It’s not enough that it’s the land of wildly anti-immigrant laws and sheriffs, and the crooked-fingered governor who feels “threatened” by … um… tall presidents. Now, Arizona is out-Wisconsining Wisconsin.
“Wisconsin on steroids” –a sweeping set of anti-union laws even more severe than those passed in Madison last March over massive public outcry—is now on the legislative agenda in Arizona. Arizona Republicans seek to ban local unions of teachers, firefighters, police, and other public servants from collective bargaining, and would even prohibit local officials from conferring with unions. These and other proposals set a new low in proposed restrictions on union rights.
The draconian package of bills includes:
A ban on local officials from bargaining with unions. It would even ban state and local units of government from conferring with unions.
Public employees could no longer have their dues deducted from their paychecks.
Enforcement of a “paycheck protection” plan making it harder for unions to get contributions for pro-labor candidates.
Prohibit local governments from granting release time for union activities, so that union leaders would have to use personal time to resolve issues with management.
“We consider this even worse than the [anti-public union] legislation that Gov. Walker pushed in Wisconsin, “said AFL-CIO Executive Director Rebeka Friend. She believes the new wave of legislation is aimed at preventing union members from speaking out against the privatization of public services in Arizona.
Privatization has long been a central goal of both the American Legislative Exchange Council (see here and here), a national group funded heavily by the billionaire Koch brothers that drafts and promotes state legislation, and the Arizona-based Goldwater Institute, an ALEC affiliate.
“This is a Goldwater Institute attack,” Friend explained. “They’re a think-tank very prominent in anti-union activities, and their main goal is privatizing public services.
Arizona went 54%/45% for John McCain in the 2008 election, and yet it’s considered only this much of a Republican lean this year:
Why is that? Because in 2008, John McCain was the hometown candidate. There is no hometown candidate on the ballot this time, unless you count the sizable Mormon population in Arizona, and the sizable militia population, which will also probably not be voting for President Obama.
McCain did no better than George W. Bush did in Arizona in 2004 (54/44) and only slightly better than Bush did in 2000 (51/45 over Al Gore). Bill Clinton actually won Arizona 47/44/9 in 1996, with Ross Perot siphoning off that 9 percent. So that doesn’t mean Arizona is going blue … at least not right now.
2010 Census Reapportionment: Arizona saw the 2nd largest percentage growth in population over the past decade (about 25%) and will gain one electoral vote, giving it 11 for the 2012, 2016 and 2020 presidential elections. This is the 6th consecutive Census where Arizona has gained at least one electoral vote.
Arizona joined the Union in February 1912 as the 48th state and final piece of the continental United States. The state has traditionally gone Republican in presidential elections. Except for Bill Clinton’s win in 1996, Arizona has voted Republican since 1952. The Grand Canyon State’s population has grown rapidly in the past half century, and its number of electoral votes has almost tripled from four in 1960. While Arizona went “red” in 2008 with home state Senator John McCain as the nominee, the changing composition of the population may lead to it being considered as more of a swing state in future elections.
Right now, Arizona’s population is 70 percent white, 29.6 percent Hispanic. But it’s the Hispanic part that’s growing. That’s why the rash of anti-immigrant laws — the fear of a growing Hispanic minority with both citizenship and potential political power. To keep the state Republican, it’s important to minimize the Hispanic vote, and to cripple the Democratic party’s ability to function in elections, which means killing off the unions, their fundraising, and their organizing ability on the ground at voter registration and get out the vote time.
Because if Republicans can essentially make Arizona a one-party state, like Wyoming or Kansas, it won’t matter how large the Hispanic population grows. Even as a minority, white conservatives will control the state, because their opponents will have no ability to organize themselves electorally. That’s the game, both in Arizona, and nationally. Because demographics are not on Republicans’ side.
And right now, this is how the polls look in the state:
Meanwhile, Gov. Crooked Finger is keeping her distance from the union-busting bills, at least for now.
For the 35th straight month the United States unemployment rate has been above 8 percent and the White House wants to cut into that statistic by bringing jobs back to the America. President Obama Wednesday hosted a forum called Insourcing American jobs. President Obama is offering tax incentives to companies that bring their business back home. The overall unemployment rate is 8.5% and the black rate stands at 15.8 %. Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed attended the event and discussed the impact on the black job market in Atlanta with the Presidents efforts.
The amazing thing about this trailer is that it could be an ad produced by the Democrats against presidential candidate Mitt Romney. It makes all of the arguments that Democrats will ultimately make against Mitt: that he is a corporate raider who puts his own greed ahead of people (and who won’t show his tax returns but has used offshore tax havens to avoid paying income taxes…) and it features the kinds of working class, older folks who Republicans traditionally entice with pro-corporate messages. It’s an odd, odd tack for a Republican candidate, but it could prove ultimately devastating to Romney. Watch the trailer to the 27 minute film that will follow Mitt to South Carolina:
And then wonder this …
Who is the Winning Our Future PAC working for? Newt Gingrich? Does Newt really think he’s going to become the nominee of a fundamentally pro business party via a populist message that assails capitalist greed more effectively than most Democrats do at this point? Really? On the up-side for Romney, if there is one, it does give him several months’ lead time to fashion a response to the fundamental argument against him: that he is a rapacious, job killing plutocrat. Or as DWS puts it: a “job cremater.” If he can parry the pro-Newt super-PAC, he may have a sufficiently robotic answer prepared when President Obama’s team hits him on Bain Capital in the fall.
On the other hand, I don’t see how this helps Republicans, because the fundamental argument against Romney is in essence an indictment of the entire conservative ethos — which is stridently pro-capital and anti-labor. The idea of “creative destruction” growing the economy, even if it costs jobs in the short run — and the idea that the pursuit of self-interest is fundamentally good for the country (as explained by Jeb Bush in his “right to rise” op-ed, or as championed by George Will in his takedown of Gingrich last month that included the description of laid off workers as “dead weight…”) is GOP 101. How does a supposedly conservative political action community tear that down, even in the interest of tearing Mitt Romney down, and not make the 99 percent versus 1 percent argument stick against any Republican?
This past Saturday afternoon in Atlanta, the once jocular and front-running, now defiant and rapidly crumbling GOP presidential contender Herman Cain announced that he’s indefinitely “suspending” his bid for the White House — and in the process he killed black Republicanism.
That probably wasn’t his plan, but after running a race filled with gaffes and gimmicks and lacking any humility or substance, Cain left the conservative movement unharmed and the mainstream GOP alive and well, but he may have finally laid to rest the peculiar strain of political thought that’s been driving black Republicans ever since the kinder, gentler Rockefeller Republicanism of former Sen. Edward Brooke and the late NAACP President Benjamin Hooks was replaced by the talking-point parroting brand that found its ultimate distillation in Cain.
After Cain’s woeful run, American politics may have finally seen the last of the “I’m-not-like-those-other-blacks” candidate — and good riddance.
Cain called himself conservative, but he mostly encouraged supporters to see him as the ultimate anti-Obama — claiming to be the “real black man” in the presidential race and saying America needed “a leader, not a reader.” Yet when the time came, Cain couldn’t back those claims up.
For quite a long spell in African-American history, each of us has had to bear the burden of the race on our shoulders. Custom and tradition — and intense desire for equality — dictated that we mind our manners and avoid personal acts and activity that would make the entire race look bad. Thus, we were skittish about eating chitterlings and watermelon, especially in public. Washington activist Petey Green eased some of that with a riotous routine on how to eat watermelon (not properly with a knife and fork). Amos ‘n’ Andy was booted from both radio and television, a banishment spearheaded by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People that persists to this day.
We were also saddled with guilt about poor grammar and incorrect English, “bad” hair that we tried to ameliorate with conks (remember Malcolm X?), processes and other straighteners, skin whiteners and certain cuss words (in particular, the dreaded 12-letter, four-syllable insult that begins with “m”), and we were to avoid or chastise those who violated the unwritten rules of deportment.
We even tolerated and laughed along with a white comedian, Lenny Bruce, who evoked laughter with his shtick mocking Joe Louis’ inarticulate interviews after dispatching the white hope of the week.
“Well, Joe, what do you think about the fight?” went Bruce in his nightclub performance.
“Ahhhh, arrrrrah, ughhh, I glad I win … blah, blah, blah, Deetroit.”
Indeed, we were embarrassed.
But no more. That was then. In the interim, we progressed to the point where not even the buffoonery of a Herman Cain can make us shudder and shrink into the shadows to hide our faces. There was a time when such antics would have been comparable to Amos ‘n’ Andy. But declaring ultraconservative billionaires the Koch brothers his “brothers from another mother” and describing himself as “black-walnut ice cream” only drew snide snickers and disdain from many nonsupportive African Americans.
His ignorance of the war in Libya and President Obama’s foreign policy fell only on his shoulders, not the rest of us. His long pauses and poor answers to questions about policy issues that presidents confront daily reflected solely on him.
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