DCCC ad: ‘Is Jesse Kelly listening to you?’
May 1, 2012
Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
One of the things I find most amazing about Tea-Publican candidates is that they seem to be completely unaware of "newfangled" inventions like audio recordings and video recordings. It's like they never heard of Thomas Edison. Tea-Publicans say one thing to an audience one day, and the complete opposite thing to another audience the next day, and then act genuinely surprised when the media confronts them about their previous statements the day before.
"I never said that!" To which the media responds, "Well, yes you did; we have it right here on video (or audio), or the text of your comments right here." This is a problem for Tea-Publican candidates from the top of the ticket with the shameless shapeshifer and pathological liar Willard "Mittens" Romney down to the bottom of the ticket in local elections.
And so it goes with the Jesse Kelly campaign in the CD 8 special election for Congress. "Jesse Kelly 2.0" would have voters believe that he is not the same wild-eyed teabagger who ran for Congress in 2010. "I never said that!" To which the media responds, "Well, yes you did; we have it right here on video (or audio)."
The National Democratic Campaign Committee has released an ad hitting Kelly for saying that he'd "love to eliminate" Social Security and supports phasing out Medicare. As the Tucson Weekly points out in CD8: The Surrogates Battle in Race To Finish Giffords' Term:
The DCCC references statements that Kelly made to the Tucson Weekly in a lengthy interview regarding Social Security and Medicare, in which he expressed a desire to do away with both programs over time.
We have no first-hand experience with the third claim in the DCCC ad, which is that Kelly would cut taxes for millionaires in half. But Kelly has expressed support for the elimination of corporate taxes and a 10 percent flat tax for all Americans, which would indeed be a major tax cut for most of America's wealthiest citizens, given that individuals who now earn more than roughly $194,000 in adjusted gross income are in a 35 percent tax bracket.
Video below the fold.
ALEC continuing to lose support, even in AZ
April 30, 2012
By Craig McDermott, cross-posted from Random Musings Turns out that pushing legislation that racks up a body count isn't considered good PR by many of ALEC's corporate supporters… Late last week, Russell Smoldon, lobbyist for SRP and one of ALEC's lead fixers in AZ and Debbie Lesko, AZ state representative AZ chair for ALEC, … Read more
Fact Check: The NRCC’s ‘pants on fire’ – the $500 billion lie that will not die
April 30, 2012
Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
The National Republican Campaign Committee believes voters are just plain stupid. They continue to repeat the $500 billion lie that will not die even after it has beem debunked repeatedly by every media fact checker since 2010.
Voters should be offended by the NRCC insulting your intelligence with such lazy repetition of lies.
The Tucson Weekly correctly points out in CD8: The Surrogates Battle in Race To Finish Giffords' Term that:
The NRCC ad makes two claims that have been declared "false" by Politifact.
The first is the question of whether Obamacare cuts Medicare by $500 billion. This is a frequent GOP attack line that Politifact has repeatedly rated as false:
There’s a small bit of truth here. The Affordable Care Act does reduce Medicare spending by $500 billion over the next 10 years. But here’s the catch: Those dollars aren’t taken out of the current budget, they are not actual cuts, and nowhere does the bill actually eliminate any current benefits.
The $500 billion is all in future spending reductions and come through the law’s attempts to slow projected growth, not cut spending.
PolitiFact National has highlighted the biggest bits of savings: About $220 billion comes from reducing annual increases in Medicare payments to health care providers. Another $36 billion comes from increasing premiums for higher-income beneficiaries. Administrative changes land another $12 billion in savings. A new national board is set to come up with $15.5 billion in savings — but can’t get those savings from a reduction in benefits. The last big chunk of $136 billion comes in changes to the Medicare Advantage program, which has become more expensive than initially anticipated.
Still, given all these changes, Medicare spending is expected to increase — something we pointed out in our fact check on Bruun a year ago. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projects Medicare spending will reach $929 billion in 2020, up from $499 billion in actual spending in 2009.
The claim that Democrats voted to cut $500 billion from Medicare is especially amusing when you consider that the Ryan budget that GOP members in the House overwhelmingly supported earlier this year includes those same reductions in spending growth. (Kelly, who is far more cautious about what he says to the press in this year's campaign, declined to say whether he'd support the Ryan budget when we asked him about it during the GOP primary.)
FWIW, Barber said last week that he would not support cuts to Medicare benefits.
The second claim is that Obamacare "puts a board of unelected bureaucrats in charge." That's a reference to the Patient Advisory Board, which has been a frequent target of attack by Republicans. Politifact has rated those attacks "False".
Video below the fold.
Follow up on the Ted Nugent concert
April 30, 2012
by
by David Safier I received an email from someone who knows someone who saw Nugent at the Pima County Fair (That's the closest I could get). Here's the report. Nugent told the crowd to thank Jan Brewer and Joe Aripaio because they were doing the right thing for Arizona. Nugent mentioned the kidnapping of the … Read more
I’ll be on the Buckmaster Show Tuesday, 12:45
April 30, 2012
by
by David Safier I'm doing my second Blogger Beat segment with Bill Buckmaster on his Tuesday show at 12:45pm. You can hear the show on KVOI AM 1030. No idea what the topics will be. I'll see what happens when I get there.
GOP budget to be rammed through on Tuesday
April 30, 2012
Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
Remember this from the Senate Appropriations Committee Chair back in January? Don 'Tequila' Shooter: 'We don't need no stinkin' testimony on the budget':
The chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee said Tuesday he is considering banning all public testimony when lawmakers take up the state budget later this year.
* * *
His decision not to hear public testimony during budget presentations by government agencies isn’t entirely unprecedented, but banning testimony during budget-bill debates is.
If he takes the more restrictive route, it will surely invite criticisms from Democrats and groups who expect to at least be heard in committee.
Shooter's attitude: "I heard it last year."
The Arizona Capitol Times (subscription required) reports today that the GOP Caucus is reviewing the budget outline agreed to between the Tea-Publican leadership and Governor Brewer last Friday, and will vote on the budget this Tuesday — with no opportunity for the public to digest the final details or to testify on the budget. "We don't need no stinkin' testimony on the budget." Lawmakers expected to pass budget Tuesday, then tackle Brewer’s personnel agenda | Arizona Capitol Times:
The Republican-led Legislature plans to approve an $8.6 billion spending plan for the state on Tuesday, shortly after Gov. Jan Brewer and GOP leaders sealed a budget agreement last week.
They then intend to turn their attention to the governor’s proposal to overhaul the state’s personnel system, a source privy to the budget talks told the Arizona Capitol Times on condition of anonymity.
* * *
Rank-and-file Republican members were briefed about the contents of the budget deal last week. They were given a few days to dig into the details of the proposal and bring back their concerns to leaders.
They will also meet this afternoon to discuss the budget for the first time in the open.
Approval of the budget sets the stage for adjournment of the current regular session. This is the week when bad bills that have been hanging around all session get slipped into other bills as amendments and get passed in the wee hours of the morning when no one is watching, not even the alleged "watchdogs" of the media.
Mann and Ornstein to the media villagers: ‘The Republicans are the problem’
April 30, 2012
Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
All of us here at Blog for Arizona have posted about the corporate media's penchant for "false equivalency" arguments: both sides do it and are to blame, the government is broken, etc. This supposedly is the "centrist" conventional wisdom of the media villager establishment (it is, in fact, the reinforcement of the conservative worldview that government doesn't work and is always "bad").
Well, the "centrist" corporate media villager establishment ought to pay attention to their high priests of "centrism" who say that the media villagers are wrong, and they have an obligation to stop their false equivalency arguments.
Thomas E. Mann, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and Norman J. Ornstein, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, write this essay in the Washington Post on Sunday (adapted from their book “It’s Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism,” which will be available Tuesday). Let's Just Say it: The Republicans Are The Problem:
We have been studying Washington politics and Congress for more than 40 years, and never have we seen them this dysfunctional. In our past writings, we have criticized both parties when we believed it was warranted. Today, however, we have no choice but to acknowledge that the core of the problem lies with the Republican Party.
The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.
When one party moves this far from the mainstream, it makes it nearly impossible for the political system to deal constructively with the country’s challenges.
“Both sides do it” or “There is plenty of blame to go around” are the traditional refuges for an American news media intent on proving its lack of bias, while political scientists prefer generality and neutrality when discussing partisan polarization. Many self-styled bipartisan groups, in their search for common ground, propose solutions that move both sides to the center, a strategy that is simply untenable when one side is so far out of reach.
Arizona well represented at the ALEC Spring Task Force Summit in Charlotte May 10-11
April 30, 2012
by
by David Safier
For ALEC trackers, their next big event is the 2012 Spring Task Force Summit May 10-11 in Charlotte, North Carolina. The big push is education:
- Digital Learning Subcommittee
- Stretching the School Dollar Workshop
- Education Task Force Luncheon
- Education Task Force Meeting
No other topic gets nearly that much coverage.
Attendance by Arizona Republicans could depend on whether they can wrap up the lege session soon — could the ALEC meeting be part of the push for early adjournment? — but we know for sure Sen. Rich Crandall will be attending. He's sponsoring the "Model Bill Discussion and Voting: Online Course Choice for Students." You can bet that model bill will be making it to a statehouse near you. Also leading not one but TWO discussions is Jonathan Butcher, the education guy at the Goldwater Institute. One is on Education Savings Accounts (ESA). G.I. wrote Arizona's ESA law, called Education Empowerment Accounts. The other is "Model Bill Discussion and Voting: District and School Freedom."
No other state has nearly the profile Arizona does at the Summit. We should be proud.
Download the official ALEC memorandum about the event
You can read the summary of the Online Course Choice for Students model legislation below the fold.
