When it became obvious that members of the legislature were called into session today to essentially vote on nothing, a couple of Democratic Senators stood up to tell the body that it was ridiculous to not have anything to vote on when there are Arizonans that would have their unemployment benefits cut off. Kudos to David Schapira and Leah Landrum-Taylor for speaking up, by the way.
Russell Pearce responded that such complaints were just “rhetoric.” Yeah, unemployment is no big deal. Those Democrats and their silly concern for the downtrodden.
This led Steve Gallardo to get up and call out Pearce. Unfortunately, Gallardo took it a bit far and said “shame on you,” which violates the rules against impugning another member. Andy Biggs took issue with this, and it could have led to some problems for Gallardo. After a short time, Gallardo amended his statement to say, “shame on us.”
It should have ended there, except, well…this from Jack Harper’s Twitter feed:
Steve Gallardo is a cancer on the Arizona State Senate. With a two-thirds vote, the Senate can remove that tumor.
Nice.
Harper can actually get in trouble for this one too. Daniel Patterson got reprimanded for some untoward comments he had sent into the Twitterverse about fellow members while on the floor, and Ed Ableser was made to take down Tweets that insulted Nancy Barto, even though he wasn’t on the floor when he made those Tweets.
Which, by the way, brings us to the most ridiculous part of the story:
Harper didn’t show up to session today.
In one of his tweets, he mocked Gallardo for not taking his seat after the 2008 election. He did this, apparently, while sitting on his couch watching the session on the internet.
(Editor’s note: we have not verified that he sat on a couch.)
Schapira and Kyrsten Sinema both cut short East Coast trips to come back for the session (Sinema showing up at 4:30 AM to fly standby), but Harper couldn’t be bothered to drive twenty miles to the capitol.
So which thing was too unimportant to take seriously, Jack: our umemployed population, or your responsibility to represent your constituents?
Say, is Harper going to collect his per diem?
5 Comments
What a complete dick.
great blog. FYI, Ed’s last name is spelled Ableser
Lauren-
Would you believe that the extra “s” was for “superlative”?
Of Course he is taking Perdiem its the best paying job he has got.
As a truthful aside, however, (in his Friday June 10th EVTrib article), David Schapira was 100% wrong. I’ve owned an actual bricks-and-mortar business of 10 employees for 14 years. Employers like me pay 100% of unemployment insurance taxes in Arizona, not Schapira’s mythical employees “paying into the system”. Unemployment insurance is an insurance product where experience ratings determine my business’s relative tax versus other employers’ taxes. The more my former employees draw Unemployment, the higher my set-aside rates are. Employers never see that money again, regardless of how well we take care of our employees. Moreover, employers like me pay Unemployment to both Arizona (dedicated toward the first 26 weeks of benefits) and the federal government. Combined – Arizona and the feds charge employers more than 3% on the first $7,000 of pay for each of their employees. It’s true, extended benefits currently are being paid from the fed’s general fund – which these days means more debt; but how that debt is reimbursed is still “our problem” as businesses and taxpayers. We don’t differentiate between a dollar taken as federal tax vis-a-vis state tax as the governor and legislators do. They seem to think if it doesn’t come out of state funds; it must be free, right? Bottom Line: Keeping Arizonans on unemployment prolongs the ill effects and adversity of our sick market. It aggravates job recovery by spiraling down a deepening debt which makes recovery even more uncertain. David Schapira should recognize who’s really paying for these benefits instead of making specious claims about pots of “free money”.
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[...] I couldn’t figure out why I had a longer than usual reply to one of my posts by Wendy Rogers. Rogers, you may remember, ran an usuccessful campaign against David Schapira last year. Her reply referenced a East Valley Tribune op-ed that I hadn’t even read, much less mentioned. In fact, her whole comment seemed only tangentially related to the post I had written, which was mostly about Jack Harper making a fool of himself on Twitter. [...]