PHXations—Monday, June 21, 2010
Looks like Republican Attorney General candidate Tom Horne has a short memory:
In a series of annual reports for his law firm, Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne wrongly denied having a bankruptcy in his past.
Reports filed with the Arizona Corporation Commission from 1997 to 2000 for Horne’s law firm show that when asked if any partner in the firm had ever been a partner in a business that went bankrupt, Horne checked “no” and signed the form.
In fact, Horne was the president of T.C. Horne & Co., an investment firm that went bankrupt in 1970 and led to him receiving a lifetime trading ban from the Securities and Exchange Commission.
[…]
Horne, who is seeking the Republican nomination for attorney general, said he regretted not disclosing the bankruptcy. He said he likely made the error because the bankruptcy happened long ago.
“I didn’t think about it because it was 40 years ago,” he said.
More here
Today, Democrat Gubernatorial candiate confirmed one of the the worst kept secrets in Arizona political circles: campaign manager Rodd McLeod is leaving.
McLeod, who joined Goddard’s campaign in January, said he expected to leave when his firm’s contract with the campaign ended on June 30. He said the move was not prompted by any disagreements with Goddard or the campaign.
“It’s been a great honor to work with the attorney general and be part of this campaign,” McLeod said. “I think we’re positioned to do very well in November, particularly when you look at the rough primary on the other side and the infrastructure we have been able to build.”
[…]
“As the campaign’s contract with MSHC (Partners Inc., McLeod’s firm,) ends and McLeod returns to fulfill commitments to other clients, he leaves a strong infrastructure for the next stage of the campaign,” campaign spokeswoman Janey Pearl said in a press release. “McLeod continues to manage during the transition. Goddard for Governor will have other announcements in the coming weeks.”
The campaign announced the addition of political director Aaron Marquez and Southern Arizona director Catherine Nichols. The campaign also hired consulting firm Strother Strategies for media consulting and the firm WebStrong Group for new media and social networking.
Via Arizona Capitol Times.
The Republic fronts a story discussing the efficacy of Joe Arpaio’s crime sweeps.
It notes that besides the illegal immigrants it catches few actual criminals:
[T]here is no clear data demonstrating the crime-fighting effectiveness of such policies. While it succeeds in locating illegal immigrants, its effectiveness in combating major crimes is questionable, and there are concerns that such sweeps draw resources away from activities that do combat major crimes.
Advocates of the sweeps say their value is largely in discouraging illegal immigrants from remaining in the community.
However, critics suggest they simply scare legal and illegal immigrants alike and drive a wedge between members of the community and law enforcement.
Catching up on an odd bit of election news from late last week:
A longtime Phoenix lawmaker running for justice of the peace has been kicked off the ballot.
A Maricopa County Superior Court judge on Thursday ruled that Democratic Sen. Ken Cheuvront collected nominating signatures on the wrong form.
Cheuvront used forms for a nonpartisan race, but justice of the peace is a partisan office.
Cheuvront, a term-limited state senator, is also the proprietor of Cheuvront restaurant on Central.
2:08 PM
More on the "Do illegal immigrants cause crime?" debate
The occasionally off-balance Espresso Pundit links to Tom Maguire’s conservative but rigorous Just One Minute blog, debating the premise of the NYT’s Sunday piece looking at Arizona crime figures.
(While the anti-immigrant forces harp on the supposed crimes committed by immigrants, the facts show that crime in the state has been trending broadly down for a decade.)
Maguire makes an interesting point:
That while crime is down greatly in cities like Phoenix, a careful parsing of FBI figures shows that crime is up in non-city and rural areas:
Now, note that the number of crimes is down even in smaller cities, though declining population forces the crime rate higher.
The steep rise in crime in rural areas, though, is interesting. The rate rise is nearly 50 percent. Is that due to alleged crimes committed by illegal immigrants?
Neither Greg Patterson nor Maguire make that case.
As the debate continues, these, it seem to me, are the central questions:
1) First, obviously, are the crimes committed by illegal immigrants … or just good old-fashioned god-fearing, gun-toting, wife-beating thoroughly Caucasian and all-American Arizona stock?
2) Similarly, what kind of crimes are they—car thefts, armed robbery, the sort of things that might be associated with the lurid idea of a predatory immigrant moving north?
3) Rural Arizona is a big place. Are the crimes happening in border towns or up north?
4) What number of crimes are we talking about, anyway? Again, the rate of increase is high.
In sheer numbers, though, the increase totals a bit more than 100 new crimes committed in an area the size of … well, the size of Arizona.
Ninety-nine percent of the state is rural—and the rural population totals about 4 percent of the state’s.
And 100 crimes equals … one third of one percent of the number committed in Phoenix and Tucson.
7:25 AM
Attorney General Debates
Last week, the Republican candidates for Governor squared off; this week it is the prospective Attorney Generals:
The two Republican candidates for Arizona attorney general will face off Tuesday in a debate held by the Arizona Citizens Clean Elections Commission.
State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne and former Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas are vying for the Republican nomination in the Aug. 24 primary election.
The Clean Elections Commission will hold a debate Wednesday with the Democrats running for attorney general.
Democrats David Lujan, Vince Rabago and Felicia Rotellini are running for their party’s nomination.
Details:
Republican Candidates for Attorney General
Tuesday, June 22, 2010, 7:00 PM – 7:30 PM
Televised on KAET Horizon Channel 8
Democrat Candidates for Attorney General
Wednesday June 23, 2010, 7:00 PM – 7:30 PM
Televised on KAET Horizon Channel 8
9:46 AM
SB 1070 is threatening Democratic electoral fortunes
Politico is reporting that the Arizona’s anti-illegal immigration bill is putting the seats of three of Arizona’s four congressional Democrats in peril. As a result they are keeping uncharacteristically quiet about the controversial legislation:
Arizona’s controversial new immigration law is imperiling a trio of centrist Arizona Democrats who are caught in powerful crosscurrents in their Republican-leaning House districts.
[…]
For the three Democrats — Reps. Harry Mitchell, Ann Kirkpatrick and Gabrielle Giffords — the new law’s polarizing force is complicating their reelection campaigns in an already volatile year. And it’s leading them to pursue a simple strategy: avoid speaking at all about the specifics of SB 1070.
Mitchell simply said that the law is “good” if it compels Congress to tackle comprehensive immigration reform. Kirkpatrick said she opposes it, calling immigration a federal, rather than a state, issue.
And Giffords, when asked in several TV and radio interviews about her position, said she also opposes the law but only because it “does absolutely nothing” to secure the border
Read more here.
2:05 PM
J.D.: Say it isn't so!
From a killer Dan Nowicki post this morning:
Republican Senate challenger J.D. Hayworth appeared in a 2007 television infomercial in which he helped convince viewers that they could rake in big bucks by attending seminars that would teach them how to apply for federal grants that they wouldn’t have to pay back.
National Grants Conferences, the Florida-based company that hosted the classes and produced the informercial, has faced criticism from multiple state attorneys general and Better Business Bureaus.
Hayworth, a former Arizona congressman who is running against incumbent Sen. John McCain, R-
Ariz., in the Aug. 24 GOP primary, made the infomercial after losing his U.S. House seat in the 2006 election. References to his TV appearance on behalf of National Grants Conferences appear in his Wikipedia entry, on the Internet Movie Database and other places on the Web. But the footage was unavailable. Highlights of Hayworth’s appearance are now posted on YouTube.com at this link.
The infomercial promotes seminars that ostensibly instruct attendees how to get the “free money grants.” Tucson TV station KVOA did an investigation of National Grants Conferences that you can watch here. The TV station’s investigative team found that the workshops cost from $999 to $1,200 and federal government grants really aren’t even available to individuals.
Politico story on the infomercial here.
2:01 PM
Is the AZ Legislature shortchanging education?
Howard Fischer of Capitol Media Services is reporting that school boards across the state are waiting for the state Supreme Court to decide whether the legislature is obeying a voter approved mandate:
Attorneys for school boards throughout the state and some individual districts contend lawmakers are ignoring what voters wanted when they approved a permanent six-tenths of a cent hike in state sales taxes in 2000. That specifically includes increasing the basic state aid paid to school by the amount of inflation.
But lawmakers, relying on a much narrower interpretation of that law, are increasingly only the transportation component of that aid.
Hanging in the balance is around $55 million. And the question of who wins the lawsuit will come down to what the court say the word “or” means.
The justices will decide in September whether to even consider the issue.
Read the whole article here.
5:45 PM
The Economist Asks: How Dangerous is Arizona?
Their answer? Not as bad as the alarmists would have you believe.
The Economist’s Democracy in America blog has picked up on the New York Times article mentioned on Phxated.com over the weekend:
So the New York Times is flagging a disconnect in Arizona, where people have become more agitated about border security, even though statistics suggest that crime is down across the state:
[T]he rate of violent crime at the border, and indeed across Arizona, has been declining, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, as has illegal immigration, according to the Border Patrol. While thousands have been killed in Mexico’s drug wars, raising anxiety that the violence will spread to the United States, F.B.I. statistics show that Arizona is relatively safe.
The murder of Robert Krentz, a rancher who was shot to death this year on his property near the border, galvanised Arizona. Looking at the overall crime numbers, a sceptic would say that Mr Krentz’s death was an unfortunate but isolated occurrence. But if we assume, as is likely, that Mr Krentz was killed by traffickers, then his murder is significant. Not because a dead white American is intrinsically more important than a dead Mexican, but because paying someone to smuggle you across the border, or being a drug trafficker, are intrinsically high-risk activities, while ranching on your own property shouldn’t be.
Sending more security to the border carries risks of its own, as does a heightened climate of fear. Earlier this month a Mexican teenager was shot and killed by Border Patrol agents in El Paso; the boy was on the Mexican side of the river, throwing rocks at the agents, one of whom shot back from the US side. But looking strictly at the security picture—which includes the effort to stop the north- and south-bound flow of drugs and guns as well as the effort to quell violence on both sides—there is evidence that the US is gaining some traction. I’m sympathetic to Arizonans on this point, although I don’t think the most alarmist scenarios are likely to occur.
Previously on Phxated.com
*Phoenix in NYT: real estate collapse, and yes, immigration
*More on the “Do illegal immigrants cause crime?” debate
*New York Times to Jan Brewer: Why won’t you free William Macumber?
6:18 AM
Wells Fargo raises fees on poor people
The PBJ reports that Walls Fargo is raising its checking fees.
Basically, you have to have $1500 in the bank and have a $250 a month direct deposit in place, or your fees go up.
The PBJ:
Wells Fargo is the second largest bank in Maricopa County with deposits of $16.8 billion, representing a 20.4 percent market share, according to the Phoenix Business Journal Book of Lists.
Many observers have expected Wells and other major banks to aggressively raise fees following passage of new laws limiting revenue from credit cards, checking account overdrafts and other banking services.
What can you do?
Move your accounts over to a credit union. They aren’t perfect, but they’re nonprofit, and oriented more to customer service and less to, um, helping destroy the nation’s economy. They keep their fees and costs lower overall.
6:31 AM
Duke Tully dies
The former publisher of the Arizona Republic died yesterday in Florida.
No worries that the paper would soft-pedal the scandal that drove him out of town; the obit goes into delightful detail:
Darrow “Duke” Tully, the former Arizona Republic and Phoenix Gazette publisher who faked an elaborate military career and resigned in disgrace, has died of complications from a stroke in Tampa. He was 78.
Tully was publisher of The Republic and Gazette until December 1985, when he resigned after learning that his political enemies were investigating his war record.
Tom Collins, Maricopa County attorney at the time, planned to have a news conference to expose Tully, who claimed to have been an Air Force combat pilot in the Korean and Vietnam wars.
[…]
Longtime friend and employee Bill Shover said Tully’s dual existence was driven by his need to win his father’s approval.
“He was rejected by the Air Force because he had bad vision and flat feet,” said Shover, former director of public affairs for Phoenix Newspapers Inc., which owned The Republic and The Gazette during Tully’s tenure.
Tully’s brother was killed in World War II during a training mission and his father criticized him for not becoming a war hero, Shover recalled.
That’s when Tully turned his sights on newspapers and was told he could curry favor with a small Indiana paper if he pretended to be a veteran.
From there, Tully’s stories about his military exploits escalated.
6:44 AM
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