Tea-Publican tyranny: auditing Pima County
March 29, 2012
Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
Our Tea-Publican overlords from the state of Maricopa and their Tea-Publican insurgents in Baja Arizona went ahead and did it — they passed "special" legislation requiring a forensic audit of Pima County bonds — and only Pima County — as a political favor to Tea-Publican insurgents in the Town of Marana.
I posted about this previously. Tea-Publican Tyranny: Micromanaging Cities and Counties:
Then there is the ongoing feud between the Town of Marana and Pima County over the Tea-Publican legisature seizing a sewage treatment plant from Pima County last year and handing it over to Marana, for which Marana has yet to pay the county. In retaliation, a Senate panel of the Tea-Publican legislature on Wednesday voted to audit Pima county's bond spending. Senate panel OKs audit of Pima's bond spending:
Rep. Terri Proud, R-Tucson, said there are many discrepancies between what the county claims to have built with the bond funds voters authorized and what actually exists. That's because, Proud contends, "there's some bullying going around with (County Administrator) Chuck Huckelberry."
To address that, the measure she pushed through the Senate Committee on Government Reform calls not only for a forensic audit of where the 1997, 2004 and 2006 bonds were spent, but also whether the county changed the timing or amount of projects "to reward or to punish an entity, party or official who stood to benefit from or be affected by the project."
Proud is not alone in the push. The town of Marana is lobbying for the examination, too. [Jonathan "Payday" Paton is a consutant to the Town of Marana.]
County lobbyist Michael Racy told lawmakers they are free to spend state resources to put the auditor general to work. And he said they also are legally entitled to force the county to spend the money to respond to each request.
But he said HB 2408 amounts to using "public money for what is more of a McCarthyesque witch hunt."
Jan Brewer Has an Historic Moment
March 29, 2012
By Michael Bryan I wasn't at all sure this moment would ever come, but… Thank you, Governor Brewer. You vetoed an incredibly shortsighted bill that put a quick buck for some political donors to some in your party ahead of the long-term health of a vital industry for this state, not to mention a vital … Read more
César Chávez March this Saturday, 9am
March 29, 2012
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by David Safier The 12th annual César Chávez March willl be held this Saturday, March 31, starting at 9am at St. John's Catholic Church (NW corner of Ajo and S. 12th Ave.) and ending at Rudy Garcia Park. The march has traditionally begun at Pueblo High School. The reason it's been moved is an interesting … Read more
An Unconscionable Mess
March 28, 2012
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Posted by Bob Lord Hard not to be depressed by the last three days at the Supreme Court. While the tea leaf readers obsess over each question asked and even the inflection of the Justices’ voices, the hard realities remain. First, there’s a reason why attorneys can in good faith argue both sides of a … Read more
SCOTUS Day 3 on the Affordable Care Act – Part 2
March 28, 2012
Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
The last of the arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court on the Affordable Care Act dealt with the expansion of medicaid coverage, and what the challengers to the law call the "coercion" theory — the federal government withholding federal Medicaid funds to states that refuse to participate in the ACA. At its heart, this is a "states' rights" theory of sovereignty.
Lyle Denniston at SCOTUSblog.com summarizes the arguments. Argument recap: Will Medicaid be sacrificed?:
Unless a closing oration by a top government lawyer stirs some real sympathy for the poor, the new health care law’s broad expansion of the Medicaid program that serves the needy may be sacrificed to a historic expression of judicial sympathy for states’ rights. It probably would require the Court to be really bold, to strike down a program passed by Congress under its spending power, and to do so for the first time in 76 years, but the temptation was very much in evidence in the final round of the Court’s hearings this week on the Affordable Care Act. If that happens, it probably would be done by a 5-4 vote.
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The Justices were actively engaged in what was the Court’s first full exploration in history of the theory — never put into actual practice — that the conditions that Congress attaches to money it hands out to the states can be so onerous that they deprive the states of their sovereign independence, coercing them into compliance with federal controls. Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., allowed the argument to run 25 minutes beyond the scheduled hour. The end result was what appeared to be a very sharp division within the Court, straight along ideological lines, with the skeptics about this “coercion theory” quite conspicuously in the minority.
The law of unintended consequences should the Supreme Court strike down the ACA
March 28, 2012
Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
Ed Kilgore at the Politcal Animal blog has an excellent post on the law of unintended consequences should the U.S. Supreme Court strike down the Affordable Care Act on Commerce Clause grounds. American law is built upon judicial precedents, and to strike down the ACA on Commerce Clause grounds would undermine more than 70 years of Commerce Clause judicial precedents, and many legislative acts.
I would caution Mr. Kilgore that this is not a bug but a feature: Tea-Publicans want to repeal the 20th Century. Many of them long to go back to principles in the Articles of Confederation that would replace more than 200 years of Constitutional law principles. They are radicals, not conservatives ("tending or disposed to maintain existing views, conditions, or institutions" – Merriam-Webster Dictionary).
Ed Kilgore writes Commerce Clause Counter-Revolution:
If the individual health insurance purchasing mandate is declared unconstitutional, many conservatives will undoubtedly hail the decision as a heroic act that takes the nation back from the brink of a yawning abyss of federal tyranny, a nation where proud Americans are forced to eat broccoli.
[But] there’s another “floodgates” proposition that needs to be discussed: the possibility that unraveling ObamaCare could unravel decades of Supreme Court Commerce Clause decisions that undergird much of the contemporary landscape of domestic policy and civil rights protections.
NRA spending puts Arizona in fifth place
March 28, 2012
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by David Safier It's a distinction, I guess. Arizona is one of the top 5 states in the amount of spending by the NRA. This includes money spent on political contributions, independent expenditures, electioneering communications and state ballot initiatives. Here are the top 5 (drum roll, please): Virginia: $979,354 Florida: $729,863 Texas: $624,021 Wisconsin: $161,291 … Read more
UPDATE: Arizona Senate votes down contraception bill
March 28, 2012
Posted by AzBlueMeanie: A brief moment of sanity in Arizona? Could it possibly be true? The Arizona Senate today voted down the "Baby Blunt" bill to allow any employer to object to insurance coverage for contraception on religious or moral grounds. Arizona Senate votes down controversial contraception bill: The Arizona Senate on Wednesday voted down … Read more
