Doug Ducey

Great people you want to give $5 mil to, Governor Ducey

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Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com

mises
AKA A Confederacy Of Jagoffs

If you’re following Arizona politics right now you know that a big issue is Prop 123, which will be voted on next month here in a special election. It would significantly increase the annual distributions from the state land trust to schools and is touted as a solution to settling the lawsuit against the state for underfunding education since the recession.

This happens to be going on at the same time as budget negotiations, and as many critics of Governor Doug Ducey and skeptics of Prop 123 have noted, the Governor and GOP majority in the Lege are not exactly acting with anything resembling humility in advance of asking the electorate to forgive them for failing to fund public education. For one thing, they want to give charter schools $100 million out of a bare-bones budget. For another, they are poised to give $5 million to a think tank led by a libertarian crackpot named William J. Boyes, who hates public schools.

No, seriously, he hates public schools! Per Laurie Roberts in the AZ Republic:

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Toto, we ARE in Kansas!

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Open revolt in the Kansas GOP is now plaguing Governor Sam Brownback in his attempt to slash personal income taxes. His reasoning for the cuts was that it would encourage business expansion and hiring (sound familiar Arizonans?) But five years in, his plan hasn’t produced the promised results but rather, has the state budget in … Read more

Ducey joins Scott Walker in demanding ability to drug test food stamp recipients

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Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com

Drug Test

For some reason it has escaped notice here in Arizona, but Governor Doug Ducey put his name on a letter from Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker to Rep. Robert Aderholt (R-AL), who chairs the Agriculture Subcommittee in Congress, about the supposed need to drug test SNAP recipients so as to break their “dependence on government”.

Dear Mr. Aderholt:

As you know, multiple states have recently enacted drug-testing provisions as part of the state-based requirements for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, otherwise known as SNAP or food stamps. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Service administers this program at the federal level, but disagrees with these drug-testing efforts.

We believe that Congress specifically gave states the flexibility to decide whether to implement this common-sense reform in the 1996 Welfare Reform Act. This Act provides that “States shall not be prohibited by the Federal Government from testing welfare recipients for use of controlled substances nor from sanctioning welfare recipients who test positive for use of controlled substances.” 21 U.S.C. § 862(b).

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Houston indictments of anti-choice smear merchants show how their claims fall apart under the slightest scrutiny

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Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com

Center for Arizona Policy, not dealing well with Monday’s news

So many anti-choicers were having a bad day on Monday with the announcement that a Republican witch hunt of Planned Parenthood in Harris County, Texas had gone hilariously awry, with the perpetrators of the video “sting” being indicted by the grand jury while Planned Parenthood was cleared, that it’s difficult to pick just one to highlight but I’ll go with Andrew Napolitano of Fox News. Napolitano, a former judge, had a meltdown over a Republican prosecutor not just going after Planned Parenthood out of opposition to legal abortion irrespective of whatever evidence came forth in the case.

“The grand jury does not turn around and indict your witnesses, the people who brought you the case, without the prosecutor wanting this to happen!” Napolitano exclaimed.

He continued: “So, why would this prosecutor, appointed by Gov. [Rick] Perry, a former judge, a Republican woman, why would this prosecutor want to do this other than to send a message like, ‘I might be a Republican but leave Planned Parenthood alone’?”

“Leave it alone?” Napolitano shouted. “They’re using tax dollars to kill babies and sell their body parts!”

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AZ Democratic caucus acting like a damn opposition party! Yay!

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Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com

Barbara McGuire
AZ Sen. Barbara McGuire

The Arizona legislative session began last week and, as has been the case for most of the past decade or five, the Democrats are in the minority. If you pay attention to the doings at 1700 W. Washington St. you know that being the opposition party means that Democratic lawmakers, armed with facts and logic, argue valiantly (and futilely) against atrocious harebrained GOP bills in committee hearings and make impassioned speeches against said bills and ever crueler budget cuts on the floors of the Senate or House. They are, of course, mostly ignored as the terrible bills and budgets pass.

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