Judge dismisses lawsuit filed by Flake’s son, ex-wife

Flaky Austin Flake and Logan Brown try and fail in another attempt to get rich on the backs of Maricopa County taxpayers

Federal Judge Neil Wake has dismissed the lawsuit brought by Austin Flake and his now ex-wife Logan, who has reclaimed her maiden name of Brown.

The case stemmed from dismissed animal cruelty charges the duo faced in the June 2014 heat related suffocation deaths of nearly two dozen dogs they supposedly were caring for at Green Acre Kennel in Gilbert. The facility was owned by Logan’s mother and step-father, MaLeisa and Jesse “Todd” Hughes, who were vacationing in Florida when the gruesome deaths occurred.

When the Flakes’ checked the kennel on the hot June 20th morning and witnessed the horrific scene, they did not call for veterinary assistance, opting to hose down the dying dogs, then callously piled their dead carcasses in a shed.

The pets sweltered to death, packed together in a steamy utility room, lacking air-conditioning. They had neither food nor water in their stomachs, according to the veterinarian who performed necropsies on the dogs.

On October 14, 2014, a Grand Jury indicted both couples with 21 felony counts and 7 misdemeanor counts of cruelty to animals. Ultimately Logan’s parents served short sentences on fraud charges involving lying to the owners of the pets, telling them their dogs ran away. The Hughes’ took plea deals in lieu of going to trial. As defendants, each pleaded guilty to one count of facilitation to commit fraudulent schemes and artifices, and one count of cruelty to animals, both Class 6 felonies. Their sentences included 23 days in jail without the possibility of work release, work furlough, home detention or compliance monitoring.  The days they served equaled one day per dead dog.

After Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery dropped the 21 felony charges and 7 misdemeanor counts of cruelty to animals against Austin and Logan Flake, the actual responsible parties, they filed a lawsuit against the taxpayers of Maricopa County and Sheriff Joe Arpaio, seeking $8 million to resurrect their formerly pristine reputations. They claim they were targeted by the Sheriff’s office and their characters were ruined by the investigation. A few $million each could go a long way to soothe their hurt feelings. Fortunately that effort went nowhere.

With their eyes still on the money prize, they angled for another civil trial, this time against the sheriff’s investigative detective.

But Judge Wake has now dismissed that lawsuit, ruling their attorney Stephen Montoya hadn’t provided evidence the detective intended to deprive the Flakes’ of their rights. Read the judge’s order.

SRAZ has written extensively about this tragic set of circumstances and the appalling flakes. Let’s hope this is the last we hear of these grifters. 

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AZ Republic: Where agenda trumps fact

Deciphering Republicese

The headline blasts, “Donald Trump’s border wall could cost much more than estimated, new report says.”

A few observations when reading the local newspaper, employing a wide range of sufferers of TDS or “Trump Derangement Syndrome“:

1.  Yes, it’s a long headline. It could have been shorter and more respectful if the word “Donald” was eliminated and replaced with the abbreviated, “Pres.”

      2.  Usage of the word “could”: Could is vague and indefinite, as in the case of may, might, maybe and possibly. If the wall “could” cost much more than estimated, it “could” also cost much less. It depends on the perspective that is intended to be conveyed. The Arizona Republic makes no bones about its messaging, rife with an open-border agenda, hence the usage of the wobbly word, “could.”

     3.  Most egregious error of all: It’s not, “Donald Trump’s border wall.” It’s ours! Americans across this nation voted for candidate Donald Trump. Among the top reasons was the promised construction of a “border wall,” since border security is national security. This principle was reiterated during a speech delivered by President Trump at the Reagan Library in December 2017.

The article was written by Rafael Carranza, described as “covering the U.S.-Mexico border for The Arizona Republic, and contributing to La Voz Arizona.” La Voz is the Spanish language edition. Both papers specialize in highlighting families separated and/or reunited at the southern border, never suggesting that their illegal entry into the U.S. or sending their young children on the arduous journey with strangers claiming to be their parents put them in indefensible predicaments of their own making.

The recent arrest of an illegal in Texas, highlights the problem.  A young girl was sent by her mother with a man, who falsely told authorities he was her father. He had, in fact, repeatedly raped her during the journey.

Would Carranza have gotten this particular assignment if his surname had been O‘Connor or Wong, or does identity politics override all other considerations at the Hillary-endorsing, open borders, far left newspaper?

UofA pays radical Hezbollah-supporting Noam Chomsky, 89, $750k to teach “politics”

This preposterous story is factual and happening right here in Arizona.  And guess what?  You’re paying for it with your tax dollars.  Judicial Watch reports that  the University of Arizona — a public university —  hired 89-yearr-old radical leftist Noam Chomsky at an outrageous salary of $750,000 a year. Chomsky, who supports Hezbollah, will teach his famously leftist brand of politics.

The information was obtained by Judicial Watch after a months-long battle with the taxpayer-funded institution for access to its records.

Judicial Watch launched an investigation after the University of Arizona (UA), located in Tucson with an enrollment of about 40,000, announced that it hired Noam Chomsky to teach a general education course for undergraduates titled “What is Politics?” In the announcement UA describes Chomsky as a “world-renowned linguist” and one of the “most cited scholars in modern history.”

The reality is that Chomsky is an extreme leftwing propagandist who defends communist regimes—including those in Vietnam and Cuba—and openly supports the anti-Israel and anti-U.S. terrorist organization Hezbollah. In fact, Chomsky met with Hezbollah leaders n Lebanon even though the State Department lists the group as a terrorist organization and the elderly professor has publicly supported the militant group’s right to be armed.

At the time Chomsky was a professor of linguistics at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), a private institution that can hire whoever it wants with no public accountability. However, UA is funded with taxpayer dollars and must comply with public-records laws meant to keep government transparent. It still took UA four months to provide Judicial Watch with the records of Chomsky’s outrageous deal.

The records show that the university’s relationship with the decrepit academic began several years ago while he was still teaching at MIT. Chomsky delivered guest lectures at UA, mostly in the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences, and the university eventually hired him as a “consultant” for $65,000. His consultant duties were to show up only six times for a politics class with only 38 students, which means he received north of $10,000 a lecture.

 The class met for 7 ½ weeks and Chomsky was to attend only on Thursdays for a total of six sessions, the contract obtained by Judicial Watch shows. UA subsequently hired Chomsky to teach for three years—from 2017 to 2020—at an annual salary of $250,000. The money comes from tuition dollars, grants, contracts and other funds generated by the public institution, the records show.

Pouring salt on the wound, UA lost nearly $25,000 hosting lectures (“THE HAURY CONVERSATION: NOAM CHOMSKY TALKS WITH TONI MASSARO”) featuring Chomsky. The school promoted one of them as an event in which Chomsky would speak on “a range of topics that could include the refugee crisis, political conflict, democracy, capitalism, climate change and social inequality.”

The records show that the outlay expenses by UA for both lectures totaled $17,007.01. An invoice for $12,687.16 dated April 30, 2018, appears to be a payment to Eventbrite from the university for the second of the two Chomsky lectures. Ticket sales came in at $12,385 and ticket costs totaled $7,683.24. When combined with the original outlays, UA lost $24,992.41 on both of the Chomsky events. It should be noted that UA has not hosted similar events for any other academic in the past 24 years, making the Chomsky fiasco a unique, one-time production at a loss to taxpayers for a radical leftist political activist.

The university’s arrangement with Chomsky has outraged many, especially those with connections to the school. Bevan Olyphant, a former Green Berets who taught a leadership class in the honors program at UA, got paid $1,500 a semester and says a full engineering professor at UA receives an average annual salary of $80,000.

This is enraging considering the university is paying Chomsky an astounding quarter of a million dollars a year. Olyphant, who owns a ranch in southern Arizona, said this is the response he got from the president of UA when he requested that the university bring in conservative speakers: “We can’t do that! We would have a riot,” Olyphant told Judicial Watch. As part of the investigation into Chomsky’s egregious deal, Judicial Watch requested records of UA’s contracts with other speakers and lecturers and none were conservative.

Kimberly Yee is the right choice for AZ Treasurer

Important office deserves voter’s attention

Proving the old adage that even a broken clock is right twice a day, the usually unreliable Arizona Republic is right on the money with its endorsement of conservative Kimberly Yee in the Arizona Treasurer’s race.

Yee’s bio details her outstanding credentials. Having worked as an executive in the treasurer’s office, there is no learning curve for the former Senate Majority Leader of the Arizona Legislature.

Yee has been endorsed by five former State Treasurers and Republican leaders across the state as well as national conservative groups.

In 2016, SRAZ featured a post including a video of Kimberly Yee speaking at the Republican National Convention, endorsing Donald Trump for President.

Today’s editorial endorsement acknowledges that Yee has the experience and knowledge to manage the state’s finances and approximately $15 billion investment portfolio.

The Office of the State Treasurer serves as the state’s investment advisor and banker, invests taxpayer dollars and conducts the state’s financial and banking services.

Kimberly Yee’s primary opponent, Jo Ann Sabbagh, is described in the newspaper’s endorsement of Arizona-born Yee, as a newcomer — she moved to Tucson in 1997 from Ohio — who engages in “relentless attacks,“ described as “disturbing.” She also plays fast and loose with the truth.

After Treasurer Jeff DeWit stepped down to join the Trump administration as chief financial officer of NASA, former AZ Board of Regents President Eileen Klein was appointed interim treasurer. She is not running for election.

Snorting Koch: An open border hallucination

If you do an online search of the Cato Institute, you’ll find it listed as an “American libertarian think tank with a moderate right wing bias” or a “conservative think tank”  — confirming that far-left predisposed Google can be not only wrong, but very wrong.

The Washington, D.C. based organization was originally launched in 1973 as the Charles Koch Foundation by billionaire Charles Koch and two associates. By 1976, the name of the Koch funded entity was changed to the Cato Institute. It supports legalization of illicit drugs claiming doing so would generate $106.7 billion in annual budgetary gains and advocates for the abolishment of ICE.

“Conservative” or “right-wing,” it is not, unless you use John McCain, Jeff Flake and Ted Kennedy as templates.

John Binder, writing for Breitbart News headlines his shocking article, “Koch-Backed CATO Institute: ‘Time for the U.S. to Have Open Borders.’ The report is based on this USA Today op-ed by Cato’s Director of Economic Studies, Jeffrey Miron, who says the U.S. “has nothing to fear, and much to gain, from open borders,” adding that Americans should “forget” about building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border to stop the illegal invasion of our country.

Cato’s Miron opines:

“President Donald Trump’s recent tweets against open borders come as no surprise. Indeed, even fervent immigration advocates worry that open borders would lower the wages of low-skilled natives, erode national security, and overburden the social safety net. Trump doubled down, tweeting that he would be “willing to ‘shut down’ government” unless Congress approves funding for a border wall with Mexico.

Trump, however, has it exactly backwards: The solution to America’s immigration problems is open borders, under which the United States imposes no immigration restrictions at all. If the U.S. adopts this policy, the benefits will far outweigh the costs.”

The United States is a sovereign nation, rightfully entitled to a secure border and protection for its citizens. In a post-September 11, 2001 world, the issue of opening our country to potential terrorists is never addressed.

Translating the liberal-speak: The United States needs to become an unrestrained, permanent repository of uneducated and unwilling to assimilate Third-Worlder invaders to benefit Americans. We need to fund them with our generous social programs, provide them with health care, educate their kids to the determent of our own, and eagerly accept their criminality. We should ignore the fact that this act of national destruction will ensure a massive expansion of the Democrat/Socialist party that is certain to have permanent negative impacts on our country — the obvious goal of the Cato Institute and the Koch Brothers.  They are radical George Soros clones in drag.

The left-wing, Hillary-endorsing  Arizona Republic newspaper plays this same deceptive game in today’s edition. In a front page article titled, “Migrant reforms floated in House,” it refers to “bi-partisan” supporters of another massive omnibus spending bill funding ‘dreamers’ and other illegals, backed by the American immigration Council an illegal alien support group opposing what it calls, “senseless deportations.” The newspaper blandly describes it as a “non-profit D.C. advocacy group that studies immigration.” Also identified as backing the measure is the “immigration policy analyst” at the “Libertarian Cato Institute.”

The intentional deception jumps off the page.

Trump adopts policies of Lincoln, rather than Reagan

It’s time to re-Lincolnize the GOP

From time to time we post an exceptional column under the heading, “Weekend reading guaranteed to make you smarter.”

Today we bring you a gem. “The Lincoln Model: How Trump Can Shut Down the Democratic Plantation.” Posted on Townhall, it Is excerpted from Dinesh D’Souza’s new book, “Death of a Nation.” His movie with the same title opens nationwide Friday, August 3.

We invite you to read this remarkable commentary on President Donald Trump, who more closely conforms to President Abraham Lincoln than to President Ronald Reagan on vital issues including immigration and tariffs.

D’Souza’s revealing expose on Democrats’ lies is illuminating. He writes,

“For too long conservatives and Republicans have allowed big lies to take over the culture and, in some cases, their minds. This progressive cultural hegemony has polluted our education system and our media with fake narratives and fake history. It has also created a kind of Stockholm syndrome among conservative intellectuals. “In our hearts we know we’re wrong.” But we’re not wrong. We’ve been lied to. It’s time for us to stop apologizing—we have nothing to apologize for—and go on the offensive. Truth is our deadliest weapon, if we will deploy it.”

And while we‘re on the topic of President Trump, the Washington Examiner headlines it’s report, “Media blackout: Trump’s 60-point accomplishment list of ‘American Greatness,’” detailing the lack of media coverage of the achievements the Trump administration has racked up, both domestically and internationally, in its first 500 days. The list is bullet-pointed for ease in reading.

Today is a two-for-one-day. Enjoy!

Watch AZ GOP debates: AZ Corp Comm & Ed Supe

Foremost among its many duties, the Arizona Corporation Commission regulates utility rates. Integrity, which has been lacking in this key commission, is the paramount consideration. Candidates Rodney Glassman, Justin Olson, Jim O’Connor, and Eric Sloan join in the debate.

The Republican Corporation Commission candidates debate can be viewed HERE.

Olson is a former state legislator who lost a 2016 primary challenge to Congressman Andy Biggs. In 2017, he was appointed to the ACC by Gov. Ducey to fill a vacancy, and is currently running for a complete term.

Be sure to read the revealing link under duplicitous party switcher Glassman’s name. Glassman is an opportunistic chameleon, who will quickly slip into whatever political affiliation he thinks will benefit him. Jim O’Connor is the knowledgeable and reliable conservative in the race.

The debate involving Republican candidates running for Superintendent of Public Instruction debate can be viewed HERE.

Incumbent Diane Douglas squares off with Republican challengers Robert Branch, Jonathan Gelbart, Tracy Livingston and Frank Riggs. Douglas strongly asserts Common Core has been eradicated in Arizona Schools, though others say it’s merely been renamed.

The candidates were asked if they supported the recent week-long teachers’ strike in which 840,000 Arizona students were abandoned in violation of contractual agreements. Although each candidate said they did not support the walk out, Livingston, who touts her credentials as a teacher, was the sole equivocator, adding the strike was “the teachers’ voice.” Her voice spoke loud and clear.

Branch asserted “dollars should follow the student,” regardless of which school their parents choose — a concept few taxpaying parents would disagree with.

Gelbart has made an interesting selection of former Congressman Jim Kolbe heading up his list of endorsements. But then again, he has no historical memory. The congressional page scandal occurred when Gelbart was just 8-years-old.

SRAZ calls it a toss-up between Branch and Riggs — leaning Branch.

 The debates, hosted by Ted Simons, are sponsored by the Citizens Clean Elections Commission.