Rogue Columnist

Solemn obligations

Here is how the pension "issue" is usually framed.

For the major corporations that still offer pensions, they are a drag on earnings growth. In the public sector, they are making every city into Detroit or Stockton, Calif., paving the road to bankruptcy.

Very large numbers are thrown around, often without context, sometimes outright fabrications. This column is not about the numbers. As a nation, we spend too much time under green eyeshades. Numbers, "just business," economics are supposed to provide definitive answers.

Of course it depends on whose numbers are used (liars figure) and there's a reason that the dismal science was once called political economy. Even at its most rigorous, economics is a brawl — and like the sums we are supposed to accept as gospel, the inputs matter (garbage in, garbage out). People are living longer! Well, not by much, it varies greatly among ethnic groups, and the ones that do live long tend to be very wealthy. Etc.

Nevertheless, a majority of the white working class — which is a majority of the electorate — believes that union thugs are bankrupting their cities and states by demanding that pensions be paid to takers on the public payroll. Republican politicians and judges are burnishing their popularity and "seriousness" by working to destroy the pension system.

In certain situations and moments, many of those thugs and takers are called police officers, firefighters, and teachers. Heroes.

When the Legislature worked

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.

Labels

Labels in political discourse are incendiary and misleading. They are useful shorthand and inevitable. Yet today they are more challenging than ever.

Let me take a couple of examples. To label someone a racist, anti-semite, sexist, or homophobe immediately disqualifies their arguments. Some people undeniably fit those labels. Others may say something racist but they still deserve to be heard in the public square, offering positions that are more textured that the simple label would imply.

Another is the tart "limousine liberal." This was coined in the 1970s to identify, say, a liberal lawmaker who supported busing while sending his children to private schools. In other words, he was a hypocrite. This term resonated especially with the white working class, many of whom would become Reagan Democrats.

Lately on this blog we have had a debate on the admissibility of the term "sociopath." While we can argue over the precise clinical definition and the care needed to apply it to individuals, I think it's fair game.

Look at the behavior of the banksters, certain businessmen, and politicians, and they fit the bill. This is especially so in their contempt for the commons, for the public interest, and the things we do together as a civilization. Indeed, many of them not only have contempt for these things but they deny they exist at all, outside the fever dreams of bleeding-heart liberals.

Who is Diane Douglas?

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

Nobody 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?

I am laid low with the worst flu I've had in years. I will return as soon as possible. Today (2/9) I dragged myself to the doc and he said I have an especially nasty strain of the flu. The boyish physician told me how this is killing people, which would please Front Page Editor, who believes we're in for something like 1918.

If this is the TV show, "The Strain," I won't insult anyone by casting him or her as Dr. Goodweather -- the CDC expert who can't identify obvious signs of a vampire. Who is the brilliant, sword-wielding evil-hunter, Professor Abraham Setrakian? Cal? Emil? Soleri?

Off to a coughing jag...

To the right is a get-well sculpture from FPE.

Phoenix 101: The weather

This is the time of year when we see smug pieces in Phoenix media trumpeting the fine weather and making fun of the blizzard or snow in the Midwest or Northeast.

It's an old con going back a century or more — although it was typically the subject of advertising (as seen in the above promotion from the 1950s) rather than of "news" stories.

How can I be so cynical as to call it a con? Two reasons.

First, America had a long tradition of the West being misrepresented as the land of milk and honey by railroads and land barons. In most cases, the reality was disappointing, sometimes disastrously so. In reality, the land was unforgiving, "civilization" was primitive, fraud and lawlessness were common, and many immigrants were ruined.

Second, Phoenix historically had about seven decent-to-nice months and five hellish ones. I say "historically" because that ratio is starting to invert, about which more later. But many snowy places have five rough months and seven that range from livable to quite pleasant. Summer in Minnesota is lovely. So it the Phoenix braggadocio about its "superior" weather has always baffled me.

It is true that many people seek the sun almost pathologically, like the doomed space crew in the 2007 film Sunshine. "You don't have to shovel sunshine!" is a motto that resonates, at least with the 4 million people who seem to be willing to put up with almost anything in Phoenix as long as they get hot weather. I admit my blind spot: As a Phoenician, nothing makes me more depressed than endless sunny days.