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Farm Animals 1 Women 0 in Arizona. Woman sentenced to decades in jail for stillbirth in Indiana

March 31, 2015 by AZ BlueMeanie

Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com

Bad day for women’s rights on Monday.

People in the Arizona animal rights community are happy, and rightly so, with Governor Doug Ducey’s veto of a bill straight out of Big Ag that would loosen animal cruelty restrictions. Yay for farm animals! Boo for women, though, since Ducey also signed SB1318, that idiotic pile of misogynistic garbage that turns women’s own damn money into “taxpayer dollars” and requires doctors to inform women about some hooey about “abortion reversal” concocted by anti-choicers.

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Fitz: The stone-cold heart of Ice Cream Man

March 31, 2015March 30, 2015 by AZ BlueMeanie

Our sad small town newspaper, the Arizona Daily Star, regularly runs a feature “tell us how to improve our newspaper.” They ask, but they do not listen. Every writer at this blog has given them advice on how to improve the Star over the years, and that advice has always gone ignored.

My biggest gripe: the Arizona Daily Star web site is the worst piece-o’-crap newspaper web site I have ever run across. The articles posted in the print edition of the newspaper are frequently not posted in the online version of the newspaper, and even when they are, the articles appear under different headlines and are not always included in the menu of articles. The “all headlines” function is a sick joke. Readers have to search for the articles, and the Star’s search function also sucks. Build a better web site already!

The only reason to buy the Arizona Daily Star is for David Fitzsimmons, the Star’s long-time editorial cartoonist and political satirist. Even the wingnuts who express hatred for Fitz for his “librul” views cannot fault him for the enormous amount of community service he does for a wide array of charitable organizations in Tucson. Fitz is truly a Tucson treasure.

Fitz’s column runs on Saturdays. This past Saturday was a Fitz classic: “The Ice Cream Man and the Koch’s dark money.” I still cannot find a link to this column on the Star’s craptacular web site as of Monday. So as a public service, I will transcribe it for you below [update: Finally a link! The Ice Cream Man and dark money]

I met him at the Arroyo Cafe in a booth in the back. This canary was ready to sing, and I was there to listen.

Dark Throat: Your boy Doug Ducey. He doesn’t answer to people of Arizona.

Me: Who does he answer to?

DT: The Koch brothers.

Me: Who?

DT: The Koch brothers of Koch industries. They’re billionaires, and they’d like nothing more than to do away with Medicare, Social Security, the minimum wage, the EPA, OSHA, public education, unions, all taxes and every government regulation ever signed into law.

Did you know the Koch brothers bankrolled the Tea Party? Their fingerprints are all over the efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act in Congress. Ted Cruz, Rand Paul and Marco Rubio are all Koch beneficiaries.

Me: What does Gov. Ducey have to do with any of this?

Bipartisan agreement in House for ‘Doc fix’

March 29, 2015March 28, 2015 by AZ BlueMeanie

Something unheard of since Tea-Publicans took control of Congress in January 2011 occurred on Thursday.

Congress overwhelmingly passed a bipartisan bill to actually fix a long-standing problem. The GOP gave up an annual hostage, the “Doc fix,” in a deal brokered between the TanMan, Weeper of the House John Boehner, and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. How Boehner, Pelosi surprised everyone with a $200 billion deal:

A few days after the chaos of a failed vote to fund the Department of Homeland Security, Speaker John Boehner asked for a meeting, alone, with House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi.

Compromise was on his mind.

With automatic cuts to doctors under Medicare set to take effect at the end of March, Boehner (R-Ohio) wanted to explore the possibility of a deal that would end the Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR), and with it a problem that has dogged Congress for nearly two decades.

The March 4 meeting in Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) office on the second floor of the Capitol was brief, lasting only 11 minutes.

But on the central question that has for years thwarted deal making between the parties — whether to raise taxes — Boehner got the answer he was looking for.

Democrats would not insist on tax hikes in legislation ending the Medicare formula, Pelosi told Boehner.

“That was, from our point of view, the breakthrough,” said Michael Steel, a Boehner spokesman.

Man, when I’m right, I am right!

March 27, 2015 by AZ BlueMeanie

Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com

Governor Mike Pence of Indiana

The Indiana Assembly passed, and Governor Mike Pence signed, a “Religious Freedom Restoration Act” similar to Arizona’s SB1062 from last year, which was vetoed by then-Governor Jan Brewer under the threat of more boycotts of a state still reeling from boycotts sparked by anti-immigrant SB1070 in 2010. I mostly agree with WaPo’s Hunter Schwarz’ analysis on how it is playing out differently in Indiana.

While Indiana has begun to feel the heat from businesses (and the NCAA, which is hosting the Final Four in Indianapolis next week), it doesn’t face two particular pressures Arizona did: (1) hosting a Super Bowl the following year and (2) a pre-existing narrative that it’s an intolerant state. Arizona already lost Super Bowl hosting duties once before, in 1993, because it didn’t recognize Martin Luther King, Jr., Day as a state holiday. And coupled with the furor over SB 1070, the controversial immigration enforcement law Brewer signed in 2010, the state was on the verge of becoming known for intolerance, not a good thing for business and tourism. Brewer said she vetoed the bill because it would have created more problems than it solved, but it didn’t hurt that the state’s economy also could have suffered.

Action Alert: Tell Governor Ducey to veto SB 1318 today

March 26, 2015 by AZ BlueMeanie

What Donna Gratehouse refers to as the “Lady Money Is Not Real Money” bill, SB 1318 (.pdf), passed the Senate on Wednesday and has been transmitted to the governor. Affordable Care Act abortion bill goes to the governor:

On an 18-11 margin the Arizona Senate on Wednesday gave final approval to legislation barring Arizonans who purchase health insurance through the Affordable Care Act from getting coverage for elective abortions, even if they pay a separate premium out of their own pocket.

Putative Democrats Carlyle Begay ad Catherine Miranda, of course, joined with the Republicans in voting for this punitive bill.

The legislation has exceptions for coverage designed to save a woman’s life or in cases of rape and incest.

A woman would have to prove this to the satisfaction of her insurer. Nothing like an inquisition from an insurance adjuster. And given the time constraints imposed by the state of Arizona in obtaining an early abortion, this process could unduly burden a woman’s constitutional right of privacy to manage her own health care and to obtain an abortion.