Tea-Publican Tyranny in Arizona: Threatening and Intimidating the AIRC

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Last week I only half-jokingly asked "When is the Tea Party finally going to issue the crisply starched brown shirts and spit-shined jackboots … Show your true face to the voters. If you want to be our authoritarian overlords, do tyranny right. C'mon teabaggers!" Terri Proud of Tea Party Tyranny.

Apparently they took this suggestion quite literally. Only they will not be wearing brown shirts — the historical reference is too obvious — but rather will be wearing yellow shirts, a color befitting their cowardly bullying of the Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission.

Make no mistake. This is about threatening and intimidating the Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission, led by elected officials like Sen. Frank Antenori and Rep. Terri Proud here in Baja Arizona. Their utter contempt for the democratic process and the rule of law knows no bounds. This is about a hostile takeover of democratic government for their authoritarian rule, as is clear from this Tea Party e-mail alert reported by Steve Muratore at The Arizona Eagletarian: Redistricting — How low will they go?:

I've received a tip on on further trouble Tea Party interests are planning to cause at the Public Outreach Hearings.

Last night, the following Action Alert was circulated (included a google map of the area/campus):

Sent: Tue, Jul 19, 2011 10:32 pm
Subject: Redistricting Action Alert

Open Phoenix Redistricting Meeting this Thursday 7-21-11 at 6:00 pm

South Mountain Community College
SU 100A
7050 South 24th St
Phoenix, AZ 85402

A way to get there:  Go South on 24th Street from Buckeye Road.
I10, I17 and Hiway 60 have no exit to 24th Street South of the Airport
(try maybe 16th Street Exit from I17 or Hiway 60)

The (A) on the map may be a distraction.   Map of Campus is NOT easily available.

The Obama/Soros/SEIU/MoveOn/AFL-CIO have taken over our Redistricting. The SEIU and Move.On.org will be out in force at the above open meeting. Arizona may change from a Red State to a Blue State if these guys do the redistricting (Gerrymandering). We may have no more Super Majority. We may have no more Tea Party Freshmen if these people have their way.

If you are Tea Party, please bring your YELLOW tea party badge, scarf, "Don't Tread on Me" flag (little)-even copies off your computer or a yellow shirt hidden by something or keep in purse/bag until seated. Last time they did not require you to register so why do so. The Independent Redistricting Committee has NOT published an Agenda (not available online yet – typical so may need to get our word out with signs). The Agenda is supposed to be available at http://www.azredistricting.org.

The Goal is NOT to replace Colleen Coyle Mathias. The Commission will just take the next independent "plant" and replace her. Our Focus should be on process (not 1 person). The
Goal is to inform the media and the Commission that we won't stand for the hijacking of the political process. The current Commission is NOT Fair, Transparent, or Non-Partisan"

Suggested Stages:
(1) Sign bearers should be outside the College entrance by at least by 5:30pm. Hopefully because the size of the crowd and the anger on the blogs, the Media will show. The agenda may not allow us to get the "non-partisan" concerns out in the meeting,
Talking points below.

(2) Meeting starts and activists put on their YELLOW badges, scarfs, flags, etc to scare the heck out of them! The leftists are saying we are arriving in buses, are funded by PAC's, and are well organized!!! They are worried!! They KNOW this process is unfair.

(3) More people arrive so others can leave. My guess is that the meeting room should hold everyone so you don’t have to worry about seats.

(4) Speakers willing to stay to end or arrive ??8pm? You will be asked to state your name and your affiliation. As you wish on your name-the hearing is recorded. The Left is trying to show this as Republican tantrum vs. Democrats. Better to state just representing myself or freedom activist, etc. If you put as subject on the card the Left's buzz words:"Communities of Interest" or "Competitive Districts" so this will not give you away and they'll put you at the very end.

They will probably be showing low detail maps for Arizona. It may be in your best interest to have a map of your own Congressional District/Legislative District.

If you don't have any maps, here is where to find them on the Internet:

http://nationalatlas.gov/printable/images/pdf/congdist/pagecgd112_az.pdf

http://recorder.maricopa.gov/electionmaps/

Talking Points from the Folks Working Behind the Scenes:

This commission has not engendered the trust of the people that the process will be fair, open and honest. People are frustrated because proposition 106 was supposed to take the redistricting process out of the back rooms of the legislature and bring it into the light of day. Sadly, almost half the time the current commission has met has been in executive sessions behind closed doors

The second major decision was the hiring of legal representation. Much of the work was done in E-Sessions and then in the end the Democrat commissioners were able to have their choice of legal counsel but the Republican commissioners were not afforded the same opportunity. ( for their own legal counsel)

The commission recently selected Strategic Telemetry (ST) as their mapping consultant. Some of ST’s most recent clients include the 2008 Obama for President Campaign ( SEIU,MoveOn.org, Gov Jerry Brown, John Kerry, State Dem parties). ST's website has been scrubbed "clean" thanks to all the people who called, emailed, and plain just yelled "no". 

Prior to the scrubbing a number of key employees were listed as 'Progressives'. 

Ken Strasma, the President of ST, use to be the Policy Director for the National Committee for an Effective Congress. NCEC's web site, the NCEC claims to be “one of the most influential political organizations having helped elect hundreds of progressive candidates to congress.” ST's website formerly stated they specialized in electing progressive candidates.

The Arizona Independent Redistricting Committee has just hired as their mapping consultant the firm headed by someone who was a policy director for the Democratic National Committee (DNC) redistricting, an extremely partisan organization. One wonders if the commission would have hired them had Mr. Strasma worked for the RNC.

The last commission held almost three times as many meetings. Since Arizona is almost twice the size of Wisconsin, over twice the size of New York and 1600 times the size of Washington DC we need more than 20 meetings if this commission truly wants public input into the redistricting process.

As part of the contract the AZIRC has requested that to the greatest extent practical maps will be drawn in Arizona with support from ST’s offices in New York, Wisconsin and Washington DC. That means there will be less input and less observation of the process. The last commission drew ALL their maps in Arizona with no outside support. Recently the GOP Voter Vault information went to WDC. Since Strategic Telemetry was mostly a 'Data Mining” site and NOT a political mapping site, they now have our GOP info. 

More Talking Points:

Strategic Telemetry's previous clients are Pres. Obama, SEIU, MoveOn.org, AFL-CIO, John Kerry, Gov Jerry Brown, many State Dem parties. 

ST is not an expert mapping company. ST advises progessive campaigns (per website). At the last Phoenix meeting, they said they would need time to learn the mapping software package, which is a standard in the industry.

Prop 106 specifically states that voter records are to NOT be used in mapping. For the last week ST has been downloading the GOP Voter Vault data (your voting records) to WDC .

The State Procurement Office is supposed to approve all state contracts and they walked out on the negotiations for ST's contract. Mayor Phil Gordon's manager was hired to be the Executive Director of the Commission, wrote the ST contract and authorized it himself.

Chairwoman Colleen Coyle Mathias, a recent Independent, lied on questions 1,6,8 on her application about the status of her attorney husband. Both Mathis and her husband donate to progressive candidates including donations to President Obama. Her husband was a PAID campaign manager for a Democratic party candidate. Colleen was awarded a job managing Obama's Stimulus Funds in Tucson in 2009 which was NOT stated on her application for this ARC job. 

More Talking Points

Prohibits both sides from having legal counsel both liberals
Closed Door sessions-more than half
No online agendas; 2 mos late Minutes
Meetings announced then cancelled
Meetings held weekdays in daytime so many taxpayers cannot attend
Moved public comments from the beginning of meeting to the end and many meetings were dragged out to 4-5 hrs

Source: campaign.r20.constantcontact.com

This ACTION ALERT is sent with your Email address BCC to protect your identity.
If you would like to be removed from this Action Alert List,
send an Email to viewpoint04@cox.net with Remove Me in the subject line.
We only send Action Alerts when we consider it important.

———

For Steve's analysis, continue reading How low will they go?

When is the Arizona political media going to start accurately reporting what is occurring? Some treat the Tea Party as entertainment for their shallow reporting. "Look at all the silly hats and hateful signs, Ha! Ha!" It's time to stop being amused, chuckleheads.

Others, like the Arizona Yellow Sheet Report and the Arizona Capitol Times are carrying water for the Tea-Publican leadership of the Arizona legislature by publishing their every wild conspiracy theory designed to undermine the credibility and legitimacy of the Commission's work with crap like this: There were legal ways to skin that cat Arizona Capitol Times "One Republican observer found recent IRC procurement contract revelations and Dem Commissioner José Herrera’s statements to be signs of highly suspect commission dealings." And this: Horne asked to probe IRC, Mathis Arizona Capitol Times "Brewer’s office isn’t the only one to receive a landslide of complaints of the IRC’s recent hiring of Strategic Telemetry or Mathis, whose vote was critical in securing the services of the firm." And this: IRC critics giving Brewer an earful Arizona Capitol Times "Brewer hasn’t committed to helping legislative Republicans oust Mathis, but it isn’t for a lack of public input." There's a lot more where that came from at the Arizona Capitol Times. (The previous Yellow Sheet Report editor was Daniel Scarpinato who moved on to be the media flak for Jonathan "Payday" Paton before settling in as the House GOP media flak).

UPDATE: Making my point for me, Attorney General Tom Horne announces redistricting commission investigation Arizona Capitol Times (subscription required):

Attorney General Tom Horne has announced his office has opened an investigation into the Independent Redistricting Commission in response to an investigation by Arizona Capitol Times and its sister publication, Yellow Sheet Report, that uncovered possible violations of the state’s open meeting and procurement laws.

“All that writing you guys did seems to have led to something,” Horne said. “I would say you played a role. We’ve also gotten lots of calls and emails. There’s a general public concern.”

This is what happens when one political party controls the state legislature since 1966 (the Republican Party). There is an entire network of lobbyists, political action groups and think tanks, and media enablers like the Arizona Capitol Times and The Arizona Republic that services this network and that has a vested financial interest in maintaining the status quo. Your interests are not their interests.