The Duchess Of Drought

When is Gail going to learn that doing nothing and having others do your work for you isn't leadership? I saw her recent op-ed with Andy Biggs, gushing about how the president could build some big dams and other infrastructure. According to her, that would fix everything that she's helped break and build up the glorious legacy of Dear Leader. Clearly, she's surrendering to the notion that brown-nosing the President is a replacement for Constitutional order. If only Arizona had its own state government to start implementing policies and building infrastructure to preserve our current water levels until interstate projects to bring in more water can be completed. If only she could somehow find a way to influence that government to do that...

You'd think that somebody who spent decades in government would have, in the past several years of our water crisis, come up with a better plan than "play to the president's ego and hope he buys the solution for us as a present." Regardless of how you feel about the President, he's renowned for his fickle favor as Colorado can tell you. He vetoed a bipartisan water project that would have given 39 communities clean drinking water, just because he didn't like how they vote. Perhaps we ought not risk our future on his favor alone, lest we join the "Great Donald Trump Blight Belt," that offhanded moment of spite will create of those communities.

By handing everything off to Washington, this whole plan could get canceled at any point during its construction, overnight, with a tweet. He can and will use these projects and his power over them to enslave us to his every whim, reneging on every single deal he's made as soon as he has a new outlandish demand. All it takes is one governor or mayor, maybe even a Republican, doing something that offends him, and the cycle of punishment and tribute begins all over again. This administration has a long history of refusing to do its job and withholding funds just to punish people who cross them and finding ways for one duty to be leveraged to force capitulation to demands that would not serve the people of this state.

I guess she might understand all this if she did more than just pass along bills written by the American Legislative Exchange Council, an affiliate of the Heritage Foundation that produces legislation for oil tycoons and Lear jet televangelists while masquerading as traditional Americana, like a parent doing their child's school project. Every time she opens her mouth on her own, she proves she's either a puppet for someone else or locked in a room with party insiders, getting high on their own fumes.

She surely doesn't take much counsel from her voters. Remember last summer, when she shut the public out of her big water presentation at the last second and only let party insiders attend? And we all know how shy she gets when she has to defend her ideas in public debate, if she even shows up. I guess that's what you do when you don't have any real principles: hide behind your party and seek rich masters.

Yes, finally, Gail, you admit the water problem isn't going to fix itself. So who's been blocking every real attempt to deal with this in an honest way? Oh yeah. That's you. The Duchess of Drought. The only explanation for you sabotaging Arizona's water future is that you're either benefitting from this or you have no idea what you're doing. Neither one is a good look.

The truth is, you're still dodging your job and begging for a federal solution, the same kind the president already vetoed. And even if he did come through, all you're doing is pushing for more supply. That's fine; we need that. But you're pretending that too much demand isn't pushing this crisis past the breaking point for families right now, as I'm writing this.

What your plan really means is that we'll get new water years after people have already packed up and left their homes, communities, and family farms because of man-made drought. Drought caused by out-of-state factory farms, like the mega-dairy in Willcox that uses more water than every single person and industry in town combined and only employs some 200 local workers. Other people had to come fix that mess for you, too. The Attorney General and the Governor had to step in because you'd broken the legislature's ability to do its job for the people in your own district.

Tell me, how does a desalination plant that takes 5-10 years to build stop Willcox's wells from going dry while the ground literally caves in from all the water being sucked out? We've known for over a hundred years that Willcox has brackish water that could be cleaned up. But no, instead we let a dairy worth hundreds of millions of dollars take the drinking water away from regular families and let them cover the hundreds of thousands of dollars it takes to dig deep enough to find the water left in the basin.

Even with the extra groundwater from desalination, if we're draining water at twice the rate it refills, you're just going to end up with another basin caving in and destroying roads, pipes, and power lines. And all this time, you push weak little bills to maybe, someday, if everything goes perfectly, take the tiniest bite at the problem. Wouldn't want to upset your donors and corporate pals, after all. I guess it makes sense when you work for a realtor who also runs a water company, selling to the very homes whose wells went dry on your watch.

You have to be aware that dams don't generate water; they retain it. Canals require surface water you haven't identified and accommodating terrain in between. Pipes and coastal desalination are decades away and very expensive. The right thing to do is have the political courage and integrity to stand before your people and say we have to live within the load-bearing capacity of our environment while we engineer ways to expand that, and that until we do, our industry and agriculture must reflect the reality of our resources. Apparently, those are traits you lack, or a constraint you believe we're too childish to accept. Or is that how you keep the corporate donations coming?

You've blocked real water protections for your donors and your own interests, and now you're hoping there are enough loyal fans of the president left in your district to get you elected one more time, using his power and his fame instead of your own merit. Why should anyone elect you as a state Senator when your literal plan is "ask daddy?" Why should we even have a state Senate if all they do is wait for a Federal messiah to fix it for us?

Well, daddy isn't in the Arizona state house, is he? Daddy doesn't control the committee that lets water regulations in Arizona get voted on, does he? The President barely knows your name and wouldn't stop to stomp on you if you were on fire, and as far as I've seen, he cares even less than you do about your constituents. If he chooses to support any part of this his interest will wane before he's done with his next cheeseburger. It'll be sloppy, riddled with conflicts of interest, and may not even be projects that will actually help us.

If you do get elected again, will you at least put in a good word for us with your boss when our wells dry up? Or maybe, while you're building your illegal border wall with your impossible internet vice tax, they'll hit an undiscovered aquifer and, for once, you can solve a problem, even if by accident? I guess it's easier to rule your voters than regulate your donors.

But as someone who lives in your district and has seen nothing from you but excuses, I have to ask: Why are you even here? Why are you even running? What are you gaining? Are you one more card punch away from another really nice ALEC-funded resort trip? What are you even offering us? What do you actually do, besides block a seat that could be filled by a real leader? Your entire career is just to let somebody else do it for you, so why are you even bothering? What is the point of... you?