UPDATE: Arizona/Cali power scheme dead

The Corporation Commission smartly put the kibosh on California's plan to siphon Arizona power. Here is the article from the Arizona Republic.

Arizona sticks its head in a hole in its green and lush lawn

Like most Arizonians, I was not born here. I moved here because of my love for the desert. I have always been amazed at the disconnect between the environment in which we live and the use of resources like water. This article in the Arizona Republic outlines some of why Maricopa and Pima counties differ on water consumption.

I was astonished when I moved to Arizona and found no water use restrictions. I have lived in various cities in the South East and without exception they all had water use restriction of some sort. Keep in mind that most of these cities get a lot of rainfall and are green and lush places.

I know it will anger many of my smug friends from Tucson who think Maricopa County is the root of all evil, but I am not sure Pima County is much better.

Why is any developer able to use grass for landscaping? It would be difficult to eliminate the existing grass, but why can't we eliminate it in new developments? Why do people move here and expect something that the natural environment will not support?

My neighbors were angry when I had the grass removed from my yard. They felt that it detracted from the looks and value of their homes. The only way to make them angrier was when I reminded them that we live in a desert...

The disconnect seems to be so large that I am at a loss as to what should be done...

Update: Arizona apparently not California's bitch

Here is an update from the Arizona Republic about Arizona shipping power to California. Apparently, I am not the only person who thinks this is a bad idea. Most of the the AZ Corporation Commission appears to be against it. Chris Mays had the money quote:

Commissioner Kris Mayes said in her filing that the project would benefit California utility customers at the expense of their Arizona counterparts while harming the environment, particularly the Kofa National Wildlife Refuge, while possibly hampering Arizona's ability to meet its own energy needs.

"California wants to drop a giant extension cord in Arizona and draw out our power," Mayes said. "Arizona's energy future is at issue in this case."

It was pointed out to me yesterday by a reader that it was the utility, not AZ Corporation Commission that wants the change. Thanks for the correction...

It is not dead yet, but here are some pre-kudos for the Corporation Commission. Make us proud, tell California to produce its own power...

Let me get this straight...

Apparently, Arizona is California's bitch... There was this article in the Republic about how Corporation Commission wants to build power transmission lines to California.

So, you might ask yourself what is the benefit to Arizona? As far as I can tell, there is zero upside for us. Our power costs could increase because increased demand for our power in California. They want to build part of the system through a protected wildlife area (bad).

I also cannot help but think about the pollution created in Arizona for power shipped to California. It would create some jobs and that is nice, but does anyone really believe that they want to do this to create jobs? I don't...

More DUI arrests vs. Freedom

This is a continuation of my ongoing rant about the DUI laws. There was this article about increasing the number of DUI checkpoints during the holidays. While catching people drinking and driving is a laudable goal, I still think the Supreme Court got it wrong when they allowed DUI checkpoints. What happened to a "reasonable expectation of privacy" and protection from unreasonable searches under the Fourth Amendment.

I guess I will have to part ways with the Supremes on this. I prefer freedom and constitutional rights to stopping crime through measure such as these. Civil liberties are too important to be overturned to stop a few drunk drivers.

How about we just pull over the people that are swerving a lot ;) OK, I know it is not that easy or funny for people affected by this.

Ever wonder why Maricopa County Hospital Sucks?

I have followed this for a while and cannot figure out why there is not more coverage in the press. Although the story is technical, it is very interesting none the less. Oh, I guess I should explain what I am talking about...

There was this blurb in the AZ Republic about the leg taking funds from Maricopa County hospital, but it does not make much sense without more context.

You can never escape past mistakes. Down at the Legislature, the independent Maricopa County health system is fighting the state over federal funds county hospitals earn but the state keeps. It started years ago when the state needed money. Counties acquiesced, but it's a bad deal. The federal program is meant to reimburse county hospitals for treating the poor, not to pad state coffers.

(written by Richard de Uriarte)

I apologize for taking the whole blurb, but it is necessary here. What is this all about you might ask? The Federal government pays money to public hospitals based on a complex formula to support indigent care and to keep the hospitals that provide it afloat. The funds are called Disproportionate Share Hospital Payments or DSH (pronounced dish)Payments. Basically, they determine how many indigent cases a hospital takes and then they pay the State of Arizona the money to offset the costs. The funds are supposed to be forwarded to the County Hospital, but our legislature keeps them... So, how much money are we talking about? If I remember correctly it was about $32 million in 2004. Now keep in mind that Maricopa County Hospital is basically falling down. There is talk about abandoning the building completely because it is in such a bad state.

The long and short of it is that the legislature is short-changing not just health care for the poor, but also the trauma center and burn unit (which are quite good and important for people in car accidents and the like). I know there is stiff competition for the honor of worst action by our legislature, but this is up there...

Private Equity

I am the only person wondering about these private equity funds that are buying up some of the largest companies in the United States? Today it was announced that Alltel will be purchased by a private equity fund for $27 billion.

I am not saying that these purchases are necessarily bad, but they certainly seem suspect to me. I am going to have to do more research on the topic and update here periodically. I guess the biggest question that never gets answered is who is providing these huge amounts of capital. Are they foreign investors? Hedge Funds? A combination?

Thomas Watch: Andrew screws the pooch

Good ole Andrew Thomas screws up again. This time he is not ruining some 16 year old kid's life see here, no this time he is botching the prosecution of a serial killer. Those of you from Tucson (or elsewhere) may not feel as strongly about this as a Phoenician. This guy killed and raped in my neighborhood. There are two things about this that really bother me. First, if they have the right guy this will affect their ability to successfully prosecute him and put him away. Second, if they don't have the right guy, it would be really nice to know.

This just shows how having a guy who is not a professional prosecutor running the County Attorney's office is a really bad idea. We need to return to professionalism. Note to the Mayor's office, you supported Thomas for County Attorney and the activist community has not forgotten. We know you want to run for Governor...

No, I have never had a DUI...

I know that I am almost alone in my feelings about the DUI laws. For those of you new to my blog, I talk a lot about the consequences of legislation. Primarily, how legislation is never neutral, there are always winner and losers. The DUI laws seem to be a particularly good example of this. The Republic has this article about the Arizona Legislature requiring interlock devices for people convicted of a DUI.

I have several problems with this law and DUI laws in general. First, the point of DUI laws does not seem to be aimed at actually reducing the number of people driving drunk. They are overly punitive and increasing (just my opinion) convicting people who have had three drinks at a cocktail party or happy hour and not really decreasing the number of people drinking and driving. There is a cost/benefit analysis that must be applied here. As restrictions and punishment for DUIs increase and given the level of accuracy of the equipment used to convict people, we are likely seeing a greater number of innocent people convicted and a lower number of truly dangerous people who will alter their behavior. I think we probably hit the level of diminishing returns when Arizona moved from 1.0 to .08 as the legal limit.

Where is the data that the interlock systems are actually affective? Does anyone benefit other than the companies making and installing the equipment? How will a poor person convicted of a DUI deal with this(the equipment is very expensive)? If we really wanted to reduce the number of traffic deaths related to drinking, how about providing free rides to and from the bar on weekends? OR Free rides home from the bar and a free ride back to your car in the morning?

I think we as a society are overly punitive. Punishment cannot solve every problem, but seems like the tool we most like to use. Why do we have such a hard time accepting human nature?

I love the Arizona nuts

Arizona has a special brand of nut cases that I find amusing, entertaining and quaint. How did Arizona obtain this largess of truly unique and wacky people. Here is a letter from the Republic that is prime example. I never thought I would see someone argue for protecting payday loans on the basis of protecting liberty. I wonder if this guy knows that their behavior would have been illegal until recently. Interest rates and fees were tightly regulated until recently... I also love the absolute blind faith in the market. Cognitive dissonance at its best...

I love Arizona...

Elections have consequences...

Here is an article from the Republic about the surprise defeat of the Republican budget in the House. All Democrats voted against the bill and 6 Republicans. This would have been impossible last session. The extra seats we picked up in the Leg create the possibility of building coalitions with moderate Republicans. The Republicans keeping purging their moderates which leaves the rest with no good choices and little loyalty. It makes me wonder if this is the beginning of the end of the extreme Republican dominance of the legislature. The Senate is already working with the Governor.

We have to keep fighting in the leg... We have to take it over.

Payday lenders: Let's get rid of them...

I am a little behind on my blogging, but I saw this article in the Republic a few days ago. I would love to see payday lenders and their slimy practices curtailed in Arizona. I wish the state would reinstate the usury laws that used to exist almost everywhere...

I would not be willing to collect signitures for too many things, but I would for this.

HOA Redux

The Arizona leg passed a bill limiting the power of HOAs in the state. It is really interesting to see the leg do stuff like this. For anyone who has ever considered buying a home with an HOA, this should be of particular interest see here.

The bill basically strips HOAs of any real power. I am very skeptical of the power of HOAs, but this seems a little boneheaded. If you are going to strip them of their power, why not just outlaw them. It is good that they cannot take members homes anymore, but they should have some enforcement power. After all, it does suck to have a neighbor with 3-foot tall weeds and a car up on blocks in the front yard. Some people choose to live under the regulatory authority HOAs.

What do you think? Should the government regulate these areas? For instance, in Phoenix if you don't cut your grass or have a particularly junky house, you can get a blight notice. It is similar to an HOA, but much less affective, but also much less intrusive. Does government have a role in regulating this kind of behaviour?

Clean Elections: Good or bad

I think about the Clean Elections System in Arizona a lot. I know, I know, I am geeky. This article in the Republic got me to thinking... My personal opinion is that public policy, all public policy is imperfect and generates trade-offs. I think it is nearly impossible for policy to be neutral. It always creates winners and losers. The AZ Clean Elections law is no exception.

Winners: People that want to run for the legislature, but are not well connected. Both state party committees are winners because candidates raise money for them instead of candidate committees. People who want to limit money in campaigns.

Losers: Traditional candidates. Interest groups with sufficient resources to influence elections. Challengers (especially state-wide challengers).

Now this is just my view of winners and losers. I am sure there is more to add to list and some of this is arguable, but I worry about the affect of the law especially when it comes to incumbency. I maybe in the minority, but I don't believe the Governor or AG are as popular as their election margins. They are popular in my house, but I would argue that their popularity is a mixture of incumbency (and they are both really competent public servants) and lightly funded challengers. This is all really great when your party controls two out of three constitutional offices, but what happens when we don't?

Here is my fear. In 2010, we have an open governors race. There is more than an outside chance that a Republican will be elected to both the Govenor and AG offices. Imagine the terrifying possibilities for Governor (John Huppenthal, Russel Pierce, Matt Salmon, any Republican from our congressional delegation) or for AG (Andrew Thomas). I fear that we will have an extreme marginally popular Republican in office (a la George Bush) who skates by with 50.1% of the vote. Why? Because Clean Election ties the hands of the people who could pour in the money to defeat them. I think Clean Election needs to dramitically restructure their funding mechinism for state-wide office.

Having said all of that, we are much better (in my opinion) with the law than without it. It has help elect a lot of good legislators and spread power around.

Are Thayer and Huppenthal behind every stupid idea at the Leg?

This article from the EVT goes into the latest stupid and misguided idea to come from our legislature. So, back to my original question, Are Thayer and Huppenthal behind every stupid idea at the Leg? Of course not, Russell Pierce and others come up with their fair share, but there does seem to be a nexus of idiocy between Thayer and Huppenthal. My all time favorite was when Huppenthal wanted to cut state-shared revenue to cities for some stupid reason and had to withdraw his bill when he discovered that his constituents would be the hardest hit (John your constituents live in Chandler and Phoenix).

Now they have decided to cut funding for technical education because they think it constitutes an "additional tax". Even Russell Pierce is against the cut... Note to John and Thayer, if you want our state to be competitive economically we need trained workers. I know you would like the market to provide all these things, but it doesn't. Furthermore, there are people that do not want to go to college and still want to make a decent living. Given the overall cost/benefit of these kinds of programs, I am biased towards more and easier educational opportunities. People pushed to the margin of our economy have less at stake. Lets give everyone an opportunity to claim their own piece of the pie... Education is a good way to do that...

Latest right-wing attack on colleges...

Here is a letter from the Republic about the recent dust up at MCC. The full story is here. Here is the problem I see, first Republicans would want to crucify the guy if he was passing liberal links around. They would be apoplectic if Ward Connerly or Noam Chomsky sent out email to the entire staff of their college. The professor has the right to voice his beliefs just not on his work email account to everyone who works at the college. It is not a matter of academic freedom.

Has the guy ever heard of GMAIL?

Sometimes I just want to throw up my hands...

This article was on MSN yesterday and made me want to pull my hair out. It basically goes into why the war in Iraq is not all that expensive because it is a smaller portion of our GDP than previous wars. I am still amazed that this crazy thinking is tolerated. I don't understand the disconnect between the out of control federal deficit and debt and how bad it is for the future of the country. I believe the total debt is about 6 trillion. I also believe that interest is now our third largest expense (around $300 billion a year). In a vacuum, that maybe doable debt-wise, but then add the borrowing from Social Security (even in the our best balanced budget year under Clinton, we borrowed $100 billion from SS) , Medicare, a trade deficit and the Bush tax cuts. I know people think I am wearing a tin-foil hat when I say that the US maybe headed towards insolvency, but I do think that is the reality.

We are quite simply living beyond our means. What is worse is that we are not going into debt to invest in research, education, restructuring our economy to deal with outsourcing and globalization which would likely payoff over the long-term. No, we are giving rich people tax cuts, paying for a war and spending big on corporate welfare. It is the equivalent of buying round after round of drinks for your friends when you got your first credit card in college. It seems like fun at the time, but when the bill comes you are shocked and cannot even remember how you spent so much. I am not normally an alarmist, but I think the financial state of our country is the biggest issue facing us.

Why Renzi should go...

Here is an opinion piece from Robert Robb stating a really good case for why Rick Renzi should resign. Robb did not intend it to be that way. See he makes a really good presentation of all of the bad things Renzi is accused of like personally benefiting from all kinds of shady deals. At the end of the article, he makes a feeble attempt to link Terry Goddard to the whole mess. I know it is tough being a Republican these days, but really Robb are the two things even remotely equivalent? Even if Goddard did everything he is accused of by Andrew Thomas and Joe Arpaio (both prone to partisan hackery), it does not even approach Renzi because Goddard is not even accused of personally benefiting in anyway. There was a transfer of money from one office budget to the other that apparently was legitimately owed. It is also important to point out that that Goddard is accused of helping another corrupt Republican that was forced out of office.

Very different... Try again Robb... OR How about calling out Republicans when they are corrupt. For example, when Rep. William J. Jefferson was clearly shown to be corrupt, I tried to help defeat him in the primary and pressured my party leaders to relieve him of his committee assignments in the House. I also opposed Alcee Hastings for the intelligence committee and I raised doubts about Murtha and ABSCAM. We should put our country ahead of party.

Media Whore or County Attorney?

Here is an update on Andrew Thomas' ongoing effort to eliminate justice from our legal system and get as much publicity as possible. If he really cared about this issue, do you think he might have contacted the guy in charge of defense attorneys for the county before sending his letter to the media?

I think this is very telling... Thomas does not really care about any of these issues. He cares about whipping the anti-immigration base of the Republican party into a frenzy, so he can seek higher office later. It seems to me that county attorney should not be an elected position. It is too important.

Can we value what parents do without monetizing it?

There is this article from MSN today. I am sure most of you have heard this one before about the 'real' salary that a mom would make. Imagine her as a driver, cook, CEO, psychologist etc... I don't know why this bothers me so much, but it does. First, why do we feel the need to monetize everything? I don't think that makes us value moms more, I think it cheapens the whole thing. The fact is that parenting is a money losing proposition. You become a parent because other more deep seated desires. You take care of children because of love and caring.

Next, the whole logic of this is crazy. By this logic, I would have my regular job and I would be a landscaper, apprentice electrician, apprentice plumber, veterinary assistant, personal chef to my wife and CEO of my media empire (A Democrats Lament, LLC). I should be making at least two or three hundred thousand a year.

Before you write me with complaints, I get the point of the whole thing, moms are important. Well here is what I think, parents are important and we should value their work as a society, if for no other reason than self interest. Children that are not raised properly are very expensive for society(yes, I know I just monetized children). Notice I said parents because all parents are important for their kids. If our society valued children like we claim or parenting for that matter, we would have policies in place to help raise children. I also have a quaint notion of corporate responsibility. We should not have to force companies to do the right thing all of the time. Good policies make good economic sense. By the same token we should value people that decide to not have children because children are expensive to society as well... Just my two cents.

Thomas Watch: Andrew you are such a baby!

Here is the latest article from the EVT about our esteemed country attorney. I have never heard a grown man whine and cry so much and so often about not getting his way. First defence attorneys were ruining his ability to kill as many people as he wants by *gasp* insisting on putting on a proper defense for someone charged with the death penalty.

He whined about the governor not paying for the increased cost of his dumb policies because it would cost other counties, not just Maricopa a lot of money. He practically whines about everything. Does little baby Andy need a nap?

Solar Power in AZ

Since I moved to Arizona about six years ago, I have often wondered why solar power is not more prevalent. I am driven by two motives here, one it is good for the environment, but two it could be a good business. While the state is investing in biotech, which I think is good, I wish we would make an effort to corner the market on solar power research and development. Why not increase our investment to the point where we can export power (or at least eliminate coal fire power plants).

I know we are talking about a large expense, but it just seems to make sense from a quality of life perspective and investing in industry that is bound to grow in the future. I think many people are largely in denial about pollution linked to population growth. Forget global warming for a moment, the air in Phoenix is filthy and getting worse. It is time to invest in quality of life measures with a view to the future. Interestingly, a Chinese company is coming to Arizona to improve their technology, not because of our superior research facilities, but only because we have sunlight. I don't mean to overstate this, but I fear for the future of our nation as we abdicate our place as an innovator to other nations. We need to greatly increase our investment in education (college should be virtually free), affordable health care (GM pays several thousand per car in health care expenses), basic research and improved infrastructure (bandwidth should be inexpensive and plentiful). It is time to prepare for the future... Here the article from the Republic about the solar company from China.