AZ-06 Green Party House Candidate Richard Grayson Concedes: "The People Won't Have Dick Grayson to Kick Around Anymore. Don't Cry for Me, Arizona."

The people have spoken, the subhuman douchebags.

According to the latest election returns, I received more votes than I would have expected in Arizona's Sixth Congressional District: 2,461, or 1.3%. I got more votes than any other Green Party candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives even though the Green Party bosses refused to endorse me and tried to kick me off the ballot by suing me in federal court. (Obviously they lost, but they were losers long before that.)

Congratulations to Jeff Flake on winning his umpteenth term in Congress and to Rebecca Schneider for running such a valiant race on the Democratic ticket and to Libertarian candidate Darrell Tapp on his stylish hat.

Don't cry for me, Arizona. You won't have Dick Grayson to kick around anymore. I am re-registering as a voter in Brooklyn, New York although I will continue to spend winters in the boondocks of Apache Junction.

Thanks again to my voters.

Why the Moronic Moralists Will Win This Election, Why They'll Make the Economy Worse, and Why This Candidate Doesn't Care If You Vote for Him or Not

If you've already voted for me or will vote for me tomorrow, thank you. I appreciate it very much although certainly there's no way that career politician Jeff Flake can lose his seat in Congress. A vote for me -- or for the fine Democratic candidate, Rebecca Schneider -- is basically a protest vote by someone who's actually living in the real world.

However, most of you who live in Arizona's Sixth Congressional District -- the East Valley cities of Mesa, Chandler, Gilbert, Apache Junction and Queen Creek -- are ignorant morons. That's why I don't give a fuck if anyone votes for me or not.

That gives me the freedom politician candidates don't have. I can say what I feel and do what I think is right without having to care about whether the unwashed masses agree. Maybe I'll get 100 votes or so, votes for which I'm grateful, but in the end, it doesn't matter.

The overriding issue in this election is the terrible economy. Unfortunately, morons like most Sixth Congressional District voters will just make things worse. In his New York Times column today, the Nobel-winning economist Paul Krugman explains why. It's essentially Macroeconomics 101 for Dummies, and so most East Valley residents can use it:

“How many of you people want to pay for your neighbor’s mortgage that has an extra bathroom and can’t pay their bills?” That’s the question CNBC’s Rick Santelli famously asked in 2009, in a rant widely credited with giving birth to the Tea Party movement.

It’s a sentiment that resonates not just in America but in much of the world. The tone differs from place to place — listening to a German official denounce deficits, my wife whispered, “We’ll all be handed whips as we leave, so we can flagellate ourselves.” But the message is the same: debt is evil, debtors must pay for their sins, and from now on we all must live within our means.

And that kind of moralizing is the reason we’re mired in a seemingly endless slump.

The years leading up to the 2008 crisis were indeed marked by unsustainable borrowing, going far beyond the subprime loans many people still believe, wrongly, were at the heart of the problem. Real estate speculation ran wild in Florida and Nevada, but also in Spain, Ireland and Latvia. And all of it was paid for with borrowed money.

This borrowing made the world as a whole neither richer nor poorer: one person’s debt is another person’s asset. But it made the world vulnerable. When lenders suddenly decided that they had lent too much, that debt levels were excessive, debtors were forced to slash spending. This pushed the world into the deepest recession since the 1930s. And recovery, such as it is, has been weak and uncertain — which is exactly what we should have expected, given the overhang of debt.

The key thing to bear in mind is that for the world as a whole, spending equals income. If one group of people — those with excessive debts — is forced to cut spending to pay down its debts, one of two things must happen: either someone else must spend more, or world income will fall.

Yet those parts of the private sector not burdened by high levels of debt see little reason to increase spending. Corporations are flush with cash — but why expand when so much of the capacity they already have is sitting idle? Consumers who didn’t overborrow can get loans at low rates — but that incentive to spend is more than outweighed by worries about a weak job market. Nobody in the private sector is willing to fill the hole created by the debt overhang.

So what should we be doing? First, governments should be spending while the private sector won’t, so that debtors can pay down their debts without perpetuating a global slump. Second, governments should be promoting widespread debt relief: reducing obligations to levels the debtors can handle is the fastest way to eliminate that debt overhang.

But the moralizers will have none of it. They denounce deficit spending, declaring that you can’t solve debt problems with more debt. They denounce debt relief, calling it a reward for the undeserving.

And if you point out that their arguments don’t add up, they fly into a rage. Try to explain that when debtors spend less, the economy will be depressed unless somebody else spends more, and they call you a socialist. Try to explain why mortgage relief is better for America than foreclosing on homes that must be sold at a huge loss, and they start ranting like Mr. Santelli. No question about it: the moralizers are filled with a passionate intensity.

And those who should know better lack all conviction.

John Boehner, the House minority leader, was widely mocked last year when he declared that “It’s time for government to tighten their belts” — in the face of depressed private spending, the government should spend more, not less. But since then President Obama has repeatedly used the same metaphor, promising to match private belt-tightening with public belt-tightening. Does he lack the courage to challenge popular misconceptions, or is this just intellectual laziness? Either way, if the president won’t defend the logic of his own policies, who will?

Meanwhile, the administration’s mortgage modification program — the program that inspired the Santelli rant — has, in the end, accomplished almost nothing. At least part of the reason is that officials were so worried that they might be accused of helping the undeserving that they ended up helping almost nobody.

So the moralizers are winning. More and more voters, both here and in Europe, are convinced that what we need is not more stimulus but more punishment. Governments must tighten their belts; debtors must pay what they owe.

The irony is that in their determination to punish the undeserving, voters are punishing themselves: by rejecting fiscal stimulus and debt relief, they’re perpetuating high unemployment. They are, in effect, cutting off their own jobs to spite their neighbors.

But they don’t know that. And because they don’t, the slump will go on.

¿Comprende?

Democrat Rebecca Schneider's October Suprise

We're running a totally untraditional and unconventional campaign here at Richard Grayson Green Party AZ-06 HQ, so we're turning this post over to our fellow opponent of Jeff Flake, the Democratic candidate in Arizona's Sixth Congressional District, Rebecca Schneider. Here'a an email we got from her campaign today:

Please join Rebecca at a very important press conference tomorrow at 1pm in front of the State Capitol Building in Phoenix. (1700 W. Washington St. Phoenix, AZ 85007).

It is here that she will be making two very big announcements:

1) If she is elected as your representative in Congress, Rebecca will donate 50% of her net congressional salary to local organizations dedicated to getting the people of this district back to work. She will continue to personally fund these efforts throughout her first year in office.

Many political candidates make promises to improve our economy or "bring jobs to Arizona." Rebecca is willing to go a step further and put her money where her mouth is. She will work to improve our economy. She will bring jobs to the East Valley - and she will put her paycheck on the line to do it.

2) We have a great new series of videos called "Flakeville" that show what our district might be like if Jeff Flake gets another two years in office.

Here's the first episode, "The Lay-off," of Flakeville at Democratic candidate Rebecca Schneider's website,

and you can catch the subsequent nine episodes here.

Election Day Foretold: Backward-Looking Jeff Flake and His Right-Wing Buddies Will Attempt a Repeal of the Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries

There's no doubt Jeff Flake will overwhelmingly win re-election against his opponents. Everyone knows that. His right-wing Republican buddies will surely take control over the House, possibly by a large margin, and they'll very likely take control of the Senate, too. Voters are angry and not very smart about whom to blame for the terrible economy. And they're fed all the crappy misinformation by Fox News and other fear-mongering, paranoid sources funded by billionaires and special interests.

Timothy Egan, in his New York Times blog on American life and politics from a Western perspective, last week wrote a post, "Election Day Foretold," which pretty much states what's going to happen.

You won! What a nice run of the House, with a big enough Republican cushion to free the more pumped-up partisans to hold investigations of Obama’s birth certificate. Let them throw steak scraps at the base, while the rest of you restore Wall Street, the insurance industry and Karl Rove to their rightful places in power.

Speaker-elect Boehner, take a bow. When health care passed, you warned of Armageddon. Now, bring it on. So many promises to keep.

But first, an apology to BP, this time without the retraction. As Congressman Joe Barton tried to say, he’s really sorry that BP is being forced to pay for the human and environmental costs of the biggest oil spill in American history. Your man Barton, a good Texan who’s received more money from the oil, coal and natural gas industry than just about any serving member of the House, is in line to become the next chairman of the committee that oversees energy. Mind you, he’s term-limited in that leadership role — in theory. Just get Boehner to bend the rules, and then gavel in the groveling, baby.

Next up, repeal the health care law. Tell those 20-something deadbeats living at home that they can no longer stay on their parents’ coverage. And give the all-clear signal to insurance companies. Whew. That was close.

With health care repeal, insurers can go back to dropping people when they get sick. Even better, they won’t have to cover those costly whiners with pre-existing conditions, as the new law mandates.

And of course, 30 million Americans who stood to get health care from the market exchanges that were to be phased in can always use the hospital emergency room, as before.

Climate change. Such a myth. A giant conspiracy. The biggest scientific hoax of our time, as Senator James Inhofe has tried to explain. Now, seize the day. You can do something about it — not the hothouse we find ourselves trapped in, but the people who are studying global warming, those elitist scientists.

Sure, it was 113 degrees in Los Angeles the other day, forests in Russia were aflame all summer, and the first eight months of this year set a pace to tie 1998 as the warmest year on record. Time for an investigation: and Congressman James Sensenbrenner, the ranking Republican on the global warming committee, has one ginned up and ready to go. He wants to look at the “science,” wink, wink. So many questions; it’ll be just like when he guided the House through the impeachment of President Clinton.

Speaking of investigations, Rep. Darrell Issa, Republican of California, wants to make good on his promise to double the investigative staff of the government oversight committee and start trolling through the White House for minor scandals. Give that man a fistful of subpoenas and unleash him.

Issa’s committee would be a good place to park a rookie congressman who needs to shake his callow youth reputation — Ben Quayle, Republican of Arizona. The former vice president’s kid had some trouble with the fake family he used on his ads, and wrote for something called “Dirty Scottsdale.” Maybe it takes dirty to know dirty. After calling Obama “the worst president in history,” young Mr. Quayle said, “Somebody has to go to Washington and knock the hell out of the place.”

Along the way, don’t forget to make a run at the federal minimum wage, food and drug regulations, unemployment benefits, even Social Security. All of them are unconstitutional, as many of your candidates said on the trail.

Then, it’s on to the big enchilada, the reason to get back into power: more tax cuts. Some people think this election was a big sporting event, like Game Day on ESPN. They thought it was about rankings and scores, upsets and game-changers. Hah!

The federal deficit is approaching $1.5 trillion. But you promised to make sure that millionaire households get their extension of the Bush tax cuts, though it is likely to add another $700 billion to the deficit over the next decade. It’s in the Pledge to America. A promise is a promise.

Will bigger deficits breathe life into a still-gasping economy? Will giving another couple hundred bucks to households earning more than $250,000 allow the 20 million or so facing foreclosure to stay in their homes? Will investigating earth scientists or Obama’s political appointments make the lives of average Americans easier?

Next question. You trounced the Democrats because of the wretched economy. Voters’ financial lives are fragile, the prospects bleak. Hope turned to empty calories. Reforming Wall Street and health care did nothing to budge the unemployment numbers, a shattering reset for a bruised middle class.

If you make all those companies sitting on piles of cash start hiring people, you’ll be returned to power, perhaps rewarded in an even bigger way in two years. If not, you’ll be remembered for the sideshow: air-guitar legislative attempts to roll back the modern age.

Politics-As-Usual Jeff Flake: After Eight Years in Congress, He Wants Another Term to Destroy an America He Detests

For eight years, politics-as-usual congressman Jeff Flake has slashed taxes on the rich, turned a surplus into a crushing deficit, and helped unleash the financial crisis that has thrown millions of Americans out of their jobs and their homes.

Now this sleazy politico wants another term for a chance to finish the job destroying an America whose longstanding strengths and virtues he reviles.

Will you give it to him?

Congressman Jeff Flake Is Salivating Over the Prospect of Getting His Hands on Your Young Daughter's Body. And His Intentions Are Anything But Good.

If he has his way, right-wing Congressman Jeff Flake will get his government mitts on the precious bodies of your young daughters and deny them the reproductive rights adult women have treasured for generations.

While claiming that government can do nothing to help people and masquerading as a so-called "libertarian," fanatic Jeff Flake wants to give the government control of women's bodies.

Jeff Flake's NARAL Pro-Choice America rating: zero.

Jeff Flake's Planned Parenthood Action Fund rating: zero.

Flake supports a constitutional amendment to ban abortion and turn American girls and women and their doctors into criminals.

Flake believes fetuses have more rights than girls or women do.

Flake would deny women both rich and poor access to abortions.

Flake wants to make sure that your teenage daughters don't have access to information about sexuality and reproduction.

Flake wants to ban mifepristone (formerly RU-486).

Flake wants to take away all reproductive rights for our brave women in the military service.

Flake voted to end funding for family planning programs worldwide.

Flake voted for the odious "global gag rule."

Flake voted to deny government workers medical insurance that would cover reproductive health and contraception.

Make no mistake about it. If he has his way, Jeff Flake will be controlling your daughter's body every day of his life. He's salivating at the prospect of gaining control.

On the other hand, I fully support a woman's right to choose and have for over forty years when, pre-Roe, I went to my first demonstration supporting abortion rights.

Democratic candidate Rebecca Schneider also is a strong supporter of a woman's right to choose.

Jeff Flake wants to control the choices your daughter can make. Don't let him!

Jeff Flake Tells Jobless Over-50 Workers: "Tough Luck. Not My Problem. In Fact, I'll Take Away Your Unemployment Benefits. The Rich Need Tax Cuts."

What does Jeff Flake tell the many East Valley residents and other Americans who have worked all their lives until the Great Recession but now find themselves among the long-term unemployed and who fear, because they are over 50 and no longer in demand, that they may never work again?

"Tough shit, ladies and gentlemen," Jeff Flake tells them. "It's not my problem. It's not the job of the federal government to help you in any way - not in a market economy. You lazy bastards shouldn't even be getting unemployment insurance benefits or food stamps or anything. My role is to make sure millionaires and billionaires pay less taxes."

That about sums up what the fanatic free-market extremist Congressman tells people like the ones highlighted in a front-page New York Times story about older workers who've been laid off and can't find jobs no matter how desperately they try and who are scared and desperate:

For the Unemployed Over 50, Fears of Never Working Again

By Motoko Rich

VASHON ISLAND, Wash. — Patricia Reid is not in her 70s, an age when many Americans continue to work. She is not even in her 60s. She is just 57.

But four years after losing her job she cannot, in her darkest moments, escape a nagging thought: she may never work again.

College educated, with a degree in business administration, she is experienced, having worked for two decades as an internal auditor and analyst at Boeing before losing that job.

But that does not seem to matter, not for her and not for a growing number of people in their 50s and 60s who desperately want or need to work to pay for retirement and who are starting to worry that they may be discarded from the work force — forever.

Since the economic collapse, there are not enough jobs being created for the population as a whole, much less for those in the twilight of their careers.

Of the 14.9 million unemployed, more than 2.2 million are 55 or older. Nearly half of them have been unemployed six months or longer, according to the Labor Department. The unemployment rate in the group — 7.3 percent — is at a record, more than double what it was at the beginning of the latest recession.

After other recent downturns, older people who lost jobs fretted about how long it would take to return to the work force and worried that they might never recover their former incomes. But today, because it will take years to absorb the giant pool of unemployed at the economy’s recent pace, many of these older people may simply age out of the labor force before their luck changes.

For Ms. Reid, it has been four years of hunting — without a single job offer. She buzzes energetically as she describes the countless applications she has lobbed through the Internet, as well as the online courses she is taking to burnish her software skills.

Still, when she is pressed, her can-do spirit falters.

“There are these fears in the background, and they are suppressed,” said Ms. Reid, who is now selling some of her jewelry and clothes online and is late on some credit card payments. “I have had nightmares about becoming a bag lady,” she said. “It could happen to anyone. So many people are so close to it, and they don’t even realize it.”

Being unemployed at any age can be crushing. But older workers suspect their résumés often get shoved aside in favor of those from younger workers. Others discover that their job-seeking skills — as well as some technical skills sought by employers — are rusty after years of working for the same company.

Many had in fact anticipated working past conventional retirement ages to gird themselves financially for longer life spans, expensive health care and reduced pension guarantees.

The most recent recession has increased the need to extend working life. Home values, often a family’s most important asset, have been battered. Stock portfolios are only now starting to recover. According to a Gallup poll in April, more than a third of people not yet retired plan to work beyond age 65, compared with just 12 percent in 1995.

Older workers who lose their jobs could pose a policy problem if they lose their ability to be self-sufficient. “That’s what we should be worrying about,” said Carl E. Van Horn, professor of public policy and director of the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University, “what it means to this class of the new unemployables, people who have been cast adrift at a very vulnerable part of their career and their life.”

Forced early retirement imposes an intense financial strain, particularly for those at lower incomes. The recession and its aftermath have already pushed down some older workers. In figures released last week by the Census Bureau, the poverty rate among those 55 to 64 increased to 9.4 percent in 2009, from 8.6 percent in 2007.

But even middle-class people who might skate by on savings or a spouse’s income are jarred by an abrupt end to working life and to a secure retirement.

“That’s what I spent my whole life in pursuit of, was security,” Ms. Reid said. “Until the last few years, I felt very secure in my job.”

As an auditor, Ms. Reid loved figuring out the kinks in a manufacturing or parts delivery process. But after more than 20 years of commuting across Puget Sound to Boeing, Ms. Reid was exhausted when she was let go from her $80,000-a-year job.

Stunned and depressed, she sent out résumés, but figured she had a little time to recover. So she took vacations to Turkey and Thailand with her husband, who is a home repairman. She sought chiropractic treatments for a neck injury and helped nurse a priest dying of cancer.

Most of her days now are spent in front of a laptop, holed up in a lighthouse garret atop the house that her husband, Denny Mielock, built in the 1990s on a breathtaking piece of property overlooking the sound.

As she browses the job listings that clog her e-mail in-box, she refuses to give in to her fears. “If I let myself think like that all the time,” she said, “I could not even bear getting out of bed in the morning.”

With her husband’s home repair business pummeled by the housing downturn, the bills are mounting. Although the couple do not have a mortgage on their 3,000-square-foot house, they pay close to $7,000 a year in property taxes. The roof is leaking. Their utility bills can be $300 a month in the winter, even though they often keep the thermostat turned down to 50 degrees.

They could try to sell their home, but given the depressed housing market, they are reluctant.

“We are circling the drain here, and I am bailing like hell,” said Ms. Reid, emitting an incongruous cackle, as if laughter is the only response to her plight. “But the boat is still sinking.”

It is not just the finances that have destabilized her life.

Her husband worries that she isolates herself and that she does not socialize enough. “We’ve both been hard workers our whole lives,” said Mr. Mielock, 59. Ms. Reid sometimes rose just after 3 a.m. to make the hourlong commute to Boeing’s data center in Bellevue and attended night school to earn a master’s in management information systems.

“A job is more than a job, you know,” Mr. Mielock said. “It’s where you fit in society.”

Here in the greater Seattle area, a fifth of those claiming extended unemployment benefits are 55 and older.

To help seniors polish their job-seeking skills, WorkSource, a local consortium of government and nonprofit groups, recently began offering seminars. On a recent morning, 14 people gathered in a windowless conference room at a local community college to get tips on how to age-proof their résumés and deflect questions about being overqualified.

Motivational posters hung on one wall, bearing slogans like “Failure is the path of least persistence.”

Using PowerPoint slides, Liz Howland, the chipper but no-nonsense session leader, projected some common myths about older job-seekers on a screen: “Older workers are less capable of evaluating information, making decisions and problem-solving” or “Older workers are rigid and inflexible and have trouble adapting to change.”

Ms. Howland, 61, ticked off the reasons those statements were inaccurate. But a clear undercurrent of anxiety ran through the room. “Is it really true that if you have the energy and the passion that they will overlook the age factor?” asked a 61-year-old man who had been laid off from a furniture maker last October.

Gallows humor reigned. As Ms. Howland — who suggested that applicants remove any dates older than 15 years from their résumé — advised the group on how to finesse interview questions like “When did you have the job that helped you develop that skill?” one out-of-work journalist deadpanned: “How about ‘during the 20th century?’ ”

During a break, Anne Richard, who declined to give her age, confessed she was afraid she would not be able to work again after losing her contract as a house director at a University of Washington sorority in June. Although she had 20 years of experience as an office clerk in Chattanooga, Tenn., she feared her technology skills had fallen behind.

“I don’t feel like I can compete with kids who have been on computers all their lives,” said Ms. Richard, who was sleeping on the couch of a couple she had met at church and contemplating imminent homelessness.

Older people who lose their jobs take longer to find work. In August, the average time unemployed for those 55 and older was slightly more than 39 weeks, according to the Labor Department, the longest of any age group. That is much worse than in August 1983, also after a deep recession, when someone unemployed in that age group spent an average of 27.5 weeks finding work.

At this year’s pace of an average of 82,000 new jobs a month, it will take at least eight more years to create the 8 million positions lost during the recession. And that does not even allow for population growth.

Advocates for the elderly worry that younger people are more likely to fill the new jobs as well.

Rep. Jeff Flake's attitude is shameful to people like me and his Democratic opponent Rebecca Schneider. Liberals believe that governmment should help those who have been thrown out of work and are facing desperate times through no fault of their own.

Just as in the Great Depression, the current Great Recession requires strong government intervention to help those who are suffering because of the inequities of the free market that Jeff Flake believes is working perfectly, even now.

Why, Jeff Flake doesn't believe in even the safety net of unemployment insurance benefits we've had since the 1930s. He's voted against them 23 times. If he and his right-wing buddies take control of Congress -- something he was crowing about this morning on National Public Radio's "Morning Edition" -- he plans to eliminate unemployment benefits entirely, as well as end the food stamp program, take away Medicare from seniors, end Social Security.

You see, Jeff Flake believes the only job in a free market is to make sure millionaires and billionaires pay nothing in taxes. Well, that's reasonable - if you're Jeff Flake and corrupt billionaires like the Koch brothers have bankrolled your cushy political career for a decade.

If you're unemployed -- or you have a loved one who is -- or maybe you fear you might lose your job and find it hard to get another one, maybe you should think about voting for someone other than the billionaires' best friend and the enemy of decent hard-working families, four-term Congressman Jeff Flake.

Over One-Fifth of Arizonans Live in Poverty, and Rep. Jeff Flake Does Nothing But Laugh and Say, "Go Fuck Yourselves, Poor People!"

According to the latest report, more than one-fifth of Arizonans live in poverty, a figure higher than anywhere else in the nation except Mississippi.

Figures Thursday from the U.S. Census Bureau show nearly 1.4 million Arizonans in households earning less than the federal poverty level - about 21.2 percent.

As Howard Fischer wrote for Capitol Media Services,

The new report shows that even with a sluggish national economy, there is an increasing disparity between Arizonans and those living everywhere else.

In 2007, for example, before the economy tanked, Arizona's poverty rate was 14.3 percent, compared with the national rate of 12.5 percent. That put Arizona at 14th-highest in nation.

By 2008, the percentage of Arizonans living in poverty rose to 18 percent, while the national figure rose to 13.2 percent. That ranked Arizona fourth-highest in the U.S. And the current 21.2 percent number is approaching a level one and a half times the national average.

What has Rep. Jeff Flake ever done for Arizona's poor people? Nothing. Nada. Zero. Zilch. Bupkis.

Oh wait, with his votes, he's laughed at their poverty and told them to go fuck themselves.

You're on your own, poor people, Jeff Flake says with a smile as he votes against unemployment benefits, food stamps, government aid to children, for housing, for education.


Jeff Flake doesn't give a shit about poor people, and that's one reason he needs to be replaced.

But, you, the dopey assholes who make up the most of the voters in the East Valley's Sixth Congressional District, don't give a shit about your poor neighbors, either, and that's why Jeff Flake is a shoo-in for re-election.

He doesn't have to worry about opponents who actually would try to help poor people like Democrat Rebecca Schneider or myself.

Those Arizonans who live in poverty deserve better representation in Congress than do-nothing, care-nothing, fuck-the-poor free-market fanatic Jeff Flake and his equally disgusting Republican colleagues.

Congratulations to Democratic and Republican Primary Winners in Arizona's Sixth Congressional District

We would like to congratulate Rebecca Schneider on her victory in the Democratic primary on Tuesday. She ran a valiant, basically DIY campaign in 2008 without any discernable help - indeed, little notice - from either the Arizona Democratic Party (which at one point did not even list her on its website with the other congressional candidates) or from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. With little funding, she managed to get about 34.5% of the vote.

We would also like to congratulate Rep. Jeff Flake on his victory in the Republican primary on Tuesday. He beat his opponent by about two to one, but his opponent was clearly inferior to the incumbent in numerous ways. We certainly think Rep. Flake is a right-wing extremist, but at least he is intelligent whereas his opponent was clearly stupid and never made a compelling rationale for his candidacy even among the troglodytes who vote in East Valley Republican primaries.

Rep. Flake is assured of election to his fifth term in November. Arizona's Sixth Congressional District's PVI is +15R, making it all but impossible for any candidate but a Republican to win. Given that 2006 (when Flake had no Democratic opponent) and 2008 were elections in which Democrats made huge gains and 2010 is shaping up as a wave election in which the Republicans should recover their House majority and Arizona Democrats need to defend threatened incumbents in the First, Fifth and Eighth Congressional Districts, no one but Jeff Flake - who's never gotten less than 63% - can win in November.

The status of the Green Party primary is unclear at the moment. The unofficial election returns from the Secretary of State show that 40 write-in votes were cast, but we don't know who they were for or how the Secretary of State will interpret the statutes regarding write-in primary candidates. In 2008, Green Party write-in candidates who did not receive the same number of votes as petition signatures they would have needed to get their names on the primary ballot were not placed on the November general election ballot.

Although the statutes haven't changed, the Secretary of State's Election Division has apparently decided - in what seems an arbitrary and capricious manner - to interpret the write-in statutes differently in 2010. We'll see what happens.

As noted in an earlier post, we have been "vetted" but "not endorsed" by the Arizona Green Party, which says it will consider endorsing us if we go forward to the general election. We will not seek their endorsement. To say that we are not impressed with the leadership and candidates of the Arizona Green Party would be an understatement.

With the exception of the Sixth Congressional District race - where we're waiting to find out if we'll be on the ballot - we will be voting a straight Democratic ticket in November.

A state canvass to certify official election results for federal, statewide and legislative races is scheduled for September 7. Stay tuned.

What Right-Wing Extremist Jeff Flake Tells an Unemployed East Valley Voter: "Jobless Benefits HURT Laid-Off Employees"

A kind voter in the East Valley who's read my posts forwarded to me the response received when she wrote Jeff Flake about extending her unemployment benefits, which have expired:

Dear Ms. Jackson,

Thank you for contacting me about the extension of unemployment benefits.

You know all too well that a sluggish economy has resulted in increasing unemployment. The causes for the country's economic situation are complex and numerous. The federal/state unemployment compensation program provides partial wage replacement checks to people who are involuntarily unemployed. The federal Department
of Labor oversees the program, while each state designs and administers its own benefits packages.

The extension of unemployment benefits offers little in the way of job creation. Quite to the contrary of their stated intent, jobless benefits hurt laid-off employees in the long run because the programs seek to temporarily fix a problem, instead of implementing a long term-solution. The best jobless benefit an individual can receive is a job offer.

As such, I generally vote against these types of bills when they are considered by the House of Representatives.

A better approach would be to reduce the tax burden on individuals and small businesses. Reducing the the burden on small businesses would provide employers with the resources to hire additional workers.

I will continue to push for responsible federal policies that promote the growth of the economy that will, in turn, provide the resources for employers to hire additional people.

Thank you again for contacting me. Please do not hesitate to do so again in the future. I also encourage you to visit my website, which may be found at http://flake.house.gov/.


Sincerely,


JEFF FLAKE
Member of Congress

What a miserable excuse for a human being. Jeff Flake is working hard to cut taxes for the rich and his corporate benefactors while denying struggling working-class people a lifeline. The corporation that laid off this worker and hundreds of others is one of Jeff Flake's biggest campaign donors!

There's not even a word of compassion for this American citizen's plight, no easy-to-say "I'm sorry you're suffering financially" throwaway line that would cost this cheap Flake nothing. The letter reeks of the condescension and contempt of the cold-hearted intellectual that Flake is.

How is this person supposed to live, you asshole career politician?

If you're as mad as I am about this, and as mad as Rebecca Schneider, the Democratic candidate running against Jeff Flake, please join her campaign's demonstration this Wednesday:

The Rebecca Schneider for Congress campaign will be staging a protest in front of Jeff Flake's Mesa Office. We will be wearing cardboard barrels, since Mr. Flake doesn't seem to care if his constituents lose their last remaining lifeline and self respect.

Join us on Wednesday, July 21th from 3:30 - 5:00 p.m., 1640 S. Stapley Drive, Mesa 85204.

Come dressed in grungy T-shirt and shorts. Barrels will be provided on site.

As President Obama said today, "That attitude [Jeff Flake's] reflects a lack of faith in the American people. They’re not looking for a handout. They desperately want to work."

Why Does Jeff Flake Hate This Good Christian Woman?

Family-hating Arizona Congressman Jeff Flake doesn't believe unemployment compensation benefits should exist. He's on record as saying, along with Senator John Kyl, as saying they deter people from looking for work. He's voted over seventeen times against expanding benefits. In fact, Jeff Flake has called for the repeal of the New Deal law that created unemployment insurance for the jobless.

Jeff Flake has contempt for the unemployed citizens of Mesa, Gilbert, Chandler, Apache Junction and Queen Creek. He has contempt for all those jobless people who are suffering in America.

Tomorrow's New York Times has a story by Michael Luo on one such person, the kind of woman Jeff Flake has contempt for:

CARLISLE, Ky. — In her well-thumbed, leather-bound Bible, Terri Sadler recently highlighted in bright pink a passage in the Gospel of Matthew.

Terri Sadler of Carlisle, Ky., listening to C-Span for news of Senate action on an extension of federal unem- ployment benefits. In it, Jesus urges his followers not to “worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself.”

But Ms. Sadler’s tightening throat and halting breath when she tries to read the words aloud make it clear that she is having trouble mustering enough faith to follow them.

Ms. Sadler, who lost her job at an automotive parts plant in October 2008, learned last month that her unemployment insurance had been cut off. She is one of an estimated 2.1 million Americans whose benefits have expired and who are waiting for an end to an impasse that has lasted months in the Senate over extending the payments once more to the long-term unemployed.

Times have changed politically, however, and opposition is growing in Washington and abroad to deficit-bloating government spending, even for those who are hurting.

For Ms. Sadler, and many like her, each passing day has become an excruciating countdown of debts and deadlines.

“I’m basically applying for everything, trying to get something,” said Ms. Sadler, 52, who since early June has not received an unemployment check, which used to be about $388 a week before taxes. “If I don’t, I’m going to lose everything. I’m not going to have a roof over my head. I’m just going to have to walk away with what I have on my back, and my dog.”

She is down to $44 in her purse and a quarter-tank of gas. She says she has exhausted the help of family and friends.

Members of her tiny Baptist church just up the road from her cramped mobile home pooled their money on Sunday to come up with her car payment and insurance. A county ministerial association paid her water bill. A nonprofit organization covered her last two electric bills.

A notepad on her refrigerator lists the other outstanding bills: $102 cellphone, $79 cable and Internet, which she relies on for job-hunting; $15 for her credit card; and $30 for an end table she had bought on layaway. Not listed was $275 for her rent this month, which she still owes.

Every morning, after Ms. Sadler takes her dog out and turns on the coffee maker, she switches on the television to C-Span. Then she cracks open her laptop to resume a job hunt that has become frantic.

But as she has run low on money, her search has also become increasingly circumscribed. She used to drive to drop off résumés with businesses; now she is mostly limited to scanning online listings.

Ms. Sadler eagerly tuned in to C-Span last Monday, mistakenly believing that Senate Democrats returning from recess would quickly take up the unemployment insurance extension. But they remain a vote short of being able to block a Republican filibuster, forcing them to wait for Carte Goodwin, the successor to Senator Robert C. Byrd, who died last month, to be sworn in. The Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, said the vote on an extension would occur on Tuesday.

The measure is now expected to pass, but advocates for unemployment insurance are hardly declaring victory yet. Fears about the country’s skyrocketing deficit, which are at the heart of Republican objections, have gained growing prevalence, even with moderate Democrats. Economic arguments that additional government spending is needed to spur the economy have been swamped.

Some Republican politicians [like Jeff Flake, John Kyl, et al.] have argued that continuing to extend unemployment benefits offers a disincentive for the jobless to find work. Supporters of unemployment insurance counter that job openings remain in short supply.

Ms. Sadler estimates that she used to spend six hours a day searching for work; now it is at least double amount of time.

“There’s been times I’ve had to make myself stop looking for jobs because it was driving me nuts,” said Ms. Sadler, who admitted that she had contemplated suicide.

Every day has become a tense scramble, highlighting just how thin the governmental safety net for the jobless becomes beyond unemployment benefits. After Ms. Sadler was cut off from jobless benefits, she qualified for $200 a month in food stamps, but food stamps do not pay her bills, nor do they cover other necessities.

She recently wrote to Tom’s of Maine, because she uses the company’s toothpaste, mouthwash and deodorant, asking whether it might be able to donate some products to her. But she was informed that the company usually gives only to nonprofit organizations.

Ms. Sadler lives alone here in this small town in the northern part of the state, where Amish are sometimes spotted heading down the main road with horse and buggy. She has only her 2-year-old dog, Tootie-muffin, for company.

Before she lost her job, she had enrolled in community college to study medical billing and coding. She finished the program in May, but most of the medical billing jobs she has applied for require experience. The framed certificate, and another one for data entry, on her bedroom wall are just decorations at this point.

How she landed in this predicament is a product of both mistakes she made and forces beyond her control. She dropped out of high school and had her daughter, Chastity, at age 15. She started working in factories soon after and eventually earned her G.E.D. She had managed to scratch out a relatively comfortable life before she lost her job, making $14.65 an hour at Vuteq, in Georgetown, Ky., a company that makes sun roofs and windshields for Toyota.

But she never accumulated much savings, besides $3,000 she had socked away in a 401(k) account, which she quickly ran through. She has always had a thing for Ford Mustangs and bought a used red one in 2006 that she now admits was a bad decision.

She filed for bankruptcy in March 2009 and was allowed to keep her car on a reduced payment schedule, but she was barred from selling it.

After moving several times, she finally found her mobile home here, with cheap green siding and outdated wood paneling, at a monthly rent she could afford on unemployment insurance.

She had used up 79 weeks of benefits but was expecting an additional 20 weeks under the extended federal program.

On Tuesday, Ms. Sadler scored just her third interview since 2008, for a $7.50-an-hour job at a check-cashing business that is an hour’s drive from her home. It would have paid less than she received on unemployment benefits and left her still unable to cover her expenses, but she had little choice.

It took all her willpower not to reach across the table to shake her interviewer and beg for a chance. The company said she would know by Thursday, but as of Friday she had not heard back.

* * *
From Rebecca Schneider, Democratic candidate in Arizona's Sixth Congressional District:

Before the bill even got to the Senate, YOUR Congressman (Jeff Flake) voted to cut unemployment benefits to the thousands of men and women who can't find work.

This vote was not only fiscally irresponsible, but downright wrong!

The Rebecca Schneider for Congress campaign will be staging a protest in front of Jeff Flake's Mesa Office. We will be wearing cardboard barrels, since Mr. Flake doesn't seem to care if his constituents lose their last remaining lifeline and self respect.

Join us on Wednesday, July 21th from 3:30 - 5:00 p.m., 1640 S. Stapley Drive, Mesa 85204.

Come dressed in grungy T-shirt and shorts. Barrels will be provided on site.

We urge you to join Rebecca Schneider's demonstration if you can.

Phony Deficit Hawk Jeff Flake Supports Huge Tax Cuts for the Very Wealthy Despite Its Adding $650 Billion to Our Deficit

Here's an excerpt from Paul Krugman's column in today's New York Times:

For a while, leading Republicans posed as stern foes of federal red ink. Two weeks ago, in the official G.O.P. response to President Obama’s weekly radio address, Senator Saxby Chambliss devoted his entire time to the evils of government debt, “one of the most dangerous threats confronting America today.” He went on, “At some point we have to say ‘enough is enough.’”

But this past Monday Jon Kyl of Arizona, the second-ranking Republican in the Senate, was asked the obvious question: if deficits are so worrisome, what about the budgetary cost of extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, which the Obama administration wants to let expire but Republicans want to make permanent? What should replace $650 billion or more in lost revenue over the next decade?

His answer was breathtaking: “You do need to offset the cost of increased spending. And that’s what Republicans object to. But you should never have to offset the cost of a deliberate decision to reduce tax rates on Americans.” So $30 billion in aid to the unemployed is unaffordable, but 20 times that much in tax cuts for the rich doesn’t count.

The next day, Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, confirmed that Mr. Kyl was giving the official party line: “There’s no evidence whatsoever that the Bush tax cuts actually diminished revenue. They increased revenue, because of the vibrancy of these tax cuts in the economy. So I think what Senator Kyl was expressing was the view of virtually every Republican on that subject.”

Now there are many things one could call the Bush economy, an economy that, even before recession struck, was characterized by sluggish job growth and stagnant family incomes; “vibrant” isn’t one of them. But the real news here is the confirmation that Republicans remain committed to deep voodoo, the claim that cutting taxes actually increases revenues.

If anything, Jeff Flake, darling of the Club for Greed A/K/A the Club for Growth, is more for tax cuts than the rich than Kyl or McConnell. He's made his reputation with his moronic little press releases highlighting an earmark of the week: some piddling sum spent for a community center here or a park there - public facilities that Flake's contributors, uber-wealthy banksters and fat cats, don't use.

But he favors not just extending the wealthy-favoring Bush tax cuts but making them larger! Jeff Flake, supposed deficit hawk, would add over a billion dollars to the deficit with his risky scheme to cut taxes on the rich even more.

Yet he won't help middle-class people who find themselves unemployed. Yesterday we got an email from an Apache Junction voter in his fifties. Due to a corporate merger and subsequent cost-cutting, he was laid off at Christmas by a national chain as a manager in a Tempe Marketplace store. That day he'd got a letter that his lifeline, his unemployment check, would stop, "pending congressional action." Currently, Republican senators are blocking passage of this action.

From Rebecca Schneider, Democratic candidate in Arizona's Sixth Congressional District:

Before the bill even got to the Senate, YOUR Congressman (Jeff Flake) voted to cut unemployment benefits to the thousands of men and women who can't find work.

This vote was not only fiscally irresponsible, but downright wrong!

The Rebecca Schneider for Congress campaign will be staging a protest in front of Jeff Flake's Mesa Office. We will be wearing cardboard barrels, since Mr. Flake doesn't seem to care if his constituents lose their last remaining lifeline and self respect.

Join us on Wednesday, July 21th from 3:30 - 5:00 p.m., 1640 S. Stapley Drive, Mesa 85204.

Come dressed in grungy T-shirt and shorts. Barrels will be provided on site.

We urge you to join Rebecca Schneider's demonstration if you can.

Richard Grayson Green Party AZ-06 Campaign for Congress Joins the Green New Deal Coalition

We've joined the Green New Deal Coalition, a coalition of candidates, individuals and organizations to support the Green New Deal.

Our campaign supports the ten policies endorsed by the Green New Deal Coalition:


• Cut military spending at least 70%;

• Create millions of green union jobs through massive public investment in renewable energy, mass transit and conservation;

• Set ambitious, science-based greenhouse gas emission reduction targets, and enact a revenue-neutral carbon tax to meet them;

• Establish single-payer "Medicare for all" health care;

• Provide tuition-free public higher education;

• Change trade agreements to improve labor, environmental, consumer, health and safety standards;

• End counterproductive prohibition policies and legalize marijuana;

• Enact tough limits on credit interest and lending rates, progressive tax reform and strict financial regulation;

• Amend the U.S. Constitution to abolish corporate personhood; and

• Pass sweeping electoral, campaign finance and anti-corruption reforms.

You can join Green Change's New Deal Coalition, too.

* * *

From our fellow AZ-06 candidate, Democrat Rebecca Schneider, on Jeff Flake's continual votes against extending unemployment insurance benefits:

The Rebecca Schneider for Congress campaign will be staging a protest in front of Jeff Flake's Mesa Office. We will be wearing cardboard barrels, since Mr. Flake doesn't seem to care if his constituents lose their last remaining lifeline and self respect.

Join us on Wednesday, July 21th from 3:30 - 5:00 p.m., 1640 S. Stapley Drive, Mesa 85204.

Come dressed in grungy T-shirt and shorts. Barrels will be provided on site.