AZ senate president and Koch-brother-lover recalled!



Nah nah nah nah, hey hey, goodbye...

Ohio's thumping defeat of SB5 was a big loss for the Benedict Arnold Koch brothers, who poured money into the lobbying group that wrote the legislation. The Koch-funded group Americans for Iranian Prosperity also paid for misleading pro-SB5 ads that twisted the words of an Ohio great-grandmother.

But the Benedict Arnold Koch brothers also suffered a loss in Arizona, where a lawmaker was recalled for the first time in history. Senate President Russell Pearce lost a special election to fellow Republican Jerry Lewis by a solid 53-45 percent.

The recall election was triggered by a voter petition drive to recall Pearce, who is unpopular for his stance on immigrant detention and was recently mired in a campaign contributions scandal.

Pearce is called the architect of S.B. 1070, Arizona’s controversial immigration law and is a long-time whore member of ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council. The Koch-funded corporate front group arranged secret meetings between Arizona legislators and Corrections Corporation of America, a private prison company, to craft S.B. 1070. It's all detailed in this NPR article.

The law would have allowed police to request immigration papers at stop if they had a “reasonable suspicions” that the person was undocumented—clearly a potential windfall for private prison companies in the business to make a profit by locking more people up.

Pearce is part of a growing trend of state legislators pushing for prison privatization, which feeds mass incarceration to the detriment of safety standards, communities and workers.

Florida Department of Corrections (FDOC) officers are currently fighting back against the Legislature’s efforts to private more than 30 prison facilities in 18 southern Florida counties. Privatization could impact 4,000 officer jobs, lower safety standards and devastate dozens of communities. There are more than 20,000 correctional, probation and parole officers with the FDOC.

The officers are seeking aggressive Teamster representation in the fight against privatization and are voting in the Teamster election now. Ballots will be counted Nov. 16.

So, what does democracy look like? Today, Ohio, Maine, Iowa and Arizona is what democracy looks like!