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Victoria Steele’s courageous testimony showed why “rape exceptions” are a sham

March 13, 2015March 13, 2015 by AZ BlueMeanie

Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com

Edited to correctly identify the committee chair. It was Kelly Townsend, not Kelli Ward. My bad.

Alas, due to our stupidly slow “high speed internet” connection at the house, I’ve been unable to view the two and a half hour Arizona House Federalism and States’ Rights (seriously?) Committee hearing from Wednesday. But there was one part that made the news, and for good reason. It was when Democratic Rep. Victoria Steele of Tucson, who was testifying against SB1318 (which denies insurance coverage for abortion, among other things), was overcome by the whole thing and shared how she had been a repeated victim of sexual assault by a family member as a young girl.

Sorry for the screen shot instead of embedded video but Channel 12 insists upon them opening immediately

Focus, people! Tax reform begins with the repeal of Prop. 108 (1992)

March 12, 2015 by AZ BlueMeanie

I have seen several news reports this week in which various activist organizations are suggesting that they are working on ballot measures for new taxes to support their interests, e.g., education, to get around our “Thou shalt not raise taxes” for any any reason, ever Tea-Publican legislature.

This has been done before for education and healthcare matters, and invariably winds up in court when our Tea-Publican legislature fails and/or refuses to support these programs at voter-mandated spending levels. Our legislature does not even abide by the Arizona Constitution. This has not been a particularly effective strategy. It mostly means full employment for a select few lawyers.

Moreover, tax measures enacted by citizen initiatives can only be amended by another citizen initiative or referendum unless a super-majority vote of each chamber cam be achieved that is “in furtherance of” the intended purpose of enacted citizen initiative. So what do you do when there is a necessary amendment, based upon changed circumstances, that is not “in furtherance of” the intended purpose of enacted citizen initiative?

This is a poor way to enact public policy. I think you are all getting way out over your skis on this. I have explained numerous times over the years what is the necessary prerequisite to any meaningful tax reform in Arizona and to restoring fiscal sanity to our budget process — repeal Proposition 108 (1992), the “Two-Thirds for Taxes” Amendment, Arizona Constitution Article 9, Section 22. This is where tax reform begins. FOCUS! FOCUS! FOCUS!

As I have posted previously:

AZ anti-choice legislators actually think you can reverse an abortion

March 11, 2015 by AZ BlueMeanie

Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com

SB1318 was already bad enough. The anti-choice bill would bar any insurance exchange operating in the state (including the ACA) from covering abortion even if the woman purchased a separate rider, on the theory that money out of a woman’s own damn pocket that she earned herself is somehow “taxpayer dollars”. It also mandates that abortion doctors report to the state health director that they have admitting privileges at a local hospital, a requirement that opponents say could expose personal information about doctors to dangerous anti-choice zealots. But they weren’t done. Now there’s this amendment.

Impressive response by Arizona Business Leaders™ to the terrible budget

March 10, 2015 by AZ BlueMeanie

Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com

Photo: AZ Chamber of Commerce and Industry announcement

By “impressive”, of course, I mean “pathetic”. The GOP led AZ Legislature dropped a turd of a budget in the middle of Friday night/Saturday morning that guts (among other things) university and community college funding and – because this is the cruelest session toward poor people that I’ve seen since I moved here in 1997 – cuts millions in Medicaid assistance, limits Temporary Assistance to Needy Families to an arbitrary lifetime cap of one year, and fails to fund child abuse and neglect prevention.

Arizona fails ‘the moral test of government’

March 8, 2015 by AZ BlueMeanie

It has often been said that “budgets are moral documents.” The late, great Senator Hubert H. Humphrey (D-MN) said it best when he said:

Our lawless Tea-Publican Arizona legislature and governor negotiated a “stealth” budget behind closed doors in secret negotations, and then “rammed it through, jammed it through” the legislature in the dead of night on Friday into Saturday morning when most Arizonans were asleep, so that there would be no organized protests from angry citizens, and even the media largely was absent to report on this travesty until after the dirty deed had been done. This is not how a representative democracy is supposed to function. This is how authoritarian regimes function.

The budget enacted by our lawless Tea-Publican Arizona legislature and governor fails miserably the “moral test of government” of which Sen. Humphrey so eloquently spoke. This amoral budget is “balanced” (in fiction only) on the backs of children and the poor — those who cannot vote and those who do not vote — while preserving the special interest corporate welfare tax breaks for their campaign contributors.