Members of Progressive Democrats of America (PDA) Tucson Chapter demonstrated their support for Medicare on the recent 46th anniversary of this important component of President Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty.

Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, and other social safety net programs were under attack by Congressional Republicans during the recent budget deficit/debit ceiling fiasco in Congress.

Extremist Teapublicans– including Arizona’s five Teapublican Congressional Representatives, Paul Gosar (CD1), Trent Franks (CD2), Ben Quayle (CD3), David Schweikert (CD5), and Jeff Flake (CD6)– brought the country to the brink of default by choosing to cling to their ideology, rather than thinking about what’s best for our country and voting with the majority of Americans.

For the final vote, Gosar joined Democratic Blue Dog Gabirelle Giffords (CD8) and voted for the compromise debt ceiling bill. Progressive Democrats Raul Grijalva (CD7) and Ed Pastor (CD4) voted against the bill– since it included no revenue increases and leaves Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid volunterable to future cuts.

Franks, Quayle, Schweikert, and Flake voted the straight Teapublican line on every vote– including voting against the debt ceiling deal because it didn’t include a balanced budget amendment.

In these tough economic times, it is disheartening that so many Congressional representatives are more concerned with ideology over the health and economic well-being of US citizens.

This graphic, based upon Department of Labor statistics, shows that overall middle class income has decreased with union membership.

According to Michael Moore, the beginning of the end was 30 years ago yesterday. On August 5, 1981, President Ronald Reagan fired striking air traffic controllers who had defied his back-to-work order. They had been on strike only two days. From Michael Moore’s The Day the Middle Class Died.

From time to time, someone under 30 will ask me, “When did this all begin, America’s downward slide?” They say they’ve heard of a time when working people could raise a family and send the kids to college on just one parent’s income (and that college in states like California and New York was almost free). That anyone who wanted a decent paying job could get one. That people only worked five days a week, eight hours a day, got the whole weekend off and had a paid vacation every summer. That many jobs were union jobs, from baggers at the grocery store to the guy painting your house, and this meant that no matter how “lowly” your job was you had guarantees of a pension, occasional raises, health insurance and someone to stick up for you if you were unfairly treated.

Young people have heard of this mythical time — but it was no myth, it was real. And when they ask, “When did this all end?”, I say, “It ended on this day: August 5th, 1981.”

Beginning on this date, 30 years ago, Big Business and the Right Wing decided to “go for it” — to see if they could actually destroy the middle class so that they could become richer themselves.

And they’ve succeeded.

Thirty years of trickle down economics later…

Productivity is up, wages are in decline, union membership continues to decline, corporate profits are breaking records, unemployment and housing forclosures are ravishing the middle class, Americans are going bankrupt due to sky-rocketing medical costs, and income disparities between the richest 1 percent and the rest of us are ever-widening.

Meanwhile, Congress– owned by big business and paralyzed by ideology– fiddles while Rome burns.

Americans are weary from grinding recession and disenchanted [putting it mildly] with our out-of-touch government. After the recent debt ceiling fiasco and the shutdown of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) due to an ideological, anti-union battle, a full 14 percent of Americans approve of the job Congress is doing, according to a recent CNN poll. (A commentator on National Public Radio’s Diane Rehm Show quipped that the 14 percent who said they approved of Congress’ performance must not have understood the question.)

And why shouldn’t we feel disenfranchised by this corporate-controlled government? In poll after poll taken during the protracted debt/deficit battle, Americans said they favored a balanced approach to deficit reduction– one that decreased spending + increased revenues– but that’s not what we got in the end. What we got was a Tea Party dream, a deficit reduction deal based solely on cuts which will likely cost the US 1.8 million jobs. Congressional Teapublicans– including five from Arizona (Jeff Flake, Trent Franks, Phil Gossar– even scared Wall Street and financial markets worldwide with their intransigence and extremism.

From Noam Chomsky’s America in Decline…

For the public, the primary domestic concern is unemployment. Under current circumstances, that crisis can be overcome only by a significant government stimulus, well beyond the recent one, which barely matched decline in state and local spending – though even that limited initiative probably saved millions of jobs.

For financial institutions the primary concern is the deficit. Therefore, only the deficit is under discussion. A large majority of the population favor addressing the deficit by taxing the very rich (72 percent, 27 percent opposed), reports a Washington Post-ABC News poll. Cutting health programs is opposed by overwhelming majorities (69 percent Medicaid, 78 percent Medicare). The likely outcome is therefore the opposite.

The Program on International Policy Attitudes surveyed how the public would eliminate the deficit. PIPA director Steven Kull writes, “Clearly both the administration and the Republican-led House (of Representatives) are out of step with the public’s values and priorities in regard to the budget.”

The survey illustrates the deep divide: “The biggest difference in spending is that the public favored deep cuts in defense spending, while the administration and the House propose modest increases. The public also favored more spending on job training, education and pollution control than did either the administration or the House.”

The final “compromise” – more accurately, capitulation to the far right – is the opposite throughout, and is almost certain to lead to slower growth and long-term harm to all but the rich and the corporations, which are enjoying record profits.

Is Tucson the new ‘Hooverville’?

Homeless shanty towns-- Hoovervilles-- sprang up during the Great Depression. (Photo Credit: Dorthea Lange for the Farm Security Administration.)

What has all of this got to do with life here in Tucson? Plenty. Two recent studies show that: 1) Tucson has the highest rate of poverty of any major city in the sunbelt and 2) Tucson has the “sickest” housing market in the US.

These statistics– coupled with Arizona’s Starve-the-Beast-Feed-the-Capitalists state government and Teapublican Congressional representatives–Gosar (CD1), Franks (CD2), Quayle (CD3, Schweikert (CD5), and Flake (CD6)– paint a pretty bleak future for the Old Pueblo.

What can we do about it? A few weeks ago at a City Council meeting, political activist Jim Hannley suggested that the Tucson Mayor and Council set up a citizens’ commission to study local poverty (Check out the video at about 3:16 minutes in part 2.) In 2007, then Tucson City Councilman Steve Leal’s office compiled a “Poverty and Urban Stress” report. With dozens of statistical graphics, the 90+ page document details poverty, educational attainment, crime, and other urban stress indicators citywide and by Council ward. At the time, the Arizona Daily Star lauded the report and the City Council agreed to revisit the report annually… but didn’t. That was 2007– before the market crash of 2008 and the ensuing recession. Obviously Tucson’s economy– as well as the state’s and the nation’s– has slid since the report was created.

Repeatedly, the Tucson City Council has bowed to local business interests, at the expense of citizens and workers. The City’s budget– like the state’s and the nation’s– has been cut by cutting jobs, thus worsening our economy by increasing unemployment.

It’s time for Tucson’s Mayor and Council to take the long view on our economy. Leal’s report should be updated and expanded to include multi-year trend data. After the update, a citizens’ commission focusing on poverty, the local economy, and jobs should be created to study the data and make recommendations based upon economic research and best practices from other cities.

As Tucson celebrates its 236th birthday this month, it’s time for Tucsonans to stop grumbling, to start fighting for economic and social justice, and to take a lesson from The Little Engine that Could: I think I can. I think I can. I think I can.

It’s highly ironic that the current social and political battle over our nation’s debt and deficit is occurring this week with the 46th anniversary of the signing of Social Security Act of 1965 on Saturday, July 30.

After a long political battle dating from Harry Truman’s presidency to Lyndon Johnson’s, Johnson signed this legislation creating universal, single payer healthcare insurance for the nation’s elderly (Medicare) and indigent (Medicaid).

From The Nation…

With reporters and photographers surrounding them, Johnson took a place beside former President Harry Truman, who the sitting president thanked for “planting the seeds of compassion and duty which have today flowered into care for the sick and serenity for the fearful.” [Emphasis added.]

These healthcare reforms were part of Johnson’s Great Society, which had two primary goals: to eliminate poverty and to eliminate racial injustice. After his landslide victory over Barry Goldwater in 1964, Johnson and his progressive Democratic Congress enacted forward-thinking reforms that were reminiscent of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal and began the full-on War on Poverty, which reduced the poverty rate significantly over the subsequent 10 years. Many important Great Society programs– aimed at improving labor, healthcare, and education for poor and working class Americans– are still in existence: Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, student loans for college, work study, and Head Start. These programs were strengthened under Republican Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford.

It is so sad how far we have fallen from this level of compassion. The programs of Roosevelt’s New Deal and Johnson’s Great Society– programs that have provided a social safety net for millions of Americans and wiped out many inequities of the past– are now facing a full-frontal attack by conservatives, bankrolled by big business.

Republican Congressmen would have you believe that the nation’s financial problems can be fixed by just cutting spending– specifically dramatically changing Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid (long-term spending) and dramatically cutting other discretionary (non-military) spending (ie, food stamps, children’s healthcare, food safety, pollution abatement, etc) which actually makes up less than 20 percent of the budget. Oh, yeah, and they want to protect oil subsidies, corporate tax loopholes (which allow multinational corporations like Bank of America to pay no taxes; tax loopholes for the rich; continue the Bush era tax cuts that they fought so hard for in December 2010; dismantle Social Security (so retirement funds for those under 50 can be gambled on the stock market); and offer more tax cuts (more trickle down economics).

At a time of high unemployment, high gasoline costs, high food prices, escalating college education tuition, skyrocketing healthcare expenses, a disintigrating social safety net, and soaring corporate profits– Republicans want workers, the elderly, and the indigent to “tighten their belts” to protect the profits and tax breaks of corporate jet owners, big oil, big pharma, big insurance, and Wall Street gamblers and corporate execs everywhere.

From the Associated Press (via the Arizona Daily Star)…

Two years after economists say the Great Recession ended, the recovery has been the weakest and most lopsided of any since the 1930s.

After previous recessions, people in all income groups tended to benefit. This time, ordinary Americans are struggling with job insecurity, too much debt and pay raises that haven’t kept up with prices at the grocery store and gas station. The economy’s meager gains are going mostly to the wealthiest.

Workers’ wages and benefits make up 57.5 percent of the economy, an all-time low. Until the mid-2000s, that figure had been remarkably stable – about 64 percent through boom and bust alike.

Executive pay is included in this figure, but rank-and-file workers are far more dependent on regular wages and benefits. A big chunk of the economy’s gains has gone to investors in the form of higher corporate profits.

“The spoils have really gone to capital, to the shareholders,” says David Rosenberg, chief economist at Gluskin Sheff + Associates in Toronto.

Corporate profits are up by almost half since the recession ended in June 2009. In the first two years after the recessions of 1991 and 2001, profits rose 11 percent and 28 percent, respectively.

And an Associated Press analysis found that the typical CEO of a major company earned $9 million last year, up a fourth from 2009.

Driven by higher profits, the Dow Jones industrial average has staged a breathtaking 90 percent rally since bottoming at 6,547 on March 9, 2009. Those stock market gains go disproportionately to the wealthiest 10 percent of Americans, who own more than 80 percent of outstanding stock, according to an analysis by Edward Wolff, an economist at Bard College.

But if the Great Recession is long gone from Wall Street and corporate boardrooms, it lingers on Main Street:

• Unemployment has never been so high – 9.1 percent – this long after any recession since World War II. At the same point after the previous three recessions, unemployment averaged just 6.8 percent.

• The average worker’s hourly wages, after accounting for inflation, were 1.6 percent lower in May than a year earlier. Rising gasoline and food prices have devoured any pay raises for most Americans.

• The jobs that are being created pay less than the ones that vanished in the recession. Higher-paying jobs in the private sector, the ones that pay roughly $19 to $31 an hour, made up 40 percent of the jobs lost from January 2008 to February 2010 but only 27 percent of the jobs created since then.

Hard times have made Americans more dependent than ever on social programs, which accounted for a record 18 percent of personal income in the last three months of 2010 before coming down a bit this year. Almost 45 million Americans are on food stamps, another record…

Federal Reserve numbers crunched by Haver Analytics suggest that Americans have a long way to go before their finances will be strong enough to support robust spending: Despite cutting what they owe the past three years, the average household’s debts equal 119 percent of annual after-tax income. At the same point after the 1981-82 recession, debts were at 66 percent; after the 1990-91 recession, 85 percent; and after the 2001 recession, 114 percent. [Emphasis added.]

At a time when Americans can least afford it and the income gap between the richest 1 percent and the rest of us is larger than the Grand Canyon, Republicans are asking for even further financial sacrifices from Main Street Americans AND they are willing to throw the world into financial crisis as they cling to their trickle down ideology of protecting the rich while casting the rest of us aside. If they want to “fix” Social Security, they should put Americans back to work at good-paying jobs. According to 2009 figures from the US Census, 14.3 percent of Americans (and 20.7 percent of American children) are living in poverty; 43 million Americans– the largest number ever.

What can you do about it?

Call your Congressional Representatives today and tell them to vote to:

• raise the debt ceiling (and stop the grandstanding),
• raise revenues (by cutting military spending, eliminating corporate loopholes that allow them to avoid paying taxes, eliminate Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, etc.),
• protect the programs that benefit millions of Americans: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, unemployment, college tuition grants, etc.
• solve the deficit problem by putting Americans back to work.

Here are the numbers:
CD8 Gabrielle Giffords: 520-881-3588 (local) or 202-225-2542 (DC)
CD7 Raul Grijalva: 520-622-6788 (local) or 202-225-2435 (DC)

CD6 Jeff Flake from Mesa (We need to lean on this guy who wants to be our next Senator.):
480-833-0092 (in Mesa) or 202-225-2635 (DC)

Senator Jon Kyl 520-575-8633 (local) or 202-224-4521 (DC)
Senator John McCain 520-670-6334 (local) or 202-224-2245 (DC)

What else can you do?

Progressive Democrats of America’s Tucson Chapter is holding a demonstration to show support for protecting Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid on Saturday, July 30 from 10 a.m. – noon at the corner of Speedway and Campbell.

MoveOn.org is calling on us– all of us– to visit our Congressional representatives’ offices today, July 26, at noon and tell them to protect Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Don’t let extremist Teapublicans destroy our economy and our country’s social safety net– as they play chicken with President Obama and the world financial markets over raising the debt ceiling. (If you know anyone who lives in John Boehner’s Ohio district, forward it to him.)

From Move On…

This weekend, it became 100% clear that Republicans would rather see America default, Social Security checks stop going out, the stock market plummet, and unemployment soar than give one inch on their position: that the very richest people and most profitable corporations shouldn’t pay one penny more in taxes.

Even after the president offered Republicans a debt-ceiling deal most MoveOn members probably consider unconscionable—with trillions in cuts, even to Medicare and Social Security—speaker Boehner still walked away from the table.

Republicans hope the threat of default will be enough to force Democrats to sacrifice and compromise even more.

But Democrats like Raul Grijalva are standing strong. Rep. Grijalva is one of 80 Democrats who have joined Leader Pelosi in saying that cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security benefits are off the table. Over the next few days, Rep. Grijalva will face extreme pressure to cave into every Republican demand and let irresponsible threats drive terrible decisions in Washington.

That’s why, with other leaders of the American Dream movement, we’re putting out an urgent call for every patriotic American to show up outside progressive congressional offices on Tuesday at noon to deliver a crucial message of support: “Thank you for protecting Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Keep standing strong.”

Can you deliver the message to Rep. Grijalva at his office on Tuesday at noon?

Yes, I can drop by on Tuesday!

We’ll follow up with all the details and a link to print your own “Keep standing strong” signs to bring to Rep. Grijalva.

Then you just have to show up on Tuesday here:

738 North 5th Avenue, Tucson, AZ 85705

We need to show as much public support as possible, so please pass this along to anyone else you know who could join in on Tuesday. This is a moment when we need to bring the progressive movement together to show our strength and show our boldest leaders that we’re with them. 

Let’s get out there on Tuesday and let leaders like Rep. Grijalva know how important it is to keep standing up to Republican threats. We can’t let Republicans crash the American economy to protect tax giveaways for the rich.

As someone who lives in CD8– Gabrielle Giffords’ district– I received a different version of this MoveOn letter urging CD8 residents to go to her office (3945 E. Fort Lowell Road, Suite 211) to encourage her to support the position that Pelosi and Grijalva have taken. I don’t know how many people will show up at Giffords’ office, but I think it’s a good idea because it emphasizes that CD8 residents need to have a dog in this fight.

Raising the debit ceiling and reducing the deficit by cutting corporate subsidies and tax loopholes for the rich– while protecting Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid– are crucial issues. If you can’t go to your Congressional representative’s office today in person, contact them. Here is their contact information: Raul and Gabby.

Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords' staff sponsored a deficit reduction town hall on June 30, 2011 in Tucson.

The featured speakers at a recent deficit reduction town hall in Tucson– David Walker from the Comeback America Initiative and Robert Bixby of the Concord Coalition– were well-versed in how bad the US economy is, the dangers of out-of-control spending, revisionist history on how we got here, and the right-wing solutions for fixing our financial problems.

The ideas covered in the talks (eg, government is too big; we need to cut spending; entitlement programs are burying us economically; healthcare reform costs too much; corporations are taxed too much; Washington is in gridlock) were almost as disturbing as the budget-balancing ideas that were left out (eg, end the wars; drop our inefficient and costly, capitalism-based healthcare system for single-payer national healthcare; put people to work at good-paying jobs, so they can fuel the economy and contribute to Social Security; end the Bush era tax cuts; raise the Social Security contribution cap; close corporate tax loopholes; disincentivize sending US jobs to other countries; end the war on drugs, legalize marijuana and tax it; invest in research to create new good jobs going forward; invest in public education and subsidize college to grow our next generation of leaders and entrepreneurs; end our love affair with trickle-down economics).

Walker repeatedly said that both Democrats and Republicans are to blame for the out-of-control spending that has increased the deficit and the debt. Ironically, Walked never mentioned trickle-down economics or Presidents Ronald Reagan or George Bush #2– two people whose failed economic policies did more to bury our country in debt than anyone else. He said that the deficit and debt were under control until 1982, when magically everything went south– with no mention of who was elected in 1982 and what he [Reagan] did to destroy the economy.

Walker did give Presidents George Bush #1 and Bill Clinton credit for being fiscally responsible and reducing the deficit but didn’t mention that they both raised taxes (something Republicans in Congress refuse to do now). He also never mentioned that after Bill Clinton raised taxes on the rich and controlled spending, he oversaw the longest economic boom in US history and handed George Bush #2 a budget surplus. In fact, when Walker mentioned the recent 10-year period where all hell broke loose financially, he left out the role of Bush #2 and his Republican-controlled Congress, who cut taxes, started multiple unfunded wars, spent money we didn’t have, handed pharmaceutical companies a blank check with the Medicare prescription drug benefit, and oversaw the largest economic collapse since the Great Depression. This is revisionist history at its best… or worst.

The evening ended with small-group, interactive deficit-reduction roundtable discussions where people could share ideas. Check out this post which includes a link to the New York Times’ deficit reduction exercise if you want to try your hand at reducing the deficit and debt.

This town hall was awash right-wing ideals. So, why was it sponsored by Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords’ staff? And, why was Giffords’ staff overtly suppressing free speech at the event? It should have been sponsored by the Tucson Tea Party. Check out the video for clips of the speeches and discussion.

Dr. Carlos Gonzales on the jumbo-tron in Arizona Stadium. (Photo Credit: Pamela Powers)

FOX News pandered to their base with their lopsided coverage of yesterday’s amazing healing event in Tucsonby dissing Tucsonans for not being somber enough after Saturday’s massacre, characterizing the touching Yaqui blessing delivered by Dr. Carlos Gonzales of the University of Arizona College Medicine as “peculiar”, and putting down the audience for greeting President Obama and the news of Gabrielle Giffords’ recovery with cheers.

FOX pundits called the 26,000+ crowd in Tucson “raucous” and criticized us for “whistles” and “whoops” when we learned that our Congresswoman had opened her eyes. (This is the wild west. Don’t they know that?)

Check out the 17+ minute FOX video coverage below.

At about 8:12 minutes, FOX pundits diss the Tucson audience for cheering too much. They say that the event became “out of control” and turned into a “pep rally”. They really didn’t like it when Gonzales said he was a Mexican/Yaqui and a 5th generation Arizonan– although these statements brought great cheers from Tucsonans in McKale Center and in Arizona Stadium.

At about 9:17 minutes, the FOX pundits say Tucsonans are “not mournful enough” and blame that on the crowd containing too many UA students. (I was in Arizona Stadium; although that crowd was mostly not students, our reactions paralleled the McKale audience.)

At about 9:25 minutes, the FOX pundits mock the Yaqui blessing as “too long” and “most peculiar” and say that he was blessing the “doors of the auditorium”– not knowing that Gonzales was honoring the four directions and what they signify.

They did like UA/Giffords intern Daniel Hernandez (about 12:11 minutes). What’s not to like about him saving his boss’ life? But they put down President Obama, saying that the speech will “affect the perception of the president”; I think it affected his perception in a positive manner!

The FOX pundits said it was a “lovely speech” (killing it with faint praise), but it had “too much politics”. (What politics?, I ask.)

Toward the end, the FOX pundits foreshadow what is to come, warning that next week, it will be business as usual on FOX News. Togetherness and no hate speech? Forget about it. That is not in their script.

Gabrielle Giffords on primary election night, 2010. (Photo Credit: Pamela Powers)

Commander Mark Kelly, husband of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, has established the Gabrielle Gifford Hunger Fund at the Tucson Community Food Bank

According to the Food Bank website, Kelly released a statement Sunday night:

“Many of you have offered help. There is little that we can do but pray for those who are struggling. If you are inspired to make a positive gesture, consider two organizations that Gabby has long valued and supported: Tucson’s Community Food Bank and the American Red Cross”

The Community Food Bank in Tucson has established a special fund for those who wish to donate in the name of Representative Gabrielle Giffords and the other victims of the January 8th tragedy.

Click this link to donate online or make a donation by phone — (520) 622-0525 or 1-800-950-8681– or mail:

Tucson Community Food Bank
P.O. Box 26727
Tucson, AZ 85726-6727

President Obama on the jumbo-tron in Arizona Stadium. (Photo Credit: Pamela Powers)

Yesterday in Tucson, President Obama urged us as a nation to move forward from the tragedy of Saturday’s mass shooting and become a better democracy. He invoked the memory of little Christina Taylor Green saying, “I want our democracy to be as good as Christina imagined it to be.”

Last Saturday, we saw 2nd amendment gun rights trample 1st amendment rights of freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. Will the massacre in Tucson prompt us to rethink our lax gun laws– particularly in Arizona? I hope so…

Will this tragedy prompt us to rethink how we have cast aside the mentally ill in our country? I hope so…

Will this tragedy prompt us to set aside racism and hate speech and move forward together as one nation? I hope so…

Glock semiautomatic handgun like the one used to shoot Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and kill six innocent people in Tucson on January 8, 2010. (Photo Credit: Stinsonarms.com)

Regardless of what Bill O’Rielly says, right-wingers are the masters of spin.

I knew that my anti-gun-violence article in Sunday’s Tucson Citizen would spark a plethora of the 2nd Amendment freedom comments, but I was really surprised at the level of denial regarding the link between gun ownership and violence.

I was particularly shocked that some commenters said if there had been armed citizens in the crowd at the Safeway that they could have stopped the gunman from shooting 18 people and killing six. (That’s the ticket– a re-enactment of Shootout at the OK Corral in suburban Tucson. People, just because you own a gun doesn’t mean you magically know how to shoot straight.)

Another person basically said, S**t happens and brushed off the assassination attempt and mass murder as something that happens in a country with so many people.

In today’s Arizona Daily Star, the article Suspect faced no legal barrier to buying gun at local store the co-founder of a gun rights group, Charles Heller, parroted some of my readers’ comments and appears ready for the Tombstone re-enactment. (Emphasis added.)

To Heller, Saturday’s shooting rampage, which killed six and injured 14 outside a northwest-side Safeway store, is evidence of the wisdom of liberal gun laws.

“This shows why it is so vital to have an armed citizenry,” Heller said. “If you can’t get the guns out of society, what can you do? You can have a well-prepared citizenry.”

Personally, I agree with Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik, who called out Arizona politicians for passing racist laws and fanning the flames of hatred and bigotry in our state.

Now Dupnik is coming under fire from wing-nut talk radio host Jon Justice and Senator Jon Kyl. As the right mobilizes against Dupnik for having the nerve to speak truth to power, the left is organizing a boycott of Justice’s advertisers.

The Republican-controlled Arizona Legislature has long been controlled by the gun lobby. Guns in bars. Guns in schools. Guns on university campuses. Guns in parks. Where will this nonsense end?

In April 2010, the Arizona Legislature passed and Governor Jan Brewer signed a law allowing Arizonans to carry concealed weapons without a permit– euphemistically called “constitutional carry”. Arizona is now one of the few states in the US where this is legal. Our law is even more liberal that Texas.  In this excerpt from Men’s News Daily, a gun lobbyist gleefully promotes constitutional carry in Arizona.

The intrusive government “permit” system in Arizona, introduced in 1994 with paperwork, approvals, fingerprinting, criminal-database listings, required classes, two mandatory tests, taxation and expiration dates to exercise “rights” is still available, but is now optional. Enormous police resources that could be going directly toward reducing crime have instead been diverted by the program into registering, regulating and tracking the innocent. About 3% of the public have signed up for the plastic-coated permission slips, though an estimated 50% of the state’s population keeps and bears arms. Official sources acknowledge they get millions of dollars per year from the permit taxes called “fees.”

“This new law brings rights restoration for the public, and an increase in freedom for law-abiding people,” said Dave Kopp, a lobbyist for the Arizona Citizens Defense League that requested and promoted the new law. “The people have the same right to bear arms discreetly that they have to bear arms openly, we are simply correcting statute to reflect that. If your jacket accidentally covers your sidearm, that no longer exposes you to criminal penalties.” A woman will be able to put a handgun in her handbag, go about her business, and not be subject to arrest.

The key changes in the law were made by repealing the infringing language in A.R.S. §13-3102, not by enacting new rules. A number of other changes were made in SB 1108, the bill that carried the Constitutional Carry law, and these will be described in plain English and posted by gunlaws.com next week. The new law will become effective 90 days after the legislature closes, or approximately in July.

Guns don’t make us safer; they only make our lives more dangerous. According to public health research, the number one risk factor for being shot by a gun is owning a gun. Also, according to the research, gun owners are more likely to shoot friends and family members than burglars or other bad guys. Wake up, Arizona.

Extremist FOX news pundits like Glen Beck and Sean Hannity and politicians like Sarah Palin whose website displayed gunsite logos on 22 targeted Congressional districts– including Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords’ CD8– and Nevada’s Sharon Angle who talked about “second amendment solutions” should be ashamed of themselves for the role they have played in the proliferation of hate speech and violence in the US.

In this special video comment, MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann calls out these pundits and politicians. It aired on January 8, after Giffords was shot point blank in the head at a Tucson grocery store.