az legislature

More poor bashing than usual in AZ legislative session

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Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com

King Crab Legs 6-92

It definitely seems as if this is the Year of Going After the Poor with a Vengeance for Republicans in the Arizona Legislature. Which is saying something, since these are people who have shown an abundance of enthusiasm for punishing low income residents for their (real or imagined) transgressions for several years now. Bills going through committees this session target poor people’s public assistance and voting rights, perpetuating narratives about their being shiftless and untrustworthy. (And the usurious lenders that Arizona voters drop-kicked out of the state in 2008 are back.)

The complete takeover of our state by Americans For Prosperity (funded by the Koch brothers) types in the 2014 election has created the perfect conditions for a total war on low income people. There’s not likely to be much push-back on it from the public as we non-poor Americans are a bunch of judgmental pricks about poor people’s life choices, as Bryce Covert of Mother Jones notes:

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CAP Day at the Capitol and (yet another) anti-choice law

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Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com

On Wednesday a bunch of nuisances with way too much time on their hands and a burning desire to meddle in your personal life on behalf of Jesus will descend upon the Arizona State Capitol.

cap day

Sounds like a barrel of laughs but I’ll pass. This event coincides with a Senate Health and Human Services Committee hearing where they will be voting on SB1318, which is yet another attempt to restrict abortion under the guise of “safety”. The bill requires all doctors performing abortions at clinics to have admitting privileges at a local hospital.

Like all other TRAP laws, admitting privileges are a complete crock of crap, as Imani Gandy explains in RH Reality Check:

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Why we can’t have legal weed right now. Because they’re anti-choicers.

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Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com

pot leaf

Per Howie Fischer:

He admits the plan is a political longshot.

But Rep. Mark Cardenas, D-Phoenix, hopes to convince colleagues to approve legalizing marijuana for recreational use by adults, if for no other reason than the alternative is having voters adopt their own plan. And if that happens, that locks lawmakers out of the process entirely.

His legislation, HB 2007, would make it legal for those 21 and older to possess up to an ounce of the drug…

…What might fare better is Cardenas’ backup plan: HB 2006 would decriminalize possession of up to an ounce of marijuana, imposing a civil penalty of no more than $100.

Now, possession of any amount is a felony, meaning more than a year in state prison.

But these are usually handled as misdemeanors. And a 1996 voter-approved law generally precludes incarceration for first and second offenses.

“I’m willing to look at that,” Farnsworth said. But he said any decision whether to even grant that a hearing depends on whether police and prosecutors believe such a change will impair their anti-drug efforts.

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A Phoenix woman hands her baby to a stranger. You won’t believe what happens next!

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ch 15 abandoned baby Link

This story leads off with the anchor being shocked (!) and the reporter, on location in the Sunnyslope area of Phoenix, holding up a flyer for a missing dog. He acts incredulous that people would be looking for a dog, when a woman apparently abandoned her baby to a stranger in the same neighborhood. The woman, Jennifer Argo, who had the baby handed off to her is indignant about it. “She makes me sick. Uh, I mean, I’m a mother of three! You know, I just could never imagine handing my child off to somebody and saying, ‘here’.”

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