Goldwater State

An incomplete roundup, one week later.

2011-01-15T16:27:00.004-07:00

David Fitzsimmons (Arizona Daily Star cartoonist "Fitz") apologized for his slanderous on-air rant. Clarence Dupnik remains strident. The Republic hit him hard in its Monday editorial, calling for him to remember his duty as a peace officer. The Washington Times's Robert Knight recommends a recall election, which, despite Dupnik's sensible stand on SB 1070, would be a great idea for many reasons of which his recent unprofessional conduct is but one.

Dave Hardy fondly remembers Judge Roll as fair-minded and respectful of the law.

Most of Gabrielle Giffords's political opponents from recent years have released statements of good will. Steve Stoltz's civic-minded reflection is the standout in that number--I could never get in to his politics, but what a class act! Randy Graf is conspicuously absent from this group. Although I consider bigots an infinitesimal epsilon away from human trash, I'm not going to read any meaning in to his silence. Perhaps it's better that we don't hear from him.

At about the same level: writers are straining to claim that Joseph Zamudio--one of the men who subdued Jared Loughner--carrying a firearm presented a danger to others. I'm not going to even link such nonsense here, and will just note that it's contradictory to write of Zamudio's finger being on the trigger in one sentence and then in another that he kept it holstered. The Wall Street Journal's features story on Zamudio gets it right.

In addition to the misguided calls to lock up the insane, we're starting to see more discussion of civil outpatient commitment. Google "Kendra's Law". It is working in New York and similar policies have been effective in a handful of other states, with civil liberties infringement approaching zero. (The ACLU's gripe is ethnic disparity, reflecting that group's recent deviation away from its core mission.) We should consider enacting such a policy here in Arizona.

A practical difference between George Bush and Barack Obama

2011-01-12T19:30:00.001-07:00

President Obama was (rightly) criticized in the first two years of his term for a dictatorial tone, for example claiming to phone BP and tell them what to do instead of letting that be handled through normal legal processes.

But in at least one respect he is less dictatorial than his predecessor. When George Bush came to Tucson for a 2008 fundraiser for Tim Bee, police--working overtime on the taxpayer dime--closed the entire length of Swan for at least four hours, from Davis Monthan AFB all the way to Sunrise. Without warning Tucson was split into two halves; people had to take detours of 15 miles or more to get from the west side to the east side, just to give George Bush a grand entrance. Hundreds were late to work or to get home to their children. Private driveways and business road cuts were also blocked along the entire route.

It's unclear to this day which of Bee or Bush was responsible for such waste and such gross inconveniencing of the common man. No President before or since has, to my knowledge, engaged in such a practice; clearing a path and restricting the movement of the plebs is better suited to a banana-republic caudillo. However banana-republican he has been at times, Barack Obama didn't have any roads shut down ~~today~~ yesterday. [BSK: post rescheduled.]

And Bee never did reimburse the public treasury or the many he inconvenience. He did, however, end up the victim of some great real-life trolling.

President Obama rose above his party tonight.

2011-01-12T19:14:00.002-07:00

Barack Obama is now on the same list as Steve Stoltz and Rodney Glassman: those whose responses to Saturday's spree shooting epitomizes republican civility.

"What we cannot do is use this tragedy as another occasion to turn on each other...[as we discuss this] let each of us do so with a good dose of humility."

And now a direct rejection of the thesis that rhetoric caused the spree shooting, without subsequently backhandedly insinuating that it did: a civil case for civility.

Addendum (BSK re: Obama): If we want our "democracy" to live up to childrens' expectations, then consensual governance is in order. Governing with the consent of the governed. Not "scoring touchdowns" with extreme and ill-wrought bills of large scope, not "elections have consequences", not democracy, not majoritarianism, and certainly not the blood-and-soil nationalism we have seen in Arizona.

Addendum 2 (BSK re: the UA choir): There is no more American song than the Shaker Hymn. When I hear just the melody in Appalachian Spring it makes the hair on my neck stand up and sometimes brings a tear to my eye. A most appropriate choice for today for a number of reasons.

Live video feed link: Obama's address

2011-01-12T18:03:00.002-07:00

The link to live coverage of tonight's memorial address is buried on the Arizona Public Media website. For those who are having trouble finding it, it is: http://ondemand.azpm.org/live/. All you have missed so far (at the time of posting) is half of a performance of Aaron Copland's Fanfare for the Common Man.

A half-mile queue for President Obama's speech

2011-01-12T16:02:00.003-07:00

At 3:50 PM the queue to see President Obama's 6 PM address (honoring those wounded or killed in Saturday's spree shooting) in the McCale Center at the University of Arizona extended past the Physics and Gould-Simpson buildings, nearly half a mile away.

The McCale Center is said to hold 14,000; overflow will be directed to Arizona Stadium where the speech will be played on the giant scoreboard televisions. (Do they still call them JumboTrons?) UA News says that all attendees will go through "airport-like" security. If that includes taking off shoes or copping a feel, they won't even fill McCale between 4 PM and the start of the address.

As for me, I'll either watch the address on Arizona Public Media's live feed or read a transcript afterwards. Many reports claim that President Obama will avoid politics tonight and some claim that he will speak about tolerance. Given the extent to which David Fitzsimmons, the Huffington Post, Clarence Dupnik, and numerous others have poisoned the discourse it will be difficult to talk about tolerance tonight without being political and without appearing that he is joining in or approves of the slanderous fantasies we heard too much of on Saturday and Sunday. The question would almost ask itself: If rhetoric or "vitriol" or whatever you want to call it did not motivate the spree shooting, then why are you bringing it up?

David Harsanyi notes the chilling implications of a dialogue about 'civility', especially one in which it is claimed that "anti-government" classical-liberal rhetoric is dangerous. That should hit home with many of the readers of this 'blog.

And on an only tangentially-related note, if you're at the speech and looking for a bite to eat either before or after the event, most of the places I recommended for lunch should be open. Mr. Antojo's makes some of the best carne asade tacos in town, as long as you have them hold the guacamole. Among places not on that list, try Wilko or Vila Thai (all near Park and University) for slightly upscale dining, Zachary's (6th and Fremont) for reliable if not great deep-dish pizzas, Rosati's (6th and Campbell) for a Chicago-style square-cut thin crust pizza as good as any from Chicago, and 1702 (1702 E. Speedway, about a block and a half west of Campbell and Speedway) for high-quality out-sized thin slices and one of the best beer selections west of the Mississippi.

There is no room for politicizing today's spree shooting.

2011-01-08T18:34:00.003-07:00

Before any information whatsoever was available about Jared Loughner, the man who shot Gabrielle Giffords, Judge John Roll, and 17 other people today in front of the Safeway supermarket near Ina and Oracle in Tucson, many were attempting to blame Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, and Jesse Kelly. Apparently, Kelly held a campaign event at a shooting range (horror of horrors). Palin's PAC put Giffords in crosshairs as part of what appears to have been a hunting-themed direct mailing.

It doesn't seem likely that a hypothetical Loughner has been plotting, plotting, plotting since receiving Palin's mailing months ago. Indeed the idea sounds laughable. And that's without knowing anything about Loughner.

Loughner's Myspace page and Youtube videos show many signs of mental illness, including a bizarre writing style, paranoia about mind control, inventing one's own currency and own language to escape mind control, and talk of "conscience dreaming" (whatever that means) and sleepwalking to escape mind control. In short, he appears to be a regular nut not an angry political assassin deciding it's time to "go to the cartridge box" all by himself.

FM 104.1 here in Tucson was relaying KGUN 9's coverage of (Sheriff) Clarence Dupnik's press conference. Repeatedly, Sheriff Dupnik, instead of focusing on the matter at hand, blamed "vitriol" in the popular press. This despite him acknowledging, without naming Loughner's name, seeing "all 7 minutes" of Loughner's Youtube videos. Near the end of the conference a reporter I could not identify pinned him down on this: was there any evidence that Loughner was inspired by such "vitriol" or had any political motive. The answer, none at all. Maybe Dupnik means "liar" or "crass jackass" in some language. Our Congresswoman--who he called a friend--was shot, and he was in spite of the facts using that in an attempt to score political points against the Right.

We all know that the staff of the Huffington Post, which appears to have been the first to attempt to politicize today's spree shooting by blaming Republican talking heads and Sara Palin, have no shame. I found out today that some of my friends--one of whom (a foreigner, so perhaps she has an excuse) even suggested the abridgement of Beck and Palin's right to free speech--don't have much either, or that they do not understand the limits of decency. (Shall we blame Noam Chomsky and other market abolitionists on the Left for every home invasion, mugging, or property crime?) To blame the political right for today's spree shooting was bad enough. To do so before any information about the killer was available was simply shameful. It's a form of lying, to claim something about motives when he could just as easily been a leftist or have done it "to impress Jodie Foster". I would be ashamed and those who participated in such wild speculation, such lying to score political points owe everyone an apology.

Kudos, by the way, to Rodney Glassman for telling Democrats to stop pointing fingers until they have the facts.

On the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords

2011-01-08T13:21:00.005-07:00

UPDATE: The latest news has Giffords alive and responsive. No word on the extent of her incapacitation.

Conflicting reports have (8th district Congresswoman) Gabrielle Giffords either dead or undergoing surgery, after being shot in the head at close range at a constituent outreach event at the Safeway near Ina and Oracle this morning. Twelve others were shot. The shooter is in police custody following a citizen's arrest made as he was attempting to escape.

Right now the news is too patchy to say much. Presumably Giffords is permanently incapacitated; just the shock wave produced by a 9mm or 0.38 caliber round at close range can cause severe brain injury. There are more questions than answers right now: why was the shooter able to fire so many rounds before he was stopped? Why was Giffords's staff not carrying? And who was the shooter?

Already the Left is attempting to blame Sarah Palin for this, as though using a hunting metaphor months ago on a PAC campaign graphic is incitement to murder today. That's ridiculous. We do not know who the shooter is at the moment--a man in his '20s is all the press is telling us--or what his motives were. It could just as easily be a left-wing extremist--Tucson has plenty--as it could be a right-wing extremist; Giffords against the Democrats about 40% of the time, and was one of only a small handful to vote against reelecting Nancy Pelosi to the position of Speaker of the House. The more extreme are calling for abridgement of freedom of the press and freedom of speech--"lock up Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin." Such talk is beyond the bounds of decency in our republic. With two narrow and well-thought exceptions--incitement and libel--we hold communication to be the remedy for communication and do not hold the authors of whatever assassins and other criminals are reading as somehow co-responsible for their crimes.

Surely today's events will give illiberal nutcases like Paul Helmke an undeserved boost of attention, if only because the rights they attempting to abridge were more recently won than those protected by the 1st Amendment. It's going to be a hard fight but the facts are on the side of liberty, unless the balancing of values very heavily favors the safety of public figures against rare events over the quotidian safety of ordinary people. Even then we must remember that John Hinkley, Sirhan Sirhan, and so many others acted before concealed carry was made legal. Readers may consider it heresy for me to say so, but now that we've won--now that (except in IL, NY, WI, and CA...) the existential threat to the right to self-defense is over--it is time, if not past time, for advocates of RKBA to contribute constructively to the discussion of how to better keep firearms out of the hands of lunatics and mental defectives. Agreeing to mandatory legal training and more thorough screening--with due process, of course--in exchange for the opponents to our right to self defense permanently standing down is a win-win bargain. And perhaps better screening would have prevented today's assassination. We do not know. As for who is to blame for lax screening, that is shared. The "anti-"s created a climate of fear that made what would otherwise be reasonable rules look like preludes to all-out abridgement of rights, and the "pro-"s for very long took an "in whatever manner pleases me" position that makes sense for law-abiding folk but doesn't make sense in an imperfect world.

The news is not clear but what is clear is the past. We were all disappointed in her vote on the "health care reform" bill that banned actuarially fair insurance and imposed a heavy transaction reporting burden on small business. But looking beyond that Giffords was no party-line voter and no ideologue. A supporter of the right to keep and bear arms, a believer in the "no exceptions" position on freedom of the press and freedom of speech, and also someone who understood, as a small businesswoman, that civil society, not government, gives prosperity, in the good sense of the word she had a liberal streak sadly lacking in today's Democratic Party. And in an era when too many Congressmen govern from Washington--which often is to Arizona what Rome must have been to Pontius Pilate's Judea--Giffords frequently met with her constituents without pre-screening their opinions or otherwise making the meeting "just for show". Altogether she was a fine match for Jim Kolbe's old 8th District and far closer to her predecessor in position and temperament than Jesse Kelly or Randy Graf, something most Republicans around here never did come to understand.

The worst criticism to be leveled at her: failure to show any leadership in a Democratic Party that made a knight's move, hard to the Left and backwards 25 years, between 2001 and 2005. Following a Friday interview The Sierra Vista Herald's Bill Hess reported what amount to signs of Gabby Giffords starting to take the lead as an advocate of fiscal restraint.

Then some jackass shot her. What was that supposed to accomplish?

A few comments on the Democratic party and Andrei Cherny's pursuit of its chairmanship

2011-01-05T14:07:00.005-07:00

Perhaps I shouldn't be surprised that Cherny is pursuing the position of chairman of the Arizona Democratic party. He apparently thinks that he has a secret supply of mojo that he can add to the water supply in Arizona that will counteract the bitterness that many Arizona voters taste when presented with the option of voting for Democratic party candidates.

His 2010 campaign for state treasurer pivoted on the idea that voters should vote for the "New" Democrat who is not the same as the old Democrat. That proposition was an electoral loser when the rubber hit the road.

Doug Ducey won after a season full of polished and aggressive attacks by Cherny because he used the shield of "prudent banker" over and over again. Cherny lost because he said he was going to expand the duties and responsibilities of the Treasurer and add an extra variable to Arizona government investing. The voters he needed to persuade weren't buying what Cherny had to sell.

Many Democrats currently believe that they can sell voters another iteration of the "New" Democrat paint job on their old Democrat jalopy. That isn't going to work in 2012. Some will try but one need only look at the bones of the Coffee party or election day 2010 to see how well that idea took off.

Cherny (or Rodney Glassman or Don Bivens) needs to recognize the necessity of adding some new ideas to the Democratic party's inbred and increasingly infirm ideological gene pool. I'll offer a suggestion to Cherny and any other Democrats who wants to win in 2012. Call the Goldwater Institute and make an appointment with their staff to discuss how many of the 100 ideas in 100 days (from Goldwater Institute) they can embrace.

On the federal level there are a few positions out there that would motivate voters to vote in favor of team Blue. So far in Arizona's congressional delegation only Raúl Grijalva has adopted the twin winner ideas of get the US out of Iraq/Afghanistan and audit the Fed. I am not sure that Ed Pastor and Gabriel Giffords are willing to endorse the idea of ending these overseas occupations but it is indeed possible that the next wave of challenger candidates will.

It is going to take some game changing positions to lure voters into considering voting Democratic in 2012.

[I posted another version of this article on another blog but the owner there apparently thinks that sticking one's fingers in his ears while yelling "No Labels will redeem our rejected ideas!" is going to do the trick when it comes to winning elections in 2012.]

Photo credit: EspressoPundit

So David Duke walks into an NAACP meeting...

2010-12-15T23:39:00.002-07:00

I have it on good word (I did not attend this year) that Russell Pearce showed up at Al Korwin's annual Bill of Rights Day event.

This is the legislator who, in his quest to institutionalize bigotry (that's fair to say because he sure isn't supporting visa reform and amnesty), introduces bill after bill that disregards the Fourth Amendment.

The DSM uses the term "lack of insight" for a necessary criterion for the diagnosis of many psychopathologies: the patient must be unaware that certain cognitions or perceptions are not normal. I think the term "lack of insight" applies here, too. That is, unless he came to beg forgiveness, and there's no rumor of that.

David F. Nolan, RIP

2010-11-21T18:09:00.002-07:00

I just received word from two mutual friends that David F. Nolan (known to many as either "Dave" or "The Nolan") passed away suddenly last night, two days shy of his 67th birthday.

An Arizonan since 2005, most recently Nolan was the at the top of the Arizona Libertarian Party's ticket, running a respectable and visible 3rd-party candidacy for the U.S. Senate. He was the principal founder of the Libertarian Party and also known for proposing what came to be known as the "Nolan Chart", one of several two-dimensional descriptors of political belief or tendency.

My sincerest condolences go to his wife Elizabeth.

I will follow up with information about the memorial service and where to send donations in lieu of flowers.

Trash and tradeoffs: or the feral Tea Partier of Fountain Hills

2010-11-12T15:23:00.003-07:00

Once again a post certain to annoy or offend some of the readers. But if you wanted someone to stroke your prejudices, you'd be reading Blog for Arizona, Sonoran Alliance, or whatever Ernie Hancock is promoting these days.

Arizona policy has once again caught national attention, and not because Russell Pearce--the man more responsible for getting Arizona thought of as the new capitol of bigotry than any other-- was elected to preside over the state Senate. No, it is because the "Tea Party", formerly reserving its vaguely paleoconservative populism for Federal and State concerns, has taken a stand on a local matter.

As reported in the Arizona Republic, on Thursday 4 November the Fountain Hills town council voted to amend the town code to allow selection of a single trash hauler. Previously, individual residents contracted individually with one of several haulers. Now all will receive weekly trash pickup services plus curbside recycling for $11.44 per month.

The local Tea Party group announced a 16 November "town hall meeting"--despite nearly 5 hours of public comment at the meeting at which the vote--announcing it as follows on their(amusingly Geocities-esque) website:

"Talkin' Trash"

On Thursday, November 4 the Fountain Hills Town Council decided, by a 4-3 vote, to take away your ability to choose your own trash hauler.

Councilmembers Brown, Dickey, and Leger, along with Mayor Schlum, voted for this action. Councilmembers Contino, Elkie, and Hansen voted to preserve your freedom.

Once more, government is trying to interfere with free market economics.

Our goal: let the people decide!

What the Tea Partiers are not discussing is price. I made a few phone calls to get a sense of what the private haulers charge. Waste Management service costs $19.50 per month plus a few dollars extra for fuel and environmental (dump) fees. Allied Waste (formerly Red Mountain) charges $55 every three months, which works out to $18.34. Due likely to economies of scale, Fountain Hills's new service will save residents $7 per month.

And those savings do not take into account the externalities. The Arizona Republic reports claims of a savings of nearly $100,000/year in street maintenance. In addition to that, there'll be less air pollution--start-and-stop driving of high-torque diesel engines like those in garbage trucks is very dirty--and less early morning vibration and noise.

The loss to the individual? Nothing. As long as it's equally clean and equally quiet trash pickup is trash pickup. Unless we somehow price into things the mental anguish a right-winger or right-wing "libertarian" must feel, given the reaction, when forced to re-evaluate very simple heuristics, everybody benefits and nobody loses. This looks like a clear example of one of those win-win transactions of which--pace Richard Epstein--coercion is an ethical and practical no-brainer. Worries about a "monopoly" are misplaced, as the area's various waste haulers can still compete when the contract is up for renewal.

Waste hauling is not health care, nor is it health insurance. There's no third-party payments problem, no moral hazard problem (except in clever hypothetical scenaria) and no price:utility tradeoffs with extreme implication for quality of life or even life-and-death. One's life, livelihood, and liberty are at stake when a "single-payer" or "single-payer"-like plan (such as the one passed by the Democrats early this year, which forbids insurance companies from competing on product) drives up costs and then reins them in with rationing. They at best only trivially at stake when trash-hauling contracts are made at the municipal level, bringing savings, reduced externalities, and extra benefits such as recycling. "But I want pickup on Wednesday." "But I want the company with the pretty purple trucks." "But I want a more expensive service without recycling because recycling is only for non-jerks and I am a jerk."

If I were a Tea Partier, and I'm not, I'd be wary of calling this "socialism" as people interviewed in the Republic--and commenting in the 'blogosphere--are doing. Socialism (euphemistically called "progressivism") and leftism more generally involves win-lose transactions, sacrificing some for the short-term benefit of others and the long-term detriment of all. Remember that poll that had 33% of Americans--who are these people--having a positive impression of "socialism"? Don't start associating "socialism" with common-sense, and still free-market, changes for the better.

On Propositions 301 and 302: No recommendation.

2010-11-02T02:06:00.003-07:00

Like previously covered Proposition 302, Proposition 301 sweeps voter-allocated funds into the general fund for the purpose of balancing the budget. In this case, it is monies from the Land Conservation Fund, set aside as 11 years of $20MM appropriations (plus private donations) following 1998 approval of the "Growing Smarter Act" by the electorate. The remaining balance of the fund is to be swept into the General Fund.

I know how I am going to vote on this one, and I'm less wishy-washy about it than I am about Prop. 302. Those of you who are in favor probably think I am against it and those of you against it probably think I am in favor. Like Proposition 302, deciding how to vote on this proposition involves balancing competing values. I do not think I can help the reader through that. I give no recommendation.

For decency's sake, vote "yes" on Prop. 203

2010-11-02T00:03:00.004-07:00

I've been more often than not surprised by just who I meet who would benefit from legalization of use and distribution of marijuana (cannabis, pot) for medicinal purposes. None have been hippies, slackers, or never-do-wells. I will not say that all patients everywhere are categorically model citizens, but the patients or would-be patients that I have met are moral and productive members of society.

The most recent: a coworker, an elderly office clerk with a very conservative manner and the work habits to match, very cautiously sought my opinion on Proposition 203 and on learning that I have long been a supporter of legalization (for any use) shared that (from her experience) medical marijuana would be the best medicine for her PTSD, that she would take would even a petty conviction not imperil her husband's business. Legal marijuana would enable a good night's sleep without the side-effects of prescription pills.

I didn't even know at the time that marijuana was therapeutic in PTSD. Surely enough, there is plenty of research to corroborate one patient's anecdotal evidence.

I find that many of the opponents of legalization of medical marijuana are simply ignorant and arrogant. A case that will forever stand out in my mind is that of an MD I knew as a teenager who called cancer patients' claims that medical marijuana would benefit them "nonsense". It turns out that this MD didn't bother to learn why the claims were being made and merely assumed that it was being argued that marijuana cures cancer. I do not know how I knew that marijuana was a potent anti-emetic, allowing chemotherapy patients to eat healthily instead of vomit uncontrollably, and an MD did not. But yes, a little hit of cheap, common marijuana smoke goes far in easing cancer patients' suffering and contributing to their health and recovery--and to suggest a THC pill would be stupid. Not only is THC not the only active constituent of marijuana, but people who are puking nonstop cannot take a pill!

Add PTSD to the list of conditions for which marijuana is therapeutic, which isn't limited to uncontrolled emesis due to cancer therapy. Marijuana reduces retinal blood pressure in glaucoma patients (helping to save their sight), controls spasticity caused by primary progressive or late-stage relapsing-remitting MS (there's one that hits close to home for this 'blogger...) and many other conditions, and reduces tremors caused by Parkinson's and other neurogenic movement disorders. And we can laugh all we want at the "munchies" in healthy people, but in patients with HIV-related wasting disease and other wasting conditions it is a lifesaver.

Opponents of medical marijuana legalization think it will send the wrong message to youths. What message is that? That our forbears who banned the stuff in a moral panic having something to do with miscegenation, Reefer Madness, and the Hearst family's interest in the pulp paper business made a mistake? That their DARE-participating schoolteachers and policemen lied to them? That for generations we've not only incarcerated people for eating or smoking something more mild than beer but locked up the ill for treating themselves? To not send this message is arrogance. We owe the young this message and a sincere apology.

They gripe that teenagers smoke more marijuana in states where medical marijuana is legal and that marijuana will be more widely available? So what! If keeping kids and adults from getting a mild buzz that generations of experience has shown us is at its worst a very mild social problem--more mild than alcohol overindulgence or tobacco smoking--really outweighs treating (and not arresting, fining, or incarcerating) the ill, perhaps one has had too many bong hits lately. They need to get out of the house more and go to places where medical marijuana is legal (e.g. New Mexico). Far from being populated with stoners and slackers, I'd call e.g. similarly-sized Albuquerque classier than Tucson. The bill is full of safeguards against recreational use--for example, plants must be grown in locked areas--to an extent that looks ridiculous to a legalization proponent, meaning that concern over recreational use is unjustified on yet another level.

And they ask if we want people "just running around smoking marijuana" as though "running around" is what marijuana smokers do--and as though the ill, who are in question here, do much running around. MS patients don't run. Huntington's and Parkinson's patients don't run. Cancer patients puking their guts out thanks to chemo don't run. We'd love for them to run.

If you would like the ill to suffer needlessly, either to oppress them or to facilitate the oppression of nearly 100% harmless others, and to continue to arrest, try, and fine or incarcerate them when they do get effective treatment, then vote "no" on Proposition 203. If on the other hand you support inexpensive and relatively safe treatment of a number of conditions, if you believe that the ill should not be punished for seeking treatment and that marginal increase in recreational use is far outweighed by this, then vote "yes".

Ballot question summaries and recommendations part 1: Propositions 106-113, the Constitutional amendments.

2010-11-01T17:39:00.013-07:00

Unlike in years past, I have not had time to cover each ballot question in detail. (Interested in joining this project? Send me an e-mail.)

However, I've had time to read them and to think them over and have received enough requests to do so that I'll provide recommendations for each:

Proposition 106, health care freedom redux

Recommendation: Yes.

A stand by the people of any state in the union against strong Federal restrictions of individual choice in purchase of health insurance and health care would have been more useful in 2008 than it is this year. Defeat of 2008's Freedom of Choice in Health Care Act, an initiative that this 'blogger strongly supported, may have impaired the Democrat-controlled Congress in its effort to simultaneously ban actuarially fair (risk-based) insurance and mandate purchase of what are essentially privately-run socialized medicine schemes. (Up to small details such as the sneaky new taxes and $600 transaction reporting mandate, that seems like a fair summary of what they gave us.)

The fight against "Obamacare" in the courts is not over (see Coons v. Geithner, and that "Coons" is none other than Nick Coons) and the passage of Proposition 106 will open up yet another front. It will also protect Arizonans from further destructive government tampering with health insurance and health care.

Moreover, it does not forbid constructive health care reform. As was the case for 2008's Proposition 101, Prop. 106 protects against two specific governmental actions. One is the compulsory purchase of health insurance or health-insurance-like schemes, mandated by the Democrats' bill, and the other is governmental interference in the ability to directly purchase medical services, the "next step" in socialization of medicine and something that, far from an imaginary evil, has been done to Canadians and others. Decoupling of insurance from employment, changing the tax structure to disfavor "comprehensive care" price insulation packages and favor actuarially fair insurance, allowing purchase of insurance across state lines, and other real health care reform measures are not forbid by the text of this ballot measure. All it forbids is the advance, under the disguise of reform, of socialist restrictions on what products and services you can purchase or choose not to purchase to take care of yourself and your family.

2008's similar but less well-worded measure lost by under 10,000 votes. Dishonest, bizarre, and potentially illegal electioneering communications by AHCCS head Anthony Rodgers (not prosecuted or so much as investigated by partisan Attorney General Terry Goddard), reported "straight" in the press in a classic case of false balance, may have made the difference. The events of 2010 show 2008's "no" to have been a grave mistake; let's correct it this year, score a propaganda coup for, and open a legal front for health care freedom. Vote "yes" on Prop. 106.
Proposition 107: an end to racial preferences in state hiring, education, and contracting.

Recommendation: Yes

"Affirmative Action" programs served a necessary purpose, but shall they be now-and-forever set-asides, a sort of pillarization, three generations and almost five decades following their passage? They corrected an injustice at one point but now, carried on too long, they are an injustice themselves--and their supporters are blind or senile enough to think we have made no social progress since the 1960s and there will be an instant reversion to bigotry if Prop. 107 passes. Nonsense. Support racial and ethnic equality by voting "yes" on Prop. 107.

Read more: I dedicated a full post to this one.
Proposition 109: Ensuring conservation remains compatible with hunting and fishing.

Recommendation: Yes, with reservations.

This measure's opponents make it out to be the sportsman's SB 1070, a means to filing on lawsuit after lawsuit to harass state government into abandoning all regulations on hunting. And that's the intelligent ones. The stupid ones, for example this year's Daily Wildcat editorial board, make arguments like "First of all, hunting and fishing are not constitutional rights. In no way can it be inferred that human beings have a right to kill animals without severely twisting the intent of the Constitution." How stupid can you get: the measure adds rights to the Constitution, it does not change the way such rights are "inferred"--and what is this "intent" thing?

What Prop. 109 does is make what is good about the status quo part of the highest law of the State. Authority to regulate hunting and fishing rests in the legislature which may delegate it (as it does) to a Game and Fish Commission. Restrictions on hunting must be "reasonable", which a reasonable person would take to mean that bag limits, seasons, and restrictions on means must be set with regard to scientific and not political concerns.

I plan on voting "yes" and I recommend that others do so. Despite this I have two reservations about the "yes" vote. First, the bill is a response to a non-existent problem. There's no reason for Constitutional amendments to be reactionary instead of forward-looking, but still, the reason this was introduced (beyond "get out the vote") is not evident. Besides extremist groups like PETA, is there anyone who politically opposes what this bill protects? The second and more serious reservation is my lack of faith in judges to determine what is reasonable. I've met dozens of scientifically illiterate lawyers in my life--I have to say that a supermajority of the lawyers I've known are both undereducated about scientific fact and inept at thinking in a scientist's fashion--and there is no special qualification, requiring scientific literacy, for a lawyer to become a judge. If a lawsuit is filed defending the "traditional means" of hunting birds with lead shot, will a judge really understand arguments made in favor of tungsten-only policies, especially if a shill "scientist" is found to defend lead? Non-scientists are poor judges of science and when science determines what is reasonable non-scientists will more often than is desirable favor the unreasonable. Passage of Prop. 109 will make non-scientists the "judges" of science more often, but I cannot say to what degree.
Proposition 110: land swaps to "protect" military bases

Recommendation: No!

Every so often we hear from people willing to bend over backwards to ensure that the military presence in this state is pampered like a baby. Rick Renzi, for example, tacked a rider onto a 2007 Congressional bill to sabotage San Pedro River conservation, ostensibly to "protect" Fort Huachuca. (To be fair, consistent with the man's history of sleaze, this was also to "protect" his father's Fort Huachuca concession business. And to be fair, he is now under indictment as a result of the ensuing investigation.) Many approved, because the military is Such A Benefit To The Community--forget that there are costs associated with the influx of federal $$$ and forget that the Army wasn't exactly straining under the San Pedro water table commitments to which it voluntarily agreed.

At issue in Prop. 110 is not riparian conservation but rather "encroachment" by development. They make it sound so sneaky: "encroachment." "Encroachment" is what happens when developers build on land near military bases not owned by the military; the gripe is that residents may later complain if the military changes use in a way that diminishes their use of their property. Proposition 110 would allow the exchange of state trust land for developers' land near military bases to prevent "encroachment" without advertisement or auction.

This is a giveaway to the military, which should act in a manner appropriate to its surroundings or plan ahead and buy more land (this is part of what Federal "eminent domain takings" are for--has the Legislature heard of those?) if it intends to change base operations to be incompatible with surroundings. And it is at the expense of Arizona taxpayers and schoolchildren and the Arizona natural environment. Sale and lease of state trust land helps to fund the public schools; every parcel just given away to developers in an exchange shortchanges education in the future. The amendment does require that the parcel exchanged be appraised so that the State receives equal or greater value, but this is a mirage: the value of the parcels that cause "encroachment" to be a concern stems from their suitability for development. With use restricted to open-space preservation or ranching and development out of question for what amounts to "forever", the State trust receives little value in return.

Furthermore, such compulsory giveaways may rush matters to the point where the State gives away from sensitive parcels key to long-term conservation--parcels better suited, taking a long-term view of things, to ranching than to blading and building--either out of right-wing anti-scientific spite or as a favor to a George Johnson type or both.

Passage of Proposition 110 is a giveaway to developers, the military, and those who make money off the military's presence at the expense of everyone else. Vote No!
Proposition 111: The Lieutenant Governor Amendment

Recommendation: No.

Passage of Proposition 111 changes the Secretary of State's title to that of "Lieutenant Governor" while maintaining most of the duties of that position, and changes the manner of election such that candidates for governor and lieutenant governor run and are elected together as two-person tickets.

The measure's best proponents argue that this will prevent Jan Brewer's situation--a governor without mandate from either the electorate or a party--from recurring. Fair enough, but this is more than offset by the harm done to potential independent candidacies and by increasing the amount of package-dealing in politics and government. Preferring more independent voices at the Capitol even if it does from time to time make the governor's social legitimacy "interesting", I recommend a weak "no".

Moreover, candidates for these positions will still run separately before party primaries, which will likely result in incompatible candidates' elections being tied to each other.

Curiously enough, Jan Brewer supports this measure, favoring a "smooth transition" in the event that the governor's office is vacated. Again, fair enough, but that concern should be left to the voters.
Proposition 112: pushing back the initiative petition deadline.

Recommendation: Yes.

This measure does two things. It bizarrely changes "centum" to "cent" in a portion of the State constitution (the former is sensible usage, the latter is not), and, more substantially, requires that signatures in support of initiatives or referenda be submitted to the Secretary of State at least six months before the general election.

At first glance this seems like a mere restriction on the citizens' initiative power. However, the four-month deadline has proved to be unworkable, not allowing time for court hearings if signature counts are in question. I am not confident that the State will not use the extra time frivolously and still bungle the process, but given what took place in 2008--with some initiatives (e.g. the home warranties measure) making the ballot despite questionable signatures because there was no time for a count, while others missed it because the count was done with no time for hearings--it is clear that improvements are needed.
Proposition 113: Secret ballots for union representation elections

Recommendation: Yes

This amendment establishes a constitutional right to a secret ballot when union representation elections are mandated by law, forbidding the "card check" procedures that would be established by the Federal "Employee Free Choice Act".

What an Orwellian name for a bill! The "free choice" available without secret ballots is to sign the card to be free of harassment or intimidation by union "organizers". We haven't had much problem with union thuggery in Arizona, but coming from back east I can tell you that stories of assaults, threats, and battery are no tall tales, nor do is retribution by the union, following an election, against workers who opposed unionization something made-up by free marketeers. Union abuse of workers is very real, and the page that link points to is but a small sampling of incidents.

Employees receive much statutory protection from employer harassment concerning unions and retribution against stances taken in union elections--employers are even forbid from making promises to workers of increased benefits if unionization fails! But unions are exempt from RICO laws and getting union harassment (or worse) prosecuted is very difficult. Eliminating secrecy in voting extends the group exposed to union coercion from those who raise their voices to all workers who aren't explicitly pro-union card-signers.

Employees and Arizona businesspeople alike will be protected by Prop. 113's passage. It is only union management and leftist ideologues who stand to lose. Vote "yes".

Penny Kotterman: Ideologue, Union Boss, Extremist, and wrong for Arizona

2010-10-25T18:20:00.003-07:00

Makers of the "Airborne" patent medicine, before it was (even more thoroughly) discredited in a class-action lawsuit, promoted it by emphasizing that it was created by a schoolteacher. Apparently--and I do not understand the mentality--our memories of kindly old Miss So-and-So who taught us in 3rd grade were to cause us to trust it more than something created by scientists and put through clinical trials and for which we actually had some evidence of efficacy.

The Penny Kotterman campaign for Superintendent of Public Instruction has attempted a similar marketing strategy. The reason we are given to support Kotterman: she was a schoolteacher. That's it. Not her policy positions, not her values, simply her occupational history. Conveniently omitted before all audiences except those composed of committed anti-private-education ideologues are some inconvenient details: Penny Kotterman is not just any schoolteacher. She was and is one of the most committed opponents to education reform in Arizona.

If the name "Kotterman" sounds familiar it is because she was the lead plaintiff in Kotterman v. Killian, the Left's challenge to the then-new tuition tax credit program. In no uncertain terms, several years before the Supreme Court's decision in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, the ultimate decision in Kotterman established the legality of the tuition tax credit program under Arizona law.

For those who may not have been paying attention, the tuition tax credit program gives a small dollar-for-dollar tax credit to people making donations to "school tuition organizations" which in turn must contribute all but a minuscule portion of what they take in to pay the private-school tuition fees for children. Compared to a direct parent tax credit the program is a kludge that only indirectly addresses the market failure caused by double-payments, but that's not the point here. The tax credit program allowed children at the margin to benefit from real school choice.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona (then AzCLU) claimed that this tax credit program violated the Arizona Constitution and brought on Kotterman as lead plaintiff. It's worth noting that they did not, and still do not in their follow-up Winn v. Garriott, claim that civil liberties are being violated. (A digression: The only difference between Winn and Zelman is between tax credits and vouchers; by continuing this case post-Zelman ACLU-AZ's board of directors is verging on a breach of its fiducial duty to its membership.) When I served on the ACLU-AZ board of directors whose civil liberties were being violated--who was less free because of tax credits--I'd get dodgy answers ("those who don't want people who give to private schools to get a tax break" or "I don't want 'my money' going to religious schools") combined with shamed aversion of eyes. The Kotterman case itself was based on the anachronistic claim that the Arizona Constitution contained a Blaine Amendment. Even more shameful: those familiar with Blaine Amendments know that they were supported and in some states passed as a means for Protestants to officially oppress Catholics: nothing that the ACLU should support! The AZ Constitution does contain Blaine Amendment-like language but even a genuine Blaine Amendment wouldn't rule out the tuition tax credit program. The AzCLU had to go one step further, in claiming that a tax credit for people saving the state an expense is the same thing as a state expenditure, therefore when donations end up paying for religious education because parents send their kids to religious schools, it is the same as the legislature making an expenditure on religious education.

The whole thing strained credulity--it was clearly a post-hoc dressing up of vulgar leftism in civil libertarian language--as does the 9th Circuit's ruling in still-pending Winn that tax credits violate the Establishment Clause because parents choose more often than not to send their kids to religious schools and STO donors choose to support these institutions. (This line of argument was knocked out of the park in Zelman in, as I recall, O'Connor's concurrence: a program cannot be constitutional in one state but unconstitutional in another because the citizens have different religious preferences.)

But what does this have to do with Penny Kotterman? She was no Schecter-like ingenue with no ideological commitments who had been personally wronged by a government policy. Indeed given that she had not been harmed it is difficult to determine why she had standing at all. She was at the time the head of the state's largest schoolteachers' union, the Arizona Education Association and was plaintiff--as is often the case in these sorts of challenges--because she was a True Believer that the policy passed by the legislature was wrong. There are no two ways about it: In the late 1990s, teachers' union boss Penny Kotterman attempted to smother school choice, the state's most significant education reform, in its crib. Far from backing away from this today, she stands by her position on her campaign website. (The dippy justification given: 90% of Arizona kids are still in the old public schools. In other words: change has not happened therefore change should not happen.)

The usually good East Valley Tribune and many other press outlets, perhaps forgetting what kind of anti-reform extremist Penny Kotterman is, have been suckered like an Airborne purchaser into believing that Kotterman must be good for the state because she was a schoolteacher.

To quote the Trib:

Penny Kotterman is a former school teacher who has spent 33 years in education, including six years as the president of the state’s largest teacher’s union, the Arizona Education Association.

We like Kotterman for two reasons. First, she will be a stronger advocate for public schools, whose performance has declined sharply in the last decade. Beyond that, we think that — after 16 years of having politicians in the superintendent’s office — it’s time to turn that position over to a teacher who has been there and done that in Arizona’s school system.

As with electing an African-American President of the United States, in principle putting an educator in the Superintendent seat would be a welcome change. However, continuing the analogy with the Presidency: not this teacher. Penny Kotterman has too strong an ideological commitment to be counted on to serve the public interest. While I cannot give him the ringing all-out endorsement I gave Scott Stewart, there is no doubting that, when it comes to education, as a legislator John Huppenthal has been part of the solution. As the East Valley Tribune noted before denying him their endorsement, he's taken the issue quite seriously, researching the alternatives and only then backing the best. He can be counted on to support what is best for Arizona's schoolchildren, no matter what institution is educating them. He can be counted among the co-authors and co-sponsors of important education bills reducing from 18 months to 3 months the amount of time needed to dismiss poorly performing instructors from their jobs, eliminating the cap on charter school enrollment, and eliminating schoolteacher tenure in Arizona. Looking forward, he has been and remains a proponent of merit pay. Kotterman, on the other hand, we can expect to perform an inappropriate balancing of the interests of schoolchildren against the interests of unionized teachers and the public school establishment, and declares on her website that she remains 100% opposed to vouchers and tuition tax credits, which help make school choice a reality for many middle-class families.

I thus recommend that readers vote for John Huppenthal on 2 November 2010.

Arizona Blue Meanie outed.

2010-10-25T11:11:00.003-07:00

And while I was busy kicking Dan Heller for his descent into smug and antisocial glibertarianism (or, more likely, while I was sleeping with the post queued up) Josh Brodesky of the Arizona Daily Star gave an infinitely nastier character what he had coming.

The Arizona Blue Meanie has been outed as Tucson lawyer Roger White, no doubt keeping his identity secret to avoid both loss of clients and libel suits. The Blue Meanie's modus operandi was to be wild and Make Things Up. Sometimes this was just insinuation--for example, he didn't accuse Jeff Flake of embezzlement but attempted to connect it with the non-increase in Social Security checks, and sometimes it was outright defamation. Logic rarely played a role in his remarks--in stark contrast to his co-'bloggers. Perhaps this was also a reason for anonymity: who would hire a lawyer who doesn't seem like he thinks his way through things?

I'd prepare a shame list, but I recommend just clicking the "Blog for Arizona" link and seeing for yourself. It's hard to find a "Blue Meanie" post that is both reasonable and within the bounds of gentlemanly decency.

The State Bar lists White as inactive, but Justia says he practices family law and estate planning. To those disgusted by his politics and personal conduct, I recommend giving your business to Peter Schmerl, a good (modern classical-)liberal and despite his shyness a real stand-up man both privately and in his community.

Call me old-fashioned, or an out-of-touch Midwesterner, but this 'blogger believes in wagering one's reputation on one's remarks, on correcting one's self if incorrect, saying "sorry" and meaning it, and in making amends if one wrongs somebody. Where I come from that went simply with being a man (or grown woman). It makes one wonder, what kind of men are anony-'bloggers like White or the contributors to Sonoran Alliance? Anyone who knows these characters personally care to comment?

Another endorsement from Ben K: Rick Fowlkes for Corporation Commission

2010-10-25T01:01:00.002-07:00

I was told at my wedding that Rick Fowlkes didn't make the ballot, and should have checked up on that before stating it as truth here: to readers, I offer a sincere "sorry!"--and a thanks to Thane for setting me straight in the comments of that last over-the-top hockey-fight post.

Let's put an engineer and a free-marketeer on the Corporation Commission: vote Rick Fowlkes. Instead of writing at length about the man and his platform, I refer readers to earlier posts. Nothing has changed but his party: Fowlkes remains a man of ideas, the lone candidate who seeks truly to empower consumers and make the markets work.

R.I.P. Daniel Heller

2010-10-24T08:27:00.005-07:00

It appears that Phoenix Libertarian Examiner Dan Heller, or at least the Heller who was an intelligent commentator and a joy to read, died recently of circle-jerk related injuries.

The strongest evidence to date: an article entitled "Don’t be a jerk: Vote Libertarian or Don’t Vote at All"

I'll let it speak for itself first:

If you vote for increased taxes (or for the existence of taxes at all), you’re voting for strong, scary-looking men with badges and guns (who take their jobs way too seriously) to collect private property—through violent means—from your neighbor. That’s not cool, even if it’s for a “good cause” (i.e.; for whatever righteous redistributionist cause—probably involving children— you support).

If you vote to ban or prohibit a substance you don’t like (such as tobacco or alcohol or any other narcotic), you’re supporting the use of violence against other people because you think you know what’s best for them. Come on. Don’t be an jerk. Don’t use or endorse the use of violence because you think you know what’s best for other people. Instead, if you’re going to take a risk by voting, without being a jerk, vote with the Golden Rule in mind—vote unto others as you would have them vote unto you.

Would you walk to your next door neighbor’s house, point a gun at him and demand that he gives you some money because you don’t like his “immoral” habits, like smoking? Would you point a gun at your neighbor and demand that he pays you money so you can give it to some homeless children you think deserve it more than he does? Would you say, “Pay up, buddy! I need to buy your health insurance and create a retirement savings account for you. Do it now, or I pull the trigger!”

More than likely, no, you wouldn’t, because that’s sociopathic behavior. But why vote like a sociopath then? There’s no reason to. Just stay home. Open a bottle of wine. Relax.

Taxation is or sometimes can be similar to a shakedown. And a sink is or sometimes can be similar to a toilet. Nevertheless, if you really cannot tell the difference you are not welcome in most homes, including mine. And similarly the popularity of Heller's viewpoint--none of the ideas are new, and they were indeed quite old by the time I believed them as an 18-year-old punk--among the soi-disant "hard core" of the Libertarian Party explains why libertarians are in general unwelcome. It isn't quite shitting in the sink, but the sort of false moral clarity that has one telling people not to vote their conscience, and condemning all candidates and by extension the people who vote for them as engaging in sociopathic behavior is rude and antisocial--if not a signal of some kind of sociopathy!

Rather than tackle this ab initio I turn to one of the best respected libertarian philosophers of our time, Loren Lomasky, best known as the author of Persons, Rights, and the Moral Community. In "Libertarianism as if (the other 99% of) people mattered", an essay appearing in Social Philosophy and Policy 15 (e-mail me if you cannot find a copy--an essay containing the phrase "Libertarians ought not be required by their principles to lead geyserless lives" is almost certain to be fun):

If I have adopted the cooperationist rather than the rejectionist attitude toward the society in which I live, then I am thereby committed to acknowledging that although my fellow citizens' views concerning the ethics of taxation are, as I see it, mistaken, the perspective from which they adopt those views is not so unreasonable or so uncivil as to disqualify them from moral respect. ... It is, therefore, not only misleading but also an exercise in borderline incivility to equate taxation with theft, for if it is taken in its straightforward sense, that pronouncement denies the legitimacy of the social order and announces that I regard myself as authorized unilaterally to override its dictates as I would the depredations of the thief. It says to my neighbors that I regard them as, if not themselves thieves, then confederates or willing accomplices in thievery.

One is left to wonder why Heller neither drops out of society nor engages in war on his neighbors and colleagues. Moreover the equation of taxation with theft is a circular argument and a patently obvious one at that.

This isn't to say that there is no ethical component to voting. One is probably compelled by common decency to vote out of office recidivist violators of guaranteed liberties, such as Joe Arpaio, and we shun from polite company at least outright Sheriff Joe supporters. It is likewise for global warming denialists--all other things being equal, candidates who support policies that prevent us from fouling our shared nest receive the vote of moral people, and those who deliberately or negligently spread falsehoods--especially scientists who make silly arguments for ideological reasons--to enhance the short-term profits of the Koch brothers or merely because they think they are spiting Al Gore are shunned. "Not our kind, dear." It isn't war, but we don't simultaneously accuse people of being thieves and sociopaths or in league with thieves and sociopaths yet treat them as friends or welcome neighbors.

What makes this all the more amusing is the total falsehood of Heller's newfound moral clarity. Every serious libertarian thinker recognized far more subtlety to these questions--to choose two "accessible" examples, Friedman and Hayek both supported guaranteed minimum incomes for very solidly classical-liberal reasons. If it wasn't done before, Nozick in Anarchy, State, and Utopia made the equation of liberty with a lack of coercion intellectually off-limits: the arguments against it substitute for true rebuttal a merely more strident repetition of the old Spooner/Rand/Rothbard position.

By now I'm boring my readers. Let me just finish up by saying that to date I have been able to find force (Oh no, force!!!!!!) in the positions held by every "libertarian" who like Heller categorically condemns force and condemns all who do not vote as he would like for being supporters of force. So yes, your moral clarity is fake. And yours too. And, when I'm guilty of it, mine.

For reasons I might get to, at least a few third-party candidates receive my personal endorsement this season, at the very least: Libertarians Joe Cobb and Thane Eichenauer, independent Ted Downing, and, with reservations, Libertarians Nick Coons and Steve Stoltz. Rick Fowlkes would get my endorsement, too, but he's not on the ballot. And for now the link to Heller will remain. His back-catalog--before what must have been a blow to the head (perhaps from a Rothbard book?) had him repeating 1970s cliches in his columns and, we see, unable to distinguish the sink and the toilet--is interesting and his recent output cannot detract from it. Moreover we can expect false moral clarity to be a mere phase he's going through. It happens to most self-identifying "libertarians" and the more intelligent ones get over it eventually.

Vote "Yes" on Proposition 107: 3 generations of discrimination has been at least enough.

2010-10-24T00:15:00.003-07:00

This year's Proposition 107, the "Arizona Civil Rights Initiative", is simple, almost self-explanatory. To quote:

36. Preferential treatment or discrimination prohibited; exceptions; definition

SECTION 36. A. THIS STATE SHALL NOT GRANT PREFERENTIAL TREATMENT TO OR DISCRIMINATE AGAINST ANY INDIVIDUAL OR GROUP ON THE BASIS OF RACE, SEX, COLOR, ETHNICITY OR NATIONAL ORIGIN IN THE OPERATION OF PUBLIC EMPLOYMENT, PUBLIC EDUCATION OR PUBLIC CONTRACTING.

B. THIS SECTION DOES NOT:

1. PROHIBIT BONA FIDE QUALIFICATIONS BASED ON SEX THAT ARE REASONABLY NECESSARY TO THE NORMAL OPERATION OF PUBLIC EMPLOYMENT, PUBLIC EDUCATION OR PUBLIC CONTRACTING.

2. PROHIBIT ACTION THAT MUST BE TAKEN TO ESTABLISH OR MAINTAIN ELIGIBILITY FOR ANY FEDERAL PROGRAM, IF INELIGIBILITY WOULD RESULT IN A LOSS OF FEDERAL MONIES TO THIS STATE.

3. INVALIDATE ANY COURT ORDER OR CONSENT DECREE THAT IS IN FORCE AS OF THE EFFECTIVE DATE OF THIS SECTION.

C. THE REMEDIES AVAILABLE FOR A VIOLATION OF THIS SECTION ARE THE SAME, REGARDLESS OF THE INJURED PARTY'S RACE, SEX, COLOR, ETHNICITY OR NATIONAL ORIGIN, AS ARE OTHERWISE AVAILABLE FOR A VIOLATION OF THE EXISTING ANTIDISCRIMINATION LAWS OF THIS STATE.

D. THIS SECTION APPLIES ONLY TO ACTIONS THAT ARE TAKEN AFTER THE EFFECTIVE DATE OF THIS SECTION.

E. THIS SECTION IS SELF-EXECUTING.

F. FOR THE PURPOSES OF THIS SECTION, "STATE" INCLUDES THIS STATE, A CITY, TOWN OR COUNTY, A PUBLIC UNIVERSITY, INCLUDING THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA, ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY AND NORTHERN ARIZONA UNIVERSITY, A COMMUNITY COLLEGE DISTRICT, A SCHOOL DISTRICT, A SPECIAL DISTRICT OR ANY OTHER POLITICAL SUBDIVISION IN THIS STATE.

Opponents of this proposition tend to make two claims. One is that quotas do not exist in Arizona. True, but it isn't the whole truth. While there are no quotas per se, there are plenty of preference programs, as documented in a Goldwater Institute whitepaper

The other is that preference programs exist as a matter of justice or are necessary to prevent discrimination. That's outright nonsense: the way to not discriminate on the basis of ethnicity into account is to consciously stop discriminating on the basis of ethnicity, which is not the same thing as giving preferences.

As we were reminded by Richard Epstein and others in the wake of Rand Paul's bout with foot-in-mouth syndrome earlier this year, there is a reasonably compelling argument to be made for government affirmative action programs as a sort of remedy for negative discrimination in the immediate past, so as not to "lock in" for a generation or longer the results of such discrimination. If the government for a time deliberately did not hire Martians, it would make sense to give preference to Martians in its next few hires so as not to keep Martians more or less locked out until all the Earthlings retire, and to avoid the effects such a policy would have on the next generation of Martians (and Earthhlings!)

But Arizona's preference programs are not time-limited remedies to past discrimination and not narrowly tailored in intent or effect even if they avoid quotas. At best they are responses to discrimination of decades ago. Some of their supporters seem to think we are living decades ago. Take the League of Women Voters, which stated in the measure's publicity pamphlet that "The LWVAZ believes that all qualified candidates should get a fair chance to compete for jobs or obtain an education based on individual merit, not special connections. Proposition 107 would turn back the clock to a society of "good old boy" networks where women and people of color routinely face discrimination. "

Were preference programs repealed immediately after their institution, yes, this would be true. The same people would be in charge, making the hires they would make without it. But we've made decades of social progress since then and while bigots can still be found in trailer parks and retirement homes they are no longer in charge of the university or government. Indeed those university, county, municipal, and state bureaucrats who the League of Women Voters implicitly claims would not allow others to obtain an education or compete for jobs based on merit unless prohibited from making decisions based on what a reasonable person would think to be merit (a hint for LWVAZ members: "merit" is not race, gender, or ethnicity) should be outraged.

I repeat: The moral authority of preference programs expired decades ago. The bigots of old are retired or dead. Thanks in part to past preference programs, a new generation has not taken their place. Proponents of continued ethnic discrimination have a difficult question to answer, and you should ask them it whenever you get the chance: "How long should discrimination persist, and under what conditions would you support its end?" The answer "as long as there is inequality between ethnic groups" is inadequate. If imbalances still exist, it is likely that they are not the direct result of past discrimination. It is evident that further "positive" or "reactionary" discrimination to remedy such imbalances will be ineffective, in addition to being unjust.

That injustice, acknowledged in both the majority opinion and dissent in Grutter v Bollinger (the U.S. Supreme Court case upholding discriminatory programs if narrowly tailored and limited in duration), is now holding back race relations and may be the cause of much residual ethnic prejudice. We're at the point where many a person of European or South or East Asian ancestry, on seeing someone whose ancestors came from the "global south" be admitted to a selective program at a state university, receive a state contract, or be hired as a state employee, suspects that that admittee, that contractor, that employee may have gotten there through an unfair and discriminatory process. That is not a situation we'd like the suspected "affirmative action" admittees, contractors, or hires to be put in.

To quote native Arizonan and retired Supreme Court Justice O'Connor's majority opinion in Grutter v Bollinger:

[Accordingly,] race-conscious admissions policies must be limited in time. This requirement reflects that racial classifications, however compelling their goals, are potentially so dangerous that they may be employed no more broadly than the interest demands. Enshrining a permanent justification for racial preferences would offend this fundamental equal protection principle.

A policy limited in time must be subject to either sunset or periodic review. The Arizona legislature has established no sunset or periodic review for its discriminatory programs. By initiative, we have forced a review. Let's sunset the policy ourselves this November 2nd. Vote for progress on race and ethnicity. Vote "yes" on Proposition 107.

The little differences.

2010-10-23T23:10:00.003-07:00

I've spent 7 years in Tucson, will be 8 before I leave, and I'm still learning some of the cultural differences between here and "back east"

Case in point: Nobody, except me, wears evening clothes (aka a tuxedo) to the symphony's opening night.

Neither way is clearly better, but one sure is strange to me!

A bit on Scott Stewart's challenger Kevin Mattocks

2010-10-22T20:05:00.001-07:00

It's no secret that Scott Stewart is the only member of the PCC governing board who works in the private sector or even has a strong private-sector background.

Kevin Mattocks, his opponent, also has a bit of a private sector background, but for the most part has worked as a policeman, first in Mesa, then in Oro Valley. Recently he has been head of the FOP, one of the police unions. Stewart (see below) believes him to be the government employee union candidate, and knowing Stewart (and knowing Stewart to be honest to the point where one would mistake him for a Quaker) I'd be very surprised were this were an exaggeration. Indeed, Mattocks confirms the narrative, perhaps inadvertently, on his own website:

I had many discussions with my twin brother who works as a police officer with Pima Community College. The employees of the college learned of my enthusiasm and eligibility to run for this position in district 4. They met with me and talked me into running.

(emphasis mine). Not requests from community leaders, not even faculty and students, and certainly not any intrinsic interest in the position motivated Mattocks: college employees, perhaps perturbed that Stewart backed a 40-hour work week, asked him.

Government employee union candidate or not, what has struck be about Mattocks is his vacuity. Why is he running? He doesn't say. What does he want to do differently? The best we find on his website:

I believe in personal responsibility, family first, limited government, free markets, individual liberty, traditional American and Christian values and a strong national defense. I believe the role of government should provide people the freedom necessary to pursue their own goals. I ask for your support and your financial support as I continue my election. I have never planned or run an election nor do I consider myself a politician. I appreciate your interest in my success.

How any of this translates to PCC Governing Board policy is anybody's guess. He goes on a bit:

...Issues:

*

Accountability with our Tax Dollars
*

Affordable and Accessible Community College Education
*

Public Safety
*

Improvement of Adult Education Programs
*

Community Development

And the second version of the website, although more polished, also lacks concrete statements about PCC or county policy.

I do not attend PCC governing board meetings so I cannot speak to how much interest Mattocks has shown in the month-to-month concerns of that body. But his website and his non-existent statements to the press appear to indicate either that he is uninterested (i.e. he was put up to this), that he hasn't researched the issues at all, or that he hasn't a clue about the PCC governing board's concerns and the compromises they must make with each other and with reality and thus has no policy ideas at all.

It would be small of me to argue that Stewart is a better choice because he is a highly educated engineer and his opponent is a police officer whose regard for intellect may or may not be signaled by his writing on that first website. Surely an "everyman" can also act to advance higher education; in the American tradition millions of "everyman" parents, for several generations, have done so by encouraging and pushing their children to hit the books and go to college. But whereas Stewart has much to say about the value of education to the individual and the public and specifically about the role of the community college, conspicuously missing from Mattocks's (few) statements concerning his run for office are any discussion of education. Not even the vapid Congressional "I support education and the children..." Nothing.

I ask again, and will be far nastier about it than the ever-polite Stewart: Why is Mattocks running? He appears to have no interest in the position, to bring nothing to the race, and if elected it does not appear that he will bring anything to the seat except his rear end. It is not up to us to give him the benefit of the doubt. It's up to him to convince us, to share with us his ideas and the way he thinks about policy. He's not even trying to do so.

From Stewart's website:

A short statement about my opponent

For twelve years now I've worked to take care of the Pima College staff in both good times and bad. In fact, I've almost always been the board member to publicly defend our employees’ compensation package. This year, however, I have opposition from the government employee union sector. Personally, I believe my opponent was recruited by Pima's union leadership because of the manner in which we have dealt with recent funding cuts. Let me explain why I think this.

Like everyone else, we have to do more with less. However, instead of instituting layoffs and furloughs we've expanded our workweek from 37.5 hours to 40 and cut pay 2.7% per hour (resulting in 4% more pay per week). Unfortunately, the union leadership sees only more hours for less money per hour. They have even publicly complained about the hardships of the 40-hour workweek – this at a time when many folks in the community have lost their jobs!

I have met my opponent and he's an intelligent and positive man. Nonetheless, I believe his background as a government employee and a government employee union representative could very well change the board from one that looks out for the community first to one that first looks out for college employees first. Naturally, I believe we have to take care of the employees but our primary mission is to serve this community FIRST and foremost.

No recommendation on Proposition 302

2010-10-22T14:33:00.002-07:00

A first for this 'blog: on one ballot question, I provide no recommendation. Perhaps (Treasurer candidate) Thane will be able to offer more perspective.

The legislature's (constitutionally-mandated) balancing of the budget depended in part on the sweeping of tobacco surtax revenue into the general fund. In 2006, voters approved Proposition 203, the Arizona Early Childhood Development and Health Initiative, sometimes called "First Things First" after the bill's supporters' name for themselves, which added an eighty-cents-per-pack surtax to the cost of cigarettes and established a far-left, Great Society style board to promote government-run pre-K schooling and well-baby care, which since its establishment is estimated by its supporters to have provided services of some sort or another to half of the children age five and under in the State.

Since the funds were set aside by voters, they can only be re-allocated by voters. This year's Proposition 302 does that. It defunds the activities of the Early Childhood Development and Health Board and sweeps the eighty cent surtax into the General Fund.

On the one hand, this is a good thing. It balances the budget and removes a California-style pre-allocation from our system of government, putting budgeting back in the hands of the legislature, which is better equipped than the single-issue ballot question voter to make cost-benefit decisions in context. And it defunds a program that not only makes Arizona children government dependents from birth, but also one that does so unsustainably, by taxing an unhealthy and ordinarily extremely rude activity that by rights we'd like to see diminished by orders of magnitude and that has over time went from socially acceptable to acceptable in all but the politest of circles to generally unacceptable, at least among educated folk.

On the other hand, it means that the budget, more so than it is already, is funded by many petty taxes that are difficult to reduce and easy for some to impose on others. Structurally, taxes--except those that amount to user fees like road taxes or obvious corrections of externalities (Pigouvian taxes) like carbon taxes--should be few in number and of the sort that affect most or all people in a fairly direct manner.

I don't see either of "yes" or "no" on Proposition 302 having a clear advantage here and will not share how I plan to vote on this. Perhaps commenters have insight or perhaps Thane will clarify, but for now: you're on your own.

Ben's endorsement: Re-elect Scott Stewart to the Pima Community College governing board

2010-10-21T22:45:00.005-07:00

The beginning of my (late) remarks on the upcoming election, this one is more a personal endorsement than any. For as long as I have known Scott Stewart--almost as long as I have been in Tucson--I have known him to be a man of integrity and not only a capable intellect but someone with enough concern for propriety and realities of the day to be said to exhibit wisdom.

He has his detractors (*cough* glibertarians... *cough*) but the worst they say about him is that he is not a reactionary or ideologue, that he takes this "public servant" stuff seriously and is acting to better Pima College and the community rather than to further some outside agenda. So self-absorbed and overcertain of their small beliefs are his detractors that they do not realize that to normal people what they are saying would be a serious compliment!

Beyond that, just consider what Scott Stewart himself has wrote of his service on the PCC Governing Board:

My Record (Scott Stewart)

When I was first elected my primary intention was to keep the college effective and affordable for both students and taxpayers. I also was interested in exporting Pima's strengths to other institutions. The reason this was a priority was (and it still is!) Pima's fastest growing market share was remedial education for recent high school graduates.

I have never governed as a partisan. Instead, I work hard and study the College and the choices before it. Some of our main choices relate to where our students come from and where they go next, either transferring to a 4-year university or going directly to work. I believe my study has allowed me to make the best judgments possible regarding such choices.

In my time on the Board, I've personally worked to attract students from alternative venues such as charter and private schools and home-schooling. I have ensured Pima remains friendly to such students. We have reached out as well to these institutions and associations to help them solve their student challenges. I've also successfully pushed partnerships so our graduates can afford further education beyond Pima. The College now offers several of these.

During my years on the Board, I've helped Pima make the following improvements:

· More transparency - our “metrics” are now posted on the PCC website

· Moved our Aviation Technology Program to a site on the airport grounds to qualify for FAA Certification in more areas

· Increased the staff workweek from 37.5 to 40 hours

· Moved staff closer to a “Pay for Performance” plan, rather than simply basing their pay on time employed

· Improved pay dramatically for the high-demand nursing faculty

· Ensured that Pima listens to local employers so we can learn what is needed and wanted from our graduates

· Ensured the College works with local high schools, charter schools, private schools, and home school associations to know how their students do on our placement exams.

· Reduced opportunities for identity theft by insisting that Pima not use Social Security Numbers as a student ID

Obviously, I'm proud to have successfully worked on all of the above. I would appreciate your support to continue my work.

There's nothing in there not to like, and to the best of my knowledge no serious omission of any reason to not support the man, either. I give the re-election of Scott Stewart my wholehearted endorsement.

To read more, visit www.stewartforpima.org.

Phoenix sticking its neck out over billboard censorship.

2010-10-21T17:21:00.005-07:00

Update, from Korwin's press release:

Assistant Phoenix city attorney Ted Mariscal claimed in a conference call with Mr. Korwin and CBS Outdoor that the billboards weren't commercial enough, the message was too vague, and then demanded the message be changed to his satisfaction. When pressed for a definition of what is either sufficiently commercial or what defines a public service ad he declined to respond, referring instead to a 12-year-old 9th Circuit court case concerning a religious group (Children of the Rosary) and abortion ads. CBS is designing new art to please the city, but without guidelines of what's acceptable, there's no way to predict the result, and the TrainMeAZ campaign isn't exactly keen on this approach.

Arizona Republic 'blogger Laurie Roberts reports on a developing story: the City of Phoenix has pulled TrainMeAZ.com's advertisements from bus shelters, supposedly following receipt of a complaint. (Whether or not the complaint was truly external--and just what kind of person would complain about a run-of-the-mill add--is currently unknown.)

TrainMeAZ is a website advertising firearms training and other firearms-related services. The billboards are rather simple: the stock "Guns Save Lives"-in-a-heart thing followed by "Arizona says: Educate your kids", followed by the URL. In short: buy a firearm, keep your kids safe by training them, and oh, here's our URL where you will be directed to services to help do both. A commercial ad for a website if there ever was one.

Phoenix's argument: It's a public service announcement, not an ad for commercial service, and the city's (court-upheld) ad policy prohibits purchase of PSAs. But PSAs do not direct people to commercial websites.

The distinction--and what test will be applied--isn't immediately clear, but what I do know is that the City of Phoenix must be up for a fight. We "civilized" folk often think of bigots as idiots and slobs (because most of them are): the man behind the ads, Alan Korwin, is a bit of a homophobic and anti-immigrant bigot (very recently giving space in his newsletter for a typical Russell Pearce bigot rant) but he's no idiot. What he's good at--getting the word out about firearms liberalization--he's extremely good at, and something has me thinking Phoenix could be outmatched.

Jon Justice: sicker than I thought.

2010-09-23T02:20:00.002-07:00

Tucson radio personality Jon Justice is one sick, idiotic motherfucker.

But his latest stunt--making veiled sexual threats against Isabel Garcia in an online video--takes "sick" to a new level.

"The Unapologetic Mexican" has more.

The million-peso question: Will the right-wingers circle the wagons to protect him, or denounce this?

A couple of familiar names in the third party primary.

2010-08-23T15:02:00.004-07:00

Those voting in the Libertarian Party primary should be sure to check the list of official write-in candidates at their polling place. Write-ins go on to be listed on the ballot in the general election.

Among them are:

Rick Fowlkes, apparently returned from a few years in the Republican Party. Rick is running again for the Corporation Commission, and with his experience in public utilities engineering and appreciation for "real-world" free-market solutions, I believe him more than qualified. Unless he's become one of those anti-science global warming denialists, he gets my endorsement as usual.
Thane Eichenauer, running for State Treasurer. Where have I seen that name before? I have no idea of his platform, but I do imagine he supports balancing the budget without any shell-game gimmicks.

Why Sun Tran management and Tucson need to stand firm in negotiations with the Teamsters.

2010-08-03T19:05:00.005-07:00

By now, readers have likely read or heard of the ongoing Sun Tran strike that has bus service in Tucson cut back to extremely limited service leaving many who cannot afford autos nearly stranded in a city designed and built for autos.

It's a severe inconvenience, and it lays bare the often forgotten "distributional" implications of transportation policy decisions. To many of the working poor, it's more than an inconvenience; it's like a kneecapping of their livelihood.

But the Teamsters are asking far, far too much for Sun Tran management. If necessary, strikebreakers should be hired to get the buses moving and the poor to their jobs ASAP. Caving in is not an option.

This is no mere dispute over wages and benefits: the union is demanding that there be no route cutbacks, no layoffs, and that Sun Tran be transferred to the sales-tax subsidized RTA. More than retirees and xenophobia have crossed the Colorado River in recent years. The Teamsters in this dispute are, like California government-employees' unions, attempting to arrogate to themselves the ability to set policy. Not in this state, not even in left-leaning Tucson, should they be allowed to do so.

SB 1070 opponents one-up supporters: actual terrorism!

2010-07-31T02:23:00.005-07:00

Thursday evening I linked and briefly commented on reports of terroristic threats made against Judge Bolton by SB 1070 supporters.

There's no game of one-upmanship going on that I can discern, but there might as well be; the Arizona Daily Star reports that on Thursday afternoon a group of 8-10 SB 1070 opponents engaged in an (almost) unsuccessful act of terrorism on I-19.

Tires bound together by rope were dumped onto I-19 during rush-hour, followed by tar, paint, broken glass, and a banner. This could have caused a multi-car pileup. Fortunately, it merely caused severe traffic delays. If the faux-"civil disobedience" of downtown protesters amounted to bullying (and it did), I'm out of words, left to say that instead of death on the highway, the I-19 wackos merely achieved super-bullying.

It sounds like like the group at fault is good old-fashioned socialist or other leftist nutcases, the sort that were supposed to have died out in the 1980s. From the Daily Star's report:

Neither SB 1070 nor the deployment of National Guard troops to the border do anything to address the root causes as to why people migrate.

"U.S. economic policies and wars have displaced and impoverished millions of people all over the world. Capital-driven policies, such as NAFTA, create poverty. These policies and laws not only consume and exploit land and people, but they also displace us from our homes, forcing us to migrate in order to survive.

In linking NAFTA to migration, they're half right. And the creation of free trade in goods without also establishing free movement of people not only makes zero sense from a Ricardan point of view, it also has had the effect of class legislation. But one would have to be insane enough to be a socialist to see free trade as "exploitation".

And what any of this has to do with the I-19 commuters they could have and possibly intended to kill is anyone's guess. Then again, the left has always hated the "bourgeois" middle class, so perhaps they didn't feel a link was necessary.

A little more digging shows that the group, which calls itself "Freedom For Arizona", posted its press release to Indymedia. The name makes them sound like Ron Paullistas or teabaggers. They're clearly not, and they're as stupid (and grammatically challenged) as they are crazy. To wit:

*Partial justice is no justice at all! Despite Judge ruling to block parts of SB 1070, racial-profiling, raids, deportations and the militarization of the border will continue unchallenged. This is why today we shut down Interstate 19 (I-19)*

It appears our new left-wing terrorists don't understand what a preliminary injunction is. What they call "unchallenged" is being challenged in at least two current lawsuits.

And it gets dippier. Here's how they end:

We want an end to the militarization of indigenous land, I.C.E. raids, deportations, the attacks on ethnic studies, violence against women and queer people, the expansion of prisons and immigration detention centers, empire, the border wall and the genocide at the Arizona-Sonora border that has claimed the lives of over 153 people during the first 8 months of this fiscal year alone.

John Dougherty is a spoiler!

2010-07-29T22:54:00.001-07:00

John Dougherty is the only candidate for US Senator willing to call a spade a spade on the twin scourges of immigration prohibition and drug prohibition. If John McCain manages to beat his Republican opponents in the primary which Democrat is equipped to put the screws to the only remaining member of the Keating Five to hold elected office (two have died)? Further John Dougherty is willing to advocate for an end to the tremendously wasteful overseas occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. Dougherty must as yet prevail over his three opponents but given that most of the voters in Maricopa county hadn't heard of any of his opponents come a year ago one can only hope that exposure will earn him enough votes to prevail over his Democratic primary opponents.

I hope John Dougherty will spoil John McCain's post-election day plans.

Speaking of doing it wrong: xenophobes and bigots now resorting to terroristic threats.

2010-07-29T20:00:00.002-07:00

The Associated Press delivers a credible report of threats against Susan Bolton, the judge who issued yesterday's preliminary injunction against most of the truly onerous sections of SB 1070.

Yeah, that'll show her that the Federal government isn't likely to win its case on its merits!

The Arizona Republic also reports that someone shot at Raul Grijalva's office. Congressman Borracho should be "boycott" himself for calling for a boycott of his constituents. Perhaps those who believe it can also explain why he should be shot? It doesn't make sense.

"Civil Disobedience": You're doing it wrong.

2010-07-29T16:20:00.004-07:00

Michael Bryan's "Blog for Arizona"--a quality source of leftist commentary, thanks to contributor David Safier--also employs an anonymous character called "AZ Blue Meanie" who's partisan in a trite way and often simply a slob who discredits the others by association. Today, he hit a new low. Regarding arrests of protesters chaining themselves to rails and blocking the streets he had this to say:

The First Amendment is under assault in Arizona today...

Blocking the street, lying down in the street, chaining one's self to a rail, none of these are First Amendment protected activities. The First Amendment is not understood as protecting any and all acts so long as one can spin a tale claiming that they are a mode of expression.

"Civil disobedience" in particular is not usually protected by the First Amendment--unless it is disobedience of an official who is infringing First Amendment-protected activity. Civil disobedience is by definition the defiance of legal authority and inherently involves breaking statutory or common law.

What we are seeing from protesters today barely qualifies as civil disobedience. It's more a bully tactic than anything else. Incapable of expressing themselves in a responsible fashion (e.g. in writing) or of legitimately attracting the attention of the press, and perhaps ideologically opposed to (horror of horrors) buying advertising time or space they instead attract attention to themselves through disruption. Some are likely doing it as a "macho" thing. Next to mixing passable Lemon Drops and Cosmopolitans, few things make college-age panties drop faster than "Gee, aren't I the stud. I got arrested 'protesting against injustice'".

This bullying/posturing activity is, from a semiotic point of view, quite far from the civil disobedience of Thoreau, of Ghandi, and of SNCC and other 'Civil Rights' groups. Thoreau quite nearly defined the practice as forcing the authorities to shame themselves enforcing an unjust law. Lunch-counter sit-ins perhaps epitomized this: forcing the authorities to brutalize peaceful people to enforce the trespassing laws that made segregation possible. And the marches and blockades of Ghandi and King were no mere disruption, no mere bullying, and not in any way tantrums: they were demonstrations of the humanity of people treated as an underclass.

Every illegal immigrant engages in an act of civil disobedience when he crosses the border, when he goes to work without a visa, and when he fights to stay here. Ask "Why is that man (or woman) being taken away from his livelihood and community?" and the State is left to answer "He doesn't have the required permission slip. We don't issue those."

The "civil disobedience" we saw today, that has become a ritual on the far left, a rite of passage and perhaps one way young would-be radicals get laid, is a shameful mockery of the semiotically meaningful civil disobedience of the past and of the everyday civil disobedience of the illegal immigrant. And to assert that it is protected by the First Amendment when the point of civil disobedience is to demonstrate the injustice of a law is simply a sick joke.

Respect rule of law. Prosecute Sheriff Joe.

2010-07-29T05:00:00.001-07:00

18 U.S.C. § 242:

Whoever, under color of any law, statute, ordinance, regulation, or custom, willfully subjects any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth, Possession, or District to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured or protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States, or to different punishments, pains, or penalties, on account of such person being an alien, or by reason of his color, or race, than are prescribed for the punishment of citizens, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both; and if bodily injury results from the acts committed in violation of this section or if such acts include the use, attempted use, or threatened use of a dangerous weapon, explosives, or fire, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and if death results from the acts committed in violation of this section or if such acts include kidnapping or an attempt to kidnap, aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to commit aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to kill, shall be fined under this title, or imprisoned for any term of years or for life, or both, or may be sentenced to death.

(from Cornell's Legal Information Institute.)

Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio and his ~~goons~~ deputies are supposedly going to conduct yet another sweep today. These inevitably end in civil rights violations, of which the case of Julian and Julio Mora is about the best-known. They inevitably depend on civil rights violations--arrests without probable cause--to operate.

This from this morning's ACLU-AZ e-mail:

In mid-June, a teenaged Latina girl was driving home. Near the entrance to her gated community, she was pulled over by a police officer for not coming to a complete stop at a stop sign. When asked to produce identification, she showed the officer her valid Arizona driver's license. The officer said the driver's license was not enough and stated "he was required by law to ask for further documentation as proof of citizenship." The girl, a high school senior, is a US citizen and speaks perfect English without an accent. Although the girl knew that SB 1070 hadn't yet gone into effect, she was so frightened and confused by his request that she agreed to have the officer follow her to her home (around the corner), where she went in and got her US Passport for him to review. The officer left without issuing a warning or ticket. Because she was extremely nervous, the girl was unable to write down his name or badge number. The student was (and still is) shaken by the incident. It's the example of someone being humiliated and treated like a criminal solely because of the color of her skin.

There we have it again: No probable cause, not even reasonable suspicion.

It needs to stop, and (successful) civil suit after (successful) civil suit has not stopped it. Joe Arpaio and any deputy who so much as violates one person's protected civil liberties and any of these sweeps must be prosecuted under 18 U.S.C. § 242.

Sheriff Joe "fans" might recall that last year former U.S. Attorney for New Mexico David Iglesias remarked that if it were up to him, he'd seek an indictment of Joe Arpaio over civil liberties violations committed in the course of harassing his enemies, including the ACLU-AZ's Dan Pochoda, Maricopa County Manager David Smith, and Phoenix mayor Phil Gordon. U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke still hasn't developed the guts or the integrity to do what needs to be done. Now that Arizona immigration policy has the White House's attention, it's time for Eric Holder to put his foot down. I'm not expecting it to happen, but it's the sensible thing to do.

For what it's worth, my "pop sociology" conjecture--no, I can't cite any literature!--has Sheriff Joe's popularity dropping after he makes the perp walk on camera. The sort of people who support him are the sort who'd support Putin or Mussolini and perhaps the sort who support Barack Obama in his giving of extralegal orders to BP or his wiping out of GM shareholders. They're the Authoritarian Personality Disorder types who'd support any strongman just because he is a strongman. A bit of humiliation of the strongman will fix that. U.S. Marshalls at his Fountain Hills home will be best.

Clarification: I am not advocating 18 U.S.C. § 242 prosecution due to the actions in the specific incident mentioned in the ACLU morning e-mail; it would appear to be a very weak case. I am advocating prosecution for any "winning" incident of deprivation of rights under color of law and most certainly for any documented violations today or in the future.

Most of SB 1070 blocked: victory and a minor disappointment.

2010-07-28T17:27:00.004-07:00

As readers are already aware, Judge Susan Bolton of the Arizona District Court issued an order on preliminary injunction, enjoining most of SB 1070, which was to take effect tomorrow. Few others are linking the official order, but as has been the practice since this 'blog was started, of course I do so here.

Left standing are the law's provisions

Prohibiting political subdivisions of the state from limiting enforcement of Federal immigration law,
requiring that State officials work with Federal officers to determine immigration status,
allowing Arizonans to sue political subdivisions which restrict immigration enforcement to less than the full extent allowed by Federal law,
making "harboring" or "transporting" undocumented aliens a misdemeanor
criminalizing the inhibition of traffic by solicitation of day labor,
establishing as a state offense the knowing or intentional employment of undocumented aliens,
increasing requirements for verification of employment eligibility,
and establishing the "Gang and Immigration Intelligence Team Enforcement Mission Fund"

.
Most of these provisions are bad law. That there was no injunction does not mean that there is no longer a reasonable Federal pre-emption case against SB 1070's the requirements and penalties SB 1070 established for employers. Probably the worst bit left standing was the authorization of lawsuits. "Full extent" is a very dangerous idea: if Federal law allows a police department to spend every last dime and every man-hour on immigration enforcement, someone can sue if police do other things, like respond to calls or attempt to bring in suspects in crimes, especially the real sort that have identifiable victims. But there was never much of a Federal case against that and certainly none that merited an injunction.

It is a significant victory: most of the provisions of SB 1070 that would have led to violations of protected civil rights were enjoined from taking effect until the cases are decided. That these provisions were enjoined signifies (by legal standards) that the US DOJ can expect to succeed against them with high likelihood. I would have preferred that the order was based more on the ACLU and Co's 4th Amendment complaint than on the DOJ's concerns about preemption, but the effect is the same, at least in the near future.

The disappointment comes at Ms Bolton's introductory phrase:

Against a backdrop of rampant illegal immigration, escalating drug and human trafficking crimes, and serious public safety concerns...

A better version would have referred to this as perception, and not reality; the court should not perpetuate folktales. This is the bigots' narrative, the history that they Just Made Up to whip up support for oppression of outsiders. This session, it became the legislature's cause of action. It is false.

The Daily Star gets self-defense wrong

2010-07-26T00:26:00.004-07:00

From the Daily Star's editorial lamenting the legalization of CCW without a permit:

Some supporters even argue that the more people who carry firearms, the safer we will all be from robberies, assaults and lunatic shooting sprees.

We think not. We suspect a bunch of armed citizens trying to intervene in such incidents will be more likely to endanger innocent, unarmed citizens than to prevail over the bad guys.

From a certain perspective--that of someone who understands this argument in favor of liberalized carry--the Star just characterized my defense of myself as an "intervention" that will endanger third parties.

Of course, the Star isn't writing from that perspective. Perhaps nobody made it clear to the editors that the reason safety is expected to increase is that that rapist, muggers, and the like will feel more at risk of being shot by their prospective victims, with little open indication of who the "safe" targets are. Perhaps it would take the Ludovico treatment to really get this across. Whether or not concealed carry does make third parties significantly safer is still an open question, but we know at least that it does not make people less safe.

This isn't to say that more people coming to the aid of others is a bad thing. The Star seems to think so, and to think it is dangerous. Reality has never been a strong influence on people with beliefs like that: we are over 20 years into America's successful experiment with CCW, and evidence that aiding others is a dangerous activity has not emerged.

Speaking of reality not being a deterrent, why is the Star still calling the borderline non-entity known as the Brady Campaign?

On the topic of concealed carry: The one concern I've had about this measure is that it takes away the "carrot" that induced a significant minority of Arizona firearms owners to undergo some sort of formal training. I do not doubt that most can shoot adequately at a reasonable distance and that even more can safely "handle" firearms. I would like to think that they familiarize themselves with the law, as well, but (although it has not manifested itself as a major problem) my "anecdotal" experience says that isn't the case. I get worried even more because libertarians and right-wingers are probably more likely to carry than moderates or lefties, and the capacity a certain large "paleo" subculture of both libertarians and right-wingers has for simply Making Things Up and assuming that they are the law is on par with lefties' capacity for pretending their class-warfare prejudices are "economics". Every so often some idiot makes up, that one can legally shoot trespassers (more accurately: "I Have A Right to shoot trespassers"). Usually this ends in simple assault. Sometimes people get hurt.

For a more concrete example (not related to trespass) of what can go wrong, read up on the murder of Grant Kuenzli by Harold Fish. Harold Fish, apparently afraid of dogs, escalated a tense situation by firing a "warning shot." There is not (and there ought not be) any such thing as a "warning shot" in this state, nor anyplace else in the U.S., to the best of my knowledge. Perhaps influenced by silly TV shows, Fish applied made-up use-of-force law to his situation.

I also want readers of this 'blog to stay out of trouble. Heed Charles Heller's advice (as communicated by the Daily Star) and learn the use-of-force law. It's short and given in plain language in Chapter 4 of ARS Title 13.

Tim B. Lee, Honorary Tucsonist

2010-07-24T23:00:00.007-07:00

Judging from his observations concerning the effects of freeway construction on St. Louis, Tim B. Lee would probably get along well in Tucson.

There used to be plans here, from 1958 into the 1970s, to to build an "I-710" freeway following the route of Campbell Avenue. Earlier versions of this scheme followed this by construction of a freeway over the bed of the Rillito.

Nowadays putting concrete and exhaust fumes over our greenbelts seems ridiculous, the stuff of self-discrediting old curmudgeons who've lost the part of their brain that makes it clear why such things are valuable. Tucsonans know in their gut that our resistance to building superhighways is what made and makes our city coherent, bikeable, walkable, and keeps our air free of smog despite our being caught between four mountain ranges. It may frustrate the newcomers, but we have no inclination to destroy neighborhoods for suburbanites' convenience in the way New Orleans, St. Louis, or Philadelphia did. If they wanted that, on their way in from Orange County they should have gotten off the I-10 about 120 miles earlier!

SB 1070 hearings: injunction likely.

2010-07-23T17:54:00.003-07:00

No transcripts of today's two District Court hearings concerning motions for preliminary injunction of SB 1070 are yet available, nor was a video or audio recording made. Preliminary reports are up on the websites of the Arizona Daily Star and Arizona Republic.

It's pleasing to see a hard-hitting judge assigned to the case, and from the nature and tone of questions, it appears that at least portions of the law will be enjoined, although "when" and "how much" is still up in the air.

From the Republic:

The other part of this section of the law that was addressed was the portion that states that any person arrested must have his or her immigration status determined before he or she can be released.

Bolton asked Bouma whether lawmakers really intended that anyone arrested, regardless of his or her legal status or whether the arrest involved citing and releasing someone on the spot or booking him or her into jail, had to have immigration status determined before being released from jail.

Bouma gave her several different answers at different points in the day.

He first said that U.S. citizens don't have an "immigration status" and therefore SB 1070 wouldn't apply to them. He also said that part of the law was intended to follow the part allowing officers to ask someone about their legal status, which means it would apply only to individuals suspected of being in the country illegally.

"But (police) training materials specifically acknowledge that they don't know what it means and that it will be left up to each agency to decide what that sentence means," Bolton replied, adding that she had heard from some law-enforcement authorities that this portion of the law could lead to the arrest of tens of thousands of people who otherwise would have just been cited and released.

and from the Daily Star:

One section of the law that appeared to trouble the judge says people who get arrested, for any reason, must have their immigration status checked with federal officials before they are released.

She pointed out police "arrest" people all the time for minor crimes, issue them a citation and let them go about their business. Bolton said this provision of SB 1070 would appear to require police to hold people for some extra period of time beyond what is necessary to cite and release.

Bouma said lawmakers meant to apply that only to people who actually are booked into jail.

"That's what they should have said then," Bolton responded.

Classic. "What we meant to say is...". Ordinarily that doesn't even pass the laugh test, but Arizona legislators' sloppiness with language and general ignorance are notorious. (Anyone remember the wording of the "No Taxpayer Money for Politicians" initiative, written by a few legislative heavyweights?)

It looks as though Dave Euchner's amicus brief, which pointed out the prospect for extension of detentions without probable cause, had a bit of impact there, and that the Judge Bolton is a bit hostile to that portion of the law. Also, from the Republic,

Section 3: Documentation

Section 3 of SB 1070 as amended creates the state crime of "willful failure to complete or carry an alien registration document."

Attorney Nina Perales with the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, one of the civil-rights groups that filed the lawsuit along with the ACLU, said this portion of the law creates new classes of non-citizens because it doesn't offer exceptions for individuals who may be in the midst of citizenship or asylum proceedings and have permission to be in the country but don't yet have documents.

Bouma responded that that argument gets into a hypothetical "chamber of horrors" that people would be hauled off and thrown into jail to wait until someone could determine whether they belonged there.

Bolton agreed that all this portion of the law does is create a state punishment for violating federal statute. But she added that state punishment may create a pre-emption problem.

Bouma argued otherwise but then seemed to concede that he may lose on this part of the law.

"I didn't have the feeling I convinced you last week, either," Bouma said, referring to an earlier hearing.

Section 6: Removal

Section 6 of SB 1070 as amended allows law-enforcement officers to, without a warrant, arrest people suspected of committing offenses that make them "removable from the United States."

Bolton seemed to have serious concerns about this portion of the law. She said there is no list of crimes deemed to be removable offenses and questioned who would make that determination and at what point during the arrest it would be made.

"How can a police officer make a determination that a person has committed a removable offense when that decision can only be made by a federal judge?" she asked.

Plaintiffs appeared to be taking a "shotgun" approach concerning preemption, and Bolton was skeptical or even dismissive of many such claims, but as seen above, some of the pellets appear to have hit their target. Right now I'm expecting portions of the law, including prolonged detention following arrests, to be enjoined pending the cases' outcomes.

Water from the sky? Imagine that!

2010-07-21T22:35:00.004-07:00

That air-conditioning units, during humid months, cause liquid water to condense out of the air was always obvious. A recent KOLD web article puts a high estimate on the amount: 2-3 gallons per hour from households, and over 500 per hour from the U of A's Marshall Building.

This is clean water, that could be potable were it filtered to remove airborne particulates, and can certainly be used to water landscaping--without draining the aquifer. Whether or not the effect is a significant contributor to the "Non-Soon" is a question I'll leave for another time.

List of ballot propositions

2010-07-21T00:53:00.007-07:00

Proposition-by-proposition commentary and some coverage later, but don't expect the day-by-day coverage of developments in the news that I've given in the past. Either personal or joint endorsements likely.

Which reminds me: if you enjoy reading this site and share a classical-liberal point of view, you're welcome to volunteer as a regular or occasional contributor. If the site gets past its current below-break-even level of ad earnings, I'll share the excess.

On the November ballot Arizona voters will see the following questions:

Proposition 106: An updated version of the Freedom of Choice in Health Care Act,
Proposition 107: A much-overdue LRCA prohibiting racial discrimination by the State or any of its political subdivisions,
Proposition 108: Guaranteeing secret ballots in both political and union elections,
Proposition 109: A somewhat enigmatic LRCA guaranteeing an affirmative right to hunt and fish,
Proposition 110: An LRCA pertaining to exchange of trust lands to prevent "encroachment" on military bases,
Proposition 111: Eliminating the office of Secretary of State and establishing that of the Lieutenant Governor, who is to be co-elected with the governor,
Proposition 112: Changing "centum" to "cent" in the law pertaining to ballot initiative signatures (stupid), and also requiring that signatures be filed six months before the election,
Proposition 203: The only initiative on the ballot this year, a medical marijuana law with real backbone,
Proposition 301: Transferring land conservation fund money to the General Fund, overriding a past ballot initiative,
Proposition 302: Repealing most of the "First Things First" initiative, transferring its funds to the general fund, with the stipulation that they be appropriated to Health and Human Services for the benefit of children.

Ballot initiatives didn't have the momentum they had in 2006 and 2008, but the legislature was busy!

Greg Patterson had better have 'blog insurance.

2010-07-20T17:02:00.004-07:00

"Espresso Pundit" and former legislator Greg Patterson had better have 'blog insurance, that is, if Malcolm Hughes and the University of Arizona have the good sense to ~~destroy him like the fleabitten dog he is~~ sue him into last century.

An accusation of academic fraud is serious, and if not substantiated, is the sort of false allegation of fact that amounts to libel. Way back when the "Climategate" e-mails were first being exaggerated and twisted into evidence of wrongdoing, Patterson first smeared Hughes as a fraud, and it was apparently let go. Now he's doing it again--evidence that libel from the anti-science set must be snuffed out early on--dazzling his audience by parlaying a conclusion that a figure Hughes contributed to a report was "misleading" to an accusation of academic/scientific fraud.

Fraud in science is presentation of fabricated or altered data, data that are not as described, or of conclusions that do not follow from the data. Contributing a figure that may be misinterpreted by a "casual" reader--the worst that can be inferred from the report cited by Patterson, is not fraud.

We will find out the truth about SB 1070 in 15 days.

2010-07-14T21:57:00.004-07:00

Many commentators--radical leftists to a man--have said a lot of patently stupid things about SB 1070. Miguel Guadelupe of the "Huffington Post" claims that it imposes a "papers please" policy on anyone who looks Latino, as though "reasonable suspicion" means "stupid hunch". Tucson Communist Party factotum (no joke) Carolyn Trowbridge likened it to apartheid and ethnic cleansing. If Raul Grijalva can be said to think at all ("th" and "dr" being similar but not identical), Raul Grijalva thinks the bill so bad as to justify an economic boycott of his constituents.

A common-sense reading--taking into account that "reasonable suspicion" is a legal term of art that does not mean "a bigot's hunch"--is not the only thing that rules out "papers please." History does as well. In 1997 Chandler officials attempted an immigration-enforcement dragnet, known now as the Chandler Roundup. Policemen asked those who looked Latino to prove their citizenship, detained those who could not do so (picture Cheech Marin: "Greencard? I'm from East LA!") and as a result the city ended up paying over $400,000 to plaintiffs in a class action.

SB 1070 is bad policy and probably unconstitutional, too--see the Justice Department and the AACJ's respective Dormant Commerce Clause and 4th Amendment arguments. We can confidently say that Grijalva and co. aren't being truthful, and we can confidently call Panglossian, disingenuous, or ridiculous the right-wingers who claim that 1070 merely parallels Federal enforcement policy. Beyond that, honest observers will simply have to wait until the 29th to learn the implications of SB 1070.

One of the more pressing questions is its implications for public schools. Arizona has gone along with the (upsetting) trend of keeping a police officer around public schools through the course of the day. These officers are often friendly with the schoolkids and may learn something about students' immigration status either directly or through word of mouth. Suppose a student is lawfully stopped due to participation in a fight and the "school resource officer" has heard that he's in the country illegally. Does SB 1070 require prolonged detention and an inquiry into the student's visa status?

Jack Chin's whitepaper ~~law review article~~ (very much worth reading) provides some clues as to SB 1070's effects outside of schools. Among his claims are that it's a racial profiling bill, but he's not using "racial profiling" to mean what it's commonly taken to mean. "Racial profiling" to the average Joe means "treated like a criminal because I'm (e.g) black", but in Chin's usage it applies even if ethnic appearance is merely one factor among many used in a police decision to stop or detain someone. Perhaps the most important document, however, are the new police guidelines issued by AZ POST.

While it emphasizes the totality of circumstances, the POST guidelines document features a troubling bulleted list of criteria for reasonable suspicion. Copied verbatim:

FACTORS WHICH MAY BE CONSIDERED, AMONG OTHERS, IN DEVELOPING REASONABLE SUSPICION OF UNLAWFUL PRESENCE
•Lack of identification (if otherwise required by law)
•Possession of foreign identification
•Flight and/or preparation for flight
•Engaging in evasive maneuvers, in vehicle, on foot, etc.
•Voluntary statements by the person regarding his or her citizenship or unlawful presence (Note that if the person is in custody for purposes of Miranda, he or she may not be questioned about immigration status until after the reading and waiver of Miranda rights.)
•Foreign vehicle registration
•Counter-surveillance or lookout activity
•In company of other unlawfully present aliens
•Location, including for example: A place where unlawfully present aliens are known to congregate looking for work, A location known for human smuggling or known smuggling routes
•Traveling in tandem
•Vehicle is overcrowded or rides heavily
•Passengers in vehicle attempt to hide or avoid detection
•Prior information about the person
•Inability to provide his or her residential address
•Claim of not knowing others in same vehicle or at same location
•Providing inconsistent or illogical information
•Dress
•Demeanor – for example, unusual or unexplained nervousness, erratic behavior, refusal to make eye contact
•Significant difficulty communicating in English

Some of these are extremely problematic, elevating mere "suspicious" behavior--familiar to anyone who's ever been in the company of e.g. illegal gamblers or paranoid pot smokers--to "reasonable suspicion" of a particular civil offense having to do with visa status. And as Martin Escobar noted in his complaint, skill with the English language is no indicator of status as an alien, let alone of visa status.

What remains to be seen is how many of these criteria must be satisfied before police decide that they have "reasonable suspicion" and apply SB 1070--and how many lawsuits police departments will get from bigots who think they're not being loose enough with their standards of suspicion. Taking Phoenix Law Enforcement Association president Mark Spencer's
remarks to the Arizona Republic as being representative, I predict that most policemen will err on the side of caution. Somewhere--and it wouldn't surprise me if "somewhere" was either in Prescott Valley, Chandler, or anywhere under the MCSO's watch--a policeman or department will push at the boundaries and ruin someone's day. (MCSO goons were doing this long before SB 1070.) That person will "win the lottery", so to speak. A bad day followed by litigation, probably with a lawyer on the case pro bono, and a large payout from the public purse.

That's hardly "apartheid" or "papers please". If, on the 29th, I turn out to be wrong, I'll correct myself here. I don't expect the Miguel Guadalupes, Carolyn Trowbridges, and Raul Grijalva's of the world to be honest enough to do the same; if I turn out to be correct, they should be brought to account: removed from positions of public trust, fired from newspapers (Guadalupe was not merely wrong: he was wild), and shunned from polite company until they issue retractions, apologize, and preferably make some sort of material amends for the harm they did to working Arizonans by their boycott-inducing exaggeration.

Good news and bad news about photo radar.

2010-07-12T10:15:00.004-07:00

The good news applies to all of you. The bad news is bad only to me.

The good: After this Thursday, the Arizona DPS's 76 photo radar cameras will be shut down. After years of denial that it was a way to squeeze drivers out of their hard-earned money, it's being shut down because it wasn't the revenue-generator it was expected to be.

That means that 55 mph I-17 (no, that's not a typo: 55!) will no longer be as bad a speed trap. And it also means that there'll be less risk of rear-ending or being rear-ended while avoiding idiots who hit the brakes and slow to below the speed limit.

County and municipal photo radar and cameras, including the infamous Show Low and Tempe cameras, will remain in service.

The bad: For the second time, Maricopa County served a photo ticket on me. I'm out another $240. For a long time, Maricopa did not send process servers to Pima. Even now, it's rare. I suspect that I was deliberately targeted, but it could be a statistical fluctuation.

Don't make nonselective enforcement of speed limits and traffic signals--especially of the I-17 speed trap--pay: never respond to a mailed complaint. Make counties properly serve you your citation. This is done less than 1/4 of the time. Chances are high that you will simply not have to pay your fine.

A sign that Arizona ecotourism is less popular than usual this year.

2010-07-08T01:38:00.003-07:00

Aravaipa Canyon permits, especially for the west entrance, usually come very close to selling out on the weekends and sometimes even on weekdays. This year only 25 September and 2 October

Could it be that the (probably incorrect) that SB 1070 will actually be widely oppressive (as opposed to symbolic, a nuisance, and a sure-win lottery ticket for the few it affects) is keeping eco-tourists away?

Upcoming events

2010-07-07T18:16:00.002-07:00

Three upcoming events for classical-liberal Arizonans:

Tomorrow, Thursday 8 July at 11 AM, the Goldwater Institute (no affiliation with this 'blog) is hosting an Internet chat in which the implications of McDonald v. Chicago will be discussed. For details, see the event website.
On Thursday, 15 July the Goldwater Institute is hosting a luncheon speaker event with Frank Luntz, one of the behind-the-scenes architects of the Contract with America, in which the nature of the American electorate in 2010 will be discussed. Non-member tickets start at $50; see the event website to register.
On Friday 30 July, the Arizona chapter of Americans for Prosperity will celebrate the anniversary of Milton Friedman's birth. Details are as follows:
Dear Arizona Taxpayer,

This year, the late economist and freedom fighter Dr. Milton Friedman would have celebrated his 98th birthday. He won’t be here for that event, but we’re going to celebrate it for him!

In coordination with the Foundation for Education Choice (www.edchoice.org) and its 2010 Friedman Legacy for Freedom Day, the Arizona chapter of Americans for Prosperity Foundation is throwing a birthday party for Milton.

On Friday, July 30, from 6:00 to 9:00 pm, we will meet at the Mama Java Coffee Shop, on the southeast corner of 36th Street & Indian School in Phoenix.

Here is the schedule for the event:

6:00 to 6:30 pm – Guests arrive. The first 25 persons to respond will get a free ( Milton would say “unpriced”) drink. RSVP to Tom Jenney, at tjenney@afphq.org.

6:30 to 7:30 pm – Viewing of Phil Donahue’s 1976 interview with Friedman.

7:30 to 7:45 pm – Exclusive (and very geeky) video footage of AFP Arizona director Tom Jenney talking to Milton in 1994.

7:45 to 8:45 pm – Q&A on the progress of the school choice movement, featuring Clint Bolick of the Goldwater Institute’s Scharf-Norton Center for Constitutional Litigation.

8:45 pm – We sing “Happy Birthday” to Milton.

RSVP to me at tjenney@afphq.org. If you are one of the first 25 persons to respond, I will send you a coupon for your free (“unpriced”) drink.

These sorts of events are an excellent means to network with fellow liberty lovers. It is unlikely that I will attend any this month, but the Friedman event is a possibility.

Jan Brewer has gone off the deep end.

2010-07-06T17:54:00.002-07:00

In her effort to win the votes of the bigot wing of the Republican Party, Jan Brewer has joined the ranks of those who simply make things up about undocumented immigrants.

The claim: decapitated bodies of undocumented immigrants are being found in the desert. As reported by the Arizona Republic, six county medical examiners, including those of all four border counties, could not recall a single example of such a corpse being found.

Of course, were this happening, it would be an argument for less enforcement--for moving immigration back to the roads, where it belongs--not more, but that's beside the point.

HT: Vishal Ganeshan

Happy Independence Day

2010-07-04T08:22:00.002-07:00

Unlike last year, no commentary on the fireworks today. I had contemplated an essay on rebellion in free society, but to write such would be self-indulgent, and besides that, I'm away visiting family, and it'd difficult to so much as think with eight people milling about in a "bi-level" house. (What a loud and un-private floorplan!)

If you'd really like something to ponder, think of why the early American govenrnment (Continental Congress), despite the American Revolution having been a minority movement, earned legitimacy. Perhaps it is because the (classical-)liberal ideals on which the law was based are so inherently considerate of others. The Revolution itself, unlike most of today's movements which have adopted some of its symbols, was not one of whiners out to take but not to give. It wasn't "People just want to be left alone". And it was not based on inflexible (and insufferable) ideological "principle", either.

For some inspiration, hunt for an essay of Loren Lomasky titled "Libertarianism as if (the other 99% of) people mattered." Send me an e-mail if you cannot locate a copy. But today, just celebrate liberty.

The Arizona connection to McDonald v. Chicago

2010-06-28T17:30:00.003-07:00

The rest of the U.S.A. became a bit more like Arizona this morning: the Supreme Court ruled in McDonald v. Chicago that the Second Amendment applies to the states and thus that (given the Heller v D.C. ruling) the right of the people to keep firearms, including handguns, in their homes is protected by Federal law. The Arizona Constitution already protects such a right; residents of other states are not so fortunate.

Although there is a long way to go--the right to carry still has not been established, the court did not even offer a standard of scrutiny, and the case's 5-4 split is disappointing--we rightly celebrate today, and Alan Gura, Bob Levy, and others who organized and argued this challenge, Heller, and the follow-up cases deserve our congratulations and our thanks. It's worth keeping in mind that they could not have won this victory were it not for the scholarly rehabilitation of the "individual rights" view of the Second Amendment.

Following the 1989 publication of Levinson's "The Embarassing Second Amendment" in the Yale Law Journal and certainly by the late '90s when said view made it into Laurence Tribe's textbook the "individual rights" view became mainstream. It took commentators a little while to catch up; until Heller it was common to hear the individual rights interpretation called a popular myth with no scholarly support. (Why haven't we brought these "journalists" and politicians to account? In the age of Google it is very easy to embarrass someone with his own words!) The adoption of the individual rights interpretation by left-wingers like Levinson is symptom, not cause; with few exceptions, those whose cultural commitments were anti-individual-rights were not going to make the switch in the absence of strong arguments from others.

Among the many law review articles cited in the McDonald decision is an important textual study, Original Popular Understanding of the Fourteenth Amendment as Reflected in the Print Media of 1866-1868, by one by David T. Hardy, published in the 2008-2009 Whittier Law Review. Some readers may recognize that name: Hardy lives in Tucson, represented Graham County Sheriff Richard Mack in his anti-Brady Bill case, and 'blogs at Of Arms and the Law.

What many do not know is that a 1974 article in the Chicago-Kent Law Review, also called "Of Arms and the Law" (now available on SSRN), by Hardy and Tucson personal injury lawyer John Stompoly, was perhaps the first serious modern argument for the individual rights view of the 2nd Amendment. 36 years ago, two Arizonans set into motion the shift toward the individual rights view.

The article's approach to the Constitution is "dated", and that's a charitable term: it makes serious appeals to the "intent of the framers", which one cannot do today without being laughed out of the room. It's still worth reading, if perhaps for another reason. its long discussion of the empirical effectiveness of firearms controls reminds us of something that has been forgotten: even in the early 1970s the case for strict gun control had been empirically refuted.

SB 1070: The worst that could happen.

2010-06-25T17:18:00.002-07:00

Born in East LA from CheechAndChong

Also see the film of the same name. Sheriff Joe's goons actually did this to some kids in the Phoenix area earlier this decade, and it wasn't funny. I can't remember their names or how to find it quickly at this point. Eleanor Eisenberg would know.

No, I don't think this is likely, but it seems to be what the wild imaginations of e.g. Raul Grijalva, Kyrsten Sinema, and Phil Gordon have thought SB 1070 to be. More on that later.

Plumbers vs Waterless Urinals

2010-06-24T17:34:00.005-07:00

In many ways, life is better on this side of the Colorado. For example, however crazy we are about immigration--and wasn't that craziness imported from So. Cal?--the pollution in our air doesn't cause the sort of dementia that makes waterless urinals controversial.

Via Wired, we have a report that the plumbers' union in Southern California attempted to ban waterless urinals, and that it made some rather nutty claims to support this:

To buttress their health claims, plumbing unions in California hired Phyllis Fox, an environmental engineer and water quality specialist. She conducted her own analysis, which involved visiting men’s rooms to acquaint herself with the subject matter. Fox didn’t perform any tests, but by examining the designs of the Falcon and other waterless urinals, she concluded that hydrogen sulfide gases in the sewer lines could escape when the cartridges were replaced, resulting in “unconsciousness, respiratory paralysis, and death.” In other words, the waterless urinal could kill.

Yes, janitors in the many Arizona public buildings with flushless urinals die of hydrogen sulfide poisoning. All the time. That is, if they survive traffic: our gun laws mean that shootouts over lane changes and parking disputes happen everyday.

But seriously, this dispute shouldn't be happening. Other states can look to Arizona and conclude that flushless urinals are safe and effective.

Read the original article: it has quite a few Arizona connections, including a somewhat humorous account of a plumbing incident at Fort Huachuca, and some interesting facts. I had no idea how much electricity was used for water pumping, and didn't consider that flushing a urinal aerosolized bacteria, either.

On Earth Day, I recommended that more businesses install these urinals, and additionally that people just "lift a leg" from time to time. There's no sense in contaminating clean drinking water with human waste.

"Get in line."

2010-06-23T14:52:00.004-07:00

I just stumbled on this two-month-old clip of state representative Steve Montenegro, himself an immigrant, speaking in support of SB 1070.

And I'm wishing we had some IQ qualification for public office.

Says Montenegro: "I am saying if you here illegally, get in line, come in the right way."

There is no "line." None. Montenegro is either stupid or he's lying or possibly both--and Fox News reporters don't have the honesty or gumption to ask "what line"?. There is currently no way someone wishing to get a work visa or to immigrate can simply file paperwork and wait for bureaucrats to process it in turn and be guaranteed issue. Both immigrant and nonimmigrant work visas are subject to quotas and to often arbitrary denials.

It cannot be emphasized enough: Coming here to live and work, temporarily or permanently, is not a matter of merely signing up and waiting for government employees to finish the data entry and do a background check. There is no line.

If Montenegro can prove me wrong, I will publish a retraction here and donate $100 to the charity of his choice. Right now he's looking like either a liar or a moron.

Important new SB 1070 brief filed: AACJ says law requires 4th Amendment violations.

2010-06-21T21:46:00.006-07:00

A section heading sums it up: "SB 1070 manufactures cause"

Today four lawyers from the Arizona Attorneys for Criminal Justice, the state affiliate of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, filed what is probably the most important brief to date on SB 1070. Therein they argue that violation of established 4th Amendment standards of suspicion inheres in the mandates of 1070. To quote:

The statutory scheme created by SB 1070 would subject individuals to de facto arrests absent adequate constitutional protections. SB 1070 proposes to substitute reasonable suspicion for the well-established requirement that an arrest must be justified by probable cause to believe that a violation has occurred. Even in cases where an investigative stop by police is justified by reasonable suspicion, it is possible for police to exceed the permissible scope of the stop and convert an investigative detention into a de facto arrest, and SB 1070 seeks to do just that...

A person’s immigration status is not something that can be determined by state and local law enforcement officers, or even by federal immigration officers, in the context of a brief investigatory detention. Instead, persons seized will be subject to a prolonged detention, for which the Fourth Amendment demands a finding of probable cause. SB 1070, however, permits this prolonged detention without the requisite finding of probable cause that the person is unlawfully present in the United States.

Those who've been following the matter may recall that in an interview with the Arizona Republic Mark Spencer of the Phoenix Law Enforcement Association claimed that, in the paper's hypothetical stop scenari (that other interview participants thought would have SB 1070 implications), no reasonable suspicion concerning immigration status existed therefore SB 1070 mandated nothing. The AACJ amicus brief goes further than this, arguing (much more intelligently than Martin Escobar's lawyers did in their sloppy "first post!!!!1111!!" complaint filed immediately following the bill's passage) that there's almost no way a policeman could possibly have reasonable suspicion that someone was in the US illegally:

In Arizona specifically, reliance on race, language, and dress as the basis for reasonable suspicion used to justify a seizure all but guarantees a constitutional violation.

In a 1985 class action against the INS for engaging in a pattern of unlawful stops to interrogate persons of Hispanic appearance, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held that Hispanic appearance and presence in an area where illegal aliens travel is not enough to justify a stop. Nicacio, 797 F.2d at 703. In that case, the government also used the manner of dress as a factor in the reasonable suspicion analysis. However, the Court rejected that factor, noting that such “characteristics were shared by citizens and legal aliens in the area, as well as illegals. As the district court found, the appearance and dress factors relied upon by the agents ‘are a function of the individual’s socioeconomic status.’” Id. at 704....

The scheme employed by SB 1070 pays lip service to the constitution by stating that race cannot be the sole factor for making a stop. However, as seen in decades of case
law, officers routinely use race as the primary basis for a stop and cite “rote” factors as described in Rodriguez or “profiles” of driving behavior such as those described in Gonzalez-Gutierrez that do not distinguish criminal activity from innocent activity. All too often, our attorneys see cases filed by law enforcement officers of all jurisdictions where the initial stop was based on the driver’s demeanor. Included in the list of factors to be used for determining reasonable suspicion include the driver looking at an officer in a parked vehicle as he passes and the driver not looking at the officer...

“Unlawful presence” is a highly technical term, meant to describe the status of individuals who are present in the United States without the proper governmental authorization. Just like citizenship, it cannot be determined by physical appearance or language, but is established by operation of law...

SB 1070 poses an immediate and irreparable harm in that it compels the unlawful detention of U.S. citizens and others who are lawfully present in this country. The prolonged detention requirement of A.R.S. § 11-1051(B) immediately violates the rights of every U.S. citizen in Arizona of “Mexican ancestry” or “Hispanic appearance.” Although the statute allows a presumption of lawful immigration status if the Hispanic
citizen produces an Arizona state driver’s license, there is certainly no requirement under Arizona law for a citizen to possess a driver’s license when he or she leaves home each day. And as a citizen, a person of Hispanic appearance or Mexican descent, of course, does not possess valid immigration documents because he or she is not an immigrant.

The brief has been filed in support of the plaintiff's motion for preliminary injunction in the ACLU Foundation / National Immigration Law Center/ MALDEF Friendly House et al vs Whiting et al lawsuit. The complaint is also worthwhile reading. If nothing else, read the descriptions of the individual plaintiffs: instant rebuttals to the glib right-wingers who think that only illegal aliens will be negatively affected by this law.

Brief authors are, in order listed, David J. Euchner, Louis S. Fidel, Matthew H. Green, and Adam N. Bleier, all Tucson-based defense lawyers. Green's has enough reputation as an immigration lawyer for me to recognize the name; Euchner is an assistant public defender and well-established activist on behalf of various good causes. No word on who wrote what, but large portions have the understated, incisive wit that Euchner brings to everything except his dull, pedantic, and irredeemably awkward contributions to the Arizona and National Libertarian Party platforms. (Which is a way of saying that it's good to see him moving on to better things.)

A final aside: Have a look at Footnote 1. Clever! Complaining that SB 1070 doesn't define "reasonable suspicion" is forgivable when e.g. Facebook commenters do so, but recall that this has been one of Kyrsten Sinema's gripes. However dippy she is, she's a lawyer. She should know better.

Joesler, who set Tucson's architectural "tone", featured in exhibition.

2010-06-16T19:00:00.004-07:00

Driving or walking about Tucson's older neighborhoods, it's difficult not to see the influence of Josias Joesler. An eclecticist responsible for bringing "Spanish Colonial Revival" and "Pueblo Revival" style to Tucson, he is best known for St. Phillip's Church and Plaza, Broadway Village Shopping Center, and the Catalina Foothills Estates residential subdivision.

He's largely if not entirely responsible for the tendency in Tucson to make buildings appear older than they are. At his best, his works are near-paragons of the art of building with the desert landscape. At his worst, he was a pastiche artist. For better or for worse, he largely set the "tone" for development in central Tucson and the Catalina Foothills; many more "modern" developments including Casas Adobes Plaza show his influence. As reported in the Daily Star, through 21 August the University of Arizona Library's special collections department is featuring a Joesler exhibit, consisting of original plans, concept drawings, and photographs of his buildings.

According to Russell Pearce, an illegal alien could assassinate Russell Pearce with impunity.

2010-06-15T07:17:00.004-07:00

According to Russell Pearce, an illegal alien could assassinate Russell Pearce with impunity.

He didn't actually say that, but he's quoted as follows in the Arizona Capitol Times:

Pearce’s interpretation of the 14th Amendment is much different than the definition established by the Supreme Court. He said the 14th Amendment makes it clear that, in order to be granted citizenship, a person born in the U.S. must also be under the jurisdiction of U.S. government. He said the federal government has misinterpreted that clause by allowing children of illegal immigrants to become citizens even though, as he sees it, they are not under the jurisdiction of the U.S. government.

“We don’t have jurisdiction over those who break into the country,” Pearce said. “Just like a foreign diplomat, we have no jurisdiction over them.”

That's new! "No jurisdiction" means that an illegal alien cannot be made to stand trial in a US court and cannot be sued except if he consents to be sued. If Pearce is correct, this would mean (among other things) that an illegal alien fed up with Pearce's contribution to absurd "enforcement first" opposition to immigration reform or perhaps with his attempts to incite pogroms could simply kill him and never have to answer for the crime.

Yes, this means that Arizona is "making news" again. At least with SB 1070 we could say that half of the attention was either hyperventilation of those who expect the courts to make a worst-case change of standards of reasonable suspicion or due to (deliberate) misrepresentation of what was in the law. (It does not, for example, establish a new trespassing offense.) And at least in the case of "ethnic studies" we could say that the prohibition of teaching crass ideology (much different than teaching history or teaching about ideology) on the taxpayer dime was justified. But this time, the press is dead-on: Pearce and John Kavanagh intend to introduce a bill in the next legislative session to challenge settled 14th Amendment law.

Kavanagh's justification (as quoted by CNN) is almost as loony as Pearce's:

"If you go back to the original intent of the drafters ... it was never intended to bestow citizenship upon (illegal) aliens," said Kavanagh, who also supported Senate Bill 1070 -- the law that gave Arizona authorities expanded immigration enforcement powers.

Yep, Kavanagh has gone to that modern-day last refuge of scoundrels on Constitutional matters, the same place the Brady Center went on the 2nd Amendment: original intent. When one cannot support one's position by textualism or, barring that, by appeal to some theory of law, pretend that one's own position is that of (all of!) those who drafted and adopted the law and that such "intent" should trump public meaning. "What they meant to say was: ___[wacky mad libs]___"

Original intent is an intellectual nonstarter and anyone advocating it in 2010 is an ignoramus, a sleaze, or a simple doofus. As legal theory it has been dead for over two decades and was rotten long before that. But unlike Pearce's position, taking it seriously doesn't lead to Kavanagh's assassination, unless...

Knuckle-dragging, Prescott edition.

2010-06-05T03:48:00.005-07:00

"Knuckle-dragger" is one of those insults that works. It's not mere scatology, nor a nonsequitur about somebody's mother's occupation, and far more evocative than the more easily brushed-off stupid. Of late it's been a faddish delight among free-marketeers to point out when leftists are advocating a folk economics rooted more in instincts that, however bizarre in a capitalist society, could be adaptive for hunter-gatherers.

We can make fun of Jane Brewer demanding, despite those evil foreigners being so sneaky as to leave the border regions one of the safest places in America, that the border be "secured" but not asking for the comprehensive immigration reforms that would make that easier and cheaper. When tribal brutishness goes from silly to ugly, it's less easy to laugh. But nonetheless what's going on in Prescott is hilarious.

Jennifer Fang, a new 'blogger on Blog For Arizona, sums it up well. A mural celebrating "green transportation" is being painted on the wall of the Miller Valley Elementary School. Have a look at the Prescott Courier's photos. It's bad art. It doesn't look like "graffiti in LA" but it does look like trashy street art, the sort I remember seeing on Freret Street buildings in New Orleans but without the (thin) excuse of "authenticity". It's a flubbed caricature of the visually grating, intelligence-insulting worst of the New Deal WPA murals, and the outsized boy so centrally featured makes it 3 times worse than it would have been otherwise. (I made up the number. You get the point. And at least the WPA murals weren't mere labels for the buildings. This one is "happy healthy children here, and support green transportation!" Absurd in a literate society.) Not only is it grotesque, it matches the Prescott aesthetic--and by that I don't mean the fake waterfalls of the new development--about as well as would the Eiffel Tower. Intrinsically ugly, out of place, and amateurish on top of that, it ruins the neighborhood ambiance and has the potential to depress property values.

But that's not the gripe that's making the news. According to the muralist in his interview with the Prescott Daily Courier, for two months people have been driving by shouting things like "You're desecrating our school," "Get the nigger off the wall," and "Get the spick off the wall." Yes, people are bothered not so much by the art but because a dark-skinned Hispanic boy at the school was the model for the featured grotesque.

I have enough ties to Prescott now (come Oct. I can say that's where my "in-laws" live) that this disappoints but doesn't surprise me. The area has for a long time been dominated by old folks, and a large minority of those are the sort to whom bigotry comes as naturally as calculus does to a physicist. Putting one of those low-status colored people on the wall, and not the godawful ugliness of the piece, somehow is a "desecration".

No word about this from the model himself. The poor kid was painted to look like he had a bad lymph node disorder; on top of that finding out that people--his neighbors, given that Prescott is still a rather small city--hate him for no reason except that he didn't have the good sense to choose 100% European ancestors has probably been a bit traumatic.

As the Courier noted in its editorial, it's 2010 and this is just a mural; in other words, the controversy is based on nonsense.

Contrary to rumor, it doesn't seem that Miller Valley principal Jeff Lane wanted the skin-tones lightened but rather wanted the piece touched up for aesthetic reasons. Councilman Steve Blair (again reported by the Courier), on the other hand, took the nonsense to higher levels:

On his May 21 show, for instance, Blair said, "I am not a racist individual, but I will tell you depicting a black guy in the middle of that mural, based upon who's President of the United States today and based upon the history of this community, when I grew up we had four black families - who I have been very good friends with for years - to depict the biggest picture on that building as a black person, I would have to ask the question, 'Why?'"

Why not? And what does Barack Obama have to do with this? Further down:

Blair said he has received a number of calls from long-time Prescott residents who ask, "Who authorized that graffiti on the wall?" He added: "What these people don't like is somebody forcing diversity down their throats."

I see. Depicting one of the students at the school on the mural is a (perhaps sexual) act of dominance. Plenty of room for explaining that with current sociobiological theories of racism; I'll leave that up to the reader.

Medical marijuana headed for the ballot.

2010-06-02T16:56:00.004-07:00

It's the earliest ballot initiative filing in recent memory: on 14 April, the MPP submitted signatures for their ballot initiative, which got the go-ahead yesterday.

Full text will be analyzed as soon as I have it. Until then, read the MPP's summary.

Some of you may have voted for a similar measure in 1996, but that was subsequently all but set aside by the legislature. Since then, it has become nearly impossibly for the legislature to override an initiative. You may have voted for it again when it used the word "prescribe" not taking into account that the Federal government gave that term meaning beyond the obvious plain language, in a way that physicians could lose their ability to write "prescriptions" altogether if they prescribe marijuana.

This 'blogger favors legalization, both to reduce smuggling traffic at the border and as a matter of basic human rights. And all drugs except antibiotics should be available without a prescription. But we're not going to see that this year. This initiative may not be perfect, but will provide relief for some, and deserves support.

Puerto Rican almost deported to Mexico.

2010-06-01T17:40:00.002-07:00

Following an arrest in connection with a car theft, a natural-born Puerto Rican U.S. citizen was detained for three days by ICE and nearly deported to Mexico.

Sounds like the popular version of SB 1070, right? Police hand over Latinos to ICE, where they will be racially profiled. Two problems: SB 1070 doesn't go into effect until 29 July, and this incident took place in Berwyn, IL.

Proof that there's nothing "special" about Arizona. Shall we boycott Berwyn or Chicagoland now?

The geographic references might not make sense to my Arizona readers, but that ICE in Berwyn couldn't figure out that the guy was an American, or at least, not a Mexican was pretty ridiculous. If they didn't know what a Mexican (or at least a Mexican-American) was, they could have walked along Cermak toward Cicero Ave. and figured it out. I could almost understand someone in, say, Bemidji Minnesota not knowing that "Spanish" people come in different kinds, but Berwyn?

And do we need any more illustration of why neither physical appearance nor skill with English are "reasonable suspicion" for being a foreigner?

Congratulations are in order.

2010-05-29T23:23:00.002-07:00

I should have posted this a couple of weeks ago: Desert Lamp co-founder Evan Lisull and Daily Wildcat writer/editor and independent 'blogger Laura Donovan took their bachelors' degrees at the University of Arizona and will be moving on to bigger things.

Evan started what has come to be the best-written and most interesting 'blog in the state, and got a healthy "blogosphere" conversation going for about a year. He's headed off to the law school at George Mason; something makes me think we'll be seeing his name attached to very interesting things in a few years. Connor Mendenhall will stick around for at least another semester, and both Vishal Ganeshan and some "Storm Bird" guy have been brought on to the Lamp 'blog to keep things going.

Laura Donovan was one of the most capable people I've encountered on Wildcat staff in my seven years in town. No word on her future "plans" other than that the plan for now is no plan, aside from ending up in Washington DC in the fall. It should be interesting.

Best wishes to both of them in their future endeavors!

Petty Irregularities

2010-05-18T22:20:00.003-07:00

It seems that every time I cast a vote at a consolidated polling place--not Tucson Precinct 69, but a single polling district at the "Fine Arts Auditorium" covering much of mid-town--I encounter irregularities, stemming more from poll-worker incompetence than from outright malice or Chicago-style corruption.

We vote on paper ballots which are in turn fed to an optical scanner. Wasteful, but until and unless computerized voting machines go open-source and are open to voter inspection, the paper trail is necessary. It didn't stop County staff from flipping the result of the 2006 RTA election (or creating the appearance of having done so), but it is, at least, a safeguard. The polling place often has a worker looking on at the optical scanner to make sure that the same sort of dingbat that couldn't figure out punchcard ballot doesn't screw up putting a piece of paper in the only slot available. (I'm serious: that's all that needs to be done. Orientation doesn't matter.) The worker sometimes seems as though he's reading the ballots as they go in.

Hence paper "privacy sleeves" are available to ensure a secret ballot. But when I took one today, I was admonished: those were not for me. I voted, fed my ballot to the machine (with the old man looking on), then asked at the original table, in a somewhat heated fashion when we got rid of the secret ballot in Tucson.

Told to take it up with an equally old lady at the next table, the matter was resolved: I was reassured that not only were the sleeves available, but that the poll workers were supposed to offer them. She set them straight.

That isn't as bad as what happened back in 2008, when I had to raise a fuss and get on the phone with the County Recorder's office to get poll workers to give me a primary ballot. "Your party isn't having a primary," I was told. Of course they were, and there were write-ins to nominate, as well.

I understand that poll workers are largely retired, that their brains are in slow decline, and that it isn't a well-paying job. But getting it right isn't very difficult. We should at least adopt some minimum qualifications, or better still, an "If we forgot to give you a receipt"/"30 minutes or it's free" policy. If the doddering old folks screw up and you catch them, you should get ~~ten bonus votes~~, a pizza, dinner at Cafe Poca Cosa, a contribution to the charity of your choice, or something similar. On them, not on the taxpayer.

It looks like the "ayes" have it.

2010-05-18T22:18:00.002-07:00

From the looks of things at 10:18 PM, Proposition 100 will pass and Arizona's sales tax will increase by one cent on the dollar.

This isn't too much of a surprise, given the near-total failure of the "No" side to so much as present a counter-narrative.

"Post-mortem" to follow tomorrow.

Vote "No" on Proposition 100

2010-05-14T14:15:00.003-07:00

If one is concerned about Arizona's solvency or quality of government in the long run, a "Yes" vote in next Tuesday's special election on Proposition 100, which would raise the transatction privilege tax (sales tax) by one cent per dollar, is irresponsible.

The Joint Legislative Budget Committee's projections are telling: If Proposition 100 passes, we can expect a $982 MM deficit in 2014 when the "temporary" tax expires, compared to a $200 MM deficit if it fails, if the "Healthy Arizona" 2000 Prop. 204 program is left funded. The other scenario is not worth considering at this point, since one of the many negative consequences of the "Obamacare" bill--as though banning insurance in the true sense of the word wasn't bad enough--is to put AZ's Federal Medicaid funding at risk if 2000 Prop. 204 is defunded.

The difference between $982 MM and $200 MM alone is more than five times the size of the current deficit. Unless the tax increase either becomes permanent or doesn't pass at all, in the not too distant future we'll be facing a shortfall that makes this year's seem like nothing.

Jan Brewer and many of Prop. 100's supporters are claiming that, nevertheless, Proposition 100's passage this year is necessary. From a certain perspective, that is correct. Arizona's constitution requires that the state budget be balanced. If the legislature is unable or unwilling to make the cuts necessary to balance the budget, then revenue must be increased. So far, the cuts made have been opportunistic and haphazard. As was the case when I argued for ending "home rule" in Arizona's cities, it cannot be emphasized enough: The scope of state government has not yet been decreased.

We could, based on that insight alone, develop a naive algorithm for balancing the budget. Let's go back year by year, scaling each year's budget to account for Arizona's increased population, until we find a year for which the scaled budget is balanced, and adopt that year's budget. The Tucson Weekly and other reactionary-leftist sources of commentary would have you believe that every cut from the State budget will take us into Third World conditions, but don't take their lead and start kidding yourself. Arizona's budget shortfall is the result of spending increases during the construction boom (perhaps due to the perverse dynamic between Gov. Napolitano and the far-right Legislature!) and pre-boom Arizona was not a bad place to live.

But we don't have to look to the past for guidance. Using Dean Martin's Arizona Checkbook service and other publicly available information, you could put together your own $150 MM in cuts rather easily. Or, you could put to use information from think tanks. Experience with dubious figures and specious arguments from the Goldwater Institute and Americans for Prosperity has taught me to be even more cautious with non-academic whitepapers than I am with academic sources, but this one, on review, seems solid. The Reason Foundation, together with Americans for Prosperity, has put together a guide to cuts that would balance Arizona's budget. If there could be such a thing, it should be required reading for all voters in next Tuesday's election.

These aren't shell-game gimmicks, nor de-funding of initiative-mandated programs, nor drastic cuts to essentials that would put AZ in the "third world". Included are a few bad ideas, such as letting the proposed Rosemont copper mine tear up the Davidson Canyon/Northern Santa Ritas near Tucson. (I don't oppose mining, but mining the Black Hills in Greenlee County or the back side of the Silver Bells is rather different than mining a tourist Mecca a stone's throw from a city of a million people! And the Silver Bells are in Ironwood NM, which is the closest thing I have to a preferred "stomping grounds", so this isn't NIMBYism.) But what is proposed is mostly good.

The number that should leap of the page at you is what could be saved by releasing non-violent drug offenders from state prisons and not sending any more to prison. $60 MM this year, and $120 MM in 2011. That eliminates most of the shortfall in one act.

Consider the one-time gains: Sale of the Santa Rita Experimental Range, of which the State's ownership was supposed to be temporary, could get us through this year and moving the Papago Park military reservation--just why are the National Guard centrally located in Metro. Phoenix?--will take care of next year's troubles, too.

Now move on to department eliminations. Even if the Agriculture Department's budget is halved--the wholesale elimination proposed is probably not responsible, but the department's scope could be reduced to providing true public goods--that's $4.5 MM per year. $10 MM can be saved by eliminating the Department of Tourism. Our outdoors sells itself! (Word to out-of-towners: come hike Aravaipa Canyon. Trust me on this one, or send an e-mail.) $100 MM per year can be saved by moving portions of University coursework to community colleges, which many students do anyway. (Let students who value the difference pay more, like their counterparts at private universities.) We don't need a Liquor Department, nor a Parent's Commission, nor a $40 MM special "Career Ladder" program for the schools (aren't they supposed to do that anyway?), and certainly don't need an Arts Commission, state departments of racing, private postsecondary education, cosmetology, barbering, opticians, optometry, podiatry, chiropractic (!), acupuncture (!!), naturopathy (!!!), and homeopathy (?!: a state department for regulation of placebos and outright quackery!). The beauty of the proposed cuts is that you do not have to agree or support all of them. As they amount to over a billion dollars per year, they're more than enough to get us there.

And one of the ideas proposed is just plain overdue: a parental "use tax credit" for private education. It's one of the strangest things about our current state of affairs, that middle-income people get their children's educations subsidized by the state. Thinking that makes us better off is like thinking we can be made more wealthy by picking our own pockets. A use tax credit will eliminate the double payments problem and let the benefits of choice be open to more people. In the long run it will lessen dependence on the State for education and make the next shortfall less of a "panic".

The takeaway message: Even if you do not support half or even three quarters of what is in the Reason Foundation's report, it is possible to balance Arizona's budget without raising taxes. Therefore, the tax increase is not necessary.

What the legislature needs is a voter mandate for cuts. Those who are on the fence about supporting cuts need to know that the public will not vote them out of office for doing what needs to be done. The Steve Farley types, who've never seen a cut they like or a spending increase they don't, need to be forced by the voter to start thinking like grown people and considering that we live in a world of finite resources and that the government simply can't do everything that Would Be Nice without raising taxes and thus diminishing the ability of people to enjoy the fruits of their labor and investments. The construction-fueled days of free money in Arizona for government programs are over. Time to prioritize. Vote "no" on Proposition 100 to make the legislature do just that.

And start demanding responsible cuts to the scope of government, as well. Read the Reason Foundation report and call your representative or write your newspaper to say that this milquetoasty, timid cutting of a little from this, a little from that has to stop, to be replaced by a reduction of the scope of state government. At the very least, demand that non-violent drug offenders be released from prison.

Campus carry moving along in Virginia; when can we start calling AZ "Overdue"?

2010-05-12T16:59:00.005-07:00

Via Dave Hardy, news that George Mason University's firearms ban is being challenged in Virginia's Supreme Court.

Arizona statutes explicitly delegate authority to regulate firearms at the state universities to the Board of Regents, which means that a VA-style challenge could not be made here, or at least that it would have to be structured differently.

But at issue in the appeal are the question of whether or not a carry ban violates the Second Amendment and whether or not prohibiting carry at a University is truly a compelling government interest, whether, if the government has a compelling interest that would necessitate limitations on RKBA, outright carry bans are narrowly tailored, and whether prohibiting students from keeping arms in their dormitories is, following the holding in Heller, unconstitutional. While Virginia law is not Arizona law and Virginia precedents are not binding here, state courts draw on the reasoning of other states' courts frequently, thus our attention in AZ should be on VA.

Moreover, if the appellants prevail, Virginia will join Utah and Colorado in allowing carry at state Universities; as more colleges, public or private, permit carry, the paranoid fantasies of the ban proponents lose credibility. We will, of course, still hear them, and they will, of course, still receive press coverage, regardless. It's over 20 years after Florida passed concealed carry, and the hoplophobes still repeat the arguments they made there every time liberalization is proposed elsewhere, and they are still taken seriously by the press. But it's much easier to point to examples of success than to take the lead ourselves--"Utah students can carry, and it hasn't been a problem--"no matter how much it'd be better for us to have been the leaders in this.

Why I take my hat off to Martin Escobar.

2010-05-04T20:19:00.002-07:00

Arizona's longtime paleocon/populist blowhard Ernest Hancock, whatever his many faults, has made a few good observations over the years. One to remember is that if you have a "government number" it is far easier to get attention. Translating "government number" out of Ernie-speak, that means that if you are participating in some sort of governmental process, be it by running for office or filing a lawsuit, you will more likely be considered newsworthy.

Tucson, AZ policeman Martin Escobar probably doesn't know who Ernie Hancock is, but appears to have taken that advice. His lawsuit, alleging violations of his 42 U.S.C. §1983, First, Fourth, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendment protected rights due to SB 1070, gained him national attention. The text of the complaint may be found on CNN.com and several other news outlets; the last time I checked, it wasn't yet available from the courts, but probably will be. National attention, yes, but on reading the complaint, the lawsuit appears not only frivolous but blatantly and unapologetically frivolous. Escobar doesn't appear to have suffered injury, be compelled to suffer injury, or otherwise have standing, and his counsel doesn't even try to link the pages upon pages of Escobar's reflections on policing in southern Tucson to his allegations of rights violations.

But my hat goes off to Escobar, not for the publicity in itself, but for bringing the realities of policing in Tucson south of 22nd Street to public attention. A document with a "government number" explaining that neither use of the Spanish language, nor dressing in a Mexican fashion, nor listening to norteño music, nor ethnic appearance, nor skill with the English language constitute reasonable suspicion that one is an alien, let alone an alien without the right visa, now exists, both as a matter of public record an in the popular consciousness. Escobar himself now has the name recognition for ACLU-AZ or whoever else will bring eventual Fourth or Fifth Amendment suits concerning the enforcement of SB 1070 to think of him when they need expert testimony concerning the meaning of "reasonable suspicion" and "probable cause" when visa status is in question.

A single frivolous lawsuit will likely achieve far more than the dumbed-down chants of thousands of protesters.

The Everyday Boycotts of San Francisco

2010-04-29T22:47:00.002-07:00

On the San Francisco Chronicle's editorial page, a witty rejoinder:

...This city is losing revenue every day as a result of inaction from City Hall. They might not use the term "boycott," but the businesspeople and tourists who don't return because of their disgust with the condition of the streets or concerns about their safety represent lost dollars. So do the entrepreneurs or developers who go elsewhere because of the regulatory thicket here...

Read the whole thing.

If boycotts are to be how we settle internal differences in this country, then San Francisco is deserving. The health-care bill for which they share a good deal of responsibility--who sent Pelosi to the House?--affects us far more than SB 1070 affects them, and what it does to people, assuming that "Probable Cause" means in SB 1070 what it has always meant, is more morally repugnant.

But that aside, yes, there's good reason to "go elsewhere". San Francisco is a great place to eat, and the architecture is cute, but it's frustrating in ways even this ex-New Orleanean can't take. Very recently I attended a scientific conference in San Francisco at the Moscone Center, their convention center. I don't recommend Moscone at all. It isn't that there was anything wrong with the facility, but the staff were overwhelmingly rude at times it counted the most. Among other things, a very rule-oriented, European mentality was displayed. For example: After having been jerked around the night before by staff and getting there early, nobody could put up posters at 7:55. Not until 8 AM sharp. A handful (or two) of incidents such as this made it such that I and many others recommended not going there in the future.

In Phoenix the staffers may have voted for Sheriff Joe, but at least they're polite and have American attitudes.

The partition of Arizona

2010-04-29T10:46:00.003-07:00

"Baja Arizona" has been tossed about for a while to describe Southern AZ. I'd like to think it the more sober portion of Arizona, the one that put solidly Goldwater Republican Jim Kolbe in the house for eleven terms.

A friend just coined a new complement to this: Phoenix and environs as "Loco Arizona". Not a bad label for the portion of the state populated by geriatric immigrants from places like Ohio, Indiana, and the Chicago suburbs who come here, grow green lawns, and get upset over rattlesnakes, "dry heat", and Mexicans of any citizenship.

Should there be an Arizonan divorce? The problem with Baja Arizona is that it isn't just Kolbe territory. (I'd bring up Giffords, but she caved on the community rating mandate/high deductible ban bill). It also sends far-leftist union stooge Grijalva to the House cycle after cycle. And it's home to the U of A, the "Salt of the Earth Labor College", and the geriatric folks from back east whose political opinions come straight out of 1935, market abolitionism and all. Baja Arizona is Soviet Snowbirdistan.

SB 1070 probably isn't the big deal the Soviet Snowbirdistan types are making of it--that'll depend on whether or not police departments elect to violate Constitutional standards in its enforcement. (That isn't a given.) And recall that the tension between Arizona's lunatics makes AZ the eighth most liberal state in the Union. Without Phoenix, we'd be Massachusetts. And perhaps without Tucson, we'd be everything the San Franciscans and media whores are currently imagining we are.

But I do like "Loco Arizona". That should stick.

I can has boycott?

2010-04-28T16:13:00.003-07:00

A few remarks on the "Boycott Arizona" idea:

SB 1070 doesn't go into effect until 90 days after the end of the legislative session.
ICE decides which police forces can and cannot enforce immigration law, and can render this moot.
Governor Brewer has noted that AZ law enforcement will be expected to comply with Constitutional standards of reasonable suspicion and probable cause. To remark--before the law goes into effect--that SB 1070 will bring about violations of basic rights is premature. It will do so if the various police forces and Sheriff's departments screw up.
In light of the above, if Brewer is right, this is a policy that at worst willhurt AZ policing by tying up police time (and wasting taxpayer money) on doing ICE's job and enforcing bad Federal policy.
The people pushing for a boycott, mostly Democrats, are hypocrites until they call for an open-border immigration policy. By "protecting" union labor against competition, they created this problem--this problem exists because there is not an open immigration policy--and leftists are largely responsible for the popular misconception that open immigration hurts Americans. That this was picked up by populist reactionaries on the Right doesn't change history.
This is really a bad road to go down.

Shall we boycott Vermont because they sent someone who identifies as "socialist" to the Senate? (If socialism isn't as morally repugnant to you as racial profiling, you need to think harder about socialism. It's government interference in almost everything in life that matters.)

Or, getting to more practical concerns: Shall we boycott every state that has a Democratic senator? The ban on major-medical insurance (and the killing of HSAs that will result), the tighter coupling of health care to health insurance and health insurance to employment, the mandate of community rating, all of this harms people at least as much as the racial profiling that will supposedly result from SB 1070. And given the opportunity to pass sensible reform, decoupling insurance from employment, moving the US off of the insurance-as-insulation model, the Democrat health care bill was a disgrace. Shame and harm. Where's the boycott of California? Arizonans have as much reason to boycott San Francisco--San Franciscans put Nancy Pelosi in the House--as San Francisco would have to boycott AZ were the hyperbolic claims about SB 1070 actually true. And why didn't we boycott Massachusetts when they enacted a Europe-style health care system, one that has been a failure yet served as a model for the Democrat bill?

Why aren't we boycotting Chicago (responsible for IL's backwardness) over firearms policy?

Oppressive firearms policy and health care policy is, again, at least as bad as the cynical fantasy versions of SB 1070. If boycotts will be the response, we might as well dissolve the Union.
Talk of "revealed preference" is usually bluster--it fails to take into account irrationality--but it applies directly to boycotts. Talk is cheap. That ordinary people--not publicity whore celebrities--will cancel trips to the Grand Canyon or conventions in Phoenix is doubtful.

Supai Indians get upset over nothing, ASU pays them $700,000

2010-04-24T04:08:00.004-07:00

In the New York Times:

Members of the tiny, isolated tribe had given DNA samples to university researchers starting in 1990, in the hope that they might provide genetic clues to the tribe’s devastating rate of diabetes. But they learned that their blood samples had been used to study many other things, including mental illness and theories of the tribe’s geographical origins that contradict their traditional stories.

I'm going to sound like Martel for just a moment: The Havasupai Indians should have been told that they could take their "traditional stories" and stick them [insert your choice of location]. They have no special right to revoke permission to use genetic materials collected from blood samples, and none to be secure in their fairytales.

That the Board of Regents paid them a $700,000 settlement is a violation of their fiducial duty to the taxpayers and to ASU's donors, and also a violation of their responsibility to ensure academic freedom for graduate students and faculty. A consent form is a consent form. End of story. As reported in Nature, no misconduct was found by an independent investigation.

What was at question in the Indians' lawsuit was whether or not someone who handed over samples could retroactively revoke consent and extort money from the taxpayer. Instead of settling the suit, ASU should have fought it to victory, enabling further such claims to be summarily dismissed.

The expression "Indian giver" has just taken on new life, and new meaning.

Lift a leg. (The obligatory Earth Day post.)

2010-04-22T23:59:00.000-07:00

I'm a few hours late on this one, but will back-date it because I can. It was also going to include numbers, including the cost of Tucson-area water treatment. Instead, I'll give but two ranges and one number:

3-10 gallons per minute. 1.5 - 5 gallons per flush. 20 gallons.

Water is scarce in most of Arizona, and as readers of this 'blog probably understand, water rights out here don't make much sense. "Prior claim to all of the water" is incompatible with both the Nozickian "as much and as good for others" and sustainable use of aquifiers. Lowered water tables destroy streams and change vegetation patterns. If you're still one of those ~~right-wing nutjob~~ holdouts who think concern for such things has nothing to do with human welfare, read up on Ecological services and think more subtly.

We're already diverting a major continental river to do absurd things like grow cotton in the desert or wisteria trees and green lawns in Phoenix. (Water is something that everyone needs therefore its price shouldn't reflect scarcity, right?--that's the common logic, and what's good for health care is good for...) Waste water is filtered, centrifuged, and treated with chlorine or ozone to make it suitable to dump on food crops, and water treatment plants have to be upgraded just to meet those standards. Recycling water from tap-to-tap remains a costly far-off possibility.

The craziest waste--aside from the cotton and old men "watering the rocks" in their landscaping--is the use of good, clean drinking water to wash away refuse. Leaving the spigot on while shaving uses 20 gallons of potable water. Showering uses 3 gallons per minute with a low-flow showerhead and ten gallons per minute with the old-fashioned kind. Modern toilets use 1.5 gallons per flush, and older ones use 5. Up to five gallons of drinking water is contaminated with waste and has to be processed every time you flush the toilet.

My recommendations: If possible, install greywater systems, low-flow showerheads, modern toilets, and (in public buildings) flush-free urinals. Turn the tap off while shaving; swirl the razor in a glass. Shower with someone you love or at least someone with whom you're comfortable being nude. And, at least if you're male, for goodness's sake, stop wasting a gallon or more of water every time you have to take a leak. Find a suitable shrub (not a cholla), check for rattlesnakes, and piss outside every once in a while.

SB 1070, not as bad as it could have been

2010-04-21T18:01:00.003-07:00

SB 1070, which could be called the Russell Pearce Omnibus, was sent to the Governor's office this Monday.

The bill:

Requires, without regard for limited resources, that police spend time determining--or attempting to determine--the immigration status of anyone arrested.
Makes employ of illegal aliens by private business, or even hiring an illegal immigrant to mow one's lawn, a State issue.
Criminalizes hiring of day laborers if picking one up momentarily disrupts the traffic flow.
Criminalizes transporting an illegal immigrant in one's vehicle with no exception. Driving a bleeding illegal immigrant to the hospital would be an offense. Extreme cases aside, this is mandatory social ostracism.

Moreover, whether or not the bill requires police to prioritize immigration enforcement is ambiguous. It does allow Arizonans to bring action against any governmental subdivision which restricts immigration enforcement below the "full extent permitted by Federal law". That could be taken to mean that any police force authorized to enforce immigration laws (the Maricopa County Sheriff's Department lost that power!) would have to spend all of its time doing so.

It could have been worse: early versions of the bill changed trespass statutes to make those without the Federal visas guilty of a state offense of "trespassing".

Another Senate candidate.

2010-04-21T17:37:00.002-07:00

Word from a credible source has David Nolan, a co-founder of the Libertarian Party, running for the U.S. Senate as that organization's candidate.

Nolan is underwhelming in person, to put it politely, and generally opposed to the sort of libertarianism that admits ideas and solutions instead of reflexive "principles". He's also been a destructive force within the Libertarian Party. At the 2008 convention at what was supposed to be an "elder statesman" dinner he called for the Reform Caucus, the single best hope for reviving that moribund 3rd party, to "go reform the GOP", and supported the restoration of a dippy, ideological platform that does the opposite of showing off the best of modern libertarianism. For as long as he's been around, he's said to have been a supporter of the Sarah Palinization of the Libertarian Party, and Brian Doherty's book has him as a driver of the "Never again Clark!" movement that destroyed the LP's shot at UK Liberal Party or German Free Democrats-style credibility. It's worse: later in 2008, he backstabbed the Bob Barr campaign when it was at its fundraising and earned-media peak. I have the e-mails if anyone is interested.

Given that he has never held public office or served in government, the public would be right in having zero confidence in his ability to represent Arizona. Perhaps he's capable of understanding the issues, but I don't know the man to take advice from anyone. That having been said, he's almost as "qualified" as Rodney Glassman. Nobody is ever ready for the Senate.

Back in 2006, Nolan called global warming a "hoax", as though hundreds of scientific papers--of which I have read dozens--were simply made-up by their authors. That was a reckless and idiotic position, of the sort that totally undermined my confidence in the man's ability to have an honest opinion of anything, and a slander of many good people. There isn't a chance in hell he'll receive either my vote or my personal endorsement, unless he vocally comes clean on environmental issues and shows some respect for science. That is to say, unless I see a different Nolan, I'm not voting for Nolan. Jeff Flake, a good modern classical liberal around whom there was a Senatorial "buzz" before it became clear that McCain wouldn't retire, supports a revenue-neutral carbon tax, but in the Libertarian Party, it's exceedingly rare that the grown folks are in charge. I'd love for Nolan to show the seriousness and command of the issues of Flake, but I've learned not to expect to be impressed by 3rd Party candidates.

Glassman aims for the Senate.

2010-04-17T04:47:00.003-07:00

Back when Rodney Glassman was first seeking public office, I remarked that he was an overgrown fratboy, a trustafarian dandy with a sense of entitlement big enough to get him kicked out of Carol West's office, and doubted his capability to be an effective City Councilman. (Follow the keyword link at the bottom of the page for some colorful information, or just search Tucsonweekly.com for "Glassman" and "get out of town".) To my surprise--and pleasantly, as I don't like seeing people screw up--he grew in to the position quickly. Those who pay attention to the City Council know that he's actually been the voice of good sense more often than not.

By now, his resignation from office in order to run for the U.S. Senate is old news. Do I think he's ready? Is anybody ready for the Senate? Is this an endorsement? No, but it's an update. And for the record, I think Lori Oien would make a great Councilwoman, the same as I did when she first ran for the seat.

My unsolicited advice for Glassman:

Lose the smirk. Learn to smile like a man.
Don't do it. Resignation is irrevocable, but it gives you the chance to go do something with your life. "(1) Trustafarian Grijalva flunky and (2) City Councilman" is a shoddy resumé. Add a science or engineering degree to that list of credentials and actually make or build something. Or go into business for yourself in something nontechnical and find out how the private sector works for those who create and don't merely inherit wealth. Before his stint on the Phoenix City Council, Barry Goldwater had experience as a military officer and with the day-to-day direction of a private firm. One that he inherited a stake in, yes, but that did not prevent him from learning how wealth is created, how free-market capitalism benefits the little guy, and how to sympathize meaningfully with those who are trying to get a leg up in this world. If the Democratic Party has a serious cultural shortcoming beyond its willful ignorance of free-market solutions to modern problems such as what is (not was, still is) wrong with health care and health insurance, it is this lack of appreciation for the entrepreneur. One cannot divide the U.S.A. almost literally into classes, into "haves" and "have nots", into "the rich" and "the poor", each with de facto different legal status, one as the permanent recipient of transfers and the end in himself and the other as the permanent source of transfers and a means to an end, and at the same time respect the entrepreneur. Come out and scramble like the rest of us, and it'll make you better than the average Democrat.
Krugman's popular work, especially for the New York Times, is shameful trash. Krugman the scholar is worthwhile reading. Dive in. And read some Hayek while you're at it for background. I'm serious.
Attend a few Tea Party rallies. Just hold your nose and do it. Get outside your comfort zone and learn something about Americans' values.
Let yourself be photographed with a shouldered AR-15. It'll save you a lot of trouble.

zOMG I need a bulletproof vest now !!!!!!!!11111!!11!1ONE (Or, can we be sober about SB 1108?)

2010-04-17T02:29:00.004-07:00

It's now twenty years after firearms liberalization began in earnest. We have twenty years of successes in forty-eight states to inform our perspective. Why, then, the lack of sobriety in response to passage of SB 1108, the not-quite-"Constitutional Carry" bill signed into law by Gov. Brewer today, from commentators and a considerable minority of Arizonans.

Take, for example, the words of (state representative, nonanalytic thinker, and "public artist" responsible for replacing cheap, flexible buses with better-looking, inflexible, expensive streetcars) Steve Farley, as cut-and-pasted on Blog for Arizona:

Last week the Legislature sent to the Governor's desk (for her likely signature) another Russell Pearce bill, SB1108, that will allow any Arizonan over 18 years old to carry a concealed weapon anywhere that is not controlled by federal law. No background checks or training will be required. People with mental illness or a criminal history can no longer be kept from carrying a concealed weapon.

Nope. The prohibited possessor law is still in effect. All SB 1108 does is allow concealed carry anywhere one could previously open carry, under the same regulations as open carry. I wonder even more how Safier (for whom I have much respect despite our political disagreement) puts up with his anonymous coward co-'blogger, who didn't spot Farley's gaffe. Perhaps the co-'blogger is Farley?

Or try "Tucson Independent Examiner" Hugh Holub:

Some training in the "shoot no shoot" decision is better than nothing. I really don't think people ought to be running around carrying concealed without some training about what situations you really can blow someone's ass to Hell.

Except that people could already carry openly without that training, and without it causing much trouble. Strict liability is a curious thing, that has gun owners buying Al Korwin's books to keep themselves out of trouble.

Why do the hoplophobes and Holub-like milquetoasts always speak of "running around", anyway? I didn't know that carrying added that kind of spring to one's step. Is that slang for "acting irresponsibly". Yes, I don't think people should act irresponsibly.

Holub goes on:

My main concern is for the cop or Sheriff's deputy or DPS officer that walks up to a car in a routine traffic stop. This is one of the most dangerous moments in police work because you really don't know what you are walking up to, especially at 3 AM out in the middle of nowhere.

Under the new law, if you have a weapon in your car, you will need to acknowledge this and surrender it.
Imagine you are the cop walking up…and the driver yells "I've got a gun and I'm handing it out the window…"

Are you going to be pointing your service weapon at the driver?

Most officer involved shootings start with a driver or passenger making a furtive gesture in a stop which looks like they are reaching for a gun. Boom. Dead. Good shoot usually.

Police in Arizona are better trained than that, knowing how they should conduct themselves in an encounter with someone who is carrying legally. And Arizonans who carry openly already know--or should know, as it is their responsibility--their obligations in an encounter with the police. Shooting someone carrying legally and acting as he ought would be manslaughter, at least. Bad shoot, usually. Note that it rarely happens. Instead of drawing on 20 or more years experience, Holub, like many, is content to simply Make Things Up. To opponents of firearms law liberalization, imagination trumps reality.

The punchline is at the end:

And consider for a moment all the problems we've had with gangs and drug cartel enforcers...now they can legally hide their guns and can't be busted for that.

Be careful out there. The new state motto is "an armed society is a polite society".

The "you can spot the bad guys because they're the ones who carry and/or conceal weapons" meme, again. An intellectual nonstarter in 2010, but so are most anti-liberalization arguments.

If they could legally carry at all--if they were not prohibited possessors--they could previously legally carry concealed, by taking the course! There's no part of the concealed carry course where one must answer "are you a gangbanger (Y/N)?" let alone do so truthfully!

"Hide their guns" is the interesting bit. In the Old West, one could carry openly but never concealed; concealing a weapon was a sign that one was up to no good, something for liars and scoundrels who had to hide something. The culture has changed; open carry makes some (crazy) people uneasy to an irrational extent. Moreover, open carry changes the dynamic of an encounter with an assailant; concealed carry is safer.

As much as I give Al Korwin grief about his right-wing reflexes, I have to say he's great with words (it is he who coined the term "hoplophobe") and spot-on about this one. "Concealed carry" is "discreet carry". Nothing more, nothing less. Not hiding something, but rather being discreet, for one's own safety and perhaps the comfort of left-wing hoplophobic weenies who call the police to report "there's a MAN with a GUN!" Such discretion is what is demanded of many of us in the modern culture, especially professionals and even more especially academics! SB 1108 brings Arizona's Old West gun laws into accord with modern culture.

Hysterics like Farley's (and my colleagues) and goofiness like Holub's distracts from the few truly bad seemingly pro-gun bills. Rather than repeating long-discredited arguments about "blood in the streets" and "the police will/should summarily execute legal carriers during an active shooter situation" when we were trying to extend the right to carry to University faculty and students, the worriers should have concerned themselves with the unseemly amount of attention given by the legislature to the Murder of Grant Kuenzli by the Coward Harold Fish and the resulting reckless change in standards of evidence. As reported in the Phoenix New Times, this may lead to yet another murderer being let loose. So much for deterrence. "Harold Fish and Roger Garfield got away with it...and look, there are no witnesses. I'll just claim self-defense!"

ASU ahead of U of A this year: PIRG vote to happen.

2010-04-06T10:59:00.003-07:00

Via the Desert Lamp, news that ASU students will vote on a PIRG fee today and tomorrow.

Reasons attendance at the university should not be bundled with a fee to pay for political activism are obvious, and the ways in which Naderite PIRG is both wasteful and insidious are well-documented.

As is the non-legality of deciding student fees by plebiscite. See FIRE's whitepaper on student fees for an overview. The relevant precedents are Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System v. Southworth, 529 U.S. 217 (2000) and Amidon v. Student Ass’n of the State Univ. of N.Y. 05-6623-cv. Also worthwhile reading is Gregory Sanford's law review article, "Your opinion really does not matter: how the use of referenda in funding public university student groups violates constitutional free speech principles", from the Notre Dame Law Review (83 Notre Dame L. Rev. 845 (2007-2008)).

ASU's student newspaper has come out with a clear argument against the PIRG fee, one that thoughtful students of all political beliefs should appreciate. Often, student newspaper editorials are more an indicator of campus opinion than opinion-maker; nevertheless, if the PIRG fee passes, ASU students should probably get on the phone with ACLU-AZ and FIRE to pursue an airtight 1st Amendment claim.

Maricopa County now serving photo radar citations in Pima

2010-04-05T15:10:00.003-07:00

An alert for readers who wait for photo radar citations to be properly served before responding to them:

Maricopa County is now serving photo radar citations to residents of Pima County. This means that not only do you have to put up with tiny-brained folk slowing down to the speed limit and slamming on the brakes near the cameras, there's also a chance you might actually have to pay a fine if driving more than ten miles over the sometimes absurdly low (55 on I-17?) Phoenix speed limits.

Of course, this doesn't apply if the Easter Bunny strikes again.

What is or is not a Goldwater conservative?

2010-04-01T11:55:00.004-07:00

Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan are two figures from American history that many will point to as examples of admirable politicians. Many people these days believe Barry Goldwater to have been a libertarian Republican. In the upcoming 2010 elections voters in Arizona will have an opportunity to consider a candidate for Arizona's third congressional district who proudly claims to be a Goldwater conservative. Paulina Morris is campaigning against eight other Republicans for this office.

It is probably time for me to review Barry Goldwater's book The Conscience of a Conservative. With a new sense of inspiration that all things are possible (with enough hard work) now that Republican Scott Brown has been elected to be US Senator from Massachusetts perhaps a modern day equivalent of Barry Goldwater will find his way to office.

SB1168: Eliminating one more "hole" in the right to carry.

2010-03-31T23:07:00.004-07:00

The vote totals aren't showing on the state Senate website just yet, but SB 1168 was presumably passed this Monday when it received its third reading, and will thus (if all goes well) be considered by the House.

Arizona is almost a model for liberal firearms regulation. There remain, however, "holes" in the state, areas that are not secured, where "checking" one's firearm is not an option, and where open carry is prohibited. Alcohol-serving establishments, schools and universities, and public parks are all places one must avoid if carrying openly. In two out of three of these cases, concealed carry is either prohibited outright or nearly always prohibited. This means, of course, that one must be un-armed on one's way to or from these places, as well.

ARS 13-3108 currently authorizes political subdivisions of the state to restrict carry in parks so that only those with CCW permits may carry. SB 1168--not to be confused with a 2009 firearms bill with the same number--eliminates this power. It also explicitly prevents political subdivisions from enacting or enforcing firearms laws more restrictive than those of the State.

Since the Board of Regents is authorized separately in ARS title 12 to restrict carry at the universities, this does not seem to be true "constitutional carry", as some of the bill's proponents claim. But it's a step in the right direction. Every time liberalization advances, we get to turn to those who repeat old anti-gun arguments long after they've been disproved by experience.

To my fellow academics: Are you afraid to go everywhere in AZ except the university, the courthouse, bars and restaurants with those reactionary signs, and the public park? Are you afraid, now, to go to the park, too? Is this fear well-founded? Are these dangerous places relative to less liberal states?

Arizona Senate declares sovereignty over things that do not exist.

2010-03-29T22:13:00.004-07:00

From SCR 1050, a referendum which passed the AZ Senate on the 22nd of March:

7. The regulation of intrastate commerce, manufacturing and noneconomic activities, as it pertains to intrastate anthropogenic carbon dioxide or other greenhouse substances produced by biological, mechanical or chemical processes, including refuse and agricultural operations, is excluded from the meaning and understanding of the Enumerated Powers at the time the United States Constitution was ratified on June 21, 1788, and it is vested in the states under the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

and

The harmless emission of anthropogenic carbon dioxide or other greenhouse substances produced by biological, mechanical or chemical processes, including refuse and agricultural operations, is a necessary incident of the Constitutional rights of Arizonans under the Ninth Amendment to the United States Constitution, as well as article II, sections 2 and 33, Constitution of Arizona.

and, while we're at it,

The intrastate emission of anthropogenic carbon dioxide or other greenhouse substances produced by biological, mechanical or chemical processes, including refuse and agricultural operations, is not subject to federal law or federal regulation, under the Enumerated Powers of the federal government. Accordingly, to the extent that such emissions can be regulated consistent with the principles of free republican government, such power is reserved to the State of Arizona or the people under the Tenth Amendment to the United States
Constitution.
C. Any effort by any governmental official to enforce within the borders of the state of Arizona federal laws or federal regulations purporting to restrict intrastate emissions of anthropogenic carbon dioxide or other greenhouse substances is herewith declared a violation of civil rights and unlawful under Arizona state law.

Emphasis mine all around.

"Harmless greenhouse substances" do not exist under today's conditions. Likewise "intrastate" emission of CO2, methane, and other light gases is unlikely; consider only that water vapor, of comparable molecular weight, blows into New Mexico and points beyond.

Perhaps unwittingly, the AZ Senate is trying to assert its right to regulate, without federal interference, things that do not exist. Is 10th Amendment sovereignty over the Tooth Fairy next?

Have a look at the measure's title. "Freedom to breathe act?" Something makes me think that the Goldwater Institute's scientifically illiterate, blustering fat slob Byron Schlomach is behind this. Oh, sorry, I mean "Byron Schlomach, PhD." We need a cartoon series with that title. Sort of a cross between Batman the Animated Series and Pee-Wee's Playhouse. The adventures of a fumbling propagandist hack, with especial insight into the "creative process".

The Goldwater Institute is promoting the measure; I learned about it via a Nick Dranias e-mail. More about my beef with Schlomach in a previous post. Check out the linked graph. I'm tempted to post the e-mail exchange I had with him, but that would be so...tacky. Safier is on the wrong side of very many things and probably read his econ texts upside down and backwards, but is usually on the right side of the truth, which is important. He's been taking the Goldwater Institute hacks to task for some time. Read the latest. And Ladner is a statesman compared to Schlomach!

Yet another summary execution allowed in Cochise County

2010-03-19T14:41:00.003-07:00

Word to the wise: Don't turn your back to Border Patrol agents in Cochise County. The back is where they like to shoot people.

And the County Attorney will not prosecute. First there was the Nicholas Corbett matter, which admittedly involved hung juries. Now, according to the Daily Star, an assistant CA has ruled that the shooting of Jorge Alfredo Solís Palma was legally justified.

Let's step through this. Solis hides under tree. Solis refuses to come out. Solis flees. Solis throws some rocks while fleeing. Solis is shot and killed. Perhaps that assistant county attorney has never thrown anything in his life: throwing one way while running the other, that's not a credible attack, certainly not one that justifies shooting under most use-of-force regulations.

There's more in the Sierra Vista Herald: the above narrative is oversimplified. But reading the Herald report, two things become clear: (1) It's not at all certain that Solis wasn't shot merely because there the agents were exasperated (2) the County Attorney's office didn't get to review the recordings that could possibly establish probable cause.

Instead, the Cochise County Attorney used the Border Patrol's reports to establish whether or not to prosecute Border Patrol agents. Does anyone else see something wrong with that? Were there no objective evidence, it'd be understandable, but that's not the case.

Another gem from Martel Firing

2010-02-12T06:10:00.004-07:00

In the Arizona 'blogosphere, Martel Firing is probably the master of the succinct, witty post, and he's put up yet another gem. I'll give only a teaser, and a few remarks:

Volgy said (as accurately as I can remember), “Democrats hire garbage men and pay them well. Republicans contract out the job and the contractors pay the minimum possible. So yes, there is certainly a partisan difference.”

Volgy just inadvertently provided one of the best explanations for why urban Democrats--and I'm thinking back to days living in New Orleans and, before that, the Chicago area--are so corrupt and so prone to turning everything into a brother-in-law job. Is this why he's a professor of political science?
A Swiftian economic theory in which a the product of jobs, hours, and wages was maximized instead of utility would be hilarious. Perhaps only to me and two other people, but still, I'd buy that book!
Having been to San Francisco lately, I'm inclined to think that Martel means "stinks" literally.

Comically bad headline writing.

2010-02-11T19:57:00.003-07:00

Thinking back to Thane's last post, I just saw the following on a newspaper rack:

Epic blizzards renew assault on East Coast.

Mixed metaphor fail. Will someone please explain to me why Tucson's better paper got stuck with the afternoon slot (sure death in today's market)?

Are we to take SB 1266 to be a sign of decency?

2010-02-10T20:27:00.004-07:00

Schoolkids send naked cell-phone photos of themselves to each other. Given what is usually on one's mind--and what usually seems funny--at that age, does this come as a surprise to anyone?

What is surprising is the response. Bawdy jokes, (usually less-than-tasteful) drawings of sexual subjects, and "dirty" pictures passed around by schoolkids used to be the subject of adult scorn, at worst being confiscated, especially if the pictures are of a classmate, or resulting in issuance of a detention. Way, way back in the '90s this kind of silly, juvenile behavior was treated as just that. Nowadays, schoolteachers and parents of the "victims" want to get the law involved.

Under current Arizona law, sending of nude pictures of self or classmates by cell-phone or e-mail could be prosecuted as sexual exploitation of a minor, a class two felony. SB 1266 creates a new class 2 misdemeanor, "unlawful transmission or possession of explicit sexual material by a minor", to take the place of this. The title is a bit misleading; in addition to explicit sexual material, it also criminalizes the possession or transmission of photos of the genitalia, or of mere nude photos. As Alessandra Soler Meetze of ACLU-AZ remarked to the Arizona Republic, the bill criminalizes the digital equivalent of mooning.

From a certain perspective, SB 1266 looks like a stroke of decency from the legislature. "Let's not make the kids register as sex offenders; let's give them a slap on the wrist." However--Candy Andy Thomas's ~~persecution~~ ~~prosecution for having a computer virus~~ ultimate plea bargain with teenager Matt Bandy for passing around Playboy in school aside--Arizona prosecutors have been reluctant to charge teenagers with felonies for acting like kids due to the severity of the sanction.

Issuing Tasers to police made it more likely that they use force against suspects and detainees. Passage of SB 1266 will likely have the same effect of prosecutors. To quote the same Republic article:

Paul Ahler, executive director of the Arizona Prosecuting Attorneys' Advisory Council, said he didn't think any Arizona children have been charged with felonies for sexting under the current law.

However, children in other states have.

His organization, which includes representatives from the state's county attorneys, the state attorney general and municipal prosecutors, supports the bill.

Ahler said judges and law enforcement now are stuck with labeling a child a sex offender or finding some lesser charge that may not precisely fit the circumstances. In August, for example, Tucson police recommended a misdemeanor charge of using a telephone to offend, harass or intimidate for two 13-year-old boys suspected of sexting.

"Arizona prosecutors do not want to deal with this issue using child-pornography laws," Ahler said. "These are not pedophiles, not sex offenders. But they are doing something dangerous that needs to be stopped."

Susan Crawford with the Pinal County Attorney's Office said the current law has made officials reluctant to prosecute sexting at all.

She said the proposed legislation would show minors that sexting is serious, while at the same time allow for a more appropriate level of sentencing.

Since when is sending nude pictures dangerous?--and since when was the (cash-strapped) State of Arizona supposed to show kids that Behavior X is "serious". What does "X is serious" mean, anyway? "You'll get in trouble for it" or "It's harmful to nonconsenting parties?"

Southern Arizonans take note of the bill sponsor: Sen. Paton. The re-election of Gabby Giffords is looking better each week.

Of the import of article titles in newspapers

2010-02-08T17:45:00.003-07:00

I live and work in Phoenix, Arizona. I follow news and commentary from Tucson. One complaint that I hear is that the Arizona Daily Star has an employee that chooses article titles that are biased against Barack Obama. That intrigued me enough to research the title assigned to a national column in my local newspaper.

Today's Charles Krauthammer's column in the Arizona Republic has the title "Common sense will win in U.S. - despite liberals". The title provided on TownHall.com of "The Great Peasant Revolt of 2010" doesn't seem appreciably different to me.

I found the article to be a very useful analysis of the folks currently called Liberals in the news and by 90% of the population.

HB 2148: Their culture war, on our time.

2010-02-05T02:13:00.003-07:00

HB 2148 is not the terrible bill it has been made out to be. A reading of the full text shows that, contrary to some of the more strident arguments against its passage, it will not give preference to married strangers over single relatives.

Nevertheless, we must ask ourselves: Why change the adoption rules to give preference to married couples? Are so many people seeking to adopt children that many are being turned away? Can "we" (Arizona) afford to be this choosy?

I'm not confident that this bill will make it any more difficult for single people to adopt, nor that it will make it less likely that current wards of the state will be adopted. I am not confident that it will do these things. But I am reasonably confident that adoption of children by single people is not a current problem and that the legislature should concern itself with matters of greater substance, such as the budget, firearms law reform, or education. Legislators' "signaling" bills waste what is in many sense our time and increase the chances that meaningful fixes to real world problems be put off until next year.

And Hitler named that cute little puppy "Liebchen"

2010-02-04T11:49:00.003-07:00

"Hugh Nuze" over at the Sonoran Alliance 'blog complains that the Arizona Republic "refuses to publish even one positive article about Arpaio, Thomas."

Reading further, it turns out that the Repug rejected one particular guest opinion--written like a letter to the editor! One poorly written guest opinion goes unpublished --> "they refuse to publish even one (that is to say, they refuse to publish any) positive article about Arpaio, Thomas."

Fail.

It looks like the whining tactics of the right-wing and libertarian Lysenkoists, the global warming denialists, have crept their way into everyday concerns. The world just got a bit more obnoxious.

Beat Back Buffelgrass

2010-02-03T18:51:00.004-07:00

Now on to what I actually wanted to post about today:

The Buffelgrass Information Center and the Pima Association of Governments is holding a "Beat Back Buffelgrass Day" this Saturday from 8-11 AM. Attendees will learn how to identify buffelgrass and will be taken to sites in the area to remove it; the group also encourages neighborhood removal of the noxious weed. I support pulling it on sight.

Learn more on the event website.

Buffelgrass is an invasive weed and fire hazard wrongheadedly introduced to the area as forage a few decades ago. As the Sonoran Desert biome did not evolve as one that periodically burned, buffelgrass-fueled fires kill off native plants like saguaro and cholla and destroy the local ecosystem, leaving nothing but buffelgrass. I'd say that buffelgrass is to Arizona what kudzu is to the Deep South, but it's worse. It's more like rabbits in Australia.

In Mexico it is still planted as forage, illustrating yet again (as if we didn't have enough examples already) why there's need for an international convention on invasive species and noxious weeds.

A PIRG case worth reading: even refundable fees are of questionable legality.

2010-02-03T18:25:00.005-07:00

Galda v Rutgers, 772 F.2d 1060

See also the University of Chicago Law Review article "The Right Not To Sue".

I won't be around next semester when the fee is imposed and thus will not have standing myself, but I'm thinking of calling FIRE (again) to see if there's anything I can bring to e.g. the U of A general counsel's office, and I'm certain that it will be possible to find students who do have standing.

(An aside, added later:)

Given that the "Student Government" is considering a resolution against concealed carry on campus, this review is interesting.

One of the PIRG culprits identified--read the justification and laugh!

2010-02-03T17:59:00.003-07:00

Through the grapevine, your narrator learns that one of the organizers of the effort to charge all U of A students to subsidize the PIRG political organization is one "Pacifica Nicholson Sommers", a biology PhD student. The justification (to a friendly party), word for word:

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Pacifica Nicholson Sommers
Date: Tue, Feb 2, 2010 at 8:32 PM
Subject: Re: PIRG Info
To: [redacted]

Hey [redacted],

Thanks for writing. I am generally opposed to fee increases as well, but I
think ArizonaPIRG is a really cool program that I would like to see have a
more concrete infrastructure and presence on campus, which is why I am out
there asking people to support this one. There is a lot of talk about social
and environmental problems on campuses, lots of cool research and lots of
round tables and panels and forums. There are some clubs that take on social
issues, but the problem with all-volunteer efforts run by busy students is
that there is often very little accountability and things tend to fall
through the cracks. Leadership gaps open up between school years. The whole
premise of ArizonaPIRG is that we can hire someone to provide structure to
internships for credit, to do the gruntwork of scheduling and logistics, and
who has the experience to train the students in techniques for public
outreach.

The idea of students assessing ourselves fees dates back to the 1960's and
1970's, when students wanted more ownership of their campus life, and wanted
to create women's resource centers, recycling programs, and other things
university administrations were not doing for them. One of those things to
emerge was the Public Interest network. Over eighty chapters in fifteen
different states fund themselves a variety of ways. For example, most
students in the UMass have a mandatory $11 fee - with no refund. Students
voted for it, in fact within the last three years students voted to raise
that from $7 to $11. New Jersey Rutgers students fund student PIRG chapters
through a waivable $11 fee on their tuition bill. In 2007, over 90% of
voting students in a referendum voted to keep that. We are proposing that
all the students on the campus at University of Arizona will benefit from
voting to assess ourselves a refundable $1.50 fee to support ArizonaPIRG
here.

This fee would apply to all students on campus because having ArizonaPIRG as
a funded group on campus would benefit the whole student body. In the big
picture, students are supposed to be learning, engaged, active citizens.
Having someone ask you to take a stand on an issue like the Arizona Clean
Cars program informs you and gives you a chance to think critically. Whether
you file it away for later or you get in a three hour fight following your
rant about the Great Hoax of global warming, both you and the person you are
talking are learning something. We put on events like the panel discussion
on perception and substance in sustainability last semester that give
students a chance to learn something they never thought about before.

I understand the whole concept of grad students needing to be focused on
"piling higher and deeper." Undergraduate years are the time to get that
breadth of experience, to go out and campaign and protest and skip classes,
right? Still, I contacted the PIRG organizer on campus when I arrived here
and wanted to get involved. I have found a really useful niche in being a
part of ArizonaPIRG, in that I can interact with undergrads and inform
(yes, beyond being a TA for them, fun as that is). I have been involved in
reaching out to faculty to advise us and participate in events, which has
been neat since I end up reading about their work and finding out about
novel sources of funding and programs. Plus, I have learned public speaking
and planning skills that will be helpful if and when I run anything from my
own lab to my own department.

I am not sure what is "sneaky" about students funding a student-run advocacy
group - the whole point is that any students who are interested can join and
can help set the agenda. That includes tea-partiers if they are interested
in organizing change the status quo for the better. The defining feature of
campaigns we work on is that it's our interest against special interests. We
organize peers against monopolies for concert ticket prices, like would
occur if LiveNation and Ticketmaster are allowed to merge. We organize for
public transportation. That's not a partisan issue. There are plenty of
conservatives (Bob Walkup, Mayor of Tucson) and liberals (Al Gore) alike who
support alternatives to high gas prices. The whole point, however, is that
students join and set the agenda for that campus and that state. Arizona is
in no way required to conform to Massachusettes' or California's agendas.

And we certainly intend not to be sneaky about what we're doing. No one will
be paying a fee unless students vote for it. That takes getting the word out
to a lot of people. We have been doing class announcements and tables on the
Mall. We met with GPSC last semester and have been working with them on what
it would take for them to support this. We're hoping GPSC representatives
can help explain exactly what this is for to their department peeps. Our
goal is to do a poll of the student body and have at least three quarters of
the students know what ArizonaPIRG is and what we're doing.

The whole point of students being able to assess ourselves fees is so
someone with a proposal can give students the option. That's what we're
doing - putting in a proposal. I think it's a great organization, and a cool
idea, but I won't force anyone to agree. That's why we have votes, right?

Anyway, sorry this is so long. I just wanted to make sure I gave you some
concrete details. Does this answer your questions?

Pacifica

To sum up why a PIRG subsidy is ok:

UMass has a mandatory fee and hasn't been spanked in the courts yet. (It's worth noting that Rutgers PIRG's fee is refundable because they were beaten in court. See Galda v Bloustein.)
Students in the PIRG club can vote on what PIRG does.
The issues PIRG concerns itself with are largely "nonpartisan" and that somehow makes them better.
The organization is student-run therefore it's ok that students fund it. (Isn't that argument from equivocation?)

It appears that Ms Sommers either doesn't understand at all why people would oppose a PIRG fee or sees the cause worthy of "used car salesman" disingenuity, equivocation, and fast talk. I'd like to think that a PhD student isn't so flaky as to fall into the first camp, nor so unethical as to fall into the latter. It's tough to be charitable here.

PIRG is back at it.

2010-02-03T01:12:00.002-07:00

The Naderite busybody brats of PIRG are at it again, attempting to secure funding for their political activity through a line-item fee at the University of Arizona, or so I have learned through the Associated Graduate Council of the College of Science listserv, which I for some reason am still on, a few years after my involvement with that organization.

No word on whether or not another illegal election will be held. I don't know if I'd have standing to sue (I plan on graduating before the next semester starts) but I'm sure I can find someone who does. What's amusing about this is that PIRG lost the plebiscite that (up to the obvious legal speed bumps) decided whether or not they'd be funded by a student line item.

The Internet is great, in that nonsense lives forever. I don't know who the people are in Associated Students of the University of Arizona (the undergrad "student government", a sort of Mickey Mouse organization) who think that they can decide better than individual students--grads, undergrads, or others--what political and policy causes are worthy of support. But I'd like to know, so that their names be preserved on the Web and show up on Google searches for a very long time, for example, when they are being screened for admittance to the bar. They're 18, they're at college: childhood should have been over a couple of years ago. Time to hold them to adult standards.

Another reason to support universal school choice.

2010-02-02T17:41:00.000-07:00

The Arizona Daily Wildcat recently printed a Laura Donovan column about bullying in schools. (The original is superior to the version that made it to print.) "Where were the teachers?" is the million-dollar question.

But where are the rest of us, too?

It's a narrative I hear over and over: A student, usually but not always of above-average academic ability, having difficulty at government-run public school moves to a private school to escape cliqueish social nastiness and daily abuse, the "Lord of the Flies" culture that constitutes the "unifying experience" some on the Left use to justify the continuation of the one-size-fits-all model for education. Sometimes the change happens between middle school and high school, and sometimes it is a change of middle schools, high schools, or even grade schools that does it.

Stress levels drop, social life improves by leaps, and very often the student's grades improve as a result. It is simply unjust to expect such students' parents to make a double-payment for their child's dignity to be respected. Should Phoebe Prince's parents have had to pay double so their daughter wouldn't be driven to suicide?

Schmidtz finally getting his due.

2010-01-27T15:51:00.003-07:00

From this month's lead Cato Unbound essay:

Finally, it is possible to advance liberty and defend individual rights in a manner different from Rand’s, as the works of Robert Nozick, Loren Lomasky, Jan Narveson, and David Schmidtz attest, and thus there is nothing in this proposed discussion that should be taken to deny the importance of their works.

It's ridiculous to put the blustering slob Ayn Rand on the same level as Nozick, Lomasky, and Narveson (and by extension Rawls and Gauthier)--the topic of the month's discussion aside, it'd have been better for Rasmussen to write "It is possible to advance liberty and defend individual rights in a manner different from the neo-Aristotelean treatment of myself and Den Uyl..."

But I digress. Arizona's own David Schmidtz--a sort of anti-Rand in his caution with language and his search for a common starting point with his readers--does belong in that bunch and it's pleasing to see him get his due.

Readers unfamiliar with the dean of local (classical-)liberal thinkers would find his Political Theory paper How to Deserve or the draft treatment of property rights recently recommended by Will Wilkinson good places to start. His Elements of Justice was also a lot of fun on an intellectual level, and if nothing else helped tremendously to clarify the questions. (I'd say it provided a few answers, too; your experience may vary.)

Speech as in beer? On its way out in Arizona.

2010-01-25T19:11:00.000-07:00

By now most readers will have heard of the Institute for Justice's Wednesday victory in striking down the "matching funds" provisions of Arizona's so-called "Clean Elections" system.

The text of Judge Silver's order is not yet available. I'm wondering what information she has now that she didn't have a year ago. The preliminary ruling in McComish v. Brewer was back in August 2008. A delay until the end of the 2008 election cycle, so as not to throw the election into chaos and call into question the legitimacy of the results, was certainly in order, but a final ruling should have been given as soon as possible, so that active campaigns--including that of Dean Martin, who is both a "Clean Elections" candidate and one of those who brought a legal challenge to the system--would be minimally damage by the outcome, and the election be truly as "clean" as possible.

Tucson vs Business

2010-01-18T02:12:00.002-07:00

Tucson has a reputation for being anti-business. We can't point to one or two statutes--it's more of a feeling or a "smell". Rhonda Bodfield's features article in the Daily Star, Tucson vs. Business, spells it out very clearly.

Those of you who live elsewhere in the state should worry if your city sounds like the one described in the article.

If I were one of the City Councilmen facing recall, I wouldn't just agree that something is wrong; I'd take a stand, publicly, against obstructionist, abusive bureaucracy and overly burdensome city codes.

You call that "clean"?

2010-01-15T03:09:00.002-07:00

Moreover, ever since triggering matching funds, Sposito has seen each dollar spent on his campaign bestow generate two dollars in opposition to his campaign because one dollar went to each of his two opposing subsidized candidates.

From the original motion for a temporary restraining order against the "Clean Elections" system.

Is Jan Brewer politically tone-deaf?

2010-01-15T02:36:00.003-07:00

The committee to re-elect Jan Brewer has filed an affidavit requesting that whatever remedy the courts apply in the McCornish v. Bennett First Amendment case challenging the state's so-called "Clean Elections" system of subsidy for candidates for office not apply to the 2010 election, as changing the rules now would effectively decide the election against those candidates who signed on to the "Clean Elections" system.

Fair enough, although I'm reasonably confident that an alternate arrangement could be found for these candidates. One must question, however, why Brewer was running as a "Clean Elections" candidate to begin with.

I'm thinking that the Libertarian Party should call Brewer and give her honorary membership. One of their many "principles" is to not choose one's battles wisely, to fight everything out, sometimes even to act as though all of one's positions are somehow morally necessary as a package. Brewer's support for tax increases alienated her from the Republican base this year; one would think that some symbolic consilience, or at least an effort to not further aggravate that base when it doesn't matter, would be in order. "Clean Elections" is unpopular with the Republican base. Candidates who, through code-word bigotry, cheap public shows of religious piety, or even respectable hard-line fiscal conservatism, demonstrate that they "belong" can run as "Clean Elections" candidates and still win their primaries. Someone already considered a "RINO" probably cannot.

The Brewer campaign's request is on its face reasonable. But when the decision to run as a "Clean Elections" candidate had to be made, it was already known that the system's legality was seriously in question (due to the Davis v. FEC decision). Given Brewer's difficulty securing the support of the Republican base, it should have been evident at the time that putting the campaign in a position where it might have to appear to support the hated subsidy system would be a mistake.

A rent tax like Osiris

2010-01-05T17:09:00.003-07:00

Shall the idea of a double-tax on renters now be resurrected every year in Tucson? This time, the City Council didn't wait for public outcry to defeat the idea, but why is Mike Letcher even putting forth the idea? This is why Kromko, Juliani, and co. shouldn't have scrapped plans for an initiative last year.

Given the strong possibility of a recall election, there is much more to say about this, when the "real job" lets up a bit. Don't take talk of de-funding the governmental functions of government and emergency services seriously; demand that the city council meaningfully cut the scope of government.

The East Valley Tribune and the end of an era

2009-12-31T12:18:00.005-07:00

Today's issue of the Tribune will be the last. Like many businesses that fail to survive it will end with a fizzle and not a bang.

I had always hoped that the Tribune would motivate the Arizona Republic to provide better coverage of issues of the day but it may well be that other factors make that unlikely.

Newspapers such as the Arizona Republic and the New York Times will continue to operate with their token articles from the other side.

The Tribune will be missed.

[Update: It appears that a business may continue Tribune operations into 2010]

Merry Christmas

2009-12-25T00:01:00.002-07:00

This post is just to wish readers of this 'blog a happy and safe Christmas.

Look for politics and policy discussion later: enjoy the time with your families--and if you insist on substance here: consider whether or not something or somebody you supported prevents others from doing the same.

Global warming and desert flowers

2009-12-23T12:08:00.001-07:00

Via the University of Arizona, news of a study that shows that anthropogenic climate change (local effects of global warming) is both diminishing and changing the showy Sonoran Desert spring blooms.

Counterintuitively, the change favors more cold-hardy species; as rains get shifted later into the season, germination happens in colder weather. The whole news article is an example of responsible science journalism and is worth reading.

For more information about how AGW will affect Arizona, see the Southwest Climate Change Network website, a project of the University of Arizona.

The recession.

2009-12-22T15:23:00.003-07:00

My apartment now has a few squatters of the Mus muscularis sort. I wouldn't mind were it not for the noise and that they don't use the toilet; a live-catch trap is set to try to get rid of them, and the entrance holes have been duct-taped. Mice and people have different ideas of space which makes living together difficult. (Perhaps the difference between reasonable folk and many socialists or global warming denialists is equally intractable; perhaps their brains are simply different. The prospect that some people are incapable of "getting it", of distinguishing truth from falsehood and good argument from bad, in the same way mice can't be brought to not chew the walls and defecate in strange places, is very interesting...)

In earlier times, a live-catch trap would have been though of as ridiculous; the problem with mice back then was not so much that they crapped on the counter and rattled inside the cabinets but that they ate one's stores of food. The mouse and the weevil were a serious threat to health and survival--look up how much grain is still lost to weevils; while one couldn't do much about weevils, killing mice, or keeping allergy-aggravating cats around to do so, was in order. Today mice are a mere inconvenience. Given a choice between the very small inconvenience associated with live catch and turning the mice loose a few blocks away or easier neck-breaking traps and suffering and death for mice, I go with the former. (Shades of Nozick's musings on animal rights, right?)

Over the past few years I've saved aluminum--mostly cans--to take in for recycling, storing it in a trash can outside my apartment. It'd be easier to just throw it in the blue bin, but the money adds up to something not insignificant to someone drawing a grad student salary. On Saturday I was to take it in, along with a few bags from inside my apartment, to pay for gas for a car-shopping trip to Phoenix, but when I went outside, the trash can was empty. The cans in there were mostly in plastic bags, conveniently wrapped up for any scavenger. I took the few bags from my apartment to the recyclers, but arrived a minute late (by their reckoning).

On to the gas station, to fill up before heading to Phoenix. At the pump a shifty-looking, shabbily dressed old man in a pickup was eyeballing me and had the courtesy to wait until I was done pumping before spanging. From his appearance and twitchy manner I though him a tweaker--it isn't uncommon in that part of town for people to somehow have money for amphetamines but not for gas and laundry--so I asked where he was headed. The reply: The metal place down at 22nd and Euclid, to take in scrap.

Instantly it hit me, that his was the truck I saw pulling in to Can-It just before I did. Also a minute late by their reckoning. He explained further that he needed the money to buy pain medicine for his back; he just got out of the hospital for treatment of a crushed vertebra. Ouch! No wonder he was so twitchy.

I gave him the few quarters in my pocket--certainly enough for gas to get to 22nd and Euclid from Miracle Mile-- plus the ten pounds of aluminum from my trunk. Never have I seen anyone so happy to get (what by then was) another man's inconvenient junk.

This economic recession doesn't feel so painful. My in-laws' business is hurting, but they were well-off, and that's most of what I've been hearing: "business is lousy". Jobs statistics reveal something different. Surely as usual they mean many people get laid off and then find employment elsewhere--there's turnover. But for the really marginal cases, recessions can mean having to spange for gas money to sell scrap to buy cheap opiates to take the pain out of a back injury.

In the John Ford film version of The Grapes of Wrath--and unlike Steinbeck, John Ford was no Red--Oklahoma townsfolk try to figure out who should be shot or hung for bringing bank-related trouble down on farmers. There's ultimately no answer, just as there's nobody to blame for last year's finance-sector collapse. (That didn't stop many from seeking someone to blame, be it economists who had nothing to do with the problem, bankers, or someone else. Such talk always sounded brutish to me, but see the note about mice and global warming denialists above.) We can say that the system used to hedge against certain sorts of risk was broken, and we can't say that there's anything wrong with hedging against risk. If we choose to look deeper, we find that the government forbade more transparent ways of hedging against risk.

Contra Rawls, I do not think it necessary or even desirable to do everything that will produce some gain at the "bottom", regardless of its effect on everyone else. His theory also is clumsy in its failure to account for progress over time, its 100% discounting of the future. Nevertheless there are reasons, both moral and practical, for everyone from the "bottom" to the "top" to have a stake in the political and legal order. Reactionary policy from Washington--"X Y and Z need to be 'more regulated' (whatever that means"--still appears likely, but if we had any sense we'd sit back and ask "what will make us better off?" That must take into account not only the welfare of those who use derivatives to hedge against risk but also of those for whom the systemic risk problem means having to spange for gas money to sell scrap.

If this means that things are made slightly less convenient for those at the "top"--and I'm not confident that it does mean this--then so be it. I'd like to think that people deserve at least as much consideration as my apartment mice.

Martel writes Grijalva...

2009-12-22T14:36:00.002-07:00

Martel Firing of the "Odd Citizen" 'blog sent a letter to Rep. Grijalva. It begins:

You’re acting like a push-over. Look, Ben Nelson and Mary Lanerieu got lots of boodle for their districts...

Read the whole thing. Best humor I've seen in the blogosphere in months!

Border Patrol: "Our arrests aren't really arrests."

2009-12-17T12:36:00.003-07:00

Via Terry Bressi, a report in the Nogales International about a possibly unlawful stop, arrest, and search by the Border Patrol.

Pima Medical Institute student Iris Cooper turned around to return to Patagonia to retrieve her forgotten textbooks and was pulled over by the Border Patrol. Maybe seeing someone perform her maneuver gives "reasonable suspicion" for a stop and maybe it doesn't, but as Bressi notes, standards of probable cause for detaining her for half an hour in handcuffs and searching her vehicle probably isn't in order.

Here's the hilarious part:

Agent David Jimarez, a spokesperson for the Border Patrol, said agents more than likely thought they had pulled over a smuggler and that Cooper was cuffed for both their safety as well as her safety. He said that often smugglers will try to run away if they think their vehicle is going to be searched. “The handcuffing doesn’t necessarily mean that she is being placed under arrest,” said Jimarez, referring to Cooper.

"Yeah, you're in handcuffs, you're not free to go, and it's not an arrest because we don't call it an arrest." I suppose it's better than facing prison time for having been punched in the face by Border Patrol, but still both stupid and unbecoming of agents of the law in a liberal republic.

It looks like La Migra might be getting thumped again.

However, Dan Pochado, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Arizona told the Weekly Bulletin/Nogales International that 99.9 percent of the time such an act would indeed be considered an arrest.

"When you are handcuffed that is effectively an arrest because you are unable to leave voluntarily,” Pochado said. "From the information given, it appears that the level of force here would arise to an unreasonable seizure and a violation, therefore, of the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution."

"Pochado" here is actually "Pochoda", and is no lightweight.

Bill of Rights Day

2009-12-15T16:29:00.003-07:00

This post is just to wish readers a happy and free Bill of Rights Day.

Food for thought: It does not appear that the enumeration of rights in the Constitution facilitated abridgements of others. Ponder that next time a "libertarian" offers up "principle" and high abstractions as reason for a policy position.