Featured Stories
Pimps for Private Prisons and Profit: Taxpayers are getting ripped off
February 16, 2012
Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
It looks like our shadow governor, Chuck Coughlin and his lobbyist firm HighGround, Inc. that pimps for private prisons in Arizona, has needlessly been costing Arizona taxpayers millions of dollars steered into profits for his private prison clients.
Taxpayers have the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and its prison privatization model legislation to thank for being ripped off, as well as complicit Arizona legislators.
Here is the Arizona Prison Report | American Friends Service Committee.
The Arizona Republic today continues the 'Republic's special report: The Price of Prisons with this report Arizona private prisons slammed by report:
Arizona's private prisons are not cost-effective for taxpayers and are more difficult to monitor than state prisons, according to a new report by a prison watchdog group that is calling for a moratorium on any new private prisons in the state.
The report examined the five prisons that have contracts to house Arizona prisoners and six private prisons that house federal detainees or inmates from other states, including California and Hawaii.
Based on public-information requests and other data, the report by the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker group that works on criminal-justice reform, concluded that:
Arizona paid $10 million more for private prison beds between 2008 and 2010 than it would have for equivalent state beds.
Arizona's pending plan to contract for another 2,000 private-prison beds would cost taxpayers at least $38.7 million a year, at least $6 million a year more than incarcerating those inmates in state prisons. Plans to add 500 more maximum-security beds in state prisons would add almost $10 million a year to the bill. The report questioned whether those beds are needed, since the state's prison population has declined over the past two years by more than 900 inmates, to 39,854 as of Wednesday.
House Speaker Andy Tobin – You’re Fired!
February 16, 2012
Posted by AzBlueMeanie: There are only two words that House Speaker Andy Tobin's colleagues should have for him: "You're Fired!" Tobin's tyranny against the Arizona Independent Redistricitng Commission (AIRC) continues to be an all-consuming obsession for him, like Captain Queeg and his strawberries in the Caine Mutiny. It's time for a mutiny of the Arizona
A Tale of Two Apologies
February 16, 2012
by David Safier Lisa Chan starred in a political ad shown in Michigan during the Super Bowl which has been widely panned as being racist. It was clear Chan was an actress reading from a script, not stating her own beliefs. She could easily have ducked responsibility by "apologizing" to people who imagined the words
Anatomy of a Doomed to Fail Recall — Blind Passion, or Blind Egotism?
February 15, 2012
Posted by Bob Lord This is related to a recent post by AzBlueMeanie, regarding Leonard Clark’s recall effort. AzBlueMeanie and I have an entirely different take on the wisdom of an effort to recall Brewer, but I’m guessing the exact same take on an effort to recall Brewer that is led by Leonard Clark. I’d
Mission San Xavier del Bac
February 15, 2012
by David Safier
Joan and I took a friend from Portland to see Mission San Xavier del Bac this weekend. It's the first time in a long while I've seen it without scaffolding hanging around it (if I've ever seen it without scaffolding). Absolutely beautiful. I took a pic from my favorite rear view, gray scaled it, then did a little of what I used to do in the darkroom (in the olden days) with Photoshop.
A bit of a poor man's homage to a shot Ansel Adams took in 1968, which you can see below the fold. I noticed Ansel didn't have a large cactus in front of the left gate, a palm tree in front of the dome, or a car parked inside the gate (which meant I couldn't shoot the courtyard). And he took unfair advantage of me by being a great photographer.
Anti-Union collective bargaining bill stalls in the Senate
February 15, 2012
Posted by AzBlueMeanie: It appears that the assault on public sector unions by the Goldwater Institute has run into a snag in the Arizona Senate. Some Tea-Publicans are nervous about pissing off unions that have traditionally been supportive of the GOP over the years. Talking Points Memo reports Aggressive Anti-Union Bill on Life Support in
FCC Standards, Sen. Klein? Seriously?
February 15, 2012
Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
Is Sen. Lori Klein insane? No, seriously. This is both fair and not offensive to ask.
Klein wants to use FCC standards for teachers in classrooms because she believes that teachers are potty-mouthed and have a bad influence on impressionable young children.
FCC standards?
Does Klein not watch television? Has she not seen prime time sitcoms like How I Met Your Mother, Two Broke Girls and Two and a Half Men? Or the FOX Sunday night lineup of cartoon shows targeted to attract children like The Simpsons and Family Guy? And don't even get me started about the comedy shows on Comedy Central like South Park and Futurama. And the so-called reality TV shows, puh-lease.
Does Klein not listen to the music children are listening to on the radio, or worse, watch the music videos that accompany the music? One of the top listened to songs of this past year was Cee Lo Green's "Fuck You." Really, that's the title.
In what alternate universe does Sen. Lori Klein liven in?
Michael Hicks at Tuesday’s School Board meeting: “No, I have no more comments.”
February 15, 2012
by David Safier While he was being interviewed on KNST radio, TUSD Board member Michael Hicks made a vile, unsubstatiated comparison between a group of TUSD students attending a UA Mexican-American Studies class and the sexual abuse which allegedly occurred at Penn State. When given an opportunity at Tuesday's school board meeting, Hicks refused to
