Kudos to the Maricopa County Democratic Party for this kick-ass repository of anti-Joe info.
Today the Maricopa County Democratic Party formally unveiled a brilliant new weapon in the ongoing war against corrupt old Sheriff Joe: A Web site called Joesgottogo.com. The site bills itself as, "The best source of Joe Arpaio facts anywhere on the Internet." And after checking it out, I think they've got the kitchen sink, the kitchen, the lawn furniture, and the patio gas grill in the mix along with everything else you'd need to debunk every myth in the world about Arpaio, or just gather enough evidence to educate the uninformed.
The breadth of information provided matches the breadth of Joe's malfeasance in office -- or the backside of Joe's henchman Chief Deputy David Hendershott, take your pick. There's news, links to media stories, video of Nickel Bag in action, an extensive breakdown of Joe's record, blogs, and my fave, the "B.S. Meter" page, which details and refutes a plethora of Joe prevarications. You know, like the oft-repeated canard, "My approval ratings are 80 percent," when they're actually barely above the 50 percent mark -- a dangerous place to be for any incumbent. Or the whopper that his jails are "humane," when in fact they've been condemned by Amnesty International and have resulted in 2,700 jail condition lawsuits and payouts of over $42 million in settlements and jury verdicts.
The site's Democratic authors have obviously spent a great deal of time and effort compiling all of the info found in the site. And for those obsessed with helping drive Joe from office, there are documents and stories in there that you'd be hard pressed to find on your own. The section on lawsuits has a rolling list of some of the nearly 5,000 that Joe's faced for various issues since taking office. There's a chilling section on civil rights abuses, as well as pages on wasted taxpayer money, unserved warrants (Joe has no warrants detail like other big counties), immigration enforcement, and various investigations of the MCSO.
The section on Joe's budget abuses is especially delicious. Just check out some of the subheads: "Going over budget is common for Joe Arpaio," "Deputies go without while senior staff go to Honduras," and "Changing their story why they broke the budget." Equally entertaining is the chapter on "Questionable Acquaintances," with these right-on-the-money-subheads: "Appears at meetings of known racist groups," "Looking the other way for campaign contributors," and, the timely question "Is the Board of Supervisors subservient to Joe Arpaio?" The answer, of course, is, `Hell, yeah!" Save, perhaps, for Supervisor and Joe-critic Mary Rose Wilcox.
The "Questionable Acquaintances" section also lists a number of actual persons deemed to be unsavory along with their mug shots, or snapshots of them with Joe. Pictured are ex-KIA peddler Rusty "Crusty" Childress, leader of United for a Sovereign America, the most vicious anti-immigrant group in Phoenix, nativist bombshell Michelle Dallacroce of Mothers Against Illegal Aliens, and racetrack owner Jeremy "Jerry" Simms, a contributor to Joe's campaign, who was recently implicated in what appears to be a case of quid pro quo involving an MCSO investigation of the Arizona State Department of Racing.
I should also mention that the video page has some real cherries in there, from Channel 12's work on the MCSO's Honduran scandal and footage of Joe's recent corn vendor round-up, to past interviews where Joe fudges the numbers on the illegal aliens in his custody and a disturbing interview with a convenience store owner in Guadalupe. One of the lady's clerks waited 45 minutes for MCSO deputies to show up during a robbery where the store's panic button was hit twice. By the time they arrived, the gun-toting suspects were long gone. Fortunately, no one was killed.
This is not the first anti-Joe Web site in existence. The granddaddy of them all is Arpaio.com (a.k.a., "Overthrow Arpaio"), the oldest such site that I know of, and, of course, New Times has its own site, "Investigating Sheriff Joe Arpaio." But when it comes to working for the defeat of Nickel Bag, the more the merrier, people. This is not a battle any one entity or person can win on their own.
