PCDP Hello / Goodbye Party

May 8, 2012

Posted by AzBlueMeanie: Event announcement from the Pima County Democratic Party: Hello / Goodbye Party SPECIAL EVENT! Pima Dems Invites you to say… Hello / Goodbye Thursday, May 17, 20125:00pmLobby at Hotel Congress311 East Congress(Public Parking Garage Available at Congress and 4th Ave.) Join the Pima County Democratic Party as we say “Goodbye” to our … Read more

About those fund sweeps in the budget

May 8, 2012

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Governor Brewer has signed the Tea-Publican budget. Brewer signs $8.6B AZ budget. All is right in Tea-Publican land. Or is it?

As I posted last week, there already is a Legal challenge to fund sweep of mortgage fraud settlement fund in the works. The Arizona Capitol Times (subscription required) reports Housing group preparing lawsuit over mortgage sweep | Arizona Capitol Times:

Attorney Tim Hogan, of the Arizona Center for Law in the Public Interest, said he will represent the Arizona Housing Alliance in a suit trying to block the sweep. The money is from a $97.7 million pool the state received as part of a multistate settlement with several banks.

Hogan said the suit will allege that the sweep is illegal for two reasons.

One, he argued, is that it would violate the separation of powers between the Legislature and the Attorney General’s Office.

* * *

Hogan said the Legislature cannot directly appropriate the money, so it instead passed a bill ordering Horne to transfer the money to the general fund.

* * *

Hogan said it would also be unlawful for Horne to transfer the money because the settlement stipulates that it can only be used for specific purposes, such as avoiding preventable foreclosures, ameliorating the effects the foreclosure crisis, strengthening law enforcement efforts against financial fraud or deceptive acts in the housing market, or compensating the state “for costs resulting from the alleged unlawful conduct of the defendants.”

“Were he to transfer the money it would violate his duty as trustee of this court-ordered trust fund,” Hogan said.

Today, the Arizona Daily Star editorializes against the fund sweep (a day late and a dollar short). Foreclosure-aid funds should be used as intended:

One of the legacies of the housing crisis is a failure to provide meaningful assistance to the millions of homeowners across the country who lost big on their homes. We bailed out Wall Street, but did nothing for borrowers, who often waited for loan modifications that never came. That's one reason we strongly disagree with the diversion of $50 million from a fund that was supposed to be applied to foreclosure assistance, but instead is being used for the state budget.

The vulture capitalist Willard ‘Mittens’ Romney and his ‘businessman’ myth

May 8, 2012

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

An important long post from David Waldman at Daily Kos, Mitt Romney is a 'businessman' like the Hamburglar is a rancher (excerpts):

So I've been thinking about revisiting the topic of just how Romney managed to keep making so much money from companies that, in many cases, ended up failing. But so has everyone else, so now I have some video support that does the job for me, in just three minutes.

See video from former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich explaining how private equity partnerships (vulture capitalists) like Bain Capital make their money. (Video below the fold).

Romney borrows money to buy a majority stake in a company, takes over its board of directors, and uses that position to vote Bain a fat management contract, and take out the biggest loans possible from the company's bank. That money goes to pay back the people who put up the money for the purchase, as well as giant bonuses for Bain managers. But now the company has a huge debt to the bank (the interest on which is, of course, tax deductible), which the Bain managers sorta-kinda attempt to pay back by cutting payroll, benefits, investments in equipment, etc. Basically anything they can find to transfer the pain to anyone other than themselves.

Thanks, Secretary Reich! Beautiful job!

* * *

What that means is that not only is Romney not a "job creator," he's not a even really a "businessman," either. He's a financier, but he knows that's always been kind of a dirty word. So it's "businessman," or "entrepreneur," or… "job creator."

To a financier like Romney, what a business does, and who does it, doesn't matter. He's in it for the money. Specifically, taking money from other people.

Anti-labor bills fail in the Arizona legislature

May 8, 2012

Posted by AzBlueMeanie: With much fanfare at the start of the legislative session, the Goldwater Institute pushed a package of four anti-labor bills carried by lead sponsor, Sen. Rick Murphy (R-Glendale). Anti-Union Bills Sail Out of Arizona Senate Government Reform Committee – Phoenix New Times: Senate Bill 1484 states public employers "shall not deduct" any third … Read more

The Arizona Republic’s unconstitutional pension reforms finally repealed

May 8, 2012

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

The Arizona Republic has a long and sordid history of anti-unionism dating back to when conservative newspaper mogul Eugene C. Pulliam (grandfather of former Vice President Dan Quayle) was the publisher of the Arizona Republic and Phoenix Gazette. The anti-unionism of the Arizona Republic.

The most recent example was a multi-part series of "investigative" reports in the Arizona Republic in the fall of 2010 that relied heavily on the biased research of the Goldwater Institute and quoted liberally from Byron Schlomach of the Goldwater Institute in its reporting. The Goldwater Institute and ALEC manufactured a public employee pension crisis, and the Arizona Republic carried water for them. Public employee pension reforms – a manufactured 'crisis':

The Tea-Publican Arizona Legislature then cited The Arizona Republic series as a reason for taking up public employee pension fund reforms during the past session. Regular readers know that this was part of a national legislative effort through the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and its affiliated members like the Goldwater Institute. Two reports on the tentacles of the Kochtopus and ALEC. The only question is whether The Arizona Republic was a complicit participant in this effort. We report, you decide.

Both our Tea-Publican legislators and editors of the Arizona Republic continued to press for pension reforms even in the face of well-reasoned legal arguments that it violated an express provision of the Arizona Constitution and contract law (impairment of contracts), and violated the fiduciary obligations of the pension fund manager (Arizona) to the fund beneficiaries. Our Tea-Publican legislature adopted the state pension reforms argued for by the Arizona Republic as proxy for the Goldwater Institute.

Public employee pensioners sued, and the Court struck down the Arizona Republic's pension reforms as unconstitutional. Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Eileen Willett ruled the Arizona Republic's pension reforms were unconstitutional.

How To Do The Q in QandA Correctly

May 7, 2012

By Michael Bryan As a frequent host and participant in public Q and A sessions, I frequently see egregious examples of how NOT to ask questions in a public forum. It is frequently painful to go through the open question period after a public discussion. Too few people keep in mind the real goals of such a … Read more

The Fire Next Time: The Euro Financial Crisis – a Keynesian revolution to ‘austerity’

May 7, 2012

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Yet another European leader has fallen as a result of conservative economics "austerity" measures, this time Nicolas Sarkozy of France. The French are revolting. The Greeks are too. And it’s about time.

Paul Krugman writes, Those Revolting Europeans (h/t graphic, crooksandliars.com):

Both countries held elections Sunday that were in effect referendums on the current European economic strategy, and in both countries voters turned two thumbs down. It’s far from clear how soon the votes will lead to changes in actual policy, but time is clearly running out for the strategy of recovery through austerity — and that’s a good thing.

Needless to say, that’s not what you heard from the usual suspects in the run-up to the elections. It was actually kind of funny to see the apostles of orthodoxy trying to portray the cautious, mild-mannered François Hollande as a figure of menace.

* * *

What is true is that Mr. Hollande’s victory means the end of “Merkozy,” the Franco-German axis that has enforced the austerity regime of the past two years. This would be a “dangerous” development if that strategy were working, or even had a reasonable chance of working. But it isn’t and doesn’t; it’s time to move on. Europe’s voters, it turns out, are wiser than the Continent’s best and brightest.

What’s wrong with the prescription of spending cuts as the remedy for Europe’s ills? One answer is that the confidence fairy doesn’t exist — that is, claims that slashing government spending would somehow encourage consumers and businesses to spend more have been overwhelmingly refuted by the experience of the past two years. So spending cuts in a depressed economy just make the depression deeper.

Moreover, there seems to be little if any gain in return for the pain. Consider the case of Ireland, which has been a good soldier in this crisis, imposing ever-harsher austerity in an attempt to win back the favor of the bond markets. According to the prevailing orthodoxy, this should work. In fact, the will to believe is so strong that members of Europe’s policy elite keep proclaiming that Irish austerity has indeed worked, that the Irish economy has begun to recover.

But it hasn’t.