College students: the latest target for right wing demonization
April 25, 2012
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by David Safier When the right wing wants to fundamentally destroy some part of the government, it launches a campaign of demonization. It's not enough to say there are problems with, say, traditional public school systems or Social Security or Medicare or public workers' unions, because it's possible to take reasonable measures to fix problems. … Read more
The banksters of Wall Street are a bunch of ingrates
April 25, 2012
Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
I have posted several times over the years that the stock market performs better under Democratic presidents.
Now there is updated research again making my point. Steve Benen writes Parties and markets and bears, oh my:
In February, we discussed an unmistakable trend: over the last half-century, the stock market has invariably performed better under Democratic administrations than Republican administrations. But Doug Henwood has taken this a little further, noting stock market gains over the first 40 months of presidential terms, going back 70 years.
As Henwood found, market performance under President Obama is the third best — outpacing both of Reagan's terms — and the average under Democratic presidents in general is considerably better than under Republican presidents. (h/t chart by Doug Henwood).
In 2004, a Bush cabinet official said job creation and GDP numbers don't really matter because "the stock market is … the final arbiter" of economic success. If that's still true, Republicans appear to have some explaining to do.
It also suggests Barack Obama is the worst socialist of all time. A soaring stock market, record high corporate profits, private sector job growth … it's almost as if the president didn't listen to Karl Marx at all.
The Banksters of Wall Street are contributing heavily to GOP Super PACs and forming PACs of their own in the wake of Citizens United v. FEC for the purpose of defeating President Obama.
This despite the fact that President Obama has not prosecuted a single bankster of Wall Street for the greatest fraud in the history of the world and nearly destroying the world's financial system and economy in the process; he has not sought a repeal of provisions of law that allow for exotic investment devices like derivatives and credit default swaps that have turned Wall Street into a casino gambling numbers game rather than entrepeneurial investment in industry; and he has not sought to reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act firewalls between banking-investment-insurance.
Also despite the fact that the "investor class" is the only sector of the economy that has recovered their losses from the Bush Great Recession that resulted from their rapacious fraud, and they are fabulously wealthy again.
The banksters of Wall Street are a bunch of ingrates. So what explains this? They see themselves as "masters of the universe" who can do no wrong, and their feelings are hurt when they are portrayed as the villains, indeed criminals, that many of them truly are.
Nuke Waste Dump: Votes and Prayers
April 25, 2012
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by David Safier As AZ Blue Meanie posted this morning, the State House and Senate passed Concurrent Memorial SCM 1004 praying for a nuclear waste dump in Arizona. Seriously, praying. I'm not up on my Memorial lingo, but apparently, after all the "Whereas" clauses, the wording is: Wherefore your memorialist, the Senate of the State … Read more
Quick recap of oral argument of SB 1070 today
April 25, 2012
Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
This morning the U.S. Supreme Court heard the final oral argument scheduled for this Term in Arizona v. United States. The Court will consider whether four key provisions of S.B. 1070, Arizona’s immigration law, are preempted by federal law.
Justice Antonin Scalia, who frequently portrays himself as an "original intent" constructionist of the U.S. Constitution, demonstrated this is a lie by taking a radical position unsupported by the language of the Constitution or precedents in his questioning of legal counsel today. Lyle Denniston at SCOTUSblog.com recaps the oral argument from this morning. Argument recap: A choice between radical and reasonable?:
With Justice Antonin Scalia pushing the radical idea that the Constitution gives states clear authority to close their borders entirely to immigrants without a legal right to be in the U.S., seven other Justices on Wednesday went looking for a more reasonable way to judge states’ power in the immigration field. If the Court accepts the word of Arizona’s lawyer that the state is seeking only very limited authority, the state has a real chance to begin enforcing key parts of its controversial law — S.B. 1070 — at least until further legal tests unfold in lower courts.
In an oral argument that ran 20 minutes beyond the scheduled hour, the Justices focused tightly on the actual operation of the four specific provisions of the law at issue, and most of the Court seemed prepared to accept that Arizona police would act in measured ways as they arrest and detain individuals they think might be in the U.S. illegally. And most of them seemed somewhat skeptical that the federal government would have to change its own immigration priorities just because states were becoming more active.
At the end, though, the question remained how a final opinion might be written to enlarge states’ power to deal with some 12 million foreign nationals without basing that authority upon the Scalia view that states have a free hand under the Constitution to craft their own immigration policies. The other Justices who spoke up obviously did not want to turn states entirely loose in this field. So perhaps not all of the four clauses would survive.
Conservative Republicans speak out against the radical Tea-Publicans’ War on Women
April 25, 2012
Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
There was a My Turn column in the Arizona Republic on Sunday by Linda Binder (Lake Havasu): Susan Gerard (Phoenix); and Roberta Voss (Glendale), each a former Republican state legislator.
Each legislator was considered a "solid conservative" Republican in their day, but in today's radicalized Tea-Publican Party would be vilified as a "Republican in Name Only " (RINO), or worse: (choose one) a socialist, communist, Marxist, Leninist, Maoist, secular humanist, "librul" Democrat — disparaging terms used interchangeably without regard to meaning by Tea-Publicans to refer to anyone who disagrees with their radical extremist agenda.
Binder, Gerard and Voss sounded the alarm on the radicalized Tea-Publican War on Women. Stripping health choices from women isn't priority:
Among Republicans there is a history of support for access to health care, including Planned Parenthood, and rejection of the intrusive laws being passed by the more extreme-right members of the party now.
In fact, we Republicans just a short decade ago passed Arizona's state law requiring insurance companies to provide fair coverage of contraception — the very bill these extreme right Republicans now are working to repeal.
The sad thing is, if this new crop of Republicans get their way, more women would be uninsured, medical discrimination against women would be legal again, and women would once again be forced to pay more for health care and get less for their money.
Even the nation's family-planning program — to provide low-income women with birth control and other preventive care — was signed into law by President Richard Nixon and expanded by President George H.W. Bush. Solid conservatives, like Barry Goldwater, supported Planned Parenthood. His wife, Peggy Goldwater, sat on the board of Planned Parenthood in Arizona.
War on Women: AZ Legislature fuels the fire
April 25, 2012
by Pamela Powers Hannley In 2010 and 2011, the Arizona Legislature led the way for crazy extremist laws against immigrants and brown people in general. Changing their focus slightly, the Arizona Legislature decided to victimize women during the 2012 session. Not to be left out of the nationwide War on Women, legislators proposed multiple bills … Read more
The Farley Report – April 24, 2012
April 25, 2012
Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
Time once again for The Farley Report from Rep. Steve Farley (D-LD 28):
And now, the news…
–> Budget: Talks continue in earnest among Republicans and Democrats in the Legislature and between Republicans and the Governor's staff. I wish we could add talks between the Democrats and the Governor so we score a budget trifecta, but there is no sign of that happening yet. No decisions are likely to happen this week while the Governor is celebrating SB1070 Week in Washington DC, so we are now looking at remaining in session at least until late next week or beyond.
In the meantime, the Governor's ultimatum is still in effect — she will veto any bill that is sent to her before the existence of what she deems adequate progress on the budget. That means our workload is shrinking while final votes are backing up because no sponsor wants to send their bill to certain death on the Governor's desk this week. As soon as the veto threat is lifted, the dam bursts and we will be doing a whole lot of final votes all at once.
This week's News in Bills:
–> Today the House by a vote of 33-17 passed Senator Al Melvin's (R-Saddlebrooke) "postcard to Congress", SCM1004, which "prays" that the U.S. Government send nuclear waste to Arizona as the solution to our economic crisis. I'm sure THAT won't get us on the Daily Show again.
–> Senator Sylvia Allen (R-Snowflake) has a bill (SB1182) that would make it a state crime for state, county, or local law enforcement officers to enforce federal law, thus putting them in a double-bind — if they obey their oath to uphold the U.S. Constitution, they will be charged with a state crime. It passed the Senate 20-8, and will head to the Governor as soon as she rescinds her threat to veto all bills, although I hope she continues the veto threat for this one. Too bad certain legislators feel the ideologically driven need to punish our first responders for doing their jobs.
–> Senator Frank Antenori (R-NotTucson) resurrected his bill to widen the definition of intersections — the one which we killed in House Transportation Committee in March with only three votes in favor. You may recall that a Phoenix police commander with 26 years in the Traffic Division testified that the bill would dramatically increase injuries and fatalities all over the state. After the bill was killed, Sen. Antenori was witnessed getting in the commander's face and cursing him out in the hallway outside the committee room. A few days later, media reports broadcast video of Sen. Antenori running a red light in Scottsdale, which you can see here: http://www.myfoxphoenix.com/dpp/news/politics/state_politics/state-senator-miffed-at-red-light-violation-question-3-26-2012
The intersection redefinition came back as a Senate strike-everything amendment to a Rep. Ted Vogt (R-Tucson) bill (HB2557) that formerly involved cell phone companies giving call location information to law enforcement. Last Thursday, we had a final read in the House where it gained the required 31 votes before I stood up to speak and give some background on the bill so that members knew the public safety risks. I acknowledged that we need to help solve the problem of people getting unfair tickets for making late left turns after being caught in the intersection by traffic cameras. But this bill would apply to ALL signalized intersections, potentially making all of them more deadly. After my speech, the bill went down to defeat 27-29. Rep. Vogt asked for the bill to be reconsidered tomorrow, and I hope that common sense and public safety will again prevail.
The Cap’n Al Melvin Memorial Nuclear Waste Dump in Saddlebrooke, AZ
April 25, 2012
Posted by azBlueMeanie: "Elections have consequences." Well, the right-wing lunatics in Saddlebrooke elect Sen. Cap'n Al Melvin to office, so they should pay the consequences. "Atomic Al" as he is otherwise known, actually convinced the Tea-Publicans in the Arizona legislature to pass his resolution to Congress asking for a nuclear waste dump facility in Arizona. … Read more
