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June 09, 2010

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"A poll conducted by ASU researchers indicates that 81 percent of registered Latino voters oppose SB 1070 either strongly or somewhat that and 59 percent blame Republicans. But the poll also indicated that 60 percent of Latino voters also blame Democrats for not doing enough to block the law."

The same article notes that:

* Latinos account for about 30 percent of Arizona's population but only 14 percent of its registered voters. Of these, 51 percent are Democrats, 17 percent are Republicans

Presumably the other 32 percent are Independents. The latter is especially useful since Independent voters are allowed to vote in Arizona Republican primaries, potentially giving them de facto veto power over extremist candidates.

* Arizona has a large untapped pool of about 400,000 unregistered Latinos eligible to vote.

* About 500 Latinos per week are registering to vote as Democrats, up from 100 per week before the passage of SB 1070. No word whether registration as Independents has gone up.

http://www.azcentral.com/news/election/azelections/articles/2010/06/08/20100608arizona-immigration-law-backlash.html?loc=interstitialskip

Politics in Arizona cannot be divorced from energy/water policy. If there is an Arizona Syndrome, it is the disease arising from the toxin of having the nation's largest nuclear power plant located upwind near the state's capitol and feeding the unsustainable energy hunger of the Southwest.

For those who may have missed the latest example of the cozy relationship between 'regulators' and industry: “Ex-nuke panel chief joins Pinnacle West” - http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/business/articles/2010/06/02/20100602biz-nuclear0602.html

Institutional liberalism is at a disadvantage in a society that is economically contracting and socially anxious. The Right traditionally does very well during periods like ours (FDR was the very lucky exception) because it emotionally connects to people's fears. That's why their narratives speak to people's convoluted anxiety about social status. Progressive policy may be thoughtfully detailed but it fails to assuage this neurotic tic in post-boom America.

I think the real question is whether the long arc of socio-political reform and gradualism - essentially our history of the past 80 years - is now over. The fantasy constructs of xenophobes and paranoiacs now usurps more of our discourse than actual problems. We squander billions daily making sure a one-time event like 9/11 never happens again. We're still spending billions to prevent a Soviet invasion of central Europe. We subsidize Big Oil and starve alternative energy. We spend like crazy on suburban infrastructure because our economy is a virtual one-trick pony. And we deny the real-world labor market should have any impact on our immigration laws.

Arizona got here first because it had less institutional liberalism to overthrow in the first place. And now we're going to lead the way to the Randian utopia of yeoman E-Bay titans. It should look like Quartzite but without the monthly Social Security checks.

"So is it 'hopeless??' No. Goddard must work harder..."

And so begins the paragraph that should be waved in the face of anyone who claims that Mr. Talton doesn't have the best interests of Arizona at heart. Along with many others, but this is, well, contemporaneous.

I'd like to understand more about how the LDS voting bloc has influenced previous elections and given us such luminaries as Russell Pearce, Thayer (Axe the Tax)VerSchoor and former legislator Karen Johnson. With 6% of the population, they seem to have disproportionate clout.

Let's not forget about two other important elements. One is the cycle of "starving" the government, which leaves our society susceptible to inevitable disasters, which, in turn, lead to greater anti-government sentiment. During a period of great duress (when the government is seen as the problem, not the solution), politicians who have extolled the virtues of big government (such as Obama and Napolitano) are blamed. The other is the visceral aspect for some whites of seeing the ascendancy of minorities, both in terms of population and visibility. The social problems associated with illegal immigration, for example, are seen to be linked to racial factors and not the economic factors that fuel such immigration. These whites will then vote against their own interests so as not to benefit this group.

"Progressive policy may be thoughtfully detailed but it fails to assuage this neurotic tic in post-boom [the name of any collapsed civilization]."

It the midst of the furor over SB1070 here in AZ it was barely noticed that employer groups were in DC getting Obama's Solicitor General to petition SCOTUS to overturn the 2007 employer sanctions law. So the industries with the highest concentration of low-skilled immigrant workers (both documented and not) prioritized saving their own necks and profits. Every time Arpaio raids a workplace, you never see an employer's face on camera. Goldwater Institute and the AZ Chamber of Commerce have been AWOL on SB1070 because the Lege stripped out a provision that would have let county attorneys subpoena employer records to proceed with sanctions cases or take witness depositions. Gosh it's sure hard to prove they "knowingly" hired undocumented workers without that! Dozens of cases against employers have been dropped (I believe there has been maybe one successful prosecution since the employer sanctions law was implemented) and only 6% of Arizona companies are signed up for e-Verify, though the law requires that any company that hires someone after 2008 must use it. I would buy that not a lot of companies are hiring due to a bad economy but I'm finding it hard to believe that 94% of AZ businesses haven't hired anyone in the past 2 years. I do know there's no enforcement whatsoever of e-Verify. The so-called toughest employer sanctions law in the nation is a sham and so is SB1070. If that law stands, I predict there will be a few months of high-profile raids and deportations but in short order the business community will put the kibosh on it and we'll be right back where we started.

"donna" wrote:

"...only 6% of Arizona companies are signed up for e-Verify, though the law requires that any company that hires someone after 2008 must use it."

Thanks for this statistic -- I've been wondering about that. Could you please cite the source or provide a link?

As for the requirement to use e-Verify, yes, it's there, but there is no criminal or civil penalty specified for failing to use it.

Nationally, only 2.6 percent of employers use e-Verify. It pushes immigrants away from the use of fictitious Social Security numbers and toward ID theft from individuals living or dead. More than half of the job applicants who should have been denied authorization to work were incorrectly approved by e-Verify:

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/2010/02/26/20100226everify0226.html

ICE recently conducted an audit of 84 Arizona businesses; 43, more than half, were found to have illegal workers on their payrolls.

ICE conducted a random audit of the I-9 forms of 17,000 Arizona employees. They wouldn't say how many were found to be illegal, but nationally the rate is about 18 percent, and Arizona has a higher percentage of illegals than the national average.

http://www.azcentral.com/business/articles/2010/04/23/20100423arizona-illegal-workforce-audit.html

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