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.

John Huppenthal, Modern-Day Bircher

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We now know that John Huppenthal is a Birther from this comment :

“bat shit crazy stuff”!!! Its in Obamas book, Obama said he was born in Kenya!!!! If this were a Republican, you would be going nuts demanding those college records.

But is he a modern-day Bircher (as in John Birch Society) as well? Here’s Huppenthal in September 2013 commenting on the poor in America:

Let me assure you that the poor in the US are much better off than the poor in an other country. Our poor are very asset wealthy and consumption wealthy as compared even to typical people in most other countries.

Compare that to these excerpts from a John Birch Society screed, circa 1965, which were part of its “What’s Wrong With Civil Rights” campaign, as reported by The Progressive:

The average American Negro has a tremendously higher material standard of living than Negroes anywhere else; and far higher, in fact, than at least four-fifths of the earth’s population of all races combined.

The average American Negro not only has a far higher standard of literacy, and better educational opportunities, than Negroes anywhere else; but a higher level of literacy, in fact, than at least four-fifths of the earth’s population of all races combined.

See the similarities? They’re awfully hard to miss.

Okay, so Huppenthal thinks like a Bircher, but how does he feel about Blacks?

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Is Israel the First Morally Justified Oppressor?

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To ask that question is of course to answer it.

We know by looking back historically on periods of oppression by one people on another that there has not been one example of morally justified oppression.

But in the moment, the argument is routinely made, and accepted. In The players may change, but the game remains the same: The use of racism to justify the massacre of innocent civilians in Gaza, Jenin Younes draws the parallels between Israel and all other oppressive regimes. Younes:

In the digital age where a wealth of information is available at the tap of a keyboard documenting background facts that are disputed by no serious historian—the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people from their land, and the continued occupation and oppression of the Palestinians–it is difficult to understand how otherwise reasonable, fair-minded people can continue to support and justify Israel’s aggression against this helpless group of human beings. While the reasons underlying this anomaly are many and complex, ultimately Israel uses the same tool that has been used for centuries to justify various forms of oppression of an ethnic group, from enslavement of blacks and ethnic cleansing of Native Americans in the United States to apartheid in South Africa: the dehumanization of the oppressed by portraying them as inherently inferior in some aspect, and the insistence that, regardless of its acts, the oppressor is morally superior and therefore justified. [emphasis mine].

Can there be any argument that is not what is happening in Israel today?

Here’s Netanyahu, distinguishing Israelis from Palestinians:

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Thucky and Me, Our Magical Year (Part 4)

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[Fourth in a multi-part series]

[Previous parts in series: Thucky and Me, Our Magical Year (Part 1); Thucky and Me, Our Magical Year (Part 2); Thucky and Me, Our Magical Year (Part 3);

Februrary 2014: We Figure It Out

After Thucky’s really bad September, he and I go back and forth for months on tax and economic issues. I notice in this timeframe that he’s commenting at all hours of the day and night.

My fellow writers and I are by then becoming more convinced that Thucky is not just “some troll,” but I led us down a bit of a rabbit trail for a while, thinking Thucky is someone else. We had failed to focus on the comment to Craig’s post, where Thucky reeled off the names of Huppenthal’s Hispanic childhood friends. One of us became convinced Thucky was John Kavanagh, which was a bit strange given John’s complete comfort in commenting under his own name.

Finally, in early February, we figure it out.

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Is Israel’s “Jewish State” Demand a Source of Oppression?

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My posts on Israel – Palestine tend to focus either on what I believe is a ludicrous demand on the part of Israel that it be recognized as a “Jewish State” or on the oppression of Palestinians.

But I never considered the possible connection between the Jewish State demand and the oppression.

In a piece last weekend in Ha’aretz, One wretched Jewish state, Gideon Levy makes the case for such a connection:

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A Deluded Consensus on Discrimination

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Cliven Bundy and Donald Sterling made it clear that bigotry still flourishes.

By Emily Schwartz Greco and William Collins

[Distributed via OtherWords.org]

[Note to Blog for Arizona readers: We ordinarily don’t run syndicated commentary of outside writers. However, the inclusion of John Huppenthal in a group with Cliven Bundy and Donald Sterling inspired me to make an exception]

A wide majority of U.S. voters say black Americans who can’t get ahead should blame themselves for their troubles instead of racial discrimination.

That’s one of the more startling findings from a recent Pew Research Center effort to bunch voters into categories of likeminded people. The study came out a few days before the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act, a landmark law that was supposed to bring about real equality.

Wouldn’t it be nice if that majority were right? Sadly, prejudice is alive and well — even if getting caught saying racist things harms your public image.

Just ask Cliven Bundy. He’s the rancher who became a right-wing celebrity when militiamen joined him in an armed standoff with Nevada authorities over his refusal to pay grazing fees for letting his cattle roam on federally owned land.

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