by Mark B. Evans on Mar. 12, 2013, under Uncategorized

Dysfunctional Congress result of dysfunctional districting

By Mark B. Evans
TucsonCitizen.com

So now that there’s going to be no deal on sequestration, some of you will be singing the Sequestration Blues due to all the cuts and their possible deleterious effects on our local and state economies.

Others of you may be jumping for joy that finally some federal spending is getting cut.

But all of you, no matter your opinion on sequestration, are unhappy with the Congress and its failure to do much of anything.

It’s getting tiresome writing about the dysfunctional Congress and the childish behavior of its members.

Congress hasn’t worked the way it’s supposed to since at least 1995 when then Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich played chicken with President Bill Clinton and shutdown the U.S. government.

The funny thing is, the fault lies not with the Congress but with us. We elected these knuckleheads. And then we re-elected them. And re-elected them. And re-elected them. And …

Every two years, at least 90 percent of Congressional incumbents are returned to Washington followed immediately by our kvetching about how rotten the Congress is.

So perhaps it’s not the Congress that’s dysfunctional, but America?

Well, that doesn’t sound right, either, does it? So what’s wrong?

Gerrymandering.

In the days before computers, spreadsheets and Google Maps, political districting was more voodoo than science. Determining not only voter registration but voter behavior precinct by precinct was not just hard, it was practically impossible.

That’s not the case today. Political cartographers, if you will, have enormous amounts of computerized data available to them that allows them to draw a political district house-by-house if they wanted.

They not only know where you live and what party (if any) you’re registered with but how often you vote. A registered voter who votes is far more valuable than one who doesn’t, or who does so infrequently.

This data has been used the past 30 years to gerrymander Congressional districts to the advantage of whichever party is in power in a state.

The result is an increasing number of “safe” districts in which candidates for Congress need only worry about their party primaries because the general election will be a slam dunk.

According to an analysis of the 2000 election done by Congressional Quarterly, about 82 percent of the 435 House seats were considered “safe” for the incumbent.

The number has gone up since the 2010 round of redistricting.

That means almost all members of the House need not pay attention to or be concerned with points of view different than theirs. Only their party matters.

In fact, if a House member were to listen to a member of the other party and an act in a bipartisan way, it would virtually guarantee unelection in the next primary for being a party apostate.

As for the Senate, its problem mostly has to do with cowardice; that is, both parties are terrified of getting rid of the filibuster because they need it to vex the majority and prevent it from passing legislation the minority doesn’t like.

And so the result is we get a polarized, uncompromising, dysfunctional Congress.

So what’s the solution? Strangely, Arizona is among the state’s leading the way by creating a bipartisan redistricting commission that is required by law not to give a party a particular advantage.

It hasn’t exactly worked out that way the past two rounds, but it mostly has. There are still safe districts in Arizona, but that’s mostly due to the racial gerrymandering required by the federal government. The state’s redistricting commission is forced to balance the safe racial seats (which happen to be Democratic) with safe Republican seats.

If the U.S. Supreme Court strikes down Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act this year, then in 2020, the state’s redistricting commission will be better able to balance the state’s Congressional districts.

If all the states followed Arizona’s lead and created a majority of districts in which candidates for office had to be concerned with securing the votes of all types of voters, not just their party’s faithful, then we might see in 2022 a more balanced and more functional Congress.

Of course, we also might see pigs fly, too.

The power to reform Congress lies with us. We can keep doing what we’ve been doing the past few decades and keep complaining about it, or we can choose to fix the problem by fixing the districts.

A pox on “competitive” districts: Let us stop and pay homage to Elbridge Gerry

By Emil Franzi,
Southern Arizona News-Examiner

Mark Evans blames dysfunctional government on the method we use to assign legislative representation. If we could just make the 435 members of Congress come from more “competitive” districts then we would have less ideologues and more compromise and eliminate gridlock.

There are several fundamental problems with this popular but flawed analysis.

Mark is one of the folks who believes if we can just acquire enough people who are totally uncommitted to any coherent philosophy of governance or economics, these folks will all get together and DO SOMETHING! And somehow that will work out for the best.

Try this. How about those who complain that Congress or State Legislatures or City Councils need to have a “bi-partisan compromise” to resolve any specific problem first tell us what the specific compromise should be? It’s a cheap shot to blame your elected officials for not listening to you when you really haven’t bothered to offer any concrete proposal yourself. Why do you assume that the answer to everything is somewhere in the middle of all the views presented without even bothering to consider any of the always present unintended consequences?

Just ordering your representatives to “do something” doesn’t help the problem unless you have some idea what the “something” should be.

Want to make it worse? Elect more people who don’t have a clue either or who will wait around for you to get one. Or worse, will get spooked into action by special interest groups including the perceived mainstream media which is the biggest one of all.

Mark’s worst error is concluding that the process known as Gerrymandering, where legislative districts are designed to match a specific constituency to a specific set of candidates, has somehow grown with technology. Technology may have refined it a little, but it was probably a known process as early as the first city council election in Ur.

In America, it is called “Gerrymandering” for Massachusetts Governor Elbridge Gerry who was in office when the state legislature reapportioned and had one district that wound through the state that looked like a snake or a “salamander” causing those it didn’t favor to name it after Elbridge.

Elbridge Gerry (pronounced with a hard :G”) was a distinguished Founding Father, a signer of the Declaration of Independence and one of the 30% of those who attended the Constitutional Convention in 1787 who refused to sign the final document. He was a Jeffersonian in a basically Federalist state, hailed from the cultural outlying community of Marblehead, and was James Madison’s second Vice-President, dying in office in 1813.

They knew well how to cut district lines in his times using an abacus and a quill pen. The study of human behavior via computer gives as many more chances to misread data as it grants advantages in speed. Try the Romney campaign and the pollsters who predicted his victory as examples.

The method is nothing new and was actually much more prevalent in the past than now. We spent the first 175 years of the Republic assigning the members of the US House of Representatives to the states to do with as they pleased. Until 1965, they didn’t even have to be assigned by population WITHIN the state. If anything that, and other rules involving ethnic minorities which established “separate but equal” districts, has diminished the ability to Gerrymander to such a degree that one could make the argument that is actually more competitive districts that lead to gridlock.

Who do you believe is the most likely to make a courageous but unpopular decision – a politician from a relatively safe district or one from a marginal one with multiple interest groups and an opposition party ready to pounce?

Who do you think is most likely to roll over and support every half-assed idea his pollsters say is popular today?

Why do you believe that there are some magic answers available in the middle of all the proposed solutions to most problems?

Why do you believe that government can solve or even aid in solving every problem or even most of them?

Why do you want to limit the choices for representation by we who have actually paid attention to those problems in favor of the casual and ignorant voters who haven’t?

Your turn for a second round, Mark.

In the meantime I will quietly celebrate July 17th as a personal holiday, the birthday of that great American Elbridge Gerry.

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Defining guns and deciding if guns are really the problem

by Mark B. Evans on Jan. 25, 2013, under Uncategorized

There’s room in the 2nd Amendment to add more gun regulation

By Mark B. Evans
TucsonCitizen.com

In reading some of the comments on Sarah’s Garrecht Gassen’s column today in the Arizona Daily Star, a few absolutists chimed in that the 2nd Amendment is very specific, it prohibits ANY limitations on arms ownership.

Which got me to thinking, the 2nd A does not define arms. Arms have evolved over the years. At the time of the 2nd A’s writing, all personal arms were single shot muzzle loaders.

If the absolutists are correct, then we should be able to possess any portable arm, sub-machine guns (my favorite is the BAR, which also happened to be the preferred weapon of Clyde Barrow), RPGs, M203 grenade launchers, mortars, or even the greatest gun of them all, the Ma Deuce, the M2 .50 caliber machine gun.

Turns out, you can own those kinds of weapons, but the laws governing their purchase and ownership are very strict:

Among other things, federal law:
1. Requires all machine guns, except antique firearms, not in the U.S. government’s possession to be registered with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF);
2. Bars private individuals from transferring or acquiring machine guns except those lawfully possessed and registered before May 19, 1986;
3. Requires anyone transferring or manufacturing machine guns to get prior ATF approval and register the firearms;
4. With very limited exceptions, imposes a $200 excise tax whenever a machine gun is transferred;
5. Bars interstate transport of machine guns without ATF approval; and
6. Imposes harsh penalties for machine gun violations, including imprisonment of up to 10 years, a fine of up to $250,000, or both for possessing an unregistered machine gun.
http://www.cga.ct.gov/2009/rpt/2009-R-0020.htm

Plus, there are very strict ATF rules for the ownership and use of rockets and grenades. While you can own an RPG launcher, buying and using the grenades for it is a bit cumbersome (actually, more than a bit).

The above all sound like very sensible laws (though the one barring purchasing of new weapons would have to amended) and since the NRA presumably has acquiesced to them (no court challenges to them that I could find online) and they are arms just like an AR-15 or .45 semi auto are, then perhaps the Congress should simply adopt and apply the rules for machine guns and grenade launchers to all firearms. No one’s right to own any firearm would be restricted.

By having rules for one type of arms but not others implies there are differences in the lethality and the danger to the public from weapon to weapon and therefore differences in what the 2nd Amendment would define as “arms.” Therefore, a reasonable society can impose restrictions in ownership and use of those weapons, depending on their defined use and lethality.

If that’s not the case, then the limitations on ownership of machine guns and rocket launchers is as unconstitutional as it is for assault rifles, hand guns, extended clip magazines, and so on.

The Adam Lanzas and Jared Loughners of the world should be legally allowed to own not just an AR-15, but an M-16. What’s the difference other than the rate of fire?

However, if we agree as a society that some arms are different than others and require different regulation, than we should be able to draw the line in different places as circumstances warrant. Right now, the line seems to be drawn a little too high, allowing unregulated ownership of arms with considerable lethality. Perhaps it’s time to lower the line?

Or perhaps we should take the side of of the absolutists and the Constitutional originalists, who assert the Constitution is not a living document, does not change with the times and means exactly what it says. Since the Founders did not know of breech loading or repeating firearms at the drafting of the 2nd Amendment, we should assert that only the personal “arms” known to them at the time can be possessed without regulation – single shot muzzle loaders. You can own as many as you want. All others are subject to restriction and regulation.

I find it hard to believe that any of the Founders, if alive today, would look at Sandy Hook or Aurora, or the 10,000 homicides a year in this country, then look at the 2nd Amendment, and say, “Well, that’s the price you have to pay for liberty.”

If they had known what guns would become, I think they might have written the amendment a little differently.

UPDATE: A friend told me I should re-read the SCOTUS District of Columbia vs. Heller ruling, penned by none other than Antonin Scalia, that there was an argument in there similar to mine above. From the Cornell Law School summary of the ruling:

2. Like most rights, the Second Amendment right is not unlimited. It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose: For example, concealed weapons prohibitions have been upheld under the Amendment or state analogues. The Court’s opinion should not be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms. Miller’s holding that the sorts of weapons protected are those “in common use at the time” finds support in the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of dangerous and unusual weapons. Pp. 54–56. http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/07-290.ZS.html

Here’s the text of the ruling the summary draws from:

Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited. From Blackstone through the 19th-century cases, commentators and courts routinely explained that the right was not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose. See, e.g., Sheldon, in 5 Blume 346; Rawle 123; Pomeroy 152–153; Abbott333. For example, the majority of the 19th-century courts to consider the question held that prohibitions on carrying concealed weapons were lawful under the Second Amendment or state analogues. See, e.g., State v. Chandler, 5 La. Ann., at 489–490; Nunn v. State, 1 Ga., at 251; see generally 2 Kent *340, n. 2; The American Students’ Blackstone 84, n. 11 (G. Chase ed. 1884). Although we do not undertake an exhaustive historical analysis today of the full scope of the Second Amendment , nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.²⁶

We also recognize another important limitation on the right to keep and carry arms. Miller said, as we have explained, that the sorts of weapons protected were those “in common use at the time.” 307 U. S., at 179. We think that limitation is fairly supported by the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of “dangerous and unusual weapons.” See 4 Blackstone 148–149 (1769); 3 B. Wilson, Works of the Honourable James Wilson 79 (1804); J. Dunlap, The New-York Justice 8 (1815); C. Humphreys, A Compendium of the Common Law in Force in Kentucky 482 (1822); 1 W. Russell, A Treatise on Crimes and Indictable Misdemeanors 271–272 (1831); H. Stephen, Summary of the Criminal Law 48 (1840); E. Lewis, An Abridgment of the Criminal Law of the United States 64 (1847); F. Wharton, A Treatise on the Criminal Law of the United States 726 (1852). See also State v. Langford, 10 N. C. 381, 383–384 (1824); O’Neill v. State, 16Ala. 65, 67 (1849); English v. State, 35Tex. 473, 476 (1871); State v. Lanier, 71 N. C. 288, 289 (1874).

It may be objected that if weapons that are most useful in military service—M-16 rifles and the like—may be banned, then the Second Amendment right is completely detached from the prefatory clause. But as we have said, the conception of the militia at the time of the Second Amendment ’s ratification was the body of all citizens capable of military service, who would bring the sorts of lawful weapons that they possessed at home to militia duty. It may well be true today that a militia, to be as effective as militias in the 18th century, would require sophisticated arms that are highly unusual in society at large. Indeed, it may be true that no amount of small arms could be useful against modern-day bombers and tanks. But the fact that modern developments have limited the degree of fit between the prefatory clause and the protected right cannot change our interpretation of the right.

In terms of my argument, the key phrase from the above is “historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of dangerous and unusual weapons.” It seems it’s time for the country to have a rational debate about which weapons should be defined as “dangerous and unusual.”

And, in case you want to argue what the 2nd Amendment “really” means, your opinion doesn’t matter, only the opinion of the Supreme Court of the United States matters. And the court says the right is not unlimited. We just need to figure out what the boundaries of the limits are.

Considering the wholesale slaughter via firearms in this country, it would seem the boundaries are too broad.
. . .

Is it the guns, or the drugs?

By Emil Franzi,
Southern Arizona News-Examiner

Mark’s constitutional points are basically correct. His historical revisionism is fantasy. And his practicality suffers.

No amendment is absolute. Laws against the reckless discharge of a firearm in crowded circumstance are obviously legitimate as are background checks to keep felons from at least purchasing weapons legally. They will still do so illegally as so many do now with illegal drugs. Even confiscation, if physically feasible, would solve little. Other things will help more.

Tightening existing statutes would help. There are few prosecutions of “straw purchasers” and many states are lax at posting the names of prohibited owners in the FBI data base. This would help a little as would holding more gun owners criminally and civilly liable for carelessness in storage and handling. That doesn’t mean keeping them locked and unloaded. It does mean not leaving them around where it’s easy to steal them like under a car seat in an unlocked vehicle. Many often fail to keep the numbers of their firearms somewhere that can be accessed if they are stolen. That is one of several habits more responsible gun owners need to acquire.

Saying that, it is also time to put a sock in it about gun ownership in the first place and quit making the usual know-nothing and ignorant attacks on gun owners. The NRA is a successful lobby because its elected leaders do what their members want them to – defend their rights. That the NRA spent $20 million or so in the last election is chump change – that’s about the cost of a US Senate race in a middle sized state. The real clout the NRA has is the size of its membership which the anti-gun zealots and yahoos have added over a hundred thousand to in the last 30 days. Congressman Giffords and Mark Kelly will impress us when they hit their first one million dues paying members, even more so if they allow those members to choose the leaders of their group as the NRA does.

Those who complain about “gun violence” need to better define it and then explain why it is worse than other kinds of violence. They should also recognize there are times when it is necessary, either when resorted to by a cop or a private citizen. Few argue against the former. The argument appears to be who is authorized to perform it.

Mark claims we are a “murderous society” but we have far less violent crimes than many countries where guns are less available. And less murders. We have more “gun violence” because we have more guns. The victims could probably care little. All those little children murdered in most school shootings could in many cases been slaughtered by other means than an “assault rifle” or a “semi-auto”. A double barrel shotgun comes to mind or even a ball bat. The difference between the fates of Carthage and Hiroshima are primarily in the technology, not the end result.

While arming teachers is debatable, one thing isn’t if real safety improvement is wanted. Add to fire drills other categories – ie, what to do if an armed nutter appears. But before I discuss anything else about firearms, I have a simple request to make of Mark and others. I want to add two more items to the discussion that have far more relevance to dead kids than others.

The first is releasing to the public the toxicology reports one all of the mass shooters or those attempting similar acts for the last ten years. How many were on prescription meds and is there a connection? Before I hear anymore whining about the “Gun Lobby”, how about Big Pharma? Think we ought to look there first? I am deafened by the silence on that from Joe Biden and others.

The second involves something that violently kills more kids, and adults, still than anything else – drunk driving. I would like a car purchaser to at least have the same legal restrictions I do when I buy a gun.

Gun buyers require a background check when doing business with a dealer. While none is required from two individuals undergoing a private purchase, they ARE mandated by law to only sell or trade any firearm to a resident of their own state. Private purchases require something like a driver’s license or similar ID.

Car purchasers don’t.

You can have multiple DUIs, done time, even have outstanding warrants but I know no of no requirement that you need show anything to a car dealer if you have the cash.

Simple law. Automotive lobby too big? I don’t even know if they’d object.

Put those on that “table” and then call me about the gun stuff.

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Is America’s violent culture the source of gun violence?

by Mark B. Evans on Jan. 08, 2013, under Uncategorized

Violence is not uniquely American

By Emil Franzi,
Southern Arizona News-Examiner

Mark Evans believes there is something uniquely American about the levels of violence here but presents little evidence to support the allegation.

The only real stats he brings us involve us even though his argument is a “compared to what”. Then let us compare. Mark finds America troubled more than other places. I find us less so.

America has more guns per capita than anyplace else and supposedly easy access to them. Yet a couple of generations back access to guns was much easier. You could by a rifle in California at 14 all by yourself. I did. It was semi-automatic with a 15 round magazine. You could also by a pistol through the mail at 18. I did that too. So did lots of others.

Carrying a weapon on school campuses was not only legal but encouraged. High schools even in suburban Los Angeles and Chicago had rifle ranges and teams and we brought our own guns to school to use them. The UA for Rodeo Week had hundreds of wannabe Wyatt Earps ( I did Bat Masterson myself with a cross draw holster) and nobody cared. And nobody got shot.

What happened? Part of it was the elimination of universal military service which taught most males about proper firearms handling and more important taught respect instead of fear of them, but the simple point is there is no real connection between gun proliferation and violence. Try something else.

Today there are portions of New England – Vermont and Maine particularly – with above average gun ownership and sensible gun laws that have little violence, while big cities like Chicago and Washington DC have passed draconian gun laws and have hideous rates of violent crime both with and without guns.

The Brits and the Australians reacted to a single mass school shooting in each country with mass gun confiscations. The result has been not only the increase in crimes of violence, but the almost doubling of crimes using a gun in both nations. I believe that proves gun laws don’t stop “gun” and other crime, they increase it.

That we have had a number of school shootings must be balanced against population size. We have over 12 times the population of Australia, and close to six times that of the UK. But we’d need manjy more incidents to come close to matching Norway on a per capita basis’ of folks shot by a mass killer. They have the record, short of those employed by a government, with the dirty little cretin who didn’t even have the decency to commit suicide after hunting down and shooting 70 mostly teens in an area selected by him for the inability of anyone to stop him.

In fact, he’s proud of it and wishes he’d bagged more. The justice impaired Norwegians have a society so profoundly sick that it can’t even give this mutant a life sentence. He will serve his time in a genuine country club prison until he is released in middle age, perhaps to try another round.

Mark, if there’s something wrong with us it pales next to the Norwegian abandonment of both self-defense and self-respect. THAT is a sick society.

Statistics on the number of people using firearms in suicides also needs to be placed in context. Most deaths in which a firearm is used are suicides. The complete absence of firearms would not reduce the number of suicides, only the method. I place Japan in evidence. They have almost NO private firearms and double our suicide rate. Also, suicide is often the ultimate act of narcissism. Blowing your brains out fits that as does one of the methods preferred by suicidal Japanese which is taking a dive off a high rise building.

Russia has strict gun laws. And their violent crime rate – from murder to rape and assault – is double ours.

Is there a common denominator for all this violence besides Mencken’s observation that wars will only end when babies are born with larger cerebrums and smaller adrenal glands?

Perhaps. There are two real possibilities. We hear about the influence of violence in movies, television and video games but I believe violence itself is far less harmful than the totally immoral behavior that surrounds too much of its presentation. A bad guy is a Nazi camp guard shooting at oncoming American troops. A good guy is the American soldier who blows him away. Bad violence vs good violence. Two of the most violent movies I know are SAVING PRIVATE RYAN and WE WERE SOLDIERS. Both are also highly moral.

Most of the violent crap produced in film and video games shows no values whatsoever. And its highly popular outside the United States. The French slobber over guys like Tarantino. It was the Italian film industry that invented the generally amoral spaghetti western with more gratuitous violence and far less contrast between good and bad than we get from the Duke, Clint Eastwood not withstanding.

And while we hear all about mental health treatment and the lack of it, try the over-medicated millions popping a wide variety of mind-altering drugs that have known violent reactions for too many people. I believe that occurs way beyond our borders. And way too often.

Mark closes with “We need to change America, not just its gun laws.” We are hardly alone in that. But we still retain certain fundamentals including the inherent right to self-defense that many other debased societies now reject or never recognized.
. . .

Violent American culture will prevent any substantial gun law reform

By Mark B. Evans
TucsonCitizen.com

The conventional wisdom after the horrific killing of 20 young children in Newtown, Conn., was that this mass killing was finally going to be the game changer in the gun control debate.

This killing was so brutally tragic that the millions of Americans who’ve been on the fence about what to do about gun violence in America would finally jump down to the side of gun control.

The momentum would flip to gun ownership restrictions after years of being on the side of gun ownership rights. The answer to gun violence would no longer be more guns but fewer.

But while that may be what’s happening in the national discussion about guns post Newtown, it’s unlikely much will change. The Supreme Court says the Second Amendment says Americans are allowed to own guns. Any attempt to change that other than a repeal of the Second Amendment will be defeated. And repealing the Second Amendment is more than unlikely. Changing the Supreme Court’s makeup from slightly conservative to slightly liberal will take numerous Democratic presidential and Senate campaign victories over the next 10 to 20 years, which also is more than unlikely.

America is a violent country. We’re used to it. We’ve not only learned to live with it, we’ve come to glorify it in our culture.

Of the top 20 money grossing movies of 2011, 17 of them featured violence at the core of their stories and 10 involved homicide of one kind or another and 10 involved gun violence of one kind or another. All of them were movies directed at teens and young children. Among those featuring guns, two – Rango and Cars 2 – were directed at young children.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, in 2009 (the latest year for which accurate statistics are available), a firearm was used to murder 31 people per day on average in America. That was 68 percent of all total homicides that year. Another 51 people a day on average took their own lives with a firearm that year. That was 51 percent of all suicides.

Between 2000 and 2010, more than 100,000 people were murdered with a firearm in this country and nearly 500,000 people were shot by someone else and survived the wound. Add to that the nearly 200,000 people who killed themselves with a gun in that decade and you’ve got a national gun casualty total of nearly 1 million people wounded or killed with a gun over 10 years in our country.

The national response to this carnage? A shrug of the shoulders.

We go merrily along about our business, unconcerned about the plague of gun violence in America We’re used to daily news reports that someone got shot in our city. That’s normal. It’s only when 10 or 20 people are killed all at once that we have a brief bit of hand wringing about gun violence.

If Americans are truly concerned about the level of violence in this country then there needs to be a wholesale change in our culture. We need to be as horrified at one person being killed with a gun as we are when 26 at once are.

Guns are not solely the problem. Access to mental health care is not solely the problem. It’s also America’s fascination with violence and ambivalence to murder that’s at the root of Newtown. If we want to prevent another Newtown, we need to change America, not just its gun laws.

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Do we need more political parties?

by Mark B. Evans on Dec. 07, 2012, under Uncategorized

Two parties are enough

By Emil Franzi,
Southern Arizona News-Examiner

“Damn your principles! Stick to your party!” said Benjamin Disraeli. Funny, could also be John Boehner shoving his real conservatives into line over his tax increase proposals.

I am constantly perplexed about the schizophrenia present in people who can complain on one day that our politicians are corrupt self-aggrandizing unprincipled hacks who stand for nothing and then complain some more when they actually act like they believe in something.

The problem with the two parties we have at present isn’t that they are run by small groups of zealots but that one of them masquerades as a moderate party and hides much of its agenda while the other doesn’t really support the agenda it claims to propose.

There is nothing inherently wrong with two political parties having opposite beliefs about economic theories, the relationship of states to the federal government, or the conduct of foreign policy. That is their history and why they were formed in the first place as coalitions of special interests (all interests being “special”). One cannot have any form of conflict resolution without first defining the conflict.

That is also how parties are formed in the rest of the world that has actual elections. There are several variables. We have evolved into the two-party system, the Brits to the two and a half, and most of the rest into multi-parties. Multi-party systems form governing coalitions after the election, two party systems form their coalitions before.

The strength of the Democratic Party coalition is their adherence to the coalition principle and the mutual support system that gives them. It strengthens and broadens their base. The unions, enviros, trial lawyers and others all know the rules and what benefits they derive from playing by them. That’s a concept Republican have yet to fully grasp.

When the Democrats are losing they tighten up and try to expand the groups they already have – which is why they will support almost anything that builds union membership and fight tenaciously on behalf of it. The Wisconsin recall attempt against Governor Walker is a classic example.

Republicans are far less unified and have never really accepted the varied portions of their own coalition. You can tell by how they responded to an election that was a tactical draw. Republicans have 30 of 50 governors and 25 state legislatures. They only lost the Presidency by 2.5%, kept the House by losing only eight seats, and only went down two in the Senate. The biggest single contributing factor to their 2012 and other failures was campaign incompetence and weak candidates, not the coalition itself. But high expectations were so thwarted that you would think it was 1936. Morale was higher after the 1964 Democrat sweep that left the party in far worse shape.

Republican disunity, played well by Obama and the Democratic media, already has the real fiscal conservatives in a brawl with the House leadership which would rather hop around on the poll data than keep its Tea Party and other groups happy. We also hear calls for the purge of social conservatives who are another big part of the GOP.

Some believe the GOP has gotten too hard line but that’s only on the surface and for the rubes to chatter about. They don’t stand firm mainly because most of their leadership never really believed in what they only appear to be standing for.

Don’t mistake the internal unity of the Democrats for any kind of tolerance of diverse views. There is no longer much room for pro-Life and pro-Gun advocates any more. Democrats have drawn their internal lines and defined their coalition without the old leavening of social conservatives.

Will these two coalitions last in their current configurations? Probably. The number of fed-up folks is still less than a majority and they are too diverse to coalesce around anything or anyone really viable.

. . .

We need more parties to give Independents a home

By Mark B. Evans
TucsonCitizen.com

Damn your principles! Stick to your party!

- Benjamin Disraeli

America needs another political party (or two or three). The wild-eyed zealots who inhabit what’s left of the Democratic and Republican parties after two decades of flight by disaffected members have this country so tied in knots it can barely function.

Republicans and Democrats no longer oppose each other, they hate each other and they seem increasingly willing to destroy the country in their zeal to destroy the party they hate.

That they both wrap themselves in the flag and claim to love the country they’re betraying would be laughable if it weren’t so disgusting. And disheartening.

For the past 20 years the number of people identifying themselves as independent voters has grown exponentially.

In Arizona, Independents now outnumber Democrats and by the next presidential election they may pass Republicans too.

Nationally, there are no definitive statistics because 22 states don’t register voters by party. But in the 28 states that do, Republican and Democratic registrations declined between 2008 and 2012 in nearly every state while independent registrations rose in nearly every state.

Exit polls show that nearly a third of voters self-identified as an independent voter in the past election.

The conventional wisdom is that these independents are fed up with the intransigence of their former parties and are expressing their dissatisfaction with their feet, unwilling to remain in their party but unwilling to join the “other” party.”

They’re supposed to be conservative Democrats or liberal Republicans, the so-called moderates, but it’s more complicated than that. And the term independent is misleading because it implies they’re truly independent, that they pick and choose their candidates on merit rather than party, but the truth is former Democrats who reregistered as Independents still tend to vote a Democratic ticket. Same goes for ex-Republicans. True ticket splitters – voters who regularly vote for Republicans and Democrats on the same ballot – are rare.

So why have millions of Democrats and Republicans chosen to become political orphans – separating themselves from the infrastructure and security of the party?

Part of the answer lies in the changing political culture caused by the rise of new communication technologies.

Any candidate, elected official or party member who dares stray from the party’s generally accepted platform can be immediately and brutally chastised and ostracized for their heresy.

Consider retiring Sen. Jon Kyl. In 2005 Kyl stuck his neck out and advocated for a comprehensive immigration reform bill that would have provided a path to citizenship for more than 12 million illegal immigrants estimated to be residing in the United States. The bill languished but it helped him get re-elected in 2006.

In 2007, when opposition to illegal immigration was reaching its most fevered pitch, opposition to the bill in conservative media – talk radio, Fox News and blogs – forced Kyl and others to cave and the bill failed. It caused Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) to complain that the GOP had been completely hijacked by talk radio.

Kyl changed his position and after becoming Senate minority whip he became an illegal immigration hawk. He had to, lest he be dubbed a RINO and drummed from the party by the fire-breathing rock throwers who had taken control.

Party Puritanism has ravaged both political parties. The quest for the purest of the pure party members continues to beleaguer both. The GOP in Arizona is tearing itself apart as economic conservatives and libertarians battle the social/Christian conservatives for control.

In Pima County, several county GOP meetings nearly broke out in fist fights this year as allies of current county party chair Carolyn Cox argued with members who were supporters of former chair Brian Miller (they’re derisively dubbed “Paulistas” for their support of erstwhile presidential candidate Ron Paul) about the party’s campaign strategies in several local elections.

In Maricopa County, the Democratic Party there nearly split apart during the primary fight for the new 9^th Congressional District between Kyrsten Sinema, Andrei Cherny and David Schapira. The divisions were so bitter than some Democrats wouldn’t campaign, endorse or support Sinema in her race against Republican Vernon Parker.

In other words, some Democrats would have rather have seen a Democrat lose to a Republican than the “wrong” Democrat win.

It’s these kind of internecine squabbles that is helping fuel the flight of millions to the political wilderness.

But there’s power in the party. Our entire electoral system, local, state and federal relies on it. And if the parties are broken, so is the government.

Political parties provide candidates education on how to run for office, fund raising and volunteer help, vital voter data and other support that is necessary to win office.

They help voters figure out faster who they’re for and against and they help get out the vote, increasing turnout.

No single political party can be a party for all, nor even two parties. But a party of none, which is the trajectory we’re on, serves no one.

Taking your toys and going home might be OK when you’re six. But for adults whose participation in the political process is vital for all of our prosperity, it’s destructive and dangerous.

We need more parties. Any Independents out there got a few billion dollars to help get one started?

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A proliferation of candidate pledges – what’s the point?

by Mark B. Evans on Nov. 15, 2012, under Uncategorized

A plague of pledges

By Mark B. Evans
TucsonCitizen.com

Among all the ridiculous things voters had to endure during the recent campaign season were all the shrill ads about how some candidate signed or refused to sign some self-important group’s “pledge.”

The pledge of all pledges is of course the anti-tax pledge of the Americans For Tax Reform, headed by the liberal bugbear Grover Norquist.

Norquist, created the pledge back in 1986 when the only pledge candidates had to take was the Pledge of Allegiance. In the 26 years since, the pledge has been enormously successful boxing in Republicans when it comes to budget balancing, whether federal or state.

Whenever budgets get out of whack, every Republican anti-tax pledgee is forced to only consider spending cuts to balance a budget lest they face the wrath of a smidgen of voters who will decide the next Republican primary.

Meaning, if you’re a Republican it’s hard to get elected if you don’t sign the pledge and hard to stay elected if you violate the pledge and vote for a tax.

The inability of Arizona to effectively balance its budget in 2009 and 2010 is a perfect example. Since tax increases were off the table, the Republican-controlled Legislature had to resort to borrowing money and cutting critical state agencies to the bone rather than soften the blow with a modest tax increase and modest spending cuts.

The success of the ATR tax pledge has caused a proliferation of pledges over the years, many of them ridiculous and useless.

Most are conservative pledges that are part of the party Puritanism trend that is purging all but the most conservative of conservatives from the Republican Party. The GOP is now chockablock with oath takers and oath keepers of all kinds, each with their own idea of what it means to be a “real” Republican based on whether someone has signed a particular pledge.

Besides taxes, other pledges candidates are asked to sign require support or opposition to abortion, global warming, gay rights, balanced budgets, open government, school funding, student loans, lobbying, open government, health care reform/repeal and farm subsidies.

All of the groups promoting their pledges are hoping to have the same success as Norquist but there are so many now that many candidates can get away with not signing some of them. Even a few Republicans have managed to avoid signing Norquist’s pledge and won election, albeit in mostly moderate districts or states (or try to hide that they signed the pledge, such as Sen. Scott Brown, R-Mass).

An argument can be made that these pledges help voters determine whether a candidate is someone they should vote for. But that merely caters to litmus-test voting in which one or two issues are the deciding factor for a voter.

Abortion is the biggest litmus test. There are millions of poor and middle class Americans who are better off supporting Democrats but who despise the Democratic Party because of its support for abortion rights.

It matters not to them that Republican fiscal policy is harmful to them; all that matters is that their candidate is against abortion.

That’s a silly way to decide who, on balance, is the better candidate when there are many issues equally as important, if not more important than that single issue.

A better way than pledges is for voters to consider the voting ranks and grades most groups put out. The National Rifle Association, for instance, grades all state and elected officials on their adherence to the NRA’s gun rights principles. Those grades help advocacy groups determine which candidates they should back and also help voters figure out whether a candidate is always, mostly, sometimes or never in support of issues they support.

Pledges back candidates into corners and prevent the compromise that is vital for governance in a nation in which there are many issues, many points of views and many voters with different ideas about how they should be governed.

We’re better off having elected officials who are flexible and can address issues based on the circumstances of the moment and not some rigid, inflexible oath keeper frightened of losing the next election because they crossed some arbitrary line.

Perhaps the best pledge a candidate for office can make is to pledge not to sign any pledges.

…

Pledges are just politics, so what else is new?

By Emil Franzi,
Southern Arizona News-Examiner

There are two basic ways for elected public officials to represent their constituencies. One is known as the Burkean view, named after the great English statesman Edmund Burke. It maintains that you should choose a representative the way you choose others to handle matters that cannot done by yourself such as lawyers and doctors. You allow those representatives to use their best judgment and replace them periodically when they don’t.

The contrary view is a more Puritan one that trusts mankind little and believes that representatives should do what their constituents want. Both views were prevalent in early America depending on the cultural background of the different colonies.

The Burkean view works when the constituencies are small and reasonably well educated, as they were in his day. But from the beginning the other view was present. In extreme cases, representatives abstained from an issue on which they had no instructions from those who chose them

Today’s debate is a replay of that early dichotomy. One prime example is the “no new taxes” pledge gathered by limited government advocate Grover Norquist. Some think Norquist’s solicitations of signed pledges from both federal and state office holders is somehow a subversion of democracy. It’s not. What it does is clarify what those holding or seeking office will do if elected.

Norquist is far from being alone. Every interest group in America from noble to sleazy, from the Aardvark Protective League to the Society for the Promotion of Zithers wants to know where their senators and representatives stand on their often very narrow issues. Candidates and office-holders face these groups and their often lengthy questionnaires with everything from hostility to dread. There are things that will lose them votes they don’t want to go on record about that they are ofen perfectly willing to make private commitments over, sometimes to both sides. In asking them to publicly go on record, the Norquists and those Zither folks do voters a favor in allowing them to know where candidates stand.

Incumbents have voting records, but these can be tricky as there are often omnibus bills with pages about helping widows and orphans and a small paragraph that allows torture of cats that justify a no vote. And legislative leaders trying to hold onto a majority and their roles often either allow those with marginal constituencies to take a dive on a controversial bill or else stifle any votes at all. (See REID, HARRY)

Moving a proposal from one state to another which has some with wadded panties is as old as the Republic. The Left has done it for years but whines when conservative groups like ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council) produces model legislation. ALEC itself is modeled on earlier Progressive operations.

In 1798. a Federalist Congress passed the forever infamous Alien and Sedition Laws. Jefferson and Madison drafted the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions in response. This was a centralized effort to overturn a bad federal law by action in multiple states. Those who rant about Grover Norquist and others with a similar methodology, left or right, might look back at two of our greatest founders and answer the question “so what’s new?”

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To compromise or not to comprise, that’s the quesion

by Mark B. Evans on Nov. 08, 2012, under Uncategorized

A pox on compromise

By Emil Franzi,
Southern Arizona News-Examiner

The biggest cliché we hear from most political candidates and office holders is that we can only move ahead and resolve problems through compromise where each side gives in to the other. This is, after any degree of reflection, a fundamentally absurd premise. It is based on the ludicrous assumption that no one is actually correct about anything.

What passes for compromise is not coming together for a solution to a problem but the sacrifice of an issue you don’t care much about for a gain over another issue you do. Think about how it works in your own life. That’s how it works in politics too.

Obviously, it works best for those with few genuine convictions or for that matter genuine answers, and worst for those who actually have knowledge about real issues and a concrete agenda to address them.

We all know the nation is heavily in debt – 16 trillion dollars and rising. Compromise is what got it here. Compromise with a Democrat Governor by a handful of GOP legislators during her six years in office is what put Arizona on the road to insolvency, yet most of old media and too many in the business community not only commend those accommodations but yearn for their return.

Almost every political faction or ideology wants to spend somebody else’s money on something. The first stage of compromise is to trade support for each other’s spending desires. That’s obvious. But what about the budget hawks who believe that overall spending must decrease? The only way they can compromise is to vote for SOME of what those with a bigger spending agenda want and give them only a piece of it. This time. Next time the spenders will be back with the rest and get another piece of it. And there will be others with new ways to raid the treasury for what are always well named causes. They will have to be compromised too.

To quote the late Senator Everett McKinley Dirksen, a million here, a million there and pretty soon you’re talking about real money. That Dirksen was talking in mere millions just 50 years ago where billions are now common indicates just how much compromising has occurred since then.

You can’t put most Chevy parts on a Ford. You have to pick which kind of car you want and stick with it. The same thing applies to economics. You can believe in Keynes or Hayek, Marx or Friedman but they hardly mix well. What compromise gives us is something more closely resembling Benito Mussolini. Not the best way to manage the economy particularly if you don’t think it actually requires that much management, or that some things are unmanageable.

Beyond the economic issues are the social or value issues. How do you compromise something like the right to self-defense? If I have one, why am I precluded from exercising it via strict controls on what weapons I may possess? The Brits and other Europeans have gradually compromised that right away by following weapons control to its logical conclusion, that an individual right is secondary to the “greater good”. In England, there no longer IS a right to self defense.

Try abortion. You either believe that human life begins at conception or you don’t. If it’s don’t, then when? Compromise here is basically impossible.

The founding document of this nation is The Declaration if Independence. It hardly projects compromise. It states a clear objective. The Constitution that followed it is supposedly a monument to compromise but it’s really a document that leaves most powers with the states and the people. It contains a long list of restrictions placed upon the government it created that have been – love to use the term this way – “compromised” over the years, particularly by the new schools of jurisprudence based on how to imagine the constitution grants powers it doesn’t possess.

But the biggest failing of compromise is its simple inability to give resolution to an issue. It exemplifies that other favorite cliché about kicking cans down the road. That much-touted moment in American history that gave us the famed Compromise of 1850 led us the Civil War of 1861. That war resolved the biggest issue in the republic by abolishing slavery. That time there was no compromise.

We call them the greatest generation but they had an advantage we don’t. They were given a difficult but simple task – crush Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. They didn’t compromise it, they accomplished it. Had the hollow men who ran most of the western democracies not cravenly sought compromise with the evil of Nazism, resolution might have come earlier.

We babble now over the concept of “conflict resolution.” Conflicts are finally resolved by people who act like Churchill, Patton, Sherman and Scipio Africanus.

A pox on compromise.

…

Compromise is the American way of government

By Mark B. Evans
TucsonCitizen.com

Compromise created this nation. The Constitution we all revere and all point to when insisting we’re the ones who are right is a monument to compromise.

The bicameral Congress is a compromise. Some Founding Fathers wanted only a House of Representatives, but small, less populated states feared being overrun by the big states and insisted on a second house of the Legislature, one in which each state was represented equally – a Senate where tiny Rhode Island had as great of a voice as massive Virginia.

If you don’t like the way our government works, the way it requires compromise to get anything done, then blame James Madison, he’s the architect of the checks and balances system.

He’s the one who convinced his fellow Founders that a government in which the minority was empowered to vex the majority was as a government that by its very nature avoided tyranny.

Mr. Franzi’s argument disparaging compromise is actually an argument for totalitarianism, that only majorities should rule and that those members of the majority must defend their virtuous ideology at all costs.

That’s not America. It’s some other country in which ideologues rule the day. Kazakhstan, perhaps.

By Mr. Franzi’s argument, compromise is akin to capitulation. Not so. There is virtue in compromise. We learn that as children. The selfish brats at the daycare who gather up as many toys as they can and then defend them from all comers are the kids we all learn to despise, to pity and to avoid.

It’s always better to share and to get along with others, even the kids you don’t really like. Who would you rather have befriended as a child? The kid who let you play with his Transformers so you both could have fun, or the kid who sulked in the corner, playing alone with his GI Joe, killing imaginary enemies all by himself?

Our nation is in fiscal peril. The foul sequestration bill that imposes $1 trillion in spending cuts – half to defense, half to social spending – and the expiration of the Bush-era tax cuts loom on the horizon.

Conservatives refuse to yield on the defense spending cuts, liberals on the social spending. Liberals want a tax increase on the wealthy, conservatives want no tax increase on anyone.

Both sides are dug in and insist on the virtue of their position. To compromise is to be weak, it’s a betrayal of yourself and your core beliefs. A line must be drawn somewhere, right?

Since neither side gained an advantage in the recent election we now have a choice, compromise or destroy the economy.

Compromise is not capitulation. It is possible to give a little on taxation and still be a conservative and to cut a little spending and still be a liberal.

Why even the greatest conservative of modern times, the saintly Ronald Reagan, compromised. Ronald Reagan was no fan of taxes, in fact he orchestrated the greatest tax cut and reform in our history. But he and the Congress spent more than they took in and the national debt and the budget deficit exploded after the tax cut.

To try to get a handle on it, he worked with Republicans and Democrats to pass a number of small tax increases to stem the red ink.

It didn’t work, nevertheless Reagan was a compromiser. Are we to now look poorly on Reagan? Should he be drummed out of the ranks of conservatives? Should Grover Norquist paste over Reagan’s picture hanging in all those Republican Congressional offices with a copy of his anti-tax pledge?

We’ve seen what one-party rule can do. When President Bush II had both houses of Congress on his side, he pushed through the second biggest tax cut in our history. Then war came. Did he then accede to the folly of cutting income by a $1 trillion while also spending $1 trillion on the war? Nope. Why, to have given in on tax cut orthodoxy would be akin to a virgin becoming a whore. Compromise? A pox on compromise.

When President Obama had both houses of Congress at his back, he pushed through a ridiculous and likely ruinous health care bill. It passed without a single Republican vote. Obama was a virtuous, uncompromising Democrat.

But perhaps if Bush had compromised on tax cuts and Obama on healthcare we wouldn’t be speeding toward economic ruination.

It wasn’t compromise that got us into this mess, it was the lack of it.

Compromise is the American way. Our country requires it.

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Prop. 115: A good compromise or attack of the evangelicals?

by Mark B. Evans on Oct. 31, 2012, under Uncategorized

A Genuine Compromise

By Emil Franzi,
Southern Arizona News-Examiner

“Just let me do the nominatin’ and I don’t much care who does the votin’”
- William Marcy Tweed, Tammany Hall

All those folks who constantly whine about a “lack of compromise”, “polarization” and “partisan gridlock” should support this measure because it is a genuine if partial compromise between those who want their judges elected and those who want them kept as far away from the people as possible.

Until 1974, Arizona judges were elected at all levels. In 1974 voters amended the state constitution to change that statewide and in the larger counties to appointment by the governor from a short list provided from an appointed commission. It was then as now heralded as a great reform from a supposedly corrupt elected system. After almost 40 years, the basic dispute over who shall govern exemplified by how the judiciary is chosen is far from being settled, and the issue of corruption now attaches itself to the current system.

Proponents of the Merit Selection system consider a narrowly defined list of “qualifications” to be all important and claim that the system removes the process from “politics”.

Beware of anything that claims to take the politics out of politics.

The judicial branch was designed as co-equal to the legislative and executive. It was one of the great features of the original constitution and copied all through the free world. At the federal level the balance is achieved by allowing the executive branch to choose the judiciary with the consent of the legislative.

Moving to the federal system and dumping all those short lists and appointed nominating commissions would allow those we elect to pick those who judge us and would be the real compromise. Prop 115 only moves us in that direction by reducing the power of the state bar association to appoint commissioners and increases that of the governor. It also forces the selection commission to give the governor a wider choice that the three names sent now.

Other parts of the compromise includes extending the terms of appellate and supreme court justices from six to eight years and allowing judges to serve until age 75, up from 70.

Baby steps to real reform. The supposed partisan neutrality of the Commission on Appellate Court Appointments was shattered when that body was assigned the role of nominating the members of the supposedly independent commission on re-apportionment that blatantly gerrymandered Arizona’s congressional and legislative districts. A child of four could tell that the fix was in. Think the same partisan crap doesn’t occur when these people send the governor the short lists for judges? Think partisanship and carefully selected “independents” aren’t used to game the system for judges too? Isn’t this even more corrupt than any direct election?

The defenders of the current system tout the wonders of somehow finding the most qualified people, a definition they reserve for themselves and hold not only the voter but those we voters select in quiet contempt. They are part of the original progressive movement that would reduce elected officials to the level of student government while elevating the unelected judiciary to supremacy and eliminate the tri-partite system on which our government is based.

To control the nominating process is to control the rest.

•••

Don’t give the governor free reign over judicial appointments

By Mark B. Evans
TucsonCitizen.com

Should strict adherence to the Christian faith and adamant opposition to abortion be the deciding factors as to whether a lawyer is appointed as a Superior Court Judge in Pima or Maricopa counties, or to any of the state’s appellate courts?

How you answer that question may determine how you vote on Proposition 115, which seeks to reform the selection and retention rules for state appellate judges and Superior Court judges in those counties.

Most voters will receive their voter guide pamphlet in the mail in the next few weeks and there are many arguments for and against Prop. 115, most asserting that it either removes politics from the selection process or injects more politics into it.

But this is only partly about the politics of judicial selection and mostly about so-called Christian values. It’s a solution seeking a problem put forth by the Center for Arizona Policy, a Phoenix-based evangelical Christian organization that wields enormous influence over the Arizona Republican Party and whose leaders fervently believe that a “Biblical worldview” in public policy is essential for Arizona’s prosperity.

Arizona’s conservatives the past few years have been trying to remake state government to conform to their political vision and the Center for Arizona Policy is in the vanguard of that effort. Prop. 115 is its idea, it not only championed the proposition, but was directly involved in the negotiations over the ballot’s language.

Arizonans used to elect all of its Superior Court and appellate judges but voters in 1974 changed the state constitution for the appellate courts and Maricopa and Pima counties because it was believed then that direct election of judges made them more beholden to the whims of the electorate or the monied interests who funded their campaigns than the law.

They instead created a merit selection process in which a bipartisan panel of experts selects a bipartisan list of three candidates for the governor to choose from to fill a court vacancy. Selected superior court judges then must face voters every four years and appellate judges every six years in a “retention” vote. Since 1974, no judge or justice has ever been booted by voters.

The supposed basis for the needed change is that the Arizona Bar Association wields inordinate power in the current merit selection process and the Bar has supposedly become more liberal these days and therefore supposedly only liberal jurists have been making the cut for the governor’s choice.

Yet during the debate and negotiation over the Senate resolution in 2011, little evidence was presented as to the supposed left leanings of all the judicial nominees. In fact, every time Gov. Jan Brewer appointed a judge, her office issued a glowing press release proclaiming the virtues of her appointee.

But this proposition isn’t what the Center and the state’s conservative legislators wanted. They wanted a system similar to the federal selection process in which the governor could pick whomever he or she wanted, but that nominee would have to be confirmed by the state Senate. What’s more, they wanted every judge to face reconfirmation at the end of their terms.

The judges and the Bar balked at that, saying it made the selection process completely political and instead dug in for a compromise which is manifested in the awful Prop. 115.

While purporting to retain the merit selection system it in fact guts it. The proposed changes give the governor extraordinary power in selecting judges. It dilutes the power of the Bar in the nominating process and increases the number of nominees to eight, which, considering the paucity of applications for most judicial vacancies, essentially insures that every application will make it to the governor’s desk.

In other words, it takes the merit out of the merit selection process. Rather than have a body of legal work that warrants elevation to the bench as determined by a panel of legal experts, an applicant need only conform to the governor’s political view of the world to get appointed to the judiciary. No check, no balance, just appointment.

That’s worse than the pick-and-confirm process originally proposed.

For the deeply religious members of the Legislature and the leaders of the Center for Arizona Policy, they need to be mindful of what they wish for – they may get it. While it may be inconceivable to them that another Democrat could be elected governor of Arizona, it was only a short four years ago that their unholy of unholies – Janet Napolitano – sat behind the governor’s desk.

If the merit selection system is not working as intended, then by all means, tweak it (as voters did in 1992, adding more members to the merit selection panel). But there’s no evidence that it’s not working, unless you insist that every judge in Arizona proclaim their Christian faith and opposition to abortion.

But this isn’t about abortion or Christianity. It’s about selecting the best judges to rule on the law without them having to cleave to a narrow, religious view of it.

Prop. 115 is a disaster and should be rejected. Vote no on Prop. 115.

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County elected offices – More? Or Less?

by Mark B. Evans on Oct. 18, 2012, under Uncategorized

TucsonCitizen.com Administrator/Editor Mark B. Evans thinks there is no need to elect many of the county offices, they could all be appointed by the Board of Supervisors, but Southern Arizona News-Examiner Editor Emil Franzi thinks Evans is nuts, the county needs more elected officers to make government more responsive to the people.

We need more elected rulers, not fewer

By Emil Franzi,
Southern Arizona News-Examiner

One of the principal characteristics of American exceptionalism is the manner in which we choose who shall govern us. When the nation was founded, we had few role models. The British parliament, some smatterings from Iceland and Switzerland, bits and pieces from Ancient Greece and Rome and a few native tribes. The concept of “citizen” was still being formed and had yet to replace “subject”.

We used a variety of methods in putting together that great experiment in self-government. molded by the various regional cultures brought to us primarily from our English forebears and other Enlightenment thinkers, but what we did pretty much resolve was the need to diffuse power. Our constitution exemplifies that with a long list of “do nots” which many have been trying since then, sometimes successfully, to weasel out of.

One of the biggest differences between us and our English and European predecessors is the large number of folks we choose to govern us. We did not set it up that way for “efficiency”. We set it up that way because we don’t trust each other.

It was not, as Mark alleges, to reduce corruption – sorry, Mark, never heard that one before. In fact, it probably increases petty corruption. Illinois has a very long ballot. Corruption wasn’t the issue, power was.

It’s a simple premise. People you get to vote for tend to treat you better than people you don’t.

There are other benefits. Political rivalry, particularly with partisan government, tends to be a check and balance not only on power but corruption and incompetence.

The Progressive movement, elitist in nature, has waged campaigns against these original concepts for over a century. They want less offices, longer terms, and the morphing of office-holders at all levels into policy makers, NOT constituent advocates.

The Populists who dominated Arizona’s Constitutional Convention created County offices and greatly diffused power. The gave each county a board of supervisors and seven elected line officers with the board acting as a quasi-legislative body with only budget powers over the seven who were given responsibility for everything except the Court system which consisted of elected superior court judges, Justices of the peace and constables. All but the judges were given two year terms. Most of the other 49 states and the approximately 3,000 counties were and mostly still are similarly structured.

Before moving to eliminate an office, one should first recognize what it does. The county attorney and sheriff are rather obvious. The assessor is too although the role has been eroded over the years if not the actual powers. Arizona assessors should note that if the writers of the state constitution had wanted them to be an employee of the state department of revenue, they wouldn’t have made them independent elected officials.

We also used to elect city assessors as well as others at the town level. Yuma still elects its city attorney. A constant wave of progressive “reforms” has eliminated most others.

The recorder does more than file deeds, although in the era of claim jumping one might understand why this office was elected and in the modern era of neo-claim jumping through newer scams why we might want it to stay that way. The record is also responsible for the voter registration roles and determining election eligibility. Many are not quite ready to make that job appointive.

The treasurer seems to be the focus of those who dismiss granting the discretions one possesses in elected office. But we in Pima County just noticed why that function should stay on the ballot. There was an issue raised by a candidate about the legitimacy of a travel claim made by a county supervisor. The issue was voluntarily clarified by an elected treasurer. Think an appointee would have done that? County treasurers have also been whistle blowers and watchdogs in other cases and should remain independent.

The clerk of the court is also more than a record keeper, although access to all public records should keep those in the reporting business wanting as much direct responsibility with that record keeper as possible. The clerk also both assigns personnel and is involved in judicial and staff selection in trials

The role of the county school superintendent has been diminished along with their budgets, but there is still one excellent reason to keep the office around and independently elected. They fill school board vacancies.

I’ll leave the court system to a separate discussion save for the constables. All the versions of the Robin Hood legend from Errol Flynn to Mel Brooks show us the power of the original sheriffs as the king’s agent. Constables have certain powers not assigned to the sheriff in reaction to that as another firewall against even an elected sheriff. Constables are also the only local official who can arrest the sheriff. Perhaps they have become symbolic, but what they represent is a good symbol, a symbol that reminds us that we are citizens and not subjects.

County government has grown and we now have more functions and employees working directly for the board than we do the line officers. That’s not a good reason to eliminate the line officers, it’s a good reason to add more.

Don’t like your roads? Let’s elect the Director of the County and City Departments of Transportation. Health Department blows too much money, inspectors too nasty? Elect that director too.

Self-government is hard. You have to pay attention. It’s easy to just slough it off and figure everything will be OK. Get rid of all these elected offices you don’t know much about. Let somebody appoint them. Who really cares.

We who do care and pay attention find someone else’s lack of interest and knowledge not a very good reason to change the system that has worked very well for the first hundred years of Arizona statehood.

. . .

We don’t need to elect so many county officials

By Mark B. Evans
TucsonCitizen.com
Voting in the general election began October 11 with the distribution of early ballots, and as usual in presidential election years voters will have quite a long ballot to slog through.

At the top of the first side are the big races that most voters will be fairly well-informed about – president, congress, state Legislature and what not.

But at the bottom and on the flipside, voters will have to decide a bunch of races for which there is precious little information about the candidates or even what the office they’re running for does.

Most of those offices are in the county and they don’t need to be filled through an election. They’re anachronisms of the 19^th century and there are better ways to hire clerks, accountants, process servers and justices of the peace.

In the 19^th century, corruption was rampant but there was no FBI or state police to investigate public malfeasance. Consequently, one of the only ways for citizens to control their public officials was to make most public offices elected.

Moreover, Arizona is huge and getting to the capitol or from one county to another was an arduous and expensive journey. So local government was really local back then.

And small.

At statehood, Arizona only had about 250,000 residents, Pima County only about 26,000. So when voters elected a court clerk, he was the entire office. (The Sheriff had a couple of deputies).

Now in 21^st century there are nearly 7 million Arizonans and 1 million Pima County residents and those county agencies are all big bureaucracies and there is no need to elect their leaders; the Board of Supervisors should appoint them. (And there should be more supervisors representing fewer people but that’s a different argument for another day).

Corruption is not anywhere near the problem it was 100 years ago plus there are robust state and federal law enforcement agencies tasked with investigating it when suspected – as the FBI’s recent surveillance of Attorney General Tom Horne proves.

And is there really a conservative or liberal way to file court records (court clerk), collect property tax payments (treasurer), oversee home school registrations (school superintendent) or record property transactions (recorder)? Do we really need to be electing process servers (constables) for the justice courts? Does any voter really have any idea whether a justice of the peace is really a good justice of the peace?

No to all.

Good arguments could be made about the political nature of the county attorney, sheriff and assessor but even better arguments could be made about how much better those offices could be run if you took some of the politics out of their leadership by making them beholden primarily to the standards of their profession rather than to their campaign donors and a fickle electorate.

To top it off, candidates for these offices are rarely opposed. Of the six county agency races this year, half are unopposed. Of the seven constable races, five are unopposed and all five justices of the peace are unopposed. If no one is even going to run against the current office holders, what’s the point in having an election?

Several of these offices are required by the state constitution; so to convert them to appointed offices requires a state ballot proposition.

So when we’re all filling out our ballot this year and sighing about how long it is and how we don’t really know much about any of the down-ballot races, keep in mind that the power to help ourselves by reducing the number of elected offices in the counties rests with us.

County elected office reform should be on the 2014 ballot.

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

Prop. 121 – ‘top two’ primaries, yes or no?

by Mark B. Evans on Oct. 10, 2012, under Uncategorized

TucsonCitizen.com Administrator/Editor Mark B. Evans thinks Prop. 121 will allow more independents the opportunity to vote in primaries but Southern Arizona News-Examiner Editor Emil Franzi thinks it disenfranchises too many voters and is based on false premises about independent voters.

Vote No

By Emil Franzi,
Southern Arizona News-Examiner

Those currently attempting to change the rules for Arizona primary elections via Proposition 121 are attempting to define those voters currently registered as independents to justify their proposed manipulation of the entire electoral process. They believe that altering the nomination process by having the top two candidates picked in a non-partisan primary, then run off in a non-partisan general election, with no other candidates allowed to enter, will somehow please those independents sufficiently to increase their primary participation and benefit the process by doing so. They are demonstrably wrong on both counts.

Independent voters once were a small percentage of the electorate. For decades, they barely hit 10 percent in Arizona and elsewhere. Many were independents for good reasons other than a dislike of political parties. Independent registration was more a sign of neutrality than one of indecision or apathy, and included military personnel, government workers and contractors, educators, and even journalists. They were a small, but highly diverse segment of the electorate.

Proponents are correct in stating that many current independents are unhappy with the two major parties most of them recently fled. But they are wrong in believing that the vast majority are some variety of nebulous centrist, longing for compromises on major issues. Many, if not most of them, are in some ways to the right and left of the parties they abandoned.

The two major parties now represent totally different basic philosophies of government. Like any political party anywhere, they are coalitions. Coalitions inside parties are where the compromises take place in a viable partisan system. The Democrats are based on the interests of trial lawyers, environmentalists, and big unions among others. Note how the Democrat factions cover each other’s back. The Republicans are based on advocates of a strong military, minimal government (particularly federal) intervention in the economy, and traditional values. Note how GOP sub-genres haven’t quite figured that out yet. Democrats favor gay marriage, government-funded abortion, more gun control, public employee unions, and a narrowly secular welfare state. Republicans don’t. Two platforms, easy read, simple conclusion.

It’s hard to put Ford parts on a Chevy. Years of compromises and can kicking everything with parts from Audis to old Willys Jeeps brought us to where we are now. Compromise is what got us all $16 trillion in the hole. Compromise got us our mushy policies towards the Middle East. Compromise got us a hospital where medical professionals work around the clock to save the life of a six-month premature baby in one wing while other medical professionals have just trashed an eight-month fetus in another wing because a shrink decided keeping it alive would injure the mother’s mental health.

Many of those who left the two major parties are not compromising squishies, longing for centrism, but folks who considered their old coalition too weak in the specific areas they care about. Many hard lefties and hard righties agree that there has been too much moderation and the inaction it breeds. They are the ones mainly responsible for the exodus from the two relatively “moderate” parties we have now. The claim that eliminating the control of nominations by political parties will elect more moderates is spurious.

The proposed system will further polarize it. While we grant the sincerity of those proponents who believe otherwise, we note their general inability to elect much of anybody to anything in the past and their further inept attempts to govern on those few occasions when they did so.

The Old Establishment interests behind Prop 121 are trying to convince you, because they actually believe it themselves, that independents are something other than what they are. If they were in fact reasonably cohesive about much of anything, and other than erratic and incoherent about how they wish to achieve it, they would’ve started their own party by now. They didn’t because they can’t because they aren’t.

Can the proponents of “no peaky primaries” actually point to a genuine role model anywhere in the free world? All functional and genuine representative governments everywhere have been based around the competing agendas found in their various political parties. The Anglo-Saxon model is primarily a two party system, the European, multi-party with various deviations such as the proportional representation used in Israel. Nobody anywhere does it the way they propose besides the Nebraska legislature which is a de facto Republican body.

What the proponents have done is to claim to represent the unrepresentable – the independent voter. They do them no service in this grand hijacking. In diminishing the role of political parties, they reduce their choices. Worse, they reduce the ability of the rest of us to reasonably coalesce and nominate candidates of our choice or even select a later alternative if unsuccessful. They also all but guarantee that no new political parties will ever emerge.

The “no peaky process” essentially disenfranchises the majority of voters who are still registered in a political party and particularly those who bother to vote in their primaries. The portrait of the voter painted by the proponents chastises good citizens who choose to participate in primary elections while pandering to those who don’t bother, hardly a lesson in civic responsibility.

Many of those who argue against Prop 121 cite the strong possibility of unintended consequences.

The intended ones are sufficient reason to vote it down.

* * * *

Vote Yes

By Mark B. Evans
TucsonCitizen.com

Who says there’s no such thing as bipartisanship any more? Why there has been an issue in Arizona this summer so controversial and so outrageous that we’ve even seen tripartisanship in which Democrats, Republicans and Libertarians teamed up to defeat this ravaging horror.

Yet despite this unprecedented level of cooperation among political foes they were unable to defeat their common enemy.

Yep. They lost. And so Arizonans will have the chance to decide whether unaffiliated voters – so-called independents – can have more say in choosing candidates for elected office.

Despite the best efforts of the state’s political parties and multiple lawsuits seeking to deny voters the chance to decide an issue about voting (how’s that for irony), the Arizona Supreme Court last week ruled that Proposition 121, the Open Elections/Open Government initiative, had enough qualifying signatures to be placed on the November ballot.

The measure would change the way Arizona conducts its primaries, dumping all candidates for office into the pool and letting voters sift through them. Those getting the most votes would advance to the primary at a number equal to double the number of open seats.

The law changes the primary process for all statewide and legislative offices, county and municipal races, including Tucson, and congressional races (school board elections remain the same with only a general election).

The intent of the law is to get more independents to vote in primaries. Under the current system, independents can only vote in primaries if they choose a single party’s ballot. That forces them to reattach themselves to political parties they have purposely detached themselves from, therefore, they don’t vote in primaries in very great numbers.

A third of state voters are independents. They are mostly moderates and so what’s left of the Republican and Democratic parties have become populated with zealous ideologues who relish banishing moderates from their parties almost as much as the enjoy beating the other party in elections.

The belief is that by letting more independents into the candidate-winnowing process, candidates will have to moderate their views rather than have hardcore conservative or uber liberal candidates rely on only like-minded party faithful turning out for the primary, setting up a general election with a far right candidate versus a far left candidate and leaving moderates not much of a choice.

Whether Prop. 121 will work as intended is unknown. This process is used in other states and primary elections still have low turnout, especially among independents.

But that’s not why voters should vote for it. They should vote for it because it strips the political parties of their power and puts it back in the hands of the voters. That’s why the parties fought so hard to keep it off the ballot.

The parties will still try to game the system if it passes, to be sure, but no matter how they try to manipulate who runs in the primaries, on election day all voters in a district rather than just a handful of party zealots will have an opportunity to have a say about who advances to the general.

And for that reason alone, you should vote yes on Prop. 121.

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

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Dysfunctional Congress result of dysfunctional districting

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