Kathleen Dunbar Sucks Resources Straight Out of the Mouths of Ward III's Hungry Children
I live in Ward III in Tucson, Arizona. There are two women running for City Council who both purport to want to represent me. I hope Karin Uhlich wins the election tomorrow as she would represent me. Kathleen Dunbar has not represented me well (at all) during her tenure on the City Council.
Karin Uhlich is the Democratic Candidate. Karin is experienced in management and economics. While I don't know Karin personally, I have met and talked with her several times. I find her to be sincere in her desire to represent the people of this working class district.
Of course there is also the little (ha!) matter that in Tucson Wards do not choose the people who represent them. The upper middle to upper upper SEC folks in the foothills (and eastside) have just as much say in determining the representative to a working class neighborhood as the folks who actually live in the Ward. In Tucson City Council Members are nominated in each ward, but are elected in citywide elections. This allows for situations such as the one when then Tucson Mayor George Miller noted in a 2001 article "Ward 2 has not been represented by the person it has actually chosen in 22 years." This has also been the case in Ward III for the last few years.
Karin holds press conferences outside the gates of the Tucson Country Club while Kathleen Dunbar and Jim Click, sugar daddy to local and regional Republicans, hob-knob with Karl Rove inside the gates at a totally closed "fundraiser" for local corporate sponsored Republicans.
Maybe that is where she learned last week's stunt in which she she sued everybody and their sister over a campaign mailer that she purports contained defamatory statements that have caused her "severe mental and physical anguish." The case was filed against her Democratic opponent and three retired teachers their husbands, the Pima County Democratic Party and a lawyer for the Amphitheater Public Schools district and his wife. The lawyer's comments that were quoted on the flier were from a May 2004 council meeting.
Dunbar pimped over the Amphi School District. This is very personal for me. I live within the Amphi School District. I believe in public education and have refused to move from this area within which it makes perfect sense for my family to live. But after sticking with my beliefs through my daughter's time at Holaway Elementary and Amphi Jr. High we decided we had to put our daughter in private school for High School so that she could have a real college prep curriculum in an academic atmosphere-- something that just wasn't offered in our local schools. At least the High School is in our neighborhood. Her sinking of a done deal that would have given Amphi hundreds of thousands of dollars hurts me personally.
So while Dunbar is whining about mental and physical anguish, the fact remains that I am suffering similar mental and physical anguish that my most basic right to participation in the selection of who represents me is being stolen by the large "independent" expenditures that financed her (and Fred Ronstadt's) campaign in 2001 to the tune of $125,000. Read about this and more in a PDF that discusses campaign finance reform. I'm damaged when my neighbor's children are damaged.
So there is the matter of corporate and state level party funds being pumped into Ward level races and corporate interest put before basic human needs in neighborhoods.
I get very pissed off when I, a simple resident of a working class neighborhood in Tucson Arizona, can see corruption at the highest levels of government directly tied into the essential theft of my neighbors and my votes. This is not a minor issue. This is about the preservation of the very heart of democracy in the face of an essentially treasonous corporate coupe.
How Kathleen Dunbar the Republican Candidate was ever elected is beyond my understanding. But not beyond my suspicions.
We know that there were profound irregularities in the November 2004 elections. Thanks to the tireless and tenacious work by John Brakey of Tucson we can see how selective local elections had their precinct level records falsified in order to provide a paper trail should the electronic ballot irregularities being called into question. These select precincts could then be "randomly" chosen for inspection/recount should an audit be required. Hog wash, you say? Nope. Glaringly irregular puzzle pieces that hint at widespread election problems were also found in
Scottsdale. And Arizona's Secretary of State Jan Brewer has not fulfilled her duty to address how such glaring holes will be remedied and electronic voting machines decertified when such problems arise. Indeed she has been brought to court over her failure to address this issue.
More on Dunbar's record, statements and outrageous behavior:
From an article on October 26, 2000 in the Arizona Daily Star.
"(Dunbar) has not been consistently moderate, pointing to her support of a bill requiring schools to teach alternatives to evolution. Dunbar said she signed on as a favor to a colleague, then when it bogged down in fighting over creationism, she realized how divisive it had become and worked in caucus to kill it."
The Star publishes excerpts from Weblogs and the one quoted below shows that campaign finance reform is relevant to every level of government.
"I got a mail piece from City Council candidates Kathleen Dunbar and Fred Ronstadt recently. These candidates have both opted out of Tucson's publicly financed campaign system. They both feel public financing is a waste of public money and think private interests should be relied on to fund the election of our public officials. I haven't got any problem with a person following their conscience in such matters, but they should be consistent, right?
On the flip side of the Dunbar/Ronstadt mailer is the mug and the endorsement of none other than Arizona's Sen. John McCain. McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform law shepherd John McCain. Supporter and defender of Arizona's clean elections law John McCain. I suppose the moral of this story is that party loyalty is stronger for GOP pols than is principled adherence to basic political convictions about the nature of the public's interest."
Outside and special interests are the ones supporting the disturbing and steady undermining of programs of benefit to her constituents in favor of the big money corporations with ties to the Greater Tucson area and not to Ward III.She didn't take the clean elections money. How could she? She doesn't believe in clean and fair elections. She's got all that corporate money behind her and there is no way she'd give that up for a clean and fair election.
Claims responsibility for neighborhood improvement that was put in place by democratic predecessors. Dunbar helped kill the very programs that allowed for these neighborhood improvements.
We must stop the rise of Dunbar and people like her (Ronstadt) through the graft-controlled political ranks. These are the people who end up in Washington, supposedly representing us, who all the while have become indebted to corporate benefactors and perpetuate and strengthen the culture of corruption now being exposed in Libby's indictment and the treasonous obstruction of justice he engaged in to protect the Halliburton controlled Vice Presidency.
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