Arizona Politics for Conservatives: Sonoran Alliance
Arizona Politics, News, Commentary and Information with a Blatantly Conservative Worldview Presented by an Alliance of Writers, Activists, Consultants and Government Insiders.
With the Tucson City council elections just days away, Karin Uhlich is showing her true feeling towards her constituents. Rather than standing on the issues and her own voting record, she has now laid the smack-down by calling those who oppose her, “Tea baggers”. Not unexpected from the state-run media, but somewhat shocking from my local “enlightened” council-gal.
Right from her website:
Click to Enlarge
Reprinted from
COMMON SENSE
“In the following sheets, the author hath studiously avoided every thing which is personal among ourselves. Compliments as well as censure to individuals make no part thereof. The wise and the worthy need not the triumph of a pamphlet; and those whose sentiments are injudicious or unfriendly, will cease of themselves, unless too much pains is bestowed upon their conversion.”
October 28, 2009
David Smith’s Private Twilight Zone – It is not what you think it is
There is a place in another dimension, where a confluence of seemingly unrelated elements is found, joined by the glue of pure circumstance. That we have discovered them at all might be attributed to serendipity, though some could argue, given David Smith’s obtuse actions, our discovery was all but inevitable. The elements are basic, human behavior, the wisdom of our Founding Fathers and clueless, blundering.
Maricopa County (Arizona) County Manager David Smith is our anti-hero. Freshly emerged from a series of inept moves, one would think Mr. Smith should have learned to think seriously about the nature of cause and effect. One would think, but given his history, we know better.
The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, at whose pleasure Mr. Smith serves, has been involved in a long running battle against the office of the County Attorney, Andrew Thomas. Several of the board members are under criminal investigation by the County Attorney. With misguided wisdom, the Board of Supervisors has sought to undermine those investigations using a series of gimmicks including withholding much needed funds from the office of the County Attorney. That these actions have drawn considerable attention from a disapproving public is not astonishing. The local blogs has been aflame with incriminations, finger pointing and fact corrections offered by cognoscenti, as well as lesser lights.
The Board of Supervisors has not been pleased, to say the least. He, or she, caught with a hand in the cookie jar is never happy, and repeatedly, bloggers have found Board member hands in the jar, or at least have been able to report crumb-coated fingers, guilty grins and missing cookies. One would think the Board, and its appointed manager, would take the hint and strike a lower profile. One would think, but then again, logic does not seem to be a guiding principle of these people. Attempted retribution is what they pulled out of their bag of tricks yesterday, with dismal results.
David Smith is demanding that several employees of the County Attorney’s office disclose details of their communications with various media, including their private communication sent from their personal computers during non-work hours. It is here that we find the confluence of their foolishness, the First Amendment and human behavior.
Our Founding Fathers, primarily at the insistence of Thomas Jefferson, endowed upon us a legacy of freedom, based in part on these immortal words: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press… David Smith appears to be nibbling at the edges of the First Amendment, never an advisable thing to do, and in the process, has triggered the third element of our extraordinary confluence – human behavior, specifically the manifestation of aggression that comes from frustration. Psychologists tell us that more arguments result from interruption of speech than any other source. David Smith tells us to shut up; we feel frustrated and lash out ever more aggressively in our blogs.
This begs the question: why does the Board of Supervisors tolerate such behavior from their chief employee, and has the time come for him to step down? Furthermore, if they are in complicity, shouldn’t they all seek new jobs? We believe that this would be C O M M O N S E N S E.
Who the author of this Production is, is wholly unnecessary to the Public, as the Object for Attention is the Doctrine itself, not the Man. Yet it may not be unnecessary to say, That he is unconnected with any Party, and under no sort of Influence public or private, but the influence of reason and principle.
- Philadelphia, February 14, 1776
Take a moment, and restore your faith … 2010 will be here sooner than you think! From Congress to the Maricopa Board of Supervisors, a new day is dawning come November 2010 and it begins with you!
by Clint Bolick and Sandy Bahr
Many aspects of environmental and energy policy divide the authors of this column. But we join together to urge the Arizona Corporation Commission not to squelch an innovative approach to solar energy that benefits private and public entities alike.
At issue are solar-service agreements, in which solar companies install and maintain solar panels on schools and other tax-exempt organizations for free. The schools receive power for a low monthly fee over an extended period of time. The solar companies collect renewable-energy tax credits for which tax-exempt entities are not eligible.
Such solar-service agreements are a reality with unlimited potential in Arizona–but only if the commission decides in the coming days not to treat the solar companies as public utilities and subject them to costly and burdensome regulation. The likely effect would be to send the firms packing to other states that do not regulate them like utilities.
Solar companies are not utilities. They are not producing energy; rather, they are facilitators that enable private entities to generate their own energy. They assist entities that could not afford to construct solar facilities and that are unable to access the tax credits that otherwise could make such facilities economically feasible.
Schools across the state, which are copious consumers of energy, are anxious to reap the benefits of solar service agreements. The escalating and constantly gyrating costs of energy can play havoc with a school district’s budget.
The commission’s decision comes down to either expanding its power or accomplishing its renewable energy mission. In this instance, it can best achieve its mission by recognizing that these solar firms should not be treated as utilities.
Clint Bolick is director of the Goldwater Institute Scharf-Norton Center for Constitutional Litigation. Sandy Bahr is chapter director for the Sierra Club’s Grand Canyon Chapter. A longer version of this email ran in the Arizona Republic.
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/134080
Take these two items together and consider how the individual in the White House views Israel. This is being posted so folks who wish to can consider how events like these may impact them. The White House is stalling on Afghanistan and the dollar is still in ICU. And, why on 9/11 there was no mention in the U.S. media of the words “Muslim”, “radical”, or “Islamic.”
Taxpayers in the City of Tucson, courtesy of Proposition 200, are being asked to amend the city charter to strip the current and future city councils of their authority to establish budgets for the police and fire departments. The Arizona Tax Research Association (ATRA) strongly urges Tucson taxpayers to reject this effort at ballot-box-budgeting.
From local school districts to the state of Arizona, clearly the most important duty of our elected representatives is to establish an annual budget. Once adopted, those budgets reflect months of planning where elected officials are challenged with managing changing spending priorities against the budget decisions of previous elected officials.
The State of Arizona has become the poster child for the negative policy implications of ballot-box-budgeting. For the last two decades, a steady stream of special interest groups used the initiative process to either permanently earmark funds to their causes or establish guaranteed funding levels outside of legislative oversight and control. Collectively these initiatives have undermined the state’s budgeting process by handcuffing state lawmakers ability to react to changes in the economy or spending priorities. Today, the state of Arizona faces a $3 billion budget deficit. It would be an understatement to say that the challenge of closing the deficit is complicated by the fact that some major budgets units are “voter protected” and cannot be reduced.
The inherent flaw with ballot-box-budgeting is that citizens vote to mandate a spending obligation without understanding the long term budget impacts of the proposals and clearly the proponents prefer it that way. Side-stepping the cities budgeting process allows the proponents of Proposition 200 to have an isolated budget debate regarding police and fire protection without the unpleasantness of a tax increase to fund it. Make no mistake; in the end, this process always poorly serves taxpayers who are left questioning why citizens were not properly informed that these services are not free.
In fact, in order to force a more informed debate regarding the true costs of mandated spending initiatives, Arizona voters amended the state’s constitution in 2004 to require that such initiatives “also provide for an increased source of revenues sufficient to cover the entire immediate and future costs of the proposal.”
By any measure, Proposition 200 will force increased spending that will either drive future tax increases or impact other city services. With the current economic crisis facing Arizona serving as a painful reminder, Tucson taxpayers can be assured that, if approved, Proposition 200 will certainly force a tax increase at some future date.
Kevin McCarthy, President
Arizona Tax Research Association (ATRA)
ATRA is a sixty-nine year old statewide, non-profit, non-partisan taxpayer association
In a recent report, the president’s oversight board released data specifically showing more than 30,000 jobs created or saved nationwide, including more than 650 in Arizona. Recipients in Arizona said they had received $29.6 million of $139 million in contract awards so far.
Again, for you folks educated in the public school systems, I’m going to my old-school calculator to help you out.
$29.6 million divided by 650 jobs equals $45,538.46 per job! And this is being reported as good news. Uh-huh.
One last question, How do prove that you saved a job?
via azstarnet.
