Featured Stories
Update to The Bush Years Were a Lost Decade
March 7, 2010
Posted by AzBlueMeanie: Update to a previous post The Bush Years Were a Lost Decade. MeteorBlades at Daily Kos posted More on the Lost Decade, courtesy of Cheney-Bush: Just about any way you look at it, the country got smacked around from January 2001 to January 2009. Aside from its wretched foreign policy, violations of
SWAG Update
March 7, 2010
Posted by AzBlueMeanie: Time once again to update candidate filings. The dance card is filling up quickly. You can play along at home at http://www.azsos.gov/cfs/CommitteeSearch.aspx The Pima County Board of Supervisors appointed Rep. "Don't make me angry" Frank Antenori to the LD 30 Senate seat vacated by the wannabe tin horn dictator of Tucson Sen.
The Coming Week – Legislative Edition
March 7, 2010
Posted by Craig McDermott As usual, all info gathered from the website of the Arizona Legislature, except where noted, and subject to change without notice (and given the activities expected for this week, short-notice changes are likely)… As noted earlier this weekend, a special session (#7!!) is on tap for the week. Look for more
Fire staffs at “failing schools”?
March 7, 2010
by David Safier This has been going on for over a decade, but it's moving to center stage. Poorly performing — often called "failing" — schools sometimes fire all the people who work there. Then members of the old staff can reapply, if they wish, with no guarantee they'll be rehired. There's a story in
G.I.’s Clint Bolick, an illegal immigration lib
March 7, 2010
by David Safier Of course, the "lib" in the headline refers to "libertarian." It looks like there's a dust-up going on among conservative bloggers over the candidacy of Shawnna Bolick, running in LD-11. She's the wife of Clint Bolick, G.I.'s litigator in residence, and Seeing Red AZ wants to hang Clint around Shawnna's neck like
My old school ratio
March 6, 2010
by David Safier I was thinking about that 1-to-1 teacher-to-bureaucrat ratio the Goldwater Institute has been throwing around. Let's ignore for a moment the ridiculous term "bureaucrat" and just look at the ratio: one non-teacher for every teacher. I thought back to the high school where I taught, outside Portland, Oregon, and started counting up
Special Session #7 on tap for Monday
March 6, 2010
Posted by Craig McDermott, cross-posted from Random Musings The Governor has called for a 7th Special Session of the 49th Arizona Legislature to address the state's current budget deficit (~$700 million) and to formulate a budget for next year. According to the AZRep article on the matter, the basic framework of the package worked out
G.I. Guarantee Watch: Letter declares “fair use”
March 6, 2010
by David Safier It's official. According to the Goldwater Institute, the definition of "bureaucrat" includes bus drivers, maintenance workers and food service workers — I think. I got a [kind of] definitive letter in the mail on an official piece of G.I. stationery. Here's the word from G.I. "We believe the term bureaucrat accurately describes
