The latest gambit in Governor Brewer’s increasingly strained negotiations with the Legislature is a lawsuit she intends to file today forcing the Legislature to send her the recently passed budget that she will presumably veto in an attempt to start the process over with less than three weeks to go.  

The Governor has backed off on her insistence that the FY’10 budget include a tax increase and is now calling for legislation to put the tax increase on the ballot at some time in the future.  I suppose that’s a logical negotiating position on her part – “I’ll give you a no tax increase budget for FY’10, if you give me the tax increase vote in return.”

One problem.  

How does it pass the Legislature?

In theory, you have two somewhat realistic options to pass it in both chambers.  

First, you convince Republican legislators that this isn’t really a tax increase, just a vote to give voters a choice.  You then hope that the desire to finish this marathon legislative session outweighs the reluctance to vote for the tax increase.  Odds of this happening – probably slim and none.  

Second, you try and convince Democrats to provide a large majority of the votes and then try to pick off and/or buy Republican votes to get yourself a majority.  Odds of this happening – slightly better, but it would fly in the face of strong Democrat opposition to the sales tax and their desire for something with a little more, shall we say, oomph in the tax department.  It also assumes that there are enough Republican yes votes, something that is by no means guaranteed.  

This is probably why the Governor wants the budget bills.  Vetoing them serves her purposes in both scenarios.  In scenario one, she can increase the desperation about passing a budget by vetoing these bills.  If these ones are off the table, she apparently believes she is in a stronger negotiating position as the fiscal year nears an end and Legislators come under increased pressure to strike a deal.  

In the second scenario, she is in better position to buy both Republican and Democrat votes for her tax increase if she can play a big role in the crafting of a new budget.  

Fun stuff.  Aren’t you glad you’re not a Legislator?

This coming Monday, the Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled to take up a proposal by Senator Jonathan Paton to send to the ballot a measure to get rid of Clean Elections.  

I for one, support that measure for the same reasons many do who follow politics in AZ.  I believe that the system is irreparably flawed and serves as a drag on free speech.  I also oppose the idea of using public money for political campaigns.  

But courtesy of Freshman State Senator Steve Pierce there is another reason to get rid of Clean Elections that most of us haven’t thought of.  

From Today’s Capitol Times:

“Clean Elections gives you a lesser quality of people, and I think people should have to raise their own money,” 

Lesser quality of people?

Considering that a significant amount of Senator Pierce’s colleagues have utilized Clean Elections at one point or another in their careers, one can only imagine what Senator Pierce must think about the people he serves with.  

by Gayle Plato
DSW wrote a great post, a pointed starter piece as a catalyst of thought:  he asked of revolution and what IS HAPPENING in our society?  As the right wing extremist gets a face today, and the liberal sanctimony rachets up, I think of the movie Falling Down.  Michael Douglas is a marginalized, conservative soul, donning a brush cut.  He goes wacko and implodes. We watch the spiral down, feeling his small story of a small man. It’s Dostoyevsky’s Notes From The Underground  in the flesh. He’s also a character, not a real person–an amalgamation of cliche and stereotype as all characters are in a good tale.  But what happens when society hands us brazened crazies depicting a cliche, right down to a name that sounds like a fake in a comic strip?  I truly think most movie producers would change  the Holocaust Museum shooter’s description  a bit to sound like less of a stereotype.  But he is a real person as the media tells.

Conspiracy Theory

To conspire is to team up and coordinate before a negative event. From Bilderberg, 9/11 Blamers, Ghosthunters to UFOs, we can find this aspect of angst.  We are geared to look for the message between the lines, to look for shadows in the hall. We were raised to value hidden messages as that’s the core of advertising.  Whether  a lady’s image hidden in an ice cube reflection, or a nano-second flash of programming words, we believe in being manipulated. 

Research and development, engineers of innovation attract Dilbert.  It’s the MBA skim-knowledge, marketing type ‘dude’ that get the girl though isn’t it? Focused on a goal and working toward his objective to beat his rival and get higher quotas by the end of the quarter. Basically, the end justifies the means in marketing.  Lobbyists or non-profiteers; used car salesmen or green energy developers: we are all trained to sell. But what happens when no one is buying it anymore? While you might invoke retooling, the trend in democratic circles is to haze the buyer, and shame the citizen into line.  Obi Wan Kenobi’s got nothing on the liberal marketing gurus.  Make it uncool to do anything unique  or to question the authority of the big head. 

We are seeing martial law on Capitalism and this is a painful sword in the side of the common man. 

Liberals promote agnostics of values.  They think having values are good when putting on show for their kids ( say please honey, or make sure to share your things sweetie), but they do not know for sure if personal values, if having an internal locus of control is healthy.  It take a village to raise a child people! Oh and never miss the opportunity in any crisis either.  Everything is about the group think, opinion polling based numbers to be manipulated.   None of them knows the art of opinion seeking:  to understand a commonality of thought and desire. That requires the ability to question, not just developing any old answer. They do not commit to a decision without a certain percentage of favorables.

Triumph of the Nerds

But the ability to question authority seeds development.  We need to ask why and look for what and how. Nerd thinking led to the technology we embrace, and created the foundation of our capitalist base.  Nerds are ultimately individuals who stand alone, often working overtime in their pjs while revolutionizing the future.  BUt the 21st century nerd gets girls, is a girl, has a family, and makes good money.  The guy who skipped frat parties, took up library tables on friday night, and forgot to eat lunch because he was working, that man changes the way information travels. It’s when nerds start organizing,  meeting other individuals, small businessmen, family people, home schoolers, smart girl politicos, all questioning collectively, and looking with descretionary, scientic methods,  that we get the fear factor of the left.  We become  their prototype conspirators.

Faith-based feeling and thought becomes a pathology in a liberal world.  When faith-supported values, from a collection of individuals, desiring to be left alone and raise their familes in a country of  limited government, that  proves we are not of the cool crowd; we get mocked and belittled.  We deserve swirlies and a beat down after lunch.

But in the last twenty years, the dweebs of individualism, the deeply believing judeo-christians, and the average family guys are finding common ground. Merging and evolving parties of political development mixing intellectual pursuit with faith in a higher power does not compute with the old guard libs.  I submit, the insecure self-appointed cool guy bully types are seeing they are not the majority, but only a loud minority. 

The Left is Behind

Liberal Rapture equals all intellectual property and centralized cliques of community organizing getting taken up to Washington DC.  Think of Janet Napolitano as she was swept up in the Liberal Rapture.  Lots of looking at each other happens as they peer down from on high, judging us, the little people, as they  decide who gets a new hip or cancer treatment.  POTUS’ Czar-o-cratic teams find little flaw with plans on paper and put them into practice. It doesn’t really matter if the social experiment  fails, it’s all about statistical significance anyway, as the fly-over state is irrelevant.

Community Organization

Is the Borg of Libs cracking?  What happens when the Borg is proven to have weaknesses?  Resistance is then NOT futile but cogent and vital.  Shane asked if it’s a revolution, and I say, not exactly: I suspect it’s a freedom-loving resistance.  We become not a Dostoyevsky’s Underground Man ,sniveling alone.  A thoughtful, calm Resistance is an Underground Railroad: a resistance to the evil group-think and control.  We are angry as a group of conservatives, but I think the stages of remorse are evolving into action of principle, non-violence, and faith in the Good.    Do not let the liberal media get you down, selling us on the thought that one extremist, the lone gunman incarnate, is anything but a news cycle hook; marketing by the main stream media chomping at the bit for an excellent 20th century stereotype.  He is the posterboy of the  Leftie Fear Base.  He is the reason Janiene Garafalo, Sean Penn, and George Soros get up in the morning.  This story may never lose it’s cycle on CNN.

The Purpose Driven Life

But Resistence is not Futile as long as it’s Purposeful.  Messages don’t have to be as long as my writing , in fact, we can learn from the left.  Use their playbook and remember how well they market.  I said in a recent post elsewhere, that we need a conservative, republican platform written like a mission statement with an index card of highlights that would fit in a pocket.  We cannot have a platform longer than the Constitution it supports.  We need purpose driven values and soulful sound bites of tight talk:  Limited Government, Pinpoint Spending, Representation before any Taxation, Check and Balances  which are Clear and Level, and finally a Contract of Commitment with regular Performance Reviews.

We’ll Always Have Paris…

Finally, I put forth the true example of how resistence is played out in the culture of film.  Rick and Ilsa meet up in Casablanca.  Rick was left with his heart on his sleeve, hurting and confused as to what happened?  Ilsa could not get away from the reality of the war, her husband a Resistance Leader, and the juxtoposition of wanting to ignore the reality but faced with Good v. Evil.  Casablanca is a wonderful metaphor of today’s conservative angst, in love with the past and not  ready to face the world as it is.

But then, Rick lets Ilsa go, the Resistance was in the good, and he could not deny he must let values triumph.  Even though he was dumped and ignored, he still loved Ilsa and the life of ignorance in that short time in Paris.  People were literally being rounded up as they fell in love.  But Ilsa never followed him, and he hid out in small business, hurting over the past.  He hid in Casablanca.

Rick is the conservative businessman, denying the world around him. But he does have values and if for no other reason than that he mirrors Ilsa’s commitment in her love and in her desire for life.  She has moved on, the world cannot be ignored anymore as they did in Paris.  Rick must face the world as Ilsa already has done. With “As Time Goes By” playing, Rick knows he cannot take Ilsa away from her mission and her good fight; love triumphs as the Resistance matters more than a love of something once had. We too must see the world as it is as this time goes by.

*Casablanca means White House and Ronald Reagan was up for the Humphrey Bogart’s role- facts that add to the layers of the metaphor, here in my pj media mind.