ONE DOWN: As we've consistently predicted, given half a chance the people who actually live in Dogpatch will eventually clean up the political cesspool and eliminate the developer stooges who blight the Town of Marana. Their recent election demonstrated that truth. With only five candidates fighting it out for four seats, former Mayor Ora "Mammy Yokum" Harn and Vice-mayor Sharon "Moonbeam McSwine" Price ran fourth and fifth. Just seven votes separated them at the bottom of the ticket. Councilman Herb Kai led the ticket. Kai is remembered for towering over his colleagues when he once actually disqualified himself on a zoning issue, saying he had a conflict of interest. Running second and third were newcomers Michael Reuwsuat and Roxanne Ziegler. Reuwsuat is an employee of Kelly Green Trees, a company run by Dick and Shari Kelly, who have long been active in outfits like Alliance Marana. Ziegler works for Hughes and is currently a member of the town's Planning and Zoning Commission--which is a little scary, but at least we can expect her to wear shoes and not chew on stems in public. Had the good folks in Marana run another candidate, we'd have kissed Harn goodbye too. Another recall, anyone? TO THE LETTER: Tucson City Councilman José Ibarra has learned how to play hardball with two of his colleagues in defense of his own constituents--and the colleagues are whining like the stuck pigs they both are. The Four Horseman of The Annexation and Growth Apocalypse--namely, Mayor George Miller and Councilmembers Michael Crawford, Janet Marcus and Shirley Scott--are all poised to approve as part of a pre-annexation agreement a deal where Granite Construction basically gets to strip-mine a quiet neighborhood around Sunset and Interstate 10, in Ibarra's ward. Both Crawford and Scott have neighborhood problems in their own districts. Crawford represents the folks around Tucson Tallow, and Scott has the proposed Southwest Soils site for processing contaminated earth and other bad stuff. Ibarra has written 3,600 letters to Crawford and Scott's constituents, pointing out that he supports their causes and he'd like to see the person who represents them do the same for him over the Granite deal. Seems reasonable to us, but Crawford and Scott are screaming--and waffling. They were both part of the four-to-three vote to approve the pre-annexation, but both are now claiming that doesn't mean they'll support the rezoning. Uh-huh, sure. It's further proof of the adage that cockroaches hate sunlight. NEWWORLDORDER: The rape of River Road continues as New World Homes attempts to rezone 15 acres at La Canada for another 100 units. You'll remember New World as the wonderful folks who clear-cut as much of the northwest side as our supine pols and bureaucrats would allow them. Should anyone ever record the history of the great ironwood and saguaro holocaust of the late 20th century, surely New World will rank as the local environmental equivalent of Adolf Eichmann. New World is claiming its latest attempted rape is "infill," which it apparently defines as dumping more homes into any vacant lots they jumped past on the first go-round. The area is in Pima County Supervisor Mikey Boyd's district, and we're betting he buys the "infill" crap. Read this carefully, Mikey: When a development dramatically alters the nature of an existing area, instead of simply adding similar patterns, it ain't infill! PISTOL WHIPPED: Interesting that two rather diverse groups, the Tucson Rod and Gun Club and the Audubon Society, have both had run-ins with the U.S. Forest Service. While closing the TRG shooting range recently, Forest Service officials claimed they had to act quickly after receiving a safety report on a Friday. They claimed they couldn't even wait until Monday morning to do the deed because of the high-risk factors they had just discovered. Oh, yeah? Then how come the Forest Service attorney who chased down the club officers on Saturday was flown in from Albuquerque on Friday? We don't believe that phony cover story. And neither did the Audubon folks, who had to take the Forest Service to court to get public information concerning the agency's lack of zeal in pursuing the issue of the Mexican spotted owl. Apparently Smoky only cares about tree-covered areas when it involves gun clubs and the preservation of acoustics for tourists riding trams. Forest Service officials have been notoriously lax in pursuing forest clear cutting elsewhere. Anybody who once had a cabin in Madera Canyon knows how duplicitous the Forest Service has been. Their rules are arbitrary and they don't keep their word. Don't be fooled by the Smoky garb--underneath you'll find the same Ninja mentality of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. That's why Ed Abbey called Forest Service types the "Tree Pigs," remember? DEADBEAT ON THE EDGE: Gov. J. Fife Deadbeat III came on strong last week, insisting he's going to whip the feds and their 23 felony counts in court and return to the governor's seat in 1998. Fife's bluster came following press accounts he'd met with Secretary of State Jane Dee Hull to plan an orderly transition should a "mishap" occur. First off, if a mishap occurs, it'll be because Fife doesn't get convicted. But if you ask us, Fife's fiery press conference was just for show. From what we hear, Fife has been aggressively exploring the possibility of a plea bargain that would keep him out of prison--which the prosecutors have rejected thus far. And other spies tell us Hull has privately told them she expects to be governor by this time next year--or at least running for the spot if Fife somehow survives his trial. Either way, Fife's days at the top are numbered--and last week's press conference is just another example of how good he is at lying to the public. THE WATCHING MORONS: Apparently local TV news viewers are so stupid they have to be told which TV news they're watching. At least that's the conclusion we draw from a chance encounter with KGUN-TV, Channel 9. We don't know why we were watching that station's news--we realized some time ago KGUN generally tells us nothing that isn't already in the morning paper; unless, of course, some poor wretch has been shot, or a hapless family has been roasted alive in a spectacular car crash during the day. Now that's news well worth experiencing via full-color video! Anyway, at the end of their first segment, they gave us 30 seconds of puffery about who their anchors are. Duh? Weren't we just watching those guys? Sure, they're nondescript white people, but geeze, if you've just sat through five whole minutes of shootings and car crashes that constitute the bulk of KGUN's daily contribution to local journalism, you'd think you'd at least remember it was Ralph and Alf who were reading that ever-so vital stuff. Our suspicion that KGUN is aiming its news at stupid people was confirmed late last week, when one of our spies reported seeing a KGUN "news" story on the dangers of hiking in Sabino Canyon. Gee, somebody might slip and fall...and, golly, there's the ever-present menace of broken glass! The kicker, our correspondent reports, came when the reporter--some young woman who seems new to town--asked a hapless hiker how she felt after running out of water in the canyon. "Thirsty," was the unfortunate victim's reply. And did you catch the weekend news on Nine? We didn't, but we're told they did a long story about how cops haven't yet caught the Marana High Ripper. No news is, well, no news, but that apparently didn't stop KGUN's weekend reporter from doing a "major piece" on how kids are frightened and concerned. We're told the story centered around a play some of the Marana students are doing--never mind that the recent stabbing victim had nothing to do with said play. But, like the old cliché says, the fake news must go on. HE'S LOOSE! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES! The real news in local TV news these days, however, is over at KOLD-TV, Channel 13, where bulldog anchor stud Bud Foster has reportedly extracted his butt from that hi-tech plywood anchor desk to troll the Newsplex in search of reporters to grill. The reporters, oddly enough, just happen to be sitting there in the line of fire with nothing better to do. Sure it's showbiz, but at least it's something different--and we suppose there's always the remote possibility Bud could blow a tire and crash into a hapless clot of reporters, roasting them alive.

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