Every so often I drop a diary about the fucked-upness of Arizona politics. The state provides a lot of material, as late night talkshow hosts and most of America knows. For a glimmer of how screwed up things are, check out the bar chart below, which was emailed this week by my state senator, Lela Alston. The chart shows just how far down the toilet the barely upright walking jackasses at the Capitol are taking us. Alston is good people, which is true of most downtown Phoenix elected officials, at state and national levels. Arpaio gets like 20 percent here, and after the news about him paying $100,000 to a Seattle scam artist to smear a federal judge, that small percentage is likely to dry up.
Sadly, except for a few urban blue bubbles, much of the state (with exceptions of course, like wonderful Bisbee) is bible-thumping Sagebrush nutters who send fundies like Sylvia Allen to the legislature to design education policy. That's right, the Senate Education Committee includes a realtor who believes the earth is 6,000 years old and thinks it'd be neat to make church attendance mandatory.
She ain't alone atop Screwball Hill. The current senate president, Andy Biggs, recently spoke at an Oathkeepers circlejerk in Phoenix where the group's founder, Stewart Rhodes, said Sen. McCain should be "hung by the neck until dead." Sen. Biggs said nothing, then or afterward. Sen. Kelli Ward was also there and didn't push back on Rhodes's threat to murder a US senator. That's because Ward, who's still not sure about chemtrails and Obama's birthplace, and thinks Cliven Bundy is a righteous victim, has been recruited to oppose Sen. McCain in the GOP primary next year, and she needs the wingnut base that probably would string up the senator.
Here's the deal: the bottom feeders who control the levers of power at the Arizona legislature are a cackle of fundamentalist nitwits who constitute a veto-proof anti-education lobby. The proof: they've screwed up education more than any other state in the last decade—in terms of money and results. Shit, we've got an elected Superintendent of Public Instruction, Diane Douglas, an inexperienced moon-baying pinhead who's pissed off everyone in a very short time, and schools suffer. Combine the soap opera at her Arizona Department of Education with a legislature that doesn't value education and is hellbent on pissing all over unionized teachers and tenured professors, and here's what you get:
If that's a little hard to read, the deep red lines are cuts, and those cuts are mostly to education between 2008 and 2016. Sheesh, consider the 67% cut (!) to community colleges—in a very big state with few universities, where two-year schools are vital to the economic and social health of some towns. So let's whack them by two-thirds! And our three big universities, huge economic and cultural drivers, including ASU, the largest college in the nation—cut them 41% and force even more corporate dependence, not to mention higher tuitions. And K-12? Well, gut those little peckerheads too, more than any other state, and send the money to charter schools that aren't performing. And if someone gripes about these hatchet jobs, like a school superintendent, the governor's office can smear that person with Koch cash, the same bucket of dough that helped elect Ducey.
The years in the chart represent The Golden Age of Republicrazy in Arizona: Gov. Jan 16-second Brewer, Sen. Russell bad-enough-to-be-recalled-by-conservative-Mormons Pearce, and now Gov. Doug Ducey, who, improbably, is making Brewer look good. The legislature is an embarrassment, about as smart as bait. Even less compassionate. And always farting up the room, there's Joe Arpaio and the anti-immigrant rage he brings to education policy. One thing that contributed to Pearce's recall, where he went too far, was his ugly Arpaio-inspired bills that injected their racism into the classroom, making teachers immigration cops and students liars.
So this gang makes decisions about teaching our youth. But they don't really like the education community and, besides, they get bigger piles of money from the corrections industry than from teachers. And Gov. Brewer's team happened to include two former lobbyists for Corrections Corporation of America. One result: on the chart you get the big black bar on the left, the one going way up, for prisons.
A growing chunk of the corrections budget is for private prisons, who've purchased the legislature and installed aides in advisory roles. Check this out: The legislature used to require an annual study that compared the effectiveness of private prisons against the good old public variety. A problem for legislators who take their marching orders from ALEC and the corrections industry was that the reports kept showing that public prisons are less costly and more effective. So the leadership did what any self-respecting hooligan would do: they ended the annual study. Problem solved!
So: no oversight of private prisons, whose budget continues to soar. But hey, immigrants! Rapists! Would you be surprised if I said the corrections industry was a giant supporter of SB 1070? No, no you would not. So we build more prisons, and our sheriffs drive around in big tanks and shit (knocking down a dude's door on a cockfight raid), we militarize the border (and hassle the O'odham), and if a $165-million jet goes down in the desert we think "too bad" and move on. We waste a shitload of money on drug wars and border patrol and the militarization of our lives and paying Arpaio's tabs, but don't ever waste a dime on education! It'd be nice if we decided, Hey, let's waste some money on our teachers and schools!
Instead, we must be "accountable" for every damn dollar going to public schools, and during the last two administrations in Arizona accountability means "slash to the bone," then lie about what you're doing—try to put a bow on a turd. But how do you spin cutting K-12 and secondary ed more than any other state? Or the worst dollar per pupil ratio in the nation? They'll say it's not about the money but at a certain point, when it affects performance, when families aren't being served, when teachers are leaving, it is about the money.
Everybody and their cousin is coming up with education plans. Given these yahoos, I don't expect them to say, Hey, let's waste some money on our teachers and schools!