Colorado Luis

Latina/o Progressive Radio in NM

Joaquin at SoyBlue reports that Albuquerque's Air America affiliate is going to test market a show featuring Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez called "Our America" that will be an English language look at politics from a Latina/o point of view.  Need I say that this is something that is sorely needed in our media?  Sure, there's Latino USA that is picked up by KUVO on Sunday mornings, but that's an NPR production with all of the faux-neutrality (i.e., kowtowing to conservatism) we've come to expect from NPR.

The show is going to be on KABQ AM 1350 ("Albuquerque's source for Broncos football") on December 3 and 10 at 11:00 a.m. Mountain Time.  I can't tell if you can stream that station, but it sure sounds like something worth listening to.  I personally would like to see some shows where leftist Latina/o POVs are incorporated in with other views, but this show sounds good too.

Air America is saying that if the show is successful, it will be made available to other stations, and evidently there are four AAR affiliates in Texas ready to sign up.  If "Our America" does become available nationally, it will be a real opportunity for our "Boulder" (actually Thornton) AAR station to redeem itself in my book.  Or looking at it another way, if a progressive radio station in Colorado turns up its nose at a show aimed at progressive Latinos, it pretty much would confirm that AM 750's owners want to portray liberalism as the exclusive domain of Grateful Dead-listening white Boulderites (no offense to my readers who fit that profile) and have no interest in acknowledging the much broader liberal community in Colorado.

Ref C and the Courts

One of the mostly unreported side effects of TABOR has been the gutting of our state court system.  In some districts, clerk's office staff has been slashed so much that the offices close over the lunch hour and/or an hour early.  In others, the number of judges has just not been able to keep up with the pace of growth.  That background is what's missing from this Denver Post story about the growing practice of hiring retired judges to hear cases (at $200 to $400 per hour) in places like Arapahoe County where the district court just doesn't have enough judges to handle the case load generated by the booming population out there.

The article does mention critics who say this sets up a two tiered justice system for those who can afford private judges -- and of course that's true -- but what it should also have said is that the $3200 that the divorcing couple mentioned in the article paid to have a retired judge hear their case basically ate up a lifetime of TABOR rebates and then some.  Under TABOR the state couldn't afford to maintain a court system that kept up with population growth in places like Arapahoe or Douglas Counties.  (Weld County, you're next.) The couple may have saved money compared to the cost of getting lawyered up for a hearing that gets continued because the judge's calendar is full, but not compared to what they would have spent if they lived in a place (like the City and County of Denver) where the number of judges reasonably matches the court's caseload.

I know health care and education are pressing priorities, and I also know that the legislature's Democrats are working with a governor who wants to make road construction the highest Ref C priority.  The state courts don't have lobbyists, but I hope the legislature and the governor recognize the belt-tightening in the third branch over the past few years and do something about it so we don't go to this two tiered system of justice based on wealth.  I don't even mind that Governor Owens would be the one who would get to name new judges out in the counties that need them.

Immigrants Taking Jobs Americans Want

If there is a crackdown on undocumented immigration, who will teach our children to ski?

It seems like every youth ski instructor out there is Australian (which is odd enough, considering that isn't a very snowy country), and maybe they all have proper papers, maybe they don't.  But the point is spending your days teaching kids to ski and getting a season pass for your days off isn't the kind of crappy job you usually associate with immigrant labor.  I'm sure working for a ski resort isn't lucrative, but still.  There used to be people, often but not necessarily from wealthy backgrounds, who would come to Colorado for these low paying ski instructor and other resort-related jobs.  We called them "ski bums."  Nowadays it seems like the American ski bums have largely been replaced by an army of Australians and New Zealanders.

So what's the story?  Is there a shortage of qualified ski instructors and other resort personnel that has enabled the resorts to get visas for Australians to come fill those jobs?  Has the supply of American ski bums dried up?  Or is this an actual case of undocumented immigrants coming in and taking jobs that otherwise really would get filled by Americans?  Such examples are hard to find:  This year, with a border crackdown reducing the number of Mexican farm workers looking for work in California, farm jobs have gone unfilled and wages and conditions have not improved, contrary to the theory that reducing the supply of undocumented workers would cause wages and benefits to rise.

I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for Tom Tancredo and his pals to get worked up over the possibility that immigrants are taking ski resort jobs that Americans might actually want.  Even though many undocumented workers are people who came over legally from overseas and either overstayed their visas or got jobs in violation of the terms of their visa, Tancredo and his supporters are focused exclusively on the southern border.  I guess this is because Tancredo thinks the real problem is the "cult of multiculturalism" and undocumented Australians just don't pose the same cultural threat in Tancredo's world that undocumented Mexicans do.

Friday Random Ten

I really got these ten songs randomly on my Ipod the other day: 1. Soy de San Luis -- The Texas Tornados 2. Don't Look Now -- Minutemen 3. Violaine -- Cocteau Twins 4. Is This All There Is? -- Los Lobos 5. B Side Wins Again -- Public Enemy 6. Barefoot -- k.d. lang 7. Drumi Mobila -- Los Super Seven 8. Ella -- Jose Alfredo Jimenez 9. White Girl -- X 10. We Major -- Kanye West Featuring Nas & Really Doe Have a good Black Friday! Black Diamond Friday, in my case. Heh.

Thanksgiving Haiku

White man invades us, Steals our land and livelihood! Enjoy pie, asswipes.

Keep Colorado Safe

From the immigrant bashing lunatic fringe. Hey, just because immigrant bashing does not live up to its billing as a way to mobilize conservative support doesn't mean we won't have to fight to keep some anti-immigrant initiative that could end up hurting a lot of people (including citizens) from passing next year. Fortunately, the forces of good are already mobilizing and already have a presence on the web. Check it out and help us fight the good fight in 2006.

Purchasing Power

Here is a fantastic point made by NewMexiKen: Federal minimum wage: $5.15. It’s been $5.15 since 1997. Loss of purchasing power: About 19.4%. In 1997, Congressional salaries were $133,600. If the minimum wage was raised only as much as Congressional salaries have been raised — by the Congressmen themselves; I mean there hasn’t been a big groundswell that I’ve heard to increase Congressional salaries — then the minimum wage would become $6.37 in January. And even the $5.15 minimum wage is something that had to be dragged out of the Republican Congress kicking and screaming by Clinton -- the relative loss of purchasing power began before that. But anyway. Why doesn't someone propose that every time Congress gets a "cost of living" pay increase, the minimum wage has to go up by a corresponding percentage? I suppose the perverse consequence would be that the Republicans would suddenly become believers in holding the line on Congressional pay, which in turn would make serving in Congress even more for the wealthy who don't need the salary than it is today. Still, this is something worth thinking about.

Priorities

While Republicans want to spend 2006 grandstanding over racial issues, Colorado Democrats want to come up with solutions to the state's problems: House and Senate Democratic leadership have several ideas for health care: lowering prescription drug costs by buying in bulk, making health insurance more affordable for small businesses by creating a government pool to help cover high claims, and subsidizing premium costs for low-income residents to encourage preventive care instead of relying on more expensive emergency treatment. The cost of employee health care is becoming a real drag on job creation and on the quality of existing jobs. I personally believe a national health care plan is the best solution, but Colorado's legislature can't make that happen. The state reinsurance pool being proposed by the Dems, especially, ought to work as a short-term fix while we wait for the transition to national health care. What's the Republican plan? Hassle brown people for ID when we try to use state services. And run it as a November ballot initiative, of course, because the point is to really just to get the "base" to the polls. After all, as Joe Stengel says, the next governor will get to make appointments to the Reapportionment Commission and maybe get to name a state Supreme Court justice or two. Update: Senator Salazar proposes a national commission to study health care reform. Are we seeing a coordinated, on-message Colorado Democratic Party?

Saturday Beer Blogging 11.19.05

Pre-Columbian elevation assisted indigenous American female master brewers -- there is no way I could overlook this story:

    An ancient brewery from a vanished empire was staffed by elite women who were selected for their beauty or nobility, a new study concludes.

    . . .

    The brewery, on a mountaintop in southern Peru, cranked out hundreds of gallons of beer every week. The 1,000-year-old facility was part of the Wari empire, which predated the Incas.

No Reinheitsgebot for the Wari, of course.  Their beer was made of corn and Peruvian pepper-tree berries.  I expect to see a clone recipe in Zymurgy any month now.

Of course, I have to take any story about archaeologists' finds with a grain of salt, even though they are trained experts and I am not, when they start trying to project their findings into modern society.  There are just a whole host of cultural assumptions this information is being filtered through.  For example, what to make of this:

    Bits of Wari society may have carried forward even to today, says Susan deFrance, an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Florida. Modern Andean drinking culture is unlike many Western societies, in which women tend to drink less.

    "There's a lot of equality in terms of how men and women drink in the highlands of Andes," deFrance said. "Women will get as rip-roaring drunk, if not more so, than men."

Maybe it is just the people I hang out with, but my reaction to this was:  This is different from modern American society how?  These recent finds about ancient Peruvian brewing culture are extremely interesting regardless of whether they shed light on alleged differences among modern cultures.

The Immigration Non-Issue

So Colorado Republicans want to make immigration a big issue for the 2006 election.  My advice to Senate President Fitz-Gerald, Speaker Romanoff and the rest of the Colorado Democratic contingent in the legislature:  Don't take the bait.

The idea that "immigration will be the issue in 2006" has been pushed by Republicans angry with the Bushies' uncharacteristic moderation on the issue for so long that reporters and others ought to recognize it for what it is:  just another contrived cultural wedge issue for an election year.  Sure, Greg Walcher was able to close the gap on John Salazar by running TV commercials featuring shadowy brown criminals, but that was successful (and only partially so) only because Salazar is himself a brown-skinned Latino and therefore more vulnerable to race baiting.

The lesson of 2005 should be that immigration does not move votes.  The attempt late in the Referendum C and D campaign to defeat C by linking it to undocumented immigration failed.  So did Jerry Kilgore's attempt to use immigration as an issue in the Virginia governor's race.  The lesson is that except as a way to play the race card against a Latino candidate, this issue has no traction.  Also, history teaches us that immigration becomes an issue at the bottom of a recession when people are looking for scapegoats, not when Republicans out of ideas need to manufacture a boogeyman to rally people against in an election year.

Fitz-Gerald, Romanoff and the eventual Democratic candidate for governor should take the grown up route of pointing out that immigration is a federal responsibility, and keep the focus on the issue that matters most to Colorado voters:  the economy.