Create perfect Thanksgiving pies. Drive to Costco, select an apple, pecan, and pumpkin pie and pay for them. Then head to Fry’s or Safeway or Bashas for whipped cream and vanilla ice cream.

Argue effectively with your wingnut relatives. Many of y’all aren’t lucky like me. I’ll be feasting with a bunch of commie liberals tomorrow so the conversation will revolve around things like where to get good organic produce in Phoenix and what an appalling collection of dangerous morons the GOP Presidential Primary roster is. Those of you facing the unfortunate predicament of having to chow with your Fox News watching inlaws have a bigger challenge. I feel for you. Luckily, the interwebz provide a wealth of useful sources to help you help your brother in law to a giant cup of STFU.

MoveOn has the Top Five Fox Myths To Debunk This Thankgiving. Short, pithy, and substantiated statements to help you demolish myths about the Occupy Movement and the deficit.

Speaking of the deficit: Economist Dean Baker took NY Times privileged wanker extraordinaire David Brooks to task for falsely conflating Greece’s economic troubles with America’s. This has become a common bleat from the Right and Baker neatly lays out the case for why it’s idiotic and disingenuous to compare the two countries: 1. Greece has chronic structural debt problems that are totally unlike ours. 2. The US is a highly diverse economy (still) and our dollar is protected from inflationary pressures. 3. We have a sovereign currency, unlike Greece, which is a member of the EU. Greece is more analogous to Ohio than it is to the entire U.S.

“47% of Americans pay no taxes!” My suggestion is not to bother with the usual response about how everyone actually does pay a whole host of taxes (sales, payroll, etc). Make your brother in law defend his tax breaks! As I’ve explained here before, the increasing number of households paying no taxes is driven by stagnating wages but also in large part by exemptions and credits to parents. I cited conservative economist Keith Hennessey and here’s the link again: Why do so many Americans pay no income tax?

Fannie and Freddie totally caused the collapse!!1! This lie has been laid to waste by every sentient being who researched the matter for two minutes but it remains an article of faith with conservatives. Mother Jones debunked it, yet again, in response to Michele Bachmann last month:

The origination of subprime loans came primarily from non-bank lenders not covered by the [Community Reinvestment Act, a law pushing the two GSEs to purchase more loans in the secondary markets and thus expand access to housing loans to low-income neighborhoods];

The majority of the underwriting, at least for the first few years of the boom, were by these same non-bank lenders;

When the big banks began chasing subprime, it was due to the profit motive, not any mandate from the President (a Republican) or the Congress (Republican controlled) or the GSEs they oversaw;

Prior to 2005, nearly all of these sub-prime loans were bought by Wall Street—NOT Fannie & Freddie;

In fact, prior to 2005, the GSEs were not permitted to purchase non-conforming mortgages;

The change in FNM/FRE conforming mortgage purchases in 2005 was not due to any legislation or marching orders from the President (a Republican) or the the Congress (Republican controlled). It was the profit motive that led them to this action.

Hope this helps!

Good morning Chairwoman Barto, Vice Chairman Court, and members of the Committee:

My name is Christie Herrera and I am the director of the Health and Human Services Task Force at the American Legislative Exchange Council, or “ALEC.” ALEC is the nation’s largest, nonpartisan membership association, with approximately 2,000 legislator members from all 50 states and 78 members of Congress. Right here in Arizona, we have 37 ALEC members in the House and Senate. Since 2005, 22 states have enacted model legislation drafted by ALEC’s Health and Human Services Task Force.

ALEC Commends HCR 2014

I submit this statement to commend House Concurrent Resolution 2014, which would protect the rights of Arizonans to make their own health care choices.

HCR 2014 is modeled after ALEC’s model legislation, the Freedom of Choice in Health Care Act. Five other states—Minnesota, New Mexico, North Dakota, Wisconsin, and Wyoming— have introduced legislation similar to HCR 2014.

Senator Barto was on ALEC’s Health Care Task Force Executive Committee at their recent 2011 conference in New Orleans. In 2009, she was recognized as a Model Legislator by ALEC for sponsoring the Healthcare Freedom Act (HCR 2014).

It’s all so innocent. Such a coinky-dink. I’m sure we’re blowing it out of proportion.

LOBBYING AND LOBBYISTS IN ARIZONA

Lobbying in Arizona includes:
1. Attempting to influence the passage or defeat of any legislation
2. By directly communicating with any legislator, or in the case of bonding, lobbyists directly communicating with any school district employee or a school district governing board member, or
3. Attempting to influence any rule making proceeding by directly communicating with any state officer or
employee.

Do ya think we should maybe consider making ALEC register as lobbyists?

According to a review of City Council spending from July 2007 to December 2010, Neely’s office had the highest expenditures charged to the city, totaling nearly $108,000 with about $42,455 reported to be for food. Much of that, $33,000, was for food at Roy’s Restaurant at the JW Marriott Phoenix Desert Ridge Resort & Spa.

She’s taking flak from her opponents for amount but I’m bugged by the fact that she chose that same venue, at a restaurant in a swanky golf resort at Desert Ridge, to do a monthly constituent outreach event. These breakfasts were held once a month over a period of 3 and 1/2 years, at 7 am on Friday mornings. Hmm. What kind of people typically go to breakfasts at resorts hosted by prominent local elected officials at 7am on weekdays? My experience is they tend to be politicos and/or schmoozy networkers looking for a favor or an opportunity. I’ve been to more than a few myself and I can tell you that the only working class people you ever see at them are the servers. Sure enough, here’s how a Republic piece a month ago about Neely’s replacement Bryan Jeffries’ (who is taking a more varied and inclusive tack on constituent outreach) describes Neely’s monthly breakfasts:

In recent years, those have taken place on weekday mornings at Roy’s, a fine-dining restaurant at the JW Marriott Desert Ridge Resort in northeast Phoenix. Always in attendance were city staff members, officials with the Paradise Valley Unified School District, business representatives hoping to curry favor with the councilwoman, and a handful of regulars from the ranks of voters.

Not that there’s anything unethical about being a business representative currying favor with a councilwoman at a breakfast at a posh resort. Curry on with your bad-ass networking selves, schmoozers! But candidate Neely made her priorities known in the years she served on the Council and they sure as hell didn’t include the kind of people in her district who wouldn’t be able to get to the JW Marriott Phoenix Desert Ridge Resort & Spa on a workday.

That’s obviously a political email. Sal is defending himself from a recall, which he has every right to do, and he is certainly entitled to do so as hyperbolically as he wishes. But he’s not allowed to do it from his City Council office at 10:30 on a Wednesday morning. Those are working hours and Sal is supposed to be using them to do City Council business and serve his constituents. Ironic that a guy who regularly casts aspersions on the work ethic of public workers has so much downtime on the job.

As this email shows, Sal doesn’t just send campaign emails improperly from his government office, he sometimes embeds a political message in his official government emails:

DiCiccio has been desperately pushing the story that “union thugs” are threatening him and his family. (A tale so flimsy that so far it has rated only one breathless Doug MacEachern editorial -contrast that with Doug’s many tirades about Tucson ethnic studies. And it really seemed like MacEachern was phoning it in.) I guess it’s okay to tell that to your constituents but I don’t think mentioning the recall passes the proper-use-of-official emal smell test.

But this is a guy who has no internal ethical conflict over owning parcels of land near the highway he’s trying to get developed so what do you expect?

Update to add a detail I forgot: Is DiCiccio using a constituent email list to send political emails?

I became aware of ALEC back in 2006 when I was researching for my State Senate race. I was struck by how similar Republican bills in Arizona were to those in Utah, South Carolina, and several other GOP majority legislature states. I found this Progressive States Network report that explained it all. ALEC brings the multi-national corporate agenda along with a truckload of corporate money to (mostly) Republican legislators, providing them with model legislation.

HOW ALEC AND THE RIGHTWING OPERATE IN THE STATES At its heart, ALEC is little more than a tax-exempt recipient and front for some of the nation’s largest corporations, as companies ranging from Enron, ExxonMobil, Coors Brewing, Pfizer to Phillip Morris have paid for ALEC’s expansion and success:
•Corporate-dominated task forces of ALEC and other non-profit groups provide industry with, in the words of one former industry co-chair, ‘a channel to express its interests to a majority of the states’ speakers of the house and presidents of the senate.’
•A key to ALEC’s success is that it coordinates the introduction of legislation with national experts, local political operations, state-based think tanks, national issue-based lobbying networks and direct corporate lobbying in the statehouses.
•States are vulnerable to rightwing takeover because most state legislatures are made up of poorly paid, part-time lawmakers with few if any staff to research or evaluate the laws they are asked to approve. There are therefore few staff who can challenge the expertise presented by conservative operatives or to uncover the hidden payoffs for corporate interests contained in the legislation.
•By setting the agenda in the statehouses, even a legislative defeat gives ALEC’s legislative allies an issue to run on at the next election, with progressives always reacting and often having little to say in response.

THE ALEC AGENDA: THE IMMEDIATE PAYOFF TO ITS CORPORATE BACKERS The rightwing network fronted by ALEC gives a “public interest” sheen to the raw special pleading of corporate interests that have bought a slot on the organization’s board. Some examples of its recent agenda items includes:
•Defending Oil Companies from Global Warming Legislation: Backed by the oil industry, ALEC lined up legislators to ‘temporarily’ lower taxes on gasoline to divert attention from record oil company profits. ALEC has also worked to undermine regulations aimed at curbing the carbon dioxide emissions leading to global warming.
•Serving Big Pharma: Fighting the Importation of Prescription Drugs: ALEC and its drug company backers have mounted a full-scale campaign to defeat initiatives by cities and states to promote importing prescription medicines from Canada.
•Protecting Low-Wage Employers: Rolling Back Labor Rights: ALEC has promoted legislation to block local governments from raising local minimum wages or even requiring government contractors to pay a fair wage to their employees.
•Telecoms: Blocking Municipal Broadband at Expense of High Tech: ALEC has worked to block or hamstring cities trying to build cheaper or even free Internet services for their residents.
•Helping Insurance Companies Fight Off Corporate Accountability: ALEC has been promoting a campaign to stop state insurance commissioners from requiring insurance companies to meet the same accountability and auditing rules that were imposed on publicly-traded corporations in the wake of the Enron debacle.
•The Bankers Payoff from Long Term Health Care ‘Reform’: ALEC has been advocating cracking down on seniors who shelter income in a home while using Medicaid to finance long term care, a campaign to undermine health care for seniors and force them to buy ‘reverse annuity mortgages” from ALEC’s financial industry patrons.

That was back in 2006. Republicans have taken large majorities in Red States across the country since then, giving ALEC a clearer path to successful implementation of their pro-corporate, anti-worker, and anti-consumer agenda. Janet Napolitano’s departure from the Arizona’s Governor’s office and Jan Brewer’s subsequent appointment to that office and ushered in SB1070, which was not (contrary to popular belief) the brainchild of Russell Pearce. Last October NPR reported that it was model legislation drafted in a hotel conference room by an ALEC task force of which Corrections Corporation of America was a key participant. Also from that NPR piece.

But first ALEC has to get legislators to the conferences. The organization encourages state lawmakers to bring their families. Corporations sponsor golf tournaments on the side and throw parties at night, according to interviews and records obtained by NPR.

Bowman says that’s nothing special: “We have breakfasts and lunch. They’re at Marriotts and Hyatts. They’re normal chicken dinner. Maybe sometimes they get steaks. Yeah, we feed the people. We think that it’s OK to eat at a conference.”
Videos and photos from one recent ALEC conference show banquets, open bar parties and baseball games — all hosted by corporations. Tax records show the group spent $138,000 to keep legislators’ children entertained for the week.

But the legislators don’t have to declare these as corporate gifts.

Consider this: If a corporation hosts a party or baseball game and legislators attend, most states require the lawmakers to say where they went and who paid. In this case though, legislators can just say they went to ALEC’s conference. They don’t have to declare which corporations sponsored these events.

$138K to entertain kids? Dude, that’s a lotta Chuck E. Cheese. And clearly it’s pretty easy, if you’re a corporation, to persuade lawmakers whom you’ve wined and dined and whose kids you’ve placated – and who don’t even have to report it as corporate gifts – to be very obliging about pushing legislation that you’ve written for them.

I’ll have more about ALEC a little later.

Update on the Corp Comm hearing is that nothing was decided and they will re-adjourn Friday morning at 9:am. If you’re so inclined please contact the staffs of the following Commissioners and let them know that reopening APS’s 2011 Renewable Energy Plan is unnecessary and disruptive to business.

John LeSueur
Advisor to Chairman Gary Pierce
602-542-4145
jlesueur@azcc.gov

Antonio Gill
Executive Aide to Chairman Gary Pierce
602-542-3933
agill@azcc.gov

***********************************

Amanda Ho
Advisor to Commissioner Bob Stump
602-542-0837
ahho@azcc.gov

Trisha Morgan
Executive Aide to Commissioner Bob Stump
602-542-3935
tmorgan@azcc.gov

*************************************

Tracy Hart
Advisor to Commissioner Brenda Burns
602-542-0745
thart@azcc.gov

Thomas Galvin
Advisor to Commissioner Brenda Burns
602-542-3622
tgalvin@azcc.gov

Brewer lie #1: Federal health care law makes it too hard to fund transplants.
FACTS:
The federal health care law has nothing to do with transplants in Arizona. Brewer signed into law the cuts to life-saving transplants BEFORE the federal law passed.
The federal health care law in 2010 gave Brewer a choice by saying that if Arizona wants to keep federal matching money, it needs to maintain current spending on AHCCCS. However, transplants are not included in this requirement, which shows again that federal law has nothing to do with funding transplants in Arizona.
Every other state in the country funds transplants and they are bound to the same federal law.

Brewer lie #2: Brewer says the 2009 federal stimulus act came with rules saying she can’t make any cuts to AHCCCS that would allow her to free up money to spend on transplants. She claims that all the budget money went to AHCCCS, leaving no room to fund transplants, which weren’t included in the federal requirement.
FACT:
Brewer cut $60.6 million from AHCCCS after the stimulus bill passed, because the stimulus bill allowed all states to cut money from AHCCCS.

But she seems to have ‘misplaced’ $30 million in discretionary stimulus funds:

September 2010
· Brewer spends $2 million on discretionary stimulus money on algae research.

October 2010
· Bone marrow transplant patient Mark Price loses AHCCCS coverage for his transplant surgery, is saved by a benefactor/donor.
· Brewer still has $30 million of discretionary stimulus dollars in her coffers, according to state economists.

November 2010
· A family friend of liver transplant patient Francisco Felix dies and donates her liver to him.
· Felix, who is on AHCCCS no longer has transplant coverage and is left with a few hours to come up with $200,000 to pay for the transplant.
· Felix loses his opportunity and the family friend’s liver goes to someone else.
· State economists say Brewer has said she used $30 million of discretionary stimulus dollars, but has not told the public what she used them for.
· House Democrats file a public records request to find out what she spent Arizona’s tax dollars on.
· State economists say transplants will cost only $1.2 million next year.

The House Dems note on the blog post that Brewer spent $2 million on algae research in September. Yeah, I get that it could have been spent on transplants but I can’t hate on alternative fuel research. If we were dealing with a forced choice between algae and transplant patients, then by all means go with the transplants. But Brewer got $185 million in discretionary funds from Obama’s stimulus, much of which have gone to kind of law ‘n order stuff that gives GOPers a tingle up their legs. In fact, in July Brewer committed $10 million to what she called a Border Security Enhancement Program. Considering that Judge Susan Bolton blocked several key parts of SB1070 just a few days after she approved the funding (and Brewer had to know that was coming) what, exactly, are the jurisdictions awarded the money going to be doing with it? The guidelines specifically disallow using the funds for general police activities (page 7).

I realize that it’s easier to get negative public attention against something like algae research. It invokes shades of Sarah Palin railing against fruit fly research in the 2008 campaign. But that fruit fly research Palin mocked led to substantial inroads into understanding autism. Research into algae as a potential fuel source is important too, and potentially profitable to Arizona. And alternative fuels and energy independence are popular in general. As for the $10 million from Jan’s discretionary stimulus funds going to “border security”, as popular as border security is, it probably wouldn’t be too hard to find at least $2 million going to non-immigration related enforcement, especially given the Bolton decision.

Allowable Costs. The intent of this program is to provide supplemental resources to county, local, and tribal law enforcement agencies to address criminal activity associated with the lack of security along the U.S. Borders. While equipment is an allowable expense, the Border Security Enhancement Program is not intended to be an equipment-centric grant and jurisdictions must consider the ongoing maintenance and operation cost associated with any equipment purchases. The following expense categories are allowable under the terms of this agreement:

 New Sworn Officers
 Personnel overtime and associated backfill cost
 Part-Time Personnel
 Travel, Per Diem and Lodging
 Vehicle and Equipment Purchases and Rentals
 Vehicle/Equipment Maintenance
 Fuel Cost and/or Mileage Reimbursement
 Equipment (For telecommunications equipment purchases the applicant must discuss the interoperability features of the equipment in their proposal, including specific information about other agencies that the equipment will communicate with)

3. Unallowable Costs. The Border Security Enhancement Program is one-time funding intended to supplement existing public safety resources, and thus, is not intended as a hiring program. Therefore,
applying funds toward hiring full-time or permanent sworn public safety officers, while an eligible activity, is done at the risk of each jurisdiction as there are currently no funds identified to sustain this
program and any funded positions into future fiscal years. Border Security Enhancement Program funding shall not be used to supplant inherent routine patrols and law enforcement operations or activities not directly related to providing enhanced law enforcement activities targeting the illegal drug trade, human smuggling, or illegal immigration. Finally, construction and/or renovation costs are prohibited under this grant application.

I guess you could call that a temporary jobs program. But what Arizona really needs are long-term investments that not only create jobs, but do something qualitatively important to the future of the human race. In other words, algae research is a good thing. As good as organ transplants. I’m disappointed in Democratic leadership for attacking it.

Ooh, that has me deeply concerned. The deal in today’s installment is that some teachers are teaching in schools as contractors while also drawing retirement pay. And because they are on retirement the teachers and their employers are prohibited from contributing into the retirement system, meaning less money going into the pension fund that has to pay future retirees. Is this a problem? Sure. Is the article overstating the magnitude of it? Yep. But what’s frustrating is how the real cause of this particular problem – privatization – is ignored in the rush to attack teachers and other public employees.

The AZ State Retirement System, unions, and retiree groups worked on legislation to modify the system so that you wouldn’t have people retiring and then immediately returning to work in the exact same job. The bill, HB2390, was sponsored by Rep. Tom Boone (R) in 2010 but never made it out of committee. What happened to that legislation?

The official story is that the budget crisis stopped the bill from moving forward. But people close to the situation will tell you that a Republican lobbyist named Kevin Demenna got the bill killed on behalf of Smart Schools Plus, the private company he represents. (The Republic story reports that the company now supports the changes.)

This is yet another demonstration of the gaping disconnect between the rhetoric of conservatives and the reality of their policies. They promote privatization as a way to streamline big, bloated government and improve services. But more often than not the privatization schemes are conduits for former Republican politicians and lobbyists to enrich themselves with no measurable improvement to the government function they took over and often a decline in the quality of the work (see: private prisons). Meanwhile, the demonization of government workers and unions continues apace. A mostly unsuspecting public buys it because they’ve been manipulated for 30 years to see some vague amorphous entity known as “government” as the source of most problems.

Privatization is popular because it sounds free market-y. And based on several conversations I’ve had with voters while working on campaigns, it seems that a lot of people think that if a government function is privatized it no longer costs the taxpayers anything. The cost of that function magically disappears from the public ledger while those clever and sensible business people transform it into a self-supporting and profitable venture. Conservatives are especially prone to have this blind spot, as I’ve discovered when I try to explain to them how funneling billions to Halliburton in no-bid contracts is not the most optimal use of tax dollars. I might as well be talking to a tree stump. It doesn’t seem to occur to them that money going to defense contractors is tax money just like the money going to schools and social services. This public ignorance is what enables lobbyists and assorted scam artists to concoct schemes to bilk taxpayers that they call “reform”. Generally speaking anything called “reform” of a public institution can usually be defined as “rich people have figured out yet another way to get their hands on public money and ensure that we the people get even less of the service we’re paying for.”

We keep hearing how drastic budget cuts need to be made to get Arizona out of the hole we’re in. We must examine all programs and determine where waste can be eliminated, we are told. May I suggest starting with a thorough evaluation of every Republican privatization boondoggle currently operating in AZ? Not that it’s likely to happen but a Diva can dream.

Okay. Fine. Leave aside the other issues, such as human error at the Kingman facility and the unholy alliance of the private prison industry, the Brewer administration, and Republican legislators. Look at Arizona’s inmate classification directive. You can find it in a 23 page pdf right on the AZ Dept. of Corrections website. Something stands out right away, doesn’t it? I’ve helpfully circled it for you.

Pop Quiz: Who was the Governor of Arizona on February 25, 2010?

I didn’t even know about the date of the order until Terry Goddard brought it up in his rousing speech at the AZ Democratic Party State Committee meeting yesterday. Brewer owns this – lock, stock, and Inmate Classification order. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

The nutjob story in a nutshell, from Mashable:

The conservative-leaning group utilized a Yahoo Group and a service called coRanks to tell its nearly 100 members to Digg or Bury certain stories multiple times per day. It was founded in May of last year, meaning that this group has been operating for more than a year. The accused ringleader is Bettverboten, a still-active Digg power user with more than 1,500 submissions and 73,000 Diggs.

Those are some impressive numbers. I can only imagine how many articles this group buried over the year. On one hand, I’m envious of their organizational skills and dedication. On the other hand, who has the time?