The key words here are “may be.” Here is the story on News 15 (ABC Affiliate)
Mary Rose Wilcox May Be Under FBI Investigation
June 18, 2009 By 10 Comments
How NOT to use your Facebook
June 18, 2009 By 9 Comments
When your own “wall” on Facebook isn’t filled with enough good stuff, you can wander over to your friends’ walls and see what is going on in their world. One of my friends is apparently good friends with a number of the Deakin family. Jim Deakin is running against John McCain for U.S. Senate, and Adonia Deakin is his wife. Well, it seems they have been traveling the state, probably to collect signatures and campaign in general, which led to this post from Adonia Deakin:
We Are Back!!! Wonderful sucessful trip to Navajo County. Wanna talk about some great vocal Americans. All the PC’S here in Maricopa should visit and see how to not be SHEEP!
Now I figure that with the bulk of the state’s population, Maricopa County also is likely to have the bulk of the Precinct Committeemen (PCs). All of a sudden, I think Deakin might win Navajo County, but he appears willing to trade Maricopa County for it. I’m guessing McCain would be alright with that.
Janet Contreras: The Letter
June 18, 2009 By 91 Comments
By now, many of you have heard about the letter that went viral that was written by fellow Arizonan, Janet Contreras. Yesterday, Glenn Beck read her letter on the air. The public response to her letter ultimately crashed the servers at Glenn’s site. In order to help Janet’s letter get national exposure we are posting it here. Incidentally, Janet was interviewed this afternoon by Glenn from the Phoenix Fox 10 studios.
An Open Letter to Our Nation’s Leadership
I am Janet Contreras, a concerned, home-grown American citizen. I am 53, and I have been a registered Democrat all of my adult life. Before the last Presidential election, I registered Republican because I no longer feel the Democratic Party represents my views or works to pursue issues important to me. I now no longer feel the Republican Party represents my views or works to pursue issues important to me. The fact is I no longer feel any political party or representative in Washington represents my views or works to pursue issues important to me.
There must be someone, please tell me who you are. Please stand up and tell me you are there and are willing to fight for our Constitution as it was written. Please do it now.
You might ask yourselves what my views and issues are that I would feel so horribly disenfranchised by both major political parties. What kind of nut job am I? Will you please tell me? These are briefly my views and issues for which I seek representation:
* Illegal Immigration-I want you to stop coddling illegal immigrants and secure our borders. Close the underground tunnels. Stop the violence and trafficking in drugs and people. No amnesty, not again. Been there, done that, no resolution. P.S. I am not a racist. This not to be confused with legal immigration.
* TARP Bill-I want it repealed and no further funding supplied to it. We told you “NO!” but you did it anyway. I want the remaining unfunded 95% repealed. Freeze! Repeal!
* Czars-I want the circumvention of our checks and balances stopped immediately. Fire the Czars. No more Czars. Government officials answer to the process not the President. Stop trampling on our Constitution and honor it.
* Cap & Trade-the debate on global warming is NOT over, there IS more to say.
* Universal Health Care-I will not be rushed into another expensive decision. Don’t you dare pass this in the middle of the night and then go on break. Slow down!
* Growing Government Control-I want states rights and sovereignty fully restored. I want less government in my life, not more. Shrink it down. Please mind your own business; you have enough to do with your REAL obligations. Let’s start there.
* ACORN-I do not want ACORN or its affiliates in charge of our 2010 census. I want them investigated. I also do not want mandatory escrow fees contributed to them on every real estate deal that closes. Stop all funding to ACORN and its affiliates pending impartial audit and investigation. I do not trust them with the taking of the census or with taxpayer money. Face up to the allegations against them and get it resolved before the taxpayers get any further involved with them. It walks like a duck and talks like a duck-hello… stop protecting political buddies. You work for the people. Investigate.
* Redistribution of Wealth-No. If I work for it, it is mine. I have always worked for people with more money than I have because they gave me jobs. That is the only redistribution of wealth I support. I never got a job from a poor person. Why do want me to hate my employers? What do your have against shareholders making a profit?
* Charitable Contributions-although I never got a job from a poor person, I have helped many in need. Charity belongs in our local communities where we know our needs best and can use local talent and resources. Butt out, please. We want to do this ourselves.
* Corporate Bail Outs-knock it off! Sink or swim like the rest of us. If there are hard times ahead, we will be better off just getting to it and letting the strong survive. Quick and painful, like ripping off a band aid. We will pull together. Great things happen in America under great hardship. Give us a chance to innovate. We cannot disappoint you more than you have disappointed us.
* Transparency and Accountability-how about it? No really, let’s have it. Let’s say we give the “buzz” words a rest and have some straight, honest talk. Please stop trying to manipulate and appease me with cleaver wording. I am not the idiot you obviously take me for. Stop sneaking around meeting in back rooms making deals with your friends. It will only be a prelude to your criminal investigation. Stop hiding things from me.
* Unprecedented Quick Spending-stop it, now. Take a breath. Listen to “The People.”
Let’s just slow down and get some more input from some “non-politicians” on the subject. Stop making everything an emergency. Stop speed reading our bills into law.
I am not an activist. I am not a community organizer. Nor am I a terrorist, a militant nor a violent person. I am a mother and grandmother. I am a working woman. I am busy, busy, busy and tired, tired, tired. I thought we elected competent people to take care of the business of government so that we could work, raise our families, pay our bills, have a little recreation, complain about taxes, endure our hardships, pursue our personal goals, cut our lawns and wash our cars on weekends, and be responsible, contributing members of society and teach our children to be the same, all the while living in the home of the free and land of the brave.
I entrusted you with upholding our Constitution and believed in the checks and balances to keep you from getting too far off course. What happened? You are very far off course. Do you really think that I find humor in hiring a speed reader to unintelligibly ramble through a bill you signed into law without knowing what it contained? I do not! It is a mockery of the responsibility I have entrusted to you. It is a slap in the face! I am not laughing-the arrogance!
Why is it that I feel as if you would not trust me to make a single decision about my own life and how I would live it, but you expect that I should trust you with the debt that you have laid on all of us and our children? We did not want that TARP bill. We said “NO!” We would repeal it if we could. I am not sure that we still cannot. There is such urgency and recklessness in all the recent spending. From my perspective, it seems that you have all gone insane.
I also know that I am far from alone in these feelings. Do you honestly feel that your current pursuits have merit to patriotic Americans? We want it to stop. We want to put the brakes on everything that is being rushed by us and forced upon us. We want our voice back!
You have forced us to put our lives on hold to straighten out the mess you are making. We will have to give up our vacations, our time spent with our children, any relaxation time we may have had and money we cannot afford to spend on you to bring our concerns to Washington.
- Janet Contreras
June 17, 2009
Arizona – AFP Holds Taxpayer Advocate Press Conference
June 18, 2009 By 8 Comments
In case you missed the press conference at the State Capitol yesterday, here is one clip featuring State Director, Tom Jenney, leading the charge alongside other taxpayer advocacy groups and state legislators. Unfortunately, you won’t see this on any of the local television newscasts but KFYI-550 covered the event. Veteran capitol beat reporter, Howie Fischer, (fraternal “twin” of our own conservative writer, “Chewie Shofir”) showed up to shoot a few photos but didn’t stick around to cover the event. You may also view more coverage of the press conference at our YouTube webpage.
Stop the Special District Shell Game
June 18, 2009 By 2 Comments
by Nick Dranias
Goldwater Institute
In 2005, Maricopa County spun-off its hospital system to a newly-created special health care district. With the stroke of an accountant’s pen, the county shifted what was then $400 million in annual spending off its books and onto those of the new special district. Maricopa County quickly took advantage of that new-found money with hundreds of millions in fresh spending. Meanwhile, the County’s newborn special district toddled along, levying more than $40 million in new property taxes and spending more than $400 million in its first fiscal year.
Since then, Maricopa County and this district have saddled county taxpayers with more than $150 million in new spending and taxes that would have otherwise been blocked by the state constitution’s spending and property tax caps. It is doubtful that voters had any idea this would result when they approved the creation of the “Maricopa County Special Health Care District”.
Special districts are the municipal equivalent of Enron partnerships. They have benign sounding names like “health care district,” “water district,” and “stadium district,” all of which disarm voters when they appear on the ballot. But once formed, numerous special districts can overlap, making them exceedingly difficult for ordinary citizens to track, much less to hold politically accountable. Special districts operate below the political radar, while wielding broad taxing and spending authority.
It is no accident that the number of special districts in Arizona has tripled from around 100 in 1980 to more than 300 today. When tax and spending caps were imposed in the early 1980s, those caps excluded most special districts. As a result, cities and counties remained free to avoid hard budgetary choices by spinning-off expensive programs into special districts.
Fiscal responsibility will return to local government only when this shell game is stopped. The best solution is to eliminate the incentive to indulge unsustainable spending through the device of special districts. This requires closing the special district loophole in the state constitution’s spending and taxing caps.
Nick Dranias holds the Goldwater Institute Clarence J. and Katherine P. Duncan chair for constitutional government and is the director of the Institute’s Dorothy D. and Joseph A. Moller Center for Constitutional Government.
