by David Safier

Recent international tests of students have put Finland's schools at or near the top of the rankings. Finnish education has a few traits that should make conservative "education reformers" sit up and take notice. It doesn't give standardized tests to students until high school, and very few even then. Instead of punishing or closing "low performing schools," it puts money and resources into improving student achievement (The usual result is, student achievement improves). And its teachers are drawn from the top 10% of the country's college students unlike the U.S., where teachers tend to come from the middle of the college pack.

A Finnish expert on education, Pasi Sahlberg, has an article debunking the idea that "Great Teachers" are the answer to improving U.S. education. He acknowledges the importance of strong teachers, of course, but the promoters of the "Great Teachers" solution are ignoring more important aspects of our country's education problems.

Sahlberg puts poverty at the top of the list of the concerns the U.S. needs to address to improve its children's education. He cites studies concluding that at most a third of the variation in student achievement is the result of teacher quality, school climate and leadership. The other two-thirds is attributable to factors outside the school. And it's almost universally acknowledged, poverty is the number one factor in low student achievement. Sahlberg compares the U.S. and Finland.

In the United States today, 23 percent of children live in poor homes. In Finland, the same way to calculate child poverty would show that figure to be almost five times smaller. The United States ranked in the bottom four in the recent United Nations review on child well-being.  Among 29 wealthy countries, the United States landed second from the last in child poverty and held a similarly poor position in “child life satisfaction.” Teachers alone, regardless of how effective they are, will not be able to overcome the challenges that poor children bring with them to schools everyday.

There's more to the article, but for me, that's the most important takeaway. Bill Gates can push the "Great Teacher" solution to our education problems and his new high tech teacher evaluation methodology all he wants. But if he and other corporate "education reformers" would look at their own bank accounts compared to the bottom 50% of the country and put their energies towards lowering our shameful poverty rate, that effort would go a lot further toward improving our students' achievement than all their bashing of teachers and traditional public schools.

by David Safier

The NY Times has a good op ed by UCLA law prof Joanna C. Schwartz on the value of malpractice litigation in reducing medical errors. Contrary to the notion that malpractice suits result in people hiding problems, she says it encourages improved practices.

New evidence, however, contradicts the conventional wisdom that malpractice litigation compromises the patient safety movement’s call for transparency. In fact, the opposite appears to be occurring: the openness and transparency promoted by patient safety advocates appear to be influencing hospitals’ responses to litigation risk.

[snip]

[W]hile hospitals historically took an adversarial and secretive approach to lawsuits and error, that has begun to change. In recent years, hospitals have become increasingly open with patients: over 80 percent of hospitals in my study have a policy of apologizing to patients when errors occur. And hospitals are more willing to discuss and learn from errors with hospital staff.

What accounts for these changes? Several factors appear to have overcome historical resistance to transparency, including widespread laws requiring disclosure to patients and confidentiality protections for internal discussions of error. Hospitals have also found that disclosing errors to patients and offering early settlements reduces the costs and frequency of litigation.

My study also shows that malpractice suits are playing an unexpected role in patient safety efforts, as a source of valuable information about medical error. Over 95 percent of the hospitals in my study integrate information from lawsuits into patient safety efforts. And risk managers and patient-safety personnel overwhelmingly report that lawsuit data have proved useful in efforts to identify and address error.

My knowledge on this issue is minimal. When I have questions, my usual go-to guy is Barry Kirschner, a friend and local lawyer. He sent me an email expanding on the op ed.

One of many reasons people have an incentive to drive more carefully is the cost of insurance and the threat of accountability should they be responsible for an accident. There is less irresponsible drinking and driving and risky conduct because of this civil liability.

Doctors have many pressures on them on and off the job. The surgeon who is on call and not supposed to have a drink because of the possibility of working, has extra incentive to do the right thing because of the possibility of civil litigation. It also applies to the surgeon who is on his or her feet for 8-10 hours a day and cannot maintain the type of focus a patient should have when the patients' eyes or spine are at issue. Civil litigation as a possibility also affects the Radiologist, influencing the MD to be that much more certain that all nuances of the image are considered properly and with sufficient time and energy.

I have had no personal involvement in a malpractice case for over 10 years. My very limited experience suggests that the bias against patients who bring suits against doctors overwhelms the fairness of the system.  There are many problems with how things are done. The right wing has long had as a goal the elimination of malpractice suits.  This has the two fold advantage to them of currying favor with insurance companies and doctors, and dealing a financial blow to trial lawyers, generally funders of more progressive causes. But the consumer/patient will suffer with worse outcomes, including quite a few which are catastrophic, if the providers have less concern about civil liability.

Posted by Bob Lord

Imagine that? Huff Po reports that a Fed Board Governor, Sarah Bloom Raskin, has "raised the possibility that rising inequality may restrain economic growth for several years."

I suppose we should be encouraged that someone in a position of modest power is starting to see inequality as a negative. But at the same time, it's stunning how cautious and late to the party she is, and she's supposedly a step ahead of her fellow Fed Board Governors.

Did it really take her this long to start worrying that if wealth and income flow out of the hands of people who buy stuff and into the hands of those who chase speculative investments, the economy might suffer?

“In my view, the large and increasing amount of inequality in income and wealth, which has been an ongoing development for decades, may have exacerbated the crisis,” Fed governor Sarah Bloom Raskin said Thursday in a speech delivered in Washington. “More research is required to determine whether it may also pose a significant headwind to the recovery from the crisis for years to come.”

More research is required? No, Sarah, it really isn't. Call Joseph Stiglitz. He'll tell you all you need to know.

But we have to keep telling ourselves: "This is a good development." Heck, in another decade or so, they might even conclude we perhaps ought to do something about inequality.

Posted by AZBlueMeanie:

Remember back around 2004 the attempt to create a "Buy Blue" list of businesses that are progressive? There was hesitation by many businesses to participate, because they feared the knee-jerk reaction of wingnuts who would boycott their business if they were identified as progressive.

During the Sandra Fluke advertising boycott of the drug adled Rush Limbaugh, I would get requests for a list of his advertisers to boycott. (This boycott is still going strong, by the way, and Rush may be losing his contract with at least one radio network over the loss of advertising dollars).

Rejoice progressive shoppers! Now "there's an app for that." New App Lets You Boycott Koch Brothers, Monsanto And More By Scanning Your Shopping Cart - Forbes:

In her keynote speech at last year’s annual Netroots Nation gathering, Darcy Burner pitched a seemingly simple idea to the thousands of bloggers and web developers in the audience. The former Microsoft programmer and congressional candidate proposed a smartphone app allowing shoppers to swipe barcodes to check whether conservative billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch were behind a product on the shelves.

Burner figured the average supermarket shopper had no idea that buying Brawny paper towels, Angel Soft toilet paper or Dixie cups meant contributing cash to Koch Industries through its subsidiary Georgia-Pacific. Similarly, purchasing a pair of yoga pants containing Lycra or a Stainmaster carpet meant indirectly handing the Kochs your money (Koch Industries bought Invista, one of the world’s largest fiber and textiles companies, in 2004 from DuPont).

At the time, Burner created a mock interface for her app, but that’s as far as she got. She was waiting to find the right team to build out the back end, which could be complicated given often murky corporate ownership structures.

She wasn’t aware that as she delivered her Netroots speech, a group of developers was hard at work on Buycott, an even more sophisticated version of the app she proposed.

“I remember reading Forbes’ story on the proposed app to help boycott Koch Industries and wishing that we were ready to launch our product,” said Buycott’s marketing director Maceo Martinez.

The app itself is the work of one Los Angeles-based 26-year-old freelance programmer, Ivan Pardo, who has devoted the last 16 months to Buycott. “It’s been completely bootstrapped up to this point,” he said. Martinez and another friend have pitched in to promote the app.

Pardo’s handiwork is available for download on iPhone or Android, making its debut in iTunes and Google Play in early May. You can scan the barcode on any product and the free app will trace its ownership all the way to its top corporate parent company, including conglomerates like Koch Industries. Once you’ve scanned an item, Buycott will show you its corporate family tree on your phone screen. Scan a box of Splenda sweetener, for instance, and you’ll see its parent, McNeil Nutritionals, is a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson.

Even more impressively, you can join user-created campaigns to boycott business practices that violate your principles rather than single companies. One of these campaigns, Demand GMO Labeling, will scan your box of cereal and tell you if it was made by one of the 36 corporations that donated more than $150,000 to oppose the mandatory labeling of genetically modified food.

* * *

Buycott is still working on adding new data to its back end and fine-tuning its information on corporate ownership structures. Most companies in the current database actually own more brands than Buycott has on record. The developers are asking shoppers to help improve their technology by inputting names of products they scan that the app doesn’t already recognize.

* * *

There are Buycott campaigns encouraging shoppers to support brands that have, say, openly backed LGBT rights. You can scan a bottle of Absolut vodka or a bag of Starbucks coffee beans and learn that both companies have come out for equal marriage.

“I don’t want to push any single point of view with the app,” said Pardo. “For me, it was critical to allow users to create campaigns because I don’t think it’s Buycott’s role to tell people what to buy. We simply want to provide a platform that empowers consumers to make well-informed purchasing decisions.”

Note: The story reports that there has been such high demand for the app that the servers are having problems keeping up. They are working on the problem, so keep trying.

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

This morning I posted:

The worst purveyors of this "Benghazi! Benghazi!! Benghazi!!!" faux scandal have been the new Three Stooges, Sens. John McCain, his puppet boy Little Lindsey Graham, and Kelly Ayotte as "Shemp." They have perpetrated a fraud for purely partisan political retaliation. They besmirched the reputation of U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, who has been vindicated by the emails released this week.

The new Three Stooges owe Susan Rice and the American people an apology. They have demonstrated their utter lack of character and judgment to serve in the U.S. Senate. If they had any honor, they would submit their resignations from the U.S. Senate for their indefensible actions.

Others are making the same point. Steve Benen writes today in Rice's rehabilitated reputation:

When Time's Michael Crowley reported this week on what we learned from the disclosure of internal administration emails on Benghazi, it noted three larger takeaways, one of which was "Susan Rice got hosed."

That was true before, but it's even more obvious now. Republicans, led by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), set out to destroy the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations last November, blaming her for Benghazi talking points. The campaign against Rice worked -- she was not nominated for Secretary of State -- but it's now painfully clear she "played no role in crafting the talking points," and simply shared with the public the best information available at the time.

Indeed, our friends at Politics Nation are asking a good question: "Where's the apology for Susan Rice?" The Rev. Al Sharpton added, "The GOP smear campaign against Ambassador Rice was vicious, personal, and wrong. That's why she deserves an apology, but I won't hold my breath."

Susan Rice apparently will receive a consolation in prize.

Insiders with ties to the Obama administration tell The Cable that U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice has become the heir apparent to National Security Advisor Tom Donilon -- a post at the epicenter of foreign-policy decision making and arguably more influential than secretary of state, a job for which she withdrew her candidacy last fall amid severe political pressure.

"It's definitely happening," a source who recently spoke with Rice told The Cable. "She is sure she is coming and so too her husband and closest friends."

"Susan is a very likely candidate to replace him whenever he would choose to leave," agreed Dennis Ross, a former special assistant to President Obama and counselor at the Washington Institute. "She is close to the president, has the credentials, and has a breadth of experience."

by David Safier

A new ad about Jeff Flake's vote against background checks will be playing in Arizona through May 30. It's Caren Teves talking about her son and his fiance who were killed in the Aurora, Colorado, shooting, then showing the letter from Flake saying he supported background checks, which he went on to vote against.

Jeff "Both Ways" Flake continues to try and wriggle his way out of the bad publicity, saying he did vote to strengthen background checks, it's just that . . . (Fill in the incomprehensible blank).

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

It looks like Tucson will have a city council election after all. I was starting to wonder with the filing deadline of May 29 fast approaching. Republican candidates only need a ridiculously low number of signatures to qualify for the ballot (because there are so few Republicans in Tucson):

WARD 3  minimum 123  maximum 245

WARD 5  minimum   69  maximum 137

WARD 6  minimum 183  maximum 365

The Democratic incumbents all filed to run for reelection.

Karin Uhlich (D-WARD 3) was the first candidate to collect the maximum number of petition signatures and has filed to qualify for the City of Tucson's Clean Elections matching funds.

Uhlich will face a rematch with her opponent from four years ago, Ben Buehler-Garcia, who filed this week. Buehler-Garcia tries again to take Uhlich's Ward 3 Tucson City Council seat. Buehler-Garcia turned in the maximum 245 signatures for a Republican candidate in Ward 3. I assume he will be funded by the usual suspect GOP bagmen such as Jim Click and Bruce Ash, and of course, lobbyists from the Rosemont Mine. I'll bet most of his money will come from outside of the city.

Richard Fimbres (D-WARD 5) has his maximum number of signatures, but i am infomed that he is working on the last few Clean Elections contributions he needs to qualify for the City of Tucson's Clean Elections matching funds. If you haven't already contributed, it's time to pony up.

Fimbres will face an unknown political newcomer. Challenger files for Ward 5 council seat:

Michael Polak, who is seeking office for the first time, needed 69 signatures to qualify for the primary ballot. He turned in 131.

Polak, 45, is a Marine Corps veteran and California native who moved to Tucson four years ago while employed by Boeing.

He owns Desert Armory Gun Parts and Accessories.

Ahhh, so he's the NRA guy I've heard about. Funny, isn't he running against the wrong incumbent? Aren't the gun worshipers and fetishists all bent out of shape over Councilman Steve Kozachik and his gun buy-back earlier this year?

It looks like none of them had the cajones to take on Steve Kozachik (D-WARD 6), who has the maximum number of signatures, and has filed to qualify for the City of Tucson's Clean Elections matching funds.

The Tucson City Clerk's office does not indicate any Republican took out papers to run against Kozachik in Ward 6.

So far, there are currently no contested primaries. There is an election contest in only two out of the three wards up for election this year, in two heavily Democratic wards (although the general election vote in November is city-wide). Ho-hum.

This will only benefit Democratic candidates in a Democratic city. There's not much for Republicans to get excited about. Even the "Debbie Downer" Arizona Daily Star has grudgingly had nice things to say about the Tucson City Council of late. Downtown shows promising signs of resurgence, and Cranes, cones, construction workers - downtown Tucson is coming back to life. I am sure they will find something to complain about, however, to keep the advertising dollars from Jim Click rolling in.

The deadline for nominations other than by primary election is also Wednesday, May 29.

The deadline for write-in candidates in a primary election is Thursday, July 18.

The "deadbeat deadline" for write-in candidates for the general election is Thursday, September 26. If you haven't engaged before then, don't even bother.

by Pamela Powers Hannley

The Downtown Tucson Partnership-- like other business groups before them-- has designs on the Ronstadt Transit Center (RTC). Since the early Feb. 5 City Council vote approving a 60-90 day public comment period before throwing the RTC to the dogs... er ... developers,  the Tucson Bus Riders Union held a public forum at the Rialto, compiled and organized hundreds written comments collected at the forum, met with City Councilwoman Karin Uhlich, and participated in collecting 2800 surveys from bus riders. 

When the Ronstadt Transit Center was constructed in 1991, it was billed as a community gathering place. Dance and music performances at the RTC were featured during Downtown Saturday Nights (pre-cursor to Second Saturdays but twice per month in its heyday). At the April public forum, dozens of speakers talked about improving the transit center, making it a focal point for community activities (as it once was), and building community-- not commercial develop-- at the site.

The big question is: in making its decision regarding the fate of the Ronstadt Transit Center, will the City Council listen to the 41-member Downtown Tucson Partnership or the thousands of Tucsonans who have voiced their opinion on this issue?

Today, May 17, a group of transit activists, downtown residents, and members of the Tucson Bus Riders Union will gather at the Ronstadt Transit Center in a community-building exercise. Wear white, bring your musical instruments, signs, and your community spirit to the RTC at 5 p.m. and let's see what happens. Meet under the clock, and don't disrupt the buses. This is a bus-friendly, community event-- not a protest.

For background on the most recent Ronstadt Transit Center struggle, check out stakeholder opinions after the jump.

Downtown for Everyone, Part 1: What Business Wants

Downtown for Everyone, Part 2: What Downtown Neighborhoods Want

Downtown for Everyone, Part 3: What Bus Riders Want

Downtown for Everyone, Part 4: What Tucson Citizens Want

Tucsonans have pushed back unwise development in the past. The proposed downtown Tucson hotel-- financed by the taxpayers-- is a perfect example of the people rising up and telling the City Council what to do... loudly and clearly. The people won that battle in 2010.

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Last year, Rep. Michelle Ugenti (R-Scottsdale) sponsored HB 2826 (consolidated election dates; political subdivisions), a bill providing for the consolidation of elections in the fall of even numbered years only. The law will apply to elections in 2014 and thereafter.

The City of Tucson filed its special action for declaratory and injunctive relief on October 10, 2013 in the Pima County Superior Court, City of Tucson v. State of Arizona et al. (Case No. C20126272). The City of Phoenix Intervened as a plaintiff. The case is assigned to Judge James E. Marner.

On Monday, Judge Marner ruled on the motions for summary judgment. (For some reason I am unable to access the case documents online today, so the ruling is not attached).

I have tried to interest our local newspapers The Arizona Dail Star and the Tucson Weekly in reporting on this case, but apparently they no longer have an interest in court reporting. The Arizona Republic today has a report, from a Phoenix-centric perspective, naturally. Phoenix, Tucson fight change in election calendar:

City leaders had sought a decision on the law’s validity and an injunction to prevent it from taking effect while they argue the issue in court. They said the law interferes with a matter of purely local concern: their authority to determine how to conduct elections.

Cities and towns across Arizona have objected to the law and cite a long list of potential consequences, including that local elections would become fiercely partisan or draw little attention at the bottom of a more crowded ballot. The law, signed by Gov. Jan Brewer in 2012, will impact roughly half of the state’s 70 municipalities.

Supporters of the move have said it will increase voter turnout and help some cities and towns save money because they could utilize county elections resources, instead of paying the cost of printing ballots and staffing elections on their own.

In Phoenix, Stanton and four council members — Bill Gates, Thelda Williams, Michael Nowakowski and Daniel Valenzuela — could potentially serve a year beyond their elected terms, which expire in 2015, assuming they stay in office for that long. Each council member represents about 180,000 residents who would have to wait longer to elect their representative.

Tucson filed its lawsuit against the state in October after several months of cities grappling over how they might respond. A few months later, Phoenix joined the case as an intervenor, meaning the city can argue the case, which will impact all Arizona charter municipalities.

Phoenix City Clerk Cris Meyer said the law would require sweeping changes to the city’s election system and do away with the city-focused process voters have requested over the years, particularly the emphasis on a nonpartisan election cycle.

“Commingling of the state’s and Phoenix’s processes, including potentially commingled ballots, diminishes Phoenix’s ability to ensure a pristine process, free of party politics and state or federal issues typically associated with party platforms,” attorneys for Phoenix argued in court documents.

* * *

The city would likely have to abandon its voting-center system, which allows residents to cast an in-person ballot at more than 20 locations starting several days before the election. Arizona holds elections on a single day, and voters have assigned precincts.

* * *

The state Attorney General’s Office contends election alignment has led to a massive increase in voter turnout in Chandler, Scottsdale and Gilbert, which moved their elections from the spring to fall of even-numbered years. For example, 14 percent of Scottsdale registered voters turned out for the city’s March 2006 election, compared with 85 percent in fall 2008, according to court documents.

“The record is clear that election alignment causes dramatic increases in voter turnout and dramatic reductions in overall election costs and cost per vote,” the Attorney General’s Office wrote.

Pima County Superior Court Judge James Marner also denied a motion by the state for a summary judgment to dismiss the case. But Marner said conflicting evidence presented by the state and cities regarding voter turnout and cost savings needs to be heard in court.

Maybe one of our local tee-vee news reporters will find this case worth the trouble of reporting. How about you Bud Foster? How about you Barbara Grijalva? Someone? Anyone? Hello?

by David Safier

The national PAC Democrats for Education Reform (DFER) recently set up shop in Arizona. DFER is a pro "education reform" group funded primarily by hedge fund money that favors school choice, charter schools and vouchers with a bit of teacher union bashing on the side. It has clear connections to conservative groups pushing a nearly identical privatization agenda. By giving campaign cash and support to Democratic candidates and sitting legislators in exchange for them playing nice with conservatives on education legislation, DFER can pull in those few extra votes needed to pass legislation that moves funds toward charters and private schools and away from school districts. The California Democratic Party is concerned enough about the PAC's influence, it passed a formal resolution condemning DFER. For more information about DFER and relevant links, read my earlier post.

DFER Arizona has a State Director and six people sitting on its Board of Advisors. It's an interesting group. Most of them lean toward the moderate to conservative end of the Democratic Party but, so far as I can tell, they're genuine Democrats. The most suspect to me is the State Director, Christina María Martínez. Her connections with the conservative "education reform" movement appear to go beyond what you would expect from a Democrat, including serving as a lobbyist in Arizona for the very conservative American Federation for Children. Martinez and most of the others, no matter their Democratic credentials, have drunk the conservative privatization Kool Aid and want to spread the gospel amongst their fellow Democrats. This makes it even more important to make the group's agenda clear and to let people know who the Director and Board members are since they're often people working alongside us and voting with the rest of us on other issues.

DFER's Arizona State Director is Christina María Martínez. The Board Members, along with their thumbnail descriptions on the DFER website, are:

• Rhonda Cagle, Senior Vice President of Communications, Imagine Schools
• Victor Contreras, South Phoenix Community Leader, Arizona Licensed Realtor
• Mark Cardenas, Arizona State Representatives, LD-13 [Cardenas is actually in LD-19. The website has it wrong.]
• Julie Erfle, Writer and Speaker for Politics Uncuffed
• Mel Hannah, Chairman of Arizona African American Leadership and Legislative Council (AAALLC)
• Jaime Casap, Global Education Evangelist

Below the fold you'll find more details about the players that I've gleaned from Arizonans who know them and from the internet. The descriptions are incomplete, but they're a start.

DFER is closely connected to its conservative counterpart, the American Federation for Children (AFC). In 2011, Martínez was a registered lobbyist for AFC in Arizona. In February, 2012, Martínez spoke in favor of private school tuition tax credits and the Empowerment Scholarship Accounts, Arizona's version of school vouchers, during a State House Ways and Means Committee Meeting.

In October, 2012, at an HCREO Legislative Summit, Martínez moderated a panel discussion, "Public Policy, Parental Choice, and the Landscape for Educational Options," whose panel consisted of an advisor for AFC and a state director for DFER. In a column she wrote on Huffington Post about how important the issue of education is to Hispanic voters, Martínez discussed a poll created jointly by HCREO and the AFC. One of the main points she drew from the poll was, "91% of Latino voters support distributing vouchers and tax credit scholarships should be available in some form."

Rhonda Cagle, Board of Advisors. Cagle is currently a Senior Vice President of Communications for Imagine Schools, a national Charter Management Organization which is, in my opinion, among the worst in the country and one I've written about extensively. Cagle is married to Lorenzo Sierra, a Democrat who ran unsuccessfully in the 2012 Democratic primary in LD-19. Sierra was one of four Democrats running for the two House seats. He and one of the winning candidates, Mark Cardenas, were endorsed by the American Federation for Children (AFC), which gives most of its endorsements and campaign contributions to Republican candidates. The Democrats AFC endorses are in Democrat-majority districts where there are no viable Republican candidates.

Cagle has written that she used to be registered as an Independent and voted for both Democrats and Republicans but has registered as a Democrat since she married Sierra.

Mark Cardenas, Board of Advisors: Cardenas is a first term state representative from LD-19. Like Lorenzo Sierra who lost in the primary, Cardenas was endorsed by the American Federation for Children (AFC), which gives most of its endorsements and campaign contributions to Republican candidates. The Democrats AFC endorses are in Democrat-majority districts where there are no viable Republican candidates.

Victor Contreras, Board of Advisors: Contreras is a realtor who ran for State Senate as a Democrat in 2010 and 2012. In his 2010 race, he received $6,188 in campaign contributions from the American Federation for Children. (In 2010, AFC also gave $12,235 to Al Melvin and $63,153 to John Huppenthal.)

In an Arizona Republic Q&A, Contreras stated, "I support school vouchers because they give parents another option and create more opportunities for students." He attended the February, 2012, House Ways and Means Committee meeting also attended by Christina María Martínez and, like her, supported private school tuition tax credits and the Empowerment Scholarship Accounts, Arizona's version of school vouchers.

On his Facebook page, Contreras stated in January, "Proud to support School Choice and the kickoff to School Choice Week here in PHX and across the country!" Also on FB, he told people they should see the film, "Won't Back Down," a film pushing parent triggers, the conservative legislation that allows parents to convert school district schools into charters.

Julie Erfle, Board of Advisors: Erfle's background doesn't fit neatly with the other board members. She became known when her husband, Phoenix Police Officer Nick Erfle, was killed by an ex-con who was in the country illegally. Officer Erfle's name was invoked by anti-immigration activists in support of SB1070, but Julie opposed SB1070 and is a supporter of comprehensive immigration reform. Other than a post on her blog, Uncuffed, supporting some aspects of performance funding, she has not said or written anything I can find that would put her in the choice/education reform camp. In fact, in another blog post, she comments that charters don't produce better results than traditional public schools, there's no reason to think vouchers will result in better student achievement, and decreased regulation in education can create problems. I haven't found anything she has said or done that would make her a supporter of DFER.

Mel Hannah, Board of Advisors: Mel Hannah has a long list of accomplishments, including being the first African American to serve on the Flagstaff City Council. He has been connected with a wide variety of civic organizations including, in the area of education, Chair of the African American Advisory Council of the Arizona Department of Education and Chair of the Tempe Union High School District Diversity Committee. He is the current chair of the African American Legislative and Leadership Conference (AALLC), an organization founded by State Senator Leah Landrum Taylor. I found no information about Hannah's stances on conservative "education reform" issues.

Jaime Casap, Board of Advisors: Casap is a Google executive working on business development related to K-12 education. He is a fervent advocate of digital learning, which would make him a likely supporter of online learning and blended learning, both approaches advocated by the conservative "education reform" movement. He's a member of the Digital Learning Council founded by Jeb Bush and Bob Wise. He's also a faculty associate at ASU and serves on Arizona’s STEM Education Advisory Board.

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Major Garrett, who used to work for FAUX News Fraudcasting for years, left the GOPropaganda machine to go to work for CBS News. Last night on CBS Evening News, Major Garrett put a definitive end to the conservative media entertainment complex cult's "Benghazi! Benghazi!! Benghazi!!!" faux scandal, with this report (transcript by) Josh Marshall: CBS Calls Out GOP For Doctoring Benghazi Emails:

MAJOR GARRETT: Scott, Republicans have claimed that the State Department under Hillary Clinton was trying to protect itself from criticism. The White House released the real e-mails late yesterday and here’s what we found when we compared them to the quotes that had been provided by Republicans. One e-mail was written by Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes. On Friday, Republicans leaked what they said was a quote from Rhodes. “We must make sure that the talking points reflect all agency equities, including those of the State Department, and we don’t want to undermine the FBI investigation.” But it turns out, in the actual e-mail Rhodes did not mention the State Department. It read “We need to resolve this in a way that respects all the relevant equities, particularly the investigation.” Republicans also provided what they said was a quote from an e-mail written by State Department Spokesman Victoria Nuland. The Republican version notes Nuland discussing: “The penultimate point is a paragraph talking about all the previous warnings provided by the Agency (CIA) about al-Qaeda’s presence and activities of al-Qaeda.” The actual e-mail from Nuland says: the “…penultimate point could be abused by Members to beat the State Department for not paying attention to Agency warnings…” The C.I.A. agreed with the concerns raised by the State Department and revised the talking points to make them less specific than the C.I.A.’s original version, eliminating references to al-Qaeda and affiliates and earlier security warnings. There is no evidence, Scott, the White House orchestrated these changes.

Video below the fold.

Of course, FAUX News Fraudcasting and hate radio will continue to push this faux scandal to its ignorant listeners, but stick a fork in it, it's done.

The worst purveyors of this "Benghazi! Benghazi!! Benghazi!!!" faux scandal have been the new Three Stooges, Sens. John McCain, his puppet boy Little Lindsey Graham, and Kelly Ayotte as "Shemp." They have perpetrated a fraud for purely partisan political retaliation. They besmirched the reputation of U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, who has been vindicated by the emails released this week.

The new Three Stooges owe Susan Rice and the American people an apology. They have demonstrated their utter lack of character and judgment to serve in the U.S. Senate. If they had any honor, they would submit their resignations from the U.S. Senate for their indefensible actions.

The corporate "lamestream" media -- in particular ABC News and The Weekly Standard -- which hyped the fabricated GOP summaries of emails last week, also owe the American people an apology. At least CBS News has made its mea culpa.

by Pamela Powers Hannley

"Amid a discussion of the Bible and the Promised Land, the state House voted Tuesday to let Arizonans vote next year on whether they want to be able to challenge the federal government," reported the Capitol Media Services in the Arizona Daily Star.

Both Craig McDermott and the AZ Blue Meanie have written about the SCR1016 vote which would insert a strict constructionist passage to the Arizona Constitution thus setting up the Legislature for future court battles with the feds (their favorite way to waste OUR money) if US government dares to do something not specifically listed in the Constitution by the founding fathers-- like providing universal healthcare, food stamps, Social Security, etc. You know what they're up to.

I would like to point out to the Lege that separation of church and state IS in the US Constitution.

What the heck are you doing discussing the "Bible and the Promised Land" while you are in session? These topics are irrelevant to the conduct of government. Period. Get back to work.

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Senator Steve Farley (D-LD 9) provides a special budget edition of The Farley Report UPDATE: Medicaid, Budget Pass Senate:

Here's the brief update I promised you during the last Farley Report:

I have served seven sessions in the Legislature. I have never before experienced a day like today. Together with five brave Republicans -- Majority Leader John McComish, Majority Whip Adam Driggs, Rich Crandall, Steve Pierce, and Bob Worsley, we 13 Senate Democrats amended and passed budget bills to invest in Child Protective Services, K-12 and Higher Education, State Parks and Arts Commission grants, Adult Education and Literacy, and above all, the Governor's Medicaid restoration plan to cover 300,000 more people in poverty, save our hospitals and boost our economy. The bills now move to the House for consideration.

The drama was immense, as this coalition proved our strength in vote after vote and reconsideration after reconsideration as we held firm together, across party lines. Through it all, we stood tall for all our constituents.

This is why I got into public service in the first place -- to create bipartisan, common-sense solutions to make Arizona a better place. Tonight, we actually accomplished that on the floor of the Arizona Senate. After seven years in the minority, losing vote after vote, it was a revelation to be part of a bipartisan moderate majority adopting good amendments, and voting for good budget bills that pass.

This is the type of work the people of Arizona have been waiting for -- we put the partisan games aside to do what is right. I hope and believe that this is a glimpse of a better political future for our state.

Have a wonderful evening. I'm heading back home to Tucson.

Thanks for your faith in me as your Senator. 

Steve Farley

Posted by Bob Lord

Inequality and climate change, two of our three most critical challenges (American imperialism being the third), have one thing in common:

Each report is more stunning (and more depressing) than the previous one. 

The following is an excerpt from Welcome to the Guilded City of New York, an article that appeared in a recent issue of The Nation:

Here is New York in 2013: a city of dazzling resurrection and official neglect, remarkable wealth and even more remarkable inequality. Despite the popular narrative of a city reborn—after the fiscal crisis of the ’70s, the crack epidemic of the ’80s, the terrorist attack of 2001, the superstorm of 2012—the extraordinary triumph of New York’s existence is tempered by the outrage of that inequality. Here, one of the country’s poorest congressional districts, primarily in the South Bronx, sits less than a mile from one of its wealthiest, which includes Manhattan’s Upper East Side. And here, a billionaire mayor presides over a homelessness crisis so massive that 50,000 men, women and children sleep in shelters each night. More New Yorkers are homeless these days than at any time since the Great Depression.

The numbers tell the story. Between 2000 and 2010, the median income of the city’s eight wealthiest neighborhoods jumped 55 percent, according to the Fiscal Policy Institute. Meanwhile, as the cushy precincts got even cushier, median income dipped 3 percent in middle-income areas and 0.2 percent in the poorest neighborhoods.

New York, of course, has always been a city of striking contrasts, but its wealth gap is growing ever more extreme. The richest 1 percent of New Yorkers claimed almost 39 percent of the city’s income share in 2012—up from 12 percent in 1980. The money pouring in at the top of the income brackets has simply pooled there, without trickling down to the bottom or even the middle. This great pooling has occurred as median wages have fallen, the cost of living has increased, and the poverty rate has risen to 21 percent—as high as it was in 1980. As a result, America’s most iconic city now has the same inequality index as Swaziland.

Consider the highlighted passage for a second. Almost 40% of the income in New York flows to the top 1%. The average top one percenter has an income about 66 times that of the average 99 percenter. Before long, half the income in New York will flow to the top 1%. And the rest of the country won't be that far behind. 

So what will come first, an uprising of the masses or a planet on fire?

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

In 2004, a handful of Republican senators joined with Democratic senators to wrest control of the Arizona Senate chamber from an obstructionist Senate President. It hasn't happened since -- until today.

A bipartisan Senate coalition, led by the Republican majority leader John McComish no less, gave tentative approval Thursday to Gov. Jan Brewer’s proposal to restore and expand Medicaid (AHCCCS). Ariz. moves closer to Medicaid expansion:

[The coalition beat back more than a dozen hostile GOP amendments sponsored by Senate President Andy Biggs and Sen. Kelli Ward, in a failed attempt to weaken the measure.]

The measure awaits a formal vote of the full Senate, which is expected to come later today. If it passes, as expected, it’s likely to run up against a buzzsaw in the House, where the fate of Medicaid expansion, and the budget it’s attached to, remain uncertain.

Senate President Andy Biggs, R-Gilbert, a steadfast opponent of the governor’s proposal, fought unsuccessfully to kill it with a slew of amendments, including requiring a two-thirds vote for approval, eliminating a hospital tax that will help pay for expansion, converting all state employee health insurance to Medicaid and repealing expansion if even one Medicaid patient is found to be an undocumented citizen.

* * *

But again and again, two members of Biggs’ leadership team and three other GOP senators stood with the chamber’s 13 Democrats to defeat Biggs’ amendment. Majority Leader John McComish, Majority Whip Adam Driggs and Sens. Rich Crandall, Steve Pierce and Bob Worsley joined Democrats to approve the Medicaid amendment on an 18-12 vote.

“We’re faced with two unpleasant choices,” said McComish, who sponsored the Medicaid amendment. “If we don’t do Medicaid expansion, our rainy-day fund will be totally wiped out.”

One of Biggs amendments was successful, requiring a three-year “sunset” review by the Legislature of the expanded health-care program. That provision also is contained by a package of bills unveiled this week by House Speaker Andy Tobin, R-Paulden.

The Arizona Capitol Times (subscription required) adds, Senate gives preliminary approval to Medicaid expansion:

Whether that wave of momentum carries over into the House next week, when representatives are likely to begin debating the $8.8 billion budget and the expansion of the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment system, remains unclear.

The votes for Brewer’s expansion plan in the House are far less certain than they were in the Senate.

* * *

McComish, R-Phoenix, supported one of Biggs’ amendments: a sunset measure that would repeal Medicaid expansion on Jan. 1, 2017, essentially requiring the Legislature to vote again in four years and decide if the state still wants to continue the program.

* * *

“The only thing we know for sure about the state of Arizona over the next three years is we’re going to lose money if we don’t pass Medicaid expansion. And with the Biggs floor amendment, we know that in three years, we get another crack at it,” he said.

House leaders will likely huddle next week to see what support there is in the chamber for the Senate budget and Medicaid expansion.

* * *

Earlier in the day, Senate Republicans briefly entertained the possibility of blowing up the budget and starting from scratch next week, but budget deals reached by Senate Democrats and a few Republican dissenters forged ahead in approving the $8.8 billion budget – to the dismay of the majority of Republicans.

One by one, Democrats’ amendments were offered, initially rejected, but then approved on division votes in the Senate Committee of the Whole. That was despite the objections of a majority of the Republican caucus, who watched helplessly as Crandall, Pierce and Worsley joined with the minority party to approve most of their wishes.

House Republicans crossed over from their chamber to watch the voting take place, getting a glimpse of what could transpire in their chamber next week.

* * *

Meanwhile, the Democrats succeeded in adopted amendments including $9 million for Child Protective Services, $875,000 for Navajo Technical College and funding for the Arizona State Parks Board and Arizona Arts Commission.

A plea came Ward during the morning caucus for Republicans to unite.

“I would like to see our caucus come together as a caucus,” Ward said. “I’m tired of seeing Republicans picked off to vote for a Democrat budget.”

But Hobbs said Republicans were finally getting a taste of their own medicine. Democratic amendments are routinely shot down by majority vote in the Senate.

“We’ve also been able to show how tenuous their majority is. That’s a win right there,” Hobbs said.

Today was a good day. It was a well-deserved humiliating defeat for Tea-Publican obstructionist Andy Biggs. Enjoy it. And then start calling your Tea-Publican House members to pressure them to vote for this Medicaid (AHCCCS) restoration and expansion bill. Tell them to show the same courage to do the right thing as these five senators showed today.

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

I have posted about this topic from time to time whenever a member of Congress introduces a bill for a constitutional amendment that would make the right to vote a fundamental constitutional right. This is important, because fundamental constitutional rights are subject to the strict scrutiny standard of review by the federal courts. Currently the right to vote, which is not expressly guaranteed in the Constitution, is generally reviewed under the rational basis standard of review.

Under the strict scrutiny standard of review, most of the attempts to restrict voting rights that we have seen in recent years would not pass constitutional muster.

John Nichols writes at The Nation, Congressmen Seek Constitutional Guarantee of the Right to Vote:

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia made a point of emphasizing during the Bush v. Gore arguments in December 2000 that there is no federal constitutional guarantee of a right to vote for president. Scalia was right. Indeed, as the reform group FairVote reminds us, “Because there is no right to vote in the U.S. Constitution, individual states set their own electoral policies and procedures. This leads to confusing and sometimes contradictory policies regarding ballot design, polling hours, voting equipment, voter registration requirements, and ex-felon voting rights. As a result, our electoral system is divided into 50 states, more than 3,000 counties and approximately 13,000 voting districts, all separate and unequal.”

Mark Pocan and Keith Ellison want to do something about that.

The two congressmen, both former state legislators with long histories of engagement with voting-rights issues, on Monday unveiled a proposal to explicitly guarantee the right to vote in the Constitution.

“The right to vote is too important to be left unprotected,” explained Pocan, who announced the initiative at the state capitol in Madison, Wisconsin, where the Republican state assembly speaker recently announced plans to enact restrictive “voter ID” legislation before the 2014 election. “At a time when there are far too many efforts to disenfranchise Americans, a voting rights amendment would positively affirm our founding principle that our country is at its strongest when everyone participates. As the world’s leading democracy, we must demand of ourselves what we demand of others—a guaranteed right to vote for all.”

Without that clear guarantee, argues Ellison, politicians continue to propose and enact legislation that impedes voting rights. Noting recent wrangling over voter identification laws, burdensome registration requirements and reduced early voting opportunities in various states, as well as a challenge to the Voting Rights Act that is now under consideration by the US Supreme Court, the Minnesota Democrat, who co-chairs the Congressional Progressive Caucus, says, “Even though the right to vote is the most-mentioned right in the Constitution, legislatures across the country have been trying to deny that right to millions of Americans, including in my home state of Minnesota. It’s time we made it clear once and for all: every citizen in the United States has a fundamental right to vote.”

If approved by the Congress and then ratified by three-fourths of the states, it would add to the founding document this declaration:

SECTION 1: Every citizen of the United States, who is of legal voting age, shall have the fundamental right to vote in any public election held in the jurisdiction in which the citizen resides.

SECTION 2: Congress shall have the power to enforce and implement this article by appropriate legislation.

There is nothing radical about that language. It outlines a basic premise of the American experiment, and a concept that the United States has proudly exported. Indeed, when the US has had a hand in shaping the destinies of other lands, as well as international agreements, the primacy of the right to vote has been well understood and explicitly stated.

* * *

Americans have considered right-to-vote amendments in the past. But the frequency with which contentious debates are erupting nationwide—just this year, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, more than eighty bills to restrict voting have been introduced in more than thirty states—has already inspired significant activism on behalf of constitutional reform.

“The right to vote is the foundation of any democracy,” says FairVote executive director Rob Richie. “Adding an affirmative right to vote to the US Constitution is the best way to guarantee that the government, whether at the federal, state, or local level, cannot infringe upon our individual right to vote. Building support for this amendment offers an opportunity to inspire a twenty-first-century suffrage movement where Americans come together to protect voting rights, promote voter participation and debate suffrage expansion.”

Republicans, of course, will oppose this amendment on the specious grounds of "states rights." They also understand that it will result in the strict scrutiny standard of review, which would bring a halt to their multi-faceted attempts to limit the right to vote, and to make it as difficult as possible,

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

It turns out that the conservative Tea Party and Patriot organizations who applied for 501(c)(4) tax exempt status did so because they were concerned that their activities violated the tax exempt status. They knew that their political activities skirted the legalities for a tax exempt status, so they sought the IRS "seal of approval" (the real IRS scandal).

You see, you do not have to apply for a 501(c)(4) tax exempt status. Steven Benen explains, How to apply (or not) for tax-exempt status:

Noam Scheiber raised an interesting point I hadn't seen elsewhere.

It turns out that the applications the conservative groups submitted to the IRS -- the ones the agency subsequently combed over, provoking nonstop howling -- were unnecessary. The IRS doesn't require so-called 501c4 organizations to apply for tax-exempt status. If anyone wants to start a social welfare group, they can just do it, then submit the corresponding tax return (form 990) at the end of the year. To be sure, the IRS certainly allows groups to apply for tax-exempt status if they want to make their status official. But the application is completely voluntary, making it a strange basis for an alleged witch hunt.

So why would so many Tea Party groups subject themselves to a lengthy and needless application process? Mostly it had to do with anxiety -- the fear that they could run afoul of the law once they started raising and spending money. "Our business experience was that we had to pay taxes once there was money coming through here," says Tom Zawistowski, the recent president of the Ohio Liberty Coalition, which tangled with the IRS over its tax status. "We felt we were under a microscope. ... We were on pins and needles at all times." In other words, the groups submitted their applications because they perceived themselves to be persecuted, not because they actually were. 

Jamelle Bouie added, "This helps explain why the IRS decided to apply scrutiny at all. Applications are unusual, and when you receive a large number of them from a particular set of right-leaning groups, it's bound to raise suspicion. As Scheiber notes, 'The IRS was unexpectedly flooded by dodgy 501(c)4 applications and was at a loss over how to manage them.'"

I have a little background covering tax law as it relates to non-profits, and I'll confess this is new to me. But it turns out, it's true -- 501(c)4 don't have to apply to the IRS; they can simply claim the status and proceed accordingly.

* * *

This seems important rather important. All of these groups sent in applications, overwhelming confused IRS bureaucrats who struggled, not only to deal with the paperwork, but with the ambiguities of tax law as it relates to political groups seeking tax-exempt status.

So, it would appear that the overwhelmed officials, seeing tons of Tea Party groups filing for (c)4 status, started wondering if perhaps these political entities didn't really deserve it. As we know, some liberal groups ran into trouble, too.

The angle I don't understand, though, is why these groups would send in unnecessary applications in the first place. Scheiber's report says the groups were worried about adverse tax consequences down the road, but why would that stop them? If they hoped to influence the elections, by the time they faced after-the-fact scrutiny, the elections would be over.

* * *

Regardless, these details seem to cast the story in a different light. More from Scheiber:

So the crime here had nothing to do with "targeting" conservatives. The targeting was effectively done by the conservative groups themselves, when they filed their gratuitous applications. The crime, such as it is, was twofold. First, in the course of legitimately vetting questionable applications, the IRS appears to have been more intrusive than justified, asking for information about donors whose privacy it should have respected. This is unfortunate and intolerable, but not quite a threat to democracy.

Second, the IRS was tone deaf to how its scrutiny would look to the people being scrutinized, given that they all subscribed to the same worldview, and that they were already nursing a healthy persecution complex. Which is to say, the IRS didn't go about its otherwise legitimate vetting in a very politically-correct way.

Just to clarify, I'm not endorsing a "nothing to see here" argument, and I'd like to see more information about all of this. But these additional details do cast the story in a different light, and raise questions about just how "scandalous" the actions were.

It was the desire of these conservative groups to get the IRS "seal of approval" for their tax evasion, er, tax exempt status that led them to submit an unnecessary application, an unusual event, that the IRS was required by law to review. So the IRS "scandal" was self-inflicted by these conservative groups seeking to evade taxes 'legally."

BY THE WAY: Since an application is not needed and one can operate as a tax exempt non-profit during the application process, any delays in application processing that these organizations are complaining about did not result in any actual harm -- they were still operating as a tax exempt non-profit.

The most you can say is that extra scrutiny from the IRS in trying to do its job thoroughly may have constituted "harassment," but then that would be a matter of perspective. Of course a paranoid anti-government, anti-tax organization is going to perceive that it was harassed by the big bad "guvmint." That's its whole purpose for existence.

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Former New York Times reporter and Pulitzer Prize winner David Cay Johnston, a columnist for Tax Analysts, and who teaches tax and regulatory law at Syracuse University Law School, explains The other IRS scandal : Columbia Journalism Review:

The burgeoning “scandal” over how the IRS chose for review 75 applicants for tax-exempt status puts on full display an unfortunate tendency in journalism—to quote people accurately without explaining the underlying context. Yes, it is as wrong for IRS employees to select groups to scrutinize based on their names as it is for police to stop and frisk young people based on the color of their skin. Still, the facts here are not so black-and-white as with racial profiling.

There is a scandal in all of this—several, actually, and some are more significant than the one that is getting all the attention. As the story unfolds, here are some important points to keep in mind:

• Missing from much coverage is the relevant recent history—the role of the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision and how it prompted a deluge of requests from new organizations seeking tax-exempt status under tax code Section 501(c)(4) as “social welfare” organizations—despite the fact that many of these are blatantly political operations.

• Congress requires the IRS to review every application for tax-exempt status to weed out organizations that are partisan, political, or that generate private gain. Congress has imposed this requirement on the IRS, and its predecessor agencies, since 1913.

• When it comes to 501(c)(4) organizations, what the IRS is supposed to do is draw a distinction between groups that are “primarily engaged” in politics and groups that really are primarily engaged in “social welfare”—somehow “promoting the common good and social welfare of the community.” It’s kind of mushy. Brad Plumer has a good explainer about this on The Washington Post’s Wonkblog.

• The first scandal here, meanwhile, is that the social welfare tax exemption is being used by existing 501(c)(4) organizations, including some very large ones, to promote partisan political interests—the very activity Congress has explicitly prohibited for a century. The New York Times, after a weak political piece on Saturday, had a clear and useful explainer about this on Tuesday.

• Also worth pointing out: None of the [Tea Party] organizations that the IRS scrutinized as a result of the ill-considered screening-by-name regime was denied tax exempt status.

• The second—and widely ignored—scandal in this unfolding story is that the IRS is drowning. Congress is demanding that the agency do more and more with less and less, as we have reported here and elsewhere. As David Levinthal reported Tuesday at the Center for Public Integrity:

The IRS’ Exempt Organizations Division, which finds itself at the scandal’s epicenter, processed significantly more tax exemption applications in fiscal year 2012 by so-called 501(c)(4) “social welfare” organizations — 2,774 — than it has since at least the late 1990s.

That compares to 1,777 applications in 2011 and 1,741 in 2010, he reported.

Meanwhile, in real terms the IRS budget has been cut 17 percent per capita since 2002, even as Congress has piled on other new duties, such as hunting for offshore accounts, dealing with the complexities of the Affordable Care Act, and other expanded obligations.

To hear the IRS’s bureaucrats tell it, it is this combination of a flood of new work and the challenge of reduced manpower that prompted what an inspector general’s draft report on this problem[.]

* * *

Meanwhile, maybe reporters could investigate this: Karl Rove, the Republican strategist, initiated the use of the tax exemption for 501(c)(4) social welfare organizations to promote candidates and causes when he formed American Crossroads in 2010. He in turn inspired a Democratic operative—Bill Burton, former deputy press secretary to President Obama—to do the same, starting Priorities USA in 2011.

Are these organizations primarily political? Here is how Open Secrets described Rove’s 501(c)(4) operation and its political influence and ties:

American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS, both formed in 2010, are the heavy hitters of the multicandidate outside spending groups. They were started and continue to operate in consultation with GOP operatives Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie. American Crossroads, a super PAC, and GPS, a 501(c)(4) that isn’t required to disclose its donors, spent more than $70 million that year, according to one of its officials, though they only reported spending a little more than half that to the Federal Election Commission. Steven Law, former general counsel of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and chief of staff to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, is president of both groups. The groups raised $51 million in 2011, and have said they plan to spend much more than that in the 2012 elections.

Consider that in the context of a 1963 federal appeals court, which ruled that to qualify for tax exemption under 501(c)(4), “the organization must be a community movement designed to accomplish community ends.”

A couple of smaller points: Many news organizations also reported that the IRS wanted the names of donors, indicating (or quoting organizations as saying) that this is improper. Actually, disclosing donors to the IRS is required of most tax exempt organizations on Form 990 Schedule B, as Lerner told reporters Friday. However, Schedule B is not made public by the IRS, while Form 990 is. (The IRS did, improperly, release some donor information to ProPublica, as it reported here and here.)

After the publication of this post, the Inspector General's report disclosed that liberal groups were also subjected to extra scrutiny, and at least one group, Emerge America, was denied tax exempt status. Report: The IRS also targeted at least three liberal groups. This tends to undercut the crybaby persecution and victimhood meme from the conservative media entertainment complex cult.

Posted by Bob Lord

What I guessed would be an obscure blog post last week regarding the Phoenix CD8 campaign became far more serious when Stewart's general consultant, Mario Diaz, acknowledged it in three separate tweets last Thursday. Remarkably, Diaz thought it a good idea to raise awareness of blatantly disparaging remarks Marie Rose Wilcox, a Warren Stewart supporter, made about Kate Gallego, one of Stewart's opponents. Then, after I responded to his tweets in a second post, Diaz acknowledged that post in yet a fourth tweet.

Now, one of Arizona's premier bloggers, Donna at Democratic Diva, has posted on the subject:

As for Pastor Stewart, he is known for having a very traditional view of marriage, judging from statements he made condemning same-sex marriage in the strongest possible terms last fall (they’ve been scrubbed from his church’s website but can still be found elsewhere). A woman in a straight marriage taking her husband’s last name is about as traditional as it gets. I should think Stewart, of all people, would approve of that.

At any rate, Stewart cannot claim ignorance of Wilcox’s inflammatory remarks since he was present at the telephone town hall when she said them and his consultant then doubled down on supporting both him and Wilcox in response to Lord’s posts. I get that tempers flare in campaigns and sometimes people involved in them blurt out inappropriate things. The thing for Stewart, Wilcox, and Diaz to do right now is to apologize to Kate Gallego for that defamatory accusation against her. The longer they remain silent on it the more it looks like a deliberate tactic, once shouted at a town hall and now muted to a whisper campaign.

Diaz's acknowledgment of my posts makes a big difference.

Nor can Stewart remain silent, for if he does, his silence will speak volumes about his character or, more precisely, lack of character.

This is no longer about Marie Rose. Nor is it about Mario Diaz, although his tweeted statement that he "stands with the Pastors, Marie Rose Wilcox and Warren Stewart based on their collective investment in the commuinty" is ludicrous. Investment in the community, Mario, does not place one beyond reproach. If any politician or public figure acts or speaks inappropriately, he is to be called out for it. There are no exemptions in politics. 

At this point, it's about Warren Stewart, and his seeming refusal to address clearly outrageous remarks by someone closely affiliated with his campaign. How outrageous? Eighty-six percent of married women take their husbands' last names. Marie Rose herself took her husband's last name. Yet Marie Rose had the temerity to label Kate Gallego's taking of her husband's name as a dishonest act intended to deceive voters. 

Stewart's silence is deafening, and deplorable. And let's not forget, he is a member of the clergy. You would think that as a pastor he would have a zero tolerance policy for this type of nonsense. Unfortunately, that appaars not to be the case.  By all appearances he has consciously chosen to remain silent. Certainly, with his general consultant repeatedly tweeting about the matter, he no longer can claim to be unaware. 

It is time for Warren Stewart to state, loudly and clearly, that he does not condone baseless character assassination and won't tolerate it from anyone affiliated with his campaign. And if Marie Rose Wilcox continues to hold back on an apology, he needs to cut her loose. If he doesn't have the character to take those steps, he's not qualified to serve on the City Council or, for that matter, in any other elected position.

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

I explained the other day "The real scandal with the IRS review of applications for 501(c)(4) tax exempt status from political organizations is that political organizations do not qualify -- and should not recieve 501(c)(4) tax exempt status. Period." The real IRS scandal: the ease with which political organizations have been abusing the 501(c)(4) tax exempt status.

There has actually been some very good reporting on the real scandal (just Google "the real IRS scandal"), but you would never know this if you rely on the Arizona political media or the cable tee-vee.

The New York Times op-ed page has two good pieces today. Sheila Krumholz and Robert Weinberger from the Center for Responsive Politics write, The Real I.R.S. Scandal:

Yes, the I.R.S. may have been worse than clumsy in considering an avalanche of applications for nonprofit status under the tax code, and that deserves scrutiny whether or not the agency’s employees were spurred by partisan motives. After all, some of these “tea party” groups are most likely not innocent nonprofit organizations devoted to the cultural significance of hot beverages — or to other, more civic, virtues. Rather, they and others are groups that may be illegally spending a majority of their resources on political activity while manipulating the tax code to hide their donors and evade taxes (the unwritten rule being that no more than 49 percent of a group’s resources can be used for political purposes).

The near vertical ascent in political spending by these “dark money” groups was prompted by the Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in the Citizens United case, among others, freeing them to be more active in this realm.

And it’s a bipartisan scandal, though it’s hard to tell that judging by the names some groups have adopted — as the I.R.S. should know. Can you tell which of these lean left and which ones right? Patriot Majority USA, Crossroads GPS, American Future Fund and the Citizens for Strength and Security Fund. (Nos. 1 and 4 are liberal, 2 and 3 are conservative.)

The majority of the organizations that appear to be most politically active — from groups that run their own ads, like American Action Network and Americans for Prosperity, to the mysterious Center to Protect Patient Rights [the Phoenix-based "Kochtopus" organization headed by GOP consultant Sean Noble, currently under investigation for money laundering by the state of California], which distributes [launders] money to other political groups — already have exempt status. There’s little evidence that the I.R.S. is looking into these groups.

The latest news will make that job more difficult. . .

* * *

[E]ven more regrettable is the long-term damage to the credibility of the I.R.S. as an impartial arbiter of whether organizations merit tax-exempt status. This will be difficult to undo, particularly because of the secrecy required for the agency to effectively examine organizations without generating doubts about them, as well as to prevent other organizations from coming up with strategies to evade scrutiny in the future.

* * *

With the surge of dark money into politics, we need to ensure that the I.R.S. is capable of rigorously enforcing the law in a nonpartisan, but also more effective, way. While we focus on the rickety raft of minor Tea Party groups targeted by the I.R.S., there is an entire fleet of big spenders that are operating with apparent impunity.

Congress has already announced hearings and investigations, and the service’s leadership will be grilled, as it should be. But it would be a travesty if the misdeeds here undermined the important work that must now be done to foster greater transparency, and to bolster confidence that the I.R.S. is in fact scrutinizing politically active groups across the board, regardless of their ideological bent.

The Times editorialzes today, Take Politics Away From the I.R.S.:

What is more important is Mr. Obama’s promise to clarify the extremely vague tax laws, which are the root cause of the problems in both the I.R.S. and the political system.

The report issued Tuesday by the Treasury Department’s inspector general said no one outside the I.R.S. had pressured staff members to look more closely at Tea Party groups. The agency’s mistake was made in-house, and the report uncovered no evidence that it was the result of political pressure from the White House, as many Republicans are charging.

Instead, it was a group of midlevel employees who decided to search for the phrase “Tea Party” and other key words used by conservative groups in identifying and evaluating applications to become tax-exempt “social welfare” groups.

* * *

The practice was inexcusable, because social-welfare groups of all political stripes, known in the tax code as 501(c)(4) organizations, had for years abused their tax exemptions through excessive political activity, and the I.R.S. should have cracked down on them without regard to ideology.

* * *

Nonetheless, there is a clear reason this problem kept arising at the I.R.S., and it is the same reason that social welfare groups were allowed to overrun the political process with secret cash in the last three elections. There are no clear standards for how much political activity a 501(c)(4) group can undertake, or even a clear definition of what political activity is.

For years, the I.R.S. ignored the activities of these groups; when it finally decided to crack down, it did so in a dangerous way.

The tax code says these groups must engage only in social welfare work, but decades ago the I.R.S. began allowing them to dabble in politics, working for or against candidates, as long that was not their primary activity.

Some groups carefully spend only 49 percent of their money on politics, while others, including the one founded by Karl Rove, do nothing but politics while claiming they are engaged in social welfare work. The I.R.S. employees didn’t understand the rules, the inspector general said, largely because the rules barely exist.

Given the confusion, and the years of abuse, it’s time for the I.R.S. to return to the original language of the statute and require these groups to operate “exclusively for the promotion of social welfare,” and not engage in politics. But since even that definition can be squishy, Congress also needs to require that all these groups disclose their donors. Most want the 501(c)(4) designation precisely because it allows secrecy for their donors; otherwise they would take the far easier step of becoming standard political organizations, known as 527 groups, which have to reveal their contributors.

The best way to prevent abuse is to reform this vague statute and eliminate the agency’s discretion. Republicans and Democrats should be joining forces in taking this important step.

Can I get an Amen and a Hallelujah!

Michael Hiltzik at the Los Angeles Times makes the same case. The real IRS scandal - Los Angeles Times:

It's strange how "scandal" gets defined these days in Washington. At the moment, everyone is screaming about the "scandal" of the Internal Revenue Service scrutinizing conservative nonprofits before granting them tax-exempt status.

Here are the genuine scandals in this affair: Political organizations are being allowed to masquerade as charities to avoid taxes and keep their donors secret, and the IRS has allowed them to do this for years.

The bottom line first: The IRS hasn't done nearly enough over the years to rein in the subversion of the tax law by political groups claiming a tax exemption that is not legally permitted for campaign activity. Nor has it enforced rules requiring that donors to those groups pay gift tax on their donations.

The organizations at issue are known as 501(c)4 groups (call them C4s for short) after the section of the tax code that applies to them. They're nonprofit "social welfare" organizations that by law must be devoted primarily to programs broadly serving their communities, not private groups . . . In recent years, however, overtly political groups have been claiming C4 status, which allows them to keep their donor lists secret and to avoid paying taxes on certain income.

Our lunatic campaign finance system is what turned the typical C4 from a volunteer fire department into a conduit of anonymous political cash. Big donors were given the green light to spend freely on elections by the Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United decision. That wasn't good enough for some; they wanted to distribute their largess secretly.

C4s were there for the exploitation, and the result has been a wholesale decline of donor disclosure on the national level: As recently as 1998, nearly 100% of all donors to federal campaigns were publicly identified, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a campaign finance watchdog group. By the 2012 presidential election, that was down to 40%.

The beneficiaries of the C4 tax break, understandably, will employ any subterfuge to keep it. That's what's behind the current firestorm over disclosures that in 2010 and 2011, IRS personnel screened requests for C4 status by applicant organizations with "tea party," "patriot" or "9/12" in their names.

* * *

[By January 2012 the IRS] had substituted a screen designed to capture "political action type organizations involved in limiting/expanding government, educating on the constitution and bill of rights, [and] social  economic reform/movement."

Conservatives contend that this is still an anti-conservative screen. It sounds perfectly neutral to me, unless someone knows of a conservative organization devoted to "expanding government," or unless right-wing groups are supposed to have a monopoly on "social economic reform." In any case, the inspector general found that most of the 298 selected applications indeed showed indications of "significant" political activity that might have made them ineligible for the tax exemption.

So while these political organizations are crying crocodile tears that they were mistreated and subjected to extra scrutiny when they applied for 501(c)(4) tax exempt status (see this insane piece of reporting in the Washington Post today, For some groups, a ‘horror story’ dealing with IRS), the fact of the matter is that these political organizations are engaged in the systematic abuse of tax law to gain a tax exempt status to which they are not entitled. This constitutes tax evasion. And tax exempt really means a "tax subsidy" from other taxpayers who are subsidizing their political activites. This is insane, and it must end.

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Announcmeent from the Fred DuVal for Governor 2014 campaign:

by Pamela Powers Hannley

Progressive Democrats of America (PDA) members visited roughly 200 Congressional offices nationwide on May 15 with an urgent message for their representatives: "Austerity is not an option." In addition, 2,000 PDA members called their Congressional representatives yesterday, and Robin Hood Tax supporters held demonstrations in San Francisco and Fresno. Over the past year, PDA's monthly letter drop campaign has mushroomed from a handful of offices visited to nearly half of Congress.

Once again, here in Tucson, PDA  visited the office of Representative Ron Barber. Once again, we asked him to back the Financial Speculation Tax (AKA the Robin Hood Tax) which would charge a tiny fee for every Wall Street transaction, stop speculative minute-by-minute computerized trading, bring stability to the financial markets, and generate billions of dollars for our economy. Once again, we asked him to protect the middle class, the veterans, and the poor by protecting Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. 

Mr. Barber, aren't there more regular folks in CD 2 than bankers? Why would you protect Wall Street-- and not your constituents?

The only thing I can say to you is, "We're not giving up, and we're not going away." 

More about yesterday's actions after the jump.

From PDA...

They fanned out across the country from Los Angeles to Phoenix, Chicago, south to Atlanta and Miami, to the towns of Western Massachusetts, in New York City and beyond, and they entered offices on Capitol Hill in a national “Educate Congress” letter-drop campaign.  Roughly 200 members of Congress were delivered this urgent message, a reminder that the country’s deteriorating condition needs to be addressed with meaningful policies that bring prosperity to Main Street.   Austerity is not an option.    

The message in the letter delivered today read, “We are voters… writing to urge you to oppose cuts to essential programs, as well as support common sense tax policies and job creation, as well as expanded, improved healthcare.”

In San Francisco, letter-drops culminated in a march from the offices of Rep. Nancy Pelosi to Sen. Diane Feinstein.  Elsewhere, visits transformed to rallies, as well. 

Workers and students, concerned citizens, all activists against austerity, banded together in this national outreach effort with profound results:  reaching nearly half the Congress.  They were members of Progressive Democrats of America (PDA), joined by National Nurses United, Labor for Single Payer and others, in support of the Robin Hood Tax, now before Congress in the reintroduced Inclusive Prosperity Act, H.R. 1579.  Today’s letter-drop campaign and national call-in effort also urged passage of Medicare for All legislation and an end to cuts to Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid.

“We reached more than 200 congressional offices in district offices today, demanding “Prosperity Not Austerity,” said PDA National Director Tim Carpenter.  “We  also  made hundreds of phone calls into district offices, demanding our elected officials join Rep. Grayson, Rep. Takano, and dozens of other House members drawing a line in the sand against any cuts to Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid.”

Carpenter added, “We also turned up the volume on the need to pass H.R. 1579, also known as the Financial Speculation Tax (FST) and Robin Hood Tax, that would generate hundreds of billions of dollars a year to fund job creation and help the economy, as well as protect the social safety net.  This measure would save lives and save taxpayers’ money, increase revenues and decrease financial speculation that directly causes highly-destructive fiscal bubbles. We launched this Educate Congress campaign three years ago—before the Tea Party, and before the Occupy movement.” 

A follow up national call-in effort is continuing.  Next Tuesday, PDA and others meet with Rep. Ellison and Rep. Grayson to talk about next steps to obtain co-sponsors for H.R. 1579 and signatories on a Grayson-Takano letter pledging support for social services. 

Posted by Bob Lord

I have the third post in my series up at inequality.org, Tax-Free Municipals: An Unnecessary Giveaway.

I'm having second thoughts about the title. Did I imply that some giveaways are necessary? 

The purpose of this series is to shine a light on the giant pools of assets producing income that is not subject to current taxation. The foregone tax revenue associated with these asset pools is enormous. And the lion's share of the tax benefits is flowing to the very rich. In the case of tax-free municipal bonds, putting aside the benefits flowing to states and their subdivisions, the benefit to wealthy individuals, developers, and large corporate interests exceeds $100 Billion over the next ten years. 

But tax-free municipal bonds are only a part of the pool of tax-exempt assets benefitting the wealthy. 

Here are the two prior posts in the series:

Retirement Vehicle or Giveaway to the Rich?

Looting the Treasury to Benefit Big Insurance

By Craig McDermott, cross-posted from Random Musings

...'cuz some of them seem to be killing off their brain cells at an alarming rate...

On Tuesday, the House gave its approval, by an almost-completely party-line vote, to SCR1016.

That SCR places a proposed amendment to the Arizona Constitution on the ballot in 2014.  If passed by the voters, it would add a clause to that document stating that Arizona could "nullify", or ignore, any federal action, law or rule.  AZBlueMeanie at Blog for Arizona has a great rundown of that here.

This post is merely about a little over 40 seconds of the House debate on the measure, specifically Rep. Steve Smith's "explanation" of his vote.  He used his "explanation" of his vote to respond to the previous speaker, Democratic Rep. Albert Hale, the only Democrat to vote in favor of the measure.  Hale felt that such a measure would prevent the federal government from taking land and sovereignty from Native peoples and nations.

Note: There's no actual debate during final votes on measures at the lege, just legislators "explaining" their votes.  Some of the explanations get a little long-winded and even bombastic.  Smith was neither long-winded nor bombastic, but after watching his quiet certitude on the historical rightness of unbridled imperialism, I considered adding a third descriptor to the previous sentence - "drug-addled".  However, lacking the results of an independently administered and analyzed drug test, I chose not to go there.

The text of his "explanation" (emphasis added) -

Mr. Speaker, I think just since we're talking a little bit about history, I think it would be fair to point out that history of virtually every nation on the earth has come about from one people taking from another.  Going back to biblical times.  If we stand on this argument, then God's people never should have occupied God's land. 'Cause they took it from people, too.  I guess I wanted to say that some people look at the United States as a taking nation.  I look at it as the most benevolent and the most giving nation, certainly in our time and frankly, ever.  I vote yes.

The scariest part isn't that he said what he said.  It was in how he said it, with the same matter-of-fact tone that former legislator Sylvia Allen proclaimed that strip mining uranium was OK because the Earth was 6000 years old and doing just fine.

by David Safier

I write a monthly column for The Explorer. My latest column is about BASIS, an appropriate topic for a paper whose distribution area spans BASIS Oro Valley and the new/old BASIS Tucson North (a new building that houses students from the original BASIS).

I start with a hypothetical:

Let’s say you decide to start a school for sixth through 12th graders that gives students a rigorous, world class education: demanding courses, lots of homework, sky-high expectations.

Then I follow the students as they move from the 6th grade to the 12th and the inevitable attrition that has to occur in any school with a preset standard of excellence.

Student attrition continues in high school until by senior year, only 33 [of the original 100] students remain. Those left standing are testament to the strength of the school’s curriculum, but what about the 67 who left before they graduated? It might be too harsh to say the school failed them, but there’s no question the school didn’t succeed at raising them to its high standards.

What I’ve just described is the way things work at BASIS charter schools. The standards are high, the workload is daunting and two out of three students don’t make it to their senior year. The schools work fine for a select group of students, but they certainly don’t provide a model that can be used in schools that educate all students who come their way.

Another attempt to get The Facts, not The BASIS Legend, out to the community.

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

The self-important pompous assholes of the Beltway media elite have their noses in a snit. Ed Kilgore at the Political Animal blog sets it up, D.C. To Obama: Don’t Mess With “This Town”:

Well, it doesn’t get much more official than this: an VandeHei/Allen “Behind the Curtain” column announcing that D.C. (“the town”) is “turning on” Barack Obama, and there will be nothing but venom coming from any direction for the foreseeable future[.]

* * *

Too bad, voters, and all those who have an interest in their federal government doing something constructive; Obama has to have his spanking from “D.C. stakeholders,” so enjoy it or look the other way.

What amazes me the most about this column is the forthright announcement that the MSM are going to make explicit common cause with the GOP[.]

Wait, they don't do that already? POLITICO is part of the right-wing noise machine.

This open partisanship is excused by the fact that in “this town” (among the “Establishment Democrats” who are a “D.C. Stakeholder”) Democrats aren’t bothering to defend Obama. Which Democrats are we talking about here?

* * *

Yes, MoDo is your representative Democrat. When you’ve lost her, you’ve clearly lost the Blue States altogether.

The perpetual teenager from the Mean Girls clique stopped being relevant over a decade ago. Who the hell even reads Maureen Dowd anymore?

On this particular occasion, Harris and VandeHei come so close to self-parody that every sentence is like a pinata you could hit from any direction. But make no mistake: this is a declaration of war by elements of the Beltway Media who are determined to show us all they still have the power to “bring down a president,” as they arrogantly used to say about Watergate, and that not only the GOP but the Breitbartian wingnuts have a new ally in the “Vetting” of Barack Obama.

Time to bring in the closer for all things POLITICO, Charles Pierce at Esquire. Things In Politico That Make Me Want To Guzzle Antifreeze, Part The Infinity:

And not out of delicate demitasse cups, either. But straight out of the big square can with both hands.

The two presiding geniuses behind Tiger Beat On The Potomac has had all they can stands from this president, and they...can't,...stands...no...more. So they have declared themselves in rebellion today. Juiceboxes will be flung in anger. Paste will be thoroughly chewed. Breath will be held until everyone is blue. Nap time will be bravely resisted — non-violently, of course — and the insurgents boldly declare that they will be in control of the classroom by lunch time. Aux armes, citoyens! You have nothing to lose but your crayons.

Not to minimize the inherent political savvy of Chris Lehane, one anonymous former Obama aide, one anonymous "longtime Washingtonian," or Vernon Jordan — who, I admit, I'd thought had long gone off to peddle influence in the Beyond — but I think they're pretty much camouflage here for the fiery tantrum summoned up by the authors.

(And, not for nothing, but "longtime Washingtonian" may well be the beau ideal of TBOTP sourcing. They should make it the company motto. And the two presiding geniuses are going to be shocked one morning when they look in the mirror and see Sally Quinn staring back at them.)

Obama's aloof mien and holier-than-thou rhetoric have left him with little reservoir of good will, even among Democrats. And the press, after years of being accused of being soft on Obama while being berated by West Wing aides on matters big and small, now has every incentive to be as ruthless as can be. This White House's instinctive petulance, arrogance and defensiveness have all worked to isolate Obama at a time when he most needs a support system. "It feel like they don't know what they're here to do," a former senior Obama administration official said. "When there's no narrative, stuff like this consumes you."

First of all, does it make any difference any more if I point out that it's the authors who are asserting that the president lacks good will "even among Democrats," and that the supporting quote doesn't have fk-all to do with the president's "mien" — Those Word-a-Day desk calendars are paying off, boys! — and rhetoric? I didn't think so. (Examples of both would have been helpful, too.) More significant to me is the assertion by the two president geniuses that the entire elite political press corps is about to engage in a mass abandonment of any kind of journalistic standards.

Let me give the two presiding geniuses a tip from my days covering the wonderful wide world of sports. The people you cover do not have to like you. The people you cover are under no obligation to be nice to you, or to make your job easier, or not to call you a "fucking maggot" when they don't like what you've written, which is pretty much always. The people you cover can and will throw jockstraps at your head  — and do infinitely worse — if they so choose. That does not free you from your obligation to cover what they do for a living fairly, and to present that information to your readers accurately.

* * *

Quite simply, any political journalist who decides to be "as ruthless as can be" chasing the current crop of phony and/or demi-scandals, and does so based on the deep philosophical principle of "Nyah, nyah. You think you're so smart. I'll get you at recess," should be looking for a new job by nightfall. And it is beyond even TBOTP's limitless capacity for shamelessness to suggest otherwise.

And for these two rodeo clowns to criticize anyone for "petulance," "arrogance," and "defensiveness" is so petulant, arrogant and defensive as to beggar imagination. Do these people think the Republicans wouldn't have done the same damn thing to President Hillary Clinton? Or President Joe Biden? Or President Insert Name Of Democrat Here? For going on six years now, one of our two political parties has deliberately chosen not to help govern the nation, and to make the attempt to govern the nation as hard as possible. Now, they have some more interesting excuses. Period. Bill Clinton is now the perfect example of the kind of Democrat that the authors say this president should be. How'd the Republicans — and the Beltway pre-school — treat him when he was president? Somebody stop these two before they bring my whole profession down around their ears.

* * *

Oh, shut up [Ron Fournier - AP]. Please. I realize life was easier when you were slipping Karl Rove mash notes during study hall — Funny how your concern over White House ratfkery was not in evidence then — but get over yourself, OK? Of course, because of their deep concern for The People's Right To Know, I expect to see in the not-too-distant-future a long treatise by the presiding geniuses in defense of Bradley Manning, and a flaming jeremiad by Ron Fournier on behalf of Julian Assange. Otherwise, I might think this whole business is an exercise in angry butthurt by performing circus egos. Of course, I could be wrong about that.

As i said the other day, the GOP has dusted off its "Big Book of Scandal Mongering" from The Hunting of the President in the 1990s. I recall that the media said it learned its lesson and that it would not fall for this again. Yet here we are, with the two presiding geniuses behind Tiger Beat On The Potomac essentially saying that the self-important pompous assholes of the Beltway media elite have decided that it's the 1990s again, and they are declaring The Hunting of the President is back on.

If anyone should be hunted, it is the feckless Beltway media villagers. Just round them all up and march them into the Potomac River.

UPDATE: Greg Sargent weighs in: Politico reports that "the town" has turned on Obama. We should take that seriously. When the Village turns on a President.

Posted by Bob Lord

No surprise here. The OECD reports that income inequality increased as much in the past three years as it did in the preceding twelve years.

And the OECD countries with the largest income gap between rich and poor: Turkey, Chile, Mexico, Israel and the old US of A.

I've previously noted that we're living through a great experiment: How much wealth and how much income can we cram into the top 1% before the bottom 90% explodes? Still no answer, but the experiment still is moving along.

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

The Arizona Republic(an)'s columnist Robert Robb had a column yesterday about the IRS "scandal" that left me wondering, "Where the hell did that come from?"

The real scandal with the IRS review of applications for 501(c)(4) tax exempt status from political organizations is that political organizations do not qualify -- and should not recieve 501(c)(4) tax exempt status. Period. The real IRS scandal: the ease with which political organizations have been abusing the 501(c)(4) tax exempt status.

The thousands of political organizations that have wrongly recieved this tax exempt status should lose it, and Congress should enact new legislation to make certain of this. While Congress is at it, the law should require transparency -- no anonymous donors, their identities and the amount of their contributions made publicly available in a financial disclosure statement. Problem solved.

But Robert Robb uses the IRS "scandal" to argue for a consumption or flat-income tax as a means of eliminating the IRS all together, asserting that there is a "liberty dimension at stake." How to keep IRS out of politics. This "scandal" is seen as an opportunity to argue for more income redistribution upwards to the über-rich plutocratic elites for whom Robb has spent his life as a lackey.

This idea did not originate with Robb. It is part of the latest talking points from the right-wing noise machine. Ed Kilgore at the Political Animal blog explains. The Coming Flat Tax Resurgence:

Whatever else comes out of the “scandal” over IRS scrutiny of 501(c)(4) applicants (and it’s already clear it will be harnessed to the GOP’s Great White Whale obsession with repealing Obamacare, on which the House will hold its 37th vote this week), one byproduct is certain. Sooner probably than later, we will see a resurgence of “flat tax” proposals, which have always advertised the abolition of the IRS as their most attractive feature.

Indeed, the conservative “base” may be ahead of the pols and bloviators on this one. If you Google “IRS Scandal Flat Tax” right now, you mostly turn up letters-to-the-editor and Freeper commentary (though the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s conservative columnist Kyle Wingfield briefly mentioned it). But it’s going to be a bottomless crack pipe for talk radio types (who have always been the bedrock of support for flat-tax schemes, and will probably continue to be so now that Herman Cain is among their ranks) who view progressive income taxation as the ultimate enemy.

* * *

The peril with “flat tax” schemes (or for the closely related “consumption tax” schemes), of course, is that they typically rely on significantly higher taxes for the poor and the middle class. They are ultimately not that different from the state-level GOP “tax reform initiatives” involving higher sales taxes combined with much lower or abolished income taxes that have gotten Bobby Jindal (and to some extent, Sam Brownback) in political hot water.

So federal-level conservatives may regret re-embracing “flat taxes” generally or some version of the “Fair Tax” specifically. But they probably won’t be able to help themselves in the current environment.

Robert Robb, just another cog in the right-wing noise nachine.

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

What's a Tea-Publican deficit peacock to do? (They love to rail against the deficit, but their economic policies only add to the deficit). The deficit, which Tea-Publicans created but like to use against Democrats, is disappearing. Oh Noes!

Paul Krugman writes, About That Debt Crisis? Never Mind:

OK, another toe dipped in reality. The new CBO numbers are out, and they scream “debt crisis? What debt crisis?” Here’s the actual and projected ratio of federal debt to GDP:

Yes, debt rose substantially in the face of economic crisis — which is what is supposed to happen. But runaway deficits? Not a hint.

Yes, there are longer-term issues of health costs and demographics. As always, however, these have no relevance to what we should be doing now — and it’s far from clear why they should even be a priority for discussion. As I’ve written before, the VSP consensus seems to be that to avoid the possibility of future benefit cuts, we must commit ourselves now now now to … future cuts in benefits.

Why, it’s almost as if the real goal was to make sure that benefits get cut even if the fiscal outlook improves.

Meanwhile, our policy discourse has been dominated for years by what turns out to be a false alarm. To the millions of Americans who are out of work and may never get another job thanks to premature fiscal austerity, the VSPs would like to say, “oopsies!”

Or maybe not even that. I’m happy to report that the Times does place this fiscal news on page 1.

[U.S. Budget Deficit Shrinks Far Faster Than Expected, "[T]he government’s annual deficit is shrinking far faster than anyone in Washington expected, and perhaps even faster than many economists think is advisable for the health of the economy."]

But correspondents tell me that at VSP Central, aka The Washington Post — where deficit panic has pervaded the news pages as well as the opinion section — the stunning new deficit report is buried as a small item deep inside the paper.

[This is due to the Post's unholy partnership with the Pete Peterson Foundation, which is committed to the destruction of social security and Medicare. The Washington Post Lets Pete Peterson Write The News On The Deficit. The Post piece is written by Peterson's embed reporter, Lori Montgomery. CBO sees brighter economy with budget deficit to plunge to $642 billion this year, "On Tuesday, some analysts urged congressional Republicans to call an end to their fixation on budget cutting."]

And Bowles and Simpson, who are now 26 months into their prediction of fiscal crisis within two years, will continue to be treated as revered gurus.

[Their Fix The Debt corporate front group is associated with the Pete Peterson Foundation; his son is on the board.]

Ezra Klein adds, Wave goodbye to our deficits:

Here’s the short version: Washington’s most powerful budget nerds have cut their prediction for 2013 deficits by more than $200 billion. They’ve cut their projections for our deficits over the next decade by more than $600 billion. Add it all up and our 10-year deficits are looking downright manageable.

Read his whole post -- with graphs! CBO says deficit problem is solved for the next 10 years.

by David Safier

It's nice to hear a positive story like this saying Hispanic students are succeeding at UA. The NBC News story says UA has a 44% Hispanic graduation rate compared to a 36% rate nationwide. It also says the freshman retention rate for Hispanic freshmen is 78%, just a bit under the average 82% rate.

I'm sure this isn't the whole story -- my knowledge of the world or higher ed is limited, so I can't fill in any details -- but any story about people making it at college, especially the two spotlighted students who are the first in their families, is a positive story in my book.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Every once in awhile you run across a headline that the copy editor had to have read and approved, but is so unintentionally funny in print that you have to wonder, "what were they thinking?" Today's example comes from the Arizona Capitol Times:

Ariz. lawmakers want students to learn how to budget

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

I posted about this previously, Arizona's Neo-Confederate dead-enders and secession:

Remember the "Checks and Balances in Government" citizens initiative aka the "nullification" initiative from a nutty Scottsdale millionaire businessman, Jack Biltis, that failed to qualify for the ballot due to an insufficient number of signatures last year? Businessman spends $1.2 million to put nullification measure on ballot.

Biltis has decided to bypass the expense of another initiative effort and to take the easy route of getting his fellow Neo-Confederate dead-enders in the legislature to repackage his "nullification" initiative as a constitutional amendment referred to the ballot by the Arizona legislature. SCR1016 is sponsored by the usual suspects, Sen. Rich Crandell (R-Heber), Sen. Judy Burges (R-Sun City West), and cosponsors Sen. Cap'n Al Melvin (R-Saddlebrooke), and Rep. Brenda Barton (R-Payson).

The ballot measure would amend the state Constitution to allow the state to reject any federal action the public deems to be a violation of the US Constitution by passing an initiative, referendum or bill, or by using any other legal remedy. The proposal also prohibits the state from using its employees or resources to enforce or cooperate with a federal action that’s rejected by the people.

It turns out that Jack Biltis has a lobbyist buddy who helped him out in getting these yahoos to sponsor SCR1016: the wannabe tinhorn dictator of Tucson, Jonathan "Payday" Paton. If there is a bad idea, you can bet this tool is behind it.

it's a sad day in Arizona. On Tuesday, the Neo-Confederate dead-enders and Tea-Publican Birthers-Birchers-Secessionists put the long discredited and unconstitutional theories of "nullification, interposition and secession" on the 2014 ballot. The late night comics rejoice!

So Laurie Roberts, how's that "De-Kook the Capitol" project working out for ya? The Arizona Republic reports, Arizona could deny resources for federal laws under bill:

Arizona voters in 2014 will decide whether the state can deny resources to federal laws or programs it deems unconstitutional.

The Legislature on Tuesday gave final approval to Senate Concurrent Resolution 1016, its latest effort to flex state muscle against the federal government. The measure will go on the November 2014 ballot. It proposes to allow either the governor and state Legislature or voters to refuse to use state personnel and resources on any federal law or action deemed to be inconsistent with the U.S. Constitution.

Sen. Chester Crandell, R-Heber, sponsored the bill.

“We need to stand up and use our sovereign rights and this is another tool in the toolbox to be able to do that,” he said in a public hearing on the bill.

Former state lawmaker and unsuccessful Republican congressional candidate Jonathan Paton and Phoenix businessman Jack Biltis are behind the resolution.

This is a second attempt at passing such a measure by Biltis, who runs an employer-services firm. He spent more than $1 million of his money on an unsuccessful 2012 effort to put a similar measure on the ballot. The Checks and Balances in Government initiative lacked enough valid signatures to qualify, elections officials said.

Biltis said in committee hearings on SCR 1016 that he would again invest his own money in campaigns for the measure.

Proving what an effin' imbecile he is, Jonathan "Payday" Paton testified in committeee hearings:

• Paton told lawmakers during a committee hearing that he believed the measure is constitutional based on Supreme Court rulings. He said the court clearly ruled the federal government cannot “commandeer” a state to act in support of a federal law.
• “We can’t stop the federal government directly ... but we can say how we are going to use our resources within the environs of our own state,” he said. “We have the power as a state to decide what’s right for our state.”
• “I don’t envision this as a left or right issue,” he said. “I envision this as a checks and balances issue.”

Don't quit your day job as a corrupt lobbyist, "Payday," because you don't know shit about constitutional law.

House Minority Leader Chad Campbell, D-Phoenix, got it exactly right: this bill is “a complete waste of time.”

“It’s talking about not wasting money on things we feel are unconstitutional at the state, but the referendum itself is unconstitutional,” he said. “You can’t supersede federal authority.” [See the Supremacy Clause, Article VI, Section 2.]

Campbell said there are already checks and balances against the federal government overstepping its bounds — the courts. [Federal judicial review, Marbury v. Madison. The states do not get to decide what is constitutional.]

And that, he said, is exactly where this would end up. Campbell said if voters or the Legislature decide to deny services for a certain federal action, the federal government will likely sue and the courts will still be the deciding factor in the end.

Our "lawless legislature" was highlighted by the Arizona Republic in this recent report, Controversial Arizona laws rack up big legal fees, a must read on how the ideological extremists of the Tea-Publican Birthers-Birchers-Secessionists are pissing away your tax dollars pursuing their unconstitutional and unlawful legislation.

A similar ballot measure to declare "state sovereignty" over federal lands in Arizona, Proposition 120, was on the 2012 ballot and was soundly defeated by Arizona voters, 1,308,299 votes to 623.461 votes. Now we must defeat this "nullification, interposition and secession" measure in 2014.

But it is not enough to simply defeat this measure. Every member of the legislature who voted in favor of "nullification, interposition and secession" violated their oath of office to defend the U.S. Constitution. It is an act of insurrection and sedition against the U.S. government. It is disloyal and un-American. It is not to be tolerated and they should not be serving in elected office.

Senate Vote Detail. House Vote Detail. Let me make it easy for you, Laurie Roberts. It was a straight party line vote. Sens. Rich Crandall and Lynne Pancrazi were absent and did not vote in the Senate. Rep. Thomas Forese was absent and did not vote in the House. Unbelievably, Rep. Albert Hale (D-LD 7) was the only Democrat who voted in favor. This must have been a mistake. Hale needs to explain his vote.

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Craig McDermott posted earlier about Senate President Andy Biggs' budget package introduced yesterday, and mentioned the omnibus elections bill tacked onto the appropriations bills. Here's Biggs' deal: Medicaid restoration in exchange for reducing voting rights.

After a cursory review of SB 1493, it appears to me that Sen. Michele Reagan (R-Scottsdale) and Rep. Michelle Ugenti (R-Scottsdale) have abandoned earlier attempts to modify their so-called election "reform" bills to address the complaints of voting rights groups and Democratic legislators, and are now sticking with the earlier versions approved in committee in an attempt to ram these unnecessary and counter-productive measures through the legislature.

This is a middle-finger salute to voting rights groups and Democrats. It moves Arizona backwards on voting rights.

Each of the measures standing alone attracted unified opposition from Democrats and enough Republican opposition to stall these bills in the legislature. By combining all of these measures into a single omnibus bill and tacking it onto the budget appropriations bills, Senate President Andy Biggs is hoping to strong-arm this bill through the Senate by insisting on party unity. You can bet his whips are going to be working over Republican senators.

Your senators need to hear from you now. Pick up the phone and call your state senator to oppose SB 1493. The Senate directory is here: http://www.azleg.gov/MemberRoster.asp?Body=S. Keep calling them until this bill is defeated.

by Pamela Powers Hannley

A new research study published today in the American Journal of Medicine found that current marijuana users had significantly lower fasting insulin, were less likely to be insulin resistant (a pre-diabetic state), and were more likely to have high HDL (good cholesterol). (Read the study here.)

Marijuana (Cannabis sativa) has been used for centuries to relieve pain, improve mood, and increase appetite. Outlawed in the United States in 1937 and further restricted under the Controlled Substances Act by the Nixon Administration, marijuana use has continued to increase. There are an estimated 17.4 million current users of marijuana in the United States. Approximately 4.6 million Americans smoke marijuana daily or almost daily. With the recent legalization of recreational marijuana in Washington and Colorado and the legalization of medical marijuana in 19 states and the District of Columbia, US public opinion has moved toward less stringent laws.

In an accompanying editorial, Dr. Joseph S. Alpert of the University of Arizona College of Medicine calls on the federal government to open the doors of medical research to marijuana, allowing free investigation of the drug. Study details after the jump.

This new study about insulin control and pre-diabetes was conducted by a multicenter research team which analyzed data from the National Health and Nutrition Survey (NHANES) between 2005 and 2010. They analyzed data from 4,657 patients who completed a drug use questionnaire. Of these respondents, 579 were current marijuana users, 1,975 had used marijuana in the past but were not current users, and 2,103 had never inhaled or ingested marijuana. Fasting insulin and glucose were measured via blood samples, and insulin resistance was calculated.

Participants who reported using marijuana in the past month had lower levels of fasting insulin and insulin resistance and higher levels of high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C). Large waist circumference also is linked to diabetes risk, and this study also sowed significant associations between marijuana use and smaller waist circumferences. 

These associations were weaker among those who reported using marijuana at least once, but not in the past thirty days, suggesting that the impact of marijuana use on insulin and insulin resistance exists during periods of recent use. Current users had 16% lower fasting insulin levels than participants who reported never having used marijuana in their lifetimes. 

“Previous epidemiologic studies have found lower prevalence rates of obesity and diabetes mellitus in marijuana users compared to people who have never used marijuana, suggesting a relationship between cannabinoids and peripheral metabolic processes, but ours is the first study to investigate the relationship between marijuana use and fasting insulin, glucose, and insulin resistance,” says lead investigator Murray A. Mittleman, MD, DrPH, of the Cardiovascular Epidemiology Research Unit at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston.

Although people who smoke marijuana have higher average caloric intake levels than non-users, marijuana use has been associated with lower body-mass index (BMI) in two previous surveys. “The mechanisms underlying this paradox have not been determined and the impact of regular marijuana use on insulin resistance and cardiometabolic risk factors remains unknown,” says coauthor Hannah Buettner.

The investigators acknowledge that data on marijuana use were self-reported and may be subject to underestimation or denial of illicit drug use. However, they point out, underestimation of drug use would likely yield results biased toward observing no association.

“We desperately need a great deal more basic and clinical research into the short- and long-term effects of marijuana in a variety of clinical settings such as cancer, diabetes, and frailty of the elderly,” said Editor-in-Chief Joseph S. Alpert, MD, Professor of Medicine at the University of Arizona College of Medicine. "I would like to call on the NIH and the DEA to collaborate in developing policies to implement solid scientific investigations that would lead to information assisting physicians in the proper use and prescription of THC in its synthetic or herbal form.” 

This is the second major study released this week about the medical benefits of marijuana. On Monday, a study showing decreased bladder cancer risk among marijuana smokers compared to cigarette smokers:
Marijuana Linked To Lower Bladder Cancer Risk, Study Says

I think it is high time [pun intended] that the US government end its polilically motivated, schizophrenic policies toward marijuana. States should stop putting up economic roadblocks to medical marijuana clinics. (What other legal industries have been victimized in this way?) And the Obama Administration should stop the crackdowns on clinics and open up the doors to research, which were closed by President Nixon.

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Time once again for The Farley Report from Senator Steve Farley (D-LD 9):

I believe I previously shared with you my analogy of the legislature as a middle school. That analogy is particularly apt as we approach approving a budget, as we began to do this morning.  

Just like 7th and 8th grades, for the last few days rumors of all kinds have run rampant, cliques have formed and broken, fights have broken out then healed almost as quickly, and adrenaline is reaching a peak. Huge lines in the sand are easily crossed and then forgotten, reputations are made and then broken, and hope and fear fight over the same space in our consciousness.  

The Medicaid restoration has heightened the stakes dramatically this year, so this next couple of weeks is really gonna be something to witness.  

Yes, the logjam of the past couple of months is finally broken, and the end is in sight. This may be due to the Governor's threat to veto all bills until progress is made, or perhaps due to today being the day legislators' per diem reimbursement is slashed, but either way the result is welcome after weeks of stagnation.  

Here's how it is going down so far, subject to change at any moment: 

Ten separate budget bills--covering different aspects of the budget--were introduced by special dispensation of the Senate Rules Committee today. This is a surprise in and of itself, since the previous assumption was that budget would start in the House, given President Biggs's declaration weeks ago that he would not let Medicaid get a vote on the Senate floor.  

None of these bills (SB1483-1492) include the Medicaid restoration. However, the general understanding is that one of them will be amended (by a Republican) during Committee of the Whole on Thursday to include the Governor's restoration plan (with no language against Planned Parenthood), and there are more than enough bipartisan votes to pass it.  

Thus amended (and with other amendments to improve the current language of other bills), the package will be third read and sent out of the Senate late Thursday/early Friday and sent to the House, where--barring unforeseen glitches--it will likely be further amended and returned to the Senate for final approval, then passed to the Governor for signature.  

The House seems to have enough votes to pass Medicaid as well, but Speaker Tobin is still trying to push an alternative of sending it to the voters (costing another $8 million in taxpayer money to do so). There does not appear to be support for that alternative. The Governor's plan has a strong chance of making it through, particularly given the momentum that would come from the package passing through the Senate with more bipartisan votes than necessary. 

That's the plan on Medicaid. The rest of the budget is a bit more checkered. While most of us assumed that any budget coming out of the Senate would be way too conservative for Democrats to consider, the bills before us today, while they contain flaws, are in many ways surprisingly reasonable, and almost matches the Governor's budget proposal from earlier this year. Despite their problems, these bills don't emulate the slash-and-burn budgets of recent years. 

They fund the inflation factor for K-12 education ($82 million this year) for the first time in years (admittedly after the legislature lost a court case to that effect) and there is funding for the UofA medical school and updating the ancient computers in the Department of Education. On the other side, Performance Funding remains. This has the possibility of rewarding rich schools while punishing poor ones, but it is pushed off into next year at which point the formula will be finalized and hopefully fixed, if that is possible. Also, the statutory formulas for classroom supplies and computers are eliminated, as is the School Facilities Board formulas. Adult Ed is not funded, either.  

CPS funding is increased, but not to the extent needed. For instance, Emergency and Residential Placements for kids who need to be removed from dangerous homes is scored at less than half of what the Governor says we need, and this could set up more terrible situations wherein kids are housed in offices for days on end -- we have to protect those kids who count on us for their safety.  

There will be amendments offered by both Republicans and Democrats to fix many of these shortcomings, but it remains to be seen how many will be adopted. It could well be that I and others will be voting in favor of the Medicaid bill, but against many of the other bills that do more harm than good.  

Another little kicker today was the late reintroduction of a series of Senate elections bills that were held in the House. These bills would collectively have the effect of reducing participation in Arizona elections and should be resisted at all costs. Thankfully for democracy, I have reason to believe that this package will not make it to the Senate floor. I will, as always, watch carefully just in case I am surprised. This is, after all, the season of surprises in the Legislature.

I will send you a brief update late Thursday or early Friday to let you know how this all shakes out here at Washington Street Junior High. 

Thanks for your faith in me as your Senator.

Steve Farley

By Craig McDermott, cross-posted from Random Musings

Correction added on 5/15 - during my initial perusal of SB1492, it appeared as if some Medicaid expansion provisions were included in it already.  While there are some changes to AHCCCS provisions contained in it, they are minor and *not* part of a Medicaid restoration package.

Well, the Senate has introduced its budget package, placing the Medicaid restoration plan in the budget itself but adding a kicker, SB1493.

It has the rather innocuous subject of "elections; omnibus".

It really should be called "extortion; all-in-one; every bad election-related scheme offered by the Republicans this year".

There's summarily removing voters from the permanent early voting list (PEVL), effectively barring most schools from serving as polling places, making successful recall elections all but impossible, barring organizations and campaigns from collecting and returning early ballots, elevating administrative barriers to initiative petition drives, and more.

Any one scheme would render a bill "unpassable" (and has, many times during this session); placing them all in one bill means that the Senate leadership (read: Andy Biggs) expects factors other than the merits of the proposals to influence legislators' votes on the bill.

The other bills in the package are:

SB1483, general appropriations

SB1484, capital outlay

SB1485, budget procedures

SB1486, revenue; budget reconciliation

SB1487, K-12 education, budget reconciliation

SB1488, higher education, budget reconciliation

SB1489, government, budget reconciliation

SB1490, criminal justice; budget reconciliation

SB1491, environment; budget reconciliation

SB1492, health, welfare; budget reconciliation (yes, probably the one that eventually will have the Medicaid restoration provisions.)

Senate Appropriations is scheduled to hold a hearing on the bills tomorrow (Wednesday) at 11 a.m. in SHR109.  If you plan to attend, plan to arrive early because seats will be at a premium.  Bring a strong bladder, too - it's going to be a long meeting. 

More later...

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Well, well, well . . . the "nothingburger" of the conservative media entertainment complex's "Benghazi! Benghazi!! Benghazi!!" faux scandal now has a real scandal, only this one involves a GOP operative "misrepresenting" the contents of an email to an all too gullible "lamestream" media wanting to out-FOX FOX News.

Jake Tapper, who used to work for ABC News but has moved to TeaNN (formerly CNN), has a scoop today on how his former employer got played by this GOP operative in its "exclusive" report last week. CNN exclusive: White House email contradicts Benghazi leaks:

CNN has obtained an e-mail sent by a top aide to President Barack Obama about White House reaction to the deadly attack last September 11 on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, that apparently differs from how sources characterized it to two different media organizations.

The actual e-mail from then-Deputy National Security Adviser for Strategic Communications Ben Rhodes appears to show that whomever leaked it did so in a way that made it appear that the White House was primarily concerned with the State Department's desire to remove references and warnings about specific terrorist groups so as to not bring criticism to the department.

Rhodes, White House communications director Jennifer Palmieri, and White House press secretary Jay Carney, could not be reached for comment.

In the e-mail sent on Friday, September 14, 2012, at 9:34 p.m., obtained by CNN from a U.S. government source, Rhodes wrote:

“All –

“Sorry to be late to this discussion. We need to resolve this in a way that respects all of the relevant equities, particularly the investigation.

“There is a ton of wrong information getting out into the public domain from Congress and people who are not particularly informed. Insofar as we have firmed up assessments that don’t compromise intel or the investigation, we need to have the capability to correct the record, as there are significant policy and messaging ramifications that would flow from a hardened mis-impression.

“We can take this up tomorrow morning at deputies.”

You can read the e-mail HERE.

ABC News reported that Rhodes wrote: “We must make sure that the talking points reflect all agency equities, including those of the State Department, and we don’t want to undermine the FBI investigation. We thus will work through the talking points tomorrow morning at the Deputies Committee meeting.”

ABC News notes in its report that it was provided summaries of White House and State Department emails, not the emails themselves.

The Weekly Standard reported that Rhodes "responded to the group, explaining that Nuland had raised valid concerns and advising that the issues would be resolved at a meeting of the National Security Council’s Deputies Committee the following morning." Nuland refers to then-State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland.

Whoever provided those accounts seemingly invented the notion that Rhodes wanted the concerns of the State Department specifically addressed. While Nuland, particularly, had expressed a desire to remove mentions of specific terrorist groups and CIA warnings about the increasingly dangerous assignment, Rhodes put no emphasis at all in his e-mail on the State Department's concerns.

The context of the e-mail chain is important.

* * *

Previous reporting also misquoted Rhodes as saying the group would work through the talking points at the deputies meeting on Saturday, September 15, when the talking points to Congress were finalized. While the previously written subject line of the e-mail mentions talking points, Rhodes only addresses misinformation in a general sense.

Context here, too, is important.

* * *

So whoever leaked the inaccurate information earlier this month did so in a way that made it appear that the White House – specifically Rhodes – was more interested in the State Department’s concerns, and more focused on the talking points, than the e-mail actually stated.

Media Matters reports on how the ABC News "exclusive" was picked up by other media outlets without question, giving new life to this faux scandal last week. New CNN Report Indicates The Media Echo Chamber Has Run Amok Again On Benghazi Email.

The Hill reports today the White House asserts that a GOP operative "fabricated" the information leaked to ABC News and The Weekly Standard. White House: GOP fabricated leaked Benghazi email:

The White House on Tuesday accused congressional Republicans of fabricating emails leaked to two different media organizations that suggested interest in scrubbing the Benghazi, Libya, talking points.

"Republicans who were leaking these emails that have been shared with Congress didn't just do that. They decided to fabricate portions of an email, and make up portions of an email in order to fit a political narrative," Carney said. "I'm not surprised by it because we've seen it again and again."

Both ABC News and The Weekly Standard reported last week that then-Deputy National Security Adviser for Strategic Communications Ben Rhodes wrote an email primarily concerned with the State Department's suggested edits of the Benghazi talking points.

The email appeared to give credence to those who had suggested a greater White House involvement in scrubbing mentions of specific terrorist groups and prior CIA terror warnings from the final talking points distributed to administration officials and congressional leaders.

But a full version of the email, obtained by CNN, suggests that Rhodes never specifically says he wants the concerns of State Department official Victoria Nuland to be addressed at a meeting to work through the talking points. Rather, he wrote that he hoped the concerns of all those involved in the process are considered. 

Carney said Tuesday that apparent contradiction was evidence of Republican willingness to "cherry pick information, or in this case, make it up in order to fit a political narrative."

Dan Pfeiffer, a senior White House adviser, also suggested that Republicans had falsified the leaked email.

"Somewhere on Capitol Hill, a GOP source is having a series of awkward conversations with reporters about the fabricated Benghazi email," Pfeiffer said on Twitter.

When the evidence doesn't fit the narrative, the GOP just fabricates the evidence. It's time for ABC News and The Weekly Standard to out who this GOP operative is. It's also time for the "lamestream" media to stop taking this faux scandal seriously.

UPDATE: Josh Marshall explains, "I guarantee you Jonathan Karl had a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach when he saw [his source's] explanation. Because that explanation by reference to earlier comments in the [email] thread is pretty weak. Karl's follow on piece is entitled 'More Details on Benghazi Talking Points Emerge' but the substance is, 'How the Story Changes When I Realize the Notes I Was Using Weren't Reliable.' The answer here is that Karl pretty clearly got burned by his source. But he at least seriously singed himself by making it really, really look like he was looking at the emails themselves when he wasn't."

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

On Sunday, the Arizona Republic for some reason felt compelled to publish a guest opinion (and video) by the disgraced and recalled former Senate President, Russell Pearce, writing on behalf of his anti-immigrant nativist hate group, BanAmnestyNow.com.

Pearce discloses a continuing working relationship with the anti-immigrant nativist hate group,  Federation of American Immigration Reform (FAIR), whose lawyer Kris Kobach wrote SB 1070 for Pearce.

Pearce also cites the widely discredited Heritage Foundation report (.pdf) released last week, which was drafted, in part, by Jason Richwine, who subscribes to the controversial "science" of hereditarianism and eugenics. Richwine was forced to resign from the Heritage Foundation on Friday, presumably after Russell Pearce submitted his guest opinion to the Republic.

Ol' Russel writes, Immigration tug-of-war: Reform effort is a sham:

The 3-year-old Senate Bill 1070, America’s toughest anti-illegal immigration law, has had a dramatic impact on Arizona. We are a better place.

* * *

According to information from the Federation of American Immigration Reform, Arizonans pay $2.6 billion per year to educate, medicate and incarcerate illegal aliens. According to the Heritage Foundation, the billions we pay today are but one-third of our eventual tab a decade from now if the “Gang of Eight” immigration bill becomes law.

* * *

However, despite the many advances we have made, the burdens of illegal immigration still are too high. This is why I call upon my fellow citizens to join me in opposing the latest amnesty/citizenship bill. The group of eight U.S. senators’ legislation (including Arizona Sens. John McCain and Jeff Flake) risks America’s financial and national security. This bill is the epitome of everything that is wrong, backward and corrupt in Washington.

Pearce toots his own horn about the "success" of his SB 1070, which is funny, because most of SB 1070 was struck down last year by the U.S. Supreme Court. The one remaining provision that was allowed to go into effect is now being challenged in court. The U.S. Supreme Court intimated in its decision that when this remaining provision makes its way back to the court, it will be struck down as well. That's a pyrrhic victory at best, hardly the "success" Pearce imagines in his fevered mind.

Pearce goes on to detail a list of grievances about the "Gang of Eight" immigration bill, which he labels a "sham."  You can read the details of his nativist rant at the link above. He concludes:

The Gang of Eight bill isn’t a serious bill. Congress has a 10 percent approval rating because this is how it conducts business. I urge my fellow Americans to oppose this bill while there is still time.

I have to agree with Stephen Lemons on this one, Russell Pearce Gets Mad Love from the Arizona Republic:

Gee, what will the Rep do to top this dumb stunt? Maybe they could get David Duke to comment on race relations, Eliot Spitzer to pen a piece about the scourge of prostitution, or Bernie Madoff to write a column on how to invest your excess cash.

And why not open up the commentaries on immigration reform even further? I'm sure nativist anti-Semite Glenn Spencer would love to horn in on the action.

Not to mention Spencer's ex-bud, minutewoman Shawna Forde, now sitting on Arizona's death row after being sentenced to die for the murders of 9-year-old Brisenia Flores and her father, Raul.

Forde could do an op-ed for the Rep. Then a Rep flunky could interview her via phone, and let her explain why it's okay to off brown people.

My point is, not everyone's opinion is equal or even valid. And if the "paper of record" is going to grant a 1,000-word-plus column and several online video snippets to a hatemonger like Pearce, then it should at least challenge his bogus facts, misinformation, and prevarications.

Then of course there is Russell Pearce's evil twin, crazy Uncle Joe Arpaio. Crazy Uncle Joe likes to hang out with has-been celebrities like Chuck Norris, and the "Motor City Madman" Ted Nugent, who literally shit his pants at a draft board hearing to avoid service in Vietnam. Patriotic American Ted Nugent Shit His Pants to Avoid the Draft.

Ted Nugent, a "special deputy" to Arpaio, is calling for all undocumented immigrants (actually, only those from Mexico, it seems) to be treated like "indentured servants," which is a nice way of saying "slaves." The Phoenix New Times explains, Joe Arpaio's "Special Deputy" Ted Nugent: Immigrants Should Be "Indentured Servants":

Nugent -- who, by the way, is supposed to be "dead or in jail" right now -- wrote a column for Arpaio's favorite conspiracy-theory website, World Net Daily, explaining his "immigration plan."

"All illegal men in America should be required to work on building the fence, to be completed in one year," Nugent says. "We would pay them minimum wage, provide food and shelter, and provide them English and American history classes at night. Everyone wins."

He explains that these immigrants will be treated "like indentured servants, meaning that they have to earn their citizenship."

* * *

Nugent, apparently operating under the belief that every undocumented immigrant in this country is from Mexico, cites several instances in his immigration "plan" in which a person's entire family will be sent "back to Mexico."

There's a quote somewhere about being known by the company you keep, and it's perhaps not surprising in this case.

Nugent adds that Arpaio's also part of his immigration plan.

"Any man or woman who is a known member of a street rat gang will be tossed out of the country and is not eligible to return," he says. "If he or she is caught re-entering America, we will apply Sheriff Joe Arpaio justice."

So how's that GOP rebranding working out? What happened to all of that talk about how Tea-Publicans learned their lesson in 2012, now understand demographic trends, and are ready to reach out to Latino Americans?

Somebody sure as hell forgot to tell Pat "Pitchfork Brigades" Buchanan, a proud member of the Sons of the Confederacy, who is urging a new Southern strategy that he and Kevin Phillips helped to pioneer for Richard Nixon, a strategy of racial resentment and hatred to appeal to white voters.

Like Ted Nugent, Pitchfork Pat wites at Joe Arpaio's favorite conspiracy-theory website, World Net Daily, "Requiem for a Grand Old Party: Pat Buchanan lays out demographic realities of Republicans' chief base: White voters." To combat the growing Latino vote, Pitchfork Pat implies that the Republican Party should adopt a new version of the “Southern Strategy” revolving around immigration. Buchanan Calls for Renewed Southern Strategy, This Time Against Immigrants - Right-Wing Watch:

His solution, of course, is not for the GOP to try to appeal to non-white voters. Instead, he suggests that Republicans focus exclusively on turning out white voters by re-implementing what he sarcastically calls the “evil Southern Strategy” that helped catapult Richard Nixon to office. Buchanan implies that this time around, instead of stirring up racial resentment against black Americans, Republicans should work to pit white voters against “illegal foreign aliens."

This is the same old nativist and racist white privilege racial resentment and hatred of the "Southern Strategy." These old white segregationists just can't die off fast enough. If this is what the GOP has become, it will soon die off as well. Demographics is destiny.

By Karl Reiner

Authoritarian rulers are not uncommon to Iran.  As Iran's June presidential election nears, the Guardian Council has yet to announce the list of approved candidates.  Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, wants to see a suitable conservative elected as president.  In a country facing a faltering economy, sanctions and entanglement in Syria, the Supreme Leader may face some difficulty in getting his way.

In the 1960s, the Shah of Iran wanted to turn Iran into a new Persian Empire.  He aspired to make it a major force in the Persian Gulf area.  As the British withdrew their military presence east of Suez, the Shah was ready to step in and put his plan into action.

Oil revenues allowed the Shah to make large arms purchases.  Using the Cold War to his advantage, he knew if he couldn't buy military equipment from the U.S., the Soviet Union would sell him all the arms he wanted.  Within a few short years, Iran's military was turned into one of the most technologically advanced forces in the world.

In 1971, Iran was America's largest arms export customer, the Shah cultivating his image as a pro-American leader in a troubled region.  Unfortunately, due to its overemphasis on the military, his plan was flawed.  The Shah ignored warnings that Iran's interests would be better served by a more diverse allocation of resources.  More emphasis needed to be placed on countrywide economic development.

In 1979, the Shah was overthrown by an anti-American Islamic regime that reoriented Iran into an Islamic Republic.  The revolution's leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, wanted to ensure that Islamic rulings applying to governance were adhered to and implemented.  Not all Iranian clerics shared his view.  The dissenters argued that clerics should not become involved in the administration of government.

Khomeini had no use or leniency for those who he felt betrayed his concept of the revolution.  He had them executed.  Worried moderates predicted that the absolute authority vested in the clergy's right to rule might degenerate into religious and clerical despotism.  The events following the June 2009 election exposed the absolutist nature of the country's highest religious authority.

The prediction made by the moderates came true as the authorities announced that 85% of voters had gone to the polls.  President Ahmadinejad won reelection with 62% of the votes cast.  Protesters, who believed fraud and massive vote rigging had occurred, got a forceful response from Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. He would not tolerate protests questioning the validity of the election.  Expressing dissent, he said, was the greatest crime one can commit against the nation of Iran.

Defeated candidates were bluntly told that they would be held accountable as the security forces moved in. Khamenei gave hardliners permission to use force in putting down protests. Other clerics denounced the brutal tactics used to suppress those peacefully protesting the election result.  They have also criticized the mistreatment, abuse and torture of imprisoned protesters.

The government's harsh actions have prompted a rethinking of Ayatollah Khomeini's concept of governance and the notion of clerical sovereignty.  The arbitrary rulings that send people to prison for propagating slander and lies against the Islamic Republic of Iran are being questioned. 

There are muted calls for limits on the power of the ruling clerics. There is a desire for the establishment of checks and balances, a way to reduce the abuse of power and corruption.  The election will show if the Supreme Leader is willing to relinquish some of his power.  Given the fact that absolute power corrupts absolutely, the chances are slim.  The growing internal friction in Iran further complicates finding a a resolution to the sanctions and nuclear issues.            

by David Safier

Tom Prezelski and I chimed in about rumors of some Senate Democrats playing Let's Make a Budget Deal with Republican Senate President Andy Biggs. AZ Blue Meanie has the Capitol Times take below. The other country heard from is Steve Moratore at the Arizona Eagletarian. He's got a similar take, but he's naming possible names.

Scuttlebutt has it that Biggs has been meeting with Senate Minority Leader Leah Landrum Taylor (D-South Phoenix) and Assistant Minority Leader Linda Lopez (D-Tucson) and a handful of other Democrats to do some wheeling and dealing to peel off enough of the opposition to get his bills passed.

[snip]

There are possibly as many as six Democratic votes in the Senate that Biggs will target for this clandestine operation. But the two top Dems in the Senate are pretty much a lock as to with whom Biggs is working to make deals.

It may be worth noting that overall, the Arizona Senate has 17 Republicans and 13 Democrats. Biggs needs 16 votes to send any Senate bill to the House or House bill to the Governor. Seventeen minus five is twelve. So, Biggs has to pick up at least four Democratic votes to make his plan work.

Oh, and as to Medicaid expansion, everyone outside the legislature expects Biggs to oppose it. He has said so on several occasions. However, the scenario described to me had Biggs including Medicaid expansion in his budget bill(s) with the very strong expectation that it would be stripped out in the House.

All the stories are similar in the big picture but somewhat different in the details, which makes it sound like they come from different sources.

I'm not sure if back rooms are still smoke-filled, but they're definitely as dark as they always were. The best way to knock down the walls and let the sun shine in is for journalists to ask questions of the appropriate senators and for constituents to get on the phone and/or write emails to let legislators know they're supposed to be doing the people's work, and we're paying attention.

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

David Safier and Tom Prezelski reported on the existience of a possible "secret' budget deal in the works in the Senate earlier. The Arizona Capitol Times (subscription required) reports that the Senate Rules Committee is meeting at 1:00 p.m. today to allow for the late introduction of budget bills. Heads up, people. Sources: Senate to move on budget this week:

Sources confirmed that the Rules Committee will meet at 1 p.m. today to allow for the introduction of the budget package. It would then be assigned to the Senate Appropriations Committee by Senate President Andy Biggs when the chamber meets for today’s session at 1:30 p.m.

The Senate, which for the past several weeks has operated on a three-day work schedule, intends to approve a budget bill by Thursday, according to the source. The plan is for senators to hear the budget package in the Appropriations Committee on Wednesday and then advance it to the floor for debate and a vote on Thursday.

It’s unclear if the bill would include Gov. Jan Brewer’s proposed Medicaid expansion plan, a measure that Biggs opposes.

But it’s possible that the Medicaid expansion plan would be offered as a floor amendment to any one of the budget bills.

For Medicaid, Biggs may be outnumbered in the Senate, where at least three Republican lawmakers support the plan. It would expand eligibility to allow individuals with annual earnings of up to 133 percent of the federal poverty line to enroll in the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System.

Combined with the 13 Democrats, who are assumed to overwhelmingly support Medicaid expansion, there may be enough votes in the Senate to add the expansion proposal to the budget package.

Typical Tea-Publican chicanery . . . Budget hearings conducted without any prior public notice or public testimony. Any media villagers in the vicinity of the capitol need to get your butt over to the Senate.

"I’d just like to clarify one point: He did vote for cloture."

I said, Look, on the vote that mattered, Senator Flake supported the filibuster. Again she interrupted:

"I’d just like to clarify one point: He did vote for cloture."

I said, Stop lying to me. That’s not a clarification, that’s a deception. I am aware that there were preliminary votes where he did not bother to filibuster, and I am aware he promised a group of Sandy Hook survivors that he would not filibuster ... but on April 17th, on the last vote the Senate took, on the vote that derailed the effort, he filibustered. It’s a matter of public record. He didn’t just vote against it. He didn’t just vote to water it down. He blocked it from coming up for a majority vote. Background checks are supported by more than 90% of the citizens. Without the filibuster, the bill would have passed. Senator McCain voted one way, and Senator Flake voted the other way. He even talked about it on his facebook page ... so why do you object when I say the same thing?

"But he did vote for cloture."

I said, Look, lady, you must think the voters are really stupid. You must think I’m too stupid to remember how things went down ... but I do remember, and I’m going to make sure all my friends remember. At first I thought Jeff Flake was incompetent, doing ridiculous things by accident. Now it’s obvious y’all know exactly what you’re doing. It’s selfish, it’s corrupt, it’s evil, and it’s shameful. He’s been in office less than a year, but he’s already managed to become the #1 most unpopular member in the US Senate. That’s not easy to do, but he earned it.

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

The latest "scandal" is that the IRS applied extra scrutiny to applications for 501(c)(4) tax exempt status from so-called Tea Party organizations.

Geez, an anti-government, anti-tax organization (the "Tea" is an acronym for Taxed Enough Already) applies for tax exempt status from the IRS -- the agency responsible for the collection of taxes -- I can't imagine why that would attract any extra scrutiny (sarcasm). By the way, the tax exempt status in effect is a tax subsidy from taxpayers, so not only are these Tea Party organizations anti-tax, but they want you to pay for their political activities. Deadbeats!

I have yet to see any reporting that this 501(c)(4) status was denied to any organization, only that they had to provide additional information about their organizations' political activities.

Of course, the conservative media entertainment complex cult has portrayed this as a case of conservatives being persecuted for their beliefs, playing the victimhood card that is the stock and trade of the conservative movement. They all see themselves as martyrs who are being persecuted by the "librul" media and the big, bad "guvmint." The corporate "lamestream" media is taking its cue from the conservative media entertainment complex cult and playing along with this persecution/victimhood meme.

Again, I have yet to see any reporting that this 501(c)(4) status was denied to any organization, only that they had to provide additional information about their organizations' political activities.

The real "scandal" here, the scandal the media has largely ignored for several years and is still not reporting, is the ease with which political organizations have been abusing the 501(c)(4) tax exempt status, and the lack of any IRS legal enforcement to prevent such abuses.

It took a tax expert to lay out this scandal succinctly. Lawrence O'Donnell, who at one time was staff director of the Senate Finance Committee and oversaw the tax-writing of that committee, explained it all in a segment of The Last Word on Monday night. Rough transcript Monday, May 13:

O`DONNELL: If the IRS personnel intentionally targeted conservative groups,that would be bad. But what if IRS personnel were correctly examining political organizations` applications for tax-exempt status? That is not scandalous because that`s the IRS` job, they must do it. They cannot just grant tax-exempt status to anyone that asks for it. And the IRS has a specific guideline for granting that tax-exempt status.

Section 501(c)(4) of the Internal Revenue Code, which defines social welfare organizations for tax-exempt purposes defines them this way, "Civic leagues or organizations not organized for profit but operated exclusively for the promotion of social welfare."

Then the IRS code does a magic trick and changes the meaning of the word exclusively. "To be operated exclusively to promote social welfare, an organization must operate primarily to further the common good and general welfare of the people of the community."

Do you see that? The IRS changes the meaning of the word "exclusively" to the word "primarily", exclusively means exclusive. That`s all you can do. You can`t do anything else.

The law`s intent is that tax-exempt status be granted to civic leagues or organizations, not organized for profit, but operated exclusively for the promotion of social welfare. It was in 1959 that the IRS on its own added the notion that exclusively really just means primarily.

So, for 54 years the IRS has gotten away with the crime of changing the word "exclusively" to "primarily". The IRS changed the law. The IRS took a hard, clear word like "exclusively", a word with legal meaning, and changed it to the soft word "primarily" that means nothing. Left it open to IRS agents then to determine if your organization was primarily concerned with the promotion of social welfare.

And then in 2010, there`s suddenly a flood of organizations applying for tax exempt status, saying that they are primarily for the promotion of social welfare, and their titles include the words Tea Party.

What planet do you have to be from to know that Tea Party organizations are not operated exclusively for promotion of social welfare as the words of the law require? And what planet do you have to be from to know that Tea Party organizations are not even, quote, primarily to further the common good and general welfare, which is the IRS scandalous interpretation of the words "exclusively for the promotion of social welfare."

Tea Party organizations are primarily, and many of them exclusively, for the promotion of Republican political candidates. Tea Party organizations are primarily devoted to attacking congressional legislation, such as the Affordable Care Act and attacking Democratic Party candidates, including the Democratic Party`s candidate for president of the United States. Tea Party organizations are purely political organizations, under no reasonable reading of the law governing 501(c)(4) organizations would Tea Party organizations be granted tax exempt status, and yet they were!

And that is not the scandal that Washington sees. The scandal that Washington sees is that Tea Party and other phrases were used by the IRS to search out at some point the kind of applications that required more questions from IRS agents. That was before the IRS decided to use more neutral terms to search this out.

This is what the IRS does all the time with every tax return it receives. The IRS knows that they can`t possibly audit every tax document they receive, so they use red flags to pull tax returns out of the pile for more scrutiny.

* * *

They try to develop indicators of where the cheating might be in tax filings.

And there`s a very different likelihood in how much cheating there might be in, say, a Little League Baseball organization applying for tax-exempt status and a political organization applying for tax-exempt status. And if in 2010 there was a flood of Tea Party applications for tax exempt status and many, many fewer applications for tax-exempt status from liberal political groups, then it only makes mathematical sense that more questions would be directed at the Tea Party applications.

So what we have here in this horrifying scandal are IRS agents doing their jobs, doing exactly what they`re supposed to do. Now, what we are not yet sure of is how balanced their approach was to that, how politically balanced, whether they showed proportionally the same sort of concern to liberal political groups applying for tax exempt status.

But the real scandal is what the IRS did in 1959 when it changed the meaning of the English language, and the IRS decided tax exempt-status could be granted, even if an organization was not exclusively for the promotion of social welfare, but simply primarily for the promotion of social welfare. And that change from "exclusively" to "primarily" allowed political organizations to buy political advertising in support of candidates or as an attack on other candidates and do so under a tax-exempt provision in the law that was never, never intended for them to hide behind. And that is truly scandalous.

Discussion starts around the 2:25 mark.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

O'Donnell's guest was Ezra Klein, who adds to this discussion. "Ezra Klein, this is one of those Washington scandals where there`s a scandal here, but I don`t think it`s what they`re talking about."

KLEIN: This is the scandal at the IRS. And I think it gets at what you were talking about in the beginning here. The intuition people have in Washington now is that what would have been right is for the IRS to let every single one of these Tea Party groups go right through, and without any kind of a look, nobody reviews your application. That`s exactly the opposite of the truth.

It`s not just they shouldn`t be unusually strict towards Tea Party groups against other political groups. But Crossroads GPS should never have been permitted as a 501(c)(4). Organizing for America, the Obama administration associated group should never have been permitted be a 501(c)(4). Priorities USA, they`re a 501(c)(4).

There has been a disgusting, appalling explosion in these anonymous groups. The reason is because they have incredibly privileged status and because the IRS was terrified going back a couple years now of getting into a fight like this one, where somebody accused them of being politicized. So what they did was they offered no truly clear guidance to people. They did nothing about them.

And now, the cruel irony of this scandal is they`re going to get that much more afraid, back off that much more, these things will be more underrated to undermine our democracy.

Lawrence O'Donnell makes this critical point:

O`DONNELL: And, by the way, the word "attack" for the IRS has always traditionally meant audit. That`s what Nixon did in the Watergate scandal, people tried to compare it to that. Of course, there`s no -- Nixon, the president of the United States was saying let`s use the IRS to audit my enemies, to grab their tax returns and challenge them about what`s on it.

This is way before you ever get to any issue of audit. This is just you`re applying for very special status and we would like to ask you some questions.

Keep this point in mind when you see right-wing polemicists like the Patrician Prevaricator, George Will, write shrill hyperbolic nonsense like this: In IRS scandal, echoes of Watergate. This is pure GOPropaganda, and George Will fantasizing.

KLEIN: Because we are afraid what it can become if the IRS is politicized. Yes, this is a special designation you don`t need to operate, you needed to get a special subsidy, and it should be clear, when an organization is tax-exempt, what that means effectively is that your tax dollars and my tax dollars are subsidizing it. We are paying for the groups like Organizing for America and the Tea Party groups and all these other groups snuck in under this designation, that they should not have because they`re not under any stretch of the imagination none political.

We are paying them to operate. That`s why there`s a higher level of scrutiny. And it`s why this scrutiny should have been applied equally across the board left and right. But it should have been applied to reject these groups, to not allow them to sneak in, get our taxpayer dollars.

O`DONNELL: And Washington reaction is funny to me, because they just hear IRS, political, unfair, and attack, and most of the commentators on television about this, who many of them are much more careful about other subjects, they just need those words. Once they hear those words -- outrageous, outrageous, outrageous.

* * *

KLEIN: And this gets to the underlying issue here, too, which is that there`s something dangerous for the democracy happening. There`s something the IRS is supposed to be stopping.

O`DONNELL: Yes.

KLEIN: There is something. We are upset about the thing they`re doing, we should be upset about the thing they are not doing, just as they can attack democracy, they also have a role defending it. And one of the roles is to not let these groups sneak in, where they are both taxpayer subsidized and completely anonymous. That is not these (ph) political groups.

O`DONNELL: Ezra Klein, thank you for bringing sense to this thing.

KLEIN: Thank you.

Ezra Klein in his comments was referring to a post he wrote, The IRS was wrong to target the tea party. They should’ve gone after all 501(c)4s. You should read his entire post to better understand the real scandal, and not be distracted by the faux outrage of the day from the conservative media entertainment complex cult.

by David Safier

For me, with my love of education and my concern about the out-of-control, NRA-fueled gun culture, this video says it all.

by David Safier

Aspects of the conservative "education reform" movement are coming under increasing scrutiny lately, especially the for profit wing of the movement. For profit, publicly traded K12 Inc., for instance, has taken lots of well deserved heat.

The Society of Professional Journalists gave one of its Green Eyeshades Awards to the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting for its series of reports on K12 Inc.

Meanwhile, K12 Inc., whose Arizona Virtual Academy has over 4,000 students and is currently on academic probation with the state, is running into roadblocks in other states. New Jersey is delaying the opening of K12 Inc.'s New Jersey Virtual Academy Charter School. It was rebuffed in its attempts to open a school in North Carolina. In Virginia where the corporation has its headquarters, the school district hosting the statewide school is dropping its affiliation. It's also finding tough sledding in Illinois.

Don't fret for the company, though. It spends millions lobbying state legislatures and has all kinds of friends in the heavily funded conservative "education reform" movement. Money, like water, always finds its way. K12 Inc. will be all right.

So will Craig Barrett, who sits on the corporation's national Board, as well as being president of BASIS charter schools and Jan Brewer's education mouthpiece. He's also the Chairman of the Board at Achieve, the group which created the Common Core along with the National Governors Association. Oh, and he recently had one of the school buildings at the Thunderbird School of Global Management named after him and his wife. It's now the Barbara and Craig Barrett Building. The man gets around.

Democrats on the education panel said the state should not subsidize virtual charter schools. They also criticized the schools because they are operated by corporations seeking to profit from online schooling.

"I just can't see where a full-time virtual school does much for a student," said Rep. Victoria Kornfield, D-Bangor. "I can see the value in some (part-time) situations, but I'm just fundamentally against it."

By Tom Prezelski

Re-Blogged From Rum, Romanism and Rebellion

Note: Between writing this and posting this, my colleague here at Blog For Arizona, David Safier, posted his own take on this issue. My arguments are only a little different from his, but it seems that this is sufficiently urgent that there is no reason why this point should not be made twice.

Rumor has it that Senate President Andy Biggs (R-Atlas Shrugged) will be unveiling a "Tea Party" budget later today. Among other things, it reportedly includes a petulant $15 million cut to the Universities, and does not include the Governor's proposed Medicaid expansion, despite the fact that it has bipartisan support.

The proposed budget was apparently drafted largely without the participation of his own Republican caucus. Even Majority Leader John McComish (R-Ahwatukee) was apparently kept in the dark, and reportedly members of the Governor's staff were calling Democrats to find out what was up. Given all this, it should come as some surprise that a handful of Senate Democrats are rumored to be supporting this thing.

This is not the first time that something like this has happened. In 2007, a group of House Democrats mutinied against their own leadership, nearly scuttling a deal between legislative Democrats, a Democratic Governor, and Republican leadership in the Senate. It was a useless venture, as the House budget was not going to pass the Senate, and was certainly not going to be signed by the Governor. In her own defense, one of the mutineers said that she agreed to the budget because it was important that her "fingerprints" be on what passed, even though neither she nor her constituents got anything out of the deal. It was a deal for the sake of a deal, the sort of thing that gets one praised in the Arizona Republic as "effective" even though it accomplishes nothing.

The media will try to portray this as some sort of ideological fight among Democrats, pitting radical left-wingers against sensible moderates, even though it is no such thing. The truth is that, even though we have not seen the Biggs budget, we know enough about his priorities that we can assume that it targets the constituencies who depend on Democrats to fight for them. This is not about making deals or a debate about left and right, it is about real people who will, by neglect and design, suffer under this budget. Unfortunately, making friends is more important to some people than making good policy.

The tragic thing is that there are enough Republicans uncomfortable with his priorities that Biggs would not have the votes to pass this budget without the help of these Democrats. A little solidarity among Democrats would make it possible to pass a truly bipartisan budget reflecting a broader set of values and priorities.

Of course, this is all just rumors, reliable rumors, but rumors nonetheless. I have some suspicion about who the dissident Democrats are, but it would be irresponsible to name names. Lets just say that I suggest that folks in Tucson call their Senators.

Posted by Bob Lord

The median income of an American family of four is around $50,000. That means half of all American families are living on $50,000 or less. In other words, they're hanging on by their fingernails.

Want to know what the average income is for a family of four in America? From Sam Pizzigati's review of Gar Alperovitz's new book, What Then Must We Do? Straight Talk About The American Revolution:

America, Alperovitz reminds us, has become the wealthiest nation in the history of the world. The nation’s annual income, if divided equally, would be enough to bring each family of four $200,000.

An equal division of all income would be communist, but it's a breathtaking statistic nonetheless. Think of it this way: We're moving rapidly toward extreme inequality. We have one family, the Waltons, with wealth greater than 100 million Americans. Each family of four having a $200,000 annual income is the other extreme. It's extreme equality. It's actually not possible to achieve, because if we ever got there, the increase in demand would the drive the economy to the point where the income of each family of four was $250,000. Wouldn't that be terrible?

Neither extreme is desirable. But if you had to choose which extreme the richest country in the world should be closer to, which would be your pick? Mine would be extreme equality.  

by David Safier

Rumors are circulating that a group of Southern Arizona Democratic senators are cutting a deal with Republican Senate President Andy Biggs over the budget. The deal is, if Biggs gives the Democrats the Medicaid expansion they want, they'll vote for his Tea Party budget, no matter how repugnant it may be to progressive values.

If a few Senate Dems give Biggs their votes, it will allow him to cut out some of the more moderate Republicans who object to parts of his far right budget and still have enough votes to pass it.

I'm confused about why any Democrats would consider playing Let's Make a Deal at this stage of the budget game. Brewer is playing hardball with members of her own party over the Medicaid expansion and it's looking like time is on her side, so why would Democrats make a Medicaid deal they very possibly will get without giving away the rest of the budget? Doesn't it make more sense to allow the Republicans to fight this one out and force the Tea Party wing to make budgetary concessions to members of their party who've retained a bit of their sanity, or even give Democrats a bit of leverage if the Republicans can't pull together a majority on their own?

You have to wonder what the Democrats in question have to gain personally from this kind of maneuver. What, if anything, have they been promised?

This is still in the rumor stage, but it's not idle gossip. It may make sense for Southern AZ Democrats to contact their senators and ask them straight out if they're making a deal with Biggs.

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

My home state of Minnesota just became the 12th state, plus the District of Columbia, to approve same-sex marriages . . . a "baker's dozen."

The Minneapolis Star-Tribune reports, In historic vote, Minnesota Senate approves same-sex marriage bill:

With deafening cheers and overwhelming emotion, the Minnesota Senate voted 37-30 to legalize same-sex marriage.

“Today, love wins,” said Sen. Tony Lourey, DFL-Kerrick.

The vote, on the heels of a vote last week in the House, brings to a close a decade of debate over marriage that has echoed through the Capitol, bringing thousands of friends and foes of gay marriage to its marbled dome to express their deeply held feelings.

The measure next moves to Gov. Mark Dayton, who will welcome it with his signature in a celebratory ceremony at 5 p.m. Tuesday on the south steps of the Capitol.

Once it is signed, Minnesota will become the twelfth state to legalize same sex-marriage.
"It's historic and I can never be so proud of this body and of Minnesotans," said Sen. Jeff Hayden, DFL-Minneapolis. On the Senate floor, Hayden said that his wife is white and noted that just 50 years ago, his loving relationship would have been barred.

[B]ackers of the legalization measure said that Minnesota already has a human rights law that bars discrimination based on sexual orientation and that does not change if the marriage law changes.

“That’s true today, that will be true tomorrow,” said Sen. Scott Dibble, DFL-Minneapolis and the sponsor of the marriage bill.

After long debate, the Senate voted down adding a measure to the marriage bill that backers said would offer religious opponents greater protections and opponents said would “gut” the state’s Human Rights act. The Human Rights Act forbids discrimination against people based on their sexual orientation. That measure failed on a 26-41 vote.

* * *

Opponents of legalization were vastly outnumbered by supporters in the Capitol on Monday, as they were in the Senate chambers.

In droves, they welcomed lawmakers to the Capitol with hearts pasted on the august building’s stone steps, sang songs, banged drums and created echoes in the marble halls as lawmakers on their side spoke.

“We have nothing to fear from love and commitment,” said Sen. John Hoffman, DFL-Champlin, setting off an echo of praise.

In anticipation of the legalization of same-sex marriage in Minnesota, Mayor Chris Coleman on Monday morning proclaimed “Freedom to Marry Week” in St. Paul and temporarily renamed a downtown bridge the “Freedom to Marry Bridge.”

Gay pride flags fly in St. Paul in advance of marriage vote:

Rainbow flags representing gay pride were hoisted along the Wabasha Street Bridge early Monday to reflect Coleman’s proclamation.

“The state of Minnesota is about to write history,” he said in a statement. “Becoming the first Midwest state in the country to legislatively legalize the freedom to marry for all committed couples is an event worth celebrating.”

City officials said the flags and the labor to put them on the bridge were donated.

Star-Tribune Photo

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Oh dear lord, the new Three Stooges (John McCain, his puppet boy Little Lindsey Graham, and Kelly Ayotte as "Shemp") are back at it again today. It appears that the "Benghazi! Benghazi!! Benghazi!!!" faux scandal is really just about semantics, or diction. "You didn't say the magic words!"

Talking Points Memo reports, McCain, Graham And Ayotte Dismiss Obama’s ‘Generic’ Terror Reference:

Sens. John McCain (R-AZ), Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) on Monday issued a statement dismissing President Barack Obama's insistence that he attributed the deadly attack in Benghazi, Libya to terrorism.

Speaking in the Rose Garden the day following the Sept. 11, 2012 attack that left four Americans dead in Benghazi, Obama made reference to "acts of terror" — a "generic reference," as the three Republican senators put it. McCain, Graham and Ayotte cited subsequent interviews that Obama gave in which he stopped short of describing the attack as terrorism. The three senators also called for the creation of a Joint Select Committee " to resolve these contradictions and answer the many other unanswered questions about this tragedy."

House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) on Monday also pushed back Obama's characterization of the attack, arguing during an appearance on Fox News that "an act of terror is different than a terrorist attack."

Seriously, Dude? That's all you got?

Steve Benen calls this the The 'diction' debates:

Marc Ambinder explained this morning that Benghazi is "a debate about post-tragedy diction." That's certainly bolstered by recent Republican arguments, nearly all of which have to do with the timing of various choices of words.

If you're thinking that genuine political controversies are supposed to deal with more meaningful issues than diction, you and I are on the same page, though congressional Republicans and much of the political world are on a very different page.

Take Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), for example. On Sept. 12, 2012, President Obama described the Benghazi attack as an act of terror. McCain yesterday insisted that those comments don't count: "The president didn't call it an 'act of terror.' ... He condemned 'acts of terrorism.'"

What matters, in Republicans' minds, is the diction. House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) was thinking along the same lines today on Fox News.

"The president sent a letter to the president of Libya were he didn't call it a terrorist attack even when in real time the president of Libya was calling this a pre-planned Sept. 11 terrorist attack," Issa said. He added, "An act of terror is different than a terrorist attack."

This amusing, in a pathetic sort of way, and not just because of Issa's rhetorical framework. It's also striking because it's shining a light on what Republicans consider truly important about this story: which officials used the words Republicans like and when.

Ambinder added, "The Diction Debates aren't real because the opponent insists he/she knows about the motivation for using/not using certain key words." That's also true -- McCain, Issa and others are quite animated over which official used the word "terror" on which day.

But all of this serves to remind us that the political world has defined "scandal" down to a meaningless level. Watergate dealt with crimes committed by a president. Iran-Contra dealt with a White House that sold arms to a sworn enemy to finance an illegal war. The Plame Affair, the U.S. Attorney purge, and illegal warrantless wiretaps dealt with systemic wrongdoing at the highest levels.

In 2013, though, we're apparently stuck with, "An act of terror is different than a terrorist attack."

These pathetic losers have no credibility. It is time for the equally pathetic losers in the Beltway media to realize this, and to turn away from this conservative media entertainment complex generated faux outrage of the day. This is just about riling up the GOP crazy base and fund raising.

UPDATE: The old Three Stooges (including Joe Lieberman) were never concerned about this list of diplomatic incidents documented by the Huffington Post. 13 Benghazis That Occurred on Bush's Watch Without a Peep from Fox News.