Democratic Diva

1. Greg Patterson, Stan Barnes, and I will be providing primary election color commentary. From 8 to 9 we’ll be on HDTV channel 12.2, AKA the “Weather Plus” channel. That’s if you have the box thingy. Channel 83 on Cox Cable. Then we’ll be doing segments on the regular Channel 12 broadcast at 10pm.

2. Every so often I get a comment to a post I did months ago, probably because the person googled a topic and my post came up. Normally I just approve them and move on, but this poor creature was so upset about a post I did back in January about Rep. Judy Burges and her Birther Bill that I wanted to make sure y’all didn’t miss it.

Quoth Ronda:

NO. YOU SUCK. She is doing a great job and has a right to her opinion without trashy people like yourself making obnoxious comments. Judy…keep up the good work.

Judy sure does have a right to her opinion, Ronda. No matter how ignorant and bigoted it is. I hope you feel better now.

**UPDATE**: I facebooked Ronda and her full name is Ronda Burges-Apolinar. She’s Judy the Birther’s daughter.

I’m not going to endorse or prognosticate about tomorrow. You may have noticed that I don’t say much about the Democratic primary races in Arizona. I definitely have my favorites but I’ve rarely felt a compelling reason to weigh in on a primary candidate in my blog posts because, for the most part, I’m pleased with our slate of candidates. Not a nutjob or cretin in the bunch*, which is not something our GOP counterparts can claim.

To be sure, there’s been mud slung and some of our candidates have over-promised and exaggerated their own qualifications and their opponents’ shortcomings, which is to be expected in elections. But I’ll happily support every statewide and local candidate who emerges in tomorrow’s election for the general race. (Of course, I live in a lege district with no contested Democratic primaries so that’s easy for me to say.)

*I know. Some of y’all are really committed to a particular primary candidate and are convinced that his/her opponent is a putrescent scalawag of the worst order. But starting Wednesday we gotta put it behind us to face a tough, but not insurmountable, General Election season.

(P.S.: Good luck tomorrow, Katie!)

I’m on the panel with Greg Patterson and Stan Barnes. Yeah, I know, 2 against 1, but it’s mostly about the GOP primaries since so many of them are trainwrecks. As a voter in CD3, I know I’m going to miss the 10 candidate clown car that is the Republican slate. I’m rooting for Brock Landers, all the way!

Next up, I’ve been asked to encourage y’all to contact Jan Brewer to demand that she participate in debates with Terry Goddard. He wants to do 6 and she intends only to do the Clean Elections one, and you know she’d try to wriggle out of that one if her participation weren’t mandatory. Phone number is 602-542-4331 and you can contact her via email here.

Here’s what I’m sending:

Dear Governor Brewer,

Governor of Arizona is an incredibly important responsibility and this state has problems far too numerous and pressing for you to be avoiding debates with your opponent. If you have time to be interviewed by national cable news networks then you have time to face Attorney General Goddard and let voters know where you stand and how you plan to address issues ranging from education to the economy to public safety.

Do not be fooled by that adorable countenance. FiFi the French Bulldog puppy, whom we’ve been dog-sitting intermittently the past few weeks, is a hellbeast. FiFi, when I praise you effusively for pooping outside on the rare occasions you deign to do so it’s because that’s where I want you to poop. Not on the Persian rug in the entryway, repeatedly. Also, as much as I know you want to play with the 14 year old female Chihuahua-Poodle mix and the 12 year old female Sheltie who reside in this household, I have to tell you that they don’t reciprocate your desire and, in fact, very much want you to leave them alone. Really, I’ve never seen my Sheltie bare her teeth like that. It’s quite impressive.

So all this doggie concierge service/interference running has taken me away from blogging.

What I want y’all to discuss in my absence: “It’s hard out there for an illegal employer. Those undocumented workers are so wily!!” That was the message from Arizona businesses to AZ Republic reporter Jahna Berry for her front page article in yesterday’s edition. Nope, it’s not the business owners’ fault. At all. Business owners never entice people to come to the U.S. for jobs. Nope. No way.

Say, when do you suppose AZ Chamber of Commerce endorsed candidate for Arizona Governor Jan Brewer is going to be asked hard hitting questions about illegal employers? The 12th of Never?

Anyhoo, I gotta get back to rubbing the belly of the high-maintenance bundle of cuteness that is FiFi the French Bulldog puppy. Because she’s my schmoopie woopie poopie!

Sorry, dealing with a crapstorm of personal stuff, including the return of a French Bulldog puppy who is very cute, but a PITA.

Read this, and discuss.

Candidates who run as successful owners of businesses love to tell voters how they should vote for them because, you know, they own successful businesses. Which makes them uniquely qualified for for public office because they’ll run their office like they ran their business!

On Sunday Square Off the issue of Republican AZ State Treasurer candidate Doug Ducey’s non-payment of property taxes came up and I didn’t get a chance to speak to it because Brahm Resnik was ready for the next topic. Apologies to Andrei Cherny because I wanted to say something but the show goes by fast. Had I been able to, I would have said that Ducey’s tax delinquency is the least of the problems with him. Dude’s got a sordid history of hosing Cold Stone Creamery franchisees over. Stephen Lemons of the New Times covered it a few days ago.

Indeed, many former franchisees who got into Cold Stone during the Ducey years — from 1995 to 2007 — have similar complaints about Cold Stone and what they refer to, over and over again, as a failed business model.

They say this business model encouraged expansion at all costs and hobbled them with high-priced goods they were obligated to purchase from Cold Stone-approved vendors. And they complain about Cold Stone’s erstwhile two-for-one coupons, with the franchisee picking up the tab on the freebie, and the fact that stores were located too close together, thus diluting sales.

This year, in a review of the 10 most-popular franchises, CNNMoney.com noted that Cold Stone franchisees have a 31 percent failure rate.

“The product is sweet, but the financials can be bitter,” notes the article. “In the last 10 years, almost one in three [Small Business Administration]-backed franchisees defaulted on [its] loan. It’s an expensive shop to start, too: The initial franchise fee is $42,000.”

Far more devastating was a June 2008 piece by Richard Gibson in the Wall Street Journal that detailed the plights of ex-franchisees, some of whom had gone bankrupt, losing homes and life savings in the process.

In my Congressional District, CD3, where just about every Republican and his dog is running for the seat, the putative front-runner is a guy by the name of Steve Moak. Steve Moak runs a nonprofit called Not My Kid, where he purports to educate parents on the dangers of drugs and other “destructive behaviors”. He’s under attack by his closest competitor in the race, Ben “Brock Landers” Quayle for not disclosing the relationship between Not My Kid and the home drug testing kits that his for-profit company (surprise!) sells on his tax forms. Again, the New Times broke the story and this time is was writer James King.

In 2004, Moak bought First Check Diagnostics, a California company that makes home drug tests. That same year, he and his wife began a program through notMykid called Project 7th Grade.

Project 7th Grade provided at-home drug tests for parents of children in the program. The idea, as Moak told New Times last week, is to give parents the tools to see if their kids are using drugs, as well as to provide a deterrent for kids who may be tempted to get high.

Moak says if a kid goes to a party and is offered drugs, being able to say “no, my parents drug-test me” would provide the kid with an easy way to decline the pusher’s offer without lookin’ nerdy.

Guess what brand of drug tests Project 7th Grade provided those in the program: the same ones produced by Moak’s for-profit company, First Check Diagnostics.

Simultaneous with the creation of Project 7th Grade, the operating budget for notMYkid shifted from funding education programs to fueling the use of the drug tests produced by Moak’s for-profit company under the guise of the new program.

Moak finally disclosed the relationship in 2007, when he sold First Check Diagnostics for $25 million, because the sale made him more vulnerable to an audit. In this case, unlike with Ducey, I’m going to say the tax thing is a bigger deal than the sleaziness of Moak’s business model. Not telling the IRS about the connection between the Not My Kid nonprofit and First Check Diagnostics is pretty stinking dishonest and on a par with Doug Ducey bamboozling Cold Stone franchise investors.

This gets to the crux of the problem with thinking that “success” in business translates to being a good candidate for public office. If making big profits for your corporation and amassing a large personal fortune is the be all and end all of how we should judge a candidate, and we don’t look at the whole picture, then I guess Bernie Madoff would make an outstanding State Treasurer or Congressman.

At our Sunday Square Off taping Friday morning, Howie Fischer tried to play the “blame Janet” card, saying that a flawed inmate classification system was what allowed three violent offenders to be placed in a medium security facility. It was Napolitano’s system, according to Howie. I asked Howie what, if anything, Governor Brewer had done to change it. He acknowledged that she’d done nothing, but still, Janet!!

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.