az legislature

Grand Old Privilege

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Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com

emporers new clotheswww.phrases.org.uk

I stayed up past 3am to watch the AZ House vote on final bills before Sine Die last Friday morning. The very last bill the Committee of the Whole was debating when it was announced that the Senate would be skedaddling, thus, not hearing any more bills was SB1339, which would have forbade so-called “ballot harvesting”. It was directed at Democratic volunteers, under spurious allegations that they are stealing thousands of ballots or forging them, or something. Democratic Reps were understandably impatient with this slander and took to the floor to say so.

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Just because their pants are in a perpetual state of fire doesn’t mean we should assume everyone else is dishonest

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Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com

Arizona political consultant Barrett Marson is not the first conservative to make the strangely candid admission that he could not be trusted with ballots while advocating for SB1339, a striker bill that bans so-called “ballot harvesting” – that is volunteer canvassers collecting mail-in ballots by voters and delivering them to the county recorder. I appreciate the (rare) candor, guys. It’s refreshing, but your slipping up and letting us know what you would do with Democratic voter ballots is not a good reason to disallow collecting ballots, thus cutting voters off from a convenient way of getting their votes counted.

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AZ House approves the “Lady Money Is Not Real Money” bill.

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Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com

pin moneyPhoto: Etsy.com

Arizona bill SB1318, which requires doctors to pass on medically dubious information about “abortion reversal”, also bans coverage of abortion in private insurance plans, even if a policy holder has purchased an entirely separate rider with her own money which does not sully the pristine money of “taxpayers” – a group that (again) apparently does not include women who use any reproductive health care not directly related to having babies.

The bill went for third read on the House floor, the last step before before being transmitted to Governor Ducey, who is certain to sign it, and was passed on a 33/24 party line vote. I listened to the testimony at work and heard the Democrats valiantly (as always) trying to explain why it was a bad idea on several levels Republican Rep. Steve Montenegro waxed lugubriously about the need to “do everything possible to ensure a child has every opportunity to have it’s first breath!” and Rep. JD Mesnard anti-choicesplained, “We all know how accounting gimmicks work!” (He clearly doesn’t.)

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In case you didn’t already know, you peons and your petty “getting on the airplane” troubles are an afterthought to Governor Ducey

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real idPhoto: homelandsecuritynewswire.com

Arizona drivers licenses aren’t compliant with new federal Real ID requirements to board airplanes and a change to a state law (passed a few years ago to assuage the fears of the black helicopter crowd) is necessary to correct that. Our conservative-led legislature, naturally, is a averse to this so the AZ Republic ed board was recently reduced to begging readers to contact Speaker of the House David Gowan to relent.

It shouldn’t have come to this. A Legislature that puts Arizonans first would have passed this bill weeks ago. Residents wouldn’t have to cross their fingers that an answer will be found.

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

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Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com

pill cartoon

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.

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