Month: December 2009

Sheriff Joe, Cont’d

by Conor Friedersdorf

A reader writes:

I work in politics in Arizona.  I've been involved in nonprofit advocacy work, campaign work, and I've worked with legislators.  Everything I've done has been on the Democratic side for the most part, but we've worked across the state with lots of groups and I've interacted with Republicans in many different contexts.

Bottom line – Arpaio is perhaps the best representative of the true base of the GOP in this state.  The more people attack him, the higher his ratings go up.  Most establishment Democrats in Arizona believe that, especially considering what's happened in previous years.  One person I've worked with closely in the past worked at the highest levels in the Napalitano administration for most of her time in as Governor.  This person explained to me that Janet got heat from the left over most of her tenure for not being tougher with Joe and holding him accountable.  But her people knew that Janet walked a tight rope – she won by less than a point in 2002 – and was really the only thing keeping the right-dominated legislature from passing whatever they wanted.  So she erred on the side of a general hands-off approach, and won Joe's silence for the most part.  His aggression was not something they wanted to have to deal with, particularly because of how intrusive and invasive Arpaio's methods are.

But let's not forget we're in a state that effectively voted by referendum NOT to honor Martin Luther King Jr. Day in the 90's.  There are several very conservative blocs in our state, ranging from Mormons to Minuteman supporters, and they all seem to love Arpaio.  He brings constant attention to the issue of illegal immigration and knows how far he can push the limits of the law.  Some of us feel like we live in a police state, but he makes a lot of people feel safer (though I imagine they would feel differently if they were Hispanic).

This anecdote sums it up nicely, I think.  Last week I was at a get together at a friend's house.  There were a few of us there that work in politics, and there were also several students from Arizona State University.  One of the students brought up a study they had done on Arpaio's prison culture (tents, concrete floors, pink clothing+handcuffs, etc.).  "It's just unnecessarily cruel," he said, "and I don't think it should be legal to treat someone like that if they're being incarcerated by the state."

Another student in the group, someone who we've hung out with occasionally and is generally a pretty quiet guy, spoke up.

"I don't know.  I mean, he is pretty effective."

"Pretty effective."  There are some people who are focused only on ends.  It's not about what Joe Arpaio does.  It's why he does it.  And to these people, a man who won't stop at degradation and home invasion to keep illegal immigrants out of the country is a patriot, and nothing less.

Another:

His most ardent reliable base is in the retirement (55+) "communities" developments where fear of immigrants and nostalgia for "law and order" play very well for his fund raising and vote generation.  His tactics will cost this county bankrupting insurance premiums in the near future from wrongful death lawsuits and countless investigations by his staff and those investigating him. His egomania and paranoia are unbounded. All of this is abetted by media puff pieces with the exception of the Phoenix New Times. I moved from there last year. When I return I will live in Tucson.

A 25 year resident of Arizona:

 …Arpaio is media-savvy, and picks his enemies well.  By this I don’t mean his foes in county government or in the media, I mean the groups on whom he concentrates the resources of his office.  Last night, as every year about this time, all of the TV stations showed footage from this year’s deadbeat dad roundup, along with the smirking Sheriff talking about how terrible it was that kids were going to have a lousy Xmas because these deadbeat dads hadn’t been paying child support.  He also goes after animal cruelty cases with a vengeance.  I think he has a finely-tuned sense of which “others’ are particularly viewed with scorn by his target supporters, and goes after them with a vengeance.  There is no doubt that many Maricopa county residents feel safer as a result of his policies, but also equally that his policies are never designed to impact negatively those supporters who see themselves as law-abiding (and hence won’t ever be in jail), are white (and hence will never be racially profiled), and don’t fit into any of the other classes that he has singled out for opprobrium.

Another reader

I think I may have some insight into why exactly Joe Arpaio is celebrated here in Arizona.  Let me explain by way of a story.
 
My mother and father are both fairly staunch conservatives from the Goldwater school of thought.  They both voted for Bush in 2000 and 2004.  In 2006, my father was called to serve on a jury relating to the death of one Charles Agster III, who died inside one of Joe Arpaio's jails. 

Details of the verdict are here.

The perspective from the token liberal paper in town that has been hectoring Arpaio for years is here.
 
My father spent 7 weeks in the courtroom reviewing the facts of the case.  When it was also over and I had been told what case he had been on, I went to him to hear his side of it.  My father has always been a very stoic and organized man, so the jumbled and emotional tale he told me struck me.  He found very little fault with the individual officers or the poor nurse in the situation and directed most of his ire towards the leadership of Sheriff's department.  He specifically recalled the testimony Sheriff Joe gave as a low point in the trial.  It was a great moment of bonding for us, because I had been following and talking about my negative views of Sheriff Joe for some time before this.
 
A couple years later, Joe was facing a very hard re-election from the Democratic challenger.  Every politician and paper, even the conservative major daily the Arizona Republic endorsed the challenger.  And despite it all, Joe won again.

I know that my mother voted for Arpaio that year.  She loves the way he 'enforces all the laws', which is conservative code in my family for cracking down on illegal immigration.  The story of my father's experience in the trial merely led her to blame Charles Agster's family for letting their son be so out of control.

Most tellingly, my father would not tell me how he voted.  He votes every year without fail, and usually a straight Republican ticket.  But even after being forced to look straight into the depth of corruption that has occurred under Joe's administration, he wouldn't or couldn't reject it outright.
 
Sheriff Joe's whole shtick is about how tough he is on crime.  And my parents don't really care about the particulars of how that happens.  To them, stories of immigrants skirting the law or committing crimes are tragedies that must be stopped.  And just how Palin's supporters rally behind her more as people point out her mistakes and shortcomings, people like my parents rally around Joe the more it seems he's being ganged-up on.

Malkin Award Nominee

by Chris Bodenner

"First they came for the rich. And I did not speak out because I was not rich. Then they came for the property owners, and I did not speak out because I did not own property. Then they came for the right to bear arms, and I did not speak out because I was not armed. Then they came for me and denied me my medical care, and there was no one left to speak for me," – Laura Ingraham, protesting the Senate healthcare bill at a rally in DC. Original poem here.

Ending The Filibuster

by Patrick Appel

A few days ago, I noted Ed Morrissey's criticism of Yglesias's call to repeal the filibuster:

Funny, but I don’t recall Yglesias demanding those changes while Democrats were in the minority in the Senate.”

Yglesias proved Morrissey's recollection fallible yesterday. On a related note, Nicholas Stephanopoulos has an article in TNR advocating for a filibuster phase-out:

It asks too much of senators–among the most self-interested of creatures–to approach the filibuster as though they were behind a veil of ignorance. They know all too well who would benefit (President Obama and the Democrats) and who would be harmed (Republicans and grandstanding centrists) were the filibuster suddenly to be amended or eliminated. It is naïve to think they might put this knowledge aside.

The passage of time, however, creates an opportunity to drape a veil over politicians’ eyes. There is no way Republican senators would agree to the immediate abolition of the filibuster. But what if the proposal on the table was to get rid of the filibuster in 2017? By then, even a potential second Obama term would have ended. Every sitting senator would have faced re-election at least once. And, most importantly, there is no way to know which party would be in the majority and which would be in the minority.

Towards A Theory Of Political Power

by Patrick Appel

A reader writes:

In response to this. So I'm curious, where does that leave the average voter in the process? With politicians caring more about lobbyist issues than those of their constituents, we may as well not have even taken time out of our day to visit the polling booth. We voted the *politician* in to office to be our voice in the halls of congress. Why should the voters and/or activists then have to enlist "opposing powerful elements" to fight for influence by proxy?  I mean hell, if that has become business as usual, why not just dissolve congress altogether and bring the back lines (and the back rooms) to the front.

Voters' interests and special interests can overlap and the balance between the two can shift. The characters and political philosophies of politicians matter, but the money trading hands cannot be ignored. It is easier to understand DC if one treats politicians as rational actors chasing incentives rather than ideological absolutists. Garnering votes is an important incentive but only one of many. My point was that separating special interests completely from government is both impossible and undesirable, not that the current balance between greater interests and special interests is ideal or the best we can do.

We shouldn't dissolve Congress because the alternatives are worse. In a democratic system the most powerful interests are almost exclusively interested in wealth creation. In a system like Iran's, to take as example a government the Dish has spent a good deal of time studying, power is concentrated in fewer hands and power is likely to infringe more upon the personal sphere. Those in control might want to impose religious law or demand the imprisonment or execution of certain individuals, to name just a few abuses of power, in addition to hoarding wealth. Banks lobbying for the right to impose larger ATM usage fees is rather mild in comparison.

This is not to say that I am enamored by lobbying in DC, but our system of horse trading is a compromise that contains the worst corruptions of power.

Super Adventure Club Update

by Chris Bodenner

Gawker gets an exclusive on an internal video circulated by the group:

In perhaps the most sinister segment, it seems that Scientology has literally taken over the police force and part of the navy in Colombia — the cult is now part of the training courses for both bodies. The Colombians have even started to use the terminology, talking of the religion, as followers do, as 'technology'. A cited statement from the police force, for example, says "we would like with your help, to generate as leaders of the Colombian community a training center exclusively for police in every part of the country where the technology of Mr. Hubbard can be delivered."

Below the Mason Dixon, Cont’d

by Conor Friedersdorf

What follows is a sampling from the one hundred plus e-mails Dish readers wrote about the South. Expect another later in the day.

— When traveling below the Mason Dixon, drink the sweat tea – out of a styrofoam cup, from any rural restaurant, and never from a fast food chain.

— Attend a Revival.  For the uninitiated, this is when a church hires an out-of-town speaker to rejuvenate the congregation.  Revivals are held over several nights and often happen outdoors by a natural spring.  This makes baptisms easy and hearkens back to a time when indoor plumbing was rare. 

— Attend a NASCAR race at Talladega Superspeedway in Eastaboga, Alabama.  Track capacity: 175,000, camp out the night(s) before, shirts and shoes discouraged.  People-watching like you wouldn't believe.

— Climb Stone Mountain, a huge quartz monzonite dome just outside of Atlanta.  The largest bas-relief in the world is etched into the north face of the 825-ft mountain.  Nothing says culture like Confederate heroes immortalized on the promontory and further glamorized with a 45-minute laser show.

— Eat boiled peanuts at roadside stands, and ask around to find good barbecue restaurants.

— The Cumberland Gap historic park, though small, is quite interesting, with the "Pinnacle" outlook extraordinary.  During the Civil War this peak was called the "United States' own Gibraltar".  This gap in the Appalachian mountain range was literally the Gateway to the West, when "the West" still counted as western Kentucky, and trails here were blazed by no less than Daniel Boone.

— I was raised Southern Baptist (still practicing, or at least doing my best) in a county that had only one red light (still probably only has about 10 or so).  One thing that most people who are not from the South, simply cannot fully appreciate about many parts of the South, is just how deeply religion permeates the culture.  I don't mean this in a bad way, it's just that, for many people who live in very rural, small towns, the church, and their church family, is..simply put… a deeply significant part of who these people ARE.  There are no museums or opera houses, concert halls, or live theater in these small towns.  Just one generation ago, there were no counselors; the local church provides ALL of these functions.  The local church pastor IS the counselor many turn to. The Christmas play is the ONLY "theater" many of these people have ever seen, or care to.  This past year's Easter pageant IS the concert outlet for them.  Now this is not true everywhere in the South, you will find splendid museums in Nashville, and dozens of music and theater outlets in the megapolis of Atlanta, but small-town, rural areas that make up much of the South's countryside are definitely like this.  This is why, criticizing or challenging one's religious beliefs in the South is tantamount to challenging their entire life and culture.  

— Family is extremely important, and babies are of paramount importance.  I cannot begin to tell you just how different people in the South are when around small children and especially babies.  In big cities, like Dallas, babies are rarely commented and often simply ignored by most everyone in public.  In the rural South, I defy you to take a baby in a stroller anywhere without being flocked by people wanting to hold your baby or compliment you and your child.  Children matter you see, they are not considered noisy and loud and to be shunned to their appropriate corner of the world until they reach adulthood. 

— Although often ignored even in the South (except maybe as “that weird old guy with junk in his yard”) I think one of the most unique and interesting aspects of the South are the visionary folk artists, some of which maintain “environments,” often huge pieces of land filled with outdoor outsider art.  Once you find one (which can be a task in itself), they can often lead you to others.  There are such environments all around the country, but there is a higher concentration in the South, they seem a more natural part of the region of kudzu, and you will meet some real Southern “characters.” 

— Washington, GA – Go to the main inn run by a two French immigrants who drive around in an old Rolls Royce – Guillame and Succun Slama.  Living an immigrant dream in a small Georgia town.

— Dixie lives an honor culture quite different from the cultures of the northern and far western states. Children in the South are instilled with respect for elders and visitors, and they – and even their parents in their adulthood – express this by habitual use of formal forms of address and appellation, e.g., Sir; Ma'am; Mister Friedersdorf; Mrs./Miss/Ms. (pronounced almost uniformly as "Miz") Lobo. Like all manners and courtesies, southerners use them to show genuine respect, admiration, and affection, but they also use them as blinds for disagreement, disrespect, and dislike.

Then there's another expression which is used complimentarily, neutrally, or – and just as often – as an expression of distaste masqueraded as a pleasantry: "Bless your heart." Since a northerner isn't hip to the southerner's inflections, the most effective means a northerner has of judging the southern speaker's regard behind these expressions is to watch the faces of other southerners within hearing – reading what registers on those faces will most often tell you the character or degree of the regard behind the expression, and lend a clue to the way the alpha speaker in the group expects his inferiors to hew to his meaning.There are times when southerners' seeming circumlocution can irritate the northerner's eagerness to conserve time, to get directly to the point. Be patient with this, but by the same token use your own judgment to figure out when a southerner is using circumlocution to bullshit your Yankee ass.

— Down south it helps a lot to be mindful and exercising of your manners: be in no doubt that that you should always use the formal forms of address; and wait until after formal introduction for invitations to address or refer to southern individuals informally. Bear in mind that even after formal introductions, southerners are in the habit of then prefixing an addressee's Christian name with Mr. or Miz – as in Mr. Conor, Miz Jordynne – and for many in the south informality goes no further than that. This can feel irksome or seem corny to Yankee visitors, but it is for and by southerners genuine and well meant, and many northeners who experience this formality find it refreshing, a pleasant antidote to the common northern presumption of instantaneous informality, not least because it restores not just the sense, but the reality, of personal privacy that seems to have been stripped  deliberately and callously away among northeners and far westerners.

 – "There's Yankees and there's Damn Yankees. Yankees come to visit; Damn Yankees come to stay."

— While I appreciate that a non-Southerner (or as we call you, Yankee) is actually exhibiting interest in the South beyond ridicule, your question is part of the problem. If you're looking for somewhere to see how Southern the South is, you're looking for a stereotype, which is exactly what we need to move past. (Especially since the romanticizing you've mentioned is something I rarely see, it's much more often a negative stereotype.)

I'm not a born Southerner… but I did spend some time working there and got to rub shoulders with people every day. Did I see the southern stereotypes fulfilled pretty much every day? Yes, I did. I heard the accents, I ate the grits, I was called "darlin." But it was much more than that. Was there some place to go there that would provide the kind of "local color" you're looking for? Probably, there's usually something to that effect in every small Southern town. But that's exactly the kind of thing I'd tell you to avoid. If you want to immerse yourself, just immerse yourself. Go to a town at random, or go to several. Stop on the highway whenever you feel like it. What drives me so crazy is that people who haven't been to the South continue to avoid it, which just keeps the status quo.

I'm sure you'll receive loads of email telling you to try this barbecue joint or that small-town museum. I don't really care where you go. Just go.

— WV is uniquely situated and hard to define. Is it the northern most southern state? The southern most northern state? Definitely not part of the Mid-West and definitely not an  Atlantic state.  In a way the state is undefinable, but I don't think we would have it any other way. But the majority of us consider the state to be part of the South.  I find WV to be one of the most unique states in the nation; however, the state at its current trajectory has no real future. 

— I lived in South Carolina for about 2 years while stationed in North Charleston (Goose Creek, to be exact) with the U.S. Navy.  I'd be lying if I told you my time there was spent peregrinating through the back-country with an eye for history and nuance–I was 19 years old, most of my time was spent trying to find a place to get served alcohol.  But living a hair north of Charleston focused my attention on one salient fact about the South: her cities are islands of cosmopolitan excess in seas of poverty and (relative) provincialism.  This is not to suggest that cities in the South spring up solely to function as respite for northern boys like me.  The state of suburbs are as much the result of deprivations from cities as they are from the poverty of the inhabitants. 

I spent those two years in South Carolina relatively unaware of this dynamic between cities and suburbs until I read Pat Conroy's The Lords of Discipline, a novel set in a barely fictionalized military academy in Charleston.  Conroy lavishes time on Charleston in a fashion similar to Berendt in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, but what comes to life is the abrupt distinction between Charleston and North Charleston.  While this is obviously not a suggestion to travel specific roads, visit towns or cities, I felt that reading that book shocked me into watching the city rather than living in it. 

— Start in New Orleans. Stay at the Monteleone, famous for its carousel bar and for where Tennessee Williams liked to have a toddy or two or three. Stroll down Royale and soak in the French Quarter architecture (which is actually Spanish architecture), relishing the spirit of laissez le bontemps roulez and the price tag on fine antiques. Eat at Commander's Palace and The Court of Two Sisters. Stroll up and down Bourbon Street. Listen to jazz at Preservation Hall. Have a hurricane at Pat O'Briens. Drink chicory-laced coffee and eat beignets at Cafe du Monde. And ride uptown on the St. Charles streetcar and have your breath taken away by the most beautiful homes in the world.

When you head for the Mississippi Delta, make your way up Highway 61 – the blues highway – stopping for lunch in St. Francisville, La., where Spanish moss hangs from the oaks, where the cemetery and the haunted Myrtles will spook the bejesus out of you. Move on to Natchez and Vicksburg, Mississippi where it will take an act of God to keep from stopping for the night just so you can admire the antebellum architecture.

In the South, we move much slower – literally and figuratively – than the rest of the world. We blame it on the excessive heat. But you will be a man on a mission so make your way to Greenwood, Mississippi. Feel the monotony of about 4000 square miles of the agricultural flatlands of the Mississippi Delta. Feel why its people sing the blues.

— There are so many great barbecue places that you’ll find off of Route 80 and other routes coming from DC or NY.  Do definitely try them out.  But better yet, to really get good Southern food, focus on fried anything, gravy and biscuits, more gravy, grits, greens, that kind of stuff.  You’re best to go to www.roadfood.com to get the best selection and itinerary. But you know what is honestly more real Southern in terms of what does the average Southerner actually eats on a daily basis?  The Cracker Barrell chain of restaurants, as ubiquitous down there as trees.  I kid you not.  It is definitely not “great” food by any means, but it’s quality at a very good price.  It is like the South meets Denny’s.  You will see a cross section of the “average” modern Southerner there, of all races and ages. 

— I'd point you to a map of the Mississippi River delta and how its geography has changed the lives of people living in southeastern Arkansas and northwestern Mississippi.  Notice the lack of bridges.  In Arkansas, if you want to go east, you have very few options — the bridge at Greenville, MS is the last one across the river for a long while, until West Helena.  A bit further north are the two major interstate bridges at Memphis, and that's it; your next chance to cross the river isn't until Missouri.  Drive through these communities and remember the moral of the story is simple:  "you can't get there from here." How does that change the outlook of someone who lives there?  How do you encourage education when there's not much to aspire to?

— Seek out megachurches, both white and black; look in urban centers for those.  Then compare them with tiny, rural churches, both black and white.  What do you pray for when you have everything?  What do you pray for when you have nothing?

— See the Jack Daniels distillery in rural Tennessee, and reflect on the fact that it's situated in a dry county. Be sure to walk around the city square afterwards.

— Edenton: again, an off-the-beaten track place with some fascinating places to visit, including what's said to be the oldest continuously used Episcopal church in the nation.  A feel for the Scottish-English culture of the 17th-century Virginia-NC tidewater, with its deep roots in the tobacco trade dominated by Glasgow.  I'd seek out some of the hidden and rather old houses around Edenton, including Scotch Hall south of the city.  And I'd go to the library there and read about the history of these places, and talk to the older staff members–especially some of the older local ladies who often staff the local history room–about the history of the region.

— If you're outside the big cities (or even if you aren't), pay attention to your instincts and the hair on the back of your neck.  The standard issue peckerneck *likes* to hurt people, and his rightful prey is a Northern intellectual.  He will smile while he beats the crap out of you and feel a righteous pleasure in doing so.  *Don't* get in arguments, particularly intellectual ones, though moral and ethical ones are a close second.  Watch your manners (much prized in the South because they defuse tension) and your mouth.  Understand that the quieter many people get, the  closer they are to tearing you a new one.

— The value of any such trip would be the exposure to parts of southern Appalachia.  I feel like everyone has some idea of the Old South, the plantation culture, and beyond Atlanta or Nashville they also know cities like Charleston, Savannah, and New Orleans.  Those places can be great, but by themselves they do not communicate much of the southern highlands, which are a particular and important part of the South.

Quote From The Cocoon

by Patrick Appel

"I knew that [Obama's] policy positions were like Hillary Clinton’s (or any mainstream Dem, as Kos puts it). But I thought, despite my disagreements with his political style, that the historic opportunity he was presented coupled with his immense political talent would lead him to become our FDR," – Big Tent Democrat, Talk Left.

(Hat tip: John Cole)

Against The Current

by Patrick Appel

Julian Sanchez really doesn't like the health care bill:

I understand, and am sympathetic to, the argument for moving toward a more genuinely marketlike system.  I understand the argument for single payer. I understand the arguments for different kinds of hybrids—baseline public provision with private coverage as a supplement.  I don’t understand this at all, and I don’t understand who (but an insurance company) could be happy with it.  Progressives and conservatives are both obviously unsatisfied, but you’d at least expect that the part progressives are pissed about would count as a victory for conservatives—a move that concedes some important value to them.  Yet I can’t see any way that it is: The plan sans public option is not one whit more “free-market,” and arguably less so, to the extent one can make such judgments at such a distance from the genuine article. It just shifts some of the subsidy from the government to profit-seeking firms that can hire lobbyists.  Awesome.

The Wire rounds-up various defenses of the health care bill sans public option.