Month: September 2012

The CAP assault on the independence of the judiciary

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Tucson Citizen editor Mark Evans redeems himself today with the opinion published in the Arizona Daily Star on Monday in opposition to proposition 115, after his wrong-headed opinion on the "top two primary" last week. Vote no on Prop. 115 – judicial selection reform:

Should strict adherence to the Christian faith and adamant opposition to abortion be the deciding factors as to whether a lawyer is appointed as a Superior Court Judge in Pima or Maricopa counties, or to any of the state’s appellate courts?

How you answer that question may determine how you vote on Proposition 115, which seeks to reform the selection and retention rules for state appellate judges and Superior Court judges in those counties.

Most voters will receive their voter guide pamphlet in the mail in the next few weeks and there are many arguments for and against Prop. 115, most asserting that it either removes politics from the selection process or injects more politics into it.

But this is only partly about the politics of judicial selection and mostly about so-called Christian values. It’s a solution seeking a problem put forth by the Center for Arizona Policy, a Phoenix-based evangelical Christian organization that wields enormous influence over the Arizona Republican Party and whose leaders fervently believe that a “Biblical worldview” in public policy is essential for Arizona’s prosperity.

Arizona’s conservatives the past few years have been trying to remake state government to conform to their political vision and the Center for Arizona Policy is in the vanguard of that effort. Prop. 115 is its idea, it not only championed the proposition, but was directly involved in the negotiations over the ballot’s language.

GOP ‘trickle down’ economics disproved and discredited, once again

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie: According to a new report by the Congressional Research Service, cutting taxes for the wealthiest does not result in economic growth, despite constant conservative claims to the contrary. But you already knew that. New Study Finds Tax Cuts For The Rich Cause Income Inequality, Not Economic Growth: Instead, tax cuts for the … Read more

Tea Party ‘True the Vote’ voter suppression efforts

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

The New York Times finally caught up to the Tea Party voter suppression efforts by "True the Vote" in a lengthy report on Sunday. Looking, Very Closely, for Voter Fraud:

It might as well be Harry Potter’s invisible Knight Bus, because no one can prove it exists.

The bus has been repeatedly cited by True the Vote, a national group
focused on voter fraud. Catherine Engelbrecht, the group’s leader, told a
gathering in July about buses carrying dozens of voters showing up at
polling places during the recent Wisconsin recall election.

“Magically, all of them needed to register and vote at the same time,”
Ms. Engelbrecht said. “Do you think maybe they registered falsely under
false pretenses? Probably so.”

Weeks later, another True the Vote representative told a meeting of
conservative women about a bus seen at a San Diego polling place in 2010
offloading people “who did not appear to be from this country.”

Officials in both San Diego and Wisconsin said they had no evidence that
the buses were real. “It’s so stealthy that no one is ever able to get a
picture and no one is able to get a license plate,” said Reid Magney, a
spokesman for the Wisconsin agency that oversees elections. In some
versions the bus is from an Indian reservation; in others it is full of
voters from Chicago or Detroit. “Pick your minority group,” he said.

[In 2010, Tea Party candidate Jesse Kelly's Claims That Mexicans Are Being Bused In To Vote Were Dismissed By AZ Secretary Of State – the claims “are without merit.” Matthew Benson, then communications director for the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office, called it an “urban legend” and pointed out that “in terms of specific instances, we haven’t seen it.”]

The buses are part of the election fraud gospel according to True the
Vote, which is mobilizing a small army of volunteers to combat what it
sees as a force out to subvert elections. Ms. Engelbrecht’s July speech
in Montana was titled “Voter Fraud: The Plot to Undermine American
Democracy.”

True the Vote’s plan is to scrutinize the validity of voter registration
rolls and voters who appear at the polls. Among those in their cross
hairs: noncitizens who are registered to vote, those without proper
identification, others who may be registered twice, and dead people. In
Ohio and Indiana, True the Vote recently filed lawsuits to force
officials to clean up voter rolls.

* * *

In a report this month, the liberal-leaning organizations Common Cause
and Demos cited True the Vote as the central player in this effort,
which it called a threat to the fundamental right to vote.

* * *

While [Ms. Englebrecht] portrays True the Vote as nonpartisan, it grew out of a Tea Party
group, King Street Patriots, that she founded in Texas. An examination
shows that it has worked closely with a variety of well-financed
organizations, many unabashed in their desire to defeat President Obama.

A polished and provocative video, circulating among Tea Party activists,
seeks to raise a “cavalry” to march on swing states and identifies True
the Vote as a participant in the effort, called Code Red USA.

In the past year, Americans for Prosperity, an organization founded by
the billionaire Koch brothers, and other Republican-leaning independent
groups have sponsored meetings featuring Ms. Engelbrecht and other True
the Vote speakers.

Latino Decisions Tracking Poll: Obama advantage grows

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie: "Mr. Self-deport," Willard "Mittens" Romney, is giving a speech to the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce in Los Angeles on Monday. Yeah, good luck with that. The latest numbers from the tracking poll by Latino Decisions this morning shows Obama's advantage is growing: With seven weeks until the election Republican candidate Mitt … Read more

Obama campaign ad: ‘The Question’

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

The "Galt – Gekko 2012" campaign has trotted out Saint Ronnie Reagan's tired old trope "are you better off than you were foure years ago?"

We have been over this point: "We have witnessed the rise of a new brand of conservatism, an odd
blend of Ayn Rand, who rejected all forms of faith and religion, and
rejected Christian altruism for "moral nihilism" (morality does not
inherently exist, and any established moral values are abstractly
contrived) and "ethical egoism" (people should act in their own self
interest); and Gordon Gekko: "Greed is good." In short, a philosophy
of "I've got mine, f#@& you!"

The selfish interest framing of this question reflects this self-interest. But the proper framing of the question is whether we together, as a nation, are better off than we were four years ago?

Do you rememember where we were four years ago this September? I do. We were nine months into a recession; the housing bubble had long since burst and foreclosures were skyrocketing; Lehman Brothers was the latest financial institution in a series of institutions to collapse under the weight of casino capitalism on Wall Street and there was market panic that the rest of the financial system would collapse with it; the stock market was in free-fall; mass lay-offs of workers were under way. We were staring into the maw of another Great Depression.

Are we together, as a nation, better off than we were four years ago? To paraphrase Weeper of the House John Boehner, "Hell yes we are!"

The Obama campaign makes this critical thinking point in its latest ad, "The Question," which responds to the "Galt – Gekko 2012" campaign's selfish interest "are you better off than you were foure years ago?"

Video below the fold.