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GOP train wreck on immigration coming next week

August 27, 2020June 15, 2018 by AZ BlueMeanie

The other day I told you that the House schedules vote on two DACA bills destined to fail:

So now we have the hardline Goodlatte-MsSally bill from the GOP House Freedom Caucus, which does not have the votes to pass Congress, and a so-called GOP moderate bill still being drafted that will fall far short of the Dream Act and the bipartisan measure that couples a path to citizenship for Dreamers with beefed-up border security.

House Republicans have released a first draft of their new “compromise” immigration bill, the “Border Security and Immigration Reform Act.”

The nearly 300-page bill is one of two that the entire House will vote on next week. It is considered a GOP “moderate” alternative to the GOP conservative bill proposed by Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-VA).

Riiight.

The New York Times reports, House Immigration Bill, Pitched as Compromise, Tilts to a Harder Line:

The draft bill, circulating among lawmakers on Thursday afternoon and up for a vote next week, closely adheres to President Trump’s vision for an immigration overhaul. In addition to protecting the young immigrants, it provides billions of dollars for a wall on the southwest border while imposing new limits on legal immigration.

The bill would also toughen rules for asylum seekers. And it would address the separation of children from parents under the Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal border crossings by mandating that families be kept together while in the custody of the Department of Homeland Security, according to a summary of the measure.

In effect, the measure would offer Democrats and immigration moderates in the Republican Party a difficult choice: accept hard-line changes to much of the immigration system in exchange for protections for young undocumented immigrants and what appears to be a modification of the wrenching policy of splitting up families at the border.

What if R.F……Hubert Humphrey had won in 1968?

August 27, 2020June 9, 2018 by David Gordon

Over the last week, there have been numerous salutations of the late Attorney General and New York Senator Robert Francis Kennedy who was assassinated after having won the California Primary in May 1968.

The tragic assassination, coupled with the horrific murder of his brother in Dallas five years earlier has left no shortage of historians and public policy wonks wondering “What if RFK had lived? Would he have won the nomination? Would he have been able to beat Nixon? What kind of President would he have been?”

These are all interesting and valid questions but it presupposes that the Democrats had no Progressive Champion carrying the banner for them in 1968 and that cannot be further from the truth.

More about that Prop. 123 ruling (Updated)

August 27, 2020March 27, 2018 by AZ BlueMeanie

Linda Lyon covered this in her post below, but here are the links that media reports have been leaving out.

Judge Neil Wake’s 33 page Order in Michael Pierce v. Douglas Ducey, CV-16-01538-PHX-NVW.

The massive 2,232-page, $1.3 trillion spending bill approved by Congress last week.

The provision that Governor Ducey’s attorney Michael Liburdi asserts “retroactively” authorized what Judge Wake ruled was an unconstitutional act by Governor Ducey is found at “DIVISION S—OTHER MATTER – Title IV—Consent of Congress to Amendments to the Constitution of the State of Arizona”:

New House Speaker J.D. Mesnard strikes out on legislative priorities

August 27, 2020December 28, 2016 by AZ BlueMeanie

The overwhelming majority of Arizonans agree that increased funding for public education should be the top legislative priority in the incoming state legislature. Arizonans support higher taxes for education, how about our Governor and Tea-Publican legislature?

The state’s projected $24 million budget surplus (see interview below) is wholly inadequate and well below the amount of restitution that the courts found our lawless Tea-Publican legislature owed to the state’s school districts for its theft of inflation adjusted school funding in previous years — which they used to give away corporate welfare tax cuts.

Even with the sham of Prop. 123 funding, “total aid to education will still be $600 million less than it was in 2009 in real dollars — and $863 million less if inflation is taken into account,” according to Dana Naimark, president of the Children’s Action Alliance. Prop. 123 will do little to restore education funding to K-12 schools.

Governor Doug Ducey’s sham Classrooms First Initiative Council failed to produce any proposals for increased funding for public education. Ducey’s Classrooms First Initiative Council produces bupkis.

Governor Ducey’s State of The State Address in January is likely to simply propose moving pots of money around without increasing tax revenues to pay for increased public education funding (the goal will be to pit interests groups against one another to fight over their slice of the budget pie, not to increase the size of the budget pie).

With this in mind, this AP interview of the new Speaker of the House, Rep. J.D. Mesnard, R-Gilbert, is deeply disturbing.

Post-convention polling bounce for Hillary Clinton

August 27, 2020August 1, 2016 by AZ BlueMeanie

Last week an outlier CNN poll claimed Donald Trump had a “big bounce” after his apocalyptic convention in Cleveland. Donald Trump bounces into the lead. The short-fingered vulgarian trumpeted this poll to claim that he had a yuuuge post-convention bounce.
According to Nate Silver at Five Thirty Eight, Trump’s polling average bounce after the GOP convention was 3 to four percentage points. According to Sam Wang at the Princeton Election Consortium, Trump’s polling average bounce after the GOP convention was only one point (see below).

Now that the post-convention polls for the Democratic convention are being released, the short-fingered vulgarian has something else for which he needs to compensate for his inadequacy.

The CNN poll released today claims Hillary Clinton has a 7 point post-convention bounce. Post-convention poll: Clinton retakes lead over Trump:

Hillary Clinton emerges from her party’s convention in Philadelphia with a restored lead over Donald Trump, having earned a 7-point convention bounce, according to a new CNN/ORC Poll.

In a two-way head-to-head matchup, Clinton tops Trump 52% to 43%, and in a four-way matchup including third party candidates Gary Johnson and Jill Stein, Clinton leads 45% to 37% with Johnson at 9% and Stein at 5%.