In this week’s Skinny, our scribe Jim Nintzel describes Arizona House Speaker David Gowan as dumber than a bag of hammers, or sack or backpack … or whatever.
Basically, it didn’t take long for the journalism community covering Crazyland to recognize that this guy missed out on some remedial tutoring. Too bad for us as we continue in this adventure called Arizona politics. The latest, as you likely know by now, is Gowan implementing a new policy that requires reporters covering the legislature from the House floor to pass a background check—criminal, civil and even our driving records. Gowan and company even listed specific offenses that will bar reporters from the floor and from doing their job. Someone, like Hank Stephenson (a former Tucson Weekly intern and contributor) who works as a kickass reporter for the Arizona Capitol Times. He’s so kickass that Gowan decided to start this new policy after Hank wrote about Gowan’s misuse of state vehicles during his campaign. Oh, it’s just another day in Crazyland, our beloved state and one we can brag about to our friends in saner places. There’s the typical social media outrage taking place right now. I think I remember that same social media outrage when Ducey took his ice cream machete to the state budget and education. Maybe I’m wrong, but it seems like citizen outrage never goes further than Facebook or some stupid-as-hammers online petition. Doesn’t anyone out there know how to rent a few buses to take some of that rage up to Phoenix? Perhaps if you include an Ikea pit stop we can get something going. Perhaps not. I’m not cynical, I’m just waiting to see how much more folks are willing to take. Wake me when the bus arrives.
— Mari Herreras,
mherreras@tucsonweekly.com
This article appears in Apr 14-20, 2016.
If the odds were good that a bus from Tucson to Crazyland could actually make it up the I-10 corridor without encountering a two hour delay somewhere along the way (this is why the commute train is needed legislators….wink wink); I’d take you up on it Maqri.
Gowan’s not running a parallel campaign to keep his state house seat is he? Cause he ain’t gonna get the nod for District 1.
Thank you Ms. Herrera, for all of the work that you do for our community. The good folks at noprop123.com here in Tucson have taken your advice. They criss-cross the state organizing voters’ groups and speaking profoundly at debates, forums and town halls.
The League of Women Voters here in Tucson courageously and effectively went to the Capitol, arranged a terrific press conference and requested that the federal Department of Justice investigate the arguably illegal sweeping of public education funding for their tax cuts to wealthy campaign donors and corporations. We are taking your advice and organizing groups and people to reclaim our State House from the ALEC-led lapdogs. Doug Ducey, Gowan, Biggs and their “sovereign citizen”/Carhi Herrod Arizona Taliban have awakened fierce opponents in voters that have had enough of their poisonous corruption.
It’s common knowlegle that “1,000’s” of little kids from elementry school “OCCUPY” the State Capitol during Legislative Seession,but adults just hide behind Computers and Cable T.V. all the time.The AFL-CIO didn’t even have their yearly Rally this year at the State Capitol.