Arizona's Own Espresso Pundit

Has the media missed the local angle on this national story?

I've been reading about the ATF gun running scandal in the national blogs, but I didn't realize the scandal is centered at the Phoenix ATF office.  Has the local media pointed this out?

CBS News has learned that virtually all the top ATF managers in Phoenix involved in the controversial "Fast and Furious" operation have been reassigned and replaced. The shake-up comes in the wake of the gunwalking scandal in which ATF allegedly allowed more than 2500 weapons to hit the streets or "walk."

Special Agent in Charge (SAC) Bill Newell has been replaced by the former Detroit SAC Tom Brandon. Newell was reassigned to ATF headquarters in Washington D.C. shortly after CBS News interviewed an ATF agent-turned-whistleblower about the alleged gunwalking.

Two new Assistant Special Agents in Charge (ASACs) have also moved into the ATF Phoenix office: Joe Anarumo of Miami and Tom Atteberry of Kansas City. Sources say they replace the ASACs who oversaw Fast and Furious in Phoenix: George Gillett, who's being reassigned to Washington D.C. headquarters; and Jim Needles, who's been tasked to the Phoenix U.S. Attorney's office.

"This is unprecedented and welcome," says one insider, who describes the new Phoenix management as "the A-Team" and "respected."

Scorpion Fondu

As you know, Governor Brewer is writing a book called "Scorpions for Breakfast" in which she details her fights with "Special Interests, Liberal Media, and Cynical Politicos."  Frankly the media's treatment of Governor Brewer has been pretty shabby and if I were one of the people who had covered her for the last few years, I would be a bit nervous. 

Naturally there will be a chapter about the reporting errors surrounding SB 1070 and the usual media malfeasance, but I think the chapters that will be most devastating are the ones that detail how the media mocked the Governor for slight misstatements while they ignored the real stories that she was actually trying to explain.

The media indignation was highest when Brewer was trying to raise the level of awareness of violence associated with Mexican drugs and human smuggling and she mentioned "headless bodies in the desert."  The media ignored her warning and jumped on the fact that there hadn't actually been any headless bodies found on the Arizona side of the border.  And since then, there's only been one found in Chandler.

I thought about the issue again when I saw this story on AZCentral today.

The bodies of eight decapitated men were dumped Thursday along roads in Durango, a drug-gang-plagued northern Mexican state already grappling with the horror of discovering mass graves where 196 corpses have been unearthed so far.

Eight headless bodies this week, 11 last week and 196 bodies in a mass grave.   There have been nearly 40,000 people murdered in the Mexico since the Mexican Government starting cracking down on the cartels in 2006.  For a sense of perspective, remember that United States  lost 50,000 men in Viet Nam. 

Most American's don't understand that Mexico is spinning out of control and they don't understand the level of violence associated with illegal immigration and human smuggling.  That's because reporters would rather focus on whether Brewer technically misspoke instead of covering the underlying story. 

History, of course, will look back on this decade as the time in which Mexico either became a failed state or barely pulled itself out of the crisis.  Readers of that history will wonder why they never noticed the crisis while it was occurring.  Brewer's book will answer the question...while Mexico was on the road to becoming Somali, leaders like Governor Brewer were sounding the warning and reporters like Howie Fischer were mocking her diction and grammar.

Atlas Shrugs

There hasn't been an oil refinery built in the United States in at least 20 years.  NEPA, the Clean Air Act and the Endangered Species act work together to ensure that there will likely never be another refinery built in the United States.

The US sits on top of some of the richest oil fields in the world...most of which are off limits to drilling.  The Gulf oil industry has been devastated by the moratorium--it's not like companies can afford to keep rigs idle until the President decides it's ok to drill. 

Then, in a shocking development...gasoline prices are rising rapidly.  So naturally, Congress has hauled the executives of the largest oil companies into hearings and demanded that they justify their actions.

More Furloughs at the Republic

Gannett Blog is reporting that the Republic is implementing another furlough.  Naturally you won't read about this is the Republic itself--just like you won't read about the collapse of Lee Enterprises in the Star--transparency is for the other guys.

Here's the interesting part of John Zidich's memo.

This, quite frankly, was an option I had hoped to avoid but top line revenues remain short of where they were a year ago. While the longer term prospects for the Arizona economy appear to be improving the short term environment remains difficult. It's important to know that this is not an issue of declining Republic Media market share. There simply is not as much media dollars available in the market.

That's interesting because revenue is still lower than a year ago despite an improving economy and increasing market share.  That's exactly what I said would happen 4 years ago when I wrote a post called "The Web Will Not Save You."  Back then the conventional wisdom was that newspapers would maintain--or even increase--their market share by shifting their content to the web.  After all, the "paper" was just a medium for the real product which was information.  As long as the same number of people still got that information from AzCentral then the revenue should keep up...right? 

Wrong.  Advertisers don't value internet traffic as much as they value newspaper readers.  In fact, when I wrote that piece, each subscriber was worth about $1,000 in advertising revenue--since that time, the number has dropped to about $500.  More importantly, a loyal web reader is worth about $10 a year to an advertiser.  That means that if all of the Republic's readers switched to the web, the market share would remain the same, but the revenue would drop 90%. 

That's why it's so important that Zidich said he has maintained market share and the economy has improved, but his top line revenue is down.  He was confirming what I said would happen 4 years ago.  It's important to remember that this has caught the newspaper business by surprise.  When I made my prediction about web revenue not supporting the current business model, I was the voice in the wildnerness.  Folks like Goldman Sachs were still predicting that traffic and revenue would just migrate to the web. 

The important point about my 2007 post is that I pointed out there is no solution.  Newspapers are like an ice cube on the kitchen floor.  Sure, the ice cube still looks like an ice cube, but you know that in a couple hours it will just be a puddle.  The little ice cubes melt first, and the big ones take a while.  However, they all end up as puddles.  That's why the Gazette, Citizen and Tribune are gone and the Star and Republic are in trouble. The Star and Republic had more thermal mass.

Revenue is not going to stabilize, so Zidich is going to cut costs until in a desperate effort to stay ahead of declining revenue--while still maintaining the shell of a viable newspaper.  This transition time gives the current staff time to find other jobs and gets the public use to reading thin newspapers written by interns. 

One thing is for sure.  This isn't the last furlough memo that Zidich will write.

Thin Ice

Last Sunday on Square Off, I predicted that the city of Glendale would declare bankruptcy within a year.  I made that prediction after the city had paid $25 million to cover last year's Coyote's losses.  Soon afterwards, the city admitted that it would have to commit another $25 million to cover next year's anticipated loses.  How much is a team worth if it loses $25 million a year?  The answer is of course, "nothing", which is why Glendale is trying to pay folks to buy the team.

The bottom line, of course, is that it's illegal for the city to pay someone to buy the team, that's why the treat of a suit by the Goldwater Institute is so effective.  The deal only works if no one challenges it. 

So here's how I think it plays out.  The Council pledges another $25 million.  The the sale falls through because it's illegal and Goldwater isn't going to back down.   Then the team leaves and Glendale defaults on the stadium bonds. 

Hopefully, the rest of the nation's mayors are watching Mayor Scruggs and the Council dig themselves deeper and deeper.  And one would hope that some of those Mayors are learning a valuable lesson about building statiums as and economic development tool. 

But it's not just the current mayors.  The name Skruggs will be in every public policy textbook written in the next 50 years...and the case history won't end well. 

 

 

More Savings from SB 1070

The media try to portray SB 1070 as financial hardship to the state.  The one statistic that you will hear over and over is that the state lost $140 million dollars of convention business because of the legislation.  Never mind that the author of that study describes that amount as insignificant compared to the size of Arizona's economy and never mind that many of those cancellations were replaced by other bookings.  Those facts don't fit the narrative that SB 1070 was some sort of financial catastrophe.

The articles also ignore the cost savings that result from the departure of perhaps 100,000 illegal immigrants... AHCCCS births have collapsed and school enrollment in predominantely Hispanic districts has plummeted.

The reduced enrollment provides a huge cost savings to the state budget.  Indeed, in the Roosevelt School District, the cost of educating a child who is not English proficient can reach $10,000 annually.  That's why this announcement from the Roosevelt School district--also pictured above--is so important to the SB 1070 debate.

Throw the Book at 'em Jan

Hmm, looks like Governor Brewer has a book coming out, and by the sound of the title, I don't think it's going to be a feel-good story about how fun it is to work with all these great people.

Scorpions for Breakfast
My Fight Against Special Interests, Liberal Media, and Cynical Politicos to Secure America's Border

My guess is that there will be an entire chapter on how badly the media screwed up the initial coverage of SB 1070.  That chapter will start with the words "Linda Valdez."   You will recall that it was Valdez who wrote the editorial that got the facts on SB 1070 completely wrong, then EJ Dionne of the Post picked up the Valdez story and said how awful the bill was...and then President Obama started slamming the bill.

I'm looking forward to getting my copy.

(Hat Tip to Steve Goldstein from KJZZ who was the first  Reporter to figure out the story. )

Grecian Formula...or When Irish eyes are Frowning.

Powerline Blog is holding a contest---$100,000 to the person who can best dramatize this crisis:

Our nation faces an unprecedented financial crisis. Every knowledgeable citizen understands that the fiscal path we are on is unsustainable. Indefinite continuation of the status quo is not an option. There are only two possibilities: reform and collapse.

I'm already on record predicting the latter option.

Indeed, Greece, Ireland and Portugal are about to collapse, so it's not like the US will be first.  I don't know exactly where US fiscal policy became fatally flawed.  I guess it was the point at which the population figured out that they could vote in politicians who would print money for them. 

Fixing the current fiscal crisis is like removing your own appendix.  Sure, you will die if you don't get it done, but you really can't handle the short term pain that it would take to remove your own appendix, so the "solution" is that you die.

I think the only thing that could save the US economy is a balanced budget amendment.  Of course, Arizona has a balanced budget amendment and a $300,000 debt cap...and the state is about $10 billion in debt, so I don't think the federal equivalent is going to solve the problem.

So I'm betting on collapse.  When I made that prediction, gold was trading for $800 an ounce...today it's over $1,500--so it appears that a lot of other people are betting on collapse as well.

Vindication

On Square Off, Brahm Resnik asked what Bin Laden's death would mean for the 2012 election.  I pointed out that it will obviously help Obama get re-elected because he has adopted and expanded the Bush policies that he once decried.  Here's a link to the show in case you missed it.

I've written several posts about President Obama decrying the Bush policies in the strongest terms while Obama's allies on the left and in the media condemned President Bush for "shredding the Constitution."  Only to have President Obama adopt and expand those policies and then take credit for their ultimate success--while the left and the media applaud Obama for being "gutsy".

I"m not the only one who has noticed and this article by Victor Davis Hanson provides a great wrap up.

In sum, Senator Obama opposed tribunals, renditions, Guantanamo, preventive detention, Predator-drone attacks, the Iraq War, wiretaps, and intercepts — before President Obama either continued or expanded nearly all of them, in addition to embracing targeted assassinations, new body scanning and patdowns at airports, and a third preemptive war against an oil-exporting Arab Muslim nation — this one including NATO efforts to kill the Qaddafi family. The only thing more surreal than Barack Obama’s radical transformation is the sudden approval of it by the once hysterical Left. In Animal Farm and 1984 fashion, the world we knew in 2006 has simply been airbrushed away.

This is a great lesson.  The outrage from the left is simply fake.  It's all for show.  During that part of the Square Off segment, E.J. Montini never said a word.  What about some Obama bashing?  Why not mention the warrentless wiretaps, renditions and drone attacks?

It's not like this is the first round of leftist faux rage. I just finished reading Clarence Thomas's autobiography and it's interesting to see the outrage from the left over allegations that Thomas told dirty jokes at work--allegations that the full weight of the evidence show to be untrue.  But even if the allegations were true, where were those outraged "advocates" when we found out that Bill Clinton was playing hide the cigar with Monica Lewinsky?   

I'm proud President Obama for changing his mind and not only adopting but expanding the Bush policies.  I think he has made the nation safer and I applaud his efforts.  I only wish that the left would either condemn Obama like they did Bush, or praise Bush like they are praising Obama. 

Sunday Square Off

I'll be on Square Off this Sunday morning at 8:00 right after meeting the press.  The Governor will be the guest for the newsmaker interview and then I'm on with Ed Montini and Rep. Rueben Gallego.  It was a good show...Bin Laden, Arpaio and Medical Marijuana.  Rep Gallego joked in the green room that the topics were chosen because all three are things that get smoked.  I thought that was pretty clever.

Here's a shot of me and the Governor in the Republic's lobby.