With only one meeting scheduled, it's shaping up to be another relatively quiet week at the Capitol.
On Thursday, 9/26
Vulnerable Adult Study Committee meets at 10 a.m. in SHR1. There's no bills on the agenda, so they're hearing and discussing a presentation from the state's Auditor General (an entity of the Rs in the legislature) on "Examining the Delivery of Services to Vulnerable Adults in the Arizona Adult Protective Services System,"
Let me be clear: politically-motivated violence has absolutely NO place in our society.
Period.
Not even if the alleged target is an utterly vile human being.
Having said that, I find it rather curious that when Cheeto has a bad week (and his debate performance was epically bad) he experiences an "attempted assassination" that may serve to alter his media coverage.
Cheeto may be the one person who can make Americans more cynical about politics than Richard Nixon.
From AZFamily, written by David Baker -
Legacy Schools in Arizona discriminated against English learners
Changes are coming to 22 charter schools in Arizona after federal investigators say the network of schools discriminated against students who didn’t speak English.
The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights announced on Friday it has reached a deal with Legacy Traditional Schools after finding the violations.
Officials say the schools didn’t offer equitable learning opportunities to English language learners, failed to have qualified teachers and didn’t track their progress.
Legacy Traditional also didn’t tell parents about programs and activities in a language they could understand.
Some non-English speaking students were also given instruction in the cafeteria instead of the classroom
Republican Congressman Juan Ciscomani has even praiseed one of their locations.
Wonder if his opinion of Legacy will change because of USDOJ's announcement?
Legacy Schools hides behind a byzantine collection of LLCs (and I haven't unraveled them all), but one thing is obvious - Aaron Hale, touted by Legacy Traditional as the founder of Legacy Traditional, is still involved with them
According to the letter from USDOJ to Legacy, contained in the article, Legacy schools are managed managed by Vertex Education.
Hale owns Vertex.
From a filing with the Arizona Corporation Commission -
Hale regularly gives money to Republican candidates (and wannabes) -
David Schweikert -
Kyrsten Sinema -
Karrin Taylor Robson -
There are others, but readers get the point. It certainly appears the Hale has received a positive return on his investment.
Still looking for ties between Vertex, Legacy, et. al., and Tom Horne, a noted bigot. He hates English Language Learners and may approve of what Legacy did while despising the the feds caught them at it.
There's actually some legislative activity this week (maybe not much, but it's still activity) -
I'm as shocked as you.
On Wednesday, 9/18 -
Joint Legislative Audit Committee meets at 9 a.m. in SHR109. No bills on the agenda, but of the six items, two involve the Arizona Department of Child Safety, one involves the Arizona Adult Protective Services System, and one involves federal money to schools. I expect this meeting to be an anti-society propaganda-fest.
At least through 90 minutes
1. Harris has been great. Facts are her friend.
2. Cheeto only spews BS when his lips are moving.
3. The hosts/moderators have an uphill battle when Cheeto is onstage.
4. I swear that as he's gotten more flustered, Cheeto's face has gotten darker. Jus' sayin'.
...of course, I'm not sure he won't do just that.
As this is something of a family friendly blog (quit guffawing now :) ), I won't say precisely what DeSantis did to Florida (and what Cheeto wants to do to the US, but it rhymes with "truck over".
From The New Republic -
Ron DeSantis Insists Voter Intimidation Tactics Are No Big Deal
The governor defended turning Florida into a police state over the abortion rights ballot initiative.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis doubled down Monday on his decision to dispatch state police to investigate thousands of verified signatures that helped to put a state constitutional amendment protecting the right to abortion on the ballot in November.
Following a roundtable discussion with condominium owners in Miami Lakes, Florida, DeSantis was asked to respond to reports that state residents felt “intimidated” after police officers were instructed to show up at their homes to verify signatures collected supporting an amendment that would overturn Florida’s current six-week abortion ban.
[Begin sarcasm]
I know, you're as shocked as I am that they've overstepped their bounds. Or tried to use their positions to put their fingers on the scale.
[/end sarcasm]
:)
From KTAR -
Arizona Senate Committee accuses Clean Elections of unlawful debate rule change
The Arizona Senate Committee claimed on Thursday that the Clean Elections Commission has illegally barred the Green Party’s U.S. Senate candidate from participating in upcoming general election debates.
Eduardo Quintana, 2024 Arizona Senate candidate and chair of the Green Party in Pima County, won his side of the primary as a write-in candidate but is not featured in the Oct. 9 debate to be broadcasted across several platforms by Arizona Media Association. As is, the scheduled debate will feature Republican Kari Lake and Democrat U.S. Rep. Ruben Gallego.
The accusation was submitted via letter by Committee Chairman Jake Hoffman in response to Clean Elections’ recent rule change that requires a candidate to have received at least 1% of total ballots counted in their primary election. According to Arizona Media Association, that 1% minimum threshold was 12,400 votes for Quintana, who only garnered 282.
I presume that the "committee" in question is Senate Government; Hoffman is chair of two Senate Government and Senate Executive Nominations aka Senate Inquisitions Committee. And this isn't about a nomination.
The story didn't mention if his statement was accompanied by foot stamping and whining.
I'm guessing that it was.
From USA Today -
Donald Trump rails against cheating in 2024 election without evidence, threatens prison sentences
Former President Donald Trump is again threatening to use executive power to jail political opponents if he's elected this fall and fraud is documented in the 2024 election, expanding his target list to include election volunteers and poll workers this fall.
In a Truth Social post late Saturday, Trump said his lawyers and other allies would be watching polling stations for alleged "cheating," echoing the false claims he has long made about the 2020 election.
Vance made his comment, minimizing school shootings, in Phoenix.
From Politico -
It’s ‘not a fact of life’: Walz responds to Vance’s school shooting comments
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz sharply criticized Sen. JD Vance’s response to this week’s school shooting in Georgia, telling an LGBTQ+ advocacy group Saturday evening that such events are “not a fact of life.”
Vice President Kamala Harris, Walz and Democrats have fiercely condemned Vance’s comments about the shooting after he responded to a reporter’s question Thursday by saying: “I don’t like that this is a fact of life.” A 14-year-old boy is accused of using a semiautomatic assault-style rifle to kill two fellow students and two teachers at Apalachee High School in Winder, outside Atlanta. At least nine others were wounded.
[snip]
On Saturday evening, Walz recalled Vance’s comments as he addressed the Human Rights Campaign, a major LGBTQ+ advocacy group, during its annual dinner in Washington.
“It’s a fact of life some people are gay. But you know what’s not a fact of life? That our children need to be shot dead in schools,” Walz said.
“That’s not a fact of life,” he added. “Folks are banning books, but they’re okay with weapons of war being in our schools.”
Vance's comments:
From the linked AP story, emphasis added by me -
JD Vance says he laments that school shootings are a ‘fact of life’ and calls for better security
Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance said Thursday that he lamented that school shootings are a “fact of life” and argued the U.S. needs to harden security to prevent more carnage like the shooting this week that left four dead in Georgia.
“If these psychos are going to go after our kids we’ve got to be prepared for it,” Vance said at a rally in Phoenix. “We don’t have to like the reality that we live in, but it is the reality we live in. We’ve got to deal with it.”
Vance has an interesting definition of dealing with it - deride and oppose efforts to address mass shooting.
But then CNN cuts them some slack (undeserved slack, IMO).
From CNN (emphasis added by me)
How some of the biggest right-wing social media stars became unwitting mouthpieces of Russian propaganda
They’re not on any of the major television networks, but they have millions of viewers. Now, the Justice Department is alleging that some of the biggest stars in right-wing social media were, unwittingly, part of a sinister Russian operation to influence the 2024 US election.The personalities weren’t directly named or accused of wrongdoing by the Justice Department, but court documents unsealed Wednesday revealed Russian state media producers funneled nearly $10 million to an unnamed Tennessee-based online media company. The company, identified by CNN as Tenet Media, boasts a slate of high-profile right-wing commentators as “talent,” including Tim Pool, Benny Johnson, Lauren Southern, Tayler Hansen, Matt Christiansen and Dave Rubin, collectively boasting millions of followers across social media platforms
My ass.
They may be vile people, but they aren't stupid ones.
Wonder if the RGA will ever return its blood money.
Not gonna hold my breath while waiting for that to happen. :)
From CBSNews (emphasis added by me) -
Grenfell Tower fire inquiry says U.S. company Arconic "deliberately concealed" dangers of building materials
The public inquiry into the deadly 2017 fire that engulfed Grenfell Tower, a high-rise public housing apartment building in central London, published its final report Wednesday on the disaster that killed 72 people. The blaze — London's deadliest since World War II — was blamed on a litany of failures, from shoddy construction and materials to poor local management and inadequate fire safety standards.
Retired judge Martin Moore-Bick, who headed the inquiry, said all the deaths were avoidable, and that while no single cause could be blamed for the disaster, a number of factors and entities "contributed to it in one way or another, in most cases through incompetence, but in some cases through dishonesty and greed."
[snip]
In a statement to CBS News on Wednesday, Arconic said it rejected "any claim that AAP [Arconic's subsidiary, Arconic Architectural Products SAS] sold an unsafe product," and insisted it had "regularly conducted tests of its materials using third-party testing bodies."
From the website of the Federal Election Commission (FEC) -
I went looking through FEC records for a direct tie/donation from their PAC to an AZ candidate and didn't find one though there was one tie between AZ and the RGA when Arconic donated to the RGA.
Arconic gave money to the RGA in 2022.
Know who was co-chair of the RGA in 2022?
Former AZ governor Doug Ducey.
In 2022, the RGA spent a LOT of money in efforts to defeat Katie Hobbs.
It didn't work, but it seems some the money spent qualifies as "Ill Gotten Gains."
From AP, written by Brian Slodysko and Dan Merica -
GOP network props up liberal third-party candidates in key states, hoping to siphon off Harris votes
Italo Medelius was leading a volunteer drive to put Cornel West on North Carolina’s presidential ballot last spring when he received an unexpected call from a man named Paul who said he wanted to help.
Though Medelius, co-chairman of West’s “Justice for All Party,” welcomed the assistance, the offer would complicate his life, provoking threats and drawing him into a state election board investigation of the motivations, backgrounds and suspect tactics of his new allies.
His is not an isolated case.
[snip]
Now {Paul} Hamrick is playing a prominent role to place West’s name on the ballot in competetive states. Hamrick surfaced in Arizona two weeks ago after a woman told the AP that a document was fraudulently submitted in her name to Arizona’s secretary of state in which she purportedly agreed to serve as an elector for West. She said her signature was forged and she never agreed to be an elector.
After the AP published her account, Hamrick said he spoke to the woman’s husband, trying to rectify the situation and “gave some information.” Hamrick declined to say what information was shared. He also tried to persuade another elector who backed out to recommit to West, according to interviews and voicemails.
The next day, with the deadline to qualify for the Arizona ballot just hours away, Brett Johnson, a prominent Republican lawyer, and Amanda Reeve, a former GOP state lawmaker, made house visits to each as they tried to persuade both to sign new paperwork to serve as West electors.
Johnson and Reeve work for Snell & Wilmer, which has done $257,000 worth of business for the Republican National Committee over the past two years, campaign finance disclosures show.
Hamrick declined to comment on the role of Johnson and Reeve. They did not respond to requests for comment.
West did not qualify for the Arizona ballot.
[snip]
Associated Press writers Jonathan J. Cooper in Phoenix, Farnoush Amiri in Chicago and Marc Levy in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, contributed to this report.
West may not be on the ballot here, but there will be third party candidates on the ballot.
From the website of the Arizona Secretary of State (emphasis added by me) -
A vote for anyone other that Kamala Harris is a vote for Cheeto.
Yesterday, I authored a post on how the president of the AZ State Senate wrote a letter to Gavin Newsom, the Governor of California.
Today, I wrote my own letter to Governor Newsom
Dear Governor Newsom,
It recently became public knowledge that the president of the Arizona State Senate, Warren Petersen, wrote a letter to you advising you to not not create more regulations for petroleum refineries.
I'm going to advise you to do what's best for the people of California; your salary is derived from taxes and your authority is derived from their consent.
Sen. Petersen's wish to protect the profits of Big Business and disregard for the public good is a problem for the people of
Arizona to address (or not address, if we don't flip control of the state senate and make him a former president of that body.)
Regards,
Craig McDermott
P.S. - I'm from AZ, and not from Sen. Petersen's district there.
What I wrote to him about taxes and consent is something that I believe is true for *all* public employees, elected, appointed, or hired - they work for us.
Not just wealthy people, not just well-connected people, and not just the people who agree with them or line their pockets with "contributions.".
