Did the Dimmer Twins (accidentally) hit pay dirt with Wilcox?
Reading the two Republic stories on the matter today—here and here—one feels that the charges filed against Maricopa County Supervisor Mary Anne Wilcox aren’t entirely spurious.
That isn’t often the feeling one gets when reading about most of Joe Arpaio and Andrew Thomas’s brutal use of their police powers.
Wilcox hasn’t as yet given her side of the story, and there are I’m sure all sorts of ways the acts could be benign. But here’s a precis from the paper:
Elected county officials must file the financial-disclosure forms with the clerk’s office by Jan. 31 each year, said Fran McCarroll, clerk of the board. The forms are required by law to help avoid a conflict of interest or the appearance of one.
A Republic review showed that Wilcox did not disclose the loans from Chicanos Por La Causa. A spokeswoman with the non-profit said Wilcox and her husband, Earl, received a $7,500 loan in November 2000, a $50,000 loan in July 2005 and $120,000 in October 2008.
According to Thomas—and the paper—she didn’t file conflict-of-interest disclosures either.
9:58 PM
Politico profiles the New John McCain
It’s about how he’s evolved from being a soi-disant straight-shooter to leading the charge against Barack Obama on both domestic and foreign-policy fronts:
For years, McCain relished being an outsider and a maverick, a style that often led to battles with his own party’s leadership. Today, for reasons that friends and McCain observers say could range from unresolved anger to concern for his right flank as he seeks re-election to genuine dismay about Obama’s agenda, he is helping lead a fiery crusade of GOP loyalists against Democratic priorities—and irked some of his Democratic colleagues in the process.
Now, of the reason’s cited, “concern for his right flank” is the telling one. McCain’s sanctimony has always been a device to further his ambition; and his much bruited-about acts of supposedly nonpartisanship concealed his dreary right-wing positions on many issues.
This New John McCain is just the most recent example of how those pretenses evaporate when it’s not politically convenient for him; his positions now—not supporting Sonia Sotomayor, attacking the AARP when it tries to help with health-case reform, sniping at the president’s decision-making process about what do to with the unholy mess the Republicans left him with in Afghanistan—are just more indications of his grimy and unattractive partisanship and self-interest.
For an in-depth and pretty unforgettable look at how this move isn’t much out of keeping with the real John McCain, see Tim Dickinson’s brutal look back at his personal history in Rolling Stone. The piece is funny, too:
In its broad strokes, McCain’s life story is oddly similar to that of the current occupant of the White House. John Sidney McCain III and George Walker Bush both represent the third generation of American dynasties. Both were born into positions of privilege against which they rebelled into mediocrity. Both developed an uncanny social intelligence that allowed them to skate by with a minimum of mental exertion. Both struggled with booze and loutish behavior. At each step, with the aid of their fathers’ powerful friends, both failed upward. And both shed their skins as Episcopalian members of the Washington elite to build political careers as self-styled, ranch-inhabiting Westerners who pray to Jesus in their wives’ evangelical churches.
In one vital respect, however, the comparison is deeply unfair to the current president: George W. Bush was a much better pilot.
2:19 PM
The Adam Stoddard case gets crazier
As someone who recently returned to Arizona after some years in those parts of the country that supposedly looks down their noses at rubes in the desert, I can say with some authority Arizona’s reputation is not as bad as it might be.
Joe Arpaio isn’t doing the state any favors, of course, and, yes, the Daily Show has taken a couple of shots at various goings-on.
But it’s not like most folks in DC or the Bay Area can, off the top of their head, recite Arizona’s place in the hierarchy of most markers of social advancement. (For the record, they are generally just a few hairs above those in the Deep South.)
However, if Andrew Thomas and Joe Arpaio keep it up, the rest of the country is going to take a closer look at how backwards and comical the state’s political system has become.
Back to the Adam Stoddard affair. After a couple of days of sickouts by sheriff’s deputies assigned to the courts, Arpaio is now apparently refusing to supply inmates to the judge’s courtroom. Heat City has the story:
The Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office has apparently stopped delivering inmates to the courtroom where a one of its detention officers was caught in an uproar that landed him in jail.
In a statement released late today, Superior Court Judge Lisa Flores said the sheriff’s office has flat-out stopped bringing inmates to her courtroom for their scheduled appearances.
The cutoff comes in the context of …
Since [Stoddard’s] jailing, Maricopa County’s justice system – one of the largest in the nation – has been thrown into a state of chaos, plagued by protests and a likely sickout by Stoddard’s coworkers, as well as bomb threats from a still-unknown source.
Stoddard’s boss, Sheriff Joe Arpaio, has described the detention officer as a “political prisoner” in his own jail. Arpaio’s supporters call Stoddard a victim of the ongoing disputes between the sheriff and other county leaders, including some judges.
Meanwhile, Stephen Lemons notes that the Goldwater Institute, in the form of director Clint Bolick, is slamming Arpaio’s handling of the case:
“Sworn law-enforcement officers take an oath to uphold the law. By effectively shutting down the very justice system they are employed to protect, the sheriff’s officers displayed contempt toward the rule of law. Taxpayers should hold them accountable for abrogating their essential duties.”
7:00 AM
Hate graffiti found at Anthem high school
From the Republic:
When Boulder Creek High School staff went to work last week, they found the sides of the school buildings, sidewalks and windows covered with graffiti. The high school is at 40404 N. Gavilan Peak Parkway in Anthem.
The campus property had been vandalized with hate speech, terms and symbols, said Lauren Sheahan, Boulder Creek High School principal. The principal declined to elaborate on the hate messages. “Students were sent to different parts of the campus because we didn’t want them to walk past the messages,” Sheahan said.
It’s bogus for the principal not to say what sort of hate messages there were, and worse for the paper not to have found out on its own. If you’re black, Latino, gay or whatever and living in Anthem, you’d like to know whether you’re being targeted or not.
7:00 AM
The Arpaio Follies begin to get some national reviews
Both the LA Times and Talking Points memo have major pieces up on Joe Arpaio and Andrew Thomas, the Dimmer Twins.
The Times story concentrates on the continuing range war between arpaio and his political enemies, with a special focus on just trying to lay out the scope of it all. The thing is 1200 words long and still manages to glide over a lot of Arpaio’s nuttiness.
You don’t hear much about the the tag team legal brutality he engages in with Andrew Thomas, and the the story doesn’t even mention the late-night arrests of the owners of the Phoenix New Times.
The result is long passages like this:
has escalated his tactics in recent months, not only defying the federal government but launching repeated investigations of those who criticize him. He recently filed a racketeering lawsuit against the entire Maricopa County power structure. On Thursday night, the Arizona Court of Appeals issued an emergency order forbidding the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office from searching the home or chambers of a Superior Court judge who was named in the racketeering case.Last year, when Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon called for a federal investigation of Arpaio’s immigration enforcement, the Sheriff’s Office demanded to see Gordon’s e-mails, phone logs and appointment calendars.
When the police chief in one suburb complained about the sweeps, Arpaio’s deputies raided that town’s City Hall.
My biggest criticism of the LAT piece is its over-reliance on he-said/she said balance.
Sure: We hear lines like, “It’s just extraordinary, the kind of thing that takes place in Third World dictatorships”—but they come not from a neutral observer but from Don Stapley’s lawyer, which minimizes the force of it in readers’ minds.
Further, the story contains no hint of what will be Arpaio’s ultimate role, which will be target of a federal investigation. When the criminal sheriff is ultimately removed from office, stories like this will seem pretty timid.
Meanwhile, Talking Points Memo has a good overview of the current shenanigans created by the Dimmer twins in a new round of intimidation tactics against local judges. The writer, is less complacent about federal intervention:
The Justice Department could step in and end Arpaio and Thomas’s reign of terror, which threatens the integrity of the entire judicial and law enforcement systems for the nations’ fourth-most populous county. But DOJ appears to be working at a leisurely pace: its probe has been underway for over a year, and there’s no sign that it’s having any effect in checking Arpaio’s actions.
And finally, speaking of New Times, Michael Lacey, the chain’s top editor and one of the owners who was arrested in 2007, has an expansive cover story this week called The Pink Negro.
The title is a reference—one I find pretty indigestible—to Norman Mailer’s essay “The White Negro.” (The idea is that Obama is a buttoned-up preppy black.)
Leaving that aside, Lacey’s thesis is that the Obama administration is taking too long is investigating:
Yes, [Obama’s] federal investigators are here examining the assaults against human rights perpetrated by Sheriff Joe Arpaio and County Attorney Andrew Thomas.
But, after 20 months, we must ask: Are they unearthing evidence or burying it?
There is, as yet, no remedy, no redress, no recourse.
President Obama, unwittingly, put the glacial timeline of his Arpaio/Thomas investigation into perspective during his speech to America last week. He said his troop surge will see our soldiers depart Afghanistan after 19 more months of combat. In other words, the war with al-Qaeda and the Taliban will end triumphantly in less time than the feds have spent — without result — probing Arpaio and Thomas.
Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon formally summoned a Justice Department task force in April 2008. As we usher in 2010, federal officials have yet to contact the very first political victim of the sheriff and the county attorney. Critical documents remain unexamined.
In the source of making its case the extravagantly long piece is an effective overview of the current state of Arpaio’s many, many criminal enterprises.
7:00 AM