View from Pima Canyon (Photo Credit: Pamela Powers)

Late April in Baja Arizona… ahhh… the weather is gorgeous, the skies are blue, plants are springing back to life, and community events pack the weekends. If Baja Arizona has such an luscious environment and close-knit, eclectic community, why is it that the natives are often weary and depressed this time of year?

Why? Because by late April we have been pummeled by the Arizona Legislature for nearly four months.

With Russell Pearce as president of the Arizona Senate, 2011 has been a particularly rough year: corporate tax cuts, birther bills, guns-for-everyone-everywhere bills, anchor baby bills, everyone-should-be-a-border-patrol-agent bills, and a who-needs-education-or-healthcare-or-parks-when-you-got-prisons budget. Heavy sigh… (Wait a minute… did I miss something? Was there a jobs bill proposed this session?)

Down here in Baja Arizona, we have been repeatedly and unfairly targeted by the Arizona Legislature. I’ve lost track of all of the specifically anti-Tucson or anti-Pima County legislation that is winding its way through the rented halls of the Arizona Legislature. Some of the most egregious bills were sponsored by or promoted by one of our one Baja Arizona Senators– Frank “let’s-shoot-varmints-in-the-night” Antenori.

Now that Governor Jan Brewer has stood up to the Arizona Legislature and actually VETOED two of the crazier bills– guns near campuses and the birther bill– I’m hoping she’ll keep going. Governor, there are many more bills worthy of your veto pen!

Let’s make this easy and not confuse the situation with lots of numbers … Jan, honey, pretty please veto anything in these categories…trust me… you can do it!

1. Anything proposed by Antenori. This includes his bills to give Pima County infrastructure to the town of Marana and his plans to become king of Tucson by regulating how many employees the city can hire and which contracts go out for bid. (Last time I checked, Antenori didn’t hold any elected offices in our city or county government.)
2. Anything that is discriminatory against a group or individual. In addition to all of the anti-children, anti-sick people, and anti-immigrant legislation, this category would include all of the anti-Tucson and anti-Pima County legislation not proposed by our so-called Senator (see #1). It also would include Pearce’s obvious political ploy to give millions of dollars to Maricopa and Pinal Counties for border security but leaves out Pima County (which actually borders Mexico) because he doesn’t like our sheriff.
3. Anything that is none of the Legislature’s business.
   3a. The Legislature has no business sticking its nose into the management of University Medical Center, the University of Arizona College of Medicine, or the newly formed UA Healthcare (HB2067). Would you want Pearce or Antenori deciding who should get medical care and what care should be given? Oops… that’s right. Arizona’s Death Panels have been hard at work destroying healthcare in our state. Don’t let them take over one of out best hospitals! Doctors and professional healthcare administrators should run healthcare institutions– not wacky ideologues.
   3b. The Legislature has no business dictating the types of housing that can be built in Tucson. HB 2005 (AKA the Mini-Dorm Proliferation Act of 2011) states that when a municipality has issued a building permit for construction of a residential structure located within two miles of either a military base or a state-owned educational facility (such as the University of Arizona), then any use of the structure for residential purposes under one lease agreement by members of the U.S. Military or by faculty, employees or students of the educational facility is deemed to be in accordance with zoning regulations (regardless of how the area is really zoned). To make matters worse, the amendment is retroactive to Jan 1, 2010 OR the issuance of the permit, whichever came first. In other words, it would allow MINI-DORMS to be legal in R-1 and R-2 zoned areas! This bill is to be voted on soon by the Senate.
4. Anything that would cut jobs instead of creating jobs. OK… sorry, Jan, I tried to trick you on this one because NONE of the Legislation suggested by the majority party this session creates a single job but several pieces of legislation will actually increase unemployment– particularly the cuts to healthcare and education– or hurt workers.
5. Anything that is the responsibility of another branch of government. The Arizona Legislature has a particularly “all knowing” aura about it this year. Not only are they taking on tasks that belong to the federal government (like immigration and border security), they are taking on tasks that belong to the cities and counties (as mentioned above).

You’re the decider, Jan. Please?

Dear Readers, there are several things you can do to maybe influence the final votes of this legislative session. Here are links to contact information for Senate members and House members. Bug them!

You also can sign Councilman Steve Kozachik’s keep-your-stinkin’-hands-off Tucson petition. Go, Koz, thanks for standing up to your own party to protect the rights of Baja Arizona!

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.

Dismissing the recent New York City sting operation and undercover purchases of high-powered firearms at a Phoenix gun show, Republican Governor Jan Brewer said she and the Arizona Legislature make the laws…period. She defended Arizona’s gun laws which allow gun show sales of firearms without a background check and forbid Arizona cities from having more stringent regulations than the state law.

Arizona’s lax gun laws came under fire after the January 8 Tucson massacre when Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and 11 others were shot and six innocent bystanders were murdered. The alleged shooter, who had hints of mental instability but no diagnosis, was able to easily purchase a semi-automatic handgun and extended magazine clips; the only purpose for such high-powered weaponry is to kill lots of people very quickly.

Adding to the outrage over the massacre, New York City conducted and video taped a sting operation at the Crossroads of the West Gun Show in Phoenix 15 days after the Tucson massacre. The videos above and below show undercover investigators easily purchasing semi-automatic weapons and extended magazines from unlicensed dealers without background checks, sales tax, or any ID beyond an Arizona drivers’ license.

Even though Arizona is one of only three states that currently allows carrying a concealed weapon without a permit, training, or a background check, Brewer said she is ready to sign legislation to make Arizona gun laws even more liberal, and Arizona Legislators are kicking around several ideas like allowing guns on college campuses, allowing guns in public buildings that don’t have metal detectors, and allowing people to “shoot varmints” at night.

Brewer defended Arizona laws with 2nd Amendment soundbites. From the Arizona Daily Star…

“We’re strong people in Arizona,” she said. “We believe in the Constitution, and we certainly support the Second Amendment.”

I guess she doesn’t care if little Girl Scouts are afraid to sell cookies in front of shopping centers anymore. Or if economic development groups are afraid sane businessmen won’t relocate to Arizona because we’re crazy.

I think Arizona would be in much better shape if they controlled the sale of guns as tightly as they want to control the sale of medical marijuana. Would-be medical marijuana patients are required to be under a doctor’s care. What would have happened to Jared Loughner if he had had appropriate mental health care?

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.

Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords with supporters on primary election night 2010. (Photo Credit: Pamela Powers)

University Medical Center (UMC) has announced that there will be a media briefing to update everyone about Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords’ condition this morning– Sunday, January 9, 2011– at 10 a.m. in Kiewitt Auditorium. Giffords was shot in the head– along with 18 other people– at a Safeway in northwest Tucson on Saturday, January 8 while she was meeting with constituents. She is in critical condition at UMC following surgery.

UPDATE from UMC press conference: The update released this morning from UMC is that Giffords remains in the hospital’s intensive care unit and is on a ventilator. The bullet went through her brain on the left side– which is better than it crossing through both hemispheres of the brain. A multi-surgeon team that conducted the 38-minute surgery on Saturday removed bone fragments and a small portion of her brain which had been damaged by the gunshot, along with pieces of her skull (in order to minimize brain swelling). She was responsive to simple verbal cues yesterday and today. The medical team is optimistic about her survival but will not comment on her future functioning.

Here is UMC’s update from Saturday.

Tucson, AZ – Peter Rhee, MD, MPH, medical director of University Medical Center’s Trauma and Critical Care, and professor of surgery at the University of Arizona College of Medicine Department of Surgery, spoke at a media briefing regarding U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords and other patients who were admitted to the Level 1 trauma center.

UMC received 11 patients; five are in critical condition, five are in serious condition and a nine-year old child died.

UMC neurosurgeons completed the surgery on Representative Giffords, who was listed in critical condition following a single gunshot to the head. The congresswoman was recovering from surgery in the hospital’s intensive care unit.

“I am as optimistic as I can be at this point about the congresswoman’s condition. We will watch her recovery during the next 24 hours and will know more,” said Dr. Rhee.

Tucson Mayor Bob Walkup said, “This is a grave tragedy for our community, the state of Arizona and our country.” He called this a time of prayer for the people who are fighting for their lives and their family members. He has instructed the chief of the Tucson Police Department to cooperate completely with the investigation that is under way led by the Pima County Sheriff’s Department.

Roberto Villaseñor, Tucson chief of police, and Walkup asked the media to verify information with sources from University Medical Center and the Pima County Sheriff’s Department, which has scheduled a media briefing for 6 p.m. today at Westward Look Resort in Tucson. Media are asked to verify the briefing time and location with the Pima County Sheriff Department.

Robert Shelton, PhD, president of the University of Arizona, acknowledged the work not only of the public safety officers, but also the staff of UMC, including Dr. Rhee and his entire team.

Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords surrounded by supporters on primary election night 2010. (Photo Credit: Pamela Powers)

News of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords’ shooting rocked the Pima County Democratic Party’s reorganization meeting today in Tucson. A Facebook post from the Three Sonorans sent shockwaves through the Democrats’ media brainstorming session as smart phones lit up around the event.

Tears and disbelief spread amongst the precinct committee members and party officials who had gathered to elect new party officers and begin to develop strategies for the future. Many in attendance had worked tirelessly on multiple Giffords’ campaigns.

The meeting suspended temporarily as delegates made phone calls, tuned in radios, and watched the TV news which were conflicting early on. At one point, NPR, CNN and local TV affiliate KOLD all reported– prematurely– that Giffords had died. At the time of this writing, Giffords is recovering from surgery at University Medical Center (UMC) after a bullet that went through her brain. According to a press conference at UMC, 10 shooting victims had been taken there, and one– a child– had died as of 3 p.m. today. National Public Radio reported 18 shooting victims, including 6 dead.

After the meeting resumed, Democrats unanimously elected a slate of new officers for 2011-2012 and unanimously passed a resolution condemning HB2281– the Arizona law banning ethnic studies at Tucson High School.

The new officers are:
Jeff Rogers, returning for another term as chair of the Pima Dems
Deya Nevarez, 1st vice chair
Paul Eckerstrom, 2nd vice chair
Paul Durham, treasurer
Elaine Lim, recording secretary
Martin Bacall, corresponding secretary

After the quickest election in the history of the Pima Dems, more than of the 100 party faithful adjourned to the party headquarters for a vigil for Giffords. Multiple Tucson Police Department squad cars were dispatched to the Democratic Party meeting at Rincon High School and to the subsequent vigil; Giffords had been scheduled to speak at the meeting today.