Michael Bryan

Michael founded BlogForArizona.net as the Howard Dean presidential campaign blog for Arizona in 2003, and has been blogging ever since. The Blog is now coming up on 20 years of continuous publication, a major achievement for any political blog, which usually have the life-spans of mayflies. Michael is an attorney living in Tucson with his wife Lauren. In 2008, Michael remade BlogForArizona into a collaborative project. Michael is now but one of the contributors to the blog and provides editorial and publishing direction in consultation with the Board of Directors and the other authors. If you want to keep up with the latest Arizona and National political news in an entertaining quick hit of news and opinion, check out the BlogForArizona twitter feed, which Mike largely curates and writes. Michael is also an AAPC member who occassionally consults on political campaigns, strategy and communications.

You Don’t Know, What You Don’t Know

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Yes, the AZ Republic called Senator Sylvia Allen “one of the best-known lightning rods in the AZ Legislature.”  Her stated belief that the Earth is only 6,000 years old and her suggestion that church attendance be mandated as a way to “get back to a moral rebirth in this country” are just two of the reasons for her notoriety. I was shocked when I heard of her appointment as Chair of the Senate Education Committee, but it shouldn’t have surprised me.

After all, I doubt her religious fervency is the reason AZ Senate President Biggs selected Allen to be the person who will control what education proposals make it out of the AZ Senate. Rather, I suspect it is her support of charter schools like the George Washington Academy she helped found in Snowflake. Listed as the “Administrative Program Manager” on their “GWA Teachers and Staff” page, Senator Allen’s employment with this school makes me wary of her ability to be impartial when it comes to legislation that favors charter schools over traditional district (public) schools. Please know that I am not a charter “hater.” I recognize there are charter schools that fill critical needs. What I am, is realistic about the impact the diversion of tax payer dollars to privately managed charter and private schools is having on our traditional school districts and their students. Make no mistake; this is a zero sum game. When charter schools win, traditional district schools, often the hub of small communities, lose.

Senator Allen’s George Washington Academy may be located in the community of Snowflake, but it is managed by Education Management Organization (EMO) EdKey Inc., a for-profit management company that operates 18 schools in Arizona. Although its schools are technically “public” there are numerous differences between them (and all charters) and your average community district schools. For starters, the requirements for accountability and transparency are very different. Traditional district schools have locally elected governing board members that are accountable to the public. Not so with charter schools. In looking at the George Washington Academy website, they had no information about the school board on their school board page, and under school board agendas, only a statement that says: “Sorry, but that directory is empty.” I had to go to the corporate website (sequoiaschools.org) to see the names of their six governing board members, but there was no access to board agendas or minutes.

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Republicans Curse the American Cursus Honorum

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By Michael Bryan

We are seeing something very unusual in the history of American politics in this cycle’s GOP Presidential primary: a complete abandonment of the American Cursus Honorum on the Right. I believe it gives significant insights into a building crisis of legitimacy in the democratic process on the Right.

Many will not know what I mean by Cursus Honorum, and if they do, may dispute that even it applies to American politics. I will explain the concept, argue for how it has historically been normative in the American political system, and then describe why I think current events are violating those norms, and what that may mean.

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What’s Holding Back Economic Development in Arizona?

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By Ed Dravo

Year after year, legislative session after legislative session passes without meaningful policies to address our economic problems. Once one of the leading states in economic growth we are now a perennial laggard. By growth I mean rising incomes and not a larger body count. If it’s larger numbers that moves you, Arizona has made the grade; that is until recently. Now more people are leaving the state than entering.

In a story written by Eric Toll for the Phoenix Business Journal two corporations employing over 3000 people earning double existing state wages passed on Arizona (Phoenix, specifically) as a place to relocate. The state made the semi-finals but failed when the selection committee passed their findings to senior management. Toll inquired off the record for the reasons for our being shunted out of the finals. Each company provided a different reason. Company A’s management committee felt uncomfortable moving to a state that re-elects someone like Arpaio (not because they wanted a more diverse culture as whitewashed in an AZ Republic editorial piece). Company B rejected us because management was afraid of raising their children in a place that repeatedly ranked alongside Mississippi and Alabama for public education. A third reason was the difficulty finding employees with training in sophisticated skill sets-read job training.

This was not the only bleak story about the Arizona economy in recent weeks: The paltry amount of venture capital raised is a big concern and NAICS, the organization ranking employment categories, has jettisoned Arizona’s listing as a high tech manufacturing state. That era pretty ended in the 90s when call centers were touted as great catches.

RetireesThat elephant is named retirees. It’s their refusal to approve funding for things like education and infrastructure improvement. There is a common element that drives all the negative outcomes. It’s all important but invisible, the proverbial elephant in the room. This behavior became apparent long ago when Sun City retirees refused to pass bond issues funding primary schools in their districts, resulting in the need for legislative relief or children would be deprived of an education. This was hardly the concern of people who moved into the district to escape cold winters and financial responsibilities.

The retiree enclaves along the Colorado, Prescott Valley, Fountain Hills, N Scottsdale, westernmost Phoenix, and the I-10 corridor north and south of Tucson represent a formidable voting block. They routinely elect legislators who enliven the monologues of late night hosts for brazen acts of civic indifference if not outright hostility to the general public. According to Bill Hart with the Morrison Institute at ASU, retirees, anyone 65 or over, will increase to 30% or more of the overall population in twenty years. With their committed voting habits that translates to a 60% majority on issues they agree on.

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Amnesty International’s Draft Policy on “Sex Work” Violates Human Rights

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Guest Post by Dianne Post

Dianne Post has been an attorney for over 34 years. For 18, she practiced family law in the Phoenix area representing battered women and molested children in family and juvenile court. Since 1998, she has been doing international human rights work mainly in gender-based violence.

The International Secretariat of Amnesty International passed a draft policy at their meeting on August 7 on “sex work” that would decriminalize all aspects of prostitution including buying, pimping, and brothel keeping while still allowing a state the power to regulate selling. The policy now goes to the Board. That policy is a direct attack on women and would make a mockery of human rights. The Nordic Model of targeting demand, where selling is not a crime but buying is, has proven to be the only successful tool to protect women in prostitution.

The alleged reason for Amnesty’s action is to make prostitution safer; the result is to do the opposite. Every country that has legalized the purchase of women in prostitution has failed. Amsterdam Mayor Job Cohen said, “Almost five years after the lifting of the brothel ban, we have to acknowledge that the aims of the law have not been reached.” According to the Amsterdam police, “We are in the midst of modern slavery.” In New Zealand, a city council member said, “It was widely expected that the outcome of legalizing prostitution would be that sex trade workers would generally operate from safe, regulated and legal brothels. In Manukau, that has not been the case.”

As Maricopa County Attorney, Bill Montgomery states, “Legalizing any activity tells the members of society that we approve of the activity in question.  Accordingly, legalizing prostitution would necessarily result in a growing market for the selling and buying of women with the consequent degradation of their dignity and heightened objectification of daughters, sisters, and mothers.”

While Amnesty would maintain its opposition to trafficking, wherever prostitution is legalized, sex trafficking increases. In the Netherlands, the sex industry increased by 25%; in Victoria, Australia, the number of legal brothels doubled, and illegal brothels increased by 300%. A 200-400% increase in street prostitution was reported in Auckland, New Zealand and in Germany, the numbers of trafficked women increased dramatically.

“Sex work and sex trafficking cannot reasonably be separated. Sex work fuels the demand for commercial sex, which is the indisputable driving force behind the sex-trafficking industry.” (Cindy McCain, Chair of the Human Trafficking Advisory Council at the McCain Institute for International Leadership, August 13, 2015, The Washington Post.)

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Tucson Charter Review Committee Seeks Public Comment

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By Tom Prezelski

Re-posted from Rum Romanism and Rebellion

Some folks reading this know that I serve on the Tucson Charter Review Committee, a body which has been meeting since August to hammer out a set of recommendations  for changes to Tucson’s 70+ year-old charter. I have been reluctant to write here about our deliberations, even though the meetings are open to the public, because we are trying to operate by consensus, and I did not want to risk being perceived as undermining the committees work by acting on my own.

The committee now has a set of recommendations and we are seeking public comments. There are two public hearings this week where members of the public may address the Committee directly regarding its recommendations:

March 10, 2015, 5 p.m. – El Pueblo Neighborhood Center, 101 W. Irvington Road

March 12, 2015, 5 p.m. – Morris K. Udall Regional Center, 7200 E. Tanque Verde Road

Written comments may be also submitted to the City Clerk’s Office by email sent to Cityclerk@tucsonaz.gov , or by surface mail to: City Clerk’s Office, P.O. Box 27210, Tucson, AZ 85726.

The public comment period ends on March 20.

The recommendations are after the jump.

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