Where's That Blue Wave in The Arizona State House Dead Heat

Since Stringer’s resignation, House Speaker Rusty Bowers has effectively put all of the chamber’s business on hold. With only 30 votes, House Republicans were without a majority until the supervisors made their choice - Former State Senate President Steve Pierce was sworn in on Wednesday and said he won’t run for a full term in the House next year, only serve out the remainder the term Stringer was elected to in 2018.

“I have great relations with the speaker, of course the president, and the governor. I know who the players are pretty well,” Pierce said.
"I’m ready to go to work."
Senate President Karen Fann hails from Prescott, as does Pierce. Republican consultant Chuck Coughlin says Pierce will be invaluable to House Speaker Rusty Bowers, both for his willingness to deal and his pipeline to Senate President Karen Fann, who like Pierce represents Prescott. (Laurie Roberts in this story )

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Back in April 2016 when Pierce decided not to run again for his State Senate position,  The Arizona Daily Independent  had a different story about that 'pipeline'
Senator Steve Pierce Will Leave Bitter Legacy
It seemed to many Arizona Legislature watchers that the only time State Senator Steve Pierce smiled was when he was thwarting efforts on behalf of the small business owners by his fellow lawmakers. Pierce, who will reportedly not seek re-election to his Legislative District 1 Senate seat, leaves behind a bitter legacy marked by favors for the wealthy and disregard for everyday people.
Pierce has served the powers-that-be since 2009. Pierce could be counted on to do the bidding of the corporate members of the chambers of commerce, and reject nearly any attempt to protect children, and families unless it would ultimately benefit the wealthy, as has the Medicaid expansion he and former Governor Jan Brewer pushed in 2012.
Pierce served as Whip, President pro-tem and Senate President. Senate President Pierce was deposed from that position in 2012 and replaced Sen. Andy Biggs, a Medicaid expansion opponent, by his fellow lawmakers. In his removal from the presidency, lawmakers argued that Pierce had to go during the Republican Primary races in which he poured money into certain primary races to strengthen his grasp on his own power and to the detriment of the Republican Party in the General Election.
Power Shift In Arizona Senate Forces Pierce Out . . . Andy Biggs, of Gilbert was voted in when senators-elect met yesterday in a private room at the Phoenix Children’s Museum. . . One legislator said, “You know, Andy got caught up in Pierce’s scandal. Pierce is a nasty piece of work

Let Arizona Republic reporter Dustin Gardiner tell you all about that!

In Arizona's House of Representatives, everyone gets the day off when ...

AZCentral.com-2 hours ago

House Speaker Rusty Bowers, R-Mesa, has repeatedly canceled final votes on ... "If anything, it's highlighting the fact that the Arizona Legislature is as partisan ...

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Voting rights battle shifts to swing state Arizona

TheHill |                        

PHOENIX — A poorly handled presidential primary election and a hotly contested U.S. Senate race have kicked off a bitter battle over voting rights in an increasingly competitive state.

Republicans who control the state legislature have introduced a handful of measures to tighten election rules they say are routinely exploited, with the goal of streamlining procedures across Arizona’s 15 counties.

Democrats say the measures amount to a last-minute attempt by Republicans to keep the state in the GOP column ahead of the 2020 elections after four Democrats won statewide offices in the 2018 midterms.

Democrats see the growing influence of Hispanic voters, along with younger voters moving into the state in search of technology jobs, as a critical building block on their path to winning the state. It is those voters, they say, who are being targeted by the GOP bills.

 

 

 

 

 

 

In Arizona's House of Representatives, everyone gets the day off when ...

AZCentral.com-2 hours ago

House Speaker Rusty Bowers, R-Mesa, has repeatedly canceled final votes . 'That's not a functioning government'

 

 

 

Democrats and some lobbyists have criticized the maneuver. They argue it's hyper-partisan to quash debate — when the chamber's other 59 lawmakers are present — simply because the majority might lose.

When asked about the concern earlier this week, Bowers brushed off any criticism. He simply responded "spin is spin."

In past sessions, when Republicans had solid majorities, floor votes weren't regularly canceled simply due to lawmaker absences.The situation is an indirect impact of last fall's election, when Democrats, fueled by the #RedForEd teacher movement and a national "blue wave," nearly created a 30-30 split in the House.

Republicans were left with their slimmest majority in about 53 years, and GOP leaders said they would focus on bipartisanship this session.

 


   

A Show of 2 Cross-Party Bi-Partisan Bro' Congressmen

An announcement 2 hours ago in AZ Big Media 

Biggs, Stanton Headline PHX East Valley Partnership Luncheon

[What's on the Menu?]

Freshman Congressmen

Andy Biggs >

+

< Greg Stanton

will share their insights on Washington and plans to move Arizona forward at the 12th annual PHX East Valley Partnership Statespersons’ Luncheon, April 24 at the East Valley Institute of Technology. 

The event, moderated by Arizona Public Service President Jeff Guldner, will focus on topics of special interest to business leaders in the six cities and towns – Chandler, Gilbert, Mesa, Tempe, Queen Creek and Apache Junction – known at the PHX East Valley. Following the discussion, guests will have an opportunity to ask questions on a wide range of issues – from recent legislative actions to immigration, education reform and the federal budget.

“This is always an enlightening event because it brings together views from both sides of the aisle,”

said Denny Barney, PHX East Valley Partnership’s president and CEO.

Stanton was elected to Arizona’s District 9 after serving as mayor of Phoenix from 2012 to 2018, where he built an economy rooted in innovation and trade. Before his election as mayor, he served nine years on the Phoenix City Council and as Arizona’s deputy attorney general.

Biggs is an Arizona native and a retired attorney who worked in the Arizona Legislature for 14 years, including four as Arizona Senate president. He was awarded “Champion of the Taxpayer” from Americans for Prosperity for his cumulative service in state legislature, and has been honored numerous times by the Goldwater Institute as a “Friend of Liberty.” 

Tickets to the event are $75 for PHX East Valley Partnership members and $85 for non-members.

Table sponsors also are available for $1,000 for eight guests or $1,500 for premier seating for eight with an elected official. 

Seating is limited and the deadline for registration is April 19. 

For more information and to register, call (480) 834-8335 or visit www.evp-az.org.

Sometime Stuff Just Happens In Screen Grabs From Videos of Ribbon Cutting Ceremonies

MyndShft

Health Care Wages Lag as Hiring Outpaces U.S. Job Growth

Low wages for home healthcare and med technicians $10-$16 per hour 

Published on Apr 4, 2019

Views: 9 [at time of upload to this bog]

Apr.04 -- Bloomberg's Michael McKee examines the continued increase in health care hiring and the industry's payroll disparity. He speaks on "Bloomberg Daybreak: Americas."

Who's Listening? Who's SPEAKING UP > Speak Now To Help Secure Land & Financing For Affordable Housing

That's what missing here in Mesa where all we see on the drawing boards is Sprawl and more Sprawl, especially almost everywhere: to the east, to the north, to the northeast and especially to the southeast. Growing fast but is it smart? . . . and I don't mean that Mesa Smart City Re-Branding campaign.

You can see what direction officials inside City Hall want to do at today's City Council Study Session for the measures and presentations made for the Proposed FY2019/2020 and FY2020/2024 Budgets.
Take a look at the list of target areas for Capital Improvement Projects (CIP).
Who benefits?

Indirectly - and at some time maybe in the future - there could be some "public benefits" in the long-term.
In the very near term, Mesa taxpayers are financing and will be asked to finance more millions of dollars in 20-year or 30-year bond debt obligations that pave the way for more sprawl.
Hikes in utility rates for water and electricity, garbage collection and recycling, increases in transaction privilege taxes will finance infrastructure that can be tapped into by real estate speculators to build-out more sprawl.

Other cities are doing this:
We’ve collected hundreds of petition signatures, and rallied for more affordable housing – as a result of our collective efforts, $15 million was committed in the City's 2019 Budget to build new affordable housing!
But will it be near rapid transit stations?
Here are the next steps required to ensure it is:
A report is going to FEDCO (Finance and Economic Development Committee) on Tuesday, April 2nd about possibly committing 20 parcels of government-owned land near rapid transit stations for affordable housing.
Please e-mail your elected officials today and let them know you want all 20 of these sites approved and reserved for affordable housing!OTTAWA, Canada > https://www.healthytransportation.ca

About Us

We are a grassroots movement of concerned citizens, organizations and businesses working together to increase healthy transportation policies and necessary infrastructure investments in the National Capital Region.

OBJECTIVES:
• Achieve a truly healthy transportation network in the National Capital Region, from the perspectives of personal and societal health, the environment, and economics;
• Increase physical activity, improve the built environment, decrease pedestrian and cyclist injuries;
• Help ensure vulnerable populations, and ultimately all residents, are well-served by an accessible transportation network;
• Help people have better access to their communities, local businesses, social support services, and green spaces by their preferred mode of healthy transportation; and
• Help ensure that greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector fall.

Smothered > The Out-Sized Influence of Big Money On Politics

As if we don't know it already, a well-researched and documented report was published today in TruthOut  

When Money Talks, Citizens’ Voices Get Drowned Out

By Rajan Menon, writing in TomDispatch

Over the last four decades, economic disparities in the U.S. increased substantially and are now greater than those in other wealthy democracies.

Despair about the state of our politics pervades the political spectrum, from left to right. One source of it, the narrative of fairness offered in basic civics textbooks — we all have an equal opportunity to succeed if we work hard and play by the rules; citizens can truly shape our politics — no longer rings true to most Americans. Recent surveys indicate that substantial numbers of them believe that the economy and political system are both rigged. They also think that money has an outsized influence on politics. Ninety percent of Democrats hold this view, but so do 80% of Republicans. And careful studies confirm what the public believes.

None of this should be surprising given the stark economic inequality that now marks our society. . .
The political consequence has been that a tiny minority of extremely wealthy Americans wields disproportionate influence, leaving so many others feeling disempowered. . . Polls show that an overwhelming majority of Americans support stricter laws to prevent wealth from hijacking politics and want the Citizens United ruling overturned. But then just how much does the voice of the majority matter? Judging from the many failed efforts to pass such laws, not much.

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A Guide to Statistics on Historical Trends in Income Inequality   

UPDATED

December 11, 2018

BY Chad Stone, Danilo Trisi, Arloc Sherman, and Roderick Taylor

 

You can find it here > https://www.cbpp.org/research

The broad facts of income inequality over the past six decades are easily summarized:

• The years from the end of World War II into the 1970s were ones of substantial economic growth and broadly shared prosperity.
  
  • Incomes grew rapidly and at roughly the same rate up and down the income ladder, roughly doubling in inflation-adjusted terms between the late 1940s and early 1970s.
  • The income gap between those high up the income ladder and those on the middle and lower rungs — while substantial — did not change much during this period.
• Beginning in the 1970s, economic growth slowed and the income gap widened.
  • Income growth for households in the middle and lower parts of the distribution slowed sharply, while incomes at the top continued to grow strongly.
  • The concentration of income at the very top of the distribution rose to levels last seen 90 years ago (during the “Roaring Twenties”).
• Wealth — the value of a household’s property and financial assets, minus the value of its debts — is much more highly concentrated than income. The best survey data show that the share of wealth held by the top 1 percent rose from just under 30 percent in 1989 to nearly 39 percent in 2016, while the share held by the bottom 90 percent fell from just over 33 percent to less than 23 percent over the same period

Data from a variety of sources contribute to this broad picture of strong growth and shared prosperity for the early postwar period, followed by slower growth and growing inequality since the 1970s. Within these broad trends, however, different data tell slightly different parts of the story (and no single source of data is better for all purposes than the others).
This guide consists of four sections.
The first describes the commonly used sources and statistics on income and discusses their relative strengths and limitations in understanding trends in income and inequality.
The second provides an overview of the trends revealed in those key data sources.
The third and fourth sections supply additional information on wealth, which complements the income data as a measure of how the most well-off Americans are doing, and poverty, which measures how the least well-off Americans are doing.

I. The Census Survey and IRS Income Data

The most widely used sources of data and statistics on household income and its distribution are the annual survey of households conducted as part of the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey (CPS) and the Internal Revenue Service’s (IRS) Statistics of Income (SOI) data compiled from a large sample of individual income tax returns. The Census Bureau publishes annual reports on income, poverty, and health insurance coverage in the United States based on the CPS data,^[2] and the IRS publishes an annual report on individual income tax returns based on the SOI.^[3] While the Federal Reserve also collects income data in its triennial Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF),^[4] the SCF is more valuable as the best source of survey data on wealth.
Each agency produces its own tables and statistics and makes a public-use file of the underlying data available to other researchers. In addition, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has developed a model that combines CPS and SOI data to estimate household income both before and after taxes, as well as average taxes paid by income group back to 1979.^[5] Economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez have used SOI data to construct estimates of the concentration of income at the top of the distribution back to 1913.^[6] More recently, they have expanded that work to examine trends in wealth concentration and to incorporate the portion of national income not captured in the tax or survey data into the analysis of income inequality.^[7] CBO and Piketty-Saez regularly release reports incorporating the latest available data.

 

Facebook User Data Records Found on Amazon Cloud

More Risks on The Cloud

Published on Apr 3, 2019

Views: 107 [at time of upload to this blog]

Apr.03 -- Researchers at UpGuard, a cybersecurity firm, found troves of user information hiding in plain sight, inadvertently posted publicly on Amazon.com Inc.’s cloud computing servers. Bloomberg's Matt Day reports on "Bloomberg Markets."