Arizona Supreme Court sides with GOP voter suppression of citizens initiatives

While you were distracted by the long Thanksgiving Day holiday weekend, the Arizona Supreme Court finally issued its opinion in the “Outlaw Dirty Money” initiative case. Arizona Supreme Court ruling supports legal tactic used to keep initiatives off ballot:

The Arizona Supreme Court has upheld the constitutionality of a legal tactic used by those seeking to keep voter-proposed laws off the ballot. [“The only issues we must decide are the constitutionality of §19-118(C) and the propriety of the trial court’s exclusion of the non-appearing subpoenaed circulators’ petition signatures.”]

The Court’s opinion is narrowly tailored. “As our decision does not turn on whether the Committee strictly complied with § 19-118(C), we need not determine the constitutionality of the strict compliance requirement of § 19-102.01(A).” The “strict compliance” constitutional challenge is left to another day.

In a unanimous ruling Wednesday, the justices reaffirmed the right of people to craft initiatives and seek to have them approved.

“And we are reluctant to impede such civic efforts,” they said.

But Justice John Lopez, writing for the court, said there is nothing unduly burdensome about requiring paid circulators to register and provide an address where they can be subpoenaed. Lopez said throwing out the signatures collected by those who don’t show up in court does not impair the constitutional rights of people to propose their own laws.

This is fundamentally anti-democratic, and wrongly decided. The valid signatures of voters who legally signed the petition in good faith are disenfranchised if the circulator cannot be located or fails to appear in court, for any reason. This legal tactic invalidates the otherwise valid signatures of voters given in good faith through no fault of their own.

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23rd Annual BICAS Art Auction (Nov. 30/Dec.1)

“It’s that time of year again! BICAS’ 23rd Annual Art Auction is coming up fast, and we hope all of you can join us! Friday is our classic drink, check out art, schmooze, and make your plan of attack for Saturday.

Nov 30, 6 to 10 p.m. and Dec. 1, 6 to 9 p.m. at YWCA of Southern Arizona, 525 N. Bonita Ave.

When Saturday comes, all of our amazing Art donated by this WONDERFUL community will be up for grabs. You can Auction all night, well at least until 9:00PM which is the cutoff! Take it with you then, or pick it up at BICAS later.

This is our LARGEST fundraiser of the year, so we hope to see many of your lovely faces out there ready to buy some sweet sweet Art. Fun for the whole family, which means no excuses!

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Can the Next Congress Chase Down America’s Runaway Wealth?

The last Congress ensured that America’s wealth will concentrate ever more rapidly at the very top — unless the next one does something about it.

[Distributed via OtherWords]

The next Congress faces a stunning array of challenges — on health care, gun policy, climate change, you name it. One crucial challenge starved of attention, however, is what I call runaway inter-generational wealth.

That’s where the wealth of a country’s richest families snowballs from one generation to the next, unconstrained by living expenses or taxes, causing an ever-increasing share of national wealth to concentrate at the top. America has experienced this problem for decades now, and last year’s tax act is certain to make it worse.

For the first time since the estate tax was enacted a century ago, rich American couples can pass $22 million to their children entirely free of federal taxes. Currently, over 150,000 American households hold that much or more wealth.

That will lock in runaway inter-generational wealth.

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Kyrsten Sinema

Arizona Women Win 42 Legislative, State & Congressional Races

Kyrsten Sinema
Arizona Senator-elect Kyrsten Sinema

Arizona has a history of electing women to public office. In 1932, Arizona elected Isabella Greenway to the US House of Representatives. In 1972, State Senator Sandra Day O’Connor was the first female president of the Arizona Senate. In 1998, Arizona voters elected five women to run the state government— Jane Hull (Governor), Betsy Bayless (Secretary of State), Janet Napolitano (Attorney General), Carol Springer (Treasurer), and Lisa Graham-Keegan (Superintendent of Public Instruction). To this date, Arizona’s Fab Five remain the most number of women elected to state government at the same time. In 2017, the Arizona Legislature had the highest percentage of women (40 percent) of any state Legislature in the Country.

In 2018, Arizona elected its first female US senator and 41 other women to political office. Out of 108 races, women won 39 percent of them this year. After inauguration in January 2019, half of Arizona’s statewide offices (4/8), 27 percent of our Congressional delegation (3/11), and 39 percent of the Arizona Legislature (35/90) will be women.

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One More Senate Race: Mississippi Goddam (Updated)

There is one senate race yet to be decided this Tuesday, in a run-off election in Mississippi.

As singer Nina Simone sang, Mississippi Goddam.

Republican senator Cindy Hyde-Smith, who was appointed by Gov. Phil Bryant in March to fill retiring GOP Sen. Thad Cochran’s seat, is a virtual cartoon character villain of the “Old South” rather than the New South image that Old Dixie would like to portray to the rest of the world.

On Nov. 11, a video appeared on social media showing Hyde-Smith saying that if she were invited by one of her supporters to a “public hanging,” she would be in “the front row” (just like the girl above).

Perhaps Senator Hyde-Smith should visit the Legacy Museum and National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama to get a better moral sense of the racial terrorism of hangings and lynchings of 4400 African-American men, women, and children who were hanged, burned alive, shot, drowned, and beaten to death by white mobs between 1877 and 1950.

On Nov. 15, another video emerged of Hyde-Smith telling a group of people that “there’s a lot of liberal folks in those other schools who that maybe we don’t want to vote. Maybe we want to make it just a little more difficult. So, I think that’s a great idea.”

What she means, of course, is African-Americans who overwhelmingly vote Democratic — when they are allowed to vote and their vote is not suppressed by white politicians like Senator Hyde-Smith.

On November 20, a Facebook post surfaced in which Hyde-Smith is seen posing for a photo wearing a Confederate soldier’s hat and holding a rifle.  She wrote in her Facebook post, “I enjoyed my tour of Beauvoir. The Jefferson Davis Home and Presidential Library located in Biloxi. This is a must see. Currently on display are artifacts connected to the daily life of the Confederate Soldier including weapons. Mississippi history at its best!”

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