Arizona's idiot legislature doesn't want you to watch their idiocy
Arizona's idiot legislature doesn't want you to watch their idiocyby Mother MagsFollow
I can understand why Republicans in the Arizona legislature would want to pass a bill like SB 1435. Here's the crucial change that the bill makes to the old language about open meetings:
{underlined is struck out}
Got that? To comply with the state's open meeting law, and yet meet in secret, they've simply changed the definition of "meeting." No longer does it mean legislative committee hearings, school board meetings, or other public agency sessions where ideas, bills, budgets, and laws are debated and discussed – and where the public can listen and speak. Now it only means those occasions where "action is taken." Goodie, we get to watch them vote.
They're not only denying the public the right to witness the deliberations of people we pay to make laws, they're denying people a voice in governance. If they limit the public only to meetings where elected officials take action, it's too late, that sausage has been made.
Like I said, I get why the GOP wants to pass this bill. After all, here is what passes as enlightened deliberation at the Arizona legislature. To no one's surprise, Sen. Allen is a sponsor of SB 1435. It's not hard to see why she and her GOP colleagues don't want the public or the press anywhere near her philosophizing.
-video- (in orig article)
Sen. Allen sits on several environmental committees and the education committee. Gulp. This year she's the sponsor of a bill that requires students to pass a civics test before they can graduate. Evidently, democracy is not part of the test. Nor is science. If it were, our students would know that the stuff she wants to mine near the Grand Canyon, uranium, is the same stuff that proves the earth is a bit older than 6,000 years.
Last week Gov. Doug Ducey said he was going to eliminate the visitor log from the Governor's Office, so we wouldn't really know who he met with as our chief executive (a decision he quickly rescinded). Then the GOP decided to close Republican Caucus meetings to the public, and now Ducey's party wants to bypass open meeting laws. I recall a line from "Arizona Roadmap to Opportunity and Freedom," Ducey's campaign manifesto, which goes something like:
But you do the opposite when your extremist agenda includes huge corporate giveaways, deep education cuts, and ugly assaults on immigration, LGBT, the poor, the environment, and women (another abortion restriction passed today). So much for transparency.
Vid & more links:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/02/12/1363955/-Arizona-s-idiot-legislature-doesn-t-want-you-to-watch-their-idiocy?detail=email
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= new reply since forum marked as read
moreso than they already are if people paid attention to state legislatures more, John Oliver called state legislatures our "shadow government" since most of what they do goes under our noses or when Republicans cut back AHCCS, socialized medicine was blamed because the whole approving AHCCS (before ObamaCare) only to adults with children was said to be the problem with government health care by a Republican neighbor. So odd he used Republican actions to slam Democrats, but didn't make distinctions between Presidential elected ones since he was believe in a "one world government" & the put in who they want to put in (cited Diebold as an example), he also used government subsidized health care & government funded anything as the next step to micromanaging all of us under a one world government.
For some reason that is convincing to them, I don't know where they receive their political info & talking points but I wish I was making this up -- in a SNAP line, I overhead two probably 40s+ women conversated where she tells her friend or whoever was with her that she wasn't going to participate in ObamaCare because she doesn't to give all her information to the federal government in-line (in hindsight it may not of been her but accompanying someone who was but the irony still went over their heads) to give all her information to the federal government.
I feel the federal government probably knows too much about us but they already have plenty of information, it is funny health care is sold as a last line defense to that. And also guns, the 4th amendment? Who cares, if they allow us to own a firearm it will stop the biggest, most powerful government from oppressing you. 
I tend to vent regarding my conservations as our peers or the people involved in these discussions all agree where even saying I'm liberal is treated as if its a shocking revelation.
