Arizona: Tucson

by David Safier

If you live in Tucson and you want to know about the tuition tax credit/STO mess, there's currently only one place to go: my posts on BfA. The Star has been AWOL when it comes to covering the story. I don't think it would take all the fingers on one hand to count up the articles the Star has published on the topic since the story broke. Meanwhile, the East Valley Trib put together a 5 part investigative series which has received national recognition and has added much more information since then with regular, in depth reporting. The Republic is giving the Trib a run for its money, doing its own research and adding to the discussion.

Crandall thinks some public testimony is inappropriate

by David Safier

One of the people who testified at Wednesday's House task force on tuition tax credits and STOs was Ann-Eve Pedersen, one of the Tucsonans who have worked hard to uncover information about misuse of tuition tax credit funds and are trying to reform the system.

I talked with Pedersen this morning about her testimony. She read from a written statement, she told me. When she got to the part about Sen. Steve Yarbrough's STO, which looks a whole lot like a government-funded goldmine for the senator, Republican Rep. Rich Crandall interrupted. He cautioned her that Yarbrough's STO was not the focus of the hearing.

by David Safier Man, Tom Horne has spent a lot of Ed Supe time and Dept of Ed money trying to knock down Tucson's Ethnic Studies programs. Who knows how much time he's wasted and how many miles he's logged...

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Shaun McClusky saved his biggest lie for last, after the local media has gone into its "black out" of election coverage on the Friday preceding election day. We don't have such a stupid policy here. You have the right to know.

This latest action is directed by the GOP "brain trust" of Bill Arnold, Bruce Ash and Jim Click (who spoke to volunteers walking for McClusky on Saturday, according to his campaign web site). This has their brand of Roger Ailes/Lee Atwater/Karl Rove "politics of personal destruction" fingerprints all over it. The kid really doesn't like this.

I received two large glossy attack mail pieces on Saturday from the McClusky campaign (despite having already voted), one with a big, bold headline screaming that "Fimbres even had 'secret bank accounts,'" citing an Arizona Daily Star article and an East Valley Tribune article -- selectively quoted and taken entirely out of context to once again suggest in the minds of voters that Richard Fimbres was somehow engaged in illegal conduct while he was an officer of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), to make the scary Halloween claim that "we can't trust Richard Hombres with public money.