The Kooks back down (a little)

Last week, in an unprecedented move, Republicans who control the Arizona House of Representatives banned reporters from the House floor. Then they said the press would have to undergo extensive background checks. They finally relented on Tuesday, saying the floor would be open to journalists — at least for the rest of this session.

As usual, this embarrassment has a back story. Earlier this year, Hank Stephenson of the Arizona Capitol Times, revealed that House Speaker David Gowan had used a state vehicle to travel to events for his congressional campaign. Even in compromised Arizona, this action has left Gowan in deep doo-doo.

The ban was an explicit retaliation. It included a provision that if a reporter had been convicted of even a misdemeanor, he or she could be kept off the floor for a decade. Conveniently, Stephenson had pleaded guilty to misdemeanor trespassing in 2014, apparently after a bar fight in Wickenburg (my kind of reporter).

Gowan is a typical Kook mediocrity. He's connected to the extremist "Oath Keepers." A-plus rating from the NRA. As usual, he wants to perpetuate his sucking at the gub'ment teet by moving up in gub'ment. With incumbent Ann Kirkpatrick (to my mind misguidedly) challenging wealthy Republican John Sidney McCain III for the U.S. Senate, the First Congressional District seat is open.

Unfortunately for Gowan, the field is crowded, including Tea Party favorite Gary "99 percent of mass shootings are committed by Democrats" Kiehne, former state Senate President Ken Bennett, and Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu. Gowan is far behind those three in fundraising. All is vanity.

Anyway, with all due respect to the capitol press corps, it's not as if the (st)hate Legislature is overrun with muckrakers, although there is so much muck to rake. Or investigative reporters, although so much demands to be investigated. These are good people, some outstanding, but the news organizations have faced savage cuts and there is little encouragement of digging outside of things such as the outrage of public pensions or the decades-long saga of the state child welfare agency.

Amid all the general media diet of car wrecks, shootings, sunny weather, and "everything's fine," occasionally unavoidable eruptions of facts happen. You can read the compilation every week on Arizona's Continuing Crisis.

Meanwhile, there's a herd of sacred cows that largely go uncovered. Among them: the charter school racket, private prison racket, groundwater management racket, the power of ALEC and billionaires such as the Kochs, the political and economic power of the Mormon Church, and, especially, the Real Estate Industrial Complex. And how these assorted rackets and powers perpetuate the Kookocracy to the detriment of the state.

When reporters were banned from the sanctum of Burton Barr, I received notes from several journalists saying, "We have to do something about this!" Well, above is an incomplete target list. Get busy.

Unfortunately, really exposing these things would require the sustained work of veteran, professional journalists. It can't be done in a video or a list. It can't be crowdsourced or explained in a compilation of tweets. It would require stalwart news organizations with the financial means and the guts to stand up against the backlash of the Kooks and their puppetmasters. And that's where things get rough.

In the banning, Gowan and his henchmen cited their "security" concerns. They should feel insecure, and not merely from their fellow firearm-toting, sanity-challenged solons. They are afraid of the public knowing how badly they have broken its trust.

 

 

 

Comments

[Pat]

Who even owns the Capital building anymore? The Republicans sold it, they don't have any right to ban anyone from it, that's the landlord's realm, within the boundaries of applicable federal laws concerning equal rights and all that stuff, of course. I wonder if the owner would rent me a space for a kiosk in the lobby where I can sell porn or some other popular conservative product?

[soleri]

Republicans have nothing to worry about in Arizona, even with much more aggressive news media. If a crypto-fascist thug like Joe Arpaio can win reelection, or a semi-literate x-ray technician can be elevated to governor, what does Gowan, or really anyone with an R by their name have to fear? Paul Babeu, the gay sheriff with an illegal Mexican boyfriend, may well win his GOP primary for Congress. You search for signs of consciousness among the suntanned zealots and finding little, simply retreat to your cubicle of privacy. There is no pubic square in Arizona aside from a few comment sections on the internet.

This dystopian road-rage movie may not have been scripted by ALEC but you couldn't ask for a better setting than a state where people mostly know one another from the kind of car they drive. Even a next-door neighbors is often little more than a shadowy head you see in a car pulling out of a garage. When someone goes berserk with a gun, or is implicated in a sex crime, the mandatory TV interview with the next-door neighbor reveals the struggle to make sense of someone who seemed normal precisely because you really didn't know them that well.

Maybe Arizona will eventually find a way to create real communities based on economic or even civic interests, but the possibilities don't look that great. The nation as a whole is not much better in this way, and the political dysfunction we see nationally emerges from this rootlessness that is both our freedom and curse. The movie we live in has occasional mayhem and hijinks along with an ending where we learn from the mistakes we made. That's the fairy tale we cling to. Its not much but it may be all we have.

[Ramjet]

I believe that the "apocalypse" is coming soon to AZ politics. I think it will make AZ SCAM look like small potatoes. It only needs some press people with the balls to bring it out.

The fields have never been so fertile.

[Cal lash]

Roger and all, I have mentioned a few times before and very recently, there is no one in Arizona to investigate politicians and major white collar crime. PPD's OCB was eliminated by the politicans because of stuff like AZ SCAM. The politicians just hired the smartest cop, so he serves at their pleasure. And invetigative journalism is dead. The best you get is News by teenager's from ASU Cronkrite.

[Cal lash]

NOTE : THE BERNIE thread is still alive and breathing.

[Cal Lash]

Change is dead in AZ. the Pols just went back into a huddle to re-figure out how to keep the news noise down. Plus currently the legislatures and Uncle Sal of Phoenix City council are striving hard to shut down liberal Phoenix.

Meanwhile, one of the few chances Dems have a chance is still burning on the previous column on BERNIE at Burning Man in the desert with posts from Pat and Naum.

[Cal Lash]

I give you Bernie, Yesterday and Today.

http://www.woodstock.com/

http://www.amazon.com/Woodstock-Aquarian-Exposition-Attending-Vintage/dp/B007VI4EQA/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1460571926&sr=8-4&keywords=woodstock+poster+original

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_Man#/media/File:Burning-Man.svg

[Ramjet]

Like Wyatt told Ike The law is coming and hell is coming with them. The cowards can't hide forever.

[cal lash]

Ramjet, it will not be a known local but a stranger from the east of Hell.
Eastwood plays an enigmatic wraith, who metes out justice in a corrupt frontier mining town, where he arrives as a stranger.

[terry dudas]

There is a ripple of opposition press in SeeingRed.com

[Rogue Columnist]

This is an amazingly civil blog when you compare it to what's out there. People write with verve and pens warmed up in hell. So what? Remember Harry Truman's quote about kitchens and heat. I still welcome anyone who wants to actually address the questions in this column.

[Cal Lash]

Jon, I believe Pat and Soleri and I answered the questions here. The folks in charge want to work in secret. U cant get in the temple if you don't have proper underwear. Besides the press, the boys are working on obtaining records thru the Freedom of information act much more difficult. Seattle and Portland are better places to be for the time being.
Hoping incrementalism works.

[Jerry McKenzie]

...the mandatory TV interview with the next-door neighbor reveals the struggle to make sense of someone who seemed normal precisely because you really didn't know them that well.

Perfect, as long as its not me (on either end)!

Wyatt Earp is the perfect metaphor for AZ. His press his much better than his real deeds - he and the Clantons were probably partners in crime and arguing over a botched stagecoach robbery - and then there was the gambling and pimping of the wives.

[John Cote]

Gowan is sponsor of HB2568 the Sprawl Developer Enabling Act of 2016. It gives owners of 600 or more acres the right to apply for and get public bond market financing without the vote of the host community! It will immediately add millions to the value of sprawl projects that would otherwise not be feasible. The bill sailed through the house 60-1.