This is the only Arizona Centennial story I will write.
Sorry, but I can’t be rosy as Arizona inches towards its 100th b-day on Valentines day.
As we all know, not all birthdays are great.
Arizona, on its hundredth birthday, finds itself under the leadership of an increasingly extreme and expensive Arizona Legislature that seems distanced from Arizona universities (as evidenced by the guns on campus measure it will surely pass) and Hispanics (as evidenced by a new slew of immigration laws about to be pitched.)
We need to ask ourselves: How did the people in the Arizona Senate and House get  their power?
Political scientists have a plausible explanation.
1. Extreme candidates tend to get voted into office in closed primaries, which most of us don’t vote in. Closed primaries are those primaries offered by the parties – ie, the Republican primary and Democratic primary. We don’t vote in these because we are lazy or busy or Independents or the wrong party or we don’t know about it.
2. Once the fringe candidates win the primaries, they advance to general elections.
3. That’s when most voters vote.
4. But by then, it’s too late.
5. The elections have already been decided, to a large degree, in the closed primaries, by the fringe voters who choose fringe candidates.
6. There’s a way to weed out wing nuts, though, the political scientists say — “open primaries.”
7. In open primaries, all voters – Republicans, Democrats and Independents – vote on the same day on one ballot. If you’re a Dem, you can vote Republican. And vice-versa. And Independents, also can vote for whomever from whatever party.

There’s a current petition drive, called Open Elections, Open Government http://azopengov.org/petition-locations2.aspx, that seeks open primaries in Arizona.

To celebrate Arizona’s birthday, decide whether you want to sign it.

Karl Rove: “An anti-Hispanic attitude is suicidal.”

Read fascinating quotes from GOP leaders waxing eloquent on immigration, courtesy of the website of  the pro-immigration reform America’s Voice.

Many of these quotes seem at odds with the shrill restrictionist tone of current Republican presidential primary candidates.

Mitt Romney photo licensed by Creative Commons.

In the last weeks, Mitt Romney voiced satisfaction over the endorsement of the lawyer who wrote SB1070 and said he’d veto the DREAM Act. (The federal measure, introduced for years but  never passed, would give temporary legal residency to kids who were brought to the United States illegally as minors, came up through our schools, have no criminal records, and want to serve in the armed forces or attend college. If they succeed, they get green cards.)  And now NumbersUSA, a John Tanton spinoff, is sponsoring anti-immigrant ads in South Carolina.

In the meantime, Barack Obama is reaching out to Latinos,  promoting  Cecilia Munoz to domestic policy czarina and making administrative changes in immigration policy.

Who do you think has a better chance in Arizona? Barack Obama or Mitt Romney?

Oldsters  over 65, the so-called “Silent Generation,” tend to be conservative Republican voters, while the Baby Boomers and GenXers and Millenials tend to be more liberal, according to a fascinating Pew Research Center study released in November, 2011. The Silents tend to be increasingly angry about the direction the United States is taking while the Baby Boomers appear to be  divided in their political thinking, the study says. Boomers like me, who grew up watching Watergate unfold, tend to be more liberal. Younger boomers tend to be a little more conservative.

As a Baby Boomer, I’ve long been fascinated by  the Silent Generation that comes before mine.  These folks are  only a few years older than  Boomers,   but they  came of age in the 1950s and early 1960s, when America was still segregated and white males dominated just about every aspect of American culture. It was the generation of The Lettermen and corny Doris Day movies and women who stayed at home and cooked dinner in high heels and the unquestioned idea that the United States of America is the greatest country in the world.

Which I guess it would be, to a  white male born into that generation.

Here’s what the Pew Center says, in part, about the Silents:

“The political discontent of the Silent generation is not economically based. A greater proportion of Silents than younger people say they are financially satisfied, and Silents are less likely to say they often do not have enough money to make ends meet.

Race is a factor in their political attitudes. Silents are the whitest of the generations and are the least accepting of the new face of America. Compared with younger generations, relatively few Silents see racial intermarriage and the growing population of immigrants as changes for the better.

As was the case in 2008, racial attitudes are associated with views of Obama and voting intentions. And while there is racial intolerance in all generations, it is more prevalent among older than younger age groups.

While Silent generation voters say they are solidly behind Obama’s Republican challengers, there are some signs of potential opportunity for the Democrats. Silents cite Social Security as often as they name jobs as their top voting issue. And while seniors tend to favor the Republican Party on most issues, they are as likely to favor the Democrats as Republicans on Social Security.”

Photo by Terry Greene Sterling

Here’s a picture of Joe Arpaio, a Silent, and Russell Pearce, who if he isn’t a Silent acts like one. The two were at a press conference announcing the new “Trespassing Bill” — the precursor to SB 1070.

In my experience, most  non-gay white Silent males I know conform to the  Pew research — they’re upset, energized and conservative.

And their fears are affirmed and stoked by Fox  News, which they watch.

A lot.

President Barack Obama got an unexpected present today — thousands of Latino votes –  from Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who just endorsed Mitt Romney.

Before he became Kansas SOS, Kobach helped draft SB 1070, with funding from the Immigration Reform Law  Institute, which is the legal arm of the Washington non-profit Federation for American Immigration Reform, or FAIR. Like its founder, Jon Tanton, FAIR wants a moratorium on all immigration into the United States. The Southern Poverty Law Center has compiled a  creepy dossier on FAIR.

If you want to get a sense of Kris Kobach, take a look at this video. Kobach was apparently under contract with the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office, and in the video he talks about what constitutes “reasonable suspicion.”

Time travel from video circa 2010 forward to now.  January, 2012.

Kobach is quoted on  Romney’s s website:

“We need a president who will finally put a stop to a problem that has plagued our country for a generation: millions of illegal aliens coming into the country and taking jobs from United States citizens and legal aliens, while consuming hundreds of billions of dollars in public benefits at taxpayer expense,” said Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach. “Illegal immigration is a nightmare for America’s economy and America’s national security. Mitt Romney is the candidate who will finally secure the borders and put a stop to the magnets, like in-state tuition, that encourage illegal aliens to remain in our country unlawfully. He is also the candidate who will stand shoulder to shoulder with the states that are fighting to restore the rule of law. I am pleased to stand with this true conservative.”

Millions of illegal aliens taking jobs from US citizens? Consuming hundreds of billions of dollars in public benefits?

Reality check: Unauthorized immigrants don’t qualify for  many public benefits, except for free k-12 public education, which economists call an asset, not an expense.

And illegal  immigration is hardly a “nightmare” these days; it is at the  lowest its been for decades, which explains why the economy trumps illegal immigration as a voter issue — except, of course, with Latinos who have seen what happened when Kris Kobach helps write immigration laws for  Alabama and Arizona.

Romney, who also said he’d veto the DREAM Act, is angling for extremist voters who tend to vote in primaries in the South.  He likely figures once he gets the nomination he’ll take a more moderate stance to attract moderate voters in the general election.

But a Kobach endorsement is something that many Americans of Latino descent, and their friends, aren’t likely to forget in the general elections.

Or forgive.

Too much has happened in Arizona. And now Alabama.

Long story short — the  Kobach endorsement  delivered many a Latino vote to Barack Obama.

And Obama, who has been working hard to mend fences with Latinos following a lackluster,  failed effort to pass the  DREAM Act and  immigration reform, needs to write a thank-you note.

To Kris Kobach.

In some Latin American countries,  “notarios” are well-respected and have a reputation for honesty. In Arizona and other parts of the United States, like Minnesota, self-described “notarios” sometimes prey on the most vulnerable immigrants,  as Minnesota reporter Gregory Pratt explains in this  Ciity  Pages story.

A controversy swirls today over whether failed presidential candidate Pat Buchanan has been booted from his MSNBC talking-head slot for the  white nationalist tone of his latest book, Suicide of a Superpower.

In the book, Buchanan laments the decline of Americans descended from  white Europeans, and blames multiculturalism for a slew of social problems. He seeks a complete moratorium on immigration.

This sentiment is shared by Jon Tanton, the founder of the Federation of American Immigration Reform, or FAIR, the Washington D.C. based non-profit that reporters often seek out for the “other side” in immigration stories.  (Tanton was also instrumental in founding NumbersUSA and Center for Immigration Studies, or CIS.) FAIR has been branded a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. The legal arm of FAIR, the Immigration Reform Law Institute, was instrumental in writing SB 1070.

Pat’s sister, Bay, is one of the founders of the Team America Pac, and if you visit the website you’ll see a link, of course, to FAIR. You’ll also see links to Jon Tanton’s publication VDare, and a number of group you should study. Peel away the layers, and you may agree with me that many share Pat’s indefensible view that multiculturalism is a social ill.

Vaclav Havel, the playwright and dissident who became president of Czechoslovakia and later the Czech Republic, died just hours before my daughter Sara and son-in-law Hugh loaded us up in their trusty Toyota and drove us from their home in Germany to Prague. We knew Havel  had died because we heard it on CNN just before we left, and we arrived in Prague during its official mourning period  for the beloved, and sometimes annoying, leader. (Annoying because he held on too long to the presidency, could be incredibly moralistic, was sometimes viewed as too passive, according to The New York Times.) But everyone knew he was the hero whose courage to speak out precipitated freedom.

photo of newspaper in Prague by Terry Greene Sterling

Sara booked us in a fabulous apartment right on  Wenceslas Square, where the Russians had shot up the National Museum decades before, in a show of force. Here, too, a couple of students had burned themselves alive to protest Russian occupation. Now the writer-dissident-president who brought change to an  oppressed nation was mourned by thousands who remembered what their country was like under the occupation, and what it is like now — vibrant and smart and cultured. It was of course vibrant and smart and cultured for at least a thousand years, but voices that were muffled were set free after Havel assumed the presidency. He stood for change. And although he wasn’t perfect, people in Prague recognized it.

Photo by Walter Sterling

On the night before Have’s funeral mass,  thousands of people stood in the cold night lined up at St. Vitus Cathedral, in the Prague Castle complex, to say goodbye. Here is a picture I snapped with my iPhone while at St. Vitus.

Photo by Terry Greene Sterling

Throughout Prague, black flags flew and signs saying things like “Goodbye, Vaclav” hung from the ancient buildings.

On Friday, the day of Havel’s funeral mass,  we drove past Wenceslas Square just as sirens blared across the square, and the nation, as the country remembered Havel. Men held their hats to their hearts. Women bowed their heads.

They all remembered the man who had the guts to speak out.

Sheriff Joe Arpaio, whose office is charged with bungling sex crime investigtions, talked to me via cell phone on the day before the Justice Department handed down its scathing investigation.

I first wrote about the sheriff’s  sex crime investigation scandal on this blog.

Then, I wrote about it in more detail for The Daily Beast.Talked to Sheriff Joe on his cell phone.

He told me the department had “corrected” the sex crime investigation scandal.

Go figure.

Arizona’s conservative governor, Jan Brewer, has her own personal sorrows that turned into a Social Security  investigation that went nowhere but raises weird questions, which were pointed out today by The Arizona Republic.

Time travel back to 1989: Brewer’s mentally ill son,  Ronald, is arrested for kidnapping a woman and forcing her to perform oral sex. He is found to be criminally insane, and hospitalized in a taxpayer funded state hospital, where he reportedly remains today.  At the time, a court official ordered Brewer to turn her son’s Social Security disability payments over to the state hospital, the Arizona Republic reports. And, the  paper reports, Brewer was re-ordered to make the payments the following year.

The federal investigation, which Brewer says was politically motivated, centered on what, exactly, happened to those SS payments. In the end, the case was closed.

PHOTO OF JAN BREWER IN PHOENIX BOOKSTORE VIA GAGE SKIDMORE (FLICKR)

But Republic reporters Yvonne Wingett Sanchez and Michael Kiefer rightfully point out that unanswered questions still swirl around the case:

“The Arizona Department of Health Services, which runs the hospital, declined to release records to The Republicregarding such payments, saying the records either were protected by privacy laws or did not exist.

Court records said Ronald was receiving Social Security benefits when he was sent to the hospital in 1990. Federal law was changed in 1995, barring Social Security benefits to anyone institutionalized after being found not guilty by reason of insanity.

Each year, Jan Brewer, as “representative payee,” would have been asked by the Social Security Administration to sign a form regarding her son’s status. That form requires the representative payee to confirm if there is any change in the living arrangements of the beneficiary. The signature line for that reporting form states: “A person who conceals or fails to tell SSA about events asked about on this form with the intent to fraudulently receive benefits may be fined, imprisoned, or both.” Ronald did have a status change in 2002. Court records show he was conditionally released in May 2002 and returned to the hospital by September 2002. He currently is confined to the hospital.

The basis of the investigation was whether Ronald improperly received benefits at any time; the amount of money in question is about $75,000. Brewer said her son is no longer receiving benefits.

The governor declined repeated requests for interviews or records regarding the investigation. Last Friday, the newspaper submitted written questions to the governor’s chief of staff and Brewer’s private attorney. Those questions were answered in part this week by a four-page statement from Brewer.

Much of that statement focused on her family’s efforts to manage the affairs of her son, whose institutionalization has required them to be involved in his financial affairs.”

This is a weird, sad story.  I’m sure we’ll learn more.

The story is also  counter intuitive –  the  same governor who  complains about Big Government relies on its  decency and largesse to care for her seriously ill son.

Sheriff Joe Arpaio, the self-described toughest sheriff in America, is now in the national spotlight because his office allegedly did not investigate sex crimes in 2005. This is old news in Arizona. In 2008, a Mesa newspaper won a Pulitzer for exposing irregularities in the sheriff’s office — and the apparent siphoning of resources into well-publicized immigration raids instead of community policing — including the investigation of sex crimes in El Mirage.

Here’s a quick geography lesson for those of you who don’t live in Arizona. Maricopa County, which elects the sheriff, is the  most populous county in Arizona. The sheriff is allowed to police every community in Maricopa County, including Phoenix, Scottsdale, Mesa, Gilbert, Chandler , Tempe, Guadalupe and El Mirage.

The sheriff has long been under fire for failing to police while diverting resources to immigration, as I said before. The sheriff’s department has cost the county millions in lawsuits filed by relatives of dead inmates alleged to have died wrongfully, or judges and other county officials who alleged the sheriff’s baseless but well publicised investigations of them were meant to harass them and ruined their careers. Sheriff Joe’s  office has been under scrutiny for misspending and abuse of power, and the U.S. Department of Justice has been investigating alleged civil rights abuses for three years. His chief deputy and several officials were dismissed or resigned amid allegations of abuse of power and yet, the sheriff goes on, bolstered by out-of-state campaign donations that almost guarantee he will be elected in 2012.

But things may change — the same group that managed to recall Russell Pearce, the once powerful senator who sponsored Arizona’s immigration law, SB 1070, now wants to recall Arpaio. And locals are predictably calling for his ouster in the national media frenzy over the old Arizona news of botched sex crime investigations.

If you want to see a video of me and Sheriff Joe, go to my  main page, and click on “videos and excerpts,” you can see a video of me and the sheriff.