Legislative schedule - week starting 12/17/2023

I was truly expecting that the week before Christmas would be a quiet one at the Capitol, but apparently, there are some things that can't be put off.

Note: HHR refers to a hearing room in the House building; SHR refers to one in the Senate building.

Note2: Generally, I'll only specify bills that look to spread propaganda.  Other bills may be more conventionally bad (think: corrupt or other misuses of public monies and/or authority).  My recommendation is that if an agenda covers an area of interest to you, read the entire agenda.

Note3: Each chamber's respective Rules Committee meets on Monday, the House's in HHR4 at 1 p.m. and the Senate's in Senate Caucus Room 1, also at 1 p.m.  Both committees serve as rubber stamps for bills leadership wants to be advanced and gatekeepers for measures that leadership wants stopped.

Note4: Meeting start times may be listed, but are flexible.  Before journeying to the Capitol or viewing the meeting online, verify the start time.

Note5: Watch for strikers, or strike everything amendments.  Those involve inserting language that replaces the entirety of a bill.  Those can be introduced at any time and can make a previously harmless bill into a very bad one.

On Monday, 12/18 

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I normally don't cover non-legislative events here, but on Monday, Adrian Fontes, the Arizona Secretary of State, will conduct a drawing to set the order of the names on AZ's Presidential Preference Election (primary) ballots.

If Cheeto isn't listed first, I expect MAGA types will claim the process was fraudulent.

But  that's not what I'm thinking couldn't be put off.  That would be on 

Tuesday, 12/19 

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House Ethics meets at 9 a.m.in HHR4.  They'll be considering the matter of Democratic Rep. Leezah Sun.

On 12/20 and 12/21 -

Nada.

Who would have suspected that Tennessee was more advanced than Arizona?

From an opinion piece in the Tennessean -

Franklin voters give Mayor Ken Moore and aldermen a mandate for civic action and sanity

Franklin, Tennessee voters sent a strong message Tuesday that they want good governance based in substance and reality.

A vast majority of citizens re-elected a mayor and selected aldermen who are serious about finding solutions to complex local problems.

They aren’t dabbling in conspiracy theories or associating with neo-Nazis.

They aren’t spreading misinformation about voting machines or voting centers that the City of Franklin had to challenge with a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, with the label “Rumors.”

They are doing the work of trying to bring the community together on issues ranging from traffic mitigation to affordable housing to responsible planning for rapid growth. They are working to create a Franklin that is welcoming to diverse groups of residents, workers and visitors.

[snip]

With eight of eight vote centers reporting, these were the unofficial results from the Williamson County Election Commission:

Mayor

• Gabrielle Hanson: 3,322
• Ken Moore: 12,822
• Write-in: 65

Alderman At-Large

Position A

• Clyde Barnhill (incumbent, unopposed): 11,837
• Write-in: 639

Position B

• Brandy B. Blanton (incumbent): 10,946
• Gary Moore: 4,666
• Write-in: 22

Position C

• Greg Caesar: 10,336
• Patrick George: 4,249
• BK Muvvala: 825
• Write-in: 36

Position D

• Jeff Feldman: 4,243
• Ann Petersen (incumbent): 10,961
• Write-in: 42

Hanson, Moore, George and Feldman are MAGA types.

Guess I'll have to forgo my TN jokes for the time being; at least AL, MS, and TX are still themselves.

So's AZ, for that matter.

MAGAts/Trumpkins like to refer to anyone they don't like as "communists". Maybe we should refer to them as what they really are. Anarchists.

Their Dear Leader (Cheeto) habitually refers to people as communists.

They're now referring to Barbie as a communist.

Even in the past, they hurled that as an epithet directed at anyone who opposed them.

It's an old tactic, one that was crap when it was used in the 50s and 60s, and it's crap now.  It seems to be part of the "spaghetti defense" portion of the war on civil society (throw a bunch of it against the wall, and see if anything sticks).

Now, the self-proclaimed arbiters of "election integrity" are finding that their tactics are coming home to bite them in the ass.

From Politico -

GOP states quit the program that fights voter fraud. Now they’re scrambling.

Over the past year and a half, eight Republican-led states quit a nonpartisan program designed to keep voter rolls accurate and up to date.

Top Republican election officials in those states publicly argued the program was mismanaged. The conspiracy theorists who cheered them on falsely insisted it was a front for liberals to take control of elections.

But experts say the program, known as the Electronic Registration Information Center, was among the best nationwide tool states had to catch people trying to vote twice in the same election. Now, those Republican-led states who left — and other states who lost access to their data — are scrambling to police so-called “double voters” ahead of the presidential election in 2024.

In recent months, elections officials in Ohio — one of the states that led the flight from ERIC — and elsewhere have been quietly convening leaders from dozens of states to talk about ways they can still work together to try to catch double-voters.

So, based on the available evidence (all left but them), their Plan A was to criticize civil society and destroy good government yet their follow-up Plan B is...nothing 

Their Plan B seems to be chaos; destroy what *is*, but offer nothing better to replace it.

Sounds like their Plan B is pure anarchy.

Another one bites the dust: Arizona's MAGA types claim another victim

From NBC -

Arizona county elections director resigns, citing politicization and 'intimidation'

An Arizona county elections director quit Tuesday, accusing the local elections department of caving to "a faction of the Republican party" and failing to protect her from "intimidation."

"I have watched as you idly stood by when I was attacked," Geraldine Roll, the Pinal County elections director, wrote in an email to the county's manager, Leo Lew.

It's not just the elections department in Pinal County; a report from the group Informing Democracy identifies two members of the Pinal County Board of Supervisors with anti-democracy tendencies (Jeff Serdy and Kevin Cavanaugh)