Featured Stories
Congressman Ron Barber hosts first ‘Congress on Your Corner’ this Saturday
June 22, 2012
Posted by AzBlueMeanie: Newly elected Congressman Ron Barber will host his first "Congress on Your Corner" event this Saturday at the Safeway on the southeast corner of East Grant and North Craycroft roads. It runs from 9:00 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. Visitors can meet one-on-one with Barber to discuss any issue, concern or problem regarding the federal government.
Congressman Raúl Grijalva campaign event featuring Jim Hightower
June 22, 2012
Posted by AzBlueMeanie: Event announcement from The Raúl Grijalva for Congress campaign: A Whole Lot of People Welcome Jim Hightower Meet Former Texas AG Secretary Jim Hightower For A Howlin' Good Time Rallying For Congressman Raúl M. Grijlava SUNDAY, JULY 1st, at 6PM (Event Starts at 5pm with patio social hour) The Loft Cinema – … Read more
The jobs Romney created at Bain were outsourced abroad
June 22, 2012
Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
The Washington Post’s “Fact Check” editor is Glenn Kessler, he of the four Pinnochio scale fame. I will frequently cite his fact checking, even though Kessler sometimes suffers from the same malady as PolitiFact, inserting his own subjective interpretation to provide “context” that turns a factual statement into “somewhat misleading.”
I now have to question Kessler’s credibility as a fact checker. On Thursday, Kessler gave the Obama campaign 4 Pinocchios for Obama’s newest anti-Romney ad for this claim: “Running for governor, Mitt Romney campaigned as a job creator. But as a corporate raider, he shipped jobs to China and Mexico. As governor, he did the same thing: Outsourcing state jobs to India.”
On Friday, the page one lead story in the Washington Post is Romney’s Bain Capital invested in companies that moved jobs overseas. How does a “fact checker” miss his own editorial board meeting about the big investigative report being published on page one, and how does he get his facts so wrong? What’s happening here?
Reporter Tom Hamburger’s investigative report has the facts. Romney’s Bain Capital invested in companies that moved jobs overseas:
Mitt Romney’s financial company, Bain Capital, invested in a series of firms that specialized in relocating jobs done by American workers to new facilities in low-wage countries like China and India.
During the nearly 15 years that Romney was actively involved in running Bain, a private equity firm that he founded, it owned companies that were pioneers in the practice of shipping work from the United States to overseas call centers and factories making computer components, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
‘FastnFuror’ and Captain Ahab
June 22, 2012
Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
The caption comes from a pair of posts by Ed Kilgore at the Political Animal blog. The first, natch, is FastnFuror:
[O]ur wingnutty friends have become exercised over the great issue of this era, Eric Holder’s stonewalling of Darrel Issa’s demands for a document dump related to the “Fast and Furious” gun walking operation, and now the president’s assertion of executive privilege against their release.
F&F does sound like it was a mess, albeit one that simply followed tactics developed and used in ATF operations during the Bush administration. I generally tend to assume all sorts of sordid and ineffective practices pervade everything remotely related to the the border-centered “war on drugs,” which is one reason I wish we’d more or less call it off.
But there’s something especially weird about conservatives raising such a ruckus over what you’d expect many of them to consider eggs broken in making a holy omelet—or over victims of gun violence, for that matter. Is the current hysteria just reflexive hyper-partisanship? Is it displaced fury at Holder for his opposition to GOP voter suppression efforts? [Yes] Is ATF-hating (remember Wayne Lapierre’s reference to its agents as “jackbooted government thugs”) just systematic now? Or is this all about the bizarre conspiracy theory—which few of the people in full shriek today mention—that F&F was actually aimed at discrediting U.S. gun dealers and hence justifying a crackdown on the Second Amendment? [Yes again]
National Center for Fair & Open Testing accuses PCC of misusing “admissions” test
June 22, 2012
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by David Safier
I love the take-all-comers aspect of community colleges which, unfortunately is coming to an end. It's a manifestation of one of the best — and most troublesome — aspects of our education system: the idea that American education gives people unlimited second chances. Like democracy, it's messy and inefficient. Also like democracy, it beats hell out of the other alternatives. But if you're starving education, limiting enrollment is inevitable. If you ask me, that's a damn shame, but if you ask a conservative, it's not a bug, it's a feature.
PCC has created hurdles to admissions which don't belong at the community college level. Worse, the main hurdle is a single test which wasn't designed to be used in that way. The National Center for Fair and Open Testing wrote a letter to the PCC Board of Governors condemning the practice.
It has recently come to our attention that Pima Community College is using the COMPASS exam, designed explicitly for course placement, as a de facto admissions test. Based on our review of the evidence, the COMPASS currently functions as the sole criterion to determine eligibility for credit-bearing courses, degree and certificate programs, and financial aid.
We are gravely concerned that Pima Community College's current policy appears to be a violation of the standards of the assessment profession, the test-makers' guidelines for proper use of exam results, and principles of good practice broadly supported by the college admissions community.
Even the company that makes the COMPASS exam doesn't condone its use as the sole criterion for admissions.
We counsel clients not to rely on assessment data as the sole criterion for making selection decisions, but to consider all available information that addresses additional relevant skills and abilities. We encourage our clients to consider other measures of knowledge, skills, and abilities (e.g., high school grades, supervisors' ratings) and various noncognitive factors (e.g., previous experience, interests, special skills)."
You can read the whole letter below the fold.
Can Arizona Democrats take back Kyl’s Senate seat in November?
June 22, 2012
By Pamela Powers Hannley When long-time Arizona Republican Senator Jon Kyl announced his impending retirement in February 2011, the chances of a Democrat filling that seat seemed so remote that most news stories—including this one from Politico—only mentioned the Republican heir-apparent, six-term Congressman Jeff Flake. Sixteen months later, Democratic challenger and former Surgeon General Dr. … Read more
The ‘Side of Love’ confronts Arpaio: Saturday night at the Tent City Jail
June 21, 2012
by Pamela Powers Hannley There's going to be a showdown at the infamous Maricopa County Tent City Jail this Saturday, June 23, at 8 p.m. No, Sheriff Joe Arpaio won't be shooting it out with Randy Parraz. Saturday night– at the Tent City, a symbol of shame and cruelty– the side of hatered and bigotry … Read more
Does Imagine Prep at Superstition really spend $20,000 per student?
June 21, 2012
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by David Safier NOTE: Since Imagine School at Superstition made news by firing 11 of its 14 teachers, I’ve been writing about it, reading up on Imagine Schools and talking to people who know more than I do. This is the third in a series of posts trying to make sense of the nation’s largest … Read more
