COVID-19 & Healthcare

GOP budget sacrifices Arizona’s children on the altar of tax cuts for corporate Plutocrats

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Don’t say that I didn’t warn you — the rats like to do their dirty work at night under cover of darkness when no one is around to see what they are doing. While you were sleeping: Legislature approves budget:

Pedi_ExamIn the wee hours Wednesday morning, the Arizona Legislature approved a $9.6 billion budget that restores some funding to K-12 education and provides a tax cut for business owners, while ignoring passionate pleas to revive a children’s health care program for low-income families.

The spending plan that will head to Gov. Doug Ducey passed with Republican support while Democrats ripped its failure to revive the federally funded KidsCare, which they said would have covered 30,000 children at no cost to the state.

The budget voting ran until 1:40 a.m. . . .

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Action Alert: ‘Budget Day’ at the Lege — the end is near

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end is near cartoonThe Tea-Publican leadership in the Arizona legislature believes that they now have the votes to pass their GOP budget, with some amendments.  Work is scheduled to begin at 8:30 a.m. this morning. and is likely to be an all day marathon session.

The public relations nightmare created by the GOP budget retaining $31 million in cuts to K-12 education passed last year at the same time they are trying to sell Prop. 123 to voters as more money for education apparently is to delay the change in education funding formulas set to take effect this fiscal year by one year — you know, just long enough to get past election day in November in the hopes that low information voters will not remember it by then.

Howard Fischer reports, GOP: Votes lined up for spending plan:

After a week of delays, Republican legislative leaders say they now have the votes lined up for a $9.58 billion spending plan for the coming budget year.

Plans are to begin debate today on the package. But the actual go-ahead is contingent on the approval of lawmakers who have been holding out — and stalled the process for — to restore funding for public schools.

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That time 12 News Phoenix helped anti-choicers stalk an abortion clinic and their patient

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Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com, and with a special note to my friends here who act like this is all a rhetorical exercise: This shit is real. Anti-choicers have succeeded in criminalizing pregnancy and in enlisting news stations to help them in that. This could be you or someone you care about next.

Channel 12 abortion reportNothing inflammatory here!

Last month there was a big buzz in the local anti-choice rumor mill about a “born alive abortion” that had allegedly occurred at a Phoenix clinic. I reported on the absurdity of the whole allegation at that time and how the MSM ought not allow themselves to be played by wild-eyed anti-abortion zealots. But, apparently, Channel 12 in Phoenix sees a real public interest in helping those zealots to harass abortion providers and in giving out potentially identifying information about a patient (her age), as they did on the Thursday 10pm broadcast.

The police reports shows the mother, 27, had been scheduled for an abortion, but went into what the report called, “spontaneous labor.” The doctor at the clinic near downtown Phoenix told police she had checked for a fetal heartbeat before the procedure and found none. She said she believed the baby would be stillborn.

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GOP budget: more corporate welfare, no KidsCare restoration, and a pittance to public education

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WitchesBrewThe state budget is a witches brew concocted in secret behind closed doors between the governor and GOP legislative leaders, and special interests who are the stakeholders in the annual GOP tax cuts sweepstakes.

Democratic leadership and the rank and file membership of the legislature of both political parties are not included in the secret budget negotiations, and forget about any public input — who cares what you people think?

The authoritarian Tea-Publicans who lord over us treat us all like mushrooms: they keep us in the dark and feed us bullshit. See the Arizona Republic‘s Linda Valdez, Get this GOP: We aren’t mushrooms.

This is in no way “regular order” or a transparent and democratic budget process. The budget is something that should go through a series of committee hearings with public testimony, and  be hashed out in public in the open from the earliest days of the legislative session.

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In which I (sigh) have to give Bob Lord a Pro-Choice 101 lecture

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I discovered this April 9th post of Bob Lord’s as I was searching for another one and decided to read it, though I’ve been avoiding his stuff as a general rule while the primary is still going on. I’ve also decided to make what began as a comment into a full post.

Bob, as you know, I’m the person you quoted here:

I personally could not care less what a male religious leader who believes women are walking baby machines thinks about our Presidential election but I can understand why either candidate would seek his favor.

This apparently inspired your tirade lambasting those of us who weren’t impressed by Bernie Sanders’ recent Pope-stalking junket and whom you believe to place too much importance on “abortion” as a campaign issue. Well, as someone who pays careful attention to what you still (despite “representing Planned Parenthood”) deem to be a trivial little ladies side issue that can, and must, be jettisoned whenever More Important™ issues (IOW those that affect men) are on the table, allow me to explain:

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