Archive for September, 2009

This was an email from a Senate staffer following a debate in the Senate Finance Committee mark-up of the health care bill.  Classic.

Senator Kerry just went on about the outrageous profits of health insurers who dominate the market and offer little choice to consumers.  That’s an interesting point considering that according to the website of Heinz ketchup, the company holds a 60 percent retail market share.  Heinz products enjoy #1 or #2 market share in more than 50 countries.  And according to Yahoo Finance, Heinz profits (8.6 percent) are more than double the health insurance industry (3.3 percent).   Government run Ketchup, anyone?

I don’t even know what to say… click the link…

http://www.break.com/index/dove-doesnt-make-it-through-peace-day.html

At some point there will be no Republicans left to scandalize – at least if the current track record is any indication – because people will get so fed up, they’ll look elsewhere for a political home.

The latest scandal, broken by Greg Patterson at espressopundit and picked up by Dennis Welch at the Arizona Guardian,  is in Arizona, where the founder of a social political club, Politics on the Rocks, showed up on the client list of a call-girl ring.  Charles Jensen has said it’s “100 percent false” and he’s hired an attorney to defend him and his name.

The good news is that two of the advisory board members, radio personality Mike Broomhead and Paradise Valley Mayor and potential gubernatorial candidate, Vernon Parker, have resigned the Politics on the Rocks board out of protest. *UPDATE – It appears that John Munger has resigned as well.

I’ve never been to any of the Politics on the Rocks events, but I’ve heard they generate big crowds of young professionals.  It’s sad that this scandal will taint these young people’s view of politics.

Escort client list shakes up political community

Sunday, 27 September 2009 21:45 Dennis Welch

By Dennis Welch
The Arizona Guardian

At least two prominent Republicans quit an influential GOP organization this weekend because its leader has been linked to one of the state’s biggest prostitution stings.

Charles Jensen, founder of Politics on the Rocks, was one of several thousand names on a list of clients of the Desert Divas, a high-end escort service busted last year by Phoenix police.

Although Jensen denies any involvement with the prostitution ring, Paradise Valley Mayor Vernon Parker and conservative talk-radio personality Mike Broomhead have resigned from the political group’s advisory board. Parker last week announced his intentions to explore a run for governor at a meeting of the group at a Paradise Valley resort.

Phoenix police released the list of clients’ names last year but without any addresses or other information. A more detailed list was made public last week after Greg Patterson, who writes the political blog Espresso Pundit, obtained it through a public records request. He published the list on hs Web site last last week and the political community has been buzzing ever since.

Parker told the Guardian on Sunday that he is stepping down from the advisory board until the matter is cleared up. He said he had no idea Jensen’s name was on Desert Divas’ list when he joined the group.

Jensen “and I spoke on the phone last night and came to the conclusion that it would be best for the organization that I resign until this gets resolved,” Parker said.

Jensen created the national organization –- which has seven chapters through the country — as a way for conservative Republicans to meet and network in a social setting. Most of the gatherings for the local chapter take place at a posh resort in Paradise Valley. The political social-club’s logo is an elephant holding a martini glass.

Besides Parker, other high-profile Republican leaders have appeared at the group’s gatherings. Arizona Sen. John McCain recently was the keynote speaker. And state Treasurer Dean Martin, who also is eying a run for the governor’s office, is scheduled to speak next month.

Jensen, who said he didn’t even know his name was on the list until last week, adamantly denies he used the escort service. He says he has hired an attorney to “go after” anyone who accuses him of doing so.

Jensen’s name and home address appear on list of alleged clients, according to police records.

The documents show that escorts from Desert Divas visited his home three times between July and December 2007.

“I’ve hired an attorney to fight anyone who insinuates I had anything to do with this,” Jensen said Sunday. “This is 100 percent false.”

Jensen said he’s got airline tickets and hotel receipts showing he was out of town each time the records show the escorts were going to his north Scottsdale home. But Jensen said he needs to confer with his attorney before making his own records publicly available.

Jensen said he suspects someone staying at his home during that time period may have called for escorts. But he declined to identify that person or their relationship to him.

He has never been contacted by police about the Desert Divas, Jensen said.

Jensen also confirmed that Broomhead, who hosts the Republican-friendly Mike Broomhead Show on KFYI 550 AM, has also stepped down from the board, at least for now. Broomhead was unavailable for comment on Sunday.

“I feel really sorry for him. It’s too bad,” Jensen said. “He hadn’t even been to an advisory board meeting.”

Members of the advisory board meet once a year and don’t have a large role in the organization, Jensen said.

Having well known GOP leaders affiliated with the club helps with promotion and establishes it as a legitimate group, he said.

While Parker and Broomhead are the only two who have officially stepped down from the 12-member board, others are considering whether they will continue working with Jensen’s group.

Sen. Jonathan Paton, a Republican from Tucson, says he’s undecided whether he’s going to stay on the board or not.

“I’ll have talk to Charles first,” Paton told the Guardian on Sunday. “I haven’t done anything with them yet.”

Paton said he joined this year after Jensen called him and asked if he could help with events in the southern part of the state.

The Desert Divas case began in 2007 when police got a tip about the prostitution ring. They made a first round of arrests in August 2008. Since then, more than 50 people have been arrestd in what authorities have called the largest prostitution bust in Arizona history.

A less detailed list of Desert Divas’ clients was released last year, but that document did not include addresses or other personal identifying information. The latest document released by Phoenix police does.

Authorities have discovered that some of the names on the list were made up. Police have not been concentrating on the clients of Desert Divas, saying those on the list are not suspects.

 

 

 

“Never assume the obvious is true.” – William Safire

As a J-school student in college, one of my required curricula was a subscription to The New York Times.  The highlight of having that subscription was reading columnist William Safire.  Not only was he a great writer – but we has a writer’s writer.  That is, he had true command of the English language and I never read a column of his (whether it was about politics or grammar) that I didn’t learn something very useful.  Of particular use as a budding journalism student was his weekly column “On Lanugage.”

His impact on the world will likely be underplayed – since he was a lonely conservative voice among the liberal chorus at the New York Times.  Two of his most famous phrases, “nattering nabobs of negativism” and “hopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs of history” will ensure that he is forever remembered, at least among a small band of happy warriors.  William Safire, dead at age 79. RIP.

“The only poll that counts is the one taken on Election Day.”  It’s a line used thousands of times a year, and I’m pretty sure it was first used by the late Stephen Shadegg – campaign extraordinaire and father of Arizona Congressman John Shadegg.

So the latest poll to pop up, showing Goddard wiping the floor against any Republican in next year’s Governor’s race, should be taken with a grain of salt… or better yet, with a salt lick.

Here is the totality of what you need to know about the efficacy of the poll:

“The pollster is known as a Democratic firm, and the survey was automated and done via telephone.” (emphasis added)

So this was an autodial, robo-call?  It is a known fact that Republicans have less tolerance for automated phone calls than Democrats (ok, maybe not a “known fact” but anecdotally, it takes more calls to Republican households than Democrat households to get the same number of respondents on a robo-call survey – trust me, I’ve seen it.)

Given that this was an autodialed robo-call, (which would cost all of about $500 to conduct) I find it a little surprising that Arizona Republic reporter Matt Benson would write on it – and wait until the 11^th graph of the story to indicate that it was a robo-call survey. 

I’ll make Matt a deal – I’ll commission a robo-call survey of 600 Arizonan’s and I’ll give him the exclusive to write the story – which I expect to be as long as this one.

You’ve got my number Matt.

It’s been well-known inside the beltway that there are more rich Democrats serving in Congress than Republicans.  But Republicans are always branded as the party of the rich.  Ironic isn’t.

Well, here is a list of the top 50 richest Members of Congress, and there are 28 Democrats and 22 Republicans.  In fact, the top 10 is comprised of 8 Democrats and 2 Republicans.

Ironic, isn’t it.

I crossed a milestone this weekend… no I didn’t have a birthday, I didn’t have another child… I worked out my abs.  What do you mean, what’s the big deal?  I have a bright purplish/red 8-inch scar going right down the middle of my stomach, so “working my abs” as a big step – at least for me.

I went to the gym Saturday morning and decided that I better start working on the midsection (softball is starting and I need to make sure I can throw and swing a bat).  It went ok.  I’m sure the muscle-rippling monster aliens that are posing as real human men (think Men in Black) were chortling under their breath that this mere human could only do 12 reps at 60 lbs on the ab machine or 10 reps of side bends.  But I ignored the eye-rolling and felt quite accomplished that I was even in there “workin’ it.”

Then to prove that I’m really tough, I went and did a mile on the stair-stepper-thingy… good grief, who needs waterboarding?  I think that is the worst torture machine there is – especially since I made the mistake of getting next to a young, fit girl who was climbing like she was running downhill.  I couldn’t stop before she did, that would be wimpy.  Thankfully, she was half-way through her hour-long stepping when I started, so as soon as she was out of sight 30 minutes later, I collapsed in a heap on the floor, lying in a pool of sweat, whispering for someone to put me out of my misery.

With the light-headed, leg-trembling, sweat-in-the-eyes aftermath, it should probably be illegal to drive home after such a hard work-out…. I’m just saying…

Arizona is a growth state. In fact, historically it’s one of the fastest growing states in the country.  Not that there is much growth at the moment, but as in times past, that will return.

Growth has benefited Arizona in huge ways – low cost of living, lots of job opportunities, good economic growth, etc.  The question is, why does Arizona grow?  Well, it’s a number of factors, but by far the biggest factor is the climate.  Yes, we are on the tail end of a brutal summer, but by October, when snow is falling in the Midwest and Northeast, we’ll all be on the phone with our friends and family bragging about our tans and how we just got out of the pool.

With growth comes the cost of infrastructure – in particular electric infrastructure – power lines, etc.   Under normal circumstances power companies, in this case APS, can plan for future needs and finance construction of infrastructure in a way that allows them deliver reliable electricity without raising rates.

But the Arizona Corporation Commission has imposed a regulation (called a Renewable Energy Standard – RES) on utility companies that 15% of the electricity they produce by the year 2025 must be produced by “renewable” sources – solar, wind, biomass, geothermal, etc.  Inexplicably, hydropower does NOT count as renewable, even though any third grader can explain the hydrological cycle.

Pop quiz: how much of the energy produced in Arizona today is renewable? 10% you say?  Do I hear 5%?  How about 0.1%.  Yep, 1/10^th of one-percent.

Back in March I blogged about Commissioner Paul Newman’s letter to Congress stating a goal to push the RES from 15% to 25% and asking for Stimulus funds to be sent directly to the Corporation Commission, bypassing current channels. At the time I figured he was kind of acting as a lone wolf.  But now, I think he may have a cohort on the Commission in Republican Commissioner Kris Mayes.

In a recent article about APS seeking a rate increase to help pay for this additional burden foisted on them by the Corporation Commission was this nugget:

Mayes said that APS might not need the rate hike it is requesting if the policy had been changed yean; ago, because if the state had grown slower, the utilities would not need to build as many power plants and long distance transmission lines to serve the population.

So Mayes thinks that slowing our growth would have made it less likely that APS would need a rate increase?  I tend to think it has more to do with the unattainable mandates the Corporation Commission has put on power companies.