Jan Brewer's big brain freeze -- not forgotten
Politico today looks back at how the candidate debates were this holiday season—and takes out Brewer’s painful 13 seconds for one last run around the track:
Says the magazine:
The gap between the ideal of debates—thoughtful, probing, spontaneous affairs that illuminate serious differences between candidates and their ideas—and the reality of debates has rarely, if ever, been more glaring.
Brewer’s in the second graf:
And then there was the frozen moment on a debate stage in Arizona, where incumbent Republican governor Jan Brewer was so tense that she paused for more than ten seconds, staring at the camera, looking at notes, then back at the camera, before finally speaking: “We have…did what was right for Arizona.”
7:19 AM
Arizona Republic: No news here! Please move along
As PHXated has mentioned before, the Arizona Republic has a curious approach to news.
If you have a wet-behind-the-ears would-be representative with a famous name who worked for a porny web site, or a governor who goes into the Twilight Zone for ten seconds during a debate, for heaven’s sake don’t treat it as big news or cover it as an ongoing story.
It just gets folks riled up.
Newspapers for decades survived on not riling folks up. (They might cancel their subscription!)
The world’s changed, today, but newspapers haven’t.
The latest: The paper heard, recently, that Gov. Brewer had been in a car crash in 1988 during which, it certainly seems, she’d been driving drunk.
The paper had a scoop!
Stop the presses?
Nope.
Instead, the paper buried it in a fact-checking column in section two. And made the story a he-said she-said sort of thing.
… When in fact the officers at the scene said she’d been drunk, and Brewer failed four sobriety tests! (The comical details are here.
The original Republic article apparently had an interview with Brewer, but didn’t ask her the obvious questions:
How do you explain the failed drunk tests? Should she have been arrested? Would failing four sobriety tests in typical stops lead to drivers being arrested—and shouldn’t they be?
Anyway, since then, Brewer has been trying to do damage control.
Here’s Brewer on CNN, for example:
As PHXated has mentioned before, the Arizona Republic has a curious approach to news.
If you have a wet-behind-the-ears would-be representative with a famous name who worked for a porny web site, or a governor who goes into the Twilight Zone for ten seconds during a debate, for heaven’s sake don’t treat it as big news or cover it as an ongoing story.
It just gets folks riled up.
Newspapers for decades survived on not riling folks up. (They might cancel their subscription!)
The world’s changed, today, but newspapers haven’t.
The latest: The paper heard, recently, that Gov. Brewer had been in a car crash in 1988 during which, it certainly seems, she’d been driving drunk.
The paper had a scoop!
Stop the presses?
Nope.
Instead, the paper buried it in a fact-checking column in section two. And made the story a he-said she-said sort of thing.
… When in fact the officers at the scene said she’d been drunk, and Brewer failed four sobriety tests! (The comical details are here.
The original Republic article apparently had an interview with Brewer, but didn’t ask her the obvious questions:
How do you explain the failed drunk tests? Should she have been arrested? Would failing four sobriety tests in typical stops lead to drivers being arrested—and shouldn’t they be?
Anyway, since then, Brewer has been trying to do damage control.
Here’s Brewer on CNN, for example:
Note that CNN, a national organization, is following up on the story.
Here again, the Arizona Republic had another story of national interest to run with, and it both a) mishandles it at the beginning and b) doesn’t follow up on it.
8:08 AM
All the details of the night Jan Brewer was apparently driving drunk
James King, at New Times, has the full details from the police report the night in 1988 Jan Brewer rear-ended another car—and the officers who came to the scene thought she was drunk.
She was never charged, for reasons that aren’t clear.
Anyway, here’s King’s account of the report on Brewer’s field sobriety tests:
[T]he officer also described the then-state-senator as having bloodshot, watery eyes, and dilated pupils that reacted poorly to light stimulation.
[…]
According to the report, when asked to stand on one leg, Brewer was “not able to perform the test as instructed.” Instead, Brewer was “swaying back and forth from side to side and front to back heavily.”
[…]
Brewer was then asked to tilt her head back, close her eyes, and touch her finger to her nose. No luck there, either. Brewer didn’t even follow instructions — initially, she failed to close her eyes or tilt her head back, and when she did, her body swayed front to back and side to side as she tried to touch her finger to her nose. Her eyes would flutter when she tried to touch her nose, the report claims.
In the third test, Brewer failed the Rhomberg Modified counting test when she was unable to count from 1001 to 1030.
In Brewer’s fourth field-sobriety F-, the now-governor was unable to maintain her balance when asked to walk in a straight line. She had to stop three times to steady herself and didn’t walk heal-to-toe as instructed. According to the report, she stepped off the line five times in her attempt to walk straight.
8:07 AM
Was Jan Brewer a drunk driver?
AZ Fact Check has a long look at a 1988 car crash in which Jan Brewer, then a state legislator, was probably drunk.
It’s pretty clear from the available evidence, in fact, that she was drunk. Here’s what it says:
DPS officers at the scene believed Brewer was intoxicated. Unsteady on her feet, her breath smelling of alcohol, Brewer failed a series of field sobriety tests.
Brewer was placed in handcuffs and taken to a DPS station, where she was supposed to undergo a test to determine her blood-alcohol level. But no test was ever performed. After a discussion with a DPS lieutenant, two officers drove Brewer home.
At the scene, Brewer told officers she had “one scotch.” Later, at the station, she said she had had two. At the time, she denied being drunk.
Brewer was never charged, and the case was never pursued. (Arizona has some crazy law that says legislators can’t be arrested while they are in session; the story notes that they can still be charged after the session ends.)
Full story here.
8:23 AM
ABC 15's Steve Irwin: There were rumors about Brewer's health "for weeks"
The ABC 15 reporter blasts John Dougherty, the New Times reporter turned Senate candidate, for posting unsubstantiated rumors about Jan Brewer’s health.
That’s fair comment; but I was struck by this remark, emphasis added:
For weeks now, we’ve been hearing Gov. Jan Brewer was suffering from some unnamed health problem that was limiting her schedule. The rumor was circulating among numerous reporters to be sure, but none would go with the story without something to substantiate it. That’s called responsible reporting, especially knowing the tendency of campaigns to float hearsay in order to derail their opponents.
What I don’t understand about the Phoenix reporter corps is why, hearing the rumors, someone just didn’t make a formal query to Jan Brewer’s staff.
Reporters don’t have to say why they are asking anything. They can just call the office up, and ask, “How is the governor’s health? Does she get regular physicals? Does she have any medical condition that voters should know about?”
If, as you’d expect, the office said the governor was fine, the reporter could conclude there was nothing to the story, absent any hard evidence to the contrary. At the same time, the reporter had the governor’s office on the record on the matter should anything contrary come out in the future.
And right now, someone like Irwin could be saying that ABC news had looked into the rumor and had concluded there was nothing to it, rather than just attacking Dougherty.
No one deserves to be harried by false rumors, of course, but chatter during a political campaign is there for a reason.
Brewer is trying to get elected to office by keeping her profile as low as possible, agreeing to just one debate, barely making herself available to reporters and refusing to answer questions when she’s caught in public. The local media should be fighting back against these tactics.
8:10 AM
Finally—a beheading!
You’ll remember that Governor Brewer has been obsessed with beheadings. Such gruesome activity at the border, she said, is one of the impetuses behind her signing SB 1070.
There actually weren’t any, creating priceless moments like this one, which comes at the 1:16 point in the video below:
At any rate, we are happy for Brewer’s sake that there finally has been a beheading reported, and that at least one of the culprits, police say, is a genuine illegal immigrant.
The Republic:
Chandler police are investigating the bizarre case of a man who was stabbed, decapitated and left in a pool of blood in a central-city apartment.
One man has been arrested and police are seeking three more suspects in what appears to be the city’s first beheading.
“We don’t go to many cases where the victim has been decapitated,” said Chandler police Detective Frank Mendoza.
The story, incredibly, doesn’t mention the ongoing role the act has had in the recent political race.
7:40 AM
A new Rocky Mountain poll: Brewer-Goddard race tightening
The press release from the Rocky Mountain poll makes it sound like very good news for Terry Goddard:
Phoenix, Arizona. October 11, 2010. Incumbent Jan Brewer holds a three point lead over challenger Democrat Terry Goddard in the Arizona governor’s race and over a fifth of voters remain undecided (21%). Among those voters most likely to go participate in the election, Jan Brewer has a larger lead in the poll (eleven points) and fewer are uncommited (15%). The Libertarian candidate Barry Hess and Green Party candidate Larry Gist are far behind with just six percent of the vote between the two. The Green candidate Larry Gist may be pulling as much as five percent of the vote away from Goddard.
Keep reading, however, and you can see that among likely voters Brewer leads 46 percent to 35 percent. But even that is a big change from the twenty-point leads she routinely polled in August and September.
7:19 AM
Brewer's office: Health concerns "bogus"
The Phoenix Business Journal quotes a Jan Brewer aide saying there’s no truth rumors that the governor has health problems..
The idea was started by John Dougherty on his Twitter and Facebook pages… and promulgated by PHXated. Dougherty is the former New Times investigative reporter who ran for the Democratic senate nomination this summer.
The PBJ:
Brewer communications director Paul Senseman said Monday there is nothing to the Dougherty claims.
“Those comments are completely bogus and started from Mr. Dougherty, who has exactly zero credibility,” Senseman said.
7:11 AM
Is Jan Brewer ill?
The Twitter account of John Dougherty, the former New Times reporter who ran in the Democratic Senate primary, said this last night:
There are persistent reports from reliable sources that Gov. Jan Brewer is seriously ill and may not be capable of…
The tweet linked to this Facebook statement:
John Dougherty for U.S. Senate There are persistent reports from reliable sources that Gov. Jan Brewer is seriously ill and may not be capable of finishing a four-year term. The public has a right to know about her physical fitness now, not after Nov. 2.
A number of people have commented and asked for more detail, but Dougherty responded only this:
This kind of thing is why it can be a mistake to vote your early ballots right away. Wait until the last week, see what surfaces, then make more informed decisions.
PHXated talked to Dougherty, who is a serious person and has a long history as an investigative reporter. He confirmed that he’d posted the tweet and said he based it on “reports from multiple people.”
7:51 AM
What are Jan Brewer's chances of losing her election?
According to Nate Silver’s 538.com, the answer is dispiriting:
8:35 AM
Crime in Arizona—down again
The Blog for Arizona has posted about the FBI’s new national crime numbers.
The full national overview is here.
Arizona had an extraordinary drop in crimes per 100,000 people, down to 408.3 from 481.2, a 15 percent drop.
That is as opposed to 6 percent nationally.
The chart does not break out kidnappings; Arizona’s uneasy relationship to that particular crime statistic is detailed here.
8:00 AM
Jan Brewer, her criminally insane son, the Arizona Republic, and prior restraint
The lede story in the Republic today is a look at how Jan Brewer’s approach to mental health funding has been shaped by her son, who is in a state hospital after being charged with sexual assault and kidnapping.
He was found not guilty by reason on insanity and has apparently been in the hospital for most of that time, though the paper is vague on this point. (Earlier, it said that the son had attended Brewer’s inauguration.)
Nowhere in either of the two stories about the case does it say what it was her son actually did.
New Times reported this a few weeks ago:
According to a Phoenix Police Department report dated July 29, 1989, Brewer, then an unemployed 25-year-old, forced his way into a woman’s apartment on West Indian School Road and threatened to hurt her “real bad” if she didn’t engage in sexual acts, including performing fellatio.
The Republic story says Brewer lost her other son three years ago:
Other personal family tragedies, such as the death of son John Brewer in January 2007 from cancer and AIDS are spoken of [by Brewer] only briefly.
A related story in the paper today is about a backstage battle to keep Brewer’s son’s criminal record out of the public eye. A judge yesterday stated the obvious, that the matter was part of the public record.
New Times broke the story a few weeks back; the Republic, in keeping with its idiosyncratic approach to journalistic niceties, kept the issue under wraps:
“I believe The Republic has been sensitive to the issues involved in this case and responsible in its reporting while, at the same time, working diligently to protect the public’s essential access to criminal-case files,” said Randy Lovely, Republic editor and vice president for news. “Obviously, we’re appreciative of the court’s ruling.”
The Republic decided not to publicize the story until the ruling was finalized on Monday.
Emphasis added. The story is confusing. Apparently, the son, who is apparently sane enough to worry about his mother’s political career, requested and got his files sealed.
The Republic got a copy of them this year, apparently through a mistake in the clerk’s office. Then the governor learned, in an interview with a republic reporter, than the file was open.
Then things get opaque:
… [Brewer’s] son’s attorney, Reginald Cooke, asked a judge to force Phoenix Newspapers, the newspaper’s parent company, to return the case file and prevent the paper from printing anything contained in it. PNI asked the judge to unseal the file.
On one level, this doesn’t make any sense, because this would seem to be a case of prior restraint. A judge can’t stop a paper from printing something in the public record.
It’s possible that the the paper’s lawyer’s decided that the matter turned on a slightly different issue; that since, whether rightly or not, the case was sealed, the paper could have been liable for publishing it, and that the smarter tack was to just make the case that the file was wrongly suppressed.
That’s a defensible argument, I suppose.
Suppressing the story about the actual battle while it was going on, during an election campaign?
That’s not defensible at all.
7:54 AM
The case of the disappearing files of Jan Brewer's criminally insane son
Amy Silverman and Paul Rubin in New Times:
Ronald Brewer […] was deemed criminally insane in 1990, following a July 1989 arrest and subsequent indictment for the sexual assault and kidnapping of a Phoenix woman. According to a Phoenix Police Department report dated July 29, 1989, Brewer, then an unemployed 25-year-old, forced his way into a woman’s apartment on West Indian School Road and threatened to hurt her “real bad” if she didn’t engage in sexual acts, including performing fellatio.
[…]
Those details are not available for public inspection at county Superior Court — even though in a typical criminal case, they probably would be. On January 9, 2009, Superior Court Judge Pendleton Gaines sealed the entire case file at the request of Ronald Brewer’s attorney.
On December 1, 2008, President-Elect Barack Obama nominated then-Governor Janet Napolitano to be the head of Homeland Security. Her successor? Secretary of State Jan Brewer. Brewer assumed office as governor on January 21.
The timing is curious.
And that’s not the even the juicy part.
Phoenix Newspapers (a.k.a. the Arizona Republic) filed a motion in July asking the judge to reconsider his January 2009 sealing order.
That motion also is under wraps. The court docket suggests that a ruling by the judge is pending.
The docket also strongly suggests that Ronald Brewer has several times over many years attempted to gain permanent release from his confinement at the state hospital in Phoenix, and has successfully won temporary release at various times.
7:26 AM
Jan Brewer's big brain freeze on Hardball
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
7:18 PM
PHXations—Wednesday, July 7, 2010
…and the boycotts continue to pile up:
The Gay and Lesbian Leadership Institute, who had been considering holding its 2011 conference in Phoenix, has chosen Las Vegas instead.
Up until recently, Phoenix was considered the frontrunner to host the December 2011 conference.
The Phoenix Host Committee, led by Councilman Tom Simplot and Rep. Kyrsten Sinema, had been working furtively to secure the conference. The conference would have attracted hundreds of gay and lesbian elected leaders.
GLLI alluded that the immigration debate in Arizona caused them to chose another site, according to the Phoenix Host Committee.
GLLI said in a letter, “The current political and legal climate in Arizona makes it complicated to accept your hospitality.”
GLLI helps equip gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people with the tools for success. The institute assists hundreds of individuals who go on to influential careers in politics, government, business and advocacy each year.
Mary Jo Pitzl is reporting that the voter surge resulting from SB 1070 is overwhelming benefitting independents:
The latest voter registration figures show increases in all categories, but the biggest gain continues to be in the ranks of independents.
In raw numbers, 14,716 Arizonans registered as “party not designated,” which is the technical term for independents. That’s more than the increase in Democrats (+3,879) and Republicans (+7,852) combined.
The numbers reflect registrations from May 5 to June 1, according to the Arizona Secretary of State’s office. That means they capture at least some of the aftermath of SB1070, when Democrats were saying that Latino voters were registering with the Ds as a protest against the state’s new immigration law.
And perhaps they were (registration numbers don’t include a demographic breakdown). But the Democrats' gains were eclipsed by increases in the GOP, and especially by independents.
The effects of the federal lawsuit against SB 1070 its effects are likely to go beyond simply determining the law’s constitutionality:
The high-profile battle over illegal immigration could sway voters, helping determine whether Democrats retain or lose their majority in Congress. It could be a boon for Arizona Republicans who have supported the law. Some vulnerable Democrats urged the Obama administration not to file the suit.
The outcome of the case also could fuel or shut down efforts now under way to replicate the law in more than a dozen other states.
The lawsuit brought more national attention to the Grand Canyon State, which has weathered protests and boycotts since Gov. Jan Brewer signed the bill into law on April 23. Supporters say that they will successfully defend the suit and that it will hold up like other immigration-related laws that have faced court challenges the past few years.
Read the whole article here
Meanwhile, three Democrats Arizona legislators are worried about the effect the feds' lawsuit will have on their election battles this fall, Politico reports:
At least three Arizona Democrats saw trouble they could face in November, and broached the topic with the White House well in advance of the court filing, which the administration first announced last month.
Three House Democrats who are all facing tough re-election fights—Reps. Ann Kirkpatrick, Harry Mitchell and Gabrielle Giffords—asked the Obama administration last month to ditch any planned court battle, saying legal maneuvering isn’t going to fix a system that’s widely seen as broken.
The story quotes Kirkpatrick and Mitchell attacking the lawsuit as a sideshow.
Jan Brewer doesn’t like the feds' suit against SB 1070, the Business Journal reports:
Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer characterized the federal lawsuit challenging the immigration law she signed in April as an “attack” from President Barack Obama and the Department of Justice.
The governor promised to assert the state’s rights and said Arizona will prevail against the lawsuits.
The NYT details how the Department of Justice decided to go after the law on the relatively uncomplicated issue of pre-emption: That immigration enforcement is a federal concern. Holder and company have the civil rights implications of its enforcement in their pocket for another day.
In a background call with reporters, a senior department official said the decision to file the lawsuit — and to do so on the ground that it pre-empts federal authority, rather than on civil rights grounds like racial profiling — followed extensive deliberations with the Civil Rights Division and others inside the department, and a trip to Arizona to meet with state officials.
Should the department fail to persuade the courts to block Arizona’s law, the official said, it would closely watch for signs that people of Hispanic appearance were being singled out.
4:07 PM
Next, in the latest episode of "Everyone Hates Jan" ...
The New York Times has a story detailing how an annual get-together of border governors from both Mexico and the U.S. is in limbo after Jan Brewer signed SB 1070.
The conference was supposed to be in Phoenix this year. Then all the Mexican border governors said they weren’t going to come, for the obvious reasons.
Brewer said, Fine, I’ll just cancel it.
But now some of her embarrassed colleagues, notably Arnold Schwarzenegger in California and Bill Richardson in New Mexico, are trying to reconvene the meeting sans Brewer.
I haven’t seen this story in the Republic. While looking for one, I notice that Brewer herself didn’t make the meeting last year, while waiting until the last minute (as she did with SB 1070), about whether she would sign a state spending proposal during the budget crisis.
8:36 PM
The Arizona Republic breaks the towing scams in the Valley wide open!
Towing companies, the story says, confiscate cars they shouldn’t, won’t let people get personal items out of the cars once they are towed, demand fees of $150 or more in cash to reclaim cars … and even arrange kickbacks with property owners.
(That last, for example, creates an incentive for the lot owners not to label the tow zones clearly.)
But wait! you say. The legislature passed a bill outlawing a lot of these practices earlier this year!
What happened?
The push for reform at the state level has gained support from some tow-truck company owners, who blame the abuses on a few bad actors giving their industry a bad name. Still, towing legislation in 2008 and 2009 could not gain approval in the state Senate.
This year, as more cash-strapped motorists complained about being fleeced, the Legislature passed the strongest towing-reform bill in Arizona history.
But Gov. Jan Brewer vetoed it, saying it would cost too much to enforce.
Thanks, Jan!
This was her rationale for vetoing the bill:
“[Law enforcement agencies] would need to reassign officers away from law enforcement duties to private towing oversight functions.”
But that’s an argument against any piece of legislation. It’s a prime argument against SB 1070, in fact, not to mention most drug laws.
It’s even a great argument against laws against murder!
“Why, if we make murder illegal, then cops will be pulled away from other law-enforcement duties!”
What’s the difference? The people facing the brunt of the enforcement of SB 1070 are harmless and poor immigrants.
For the towing bill, it was scumbag local towing companies.
Brewer’s concerns extended only to the businesses.
Now, PHXated doesn’t feel that sorry for the people getting their cars towed. Too many drivers are thoughtless at best and radiate a sense of I’ll-park-my-SUV-wherever-I-want arrogance at worst.
They deserve to be towed.
But if there are towing abuses, there’s a right way to correct them: Charge local towing companies fees that would pay for someone in government to handle complaints and enforcement for their industry.
But that would be a tax on small business!
The result: Another example of Republican political philosophy that, conveniently, protects corporate crooks … and fucks over the populace.
The Republic story on the matter, which ledes the paper today, is long and seemingly in-depth.
But read it closely and you can see there’s very little in the story beside people asserting that there’s a towing problem in town. The two case studies the story offers are entirely one-sided. In both cases the towing company involved isn’t named, much less offered a chance to respond.
10:13 AM
Jan Brewer doubles down on lying
The governor said last week that the majority of illegal immigrants were smuggling drugs.
In the face of the predictable outcry—even John McCain distanced himself from the statement over the weekend—Brewer could have acknowledged an overstatement and moved on.
Instead, she’s doubling down on the lie, getting shriller and making even less sense.
Her original quote:
“The majority of them, in my opinion and I think in the opinion of law enforcement, is that they’re not coming here to work. They’re coming here and they’re bringing drugs, and they’re doing drop houses, and they’re extorting people, and they’re terrorizing the families.”
Asked in an interview whether he agrees that most illegal immigrants are “drug mules,” the Republican senator said: “No.”
With the media continuing to press her on the statement, Brewer’s office released a slightly unhinged followup. From the PBJ:
“There has been some media attention in the last several hours regarding statements I made this morning regarding the level of drug and crime activity being perpetrated by illegal immigrants coming into and residing in Arizona,“ Brewer’s said in the statement. "The simple truth is that the majority of human smuggling in our state is under the direction of the drug cartels, which are by definition smuggling drugs.”
Notice how she’s blurring the issue from “illegal immigrants are smuggling drugs” to “they are being smuggled by drug cartels.”
The story continues:
“It is common knowledge that Mexican drug cartels have merged human smuggling with drug trafficking. For example, the Los Angeles Times on March 23, 2009, reported, ‘The business of smuggling humans across the Mexican border has been brisk, with many thousands coming across every year. But smugglers affiliated with the drug cartels have taken the enterprise to a new level — and made it more violent — by commandeering much of the operation from independent coyotes, according to these officials and recent congressional testimonies.’ This article and many federal government reports have drawn the same conclusions.
“The human rights violations that have taken place victimizing immigrants and their families are abhorrent. Border crossers are used by drug cartels as commodities. Mexican drug cartels have merged human smugglers who use their expertise in gathering intelligence on border patrols, logistics and communication devices to get around even tighter controls. U.S. border officials have stated that traffickers are gaining control of much of the illegal passage of immigrants from Mexico to the United States.”
As with so many debates in this state, the real issue here isn’t what it seems.
Of course Brewer is lying. She knows it’s not true that a majority of illegal immigrants are smuggling drugs. We know from numerous government reports that a big chunk of them are just people who’ve overstayed their visa, and we know that most of the rest are doing menial labor, a lot of it outside in incredible heat, just from simple observation.
The real issue is the state of politics in this state. Brewer’s campaign strategy is now apparent. She’s just going to repeat her mantra:
“Illegal immigration, illegal immigration, drugs, violence, illegal immigration, drugs, violence, illegal immigration, drugs, violence, illegal immigration, drugs, violence, child porn, tax cuts blah blah blah.”
And the question for the future of the state is whether Terry Goddard can come up with an effective enough campaign to combat it.
7:16 AM
Brewer and Hayworth go on the attack against Clinton
… after the secretary of state mentioned in a public interview with the Ecuadoran president that the Obama administration was going to sue to overturn Arizona’s new immigration law, Politico reports.
“This is no way to treat the people of Arizona,” said Brewer, who recently set up a legal defense fund to combat challenges to the law. “To learn of this lawsuit through an Ecuadorean interview with the secretary of state is just outrageous.”
“If our own government intends to sue our state to prevent illegal immigration enforcement, the least it can do is inform us before it informs the citizens of another nation,” Brewer added.
[…]
Hayworth called Clinton’s comments “appalling” in a statement criticizing her for making “a major domestic policy announcement on foreign soil.”
6:56 AM
PHXations—Friday, June 18, 2010
The AP is reporting that White House staffers will meet with Governor Brewer in Arizona on June 28th
The White House set a June 28 date for staffers to meet with Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer on her turf and provide more detail on sending National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border.
When Brewer met with Obama at the White House two weeks ago, promises were made for the follow-up meeting. The White House announced Friday it was keeping its promised date. Obama is not planning to attend.
CBS News confirms that the federal government will challenge SB 1070:
It was unclear yesterday whether Clinton’s comments were simply a prediction or mistake or whether instead she was getting ahead of a planned announcement by the administration.
Now a senior administration official tells CBS News that the federal government will indeed formally challenge the law when Justice Department lawyers are finished building the case. The official said Justice is still working on building the case.
Whodathunkit? GOP hiding facts about immigration law
It’s typical of Brewer and her Republican friends who consistently have failed to crack down on the violent and criminal acts that accompany illegal immigration. Their patchwork policies do nothing to solve the real problem that Arizonans experience every day.
They failed to point out that the new law will do nothing to stop the coyotes, human traffickers and dangerous drug and arms dealers who cross our border every day.
They don’t mention that the new law is an unfunded mandate and gives police no resources or money to implement the new law. Brewer and Republicans took police officers off the streets when they massively cut public-safety funding this year.
Read the whole thing at Arizona Capitol Times
While Arizona’s politicians have spent time persecuting gays and Mexicans and letting the state’s finances go into the toilet, more industrious folks in town have been working to put us on the map in an important national ranking, the Republic reports:
Arizona now ranks fourth for mortgage fraud nationally. It’s the first time the state has cracked the top five for the problem, according to data released this week from the Mortgage Asset Research Institute.
Florida, New York and California (in that order) rank ahead of Arizona in 2009 mortgage-fraud cases. The most prevalent type of home-loan fraud is application misrepresentation, which includes borrowers lying about income. Overall, U.S. mortgage fraud climbed 7 percent last year.
Officials on the state and federal level are (finally) going after mortgage fraud, the paper says in a related story:
A federal and state law-enforcement task force has accelerated arrests and prosecutions of Arizona residents accused of participating in mortgage-fraud schemes involving kickbacks, inflated property appraisals, phony buyers and other tactics.
There have been 51 Arizona indictments and 13 convictions since the task force was assembled March 1, all of them involving allegations of fraud against lenders, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.
2:23 PM
PHXations—Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Searching for the ‘Moderate Middle’:
There’s a fundraiser tonight that looks to boost the fortunes of what might be considered the “moderate middle” in the next Legislature.
Greater Phoenix Leadership is throwing a no-host fundraiser at the Arizona Biltmore to enrich the coffers of 12 legislative candidates in races “whose outcomes could make or break the business environment next year,” according to the GPL invite.
Those pivotal candidates, in GPL’s view, are a mix of Republicans and Democrats, incumbents and newcomers. Business boosters attending the fundraiser are being asked to contribute a minimum $2,500, with the money split between the candidates.
The candidates are Republican state Senate candidates Rich Crandall, Adam Driggs, Bill Konopnicki, Sen. John Nelson and Michele Reagan, along with Democratic Senate hopeful Justin Johnson (son of former Phoenix Mayor Paul Johnson) who is hoping to oust GOP Sen. Linda Gray.
On the House side, beneficiaries are Republicans Karen Fann, Kate Brophy McGee, Rep. Amanda Reeve, Eric Ulis and Doug Sposito, and Democrat Rep. Eric Meyer.
The AP is reporting that Arizona is being sued over the legislatures raid on clean air funds:
A lawsuit has been filed challenging the Arizona Legislature’s raid on lottery money that has been earmarked for public transportation since the early 1990s.
The Arizona Center for Law in the Public Interest says its suit responds to a budget bill passed during a special Legislative session in March. The bill halted yearly payments of $8 million to $10 million that had gone to public transportation since the 1990s.
The lottery money helped local transportation agencies expand service as a way to lower air pollution from personal vehicles and meet federal Clean Air Act requirements.
The lawsuit announced on Tuesday asks a federal judge to order the lottery money payments reinstated.
Grim tales from the drug wars in Mexico from the Republic’s Chris Hawley today.
The focus is on the cartel’s war against police officers in the country. Lots of gory details, and this accounting of the plain facts:
In all, 324 police officers and soldiers have been killed so far in 2010, compared with 511 in all of 2009, according to the Reforma newspaper.
“This is not beginner stuff,” said Samuel Gonzalez Ruiz, a law professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. “They’re getting more sophisticated and spending more time training.”
Also in the Republic: Joe Arpaio is planning another immigration sweep:
Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio says he plans to launch his 16th crime and immigration sweep on July 30, the day after Arizona’s new immigration law is set to take effect.
The sheriff’s office hasn’t revealed where it will conduct the sweep.
Accounts of the GOP gubernatorial primary last night;
*The AZ Daily Star’s Rhonda Bodfield.
*The Capitol Times AZ Jeremy Duda.
*The Payson Roundup’s Alexis Bechman.
I can’t find video of it yet; would appreciate the tip if anyone else finds it. The video can be found on the Arizona Citizens Clean Elections site.
10:01 AM
New York Times to Jan Brewer: Why won't you free William Macumber?
The Times today has a story about a legal case from Arizona.
There’s a guy in prison the state’s clemency board says is there because of a “miscarriage of justice.” Jan Brewer could accept the board’s recommendation but hasn’t—and according to the Times, won’t say why.
… Ms. Brewer rejected the board’s recommendation without explanation in November. It is possible that politics played a role in her decision; Ms. Brewer, a Republican who became governor last year, is running for a full term in November.
“She denied the application right after she announced that she was running for governor,” said Katherine Puzauskas, a lawyer with the Arizona Justice Project at the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University. […]
There is little political upside to granting clemency, but there is a substantial risk, as Mike Huckabee learned when a man whose sentence he commuted as governor of Arkansas in 2000 killed four police officers last year.
P. S. Ruckman Jr., a political science professor at Rock Valley College in Rockford, Ill., has been fuming about Ms. Brewer’s handling of the Macumber case. “I have been following state clemency for 30 years,” Mr. Ruckman said, “and this is easily, easily, the most disturbing. It’s borderline despicable.”
Emphases added.
The case is a doozy—the man’s son says his mother framed the father. She testified originally he had said he’d killed two people in the desert outside Scottsdale in 1962. Macumber was sentenced to life without parole.
In the story, the Times talks to the wife:
In the course of a half-hour conversation, Ms. Kempfert accused Mr. Macumber of terrible and disturbing crimes beyond the killings in the desert. Asked if he deserved clemency, she said, “Absolutely not.”
7:13 AM
For Jan Brewer fans only! A Saturday morning humor reading
“Shame on you Dennis Welch and shame on you Jennifer Johnson.”
Those are the lugubrious, choked-up words of soi-disant Espresso Pundit Greg Patterson, driven nearly to tears defending the honor of Jan Brewer after she was caught lying about her father’s military record.
Welch is the Arizona Guardian reporter who quoted Brewer saying her father had died “fighting the Nazi regime in Germany.” Johnson is a state Democratic Party functionary who, like the rest of us, thinks it’s pretty cheap to try to invoke sympathy for yourself by inventing an Inglourious Basterds-style military career for your dad.
Patterson really gets going relating the noble history behind Brewer’s gaffe.
And history it is!
He begins not in medias res but, more dramatically, at the beginning:
Hitler attempts to take over the world and uses the war as cover to launch the Holocaust….
Fortunately, the Allies mobilize! But wait—back in America…
Meanwhile a guy name Wilford Drinkwine leaves a farm in the midwest and takes his family to Nevada to work in a munitions plant….
… and with an O. Henry-like twist, Drinkwine turns out to be Jan Brewer’s father!
No one would mock his death, however he died or whatever caused it. But it’s also a bit skeevy for Patterson to try to get us all worked up about Drinkwine’s death (not to mention the Holocaust) in an attempt to distract attention from what Brewer said, which was …
… that her father died fighting the Nazi regime in Germany.
Previously in PHXated:
Jan Brewer is Keith Olbermann’s “Worst Person in the World”
Jan Brewer and her father: 205 stories and counting….
Brewer doubles down on her misstatements about her father’s war record
8:57 AM
Jan Brewer is Keith Olbermann's "Worst Person in the World"
… for saying her said died “fighting the Nazi regime in Germany,” and having a spokesperson who said she hadn’t meant, by saying that, that her dad had died fighting the Nazi regime in Germany.
Meanwhile, Politico piles on, mercilessly dissecting Brewer’s appearance on Greta Van Susternen last night, on which she blamed the media for her troubles:
Brewer […] incorrectly asserted that she “never” said her father died fighting, despite having been quoted by both the Guardian and the Arizona Republic as saying so, and strung her statement to mean that her father died from the exposure to chemicals while working in a munitions factory during the Second World War.
“My father died fighting the German regiments of Hitler,” she said. “And he did. He was building the bombs.”
“I never said he was overseas,” she contended, though her initial statement seemed to indicate otherwise. “I never once said he was in the military.”
8:05 PM
"The border is safer now than it's ever been"
That’s U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokesman Lloyd Easterling, quoted in an extensive AP investigation into crime at the bordor.
The upshot:
MEXICO CITY — It’s one of the safest parts of America, and it’s getting safer.
It’s the U.S.-Mexico border, and even as politicians say more federal troops are needed to fight rising violence, government data obtained by The Associated Press show it actually isn’t so dangerous after all.
The top four big cities in America with the lowest rates of violent crime are all in border states: San Diego, Phoenix, El Paso and Austin, according to a new FBI report. And an in-house Customs and Border Protection report shows that Border Patrol agents face far less danger than street cops in most U.S. cities.
The story has lots of stuff like this:
Even residents of the border region who want more security are surprised by the talk of violence.
“I have to say, a lot of this is way overblown,” said Gary Brasher of Tuboc, Arizona, who is president of the Coalition for a Safe and Secure Border.
Jan Brewer makes a knuckle-headed cameo, too:
In Arizona, a stringent new immigration law takes effect next month, requiring police to question suspects' immigration status if officers believe they’re in the country illegally. Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer said in a televised interview last weekend: “We are out here on the battlefield getting the impact of all this illegal immigration, and all the crime that comes with it.”
There’s one big flaw in the story: No mention of the supposed 300-plus kidnappings a year alleged to occur in Phoenix alone.
Previously in PHXated:
About all that immigrant-fueled crime…
Phoenix murders drop by nearly half in two years
9:04 PM
Jan Brewer and her father: 205 stories and counting....
From Google News at 6:45 this evening:
Having cannily ridden a wave of irrational xenophobia all the way to a meeting at the White House with Barack Obama, Brewer blows it and loses the news cycle with her own buffoonery.
Meanwhile James King at New Times talks to her GOP primary opponent, Dean Martin, who unsurprisingly has little good to say about it:
After Governor Jan Brewer’s office failed to call us back regarding the gov’s bogus claims that her father “died fighting the Nazi regime in Germany,” we thought we’d give Treasurer Dean Martin, Brewer’s opponent in the GOP gubernatorial primary, a chance to weigh in.
“Trying to use the death of a loved on for political gain is appalling,” Martin tells New Times.
Also:
Vanity Fair calls Brewer imperial sun queen of Arizona’s chromatocracy.
Wishy-washy Newsweek says Brewer “seems to have been ambiguous” about her father’s war record.
This is obviously a mistake.
The magazine meant to say that “There are signs that some say could indicate the prospect of different views of whether Brewer was ambiguous or not.”
6:45 PM
Brewer doubles down on her misstatements about her father's war record
Caught lying, a politician has three choices.
He or she can, for example, acknowledge the act and apologize …
But, let’s face it—they almost never do that.
So there’s really only two alternatives. One is fudge and obfuscate.
The other is just get all defiant and insist that the lie isn’t a lie.
That’s the tack Jan Brewer has taken after, let’s face it, telling a whopper about what her father did in World War II.
She was trying to get sympathy for allegedly being called a Nazi by opponents of SB 1070. She told the Republic:
The Nazi comments…they are awful. Knowing that my father died fighting the Nazi regime in Germany, that I lost him when I was 11 because of that…It hurts. It’s ugliness beyond anything I’ve ever experienced.
“My father died fighting the Nazi regime in Germany.”
Well, no. Her father worked in a munitions plant in Nevada, never went to Europe, and died ten years after the war.
It’s no big deal having a rosy memory of one’s parent. But it’s cheap to use that in a sympathy dodge, particularly when the truth is she’s using a hateful and unconstitutional law to play to the state’s massive political cheap seats.
How did Brewer respond? First, her office tried to dodge questions from the biggest news operation in the state:
Paul Senseman, the governor’s spokesman, did not immediately return calls or e-mails from The Republic seeking comment. But he told another local media outlet that Brewer has been very clear in the past about how her father died.
“She wasn’t embellishing the story at all,” he told The Arizona Guardian, referring to the governor’s comments in The Republic. “You’re reading something into this that isn’t there.”
“She wasn’t embellishing the story at all.”
Well, no.
And now, Brewer herself is insisting what she said was correct, too:
“I’m proud of my father and I have no reason to embellish,” Brewer told The Associated Press in a telephone interview from Washington. “Everybody was fighting for the freedom of America. He did fight … and I will say it until the day I die.”
“He did fight.”
Well, no, he didn’t.
PHXated’s father, for example, spent the 1950s and 1960s doing defense work, and died some decades later from a cancer most likely brought on from chemical exposures during that time. But he didn’t die fighting the Cold War, for crying out loud.
Deomcrats lie a lot too, of course, but Republicans are so sanctimonious about things like truth and honor and supporting the troops.
Here’s a case where right-wing hypocrisy hits the trifecta. Or a hat trick. Or something. I’m not good with the sports and betting metaphors.
Everyone’s having fun with this one. Heat City posting here
Democratic Diva posting here.
7:50 AM
Jan Brewer's big day in DC!
Arizona’s conscienceless governor, cynically ridding a wave of ungenerous and unpleasant anti-immigrant fervor, takes a trip to DC to meet personally with Barack Obama.
Based on the story in the Republic this a.m. it looks like she’s going to use the meeting as a chance to further spread misinformation about the issue:
Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer said she will paint a picture of her state as “under siege” by Mexican drug cartels and illegal immigrants when she meets today with President Barack Obama.
[…]
“We are the gateway to America for (cross-border) drug trafficking, extortion, kidnapping and crime, and we in Arizona are no longer going to put up with it,” Brewer said at a Capitol Hill hotel on the eve of her meeting. “People along the border are living in fear daily. I don’t think the president really understands that.”
Has anybody yet asked Brewer how she reconciles such language with the facts of Arizona’s crazily low crime rate?
Brief CNN interview here:
7:05 AM
PHXations—Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Brewer seems to be be getting use to the politician thing. She can bend the truth with the best of them:
Gov. Jan Brewer said in a recent interview that her father died fighting Nazis in Germany. In fact, the death of Wilford Drinkwine came 10 years after World War II had ended. During the war, Drinkwine worked as a civilian supervisor for a naval munitions depot in Hawthorne, Nev. He died of lung disease in 1955 in California. Brewer made the comment to The Arizona Republic while talking about the criticism she has taken since signing SB 1070, the new immigration law that makes it a state crime to be in the country illegally.
“Knowing that my father died fighting the Nazi regime in Germany, that I lost him when I was 11 because of that… and then to have them call me Hitler’s daughter. It hurts. It’s ugliness beyond anything I’ve ever experienced,” Brewer said in the story, published Tuesday.
Officials with the governor’s administration said her statement should not be taken to mean that she was claiming her father was a soldier in Germany during the Nazi regime.
(/yaa)
Why should speculators have all the real estate fun?
More state buildings go up for sale next week as Arizona officials hope to raise $300 million and help close the budget deficit.
It’s the second time this year that the state has sold off buildings in a sale-leaseback plan. The first one in January raised $735.4 million and that prompted Arizona lawmakers to authorize a second sale.
The sale will be conducted June 8 and investors will be required to make purchases in $5,000 installments. Investors must work through a list of underwriters provided by the state.
The sale-leaseback comes on the heels of last week’s action in which the state borrowed $450 million against the proceeds of future state Lottery revenues.
(/yaa)
The city of Tucson is joining a suit against SB 1070, another sign of the ferocious divisions the law has engendered in the state.
The suit is the one by the Latino Tucson cop who was one of the first to attack the law legally.
From KGUN-TV in Tucson:
In the cross-claim, the city agrees with Escobar that SB 1070 will violate the United States Constitution. Specifically, the cross-claim states that the new Arizona law conflicts with the commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution and also with the federal Immigration and Naturalization Act. The city’s filing asks the federal court to intervene to stop implementation. The cross-claim names the State of Arizona and Governor Jan Brewer as defendants.
(N.B.: PHXations are posted by various PHXated contributors throughout the day).
4:35 PM
PHXations—Tuesday, June 1
Brewer, Obama to meet on immigration
President Obama intends to meet with Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer on Thursday, a White House official told FoxNews.com, after criticism mounted over reports the president wouldn’t be able to meet her while she is in Washington this week.
More on FOXNews.com
Arizonans to vote on medical marijuana:
A statewide measure allowing for medical marijuana clinics to be opened in Arizona has qualified for the November ballot.
The Arizona Medical Marijuana Project said Tuesday the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office confirmed the necessary 153,365 voter signatures to qualify the measure for the ballot. If approved, the Arizona Department Health Services would regulate medical marijuana clinics in state. Patients suffering from conditions or diseases such as Parkinson’s, cancer, multiple sclerosis and HIV/AIDS would be able to buy pot for medical and pain alleviating uses.
A different legislature? One can only dream.
Even if all of the incumbents running for the state Legislature win their bids for re-election on Nov. 2, the Capitol will be a very different place next year.
Twenty-four lawmakers have reached the end of their four consecutive two-year term limit and cannot run for their same seat; another 15 have announced they will not be seeking re-election.
Alas, I’m not holding my breath. In Arizona politics it seems that the more things change, the more they say the same…
Courts rejects Goldwater Institute… again
The U.S. Supreme Court on June 1 refused to block the distribution of so-called “matching funds” to candidates running for office under Arizona’s Clean Elections law.
The court denial of the request filed by the Goldwater Institute and some candidates left the door open for a full appeal of a lower court decision.
That April 21 decision upheld the parts of the law that provide extra taxpayer support for publicly funded candidates who are outspent by privately funded opponents or independent groups.
Let’s give it credit: The Arizona Republic covers dog news as well as any paper in America.
Dogs on Twitter, dogs on Facebook, “Posh pads for pampered pooches” …
Today, the lede story in the Living section story about a doggie named Gabriel who … (sniff) died.
The hedline is “Gabriel gets his wings.”
The web hedline is “Gabriel’s Angels therapy dog left indelible paw prints on children’s hearts.”
The story says that, since he died, Gabriel has gained 1000 new followers on Twitter.
It’s been three years since noble Bandit was left in a Chandler cop car, which the Valley’s media outlets scrambled the jets to cover over a period of what seemed like months.
Arizona’s new one percent sales tax goes into effect today.
As we drive around in our Hummers and SUVs to this Starbucks or that Whole Foods, let’s remember that poor and working people will be buying their kids one percent less food, taking their families out for one percent less fun, and come fall, spending one percent less on back-to-school clothes.
But it’s just one percent. It’s not like these folk weren’t already under enormous pressure living in an economically backwards state whose jobs base, spurred by an unsustainable housing bubble and nothing else, wasn’t already in the toilet.
Oh, wait …
5:34 PM