LEVEL THE PLAYING FIELD! 86 "Right to Work."

"At will" employment is not equality.  Its result is FEAR.  Employees deserve a level playing field. Current Arizona law does not give employees a right to work.  It gives employers a right to fire, "at will."

Think of it.  A truly equal playing field would be "hire at will" and "fire at will."  In other words, I want to work for you, so I will.  Then you want to fire me, so you will.

Current law in Arizona only has half the equation.  So let's will it away.

Check out the petition to change the law.  Then sign it, please, if you will. (Am I being too cute...?)

http://signon.org/sign/wright-to-have-a-job?source=s.em.cp&r_by=410317

Bueller? BUELLER? FERRIS BUELLER??!!

A MINIMUM TAX FOR THE WEALTHY

Warren Buffett of Omaha, Nebraska

Those aren't my words.  They're Warren Buffett's.  He has a great op-ed piece in today’s NY Times which I urge you to read and send to the President we elected (twice) and to your represent-atives in  Congress.

Buffett makes some telling arguments. Here's how his piece starts out: "Suppose that an investor you admire and trust comes to you with an investment idea. “This is a good one,” he says enthusiastically. “I’m in it, and I think you should be, too.”
"Would your reply possibly be this? “Well, it all depends on what my tax rate will be on the gain you’re saying we’re going to make. If the taxes are too high, I would rather leave the money in my savings account, earning a quarter of 1 percent.” Only in Grover Norquist’s imagination does such a response exist."

This is a point that I've been trying to make for a looong time.

Let's take a test.  Here’s a group.  You tell me what they have in common besides being inventors, investors and fabulously wealthy:
Steve Wozniak and the too-soon-departed Steve Jobs, of Apple Computer
David and Charles Koch, of Koch Industries, funders of the Tea Party
Sheldon Adelson, owner of Sands Casinos in Las Vegas, Macao & Singapore, sugar-daddy first to Newt Gingrich and then to Mitt Romney
Mark Zuckerberg and Chris Hughes of FaceBook
Henry Ford
Warren Buffet

Answer: Not one of them ever said “let’s not do this because we’ll make too much money and have to pay taxes on it.”

Here's Buffett's 2-part plan:
1.  A 30% tax on taxable income between $1 million and $10 million, and 35 % on amounts above that.
2.  Don't wait until we can "reform" the whole tax code.  Change as much of it as we can.  Now!

Why even some now? you ask.  Here's why, according to Warren Buffett: "...the reform of such complexities should not promote delay in our correcting simple and expensive inequities. We can’t let those who want to protect the privileged get away with insisting that we do nothing until we can do everything."

Now there's a man who makes sense.  As "Jimmy Brown, the newsboy of the town" in the old Flatt & Scruggs song, would say: "Read all about it" at:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/26/opinion/buffett-a-minimum-tax-for-the-wealthy.html?nl=opinion&emc=edit_ty_20121126

MICHAEL D. HIGGINS TAKES ON & TAKES DOWN A TEA-PARTIER

In order to listen to Ireland's President Higgins you'll need to cut and paste this address into your browser's address bar: 

http://front.moveon.org/the-best-takedown-of-a-tea-partier-came-from-the-president-of-ireland/?rc=fb.rp

 Because of him my next European trip will be to the Emerald Isle.

ANDY MARCH, SUPER VOL, DOES IT AGAIN!!

A Letter to the Editor in the Arizona Republic, Nov. 21, 2012:                                       


Advice on lawsuit absent

Before joining the lawsuit to overturn the Voting Rights Act, did Gov. Jan Brewer and Attor­ney General Tom Horne seek buy-in from our Hispanic, Na­tive American and African-American communities?

They might have been able to provide some useful insight.

MICHAEL MOORE NAILS IT

I urge you to read his Open Letter to the President who we just re-elected.

Click on the link below.  Send it to friends; send it to those
       you know who didn't vote for him.

http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/mike-friends-blog/open-letter-president-obama

ERIC MEYER WINS IN LD 28 --AZ House of Representatives

And my photo helped

HE wins.  WE did it. This is the best news that I’ve had all day.  Then again, the day is young.

Here's what the AZ Republic had to say:

The Republic called the remaining legislative race for Rep. Eric Meyer in an east Phoenix/Paradise Valley district. Meyer, a Democrat, had been leading Rep. Amanda Reeve, R-Phoenix, since Election Night. His margin, although slight, grew steadily as early and provisional ballots were tabulated.


As Arizona marks two weeks since the Nov.6 election, all counties but Maricopa had completed their ballot counts. As of late Monday, Maricopa County elections officials reported they had about 34,000 provisional ballots yet to tabulate, along with 450 early ballots that arrived too late to be counted before Election Day.

Details: http://arizonarepublic.az.newsmemory.com/?token=ca26cb858b9efadd574fe82008ea0fc0&cnum=321497&fod=1111111

AMERICA MOVES ON; SOME DON'T LIKE IT

              Is Rush Limbaugh’s Country Gone?

There's a fabulous statistical analysis in The NY Times of Sunday, Nov. 19.  It's by Thomas B. Edsall, a professor of journalism at Columbia University, who is the author of the book “The Age of Austerity: How Scarcity Will Remake American Politics,” which was
 published earlier this year.

Do you remember when R.L. vowed to leave the country if his guy lost?  While the article doesn't mention that, it quotes R.L. lamenting the morning after Election Day that we now have a different country:

In a country of children where the option is Santa Claus or work, what wins? And say what you want, but Romney did offer a vision of traditional America. In his way, he put forth a great vision of traditional America, and it was rejected. It was rejected in favor of a guy who thinks that those who are working aren’t doing enough to help those who aren’t. And that resonated.

The numbers quoted in the various surveys cited in this article are amazing.  We are moving on.  And some don't like it.  Tough shit!

Read it and cheer, as R.L. and friends read it and weep:

http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/18/is-rush-limbaughs-country-gone/

TUCSON PULLS IT OFF; MAKES IT 5-4

Barber edges McSally in CD2

By Dan Nowicki and John D’Anna

The Republic|azcentral.com

Ron Barber, the congres­sional aide who was shot alongside U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and then won her seat in a special election earli­er this year, has won the right to represent her district for a full term after a hard-fought race against former Air Force combat pilot Martha McSally.
The race is the last to be decided in Arizona and tilts the state’s congressional delegation to the Democrats for only the second time in 45 years.
Go here:
http://arizonarepublic.az.newsmemory.com/?token=07fee2338543d2970fd7aaf23d57b9b1&cnum=321497&fod=1111111

HAIL TO THE CHIEF --& HE HAILS BACK

Ken Fallin, famed NYC artist and cousin of Susan Herman, has done many drawings of President Obama. Here he is seen giving a shout-out to the activists at MCDP who worked so hard on his behalf.

From Charles M. Blow, columnist for The New York Times:     There may have been a backlash against voter suppression laws, bringing more minorities to the polls, not fewer. The share of Hispanic voters rose in many states won by Obama. That can be attributed both to the surging Hispanic population in the country and to the Obama campaign’s incredible get-out-the-vote operation. It is less clear why the black vote held steady or grew in many of those states.

In Ohio, for example, blacks jumped from being 11 percent of the voters in 2008 to 15 percent this year. Threaten to steal something, and its owner’s grip grows tighter.

EVERY VOTE NEEDS TO BE COUNTED

A voter deposits her Early Ballot

This note is from Ann Wallack, Chair of the Maricopa County Democratic Party:
We received an update from the County Elections Department yesterday.  Here are some highlights:

200 people are working from 7 AM to 10 PM daily, including Veteran's Day.

 

The earlier number of 114,000 provisional ballots to be processed has been updated to 122,000 provisional ballots.

 

So far, of the 122,000 provisionals, 8,500 have been processed.

 

Of those 8,500, 6,900 have proved to be valid.

1,600 are invalid. 

The percentage of valid provisionals is 81%.  The same as 2008.

 

So far, 49% of the total provisionals cast were from voters who had received early ballots.

 

There are 1006 conditional provisionals waiting for voters to return with ID.  In 2008 there were 1911.

 

(I was told that in 2008 there were 99,000 provisional ballots.  I haven't confirmed that myself.)

 

The process for verifying the early ballots that were dropped off (at least 100,000) takes time. But not as long as verifying the provisionals.  So the number of ballots that are actually tabulated each day now will be lower.  On a good day they could put 80 - 100,000 ballots through the machines.  Friday they did 17,000 and yesterday they did 44,788.

 

The press release from Yvonne Reed said that 200,000 early ballots "still remain to be processed for tabulation."

 

As more votes are counted some of our Democratic candidates are widening their leads. And in one bright spot please note that CAWCD candidate

Heather Macre has gained enough votes to make it in to the win column.  I feel confident that she will stay there as more votes are tabulated.

Please stay tuned.

In solidarity,

Ann Wallack

Chair, Maricopa County Democratic Party

Click on the address below, or cut and paste it into your browser's address bar to add your name to this petition, and then pass it along to your contacts.

signon.org/sign/count%2Devery%2Dvote%2Din%2Darizona?source=mo&id=57438-2175043-o2MDkax

Adding to the confusion, election officials are being deliberately opaque about how the provisional ballot verification process works, how many ballots are outstanding, and why so many ballots were cast provisionally. Further, this lack of transparency along with the state's poor ability to execute the vote-by-mail process and ensure that all who signed up receive their ballots, has created mass confusion and threatens to undermine the perception of legitimacy for the entire election. 

ELECTION DAY UPDATE: SOME UP/SOME DOWN

Watching the results at a downtown Phoenix hotel.

7 A.M. A  wannabe voter called, reaching me at the gym.  I’d helped her register earlier.  Now she needed to know where to vote as her VOTER ID card with her polling location hadn’t arrived.  This was just the start, since most of my day was spent on the phone telling people where to go.  There are lotsa people I’d like to do that for.

SET-UP or VOTER ASSISTANCE?  A  wannabe voter with a medical condition called.  Her doctor had given her medication that made driving inadvisable “in 4 or 5 days.”  It kicked in early, and there she was, still in Maricopa County but 50 miles away on the opposite corner.  And she needed a van to accommodate her power chair.  

Let’s see.  That’s 25 miles to pick her up, 50 miles to deliver her to her polling place, 50 miles back to the pick-up point, and then 25 miles dead-headed back to the office..

My advice, that we pick her up and transport her to a polling location near where she was, and that she cast a provisional ballot.  That was the plan that we agreed upon, only she called back as our dispatcher was trying to find an handicapped-accessable van.   “Never mind.  I’ll take care of it,” she said.

DIVERSION OF RESOURCES? A woman saying she was a regular volunteer called from a donut shop saying that there was a wannabe-voter with yet another major transportation problem that would have us zig-zagging all over BFE.  Oddly enough, I couldn’t find this “regular volunteer” in our list of regular volunteers.  Then the wannabe voter called back to say that she solved her problem.  Hmmm.

AN ARMY (OF VOLUNTEERS) TRAVELS ON ITS TUMMY

Baklava and other goodies were delivered by a Tempe restaurant, and much appreciated by Congressional candidate Kyrsten Sinema.

SOME YES / SOME NO

Voters and volunteers call the office with all kinds of questions.  Many are well-meaning.  Yet I’ve been trained to be leery of entrapment.  When a man called to ask whether his wife could bring his early ballot. to the polls on Election Day, it was an easy YES.

Yet when another man called with a “transportation” problem it was a different matter.  He’s a resident of Apache County, “stuck here in Phoenix for the next few days.”  He wondered if there was anything that I could do to help him vote.  Other than telling him to go home to Apache County the answer was NO --a very  difficult NO.

WHAT A THRILL: This first-time voter came to the office for assistance completing his ballot.  Then he went home to assist his wife, after which he brought in both ballots,  depositing them in the special ballot collection box at MCDP.

ONE MORE T-SHIRT

Can you fuel our get out the vote operation by making a donation of $50, $25, $10 or $5?

BLOCK THE VOTE

Dunno if it’ll turn out to be true; that’s up to law-enforcement to investigate.  But a man called me Saturday to confirm his polling place.  After all, many have changed since 2008, so it seemed to be a routine request.

Then he explained what prompted him to call the Maricopa County Democratic Party:  He had received a robocall from the campaign of a major-party candidate other than ours.  The recorded announcement was to advise voters that their polling place had been changed, and gave the name and address of a facility at some distance.

Trouble is, the “advice” was flat-out wrong.  He was being falsely directed to a polling place out of his precinct where he would not be able to cast his vote.

Please watch this video and share it with your friends, we can't let this stand.

QUESTION 1: Was it a mistake by some list-compiler to have included a Democratic voter in a list aimed to Get Out The Vote for Republicans?

QUESTION 2: Was it a legitimate mistake in matching voter addresses with polling places?

Let's hope that this is an isolated incident and that we don’t read about in the paper or see it on the TV news.

PUTTING IT OUT THERE: For better or worse, most of the racism that we encounter this election season --and at other times-- is hidden, subtle or couched in “acceptable” terms.  “Take back  America” and “restore our society” come to mind.

Not so with one man who returned one of our telemarketing calls, wondering who was calling him and why.  When I told him he said “I’m an entrepreneur so I’m voting for Republicans.”  I said that there are many entrepreneurs who vote Democratic.

His answer: “I’m voting just to get that nigger outta the White House.”  And he hung up.

LAST CHANCE TO HAND-IN EARLY BALLOTS

Feet on the streets; digits on the dials. Congressional candi- date Kyrsten Sinema came in to phone bank for awhile.     Voters kept streaming into the office to present their early ballots rather than mail them in.     They didn’t all get to shake the hand of a candidate as this young lady did.  The other photo shows a volunteer submitting 5 Early Ballots that he collected from family members, putting them in a special box held by a staff organizer.  BTW: That's a cardboard cut-out of JFK in the background.

An apartment-dweller in Chandler called in with a weekend challenge: How could she contact the Democrats in her complex to urge them to Get Out The Vote?  Simple enough.  I printed out a list of registered Democrats,  included the Independent voters who had expressed liberal leanings in earlier phone canvassing, and, voila:  A list of 50, in numerical order by apartment number.  Now she’s one happy teacher.

A distressing story: A lady came into the office with a problem that we could not solve.  She moved to the Valley in early October --too late to register to vote here.  And by the time she realized it, it was too late for her to get an absentee ballot from her home state.  We were both disappointed.  

The good news is, though, that she’s certainly found a way to meet her new neighbors.  I connected her to the Neighborhood Team Leader in her area.  Armed with a list of friendly Democrats in the area, she’ll be knocking on doors and making phone calls until E-Day

STAGING LOCATION

Preparing for the onslaught of volunteers in the parking lot of the Maricopa County Democratic Party

TRUTH OR TRAP?

YES, I can be flip, sarcastic and glib.  And all of us in the campaign have been warned about the possibility that our conversations can and may be recorded by opposition plants.   This had happened to me decades ago in the corporate world, when my strong remarks on the phone to a caller asking about the competition ended up being played a week later to the FCC.

So you’ll forgive me for being cautious when I received a call from a Phoenix resident stuck on the East Coast who wanted to vote here at home.  She had gone there to say goodbye to her daughter in the service who is being deployed overseas, and was staying with her family.

She said that she had thought of changing her registration to her hometown, but acted a day too late.  Wasn’t there something that I could do to enable her to vote and thus support her daughter’s role in defending the country?

Frankly, there was not a single legitimate thing that I could think of.

Yes, there were a couple of illegitimate things that later came to my mind.  But I couldn’t have someone go, as her, to an early-voting office and cast her vote. Nor I could I have someone get a vote-by-mail ballot and send it to her.

Not only couldn’t I do these things, I could just see the headlines if I even mentioned them as not being possible.  Think of what some fancy editing could do.  Does the name Andrew Breitbart ring a bell?

So to this legitimate mother of a military daughter: I appreciate her service.  I appreciate your sacrifice.  But I cannot be responsible for your not voting.  And if you, dear caller, were trying to trap me, shame on you.  This isn’t my first rodeo!

NEW CITIZEN / NEW VOTER

This really made my day --and the day had just begun.  In walked a man wanting to confirm that he is a registered voter.  He's a Russian from Uzbekistan --even knows my barber, Ilya, who also is.  As with others, he'd been given a runaround on the phone trying to find out his status.He and I were both thrilled when I found him in the computer.  He dashed off to vote early, but as he did I got a commitment from him to help us with Get Out The Vote.  "I shall," he said, "just like I did for Obama 4 years ago even though I wasn't a citizen."

Whew!  Does it get any better?!





A FACE MADE FOR RADIO: I'm no Charles Osgood, but "look for me on the radio," as my long-time favorite on CBS says every Sunday morning, is now my phrase as well.
It seems that the AZ Democratic Party got a request from the local NPR station that's doing a story on senior citizens and the election.
#3 Son, Mark, who's doing research here, put my name in the hat, and after clearance from the Party's Communications Director and a couple of phone calls, in walks Nick Blumberg of KJZZ with microphone in hand, wanting to get "the senior-citizen perspective" on the election.
It sure was strange --being on this side of the mike-- as I cut my eye-teeth on radio news, what seems like 100 years ago.  Actually, it was only half that.
And a thrill it was.  Check it out at http://kjzz.org and http://fronterasdesk.org.

NEWS FLASH FROM ELECTION CENTRAL:  Susan tracked down yet another letter-writer to our friendly, neighborhood newspaper.  He appeared, from the tone of the letter, to be a good Democrat.  And he is.  He lives in a gated community in Central Phoenix, with 103 voters, and he has 3 yard signs for our candidates at his door.  But he figured that he and his wife are the only Dems in the complex.

Of course I had that same conversation last month with 2 of his neighbors who I had dinner with.

A quick check of the county's voter rolls showed that not only where they both wrong, but that of the 103 voters, 55 are Dems or Independents.

Now both couples have been enlisted to call on their neighbors in order to help turn AZ BLUE.

And a new Obama yard sign has been planted.

Ya THINK?!?!

No.  That's not a sketch of me.  It's Lawrence Downes, an Editorial Page blogger at my former employer.  He's got a great piece called "Adios, Arpaio," in Monday's Times.  Check it out: http://takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com/

A problem solved was still a problem.  

I was contacted by a Gilbert couple who are on the Permanent Early Voter List but hadn’t yet received their ballots in the mail.  They had called the county elections office several times and gotten what they perceived as a runaround.  They were even told “we have alot of information on you,” but not what that “information” is.

Once I sent them a list of the 11 early-voting places in the county, they went to the one near their home.

“We had no trouble at all in voting once we knew where to go,” they reported back to me.

Son of a contact from last week.

A man called in with a unique situation, and the solution was the same as his parents’: Vote early.

He works for FEMA and is waiting to catch a flight to the East Coast in response to Hurricane Sandy.  Although he wasn’t on the Permanent Early Voter List, he wanted the same list that  his parents told them that I had sent to them.

PARENTAL UPDATE: "Yes, my son did get a call from FEMA to report to Dover, DE asap. He finally got a flight out on Wednesday morning. From Delaware he was sent to Yardley, PA, and Friday morning he  was sent to Hoboken, NJ, which received quite a bit of devastation. God knows how long he will be deployed this time.  I might see him next spring." 

COMBATING VOTER SUPPRESSION

Signs of a unified, happy marriage in the Glenn Precinct, Phoenix, AZ

Without going into the details about “why,” there are 2, nearly-identical voter registration forms in use.  One, preferred by the state government, requires a photo ID. The other, preferred by the Federal Government, does not.

Recently we held a voter-registration drive at ASU, using the Federal form.  And late Friday we learned that many of those who registered were rejected by the County Elections Office. So a bunch of us started calling those new registrants to see if they have received their Voter ID cards.   And now we’ve been joined in that effort by  AZAdvocacy.  

For details go here: 
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/local/articles/2012/10/26/20121026county-letter-serve-voter-id.html?nclick_check=1
 

FYI, AZADVOCACY.org is a 501(c)(4) with a sister 501(c)(3) organization. Arizona Advocacy Network Foundation Mission: It secures electoral justice, political rights and full civic participation, especially for underrepresented and marginalized constituencies, to achieve government for the People, not corporations.