Greetings and Welcome …
To another edition of the BAK Sunday Open Thread. We’re here every Sunday with news, views and items of interest from around Tucson and Greater Baja. Click through if you’re interested, we welcome contributions from anywhere in the state.
First a tune
Here's an earworm I picked up last week at another site. Can’t get rid of it, don’t want to.
Some news
If you were with us last Tuesday for the Primary Open Thread you’ll remember complaints about the AZ Secretary of State’s website being broken. Officials are “downplaying” the crash and promising that it won’t happen again in November. ☛ Arizona Daily Star Here's a cheery piece, also from the Star, Lake Powell could dry up in as little as six years. Lovely.
A couple of Sundays ago we talked about the ICE detention centers in Pinal County, here. The very next day, Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Raúl Grijalva sent a letter to the Department of Homeland Security urging that the for-profit jails be shut down ☛ The Hill.
"Given the impact on detainees, the high cost to taxpayers and the Department of Justice's recent decision, we believe the Department of Homeland Security can and should immediately begin phasing out for-profit, privately run immigration detention centers," Sanders and Grijalva wrote.
The lawmakers have long opposed the government's reliance on for-profit prisons and detention centers, having sponsored legislation last year to ban them entirely across all agencies.
Sanders also made the issue a focal point of his failed presidential run, arguing that the private companies too often prioritize profit motives over the safety of inmates and detainees.
Both the DHS and, predictably, the Corrections Corporation of America defended the use of for-profit prisons. The DHS has said it will ask its “Homeland Security Advisory Council” to review the use of for-profit prisons. Alternet has a piece about this “Advisory Council” ☛ HERE
The Advisory Council that will steer this process is a roll call of war profiteers, torture defenders, human rights abusers and private sector heavyweights. Meanwhile, as Bob Libal, the executive director of the advocacy organization Grassroots Leadership, noted in an interview with AlterNet, “There is a severe lack of any immigrant or immigrant advocacy representation on the committee. I don’t think there is anyone who has been impacted by detention, let alone private detention.”
Add Pinal County ...
Pinal County was also in the news that week for being the only county that will have no options available next year for insurance “coverage” under the ACA. The Kaiser Family Foundation has released a new study on Obamacare options in 2017 ☛ Preliminary Data on Insurer Exits and Entrants in 2017 ACA Marketplaces. If you go to the link and scroll down a bit you’ll find a neat little interactive map that lets you check insurance options in every county in the country. Sure enough, only Pinal County has zero options. Cochise County is not much better with only one insurer next year, down from two in 2016. Pima and Maricopa counties will each have only two options in 2017, down from five and eight respectively.
ALEC and “Preemption”
Good article at Alternet about ALEC and the proliferation of preemption laws designed to keep cities from passing Progressive ordinances ☛ HERE.
ARIZONA GOVERNOR DOUG DUCEY didn’t like what he was seeing—local pushes in Tucson and Tempe to consider paid sick leave ordinances, a group in Flagstaff hoping to get a minimum-wage increase on the ballot. So at this year’s State of the State address, he was explicit that cities adopting progressive policies would face repercussions. “I … encourage all our cities and towns to put the brakes on ill-advised plans to create a patchwork of different wage and employment laws,” he stated. “If these political subdivisions don’t stop, they’ll drive our economy off a cliff.” Ducey promised to use “every constitutional power of the Executive Branch” to prevent such a patchwork, including withholding shared revenue funds that usually pay for firehouses, police departments, and other public safety services.
Two months later, the state legislature sent the governor a bill with a creative, systematic, and especially punitive approach to preemption. Under this measure, which Ducey signed and which will go into effect in the fall, any state legislator can ask the state attorney general if a local ordinance is in conflict with state law, and if the attorney general determines the local measure is indeed in violation, the town or city will have just 30 days to reverse the measure or watch the state distribute its share of state funds to other towns. Another law passed in Arizona bars localities from mandating the fringe benefits that businesses offer employees, while a third bars communities from penalizing companies for changing employees’ work schedules. Still a fourth measure seeks to punish Tucson and other cities that have kept gun regulations on the books despite state laws preempting them. The measure allows courts to remove public officials from office and impose penalties up to $50,000.
Yet another reminder, if you needed one, of the importance of mid-term elections.
Finally …
There’s a cool photo feature at foreignpolicy.com called The Breathtaking Beauty of Our Planet's Destruction. Enjoy.
OK …
That’s it, that’s all I got for this Sunday. As usual, I invite you to Tip, Rec and Check-In from wherever you are. Talk to me.