The Farley Report returns! Rep. Steve Farley represents Arizona LD28 at the State Legislature. Here's his latest update:
Howdy, Friends O'Farley...
I hope you are having a wonderful holiday season with friends and family. In difficult times like the ones we face here in Arizona, our human connections make all the difference.
I am so grateful to all of you for your words of support as we head into a session that will be filled with actions that could endanger our long-term viability as a state. Our work will not be easy, but it is vital that we remain vigilant to protect Arizonans from further raids on our education system, our economy, and our health. I pledge that I will continue to stand strong as I defend Tucson values while informing you on all that is happening and how you can make a difference.
The Pearce-Brewer majority is already gunning for legal immigrants, people in poverty, schools and universities, and will unleash the full power of their ideology upon us all come January. Here's a preview of a few of their coming attractions.
--> Senate President Russell Pearce will soon be unveiling his DC-lobbyist-crafted bill to roll back the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution so that he can take away citizenship from babies who are born in the United States. This breaks his promise not to push immigration bills this year, given to several Republican senators in exchange for their vote for his presidency.
The bill will be unveiled in DC by a shadowy group known as State Legislators for Legal Immigration, and will be sponsored by recently re-elected Representative David Burnell Smith (R-Carefree), who you may recall was kicked out of office in 2006 for breaking Clean Elections laws.
Additionally, newly elected Rep. Jack Harper (R-Surprise) [you can't make this stuff up -- these guys are from "Carefree" and "Surprise"] will be introducing a bill to have the state pay for ammunition for amateur border posses who will be given law enforcement powers. I know you feel safer already.
Business groups in particular are upset. They are rightfully asking that our session focus on jobs and the economy. Instead, these and other Republican border bills will once again highlight Arizona in the national media as the state with the big "Businesses, Tourists, and Customers: Go Away" sign on our doorstep.
Meanwhile, Democrats will once again introduce bills to crack down on the real border problems of human, gun, and drug smuggling. None of our five bills was given a hearing last year.
--> Last year's Republican health care cuts have claimed their first victim. Mark Price, 37, was scheduled to receive his lifesaving bone marrow transplant the same day the Republican cuts to transplant services went into effect. Without that procedure, he died on November 28, leaving his five children without a dad.
The budget cut that killed Mr. Price saved $1.4 million for the State, but forfeited millions more in federal matching funds.
It was such a jaw-droppingly ironic sign of things to come that I had to reach for my camera. I mean, literally, there was this sign at the top of the escalator, directing traffic to the various meeting rooms on the second floor of the Wyndham Hotel Saturday Nov. 20th. It was the kind of thing that made people visibly and even audibly respond when it caught and held their eye. You want a symbol, a message from god on high, a sign? Well, here's your sign.
Almost everybody spotted it, almost everyone winced. Some laughed. Some cursed. Buddies pointed and interrupted each other to draw attention to it. Some shook their heads as if exhaling a fly. I took this picture.
Like many others, I had come, as a Democrat to downtown Phoenix on a sunny Saturday seeking to assemble with some other Democrats, wandering if we were still welcome in the capitol city. I felt lost. Literally we had lost, in a great-big, major way, in like, no, not like, actually all state wide races. It sucked, I wanted a new plan. I'd come to the Wyndham to find it. This hotel was supposed to play host to what was supposed to be the first post-election state-wide meeting of the party and there wasn't a donkey in sight.
I was there as myself of course, but also, as my wife's, Beth Weisser's, representative at the consolation-fest she would surely be in for as a recently defeated state senate candidate. It was a tough day of planning for us. The AEA had scheduled a training day the same day. We are both members of both and had to split forces to cover the bases, and sift through assorted clichés. Beth drew the short straw and I was off on an adventure.
As myself, I was there as an "elected precinct committeeman," which is, I guess, one tad better than being an "elected nowhere's nothing," but I was still a novice, a babe in the woods, despite being something like a 6 year semi-active member of the actual party. Not literally a card carrying member or anything, just saying, but as the husband of a recent candidate, I'm clearly in bed with them--as opposed to someone who simply votes Democrat based on the TV ads or some much. Being a fulltime non-profit disorganization on my own, working as a Democrat wasn't often a central part of my life, but come election time, and especially since my wife candidacy, I gleefully put up some signs, pass out some flyers. I drink a lot of coffee while a wide variety of people explain to me exactly what the problem is. You know, good times; it's a party.
But then I am also this annoying self-supposed would-be journalist-type, a purported jokester who skews Dems as freely as the GOP when desperate for easy targets. It is an odd role to play, being the kind of guy who would probably write a column like this, about a meeting like that with a sense of minor, but gleeful, mischief. Anyway, in any of those various roles that play the player, I was mostly there to ask, 'what the __ just happened? '
"Shellacking." It is such an active verb, Mr. President.
As you may recall that was Obama's morning-after disaster descriptor of choice for the defeat dealt the Democrats in this just past election. To be properly "shellacked," one is not "merely" or even "summarily" defeated. No. One must be brought down (probably flailing), killed of course, and subsequently disemboweled, immersed in acids or some such taxidermy stuff, literally stuffed like a beaver, and THEN painted, varnished in fact with the shell secretions from lac beetles. That's right, doused in beetle juice. It's the same yummy flavor all candy lovers crave on the shells of their shiny M&Ms;, though there known as "confectioner's glaze." It's the kind of term used to describe what you would do with a roughly worn relic that was looking a little worse for wear. As in:
("So, should we throw this here ol' stuffed iguana? It's lookin' a might bit scruffy about the elbows."
"Naw, just give it another shellacking."
"Right-o!")
See? That what it means to get a good "shellacking. I admit that term was a fairly apt description of the appearances of many of my Dem colleagues that morning at the Wyndham. Like so many Dems there that day, I was still a little sore from my own election-day shellacking and looking the restart button, hoping for some recantation-style postgame color done by a penitent Dem leadership sans the spin cycle; and, more importantly, some quick pointers on how the rest of us were going to save our state from the hillbilly Gestapo Fox News had just put in charge of us.
Further, I went with the attitude that the Blue Dog Dems brought this turn upon us all and had a lot of explaining to do. The success of the Tea Party emblem for the GOP showed that Dems needed to differentiate from not assimilate with the GOP leaning segment of the voters. If fifty years of being marketed to have taught me nothing I know you have to build your own brand, you can't steal their brand, you have to build your own. So yes, I am prepared to say it is the move to the right that has destroyed the Democrats, a move away from the public's, and the party's, best interests.
The public has every right to be wary. Twice in recent elections the Dems had first sold, then sold out the message they'd campaigned on, squandering American goodwill and momentum in their support. As Jon Stewart quipped to Barack Obama, "It's like they're campaigning on 'Come on, Baby, give me one more chance.'" In 2006, Dems claimed they were rising up against the "Bush regime" and rallied the country and then; upon being swept into office on national good will for their message, they just basically became members of the Bush power-structure for the last two years of his presidency. Though Dems "controlled" Congress, between bluster and signing statements, Bush still wrote or rewrote government to his liking, consistently got military funding, torturer approval, and legislative endorsements for his Wall Street bail-out schemes.
Then in the face of the Bush economic crisis, America hired the opposition, the Dems to the rescue, to sort it all out and make the mess right, right? And instead, banks continued to get billions in bail-outs, give themselves lavish bonuses, while millions are thrown out of their houses by these every same banks and left with no way to fight back, even after it is plainly shown that multitudes of these evictions are frauds. The fabled Stimulus package gets hollowed out to where it won't achieve much more than the inability to not be pinned with a GOP label as an excess spending talking point.
Then there's a whole other massive expense of energy and goodwill on a health care reform that in the end ran the same course, dribbling down from a mighty message of hope to mealy mouth gesture of an inside deal, selling out the same people it claimed it was helping. It even got them following tri-cornered hats waved around by a PR firm, all to keep powerful health and insurance interests entrenched and train a public to work against their own best interests, by fighting in the streets against universal healthcare.
And now those Tea Party people were going to be running my state? I needed some inspiration. So I wandered through the well-appointed lobby, looking for likeminded Donkey-lovers, searching for some sign it was all going to be all right. With no sign of a sign in sight. That's right, and when i asked for directions, it sounded something like 'over the river and through the woods.' All the length of the lobby and up the escalator there was no further sign of Democrat direction. As if we were hidden from the general public.
Finally up an escalator, and just as you got sight of the second floor, the one and only sign of Democrats in the house came into view. It read:
Schizophrenia
Building Awareness
Advancing Understanding
[and the room name in smaller print]
AZ Democratic Party
State Committee Meeting
[and the room name in smaller print]
You may have read about polls that show Dems will lose badly on Tuesday in Arizona. DON'T BELIEVE THE HYPE! These polls badly undersample Dem voters because they only reach those with landlines. This makes them skew Republican.
THE ONLY POLL THAT COUNTS IS THE ONE ON ELECTION DAY. That would be tomorrow, Tuesday, November 2nd. Make sure you vote and make sure your friends and family vote.
And now a message from Katie Hobbs, Democratic candidate for State Representative in LD15:
Election Day is Tuesday and I just wanted to send you a quick note to let you know that it's not too late to help us with getting out the vote over the next couple of days. We are coordinating with other campaigns to make the most of our resources. If you want to make phone calls or drop literature on Monday or Tuesday, we'll get you a list. On Election Day, we still have some spots available for polling place volunteers. Contact Kendra at kml0103@gmail.com or (602) 810-8745 to sign up for a shift from 6-9am, 11am-1pm, or 5-7pm. Any time that you are able to give will be helpful.
On Election Night, we'll be celebrating with the Democratic Party at the Wyndham downtown, 50 E. Adams St., as soon as the polls close. We'd love to see you there!
Whatever you do, VOTE!!!
And thank you, thank you for your support throughout this election!
Recently Chuck Coughlin, Gov. Jan Brewer's chief political advisor, said some very childish remarks about Terry Goddard, the state's attorney general and Democratic nominee for governor. After Goddard released a report from his doctor stating he was healthy he pressed Brewer to do the same amongst reports of her declining health, Coughlin struck back at him by saying:
"What's next, is he going to release his SAT scores? How about his high school GPA," Coughlin said during a telephone interview. "How about (Goddard) release the results of a lie detector test showing he never slept with a man."
Is Coughlin a high school bully that never grew up? It is very difficult to comprehend how one of the most influential people in Arizona politics can make such juvenile comments. You would honestly believe his comments came from an ignorant high school student trying to act cool, instead they came from a grown adult. An educated man with a very professional and high profile job.
Making this sad scenario even more sickening is the number of youths that have committed suicide recently. These young people, some of them not even teenagers yet, killed themselves because they were tormented and bullied by immature peers who thought it would be funny to pick on someone that is different than they were. I have news for Chuck Coughlin and all of the other bullies: it is not and never was funny to make fun of someone because they aren't you. Again, in light of recent events this just makes Mr. Coughlin and his comments that much more disgusting. Is this the kind of company Jan Brewer keeps?
Below is the video from Fort Worth, TX City Councilman Joel Burns' speech about bulling and teen suicide from Tuesday's council meeting. The video has gone viral all around the country and is known as the "It gets better" speech. It's sad that because of bullies like Chuck Coughlin kids suffer and Mr. Burns had to make this speech.
For the record, Attorney General Goddard is happily married to his wife and has a fantastic family.
Jan Brewer's chief advisor and campaign manager Chuck Coughlin offered a classic non-apology apology to anyone who took offense at his insinuation that Brewer's Democratic opponent in the race for Arizona Governor, Terry Goddard, might be a homosexual.
Coughlin says he just dredged up this very old unsubstantiated allegation in response to the claim by John Dougherty (an award-winning investigative reporter with no connection to the Goddard campaign) that he had heard from a number of sources that Jan Brewer's health might make it impossible for her to serve a full four year term if she were elected governor. Coughlin's alleged point is that two can play at this game of making absurd charges based on unknown sources.
After all, inquiring about a politician's health problems who hopes to serve as governor is exactly the same as suggesting that her opponent, a happily married man with a child, might be gay. Can't you see the similarity?
Coughlin could have easily allayed concerns about Brewer's health by releasing a statement from her physician as Terry Goddard did.
Instead Coughlin and his firm, HighGround, decided to take the low road and engage in gay-baiting.
Governor Brewer cancelled a scheduled press conference where she was supposed to talk about solar power today. I sure hope she's not ill.
I would suggest that she fire Chuck Coughlin, but I know she can't do that since he's the one really running the governor's office. If she were to die in office, Chuckie baby would just wheel her corpse around ala Weekend at Bernie's.
The gist: The RNC has been mailing random Arizona residents, using an application we created on our site (LongDistanceVoter.org) in the form of a postcard with no secure envelope. Not only does this postcard ask for sensitive personal information, but it looks as though we and the local county offices sent it, not the RNC.
Let's try something different: Which legislative races do you care about?
Out of over 6,000 state legislative districts up for grabs this year, we've chosen 40 key races to highlight on our 2010 "Essential Races" list. These are 40 critical races that we anticipate will show which way the political tide is turning this fall.
But we recognize our own limitations. There are plenty of other key races all across the country -- so we're asking for your help in identifying them.
For an organization that wants to be known as a group of average Americans who are upset with their out of control government, why would they pick a former congressman to be the face of their group and not someone like Joe the Plumber?
The Tea Party is expected to announce that former Rep. JD Hayworth (R-Ariz.) will become a national spokesperson for the movement, a source close to the matter told The Hill.
While the article says Hayworth will be the spokesperson of the Tea Party, I thought the Tea Party was only made up of grassroots citizens that did not pledge loyalty to any party or organization? I assume he will be the spokesperson for the nationally organized and corporately funded Tea Party Express, though the article does not mention the Express by name.
It's also kind of funny that the Tea Party's MVP Sarah Palin endorsed John McCain over their new spokesperson in his recent primary.
From a Facebook announcement from the group "People who support Dan Saban for Sheriff in 2012":
Dan Saban is now a candidate for Maricopa County Sheriff 2012. Now it's our turn to finance his campaign. Make checks/money order payable to "Saban for Sheriff 2012" and mail to 14301 N. 87th Street, Suite 315 Scottsdale, AZ 85260. Be sure to include your address, occupation, and employer. (btw, you can contribute up to $410) Once his website is up and running, I will post links for it. I believe they will take online payments in the near future.
Send him a couple bucks to help him get the campaign off the ground.
U.S. Representative Trent Franks, who represents comes from the Second District has agreed to debate his Democratic challenger, retired school teacher John Thrasher.
From Thrasher for Congress press release:
Congressional District 2 Democratic Candidate John Thrasher, has challenged the incumbent, Republican Trent Franks, to a debate.
During an interview session with an Arizona Republic Editorial Board on Friday September 3, 2010, Thrasher challenged Franks to a debate on neutral ground. Mr. Franks accepted.
Mr. Thrasher now seeks a venue to hold this debate which would ideally be limited to 30 minutes before either a live audience, televised, or both.
Media outlets interested in hosting this debate should contact Thrasher for Congress Campaign Manager Chuck Foy at 602-828-5828.
Now, if Rep. Franks can debate his opponent why does Ben Quayle refuse to debate Jon Hulburd?
