"Proud" Supporters' Smear Campaign Against Nancy Young Wright for Standing Firm Against Rigged Privilege

Message from Rep. Nancy Young-Wright
October 12, 2010

Dear Friends,

In the last few days, signs have sprouted up around the district claiming that I “voted against disabled students.”  Terri Proud and her cronies have taken negative and dirty campaigning to a new low.

As some of you know, I have a family member who is severely disabled and I know all too well the difficulties that families of the disabled face on a daily basis. In fact, I am known as a vocal advocate on their behalf at the state capitol and I have often spoken out against the draconian budget cuts that have negatively impacted Arizonans with disabilities.

This attack shows how desperate the Phoenix bosses are to take back this seat. And why we can't let them do it.

At issue is a House Bill (HB2001) which was pushed through by the Phoenix political bosses in one of their many special sessions during the past two years.  

The bill’s intent?  To get around the Arizona Supreme Court, which had just ruled that the distribution of taxpayer money to private and religious schools was unconstitutional (Cain v. Horne).

Rather than respect our Constitution and the court’s ruling, the Phoenix bosses passed HB2001 on a strictly party-line vote, in special session, with little opportunity for public input.  This was yet another step by them to dismantle public education in Arizona.  And Vic Williams went right along, as he always does.

They used this legislation to further enrich corrupt and unaccountable private school tuition organizations (STOs) with your hard-earned tax dollars. The East Valley Tribune exposed this corruption in an investigative report called Rigged Privilege.
The bill was also an opportunity for the Phoenix politicians to grant even more tax giveaways to large corporations and insurance companies, paid for by you and me.

I’m proud that I stood against corruption, against more corporate tax loopholes, and with Arizona taxpayers by voting against HB2001. 

The fact that Terri Proud would attack me through a third-party group on this issue shows where her priorities are -- enriching corrupt STOs, giving even bigger tax loopholes to corporations and insurance companies, while hurting the middle class and draining more money from our public schools.  

While you can count on me to continue to do what’s right for District 26, Terri will clearly sell the taxpayers down the river to please her corporate benefactors.

If you’re as outraged as I am, click here to donate right now and help me fight back!

Thank you,

Nancy

Big Insurance, Pharma, Wall Street and John Boehner

by Richard L. Trumka,
AFL-CIO Blog
Oct 7, 2010

Stacia Haley in Seattle worked all her life and raised a child as a single parent. Yet she has no retirement income other than Social Security.

[Social Security] is all many of us will have, if we live long enough to retire.

Stacia is right. Some 64 percent of America’s retirees rely on Social Security for 50 percent or more of their income.

Yet the man Wall Street wants to make speaker of the House supports raising the retirement age for Social Security, lowering the hammer even more on low- and middle-income Americans, who die earlier than the rich. (And what about that income gap? Well, never mind.)

This is just one of the extreme positions John Boehner holds while he salivates in the wings as House minority leader, angling for a Republican takeover of Congress bought and paid for by corporate America.

By now there should be no question that if Boehner becomes speaker, corporations will call the shots—and the insurance companies, drug manufacturers and Wall Street firms have been busy paying big time for the privilege. Boehner’s campaign to date has collected nearly $7.1 million. Putting that sum in perspective, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has received $2.9 million. Meanwhile, the “Boehner for Speaker” fundraising committee has racked up another $2 million.

Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, the American Bankers Association and Big Pharma are some of his biggest Wall Street backers, with the political action committees and employees of insurance firms alone giving nearly $426,000 to Boehner’s campaign committees through June 30, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Boehner is so soaked in lobbyist dollars that his clique of friends and current and former staff members on Capitol Hill have even been given a name: Boehner Land.

New York Times columnist Bob Herbert offers a snapshot of Boehner’s corporate backers who have:

contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to his campaigns, provided him with rides on their corporate jets, socialized with him at luxury golf resorts and waterfront bashes and are now leading fund-raising efforts for his Boehner for Speaker campaign, which is soliciting checks of up to $37,800 each, the maximum allowed.

As the New York Times reported, one lobbyist in Boehner’s club—”after lauding each staff member in Mr. Boehner’s office that he routinely calls to ask for help—ticked off the list” of handouts to credit card companies, hedge fund execs and the oil industry for which he had sought Boehner’s assistance.

Take a look at just some of Boehner’s corporate agenda.

Boehner backs preserving tax cuts for businesses that shift jobs and profits overseas—saving multinational corporations $10 billion—and opposed a proposed cap on debit card fees. After all, Boehner’s friend and golf partner, Samuel J. Baptista, is a lobbyist whose clients include Goldman Sachs and Discover Financial Services.

Boehner has opposed extending unemployment insurance and spending to shore up our faltering infrastructure. That would mean less money available for tax breaks for the rich—like the 20 individual wealthy donors who alone contributed $570,300 in nearly one month under his new political organization, the Boehner for Speaker Committee.

Boehner wants to gut health care reform—legislative action that tops the priority list of his insurance company employee funders. 

Continue reading here.

BREWER'S SECRET BUDGET WILL CRUSH ARIZONA SCHOOLS

Friday, October 8, 2010
terrygoddard.com

Phoenix - Arizona's budget is wildly out of control and Jan Brewer is trying to balance it on the backs of Arizona's children.  At a news conference today, Attorney General and candidate for Governor Terry Goddard painted a stark picture of Brewer will do for schools if elected

"The current budget shortfall is $825 million," said Goddard.  "Brewer's failure to balance the budget has put our state in crisis.  She doesn't want to talk about it, but she intends to make additional massive cuts to education.  The evidence is there in the budget she signed last Spring."

 Goddard referred to the budget, HB 2001.  That bill contains the full list of cuts that would have been enacted had the sales tax increase failed and the State had to close an $800 million budget defect. 

That [Alternative Budget] list of cuts makes it very clear what Brewer will do when she is finally forced to balance the budget.  Among the cuts listed:

•    $428 million to the Department of Education

•    $100 million from the School Facilities Board

•    $107 million from Universities

•    $13 million from Community Colleges

•   $2 million from the Arizona School for the Deaf and Blind.

A total of $550 million in cuts to education in Arizona. 

 "The effect of this next round of cuts will be horrible.  Class sizes will jump, with another six to ten students in every classroom," said Goddard.  "University students will pay $1000 more every semester in increased tuition.  Brewer has already admitted that she has cut education to the bone.  To cut it further - and still claim to support education - is cynical, hypocritical and wrong."

 "This is a huge difference between Jan Brewer and me.  She has made massive cuts to public schools and intends to make far more.  I believe Arizona schools have already been harmed too much.  We must draw the line against further destruction.  We must stop trying balancing the budget on the backs of our school children.  We must start restoring our public schools.  I will never be satisfied with Arizona schools at the bottom nationally."

 Goddard urged the media to ask the Governor to defend her plans.  "She refuses to debate, so I can't ask her.  She must be held accountable to explain her plans and not continue to duck and hide until after the election."

Countdown: The Chamber of Commerce, Inside The Plot to Buy America

The Chamber's Foreign Influence

B Faiz Shakir, Benjamin Armbruster, George Zornick, Zaid Jilani, Alex Seitz-Wald, and Tanya Somanader
ThinkProgress
October 6, 2010

CORPORATE ETHICS

Following the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision in January, the right-wing U.S. Chamber of Commerce has taken record-breaking steps to influence the 2010 midterm elections. Pledging to spend an unprecedented $75 million this year, the Chamber is in the midst of launching one of the largest partisan attack campaigns to defeat Democrats, including candidates like Jack Conway (KY), Sen. Barbara Boxer (CA), Jerry Brown (CA), Rep. Joe Sestak (PA) and  Rep. Tom Perriello (VA). Having aired more than 8,000 campaign ads on behalf of GOP Senate candidates alone and having spent 85 percent of its current expenditure on Republicans, the Chamber's spending has "dwarfed every other issue group and most political party candidate committee spending."

It is well-established that the Chamber has used dues from corporations like health insurance giant Aetna to try to defeat health care reform, received contributions from bailed-out banks to lobby against Wall Street reform, and solicited funds from Fox News' parent company News Corporation for its election season attack campaign.

But a new ThinkProgress investigation reveals that the Chamber is leveraging foreign companies to help fund its activities. Foreign corporations that join the Chamber pay dues that go into the Chamber's general account, which the Chamber then employs to fund its attack campaign. The Chamber "firmly denies the charge, saying its internal accounting rules prevent any foreign money from being used for political purposes."


But, as a New York Times editorial notes today, foreign money is fungible, so "it is impossible for an outsider to know whether the group is following its rules." "We want to know what the system is. Basically, they claim they have a system, it's not enough to simply trust them, we need to verify," said ThinkProgress' Editor-in-Chief Faiz Shakir on MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews yesterday. While Congressional members and watchdog groups are calling for further investigation into the charges, such campaign actions fall into "something of a regulatory netherworld" leading campaign finance watchdogs, lawyers, and current and former federal officials to believe regulatory agencies like the IRS or the FEC will not examine them closely. Thus, with the Citizens United ruling and the Chamber's abuse of its 501(c)(6) standing, the Chamber is set to use "unlimited money from donors who have no fear of disclosure."


HOW IT WORKS

Continue reading here.

Feds: Arizona is major supplier of weapons used by Mexican drug cartels

by Jay Crandall, Special Projects Producer
azfamily.com
Posted on October 4, 2010 at 9:56 PM
Updated Monday, Oct 4 at 9:58 PM

Federal authorities are saying Arizona has now become a major supplier of the weapons being used by Mexican drug cartels. If the guns are purchased legally, how are they ending up in the hands of traffickers?

Blackwater's Black Ops

By Jeremy Scahill
The Nation
September 15, 2010   |    This article appeared in the October 4, 2010 edition of The Nation.

Over the past several years, entities closely linked to the private security firm Blackwater have provided intelligence, training and security services to US and foreign governments as well as several multinational corporations, including Monsanto, Chevron, the Walt Disney Company, Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines and banking giants Deutsche Bank and Barclays, according to documents obtained by The Nation. Blackwater's work for corporations and government agencies was contracted using two companies owned by Blackwater's owner and founder, Erik Prince: Total Intelligence Solutions and the Terrorism Research Center (TRC). Prince is listed as the chairman of both companies in internal company documents, which show how the web of companies functions as a highly coordinated operation. Officials from Total Intelligence, TRC and Blackwater (which now calls itself Xe Services) did not respond to numerous requests for comment for this article.

One of the most incendiary details in the documents is that Blackwater, through Total Intelligence, sought to become the "intel arm" of Monsanto, offering to provide operatives to infiltrate activist groups organizing against the multinational biotech firm.

Governmental recipients of intelligence services and counterterrorism training from Prince's companies include the Kingdom of Jordan, the Canadian military and the Netherlands police, as well as several US military bases, including Fort Bragg, home of the elite Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), and Fort Huachuca, where military interrogators are trained, according to the documents. In addition, Blackwater worked through the companies for the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency and the US European Command.

Continue Reading here.


Jeremy Scahill, a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellow at The Nation Institute, is the author of the bestselling Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army, published by Nation Books. He is an award-winning investigative journalist and correspondent for the national radio and TV program Democracy Now!. You can read his blog on TheNation.com here.

WATCH Jeremy Scahill discuss Blackwater's Secret Relationship with Big Business on
Democracy Now!

The Real News: "Creative Destruction" and Fascism

 The RealNews
 Sept. 29, 2010

Prof. Robert Pollin, Director of PERI Institute, University of Massachusetts at Amherst:

Austerity is Not a Solution: Why the Deficit Hawks are Wrong

 

Record income inequality threatens democracy

By The Editorial Board
STLToday
Posted: Thursday, September 30, 2010 9:00 pm

“With the middle class gone and the laborer condemned to remain a lifelong wage-earner ... all the conditions are ripe for a crowning class-conflict equalling in intensity and bitterness anything pictured by the most radical follower of Karl Marx.”

Income inequality is at record levels in the United States, the Associated Press reported earlier this week after crunching new numbers from the Census Bureau.

In fact, income inequality was only slightly greater in 2009 than it was in 2008. But the trend toward greater income inequality has been apparent since the early 1980s — the decade when Gordon Gekko, a fictional character in Oliver Stone’s “Wall Street,” first extolled the virtues of greed.

History — even fairly recent history — is not America’s strong suit. We ignore it at our own peril.
As far back as 1915, when Wisconsin statistician Willford King published the first comprehensive study of income and wealth in the United States, income inequality stoked fears of those concerned for the future of democracy.

Mr. King, whose words are quoted at the top of this editorial, was no socialist. His intention was to demonstrate that all Americans were sharing in the nation’s explosion of wealth. But that’s not what he found.

Instead, he discovered that the richest 1 percent of Americans controlled a staggering 15 percent of the nation’s wealth.

In the end, Mr. King decided that conditions weren’t yet quite ripe for the kind of class warfare that soon would break out in Russia.

As bad as things were here, he found, there were even greater concentrations of wealth and less social mobility in European nations such as Prussia and France.

That’s not true any more. So why aren’t more ordinary Americans concerned about the growing chasm between the super rich and everyone else? Perhaps it’s because they have no clue how wide it has become.

A new study by Michael I. Norton and Dan Ariely, professors at Harvard Business School and Duke University, sheds unflattering light on the question. They asked a nationally and politically representative group of 1,000 Americans to estimate how much wealth is controlled by the wealthiest 20 percent of Americans.

Continue reading here.

Conservatives Just Killed 240,000 Jobs

Posted by Terrance Heath
Alternet.org
October 5, 2010


Conservatives in Congress just fired 240,000 American workers.  Conservatives in Congress just essentially added 240,000 more Americans to the ranks of the unemployed. However you frame it, people who want to work and have been working
are soon to be out of work, thanks to GOP Senators members who refused to reauthorize — even for three months — a stimulus program so successful it won praise from Republicans like Mississippi governor Haley Barbour.

Steve Benen explains.

At issue is the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) Emergency Fund, which should have been one of the most popular programs in Congress. A key component of the Recovery Act, the fund subsidizes jobs with private companies, nonprofits, and government agencies, and has single handedly put more than 240,000 unemployed people back to work in 32 states and the District of Columbia.

Governors, including Mississippi’s Haley Barbour (R), have sung its praises, and urged its extension. In July, CNN called the TANF Emergency Fund "a stimulus program even a Republican can love."
Except, Republicans didn’t love it. Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) led the floor fight this week, and was even willing to accept a compromise: instead of a year-long extension that Democrats had requested, Durbin sought a three-month extension, at a cost of just $500 million, in order to keep the fund alive through the end of the year. Sen. Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.) refused to allow it.

"The majority has known this program was going to expire at the end of this month all year and has taken no steps to reauthorize this important social safety net program," said Enzi, who blocked Durbin’s request for "unanimous consent" for a reauthorization.

Of course, GOP Senator Judd Gregg (N,H.) killed a Democratic effort at reauthorization in March of this year. Just last week, GOP Senator Orrin Hatch shot down Democratic Senator Max Baucus’s attempt to reauthorize the program as part of a "tax extenders bill." And the House approved a bill reauthorizing TANF back in May.

Continue reading here.

Election 2010 - Republicans Plan Broad Attack on Women's Rights if Elected

By Steven Leser 
Oped News.com
October 5, 2010


It became clear to me shortly after writing my last article (1) that among the many crazy ideas espoused by many of its Tea Party candidates, the Republicans have a special focus in mind if elected. Republicans have simmered in anger for over 40 years at the progress of the women's equal rights movement. Finally, now, in 2010, they feel comfortable enough to run on a broad spectrum of policies that are blatantly anti-women's rights.

My last article mentioned that:

"While we are accustomed to Republican candidates being against a woman's right to have an abortion, five high-profile Tea Party Republican SENATE candidates, Rand Paul of Kentucky, Ken Buck of Colorado, Joe Miller of Alaska, Sharron Angle of Nevada, and Christine O'Donnell of Delaware, are even against a woman's right to have an abortion in the case of rape or incest! Women would have to have their rapists baby. Girls raped by an uncle or cousin or their fathers would have to give birth to a child from a resulting pregnancy."

------------------------

There are a few updates to that. I also found out that the GOP's NY Governor hopeful, Carl Paladino, is also for outlawing abortion for women even in the case of rape and incest. The reason that is so important is that if somehow, Roe v. Wade were overturned, the states would have the right to allow or prohibit abortion. With Paladino at the helm, New York's women would have no right to an abortion in virtually any situation. To say that this is out of touch with the wishes of the women of New York is an understatement.

I also found out that several Republican candidates, Ken Buck running for Senate in Colorado among them, want to limit the contraceptive options available to women.

We already know from data that the reason that women do not get equal pay for equal work has to do with family issues and planning. Women tend to outperform their male colleagues in pay up to the time they start a family and then they fall behind. Women who opt to never have families go on earning more than their male colleagues.

If you add restrictions on abortion and contraception to that equation, you are going to push the progress of women's equality back to what it was in the 1950's. Women are going to be reduced to having no choice but to be stay at home mothers taking care of their families. There is nothing wrong with that role for women AND men who choose it, but to have it forced on anyone because of restricted family planning options is criminal.

From their rhetoric, it's also clear that Republicans are back to wanting to punish women for having sex outside of marriage and want to trap women into having children if they dare to have sex either inside or outside of marriage. They want to destroy women's ability to plan a family and thus plan a career around their family plans.

By now some of you probably think I am exaggerating. It isn't possible, some of you are thinking, that Republicans really want to punish women for pre-marital sex. You would be wrong. This is what North Carolina Senator Jim DeMint had to say on the subject:

"[I]f someone is openly homosexual, they shouldn't be teaching in the classroom and he holds the same position on an unmarried woman who's sleeping with her boyfriend -- she shouldn't be in the classroom."

Continue Reading here.

BREWER'S DAMAGE TO CHILDREN - Education, Healthcare for Kids - Brewer Doesn't Care, She Just Cuts

terrygoddard.com
Oct. 4, 2010

Jan Brewer has never hesitated to attack the welfare of our children.  Later today, in a stunning display of hypocrisy, she is scheduled to declare this 'Arizona's Child Health Day.' Yet, her cuts to children's healthcare and education are the meanest and most devastating Arizona has ever experienced.

"At the beginning of this year, Jan Brewer tossed tens of thousands of children off of Arizona's KidsCare health insurance," said Attorney General Terry Goddard. "Her cuts to education, so far, are more than one billion dollars.  Now, she is trying to destroy First Things First, our program for early education, which we know is the most effective way to help kids succeed in school."

 

"Arizona children are forced to suffer for her horrible budget management," added Goddard. 

Here is a partial list of the budget damage Jan Brewer has done to children and families:

• Tens of thousands of children removed from the AHCCCS KidsCare program.   
• New enrollment in KidsCare remains frozen.
• State support for community health care centers has been wiped out, cutting off programs for the very poor.
• 4,200 children have lost behavioral health services.
• 20,000 poor children removed from the list for child-care subsidies.
• Severe cuts to in-home services, forcing more children into foster care.
• 300 developmentally disabled children have been cut off from state service.
• 850 severely ill children removed from Children's Rehabilitative Services.
• Substance abuse treatment denied to parents, putting a large number of children at further risk.
• Support for grandparents caring for grandchildren has been eliminated.
• CPS is no longer required to investigate all cases of child abuse.

In November, if voters pass Proposition 302, they will destroy the voter-approved program that funds early education in Arizona (First Things First).

  

"The debate on early education is over," said Goddard.  "There is no question that the best way to improve educational outcomes is to ensure - through early education - that children are ready to learn before they enter the first grade.  Jan Brewer is willing to sacrifice early childhood support and everything that goes with it - better test scores, higher graduation rates, and a better-trained work force."



"Rather than doing the hard work necessary to balance the budget - without this kind of damage to children - she is giving in to her lobbyist handlers and letting them call the most painful shots.