Rum, Romanism and Rebellion

Tim Bee is bringing Labor Secretary Elaine Chao to Tucson for a fundraiser on Tuesday.  It would be so easy for me to go after Chao for being an anti-worker Secretary of Labor: whether it comes to being dismissive of organized labor, undermining worker safety or hunting down whistleblowers. Having Chao in charge of the Department of Labor is like having Russell Pearce be ambassador-at-large to Latin America.

Here is the thing that strikes me: this is the third in a series of “big names” Bee has brought to Arizona who have been out front on dismantling Social Security. Bee has previously brought Steve Forbes and Grover Norquist down to raise money for him. One has to wonder where he is on maintaining the Social Security if these are the people that want to campaign for him.

Oh, do the folks paying for the $250 private roundtable with the Secretary recieve special lanyards or embroidered blankets?

Once again, David Safier over at Blog for Arizona just doesn’t get it. His bleeding heart is once again staining his shirts and making a mess of everything.

According to his post over at Blog for Arizona, he asked Tom Horne about his plans to end social promotion during his live chat that the Star staged yesterday. I don’t know why he thought is was his place to ask our state’s top educator about the natural consequences of that policy. Here is what he asked:

David S (daves): Aren’t you concerned about the potential for raising the dropout rate if we hold students back on a regular basis? The Star article mentioned that as a probable outcome.

Tom H (tomhorneaz): No. It doesn’t do any good to keep students in school if they aren’t learning. Fear of dropouts is sometimes used as an excuse for mediocrity. I categorically reject that.

See, Horne and I agree. We shouldn’t be worried about kids dropping out. I don’t worry about that because, you see, this sort of thing keeps me employed. As a matter of fact, such a policy can lead to more employment as the state would then have to hire hundreds, maybe thousands, more prison guards, probation officers and police after the inevitable rise in crime rates when you have so many young folks with no prospects on our streets. Heck, don’t think of this as an education policy, think of it as a government jobs program. Lefties should love that.

NB - Safier has one more post on Horne’s chat here. By the way, I wrote about the bizarre language and poor grammar on the front page of the Superintendent’s website over two years ago. It’s still there.

On Monday, Independent Annie Loyd announced that she is not going to run for congress after all. Her press release didn’t mention the name of Democratic candidate Bob Lord, but this is good news for him. I doubt that Lloyd was going to get a pile of votes, but I’m sure that Lord is helped by anything that keeps him as the only alternative to John Shadegg.

It seems that every day we have been treated to news of yet another member of John McCain’s campaign high command being a lobbyist for some sleazy or repressive foreign government. In all of that, I missed this little bit about one of Shadegg’s backers that our man at Random Musings found. A Republican being backed by lobbyists for polluters is one thing, but a Republican being backed by a lobbyist for polluters that have been dumping TCE on his own constituents? Now, that’s special.

There has been so little good news for Shadegg’s campaign (the loss of an otherwise safe Republican seat in Mississippi this week has got to be keeping him up at night), I almost feel sorry for the guy.

Almost.

Some of you have noticed that I haven’t yet written anything on the lobbyist that was working for both John McCain and the junta that runs Burma.

I am still trying to get over the shock that a straight talking reformer like John McCain even knows any lobbyists, he is their scourge after all. I’m sure that it will turn out that he didn’t even know that thig guy Doug Goodyear was even a lobbyist. I mean, he wouldn’t stock the leadership of his campaign with such people, right?

UPDATE: Et tu, Rick Davis?

When she decided to vote for the anti-gay marriage amendment, Marian McClure gave an apology of sorts. Folks at the capitol have seen this before; McClure does these things and the rest of us are still supposed to see her as a level headed moderate because she feels bad for herself. I don’t have an exact copy of her explanation of the vote, but R-Cubed’s crack research team has pieced this summary together from reports:

I am sorry that I have to vote for this bill. I have found out that there are some people in Arizona that hate their gay neighbors more than they want an otherwise intelligent, thoughtful person regulating utilities. I have decided that I really want the votes of these people. I hope you will respect me in the morning.

So, this now moves on to the Senate. What, pray tell, is Tim Bee to do?

I’ve read this post over at Sonoran Alliance a couple of times. I fail to see how this is a “nightmare scenario.”

The only thing I can figure is that they are worried that Jan Brewer will become governor. Yeah, that would be a nightmare.

I haven’t written anything yet on the alliterative Robert Robuck, the candidate who is taking on Ramón Valadez in the Democratic primary for County Supervisor. One Valadez booster I talked to was convinced that Robuck was recruited by Ray Carroll to run against Valadez. If so, he didn’t prepare this guy for his run too well.

Early on, Robuck told folks that he was running because of his opposition to the Rosemont Mine. Funny thing to use that as a justification to take out Valadez given how many of the actions of the board against the mine have been unanimous. Now he says that he’s not a “one issue” candidate.

He’s been handing out flyers (Xeroxed, come on Ray, get your buddies to open up the checkbook!) that names four issues: Water Supply, Environmental Protection/Sustainable Growth, Election Integrity and Alternative Energy. Three of those issues are ones where Valadez has been strong on, and I realize that election integrity activists are not happy with the guy but he came around after he was pressured. As much as I support that issue, it doesn’t seem to be the one that will take down a candidate as strong as Valadez is.

Not only that, but the bromides that Robuck gives on these issues indicates to me that he doesn’t have the grasp of them that would mean that he could go toe to toe with Valadez, or his potential colleagues for that matter. For example, this is from his flyer:

WATER SUPPLY: Reliable and renewable water resources are the lift [sic] blood of our communities in Pima County and must be effectively managed for our future needs.

We must manage water, because we need it to drink and stuff. Nobody has brought that up in any election for county supervisor in the entire 145 year history of Pima County, right? Geez. You want to show that Valadez is out of touch with the “real issues” and all you can come up with is this kind of Tommy Shanks rhetoric? Those of you out there that are backing this guy (and I’m sure I’ll hear from you) better hope he does a bit better than this before September rolls around.

I this e-mail was forwarded to me this weekend. If you plan on making a call, make sure to do it this morning.

Hi Everyone,

Last night, I attended the annual Southern Arizona Stonewall Democrats banquet, held in conjunction with the conference of the National Stonewall Democrats. It was great to see many friends and elected officials who are our staunchest allies.

Among the speakers was Rep. Kyrsten Sinema, who reported that prior to the dinner she heard some bad news.

Rep Marian McClure (R-30) has decided to switch her vote to “yes” on the pending anti-marriage amendment in the House. This means that the bill will likely pass on Monday.

In a nutshell, McClure is afraid that if she doesn’t vote yes, she will not receive the support from conservatives she needs to win her planned run for the Corporation Commission.

Our supporters in the AZ legislature recommend that we all call McClure’s office at (602) 926-3312 and ask her to vote “what she knows is right in her heart.”

While McClure does not support full marriage equality, she knows that this amendment is harmful and divisive and does not want to support it. She also doesn’t want to be the focus of right-wing attacks as the person who stopped it from passing in the house.

Please take a minute to call McClure at (602) 926-3312. Afterwards, please send an email to your contact list asking your friends to do the same. I’d like for this email to be the start of a viral campaign that will produce hundreds of calls to McClure’s office before she arrives on Monday morning.

If you have contacts at other LGBT and allied organizations in Arizona, please ask them to also forward your message and call to action to their members and contact lists.

In a respectful and honorable tone, we need to show McClure that we can be just as active as our conservative opponents.

Thank you,
Jason Cianciotto
Executive Director
Wingspan

I keep hearing from folks what a screwed up process we have on the Democratic side to decide our nominee. Those Republicans don’t have these superdelegates, and their primaries are mostly winner take all. Heck, even some high ranking people in Hillary Clinton’s campaign point to the Republican rules being so much better because, well, they think they would have done better with those.

Leave aside the fact that the Republicans do have superdelegates, they just don’t call them that (maybe they aren’t so super?), are these primaries really winner take all?

I was hoping to talk to my Republican mole to find out what exactly will happen today when Arizona Republicans select their convention delegates and what these rules are. From what I’ve been able to glean from some Republican blogs, it doesn’t seem that actual allegiance to primary winner John McCain is a qualification, even though he’s the prohibitive nominee. For example, one guy that signed a McCain censure motion is running for delegate. According to Sonoran Alliance, there will be three slates of delegates running, but a Ron Paul faction may make a move to get delegates seated. Paul, by the way, managed to get a bit more than 4% of the vote and would not have even qualified for delegates under the Democratic Party system, much less “winner take all.”

In 1996, we had our first Republican primary which was won by Steve Forbes. Despite being “winner take all,” the delegation that was seated was dominated by supporters of Bob Dole. In 2000, McCain won, but the delegation was headed up by Jane Dee Hull, who famously was a George W. Bush supporter. I’d like to hear from a few of the Republican activists that read me so they can tell me how this process actually works, but it doesn’t seem like the final results have much to do with the winner of the primary.