Arizona's Own Espresso Pundit

Verify This

Pop quiz for you aspiring journalists.  Here's the scenario...you don't like the State's Employer Sanctions law and the cornerstone of that law is its reliance on the "E Verify" system.  If you can create doubt about E Verify, you can undercut the entire system.

Then you get a chance to report on this scenario: 

100 people apply through E Verify. 

The system correctly determines that 93 of them are legal. 

The system also correctly determines that a little over 3 of them are illegal. 

The system fails to spot that a little over 3 of them who are illegal and stole the identities of real people who are legal. 

How would you report that?

How about this?  "Fifty-four percent of the illegal workers whose names were run through the program nationwide were wrongly found to be authorized to work,"

Isn't that incredible?  The system is 97% accurate.  It verified all the legal people and it verified all the illegal people who tried to get through by using fake name or using their real names.  The only people it missed were those who stole a real ID and ran it though--that's because the system simply checks to see if the ID is legal. 

However, the Republic story implies that E Verify has a 50% error rate.  The reporter then compounds the damage by going to a bunch of policy makers and asking them to comment on the implications of having such inaccurate system. 

Why not simply say that the system has an accuracy rate that exceeds 97%, but has a glitch if people steel a real ID?  That wouldn't be a sexy story and it wouldn't undercut the program...that's why the reporter didn't do it.

Two more points that make the reporter's agenda journalism more flagrant. The first is that the glitch is easy to fix.  Someone one either end of the system--either the employer, or the E Verify technician simply needs to compare the pictures on the ID.  After all, the E Verify location has the picture of the real person and the employer has the picture of the impostor on the fake ID.  Comparing them is easy and would eliminate the problem.  E Verify plans to implement this step.

The second fact that Daniel Gonzales failed to discuss is the number of illegal aliens who didn't even bother to apply for jobs because they knew that e verify would catch them.  After all, the system flagged EVERY illegal worker who did not steal a real person's ID.  ID Theft is a serious crime so there must be a lot of people who simply didn't bother to apply.  But again, that doesn't fit the narrative.

Agenda Journalism folks...and they wonder why people don't trust them...

Baseball Been Berry Berry Good to Me?

Yesterday I pointed out that government sponsored economic development plans have been a disaster--City North is vacant, the Civic Center can't meet its debt payments and the TSA is struggling to pay its bills.

While some "economic development" projects are simply ridiculous.  Others are actually pretty seductive.  The Legislature is currently debating  whether or not to raise taxes in order to keep the Cubs in Mesa. 

None of this is new.    For years, stadium deals have been sold as an economic panacea.  It's interesting to take a look back at how those deals have gone.

From New Jersey to Ohio to Arizona, the stadiums were sold as a key to redevelopment and as the only way to retain sports franchises. But the deals that were used to persuade taxpayers to finance their construction have in many cases backfired, the result of overly optimistic revenue assumptions and the recession.

The Wheels are Coming Off.

Earlier this year I mentioned that the things don't look so good for County Attorney Andy Thomas.  He will have to resign it he decides to run for Attorney General and his sucessor will have plenty of time to uncover and expose improprieties prior to the August 24th election. 

We probably aren't going to have to wait that long, because it's becoming clear that the wheels are coming off the Thomas bus as we watch.

In his ruling, Leonardo said:

* that Thomas was retaliating against members of the board of supervisors for perceived actions against his office, including filing a racketeering lawsuit against them in federal court.

* that Thomas was attempting to gain political advantage by prosecuting those who oppose him politically, including Wilcox.

* that Thomas acted in concert with Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who also misused his power in targeting members of the board.

Here's an Idea: Let's Tax GOVERNMENT and give the money to BUSINESS.

I was sitting in the House Government Committee as HB 2244 was voted down.  That's the bill that reforms public notices by allowing Cities and Counties to publish their budgets on their website instead of printing them in general circulation newspapers. 

What a no-brainer.  The cities alone spend $4 million a year to print hard copies of their budgets--during years in which they are closing libraries and laying off police and firemen.

Republicans. Antenori, Driggs and Nichols took the side of the newspapers.  Golly, I wonder what their constituents would prefer--more cops, or printed notices?

If you wanted to look up the budget for your city, would you go to the library and find a newspaper and go through the fine type, or would you use Google and search for it?

I can't change the Laws of Economics Captain...

Why does the right like Sarah Palin?  That's the question I get most.  The answer is that she knows she's not smart enough to fix every problem.  Let's face it, people who run government are really really smart.  Obama's smart; Cheney is smart.  As much as you hate to admit it, George W. Bush is really smart.  (Al Gore, not so much.)    And the minions around them who actually run Government?  VERY smart.  Janet Napolitano, Robert McNamara, Karl Rove...very smart people indeed.  Of course, none of them are as smart as Jimmy Carter.

The problem with smart people is that Government seduces them.  After all, if you are smart and have a lot of power, you can use your power to make life better for people. 

Unfortunately, beyond a certain basic level, that doesn't work.  The world is simply too complex, and no matter how hard you try, how smart you are and how much power you exert, you can only change the laws of economics for so long.  Then everything falls apart.

So if you think that poor people should buy homes but they can't afford them, then maybe you can create the Community Reinvestment Act...and if banks still won't lend you can create Freddie and Fannie to back up all those loans. 

Here's an article in today's Wall St. Journal about farm programs in India that, in addition to costing billions of dollars, have actually REDUCED crop yields. 

Of course, Government doesn't have a monopoly on bad ideas. Government can simply do them on such a large scale that it really screws up people's lives.  

Oh, and what happens to bad ideas in the market place?  They go away. That's why you don't drive an Edsel or a Pinto.

Actualy, in the market place, even good ideas run their course and go away...that's why you don't go to the drive in movies, rent from Hollywood Video, or have a newspaper on your drive way.  Ok, I guess there's still one drive in theater in Tempe, and I think there's a Hollywood Video in Avondale and I'm sure someone in Sun City get his news exclusively from the Republic. 

Government programs never go away...that's why we still have farm subsidies and Head Start.  Those programs don't work, but at least they are expensive.

You may think that smart people using government to really screw things up is a Democratic phenomenon--and you can be excused for thinking that.  After all, Lyndon Johnson wanted Guns and Butter and botched them both.  The war on poverty did as much damage as the war in Vietnam.  But really smart Republicans botch things too;  it was Richard Nixon who established wage and price controls and George W. Bush who imposed steel tariffs. 

Both parties botch things up in the name of "economic development."  When I served in the Legislature, the hot economic development idea was call centers--seriously. Then it was stadiums.  Golly, Detroit has three major sports teams and seems to have invested  a lot of time, money and intellect into improving the local economy.  I wonder how that's going. 

Meanwhile, back in Arizona the new Civic Center can't make its debt payments; The Tourism Sports Authority is hanging on my its finger nails; Glendale is headed towards bankruptcy; TGEN brings in some grant money, but no real jobs and now legislators are talking about "targeted" tax breaks and something called the "Discovery Triangle."  Whatever. 

Of course, in a democracy, really smart people who want to make the world a better place can't do much more than wreck the economy.  Combine brains, utopian vision and REAL power and you can manage to wreck the economy and exterminate 100 million people. 

So why does the right like Palin?  Palin isn't as smart as Obama, Cheney, Carter or either Bush.  She's like Reagan but better looking.  That means she's unlikely to nationalize health care, fix wages and prices, or impose tariffs on the steel industry.  The right is looking for someone who knows she's not smart enough to change the laws of economics.  Maybe that's Palin, maybe it's not. 

It was William F. Buckley who famosly remarked that he would rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people in the Boston phone directory than to the faculty of Harvard University.  I couldn't agree more. 

Palin is a corollary to the Buckley rule--better to have a leader with good instincts who doesn't think she can fix all your problems than a guy with an IQ of 150 surrounded by Ph.Ds who will mess up your life--and if she knows how to shoot a moose, all the better.  

The second most common question that I get about Palin, is "Why does the left hate her so much?"  I'll let the other bloggers answer that one.

Hmm, I'm detecting a patern...

Last August appeared on Sunday Square off with Kyrsten Sinema and EJ Montini and warned that massive world wide debt was going to lead to global financial collapse.  Since then things have gotten much worse.  Greece is near collapse and the Chinese--as predicted--are starting to look skeptically at US Treasury Bills. 

California, Illinois and New York are having a difficult time meeting their debt burdens with Illinois near default and talk of California being declared a failed state.

California, Illinois and New York?  That got me thinking...aren't those the bluest of the blue states?  Is there a pattern here?  I never  spent the time it would take to go state by state and determine the debt burden and then compare it to voting patterns.

However, Forbes just came out with a chart depicting the states that have the biggest "Debt Bombs"...and it's easy to find a map of the blue states, so I decided to put them together and indeed, a pattern seems to develop.

Check this out.  Both charts have four categories.  On the left is how the states voted in the last four Presidential elections--pure blue is all four Democratic, pure red is all four Republican, purple is 3 of four Democratic and pink is 3 of four Republican.

The second chart is how much excessive debt the state has piled up.  It's certainly not an exact match, but the coincidence is remarkable. 

Hog Calling Contest

Jim Nintzel over at Tucson Weekly has uncovered  a starling bit of hypocrisy.  It turns out that Congressional  District 8 "Republican" candidate Jesse Kelly has been stumping against federal pork--while he and his father have been bidding on projects funded by federal stimulus money.  Ouch.

When he's on the stump, Republican congressional candidate Jesse Kelly doesn't mince words about federal stimulus spending and earmarks.

"It must stop now," says Kelly, who promises to not seek any federal earmarks if he defeats Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in November. "This is bribery with taxpayer money, and it's a disgrace."

Kelly dismisses any notion that federal spending helps the economy.

"Government is not a job-creator," Kelly said last week at a debate with his fellow Republican candidates, including state Sen. Jonathan Paton and political newcomers Brian Miller and Andy Goss. "It is a job-crusher."

But for Don Kelly Construction, the firm where Kelly manages pipeline projects, government funding would appear to create quite a few jobs.

Kelly himself estimates that close to 90 percent of the firm's work comes from government contracts worth tens of millions of dollars. And around the country, the firm—which is owned by Kelly's father, Don Kelly—frequently bids on public-works projects funded by both stimulus dollars and federal earmarks.

So Kelly gets my Hog Caller of the Week Award for his ability to bring home the bacon.

I hope that Jesse doesn't have to face this woman--she really knows how to bring in the pork.

The State of the City

I've been covering the Scottsdale Economic Growth Association's efforts to decrease the tension among the business and political community in Scottsdale, and I mentioned last week that SEGA was hosting Mayor Lane's "State of the City" address. 

It looks like SEGA has managed to get quite a few sponsors and it is hosting a free reception at 5:00 PM tomorrow (Thursday) at the Scottsdale Center for the Arts.  Here's a copy of the brochure.  The event is free and open to the public.  You should stop by.

UPDATE:  I just noticed that the Republic covered the event as well. 

A newly formed Scottsdale civic group wants to advance economic development in the city, but its director insists it is not seeking to diminish the role of the Scottsdale Area Chamber of Commerce.

The Scottsdale Economic Growth Association, which launched in January, is designed to work on policy and issues that will advance economic development and business growth in the city, said Ed Phillips, the group's director.

Silent Killer

In the post script to my last post on Climate Change, I answered the question that I receive most--when will they finally admit that they were wrong?  The answer is of course "never" and I used the example of the population bomb and other failed disaster predictions. 

I also used that post as an opportunity to mention once again that these are not merely ideas, Rachel Carson's dire predictions in Silent Spring let directly to the death of 30 million people.  I'm not the only one to see the connection.  Hot Air has an interesting post that provides more research and more background--they get a number of 60 million dead.  These are real people folks.  Will the modern malthusians ever admit they were wrong on Climate Change, the Global Ice Age or the Population Bomb?  No.  But I'm hoping that they will at least take a sober moment and consider that these predictions and the ultimate government reactions are not free.  It turns out that my estimate was low.

Who is the worst killer in the long, ugly history of war and extermination? Hitler? Stalin? Pol Pot? Not even close. A single book called Silent Spring killed far more people than all those fiends put together.

Published in 1962, Silent Spring used manipulated data and wildly exaggerated claims (sound familiar?) to push for a worldwide ban on the pesticide known as DDT – which is, to this day, the most effective weapon against malarial mosquitoes. The Environmental Protection Agency held extensive hearings after the uproar produced by this book… and these hearings concluded that DDT should not be banned. A few months after the hearings ended, EPA administrator William Ruckleshaus over-ruled his own agency and banned DDT anyway, in what he later admitted was a “political” decision. Threats to withhold American foreign aid swiftly spread the ban across the world.

The resulting explosion of mosquito-borne malaria in Africa has claimed over sixty million lives. This was not a gradual process – a surge of infection and death happened almost immediately. The use of DDT reduces the spread of mosquito-borne malaria by fifty to eighty percent, so its discontinuation quickly produced an explosion of crippling and fatal illness. The same environmental movement which has been falsifying data, suppressing dissent, and reading tea leaves to support the global-warming fraud has studiously ignored this blood-drenched “hockey stick” for decades.

Classic Example of Agenda Journalism

Check out this lede in today's Republic.

The same week that Phoenix leaders imposed a 2 percent food tax to prevent layoffs and painful cuts to city services, City Council members agreed to spend $6 million to buy a vacant motel so Arizona State University can expand its downtown campus.

These two events have nothing to do with each other.  The money comes from different funds and the reporter doesn't even try to establish a link.  It's the reader who establishes a link based on the juxtaposition.  The reader is invited to conclude that the two events are somehow connected and naturally concludes that buying an abandoned hotel while raising taxes on food is a bad idea.

At the end of the article---1,000 words later on A13--the reporter covers her bases by informing the reader that indeed, the property purchase has no connection to the food tax. 

To save money, the city has delayed construction projects that would incur extra staffing costs, but property purchases don't lead to higher operating costs, said city spokeswoman Barbara Frazier.

Of course, by then it's too late. 

Agenda journalism through misdirection--one of those little tricks that they don't teach you in J school.