Is it time to finally say, “I’m mad as hell and not going to take this anymore?”

The Arizona Legislature (and other Republican-led Legislatures around the country) are attacking the citizens with anti-work bills and anti-student bills.

Republican presidential candidates Rick Santorum, Mitt Romney, and Newt Gingrich and Congressional Republicans are attacking women, immigrants, gays and Lesbians, unions, teachers, college students, the poor, reproductive health, public education, healthcare… the list goes on. They want to take away basic rights that we have taken for granted– like the minimum wage and collective bargaining.

FIVE people have donated 25%– $14 million– to super pacs to elect more Republicans– particularly a Republican President.

Are you tired of government against the people and for the corporations?

If you are “mad as hell”, then join Occupy Tucson, PDA Tucson, and others for a demonstration against corporate rule.

Tucsonans– and others around the world– will be demonstrating against corporate control of our lives, big-money politics, and specifically against the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)– the folks who gave us SB1070 and the anti-worker legislation in Wisconsin, Ohio, Arizona, and elsewhere.

Tomorrow, Feb. 29, come to the downtown public library at 4 p.m. for the demonstration. Bring your signs, noise-makers, and friends. Here’s more information from Occupy Wall Street…

This Wednesday, Occupiers in New York, Oakland, Mexico City, and over 80 other cities [including Tucson] will take part in a coordinated National Day of Action to Shut Down the Corporations. Occupations have been preparing a variety of decentralized actions in response to Occupy Portland’s call to target the American Legislative Exchange Council:

We specifically call on people to target corporations that are members of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). The biggest corporations in America, like ExxonMobil, Bank of America, BP, Monsanto, Pfizer, and Wal-Mart use ALEC to buy off legislators and craft legislation that serves only the interests of corporations and not people. They then duplicate and spread this corporate legislation in Washington, D.C. and in state legislatures across the country. The anti-labor legislation in Wisconsin and the racist bill SB 1070 in Arizona are two recent and destructive examples of what corporations use ALEC to do.

See here for more about why we protest corporate power and how ALEC seeks to erode our democracy, undermine workers rights and attack unions, destroy our environment, obstruct efforts to address climate change, undermine public education, pursue destructive agricultural practices and fuel the prison industrial complex. You can also RSVP for the Occupy Wall St/NYC Facebook event. For national coverage, follow @F29PDX on Twitter.

Simultaneously, European trade unions have declared Feb. 29th a European Day of Action against austerity, following massive demonstrations against budget cuts in Greece, Spain, Belgium, and elsewhere. Decentralized actions in all 27 European Union nations and beyond will be “sending a clear message to the EU leaders: this imposed austerity is going to plunge Europe into a recession!”

The effects of the financial, economic and social crisis have reached unbearable levels in several countries. Faced with the extreme seriousness of the situation, European leaders are making the race for austerity their priority response. The crisis serves as a ready-made pretext to attack the European social model, justify cuts in wages and public services, weaken social protection, make the labour market hyperflexible, and attack trade union rights.

Thus, at a time when the European summit has to adopt a treaty plunging Europe into recession and job insecurity for the long haul, the European trade unions are saying “enough is enough” and putting employment, recovery, social justice and solidarity at the forefront of the discussions.

If you are not “mad as hell,” check out the ALEC Exposed website here.

Mitt Romney has had such a lackluster showing on the national stage that I am amazed he is still running for president.

But he has enough money behind him to overcome the fact that he’s a milk-toast rich boy. The oligarchs would rather have a malleable milk-toast than a loose cannon (ie, Sarah Palen, Michelle Bachmann, Rick Perry) in the White House.

Watching Romney defend corporate personhood (top video) and promote bowing to market forces and allowing continued home foreclosures (bottom video), it’s obvious to see who his masters are, and it’s not the 99%. At the end of his clip about letting foreclosures happen, I’m surprised he didn’t say, “Aw… let them eat cake.”

Occupy Tucson poster. (Image Credit: OccupyTucson.org)

Now in its third week, the Occupy Wall Street demonstration has inspired marches and/or live-ins in approximately 566 cities worldwide including Tucson. (When I originally wrote this story less than 24 hours ago, there were protests planned in 300 cities. The number cities has almost doubled in 12 hours.)

As the movement spread, the corporate media could no longer ignore it. The current corporate media story– also repeated on NPR [heavy sigh]– is that the reasons why people are occupying Wall Street or elsewhere are unclear. Except for a handful of progressives– like our own Congressman Raul Grijalva– politicians are not commenting on the Occupy movement at all– including President Obama [another heavy sigh]. How can the politicians go on their way and ignore the anger and frustration that is erupting around them? Political pundits from Amy Goodman to Ann Coulter to Tucson’s own Jon Justice are commenting. (I’m soooooo disappointed that Justice didn’t link to my video on his trash-talk blog post.)

For those of you who don’t know why the Occupy movement is growing or what all of these people are complaining about, I offer these compelling articles and photos from the Huffington Post.

‘We Are The 99 Percent’: Stories Of The Great Recession’s Victims (PHOTOS)

Candidate-Specific Super PACs Offer End Run For Maxed-Out Donors: Study

Eric Cantor Staffer Creating Leadership Super PAC

House GOP Targeting Title X In Push To Axe Family Planning Programs

New Trade Deal Would Benefit Big Pharma At AIDS Programs’ Expense

Follow the Money: Behind Europe’s Debt Crisis Lurks Another Giant Bailout of Wall Street

JPMorgan, Bank of America, Wells Fargo Accused Of Overcharging Military Veterans

Executive Pay Spiraling Upward As Corporations Race To Pay Their Bosses The Most

Are you thoroughly disgusted? You should be.

Upcoming from Occupy Tucson

October 9: The next Occupy Tucson General Assembly is Sunday, October 9 at noon at Viente de Agosto Park (AKA Pancho Villa Park) downtown.

October 15: The Occupy Tucson event begins on Saturday, October 15 at the same location.

For more information, check out the Occupy Tucson website or check out their facebook page.

Progressive groups like Common Cause have been calling for a conflict of interest investigation of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas for months now.

Back in January, Common Cause linked Justices Thomas and Antonin Scalia to the infamous Koch brothers.

From the Tucson Progressive…

The watchdog group Common Cause is now raising the question of conflict of interest in this case [Citizens United]. Two of the court’s most conservative justices– Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia, who voted in favor of Citizens United– have been linked to Charles and David Koch, conservative billionaires who push right-wing causes with their contributions and benefited from the Citizens United ruling.

At issue is the justices attendance at soirees hosted by the Kochs. Common Cause has asked the Justice Department to investigate the connection and has asked for a re-trial if conflict of interest is found.

Today, the Huffington Post reported that a group of 20 Democratic lawmakers are calling for an ethics investigation of Thomas for 20 YEARS of not reporting gifts and other income on his financial disclosure forms. From the Huffington Post…

WASHINGTON — Democratic lawmakers on Thursday called for a federal investigation into Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ failure to report hundreds of thousands of dollars on annual financial disclosure forms.

Led by House Rules Committee ranking member Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.), 20 House Democrats sent a letter to the Judicial Conference of the United States — the entity that frames guidelines for the administration of federal courts — requesting that the conference refer the matter of Thomas’ non-compliance with the Ethics in Government Act of 1978 to the Department of Justice.

The letter outlines how, throughout his 20-year tenure on the Supreme Court, Thomas routinely checked a box titled “none” on his annual financial disclosure forms, indicating that his wife had received no income. But in reality, the letter states, she earned nearly $700,000 from the Heritage Foundation from 2003 to 2007 alone.

Slaughter called it “absurd” to suggest that Thomas may not have known how to fill out the forms.

“It is reasonable, in every sense of the word, to believe that a member of the highest court in the land should know how to properly disclose almost $700,000 worth of income,” Slaughter said in a statement. “To not be able to do so is suspicious, and according to law, requires further investigation. To accept Justice Thomas’s explanation without doing the required due diligence would be irresponsible.”

The letter also cites a June report in The New York Times indicating Thomas may have regularly benefited from the use of a private yacht and airplane owned by real estate magnate Harlan Crowe and failed to disclose the travel as a gift or travel reimbursement.

Current law requires the Judicial Conference to refer to the Attorney General any judge the conference “has reasonable cause to believe has willfully failed to file a report or has willfully falsified or willfully failed to file information required to be reported.”

Slaughter’s press statement also notes that the Heritage Foundation was a prominent opponent of the Affordable Care Act, an issue the Supreme Court is expected to rule on by next summer.

Finally, someone has the backbone to investigate this guy. He never should have been confirmed in the first place. Special thanks to CD7 Representative Raul Grijalva for being one of the 20 signers on this letter.

Senator Scott Brown (R-MA) surprised Massachusetts and the rest of the US when he won the Senatorial seat formerly held by the Liberal Lion– Senator Edward Kennedy. Recently, Brown was caught on video thanking right-wing billionaire David Koch for his financial support in the last election and asking for more help when he runs for re-election in 2012. In the above video, Koch beams as Brown, who ran as a “different kind of politician” (AKA, not a beltway insider), grovels.

One Dollar = One Vote (Photo Credit: Pamela Powers)

Billionaire Brothers’ Money Plays Role in Wisconsin Dispute from the New York Times may belong in the “duh” category, but I think it worthwhile to note the connection between billionaire right-wing philanthropists Charles G. and David Koch, Wall Street, and the current union-busting activities in Wisconsin and other states.

According to the Times, Koch Industries was one of the largest contributors to union-busting Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker. The article excerpted below also says that Koch Brothers’ political operatives have been working with state governments in Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana, and Pennsylvania to bust public employee unions.

From the NY Times…

WASHINGTON — Among the thousands of demonstrators who jammed the Wisconsin State Capitol grounds this weekend was a well-financed advocate from Washington who was there to voice praise for cutting state spending by slashing union benefits and bargaining rights.

The visitor, Tim Phillips, the president of Americans for Prosperity, told a large group of counterprotesters who had gathered Saturday at one edge of what otherwise was a mostly union crowd that the cuts were not only necessary, but they also represented the start of a much-needed nationwide move to slash public-sector union benefits.

“We are going to bring fiscal sanity back to this great nation,” he said.

What Mr. Phillips did not mention was that his Virginia-based nonprofit group, whose budget surged to $40 million in 2010 from $7 million three years ago, was created and financed in part by the secretive billionaire brothers Charles G. and David H. Koch.

State records also show that Koch Industries, their energy and consumer products conglomerate based in Wichita, Kan., was one of the biggest contributors to the election campaign of Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, a Republican who has championed the proposed cuts.

Even before the new governor was sworn in last month, executives from the Koch-backed group had worked behind the scenes to try to encourage a union showdown, Mr. Phillips said in an interview on Monday.

State governments have gone into the red, he said, in part because of the excessively generous pay and benefits that unions have been able to negotiate for teachers, police, firefighters and other state and local employees.

“We thought it was important to do,” Mr. Phillips said, adding that his group is already working with activists and state officials in Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania to urge them to take similar steps to curtail union benefits or give public employees the power to opt out of unions entirely.

To union leaders and liberal activists in Washington, this intervention in Wisconsin is proof of the expanding role played by nonprofit groups with murky ties to wealthy corporate executives as they push a decidedly conservative agenda.

“The Koch brothers are the poster children of the effort by multinational corporate America to try to redefine the rights and values of American citizens,” said Representative Gwen Moore, Democrat of Wisconsin, who joined with others in the union protests. Check this link for the rest of the article.

A few weeks ago, Common Cause linked the Koch Brothers to Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia (who voted in favor of corporate personhood and the right of corporations to donate unlimited secret funds to political campaigns). At issue is Thomas’ and Scalia’s attendance at soirees hosted by the Kochs before the Citizens United Supreme Court ruling in January 2010.

How much more evidence do we need to show that the US government is a corporate oligarchy and not a democracy? How about this story from Rolling Stone Magazine and Democracy Now?

Ohio’s union-busting Republican Governor John Kasich worked for Lehman Brothers. As such, he was “intimately involved” in selling risky investments to Ohio’s pension fund managers and those of other states. Of course, a big part of the reason pension funds are under water now is that they lost money on Wall Street during the crash– the crash that Kasich’s former employer Lehman Brothers helped to create. From Democracy Now…

Governor Kasich, yeah, and he was intimately involved with selling—getting the state of Ohio’s pension fund to invest in Lehman Brothers and buy mortgage-backed securities. And of course they lost all that money. And this, broadly, was really what the mortgage bubble and the financial crisis was all about. It was essentially a gigantic criminal fraud scheme where all the banks were taking mismarked mortgage-backed securities, very, very dangerous, toxic subprime loans, they were chopping them up and then packaging them as AAA-rated investments, and then selling them to state pension funds, to insurance companies, to Chinese banks and Dutch banks and Icelandic banks. And, of course, these things were blowing up, and all those funds were going broke. But what they’re doing now is they’re blaming the people who were collecting these pensions—they’re blaming the workers, they’re blaming the firemen, they’re blaming the policemen—whereas, in reality, they were actually the victims of this fraud scheme. And the only reason that people aren’t angrier about this, I think, is because they don’t really understand what happened. If these were car companies that had sold a trillion dollars’ worth of defective cars to the citizens of the United States, there would be riots right now. But these were mortgage-backed securities, it’s complicated, people don’t understand it, and they’re only now, I think, beginning to realize that they were defrauded. Check this link for the rest of the interview.

I agree with the Progressive Democrats of America. I’m fed up with politicians who are owned by corporatists; this includes Walker, Kasich, and Arizona’s own Governor Jan Brewer and State Senate President Russell Pearce (1, 2, 3, 4, 5). How do these people get elected? Oh, yeah, money. Lots of money.

More than 300 unapologetic progressives packed a local YWCA for the inaugural meeting of Progressive Democrats of America, Tucson Chapter. (Photo Credit: Pamela Powers)

Who said the progressive movement was dead? It is alive and well in Tucson, Arizona.

An estimated 300 activists, liberals, Green Party members, and Democratic Party foot soldiers crammed into a large meeting room at the YWCA on the west side of Tucson Monday night for the inaugural meeting of the Progressive Democrats of America (PDA), Tucson Chapter.

Twenty minutes before the meeting started, it was standing room only. By the time the first speaker began at 7 p.m., all chairs were filled and people were standing 2-3 deep on the sidelines, sitting 4-5 deep on the floor in front, and standing out in the hall.

Pretty much all of Tucson’s liberal leaders and volunteers– including a significant portion of Democratic Party Precinct Committeepersons (PCs)– came to hear what Congressman Raul Grijalva, populist radio commentator Jim Hightower and PDA leaders Tim Carpenter and Mimi Kennedy had to say.

As one of the introductory speakers, Carpenter sparked cheers from the crowd with fiery rhetoric, saying, “We [PDA] are not the Democratic Party… We’re the insurgency of the Democratic Party!”

Carpenter said that PDA was born out of the presidential races of Dennis Kucinich and Howard Dean. He gave a shout-out to other liberal groups whose members were in attendance: MoveOn.org, Democracy for America, Jobs with Justice, and the Central Labor Council.

Populist commentator and author Jim Hightower was the keynote speaker, along with Congressman Raul Grijalva. (Photo Credit: Pamela Powers)

“Building community and building organization. That’s what PDA is about,” said Carpenter. But despite their efforts, progressives learned in recent years that electing a Democratic Party president and Congress wasn’t enough to get progressive legislation enacted. PDA is now going to work inside and outside the Democratic Party for real change in America.

The speeches were punctuated with cheers when Carpenter, Grijalva, and Hightower talked about taking our country back from the radical right and corporate pawns in the  Republican and Democratic Parties.

Hightower warned activists that taking the country back from the corporate oligarchy that now runs it would be a long struggle and likened it to the 70-year battle for women’s suffrage.

Hightower did admit that he wasn’t beyond “colluding with the pharmaceutical industry” in his quest to rebuild the middle class. He wants them to invent a “new Viagra” that could be used to stiffen the spines of Democrats and give them the backbone to fight for the middle class, rather than kowtowing to big business and their lobbying machine.

After the speeches, attendees broke up into issue organizing teams around PDA’s six core issues:

• Single-payer healthcare (Medicare for All)
• Peace (ending the wars and occupations and redirecting the funds)
• Clean elections and voter rights (including repeal of Citizens United and elimination of private funding for elections)
• Economic and social justice
• Accountability of elected officials
• Environment and global warming

Republicans and Republican-lite Democrats– be forewarned. Like the Tea Party on the right, progressives are “mad as hell and we’re not going to take it anymore”. Well, maybe we’re seriously annoyed and not going to donate to or volunteer for Republican-lite anymore. Southern Arizona Leadership Council Democratic Party sympathizers and No Labels Democrats could be in trouble, if even half of the Democratic Party PCs in attendance decide to work for real progressive candidates and issues instead of just settling for someone who is not Republican.

The Tucson meeting was the second in a series of PDA organizing meetings across the state. According to Carpenter, the Bisbee organizing meeting drew 120 attendees; later this week PDA will hold events in Phoenix, Flagstaff, and Winslow.

Watch for an update of this story with full video of the speeches.

Arizona has been in a state of devolution since Governor Jan Brewer, her right-hand man State Senate President Russell Pearce, and their lobbyist cronies took two years ago.

You know the details– over $1 billion in debit with no plans to fix it; sacrificing K-12 and higher education to fund private prisons; ducking out of Medicaid and defunding transplants to fund lower corporate taxes; pandering to gun nuts (yes, anyone who wants looser gun laws in AZ is nuts) to hold onto her right-wing base while ignoring the facts that our gun laws are out-of-control; and diddling with side issues– anchor babies, two-tiered birth certificates, Obama’s birth certificate, guns on college campuses, and shooting varmints– rather than working on legislation to put Arizonans back to work. Need I go on? (Seriously, we should have would-be lawmakers take an IQ test.)

How did we get here? Or, more importantly, how did Russell Pearce– Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio crony, former Chief Deputy under Sheriff Joe, and  former head of Arizona’s Department of Motor Vehicles (who was fired for tampering with records)– get to be the most powerful man in Arizona?

The old fashioned way– money.

For more background on Pearce and the rich “White Panthers” behind his rise to power, check out this story.
Arizona’s New White Panther Party: Money & (Anchor) Baby Hate

And after you’re thoroughly disgusted, check out the Pearce recall effort launched yesterday. If you want to volunteer to collect signatures or donate to the effort sponsored by Citizens for a Better Arizona, check out their RecallPearce website.

One dollar = One vote (Photo Credit: Pamela Powers)

One year ago today, the US Supreme Court blew the doors off campaign finance reform with their decision on the landmark Citizens United vs Federal Election Commission.

The Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision ruled that limiting campaign contributions from corporations limits their freedom of speech. This decision is based upon the legal precedent of corporate personhood, which gives corporations the same rights as “natural persons” (AKA real people). This ruling permitted corporations and unions to directly fund campaign advertising, a practice that had been restricted; it also cleared the way for the creation of secret campaign financing groups, which poured billions into the 2010 midterm election.

The watchdog group Common Cause is now raising the question of conflict of interest in this case. Two of the court’s most conservative justices– Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia, who voted in favor of Citizens United– have been linked to Charles and David Koch, conservative billionaires who push right-wing causes with their contributions and benefited from the Citizens United ruling.

At issue is the justices attendance at soirees hosted by the Kochs. Common Cause has asked the Justice Department to investigate the connection and has asked for a re-trial if conflict of interest is found.

For more details, check out this story in the LA Times…
2 Supreme Court judges had conflict of interest in campaign finance case, group says

And this one in Blog for Arizona…
Common Cause requests a U.S. Justice Department investigation of Justices Scalia and Thomas for a conflict of interest in Citizens United v. FEC

Fiscal responsibility and a balanced budget were two right wing rallying cries in the recent election.

Repeatedly, Sarah Palin, Ruth McClung and other Mama Grizzlies offered the schmaltzy recommendation that we “sit around the kitchen table like a family” and work together to balance the US budget. Unfortunately, the right wing Mama Grizzlies were just as bad at math as Papa Grizzlies like John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky). While preaching fiscal responsibility, they promoted big ticket spending– like continuing all of the Bush era tax cuts.

Basically, the plan that the Republican touted in the Pledge to America back in Septenber just doesn’t add up. They want to repeal healthcare reform and make all of the Bush II’s tax cuts (especially those for the ultra rich) permanent PLUS cut government and cut the deficit. On the NPR’s Diane Rehm Show, one commentator said that even if the Republicans take government spending back to Reagan era levels + cut more, we would still be no where near a balanced budget.

So, that Mom and Pop Grizzly talk was just smoke and mirrors to get elected. Now what do we do to eliminate the US budget deficit?

Recently, two big stories in the news lately have been: what to do (if anything) with the Bush era tax cuts that will sunset at the end of 2010 and the release of the Bowles-Simpson bipartisan budget committee’s recommendations to cut the federal deficit.

There has been quite a bit of outcry against the Cat Food Commission (as Bowles-Simpson has been dubed). They recommend eliminating the mortgage interest deduction, child tax credit, and the earned income tax credit– which benefit the middle class– plus they want to lower tax rates, tinker with Social Security, and eliminate social safety nets.

In my opinion, the commission lacks credibility since it left big ticket items– like the Bush Era tax cuts and military spending– untouched.

So, here we are around the kitchen table with politicians who are afraid to make the tough choices– as usual! Now what’s a person to do? Our elected officials– on both sides of the aisle– can’t figure this out. Well, the New York Times has come to the rescue. Last Saturday, they posted an interactive budget-balancing tool: Budget Puzzle: You Fix the Budget. Check it out. It took me about 3 minutes to come up with a budget surplus by 2015 (and I let the middle class keep its Bush Era tax cuts).

So, what’s the big deal? The big deal, of course, is all of those corporate strings attached to our lawmakers.

Intuitively, to balance the budget the way a family would you would start with luxury items or things you don’t need (like the wars). Since Bush II and the Republicans (Yes, McConnell and Boehner plus our own John McCain, Jon Kyl and the rest of the right wing drunken sailors) took a few key fiscally irresponsible steps to create the budget deficit, let’s start by rolling those unfunded pet projects back to the Clinton Era (when we had a budget surplus). Here are my recommendations:

Let all of the Bush Era tax cuts sunset. Ed Schultz has been touting this idea on his radio show, and I agree with him. I was seriously disappointed when President Obama hinted that he may cave on his original suggestion (which he has been pushing for months)– continue the middle class tax cuts but let the tax cuts for the rich sunset. Schultz’s point is that the lame duck Democrats don’t have to do anything. Let the Republicans continue to fight for the ultra-rich while pretending to be fiscally responsible. (Their recent pledge to eliminate earmarks for a year would save a tiny fraction compared to Bush II’s tax cuts, and earmarks bring jobs to rural America.) I’m with Ed. If we truly want to bring down the deficit, then let all of the tax cuts end. This would provide a $226 billion savings by 2015 ($54 billion in savings from eliminating tax cuts for the wealthy + $172 billion in savings from eliminating tax cuts for the rest of us), according to the NY Times. (Personally, if the richest 1% of Americans, the big corporations, and the US Chamber of Commerce can secretly donate billions to elect lawmakers to protect their interests, they can afford higher taxes.)

Stop both wars. The Times interactive tool doesn’t give this option, but it does allow you to pick and choose ways to reduce military spending.

Allow the US to negotiate prescription drug prices for Medicare and Medicaid and eliminate Medicare Advantage. These are both HUGE corporate giveaways that Bush II and the Republicans built into the unfunded Medicare Part D prescription bill several years ago. Up until “Obamacare” eliminated these corporate giveaways, the US is the only country that did not get a quantity price break on prescription drugs. The Republicans and Tea Partiers– puppets of the corporatists– campaigned on repeal of healthcare reform. Among other parts of healthcare reform, these 2 initiatives save money.

The NY Times also provides several other spending cuts and tax increases that can help balance the budget– items that have been proposed in the past but didn’t fly for one reason or another– but I think if we started with these unfunded Bush Era initiatives we would be well on our way to getting our fiscal house in order– as it was under President Clinton.

Once and for all, as a nation, we should:

• Give up on trickle down economics;
• Stop the corporate welfare;
• Tax corporations that send jobs overseas;
• Invest in our future by fully funding education and early childhood development;
• Hold elected officials accountable and reward those who make tough choices that benefit the people– not big corporations.