Doug Ducey

The “establishment” should have been more careful about what they wished, and worked, for

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Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com

$$$

All In With Chris Hayes on the bind that traditional GOP big donors are in due to new campaign finance rules:

Link to video (because BofA never likes any video I try to embed)

As Hayes and a later panel with guests explained, the post-Citizens United reality means that “bundlers”, the wealthy, connected lawyers, lobbyists, and business types who have wielded electoral power for decades by shaking down multiple contributions, are penny ante compared to billionaires like Sheldon Adelson and the Koch brothers, who have the ability to funnel piles of money directly wherever they want.

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To no one’s surprise, Gov-elect Ducey’s Budget Study Committee is a bunch of rich white people

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Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com

Arizona’s soon-to-be Governor, Doug Ducey, has assembled a team to advise him on the budget.

PHOENIX (November 17) – Governor-elect Doug Ducey announced today the formation of a Budget Study Committee, led by a team of public and private sector professionals charged with studying the budget and providing expertise and feedback to the governor-elect.

Throughout his campaign for governor, Ducey made clear he intended to go through the budget line by line in order to ensure Arizona lives within its means and invests in priorities for the state with a focus on economic growth and education.

“Before we can address the challenges facing our state, we need to do our homework,” Ducey said. “This team of professionals will provide a diverse set of perspectives on our state finances. It’s important to me to hear from those who have dealt intimately with the state budget, in addition to receiving an outside perspective from the private sector, so we can adopt mechanisms to be more effective, accountable and efficient with our resources. I look forward to working with them to get our arms wrapped around the budget and examine the best ways to balance it while also growing our economy and ensuring there is money in classrooms to help teachers teach and students learn.”

Behold them:

john arnold

John Arnold, AZ Director of the Office of Strategic Planning and Budgeting

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If ACA subsidies are gutted by Supreme Court, what will Ducey do?

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Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com

ACA

While many legal experts express confidence that the upcoming King v Burwell Supreme Court decision will be in favor of the Affordable Care Act, the Court did cause alarm by agreeing to hear it in the first place. Here is what is at stake:

At the heart of the King case are the tax subsidies offered by the federal government to those who cannot afford their own insurance. These subsidies are critical to achieving Obamacare’s goal of insuring even the least well off. At present, those eligible for subsidies can get them whether they purchase on the federal exchange or a state one. That could change on account of a glitch in the ACA, which can be read to say that you can only get a subsidy if you signed up on a state-managed exchange. If the Supreme Court signs off on this interpretation, the federal government cannot subsidize insurance for the less well-off in any state that has declined to set up its own exchange.

In King v. Burwell, a unanimous decision by a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit sided with the Obama administration, rejecting the challengers’ argument that the provision of the ACA that authorizes tax credits for insurance purchased on an exchange “established by the State under section 1311” doesn’t authorize tax credits for insurance purchased on an exchange established by the federal government. Supporters of the ACA call this a mere “drafting error.” Opponents claim this is a clear case of statutory interpretation: The law says “state” exchanges, and that is what was intended. If this interpretation prevails, more than four million people lose those subsidies.

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Live Blogging Election Results

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In an hour, the polls will close. The big question is: Will dark money from the Koch Brothers and their multinational corporate brothers win or will the people win? Will millions of dollars — more than $25 million to buy each Senate seat for Republicans and more than $15 million in Arizona for Republicans — take this … Read more

GOP might get to continue to wage war on women by lying that they are doing that

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Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com

MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough offers this insight on the 2014 midterm election:

scarborough tweet

What an asshole. This is a guy who rose to prominence vigorously defending the murderer of an abortion doctor and subsequently voted for harsh anti-choice legislation when he got elected to Congress. Here’s what Scarborough had to say about that, on Morning Joe, after Dr. George Tiller was murdered in 2009:

“We’ve got to learn to sit down and talk,” said Scarborough at the climax of this morning’s several minute segment including co-host Mika Brzezinski and Pat Buchanan…
“People who are pro-life like myself can’t call people who are pro-choice murderers, and people who are pro-choice can’t call people who are pro-life — can’t claim they don’t give a damn about women and want women to die in back alley abortions. That is the sort of angry, heated rhetoric over the past quarter century that’s gotten us to where we are today.”

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