Casa Maria serves soup and bag lunches every day to those who are hungry and could use some help to make sure those meals continue. The organization is having a food drive through Aug. 25. Congressman Raul Grijalva's office sent out the following reminder:

Founded in 1981, Casa Maria provides a variety of services including hot showers, medical aid, and legal services. The center serves soup and bag lunches or food packs to 600 individuals and 200 families daily. It also provides clothing and other donated items.

As a member of the Congressional Hunger Caucus, Congressman Grijalva is working to raise awareness about the problem of hunger and poverty.

“During these tough economic times, places such as Casa Maria are faced with decreasing donations,” Grijalva said. “Hunger touches every community around the nation. Every day, people go hungry because they do not have the means to provide food for themselves or their families. We as a community must help one another and I encourage our community to donate what they can.”

Those that are interested in donating to the food drive are encouraged to drop off non-perishable items to Casa Maria, located at 401 E. 26th Street.

Congressman Grijalva’s office, located at 810 E. 22nd Street, will also be collecting donations up until August 25th.

The headline on the front page of Saturday's New York Times, "Voices From Above Silence a Cable TV Feud", should have been above the fold and more about freedom of speech rather than media moguls making nice in the name of making a buck.

The feud between Bill O'Reilly and Keith Olbermann goes back almost seven years, but once it started to hurt General Electric in the wallet, the media guys decided to end the war, not Olbermann or O'Reilly. I wonder what's next. Huffington Post has an interesting take here.

Here's a snippet from the NYT piece:

Both moguls expressed regret over the venomous culture between the networks and the increasingly personal nature of the barbs. Days later, even though the feud had increased the audience of both programs, their lieutenants arranged a cease-fire, according to four people who work at the companies and have direct knowledge of the deal.

In early June, the combat stopped, and MSNBC and Fox, for the most part, found other targets for their verbal missiles (Hello, CNN).

"It was time to grow up," a senior employee of one of the companies said.

The reconciliation — not acknowledged by the parties until now — showcased how a personal and commercial battle between two men could create real consequences for their parent corporations. A G.E. shareholders’ meeting, for instance, was overrun by critics of MSNBC (and one of Mr. O’Reilly’s producers) last April.

“We all recognize that a certain level of civility needed to be introduced into the public discussion,” Gary Sheffer, a spokesman for G.E., said this week. “We’re happy that has happened.”

Take a good look at Tom Horne's face. This is the man elected to advocate for public education in Arizona, but it always seems he's more eager to screw public education that advocate for it when it comes to vouchers and legislators.
But after reading two articles recently on school-tuition organizations, it feels like the hounds have been let loose on them—and that feels pretty good.

First the article from the East Valley Tribune, then the Arizona Republic shared more insight into the underbelly of school tax credits—but it was Blog for Arizona's David Safier that brought it all home here. Safier deserves a lot of credit for his blogs on education. Thanks David.

After interviewing Tucson mom Jenifer Darland about the paper trail she uncovered that pointed out major ethics violations of Rep. Steve Yarbrough, it made it seem like the entire school-tuition-organization system is a circus. While I keep cringing at what the two Phoenix papers brought to light—that tax credits are paying for the tuition of rich white kids—I've cringed even more thinking about our Tom Horne. He's been a huge supporter of vouchers - saying this STO system makes public schools stronger.

Wow, how foolish we've been folks.

East Valley Tribune lead:

Only God and the health of loved ones rank higher with Beth and Doug Fitch than an elite education for their two boys.

The $20,000-a-year cost is exorbitant, Beth said, even though the Fitches are both personal injury attorneys and own an Awatere Foothills home valued at a half-million dollars, Maricopa County property records show. But the Fitches haven't had to worry about the bill.

Arizona has paid the price.

As Republicans at the Arizona Legislature struggle to pass a budget, the financial news just gets worse.

Arizona finished the fiscal year on June 30 with an estimated shortfall of nearly $474 million, even after all the cuts that lawmakers made back in January, according to the latest report from the Joint Legislative Budget Committee. That’s partially because Gov. Jan Brewer wasn’t able to use $250 million in federal stimulus funds on education programs as she thought she could, but that money can probably be sloshed around in the current year’s budget, provided lawmakers ever get around to approving one.

The $8.24 billion that the state collected during the fiscal year is the lowest take since fiscal year 2005. After that number is adjusted for various accounting concerns, the number drops to $7.69 billion, which is more than 18 percent lower than the previous fiscal year. The state hasn’t seen a drop that steep since World War II.

More bad news: The state still hasn’t hit bottom. June’s overall tax collections were $137.5 million below June 2008.

June’s sales tax collections dropped 14.4 percent compared to June 2008, making it the 17th consecutive month that revenues have fallen compared to the same month the previous year. Those declines have been in the double digits for the last eight months.

Here's the whole depressing report: FiscalReport.pdf