Originally, the 5 Cs were copper, cattle, cotton, citrus, and climate.
I humbly offer a few words for an updated version of the 5 Cs.
Mine are
Looking at this list (which could have been far longer), it appears to be about the majority of members of the Arizona Legislature, not Arizonans.
Of course - we're a LONG way from perfect.
We elect people like Doug Ducey, Wendy Rogers, Kelly Townsend, Paul Gosar, and many others, but Texas elects people like Greg Abbott, Ted Cruz, Sid Miller, Louie Gohmert (and others).
And then there's this.
From Business Insider -
A Texas parent demanded a Michelle Obama biography be pulled from schools because they said it would make white girls feel 'ashamed'
A parent in Texas called for a children's biography about former first lady Michelle Obama to be pulled from school libraries because they viewed it as unfair to former President Donald Trump.
The Katy, Texas, parent took issue with a book titled "Michelle Obama: Political Icon" by Heather E. Schwartz, saying it "unfairly" depicted Trump "as a bully," according to NBC News, which on Wednesday published a list of 50 books that parents in Texas have asked schools to remove.
The request came as books depicting race, sexuality, and gender have faced heightened scrutiny from conservatives in the US, with many demanding certain titles be pulled from school libraries.
Nope, AZ isn't perfect, and maybe we shouldn't be talking smack about anyone, but TX could give us lessons in nuttiness, and that's saying something.
[start sarcasm]
I know, you're as shocked as I am.
[/end sarcasm]
:)
From The Glendale Star -
Ex-school facilities board member indicted
Vernal Lee Crow of Glendale was indicted on four felony counts of conflict of interest in connection with his appointed position as a member of the Arizona School Facilities Board, according to Attorney General Mark Brnovich.
Crow is alleged to have failed to disclose his interest and his son’s interest in Red Tree Consulting LLC, a construction consulting company that benefited from three projects awarded by the SFB while Crow was a participating board member
.
The press release from the office of the Arizona Attorney General is here.
Per their annual reports, Crow was not a member of the Board in 2009 but was in 2010, so I'm assuming that he was appointed by Jan Brewer.
Crow *was* part of Red Tree from its organization in 2015 (docs courtesy the Arizona Corporation Commission)
until mid-2017
But per his bio in ASFB's annual reports, Crow was also part of Dominion Environmental, since at least 1990 (also courtesy the ACC)
until, well, *now*
Related entities are Dominion Environmental Consultants NV LLC and Dominion Environmental Consultants and he was a director and officer there
at least until late 2019, when it was transferred to another officer
All of which is a long-winded way of saying that this gets better. He was a member of the ASFB when his entities received money. I don't know if he disclosed the relationships beforehand.
From the website of the Arizona Auditor General -
From the Arizona State Procurement Office -
[snip]
From a letter to the Glendale Union High School District from 2017 -
[snip]
Who happens to be from Texas?
First from Kari Lake's website -
Then from Matt Salmon's website -
For new readers, Cruz is the one who is the leader of the invertebrate caucus.
It's no secret that I support Katie Hobbs in the Democratic primary for AZ Governor but any of the Democratic candidates would be a better choice for Arizona than these two.
Hell, a cactus would be a better choice.
From AZFamily (Phoenix channels 3 and5) -
'It's basically a war zone,' says Phoenix ER doc about slammed hospitals
Health care workers watching the pandemic from the frontlines have seen the COVID-19 numbers rise and more patients in need of care.
Dr. Arya Chowdhury is an independent contractor, so she works at several hospitals in the Phoenix area. "For literally the last six months, in certain facilities, I have been seeing patients in the waiting room, and sometimes, the waiting room is so full, there's not enough chairs for patients there, so they're standing," she said.
From the Arizona Department of Health Services -
1. Wear a damn mask.
2. Get vaccinated.
Matt Gaetz, Devin Nunes, Ted Cruz, and even Cheeto himself (and others) didn't invent Republican hatred of society; others did it before them.
In June of 2013, in a special session, the Arizona legislature voted to expand eligibility for AHCCCS, what Arizona calls Medicaid. The vote was not unanimous (not hardly).
The special session bills were HB2010 and SB1009. HB2010 was later substituted for SB1009 and the AZSenate ended up voting on HB2010.
Every member who voted against it didn't even pretend to represent their constituents (because it helped them) or even Arizonans as a whole (because the expansion benefited them, too), they just argued that "good Republicans" wouldn't vote for it.
In other words, the people opposed to the measure favored their party and ideology over the folks they (allegedly) worked for.
Some of the people are out of the legislature/politics; some are still there; others have moved on to other political positions - Kimberly Yee was the a state senator but is now the state's treasurer and is running for governor, Nancy Barto and Judy Burges are still in the legislature, Michele Reagan was a state senator but then be Arizona Secretary of State and now a Justice of the Peace in north Scottsdale; Kelli Ward was then a state senator and is now chairwoman of the Arizona Republican Party; Andy Biggs was then president of the AZSenate and is now a (presumed) treasonous member of Congress; Brenda Barton and Paul Boyer are still in the legislature; Karen Fann is now president of the AZSenate; David Gowan, David Livingston, and Rick Gray are still in the legislature; J.D. Mesnard and Warren Petersen are still in the legislature; Justin Olson was then a state representative and is now a member of the Arizona Corporation Commission; and Kelly Townsend and Michelle Ugenti (now Ugenti-Rita) are also still in the legislature. Ugenti-Rita is now running for AZ Secretary of State.
Townsend and Ugenti-Rita famously dislike each other, but they are united in their dislike for Arizonans.
In case someone doesn't believe me, or are simply gluttons for punishment, video recordings of previous legislative meeting can be found here.
To watch these meetings, set the dropdown menu to 2013, 51st Legislature, 1st Special Session.
The highlighted vids are the relevant ones.
Maricopa County, Arizona is getting bluer. That's significant because Maricopa County dominates everything, including politics, in Arizona. It has a little less than 62% of the state's population, and a little less than 61% of the state's registered voters. (61.81% of population; 60.96% of voters)
Someone smarter than me might have some insight into the gap, but I consider the percentages to be (roughly) equal.
The rest of the state is purple - while there were Blue and Red areas, they roughly balanced out; however, Maricopa County was so Red and so dominated Arizona that the whole state was considered to be a Red one. That has changed.
From the Census Bureau -
From the website of the Arizona Secretary of State -
From my own spreadsheet, but the source for the data in it is the AZ SOS -
Roughly 1/3 of county voters are "other" (mostly 'party unaffiliated') and that has basically decreased through the years.
On the other hand, in Maricopa County, Democratic registration has risen from 41.78% of the total in August of 2012 to 46.65% in October of 2021, and it appears that most of the increase came from "Other" voters
To be sure, the gap closes in presidential election years like 2020 and widens in non-presidential election years, but the overall trend is unmistakable.
Well, nothing similar*.
* = Outside of Phoenix, Tucson, and Tempe...and any other places where they take infection and death seriously.
From WCVB (Boston) -
Boston Public Schools to pause athletic games, practices through early January
Boston Public Schools will pause all athletics games and practices in response to recent confirmed positive cases of COVID-19 in schools, the school district said Friday.
The district said the pause comes at the advice of the Boston Public Health Commission and will remain in effect through at least the end of Jan. 10.
Data released Thursday by the Massachusetts Department of Elementary & Secondary Education showed 322 students in the Boston Public School district tested positive for COVID-19 between Dec. 16 and Dec. 22.
Additionally, 100 district staff members tested positive for COVID-19 during the same time period, according to the data released by DESE.
From Johns Hopkins University -
1. Wear a damn mask.
2. Get vaccinated.
As in, filled with contempt for democracy, Arizonans, science, school boards, and medical professionals.
The targets of their venom may change, but the attitude of the Rs in the lege doesn't.
Unless otherwise specified, all legislators introducing bills are Republicans.
State Sen. Vince Leach and State Rep. Regina Cobb (somebody running for state treasurer) have introduced "technical correction" bills, which often become shells for strikers, or strike-everything amendment bills, filled with language so extreme that the original measures couldn't pass the lege the first time through.
State Sen. Michelle Ugenti-Rita (somebody running for secretary of state) has already introduced bills to lower the threshold for mandatory recounts of elections, limiting the powers of the governor to declare a public health emergency, and barring school districts and boards from ejecting or otherwise penalizing "peaceful" protesters in a measure that seems to protect threats against lives, as long as the lives of specific people aren't threatened, and mandating that school board elections are partisan.
State Sen. Kelly Townsend has introduced bills to prevent school boards from using tax money to pay for membership in a state or national school board association, mandating the creation of a database of "federal-only" voters and giving access to it by an entity designated by the AZlege (in short, legalizing last year's fraudit), requiring the secretary of state to ask the federal election assistance commission to add a citizenship requirement to its registration requirements, removing a requirement that fire departments in counties with fewer than 500K folks have a "certificate of necessity" before supplying ambulance services, loosening any restrictions regarding a parent accessing the medical records of their minor child ("unless otherwise prohibited by law THE PARENT IS PROHIBITED FROM HAVING ANY CONTACT WITH THE MINOR CHILD BY
21 AN ORDER OF A COURT"), and requiring pharmacies to fill prescriptions for the off-label use of meds (the hydroxychloroquine bill).
A couple of bills were filed by Democratic State Rep. Diego Rodriguez, who has since resigned his position in the lege to run for attorney general.
State Rep. Quang Nguyen has introduced a bill to add to the requirements for Arizona's propaganda civics course.
State Rep. Steve Kaiser introduced an anti-mask/vaccine bill that would penalize school districts for any violation of state law by withholding 10% of site classroom fund monies for the district.
State Rep. John Kavanagh has introduced a bill to require condo associations to add first responder flags to the list of flags they must allow to be flown.
It also specifies that flags supporting law enforcement are protected.
Here's a thought: maybe they should stop killing unarmed civilians. Maybe then flags supporting them wouldn't need protection.
Pretty sure that dealmaking is *not* covered in that state constitution; at least, I couldn't find any references to it.
And I looked.
From KTAR -
Legislators taking stock of Arizona Supreme Court ruling on single subject rule
Arizona legislators are taking stock of the potential impact of the state Supreme Court’s decision that lawmakers violated the Arizona Constitution’s requirements that subjects included in each piece of legislation be related and also be expressed in bill titles.
The justices’ Nov. 2 ruling on the constitutionality of budget bills could simplify the Legislature’s work in some ways while possibly extending future legislative sessions by making it harder to cut deals, lawmakers told the Arizona Capitol Times.
[snip]
Sen. Sean Bowie, D-Phoenix, said the ruling might result in a longer session next year, because Republicans won’t be able to pack bills with policy measures to get votes.
Republicans could work with Democrats, Bowie said. “But often that seems like it’s always the last option instead of coming earlier in the process, which I would prefer to see.”
The relevant parts of the state constitution (something that ALL legislators are sworn to follow) -
13. Subject and title of bills
Section 13. Every act shall embrace but one subject and matters properly connected therewith, which subject shall be expressed in the title; but if any subject shall be embraced in an act which shall not be expressed in the title, such act shall be void only as to so much thereof as shall not be embraced in the title.
20. Appropriation bills
Section 20. The general appropriation bill shall embrace nothing but appropriations for the different departments of the state, for state institutions, for public schools, and for interest on the public debt. All other appropriations shall be made by separate bills, each embracing but one subject.
The decision is not yet available on the website of the AZ Supreme Court; I expect that it will be and soon.
Interestingly, their hypocrisy toward and disdain and even hatred for the people of Arizona held by the GOP showed in their votes for HCR2001.
ALL Republican legislators voted in support of John Kavanagh's scheme to propose an amendment to the AZ Constitution to require all voter initiatives to follow the single subject rule, a rule that isn't good enough for them.
Paul Gosar, doing AZ proud. Again.
From The Daily Beast -
Gosar Defends Anime Clip of Him Killing AOC, Then Deletes It
Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) released a very long statement Tuesday to explain why his cringeworthy anime clip that showed him killing Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) was actually an extremely clever metaphor—then, hours later, he apparently deleted the video without explanation. In his defense of the clip, Gosar wrote that his video was a “symbolic portrayal of a fight over immigration policy” and insisted that he would never encourage violence against any member of Congress. He faced serious blowback over the clip, including from his own sister, Jennifer Gosar, who accused her brother of trying to live out a “sociopathic fantasy.” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called on a congressional ethics panel and law-enforcement officials to investigate. Then, at some point on Tuesday, the video disappeared from Gosar’s Twitter profile. A Twitter spokesperson told The Hill that it wasn’t responsible for the video’s removal.
The Daily Beast's story is based on one from The Hill -
Gosar faces increasing odds of censure on House floor
The chances of the House voting to censure Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) are rising amid simmering anger among Democrats over a video he distributed that showed him as an anime character killing Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.).
Pressure is mounting on Democratic leaders to bring a resolution introduced Friday by Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) and 60 other Democrats to the House floor as rank-and-file members argue that his actions merit extraordinary sanction at a time when members of Congress face unprecedented threats of violence.
A cartoon from Cleveland dot com (I like the ASU reference in it, though Michael Crow may not :) ) -
From the website of the Federal Election Commission (which still doesn't work right, but I could still derive some information from it...it just takes more work) -
Republican Logsdon has formed a committee for a run at the CD3 seat, currently held by Democrat Raul Grijalva.
Paul Gosar Posts Video Showing Him Killing AOC
Paul Gosar (R-AZ) has shared a photoshopped anime video that shows him killing Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY).
For those of you who think that I'm always about politics. :)
From Sports Illustrated -
Adorable Fox Trots Around the Field During Arizona State-USC Game, Jumps Into Stands
Pac-12 after dark got especially random Saturday night when a fox took center stage when Arizona State faced USC.
The adorable four-legged intruder was initially mistaken as a cat by broadcasters, the usual feral animals that rush the field, but it turned out to be a fox—the first time one has made an appearance this college football season.
The fox showed enough athleticism to be signed by the Diamondbacks. :)
ASU football now has 6 wins, making them eligible for a bowl game; their 6 wins is 5 more than U of A, who won't be bowl-eligible this year. :) :)
Probably not surprising given how enthusiastically, and violently, that most Republicans have embraced Cheeto's Big Lie about the 2020 election.
The latest thing that has been debunked but that Rs have embraced is the idea the the Biden administration intends to pay immigrant families that were "separated" by the previous presidential administration.
In a word, the idea is garbage. Rs know that, but they have their talking point and are running with it.
The latest example of this is H. R. 5854, a bill introduced in Congress by a Trumpkin member of Congress and cosponsored by most of the R caucus (including ALL R members of the Arizona delegation to Congress).
Of course, AZ's Debbie Lesko wanted to independently assert her own fealty to Cheeto and lies, and did so by introducing H. Res. 768, condemning the Biden administration for paying immigrants, and other things.
The website of the Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission is here. Comments on preliminary maps can be submitted there.
From KJZZ -
Arizona Senate chief Karen Fann who led election audit retiring in 2023
The Republican who has served as president of the Arizona Senate for the past three years and oversaw an unprecedented review of 2020 election results in the state's most populous county announced Monday that she will not seek reelection in 2022.
Sen. Karen Fann said in a statement that after nearly 30 years serving in local government and at the Legislature, she will retire. The move comes as the Republican-controlled Legislature prepares for a 2022 session where the results of the election “audit" will be a key issue. The review found President Joe Biden did win Arizona, but it raised unsubstantiated questions about aspects of the election.
Other folks have already discussed the fact that the current iteration of redistricting favors Republicans and is bad for the people of Arizona. I'll leave that up to them; they can do that more eloquently than I can. I'll just discuss some of the "horse race" aspects of redistricting.
From the AZMirror -
Some lawmakers are poised to lose out in redistricting draft maps
A number of incumbent lawmakers find themselves facing suddenly unfavorable electoral prospects under the proposed legislative map drawn by the Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission.
Some lawmakers who were previously in politically advantageous districts may now have to run in districts controlled by the other political party. Others remain in friendly territory from a partisan standpoint, but face potentially tough primary elections after getting lumped in with other incumbents who had previously been in different districts.
[snip]
[snip]
The first pic, courtesy the AZMirror, is of the current, but preliminary, district lines. The lines may move after the upcoming comment period and before the district maps are finalized.
The second pic, also courtesy the AZMirror, is of the incumbents in each district in the preliminary map.
The current district 5, Fann's district, *does* include Prescott, Fann's hometown and is heavily tilted in favor of Republicans, so Rs will almost certainly win there, but Fann may have looked at the results of the fraudit that she fronted and the complete insanity (and anti-reality bias) of her own caucus in the AZSenate, a (potential) challenge from Burges, and thought to herself "I don't need this shit*".
 |
| Courtesy the AZMirror |
* = "shit" is my word; she may not have used that word, even to herself.
My guess (and it's only that, since I don't know the internal politics of the GOPers in that area) is that Judy "Birther" Burges will run for the Senate seat while other GOPers in the area will fight over her vacant House seat in the primary..
Of course, Burges may face a primary challenge. While she's nuts, someone in her district may think that she's not nutty enough.
The gift that keeps on giving.
Even when gone.
From NPR -
With the latest payout, former Sheriff Joe Arpaio has cost Arizona taxpayers $100M
Nearly five years after Joe Arpaio was voted out as sheriff of Arizona's most populous county, taxpayers are covering one of the last major bills from the thousands of lawsuits the lawman's headline-grabbing tactics inspired — and the overall legal tab has hit $100 million.
Officials in Maricopa County, home to Phoenix, agreed last week to pay $3.1 million to cover the county's portion of a settlement with a restaurant owner who alleged Arpaio defamed him and violated his rights when raiding his businesses.
Arpaio intends to run for mayor of Fountain Hills, a suburb of Phoenix that located in Maricopa County NE of Phoenix.
I thought the clown car of Republicans running for Congress in AZ2 had a lot of folks in it, but it may be rivaled by the number of Republicans running for Governor of AZ.
Still a clown car-full, but a bigger clown car. :)
From the website of the Arizona Secretary of State -
Republican Walker appears to be from Alaska and is the sole member of a jewelry wholesale corporation.
From the website of the Arizona Corporation Commission -
Cheeto? Maybe (OK, yup :) ), but Vanky?
Never. That would be too low.
But it seems that my journalistic standards are higher than those of some folks.
From The Daily Beast, today -
Kyrsten Sinema in All Her Bad Outfits Is the New Ivanka Trump
Have you missed Ivanka Trump’s breathlessly variable White House fashion—her pristine, all-white “I’m rich” outfits or knifelike Louboutin stilettos? Probably not. But say what you will about the whole erosion of democracy under Trump’s presidency, or that pesky insurrection, the first daughter sure wore some outfits during her four years as a “White House adviser”-slash-faded-debutante.
Don’t fret, for a torch has been passed. Ivanka may be holed up in her million-dollar Miami compound, but another high-powered white woman is dressing to enrage: Kyrsten Sinema. Her clothes appear to be an extension of her political persona: she will do things her way, thanks very much, and she does not care if you don’t like it, or don’t understand it—such as her wearing a denim vest to preside over the Senate earlier this week.
