Tag: AZ

Arizona Attorney General Gets the Best Gift at Giuliani’s 80th Birthday!

Michael Matheron2 Comments

Lest we forget in the midst of Donald Trump’s New York trial for messing with the 2016 election, we’re still in the midst of doling out indictments for 2020 election mischief. Among the states still trying to clear up their 2020 election schemes, Arizona has finally succeeded in serving Rudy Giuliani with his indictment, the worst birthday surprise. In a real sense, Kristen Mayes, Arizona’s AG, bagged the best and biggest prize. . . Awkward. How did he come to this pass? Well, it was an iconic Rudy self-own, among many, perhaps his finest hour.

Until yesterday, during his Palm Beach shindig, Rudy was the only one of eleven indictments that had not been successfully served. In fact, he taunted Arizona officials trying to find and serve him since the indictment was handed down in late April. Yesterday was, in fact, the final day that Arizona could serve him, so the clock was on Giuliani’s side. But he outed himself as only Giuliani can, stupidly broadcasting on Twitter/X during his birthday bash. At 7:06 pm, with his galactically unearned overconfidence he posted this, with an “I win/You lose” accent.

Why is this man smiling?! And why is he with the Palm Beach H.S. cheerleading squad?! Oh, and how has his house not been seized?! Does he have pants on?!

Well, by shortly after eleven o’clock the bigmouth was served on his way to a car. He was full, one supposes, of his jubilant sense of (1) having made it to his 80th year at home rather than prison, and (2) having bamboozled the Arizona judicial system. In fact, he zoomed from penthouse to doghouse, clutching in his paws an indictment birthday gift grab bag full of lovely felonies:

1) FRAUDULENT SCHEMES AND ARTIFICES, in violation of A.R.S. §13-2310{A);
2) FRAUDULENT SCHEMES AND PRACTICES, in violation of A.R.S. §13-2311{A);
3) FORGERY, in violation of A.R.S. § 13-2002{A){1) & {A){3);
4) CHANGING VOTE OF ELECTOR BY CORRUPT MEANS OR INDUCEMENT, in violation of A.R.S. § 16-1006{A){3);
5) TAMPERING WITH A PUBLIC RECORD, in violation A.R.S. § 13-2407{A){3);
6) PRESENTMENT OF FALSE INSTRUMENT FOR FILING, in violation of A.R.S. § 39-161.

Now for the denouement: Attorney General Mayes, with great aplomb posted this:

With more, much more, to come . . .

Arizona – No Taxation Without – Or With – Representation!

Michael MatheronLeave a comment

January 12, 2011

“The first thing we do, let’s kill all the taxes.”
A (mild) paraphrase of Shakespeare’s “let’s kill all the lawyers”
Henry The Sixth, Part 2 Act 4, scene 2, 71–78

Ken Silverstein’s July 2010 Harper’s Magazine article, Tea party in the Sonora: For the future of G.O.P. governance, look to Arizona, surveys the political landscape of that Tea Party dominion. It’s relevant today as the GOP has seized control of the House and maintains its unofficial “filibuster majority” in the Senate.

Below are some excerpts:

Since the days of Barry Goldwater, an axiom of Arizona politics, particularly among Republicans, has been that tax cuts generate economic growth in all circumstances. Hence total state taxation has declined during fifteen of the past seventeen years; the individual income tax has taken the biggest hit, but sales, property, and corporate-income taxes have also come down substantially. The legislature has created tax exemptions for everything from country-club memberships to pedicures to food purchases by airlines (the latter at the behest of local airline lobbyists). None of this has produced the hoped-for effect. Although tax cuts “have lowered government revenues,” they “have not had any perceptible effect on the state’s economic growth,” concluded an Arizona State University business-school study, published last November, that examined the past three decades of fiscal policy.

Instead, to raise cash, the legislature has pursued a series of wild sell-offs and budget cuts. It privatized the capitol building and leased it back from its new owner, an arrangement that brought in substantial revenue but over time will cost Arizona far more. The legislature has sold off numerous other state properties at bargain prices, and has put up future lottery revenues as collateral on a $450 million loan. Meanwhile, Arizona removed more than 300,000 adults from state health coverage and terminated one health-care program for 47,000 poor children. Funding was slashed at the agency that deals with reports of child abuse and neglect, and also at Children’s Rehabilitative Services, so that parents of children with cystic fibrosis, cerebral palsy, and a number of other conditions are now required to pay 100 percent of treatment costs. 

The anti-government attitude in Arizona is now reflexive, especially because of its entanglement with the issue of immigration. As one local resident, who didn’t want to be identified because she has a government job, told me: “People who have swimming pools don’t need state parks. If you buy your books at Borders you don’t need libraries. If your kids are in private school, you don’t need K-12. The people here, or at least those who vote, don’t see the need for government. Since a lot of the population are not citizens, the message is that government exists to help the undeserving, so we shouldn’t have it at all. People think it’s OK to cut spending, because ESL is about people who refuse to assimilate, and health care pays for illegals.”

There’s a lot to think about. And not just in Arizona . . .

The Brilliant Life of Christina Taylor Green And “The Why Above All Whys”

Michael MatheronLeave a comment

January 11, 2011

“The whys of this story, why Johnny should have been struck just in that part of him that would have been most fruitful, why his clock should have been broken just at this particular time in his life,  . . . the why above all whys which is why any child should die, the whys and wherefores of the celestial bookkeeping involved, if any, I will not go into here.”
Death Be Not Proud, By John Gunther

On September 11, 2001, Christina Taylor Green entered a violent world on a violent day. Yesterday, nine years later, her brief life ended as it had begun, on a day of sudden violence. Unlike the day she was born, though, this day Christina was not sheltered safely in the arms of those who loved her, those who welcomed her. What were they thinking while gazing at the new life before them, distracted as they were by history unfolding in the destruction of the World Trade Center towers? Tiny Christina had just arrived as others were leaving, buried beneath megatons of rubble not too far away. Sudden violence and the deaths of innocents have always been with us. There’s no hiding from the chaos around us. Christina’s family knew that upon her arrival on 9/11; that day underscored the random and merciless choices that death often makes.

So, yesterday, in a Safeway parking lot, as amoral chance would have it, Christina Taylor Green, recently elected a member of her elementary school student government, sidled up to her Congresswoman, Gabrielle Giffords, for a “meet and greet.” And there, within a few feet of her, Christina’s life ended in chaos purposely unleashed through the end of the barrel at the end of a string of declining fortunes of a madman, Jared Laughlin. Green attended Mesa Verde Elementary School. She was the only girl on the CDO baseball team – she loved the sport, as well as horseback riding and swimming. There are other criteria for measuring a life as well as its duration – quality and intensity, she exemplified that. She also, tragically, exemplified the bookends of violence so common in the world, born into violence, stolen away by it.