Friday, September 30, 2016

More yellow journalism from The Arizona Republic regarding the county treasurer

The Arizona Republic's Laurie Roberts is known for her frequent hit pieces on Republicans. Her latest piece is so lousy it's frankly embarrassing. Entitled "Why is Royce Flora allowed to campaign for treasurer on our dime?" she claims that election laws are violated because the Maricopa County Treasurer's Office - gasp - included a flyer with property tax bills containing a message and photo from the Deputy County Treasurer, Royce Flora, about things like paying your bill online.  Royce is running to replace the current treasurer, Hos Hoskins, and has a Democratic opponent.

Elected officials frequently send out mail like this, it happens every day, it's known as franking and it's perfectly legal. Yet Roberts claims that is illegal campaigning. She is smearing Royce for no reason - he will not be investigated because there was no wrongdoing. If he was a Democrat, she would have never written this column.

MCRC Briefs ran this response from Hos - 
Charles “Hos” Hoskins, Maricopa County Treasurer: Regarding Laurie Roberts: -Why-Royce-Flora-Allowed-Campaign-Treasurer-Our-Dime I am pleased that she included a copy of Mr. Flora’s letter so everyone can see that is void of any “vote-for-me” language. It is informative and states our commitment to service. It is also part of our effort to support Maricopa County’s Strategic Plan that states – “By the end of 2018, the Treasurer’s Office will increase the number of parcels enrolled to receive paperless statements to 10% . . .” View the entire plan at: http://www.maricopa.gov/StrategicPlan/pdf/StrategicPlan2015-2018v0_0_1.pdf The purpose of the tax bill insert was to persuade property owners to pay their taxes online. This allows us to capture email addresses of taxpayers that are computer savvy so we can offer them the option to receive their tax bills electronically instead of by mail. The cost of printing, paper and staff time to mail tax bills is expensive. Our mailing budget this fiscal year is $905,140 which is bordering on the absurd considering that the technology to go paperless has been around for decades. We have not been able to move toward a paperless environment due to our outdated (1988) IT system which we are in the process of replacing. In fiscal year 2016 we received 2,723,528 property tax payments of which 300,880 (11%) were made online. We need to get the number of online payments up to 500,000 to justify the programming costs associated with delivering tax bills electronically. I don’t expect Mr. Royce’s letter to come close to that, but every available opportunity to increase online payments must be pursued. Finally, anyone that thinks that there is some political benefit from associating your name with property tax bills that have increased considerably should see our mail and answer our phone.

I've known Royce for years, and he's one of the most ethical, honest people I've ever met. He would gladly give you the shirt off his back. This is nothing more than a sleazy attempt at character assassination to tip the election to the Democrat. Fortunately, it won't work. It is difficult for a Democrat to get elected to a Maricopa County office since the county is overwhelmingly Republican, plus no one reads the Repugnant anymore. 


Saturday, September 24, 2016

AZ Bar spokesman periodically leaks info about me to media to smear me - years of this abuse now

AZ Bar spokesman Rick DeBruhl
We all know there are slimy people in politics who feed information to the press about their enemies. But to have this done to you for YEARS is pretty appalling. I was targeted by the Bar and the complicit former Maricopa County Supervisors beginning in 2009 and 2010 (the supervisors are all about gone now, but their staffers who targeted me are still there - I'm trying to get a hold of their names - and will not back down on the never-ending litigation I'm embroiled in with them merely to get them to pay for the costs of the Bar trial against me and two others).

The Bar and county supervisors consistently leaked damaging information about me and my superiors, former prosecutors Andrew Thomas and Lisa Aubuchon, because we were attorneys for Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Ray Stern from Phoenix New Times and Yvonne Wingett from The Arizona Republic were all too happy to write smear pieces about us. Wingett once tweeted that I was crying during the Bar trial against me, which incensed my husband because he was sitting in the courtroom much closer to me than her and knew it was a lie. Stern wrote more than once that I was "disbarred," which is flat out libel; I was merely suspended for six months.

Phoenix New Times wrote plenty of libelous articles about me over the years in regards to this, no doubt hand-fed to the reporters by the Bar! Skeptics will ask me, if you were libeled, why didn't you sue? Oh believe me, I've looked into it. The statute of limitations in Arizona is one year. With the hell they put me through merely defending myself in the other legal proceedings, I had no more energy and certainly not the health to learn libel law and file another lawsuit, nor did I have the money to hire an attorney to do it for me; it's not something attorneys will do on a contingency fee.

So guys like Brahm Resnik, Bar spokesman Rick DeBruhl's former buddy at Channel 12, feel they can brazenly say I was disbarred without consequences. I was invited to come on Kelli Ward's (who challenged John McCain in the GOP primary) brand-new radio show last Wednesday, and tweeted about it. I believe DeBruhl trolls me online, and told Resnik to tweet something cynical about it. See our exchange below (he's since deleted the libelous tweet, but not before I took a screenshot).


If you need anymore proof that DeBruhl is funneling stories to reporters about me, check out this article in March by Stern. Stern brazenly admits DeBruhl fed him this story about me supporting the Bar reform bill. "Rick DeBruhl, State Bar spokesman, alerted New Times about the bill after reading our Thursday article about a failed lawsuit filed by Lisa Aubuchon and Rachel Alexander, two former acolytes of disgraced former Maricopa County Andrew Thomas who lost their law licenses." Note the continued libel - I did not "lose" my law license, it was merely suspended. 

Aubuchon faced similar abuse. DeBruhl threatened her daughter on Twitter when she was tweeting about the Bar trial, she had called him out on something he'd tweeted that was a lie. He warned her that if she wanted any career here in media she better stay out of it. She is now a successful producer in NYC and he is....
It's been over six years since I was a Maricopa County deputy county attorney, and four years since I quit practicing law, successfully transitioning into journalism, yet the Bar and its spokesperson will still not leave me alone!
If you're a lawyer reading this, you need to know what your dues are paying for. The Bar spent over $500,000 to come after us, and almost seven years later they will not let up.Why? Because some of the others and I who have been wrongly abused by the Bar are now trying to convert it into a voluntary bar association to stop the corruption. Almost half the bars in other states are voluntary. If the Bar becomes voluntary, fat cats like DeBruhl will lose his hefty salary (probably around $150,000 if you look at what the other execs are making) and maybe even his full-time position. The Arizona Bar has the second highest mandatory dues in the nation, and its excesses have been widely documented by sites like Working for a Better Bar. Destroy my reputation so I can no longer work and afford healthcare - and that's one less activist working to dismantle the Bar.

I will not be silenced; I have successfully transferred into journalism since the corrupt Bar won't end my suspension until I pay $101,500, the cost of the bar trial against not just me but my superiors too. My immediate supervisor, who had a much larger role in everything than I did, turned on all of us to save his hide, so he had all of his disciplinary costs paid for by the county supervisors, was allowed to keep his job and only received probation!

I will continue writing and exposing these abuses until the Bar is cleaned up. For more information, check out the websites below, which I am unaffiliated with.

Working for a Better Bar
Judges Gone Wild
AZ Bar Watch (disclaimer: this site is fairly offensive)

Former Maricopa County GOP Chair Launches #NeverMcCain

Rob Haney

No one has done as much damage to the Republican Party or the Constitution as John McCain.  He continually attacked the Republican Party conservatives and sided with far left Democrats to get his left wing bills passed.   History is the best teacher and indicator.  McCain would do greater damage to a Trump administration than Kirkpatrick could ever dream of.  I believe we would even have more influence over her than McCain.  McCain certainly paid no attention to our wishes during his previous years in office.  Kirkpatrick would have neither the seniority or influence to do the damage that McCain has already caused.  McCain's defeat would create new life in the conservative wing of the Republican party.  It is just about finished now.


You have 4 choices

1. Vote McCain for him to continue his attacks on the country.
2. Do not vote in the Senate contest.  will hurt McCain
3. Vote for anyone you choose to.  They will not win, but it will hurt McCain.
4. Vote for Kirkpatrick which will hurt McCain the most. And she will be in no position to hurt Trump as much as McCain would.




Monday, September 12, 2016

VIDEO: Rachel Alexander on the Depths of Legal Corruption and State Bar Abuses in Arizona

Watch Ernie White Media interview IC editor Rachel Alexander, former prosecutor Lisa Aubuchon, and federal attorney Jeffrey Moffatt on how they were targeted as conservative attorneys by the State Bar of Arizona and others connected to the Bar, including the Bar’s crooked disciplinary judge William O’Neil. This kind of corruption isn’t just happening at the Department of Justice,  but on the local level. Alexander and Aubuchon were both briefly attorneys for Sheriff Arpaio, which is why they were targeted. They join a growing number of attorneys who have had their reputations, career, health and lives destroyed by these crooked, vicious partisans, and so they and Moffatt will not stop speaking out until the corruption is rooted out. Alexander and Aubuchon are now in their seventh year of the never-ending targeting, which Alexander has written about here.

Tuesday, September 6, 2016

Will Michelle Reagan's friendship with Christine Jones affect the outcome of the #AZ05 race?

The Arizona political scene was jolted out of the beginning of its Labor Day weekend on Friday night when the CD 5 race between Andy Biggs and Christine Jones suddenly became too close to call. It went from a Jones-37 vote margin to a Jones-6 vote margin to a Biggs-9 vote margin in the wee hours of Saturday morning.

Biggs won the race when all the ballots were counted (by 9 votes), but the proceedings are by no means over. There will be an automatic recount when the results have been canvassed, and lawsuits sure to follow. Christine Jones spent almost two million dollars to buy this seat on Election Day, and she will not be leaving any money on the table in her attempts to win this seat in court.

Though the Arizona Secretary of State’s office doesn’t have as much of a role to play in this election as the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office, it still has a small part. It is here – at the Secretary of State’s office – where Jones might have a leg up on Andy Biggs. Jones and Secretary Michelle Reagan appear to be close friends and share a strong sense of mutual respect and admiration towards one another (see social media posts below).


Also, Reagan just hired a new employee – Garrett Archer – who has singlehandedly given the Jones’ camp one of it’s arguments to contest the election in court. Archer, a data and analytics guru, could not hide his dismay and disbelief of the quickly-closing vote total between Jones and Biggs throughout Friday night. One other AZSOS employee was also considered as a possible Jones’ campaign staffer just before the former GoDaddy executive jumped into the race this past spring.

Michelle Reagan has had a rough two years as the Arizona Secretary of State. She cannot afford another topsy-turvy election on her hands – much less claims of using her official office to benefit a friend in one of the closest elections in Arizona history. Michelle Reagan must go above and beyond to show the Arizona public that she will remain neutral and impartial towards both sides in this ongoing saga. Failure to do so would be catastrophic to her future political career and to the integrity of the election process.

Reagan’s Friendship with Jones:











Garrett Archer Tweets: