You are here: Home / 2010 / March / Archives for 4th

Most Arizonans on Welfare Failing to Find Work

March 4, 2010 By 7 Comments

Goldwater Institute
News Release

PHOENIX–Most Arizona families that receive welfare assistance have no one in the home working or training for a full-time job despite a federal mandate to do so, according to a new report from the Goldwater Institute.

In 1996, Congress passed a series of reforms commonly known as welfare-to-work, which reduced the number of people nationwide receiving direct welfare benefits from 4.4 million to 1.7 million by 2007. Welfare-to-work required states to motivate people on welfare to find at least part-time work or to enter job training to prepare for a new career.

Initially, Arizona had success with welfare-to-work. But once the state reduced its welfare enrollment by half, the federal government no longer held Arizona accountable for additional progress. In 2007, 9,662 Arizona families receiving welfare had at least one adult in the house who could work, but didn’t put in a single hour during the week. That made up 60 percent of all work-eligible welfare families.

In Making Welfare Work: Reforming Arizona’s Welfare System to Help Families and Save Money, Katherine K. Bradley, a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation, explains that other states continue to encourage welfare recipients to find work or job training with additional restrictions that go beyond the federal rules. “Arizona should consider reforms that would move more families into jobs and reduce the current welfare caseload in order to improve citizens’ independence and save millions of taxpayer dollars,” Ms. Bradley says.

Ms. Bradley suggests several steps that Arizona could take to move more people off of welfare, including:

· Set higher targets for getting welfare recipients into jobs or training. Hold staff at Department of Economic Security accountable for reaching those benchmarks.
· Require able-bodied recipients to immediately begin a four-week job search program. Recipients should report daily to a training site and log at least 30 hours a week of job search and training activity.
· Deny an entire welfare check the first time someone fails to report for work or job training.
· Require all parents of children receiving welfare payments to work. Illegal immigrants aren’t eligible for TANF checks, but their U.S.-born children are. U.S. citizens and immigrants alike should be required to work to support their children.
· Rely on private employers and community groups to manage work training and job placement.

Such requirements allowed Georgia to increase its work participation rate from 11 percent to 65 percent in three years, and Texas reduced its welfare enrollment by nearly half between 2003 and 2006.

Read Making Welfare Work: Reforming Arizona’s Welfare System to Help Families and Save Money online or call (602) 462-5000 to have a copy mailed to you.

The Goldwater Institute is an independent government watchdog supported by people who are committed to expanding free enterprise and liberty.

Filed Under: Charity, Economics, Press Release, Spending, State Government, Welfare

Al Gore goes Girly-Man to save his frauduant climate scheme

March 4, 2010 By 4 Comments

This was too much fun to pass up!  Thank you Kyle-Anne Shiver!! Who wrote this delightful piece…

http://bigjournalism.com/kashiver/2010/02/28/former-veep-goes-girly-man-has-hissy-fit-in-pages-of-new-york-times/

This piece of pure, dribbling, drooling emoting is going to either make you collapse in a torrent of tears or retch into the nearest barf bag.  The only human beings on the planet to whom this editorial would appeal are a bunch of 13-year-old girls without a single clue between them.

With hundreds of millions of dollars on the line, Al is going all out to save his massive investment in the Global Warming hysteria.  Here, he comes up with histrionics befitting the amount of personal loss he stands to suffer.

Ok, so this isn’t totally about Arizona … or is it?

How about the AzCC’s Residential Energy Standards?  Or the AzCC’s stepping out from their legal role as rate-payer watchdog and into making energy policy for Arizona that is; A) out of its pay-grade by the Arizona Constitution, and B) totally based on a outright fraud.

The RES and subsequent foray into “Green Energy” at all costs, without a thought to the real cost per Kwh for fantasy sources of reliable energy is a dangerous road for Arizona’s economic future.

Cost per on demand 24/7 available Kwh of “green electric generation” cannot compare with *clean coal* and *clean nuclear* power period.  Windmills and acres of solar panels dotting the landscape with miles of transmission towers and lines crisscrossing the environment altering the patterns of migratory birds and thunderstorms might be a Quixotic vision of an environmentalists utopia, but unfortunately reality bites.  The sun doesn’t shine 24 hours a day, so you need environmentally unfriendly Lithium batteries to store the energy for later use.  The wind doesn’t blow 24 hours a day in exactly the right velocity and direction to provide on demand electricity for job producing industrial small businesses in a cost effective way.

Time to debunk the Green Dream.   We’ve even heard that schools in Arizona are spending unrestricted amounts of money to “green” up their classrooms.  Shouldn’t that be money better spent with the teachers and kids on real learning?

Anyway, until someone politically stands up and says “Look Mommy!  The Emperor is wearing NO clothes!!”  we will continue down the path to an “Olive Drab Green” future rather than the pretty green that Al Gore would have us believe in.

Filed Under: Conspiracy Theories, Energy, Environment, Liberals, Political Correctness, Predictions

M.I.A. Giffords Calls For Constitutional Amendment To Balance The Budget

March 4, 2010 By 4 Comments

The invisible Gabby Giffords, who perpetually proclaims herself a “fiscal-conservative-blue-dog-democrat-who’s-always-looking-out-for-the-residents-of-Arizona”, just announced yet another bill to balance the federal budget.

Snort of the day: Not wanting to put too much pressure on herself and her fellow congressmen, the bill would not take effect until 2020.

WASHINGTON – “Arizona families and businesses struggle every day to make sure their expenses don’t exceed their earnings,” said Giffords. “Balancing a budget is not a complicated concept. Yet over the last decade it has proven difficult for the federal government to grasp. This amendment is intended to change that.”

Giffords is one of 33 original co-sponsors of legislation introduced today that would make a balanced federal budget a requirement of the U.S. Constitution. Arizona and 48 other states have a similar requirement in their state constitutions.

The amendment would:

• Require Congress to produce a balanced budget every fiscal year beginning in 2020.

• Require the president to submit a balanced budget in his or her annual transmission to Congress.

• Prohibit outlays for a fiscal year from exceeding total receipts for that fiscal year unless Congress, by a three-fifths roll call vote of each house, authorizes a specific excess of outlays over receipts (in cases of emergencies).

Read the whole thing here.

And don’t forget that Gabby is also a big supporter of PAYGO. Again from her website:

Giffords, who last week was named the most centrist member of Arizona’s congressional delegation by the respected National Journal, has been a strong supporter of pay-as-you-go legislation. Known as PAYGO, the legislation requires future spending increases or tax cuts to be paid for with either cuts to other programs or new streams of revenue.

And that’s working out really well too.

Filed Under: Campaigns & Elections, Federal Budget, Legislation, Press Release

Phoenix city budget still doesn’t reflect changing times

March 4, 2010 By 4 Comments

by Byron Schlomach, Ph.D.
Goldwater Institute
 
Adapt and overcome. This is part of a Marine Corps mantra born of a resource scarcity the service suffered when its equipment consisted mostly of hand-me-downs from the Army. This is exactly the kind of can-do spirit that we need from government officials today.

The Arizona economy has lost more than 300,000 jobs. Tax revenues have plummeted at every level. We cannot afford to continue funding government at its former levels. Unfortunately, officials with the City of Phoenix have demonstrated an unwillingness to adapt to changing circumstances.

Phoenix says it has eliminated 500 positions, but that’s only about 3 percent of the city’s 14,000 employees. Due to attrition, the actual number of layoffs will be less than 50, or around three-tenths of 1 percent. The City Council did eliminate an administrative assistant position that paid $95,000 a year. That’s a start, but it begs the question of how many other high-dollar assistant positions have been preserved. And, it lends credence to the assertion that the average cost of a city employee is $100,000.

Residents of Phoenix were told that the city needed to impose a 2-cent food tax to protect police and fire services from budget reductions. But on a recent episode of Sunday Square Off, Mayor Phil Gordon said he was shifting police officers to other city departments whose budgets were partially funded through federal or state tax money.

So, really, the City Council has made it more expensive for people to put food on the table so that they can protect the city’s $1 million budget for “arts and culture” and the $1 million budget for “government relations,” i.e. lobbyists.

When Mayor Gordon delivers the “State of City” address next Tuesday, he will talk about all the changes going on at City Hall, all the hard choices he’s made. But the truth is, the new tax on groceries and the refusal to realign government to focus on core functions show nothing has changed and the state of the city is disappointing.

Dr. Byron Schlomach is an economist and the director of the Center for Economic Prosperity at the Goldwater Institute.

Filed Under: City Government, Spending, Taxation

National Border Patrol Council Endorses JD Hayworth

March 4, 2010 By 16 Comments

For Immediate Release: Thursday, March 4, 2010

Conservative Challenger JD Hayworth Gains Valuable Endorsement From National Border Patrol Council

PHOENIX, Ariz. March 4, 2010. JD Hayworth has gained a valuable endorsement from a group of nearly 3,000 U.S. Border Patrol agents as he campaigns against 24-year incumbent Senator John McCain.

“We need strong leadership in the Senate, and we believe [J.D. Hayworth] is the right person for the job,“ Edward Tuffy II, President of the local council said in a statement. “[Hayworth’s] unwavering support for Border Patrol agents on the front line is appreciated. As Border Patrol agents, we are only effective if the rule-makers allow us to do our jobs.”

“I am very humbled by the endorsement from the Local 2544 Border Patrol Council,” said conservative candidate J.D. Hayworth. “These men and women are out there day in, day out not only facing one of America’s toughest issues in the face but also defending our country on the front line. The American spirit that these people hold is what I thrive to represent while in office.”

Vulnerable to the more conservative Hayworth on taxes, pro-life issues and illegal immigration, McCain has resorted to attacking Hayworth on spending, despite Hayworth having a better lifetime rating from Citizens Against Government Waste, among other organizations.

McCain also voted for the $850 billion bailout of the big banks which included $150 billion in earmarks, proposed a $300 billion bailout for mortgage lenders and, according to the Heritage Foundation, sponsored an amnesty bill that would have cost taxpayers $2.6 trillion over the long-term.

Hayworth has a lifetime rating of 98 from the American Conservative Union. He has also been endorsed by Gun Owners of America, Phoenix Law Enforcement Association, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, conservative 2006 GOP gubernatorial nominee Len Munsil and many others.

For more information about J.D. Hayworth or to donate to the campaign, please go to www.JDforSenate.com.

Filed Under: Border, Campaigns & Elections, Endorsements, National Security, Press Release