When he’s not wasting his time trolling this blog, he is busy promoting the censorship of PBS.
It is unconscionable that Arizona PBS has decided to renege on its relationship with the Arizona Clean Elections Commission to conduct fair debates by giving Katie Hobbs airtime after she refused to debate her opponent. That violates clean election rules. PBS = politics = no good pic.twitter.com/oIj2E4R6SV
— Senator John Kavanagh (@JohnKavanagh_AZ) October 13, 2022
https://twitter.com/rwarrin64/status/1580678640613740545?cxt=HHwWgsCi3am22e8rAAAA
True story. RNC unanimously votes to withdraw from commission that sponsors presidential debates:
The Republican National Committee voted unanimously on Thursday to withdraw from its participation in the Commission on Presidential Debates, the organization that has long governed general-election presidential debates.
In a statement, RNC chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said the commission is “biased and has refused to enact simple and commonsense reforms to help ensure fair debates including hosting debates before voting begins and selecting moderators who have never worked for candidates on the debate stage.”
[T]he commission drew considerable ire from Trump during the 2020 campaign, with him and his campaign aides often railing about the selected moderators, the commission’s decision to hold the second debate virtually during the coronavirus pandemic and the choice to mute each candidate’s mic during the final debate after the first contest included considerable interruptions from the then-President.
[A]nd in January, McDaniel sent another letter threatening to “prohibit future Republican nominees from participating in CPD-sponsored debates” unless the commission changed its rules.
The RNC claims it has not pulled its future nominees out of debates entirely.
And, Kavanagh, himself, refused to debate his opponent on 2018 and 2020.
— 🌺 Jennifer 🌺 (@jam7x) October 14, 2022
What’s unAmerican is that you would threaten the first amendment by defunding an institution like Public Broadcasting because Lake got outmaneuvered by Hobbs.
You appear fine with defunding when it suits your rhetoric.
Stop threatening to use government to silence dissent
— Trevor Nelson | Text ACT to 644-33 (@CTrevorNelson) October 13, 2022
And of course there is this:
You know the courts have ruled that when politicians block constituents it violates 1A. MTG was fined $10k for a single instance. All we need is a lawyer who isn’t afraid of the GOP revenge machine and we could bankrupt Lake and Kelli Ward too!
— Politics Ninja (@CryptoNinjaco) October 14, 2022
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I should say tax breaks not subsidies, but my comment to Kavanagh stands.
Fox doesn’t pay its fair share, they’re takers, like most conservatives.
John Kavanagh asked “What tax dollars does Fox News receive?”
Subsidies, John, read my post again.
“You may recall that according to the New York Times, the News Corporation “paid no federal taxes in two of the last four years, and in the other two it paid only a fraction of what it otherwise would have owed” at a time when its “domestic pretax profits topped $9.4 billion.”
Carriage fees pay the rest, carriage fees I pay for channels that I don’t want and why I’ll be cutting the cord soon.
But you’re one of the people who helps siphon off taxpayer money and give it to rich people and you’re just pretending to be that stupid.
Right?
No refuting my post. Just a personal attack. Very professional.
No but defund the blog provider for not having post replies go under posts. I tried twice.
Yeah, that’s annoying…
What tax dollars does Fox News receive?
“…a television station that is politically biased…”
There it is. Truth. Finally.
He’s using this one issue, which is only a problem in his own little mind, to cancel something he doesn’t like, which is anyone disagreeing with him, and ignoring all the good things PBS does and the value it provides.
My tax money subsidizes right wing media to the tune of millions, sewers like Fox News and OAN, and so does my cable bill, but Kavanagh don’t seem to have an issue with those outlets.
He cherry picks the things he wants to cancel.
Petty man abusing his position.
RaicesTexasDotOrg.
You just don’t get it. I am not suggesting that any penalty be placed upon Katie Hobbs for her not debating. That is her choice. However, the clean election rules which PBS agreed to when it participated with Clean Elections in the debates clearly state that the candidate that refuses to debate gets no airtime and the candidate that does debate gets a half hour Q&A session. By breaking that rule PBS, which is basically ASU, has interjected itself into an election of an office that will have great influence upon the university. That is public monies being used to influence an election. That is bad and I wish to stop it by severing the relationship between ASU and PBS.
Somehow this comment got duplicated, so I deleted the copy. Gonna try to defund me for censorship, John?
Not funding a TV station is not infringing on freedom of the press. A TV station can do whatever they want within the law but that doesn’t mean that the state or anybody else has to fund them. The decision not to fund or to stop funding in no way violates the first amendment. The state is under no constitutional obligation to give money to a television station that is politically biased with respect to a candidate and that is exactly what happened in this case where ASU aka PBS is giving Hobbs time that she neither deserves nor earned. And the reason why I plan to run this bill is because we now know that ASU and PBS are the same thing. It is the state university that is putting its finger on the electoral scale. That is bad policy.
I cannot believe that you do not realize that. I suspect that you do but just want to spin your way around it because you are not about intellectual discourse on an issue but simply about spinning your base. This blog deserve a lot better than your erroneous spin take on this.
Just another tiresome tirade on cop-law. Having worked with cops as a prosecutor, I’m here to tell you that – like most cops, other than the rare one who actually is a lawyer – you haven’t the training or experience of a career attorney to understand the history, interpretation, and case law surrounding our 1A, to know squat, John. What you have is yet another reckless and overconfident opinion by a cop who thinks he understands the law. You may be a ‘law-maker’ – proving once again that democracy is only right in the aggregate, not always in the particular – but you don’t even know what you don’t know.
You are just an ex-cop and a part-time legislator, neither of which makes your opinion respectable. I’ll take AZ Blue Meanie’s (or AZBM as you abreviate it – oh so cleverly alluding to Bowel Movements) opinion informed by careers-worth experience as a litigator over your’s any day – even were I not a myself a trained attorney with a career of practice behind me. Now take your risible ‘constitutional analysis’ and shove it firmly whence your BM flows. It will be fun reading the briefs when your little bill of attainder and censorship gets taken apart in court. Please entertain us all further by trying to write the response brief yourself – that would be utterly amusing, and you could be assured that we would post it here on the blog so that you might be properly mocked.
I’ll just remind everyone that you are the guy who thought it would be consistent with the 1A to try to stop people filming police within 8ft. Remind everyone how that worked out?
I see Herschel Walker didn’t show up for the latest debate.
He’s getting money from the GOP.
I assume John Kavanagh will now move to defund the GOP.
Whoa! What a plot twist!
I did not see this coming!
John Kavanagh engaging in Cancel Culture.
Typical fake conservative. Sad.
You know what’s not up for debate?
That’s right! The good work done by RaicesTexasDotOrg!
Raices provides free or low cost legal help to immigrants.
Donating In Honor of Arizona Rep John Kavanagh is what all the cool online influencers are doing, I’m pretty sure.
Be cool like them.
And by the way, freedom of the press does not require the state in anyway to support or pay for the press. AzBlueMeanie needs to read up on the constitution. However, in his defense that mistake is a common one among people not familiar with the first amendment.
Freedom of the press is not about the state paying for PBS. It is about “the state shall not infringe the freedom of the press,” i.e., censorship, which is exacty what you as a government official are whining about. You want to tell PBS what they must do. PBS is willing to give the public the chance to be informed by hearing from both candidates without the”spectacle” of Kari Lake’s theatrics. PBS has done this for a number of candidates outside of the debate format, just look at the menu of candidate interviews posted on their website. Lake is now refusing to participate throwing A hissy fit almost as big as yours. When you actually try a First Amendment case in court, you let me know Troll Boy.
No. But it does require that government not try to restrain or punish viewpoints they don’t like when they choose to do so. Therein lies the rub that will doom your stupid bill, by which you demonstrate utter ignorance of any interpretive case history of our great 1A. Good luck with that argument in court, John!
Rather below.
Read my post above.
I’m not sure if AzBlueMeany honestly doesn’t understand what the issue is here or if he actually understands the issue and recognizes that I have a good point so, therefore, he is spinning the issue by misrepresenting my position so that he can knock it down. That is the classical straw man technique. I will give a AzBM the benefit of the doubt and assume that he just doesn’t grasp what’s going on as opposed to his being an unscrupulous spin master.
This has nothing to do with anybody refusing to debate. This has to do with the person who refuses to debate in the Clean Elections Commission debate still getting airtime, when the rules say that only the person who agreed to the debate gets a question and answer session and the person who chickens out (ala Hobbs) gets nothing. That is exactly what the Clean Elections policy is and what PBS agreed to abide by when it partnered with Clean Elections to run these debates.
So when you criticize the RNC for pulling Republicans out of debates, that has nothing to do with what PBS did and everything to do with what your candidate, chicken Katie Hobbs, did.
One of the revelations that came out of this controversy is the fact that ASU is not just the landlord of PBS. It is now evident that ASU is PBS. They hold the broadcast license and all of the bosses are deans at ASU. So when PBS put its thumb on the gubernatorial race scale by awarding Hobbs unearned and undeserved free airtime, it amounts to a government agency (ASU) interfering with an election. That is unconscionable and corrupt. My remedy is to simply sever all state government ties, which includes ASU, from PBS. The government has no business running a radio station that interferes in the election of a person (the governor) who will wield considerable authority over it (ASU.)
And by the way, my preliminary research reveals that of PBS’s $15 million dollar budget, only about $400,000 comes from the state. PBS will still be around if my bill passes, but Big Bird just won’t be a state employee. Although, actually, I believe that Big Bird now works for Disney, so it’s probably irrelevant.
“I have a good point”, that’s rich, John. Classic misplaced confidence of the ignorant.
I would like for Rep JK to explain in his own words how his constituents or the people of Arizona would be served by AZ severing state support of PBS.
How are we served, John?
You pull this sh!t to draw attention to yourself and it has really gotten old and tiresome and it wastes time and taxpayer dollars.
Yes, John, please DO respond to Liza’s excellent and good-faith challenge. BTW, I agree with her attribution of motive to you as well, Johnny the Blog Jester.