President Obama and Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer had what was described as an intense encounter on the tarmac after the president arrived in the Grand Canyon state on Wednesday.
Brewer greeted the president as he arrived off Air Force One, as governors often do when the president visits a state, and handed him a letter that she described as a “welcome” note to the state, and an invitation to talk about a comeback for her state.
Obama put the letter in the limo before going to greet Arizonans waiting nearby.
The Republican governor later told pool reporters accompanying the president that Obama brought up that he was a little disturbed (her wording) by the book she published last year called “Scorpions for Breakfast.” In the tome, she said the president was “patronizing” in a one-on-one meeting about border security.
Video …
Gov. Jan Brewer demanded answers from the Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission about a handful of alleged improprieties, the first step in the process for forcibly removing one or more of the commissioners.
Brewer today sent a letter to all five commissioners seeking a response to allegations that the IRC violated open meeting laws, public records laws and the constitutionally mandated criteria for redistricting. The letter comes as Republican lawmakers, conservative activists and others have been clamoring for a special session of the Legislature to remove IRC Chairwoman Colleen Mathis, who has been accused of colluding with the commission’s two Democrats.
The governor accused the commissioners of “substantial neglect of duty and gross misconduct in office,” repeating verbatim the provision in the Arizona Constitution that details the grounds for removing a commissioner from the panel. The removal of a commissioner requires the approval of the governor and two-thirds of the Senate.
“I am duty bound to ensure that Arizona’s redistricting process is constitutionally sound and worthy of the full faith and confidence of Arizona voters,” Brewer wrote. “The IRC has violated constitutional requirements.”
Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, who put in place the first in a string of state crackdowns on unauthorized immigration, defended on Tuesday a similar law in Alabama that allows state officials to ask residents for papers during virtually any interaction with the government.
American job seekers, said Brewer, will eventually take the low-wage farm jobs that have been vacated by migrant workers fearing for their safety. “Alabama will survive,” she told HuffPost.
Speaking after the Las Vegas GOP presidential debate, Brewer said the law would do what legislators hoped: drive undocumented immigrants out of Alabama — or even the country — and free up jobs for American workers.
“We never like to see families breaking up, but the bottom line is, probably those leaving Alabama are probably going back to Mexico,” she told HuffPost. “But we are a nation of laws and American citizens, tax-paying people, the members of our country ought not to have to take care of illegal immigration and all the issues that go with it — education, health care, incarceration.”
Facebook issued an apology Saturday for deleting a post by Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer that criticized President Obama over his administration’s new policy on prioritizing deportations of illegal immigrants.
Brewer’s picture and a statement that accompanied it were removed Friday from Facebook, apparently because they “violated Facebook community standards.”
“The post was removed in error,” Andrew Noyes, Manager of Public Policy Communications at Facebook said in a statement. “We apologize for any inconvenience.”
Gov. Jan Brewer is leaning to moving Arizona’s presidential primary to the last Tuesday in January in hopes of getting a jump on most other states.
The governor said she believes pushing the primary up from its current Feb. 28 schedule will give Arizona the national attention it deserves. Potentially more significant, she said it will force the candidates not only to spend time here in their quest for early victories but also require them to address issues of specific concern to state residents.
“Arizona is at the forefront of advancing solutions to national issues such as immigration and border security, Medicaid spending, and the financial crisis,” Brewer said.
“It only makes sense that our state be positioned to have its voice heard loud and clear when it comes to the presidential nomination process,” she continued. “Moving Arizona’s presidential preference primary election into January would ensure that our citizens are major players in the 2012 campaign.”
Brewer does not need permission to make the change: The state law which sets the primary for the fourth Tuesday of February specifically gives the governor unilateral power to move it up to any date she wants. The only requirement is that she makes her decision at least 150 days before the new date.
Governor Jan Brewer has sent out a powerful message today, providing a litany of Arizona Senate President Russell Pearce’s successful legislation and accomplishments which have provoked a recall against him. Gov. Brewer asks for donations to assist the highly respected Pearce in his fight to retain his seat against attacks from pro-amnesty radicals.
The recall election of the District 18 Conservative is scheduled for November 8. His well funded adversaries have previously tried to bring down Pearce – the author of the popular and nationally copied SB 1070. Once again, he needs our help. You might not live in his district, but he represents all Arizona citizens as he works tirelessly to reduce the size of government and keep our country safe from invasion.
In her message, Brewer writes: “This time they mean to recall from office my friend and colleague State Senate President Russell Pearce. I have known Russell for over two decades; a dedicated law enforcement officer, shot in the line of duty, a fiscal conservative who has consistently been a voice and a vote for decreased government spending, an uncompromising advocate for State’s Rights and now a national leader in our fight to enforce our nation’s immigration laws and to secure our border.
Already unhappy over what she claims is federal inaction on border security, Gov. Jan Brewer lashed out at the Obama administration Thursday for leaving her out of the loop.
Brewer said she was unaware that Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano was going to be in Nogales that day to update its border security plans. In fact, Brewer said she learned of the visit by reading her morning newspaper.
“I had no idea that she was going to move forward or making an announcement,” Brewer said of Napolitano.
“I finally am a little bit frustrated by the fact that every time I find out anything about our border I read about it in the paper or I hear about it on television or I hear about it on the radio,” the governor continued. “I wish they would notify me to let us know exactly what they’re about to do.”
Brewer has been among the most vocal critics of what she said is the failure to secure the border. She cited that as a reason for signing various new laws during the last two years to give the state a broader role, from requiring police to ask those they have stopped about their immigration status if there is reason to suspect they are not in this country legally to having the state seek donations to build its own fence along the border.
Published: June 17, 2011 at 8:11 am
I’d like to set the record straight due to the political intrigue and misinformation that have been ascribed to the recent special session on continuing the federal Extended Benefit (EB) Program until the end of the year in Arizona. This issue became ripe for a special session when our unemployment rate changed slightly in May and triggered Arizona off the EB program based on current statute.
So, here are the facts:
At its core, the Legislature did not continue the federally-funded EB program administered by the state of Arizona because many Republican legislators opposed it either on philosophical grounds or wanted to combine it with additional business tax cuts. Considerable effort was spent by my administration for what essentially amounts to a simple statutory change. Additional provisions were included to gain legislative support. Executive and legislative staff spent many days vetting various anti-fraud concepts with the U.S. Department of Labor to ensure we were not violating federal law. Prior to making the special session call, I, and my staff, had multiple meetings and telephone conferences over weeks with Senate President Russell Pearce and House Speaker Andy Tobin, both jointly and separately, and with other legislators.
As has been widely reported, Pearce requested additional safeguards against fraud, and Tobin wanted to couple the continuation of the EB program with business tax cuts, including the possible revival of vetoed bills in some form based on the Invest Arizona property tax cut for new or expanding businesses (SB1041) or the corporate income tax cut for multi-state service providers such as Apollo Group (SB1552).
Gov. Jan Brewer has called the Legislature into a special session Friday to extend unemployment benefits for nearly 15,000 Arizonans.
It is an eleventh-hour bid to keep checks flowing for people who are scheduled to exhaust their unemployment payments after Friday. To help win votes from some reluctant lawmakers, Brewer late Wednesday included a provision in her proposal that would hold Arizona businesses harmless from an expected increase in job-related taxes.
The session could be a lifeline for 14,697 workers who have been on unemployment for at least 79 weeks. By making a change to state law, Arizona would qualify for federal dollars to extend those benefits to a maximum 99 weeks.
Lawmakers would need to make a change to allow the state to calculate its unemployment numbers over a three-year period instead of two years.
The unemployment benefit is $212 a week, before taxes. Arizona’s unemployment rate is 9.3 percent.
The call for a session, to begin at 10 a.m. Friday, caps several weeks of arm twisting and negotiations between the governor and reluctant Republican lawmakers.
Many lawmakers have been philosophically opposed to the idea of people receiving 99 weeks of unemployment checks, believing it’s a disincentive to seeking a job. But Brewer, who said she shares the same disbelief that people could spend nearly two years on the unemployment rolls, said the recession had forced record unemployment.
Well, that didn’t take long.
A few hours after President Obama’s latest immigration reform speech, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer responded sharply, saying she hoped the Democrat’s trip to El Paso, Texas was not just “about locking down votes in 2012.”
Knowing full well that’s exactly what the long trip and speech were about.
Earlier Tuesday within a cartel shot of the Mexican border, Obama called for comprehensive immigration reform to show impatient Hispanic supporters that he’s trying to deliver on all those past promises of a path to citizenship.
Even though the Democrat has no intention of introducing such legislation and knows full well that if he did, it would never pass this Congress.
Obama claimed the porous border with Mexico has never been safer, thanks to additional agents.
(UPDATE: No wonder the president’s El Paso remarks sounded like a campaign speech. They were. By evening a video of the complete 24-minute speech from MSNBC’s broadcast had been distributed to millions of Obama supporters via email. Along with, of course, the opportunity to donate in U.S. funds.)
