Arizona Legislature

public education

Tucsonans Take to the Streets to Protest Ducey/GOP Budget

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public education
Approximately 100 Tucsonans rallied against massive cuts to education proposed by Governor Doug Ducey and the #AZGOP.

More than 1000 people rallied at the Arizona Capitol to protest cuts to education on Thursday. The Phoenix rally spawned a similar protest in Tucson, where 100 people protested millions of dollars in cuts to K-12 education, $104 million in cuts to universities, and elimination of funding for Pima Community College and other community colleges in Pinal and Maricopa County.

Tucson education rally
Governor Ducey had proposed increasing prison beds and funding, while cutting education. Protesters took issue with that short-sighted idea.

ICYMI, Governor Doug Ducey and Republicans in the Arizona Legislature cooked up a terrible budget deal in secret, announced it on Wednesday, and tried to ram it through both houses before the public knew what hit them (literally). Thanks to Facebook, Twitter, and the blogs– Arizonans quickly organized against Ducey’s budget plan.

You’ll remember that Ducey and the Legislature are facing a budget deficit of nearly half a billion dollars this year and over $1 billion next year, AND, thanks to Tooth Fairy Math, they believe that that can balance the budget, give millions of dollars in corporate tax cuts, and do nothing to raise revenue (to pay down the deficit or to make the tax cuts seem less ridiculous affordable.)

Parents, teachers, school board members, public education supporters, and students from 5 to 25 years old showed up in force in the two cities to tell the governor that balancing the state budget– yet again— on the backs of students and families is unacceptable. At this time, Ducey doesn’t have the votes in either chamber of the Legislature to pass his budget. Images from the Tucson rally after the jump.

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Republican lawmakers really don’t like hearing the truth

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Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com

When you think of lobbyists in Arizona you’re bound to think of people in expensive shoes and haircuts peddling bills handwritten for the corporations that pay them. It’s true of a lot of them but there are also some valiant souls who go to the Capitol regularly to plead on behalf of the people in our state who don’t have piles of cash to influence legislators. One such person is Kristin Gwinn, executive director of Protecting Arizona’s Families Coalition (PAFCO), who testified before a Senate committee on Monday about the how their proposed budget does not come close to meeting the needs of abused and vulnerable children. She pulled no punches:

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In which I express my fervent wish that Laurie Roberts will shut up forever about child abuse.

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Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com

There’s a terrible, awful story in the news right now about a Phoenix couple who starved their baby nearly to death. So it’s no surprise that Phoenix’s own Nancy Grace, AKA Laurie Roberts, was quickly on the scene to flare her nostrils about it on her column. I mean, I totally could see it coming but, dear sweet Christ on chimichanga platter is this thing dreadful.

What profound insight does Laurie have to add to this horrible situation? Why, slut-shaming, of course.

The case of Veronica Marie Diaz showcases much about what is wrong with our society, about why CPS is so overrun and just how daunting the task will be as the state rebuilds our child-welfare system. Here’s a 27-year-old woman with multiple children and no father apparently in sight. But, of course, there is a boyfriend.

There’s always a boyfriend.

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GOP majority = ALEC

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Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com

Big kudos to my pal Robbie Sherwood for getting the goods on the recent lavish wine-and-dine of Republican legislators by corporate lobbyists at the pricey Biltmore-area steakhouse Donovan’s.

Even Laurie Roberts stopped swooning over “moderate Republicans” for a minute to express her dismay at this. Which is good, because if the self-appointed saviors of Arizona like Laurie (who simply refuse to see the obvious answer that is right before their faces, which is “elect Democrats”) really want to do something it helps if they understand what is causing our problems.

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Clean Elections could not possibly have caused SB1062

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Crossposted at DemocraticDiva.com

This FiveThrirtyEight piece has been getting passed around by both opponents of Clean Elections operating in bad faith and by well-meaning people who think it’s legitimate because it’s on Nate Silver’s site.

In 2010, Arizona enacted an immigration law so stringent that the U.S. Supreme Court was forced to intervene. Four years later, the governor had to veto a nearly successful effort to allow businesses to deny service to, among others, LGBT people. After that measure failed, the Arizona House of Representatives last month passed a bill meant to increase scrutiny of abortion clinics.

These bills are coming from lawmakers who’ve assembled the most conservative state legislature in the country. That’s according to Princeton University’s Nolan McCarty and University of Chicago’s Boris Shor, who tracked the ideology of state legislatures over the past 20 years and found that Arizona’s lawmakers are more conservative than those in Georgia, Mississippi and Texas. Modern, tea-party Republicanism has found no more accommodating home than the Arizona statehouse…

…Given all that, why do these hyper-conservative state legislators keep getting elected? Because the Arizona electoral system allows for extreme candidates to compete on an equal playing field with their more moderate competitors.2

Arizona has one of the most advanced clean election laws in the country. As long as a candidate for the state legislature reaches a minimum fundraising level ($1,250), the state essentially funds her campaign.3 (Only Connecticut and Maine have similar laws on public financing for state legislature candidates.) That allows candidates to stay viable even if they don’t have connections to the state party or local business leaders.

This is the perfect formula for the tea party to take on the GOP establishment. Imagine a tea partyer who doesn’t owe anything to established business interests in her district — that’s the kind of state legislator who might support a “religious freedom” law even if businesses are hurt by it. Indeed, a study by Harvard University’s Andrew Hall and a separate study by the University of Denver’s Seth Masket and the University of Illinois’s Michael Miller both show that clean election laws lead to more extreme candidates.

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