Posted inPhoenix Politics: Arizona/Phoenix

The stand

I'm the beneficiary of Arizona public schools. At Kenilworth in the 1960s, we never suffered textbooks falling apart or holes in the ceiling. No, this elementary school whose alumni included Barry Goldwater, Paul Fannin, and Margaret Hance, which was integrated and taught everyone from poor kids to the scions of the Palmcroft elite, had superb teachers. It had a library and a verdant playing fields — the monstrous freeway only a line on a planning map — presided over by a magnificent, inspiring building.

At Coronado High School in middle-class Scottsdale, the story was much the same. Some of the finest teachers anywhere, one of the top fine-arts departments in the country, and Ralph Haver's inspired mid-century architecture. None of my teachers at either school were forced to buy supplies. Neither school was surrounded by a prison-like fence — and the '60s and '70s were hardly peaceful decades. There was even a brief teachers' strike in Scottsdale in 1971.

Now a statewide walkout is occurring. It is about much more than some of the lowest teacher pay in the nation. More even than gutting a billion dollars from public schools while dolling out tax cuts to the wealthy and politically connected. More than teachers seeing through Gov. Doug Ducey's cynical promise to raise wages 20 percent — something that wouldn't even bring their pay to the national average, and would require the Legislature to take money from other critical needs. Because…tax cuts. Taxes must always be cut.

Teachers have finally made a stand.

I have no idea whether it will be successful. I doubt it can change Arizona's trajectory. But the stand needs to be made. 

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Posted inPhoenix Politics: Arizona/Phoenix

School’s out completely

Whatever the final numbers, the outlook for education in Arizona is grim. Blame the Kookocracy. Blame the governor, wealthy Republican Douglas A. Roscoe Jr. aka "Doug Ducey." Or credit them. A majority of Arizonans voted them in.

Education Week's respected Quality Counts report ranks Arizona 47th overall. The state has been down in the basement with Mississippi in per-pupil funding for years. By no measure has funding kept up with student population or dealt with inequalities among districts.

Similarly, higher education has received ever-decreasing portions of the state general fund. The slash-and-burn cuts that are imposed every few years are never restored.

The new regime intends to double down: at least $104 million in cuts to universities, elimination of all state support for the largest community college districts, and, despite a claim of increasing K-12 funding, a serious reduction there because the promises aren't in real dollars. Including inflation, the actual spending on K-12 will be a 13.5 percent reduction from 2005-2006.

Now, my mother said, "If you can't say something nice about a person, become a newspaper columnist." In that spirit, I can't even credit the Kooks with originality. They are merely playing out a national strategy being enacted in every state capitol where Republicans hold sway.

Even so, Arizona has suffered so many decades of such vandalism, the consequences will be more severe. Real lives will be affected, opportunities to escape poverty and climb the ladder of opportunity smothered. The damage won't stop there.

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When the Legislature worked
Posted inPhoenix 101: History Politics: Arizona/Phoenix

When the Legislature worked

AZ_House
You know the Arizona Legislature. It's the bunch that reduces education money for some of the worst-funded schools in the nation, savagely cuts financing for universities, has its hands in the hustles of the Charter School Racket and Private Prison Racket. The worthy solons who sold off pieces of the Capitol area in the Great Recession.

It was the birthplace of SB 1070, the anti-immigrant (really voter suppression) law. This is only one of its creations that helped give the impression that Arizona is one of the craziest and most bigoted states. Anything forward looking, the majority opposes. Tax cuts? You bet. It is the Kookocracy.

But there was a time when Arizona had one of the most respected legislatures in the nation. Yes.

In fact, there were at least two sustained periods in the state's history when the Legislature worked.

This is no small thing because the Legislature is by far the most powerful branch of government in the state. Constitutionally, the governor was barely more than a figurehead — a status that has improved in recent years, but not by much. In other words, Arizona moves ahead, or backwards, depending on the Legislature.

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Who is Diane Douglas?
Posted inPhoenix Politics: Arizona/Phoenix

Who is Diane Douglas?

History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce. — Karl Marx

DianeDouglasNobody seems to be admitting to voting for Diane Douglas as Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction. But of the 36.42 percent of registered voters who cast a ballot, a majority backed Douglas over her opponent, David Garcia. Douglas had no experience beyond a controversial stint on the Peoria school board. Garcia is a professor of education, former teacher and Army veteran.

But there you have it.

Garcia, nationally respected, ran on a solid platform of improving Arizona schools, which consistently rank at or near the bottom nationally. Douglas, rhetorically challenged, ran against what she saw as the evils of Common Core, which particularly resonates with white suburbia.

It surely helped Douglas that Garcia had a Hispanic surname. It helped her most of all that she had an R attached to her name. For the majority of state voters, no matter the self-identified "independents," are Yellow Dog Republicans. In other words, you could run a yellow dog as a Republican and they would vote for it over the most qualified Democrat.

I write all this as prologue for the latest, but far from last, Douglas stepping-in-it event. She fired two state Board of Education staff members for the Thought Crime of being allegedly "liberal." My doubt about that was confirmed when the governor, wealthy Republican Douglas A. Roscoe Jr. aka "Doug Ducey," reinstated the pair.

You can read the hilarity here, as well as her clumsy climb-down. But what did voters expect?

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Whose civics?
Posted inPhoenix Politics: Arizona/Phoenix

Whose civics?

Students_examining_the_U.S._Constitution,_with_the_Declaration_of_Independence_above_them8d23118v
At first glance, one can only admire the Arizona Legislature passing, and new Gov. Doug Ducey (my first level Linked In buddy) signing into law a measure mandating that all high-school seniors take a civics class and pass a civics test.

If I remember correctly, everyone at my high school was required to take a semester of civics and another of economics. I took the new test and aced it.

Too much of our education system today is geared to producing workers, cubicle proles in the New Gilded Age, and "consumers." Anything that educates citizens about their rights and responsibilities — and capabilities — is healthy. That Arizona is said to be the first state in the union to take this step is astounding.

So perhaps I should leave it there and let the brightsiders say, "He didn't hate Arizona, for a brief shining moment! Everything's fine, with championship golf!"

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Governor Ducey
Posted inPolitics: Arizona/Phoenix Politics: National

Governor Ducey

Doug_DuceyDoug Ducey was elected governor of Arizona with a 36.24 percent voter turnout, the lowest in recent history. It may seem unfair to judge him so soon. But, no. The days when a GOP office holder was independent-minded are gone, replaced by a party ruled by a nihilist ideology.

As Jonathan Rauch wrote in the New York Times, "America does not have a broken political system. It has a broken political party: the Republicans." This is what those Arizonans who vote continue to double-down on.

In his inauguration address, Ducey's explicit or implied comments were in the ALEC-Koch brothers "mainstream" of the party. Taxes must always be low or cut further. Government spending must be cut further. Get government "out of the lives of the people" (except, presumably, for the Social Security recipients and defense spending that prop up the state economy). Change regulation to support certain favored businesses ("deregulation"). And the all-important "economic freedom."

Ducey reprised the old Newt Gingrich meme of "opportunity," after their fashion:

Opportunity is not a government program planned and distributed by some expert class any more than personal freedom is a favor granted by those in public office. Opportunity is a new job or training for a better job. It’s the kind of school where every child can grow in knowledge and in character, the kind of neighborhoods where families feel protected, a state where enterprise is welcome and hard work is rewarded.

In other words, Arizona can expect more of the same, only perhaps even worse.

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The Arizona experiment
Posted inPhoenix Politics: Arizona/Phoenix

The Arizona experiment

Much has been made by "left-leaning" commentators, notably Thomas Frank, about the disaster created in Kansas by Gov. Sam Brownback's enactment of conservative policies. And yet check out this chart:

2fredgraph

And this:

3fredgraph

Not to diminish "What's the Matter With Kansas," but Arizona is in worse shape. It arguably offers the better example of what happens when orthodox right-wing policies are enacted in a state without the oil and massive federal investments enjoyed by Texas. That Arizona is a growing, highly urbanized state brings into even starker relief the complete bankruptcy of the Kookocracy's "conservative ideas."

And they own this mess. The interregnum of St. Janet saw a constitutionally weak governor playing defense and never tackling the sacred cows of land use, revenue or water. Arizona's ongoing woes are the work of the regressive right that has taken over the Republican Party.

And yet, polls show at best a dead heat between Democratic gubernatorial candidate Fred DuVal — in every way the superior contender — and Republican Doug Ducey. And no chance for Democrats to gain control of the truly powerful branch of government, the state Legislature.

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Posted inPhoenix

Superiority complex

Judging from the comments on the previous post, readers were interested in hearing more about my appearance with former Arizona Republic Editorial Page Editor Keven Ann Willey toward the tail end of KJZZ's Here and Now on Wednesday. It's a measure of the true grit and journalistic integrity of host Steve Goldstein that he has me on his show every year or so. I can only imagine the pushback he gets from the Kooks (so tell his bosses if you like hearing me). But, yes, there's more to be said.

Of course, good people are working hard for Arizona, from the activists behind Save Arizona and the campaign to recall the odious Russell Pearce, to grassroots leaders such as Becky Daggett in Flagstaff and Kimber Lanning in Phoenix, to hard-fighting state Sen. Kyrsten Sinema at the capitol. They are part of the Resistance. But they are losing. Arizona has become dominated by the worst kind of public and private craziness. Things have degenerated badly since Willey decamped for the Dallas Morning News in 2002 and even since I was kicked out of the state in 2007. Yes, she's in Texas, a very red state, but it's also a place with the kind of robust economy, opposition, vigorous media (e.g. Texas Monthly) and truly diverse cities (e.g. blue Austin) that are all lacking in Arizona. Dallas just opened a new 28-mile segment of its 72-mile light-rail system, just one thing that's unimaginable in Arizona. Its red-state Texas-sized braggadocio about conservative governance has run up against one of the worst state fiscal crises in America.

So with all due respect to my friend and former Palmcroft resident Keven, she doesn't know Arizona now. When Evan Mecham was governor, he was eased out of office by the business leadership because he was a national embarrassment. Now the business leadership is gone or hiding or compromised, and worse-and-dumber people than Mecham keep rising in power. Internally, at least, Arizona is rewarded for extremism. Also, as an editorial-page editor, she's paid to temporize. As a columnist, I'm paid, or not, to break china and throw down idols in the name of the truth. As for Arizona, the rocks come with the farm, so quit complaining about being badly treated by the rest of America.

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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: National

Nihilism triumphant

"And for you Democrats looking for some silver lining…I got nothing" — Election-night tweet

Well, that was over in a flash. Our liberal, even socialist-curious, president. Our far-left Congress. And perhaps they reached too far, too fast. After all, President Obama chose as his top economic advisers Nobel laureates Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman, as well as former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker. Inheriting the bank bailout from George W. Bush, he imposed a stringent windfall profits tax on Wall Street which he used to help foreclosed house-owners. Wall Street felt the iron hand of liberalism, with a new Glass-Steagall, big enough to even turn the shadow banking system from speculation into investing in job-creating productive industries. Mr. Obama's Attorney General perp walked dozens of leading banksters. And the stimulus: Instead of wasting it in tax cuts, as some advocated, it was more than $1 trillion aimed at cutting-edge infrastructure, including rebuilding our passenger train system and high-speed rail, not being thrown away on highways. Where did the money come from for this socialist reign of terror? Higher taxes on the richest, making corporations actually pay taxes, and winding down the vast national security/empire economy. We were well on our way to retrofitting suburbia for a high-cost energy future, addressing climate change, moving away from foreign oil. And in doing so, creating millions of high-paid jobs. And many union ones, for these ruthless bastards immediately pushed through the Employee Free Choice Act. No wonder, the forces of reaction reacted…

Of course none of that happened. The quick lessons of the election: 1) When an ignorant, afraid electorate, seeing its living standards fall, must choose between bought-off Republican-lite Dems and real bought-off Republicans, they will choose the latter. 2) Except for the bluest states and most farcical candidates, money buys elections and the liberals can't outspend what John Judis calls "the party of reactionary insurrection." 3) The quiet coup has been completed. 4) The Democratic Party may not be dead, but it should be. 5) Most voters have no memory of a government that works well and fights for average people, and that bodes ill for liberalism. 6) Did it matter that the president is black? To many Americans, it did, and negatively. 7) Arizona is toast.

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Posted inPhoenix Phoenix 101: History

Phoenix 101: Myths and lies

Plato's "noble lie" is one of the foundations of his mythical republic. It also handily cements the power of the elites. So it is with our city with the name from mythology. Let's take them on one at a time:

Phoenix is a young city. This is a canard tossed out to explain every shortcoming or difficulty that can't be blamed on "the Mexicans." As in, Phoenix lacks the amenities commensurate with a big city "because it's a young city." Phoenix was founded in the late 1860s and incorporated in 1881. That's 129 years for those readers who were home-schooled or graduated from Arizona charters. It didn't become what would be considered a large American city until the late 1950s; by 1960, it was the nation's 29th largest city. That's a half century to get its act together.

Where Phoenix can legitimately claim it was shortchanged by being a younger city is that it was too small to benefit much from the golden age of American urban design and architecture, including the City Beautiful Movement. And most of what it did have was torn down in careless acts of civic vandalism from the 1960s onward.

Phoenix grew into a city in the automobile age and the ubiquity of the automobile suburb, with all the dolorous consequences that followed once that became the only mode of city "planning." Otherwise, the reliance on the "young city" excuse actually undermines itself on close inspection.

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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 inPolitics: National

McCain Agonistes

Am I the only one who notices how radio news reports — even on NPR — on everything from health care to the budget always seem to lead with sound cuts from Republican opponents. They get the time to spout a talking point, then the announcer moves on to the next story. We're left to wonder why these bills that have passed garnered any support. Considering how bought-and-paid-for the Democratic Party is by corporate interests, I find this odd. What are the corporate media afraid of? In any event, when the roles are reversed, and the Democrats are reduced to theoretical powerlessness in the Congress, we will not hear their voices. We will still hear Mitch McConnell, John Boehner and, of course, the wealthy Republican presidential standard bearer John Sidney McCain III.

Even Tiger Woods' numerous paramours had more sense than the media do over their darling, the senior senator "from Arizona." Lately many stories have swooned over McCain "finding his voice again," "leading the opposition to health care legislation," etc. An only slightly more balanced report came today from the New York Times. I hear McCain on CSPAN and he sounds like a bitter old man. The media hear him and angels sing. Old fighter pilots never die, they still get the girls (and guys). That's the best explanation I can muster.

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Posted inPhoenix Politics: National

Go Goddard?

Terry Goddard is a good man. He was a popular and effective Phoenix mayor, and after failing to achieve the governor's office in the '90s came back to become the best attorney general in the state's history. Among his top achievements has been going after the wire transfer companies that are enabling the smuggling of people, drugs and guns. He's also knocked off some of the rough edges he was said to possess as mayor and, I would assume, collected lots of political IOUs. For all these reasons, I wonder if he should run for governor.

A Rasmussen poll showed Democrat Goddard only 9 points ahead of Gov. Jan Brewer and in virtually tied with Treasurer Dean Martin, his likely Republican opponents. Another survey indicated Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio as a huge favorite of Republican voters and, according to the Info Center, leading Goddard by 12 percentage points. It's unclear whether the Badged Ego will run.

This seems like madness, or, if the polls are accurate, the pulse of a madhouse. The Republicans have wrecked Arizona through their policies and set it on a collision course with a very nasty future. The party's cruel, spiteful behavior is epitomized by Arpaio and detailed in the brutal budget cuts of the Kookocracy Legislature. Brewer and Martin are empty suits. Arpaio probably won't run because the exposure of a statewide race might finally cause the mask to slip and leave him exposed as the calculating bully he is. Yet why would any of these clowns even be in contention against Goddard, a man of genuine accomplishments and a centrist one would hope represents the best of my home state and the hope for its future?

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