Michael Bryan

Michael founded BlogForArizona.net as the Howard Dean presidential campaign blog for Arizona in 2003, and has been blogging ever since. The Blog is now coming up on 20 years of continuous publication, a major achievement for any political blog, which usually have the life-spans of mayflies. Michael is an attorney living in Tucson with his wife Lauren. In 2008, Michael remade BlogForArizona into a collaborative project. Michael is now but one of the contributors to the blog and provides editorial and publishing direction in consultation with the Board of Directors and the other authors. If you want to keep up with the latest Arizona and National political news in an entertaining quick hit of news and opinion, check out the BlogForArizona twitter feed, which Mike largely curates and writes. Michael is also an AAPC member who occassionally consults on political campaigns, strategy and communications.

What Will Gabby Do?

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Posted by Michael Bryan

Gabrielle-giffords-300Gabby Giffords finds herself in a fairly unique position: she is no longer a Member of Congress, but unquestionably has a vast reservoir of goodwill, respect, and love from her former constituents, regardless of party. To a far greater degree than any other resigning Member I can recall, Gabby has the power to influence the future political direction of her district. Arguably, should she choose to endorse a candidate for her former seat, that endorsement could have considerable, possibly dispositive, influence over who will take her place.

If her choice is well-considered, it could very well be determinative of the result of the upcoming elections in CD8, and it's successor CD2.

So, who will Gabby choose? I don't know.

Who could she choose? I have a few ideas.

Click through to keep reading…

Rep. Eddie Farnsworth Kowtows to Irrational Anti-Vaccination Crowd

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Posted by Michael Bryan Looks like the black helicopter crowd has joined forces with the vaccination conspiracy theorists. Eddie Farnsworth is backing a bill to restrict Arizona's colleges and universities from requiring vaccinations. Perhaps this is really a problem that is keeping Arizonans from getting post-secondary education, but I sincerely doubt it. Farnsworth claims "the … Read more

Queen of Delusions

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Posted by Michael Bryan Our Governor is delusional. And very rude. Jan Brewer explains her finger-wagging lecture of the President by claiming that "he just doesn't get it." Radio Interview of Brewer. Once again, Brewer has succeeded in making Arizona look foolish in the national press while garnering fawning right-wing press for herself. Apparently, Brewer's … Read more

Disingenuous Illusions and Cold Reality

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By Karl Reiner

TeapartymotivationalThe financial collapse of 2007-08 brought on the deepest recession since the 1930s. As the world of finance unraveled, the banking sector had to be rescued by the government.  Had there been no intervention, the slide would have been much worse, perhaps resulting in a depression. Deregulation and the lack of oversight created the environment which allowed the large financial institutions to get out of control.  An unfettered market proved it could run itself into the ground.  

Although Tea Party adherents were not unduly alarmed when the growing federal deficit was mostly fueled by expenditures for unfunded wars, they became highly incensed by the government’s desperate spending to stave off economic collapse.  Some of the resentment is understandable.  The government saved big firms while smaller ones went under, homeowners saw their home value shrink and unemployment escalated.    

Unfortunately, the magnitude of the economic damage is grossly underestimated.  Consumers, banks and governments are struggling to get out from under a massive load of debt.  Five years after the housing sector buckled and knocked the economy apart, 21.8 million Americans are unemployed or underemployed.  The fact that the U.S. Treasury, Federal Reserve and the central banks of Europe all scrambled to intervene in the crisis doesn’t impress the Tea Party faithful.  They believe the problems that came with the breakdown of the housing sector can be solved by cutting spending and curtailing government.