Mark your calendars: EAST VALLEY PAChyderm Coalition meeting, Thurs. Nov. 19

Where:  Freddy’s Frozen Custards and Steak Burgers

2065 Baseline Road
Gilbert, AZ 85234

When:  Thursday, November 19,  6:00 PM

Special Guest:
Arizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett

Check out the PAChyderm Coalition’s fact-filled website for additional information regarding the meeting.

Seating is limited, so please contact Jeff Dial at jd@jeffdial.com to reserve your seat. Dinner meeting starts at 6:00 P.M.

Fascinating reading: The Goldwater Institute Legislative Report Card

The 7^th annual Goldwater Institute Legislative Report Card considers how well Arizona legislators are fulfilling their constitutional obligation to uphold liberty. The report scores legislators on 305 votes across four categories: education, constitutional government, regulation, and tax and budget. The primary criterion is whether a vote for or against each bill expands or restricts liberty.

The Executive Summary and Report Card link can be read here.

Individual legislators can also be located by zip code, district, and last name.

The Arizona Legislature considers nearly 1,500 bills each session.

What’s this? Linda Valdez supports merit pay for teachers?

The decidedly liberal and over 3 million-member-strong National Education Association (NEA) teachers’ union has long taken a hard-line approach against performance-based teacher pay.

But since Obama’s Secretary of Education Arne Duncan told union officials and delegates to the NEA convention, that teacher evaluation based compensation was a goal to consider, the daily’s leftist-in-residence, Linda Valdez, has jumped onboard the administration’s train.

Duncan signaled that it was likely that federal funding would support initiatives incorporating student achievement as one of several measures of teacher performance — a well-known bane of the liberal union ideologues.

From a purely rational standpoint merit pay makes sense. Many professions offer bonuses and salary increases to exemplary employees, and incentivized employees produce better results when their superior efforts are recognized in their paychecks. Recruitment of the best and brightest to America’s classrooms is an additional plus that comes with such a compensation plan. And even the most fervent NEA unionists realize public education is in crisis, with more parents opting for charter, private or parochial schools for their children

These are facts. It’s Linda that surprises us.

If you need further elucidation about the gargantuan union, consider these parting remarks by retiring General Counsel Bob Chanin as he addressed the union convention: “We are not paranoid, someone really is after us. Why are these conservative and right-wing b****rds picking on NEA and its affiliates? I will tell you why: it is the price we pay for success.”

40th birthday greetings to the Internet

Without forward thinking innovators Charles Kline and Bill Duvall, information delivery would still be the purview of newspapers and broadcast media rather than the instant connections afforded each of us on our personal computers and cell phones.

Seeing Red AZ is particularly grateful to them and their colleagues for holding us captives without so much as a ransom note.

PAChyderm Coalition Special Education Alert

Tom Jenney, Arizona Director of Americans for Prosperity / Arizona Federation of Taxpayers, recommends “NO” votes on school overrides. Read his cogent letter to Arizona taxpayers here.

Justices Scalia, Breyer to discuss Constitution in Arizona

The good news:  ”A Conversation on the Constitution: Principles of Constitutional and Statutory Interpretation,” a discussion between Justice Antonin Scalia and Justice Stephen Breyer, takes place Monday, Oct. 26 at 11:30 a.m. at the Leo Rich Theatre in Tucson.

 The bad news:  Tickets are no longer available to the public.

However, the discussion will broadcast live on PBS World, the 24-hour PBS channel from Arizona Public Media. Southern Arizona residents can access PBS World on digital broadcast Channel 27-3, Cox Channel 83 and Comcast Channel 203. The event also will be webcast live on the Arizona Public Media Web site.

Justice Antonin Scalia was appointed to the U. S. Supreme Court by President Ronald Reagan.

Justice Stephen Breyer was a Clinton appointee.

Bios courtesy of Cornell University law School.

Additional information on the event is available here at UA News.

Reexamining Calvin Coolidge

You probably haven’t been giving much thought to Calvin Coolidge these days, but we recommend you give him another look.

It was President Coolidge, Ronald Reagan’s hero, who while still governor of Massachusetts in 1919, refused to concede to union strikers and found his courage rewarded. Ronald Reagan followed a similar path when he fired striking air traffic controllers in 1981. Both men knew what they had to do and followed their conscience rather than making concessions to moneyed entities who were in a position to throw indispensable campaign cash their way.

Amity Shlaes, writing for Forbes, addresses the issue of overpowering unions and the U.S. Presidents who took no guff from their often oppressive leadership: Today many Americans see the economic threat voracious unions–public sector or private–represent. Voters are more open to cutbacks and less sympathetic to spending than lawmakers believe. The politician who tries the Coolidge method may find himself pleased with the results.

This trip back in time is not only historically enlightening, but spotlights the path that should be considered today.  Since nearly half of all tax revenues go to education funding, why should they be exempt in this tough economy when it comes to across-the-board cutbacks?  Maybe Gov. Jan Brewer could take a page from Calvin Coolidge’s book.  Or Ronald Reagan’s.

“Just this once.”

Arizona’s predatory teachers: Light sentence for kiddie porn zealot

 With a 32-year teaching career coupled with his predilection for child pornography, Armando Gonzalez, 62, must have enjoyed his time in Arizona’s elementary and high schools.

The former Tucson Unified School district employee also worked in the copper mining community of Bagdad, Arizona, before retiring to Prescott.

Gonzalez was indicted by federal prosecutors in 2006 after he was found in possession of more than 100 images of child pornography. After entering a guilty plea in July 2008 he was sentenced this week to a 21-month prison term, the daily reports.

How much of that sentence might he serve? You can be assured it won’t be the full, albeit light, less than two years he received. Betch’a he’ll be out on parole in time for 2010 Thanksgiving festivities.

Seeing Red AZ has begun referring to the ongoing saga of sexually exploitive teachers as “the endless parade” — having written about their appalling abuses on numerous occasions.

Keep America Safe

The recently launched Keep America Safe focuses on such issues as troop levels, missile defense, detainees, and interrogation, according to Liz Cheney, who heads the group along with Weekly Standard editor William Kristol and Debra Burlingame.

Here is their first commercial, aired last evening on the Sean Hannity Show.

And unlike Obama’s Department of Homeland Security, with former Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano at the helm  — providing none of what the title of her office implies — the team at Keep America Safe is not afraid to use the words, “We face a growing threat from rogue regimes” or “foreign terrorists.”

Celebrating Columbus Day: He wasn’t gay enough

In today’s politically correct society, Christopher Columbus is often depicted as an exploiter rather than an adventurous explorer. This is what young students are being taught in American classrooms. It turns out that Columbus who sailed the ocean blue in 1492 was “very, very mean, very bossy.”

And that’s the least of it. In one Pennsylvania class, young students dressed up as characters from the era, took on roles for a mock trial and put Columbus on trial. Out of a jury of 12 students, nine found him guilty.

Although we were unable to find a commemorating message from the Obama White House, President John F. Kennedy honored Columbus in a speech from the White House garden, in which he referred to Columbus as having been “a fascinating figure to me for many reasons, but partly because of his extraordinary skill as a navigator.”

Obama, however, did find time over the weekend to address and make promises to, the Human Rights Campaign dinner, a gay rights advocacy group.

Hot Air has more.

Seeing Red AZ celebrates Christopher Columbus, for whom President Benjamin Harrison made a commemorative proclamation to mark the 400th anniversary of Columbus’ voyage, in 1892. In 1905 Colorado became the first state to observe Columbus Day. Since 1920 the day has been celebrated annually, and in 1937 President Franklin Roosevelt proclaimed every October 12th as Columbus Day — until 1971, when Congress declared it a federal public holiday on the second Monday in October.