Month: February 2017

Trump’s Muslim Ban Executive Order Reveals an Administration Ready to Lie About Absolutely Everything

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By Michael Bryan

Many have identified the reasons why Trump’s Executive Order (EO) suspending travel from seven Muslim majority counties is ineffective, illegal, and just plain stupid: it is clearly discriminatory toward Muslims, it harms our counter-terror efforts made in conjunction with those nations’s governments, it is a propaganda win for the terrorists, and there haven’t actually been any terror attacks in America by visitors from the targeted countries since 1975, among many other reasons.

But what I find most disquieting about the EO is something that I have not seen a lot of commentary on, thus far: it demonstrates that this Administration is ready and willing to take ill-considered and deleterious actions regarding national security for purely political reasons, and then blatantly lie about classified intelligence to justify it.

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Primavera Foundation’s Valentine Celebration

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“The Primavera Foundation provides pathways out of poverty through safe, affordable housing, workforce development and neighborhood revitalization. The Primavera Foundation announces the successful conclusion of the NeighborhoodLIFT program in Tucson. We celebrate 252 new low-to-moderate income homeowners and over $29 million dollars in economic impact for our community! We thank our funding partners Wells Fargo … Read more

This is what has Rep. Martha McSally hiding in the chicken bunker

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This is what has Rep. Martha McSally hiding in the chicken bunker:

Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) represents one of the reddest districts of a deep-red state. As chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, he promised to continue his years-long witch hunt of Hillary Clinton if she was elected president, but now says he will not investigate President Trump‘s multiple conflicts of interests or tax returns (for possible violations of the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution). Chaffetz Won’t Investigate Trump Because He Only Cares About Investigating Democrats.

Chaffetz got a frosty reception in his home state on Feb. 9, at a town hall (video).

Angry constituents packed a high school auditorium, grilled the congressman with questions and peppered him with boos and chants while protesters amassed outside. “Do Your Job!” Hundreds of People Shout Down Jason Chaffetz Over Lack of Trump Probe:

At a town hall meeting on Thursday night held by Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), the chair of the House Oversight Committee, the mood got rough, when hundreds of people demanded answers from Chaffetz regarding a host of controversies: his unwillingness to investigate President Donald Trump’s conflicts of interest, his support for Obamacare repeal, a proposal to sell off public lands, and more.

“You’re really not going to like this part,” Chaffetz said at one point. “The president under the law is exempt from the conflict of interests laws.”

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Senate Tea-Publicans advance unconstitutional school ‘vouchers for all’ bill

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Don’t say that I didn’t warn you. School ‘vouchers for all’ bills scheduled to be heard beginning Thursday.

Our lawless Tea-Publican legislators advanced their unconstitutional “vouchers for all” bill in the state Senate to open the door to all 1.1 million students in Arizona schools to use state dollars to attend private or parochial schools. Lawmakers move Arizona closer to school-voucher option for all students:

The 4-3 vote by the Senate Education Committee followed hours of testimony from people who already get what lawmakers call “empowerment scholarship accounts,” detailing how they’ve helped their children. Eligible groups include children with special needs, those living on tribal reservations and those who attend schools rated D or F, among others.

Sen. Debbie Lesko, R-Peoria, sponsor of SB 1431, said vouchers save taxpayer money. She said schools get an average of $9,529 a year for each student while a typical voucher is in the $5,200 range.

But Chuck Essigs of the Arizona Association of School Business Officials said that’s misleading.

He said the $9,529 figure includes federal aid to schools as well as locally raised dollars for bonds and overrides. Essigs said the actual amount paid in state aid to schools is an average of $1,100 less per student than a voucher for an elementary school child; for high schools the difference is $1,200 per child, he said.

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House Tea-Publicans vote to restrict your constitutional right to make laws

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Our authoritarian Tea-Publican legislators in the Arizona House advanced four of five bills on Thursday taking aim at restricting Arizona citizens’ constitutional right to propose laws through an initiative, and to limit or repeal the Voter Protection Act.

Howard Fischer reports, GOP lawmakers advance measures to rein in citizens’ ballot-initiative rights:

The package of legislation comes on the heels of intensive lobbying by Chamber of Commerce organizations upset that 2016 voters approved hiking the state’s minimum wage to $10 an hour now, and eventually to $12 an hour by 2020.

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The effort does not seek repeal of the right of voters to enact their own laws, which dates to the first days of statehood. Instead, these proposals, all approved on a 5-3 party-line vote by the House Government Committee, seek to rein them in (i.e., make it more difficult and expensive, if not impossible).

The Arizona Daily Star’s Tim Steller explains that the votes came down to a new Tea-Publican legislator from Tucson, Rep. Todd Clodfelter (LD 10), who voted with his authoritarian colleagues from the state of Maricopa. A tie vote would have defeated the bills in committee. Political Notebook: Arizona legislators look to seize voters’ powers:

So now [Tea-Publican legislators] must rise up from their undignified trampling and take away our misused initiative rights.

That’s the upshot of five measures introduced in the House of Representatives, four of which passed out of committee Thursday with a decisive vote in favor from a Tucson legislator. Todd Clodfelter, a new Republican representive in Legislative District 10, approved the measures despite efforts to sway him against and to kill the bills in committee.

This guy was only elected in November because zombie Tea-Publicans who vote out of GOP tribalism for anyone with an “(R)” behind their name single-shotted him, helping him to defeat one of the most able and decent legislators we had in the Arizona legislature, Stefanie Mach. That was a travesty and an injustice. Let’s ensure that this guy is a one-termer.

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