Rum, Romanism and Rebellion

Our legislature concluded their not-especially-special session on Saturday. They made $8 million in cuts in the Attorney General’s office but no cuts in either the Secretary of State’s office or the Treasurer’s office.

I know, I know. It just so happens that the Attorney General’s office is the only state constitutional office run by a Democrat. Some cynical wags might assume that this is about partisanship. Far from it. It is all about waste. Money spent on law enforcement is a frivolity we can’t afford. Especially when it is going to an office run by Terry Goddard. Oops, I mean…it can’t be that, can it?

Speaking of our statewide officials, Dean Martin ran into a bit of trouble when it turned out his YouTube channel had copyrighted material on it. You know, it is exactly the sort of thing that his office could turn to the Attorney General to help with, except now he uses outside counsel because of a tiff he had with Goddard.

How does that budget situation affect this? I mean, Goddard will likely have to lay off lawyers because of budget cuts, but Martin can keep hiring outside counsel since his budget isn’t being cut?

Turning to one of our other statewides…Tom Horne. You may have read about Horne’s little sting operation in the community of Lukeville. Horne has apparently written away to whatever cheap comic book gives out “Junior ICE Agent” badges, which is the sort of thing that one must do when one is running in a Republican primary against Andrew Thomas (that notion that Horne would be the “moderate” alternative: cancel that). Horne purports to have evidence that children from Sonoyta, the Sonoran town on the other side of the international line from Lukeville, are hopping the line and boarding busses to go to school in Ajo. The Pima County School Superintendent’s office, which is responsible for administering transportation programs for students in “unorganized” districts, protests that they have been following residency requirements and procedures for verification to the letter, which are similar to the evidence of residency that a parent has to show to register kids in their local district. The person who put these requirements and procedures in place: Tom Horne. Horne doesn’t think this is enough now that he is running for higher office.

Apparently, Horne thinks that the solution to this problem is to send his employees to far flung places like Ajo and Lukeville and train video cameras on school children. In any other situation, this would be considered at least mildly creepy, and sheriff’s deputies were called in a couple of cases. All of this, and we still have no actual evidence of a non-resident attending Ajo schools.

This is the second big issue, the first one being his jihad against TUSD cultural studies, where Horne has tried to make hay about Hispanic students in Pima County schools. I’m not saying he’s looking for support from ignorant racists, but I think that he is hoping for more looks from people who think the name of the town is pronounced “Ay-Joe.”