Friday, January 26, 2007

Do not call list, for politics

There is a bill pending before the state legislature to create a do not call list for political calls. There is an article explaining the ins and outs further here. The bill would maintain a list, but compliance would be voluntary. This is probably the best possible solution since it would be unconstitutional to force campaigns to not call.

The real problem here is not political calling, but irresponsible political calls. My thoughts on the matter are below:
  1. Robo calls for the purpose of annoyance. The Republicans used this tactic a lot during the last cycle. They would call multiple times and make it seem as though the call was from the Democrat. If you listened long enough, you would figure out who the call really came from, but most hung up before then. This practice should be outlawed or curtailed. Perhaps the best solution is to state up front who paid for the calls and not the front-group, but who coughed up the cash.
  2. Robo calls in general: Candidates, don't use robo calls. They serve no real purpose, they do not work and they cost money. Bad consultants will try to convince you that this is the best use of your money. After all, you can pay 5 cents per call and reach 10x more people than you can at 50 cents for a live call. Don't believe the hype. There are only a few studies on this topic, but they showed that the effectiveness was within the margin of error. This means that they could actually be marginally negative.
  3. Short-sighted campaign consultants: This is true of live and robo calls. People running campaigns only look short-term and don't care about the long-term affect of calling people over and over trying to increase contact rates. Candidates should be very concerned about this because it gives them a bad name.

What this comes down to is that you have to have a message that sticks with voters and a good plan for contacting them. Be efficient, not annoying.

District 7 will be a barn burner

The district 7 city council race is turning out to be pretty exciting. This article in the Republic today gives a little information about the two primary candidates.

There is Michael Nowakowski and Laura Pastor. Michael is a Latino (also of polish decent) and manager of Radio Campesina. Laura Pastor is Congressman Pastor's daughter. Mr. Nowakowski received the endorsement of the Fire Fighters and Laura has the Mayor's endorsement.

Most of the people I have talked to (the ones in the know) say Nowakowski is the better candidate. In spite of Laura Pastor's seemingly good name, she has alienated a lot of activists and political people. I have not experienced any of this first hand, but this is what I hear.

If I was a candidate and had to choose between the firefighter and the Mayor, I think I would prefer the fire fighters. Having said that, the mayor has some very good political people and if his endorsement is real, it would be a major factor. The real unknown here is whether this is just an endorsement from the mayor or if there are teeth behind it.

The Mayor has his sights on something bigger and is probably hedging his bets for a future state-wide race. The senior Pastor, at least on paper, could be important in a Democratic primary.

I find these city races a lot more fun to watch than the state-wide runs, I can't wait to see this develop.

Thursday, January 25, 2007

Is this the best way to deal with the Minute Men?

Kirsten Sinema, the very liberal (in a good way), legislator from District 15 has proposed this bill to try to curtail the activities of groups like the Minute Men. I have to admit that I don't always agree with her, but damn do I respect her moxy, not to mention her total disregard for getting reelected.

The bill would basically target non-law enforcement people on armed patrol. I have a little trouble with all of this... I am conflicted... On one hand, I don't care for the Minute Men. I think that for the most part they are reactionary, unhelpful and many of them are racists. However, I am not sure I am comfortable going after these sorts of groups in this fashion. It strikes me as, well, a little unamerican. I disagree with them, but support their right to act dumb. However, I am also trouble by armed idiots patrolling the border. Then, there is the issue of fanning the flames of this whole debate in an unhelpful way.

I am not sure of the right answer, but I feel pretty sure that this is not it.

Wednesday, January 24, 2007

The Republic's resident blowhard

There was this article in the Republic today from our resident blowhard Laurie Roberts. She is Arizona's Nancy Grace. She manages to be shrill, holier than thou and sanctimonious in nearly every piece she writes. Don't get me wrong, the travel problems of the community colleges should be fixed and they are problems.

Frankly, there is something about her that makes me disbelieve almost everything she says. Maybe it is just her tone? She is annoying...

The Republic is out of touch and dumb, like the President

I have been trying to cover local politics, but I could not let this article about SOTO from the Arizona Republic pass without comment. I almost didn't read the article after reading the headline "Bush outlines ambitious domestic agenda", knowing full well it would just make me mad. I guess I am a glutton for punishment because I read it anyway. Guess what, it made me mad...

Ambitious, really? How? It seemed like a repeat of the other SOTO speeches under Bush. Let me summarize, ahh hummm: I am a uniter not a divider (the Democrats cause all the problems, we would have bi-partisanship if Democrats would always agree with me), Blah blah fuel economy in 2178, we are winning the war (well we would be, but all of those damn Iraqis are causing problems), Tax cuts are good (I have created 7 million jobs, except it is only 3 million if you count job losses during my two terms, don't tell anyone. I wish I could create 21 million jobs like Clinton, damn him he he he), we need to cut spending (increase spending on the things I want, give another tax cut, but cut everything else), balance the budget (what's a budget?), fix health care (give a tax cut), fix entitlements (by getting rid of them).

That is about it. So, Arizona Republic where is the ambitious speech? Got any bias?

UPDATE --- This article is a better representation of reality.

Monday, January 22, 2007

Payday loan dude, you must be kidding me...

There was this letter to the editor this morning about a bill in the Arizona legislature to limit payday loans interest to 36% (yes, you read that right) and the payday loan industry is (gasp) complaining. In the letter, this fellow Jeff Albin chats up all of the benefits of having this industry around.

Now, I am not the most religious guy, but I cannot help but think there is a special place in Hell for these modern day "money changers". This topic really gets my dander up... There is a big difference between providing a service and designing a business that is meant to entrap its customers.

Before you start commenting on the intelligence of the people taking the loans and free choice, I will relay my story. I had a highly educated (Masters degree in Physics / BS Mathematics) friend who took out a title loan on his car because the company he was working for shut its doors unexpectedly and did not pay any of its workers. In spite of his awareness of their practices and reading all of the fine print, they still nearly took his car. The whole system is setup to make it difficult to pay off the principle, so they can keep their customers as indentured servants.

Our society has become less economically stable and everyone has greater risk these days (except the very rich). The time has come to heavily regulate these businesses and turn them into legitimate businesses (don't even get me started on how they prey on soldiers who have shipped out to Iraq and Afghanistan). If they cannot be reformed they should be shut down.

Monday, January 15, 2007

The unintended consequences of dumb policies...

I have often thought of how under reported and under-communicated the law of unintended consequences can be, especially on "get tough" policies. There are the policies from the drug war that have done little to curb drug use (but run up a huge enforcement and incarceration bill). The most relevant at the moment are the anti-immigrant policies being passed in AZ. There is this brilliant article by the Naked Economist about the unintended consequences stemming from policies that attempt to control behavior. consequences

The simple fact is that no matter how tough we get on immigrants and immigration, we will never be able to remove the incentive to come here for work (feeding your family is strong motivation). The unintended consequences of cutting off things like healthcare, education or forcing local police to arrest people here illegally are pretty dire.

Cutting medical care (besides being inhumane) opens our society to a large migrating group of people who could carry disease from place to place without it setting off alarm bells. If there is an outbreak of TB, you want the people going to the hospital, so it can be controlled. Taking away education just leads to frustration which will lead to greater crime and violence. Making local police immigration enforcement means that a lot of crime in immigrant communities will go unreported and will likely grow.

These ideas are counter-intuitive at times. I know they can be tough pills even for reasonably moderate people to stomach, but sometimes it is better to be rational than reactionary.

I think a lot of the anti-immigrant sentiment that exists is the result of middle class people feeling uneasy and squeezed. That anger gets projected onto the immigrants that don't really have a means of speaking up. Conveniently, immigrants become scapegoats for nearly every ill: terrorism, expensive healthcare, taxes, crime etc.

Phoenix Union Update

This letter to the editor was in Today's Republic. It lays out what I suspected and speculated about in an earlier post. How dumb is it to cut teachers out the of the discussions about curriculum?

Friday, January 12, 2007

Income Inequality

This guy is brilliant. His articles on inequality and tax cuts are right on the money. I don't understand why we don't have more of these sorts of reasoned discussions.

Wednesday, January 10, 2007

I cannot confirm, but...

I read this on Rum, Romanism and Rebellion about SEIU gaining recognition in Pima County. I hope it is true... It is good to see active unions in Arizona. It cannot help but to change the political environment. This would be the first county government in Arizona to unionize. Hopefully, this is just the begining. Surely, a least a couple other counties should be ripe for this sort of thing? I am looking at you Coconino...

Monday, January 08, 2007

Trotting out the old canard...

The canard about teachers unions being the root of all evil has been around for a while. The Republicans worked very hard to create it and unfortunately it has stuck. There is this ridiculous article in the Republic today. Before I get into this I would like to say a couple of things about our esteemed paper of record:

  1. The Republic has some obvious bias. The first is for old style moderate Republicans (see Grant woods). I think they look back wistful to the good ole days when they were a more powerful cog in the (Republican controlled) power structure. The moderate Republican power structure is dead in Arizona (see Grant Woods). There are a variety of reasons that moderate Republicans are irrelevant. The first is that they are irrelevant pretty much everywhere. The GOP is no longer a moderate party. The clean elections system in AZ has also given a stronger voice to activists and pushed the party even further right. Last, but not least was the Republican purge of moderates from the legislature in 2004, like Slade Mead.
  2. They still trumpet anti-union sentiment without much thought. After all, even moderate Republicans hate unions.

Now, back to the supposed fight between the Teachers Union and this supposed near perfect superintendent. First, nearly all administrators/managers hate unions because they are a check on their power. I would argue an important check on power. Workers don't form unions when everything is peachy in the workplace. They are formed when workers feel like they have no voice. Contrary to popular belief, most workers vote for unions for a voice in the workplace, not for more money. The teachers union has a very high percentage of members within that district which is a testament to the desire of the workers in a right to work state. Teachers first and foremost want to do their job, which is to educate children. The unions are all about making sure they can do that. There are of course disagreements about certain issues, that is to be expected.

I have a real problem with the implication that newly elected board members are somehow under the control of the union because of their endorsement. Contrary to popular belief, union endorsements are often meaningless. Without resources to back endorsements they are especially meaningless. SO, that being the case, show me the disclosures where the union spent large amounts of money to elect these people.

Or better yet, tell the most likely story. Mavrick superintendent comes into a school district to try to fix things and does some good things and bad. In the process, he run roughshod over the teachers in the district and unites them. The teachers then use the only recourse at their disposal (their union) to protect themselves and their ability to properly do their jobs. After the teachers start pushing back the administrator gets upset because we live in a democracy and he lost the election (and how could this happen because he is infinintely wise. How could the people not see it? Boooo hoooo). The bottom line is that good relations with your staff is part of the job. You cannot keep everyone happy, but if a majority are unhappy you are not doing your job...

Friday, January 05, 2007

Minimum Wage Part II

The rightwing seems really concerned about the developmentally disabled and the Minimum Wage increase. There was this in the Republic today from Robert Robb (sorry for the huge block quote):
The controversy over whether the severely disabled can be paid less than Arizona's new minimum wage contains several public policy lessons.First, government cannot suspend the laws of supply and demand, even in labor markets. At the margins, others will be losing jobs or losing hours of work, principally teenagers and part-time workers, although with considerably less notice and fanfare.Second, the Voter Protection Act is an excessively restrictive straitjacket. While some on the left don't want an exclusion for the severely disabled under Arizona's minimum wage law, as exists in federal law, most would probably think it reasonable. In 1998, however, voters approved an initiative saying that the Legislature cannot change what the voters approve, except by a three-fourths vote and only to further the purpose of what the voters approved. The latter is impossible to divine, so the Legislature is effectively precluded from doing what most would find reasonable in this case.Third, enforcing laws should be left to the government. The Industrial Commission has urged providers to continue to employ the severely disabled, saying that it won't take enforcement action against them at this time.That, however, hardly gets providers off the hook. The initiative allows private civil suits to enforce the law, with treble damages. So, the assurances of the Industrial Commission are basically meaningless.


It is interesting to me in a lot of ways how the Right is suddenly concerned with the less fortunate (but only the portion that helps their pet cause, see developmentally disabled, but not working poor). The question I have is do we really want to see the legislature with the power to make these sorts of changes to initiatives? I don't think so... The initiative process is a mixed bag for sure, but it serves both sides well. In my book if anything at various times annoys the Right and the Left it might not be so bad.

Also, where is the comprehensive study that shows that "governments cannot suspend the laws of supply and demand, even in labor markets"? I am not saying that supply and demand can be suspended, but the government tries to ameliorate the affects of the market all of the time(see mortgage deduction or almost any tax deduction or student loans) Where is the study that supports the assertion of large job losses among (gasp) teenagers? Show me the study where having a poverty wage as the minimum causes major societal problems. I guess I just don't get it and have not seen any data to back up their cause...

It is interesting that coupled with the complaints above about the leg. not being able to change voter passed initiatives, there is bill circulating to effectively take the initiative power out of the hands of the people. It is interesting to me how the Right can be so short-sighted (maybe the left too occasionally). If the Rs succeed in their efforts they will eventually have to live with a Democratically controlled legislature with the same power (with the six new seats in the house, we are only 3 seats away?). It seems like the same issue in the Bush administration with executive power. How will Republicans feel if Hillary Clinton has the executive authority that Bush exercises? I don't think it is healthy for either of them to have it...

Thursday, January 04, 2007

CEO pay out of control

Do you ever get the feeling that we have returned to the Gilded Era? It seems that everyday there is another story of a crappy CEO getting a huge compensation package. I experienced this first hand going through a merger at a former employer. The new CEO took over a profitable, albeit conservative company and all of the sudden gets a huge compensation package. He then took the company public and proceeded to spend 3 times the company's annual income in one year to increase its market share only to see profits and market share decrease. The company then fired the CFO and hired a new "merger" minded CFO. They sold the company to another troubled company and laid off most of the employees (I was not one of them, luckily).

The problem was that even though the company was not well run, all of the executives received huge retention raises. When the merger occurred the top executives received all of their stock options and two years severance pay. The worst was the CFO who received somewhere around a million stock options for 6 months of work.

The point of all of this is that we have reached a point where executive pay is loony. I don't think it portends well for our society when most people have very little job security and have mostly stagnant wages and CEOs get huge packages not linked to performance. I don't think that most people would object to pay for performance. I think it is time to give stockholders greater control over compensation and eliminate the ability of CEOs to appoint members of corporate boards.

The bigger issue relates to how we protect the middle class and stop the flow of wealth to the top 1% who now control 40% of US wealth. I wish I could find a trend for that number...

Wednesday, January 03, 2007

Minimum Wage Non-Sense

I have to address the non-sense in the Republic opinion page about the Minimum Wage prop passed in AZ in 2006. This letter to the editor is a prime example of the what passes as logical thinking from the people who have sour grapes over thumpin' the minimum wage opposition received. There was also this article about the supposed awful unintended consequences.

What is most interesting to me is that the best argument of those oppose the minimum wage increase could come up with were some perceived unintended consequences. First, I think that everyone should get the minimum wage, but lets assume that this was a valid unintended consequence. I hate to burst everyone's bubbles, but a lot legislation is poorly written, considered and has considerable unintended consequences(See the Alt fuels debacle or welfare laws insisting fathers live outside the home). Even very good legislation (like the wage increase) has unintended consequences. If you weigh a small group of developmentally disabled people that are generally provided for by the government against the interests of thousands of working poor, I think the decision is a no-brainer.

If this is best you can do, it just further convinces me that the law was well thought out and the right thing to do. Having said that we should do what we can for the people adversely affected by the law...

Paying Businesses to Stay

I have a philosophical problem with governments using tax dollars to convince companies to stay or relocate. This article outlines Phoenix's offer to keep America West/US Airways at Sky Harbor. While I am in favor of keeping them here and I will concede that it is likely that the economic impact of the company is greater than the package, I just know the company is punking us. They have already made the decision as to where they will house their headquarters, but now they want to see what they can get.

I think the worst offender is building sport stadiums. I still cannot believe all the money spent to keep the Cardinals in Phoenix. They are the worst team (perhaps ever) in the NFL and we spent millions of dollars to keep them here. It seems that most of the time, we not only pay for the stadium, but they also raise ticket prices. Now, I could understand if we built a new stadium and we got 3000 $10 tickets per game for the people that paid for the stadium.

I think the only solution to this problem is to outlaw all states and municipalities from using this practice. What do you think?

Tuesday, January 02, 2007

Cities and Counties Hiring Lobbyists in DC

I will do my best to re-post my comments from earlier. Unfortunately, due to browser issues I have permanently lost my brilliant comments.

I ran across this article today from the Republic. It goes into the various reasons that cities and counties in AZ feel it is necessary to hire people to represent them in Washington. Foolish me, I thought we had representation in Washington. Clearly, having one the "Most effective Senators in DC" doesn't have as many advantages as originally imagined. But what about Saint John, surely he looks out for his home state? Well...he would, but he is too busy running for President (for the past 10 years). What about our highly esteemed (and senior) Congressmen you ask? We all know that Flake doesn't earmark (and I respect that mostly), but what about the rest? Clearly not enough...

In the interest of helping out, here is an idiot's guide to governing for our Congressional delegation (especially our Republican members):
  1. You represent constituents, not interest groups.
  2. Worry less about scoring points for your party and more about producing for your constituents.
  3. Spending more time talking (to wingnut groups or on Fox news) than producing for your constituents may result in losing your next reelection (see JD Hayworth).
  4. Being nationally recognized by a wingnut interest group is not necessarily good (see JD Hayworth). Keep your head down and refuse those lobbyist bribes.
  5. Arizona tax payers should not have to pony up hundreds of thousands of dollars for representation in Washington. We are already paying you hundreds of thousands of dollars to represent us there and we want our moneys worth.
  6. Careless about meaningless legislation (see fetal pain bill) and more about your constituents, state's and country's best interest (in case you forgot we are mired in a two poorly run wars).
  7. Sometimes you should do the right thing even if it means not being reelected (I know this is particularly hard to stomach). Most constituents will respect your honest disagreement(no, that does not mean rubber stamp this weeks idiotic Bush Administration policy) .