The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees launched a new campaign last week taking on Arizona Governor Jan Brewer, who is pushing a new assault on the working families of her state in an attempt to take away the collective bargaining rights of state workers. Brewer is following the pattern inspired by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and pursued by governors like Wisconsin's Scott Walker and Ohio's John Kasich:

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer is about to wipe out collective bargaining rights for public service workers in Arizona with a slate of new anti-worker bills. It’s the latest orchestrated attack from extreme right-wing lawmakers, think tanks, and their corporate cronies who are hell-bent on wiping out what’s left of the middle class.

They couldn’t be more wrong. Attacking teachers, fire fighters and police and other public service workers will do nothing to create jobs or help Arizona’s budget.

AFSCME launched a petition in opposition to Brewer's assault on union rights:

To the lawmakers, governors, policy-wonks, and corporate backers who are dead set on destroying unions in America:

Your latest attempt to dismantle workers' rights in Arizona will not go unnoticed.

Firefighters, police officers, nurses, school bus drivers, home health care workers, public servants and workers of all kinds will not stand by while you scapegoat us – the people who play by the rules and do our fair share – and take away our rights by abusing your power and forcing through your extreme anti-worker laws.

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I can't lie, I'm a little teary from that video. Read this as I pull myself together:

Representative Gabrielle Giffords, a Democrat from Arizona whose unlikely recovery from a shooting last year stirred her colleagues and the nation, said Sunday that she would resign from Congress to focus on improving her health.[..]

Ms. Giffords’s decision to step down throws the race for her seat representing Arizona’s Eighth District into chaos. She barely fought off her Republican challenger in 2010, but was expected to be a shoo-in for re-election had she decided to run this year. The remainder of her term will be filled by the winner of a special election on a date to be determined by Gov. Jan Brewer.

Under Arizona law, a governor has 72 hours from the day the vacancy is declared to name the dates for special elections; the primary must take place 80 to 90 days from date of the vacancy followed by a general election 50 to 60 days after that.

Giffords' recovery thus far is nothing short of miraculous, considering that she was shot point blank in the head. She had been widely considered a shoo-in for re-election if she had opted to campaign again, but the exertions of a campaign and fundraising are not the kinds of things she needs to focus on. Arizona Democrats-- perhaps looking at John McCain and John Kyl in the Senate and Jan Brewer in the Governor's office--are naturally worried about losing this strong Democrat in the House and Gifford's husband, Cmdr Mark Kelly (ret.), was approached to run for his wife's former seat, but it looks like Kelly is not interested.

Giffords will reportedly attend the State of the Union speech on Tuesday before officially vacating her seat.

Number 18 on our countdown is actually a video from 2009, but with Shawna Forde going on trial earlier this year, it resurfaced as one to watch again.

It's a shame her trial didn't get more attention from traditional media outlets. Whether it was the fact that the victims weren't the right color for some media outlets, or a reluctance to shine a bright light on the danger of fringe militia groups, I don't know. But C&L's Dave Neiwert covered the whole trial, up to and including the verdict and sentencing, where Forde finally got what she deserved for shooting a nine-year old child in cold blood.

Rest in peace, Flores family.

[ Photo via Flickr]

Newt Gingrich personally urged members of Congress to vote for a controversial Medicare expansion bill in 2003, confirm two GOP congressmen who were in the room.

Gingrich, who is running for president, has said he never lobbied members of Congress after he resigned as House speaker in 1998. But U.S. Rep. Jeff Flake and former congressman Butch Otter - now his state's governor - told The Des Moines Register this week that Gingrich met with on-the-fence Republicans to persuade them to vote for the prescription drug bill.

Flake and Otter, who have both endorsed Mitt Romney for president, said about 30 Republican House members were holding out against the bill in the fall of 2003 because they were concerned that the proposal would expand the federal deficit when Gingrich held a private meeting of Republican House members.

“He told us, ‘If you can’t pass this bill, you don’t deserve to govern as Republicans,’ ” said Flake, who represents an Arizona district. “…If that’s not lobbying, I don’t know what is.”

Otter said: “I can’t define lobbying, but as a Supreme Court justice once said about pornography, I know it when I see it. I felt we were being lobbied.”

Yes, it was the Republicans driving the clown car the last time that Congress screwed with Medicare. In case you don't recall, Medicare Part D was passed in 2003, and went into effect in 2006 leaving thousands of seniors without medication, and introduced us to the "doughnut hole." Trips to the pharmacy became a "nightmare" for seniors with new co-pays for previously free medications, mountains of time-consuming, mind-numbing paperwork to fill out even with staff especially trained to help navigate the mess.

Seniors enrolled in Medicare Part D plans pay 58 percent more for the most commonly prescribed drugs than Americans who buy their medications through health plans administered by the Department of Veterans Affairs, according to a 2007 report.

Under the 2003 Medicare prescription-drug law, the government is barred from harnessing the buying power of 22.5 million Americans - the number of people now receiving some kind of drug benefits under Medicare - to get a better deal on prescription medications.

For example, the cholesterol-lowering drug Zocor, the cost of a year's supply of 20 milligram tablets would be $1,485.96 under the cheapest Medicare Part D plan, compared to $127.44 under the VA.

$1,485.96...that's a lot of doughnut holes.

Here's a classic example of the way far-right hate groups have been moving into our mainstream discourse, being legitimized by a clueless and culpable mainstream media.

Tucson's NBC News affiliate -- KVOA-TV, Channel 4 -- ran this interesting segment the other day on a new/old technology to catch border crossers. The most interesting thing about it, though, was their chief source for the story: American Border Patrol's Glenn Spencer:

HEREFORD - Most people agree we need to secure the border, right? The issue is, how do we know when the border is secure? How do we measure that? The American Border Patrol, a non-governmental organization that monitors the border, thinks an old technology may hold the new answer.

They're called geophones, basically, a magnet inside of a coil. But they can sense the smallest vibrations, like someone walking across the border. American Border Patrol installed the system on their ranch to test its effectiveness.

"And it works. It's been here for 11 months underground, working. And it counts everybody who crosses," said Glenn Spencer, American Border Patrol.

The sensors pick people up at 600 feet, but can start to analyze it better and tell if it's human from 300 feet.

"Showing in Google Earth where on the border the detection and the alert happened," said Spencer.

Notice anything missing from this story? Well, how about even the slightest mention of the fact that Spencer runs one of the most notorious anti-immigrant hate groups in the country?

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Christmas came early for the law-abiding residents of Arizona's Maricopa County yesterday:

PHOENIX — In a strongly worded critique of the country’s best-known sheriff, the Justice Department on Thursday accused Sheriff Joe Arpaio of engaging in “unconstitutional policing” by unfairly targeting Latinos for detention and arrest and retaliating against those who complain.

After an investigation that lasted more than three years, the civil rights division of the Justice Department said in a 22-page report that the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office, which Mr. Arpaio leads, had “a pervasive culture of discriminatory bias against Latinos” that “reaches the highest levels of the agency.” The department interfered with the inquiry, the government said, prompting a lawsuit that eventually led Sheriff Arpaio and his deputies to cooperate.

“We have peeled the onion to its core,” said Thomas E. Perez, the assistant attorney general for civil rights, noting during a conference call with reporters on Thursday morning that more than 400 inmates, deputies and others had been interviewed as part of the review, including Sheriff Arpaio and his command staff. Mr. Perez said the inquiry, which included jail visits and reviews of thousands of pages of internal documents, raised the question of whether Latinos were receiving “second-class policing services” in Maricopa County.

Mr. Perez said he hoped Sheriff Arpaio would cooperate with the federal government in turning the department around. Should he refuse to enter into a court-approved settlement agreement, Mr. Perez said, the government will file a lawsuit and the department could lose millions of dollars in federal money.

A separate federal grand jury investigation of Sheriff Arpaio’s office is continuing, focusing on accusations of abuse of power by the department’s public corruption squad.

That investigation -- unlike this probe, which involved civil law -- is a criminal matter. The other shoe has yet to drop on that score.

Arpaio, of course, claims that this is all politically motivated:

"Don't come here and use me as a whipping boy for a national, international problem," said Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

The DOJ warned Arpaio to stop racially profiling Hispanic members of the community, or face the consequences. But Arpaio vowed to continue his controversial immigration sweeps.

"I took an oath of office. I'm enforcing the state and federal laws," Arpaio said.. "It's as simple as that, and I will continue to enforce those state laws."

The normally media friendly sheriff stayed away from the cameras for most of the day today. And when he did speak, it was during a late-afternoon news conference with his attorneys at his side.

"I'm going to say it again, I will continue to enforce all the laws," Arpaio said during the 40-minute news conference.

...

"President Obama and his band of his merry men might as well erect their own pink neon sign on the Arizona-Mexico border saying welcome to your United States," Arpaio said. "Our home is your home."

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Good job, Arizona!!! Corrupt, hateful Arizona State Senator Russell Pearce was defeated soundly tonight by a moderate Republican, Jerry Lewis. Lewis took 53 percent of the vote in a low-turnout election.

Pearce, as you might recall, was the author and promoter of SB 1070, the odious immigration law that nearly turned Arizona inside out. It seems voters were unimpressed with his xenophobia and his corruption.

Via CampaignMoney.org:

“Voters in Mesa sent a strong signal to lawmakers at the state capitol today: Arizonans want politicians working for them, not for special interests,” said David Donnelly, director of Public Campaign Action Fund’s Campaign Money Watch project. “Pearce’s anti-immigrant positions may have made him into a controversial figure, but it was his love of campaign cash, special interest perks, and opposition to Clean Elections that led voters to kick him out of the Senate.”

What this election and others around the country proves is that democracy is not dead in this country. In Mississippi, Maine, Ohio, Kentucky, and Arizona, voters stood up and told the Koch brothers they don't own our government, despite their best efforts to do so. It also proves that the message of the Occupy movement is one that resonates deeply with voters across this country, who are not automatons voting party lines without thought to what they are doing. The cynical ideas of Republicans and Koch-bots across this country are being rejected out of hand.

Power to the people.

Our favorite Arizona Nazi border watcher, J.T. Ready, recently reached new opportunistic depths by showing up and pretending to support Occupy Phoenix -- even though he was apparently confronted by other participants, who made it clear he wasn't welcome.

Let's be clear: J.T. Ready is a neo-Nazi, a classic totalitarian/authoritarian, someone who despises and loathes and sneers at the kind of democracy-in-action that the Occupy movement represents. He likes chaos, though, and he sees the movement's unsettling effect as something he can use. And showing up at protests always is good for a little attention. That's why he did this.

Predictably, as Matt Gertz at Media Matters reports, the same right-wing bloggers who have been trying to smear the Occupiers as anti-Semites picked this up and ran with it:

For some time, the right-wing media has been attempting to brand Occupy Wall Street and related protests as anti-Semitic. In the latest example, conservative blogger Jim Hoft is pointing to video of heavily armed Neo-Nazi J.T. Ready patrolling the Occupy Phoenix protest and saying nice things about the movement.

Hoft sarcastically concludes, "Yup. They're just like the tea party."

It's worth pointing out that much of the rhetoric Ready spouts during the video -- decrying fiat money, saying that he and others were "exercising our Second Amendment right so that everybody can have a First Amendment right," claiming that Operation Fast and Furious was intended to "take away our rights" and the perpetrators are traitors who should be put to death -- sounds much more like the rhetoric of a conservative protestor than an OWS supporter.

And indeed, that's the problem for Hoft: Ready previously attended and reportedly spoke at Tea Party rallies ...

Gertz then details all the times Ready has appeared in support of tea party events.

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One of the most important and least talked-about stories this year concerns how Congressional districts are being remapped. Depending on the state, it's either a horribly political and gerrymandered process, or it's being done by an independent board. In California, for example, redistricting was done by an independent board and yielded what appears to be pretty objective districts for this decade.

Arizona also has an independent board, but not as independent as it should be, since the governor can allow members to be impeached by the State Senate. Yesterday, Jan Brewer axed the head of that "independent" commission by allowing the Senate to impeach her for arguably trumped-up reasons.

Via AZCentral:

On a 21-6 party line vote, the Senate gave the Republican governor the two-thirds majority vote she needed to oust Colleen Coyle Mathis, citing "gross misconduct" in her role at the helm of the independent panel.

[...]

The Arizona Constitution gives the independent panel the authority to do political redistricting, but provides a role for the governor to seek removal of any commissioner whom she finds guilty of "gross misconduct." It also calls for the Senate to ratify the governor's action.

But Democrats said Republicans fueled the effort because they don't like the draft maps the commission has produced, especially the proposed new congressional map.

"What we have here is a witch hunt," said Senate Minority Leader David Schapira, D-Tempe. "It is a disgrace. We get it: You don't like the maps. I don't like the maps, either."

The draft maps particularly agitated Arizona's GOP congressmen, who don't like the fact that districts currently seen as "safe" Republican seats would become more competitive, and who feel lines were manipulated to favor incumbent Democrats. They pressured Brewer to also remove the panel's two Democratic commissioners. However, the Senate could not muster the votes.

Governor Brewer's definition of "gross misconduct?"

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So it seems that the fake Hispanic candidate propped up by the corrupt author of SB1070, Russell Pearce, in his recall election in Mesa has suddenly dropped out:

Candidate Olivia Cortes on Thursday withdrew from the Legislative District 18 recall election of Senate President Russell Pearce amid ongoing allegations that her campaign was a sham set up by Pearce supporters to pull votes away from opponent Jerry Lewis.

Pearce will now face only fellow Republican Lewis in the first recall election of a sitting legislator in state history.

Cortes said in a statement that the "constant intimidation and harassment" led to her withdrawal. And her attorney said that the move was the condition of a deal to stop a court hearing scheduled for today.

Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Edward Burke had agreed to hear additional testimony in a lawsuit challenging Cortes' candidacy, despite ruling earlier this week that she could remain on the ballot. Burke ruled that Pearce supporters put Cortes on the ballot, but he found no fault with Cortes herself.

A Lewis campaign spokesman said Cortes' decision further proves her sham candidacy but said the damage already has been done.

"From the Cortes/Pearce camp, it's mission accomplished. Their goal was to have the ballot printed with other names on it to confuse people, and that's been done," Lewis co-chairman John Giles said. "Voters are sometimes surprisingly uninformed, especially people who are voting absentee."

The New York Times has more:

But Ms. Cortes’s candidacy fell apart after Mr. Lewis’s allies said they had uncovered evidence of even more links between Ms. Cortes and Mr. Pearce, noting for instance that Mr. Pearce’s nieces had helped collect signatures to get Ms. Cortes on the ballot and that one of Mr. Pearce’s brothers, Lester, who is a justice of the peace and is prohibited from campaigning, accompanied them.

Instead of facing another court hearing on Friday, in which Mr. Pearce’s relatives were subpoenaed, Ms. Cortes agreed through her lawyer to pull out of the race.

Pearce was asked about it at the debate this weekend, too:

Ms. Cortes’s candidacy was not debated, but afterward Mr. Pearce was called by reporters, who grilled him on the issue. He denied being behind Ms. Cortes’s candidacy and said he had spoken to his nieces about their involvement. “I wouldn’t have done it,” he said. “I wish they hadn’t done it.”

If I were a Mesa voter, I would want to toss out Russell Pearce just for making it so obvious he thinks they're all stupid.

Meanwhile, they get to look forward to the next natural iteration of Russell Pearce's politics: an open white supremacist running for city council.