Nominate and Elect Rick Fowlkes to the Arizona Corporation Commission

To date, I haven't given any candidate for office an outright endorsement on this 'blog. This will be my first: The Republican Party should nominate Rick Fowlkes for Arizona Corporation Commissioner, and the people of the state should elect him to that office.

The possibility of "change", specifically a shift away from liberalism to "solidaristic" Europe-style social democracy (soft tyranny, a la Tocqueville's use of the term, if you ask me!) has of late captured the mass press's imagination and attention. Relatively ignored has been the slow revolution in American life, deregulations, privatizations, the substitution of markets, ownership, choice, and opportunity for democratic or quasi-democratic government control. The various school choice programs, airline and telecom deregulation, HSAs, widespread adoption of individual retirement accounts and 401(k) plans: all these reforms, which reduce demand for and dependence on government, make Obama look regressive if not reactionary, once the voter does what the popular press has not and realizes that they are part of a uniformly liberal whole.

Election of Fowlkes would bring this "quiet revolution" to Arizona to the benefit of utility consumers. Relative to what could be, public utilities in Arizona operate in horse-and-buggy fashion. A state-mandated monopoly--which, with a few adjustments to the law, wouldn't be "natural"--asks an elected board, the Corporation Commission, if rates can be increased or terms of service can be changed, and the elected board either approves or it doesn't. Consumer choice does not enter the process at all; contrast how you purchase electricity or natural gas with how you buy cellular phone service, gasoline, or pizza.

Fowlkes would replace this monopoly plus rent-seeking mechanism with one based on choice and competition: utility retail service areas would be allowed to overlap, and in areas with three or more providers, competition, not government control, would determine rates and terms of service, just as it does for cellular phone service. Sharing plans would be arranged for truly monopolistic infrastructure such as wires and pipes, much as the Palo Verde nuclear plant is shared; Fowlkes has also privately expressed approval of customer ownership of the "last mile" of infrastructure, a la Ottawa, Ontario, Canada..

Kudos goes to Robert Robb for picking up on this proposal for competition in a year when editorial boards have concerned themselves mainly with the candidates' views on the constitutionality or practical benefit of the state's renewable energy mandate and flim-flammery like "partisanship". I wholeheartedly endorse Fowlkes, but, like Robb, I have reservations about his running mates. I like the idea of having three engineers on the Corporation Commission, but these two seem at times a bit out of their league. They have also publicly denied anthropogenic global warming, showing a contemptuous disregard for science; Fowlkes has merely declared it "overstated", which, to the average Joe who isn't reading scientific papers on the subject, may be true. Their competition, however, has also done so, with Marian McClure being especially fierce in calling the prevailing theory a hoax.

Republican readers: vote Fowlkes tomorrow, and strongly consider his running mates Joe Hobbs and Keith Swapp. Arizona ratepayers should be given the benefits of utility competition.

The Friday Morning Phone Call

Friday, circa 9 AM, around the time I should be prying myself out of bed with a crowbar and getting to the lab (I tend to work into the evening), the phone rings.

"Hello, to whom am I speaking?", says the caller, and I reply:
"If you don't at least have a good guess, perhaps you shouldn't be calling this number."

Buzzz....click! He hangs up.

Ten minutes later, as I'm about to jump into the shower, it rings again.

"Hi, is this Bennett?", says someone sounding roughly the same as the first caller, timidly.

"Yes, what can I do for you?"

"You're the guy who wrote the letter in the Weekly (fourth item on the page) suggesting we call Tim Bee's campaign if we got stuck east of Swan."

"Yes. I have nothing to do with the Bee campaign, but I thought people should let them know how they feel."

"Oh. So you set them up, then."

"Yes."

"That's hilarious. I couldn't get home, and I was very upset, so I saw your letter and I called them up. The lady who answered gave me your number. I asked what it was for, then she screamed it at me again and hung up."


Take-away messages:
(1) I got under Tim Bee's staff's skin. Whether or not he got the point, I don't know. I'm still not going to vote for the pendejo until I get a check, and now, an apology.
(2) The Tucson Weekly staff may not always be classy (remember Tim Vanderpool's hit on Michael Badnarik?) but someone down there has a sense of humor.
(3) Tim Bee's staff is not above behavior verging legally on harassment. My number is publicly listed, yes, but I am not the person who can answer questions about your refund.

An avoidable calamity: South Mountain Community College shootings

Reports, still lacking detail at this hour, are coming in about a triple shooting at South Mountain Community College.

Without any word of the motive or exact circumstances, there isn't much to say at the moment, other than that it this incident was probably avoidable. The Arizona Legislature had the chance to pass a bill allowing concealed carry on campus, but Senate president Tim Bee failed or refused to give it its third reading.

Would campus CCW have stopped the shooting? We can't say that for certain, but it would certainly have increased the chance that someone stopped the shooter before he got one or more shots off, and perhaps deterred the rampage in the first place. One doesn't come back after a fight and start shooting if one suspects the others to be armed. Simply put, two guns in the room is far more desirable than one or zero.

The Osmolski Affidavit

A previous (and admittedly cursory) investigation by Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard's office into Pima County's 2006 special "Regional Transportation" election found evidence of inappropriate access to mail-ballot vote totals but nothing suggesting that vote totals were manipulated.

An affidavit sworn by former county employee Zbigniew Oslomski before the Democratic Party's attorney, Bill Risner, earlier this month blows the matter wide open. Oslomski, who was not a county employee at the time of the election, alleges that Bryan Crane, the county elections division's computer operator, admitted in a social setting to "fixing" the transportation election on orders of his bosses.

Does this mean that the County Supes, the development lobby, "public artist" turned State Rep. Steve Farley, and company stole the election? More to follow.

Call the Bee campaign, ask for compensation.

President Bush (spending the taxpayer dime) flew into Davis-Monthan AFB last night and drove up to the Catalina Foothills for a private fundraiser for the Tim Bee campaign.

Swan was blocked off from the base all the way up to Sunrise; dozens of police worked overtime to facilitate this. Hundreds of Tucsonans were stranded on one side of town or the other, unable to get home (perhaps to their children) or to work on time. To get home from the gym at Rincon High, I had to detour all the way to I-10 and Kolb.

If you were late to work or stuck and unable to get home last night or this morning due to the "security theater" surrounding a private fundraiser, call the Tim Bee campaign at 520-979-8667. Leave your name and address and ask them for a check compensating you for wasted gasoline and lost time.

While you have them on the line, ask them when they're going to reimburse Pima County and the City of Tucson for that police overtime.

Until I get my check, there's no chance I'll vote for Bee. If this is how he acts when a mere state legislator, just imagine the "Do You Know Who I Am" shenanigans he'll pull as a Congressman! What happened to the Republican ideal of no external costs and no transfer payments, of everyone paying his own way?

Layout changes: pardon my dust!

Regular readers may notice that I've changed Goldwater State's template, and switched to Haloscan comment service to enable trackbacks.

To those of you who previously left comments: I can still see them. There's no good time to make that switch, but before election season, before I get posts up about the ballot initiatives, while traffic is low is better than during election season while traffic is high and discussions are ongoing.