Featured Stories
Keep your eye on this one
February 18, 2012
by David Safier I just saw this Republic story: Political committee for education registers with Secretary of State A group of parents and education advocates eying continued funding for schools has registered as a political committee with the Arizona secretary of state. The committee calls itself Quality Education and Jobs but has yet to submit
Two Justices want Supreme Court to reconsider its Citizens United v. FEC decision
February 18, 2012
Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday stayed a Montana Supreme Court decision which had upheld a state law against corporations spending on political campaigns. The stay will remain in effect until the Court takes final action on a coming appeal by the challengers to the law. The stay order is here.
Lyle Denniston at SCOTUSblog reports Montana campaign ruling on hold:
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, joined by Justice Stephen G. Breyer, supported the [stay], but said that the case “will give the Court an opportunity to consider whether, in light of the huge sums currently deployed to buy candidates’ allegiance, Citizens United [v. Federal Election Commission should continue to hold sway.”
[Their statement attacked the central foundation of the Citizens United ruling: its declaration that independent spending by corporations does not “give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.” They cited Montana’s experience — decades of heavy corporate spending that seemingly did corrupt the state’s politics — as well as “experience elsewhere” since the Citizens United decision. Those developments, their statement said, “make it exceedingly difficult to maintain” the key rationale for the Citizen United decision.]
It is unclear at this point whether any of the other Justices see the Montana case that way, and it would take five votes for the Court to modify or pare down the scope of the Citizen United decision. Five votes were required to impose the stay, but that is no indication how the Justices would vote when a final decision was at hand.
Since the Court did not yet accept the case for full review, it appeared unlikely that the case could develop in time for a final ruling during the current Court Term — unless the Court could decide in coming weeks to summarily overturn the state court ruling.
In the meantime, however, Friday’s order means, as a practical matter, that corporations in Montana at least temporarily could spend unlimited amounts of money from their internal treasuries for a few months during this year’s state political campaigns. That is because, for now, the state cannot enforce its Corrupt Practices Act ban on corporations’ spending of internal funds. The state Supreme Court had upheld that law on December 30.
A story that has damn near everything
February 17, 2012
by David Safier I'm not going to even give a run-up to this Phoenix New Times story. Here are some excerpts. Paul Babeu's Mexican Ex-Lover Says Sheriff's Attorney Threatened Him With Deportation Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu — who became the face of Arizona border security nationally after he started stridently opposing illegal immigration —
Quick Takes
February 17, 2012
Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
Friday is the deadline for most Senate bills to get public hearings in Senate committees and House bills to get hearings in House committees. (Most bills will die if they haven't had a committee hearing by Friday. . . but beware the dreaded "strike everything amendment.")
So I have been busy trying to keep up with bill tracking and committee hearings, OK?
I was reminded that I have not posted The Farley Report for the past two weeks. As Steve Martin used to say, "Excuuuuse me! I forgot." Here are the links to the last two Farley Reports:
The Arizona Supreme Court, in a supreme act of cowardice, relied on the "political question" doctrine to allow the legislature to effectively eviscerate citizens initiative mandates that the legislature refuses to fund, i.e., Healthy Arizona (the tobacco litigation fund expansion of AHCCCS coverage), Prop. 204 (2000), and undermine the mandates of the Voter Protection Act, Prop. 105 (1998). What part of "mandate" do they not understand? Arizona Supreme Court allows cuts to AHCCCS to stand. There are "death panels" alright, run by our Tea-Publican Arizona legislature and Gov. Jan Brewer.
Speaking of ignoring citizen initiative mandates, our Tea-Publican legislature wants you to enact a sub-minimum wage for workers under age 20. The only reason youth unemployment is so high is because they cannot be exploited by employers, don't you know. Insider: Minimum wage may shrink for some. House Concurrent Resolution 2056 would allow employers to drop the minimum wage — currently $7.65 an hour — by $3 for any part-time worker employed for 90 days or less. It would apply to any worker under age 20. A second provision would drop the minimum wage for anyone — part time or full time — who works for tips. It would drop the wage to $2.13 an hour or the federal minimum wage for tipped workers plus 40 cents, whichever is greater. Since voters established the state minimum wage, voters must approve any change. You know what to do.
Jan Brewer's Boss Tweed's bill to end the civil service merit selection system and return to the spoils system of political patronage was approved by the House Employment and Regulatory Affairs Committee on a strike-everything amendment to HB2571 by a 6-3 party line vote, after only four hours of testimony and debate Thursday night. The Tea-Publicans are going to ram it through and jam it through the legislature despite concerns about the legislation from some Tea-Publican members. Over worker objections, Brewer’s ‘personnel reform’ advances.
Two for-profit charter school EMOs behaving badly
February 17, 2012
by David Safier Here are a few quick stories about for profit Education Management Organizations (EMOs) bleeding charter schools dry for personal gain. According to Phoenix Business Journal, a new online charter is coming to Arizona: Life Skills Online. Life Skills runs 25 charters in 4 states. It is part of the Ohio-based for profit
Public hearing in Tucson on attacks on public workers, 4pm Friday
February 17, 2012
by David Safier From the AFL-CIO: Extreme politicians in Arizona have tried to silence the voice of Arizonans who oppose bills attacking firefighters, teachers and other public workers. They know these bills are unpopular and have fast-tracked them with little public input. But at a public hearing today in Tucson, working families and community members
Will Montana’s challenge to Citizens United v. FEC get a hearing before SCOTUS?
February 17, 2012
Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
Update to Montana Supreme Court takes a defiant stand against Citizens United v. FEC :
[B]y a 5-2 margin, Montana’s high court determined that the state law survived “strict scrutiny” because Montana’s unique context and history justified the ban in ways not contemplated by Citizens United. In his majority opinion, Chief Justice Mike McGrath dove deep into that history, ranging back over the “tumultuous years … marked by rough contests for political and economic domination primarily in the mining center of Butte, between mining and industrial enterprises controlled by foreign trusts or corporations.” Noting that, back in the last Gilded Age, Montana's wealthy "Copper Kings" bought judges and senators, picked the location of the capital, and owned the media, McGrath pointed to Montana’s vast size, sparse population, low-cost elections, and long history of having its resources plundered by foreign corporate interests to emphasize that the state has a compelling interest in maintaining its ban.
McGrath lays it out this way: “The question then, is when in the last 99 years did Montana lose the power or interest sufficient to support the statute, if it ever did. If the statute has worked to preserve a degree of political and social autonomy is the State required to throw away its protections?” The majority went out of its way to note that unlimited campaign spending on judicial elections is also having a profoundly damaging effect on judicial integrity all around the country.
Three corporations have now filed a petition to the U.S. Supreme Court asking it to strike down, without further briefing and oral argument, the state law on the premise that the Montana Supreme Court in upholding it simply failed to follow the Court’s 2010 ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, freeing corporations (and labor unions) to spend their own money as they wished on political campaigns.
Justice Anthony M. Kennedy has the petition. He has the authority to act on his own on the stay issue, but would have to share with his colleagues any consideration of summarily overturning the state court’s decision; that would take five votes.
Reminder: Raúl Grijalva Campaign Kickoff on Sunday
February 17, 2012
Posted by AzBlueMeanie: Announcement from the Raúl Grijalva for Congress campaign: A WHOLE LOT OF PEOPLE FOR GRIJALVA PRESENT 2012 CAMPAIGN KICKOFF Live Music by Los Gallegos Sunday, February 19, 2012 5:30 pm – 8:30 pm El Casino Ballroom 437 East 26th Street Tucson, AZ 85713 Please RSVP Today Raúl needs you to stand with
