Arizona is in the fight of its life and I’m not talking about baseball. The state is in a desperate fight to stay economically competitive. Frustration with the banks and Wall Street are growing daily and we are still faced with a “do nothing attitude” regarding the border.
As Game 5 of the NLDS gets underway, Arizona voters better watch their own pitch count.
Strike One: Last night, I witnessed the dying gasps of Arizona’s economy during a Florence Planning and Zoning Commission meeting where two mouthpieces for the development industry spread fear, misinformation, and outright lies to volunteer commissioners for six and a half hours. Despite overwhelming support from the community for the Florence Copper Project, the commissioners failed to advance a positive recommendation to the Council. They deadlocked on a general plan amendment which would have allowed Curis Resources to extract 3 billion pounds of copper from the ground and create over 150 high paying jobs and hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenues for Arizona, Pinal County and the Town of Florence.
The knife wielders in this case are developers who bought land cheap, knowing full well that the State Land Trust has a mining claim on the property. The “promise everything/deliver nothing” elements of the development industry seem to be committed to putting a final stake in the heart of Arizona’s economy, and any hopes for the unemployed of finding a good job… Oh I forgot, those “people” are all supposed to go to college and better themselves for a better job in a local call center. What a crock we are sold. Real Jobs require real work and real product – something our political leaders seem to be forgetting.
One of the five C’s is Copper – Not collateralized debt obligation brought to you by Wall Street and the housing industry. God Help us.
Strike Two: The mainstream media’s never ending quest for finding out who is “behind” Olivia Cortes’ candidacy in District 18 completely fails to ask a much more relevant question: Who is behind the entire recall? The recall committee has never disclosed who financed, to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars, the petition gathering efforts to create the election in the first place. The characterization of her “sham candidacy” pale in comparison to the sham election.
Who paid for it? Who is behind it? It is clearly not the voters of District 18. This was not some popular uprising against Pearce. This was and is a paid for political assassination of a man who has done nothing more than what he told the voters of District 18 he would do.
God Bless Russell Pearce.
Foul Ball: Democratic efforts to gerrymander Arizona’s Congressional Districts finally got some attention this week when Governor Brewer called them out. Too bad the limp wristed statement of support from our U.S. Senators didn’t lend much credence to her clarion call for honesty in the process. The only criterion that the commission seems to be interested in is competitiveness, which is only one of the many criteria. Their single minded effort to make some districts competitive makes a mockery of the other legal requirements which actually make a district and a Congressman an effective voice in Congress.
Here’s hoping they fix it or recall the chairman of the Commission and start over.
Wild Pitch: Jobs? Who needs them anyway? If you’re talking about Arizona’s dying construction industry, 23 percent of people who once worked to build Arizona are now wondering what the State will do to help them feed their families and pay their bills.
They shouldn’t be looking to Arizona’s Housing Director Mike Trailor for any help. He got rich off the housing boom and now sits on his bureaucratic throne hoping to duplicate efforts of the United Way. But he has clearly lost his way as he refuses to leverage a federal provision that would overnight jumpstart development of low-income housing, luring hundreds of millions of dollars in private investment capital off the sidelines and creating thousands of jobs for our neighbors and friends.
That’s right. With one stroke of the pen, King Trailor could create thousands of jobs for Arizonans. But he stubbornly refuses based on the assumption that only a few developers will actually benefit. Really? I guess he is too busy giving comments to the Republic about his thoughts on saving us from ourselves and promoting his name in the community.
If you ask me, Trailor is the problem. It is time for Governor Brewer to find a new housing director.
Strike Three: Speaking of District 18, Arizona apologists have their new anti-hero in Jerry Lewis, the candidate recruited by the undisclosed interests to run against Pearce. Incredibly, during a District 18 debate last night, Lewis compared Arizona of 2011 to Alabama of 1964. Immigration is not a civil rights issue – that is pure Democratic pabulum. Mexico is a failed state and if Arizona fails to act and to draw attention to the problem, it will be a full blown political refugee crisis before long.
Before you react, the words, “failed state: are not mine. They were told to me by my respected friend Democratic Congressman Ed Pastor more than two years ago – he explained that Mexico was being reported as a “failed state” in his congressional briefings. The only thing that has changed since then is Arizona’s successful effort to draw the nation’s attention to our worst economic problem – the failings of our trading partner south of our own border. Mexico is Arizona’s largest trading partner.
As Mexico goes, so goes Arizona. Washington is trying to solve the problems in Afghanistan and Iraq, intervene in the Middle East peace process, but when it comes closer to home, they just continue to treat Mexico like a vestige of the Monroe Doctrine or a verse out a James Taylor song and watch as our economy crumbles further. Democrats and the Obama administration refuse to understand the true nature of the problem and continue to treat the country and its’ citizens as a protectorate rather than the independent failed state that it is.
If Jerry Lewis succeeds, it is a sign that we, as a country, are losing. God bless the people of District 18, I am praying they make the right decision before THE GAME IS OVER.