Bob Lord

Bob has mostly wound down his 39-year career as a tax and business lawyer (with a 1-year interruption to run for Congress in 2008 (CD3), when he tried to unseat John Shadegg. Bob now serves as the senior advisor on tax policy for the Patriotic Millionaires, a group of wealthy Americans who believe the light taxation of America's rich is destabilizing our democracy, and as an associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies. Bob has been writing for Blog For Arizona since late 2011, concentrating mostly on federal issues, with an occasional foray into Arizona state politics.

Coates’ First White President: Read It

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Readers here know that I won’t hesitate to disagree, sometimes sharply, with the Blue Meanie. In his recent post about Ta-Nehisi Coates’ The First White President, the Meanie advises readers: “You really should read Coates’ entire essay.” Sorry, Meanie, you fell short. Folks, it’s an absolute must read, especially if you’re white. And, when you’re finished, you need to tell every one you know to read it.

It’s that important.

From my narrow perspective, the timing of Coates’ Atlantic piece was perfect. Those who follow me here or on Facebook know that I’ve been reading a lot about race lately. I’ve focused not only on trying to understand the forces behind the plight of black Americans, but also on the dynamics of what we politely refer to as the white working class.

In the second category, I’d place White Trash, Strangers in Their Own Land, Hillbilly Elegy, and White Working Class.

It’s almost as if I’ve been anticipating Coates’ piece for the past six months and researching a rebuttal to it.

Except there really isn’t a rebuttal to write, as far as I can tell. At least not an intellectually honest one.

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Devil’s Bargain and Shattered: Read Both

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I’ve now read both Devil’s Bargain, by Joshua Green, and Shattered, by Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes. Together, these two books provide insight into the 2016 election that you could never get from either alone. I highly recommend reading both, starting with Shattered.

Trump’s election really was the perfect storm, but not in the sense that he got really lucky. There was far more to it than that. And there are lessons to be learned.

The most important lesson, politically speaking, is that primaries have a purpose, and when the primary process is manipulated to clear the field, it likely won’t work out well in the end. We’ve seen this in prior campaigns, but 2016 will be the textbook case for decades to come. I’ll return to this point later in the post.

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Huppenthal / Horne Ban on Mexican American Studies Held Unconstitutional; Thucky’s Blog Comments Cited Extensively by Court

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Three years ago, when my colleagues here at BfAZ and I exposed then Superintendent of Public Instruction John Huppenthal as a closet racist, I knew we had done the right thing. But I didn’t know how right it would prove to be.

Huppenthal, or Thucky as we know him here, along with his predecessor, Tom Horne, had closed down the Mexican American Studies program in the Tucson Unified School District. I don’t know much about that controversy, but I know this: If a student of any national heritage wants to learn more about that heritage, it takes a special kind of creep to deny her the opportunity to do so.

Students, with the assistance of David Morales, proprietor of the Three Sonorans blog and friend of this blog, other community leaders, and some very capable attorneys, challenged the legislation promoted and enforced by Horne and Huppenthal. A critical issue, it turned out, was whether Horne and Thucky were motivated by racial animus either in the enactment or the enforcement of the statute banning the MAS program. This may shock a few of you, but ole Thuckenthal didn’t acquit himself well on the witness stand. Imagine that? And those comments he posted at this site and others? Yeah, those didn’t play very well either. Here are the leading paragraphs in each of the first three sections of Judge Tashima’s opinion:

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One White Man’s Apology (Along With a Book Review)

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I’ve long been confident that I’ve had my eyes open wider to the mistreatment of black Americans than at least 90%, and likely 99%, of white Amerinca.

And I still am. In fact, probably more confident.

But I’m also coming to grips with my own ignorance of how horrific, how systematic, how diabolical, how treacherous, and how brutally persistent the persecution of black Americans has been from the end of the Civil War through the present day.

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It’s Not the Haters; It’s the Enablers of their Enabler

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Yes, the White Supremacists in their Klan regalia, displaying Nazi symbols, are despicable. Of course we should denounce them.

But they will always be there. Their numbers will fluctuate. They will be brazen at certain times and keep to the shadows at other times. Sometimes their hatred and anger will simmer, noticeable only to those looking closely. Other times, it will boil over, in disgusting displays like what we saw in Charlottesville.

We’ll never change them. The issue is whether they will change us.

And over the course of a slow, half-century long march that has not yet reached its end, they have.

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