GOP candidates for Superintendent of Public Instruction debate

For those of you who missed the televised debate last evening, we invite you to meet Margaret Dugan,  John Huppenthal, and Beth Price, Republican Candidates for Superintendent of Public Instruction. Find out where they stand on the issues.

Watch the debate here.

The Clean Elections debate is hosted by KAET’s Ted Simons.

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Wong suggestion criticized by AZ Chamber open border enthusiasts

Right on the heels of Corporation Commission candidate Barry Wong’s suggestion that regulated utilities be required to check the immigration status of customers, Glen Hamer, President and CEO of the Arizona Chamber of Commerce whips off a scathing letter to the onetime commissioner. Hamer is remembered as the AZ GOP executive director who, immediately after leaving that post, fronted the Chamber’s endorsement of Janet Napolitano for governor.

But Hamer wasn’t content to let Wong know how the group he fronts for feels.  He grandstands with this “open letter.”

The AZ Chamber has long been known for its penchant for non-enforcement of our immigration laws. The group’s endorsements reflect that bias, as does the new chairman and slate of officers released today.

The McCain connection is all too evident, with the Vice Chairman of Membership: Doug Yonko. If Yonko’s name is unfamiliar, we provide this bit of information: He is the Vice President of Communications at Hensley & Company —  Cindy McCain’s Anheuser-Busch wholesale beer distributorship, one of the largest in the United States.

Recently the Arizona Chamber released its candidate endorsements for the state House and Senate. The business group endorsed 52 candidates – 17 Senate and 35 House candidates – who they said share the Chamber’s “pro-business, free-market agenda.” 

“Whether they’re a Republican or a Democrat, the candidates we’ve endorsed all share a belief in free markets and a commitment to growing Arizona’s economy by creating a tax and regulatory environment that attracts good jobs to the state.”

The Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry is committed to advancing Arizona’s competitive position in the global economy by advocating free-market policies that stimulate economic growth and prosperity for all Arizonans.

How difficult is it to read their real agenda between those few lines?

Whadda’ya think? Is Barry Wong?

Barry Wong, a lawyer, former member of the Corporation Commission and four-term state legislator, is currently running for a seat on the utility regulatory board. In 2006, he was appointed by then-Gov. Napolitano to fill a vacancy on the commission.

During a campaign interview with the daily, Wong asserted that if elected, he would require regulated utilities to check the immigration status of customers, a move he says would keep costs down for other customers.

A Phoenix native, Wong is an American-born son of Chinese immigrant parents, and is not unfamiliar with issues involving immigrants. The issue is those here illegally.

Should Wong win election, his request would be sufficient to begin a study of the idea and put the issue before the full commission. Passage of the proposal requires only two other votes on the five-member board.

“I’m sure there will be criticism about human-rights violations,” Wong said of his utility proposal. “Is power or natural gas or any type of utility we regulate, is that a right that people have? It is not a right. It is a service.”

Corporation Commission members have constitutional authority to regulate state utilities. Six candidates are vying for two statewide seats are up for election this year. In addition to Barry Wong, the Republicans in the race are Brenda Burns and Gary Pierce.

Find the victim in this scenario

Twelve employees — nearly half of the staff — of a Pei Wei Asian Diner in Chandler were fired after they ditched work to participate in a recent protest of Arizona’s new immigration law — Senate Bill 1070.

The restaurant has a workforce of about 30. The firing was the result of violation of a well established attendance polity.

“When employees choose not to show up for a scheduled shift and choose not to give notice, it causes tremendous disruption to fellow co-workers and impedes our ability to serve our guests,” the company said in a statement.

The daily reports that the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) union is “giving moral and financial support to the fired workers,” although the employees were not unionized.

A Google search provides a history of the IWW. Its goal is to promote worker solidarity in the revolutionary struggle to overthrow the employing class.

While the union is looking for a labor lawyer who will work pro bono, picketing of the company’s restaurants continues at other locations.

The fired employees want their jobs back, are asking for back pay and an apology.

A business with this as their policy statement is hardly one that would be expected to be the object of scorn.

How about making it a point to eat at Pei Wei in support of the business? Entrepreneurs are the risk takers who create concepts and provide jobs.  They are not the enemy. We’ve made it easy for you to locate a restaurant.

Rasmussen does it with integrity

The Dems spend an inordinate amount of time grousing about the results of the exceptionally reliable Rasmussen Reports polling surveys.

Notice the silence today on the revelation that Markos Moulitsas, the doyen of Leftieland’s the Daily Kos, admits publishing fraudulent polls — relying on data supplied by Research 2000. Moulitsas charges that some or all of the data was “fabricated or manipulated beyond recognition.” Moulitsas/Kos is suing for fraud.

Vanity Fair has more here.

Feds suing AZ: Even liberals think it’s a “horrendous mistake”

Make no mistake.  Liberal Tamar Jacoby, President and CEO of pro-illegal Immigration Works USA, is no fan of SB 1070. In fact, she calls it “an abomination.”

In her commentary piece, Jacoby cites as exemplars, fellow travelers and reliable leftists President Obama, the Los Angeles Times, the Roman Catholic Church, the AFL-CIO and a Who’s Who of Latino pop stars who have denounced the legislation. Jacoby even throws in Mexico’s President Felipe Calderon who condemned Arizona’s new law, but imposes even stricter restrictions on those living illegally in his own country.

While acknowledging widespread support for Arizona’s enforcement law, SB 1070, she also lets the cat out of the midterm elections bag. The fear is that such a lawsuit initiated by Obama and his Justice Department would enrage the majority who support Arizona’s law “coast to coast.”

Worst of all, she writes, such action would alienate key lawmakers, from Arizona and elsewhere, without whose help the administration will have no hope of advancing comprehensive reform.

Aha!

Jacoby goes on: How exactly does Obama imagine influential Republican Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona, or Sen. John McCain, would react to a federal lawsuit against their state? Without help or at least acquiescence from Kyl and McCain, where does the president expect to find Republican support for a reform bill? And how does the administration think proud, state-minded elected officials — not to mention “tea party” voters — would feel about a federal effort not just to check, but override a state legislature?

And therein lies the truth, from a liberal perspective. It comes down to factoring acquiescence from the old Comprehensive Immigration Reform/Amnesty hustlers, Arizona Sens. McCain and Kyl into the equation.

What a surprise!

Ca$h at la$t: Martin campaign back on track

After having to deal with a pesky antagonist who mounted a challenge to his $5 Clean Elections contributions, State Treasurer Dean Martin has made it to the cash stash after it was determined that his qualifying contributions did not contain enough duplicates to necessitate a full review of all 5,453 signatures he submitted.

Martin will now receive up to $707,443 in public money for his gubernatorial primary campaign.

Despite the challenge, a 5 percent review by the Secretary of State’s Office, as provided by law, concluded that Martin is qualified to receive funding from the Clean Elections commission.

A June 8 U.S. Supreme Court decision that blocked Arizona from distributing matching funds to Clean Elections candidates cost Martin and Gov. Jan Brewer $1.4 million extra taxpayer-funded support. The court ruled against penalizing privately funded office seekers by providing matching funds to their opponents.

Napolitano: Shamnesty wolf in enforcement clothing

Janet Napolitano, speaking at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, lectured as an authority on the topic: “Securing the Border: A Smarter Law Enforcement Approach.

It all sounds good.

The Secretary of Homeland Security and former Arizona governor should be able to impart some knowledge to the notables gathered at the Statesmen’s Forum.

Instead, they were treated to the vintage Napolitano Arizonans remember so well. Janet Napolitano, whose agency is charged with securing America’s border, told an audience in Washington, D.C., in reference to the U.S.-Mexico border, “You’re never going to totally seal that border.”

CNSNews has more here and provides this video:

Play with the sharks, swim with the fishes

Last December Seeing Red AZ wrote that Mexico’s bloody cartel war is reflected in a popular folk-music called narcocorridos, or drug ballads — which does not condemn criminality, but in fact, romanticizes drug kingpins, glorifying violent battles of drug-traffickers, their shootouts, brutal operations and inter-gang betrayals. One of the best-selling albums of last year, “The Power of Chapo,” glowingly describes the exploits of a fugitive drug lord.

It is now being reported that over the weekend, one of the most popular of such Mexican singers, Sergio Vega, 40, was killed in a barrage of gunfire in the northern Mexican state of Sinaloa. He was on his way to perform at a local concert.

Known as “El Shaka,” Vega was famed for performing the subculture narcocorridos, or dramatic ballads commissioned by drug cartels. However, musicians who become associated with one narco group by writing narcocorridos for them, can also become targets of rival narco groups.

Vega’s death adds to the string of grupero musicians – including Valentin Elizalde and Sergio Gomez — who are said to have been caught up in the violence among drug trafficking empires which are at war with the federal government and each other.

THIS is why Supreme Court justices matter

The case of McDonald v. City of Chicago, was correctly decided today at the U. S. Supreme Court. 

In a 5- 4 majority vote, in what is arguably the most important Second Amendment case in Supreme Court history, the Court today held that the “right of the people to keep and bear Arms” cannot be infringed by the states.

“It is clear that the Framers . . . counted the right to keep and bear arms among those fundamental rights necessary to our system of ordered liberty,” Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. wrote for the conservatives on the court.

How instructive that today, of all days, the confirmation hearing for Obama’s liberal appointee Elena Kagan begins. On his last day on the court, 90-year-old Justice John Paul Stevens (or his clerks) wrote the minority opinion.

The Heritage Foundation has an exclusive interview with Alan Gura, lead attorney for the plaintiffs.  Watch it here.