The Arizona Republic is doing its best to foment fear about the impending governorship of Jan Brewer. We suppose this comes as no surprise given the fact the newspaper has been a cheerleader for Janet Napolitano ever since she took office, uttering not a word of sincere criticism for any of her policies.

Here are a few recent examples of The Republic’s extraordinary bias:

On November 24th, Republic reporter Pat Kossan wrote a story headlined “Napolitano  advanced cause of education; Some foresee political setbacks for school funding if governor leaves.”

On November 25th Republic reporter Matthew Benson wrote a story headlined “Uneasiness grows over how Brewer might cut budget.”

On November 26th Republic reporter Ginger Richardson wrote a story headlined “Governor change could shift state’s climate policies.”

And on November 29th Republic reporter Ken Alltucker wrote a story headlined “Napolitano exit worries biotech boosters.”

The Arizona Republic is losing its sainted heroine, and is doing its best to prepare for Brewer’s governorship with fear and loathing and naked distortions. Over the past several years The Republic has morphed into a terrible newspaper, but now it is a terrible newspaper motivated by hatred.

The diminishing number of people who still read The Arizona Republic were treated to a barrage of columns in Sunday’s Viewpoints section, I counted ten, urging passage of the so-called “DREAM Act.” This is from the Republic’s archive of Sunday’s Viewpoints section:

Viewpoints

• Dream remains elusive for bright, illegal students
• Giving help where it’s needed
• State must give all its children a chance to thrive
• Marisol: Exhibit A for a skewed system
• ‘The 3Ds’: Scholars who need a hand
• Everyone should have a chance to make it
• A DREAM we can all appreciate
• These low-income Arizona youths have done their part
• Undocumented kids are victims of political whim
• Talented scholars vital to Arizona
• Retirement enclaves anything but boring

The misnamed DREAM Act would mandate that states must permit illegal immigrants to reach into the pockets of law-abiding citizens and force them to subsidize the tuition of illegal aliens at state universities by giving them in-state tuition. This is particularly galling because it flies in the face of the clear intentions of the citizens of Arizona. Arizonans passed Proposition 200, denying public benefits to illegals, in 2004. But more importantly, voters passed Proposition 300, denying in-state status and attending taxpayer subsidies to illegal aliens, by a 71-29% margin.

It is clear that The Arizona Republic is increasingly way out of the mainstream and less relevant. The unfettered cheerleading for the highly unpopular DREAM Act probably embarassed serious journalists, even liberal ones. And this is of course all the product of Joe Garcia, the editor of the Viewpoints section. As you can tell from this unprofessional display of advocacy, Joe Garcia is an over the top left wing socialist and an apologist for illegal immigration.

Since the Ministry of Information started laying off its senior writers, the quality of the writing has begun to slide.  The July 4th print edition contained a glaring error on the front page. The article began, “Should local school districts be merged to save money? Should affirmative action be banned in state hiring, contracts and college admissions?” The second sentence was referring to the Arizona Civil Rights Initiative, which would ban race and gender preferences in government.

Contrary to the reporter’s characterization, the intiative would not ban “affirmative action.” Affirmative action is a phrase originally used by JFK to refer to ensuring that minorities were not being discriminated against, e.g. excluding them completely from hiring or admissions. Affirmative action was never meant to give them preferential treatment. (read more about it here)

Of course, the phrase has been distorted by race-baiters and used to describe separate beneficial treatment for minorities and women. That kind of treatment would be banned under the Civil Rights Initiative. But not the traditional type of affirmative action. Regardless, preferences by private organizations would not be prohibited by the initiative, making the vague statement “ban affirmative action” used by many even more misleading.

With sloppy reporting such as this prevalent on the front page of the Ministry of Information, one has to wonder how many additional egregious errors are in it that we are unaware of.

   The Real Ed Novak

In the Ministry of Truth’s (formerly known as The Arizona Republic) Phoenix edition a few days ago, there was a blurb announcing that Ed Novak is the new State Bar president. It described his background fairly benignly; sounding as though  it was copied from the Bar’s press release. It noted such things as Novak has served as co-chair of the Professionalism Task Force, is a Judge Pro Tempore for the Superior Court, and teaches law at ASU as an Adjunct Professor.

What the article failed to convey is that Novak is one of the biggest criminal defense attorneys in town, and works for prominent partisan Democrats like Terry Goddard. He’s given thousands of dollars to Competitive Edge PAC, a federal political action committee formed by Janet Napolitano last year to raise money for Democrats and prepare for her 2010 Senate run.

His resume in criminal defense is extensive. He is a member of the far left criminal defense association “Attorneys for Criminal Justice” and is involved in everything from the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers to chairing the committee that drafts Criminal Rules of Procedure for Arizona.

He was the driving force behind a change in Arizona’s regulatory rules for attorneys which would further restrict the free speech rights of attorneys. Under his proposed rule, an attorney could be disciplined for saying something the Bar considers “disrespectful.” In an article that came out in the Capitol Times in 2005 entitled, “Lawyers contend proposed conduct code too severe,” Howard Fischer wrote in part,

The governing board of the State Bar of Arizona wants the high court to expand the rules that govern the conduct of attorneys to require they act in a professional manner, defined as showing honesty, integrity, courtesy and respect. But what is causing heartburn is a commentary in the proposed rule — verbiage designed to help attorneys and the courts understand what the rule means and how it should be interpreted and enforced — which says that requirement applies “at all times.’’…Novak doesn’t think it’s appropriate for lawyers to wear shirts with disparaging remarks….“If somebody wears a Tshirt that says something like that, I don’t see any reason why a member of the Peer Review Committee couldn’t call the person and say, ‘You know what? That probably wasn’t appropriate and next time you really need to think about the impact that that has on the members of the public,’ ” Novak said….Novak said task force members concluded existing ethics rules do not cover all the kinds of situations where a lawyer is acting unprofessionally…. But Novak acknowledged there is an effort to hold lawyers to a higher standard than anyone else. And he conceded that attorneys who act “unprofessionally’’ in their private lives could, in fact, be getting a call from the State Bar.

Apparently prohibiting attorneys from criticizing judges as the Bar rules currently do isn’t enough for Novak, he’d like restrict their free speech rights even further. Welcome to your new bar president, Arizona attorneys.

The Arizona Republic recently featured an article on the difficulty law school graduates are encountering trying to find a job in this economy. It wouldn’t have been that bad of an article, except the premise that law students want to work for a big law firm is wrong. There is a small percentage of law students who still buy into the rat race mentality that they need to work slavish hours for a large law firm and start out making $90k/yr. But we’ve realized over the years that those kind of hours, hovering over a desk never getting out of your office all day writing legal memos for senior partners, can lead to early death - heart attacks and brain aneurisms in your 50’s. Very little leisure time outside of work, and even that time is taken up with the obligatory office and charity parties, pro bono work required by the firm, and volunteer work for the state bar and other organizations. Most of the younger generation has figured that out, and they’re not as interested in interviewing with the big law firms, they’re looking for a quality work environment.

Smaller firms, corporate jobs, nonprofits and government provide a much better working environment. The pay isn’t so bad either, most start at a minimum of $60k (government and nonprofits) and usually peak in the 3 digits. In Arizona, even with law student loans it is possible to live fairly well on this level of income.

Here are some excerpts from the article, biased portions bolded:

Unlike Wimsatt [who will be working at a large law firm in town], most students have to begin at smaller firms or work for public agencies.

The article then consults Wimsatt for advice on how he was able to secure a position with a large law firm - implying that the ultimate goal for law students is to get one of those jobs. Why not ask someone who has landed a plum job with their favorite public interest group, like the Institite for Justice? Or a prestigious government job? The City of Scottsdale’s starting pay for brand-new attorneys is somewhere above $70k last time I checked - not far behind the large firms, with normal working hours, plenty of actual courtroom experience, and the rush of working on high-profile cases frequently covered by the media.

“The vast majority of people are going to graduate and not be employed by those very large firms,” Birmingham said. “They only have so many positions. But that doesn’t mean you can’t start at a medium firm at $75,000 and be plucked out in a couple of years and make $175,000.”

Note the implication there that law grads who start at medium-sized law firms really want to be working at large law firms, they just weren’t able to land those jobs. This isn’t necessarily accurate. Many of those grads deliberately chose not to get a job with a large law firm.

The Republic needs to move into the 21st century. Requiring 2200 billable hours per year (that figures out to more than 40 hours a week, and only includes hours that may be billed to clients - not meetings, classes, required office functions, etc.) is not attractive and the younger generations are no longer buying into it. Why should high-level professionals who don’t even get the satisfaction of being the top cheese making hundreds of thousands of dollars (like a CEO or corporate VP) be forced to work slave hours? Lawyers aren’t that stupid.

   Liberty’s Apothecary was the first to report on the Republic’s most recent buy-out offer, and now we learn that veteran editorial writers Joel Nilsson and Richard deUriarte accepted Gannett’s terms, and both will be gone from the newspaper by the end of July. These are two very seasoned and intelligent writers whose abundant talents have been atrophying since they were assigned to act as mere production functionaries in assembling the zoned edition’s editorial pages. Their departure ensures the Republic’s continued decline in quality, and the newspaper’s already diminished readership can claim that they have been shortchanged. Again.

   Well, well, well.  They say that given enough time, even a blind chimpanzee could find a word processor and learn to type “War and Peace.”

Speaking of chimps, the editorial board at The Arizona Republic (aka Arizona’s Ministry of Truth) has had an epiphany: the Ministry now concedes that there may be some downsides to liberalism’s unbridled love affair with multiculturalism, open borders and amnesty for illegal aliens.  Oh, and with worldwide Marxism too.

Among those downsides, the Republic has “discovered,” are the blatant and open efforts of the Tucson Unified School District (TUSD) to inculcate its students in the merits of Marxist socialism and the evils of White America. 

Amazing as it may seem, the editors seem to be on the track of finally “getting it” that this school district’s objectives - and the objectives of its board members and program directors - are distinctly anti-American and indisputably pro-Mexican. 

Portraits of Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara even adorn classroom walls.  The objective is nothing less than a calculated effort to imbue thousands of Tucson high school students and, in due course, elementary school students, in the essentials of Marxist ideology and the “Mexicanization” of the United States. 

And where better to start than in southern Arizona, where the liberals and their handmaidens, Democratic politicians in Arizona and in Congress and the mainstream media, have for decades advocated open borders and “immigration reform,” provided, of course, that “reform” is defined as including amnesty for illegal aliens?

Quoting John Ward, a TUSD teacher and an outspoken critic of the phenomenon, the editors note that included in the TUSD “raza studies” program, of course, are the incantations that “Mexican-Americans were and continue to be victims of a racist American society driven by the interests of middle and upper-class Whites” and that police officers are to be portrayed as “an extension of the White power structure.”

And they say BH Obama’s pastors, friends and “former” associates are anti-American racists.

The Ministry concludes its editorial by “refusing to believe” that the parents and taxpayers of Tucson really favor this program, which the editors characterize as urging students to “view their own society as one of oppression and victimization” at the hands of “middle and upper-class Whites” and fortified by that detestable extension of the “White power structure,” the police.

Really?

In order to test the validity of that “refuse to believe” contention, note that the parents and taxpayers of Tucson have already once elected and twice re-elected to the U.S. House of Representatives one Raul Grijalva, whose sympathies with the Marxist “reconquista” movement are no secret and who served from 1974 to 1986 on the TUSD board. 

Moreover, they have also elected to the TUSD board Señor Grijalva’s replacement, and one of the driving forces behind the TUSD raza studies program, his daughter, Adelita Grijalva.  Given these facts, the Ministry’s refusal may be, ummmm….. ill-founded.

Boy, if only Mao, Karl and Che could be here to see this.  Just think, maybe they, the Grijalvas and the editors at the Ministry could get together for some cigars and margaritas…. if only those White cops would leave them alone.

We were amused (who wasn’t?) by The Republic’s Sunday editorial about Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas. 

First, the editorial referred to “The Arizona Bar Association.” In fact, there is no such thing. There is the State Bar of Arizona. But, that is nitpicking.

The editorial admits The Republic is opposed to the County Attorney’s initiatives – such as enforcing laws on the books regarding illegal aliens. And, when Arizona’s judges turned a blind eye to those laws, The Republic did as well.

But, never mind.

Now that Andrew Thomas is in a difficult struggle with the State Bar, an outcome that could mean his inability to practice law, and subsequently lose his office, The Republic sees some merit in Thomas’s efforts.

So, is Thomas right?

The Republic chokes on the concept. In fact, it cannot bring itself to utter the words, so, instead it says, “But on this matter … Thomas is not wrong.”

That would mean he is right by any other measurement than that used by The Arizona Republic.

You get a sense of what the County Attorney has been up against, because this was, after all, supposed to have been a supportive editorial.

    As we noted a few weeks ago, Qwest is currently laboring under a federal requirement that keeps its wholesale services below cost. And Qwest’s competitors just love it that way.

The Telecommunications Act of 1996 established a means whereby the Federal Communications Commission could allow a company (such as Qwest) to compete freely - if and when it could be demonstrated that there is sufficient competition for services to free the company from being required to subsidize its competitors.

On Sunday, The Arizona Republic weighed in on the issue, and it will come as no surprise to learn that the newspaper was both ignorant of the facts and incoherent in its conclusions. It will also come as no surprise that the newspaper advocated the continuation of the heavy hand of government regulation.

“In most big markets,” The Republic opined, “including the Phoenix metropolitan area, big-dog telecom firms still control the vast majority of the marketplace, including the part known as the “last mile” of service: the vast network of hardwired infrastructure that extends from switching stations to individual homes and businesses.”

That is false.

The competitive telecom market in Phoenix now includes cable-based providers such as Cox, wireless carriers such as AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile, Cricket, etc, over 40  voice over internet providers such as Vonage, Packet8, Lingo, etc   In addition, Qwest competitors are actively using their own networks (such as AT&T, Integra, XO, etc) or network components leased from others (with wholesale network providers including Cox, Salt River Project, Time Warner Telecom, AT&T, and Level 3.

These are all alternatives to Qwest’s “last mile” network.  Competitive telecom services - landline, wireless and voice over internet providers –  can all be delivered to homes and businesses without reliance on Qwest’s network.

“The FCC granted Qwest forbearance of its pricing requirements in 2005 in the Omaha, Neb., metro area,” continued The Republic, adding, “According to a study commissioned by Qwest competitors, the Omaha forbearance resulted immediately in higher wholesale prices, higher retail prices and changes in market competition that both drove out smaller competitors.”

That is false.

The only competitor that has announced intentions to leave the Omaha market is McLeod, which announced it was withdrawing from only the residential and small business markets, and McLeod’s customer base in those segments in Nebraska has been sharply declining for years - well before the Omaha forbearance order was issued.

No competition in the Phoenix area?

Please.

Between 2000 and 2007, Arizona’s population increased 23 percent. Should not this  growth have fueled an increased demand for Qwest’s residential and business telecom services?  However, between 2000 and 2007, Qwest’s access line base decreased by 38 percent in Arizona.  In other words, not only is Qwest losing the customers it once had, it is also losing the opportunity to serve new customers moving into Arizona - for the very reason that those people are opting to sign up with a competitor. 

Again, it is no surprise that The Republic got it precisely wrong. It is also no surprise that the newspaper is afraid of the essence of free markets and vigorous competition - the very dynamics addressed by the 1996 Act.

Congress required phone companies to provide artificially low prices for its wholesale telecom services to “jump start” telephone service competition. But,  it also stipulated once competition was robust, the companies could seek relief from that requirement.

Qwest is doing just that, in the vortex of swirling competition. The Republic doesn’t get it,  of course. But, the FCC should.

   1. Republic layoffs linked to shoddy journalism
2. Illegal Hispanic immigrants fit Hispanic profile
3. Napolitano slams Republic bias
4. Montini column written in compound sentences
5. Bob Robb column written in understandable sentences