Still looking good, Arizona

Sure, I pick on Arizona here a lot, but let's be honest... they sort of ask for it. At any rate, when I looked at this map from Zillow showing the concentration of "underwater" mortgages in the country (remember, it's a lot easier to end up with negative equity when you hardly have any equity to begin with), Arizona really jumped out at me.

I expected to see a sea of red in California and Florida on this map, as well as in the Las Vegas area, but I was surprised to see the entire state of Arizona outlined so nicely for me, particularly when many of the surrounding states are almost perfectly clean. But so it is in Arizona, where they're seemingly still determined to scapegoat the immigrants for all of their problems.

Am I the only one who missed this?

Like anything in politics, the latest maneuver out of Arizona is probably more posturing and smoke-and-mirrors than actual governance--style over substance as usual--but it nevertheless surprises me that it hasn't received more attention. From the Arizona Republic,

Members of the state Legislature, including Arizona's de facto governor, Senate President Russell Pearce, have introduced a bill that essentially would have Arizona secede from the union without having to do so officially.

Really.

It's called SB1433, (See it here.) It creates a 12-member committee within the legislature that could "vote by simple majority to nullify in its entirety a specific federal law or regulation that is outside the scope of the powers delegated by the people to the federal government…"

Committee members themselves would decide this, then pass along their recommendation to the full Legislature. If, in turn, a majority of state lawmakers go along with the committee then, according to the bill, "this state and its citizens shall not recognize or be obligated to live under the statute, mandate or executive order."

The nullification committee also would be permitted to review all existing federal laws to see if our legislative geniuses want to toss them out as well.

Basically, our friends in Arizona are trying to take it upon themselves to perform the duties that are Constitutionally delegated to our Supreme Court.

I am one of the first people to agree that our federal government has grown far beyond its original mandate, using the fine print of the Commerce Clause to legislate in areas that should probably be left to the states. However, our Constitution also enumerates a process for reviewing these laws, and that process certainly does not include a 12-member committee in Arizona. To subvert that process is to ignore the Constitution, and, as the Arizona Republic writer notes, to effectively secede.

In a different time, the proposal of a bill like this would have been scandalous enough to have generated a significant response across the country, possibly meaningful enough to have sparked a small-scale (if not outright) civil war. That it can fly so quietly below the radar, without much mention at all in the national media, shows just how far the level of discourse--not to mention political leadership--has fallen in our country. It may be apathy on the part of the citizens, or simply bad government across the board. But given recent events in Arizona, it surprises me greatly to see this kind of event escape notice.

[AZCentral.com]

Interesting take on the Arizona shootings

Matt Taibbi has received a lot of praise lately--deservedly so--for his high-quality investigative writing with Rolling Stone. He wrote insightful pieces on both Goldman Sachs and the Tea Party, both of which received a fair amount of recognition and accolades.

Earlier this week, he wrote a very level-headed response to the Arizona shootings on his blog, wondering aloud whether the media had a role in the incident--and whether there was anything that could be done to change that role going forward. I do recommend reading the whole thing (it's not particularly long), but I'll excerpt it here nonetheless.

Watching the coverage yesterday I was genuinely revolted by the reflexive ass-covering efforts by virtually everyone involved in either the politics or political media businesses. I turned on Fox just out of curiosity last night, and saw one pundit after another point out that Jared Loughner was probably a schizophrenic, a statistical aberration, and that no wider conclusions can or should be drawn by the actions of one lone nutcase. We can already see that the "Jared Loughner acted alone" defense is going to be widely employed. But I don't think that explanation is really going to fly...

If we're being honest with ourselves, we in the media understand that our job descriptions do not entirely overlap with the requirements of good citizenship. If you're in a marriage, or are a parent or living with parents, or have brothers or sisters or close friends, when you argue over a difficult issue, you don't just take out all the weaponry in your arsenal and blast away. In the interests of preserving the relationship, and because you respect and love the other person as a human being, you argue as politely and respectfully as possible. And your goal in arguing is always to fix the actual problem -- there's no other, ulterior motive.

That's just not the case in either journalism (and I should know-- more on that momentarily) or politics. In politics, you don't need to treat everyone with decency and humanity, just 51% of the crowd. Actually, given that half or less than half of all people don't vote, the percentage of people who require basic decency and indulgence is probably even lower than that, maybe 20-25% of the population. There's plenty of power and money to be won by skillfully stimulating public anger against some or all of the rest, and there are few rewards for restraint.

In the media, the situation is even worse. You can make vast fortunes riling up mobs. And because it's a fiercely competitive market, there's an obvious and immediate benefit to using superheated rhetoric -- it's more entertaining, gains more attention, and definitely gets more viewers and listeners and, er, readers.

And not only is there no incentive for restraint, there's actually a huge disincentive for restraint, because for many of us in the punditry world, our livelihoods depend upon cultivating audiences who come to expect a certain emotional payoff for tuning in. If you've trained them to expect to have their prejudices validated and their sense of Superiority Over the Other stroked every time they turn on your program, they're not going to like it when the show comes on and the editorial storyline is completely opposite.

Of course, any discussion over whether the media has a role must ultimately fall back on the consumers of the media's products--all of us. We can whine and complain all we want about how much we hate reality TV and the incendiary tone that political coverage has taken, but we watch it nonetheless.

I've spoken many times here about how much I hate the college football machine that has made untold millions for the NCAA and its institutional and corporate partners, but at the end of the day, I still tuned in for the BCS title game on Monday night, even as I railed against it on Facebook and via text messages to friends. I can blame the NCAA and ESPN all I want, but let's be honest--it's my fault.

The only power we all ultimately have in life is the power to walk away, to choose not to run. TV sucks and the networks are all throwing in the towel? Don't watch. They'll get the message. But as long as we are willing to watch, listen, or read the inflammatory rhetoric that continues to be spewed out by the national media, we'll simply get more and more of it.

Corporations are just collections of people, nothing more. And they don't have any power at all unless we as consumers give it to them. I'd love to blame this on the media or on the politicians, but all they're doing is responding to what their audience is asking for. We got what we asked for, as plain as that.

If we want our media outlets to begin behaving responsibly, we all as consumers and citizens need to behave in a way that ensures that their profitability and responsible citizenship go hand in hand--in other words, punish them in the pocket for behaving in ways that make America worse. We can't just expect the media to change their ways; we all need to look in the mirror and ask whether our own actions have helped fuel these societal shifts (and of course, they have). Until we do that, we can only blame ourselves.

[Rolling Stone]

One of the saddest things I've ever heard

I hate to start the week off on a down note, but this wasn't exactly the happiest of weekends with the events in Arizona.

Christina Taylor Green, the dark-eyed, energetic granddaughter of former Phillies manager Dallas Green, existed in the brief interlude between two great American tragedies.

Born just hours after the horrific attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the 9-year-old was killed Saturday in the Arizona massacre in which a congresswoman was critically injured and five others, including a federal judge, were slain.

"She liked having that birthday," her mother, Roxanna, recalled in a Sunday telephone interview. "She thought it was a holiday when she was little. We had to set her straight."...

The youngest of two children of Green's son, John, she was among 20 people shot by a lone gunman at a Tucson shopping-center meeting sponsored by U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D., Ariz.).

Giffords is in critical condition but expected to survive.

The third grader at Mesa Verde Elementary School had gone to the event with a neighbor because she had recently been elected to the student council and already had an interest in politics, authorities said. The neighbor was shot four times but survived.

"It seemed like such a good idea," her mother said. "We never imagined anything like this could happen."

When the neighbor took the young girl to witness our government in action, I'm pretty sure this isn't what she had in mind. While it may be tempting to point fingers in the aftermath of this tragedy, I don't think that's particularly fair.

The fact is, what has come to pass for "political discourse" these days has become increasingly inflammatory and divisive, and an incident like this was almost inevitable in response. It's not particularly relevant which side of the aisle was affected by the attack--what's clear is that we need to get our act together and stop vilifying each other, or else.

This incident is a tragic and sobering wake-up call. Let's hope we learn the right lesson from it, rather than using this as an excuse to ramp up the political rhetoric.

[Philadelphia Inquirer]