Naivete: Thy Name Is Santa Cruz County Board Of Supervisors

From the Nogales International -

The county government is sending letters to its six representatives in the new state Legislature, both to congratulate them on their general election victories and to urge them to stop passing the state’s financial responsibilities on to Arizona’s counties.


The letters, approved by the board of supervisors on Wednesday, express confidence in the legislators’ leadership while at the same time criticizing the previous Legislature’s efforts to balance the budget “not by cutting state spending but by shifting state responsibilities to counties.”

The letters can be found here, starting at page 9 of the .pdf download.

Not to sound *too* pessimistic here (OK, that's foreshadowing - I'm going to be REALLY pessimistic), but the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors are going to be disappointed.

The few Rs at the lege who would even consider placing the interests of their districts ahead of staying in lockstep with extreme GOP ideology (Carolyn Allen, Tibshraeny, Konopnicki) are no longer there, and none of those had districts that covered Santa Cruz County.

Even with those members in the last session of the legislature, the Rs running the show on West Washington had no problem with shifting burdens onto municipalities and counties while at the same time restricting the ability of those municipalities and counties to adapt to the higher level of responsibility.

Santa Cruz County is so overwhelmingly Democratic that only one Republican candidate for state office, State Sen. Frank Antenori, won a majority of votes in the part of his district that includes Santa Cruz County (and even then, his margin there was only 88 votes).  Just because of basic partisanship, they're not going to feel any love for Santa Cruz County to begin with.

Add in the fact that the population demographic in Santa Cruz County is 80% Hispanic and the overwhelming majority of the R candidates in the state in 2010 ran on a campaign platform that could best be summarized as "I'm a bigot."

Arizona counties in general are going to be screwed in 2011, but Santa Cruz County should expect to be targeted for "special" treatment.

Maybe it'll be a Jack Harper-sponsored toxic waste dump in Patagonia, maybe it will be a Russell Pearce-sponsored concentration "undocumented immigrant detention" camp in downtown Nogales, maybe it will be some other even more creative bit of nastiness, but the Santa Cruz County Supervisors should spend less time crafting meaningless letters and more time filling sandbags.

They've got a deluge coming.

Redistricting Commission Interviews On Wednesday

The Arizona Commission on Appellate Court Appointments will interview the 40 remaining candidates for the next Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission.  They'll winnow the field down to 25 (10 Ds, 10 Rs, 5 Independents).  From those 25, the two highest-ranking Republicans and the two highest-ranking Democrats in the legislature (in order of selection:  Rep. Kirk Adams (R), Rep. Chad Campbell (D), Sen. Russell Pearce (R), and Sen. David Schapira (D) ) will each select one member of the Redistricting Commission, and then those four selectees will choose an Independent member who will chair the Commission.

The complete official notice of the meeting is here but here's the summary:

Date - Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Time - 8 a.m - ? (while there will be a few breaks, this one should go a while)
Place - Room 345, Arizona State Courts Building, 1501 W. Washington, Phoenix

Full agenda here, but here's the summary of *that*:

8 a.m. - Meeting opens, public comment accepted.
9:15 a.m. - Interviews with Democratic applicants
10:30 a.m. - Discussion and selection of Democratic applicants (may be partially conducted in exec session)
11 a.m. - Interviews with Independent applicants
11:50 a.m.- Discussion and selection of Independent applicants (again, may possibly include an exec session)
12:15 - Lunch
1 p.m. - Interviews with Republican applicants, followed by discussion (exec session possible again) and selection, culminating with adjournment.

Note: some of the interviews may be conducted telephonically.

Assuming they are able to stick to the timetable on the agenda (which might be an optimistic assumption), I project the meeting to adjourn around 3 p.m.


Stuff to keep an eye on:

While I don't know any of the Appellate Court Appointments Commission members personally, I can guess the names of at least two of the applicants who will make the cut with them -

Louis DeLeon and Mark Schnepf.

The Appellate Court Appointments Commission bent over backwards, violating its own rules for applications, to see that both would stay in the pool of applicants.

All of the applicants had to complete the same application package, and that package includes the following instruction:

“ATTACH A STATEMENT OF INTEREST EXPLAINING WHY YOU ARE INTERESTED IN SERVING ON THE INDEPENDENT REDISTRICTING COMMISSION.  Applications that do not include a statement of interest will be considered incomplete and will NOT be considered for nomination.”

The applications as originally completed by DeLeon and Schnepf didn't include such a statement and so should have been immediately excluded from further consideration.

However, the Commission bent its own rules to allow Schnepf and DeLeon submit their statements of interest later in the process.  (They did so, with Schepf's here and DeLeon's here).

I'm not sure what DeLeon's special connections are (though he spent a chunk of his career with Anheuser-Busch, and John McCain's wife is one of A-B's largest U.S. distributors...or maybe it's just me being a little cynical :) ), but Schnepf's are clear and rather voluminous -

Former Mayor of Queen Creek
Former Member and Officer (multiple offices) of the League of Arizona Cities & Towns
Member, Arizona Farm Bureau
Member, National Federation of Independent Business
Member and former member of a number of county- and state-level boards, commissions, and councils
Member and former member of a number of East Valley and Arizona civic and business community boards

Oh, and he's married to a Biggs (State Sen.-elect Andy Biggs will be chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee starting in January).

And all of that is just from his application.

One other thing, aside from the initial lack of a statement of interest in Schnepf's application packet, that the Appellate Court Appointments Commission has apparently overlooked is the requirement that candidates cannot have been appointed to or elected to public office for at least the previous three years.

In this context public office means (from the published list of requirements for candidates) -

DEFINITION OF ‘PUBLIC OFFICE’



Members of the IRC may not have been appointed to, elected to or a candidate for any other public office, including precinct committeeman or committeewoman but not including school board member or officer, within the last three years. In making nominations for the IRC, the Commission on Appellate Court Appointments will consider the following factors in determining whether an applicant will be disqualified as having held or run for a public office:


1. Is the position created by the Arizona Constitution or a statute?


2. If so, is the position authorized to independently perform duties that involve exercise of the government’s authority? 

These factors will be considered on a case-by-case basis because it is not possible to provide an exhaustive list of all positions that would be considered ‘public office.’ However, it is clear that people who have held or run for the following offices within the last three years are ineligible for nomination and appointment to the IRC:

{snip}

Water or Fire District

In 2008, Schnepf was elected to the New Magma Irrigation and Drainage District (NMIDD).  It's name doesn't say "Water" in it, but according to this U.S. Bureau of Reclamation document, it *is* a water district in all practical terms (emphasis added) -

The New Magma Irrigation and Drainage District (NMIDD) was formed in 1965 upon the dissolution of the New Magma Irrigation District. The new district was formed for the purpose of receiving CAP water.

Yup, it seems that there's some serious contortions going on to make sure that Schnepf makes it on to the Redistricting Commission.  The only question seems to be if he will be appointed by Kirk Adams or Russell Pearce, who are both East Valley residents.

BTW - DeLeon's application has at least one answer, that if not an automatic disqualifier, should at least be targeted for clarification during the interview.

Question #2 asks "Will your employement and/or personal circumstances permit you to attend meetings of the Independent Redistricting Commission in their entirety?"

DeLeon answered "No."

Interesting answer.  Someone who essentially applying for a job (unpaid though it may be) by saying that he can't attend to it.

Oh - the partisan makeup of the 15-member Appellate Court Appointments Commission?


3 Independents

4 Democrats

8 Republicans


Can you say "IOKIYAR rules" kiddies?. 

Isn't this one of Nostradamus' signs of the impending apocalypse?

From Politico via the Arizona Republic -

More parents naming babies after Palin girls

The power of the Palins: Turns out it's not limited to nabbing invitations to rumba on "Dancing With the Stars." The famous Alaskan clan also influenced what new parents named their babies this year.

According to BabyCenter, a global interactive parenting network, the names Bristol, Willow and Piper (the names of the three Palin daughters) saw a big surge in popularity in 2010.

What does it say about America that parents are naming their children after the children of someone who could have been a single heartbeat away from being president, but every time she opens her mouth, shows herself to be a single braincell away from being plant life?

Expect Wikileaks' founder to be on the run within days...

But not for releasing documents and videos showing U.S. procedures and actions during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, nor for the recent release of documents and cables.

Nope, the first only endangered U.S. troops and allies, while the second has mostly just embarrassed U.S. officials.  While there has been a lot of public posturing over the document releases, not much is likely to come of those - Wikileaks is outside of the U.S. and thus outside of the U.S. legal system (the person who allegedly downloaded the documents and fed them to Wikileaks?  Not so much...)

What's sure to generate a drive to hunt down, and shut down, Wikileaks is the next target of a document release, as promised by Julian Assange, the organization's/website's founder.

From CNNMoney -

WikiLeaks' founder claims he has the goods that could take down a big U.S. bank. But there's little sign anyone believes him.


Julian Assange, the founder of the site that has gained notoriety by publishing secret U.S. military and diplomatic documents, said in an interview this week that the next WikiLeaks target is a major bank.

It should be interesting to see how the D.C. types rationalize going hard after Assange and Wikileaks over the bank expose (assuming Assange's promise is real) while for all practical terms ignoring the more serious endangerment of troops (I don't care about the embarrassment of government officials, and I'm guessing that most other folks don't either).

You can be sure they'll find a way though - troops don't make "contributions" to politicians the way that Wall St. banksters do.

Press release of the day...

...Didn't have to look far for this one - it's from the Republican caucus of the Arizona State Senate...

From the press release -

Senate President-elect Russell Pearce recently received a coveted national award for his dogged efforts to fight illegal immigration. Sen. Pearce nabbed “Daring the Odds: The Annie Taylor Award” from The David Horowitz Freedom Center. A ceremony was held for Sen. Pearce and other courageous award winners at Restoration Weekend 2010 at The Breakers Hotel in Palm Beach, Florida.

OK, I'm not one who describes hatin' on brown-skinned people as "courageous" but given the makeup of the GOP caucus in the lege, we probably should be happy that white robes and hoods haven't replaced the bola tie as Arizona's signature clothing item.  Yet, anyway.

The fun part of the press release came later, in the last paragraph...

The Annie Taylor Award is named for Annie Edson Taylor, the first person to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel. She braved the falls in 1901, in a barrel she designed herself. When she exited the barrel, she said “No one should ever do that again.”

Ummm...if I understand all this correctly, they are crowing about Russell Pearce receiving an award that equates Pearce's nativism with climbing into a barrel and going over Niagara Falls in that barrel.

Now, going over the Falls in a barrel is a great metaphor for what the Republicans are doing to Arizona, except they aren't the ones in the water, we are, and we don't even have a barrel to protect us (safety measures being signs of "creeping socialism" or some such blather).

Something tells me that there is going to be an opening in the communications office of the Republican caucus of the Arizona State Senate in the near future.

BTW - At least Ms. Taylor had the wisdom to realize that maybe what she did wasn't bright.  So far, there's no evidence that Pearce and his ilk have any such wisdom.

More on the Horowitz awards/Restoration Weekend here, courtesy the Canadian blog Enormous Thriving Plants.

BrewerCare Body Count: 1

From KTAR -

After battling Leukemia for the past year, Mark Price has passed away at a Valley hospital from chemotherapy complications.


Price, whose story had been followed nationally, had found an anonymous donor to privately pay for the more than $200,000 needed for a bone marrow transplant after the new budget cuts for Arizona's Medicaid program eliminated coverage for many types of transplants.

Sad to say, there will probably be many more to come.

My condolences go out to Mr. Price's friends and family...

Light blogging for the foreseeable future...

Due to a couple of self-assigned research projects, blogging activity will be light over the next few weeks, though not nonexistent.  Expect coverage of the process to constitute the next redistricting commission and the upcoming session of the legislature. 

And if any of AZ's electeds lodges one of his feet in his mouth (not that such a thing could *ever* happen ;) )...

A little light post-dinner* reading...

* = I was going to make the title of this one "A little light post-tryptophan-induced-coma reading" but decided that would be too long... :)

...From the Mitchell (S.D.) Republic, a piece about a state Democratic Party that was hit even harder in this month's election than the Arizona Democratic Party -

George McGovern says the South Dakota Democratic Party can become competitive again with the right approach and plenty of effort.

McGovern, who has a Mitchell residence, has an idea how to do it: Follow the playbook he devised more than a half century ago.

He was the executive secretary of the South Dakota Democratic Party in the 1950s when the Democrats were in worse condition than they are now.

When he took the reins of the party in 1953, the party was at its nadir. Democrats were outnumbered 108-2 in the Legislature and held no statewide offices.

One of the people quoted later in the article opines that money is the only significant factor in elections in the 21st Century and that grassroots organizing is overrated.

I disagree - lack of money may lose elections, but money doesn't win them - votes do.

...A different (Republican) take on the grassroots organizing model of the Democrats - it may not have prevented this year's electoral carnage, but it may have served to minimize the damage - from The Explorer (AZ).

...Sarah Palin showcases her willful ignorance of the world on Glenn Beck's radio show.  Of course, it being the *Glenn Beck" show, her IQ could reach into the high single digits and still elevate the intellectual level there...

GUILTY

Tom Delay, one of the two men most associated with the Republican corruption scandals of the early and mid-2000s (the other being lobbyist/convict Jack Abramoff), was convicted today on money laundering charges in Texas.

From CNN -

A Texas jury on Wednesday convicted former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay on charges of illegally funneling corporate money to help elect GOP candidates to the Texas Legislature.


DeLay was found guilty of money laundering and conspiracy to commit money laundering, court bailiff Gilbert Soto said. He was accused of funneling $190,000 to help elect Republicans to the state House and Senate in 2002.

He probably won't get the maximum sentence, which would be more than 100 years in prison, but it's heartening to see that justice was done.  If rather slowly.

Anyone got a guess on how many members of the new R majority in the U.S. House *won't* learn lesson?

Arizona is picking up where the rest of the country is slacking off...

...unfortunately for Arizonans, this isn't a good thing...

From the Phoenix New Times -

Joe Arpaio, Russell Pearce and Jan Brewer's Arizona: Hate Crime Stats Climb

As if you need more proof that Arizona is the "state of hate," look no further than the FBI's recently released hate crime report.


From 2008 to 2009, Arizona's number of reported hate crimes increased by more than 18.3 percent. This is up over the year prior, 2007 to 2008, which saw a 14.9 percent increase in hate crimes statewide.

The numbers themselves show the creep upward. In 2007, there were 161 incidents reported in Arizona; in 2008, 185; in 2009, 219. This bucks the national trend, which shows reported hate crime incidents declining nationwide.

Most of the data is pre-SB1070, but well into the rise of nativism as a political force in Arizona. 

By contrast, Texas (just about as nutty as AZ) reported 262 hate crimes, approximately 50% more than Arizona.

Of course, Texas has a population that is more than 400% more than Arizona's.

Yippee.

The FBI finally moving in on banksters...

From ABC News -

The FBI has raided three hedge funds, part of a widening investigation of suspicions of pervasive insider trading in the $1.7 trillion hedge fund industry.


The funds include Diamondback Capital Management LLC and Level Global Investors LP, two Connecticut funds run by former managers of Steven Cohen's SAC Capital Advisors.

The third fund is Boston-based Loch Capital Management, a person familiar with the raid said. Loch has had close ties with a witness who pleaded guilty in a separate insider trading probe that centers on hedge fund Galleon Group.


The raids come as federal prosecutors prepare to unveil a series of new insider trading cases against hedge fund traders, consultants and Wall Street bankers, several lawyers familiar with the investigation said.

It's about time - this should have started happening long before there was even a hint of a Congressional bailout of Wall Street.

Look for the Rs in Congress to retaliate by cutting the budgets of the FBI and SEC next year...

The Arizona Republic: A return to the bad old days?

I know that not too long ago, I opined that the AZ Republic was less a "conservative" paper than a "corporate" one, dedicated to protecting the bottom lines of Big Business (not that there is much difference between the two, but it explains the reluctance of the Rep's editorial board to endorse the likes of nativists Russell Pearce and JD Hayworth during recent election cycles - their habit of turning private hatred into public policy has the side effect of shrinking the number of people looking for low wage/ no benefit jobs, driving up Big Business' labor costs).

However, it looks like the AZ Republic is returning to the its original purpose as the press release outlet for the Arizona Republican Party.

Last week, it ran a week long "investigation" of the troubles with Arizona's public pension systems, ultimately ending the series with a call to reform the system, perhaps by changing the public retirement systems in AZ to 401k-like systems, where an employee's retirement benefits are primarily based on how much they've taken out of their paychecks and put into an investment account.

Unfortunately for the Republic's editorial board/message discipline staff, such a change would require the voters of Arizona to approve a change to Arizona's constitution.  Something that may not be so easy to pull off since most Arizonans actually know a couple of public employees, whether as neighbors, friends, or family members. 

It's hard to gin up blind hatred of a group of people that folks actually know.

Hence the need for the Republic's week-long demonization of public employees and retirees.

Anyway, quotes in the articles from Kirk Adams, Republican speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives, and Russell Pearce, Republican Shadow Governor president of the Arizona Senate strongly hint that they already have legislation in mind to put a question on the 2012 ballot to amend the state's constitution.

Now, it may just be a coincidence, a matter of random timing, but the agenda for next week's conference of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a right wing organization that gives industry bigwigs and lobbyists a chance to influence state legislators, is posted already.

Early on Wednesday, the first full "working" day of the conference (though it is difficult to characterize elected officials partying on the corporate tab as actually "working") is an interesting item -

Public Pension Reform Working Group  9:00 a.m. - 10:00 a.m.  Independence FG

Hmmmm...

...Wonder how long it will be before the Arizona Republic makes it official and puts the names of Brett Mecum and Matthew Roberts on the paper's masthead?

Mecum and Roberts are, respectively, the Executive Director and Communications Director of the Arizona Republican Party.

The two wings of the AZGOP waging a civil war for control...

...not of their party, but for the carcass of Arizona...

This is the time of year when the political parties "reorganize" - elect new/reelect old leadership and prepare for the next political cycle.  The Democrats do it; the Republicans do it, even the Libertarians and the Greens do it.

Right now, the local chapters of the major parties are holding their reorg meetings, electing their own leadership as well as delegates to their respective parties' state committee.

Those state committee members will elect new state party leadership slates in January.

The Democrats have experienced some changes in local leadership roles, but most (all?) of those transitions have been peaceful progressions as the state's minority party tries to learn from and adapt to the results of November 2nd's results.

The Republicans?  Not so much, not with the learning, and most certainly not with the peaceful.

 - The LD11 Republicans effectively deposed Randy Pullen, chair of the AZGOP for the last two cycles (four years) by not reelecting him to their state committee.  As he won't be a state committee member, he cannot run for a state party office.  The rift has been widely credited to "establishment" Republicans (in the persons of John McCain supporters) taking back control of the district from "tea party" Republicans (in the persons of supporters of Pullen).

- The LD22 Republicans have their own "establishment v. tea party" dynamic going on, with some serious nastiness going on in the weeks leading up to their reorg meeting. 

- The LD19 Republicans had some ballot box stuffing and interesting use of proxies going on in their reorganization meeting, and the root cause of the strife seemed to stem from a "tea party v. establishment" conflict.

All of this may lead to a messy state party reorganization meeting in January, or the establishment wing of the AZGOP may have effectively silenced the tea partiers by then.

Since it looks like that the "establishment" types are ascendant, the January meeting may be a public rubber stamping of whatever they've put together by then.

Until that time, however, let me provide a pictorial summary of the Rs' LD reorganization meetings -

Pic courtesy the Flickr page of user savagetom2008











Let's call the carcass on the ground "Arizona."  I'll leave it to readers to figure out for themselves which GOPer wing is represented by the jackal, and which is represented by the vultures.

And time for a blast from the (recent) past - one of the folks mentioned in the LD22 article linked above was Trish Groe, a former state rep from LD3.  In early 2007, she was arrested for DUI.  After a lot of legal contortions (it was a felony-level DUI, then it wasn't, it was going to be prosecuted by La Paz County, then Yuma County, then Maricopa County, then there was a plea deal, then there wasn't), she finally lost her seat in the 2008 primary.  And disappeared from public view.

Until now.

Later...

Scottsdale Mayor Lane discarding expertise of Scottsdale residents...

...if the resident with that expertise is associated with an outgoing member of the City Council...

An email update from the Coalition of Greater Scottsdale (COGS) confirms something I had overheard, that members of City task forces who were appointed by outgoing council members Wayne Ecton and Tony/Marg Nelssen will be removed from their task forces and replaced by appointees of the newest members of the Council, Linda Milhaven and Dennis Robbins.

The email wonders if this is allowed under the rules in Scottsdale (City Charter and/or ordinances).  I'm not sure as the Charter and ordinances are unclear on the status of task forces (a lack of clarity that Lane is almost certainly taking advantage of), but while the City's commissions and boards are specifically covered in both Charter and ordinance language, task forces don't seem to be.

Article 5 of the Scottsdale City Charter gives the Council the authority to "create, change, and abolish boards or commissions" at its discretion, but nothing specifies the appointment procedures.

Section 2-241 of the City Code seems to apply here.

Part (b) specifies

"All members of appointive boards and commissions shall be appointed by and serve without compensation at the pleasure of the council."

Part (d) specifies

"Appointment to a board or commission, except the public safety personnel retirement system board and the personnel board, shall be for a term of three (3) years or until a successor is appointed. "

In short, and in practice, members of boards and commissions are appointed by the Council as a whole and the appointees serve specific terms on those boards and commissions.

However, the only place where task forces and task force members are mentioned is in the clauses of the City's code of ethics that say that the code of ethics applies to members of task forces. 

Otherwise, task forces are more temporary and "ad hoc" than the more formal boards and commissions.

The practice during the Lane administration regarding task forces has been for each member of the Council to directly appoint one member while the Mayor appoints the chair of the task force.

While there is nothing in the City's charter or code that clearly allows that practice, there also isn't anything barring it, either.

Whew.  :)

With all that as background, it seems petty and shortsighted of the Lane regime to discard folks who have been working on a given issue for up to a year or longer simply because of a change in the composition of the Council. 

This seems particularly so given the intent that task forces are temporary.  The time needed for new members to get up to speed can only needlessly lengthen the time that a task force has to spend on its given task, creating inefficiencies in both the use of taxpayer resources and in simple government operations.

Something that a "small government" enthusiast like Lane should find anathema to his professed ideology.

Only he doesn't apparently.

The newest blockbuster for your video game console...

Thanks to a friend for the graphic...

Jan Brewer has lied repeatedly about the reason that transplants aren't covered any longer, usually blaming the new federal health care reform law for it.  Even though she signed the transplant funding cuts into law well before HCR was passed.

When she isn't blaming HCR, she likes to blame the federal stimulus law, saying that it barred cuts to states' Medicaid programs (AZ's is AHCCCS) by any states that accepted stimulus money.  Her story is that since AHCCCS was untouchable, cuts had to come from elsewhere.

The reality is that AHCCCS *wasn't* untouchable, here or anywhere else, and was, in fact, subject to cuts.  Which she and her cronies in the lege started implementing almost from the moment she took over the governor's office.

During the furor over health care reform, many Republicans liked to scream about "government death panels."

Too bad most listeners didn't realize that the screamers were talking about the "death panels" that they themselves were part of.

...Look for Brewer and Co.'s summer movie release of a Pearce/Adams production costarring the state's AHCCCS enrollees and the state's food stamp recipients.

Soylent Green.


- yeah, it's a little gross, but at this point, pretending that Brewer, Pearce, and the rest of the Capitol gang are decent human beings who just happen to hold different political positions than I do is just a waste of energy,

And a lie.