Robert Robb calls Arizona’s budget situation “Surreal”

Arizona Republic columnist Robert Robb has written an excellent analysis of the state’s budget debacle and Gov. Jan Brewer’s attempted tax hike “fix.”

Robb’s column is a must read for those who have grave doubts regarding her handling of the mess.

He writes: If Brewer gets her sales tax referral and voters approve it, that would only provide an additional $450 million or so for 2010. Brewer proposed to partially bring back the state property tax and Democrats want to bring it back entirely. That’s just another $250 million.

So, even with the additional revenues Brewer and others insist have to be part of the solution, there’s still a 2010 deficit of around $1.9 billion to be tackled.

Looking forward, remember that the federal funds are temporary. So, even if Brewer’s sales tax increase is passed and a year’s worth of proceeds collected, and the state property tax comes back in its entirety, the state has an ongoing structural deficit – the gap between the state’s same-year expenses and revenues – of $2.5 billion.

Unless Brewer plans to advocate a tax increase three times as large as she has so far, she needs to quit demonizing spending cuts.

Do yourself a favor and read, Surreal state budget.

Resuscitating “Comprehensive Immigration Reform” to the detriment of American workers

Illegal immigration is once again front and center in today’s Arizona Republic‘s editorial. Nothing surprising there.

But before getting to the meat of this unpalatably re-heated meal, readers are served the appetizer litany of deaths of “migrants” succumbing to desert heat, kidnappings and drop-houses along with the gnawable bone for the ecology minded: “devastation to the borderland ecosystem.”  These are today’s initial reasons put forth as key to the pressing need for ‘immigration reform.”

The real story in Linda Valdez’s editorial titled Arizonans Can Help Obama, is the role of  the hometown crowd.

The editorial enthuses that Sens. John McCain and Jon Kyl will join forces with Democrats Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and former Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano turned Homeland Security Chief, to “lead a bipartisan group assigned to advance reform.” 

According to Valdez, McCain’s immigration credentials are “beyond reproach, since he recognizes that reform is necessary to facilitate an orderly future flow of migrant labor that is adequate to meet the need.”

Valdez’s assertion stands in direct contradiction to an above-the-fold, front page article in same issue of the newspaper detailing the growing number of churches and synagogues across the Valley forming support groups to assist with networking, career coaching and attempts to restore hope to desperate unemployed citizens. How does importing foreign competition, willing to work for lower wages, aid frantic American citizens who are jobless and losing their homes to foreclosure at record rates?

FOX News reports that liberal Democrat Chuck Schumer, steering an immigration overhaul through the Senate expects to have a bill ready by Labor Day. This time Arizona Republicans Kyl and McCain are deviously letting the Democrat take the flak for a bill on which they have previously been the architects and leading cheerleaders — along with their now ailing liberal cohort, Ted Kennedy. They are keenly aware their own Republican party has had its fill of their duplicity on this crucial issue.

According to U.S. Department of Labor statistics, Arizona’s unemployment rate has risen from 6.6 percent in December to 8.2 percent in May. And home foreclosures  in Arizona rose to 16,865 properties with foreclosure filings in May, a 4 percent increase from the previous month and 31 percent ahead of May 2008.

And we need to import workers, Linda?

Strong enough to sit up and take nourishment

Columnist Robert Robb analyzes the Arizona tax structure and deems it healthy in spite of the economic downturn.

He concludes his piece with this thought: This is not to say that there aren’t improvements that can be made to Arizona’s tax structure. Arizona’s corporate-income-tax rate is too high, as is our business-property tax. Arthur Laffer’s proposal to replace both the corporate income tax and the state sales tax with a value-added tax merits consideration.

We encourage you to read his thought-provoking Viewpoints column Maligned tax setup is doing its job.

Anti-Americanism passing as education in Tucson

Republic columnist Doug MacEachern has written a must-read column titled Defenses of “ethnic studies are feeble.” He discussed the taxpayer funded LaRaza programs being taught in the Tucson Unified School District’s public schools.

His piece includes several excellent links, and this stunning quote from Augustine Romero, the director of the program, which MacEachern describes as happily expressed to him last year: “Our teachers are left-leaning. They are progressives. They’re going to have things that conservatives are not going to like.”

I have written a fair bit about TUSD’s innocent, little set of survey courses in world history and governments. I’ve written about the instructors’ obsession with the United States as a land of racism and oppression, writes MacEachern.

 MacEachern continues: I’ve written about Romero’s annual summer symposiums that constitute a freak show of radical education theorists. And about their unhinged obsession with Marxism. Really, you simply must see the Web site of the featured speaker at last year’s symposium: www.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/ pages/mclaren/.

State Superintendent of Public Instruction, Tom Horne,  is correct in sponsoring legislation to ban such programs in Arizona’s public schools.

Seeing Red AZ has previously written about this travesty in Tucson where the Marxist agenda is alive and well.

Human Events carried this exposé of La Raza by former Georgia U. S. Rep. Charlie Norwood who wrote about “the dark side of our current illegal immigration crisis.”

Just when we think we’ve seen the worst of Linda Valdez….

….comes clean with desire that  GOP hold “permanent minority status”

Beginning her absurd column “Mexicans today are the Irish of yesterday,” by telling us more than we want to imagine about her unusual romantic life and subsequent marriage to a Mexican immigrant, Valdez pounds her pro-illegal immigration drum more ferociously than ever.

Ina an argument that doesn’t fly, she likens illegal Mexicans who are flooding into the United States in violation of our law and national sovereignty, to the Irish who came through Ellis Island to be lawfully processed after arriving via an ocean voyage. 

Then she dives into a tirade — hurling brickbats at Superintendent of Public Instruction, Tom Horne, who stands in opposition to La Raza (The Race) studies in the Tucson Unified School District.  Horne exposes the Reconquista instruction as “ethnic chauvinism.” The program teaches students in American schools that the American Southwest belongs to Mexico and should be reclaimed.

Valdez contends this instills a “sense of pride and political savvy in Latino kids.”

After recounting her attendance at a seminar put on by Humane Borders, a group that places water stations in the desert to aid illegal crossers, she lays blame for heat-related deaths on those who believe a nation’s borders are legitimate and should be respected. She calls them “Demagogues, mean-spirited politicians and other blowhards spewing corrosive blather.”

Then she makes a not-so-startling admission. 

“Horne and the GOP-led Legislature,” Valdez opines, “have attracted the attention of teenagers who usually have better things to do than watch politicians make fools of themselves. What those kids learn from this assault on their education will shape their political views — and help relegate the Republican Party to permanent minority status. This should trouble the mainstream Republicans who used to bring something to the political debate besides ideology and intolerance.

But it doesn’t bother this wife of an immigrant one little bit.”

Finally, she confesses to what we have long ago figured out.

AZ Republic calls for amnesty action from McCain

A “job not for the faint of heart”

The daily is back to it’s promoting amnesty for illegals.  Today the newspaper’s sole editorial is on what they obliquely term “Immigration Reform” and declare McCain’s voice must be part of the reform effort.

Lavishing him with praise for his position that even illegals are “God’s children,” the editorial calls upon him to use his bipartisan clout, the courage of his convictions and to “spend his political capitol to help advance his former opponent’s [Obama] agenda.”

Advance his opponent’s agenda?  And all along we thought he claimed to be a Republican.

McCain, who has consistently given short shrift to Arizona’s grassroots Republican party activists, carried his home state in the 2008 presidential match-up by less than 9 percent. It’s well to remember that such a close race does not provide a mandate for the “maverick” senior senator.  In fact, he was unable to carry four of the state’s 15 counties in a state that has only supported a Democrat presidential candidate once since 1948’s election of Harry Truman.

But the editorial goes on, saying McCain will have to take up a cause that’s important to Hispanic voters, even though those voters did not support his presidential bid.

In attempting to decipher that convoluted reasoning, it’s not a giant leap to understand why the Arizona Republic is hemorrhaging subscribers. 

 The editorial concludes with praise for Sen. Jon Kyl and Rep. Jeff Flake, whom they commend for offering “extraordinary support in the past,” and they “anticipate they will rise to the occasion again.”

And if the editorial isn’t enough for you, the pages of today’s paper also carry a piece by ASU professor and obvious career liberal, Doris Marie Provine, titled Migrant issue needs a blend of compassion, law. Her reasoning is that “our legal traditions have always incorporated forgiveness in their operation.” Using that rationale, we should consider disbanding our law enforcement apparatus and courts and begin tearing down penal institutions for lawbreakers.  A good dose of compassion should do the job.

This past year, Provine burnished her left-leaning credentials as a Fulbright Scholar at the Centro de Investigaciones sobre America del Norte.

E Pluribus Unum: “Out of many, one”

Sen. Jonathan Paton, (R-Dist.30), is sponsoring legislation that would ban ethnic-studies courses from high schools — specifically the 22 courses offered at four Tucson high schools in history, government, and literature.

If Senate Bill 1069 becomes law, a district or charter school that features such courses would lose 10 percent of its state funding each month. The money would be restored when the district shut down the program.

“The job of the public schools is to develop the student’s identity as Americans and as strong individuals,” said Arizona’s Superintendent of Public Instruction, Tom Horne. “It’s not the job of the public schools to promote ethnic chauvinism,” the daily reports.

National Review Online’s Jay Nordlinger reminds us of the time Vice President Al Gore misstated the national motto when he translated it — E Pluribus Unum – “Out of one, many,” which Nordlinger says is “bassackwards.”  Score one for Paton and Horne, zip for Gore.

Republic’s Valdez blames faith-based community for Tiller murder

In typical Linda Valdez fashion, her tackling of the issues surrounding the death of abortionist George Tiller, skews the facts. 

Yes, abortion is legal, a point made in her opinion piece.  Third-trimester abortion, however, is infanticide, a fact she conveniently ignores.  She joins those who lay blame for the murder of George Tiller squarely at the feet of the faith-based community — which has forcefully condemned the violent act.

In Valdez’s view, Scott Roeder, the man who pulled the trigger, is absolved as being a madman who was incited to his depraved act by those with religious convictions who believe in the sanctity of life. Tiller, one of only a few nationwide who engage in the gruesome practice of late-term abortions, was merely providing “legal medical services.”

 So religion is the culprit. The wanton destruction of perfectly formed seventh, eight and ninth-month human babies killed for money, gets a pass as “women’s reproductive rights,” and “terrorism aimed at women who dare to believe their bodies are their own.”

While Valdez oddly quotes the bible to make her point that words matter and provoked Roeder, she missed this one: Lo, children are a heritage of the Lord: and the fruit of the womb is his reward. – Psalm 127:3

There is no quarrel with her assertion that Tiller’s death was “cold-blooded murder.” What she refuses to acknowledge is that this was a subject with which the doctor had more than a nodding acquaintance.

Valdez’s bizarre commentary can be read here.

Weekend reading to make you smarter

Robert Robb’s column titled, Governor is inconsistent in her budget maneuvers, provides an in-depth analysis of Gov. Jan Brewer’s proposal for a budget fix.

If your eyes glaze over when the complex topic of the state budget and the convoluted machinations surrounding its “fix” are discussed, Robb’s article will give you a clearer understanding of the issue.

Read Robb’s column here.  You’ll be glad you did.

Russian reaction to America’s descent into Marxism under Obama

In an article titled. American capitalism gone with a whimper, Mat Rodina an editorial columnist for Russia’s Pravda, writes about the collapse of American capitalism and the leftist zeal to surrender our liberties.

He correctly addresses some of the under-girding that enabled the liberals to gain control of our “sheeple,” with these observations:  First, the population was dumbed down through a politicized and substandard education system based on pop culture, rather then the classics.

Then their faith in God was destroyed, he writes, as….top Protestant mega preachers were more then happy to sell out their souls [for] flocks to be on the “winning” side of one pseudo Marxist politician or another. Their flocks may complain, but when explained that they would be on the “winning” side, their flocks were ever so quick to reject Christ in hopes for earthly power. Even our Holy Orthodox churches are scandalously liberalized in America.

The final collapse, Rodina continues, has come with the election of Barack Obama. His speed in the past three months has been truly impressive. His spending and money printing has been a record setting, not just in America’s short history but in the world. If this keeps up for more then another year, and there is no sign that it will not, America at best will resemble the Wiemar Republic and at worst Zimbabwe.

Rodina concludes his article with this mocking warning: The Russian owners of American companies and industries should look thoughtfully at this and the option of closing their facilities down and fleeing the land of the Red as fast as possible. In other words, divest while there is still value left. The proud American will go down into his slavery without a fight, beating his chest and proclaiming to the world, how free he really is. The world will only snicker.

Seeing Red AZ encourages our readers to take a few minutes and read this account of America’s willing descent into the damning Marxist governmental scheme Russians know well enough to distrust.