#RescuePackage
The state is taking applications for renters and landlords in rural Arizona at des.az.gov/ERAP.
Phoenix residents can apply at phoenix.gov/humanservices/programs/emergency.
Mesa is taking applications for its renter program at mesaaz.gov/mesacares.
Chandler and Gilbert residents can apply at azcend.org/community-action-program/.
Glendale is taking applications to help landlords and tenants at glendaleaz.com/cap.
Scottsdale handed the money off to the county.
People living outside Phoenix, Mesa, Glendale, Chandler and Gilbert but inside Maricopa County can apply by visiting maricopa.gov/renthelp.
According to the latest Joint Legislative Budget Committee (JLBC) report, Arizona will receive $12.2 billion—yes, that’s with a B—from the latest federal COVID-19 relief bill. Some estimates have been up to $24 Billion to Arizona.
It’s far more than originally anticipated and as large as the State’s total annual budget of $12.6 billion.
The report includes the impact of direct stimulus payments, which will funnel an additional $8.5 billion into the State.
There’s an expectation that these new funds will drastically impact budget negotiations and the Governor/legislature’s plans for a significant tax-cut package.
This is why the Arizona Republican Attorney General wants to sue the Biden administration because the Rescue Plan prohibited the states’ using the money to give tax breaks.
#FilibusterAndYou
“It is a contradiction to say we must protect minority rights in the Senate while refusing to protect minority rights in the society.” – GA Sen. Raphael Warnock
#StopAsianHate
Murdered Atlanta victims on Tuesday were:
Soon C. Park, 74
Hyun Jung Grant,
51 Suncha Kim, 69
Yong A. Yue, 63
Delaina Ashley Yaun, 33
Xiaojie Tan, 49
Daoyou Feng, 44
Paul Andre Michels, 54
A 30-year-old Hispanic man, Elcias Ortiz, was injured.
When the officer started the press conference, before the “bad day” comments, a reporter asked what the male victim was doing at the spa. The officer responded that he wasn’t going to victim blame.
… which just insinuated the victim was doing something unsavory.
In fact, the male shooting victim, Elcias Hernandez-Ortiz, a 30-year-old husband and father who works as a mechanic and owns an auto repair shop, wasn’t even at the spa.
He was walking to a business next door and was just in the flight path of the escaping murderer. He’s now fighting for his life in a hospital.
One of the female victims, a new mom, was there with her husband as they were both getting, separate, celebration massages. Mario Gonzalez was handcuffed and detained for two hours, denied information about his dying wife, while the gun-totting murderer, Robert Aaron Long, easily fled the scene and was eventually caught by investigating police officers 150 miles south of Atlanta.
#TheSeige
Congressional lawmakers are unable to find common ground, or a common set of facts, even after a mob smashed into the Capitol and threatened their lives.
That’s leading to a stall in creating an independent, bipartisan panel to investigate the Jan. 6 domestic terror attack at the U.S. Capitol.
Unlike 9/11, which engendered some unity in Congress almost two decades ago, the insurrection by Trump’s supporters has pulled Democrats and Republicans further apart, even on the basic question of what should be investigated.
Republicans objected to a series of findings in the bill that quoted FBI Director Christopher Wray, a Trump appointee, saying that racially motivated violent extremism, and especially white supremacy, is one of the biggest threats to domestic security.
Federal prosecutors have now charged at least 312 people in connection with the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
A court filing on March 12 said about 100 more are still expected to be charged.
The Capitol attack has already cost taxpayers $519 million.
An NPR analysis in January found about 20% of the people who were charged in the riot, so far, had some form of military history, including those who are now serving in the military or had served in the past.
Arizona Rep. Ruben Gallego, a Marine Corps combat veteran, is calling on Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary Denis McDonough and other top officials to strip benefits from active-duty service members, veterans, and military retirees who took part in the deadly siege of the Capitol.
“The past is a foreign country: They do things differently there.” – L.P. Hartley, author of “The Go-Between”
Vouchers, strongly held beliefs, and weird science as a means to circumvent equality are not new.
From 1959 until 1964, Virginia’s Prince Edward County, aided and abetted by state officials, shuttered its 21 public schools and diverted tax revenue to pay for white students to attend a private, segregated “academy.”
Black students were denied the basic right of an education.
A lucky few were sent far and wide to schools in other counties and states, but most suffered a loss of learning from which they never fully recovered.
The school closings and “voucher-like” transfers were done because white people had a strongly held belief that one drop of Black blood made a person Black and that a Black person touching a white person could somehow transfer that one drop.
#ThePlan
In 1976, Jude Thaddeus Wanniski wrote that the Two-Santa Claus Political Theory suggests that “the Republicans should concentrate on tax-rate reduction.”
As they succeed in expanding incentives to produce, they will move the economy back to full employment and thereby reduce social pressures for public spending.
Just as an increase in Government spending inevitably means taxes must be raised, a cut in tax rates—by expanding the private sector—will diminish the relative size of the public sector.”
Wanniski suggested this position, as Thom Hartmann has clarified, so that the Democrats would “have to be anti-Santas by raising taxes, or anti-Santas by cutting spending. Either one would lose them elections.”
#WhoseVoteYourVote
Arizona has been a hotbed for election “fraud” vigilantes, and the Republicans-in-charge are moving on to “not every citizen deserves the right to vote.”
According to the CNN story, Arizona GOP legislators have introduced 24 bills that would add barriers to the voting process, second only to Georgia and among more than 250 such proposals nationwide.
Scottsdale Republican Rep. John Kavanagh suggested that excluding certain voters from the election process would be a good thing while the other Republican Scottsdale legislator, Rep. Joseph Chaplik, question why we didn’t wear masks to fight against AIDS.
A good free resource for our distinguished Scottsdale gentlemen is the Netflix series “Amend: The Fight For America,” which is all about the 14th Amendment Republicans are so eager to violate.
The Republican-held state Senate prepares to hand-recount 2.1 million ballots cast in Democratic-leaning Maricopa County.
That’s after the County and taxpayers already spent thousands on pre-and post-election tests of counting equipment and software, a hand count of a ballot sample that showed the machine count was accurate, and two professional audits by 3rd-party companies – all of which showed the election was free, fair, and properly conducted with Biden – and state senator Karen Fann – as certified winners of the 2020 election.
The motley crew leading the charge includes a failed treasure hunter, a Trumpist pillow magnate, a self-proclaimed expert on satanic forces, and roving bands of amateur ballot sleuths who climb into dumpsters and investigate chicken coop fires. While the recount can’t change the results of the election, the anger, and passions surrounding it offer a window into the future of a Republican Party that still widely insists that Trump legally won re-election, long after his loss has become clear.
Meanwhile, a Superior Court judge in Maricopa County, Arizona on Monday ordered the Arizona Republican Party to pay more than $18,000 in attorneys’ fees which were incurred through the GOP’s frivolous lawsuits challenging the results of the 2020 election.
#CampaignChronicles contains funny and witty commentary, with both insight and introspection on how readers can plant seeds during almost any conversation. I hope to encourage readers to engage in civil dialogue that brings people together and builds helpful human interaction.
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