Posted inPhoenix Politics: Arizona/Phoenix

City Hall

The first and perhaps only great mayor was Greek. He was Pericles of Athens, and he lived some 2500 years ago, and he said, "All things good on this Earth flow into the City, because of the City's greatness." Well, we were great once. Can we not be great again? — from the 1996 film City Hall.

Something strange is happening inside Phoenix City Hall, and I can't escape the nagging feeling that the ouster of police chief Jack Harris is part of it. Harris was removed as chief, but not as public safety director, after claims that the PPD inflated kidnapping numbers in order to get federal grants. Mayor Phil Gordon supported Harris, while Councilwoman Peggy Neely was a vocal Harris critic. That's the story so far, and the reporting has been disappointing. The back story has yet to fully emerge. (Here's a 3/11/11 update on council bickering; this is reaching Scottsdale levels of childishness).

To understand the modern Phoenix Police Department, you must go back to 1954, when Charlie Thomas was appointed chief. He was a rough equivalent of LA's William Parker, a modernizer and reformer who created a professional police force. PPD was never as corrupt or brutal as the LAPD that Parker inherited; it was a small force (149 officers for a city of 150,000) with a good-ole-boy culture in a mobbed-up town. It was still haunted by the 1944 murder of one its first African-American officers, "Star" Johnson, by detective "Frenchy" Navarre. Johnson and his partner were walking a beat in the Deuce when Frenchy, a notoriously brutal and racist cop, parked in a red zone off-duty and refused to move. He shot Johnson, who later died, and was acquitted by a Southern-culture Phoenix jury. Johnson's partner later came into Police Headquarters (on the first floor of the lovely, still-standing City-County Building) and gunned down Frenchy, who went down firing the two guns he wore. The bullet holes were in the walls for years. There was also the infamous World War II riot in "(racial slur) Town by soldiers, a rich historical event for some future scholar.

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Posted inPhoenix Politics: Arizona/Phoenix

The governor’s speech

Somebody sent me the "State of the State speech Jan Brewer never gave," which was supplanted by her short talk to the Legislature in the wake of the assassination attempt on Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. It sounded so much like a screed out of the Goldwater Institute that I wanted to make sure it was real. It is. You can download it here. She starts out:

As America enters the fifth year of the most devastating economic downturn since the Great Depression, Arizona is party to a vital national debate focusing on how state governments can most effectively enhance quality job creation and personal income growth. In pursuit of that objective, the leaders of some large states – principally in the Northeast and Midwest and on the West Coast – have chosen a perilous path that calls for dual expansion of the public sector and the regulatory supremacy of state government, while undermining and, in too many instances, scorning the principles of free enterprise that for more than two centuries have made America the envy of the world. This reckless strategy mirrors the model of irresponsibility that Congress and the White House have exhibited with uncommon zeal during the last two years.

In contrast, other states are pursuing a more prudent approach that limits the growth of the public sector and restrains unnecessary regulatory encroachment upon areas that are outside the rightful scope of state government, with the affirmative goal of stimulating free enterprise.

As to which economic model is superior, the verdict is in: With few exceptions, states that have a strong private sector enjoy a more robust level of job growth than Big Government states that deny the central role of the free market in putting people to work.

Brewer then lays out her Four Cornerstones of Reform. Among them: "remove unnecessary barriers that impede economic growth, and provide a stable, predictable, business-friendly environment in which private employers can grow." It's hard to know where to begin with this delusional, ideological mindset of the newly elected governor. But I suppose we must make a start.

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Posted inPhoenix Politics: Arizona/Phoenix Politics: National

Tucson rallies

The white-right has been quick to deflect any criticism after the Giffords shooting, including Sarah Palin's appalling, but somehow strategic, use of the term "blood libel." The media have been willing accomplices, as usual. Anyone who has been paying attention since the frightening crowds egged on by Gov. Palin during the closing phases of the 2008 presidential campaign, the staged August disruptions of meetings with members of Congress in 2009 and the Tea Party and all its violent rhetoric and imagery — the connection to the shooting is unavoidable. And, as Pima County Sheriff Dupnik had the guts to say, there is a peculiar accelerant of Arizona political extremism applied to this fire. In the end, however, few minds will likely be changed.

But other factors are at work, too. We can debate and weigh them, but they must be considered.

I've driven by the place where the shooting took place many times. It's one of hundreds of off-the-shelf Spanish-Tuscan-schlock shopping strips with a huge, blazing parking lot plopped down across the state by the Real Estate Industrial Complex: ugly, characterless, dehumanizing and killing of genuine community. The same is true of the endless subdivisions of lookalike tract houses, built around a garage door rather than a front porch. The built environment does influence behavior and souls. It's telling that the attack took place there and not, say, along the Fourth Avenue business district in central Tucson. Most Americans like to believe crime happens in center cities; in reality, much of it, including some of the most hideous murders, occurs in suburbia and exurbia. Also, the 8th District, like most of Arizona, is so lacking in inviting public spaces that this is where Rep. Giffords had to set up her table to meet constituents.

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Posted inPhoenix Politics: Arizona/Phoenix Politics: National

Ideas have consequences

The attempted assassination of Gabrielle Giffords in suburban Tucson on Saturday brought many things to mind, some echoed on the weekend Rogue thread. One of my police buddies told me, "Is there any doubt?" that this crime is the fruit of the Kookocracy and its gun love. "The Kooks passed an insane law that says anyone but a convict can carry a concealed weapon. With no background and no training. I treat everyone, especially Kooks and gang bangers, as if they are carrying a 30-round Glock under their shirt." I thought about the death threats I regularly received when I was a columnist at the Arizona Republic from 2000 to 2007. I was pilloried with violent criticism. My house was photographed and placed on a prominent right-wing Web site (trying to make me out a hypocrite for blasting the Real Estate Industrial Complex while doing well with my own real-estate "investment"; in fact, the 97-year-old house was in the Midtown neighborhood where I grew up and we bought it intending to live there for the rest of our lives, not flip it in two years for a profit). A deranged individual could have used that photo as a springboard to something dangerous. After I appeared on a radio show, a friend in law enforcement was so troubled by hearing one caller to the program that he came to a book signing specifically to watch over me.

As Soleri pointed out, the false equivalency argument began almost immediately, even though virtually all the politically motivated violence in recent years has come from the right. More about that in a moment. By no means let us rush to judgment — but that shouldn't become an excuse to never reach it. My biggest reaction is how this event was very tied to Arizona. When I came back to Phoenix, I'd been a controversial columnist taking on the toughest issues in Denver, Dayton, Cincinnati and Charlotte, with my work carried nationally on the New York Times News Service and others. Yet I had never received a death threat. The climate in Arizona even in 2000 was different: More vicious and threatening, more abusive and thuggish, more filled with us-vs-them hate and paranoia.

The shooting also caused me to recall an exchange I had with my grandmother nearly half a century ago, in another America. In full thrall of cowboys and Indians, I asked her why now, in Phoenix, people didn't go around with six-shooters on their hips — a nice idea in my childish mind. My grandmother, born on the frontier and raised in Arizona Territory, said, "Men wore guns then so we wouldn't have to carry them today."

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Posted inPhoenix Politics: Arizona/Phoenix

Merry ChristmAZ

Gov. Jan Brewer has a solution to the state's Medicaid shortfall. Eliminate the program. She sent a letter to Speaker-to-be John Boehner and the state's congressional delegation "respectfully" asking that the feds eliminate the spending requirements for the program. "We cannot afford this increase without gutting every other state priority such as education and public safety," Brewer wrote. Arizona faces a fiscal shortfall of $2.25 billion over the next 18 months, with health care being one of the biggest component of the budget.

The woman who thinks she thinks, yet who crushed the worthy Terry Goddard in the election, offers this as a Christmas gift in a state now notorious, yet again — this time for letting transplant patients die. The Legislature Kookocracy tried earlier this year to kill the KidsCare program, a legacy of the St. Janet years, aimed at helping the children of the working poor. They reversed course only when they realized Arizona would consequently lose $7 billion in federal money. In fact, Arizona wouldn't even have a Medicaid program if not for a lawsuit years ago. So the solution is simple: Eliminate federal mandates so the program can be starved into oblivion. The process is well under way here. It is the legislative equivalent of the cruelty emblemized by Sheriff Joe Arpaio and the private prison racket, an approach heavily supported by the mega-churchers and LDS that are a bedrock of the Kookocracy.

This is the season Christians celebrate as advent, the expectant coming of Jesus. His lessons were simple and radical: Love your neighbor, love your enemies. Jesus stood up for the last, the least and the lost. This is not exclusive to Christianity, either. All through the Old Testament, the anger of the Lord is kindled when the Israelites fail to care for the widows, orphans and poor, and the aliens, for they themselves were once sojourners in a foreign land. God speaks through the prophets on these subjects again and again. Arizona has eyes but will not see, ears but will not hear.

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Posted inPhoenix Politics: Arizona/Phoenix

Phil for Phoenix

Amid the wreckage and inertia that now define the nation's fifth (soon to be sixth?) most populous city, it's difficult to recall the near euphoria that greeted the inauguration of Phil Gordon as mayor. It was 2004, the metro area was booming, at least in real estate, and here in Phoenix, finally, was somebody who "got it." He got city, as opposed to suburbia. He got economic development, especially for the central core. He got the urgent need to diversify the economy. For "ADHD Phil," even his early speeches soared with a grand vision for Phoenix. A great city. A great mayor.

Alas, it was not to be.

If any historian cares to write about Phoenix's collapse, about how it became "the Hispanic Detroit" as the north Scottsdalers say, the mayoralty of Phil Gordon will be an essential chapter.

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Posted inPhoenix Politics: Arizona/Phoenix

Another shot to the foot

The great question as Arizona seems headed into its next phase of destruction is: How could they vote for Jan Brewer? How could they vote for the same bunch of Kooks in the Legislature, with the same policies, that have already caused so much damage in the Grand Canyon State? It is a thundering question for the nation, as well. How could so many people be willing to return to power the party and philosophy that gave is the Lost Decade of the Bush years (stagnant stock market, falling living standards, record income inequality, rising deficit and the greatest economic crash since the Great Depression)?

For Arizona, the answers seem painfully obvious: The long incubation of right-wing philosophy seeded by Barry Goldwater but returned in a whirlwind of nihilism, hatred and God-guns-gays gasbaggery that Barry would despise. The Big Sort that has drawn like-minded people there in a surprising cluster for such a populous state (Washington, of similar population, is much more diverse politically). The fierce political activism and reliability of the neo-Birchers, paranoiacs, racists, proto-fascists and Mormons that decides elections where turnout it low. The civic detachment of a state where many residents don't consider it "home" and resort-apathy is rampant. The "What's the Matter With Kansas" mentality of working-class whites consistently voting against their economic interests. And the campesino mindset of the Mexican-American population that doesn't vote, even though its very existence is threatened by the Kookocracy.

But Jan Brewer? Is this the level of idiocy to which my home state has sunk? Roman Hruska, a forgotten Nebraska senator, defended a Nixon Supreme Court nominee by saying, "Even if he were mediocre, there are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers. They are entitled to a little representation, aren't they, and a little chance? We can't have all Brandeises, Frankfurters and Cardozos." I suppose the idiots of Arizona deserve the representation of Jan Brewer. And she came along at the right time: When  the white-right was ginning up its anti-immigrant hysteria.

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Posted inPhoenix Politics: Arizona/Phoenix

Aliens among us

Among the weirdness of Phoenix, here's one that stood out. I went down to Union Station on one of regular pilgrimages, to this building that represented so much of the city that's gone yet I still love. When they finally find a way to tear it down, I'll be gone for good. Outside the nearby immense Maricopa County jail complex, uniformed correctional officers and deputies stood smoking. Down the street, work was continuing on the new courts building, yet another dreadful dehumanizing edifice plopped into the public square. It was shift change and workers were walking to their cars past Sheriff Joe's men. The laborers were all Hispanic, all speaking Spanish, all passing without a care. The coppers didn't even glance at them.

How many were really citizens or legal migrants? Did it even matter? I saw this all over Phoenix. Whatever fear or outmigration the Jim Crow anti-immigrant SB-1070 provoked, Hispanics are everywhere and everywhere working. It reinforced my belief that the law is more about voter suppression and keeping them in their place than any cry for help because Washington failed to "secure the border." Even with the migration of millions of Midwesterners, Phoenix can't escape its heritage as a Southern town, especially with segregation. And on the other side of the tracks remains the huge underclass that keeps the low-wage economy going. It wouldn't surprise me if the 2010 Census showed the city with close to a Hispanic majority.

Most work hard and play by the rules. Some want to earn money and return to Mexico. Most want to be Americans. To be sure, they face virulent bigotry not unlike that endured by the Irish and Italians before them. Unfortunately, Phoenix is a poor melting pot. It lacks the economy with the rungs in the ladder to allow most to rise. The education system is among the worst in America, including the joke of the "charter school movement." And yet the man who has presided over not only its continuing miserable performance but a worsening is on his way to a new public office. Meet the new Attorney General, Tom Horne.

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Posted inPhoenix Politics: Arizona/Phoenix Politics: National

What happens in Arizona…

Harper's magazine is doing some of the best journalism in America today. Fortunately or unfortunately, most of it is behind a pay wall. And because it is aimed at America's declining number of educated, intelligent readers, its overall influence is sadly open to question. This is not the mass-market Harper's of the 1870s that brought down Boss Tweed through the savage and wildly popular illustrations of Thomas Nast, nor does it have an American population that is largely literate. Still, Ken Silverstein's " Tea Party in the Sonora: For the Future of GOP Governance, Look to Arizona," was flattering: A magazine-length summary of many themes long examined on this modest blog. Arizona's breakout bout of crazy has caused numerous competent national journalists to parachute in, to try to explain the damned place. The New York Times and LA Times have been especially diligent. Yet they barely scratch the surface before gratefully departing Sky Harbor.

The New York Times, for example, had an arresting front-page photo of the bodies stacked in the Pima County morgue, bodies of illegal immigrants who have died just so far this summer crossing the desert. Yeah, the ones putting guns to our heads and forcing us to hire them at the lowest possible wages and with no protections while they pay taxes to every level of our government. I'd love to see that photo on page one of the Arizona Republic.

I can guarantee you that Eugene C. Pulliam's Republic would at least have run out of office the odious Joe Arpaio. The sheriff is held in contempt by every real law-enforcement officer I talk to, and old timers still refer to him as "Nickel-Bag Joe," for his strutting but ineffective, small-time busts when he was with the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (then DEA). Alas, except for New Times, the media, local and national, merely play their parts in the Badged Ego's theater. Even the media criticism of Arpaio miss the larger areas demanding inquiry. Oh, for a press corps with more skepticism. Or one that would stick around awhile and really dig…

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Posted inPhoenix Politics: Arizona/Phoenix

Will SB 1070 help or hurt?

On Sunday, the Information Center published a 573-word story, accompanied by many graphic and break-out doo-dads, asking: "Will SB 1070 help or hurt the economy." The lede: "Arizona's new immigration law will likely affect a sizable swath of the state's economy, but experts are uncertain whether it will bring overall economic gains or end up scarring the state with losses." I know one thing: These kind of shallow stories are among the many self-inflicted wounds killing journalism. Oh, I forgot, Gannett doesn't do journalism, it is an "information broker."

An old hand once told me, "Immigration isn't the most difficult dilemma facing America. It's worse." It is a result of Americans' insatiable addiction to cheap labor. But it is part of a far more complex set of phenomena involving a Third World nation bordering the First World superpower; globalization's destruction of Mexico's peasant economy; mass migrations on a scale never before seen on an overpopulated planet; corporate greed amid a worldwide glut of labor, and billions of poor living without hope but primed for instability and extremism. The topic deserves at least the kind of sophisticated work done early last decade by The Arizona Republic with the "Dying to Work" series.

The overwhelming evidence is that SB 1070 will be a net economic loser for a state already in a depression. The most comprehensive national work on the public costs of illegals vs. their output for the economy has been done by UCLA's Raul Hinojosa. The verdict: The aliens are a net positive. Nowhere is this more true than Arizona. The anti-immigrant bill is already dearly costing the crucial tourism industry from boycotts. Its explicit political extremism will deter capital formation and investments by quality corporations. To the extent that it causes an exodus of illegal immigrants, it will further erode the tax base, for those aliens pay a disproportionate share of their incomes to Arizona's regressive tax system. Most will stay, even deeper in the shadows and out of the mainstream, adding to the state's lost human capital and talent. Most important is this: No low-wage, easily exploitable migrant labor force, no Growth Machine.

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Posted inPhoenix Politics: Arizona/Phoenix Politics: National

The Arizona syndrome

Arizona Democrats may have thought they were on a roll in recent years, at least in congressional elections. Harry Mitchell beat J.D. Hayworth in a solid red district and Gabrielle Giffords won a swing seat. Much of that was actually anti-Bush, anti-J.D. sentiment. Now Arizona seems poised to rejoin the South and most of the Plains and Intermountain West states as solidly red. My recent sojourn to my home state did nothing to dissuade me from this view. Many Democrats are dispirited. The party lacks the infrastructure of the right — from "think tanks" and big corporate money to endless right-wing talk radio. In a state with a fairly recent past of vigorous two-party competition, the Democrats were largely asleep as the extreme Republican right took control from the ground up, starting with school boards and obscure boards, eventually taking commanding power in the Legislature, by far the most powerful branch of government.

This is a crying shame for Terry Goddard. I heard the meme of "he thinks he deserves to be governor because his old man was." Far from it. Goddard is the most qualified candidate, a smart, open-minded public servant who has earned his way in elective office and actually did the most to attack border crime. The Democrats have a number of excellent candidates for statewide races, including David Lujan, Andrei Cherny and my old colleague and friend John Dougherty. They stand little chance against the vast capacity of the right. Mitchell and Giffords may well go down.

The big weapon against the Dems is, of course, SB 1070, the Jim Crow anti-immigrant bill.

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Posted inPhoenix Politics: Arizona/Phoenix

Arizona depression II

My favorite hotel, adjacent to the Willo Historic District, is full. Two large conventions are downtown. This was all booked before Arizona passed its Jim Crow anti-immigration law. Now every restaurant owner and person associated with the tourism industry I speak with is terrified about the growing backlash against the state. Many here are outraged about boycott calls. But it's fair game: Without the boycott, Gandhi, King and Chavez would not have had a key weapon against a grave moral injustice. I wish people would boycott by legislative district, while spending money and time in central Phoenix and Tucson, as well as with Hispanic- and progressive-owned local businesses. The rocks come with the farm, and the residents of the state allowed the Kookocracy to run wild, not only with SB 1070 but a host of madness.

Phoenix is in trouble anyway. Mayor Phil Gordon, a good man who loves the city and came into office seven years ago amid such hope, seems adrift. The composition of the city council has changed and for the first time since the reforming Charter Government movement took power six decades ago is becoming politicized. The ability to do the big things accomplished by Skip Rimsza and seen through by Gordon appears gone. Huge swaths of the city look like Dresden after the rubble had been carted away. The largest business, based on signage, remains "Available." Light rail (we built it, you bastards) is a big success; for example, I see many guests at the hotel taking it to restaurants, the convention center or to and from Sky Harbor. Yet the fiscal crisis is causing cuts in frequency, which will hurt ridership. The bus system has already been reduced to service levels seen in small cities.

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Posted inPhoenix Politics: Arizona/Phoenix Politics: National

Arizona crazy

From the Jim Crow anti-immigrant law and birther bill to the reality television show Sunset Daze, Arizona is gaining an international reputation for being crazy. It's not just "image" or "bad publicity." How did this happen to my beloved home? It took decades and tectonic shifts. Some will sound familiar to regular Rogue readers, but for the sake of the thousands of newbies that have found Rogue Columnist and are curious/frightened about Arizona, here's a primer:

The new Republican Party: Arizona always had a strong reactionary element, going back to its dependence on mines and railroads. Even the Democrats were mostly conservative. Arizona never produced, for example, a William Borah, the progressive Republican senator from Idaho. But even among the Republicans, there was independence and an understanding that Arizona would blow away without massive amounts of federal money. Republicans were a minority until Barry Goldwater slowly built them into the state's dominant party in the 1960s. Even then, Goldwater, Arizona Republic publisher Eugene C. Pulliam and others kept the John Bircher element at arms length, happy to use them but never let them take control. This changed with time and massive influx of new people. By the 1980s, conservative extremism was in the governor's seat. From the 1990s onward, the Christian Coalition and other national right-wing groups began taking control of the party from the lowest levels up, and purging old Arizona Republicans who now were labeled RINOS (Republicans in Name Only). They also focused on winning offices that held the most budget power, from school boards to the Legislature. The result is an entirely different creature: militant, frozen in ideological conformity, hostile to the facts, deeply committed to enacting "conservative" abstractions with little evidence they succeed. And, as the evidence shows, racist. Now, the Republicans have pretty much ruled for decades and the state is a catastrophe. Questions? That doesn't stop them from acting like victimized outsiders and the duhs and ignos in this ill-educated state fall for it.

The Big Sort: The journalist Bill Bishop used this as the title of his book on the dramatic clustering of like-minded people in different regions. It's a big change from most of American history, and as Bishop puts it, the Big Sort "is tearing us apart." Arizona is Exhibit A in this self-selecting process, especially among the Anglo population that votes, has money or is easy pickings for the demagogues. Arizona doesn't have its Austin (sorry, Democratic Tucson's strings are ultimately pulled by a car dealer and the sprawl barons). Despite the notion in the mid-1990s that population growth would moderate Arizona politics, or even the Democratic seats picked up during the nadir of the Bush presidency, Arizona has become redder and redder. People increasingly seemed to move to Arizona or the Phoenix suburbs to be with their co-religionists on the right, while progressive-minded folks moved out.

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Posted inPhoenix Politics: Arizona/Phoenix

Causes and consequences

They came from far away by the millions, bringing strange, sometimes offensive customs and values. They show no interest in Arizona's history or traditions, preferring to keep to themselves. Through their numbers and the way the state uses them for economic gain, they profaned the peerless beauty of the Sonoran Desert and destroyed the magic of the Salt River Valley. They caused billions in public costs that will linger for decades. While many are said to be hard-working, most are in the state for its government-subsidized goodies, and their numbers have included no small share of criminals, even kingpins seeking to extend their dangerous empires across the border. And it's the smaller things, too. As wealthy Republican John Sidney McCain III would have it, they deliberately cause accidents on the freeways and otherwise drive like maniacs. I'm no bigot — some individuals are even personal friends — but I even find their accents grating, their clothing bizarre, the ever-growing accommodations we must make for them unfair.

I'm writing, of course, about the other great migration that destabilized my home state: That of the Midwesterners and Californians. We all have our biases. If mine had been acted upon, Arizona would have passed appropriate taxes and strong land-use protections to help mitigate and reduce this wave of destructive immigration. Instead, it has rolled out the nation's harshest law against illegal immigrants. A Legislature whose majority prides itself on disdain for learning and believes the facts have a leftist bias won't solve one of the most complex problems facing America, or any rich nation adjoining a poor one. But it can guarantee racial profiling and provide tools to further oppress the working poor. It has also made Arizona an international pariah, ground zero of crazy. How did we get here?

Arizona was once part of Mexico, and without the Gadsden Purchase the international border would be just south of Phoenix. For generations, people came and went at will between the (territory and) state and Mexico. Mexican-American families predate the arrival of my kin in the 19th century. The economic and social destinies of the Arizona and Mexico were tightly intertwined (rent the movie Lone Star to understand the textures and ironies). The Anglo elites long exploited Mexican workers for the farms and groves of the Salt River Valley (including the Goldwater family's Goldmar), officially for a time through the Bracero Program. The American government implicitly allowed Mexico to use the states as a "safety valve" for lack of economic opportunity at home, in exchange for the authoritarian ruling party's anti-communism. Everything started to change in the 1980s.

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Posted inPhoenix Politics: Arizona/Phoenix Politics: National

State of cruelty

America is starting to catch on that something's happening in Arizona and that it matters. The New York Times has opened a Phoenix bureau and the LA Times reporting is such that it might as well. This isn't Idaho. This is the third or even second most populous state in the West, contains the nation's fifth most populous city and 13th largest metro. And it's insane.

The focus for now is the draconian anti-immigrant law passed by the Legislature and signed by the Kook-tool Gov. Jan Bewer. It will turn law enforcement into a baby border patrol and essentially require racial profiling and further marginalization of the Hispanic community. This is the capstone of the career of state Sen. Russell Pearce, the Mormon East Valley lawmaker who has gone from the lunatic fringe to the height of power. (And I mention Pearce's denomination to ask, where are the powerful LDS voices denouncing him for actions that go against Mormon values of compassion? I hear many LDS oppose this.). Beyond this, everything gets murky. Arizona can't deport people (they tried with me); it lacks the funding to operate its current prison-industrial complex, much less incarcerate a million illegal aliens. This is only the beginning of what's wrong here.

The measure, like the other anti-immigrant laws of recent years, is hypocritical. Arizona's low-wage, low-quality economy is built around the inexpensive labor of illegal immigrants. Construction, tourism and landscaping companies have made huge profits on the backs of workers making less than citizens and lacking even the minimal protections and safeguards that Arizona provides. Why do you think you "get so much house for the money"? The remains of the state's agriculture industry would die without illegals. Anglos from the toffs in north Scottsdale to working stiffs in Phoenix get housekeepers and yard care for a fraction of its real cost. As Phoenix, especially, became a narrower economy focused on house building, illegals became more important. The people in power sure as hell weren't going to pay competitive wages for citizens, much less allow unions.

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