dark money

The Top Two blackmailing of AZ Democrats begins!

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Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com

Open and Honest Elections filing

From the AZ Capitol Times comes this teaser for their January 12th edition of the Yellow Sheet:

Top two and anti-dark money rolled into one

By: Yellow Sheet Report January 12, 2016 , 4:18 pm

The campaigns for dark money disclosure and a “top-two” style primary election system have officially joined forces under the aegis of Open and Honest Coalition. In a news release today, the coalition announced the filing of “separate, but aligned” proposals to amend the Arizona Constitution.

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Political Payback: Governor Ducey gives the ‘Kochtopus’ a seat on the Arizona Supreme Court

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Cartoon_22Scott Walker, “the goggle-eyed homunculus hired by Koch Industries to run their Midwest subsidiary formerly known as the state of Wisconsin,” had a political corruption scandal hanging over his head both before and after he was elected governor.

Walker, his staff and associates were the subject of  “John Doe” investigations by prosecutors into, among other things, illegal campaign finance coordination with Wisconsin Club For Growth and other “dark money” conservative organizations. John Doe investigations related to Scott Walker. These investigations threatened his budding presidential campaign ambitions.

The one branch of government in Wisconsin that the “Kochtopus” did not control was the judiciary, specifically the state supreme court. In Wisconsin, state supreme court justices are elected, so there was a way to make Walker’s legal problems “go away.” Koch Brothers and D.C. Conservatives Spending Big on Nonpartisan State Supreme Court Races; No Election Is Too Small For The Koch Brothers’ Money; The Stealth Campaign to Buy America’s Courts; How Dark Money-Fueled Judicial Elections Corrupt Our Judiciary.

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2015 was a big year for the GOP culture of corruption in Arizona

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The GOP culture of corruption in Arizona has produced a number of threads this year that are coming together at the end of the year. Other shoes are about to drop early in 2016 — lookin’ at you crazy Uncle Joe Arpaio.

Disgraced former congressman Rick Renzi has now exhausted all of his appeals and is finally serving time in prison after years of litigation. Ex-Arizona congressman Rick Renzi denied new trial:

MorgantownA federal judge on Wednesday denied a new trial for former U.S. Rep. Rick Renzi, who was convicted in 2013 of corruption, money laundering and other charges and is serving a three-year prison term.

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Renzi was convicted in 2013 of corruption, money laundering and other charges. An appeals court upheld the convictions last year, and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear his appeal in June.

Renzi began serving his sentence at the federal prison in Morgantown, West Virginia, in February. Best Places To Go To Prison – Forbes.

The top political corruption story in Arizona in 2015 has been the melodrama playing out at the Arizona Corporation Commission.

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GOP Culture of Corruption: things just got real for Commissioner Susan Bitter-Smith

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The GOP culture of corruption at the Arizona Corporation Commission has been a soap opera for over a year now.  Tom Forese and Doug Little were elected to office last year with “dark money” from the state’s largest utility, APS, and its parent company Pinnacle West Capital Corp. The regulated purchased the regulators.

Screenshot from 2014-04-02 14:06:21In a related matter, Commissioner Bob Stump’s phone was seized for a forensic examination to recover emails and texts that may disclose illegal campaign coordination between Tom Forese and Doug Little and the GOP “dark money” organizations. The complaint is being pursued by the Checks and Balances Project.  Judge orders review of Stump’s text messages.

There has been the ongoing “dark money” disclosure dispute between some members of the Commission who want APS and Pinnacle West to come clean, and  Tom Forese and Doug Little who simply chant the Goldwater Institute’s magical mantra of “First Amendment free speech!” to justify political corruption and the Commission becoming a captive agency, bought by the utilities that it regulates. Regulator wants APS to disclose ‘dark money’ — well, not really — Montini: APS disclosure request is kind of a sham and Roberts: Burns’ request for APS disclosure is a joke.

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GOP chair paints Top Two Primary and anti-Dark Money initiatives as the work of dirty hippies

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Robert Graham
Robert Graham

Per AZGOP Chair Robert Graham in the AZ Capitol Times:

The Arizona Capitol Times recently reported the same people behind the failed jungle primary initiative in 2012 plan on taking another run at it in 2016. Only this time jungle primary supporters intend to team up with another group of liberals pushing an aggressive regulatory agenda designed to relieve Arizonans of our free speech rights—all under the guise of eliminating so-called dark money.

Ouch! That’s bound to leave a mark on the carefully-crafted “we’re so above the extremists on both sides!” image of the Open Primaries people. Graham’s oped is clearly signalling how conservatives plan to defeat both Top Two primaries and Terry Goddard’s Dark Money initiative – by painting both as acts of desperation by sore loser leftists.

No, really, Graham says so (though he admits the two measures are unrelated):

The supporters pushing this initiative are losing candidates who have proven incapable of winning elections in Arizona. Paul Johnson and Terry Goddard, the two people behind the jungle primary and the attack on free speech, have a combined staggering six losses in statewide races.

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