AZ News & Blogs 6/25/2010

Drugs

• All’s “normal” after Rocky Point police chief, bodyguard shot 
• Puerto Penasco, Mexico Police Chief Erick Francisco Landagaray, and his bodyguard Luis Huerta Ibarra, were gunned down over the weekend while patrolling the seaside city, also known as Rocky Point.
• Mexican drug lords creating havoc in southern Arizona 
• Mexican drug cartels have set up shop on American soil, maintaining lookout bases in strategic locations in the hills of southern Arizona from which their scouts can monitor every move made by law enforcement officials, according to federal agents.
• Possession of Any Recreational Drug Has Been Legal in Portugal Since 2001… 
• …and the country hasn’t fallen apart. (I know—you’re “shocked.”)
• See the video. 

Oh, Politics!

• WSJ: “JD Huckster” 
• The Wall Street Journal has weighed in on the reality of JD Hayworth.  Not the spin, not the shiny object, revisionist history campaign fluff…the real story.  This reality is best personified in the portion of the infomercial  starring the “former member of the powerful Weighs and Means Committee” where he uses the trust of the people who elected him to sway the hearts and minds of others into a complete and total scam.
• Why Jim Deakin Should Support JD Hayworth for the US Senate 
• If anything, he brings lack of experience.
• My thoughts:  The one good thing.
• What’s this? NRA rejects own board member Buz Mills, endorses Brewer 
• Arizona gubernatorial candidate Owen “Buz” Mills, a honcho with the National Rifle Association (NRA), got a rear-end full of buckshot as the organization endorsed his adversary, Gov. Jan Brewer.
•  Listen to Ernest Hancock talk on the corrupt NRA with Sheriff Mack.
• Jan Brewer's new motto: "Damn the facts, full distort ahead!" 
• The example he cited involved her saying, during a debate between the R candidates for governor that the majority of undocumented immigrants were engaged in narcotics trafficking and extortion and that they are responsible for a massive crime wave in Arizona.
• As this Think Progress piece from writer Andrea Nill points out, during a period in Arizona's history that has seen an increase in undocumented immigration, there has been an actual decrease in crime in AZ.

Oh, Politicians!  Time to get rid of the welfare state!

• Sells Islands? 
• On the surface it seems shocking that a nation would sell off parts its physical environment because of public sector debts. But this has been going on for a long time in impoverished nations. First profligate nations are lent a lot of money by private sector banks. Then the nation becomes over-extended revenue-wise. Finally the IMF is called in to provide a "loan" that must be paid back. The impoverished nation cuts its bloated public sector, raises taxes and sells of chunks of its public portfolio, maybe to the fraternity of banks that lent it money in the first place.
• My thoughts:  Et tu Arizona?

Living

• Living on (a Lot) Less 
• I spent last weekend at a lake house in Maine with a broken water pump. For three days, we had no running water. Being beside the lake gave us ample access to water, but nothing flowed from the taps.
• It turned out that five of us could live pretty comfortably on about five gallons of water a day.

AZ News & Blogs 6/12/2010

• Police and Accountability 
• I have written before that the inexpensive handheld video camera is perhaps the most important innovation in police accountability in my lifetime.  So of course, the police want them banned.
• Clean Elections Candidates Advised to Return Public Subsidies 
• At an emergency meeting Wednesday, the Arizona Citizens Clean Elections Commission declared that taxpayer-funded candidates who have accepted campaign subsidies cannot withdraw from the Clean Elections system and run with private fundraising. But the Commission is wrong, according to the lead attorney who convinced the U.S. Supreme Court to block the use of matching funds at this point.
• “There is nothing in the law that prohibits withdrawal from the Clean Elections system – provided taxpayer-funded candidates return their government subsidies and run with private financing,” said Nick Dranias, the Goldwater Institute’s director of constitutional studies. “No provision in the Citizens Clean Elections Act addresses the issue of voluntary withdrawal from the system. And no rule prohibits the Commission from allowing candidates to withdraw from the system if they return their subsidies.”
• Strange bedfellows 
• Mills' attorney told the commission that it should reject a request from Gov. Jan Brewer's campaign to invoke an emergency clause and release publicly funded candidates to raise private dollars. It's needed, Brewer's crew argued, because of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that bars the distribution of matching funds to publicly funded candidates.
• Worries increase along with Arizona's debt 
• Paying off that debt will strain state budgets for years to come. For the fiscal year that starts July 1, the state must make a $232 million debt payment out of its general fund.
• Abramoff Released From Prison; close ties to Hayworth linger in the minds of voters 
• This cannot be a good week for Team Hayworth, with reports his campaign is losing steam and this ugly little reminder of just how low some people will go.  You would think after the whole Abramoff “thing”, taking a closer look at folks would have been a good idea.  But, then…I guess some people never learn.