AZ Governor Janet Yanks Arpaio's Anti-Immigrant Funds

>>>>>AZ RESIDENTS: PLEASE CALL NAPOLITANO'S OFFICE NOW TO THANK HER FOR THIS MAJOR STEP TOWARD HUMANE AZ IMMIGRATION POLICY: 602-542-4331. WE MUST SPEAK OUT IN SUPPORT OF REASONABLE, COURAGEOUS STANDS! PLEASE ALSO CALL YOUR STATE LEGISLATORS AND ASK THEM TO SUPPORT THE GOVERNOR!<<<<<

In a deft strike at the Maricopa County Sheriff's highly controversial anti-immigrant round-up/deportation neighborhood sweeps, AZ Governor Janet Napolitano (D) has issued an executive order directing the state's Department of Public Safety (DPS) to give priority to targeting the tens of thousands of felons in the state:

The executive order directs the DPS to immediately deploy a squad to address the backlog of nearly 60,000 open felony warrants statewide, with priority on gang-related felonies and fugitives who are undocumented immigrants.

The action takes place in a statewide budget crunch partly brought on, ironically, by misguided rightwing Republican-driven anti-immigration policies such as the recent "employer sanctions" law. These measures are triggering an exodus from Arizona of Hispanics (immigrant and other) fearful and angry at being targeted. When they leave, they take millions from the consumer/tax streams that fund state operations.

The open felony warrants Napolitano seeks to address appear largely to have been tabled by the Sheriff in order to to target Hispanic immigrants who have entered the country without authorization. For the rest of this story, please see my post at Citizen Orange.

Criticism/Self-Criticism

There's been much criticism of late aimed at Gov. Janet for signing the Employer Sanctions bill and its recent revision.

Much much-deserved criticism, I might add. We have a right to expect elected leaders of the Democratic Party to, well, lead.

Unfortunately, politics, by definition, is about following, not leading. Politicians generally must reflect the prevailing sentiment or else they'll speedily be unemployed.

It's only in the extra-ordinary times--the "outside the ordinary" moments--that politicians have any possibility of leading, and it happens only if those moments are matched by the extra-ordinary person. Hence Roosevelt's three terms (for which the gods are ever to be blessed) and Bush's impertinent reversal of Constitution democracy following 9-ll (for which the gods are ever to be cursed). How much of global destiny is due to peronal charisma I don't even want to know.

That aside, immigration seems to punch the buttons of the Right but leave the Left somnolent, snoring. We wonder why. It seems to me that there is more strength in hating, in the mere notion that somebody's getting something for free, than there is in the fact that loving ennobles both the lover and the loved one. Why is that?

But I wander. The thing is, if we on the Left had stood up for our own principles and denounced the racist, xenophobic, fascist, lying rhetoric and the resulting laws, round-ups, detentions, and deportations, Napolitano would have had the political cover to veto those measures. Remember Vietnam? Well, maybe not. Unfortunately, we haven't really acted on our principles on the needed scale in 40 years. And that's the point. Fifty percent of why we've gotten to this benighted place is because we let ourselves be distracted, intimidated, or just plain excused from showing up.

With the exception of a tiny handful of Anglo clergy, activists, and bloggers in Tucson and Phoenix, a couple of Democrat legislators, and 95% of the Hispanic community, we Democrats, independents, and ethically grounded Republicans just didn't provide Napolitano the political cover to withstand the haters, did we? I couldn't even get a MeetUp group to agree to meet with me on the subject. There was just no there there among Lefties, and there still isn't. Which reminds me, again, of why liberals are so often called "rotten rock." We talk a great line, but don't expect us to put our bodies in the line of fire. Nhuh-uh!

So before you denounce her, look in the mirror. We on the Left took a powder. We are only just now beginning to wake up to the fact that something very similar to Nazi Germany in means, methods, and morals (if not in scale, thank God) is happening right here in the Fatherl, er Homela, er USA. That's pretty disgusting if you ask me.

Where've I Been?

I've been housepainting, and while housepainting, pondering this blogging bidness.

There are three approaches, two of which are available to me. Tag-teaming is the one that isn't available, but blogging for the sake of filling up space, or blogging when I've got something to say, are my two options. The downside of the latter is that there are days when I'm elsewhere in my life, and that, to you, looks like I've disappeared. The downside of the former is that I waste my time and yours. The choice seems clear to me.

The world--well, at least the USA--is already eyeball deep in opinions about the presidential race. I have nothing worth noting to add, and if I should think of something, I'll post it. I don't follow sports and the Oscars are a bore even if Johnny Depp and Cate Blanchette are not. Television is a yawn except for all the ways the news is throwing the race, but how many times can I write about that, and "Lost," but I'm not fascinated with deciphering it. So there you are.

OK, I'm always interested in--no, appalled by and much concerned about--Latino immigration issues here in my state, but I'm not adequately informed about the pending changes to the federal H2 visa or Gov. Napolitano's pursuit of complicity with that federal plan to screw "guest" workers. All I know for sure is that any revisions made by this crowd will favor business and drop any pretense at achieving "hospitality" in any sense implied by the word "guest." I'll bet my bottom dollah that protections for workers will be compromised, and bidness will be empowered to be even greedier and meaner.

It has even occurred to me that in all those years Clinton was in office, the neo-Cons were planning not just the Iraq take-down but also the global take-down of the middle classes, a la Milton Friedman. And part of that is to stir up the so-called "immigration" crisis in the USA in order (a) to divert our attention from the real ways we're being effed over and (b) to deplete the ranks of immigrant labor, drive native working classes out of the (disappearing) factories and into the onion fields, and replace them with desperate native middle classes. It's a push-down, a race to the bottom for all of us who didn't even know there was a race going on. It's all part of the re-feudalization of the known world, which, of course, is rounded out by the fundamentalists and their various autos da fey. Hello Hagee, you bloated, bleating sheep-brained moron.

What else interests me at the moment, besides all that, is learning to cook with hot Hatch green chiles, learning to make better pendants of polymer clay, getting acquainted for the first time with the Society of Creative Anachronism, our back yard, which is coming back to life after the chilly eight weeks of winter in Phoenix, and the interior of our home, which, after twelve years, needs to be re-painted.

Likely I'll be spending several hours in the coming couple of weeks on these matters. Maybe I'll bump into a wandering thought or two. Stay tuned.

AZ's Guestworker Program: Questions for our Lawmakers

If you believe that employers are utilizing foreign workers (Mexicans, predominantly) to undercut the wage that they would be forced to pay to US citizens if there were no alternative labor source, then you will have questions about SB1482, a guestworker bill pending in the AZ Senate and endorsed by Democratic Governor, Janet Napolitano.

Some background considerations: Because this bill raises many of the same questions raised by a new Department of Labor proposed guestworker rule, it's relevant to note that under a Friedmanian/GOP "free market" approach, there would be no guestworker program. The domestic marketplace would determine the wage, and if an Arizona cotton farmer couldn't find cotton pickers for $5/hour, then he might have to pay, oh, I don't know, $25/hr. (Amounts are purely hypothetical, understand.)

But we know, or should, that the "free market" as conceived by Republicans does not include letting the market determine wages. It is weighted to the needs of "bidness," not to the living needs of the people.

That said, we also know that Americans are not likely to receive the inevitable cost passthrough of $25/hr for cotton pickers. I guess that would make a $75 Izod polo shirt cost, what, $200? Just guessing, have no clue. I get my polo shirts for $15 from Mervyns, and I think anybody who doesn't is a moron.

Listen up: You and I, every day, either benefit from the gamed wage/price structure installed by very powerful business interests, or are screwed on purpose by that structure--as in the case of the cost of prescription drugs in the US generally, and under Medicare particularly, and as in the case of flat US wages since 1970. So we are both oppressed victims of the system and its beneficiaries when it comes to produce, for instance. We are not merely innocent bystanders observing the greed of the US employer and the exploitation of the Mexican laborer. We are complicit in his and her exploitation, too. I reckon that our share of the ripoff pales by contrast to the share raked in by the CEO and the shareholders. But still.

So. If you both care about the capability of the US worker to earn a genuine living wage, AND the Mexican workers' vulnerability to rank exploitation in termns of payment and working and living conditions, then you have a duty to ask your legislator some tough questions.

1. How does the bill define "labor shortage" and who decides?
2. What measures are in place to prevent AZ employers from utilizing cheap foreign labor to undercut market-based wages for native workers?
3. What safeguards are in place to ensure decent working and living conditions of guestworkers and native workers equally and alike?
4. What safeguards are in place to prevent the wages paid to guestworkers from eliminating native workers qualified for an interested in equivalent positions
5. What criteria ensure that AZ employers have genuinely been unable to hire native workers at a fair, living wage given the conditions of the jobs involved?

This is, given the present state of capitalism, a matter of balance or the whole house of cards will collapse. It does no good to pretend otherwise. At the same time, every reputable measure indicates that worker productivity in the USA is going heavily to benefit the CEO and scarecely at all to benefit the worker. I am sure that there is a lot of manuverability in this sum/zero equation. I am sure beyond any doubt that we can effect a sum/sum equation, and that our collective future depends on our doing just that, here and in every sector of the market. It's the job of our elected lawmakers to ensure that this happens. If they don't do it voluntarily, it's our job to make sure they do it anyway.