From now until September, head over to the Coronet for a special lunch deal that will help you save some cash while still treating yourself. Lunches feature different combinations of cups of soup, a la carte salads and half tartines, which are $5, $4.50 and $10.50 (for a whole) respectively on the regular menu. The $10 combo special, which includes iced tea or Pellegrino soda, is available Tuesday through Friday from 11 a.m. until 3 p.m. along with the regular afternoon menu.

I didn't read this in The Nation or some other lefty journal. It was on the CNN Money website. The observation didn't come from some pinko/socialist/Harvard-teaching/Vermont-living/Kenyan-born Democratic politician. It came from research conducted by the International Monetary Fund. Its conclusion, in the words of the CNN Money subhead:

Wealth does not trickle down from the rich to the poor. Period.

In fact, concentration of wealth in the hands of the rich, the report concludes, is bad for the economy. In the words of the report itself:

[I]f the income share of the top 20 percent (the rich) increases, then GDP growth actually declines over the medium term, suggesting that the benefits do not trickle down. In contrast, an increase in the income share of the bottom 20 percent (the poor) is associated with higher GDP growth. The poor and the middle class matter the most for growth via a number of interrelated economic, social, and political channels.

So, income inequality is a problem, not just for the people at the lower portion of the income ladder, but for the entire economy. And here are the report's general recommendations for lessening inequality.

Irrespective of the level of economic development, better access to education and health care and well-targeted social policies, while ensuring that labor market institutions do not excessively penalize the poor, can help raise the income share for the poor and the middle class.

Interesting. Maybe the notion that making the rich richer is good because they're the "Job Creators" (The word "creator" in that term was carefully chosen to evoke God-like images of The Creator) and their wealth will trickle down to others is a self serving myth created by those at the top of the heap and their enablers. And maybe, if wages were higher and social/educational programs were stronger, we'd all be better for it—except, of course, the folks who have benefitted the most from our current robber-baron levels of income inequality.

U.S. Rep. Raúl Grijalva sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch requesting the Department of Justice launch a public investigation into allegations of abuse and two recent deaths at the Eloy Detention Center. 

About 200 detainees started a hunger strike over the weekend, after finding out inmate José de Jesús Deniz-Sahagún, a native of Mexico, had died while in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. ICE runs the for-profit detention center outside of Phoenix.

Detainees say they witnessed guards beat Deniz-Sahagún and then put him in solitary confinement before his death, but ICE alleges he was found unresponsive with no obvious signs of injuries. It was reported that a second man also died, likely after similar events, the detainees allege.

“I am alarmed at reports that not one, but two detainees have died while in custody at Eloy Detention Center. The fact that some this information is seeping out of the seams, as opposed to being reported and addressed outright, only furthers the concerns. We are not learning of these abuses—and one case, not learning of the death at all—through official channels. We are only hearing from the detainees inside," Grijalva said in a statement.

“Eloy Detention Center is in the business of detaining people for profit, but that does not exempt them from upholding the law. Where transgressions occur, accountability must follow. Attorney General Lynch is a stalwart advocate for justice, and I am confident that her department will get to the bottom of this in an open and accessible way," he added.

We've got two pairs of tickets to Friday night's Diamondbacks game against the San Diego Padres. The game starts at 6:40 p.m at Chase Field in Phoenix. We'll draw the winner Thursday ("tomorrow" from when this was published, "today" if you're seeing this in your newsletter) at Noon. You have to be able to pick the tickets up at our office (located near the Foothills Mall) between when we get in touch with you by 5 p.m. Friday. Enter here:

City Councilman Steve Kozachik calls Safe Park an unsafe and unsanitary place. The park has become a small community of houseless residents and advocates that have occupied downtown's Veinte de Agosto Park and some surrounding areas since 2013. For now, it has been shut down to all until it's cleaned. 

Since Sunday, yellow caution tape surrounds the park, and city deep-cleaning crews have been in-and-out. That evening, Tucson Police agents went through the park and cleaned out the remaining belongings from previous occupants. They were all evicted Friday. A young man's death at the park Thursday was the last drop to it all. 

Local businesses asked the city to fix the place up due to public health concerns. There are no toilets available, so occupants took it to the streets. When I wrote about Safe Park in April, several sources told me they had years ago requested permits for portable toilets, but the city said no.  

The city can continue to kick people out from sidewalks, parks, washes, but the bottom line is that the shelter beds are not sufficient. The so-called resources are not sufficient and, according to several of Tucson's houseless residents, pretty damn hard to obtain. These short-term "solutions" do not work.

When I first read about TUSD Superintendent H.T. Sanchez's new contract that extends through 2018, I defended it as being on the high side of normal for a superintendent in a district of this size but within a reasonable range for a newly negotiated contract. After following and participating in the vigorous, wide-ranging discussion in the comments section, I modified my support, writing that the raise sends a bad message to the rest of the staff, which has gotten small salary boosts (engineered, I should add, by Sanchez) but not anything close to what he has received. After reading more opinions about the contract and looking over its language as carefully as this lay person can, I've come to the conclusion the salary package and benefits are excessive to the point of being indefensible.

Executive compensation has skyrocketed over the past decades while salaries for the vast majority of the population have stagnated. That's wrong in every possible way. At the same time, we've developed a Cult of the Executive, especially in the private sector but also including the public sector, where we assume they have nearly supernatural powers and attribute every rise in fortunes to their genius while we forgive them for downturns and gift them with golden parachutes. Seeing the same attitudes carried over into the public sector is troubling, to say the least.

The new contract puts Sanchez's salary at $280,000 for the 2017-18 school year. The actual figure, with the add-ons, is well over $300,000, not even figuring in money that goes to pay for his business costs. A starting teacher in TUSD makes about $34,000, and it's unlikely to be much higher in 2018. That makes Sanchez's salary almost nine times higher than a first year teacher's. If we put the salary of the lowest paid full time district employee at about $20,000, that means there's a 15-to-1 ratio between the top and bottom salary. While that doesn't come anywhere near the inequities in the private sector, it's too great a gap for a public institution.

I read through the contract last night, and most of it confirmed what I already knew. There's the one time, 50 percent-of-salary bonus for completing the third year of the original contract, somewhere between $115,000 and $130,000 depending on how you do the math (At least that's how I figure it). There's the $25,000 per year bonus for each of the last two years of his new contract he completes. There's the extra 6 percent each year for meeting goals set by the board, which adds something like $16,000. All that, on top of the annual raises built into a salary which tops out at $280,000, is pretty hard to stomach in these tough economic times, especially in comparison to the shamefully low teacher salaries. It's important to point out that cutting Sanchez's salary and benefits wouldn't have any impact on teacher salaries since there's one of him and 3,000 of them, so that shouldn't be part of the discussion. However, that doesn't make the comparison any less troublesome.

Tucson teen Ana Cobos Lugo says she called the Eloy Detention Center Monday to check up on her dad Felipe—who's been recovering from a serious surgery for the past few months—and was hung up on.

She and her family were unable to visit him over the weekend because, since Saturday morning, about 200 detainees announced they started a hunger strike to protest the facility's inhumane and abusive conditions. In retaliation, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials prohibited any visits and communication to the outside world. When Ana called in, she asked whether the same rules would apply for this weekend, or if her father would get to call home soon. She didn't get an answer.

"We haven't heard from him since Friday," the 17-year-old says. Her younger siblings and mom drove up to Eloy Sunday for a rally in support of the hunger strike. "I will keep calling until I speak with my father."

Since December, Ana and her family have pleaded ICE to release Felipe from detention because of his health. He suffers from a progressive skin infection, and underwent surgery in March. He was still semi-unconscious from the anesthesia when he was transported back to the detention center, and Ana says he rarely gets his pain medication. Prior to the surgery, he didn't get much medical attention, causing his wound to get badly infected. (Felipe's been in the country for close to two decades. He and his wife moved here with Ana when she was only a few months old. Ana's three younger siblings are U.S. citizens.)

Felipe's experience doesn't stand alone.

Spend enough time in Tucson’s music scene and you will start to hear the term “the Tucson sound.” It comes straight from the musicians’ mouths, from the fans, from the reviews and is embedded in our long history of musicality.

What does it mean exactly? Well, like any other classification or genre identifier, there is no one right answer. Tucson sound, is maybe best described as music which embodies the preserving spirit of dwellers in a desert environment, which from the start appeared so inhabitable. Maybe it speaks to a certain mysticism that permeates beneath the hot sands. Maybe it is influence drawn from country, Latin music and desert rock.

Though the answer is subjective, many of Tucson’s die hard music enthusiasts can speak to what this sound has meant to them. Nostalgia is a reoccurring theme.

Club Congress, 311 East Congress St., has long cultivated a space to showcase the unique voice of Tucson artists and kind of stands as a museum documenting the search for this “sound.” The historic venue will take that niche and turn it literal with their upcoming “Tucson Rock n Roll Museum” exhibit.

The vision for the collection is to pay tribute to Tucson’s music history over the past half century, through the help of the community who was a part of it.

Congress is reaching out to this city’s musicians and fans for rock and roll memorabilia to include in the community driven museum. The guidelines are light and they are welcoming posters, photographs, newspaper clips and videos which help tell the story of “the sound.”

Today's the third year undocumented youth have been able to apply for President Obama's 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, which granted permission to be in the country and work for a renewable two-year period.

It was estimated that roughly 700,000 young migrants qualified, according to the advocacy group Mi Familia Vota.

On Nov. 20, 2014, Obama announced an expansion of the DACA program and a similar relief for parents of U.S. citizen or legal resident children, a program nicknamed DAPA. However, on Feb. 16, a federal district court judge in Texas temporarily blocked both programs. 

Currently, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services is solely accepting applications for people who qualify for the 2012 DACA.

The Center for American Progress' Silvia Mathema wrote about a recent report on the economic impact DACA, extended DACA and DAPA have/would have in each state. If the three programs are implemented fully, the U.S. economy would grow by $230 billion over the next 10 years, the analysis says. 

An interactive map shows that about 137,000 people in Arizona are eligible for extended DACA and DAPA, which is more than half of the state's undocumented population.

Calexico's Joey Burns took his ukulele to the WFUV Christmas Concert in 2013 and got Beth Orton, Sam Beam (Iron & Wine), Glen Hasnard (The Frames/Swell Season), Nick Lowe, Kathleen Edwards, Amos Lee and everyone in his band to sign the instrument. Then, while performing on Conan, Burns had Neko Case, Jon Rauhouse, Kelly Hogan and Eric Bachman make their mark on the ukulele as well.

Now Burns is auctioning off the signed ukulele as a fundraiser for Tucson's community radio station KXCI. The instrument itself is a Carlo Robelli soprano ukulele with a sapele body, nato neck, rosewood fingerboard and bridge and chrome tuners.

The auction ends on Wednesday, June 17, and with two days left, the auction is only up to $136 (at the time of this post). You can put your bid in by visiting the item's Bidding for Good page. The winner can either pick up the uke at KXCI headquarters (220 S. Fourth Ave.) or opt to pay for shipping.