I’ve been somewhat impressed with the way Governor Brewer has been handling Arizona’s fiscal crisis. Not impressed as in thinking she’s doing a great job, but impressed as in she’s been holding back the worst excesses of the kookocracy. So I was hoping against hope for some sanity from her State of the State address.

Alas, it was not to be.

According to Brewer, Arizona’s problems mostly stem from: Too much healthcare for the poor, the federal government, and immigrants. Not as one might think from massive overbuilding fueled by a corrupt banking system which when the bubble burst left the state gasping for revenue.

It’s the poor, the Mexicans, and the feds that are dragging us down. Dang them.

So how is Arizona going to dig itself out of the $5 billion hole? We will “un-shackle our job creators.” Committees will do this. Somehow.

To give Brewer credit, she does bring up education as an important factor in Arizona’s future. And how do we provide a solid education for Arizona’s children? School choice and loosening teacher standards!

This idea that instead of bringing all schools up to par, we should reward the children whose parents are engaged in the process and punish the children who are born into dysfunctional families is sickening.

Guess they should have picked better parents.

As an extra flourish, Brewer brings out the wingnut trope that “No government ever created a dollar of wealth or a dime of capital.” And then disagrees with herself when she says, “Every one of Arizona’s military bases is critical to our national defense—and to our state and local economies.”

I suppose the military is not government-run.

To be fair, Brewer does hint at supporting tax hikes to help cover the budget deficit. Or at least I think that’s what she meant: “Over the long run I support a responsible pro-growth tax reform package that includes tax cuts. However—we must ensure a revenue base that supports vital functions through this downturn.”

Now I’m depressed.

The full text of the address can be found here (PDF).

Nothing new about that.

But lately things have been coming to a head. I don’t know if it’s all some elaborate practical joke, if I’m going nuts, or if the thought leaders out there are, in fact, completely insane.

One current source of confusion for me is the endless obsession and lamentation about housing prices. Yep, they crashed, and they crashed hard. If you, for some reason, bought a house at the top of the bubble you are now in a world of pain. And I feel for you. That really, really, sucks.

However—and here’s where I stop tracking the narrative—there was a huge bubble fueled by incredibly sketchy loans; loans that should never have been given. Those loans raised housing prices to fantasy levels, levels that priced homes utterly out of reach of home buyers.

I live in Phoenix, one of the housing bubble poster children, a metroplex where a lot of people are “paid in sunshine”—high-paying jobs are few and far between. According to RealEstate.com, in 2007 Phoenix had a median household Income of $45,474 and a median home value of $347,000.

Do those two numbers jive to you? They shouldn’t. If your household income is $45K, you simply cannot purchase a home for $347K. It’s called math. You can’t pay the vig. There’s nothing mysterious about it.

But now the bubble has burst, and home prices are back somewhere realistic. Which, again, really sucks for you if you bought your house at the top of the bubble. You are now deep in the hole. So I can see all those people desperately wanting house prices to pop up again so they can at some point actually sell their homes without going bankrupt. Granted. As for myself, yes, I enjoyed the fantasy that my house had made me rich, rich I tell you! Which I was for a while, in theory. Theory and reality are not the same. You are rich when you have the cash in hand.

But. If the house prices go back up to bubble levels, nobody can buy the houses without insane loans, and we would be back in another bubble. Which by its very freaking definition is not sustainable. Houses can’t cost more than people can afford, or people can’t buy them. Unless we can start paying our mortgages with unicorn tears, that’s just how it is.

So why am I reading all these stories lamenting the lack of lift in housing prices? Isn’t it a good thing that houses are affordable for working people again?

So people can actually, you know, live in them?

Kingpin hummingbird. Click for larger size.

One of the great things about living in the Valley of the Sun is the hummingbirds. Stick a hummingbird feeder in your backyard, and soon enough you’ll see the little critters come feed at sunup and sunset.

It never fails to put a smile on my face.

One thing, though, you wouldn’t know about hummingbirds just from looking at them is how unbelievably aggressive they are. A feeder is pure gold to them, and they’ll squabble non-stop, which involves lots of angry chirping, aerobatics, and dive-bombing. I’m not sure if it’s the change in weather lately—yes, we had rain and overcast days—or if it’s mating season, but our local kingpin hummingbird has gone into a total ’roid rage. Get close, and you’ll get an earful. Be another hummingbird and get close, and you are in for a can of whup-ass.

I live on sugar water, dammit! You want some of this? You want some of this?

If you’d like to see more pictures from my backyard, please check out the set on Flickr.

It’s election season and as usual in Arizona that means a bunch of harebrained propositions are on the ballot. After some quality Internet time doing research and some comfy-chair time pondering things, here’s how I filled out my ballot:

Prop 100: No New Home Tax, aka Home Builders Like Money. A Lot.

NO

I see no reason to give real estate developers special protection, especially in light of the state’s current billion dollar budget shortfall.

Prop 101: Freedom of Choice in Health Care, aka The Socialists are Coming! Run!

NO

Why is this on the ballot? Why should we write details about healthcare into the state’s constitution? I’d prefer lawmakers to work this out as they go along. Yes, even the Clown College that is the Arizona State Legislature.

All the talk about preventing “socialized medicine” raises a huge red flag for me, and either way, the language is vague and amending the constitution for something that’s not a current issue smells fishy.

Prop 102: Constitutional Ban on Same Sex Marriage, aka Queers Eat Babies.

NO

I utterly fail to see how preventing a loving same-sex couple from reaping the same tax benefits from being married hetero me receive will somehow turn society into a howling abyss of madness.

As a side note, the argument that keeps being brought up about how “family” throughout history has always been defined as one man, one woman, and their children is patently false. Read a history book that isn’t the the Bible and you’ll see.

Prop 105: Majority Rule—Let the People Decide, aka Democracy Sucks and Taxes Make Us Cry.

NO

This proposition is arguably the biggest pile of manure of the lot. If passed, it will count all eligible voters who do not turn in a ballot as “no” votes on any ballot initiative that would raise taxes.

Wow. Don’t like democracy much, do you?

Although, I might vote for the proposition if it would include provisions for all propositions, as they obviously tend to be little more than special-interest fodder.

And of course, kudos on the Orwellian double-speak.

Prop 200: Payday Loan Reform Act, aka The Poor Don’t Need Money.

NO

Would remove sunset provisions set to kick in in 2010 for payday loan companies.

The payday lending industry is a blight on America. Get rid of them and help society improve. This is a double-plus NO.

Prop 201: Homeowners’ Bill of Rights, aka Please Let Us Sue our Builders.

YES

The current system of forced mediation in disputes with home builders is rigged in the builders’ favor.

Incidentally, I can’t believe there’s a proposition on the ballot I can actually vote yes on.

Prop 202: Stop Illegal Hiring Act, aka Please Let Us Hire Illegals If We Do It On The Down Low.

NO

I’m not a lawyer, but it looks to me like this will gut the current employer sanctions law.

But again, kudos on the double-speak.

Prop 300: Legislators’ Salary Increase, aka We Deserve Mo’ Money.

NO

Sorry people. With a billion dollar budget shortfall out there, I’m not getting a raise, and neither are you. Maybe if you get the state out of the black hole you’ll get some billz for your skillz.

In the sun, the car washers, all latino, are working, spraying and wiping, getting the customers’ cars taken care of as quickly as possible.

Next to me sit a woman and her blonde child, perhaps four or five years old. She’s pretty.

“Mom,” the girl says, “I don’t like brown people.”

The mom smiles and puts her finger to her lips, “Shhh.”

Door bell rings, it’s a tired-looking middle-aged realtor going door to door. He hands me a flyer.

“Are you in the market to sell or buy a home?”

“Hell no.”

“Uh. Hell no, huh?”

“Yeah, not in this market.”

He looked like he lost a little wind, but then gathered himself: “Oh, the market isn’t that bad! The credit market is improving and …”

“Yeah, no. Sorry.”

And according to his flyer, the FHA has raised the loan limit, so “you can buy a property, mortgage up to $346,250. [sic] With 0 down and a 580 credit score.”

Golly gee, Batman, that sure sounds like nothing can go wrong…

Now, snarky as I am, I don’t mean to denigrate the guy—he’s out on the street trying to hustle up business. I respect that. But the situation is completely disgusting.

We’ve also been using Cox for cable TV, and they gave us a pretty good bundling deal for phone service, so all our communications at the house now comes from our good friends at Cox.

Who recently sent us a letter saying they’re going to increase our bill by $10/month starting on the 15th of February.

Fine, OK, it’s still worth it, so not much to say about that. Except for the other content of the letter, which says that the deal we’ve been getting so far is so great that we should be tickled pink our bill is only going up by $10.

OK, fine. We’ll bend over. But wait, there’s more! We’re also getting faster Internet service. Yay! Faster Internet good. And we’re going to get more HD TV channels. Which is a good thing, as the current Cox HD lineup is pathetic at best.

What the letter doesn’t address is when we’re going to get the faster Internet service or when we will get all these fabulous HD channels. Or exactly which channels they’re talking about.

Now, I’m just a cave man and your modern world scares and confuses me, but how about giving us some dates for the upgrades we’re going to receive? How soon is “soon?”

If you don’t want to commit to hard dates, at least a rough indication of which quarter we’re talking about would be nice. You’d think that would be possible.

Oh, and sorry Cox, but the minute FIOS comes to our area, you’re toast.

Here are two pictures from my back yard:

Prickly Pear rose. Click for larger version.

Pink Fairy Duster in bloom. Click for larger version.

Not. A. Dime.

Great, huh? Medium roast. Dark Roast. All kinds of weird anti-testosterone blends. Sugar. Milk. Cream. Whatever you could possibly want for your particular coffee fix.

Bearing this in mind, I keep running across people who have … who have … oh, dear Lord … stopped on their way to work to buy a cup of coffee. Really. Yep. No, no, it’s true. See it every day. Your work provides all the coffee you could possibly need or want, and you decide out of your own volition to stop your car on the way to work and pay for coffee.

Now, I have a long commute. Looooong. Painful. And yet I am able to wait until I get to work to pick up the free coffee. It seems that my entire being will not self-destruct if I don’t spend $4 on coffee on the way to a place where free coffee awaits me.

So what is the deal here? Much as I try, I just can’t wrap my head around why somebody would elect to pay $4 for absolutely no reason whatsoever apart from being able to carry a coffee cup with a different label on it. If you needed it that bad, why don’t I see you drinking any more coffee the rest of the day? How can that morning cup contain the magic elixir that keeps you alive, but then you don’t need another for 24 hours?

So here’s the big question: Can I have your money? You obviously have no idea what to do with it, so please give it to me. The first thing I will do is to not spend $4 per day on something I can get for free at work. That adds up to $20 per week, which is $80 per month, perilously close to a cool grand per year.

You can buy real stuff they don’t give you for free at work for that kind of money.

Just saying.

I’d always operated under the assumption that traveling with a child would automatically take you out of the running for upgrades like that, but I’m very happy to have been wrong. Business Class, as you would expect, is a very different experience when it comes to flying. Ah yes. You are greeted on the flight with your choice of water, orange juice, or champagne. The meal has three courses, including a quite amusing appetizer. Your wine selection is served in a glass, not a plastic cup, and from a bottle, not a mini-bottle. After the meal, you are offered port. There is a buffet area if you get peckish between meals. The bathroom is large enough to be comfortable and has windows.

And most important of all, the seats … ah, the seats.

It must be good to be rich.

Soundtrack: “Honey White” by Morphine