OK… so the reason I decided to start a blog came from a podcast. I subscribe to NPR’s Fresh Air with Terry Gross (AMAZING) and listen to it while working. Last week, I was listening to podcast 5-6-2010 where Terry Gross interviewed Mr. Howard Fischer (Journalist, Capitol Media Services) who covers Arizona politics. This story made me so angry! So angry that I stomped up from the lab, sat at my computer, and logged onto blogspot ready to speak my mind!
But of course… I didn’t belong to blogspot yet so I spent the next two hours setting up my page, making it look pretty, coming up with a name, and by the time I was ready to write…. I was no longer angry. In fact I was in delightful mood thinking of all the opinions I was soon to vomit out to the world at large. That kind of self-flatulence does not lend itself to critical thinking.
So, I had to give it a few days, re-listen to the podcast, and wait for a workday with lots of breaks between experiments. This is the day…
I want to begin by outlining the new laws that will take effect and some that are already swinging in Arizona; and I think most people know which one ill start with… (if you don’t, wake up and listen to the news).
Immigration:
On April 23rd Arizona passed a new bill that requires police to question people about their immigration status if there is a suspicion that they are in the country illegally… Some police departments are against the new law but Arizona has made it legal for citizens to file lawsuits against police departments who are not enforcing the law.
BTW: lets look at the man responsible for this bill. According to Mr. Fischer: “Russell [Pearce] is very conservative. I mean, his background is law enforcement. He was a sheriff's deputy. He was a justice of the peace. He has a child who was shot by an illegal immigrant. Russell sees things in very black-and-white ways” (Fischer)
Guns:
A new law takes effect on July 29th that will allow any adult to carry a concealed weapon without a permit… which means no training or background checks.
Ethnic Studies:
AZ has passed a law attacking ethnic studies courses. The law states that schools cannot have a course that teaches hatred of any other race… which sounds great! Except that is was put into effect in order to prohibit ethnic studies classes that build ethnic pride among Hispanic students. These classes held in cities like Tucson, old presidio towns, were set up to look at contributions of Latinos to Arizona culture but are being taken away because people fear they are building ethnic solidarity and reverse racism.
Abortion:
Another new bill changes the kind of health coverage city employees can receive. Previously, city employees had the opportunity to include elective abortion coverage in their insurance plan, but it is now illegal for public money to “fund abortion” so city employees no longer have that option.
Embryonic Research:
It is now illegal in Arizona to produce human animal hybrids.
People in Arizona fear scientists are going to start researching things that would be ethically improper… like creating “minotaur’s…”
Thanks for that amazing visual Mr. Fischer!
And Finally, Prop 102:
Again, I hope most of you recognize prop 102 from 2008. This bill received lots of press, as did CA’s prop 8 and Florida’s amendment 2.
This bill amended the constitution to now read “only a union of one man and one woman shall be valid or recognized as a marriage in this state.”
Anybody else confused… because I thought conservatives (like Az governor Jan Brewer, the one responsible for most of these bills…) wants government to get outta the way… you know, “don’t tell me what to do with all the money I make on wall street” and “don’t tell me I cant carry a concealed death machine with no training”… sort a thing.
But then, at the same time, they want the government to tell the homos that they cant get married, to tell women what they can and cant do with their bodies, to tell the police that racial profiling is ok but to keep Latino students from learning about their ethnic history because “that’s reverse racism” hmmm….
Lets look at Mr. Fischer’s final comments about Arizona politics:
“We [az] had a birther bill this year, for example, that actually got out of the House, that said if Barack Obama wants to run for reelection, he'd actually have to produce a birth certificate to the satisfaction of our secretary of state before he could be on the ballot here. I can't make this stuff up.
We had a lawmaker, name of Barbara Brewster, who, a number of years ago, put out a memo equating homosexuality with bestiality and cannibalism, who also went up to Senator Barbara Leff - who is a Jewish senator from Paradise Valley - and said to her: You can't be Jewish. You don't have a hooked nose.”
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