True to BfA form, the ad hominem attack.

I do not think that military personnel will be involved due to the posse comitatus law. I think that border patrol officers will be running these facilities or maybe federal detention officers. Just became it is on a military base does not mean the military will be involved. Just speculation.

Given that few people released on their promise to return for a hearing do so, what alternative is there to detention while awaiting adjudication? How about not showing up results in an automatic denial and deportation without appeal?

You suggest that Trump should go to the courts to get an extension of the Flores 20 day limit to detection but those detentions are in detection centers, which are more like jails than presumably housing on military bases would be. I have lived on military bases. I think that they would be a lot better than detention centers.

I think you need to rethink this one or at least wait for more info on the military accommodations.

I was following along until I stumbled on this sentence: “One of the more dire being the moral injury to the personnel of the armed forces ordered to administer concentration camps.” That’s the kind of sentence that scares reasonable people away. Are you really equating confinement with one’s family on a military base with being inside a concentration camp?

“…with an indirect attack on my patriotism.”

?????????????????? What are you talking about

I get elected because the voters prefer my views to my Democratic opponents views. It is called democracy. You got a problem with dat?

Flake did not run for reelection because he could never win the primary. If he cannot win in his home state, how could he knock off an incumbent president who is popular within his party. Find a “safe space,” Tom.

By this post I meant Tom not Lisa. Although Lisa is also divorced from reality but she is at least on our planet.

This post displays a level of cluelessness never before seen on BfA.

Flake is a libertarian, which is close to conservatism but not conservatism. Flake has burned his bridges with Arizona conservatives. Flake is not voting to please the party. He is beyond that. He is voting his beliefs.

Good unions do not need agency fees. When I was a cop, union membership was voluntarily and there was no agency fee. Of about 1,200 cops, only 1 did not join. That 1 was not me, by the way. All but 1 joined because we had a good union.

It should have been linked to a post below, where I eventually linked it.
That said, the Pharmacy Board is investigating this case. If the pharmacist did not refer the customer to another pharmacist or pharmacy, then he or she should be disciplined. The law we passed was meant to balance the competing needs of patients getting prescriptions filled and pharmacists who have sincere moral or religious objections to participating in abortion. No medical practitioner should have to give up their career because they remained true to their sincerely held moral or religious beliefs, when the source of the dilemma can be served alternately.

Unfortunately, the law that we passed did not envision circumstances where the drug which causes abortion is being prescribed for a non-abortion purpose, which would not shield a pharmacist. The question here is did the pharmacist know that the drug was not for an abortion and by know I mean was it so stated on the prescription. Probably not and in the future it probably should be to avoid these cases in the future. I am not sure if a verbal attestation by the patient about the drugs purpose would suffice. It is a difficult question.

Including the personal moral decision of the pharmacist, assuming he or she meets the law’s standard.

Including the personal moral decision of the pharmacist?

If that is the case, then we agree. Be careful, you may be banned from BfA.

Can I infer based upon your mentioning the nonviability of the unborn child as a factor in this case that, were it still alive, you would have supported the right of the pharmacist to refuse service based upon a sincerely held religious or moral belief against abortion, assuming that the pharmacist complied with state law and handed the customer off to a pharmacist who would serve her?

Can I assume that you have no good argument against my initial comment, which is why you are going off on secondary attacks? Or would you like to break with history and answer?

I subscribe and they are no William Safire.

I objected to the use of a picture of a candidate in a white doctor’s coat. Occupational info in a bio is fine or even referencing one’s position, when discussing relevant issues, is ok.

What your saying about me is a lie. I only criticized the photo and never said anything about bios. What you posted is a lie and is very unethical.

News should neither be supressed nor faked. However, here we are talking about editorial content, which is the editor’s place to offer his or her opinions. It is the editor who decides what is put in print. He or she picks the editorial, columns and even letters.

I have no right to attack the NY Times for having no conservative columnists, the AZ Republic for pitting Montini, Valdez and Roberts against Robb or AzBM for only republishing liberals cartoons. It’s their right. All I can do is unsubscribe or tune out.

Not a difficult concept to grasp.

Oops…right not write.

The “they” were the Nazi government not a private businesses that has a write to determine its editorial positions. Big difference.

You know what they say about assume. Don’t assume.

A picture is worth a thousand words.

But they did find anti-Trump bias, which they failed to link to effecting investigative decisions. Proving such a link is no easy task. It is troubling that those biases were at high levels of the FBI. Kimberly Strassel of the WSJ expounded on this in her column. I offer an excerpt for your readers consideration:

Be ready to hear the report absolves the FBI and DOJ of “bias.” Not true. It very carefully states that “our review did not find documentary or testimonial evidence directly connecting the political views these employees expressed in their text messages and instant messages to the specific investigative decisions we reviewed.” Put another way, he never caught anyone writing down: Let’s start this Trump investigation so we can help Hillary win.

But the bias is everywhere. It’s in the texts between Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, and those of three other employees who are routinely “hostile” to Candidate Trump. It’s in Ms. Page’s freak-out that Mr. Trump might win the presidency and Mr. Strzok’s reply: “No. No he won’t. We’ll stop it.” It’s in a message from an unnamed agent in November 2016 who writes that although the FBI found Clinton aide Huma Abedin had “lied,” it doesn’t matter since “no one at DOJ is going to prosecute.” To which a second agent replies. “Rog—noone is going to pros[ecute] even if we find unique classified.”

It’s in the Justice Department’s decision to cut deals with Mrs. Clinton and her staff and shelter them from a grand jury. And to agree to limitations in searching for and in devices. And in immunity agreements. The report is largely neutral on all this, giving officials the broad benefit of the doubt on “discretionary judgments made during the course of an investigation.” But it immediately follows that statement by noting that its job of evaluating the integrity of decisions was “made significantly more difficult” by the obvious bias among key players, which “cast a cloud” over the entire “investigation’s credibility.”

Food for thought.

Talk about grasping for straws. Using “Senator” in political posts that often deal with state issues is relevant because people should know where I am coming from and my involvement in state political affairs. It is all about relevancy and transparency

Not disclosing that would be concealing a pertinent fact and many would attack me for concealing my involvement in state government and politics. In fact, you would probably be leading the charge.

You are letting your political biases get in the way of clear thinking, which is always a problem with ideologues. Work on that too.

I am not wearing my old police uniform, not that I still would fit into it. Informing voters of your history is transparency. Wearing a uniform not related to the office you are running for is tacky. Although Bradley did not post it, which should be noted. I might add that, in my opinion, using titles like Dr. is also tacky. I only use my title on college campuses, where it is relevant.

There is no picture of me in uniform, not that I could still fit in it.

Wow. Do you really think nuclear weapons and delivery systems in the hands of a rogue state is so minor a threat that we should create insurmountable obstacles to disarmament talks. Or is this more of your Trump fixation madness.

Like the Dam House and Dem Senate resolved it under Dem President Obama?

North Korea is making concessions. Read the papers but maybe not the NY Times.

What did Obama get in return for reducing our missiles? He said he was doing it unilaterally to set an example. But it did not work. But wait, he is a Nobel laureate.

Since Obama got it for doing nothing, maybe nobody should know.

The kids in cages photo was taken during the Obama administration. Oooooops!

He forgot to wear his stethoscope. The white doctor’s coat prop works much better with a stethoscope.

If Trump pulls this off, he will get the Nobel Peace Prize for doing something, as opposed to Obama who got it for what he was supposed to do but didn’t. What will you say then?
By the way, Dem hero FDR made Stalin an ally. Do you condemn that?

You are so blinded by your hatred of Trump that you absurdly declare the historic meeting a failure before the results are in. You have no credibility.

I assumed wages would be stable if automation increased productivity. Otherwise, what do you do with millions of idle poor? Certainly mandating public service work might also be acceptable. People need some sense of accomplishment and worth.

Focus on precisely what I said. It was not military service. That is the last free critical reading instruction I will give you.

You need to re-read my post. I suggest that you take a critical reading course at one of the community colleges.

It was a serious comment but your ideological bias precludes your perceiving reality accurately. But it does keep you in a liberal “safe space,” where all those who disagree with you are evil. You need to work on that.

See above for my reply. I hit the wrong key. I do his often, so I am a recidivist also.

First, the prosecutors used Arizona Department of Corrections data.

Second, the latest Corrections Department data show that 74% of the inmates are violent. Go to: https://corrections.az.gov/sites/default/files/REPORTS/CAG/2018/cagapr18.pdf

Once again, 95% are violent offenders, recidivists or both. Who do you want to let loose early?

And as an afterthought, some first time non-violent offenders deserve long prison time, like the investment advisor who steals an elderly couple’s retirement funds.

Not sure what value cold war anti-submarine warfare experience has at the capitol. Any ideas?

When I last looked, 95% of Arizona inmates were either violent offenders, repeat offenders or both. Which of them do you want to release?

What jobs would you retrain unskilled and semi-skilled workers to perform? Seems like a 20 hour work week would be a better option. Maybe playing mindless video games is the future. Glad I won’t be around.

Congratulations. Your comments earn you the “Pompous Ass Award.” Specifically, the award is yours for saying:

“ Mark Finchem has held many jobs. However, he spent most of his professional life (20 years) working as a cop in…. wait for it…. Kalamazoo Michigan.”

“He now supports himself and his family as an independent real estate agent and can be seen in the Phoenix capitol and at Tucson events adorned in his large cowboy hat, rawhide jacket, and “Colonel Sanders” tie – that I imagine guys from Kalamazoo Michigan think is very “Western” …. but is actually anything but western.”

“Mark Finchem is surprisingly well spoken for possessing only an Associates Degree.”

“Many low-level state legislators like Mark Finchem go on to seek federal office…”

“Let’s give Mark Finchem, the “Colonel Sanders” tie wearing, ten-gallon hat sporting, radicalized, Fox News, AM Talk Radio, Zombie Loon, the boot this November.”

By the way, how do your ad hominem attacks sit with the candidate you support, Hollace Lyon, who you imply is a consensus builder? Does she know that this is the way you promote her and her consensus building, with sophomoric insults?

It’s not about religion. If a person sincerely believes that a fetus is a human being, how can that person not vigorously oppose abortion? Were that person to accept freedom to choose, it would be allowing murder.

If a person sincerely believes the fetus to be an unviable tissue mass and he or she has an abortion, I believe they are wrong but I do not believe the person is a murderer. If they believe the fetus is a human and do so, then they are a murderer. It’s not a hard concept to grasp but pro-choice people too often miss it.

You do not have to agree with pro-life people but you should know where we are coming ftom.

Then you are guilty of reckless snarking.

You seem to have reverted to snarky. Too bad.

Don’t gloat prematurely. From this mornings news:

Washington (CNN)President Donald Trump told reporters Friday he remains open to holding a summit with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un on June 12.
The President said lines of communication had opened between the two countries after officials said Thursday that the North Koreans had become unresponsive, leading to the planned summit’s cancellation.
“We’re going to see what happens. We’re talking to them now. It was a very nice statement they put out,” Trump said on the South Lawn before departing in his helicopter for the US Naval Academy in Maryland, where he is delivering a commencement address.
“We’ll see what happens. It could even be the 12th. We’re talking to them now,” he said. “They very much want to do it. We’d like to do it.”

If you cannot support the president in these efforts, you should at least step back and give him a chance. It almost looks like you want him to fail. I am not saying you do, but you do seem to gloat when there is a setback. How quickly you jump on any hint of a setback.

Sad.

Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal had an editorial or perhaps a column that said about 70% of SALT savings came from the state’s I mentioned. Be that as it may.

Regarding the royalty argument, it seems weak. Royalties are neither personal nor corporate income. Would you also want to tax Arizona state trust land revenue before it goes to fund education. Your argument leads us down a slippery slope to a tax swamp.

I do not question your intellectual consistency, you are not AzBM.

Regarding your comments:

1. Corporations are not really taxed because much of their taxes are passed thru to their customers.

2. Taxing wages would be poor tax policy because wages are an input to production and taxing an input results in double taxation, should the good be taxed upon sale.

3. Allowing a tax deduction for taxes paid to another jurisdiction is not taxing an input but it is taxing payments made to an entity that provides one with services. It is a quid pro quo and is different than wages. Although I do not believe that all tax payments should be denied deductibility.

4. I do not believe that limiting deductibility for higher SALT is poor policy given that its usage is concentrated in a handful of states (NY, NJ, Cal. and Conn.) Thus creating the poor tax policy of the rest of the country’s taxpayers subsidizing the higher public benefits received by a minority of U.S. residents.

5. Finally, your statement about Republican motives for supporting lower taxes is not true, at least from my observations over a lifetime of conservative activism. You wrote:

“When we devalue the federal tax benefit of state tax payments, we cause rich people to increase the pressure on legislators like you to reduce state level income taxes. And legislators like you buckle under the pressure and undermine the public school system. And we’re all worse of for it.”

Conservatives do not need rich people to pressure us to keep taxes low. We do so because we believe in limited government and that low taxes stimulate economic growth. Agree or disagree, that is what motivates most of us and not pressure from the rich. In fact, many rich people are liberals who support high taxes because they are less impacted by high taxes than middle class and upper-middle class residents.

Always interesting to read and respond to your posts, when you are not being snarky.

So initially progressive Democrats criticized Trump’s tax bill because it favored the wealthy and now you object to the wealthy losing a tax break. Wow!

Sorry Tom, your answer looked a lot like your usual dodge.

And by the way, regarding the governor’s Monday statement, “We are going to put 20 percent additional money in for teacher pay, up through 2020,” he reaffirmed on Monday.” That is what we did. That statement does not say for each teacher.

You seemed to have missed my questions just like Tom. Let me restate them for you.

Do you agree with the formula we used and that Governor Ducey agreed to accept? If not, what formula would you have used? Finally, don’t you think it odd that neither #RedForEd nor the legislative Dems suggested a formula, even while criticizing the legislature and the governor. Note that Dems never addressed this point in their amendments.

Take a lesson from Frances Perkins and answer them. That is called productive discourse, as opposed to hollow political propaganda.

You seemed to have missed my questions. Let me restate them for you. Do you agree with the formula we used and that Governor Ducey agreed to accept? If not, what formula would you have used? Finally, don’t you think it odd that neither #RedForEd nor the legislative Dems suggested a formula, even while criticizing the legislature and the governor. Note that Dems never addressed this point in their amendments.

You did not answer any of my questions. Are you evading them or do you lack the information to address them? If it is the latter, read my post and then respond. Let’s have a discussion.

I did not mean to misrepresent you but you seemed to be criticizing the distribution formula we used and its outcome when you titled your post,”When is 20% not actually 20%? When it’s a ‘Ducey’ (lie).” But here is your chance to clear up my misunderstanding.

Do you agree with the formula we used and that Governor Ducey agreed to accept? If not, what formula would you have used? Finally, don’t you think it odd that neither #RedForEd nor the legislative Dems suggested a formula, even while criticizing the legislature and the governor.

I appreciate your actually addressing the point I made. You are a role model for others on this site. The fact that many of the districts on the western side of the state have lower pay overall will give them more money and enable larger pay hikes. Hopefully that will help, although I doubt we could ever compete pay-wise with California.

It is very rare to have dedicated funding for any programs. I am not sure how we could run government that way. After all, we have a $10 billion budget and only a small portion is dedicated and then only when enacted by voters as part of a referendum or initiative.

Any tax enacted and directed to a specific source by the legislature can be cancelled or redirected by the next or future legislatures, which we call democracy. There could be no reform if legislatures could forever lock their expenditures or policies in stone, thus preventing later legislatures to reverse things. Surely you do not support that?

This dedicated funding argument is based upon either misinformation about how things work or political posturing. We used a lower revenue estimate than the governor’s original estimate to fund the pay raises and the bipartisan JLBC said that our lower revenue estimate was reasonable.

But my post had to do with how we divided up the money. Could you weigh in on that? I am interested in how Dems feel about that issue because amazingly none have weighed in on it and it is a major issue. What formula should we have used, Frances?

One issue that neither #RedForEd leaders nor the legislative Democrats dealt with involved how to divide the 20% pay raise among teachers because it would have caused disagreement within #RedForED and involved the Dems in that controversy.

The issue was whether to give each teacher his or her 20% raise or use a formula that divided the total amount of money needed to accomplish that between districts based upon their student count and allow individual school boards to dispense it as they deemed best. In either scenario, the state would pay out the same amount but it would be distributed differently.

In the end, the legislature (Rs) decided to divide the amount of money needed to give every teacher a 20% pay raise by the number of students in the state and then distribute it to each district based upon their student count. This seemed the fairest way to do so and neither #RedForEd nor the legislative Ds objected or should I say weighed in.

To have given every teacher an individual 20% raise would have been true to the “20 in 20” offer but would have shorted poor districts, new teachers and teachers in low paying districts. For example, with an average pay of about $67,000, Phoenix Union probably has teachers making north of $75,000 per year – giving those high pay teachers pay raises in excess of $15,000 each. On the other hand, new teachers at districts with average salaries of about $35,000 probably start at about $28,000 – giving them raises of only $5,600.

By using the formula the legislature arrived at, the money was more evenly spread among districts and potentially more equitably among teachers. While some districts are not getting enough to give each of their teachers 20%, others are getting much more than 20% enabling them to give their lower paid teachers meaningful raises.

To have used the formula that AzBM seems to favor, 20% for all, we would have given more money to affluent districts, shorted the rest and widened the pay disparity between teachers. Go tell?

By giving districts flexibility, they can give each of their teachers the same percentage raise, give each a flat equal amount or even give more to lower paid teachers. Each district board knows their circumstances and needs best and it seemed better to let them craft plans best suited for their respective situations. That’s called local control, which many on this blog criticize the legislature for often not honoring. Go tell?

And by the way, because the raise money goes into “the base “and is dispensed in three draws over 24 months, it is more that 20% due to compounding, inflation and the need for districts to increase pension payments. “20 in 20” is more like 24% in 2020. Go tell?

Clearly it’s not over till it’s over but your failure to give Trump any credit displays your severe anti-Trump bias. And this coming from somebody who probably had no criticism of the Nobel Peace Prize Committee awarding Obama the prize for what he might do, which in the case of the Koreas was nothing.

Yes but I was not in Riverdance, nor did I see it.

To North of the River: I have no idea what you are talking about. Could you explain?

To For Sure Not Tom: The first sentence was a compliment on the cleverness of the title. The second was a joke. Unfortunately for you, you are such an ideologue that your political bias and anger seem to distort your perception of reality. You need to work on that.

I’ll give you this much, the headline is hilarious. The question is, will the Stockholm syndrome come into play?

In the meantime, Democrat gubernatorial candidates Farley and Garcia stand relatively penniless on the side of the road holding their 4 inch pipes and wearing their “Red for Ed” shirts, while Ducey drives their key campaign vehicle down the road to victory.

I think it was a preexisting condition for you, so thank Obamacare.

True to BfA form – Attack the person and evade his point.

I do not live in PV – Great research skills.

Oh wait! Maybe the infamous 4 inch pipes will now yield $2.9 billion in savings. If so, they are 4 inch bongs and your candidates are smoking with them.

The issue is not your distain for Republican politics but the lack of specificity that your candidates have. Aren’t you embarrassed by the scam they are perpetrating on the voters. At the forum, Farley said he would cut $3 billion in credits but he us not giving us a list. The four inch pipe line is old hat.

Did anyone identify the tax loopholes that will yield $1 billion much less $3 billion dollars. I doubt it.

While not insignificant, I would not call it big money. Looking at the last DOR report it appears to be about $120 million but I may have missed something.

If Dems claim to want to get Arizona out of the near-last or last place slot in ed funding, you need to find about a billion dollars in new revenue, as a start. I hope that that challenge is addressed at the debate and if sales tax increases or exemptions are mentioned, someone points out that regressive taxation is not liked among Ds.

Reply to Wileybud

See reply above in main thread.

Ducey has laid out very specific school spending numbers, supported continuing the Prop 301 tax and has a very specific new tax plan – none. I thiink that covers all bases, even though you probably disagree. How much more specific can you get?

Ducey has a very specific plan and he will be their opponent.

That misspelling of Steve Farley’s name was a typo. Not a negative slight.

Will somebody please ask what specific “tax loopholes” each plans to eliminate and how much each will bring into the general fund.

Rob Robb of the Arizona Republic recently commented on the lack of specificity in the Dems plans, specifically Garcia’s and Fasarley’s. Some exerpts of Robb’s column follow:

THE SALES TAX LOOPHOLE IS NONSENSE

In his press release, Garcia referred to “over $13 billion in corporate taxes that go uncollected every year due to give aways, carve outs and credits.” That’s a reference to a tax expenditure report produced by the Arizona Department of Revenue.

Of the total, nearly 90 percent are statutory exemptions to the state sales tax. But, contrary to spin, these exemptions aren’t loopholes. They are overwhelmingly designed to limit the sales tax to its intended incidence, a tax on the final sale of a retail good. In fact, the major exemptions for retail goods are for food and drugs.

To get any real money requires a fundamental change in the nature of the sales tax. To extend it to services or to make it like a value-added tax, levied at each stage of production. I’m in favor of both. But it ain’t closing loopholes.

GARCIA’S PLAN LACKS SPECIFICS

In any event, Garcia’s plan only identifies four loopholes to be closed: horse vitamins, 4-inch pipes, the lease of private jets, and the sale of fine art to out-of-state purchasers. And what would closing these “loopholes” raise? A whopping $13 million.

His primary opponent, state Sen. Steve Farley, plays the same game. Farley has claimed that closing sales tax “loopholes” could raise $2 billion. In a recent tweet he upped the ante to $3 billion. But here’s what I think is a very safe bet: Between now and the election, Farley will not produce a list of specific sales tax increases he proposes that will raise $3 billion.

Garcia’s plan references the fact that 74 percent of Arizona corporations pay less than $50 in income tax. AZ Schools Now, a lobbying coalition, references the same figure and proposes a minimum corporate income tax of $500 a year. It’s a terrible idea. Corporations that pay no income tax are, in large part, startups or dormant.

Garcia doesn’t explicitly endorse the $500 minimum corporate income tax. But, according to AZ Schools Now, it would only raise $17 million a year.

None of this has hurt Trump’s approval rating, which just hit 51%. That’s 5% higher than Obama at the same point in his presidency.
Note: Que Tom to respond with negative comment that evades the issue of Trump’s growing popularity.

No posse comitatus violation here, so who is the fool AzBM?

How about “Poll of the Week”

Monday, April 02, 2018
The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Monday shows that 50% of Likely U.S. Voters approve of President Trump’s job performance. Forty-nine percent (49%) disapprove. The latest figures include 33% who Strongly Approve of the way the president is performing and 39% who Strongly Disapprove. This gives him a Presidential Approval Index rating of -6. (see trends).

Trump’s overall job approval rating is now running ahead of where Barack Obama’s was at this stage of his presidency.

Show one article that refutes the cost comparison.

I guess cost does not enter into your equation.

And about Germany, whose electric costs are edging up to twice that of the US:

University of Houston Energy Fellows
Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.

POST WRITTEN BY

Paul Gregory, Professor, Department of Economics

University of Houston Energy Fellows University of Houston Energy Fellows , Contributor

Germany’s increasing reliance on renewables has imposed direct and indirect costs on its citizens and companies.

Germany’s two major electricity companies, E.ON and RWE, have announced stunning losses.

BRUECK, GERMANY – JUNE 08: Wind turbines spin on June 8, 2016 near Brueck, Germany. Germany is investing heavily in renewable energy sources, including wind farms and solar fields in an effort to cut climate warming emissions and replace nuclear power. (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

Germany has set the most ambitious agenda for renewable energy. According to Germany’s Enegiewende program, the share of renewables in electricity generation should reach 45 percent by 2030 and 100% by half century. Complicating matters is Germany’s Atomstop decision to close down its nuclear power plants under pressure from the powerful Green movement. The Atomstop agreement calls for substantial payments by electrical utilities into a special fund for storing nuclear waste.

Germany’s mechanism for achieving its ambitious renewable-energy goals is not direct subsidies but the requirement that its utilities must take wind and solar energy first into the power grid.

With wind and solar energy costing multiples more than conventional energy, their increasing share will continue to raise Germany’s wholesale electricity prices above those in other countries with less ambitious renewable energy policies. (See Figure for 2016 price comparisons).

Read the full article: https://www.forbes.com/sites/uhenergy/2017/03/31/100-renewables-by-2050-germany-pays-the-price-for-its-ambition/#26102e6d1e98

I see nothing wrong with giving the voters a choice when considering a very high and possibly not reasonably attainable 50% renewable energy mandate.
A mandate that high could dramatically increase energy costs and hurt residential and commercial customers, especially the poor. The alternative voter choice offered in the referral is to aim for the 50% level but put a safety valve in place to protect the consumer and Arizona’s economy, not to mention the stability of the grid.

The safety valve would only be triggered were economic or grid reliability issues to develop and would be enacted not by the legislature but by the elected Arizona Corporation Commission members.

Finally, please explain how the referral is unconstitutional. What part of the Arizona constitution does it violate?

Vouchers were approved by legislators representing a majority of the state’s residents.

Vouchers were approved by legislators representing a majority of the state’s residents.

Those 16 votes represent a majority of the state.

No law should be written in stone. You need to trust the voters, not tie their hands.

So asking the voters to revisit an issue and VOTE on it again is disrespecting their right to vote on issues? That is really absurd.

It has no journalistic value because there was no evidence presented in the posting that he needed or asked for any additional authority or aid. Therefore, the suggestion that Trump committed some sort of mis or malfeasance is baseless and fodder for BfA. That is logic.

Although maybe he did and AzBM just left it out. Hard to believe about someone who seems to spend an enormous amount of time writing blog postings.

And Bill, If A does not ask B for help, then Bill cannot accuse B of mis or malfeasance.

Could you diagram this sentence for me?

It’s interesting that members of the Senate committees did not rephrase their questions after being told by the intelligence chiefs that they have not received any orders to ask whether they have been ordered not to do anything, for further clarification.

The first, as you suggest, is not necessarily good or bad. The second could be bad. Mattis did not even hint at the second but here at BfA, it is OK to assume that it is the second because if it is anti-Trump, there are no journalistic standards.

“I haven’t been granted any, you know, additional authorities, capacity and capability.”

OK . He was not granted any,” YOU KNOW extra authority.” I don’t know and he couldn’t even hint at what he needed. He never said he needed more authority. This is more fake stuff.

“I haven’t been granted any, you know, additional authorities, capacity and capability.”

OK . He was not granted any,” YOU KNOW extra authority.” I don’t know and he couldn’t even hint at what he needed. He never said he needed more authority. This is more fake stuff.

During my 20 years as a cop, my chief never gave me any “additional authority” to fight crime, so I guess he was indifferent to crime. You people are really grasping at straws. You look really foolish.

Rasmussen has Trump’s approval rating at 50% , while Obama’s was 43% at same point in his presidency. Keep drinking the Koolaid and scaming your readers AZBM.

That is THE question.

Latest Rasmussen poll.

So public support in a democracy is rat’s ass level relevancy?

So after what amount of time without charges of collusion will you admit it is a nothingburger?

If Trump is convicted, then I would have to. Will you apologize to Trump, if you are wrong?

Pay attention to Trump’s approval numbers, which are higher than Obama’s at this point in office.

You are grasping at straws. Time will tell but it is running out.

What ever happened to Trump~Russia collusion? Has Mueller given up?

The polling company needs to show their work. Specifically, what weights they used. Their results are highly suspect and their weights are unknown.

As a followup, new information on the poll reveals that of the 600 voters polled, only 4% were Republicans and about 32% Democrats, with the rest Independents, Libertarians, Greens or No Party Declared, presumably. From this grossly tilted sample the pollster assigns various subjective weights, which enables either gross error or purposeful distortion.

Time will tell but calling a comment BS is a pretty weak argument. But it certainly works here at BfA.

First, I do not deny Russian efforts to swing the election, which is obvious. I do recognize that no evidence says Trump was involved or that it mattered.

Beyond that, since Arizona is Red, where will you move to, Bob?

When I poll, I insist on reliable and valid polls. Why else would I spend the money. Regarding this poll, the results are so skewed that the background of the polling firm becomes suspect.
That aside, you Dems are in big trouble because you only have back benchers as candidates – the inevitable result of not having anyone in high office for a while.
Beyond that, no information is provided about the poll. Unless the poll was of high turnout voters, it is pretty useless.

Done

If you have evidence that Mueller does not have, you should send it to him. Otherwise, there is no evidence of collusion. Using your loose definition, one could say there is collusion between the Hillary campaign and Russia because the campaign funded the dossier. That too is ridiculous.

No and it is illogical to conclude one from the other.

Before you folks get too worked up, read this description of Lake Research Partners from Bloomberg:

“Sector: Communications
Industry: Media
Sub-Industry: Advertising & Marketing
Lake Research Partners, Inc. operates as a political strategy research firm. The Firm focuses on unions and labor for issues including minimum wages, retirement security, and health care, as well as women’s life for domestic violence and sexual assault, discrimination issues, and rights. Lake Research Partners serves customers in the United States.”

In other words, it is a left wing PR firm and not an unbiased polling company, which explains the weird results. The blogger might have thought to mention this.

So far, no evidence of collusion, which is what the Mueller investigation is all about. Must be very frustrating for all you Trump hating Dems.

Let’s not forget that there is still no evidence of Trump-Russia collusion or of Russia influencing any election in the U. S.

Do you ever address a question put to you?

Tell that to Frances.

You believe this stuff?

This post sounds like the ravings of a paranoid schizophrenic. Aparently BfA has no limits or standards.

“This is a plan to dismantle Social Security…”

Rs and Ds have been doing that for years by spending the SS taxes instead of putting them into a “lockbox.” That was and is the dismantling.

But I suspect nobody but conservatives would back putting the monies into a real lockbox going forward because that would cramp government spending.

So no evidence of collusion?

If an investigation with national attention is going nowhere for two whole years, guess where it will end?

It’s all about who gets the last laugh, which will not be known until Mueller finishes, assuming he ever does.

Now that it seems more and more likely that the Trump collision investigation is going nowhere, the campaign to spin the failure as being due to Trump interference begins. I am only surprised that it did not start sooner.

Your posting that photo makes poor taste look good. God save us from self-righteous zealots like you.

So far the Trump-Russia collusion theory has produced nothing. It seems to be little more than a conspiracy theory. That is what I am talking about and you are dodging.

What if the whole Trump investigation falls apart? Might not that be a conspiracy theory?

The corruption issue was raised in the original post. You need to concentrate more. Focus and then comment on the issue and don’t evade with personal attacks.

Nothing to do with net metering.

“Net metering gave credits back to homeowners for surplus electricity they produced at full rates.” But did so even though the price of that energy was, at times, cheaper for the utilities to purchase elsewhere. Sounds more like a subsidy that non-solar ratepayers (often less economically advantaged than solar panel owners) were forced to pay to solar panel owners.

While reasonable people may differ on the merits and demerits of net metering, it is deceptive and unjustified to call the ACC’s opposition to it corrupt.

But you came to the right blog to go down that road or should I say slippery slope.

By all means keep evading the special counsel question.

Even when contrite, you are arrogant. That is a character flaw you should work on.

Mueller has a conflict of interest here but I suppose because Trump is the Target, you will not care.

For AZBM’s 4:29 comment.

That vote was before the memo and even if it was not, maybe they don’t believe in throwing out the baby with the bath water. That was a really weak argument.

I want to see the minority report and have a special counsel appointed to boot. So I see your minority report and raise you a special counsel. Are you in????

That vote was before the memo and even if it was not, maybe they don’t believe in throwing out the baby with the bath water. That was a really weak argument.

I want to see the minority report and have a special counsel appointed to boot. So I see your minority report and raise you a special counsel. Are you in????

Glad you two are not coming out against a special counsel. We need the truth.

But 5 is the one you cannot refute or deny.

Al Franken – great role model.

Maybe we can all agree on a special counsel to get to the truth.

You are willfully blind and partisan, in my opinion.

The memo raises serious questions about FISA abuse and the politicization of the FBI, or at least its upper echelon – questions that civil liberties-minded democrats and the ACLU once gave high priority to before the potential abuses targeted Trump. What hypocrisy!

Some key points from yesterday’s Wall Street Journal editorial:

1. The memo says an “essential” part of the FISA application was the “dossier” assembled by former British spy Christopher Steele and the research firm Fusion GPS that was hired by a law firm attached to the Clinton campaign. The memo adds that former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe told the committee in December 2017 that “no surveillance warrant would have been sought” without the dossier.

2. …the memo also discloses that the FBI failed to inform the FISA court that the Clinton campaign had funded the dossier. The memo says the FBI supported its FISA application by “extensively” citing a September 2016 article in Yahoo News that contained allegations against Mr. Page. But the FBI failed to tell the court that Mr. Steele and Fusion were the main sources for that Yahoo article. In essence the FBI was citing Mr. Steele to corroborate Mr. Steele.

3.Unlike a normal court, FISA doesn’t have competing pleaders. The FBI and Justice appear ex parte as applicants, and thus the judges depend on candor from both. Yet the FBI never informed the court that Mr. Steele was in effect working for the Clinton campaign. The FBI retained Mr. Steele as a source, and in October 2016 he talked to Mother Jones magazine without authorization about the FBI investigation and his dossier alleging collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign. The FBI then fired Mr. Steele, but it never told the FISA judges about that either. Nor did it tell the court any of this as it sought three subsequent renewals of the order on Mr. Page.

4.We also know the FBI wasn’t straight with Congress, as it hid most of these facts from investigators in a briefing on the dossier in January 2017. The FBI did not tell Congress about Mr. Steele’s connection to the Clinton campaign, and the House had to issue subpoenas for Fusion bank records to discover the truth. Nor did the FBI tell investigators that it continued receiving information from Mr. Steele and Fusion even after it had terminated him. The memo says the bureau’s intermediary was Justice Department official Bruce Ohr, whose wife, incredibly, worked for Fusion.

5. …But note that Democrats aren’t challenging the core facts that the FBI used the dossier to gain a FISA order or the bureau’s lack of disclosure to the FISA judges.

Your obsession with me is getting a bit creepy.

This was for FSNTom

I had no idea that you lived in such a binary world. I guess it makes live easier.

PS Not the FBI but possibly some rogue agents.

One of your more juvenile evasive posts.

You certainly have become a cheerleader and defender of the FBI and FISA ever since Trump has become a target. Not only do you not suspect foul play, which is your prerogative now, but you have prematurely ruled it out from any consideration. Wow!

What if some rogue agents in the FBI did do those things or some of them? They spied on MLK? What if ???? Is the FBI above suspicion because they are investigating President Trump?

Most pundits I have read believe that the Dem base wanted the shutdown and the deal is the beginning of the end for the Dem old guard leaders. Not that I care, being an amused observer.

It is misleading for Politico to state,

“But while several Republicans have publicly cited the document as cause for alarm—triggering an aggressive Twitter campaign that has featured dozens of supportive tweets by the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr.—they have not detailed its specific allegations.”

…when they know the document is classified and anyone who discloses its details before it is declassified commits a crime.

When did “work” become a four-letter word to liberals?

Sorry for the delay in the cite. Go to the US Supreme Court decision South Dakota v. Dole, 483 U.S. 203 (1987). It gave Congress wide latitude in interpreting the clause. However, I concede that “whatever” was overreach on my part but clearly saying that the drinking age in any particular state is a “general welfare” issue gave congress very wide latitude.

I will take the hit on this one.

47 percent of the country are not the Republican Party base and 53 percent are certainly not the Democrat base. Don’t quit your day job to become a pundit.
Trump’s 47 percent picks up independents. He is winning hearts and minds.

I said it was just one poll.

I doubt I said that about the general welfare clause. Please cite the date of the blog post so we all can look at it.

Once again you avoid my major point and a surprising one at that, which is that Trump has the same ratings as Obama did after one year in office.

Your thoughts?

The people are waking up. Here is the lede of a 12/28/17 Newsweek story, “President Donald Trump and his predecessor, Barack Obama, have at least one thing in common: identical approval and disapproval ratings in one national poll after their first year in office.”

Trump has passed his tax reform plan, which will put more money into the hands of all but those in the upper income tax bracket. As people see Trump’s promise come true and the left’s propaganda proven false, his popularity will rise even more.

Who would have thought that Trump’s approval would match Obama’s at the one year mark, especially when Obama had a media that fawned over him and Trump is the target of most media sources?

Happy New Year.

Funny how so many zealots on both sides of the ideological divide lose their sense of humor. To quote our president, “Very sad.”

The constitutional amendment states that its main purpose is, “…to secure the right of the People of Arizona to know who is making major contributions to influence the result of Arizona elections…”

It then goes on to state, “To secure this right, this Constitutional Amendment requires public disclosure of all contributors who give $2,500 or more to influence elections in a two-year election cycle…”

So it appears that the “clean money” people believe that only major contributions over $2,500 influence elections enough to trigger a report and public disclosure.

I find their high monetary bar for influencing elections interesting. Does anybody know what their rationale is for the high amount? Current law only exempts contributors who give $50 or less from disclosure on reports.

Put this gift on the right side of the tree.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2Lv7OVI6eM&w=560&h=315%5D

That pushing registration forms in front of people who are not interested in voting is one reason (clearly not the only one) for the historically high low voter turnouts as a percentage of registered voters we are seeing.

It is a simple point and one that is obviously true and rather than drawing an acknowledgement, it, as usual, is the catalyst for disagreement and attack here at congenial BfA.

Happy Holidays!

If you want someone to take you seriously and engage in conversation, it is a good idea not to call them slime. Didn’t your parents teach you civility and common sense?

You did not address my point.

Nice evasion of my point. Answer my point and I will answer yours.

Nice evasion of my point. Answer my point and I will answer yours.

The trickle down begins….. https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/20/fifth-third-bancorp-unveils-bonuses-minimum-wage-hike-after-tax-bill-passage.html

The reason that voter turnout is so low, percentage-wise, is because people who are not interested in politics or voting get enrolled via streetside tables and DMV easy signup. Thus proving the adage that you can lead a horse to water but cannot make him (her) drink.

Time will tell. If the bill stagnates or tanks the economy, Dems win. If it ushers in great economic growth, Rs and the country win. Time will tell.

The latest Supreme Court rulings say that the general welfare is whatever Congress says it is. So if Trump’s tax plan passes, it promotes the general welfare.

Make that inequality. My mistake.

Income equality is exaggerated by not including government welfare payments (AKA entitlements) into the equation. After all, that is also income.

Surprising and disappointing.

You came to the wrong place for civility, as witnessed by Mr. Bryan’s doubling down on cold.

I would also take issue with characterizing a yes vote as self-serving hypocrisy. Amazing how AzBM can read hearts and minds.

Frank’s switched and is leaving immediately. Franken still lingers. Still strange.

Also strange.

Strange that Franken denied the charges against him. What does that say about his accusers?
Or should I say what is Franken saying about them?

Also, what’s this I will resign “in a couple of weeks?” Strange.

Finally we agree on something, the need for dental therapists to provide more and less expensive dental care.

So you oppose Farley’s increase to the regressive sales tax by including services and wholesale transactions?
Good for you!

I do not see loopholes to be closed. Even the 4 inch pipe loophole was a Dem scam. They were not Home Depot pipes but high pressure utility gas pipes. Any tax added to them would be immediately passed on to consumers as a cost of doing business.

Do you support increasing items to be subject to the regressive sales tax?

Forget about DC and talk about your Democrat candidates tax increases disguised as loophole closings.

The Cambridge Dictionary defines loophole as “…an opportunity to legally avoid an unpleasant responsibility, usually because of a mistake in the way rules or laws have been written…”

The big ticket “loopholes” that Dems have historically said they would close to raise big revenue are taxing services and taxing wholesale transactions. Those are not loopholes but very conscious policy decisions.

Dems should be honest and say that they are not closing loopholes but making conscious decisions to raise taxes and not just any taxes but the sales tax, which they always claim is regressive and disproportionately falls on the poor.

So you believe in no border enforcement. If a person is charged with reentry after deportation, the jury should vote not-guilty?

I said sexual harassment and harassment to cover Grijalva. Amazing how calls for Moore to step out of the Senate race have declined since a list of Dem harassers appeared.

I will assume that your answer is no penalty and open borders. That is ridiculous. No country has that. How do you justify your position? Don’t you care about low income workers here?

Why won’t you answer the question?

PS We Republicans are not taking Pennypacker back.

At least you answered my question, which is unheard of in this blog. Thanks for that.
I do not dispute the fact that most returnees are not dangerous felons but to not punish returnees is creating an open border policy, which is crazy. No country has that, including Mexico.

Or if you are going to divert attention from Trump’s victory and go to sexual harassment and harassment in general, call for the removal of Franken, Grijalva and Conyers. Hold the hypocrisy please.

Stay on topic.

It passed out of committees in both chambers. What are you people talking about? If the procedures were illegal, sue.

Bob,
What should the penalty be for someone who is deported and returns once?
How about returning multiple times?
You have to do something.

“…a mockery of the democratic legislative process and is legislative malpractice. It was the heavy-handed act of an authoritarian (Oligarchy) regime.”
“…And none of the GOP senators who voted in favor of this bill can honestly say that they actually read the bill…”

Were the above quotes plagiarized from a conservative blog criticizing the passage of Obamacare???

The fencing for high traffic areas will cost between 20 and 25 million dollars per mile. Other areas only require surveillance hardware with quick border patrol response. Are you in now?

I will concede the spelling bee star to you.

Make that Grijvalda

I cannot think of any Dem I would rather run against. Well, maybe Grivalda.

I have long supported the “dreamers” and I hope the Dems can save them by putting a little bit of “comprehensive” into the DACA bill, such as some border fencing, internal enforcement and an end to chain migration. When did comprehensive become a bad word to Dems. When did bi-partisanship disappear?

Oh. And Conyers paid off with tax dollars so he gets a pass too.

Franken says he is staying and is sorry the women misinterpreted his roving hands and were offended by his feeling them sexually. No Dem protestations. More hypocrisy.

How could I have forgotten President Regan’s bringing communist Russia down?

Funny how in the 60s and 70s, liberals mocked conservatives accusing them of seeing Russian communists under every bed and now the roles are reversed. What goes around comes around.

All I can say is, https://youtu.be/-b5aW08ivHU

???

Having gone to catholic elementary school, I can do math and I have the knuckle scars to prove it. That said, the projected $100 million budget shortfall is 1% of the budget. I would say that our revenue estimate was pretty close and we may still meet them, as we are not yet half way to the end of the budget year.

In addition, if the Trump tax reforms pass and it looks like they will, they should generate more than enough economic growth to eliminate such a possible shortfall.

You seem more impudent and hostile than usual. I hope everything is OK.

In case you forgot, you are posting in blogforarizona not blogfornewjersey or blogforcalifornia. I left NY decades ago and I should not be subsidizing their high taxes. Besides, I thought you liberals wanted the rich to pay their fair share. The poor are not taking this itemized deduction and the middle class will benefit from the increased standard deduction.

Again, you have missed my point and question concerning your blindness to Dem offenders. I am not defending anyone just pointing out some Dem activist hypocrisy. Let me again state it:

Maybe I misjudged you. Did you call for the resignation of Bill Clinton? Did you condemn Hillary for attacking Bill’s victims? Where do you stand on Franken and Conyers? Inquiring minds want to know. You have an opinion on everything else.

I reject the assertion that Arizona engages in mass incarceration. 95% of the inmates in Arizona prisons are either violent offenders, repeat offenders or both. In addition, nobody gets sent to an Arizona prison for drug use/possession until their THIRD conviction. The first two convictions get probation and treatment.

Now I am not saying that we could not trim some prisoners, such as elderly ones who have served considerable time and are no longer a threat. But to throw around the catchphrase “mass incarceration” is more emotional . than factual.

I was addressing AZBlueMeanie.

Maybe I misjudged you. Did you call for the resignation of Bill Clinton? Did you condemn Hillary for attacking Bill’s victims? Where do you stand on Franken and Conyers? Inquiring minds want to know. You have an opinion on everything else.

I am defending no one. I just pointed out the hypocrisy of the left, or a big chunk of it, for being silent on the Dem offenders. Of course, you will evade the point of my post, which further proves my point. Thank you.

You are so protective of Dems, you cannot even say their names. You refer to them as “all these guys.” Bill Clinton was just a guy?
Hillary, his defender and attacker of his victims, is also a protected Democrat. What hypocracy.

So sexual harassment is ok, if you are godless???

You are the first person to inject race into this controversy. Please explain why and its relevance.

Does BfA’s selective memory fail to remember Bill Clinton, Teddy Kennedy, Al Franken, Anthony Weiner, Eliot Spitzer, David Wu, Kwame Kilpatrick, John Edwards, David Paterson, Antonio Villaraigosa, Harvey “Bundler” Weinstein and the latest entry, John Conyers.

“People in glass houses………”

Wow Linda. I hope that you are not an english teacher because you totally misread my comments. But the good news is that you can no longer be upset with me for the erroneous reason you stated.

We cut ed spending because we had to cut $3.5 billion from a $10 billion budget. Just about everyone got cut. And I find it amazing that you include in you criticism of me my statement that we should, ““give individual schools the most flexibility, because…I believe the districts themselves know the best choices for their students.” I took that position at the request of the schools!!!!!!

You made up the following:
“Kavanagh only speaks in approved talking points. If you’ve ever seen him on one of the local round-table shows, he has notes on the table and he sticks to them.”
Talking Points are designed to deflect/distract/confuse voters, and to keep less agile speakers from painting themselves into a corner, so that makes sense.”
He’s also full of shit. Everything the GOP has done for the last 40 years has been to end the Teacher’s Unions. It has nothing to do with children or America’s future.”

What other than venom allows you to say that my personal notes are “talking points” that I get from some left-wing imagined evil conspiratorial source? Those are my notes and I stick to them because they are my views.

You are unbelievably partisan and vicious. I actually feel sorry for you because you will never know the good feeling that comes from engaging in productive and intellectually probing debate in the search for good policy. All you do is pollute public discourse with disinformation and venom. You really belong here at BfA.
And by the way, there are no teachers’ unions in Arizona. Not sure how a lib like you missed that point.

ethical not ethically

Making things up is not ethically and detracts from what little credibility you have.

This isn’t even smoke! Does AzBM get paid by the word? Is that what this is all about. And I thought you Dems were big on transparency?

OK, so intrastate non-transparency gets a pass but interstate non-transparency is bad. Glad we got that straightened out.

Does that logic apply to the Koch Brothers or are you the only one who gets a “Get Out of Transparency Free card?

I do not know who you are, why don’t you tell all of us in the interest of transparency and to shed the illusion (?) of hypocrisy.

I did not say that and stop with the buzz words. I am OK with the unanimous FEC ruling:

“The Federal Election Commission, the nation’s chief election-law regulator, unanimously voted in 2006 to exempt a broad swath of online political activity from regulation, citing the desire to preserve the internet as an innovative, open forum for political discourse.”
“At the time, the FEC did rule that paid political advertisements would still need to contain the standard disclosures of who paid for those ads. ”

I am opposed to making those who place ads ALSO include who the ad is targeted towards. That’s a little big brotherish. What say you Mr. Anonymous, non-transparent AZBlueMeanie??? And why is it OK for you to anonymously promoter political issues and candidates? Bit hypocritical, don’t you think.

And one more thing:

“More important, the law would require the firms to disclose whom the ad was targeted at—allowing the public a glimpse at how campaigns target messages at difference audiences online.”

Doesn’t that level of government intrusion into a 1st amendment area scare you. It scares me.

These quotes came from the Wall Street Journal athttps://www.wsj.com/articles/proposed-honest-ads-act-seeks-more-disclosure-about-online-political-ads-1508440260

Your staterment about the disclosure bill is misleading. You said, “A bipartisan trio of senators, Democratic Sens. Mark Warner of Virginia and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, and Republican Sen. John McCain, have introduced legislation that would place new disclosure requirements on political advertisements in an effort to combat the kind of election meddling that Russia engaged in during the 2016 election campaign.” However, the bill does not just deal with disclosures in ads run by foreign governments. It goes after all political internet ads.

This is a big change from the policy created by unanimous vote of the FEC in 2006:

“The Federal Election Commission, the nation’s chief election-law regulator, unanimously voted in 2006 to exempt a broad swath of online political activity from regulation, citing the desire to preserve the internet as an innovative, open forum for political discourse.”
“At the time, the FEC did rule that paid political advertisements would still need to contain the standard disclosures of who paid for those ads. Technology companies also have sought exemptions to those rules.”

This expansion brings the scope of the bill far beyond controlling foreign interests, as your post suggests. It makes the bill controversial and less likely to proceed. If they did a straight foreign ad bill, it would have a better chance, which makes me question their true motives.

Thought your post readers deserved all the facts.

How many Dems have signed onto the bill? If none, can we conclude that Dems don’t care either? When was the bill dropped? Was it a long time ago? If not, how can you say there is no sense of urgency?

Your headline states, “Trump and Tea-Publicans are leaving the U.S. vulnerable to Russian cyber attacks.” Then you conclude the post with a contradictory statement about a bi-partisan bill to combat cyber attacks, “But it’s not yet clear how quickly the bill would move or if it has support among key Republicans.”

Did you change your mind near the end of the post or does someone who does not read the posts write the headlines?

Time to move on to our next disagreement.

You and your wife collude on what’s for dinner. That’s hysterical. Better look up the definition of collude and be careful back pedaling from this gaffe.

So you go from “Papadapoulous was colluding and he had the blessing of the higher ups on the campaign. They encouraged him.” to “smoke.”

I hope you did not trip back pedaling so fast.

Even “smoke” might not be appropriate. How about flatulence.

Please quote the section of the indictment that you claim shows Papadopoulos communicated the offer to exchange “dirt” with Trump campaign higher ups (“Papadapoulous was colluding and he had the blessing of the higher ups on the campaign. They encouraged him. Mueller has the emails.’)

I cannot find it. But I am not a lawyer, as you like to point out. I only see references to meetings to improve Trump-Russia relations, and that is not collusion to buy “dirt.”

Not being a lawyer, I decided to see what even the anti-Trump press is reporting about the collusion to buy dirt link. Here is what the NY Times said yesterday:

“A crucial detail is still missing: Whether and when Mr. Papadopoulos told senior Trump campaign officials about Russia’s possession of hacked emails. And it appears that the young aide’s quest for a deeper connection with Russian officials, while he aggressively pursued it, led nowhere.”

So to quote an old 1970’s commercial, Where’s the beef?” Did you make the collusion evidence up, misread the indictment or do you know something that the N.Y. Times, Mr. Mueller and I are not aware of?

And let’s not forget that Papadopoulos’ efforts, to quote the NY Times “led nowhere,” so eventually it may meet up with this whole witch hunt.

Fact check: Papadopoulous was an unpaid staff member who proposed a meeting to the Trump staff who did not bite. No meeting = no smoke = no fire.

In addition, all the Manafort activity took Place before Trump ran for office.

As in drain the swamp?

She denied chemtrails and decided not to insult constituents. Hardly a damning display. She held a town hall, which is good, and when pressed said she would keep an open mind. That is tact. Chemtrail Ward in not an appropriate label. Using it is misleading, political and wrong.
Watch it, you may be heading for probation or at least an hour’s detention (in a private prison.)

OOOOPPS! I posted the wrong link about the chemtrailk debunking article. Go to: http://www.factcheck.org/2017/08/misleading-chemtrail-kelli-ad/

OOOOPPS! I posted the wrong link about the chemtrailk debunking article. Go to: http://www.factcheck.org/2017/08/misleading-chemtrail-kelli-ad/

I do not dispute your right, as the blog editor, to ban a contributor. I know that there are no 1st amendment issues here because you are not a government agent. In addition, I would oppose extending the 1st amendment to private blogs, newspapers, meetings and even radio and TV. It would truly destroy free association and free speech.

However, I think you are on the so-called slippery slope here. Cross political divide conversations are sometimes subject to double distortion. The conservative views things from his or her political perspective (possible distortion number one) and the liberal hears the comments of the conservative through a liberal lens (distortion number two.) And it is easy to conclude that the other is way off base, although sometimes they are. But knowing when and to what degree another is off base is difficult.

This policy of banning might also have consistency in application problems. For example, in a recent post about a Democrat congressional candidate forum, one poster said, “My sincere hope is that the GOP picks kooky Kelli “Chemtrails” Ward, so a Democrat can face a genuine crazy fringe candidate.” I replied showing a link that debunked that accusation linking Ward to chemtrails -http://www.cnn.com/2017/10/27/politics/arizona-senate-martha-mcsally/index.html

In reply, another poster commented, “You need to re-read that factcheck article. It’s damning. Ward will say whatever it takes to get elected, just like the rest of you, and she’s not above wallowing in some fake conspiracy theories to get votes. As the links you yourself provided shows.”

Now I re-read the fact check article and it is not damning and it exonerates Ward on the chemtrail issue. So unless the dual filters are at play, that poster was wrong, like Thuky. If so, will you put that poster on double secret probation? Doesn’t seem worth it to me.

Does that mean I get a “Get Out of Purge Free Card?”

Sounds like purges.

Factcheck.org debunked the chemtrails and Ward link ( http://www.factcheck.org/2017/08/misleading-chemtrail-kelli-ad/ ) but don’t let the truth stop you.

McSally running for US Senate against a probable field of Republican heavyweights instead of sticking around to trounce a bunch of Democrat back benches is “bailing out.” Talk about vitriolic denial.

I do not think that the emoluments clause was intended to stop any foreign official or government from booking a room in a Trump hotel. That’s stretching gift pretty far.

emoluments

Looks like Secretary of State Hillary Clinton may get snagged by the emollients clause for gifts to her foundation in exchange for uranium to Russia. How ironic. Watch how quickly Dems lose interest in Russian collusion coverage, which is going nowhere with Trump.

Snopes.Com says the suggestion that this is another Bengazi is not justified, as much as AZBlueMeanie wishes it to be, which is pretty sick. Playing politics on the bodies of dead soldiers is perverse.

Funny, California does not agree with you. Based upon an analysis done by the California Legislative Analysts’ Office, California is just barely a donor state:

“In January 2017, the California Legislative Analyst’s Office said by several measures California is, indeed, a donor state, but just barely. It receives $0.99 in federal expenditures per dollar of taxes paid, which is below the national average return for states of $1.22 per dollar paid, according to its review of a 2015 New York Comptroller study.”

So California only loses 1 cent on the dollar. Now I do agree that, as a group, high tax states generally pay more but it is their decision to tax high for extra benefits, be they infrastructure, social programs or free utilities for their residents. Why should Arizona subsidize them, especially he biggest one, California, which seems to be breaking even?

There is another side to the issue of fairness concerning these deductions.

After all, Arizonans and residents of other low-tax states must subsidize the state and local taxes paid by residents of high tax states, such as New York, New Jersey and California, because of that deduction provision. That provision allows residents of high tax states to deduct up to 39.6%, if upper bracket, of their state and local income and property taxes from their federal tax bill. And because many high tax states provide residential water, sewer and trash pickups, we are paying up to 40% of those bills too!

And how is paying your state and local property tax and income tax a “cost of doing producing income” like a business tax.?”

Maybe elimination of the deduction is not practical but some cap should be imposed.

Wait. You can make things up because this is Blog for Arizona.

What post did you read? Where did I defend any foreign government? You can’t just make things up. Wait. You can because this is Blog for Arizona.

What post did you read? Where did I defend any foreign government? You can’t just make things up.

Of the $100,000 in Facebook ads, 56% were run after the election so only $44,000 worth could have influenced the vote. But much of that was spent in solid blue states.

So about $20,000 in ads trumped three televised debates, two tel3vised conventions and $2.4 billion in campaign spending. NOT.

Your generalization is cynical and false in almost all cases.

I am glad that you agree that they are illegal and can only be made legal, if they are passed by congress. There is hope for you.
Hopefully, the president’s action will bring Dems to the table for reform.
In the spirt of units I will ignore your ad hominem attack.

Quick clarification, individuals would have to be on silver plans and would get some increase, about 20%, which is small compared to what Obamacare has done to premiums overall. But that might be offset somewhat but Trump opening insurance markets across state lines.

Just wanted to clarify so that commentators don’t focus on my CBA comment and avoid the gist of my post, which is that the subsidies are ILLEGAL. Many on this blog have a taste for “low hanging fruit” at the expense of the major point others make.

I am glad that you were able to squeeze into your doom and gloom rant against President Trump the fact that the subsidizes are illegal and have been so ruled by a judge.

The Affordable Care Act, yours not mine, made the subsidies contingent on congressional appropriation and that has not happened since 2014. Now I can understand a president sometimes continuing to make payments after the appropriations authorization stops for a month or two to allow congress to act but continuing illegal appropriations for YEARS is wrong. (What if President Trump decided to make illegal appropriations to build more wall? I would object, even though I would like to see that because I respect the process and the law.)

Finally, you neglected to point out that President Trump’s action only stops subsidies to insurance companies and that the CBO stated that the added expenses would be covered by subsidies for individuals who get premium increases. Didn’t you know that?

This is just like DACA. Many of you believe that it is alright to disobey laws that you don’t like. If everyone felt that way and acted accordingly, we would have chaos.

Clearly on this blog you can indefinitely argue about anything. I had fun but it is time to move on to the next post.

Typos are allowed though.

“There are none…” If you are going good to insult me, use proper grammar.

That was for Tom.

Another non-answer and evasion. So typical of those who can only throw stones but not engage in meaningful discussion.

Read the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993, which was supported by Ted Kennedy and Bill Clinton. It’s a good start.
And since I answer your questions, how about answering mine or can’t you?

In response to your first comment I said:

“All they are asked to do is stand. No looking and no saluting or hand on heart. It is as close to neutral as you can get. Employers have the right to stop employees from making statements that harm their business. Taking a knee is clearly a political statement as much as wearing a “Make America Great Again” pin.” END OF POST

My later post said:

“Were the owners of the team the government and it was requiring the players to salute the flag or recite the pledge, then it would probably be compelled speech as per West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624 (1943.)
However, in this case it is a private employer dealing with employees with contracts. The issue is not so clear, as per the American Bar Association. Go to: https://lawnewz.com/uncategorized/aba-legal-fact-check-can-you-be-forced-to-participate-in-the-national-anthem/

I would add that my guess is that players could be penalized for kneeling because it is in violation of the contract that they signed because it is detrimental to the game and that an owner who ordered a salute would lose because it seems like truly compelled speech to me but that an owner would prevail, if he or she were just requiring a neutral action like standing mute. END OF POST

I said that it would be compelling speech, were the government to require to salute or pledge. But that is not the case. I again said that my opinion (guess) is that just having them stand is acceptable because it is as close to neutral as possible and a neutral act is not compelling anything. I thought that was clear but I do not mind clarifying.

I then asked you all, “..since all of you are so anti-compelled speech, are you now OK with bakers and photographers refusing jobs that compel them to contribute to activities that violate their sincerely held religious beliefs? And how about those Little Sisters of the Poor?,” which you forgot to comment about.” Please do so.

By the way, since all of you are so anti-compelled speech, are you now OK with bakers and photographers refusing jobs that compel them to contribute to activities that violate their sincerely held religious beliefs? And how about those Little Sisters of the Poor.?

I will look past the arrogant and condescending part of your post (“And you clearly do not understand the concept of ‘compelled speech,’ do you Senator!?”) and address the compelled speech part. Were the owners of the team the government and it was requiring the players to salute the flag or recite the pledge, then it would probably be compelled speech as per West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624 (1943.)

However, in this case it is a private employer dealing with employees with contracts. The issue is not so clear, as per the American Bar Association. Go to: https://lawnewz.com/uncategorized/aba-legal-fact-check-can-you-be-forced-to-participate-in-the-national-anthem/

I would add that my guess is that players could be penalized for kneeling because it is in violation of the contract that they signed because it is detrimental to the game and that an owner who ordered a salute would lose because it seems like truly compelled speech to me but that an owner would prevail, if he or she were just requiring a neutral action like standing mute.

You might want to do a little research before mouthing off in an arrogant and condescending way. Makes you look bad.

I will look past the arrogant and condescending part of your post (“And you clearly do not understand the concept of ‘compelled speech,’ do you Senator!?”) and address the compelled speech part. Were the owners of the team the government and it was requiring the players to salute the flag or recite the pledge, then it would probably be compelled speech as per West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624 (1943.)

However, in this case it is a private employer dealing with employees with contracts. The issue is not so clear, as per the American Bar Association. Go to: https://lawnewz.com/uncategorized/aba-legal-fact-check-can-you-be-forced-to-participate-in-the-national-anthem/

I would add that my guess is that players could be penalized for kneeling because it is in violation of the contract that they signed because it is detrimental to the game and that an owner who ordered a salute would lose because it seems like truly compelled speech to me but that an owner would prevail, if he or she were just requiring a neutral action like standing mute.

You might want to do a little research before mouthing off in an arrogant and condescending way. Makes you look bad.

All they are asked to do is stand. No looking and no saluting or hand on heart. It is as close to neutral as you can get. Employers have the right to stop employees from making statements that harm their business. Taking a knee is clearly a political statement as much as wearing a “Make America Great Again” pin. You can do either but not at work, if your boss objects.

All they are asked to do is stand. No looking and no saluting or hand on heart. It is as close to neutral as you can get. Employers have the right to stop employees from making statements that harm their business. Taking a knee is clearly a political statement as much as wearing a “Make America Great Again” pin.

Employees at work can be prohibited from making political statements. That is just good business. Even public employers can prohibit political expression by employees, while working.
The NFL has prohibited players from expressing pro-police and pro-fight breast cancer opinions while working. Why should statements critical of the police be allowed?

And dont forget to explain my conservative voting record when I ran Clean.

Nice dodge. Now look at my reports and get back to the blog.

Ooops. I meant finance reports and not fiance reports. Don’t tell my wife.

Take a look at my fiance reports and tell me who my corporate masters are. Then explain my near identical votes during my first few terms, when I ran as a Clean Elections candidate.
Better yet, just drop your conspiracy theory idiocy.

What D bills were run (stolen) be Rs last session?

…and hopefully will not involve an artificial boost from stimulus money that was funded by increasing the national debt by 116%. Our children should not have to pay for our problems.

You seem to have responded to the wrong post. This post is about the administration’s success.

…and continues under Trump.

Good news for America and the president. Nice of you to print it. Sometimes you surprise me.

He is the NY Times’ idea of a conservative.

At least we will have fun fighting over which dollars.

Repealing the 2nd amendment is low hanging fruit compared to changing the makeup of the Senate. But please devote considerable time and effort to these causes, which will distract you from promoting more dangerous liberal (Oops, I meant progressive) causes.

Aren’t you concerned about defuding social security and Medicare?

Because they are not welfare programs but insurance programs that beneficiaries and their employers pay for. Or so the legend goes.

Bob,
You were not clear whether or not you support this supposed job creating tax cut. Do you? Just curious.

Oh wait! You are keeping it up. Thanks.

What does that have to do with my post?

The latest Harvard-Harris poll has him at 45%.

These clearly unjustified and political attacks are boosting his approval ratings. Keep it up!

I did not say I believed that. I questioned your saying they thought the national anthem was racist. Read more carefully.

We also don’t force people to be football fans, as the NFL will soon learn.

The U of A just hired Noam Chomsky, a well-known left wing activist, as a professor using an endowment (dark money?) . Do you oppose his hiring also or just conservatives?

OK. So you introduce the point about the anthem and slavery and I respond to it and then you accuse me of “lawyering the point” and switch to a rant you are more comfortable with. You should see a doctor because you may have SDD – subject deficit disorder.

Just because you disagree with the conservative point of view is not justification to banish it. That is what happens in totalitarian countries and based upon the opinions many on the left now share about this and the 1st amendment, God help us if “progressives” ever get absolute power.

With academia overwhelmingly liberal, such a small opposition voice seems intellectually healthy to me.

Interesting point that I was unaware of but that is not why players are kneeling or if it is, they are sure keeping it a secret. And why would they object, since we don’t use that verse?

By the way, for a different take on the third verse, go to: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/03/arts/music/colin-kaepernick-national-anthem.html?_r=0

Saying you have a right to speak unasked at the events of others, on radio and TV shows that don’t want you, at private clubs and events without permission and while working on duty for someone is scary.
And I am not only technically correct on the first amendment. I am totally correct.

The Constitution, specifically the 1st amendment, does not protect NFL players “taking a knee” or KKK members spewing hate speech, unless it is an agent of the government trying to shut them up.

It is a common fallacy to think that the 1st amendment protects all but illegal speech (obscenity, the immediate advocacy of violence, harassment, etc.) all the time. The 1st amendment only prevents the government from suppressing free speech. The NFL or team owners could stop the kneeling anytime as employers and the players’ contract probably could not stop them. By the same token, a TV or radio show can prevent guests from appearing or hit the mute button when the station does not like what someone says and there is no 1st amendment violation because these are private persons exercising their rights to control their employees “on-duty” actions or the airwaves that they control.

Also, the old veteran did not say he wanted to shut the NFL players up, unless you omitted that part. All he said was that he thought that the kneeling was horrible and he is entitled to that belief just like you can think hate speech is wrong but defend the right of people to say it, as I do.

The bottom line is people can pick and choose what they let other people say, when they control the venue or the speaker is an on-duty employee. The 1st amendment only prevents government suppression of free speech. It’s a common mistake but one that needs correcting.

Read it again and take a course in critical thinking and reading. Here is what he says about “undesirables” and eugenics:

“One proposal previous eugenicists have made is to pay people with undesirable qualities — such as extremely low intelligence, or poor impulse control — not to reproduce. William Shockley went as far as to say that the state should pay people not to have children along a graduated scale in proportion to how many points below the mean IQ (100) they fall.[4] This proposal has serious problems that likely doom it to failure. Make no mistake, intelligence is a crucially important trait for living a successful life, but it is far from the only trait that matters. Qualities like compassion, empathy, and creativity are important for human flourishing, and for treating other people with respect. Policies like these, moreover, might lead to the manipulation of IQ test results by corrupt bureaucrats. Finally, IQ scores are at least partly affected by environmental factors in ways that are not well understood as of yet, a point that should not be overlooked (even if these effects are often exaggerated by blank slate enthusiasts).”

He argues AGAINST using eugenics to limit the birth of so called, “undesirables.” As an academic, he first explains what proponents wanted to do and then he argues against it, in a eloquent manner.

Not wanting to banish someone who discusses the pros and cons of an issue is not defending the issue. Do you really believe that or are you just throwing mud against the wall?

Besides, why would I want to associate myself with a movement whose early days was spearheaded by Planned Parenthood’s founder Margaret Sanger, whose current organization is a tool for eugenics, in some cases.

I am not pro-abortion but I do not believe that those who are should be banished from universities. How unprogressive of me. By the way, aren’t any of the liberals who read BfA going to defend academic freedom? Have they turned into witch hunting progressives or are they afraid that they too will be persecuted by the progressives?

This post was in response to Pamela Powers Hannley’s post above.

Bit of a “hit and run” in that you suggest that Professor Anomaly said some dark things in his article. It is mostly a historical look at genetics and eugenics with a little future policy speculation thrown in. He condemns the past abuses and current authoritarian proposals for eugenics use and seems to support more readily available testing so couples know what they are getting into (no pun intended) with sex.

I think you owe it to Professor Anomaly to specifically cite why you attacked him so he can defend himself or retract the dark shadow you have cast over his reputation.

I will answer you when you take the vulgarities out of your comments.

How despicable! I cannot believe that a conservative point of view is being presented at the U of A and in Tucson no less! It is time that we cast aside the outdated notion of a classical “liberal” education, where students are exposed to and intellectually challenged by a variety of ideas, and move forward with the new “progressive” model of only left-wing, non-offensive, inclusive, non-GMO, gluten-free and fair trade ideas.

With the Regent’s latest report showing that in-state undergrads on average pay only $3,974 in tuition, after student scholarships and aid and NOT including student loans, it is hard to believe that anyone is seriously discussing an affordability issue at our universities.

In addition, the high tuition charged to out-of-state students is a major source of the student aid subsidies that go to about two-thirds of in-state students. And the out-of-state students are not complaining because they are getting a good deal also. Finally, the high tuition has not deterred out-of-state student enrollment with about half the students at ASU being out-of-state.

I just think that making a high school freshman make such a decision at the end of the school year is a bad idea because they are too young to commit. That’s all.

To your comments:

1. I have criticized the proliferation of deans many time in meetings with President Crow. I will concede that the growth of administrators has been less severe at ASU and we even culled a few during the recession. But surely you do not doubt the Huffington Post article on the growth of deans nationwide that I cited. In yesterday’s N.Y.Times columnist Ross Douthat noted that Harvard has 55 Title IX administrators!

2. Don’t be too critical of out-of-state students. I do not believe in-state students are being shut out but the extra tuition outsiders pay subsidizes the big breaks that in-state students get in tuition. At the undergrad level, about half the instate students get free tuition and on average in-state students only pay just under $4,000 in tuition. There is no affordability crisis in our universities for in-state undergrads.

3. I have always supported legalizing DACA kids but the constitutional way, via congress. See my TV debate at https://azpbs.org/horizon/2017/09/state-lawmakers-debate-legality-daca/

4. I did not fund 9th grade JTED but that did not deprive any student of the opportunity to attend. JTED programs are only for two years and have always been in the junior and senior years of high school. EVIT wanted to recruit 9th graders to get a quick enrollment boost to help with a financial crisis caused by the expensive campus they built. I opposed it because I do not believe 9th graders can make a decision to go vocational versus academic and if vocational, what to take. Keeping it for 10th graders just gives them another year to decide but they still take the full two years.

I will not address the single payer comment because I assume it is just a friendly jab.

I do not think that the supermajority is so much a sign of mistrust of either legislators or voters but an acknowledgement that some actions require greater caution and should not pass by a slim majority, especially at the polls where only 20 or 30 percent of the voters might come out.

I did not intent for the jury comparison to be “apples to apples.” I used it to introduce the concept of consequences of different weight. Passing a tax increase has more impact than a memorial declaring the first day in April “Blog for Arizona Day.”

It is. Do you know of a more democratic one? I suppose the referendum comes close but it is created by elected representatives of the people and not the people themselves.

Upps. I posted my reply above.

I disagree with you but appreciate a reasoned argument, which you should use more often.

Requiring a 2/3s vote, in my opinion, is not undemocratic, especially when passed by the most democratic process we have in Arizona. Imposing a higher bar for certain acts that have more serious consequences is not undemocratic. It is cautious.

The fact that jurors have to be unanimous before convicting someone is not undemocratic, it is cautious because of the consequence of the vote. Likewise, the legislature needs a 3/4 majority to amend a voter passed measure and even then only if it furthers its goal? Is that undemocratic.

Requiring supermajorities for especially consequential matters goes back a long way in history, (Ancient Rome) and is used in many places around the world today by many “enlightened countries and institutions (Denmark, the U.K. Canada, the EU and even the UN.”)

So we disagree.

“Prop. 108 is the GOP’s weapon of mass destruction. It is undemocratic…”

So how can a proposition passed via the populist, citizen-initiated initiative process that passed with 72% of the vote be undemocratic?

This blog should have a warning that reads, “This blog is logic-free. Turn off your reasoning ability before clicking into it.”

That recent FTSE count is for all students, in-state, out-of-state, undergraduate and graduate. I do not believe that the founders gave us a mandate to provide as near free as possible tuition to out-of-state and foreign students. I know that at ASU, about half the undergrads are from out of state.

I suspect that when you allocate state aid by Arizona students only and take into account the extra tuition money that out-of-state and foreign students pay, which subsidizes in-state student tuition, the picture is not as dire as you portray it.

In fact and as I posted before,

You cannot discuss tuition and tuition increases without discussing how much in-state students actually pay. The last time I saw the data from the Regents, about two years ago, about half the in-state undergrad students paid no tuition at all. Another third paid greatly reduced tuition and the rest paid full tuition.

These amounts do not include fees (but they are not monumental) and take into account all types of financial aid, including a sizable shift of tuition revenue (much of it from large out-of-state tuition costs) to poorer students. So when the dust settles, ASU and the other state universities have very affordable tuition or no tuition for probably three-quarters of their students. The rest of the undergrads come from well-off households, who you libs think don’t pay enough money to government anyway.

I might also add that some of the increased costs today result from a massive growth of administrative personnel since the 1970s, Deans of Anything and Everything, along with mandatory fitness center fees that all students must pay and that I voted against authorizing.

Finally, doing a two-year community college and two-year university articulation package, the cost of a four-year state university degree is probably among the lowest in the nation.

Amazing how these facts get lost in the smoke and mirrors of politics.

Currently doctors and hospitals make up some of the inadequate payments of Medicare, Medicaid and the zero payments of most uninsured by overcharging private insurance plans. What will they do when you libs cook the goose that lays the golden eggs?

Anyone with a calculator knows single payer is unaffordable. Vermont backed out of it, Colorado voters nixed it big time and California has also backed off.

Half the in-state undergrads pay NO tuition and another third pay reduced tuition and the Huff Post documents the proliferation of college administrators that increase operating costs. Is that specific enough or do you insist on the names of every free-ride student and every subsidized one.

Please comment on the tuition breaks and discounts. Specifically, how can tuition be unaffordable for the 50% who pay NOTHING?

Frances,
You ignore my key point that half the students pay no tuition and another third pay reduced tuition, which totally refutes the idea that college is unaffordable in Arizona. Then you question my comment on too many administrators at colleges and I counter with proof from a liberal source. You then want me to go on a wild goose, or should I say administrator chase.

I have a better idea. You comment on the free and low tuition and national proliferation of excess administrators and then we can micro-analyse Arizona universities.

And while you are at it, please identify the mishmosh of non sequitors you say I made. It’s accountability time, Frances.

Go to the Huffington Post for info on the large growth of administrators.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/06/higher-ed-administrators-growth_n_4738584.html

Here is the gist of the Huffington Post post:

The number of non-academic administrative and professional employees at U.S. colleges and universities has more than doubled in the last 25 years, vastly outpacing the growth in the number of students or faculty, according to an analysis of federal figures.

The disproportionate increase in the number of university staffers who neither teach nor conduct research has continued unabated in more recent years, and slowed only slightly since the start of the economic downturn, during which time colleges and universities have contended that a dearth of resources forced them to sharply raise tuition.

In all, from 1987 until 2011-12—the most recent academic year for which comparable figures are available—universities and colleges collectively added 517,636 administrators and professional employees, or an average of 87 every working day, according to the analysis of federal figures, by the New England Center for Investigative Reporting in collaboration with the nonprofit, nonpartisan social-science research group the American Institutes for Research.

I do not deny that class sections have been reduced but how can you dismiss without comment the fact that half the students pay no tuition and another third pay reduced tuition. Come on.

You cannot discuss tuition and tuition increases without discussing how much in-state students actually pay. The last time I saw the data from the Regents, about two years ago, about half the in-state undergrad students paid no tuition at all. Another third paid greatly reduced tuition and the rest paid full tuition.

These amounts do not include fees (but they are not monumental) and take into account all types of financial aid, including a sizable shift of tuition revenue (much of it from large out-of-state tuition costs) to poorer students. So when the dust settles, ASU and the other state universities have very affordable tuition or no tuition for probably three-quarters of their students. The rest of the undergrads come from well-off households, who you libs think don’t pay enough money to government anyway.

I might also add that some of the increased costs today result from a massive growth of administrative personnel since the 1970s, Deans of Anything and Everything, along with mandatory fitness center fees that all students must pay and that I voted against authorizing.

Finally, doing a two-year community college and two-year university articulation package, the cost of a four-year state university degree is probably among the lowest in the nation.

Amazing how these facts get lost in the smoke and mirrors of politics.

I must admit I was surprised and I am not pleased but I wonder if Trump isn’t getting ready to run a variation of rope-a-dope. Time will tell. Trump is not an incompetent politician. Look what he did to Hillary. Surely you haven’t forgotten?

DACA goes far beyond prosecutorial discretion, which in any event is best used on a case by case basis and not on 800,000 people. Prosecutorial discretion is simply not prosecuting. It is NOT conveying legal status, which only immigration law can confer and that must come from congress.

I have always supported legalizing DACA “dreamers,” even at the height of SB1070, which I cosponsored and supported. But you have to do it the legal constitutional way – with a bill.

What will you do if Trump gets a DACA bill passed, something Obama could not do even when the Dems controlled both houses of congress?
How will you spin it?

If the elite 2,500 agent CI unit comes up empty, will you give up, Captain Ahab?

It is not okay to ask that question. You should apologize.

There is no fact that substantiates any claim of any votes being changed or deleted or added. Trump won. Get over it and move on.
You are staring directly into nothing.

So far there is no evidence that any sides election was corrupted. As the months go by and no evidence is uncovered, I do feel more at ease but I agree that we should never get complacent. Nor should we get obsessed and paranoid.

A wall, missing emails, draining the swamp and terrorism were key issues in the campaign and were also reasons why Hillary lost. I think Bob’s analysis explains a lot on the Democrat side but that was not the only reason Hillary lost. Life and elections are complex. No analysis can discount Hilary’s ethical flaws, public anger with the Washington establishment, R and D, and terrorism, not to mention the economy.

Interesting and lengthy post, Captain Ahab.

Steve is a nice guy and I respect him, even though I disagree with his positions. But there is no Democrat who can beat Gov. Ducey because you have no front bench. You only have a back bench because you cannot get a Democrat elected to state-wide office.

Your great Democrat hope lost to Diane Douglas and Governor Ducey got over 800,000 votes.

I am glad you are defending their right to donate to political causes and candidates. I am pleasantly surprised and corrected.

Maybe I pre-judged you. So if you believe that each group of donors should receive equal civil liberties protections, then why bring up their differences regarding motive? What was the purpose of your comment. You seemed to point out a difference but one not relevant to my post concerning their respective rights to donate.

Please explain.

Also note that I do not believe the motives of the conservative donors are evil.

Critical thinking also entails “reading between the lines.”

Last I looked, first amendment rights applied to all expression, except for a few illegal acts, and not just views that you like. Your problem is with more than just income inequality, you don’t like civil liberties.

Also, I find it hard to defend left-wing billionaires but I do because I am not a hypocrite.

And by the way, ad hominem attacks are anathema to critical thinking. You should wean yourself of them. After you do so, we can work on your logic.

Among many on the left today, bias is a badge of honor. Truly is a sad state of affairs, especially for liberals.

AZBlueMeanie goes over the edge:

“We have too many right-wing billionaires like Robert Mercer, Dick and Betsy DeVos, the Koch brothers, etc. who are using their wealth in our money-driven political system to gain power — but to what purpose? What is their ultimate objective? We need answers to these questions.” – AZBlueConspiracyMeanie

Time for the tin foil hats.

Or how about:

“We have too many left-wing billionaires like George Soros, Warren Buffet, Pierre Omidyar, Tom Steyer, Jonathan Soros etc. who are using their wealth in our money-driven political system to gain power — but to what purpose? What is their ultimate objective? We need answers to these questions.”

These are people legally using their money to promote their ideas and candidates who support their positions. It’s not a conspiracy it’s the Bill of Right in action.

I love the way you sneak in your subtle, false propaganda, as in:

“This weekend, white supremacists, Neo-Nazis, Neo-Fascists, Neo-Confederates, Ku Klux Klan and various and sundry other white nationalist organizations — key constituencies of the Trump political base…”

Key constituencies? What a slanderous lie. You do not win presidential elections with such loathsome extremists as your key constituencies.

Good reply, I think you got every nit.

Actually, it just made our mission to combat false news and bias more relevant.

Does anybody know how many people actually read this blog because based upon the comments, there seem to be about a baker’s dozen. Also, when is the annual dinner?

I was arguing about the medical malpractice of diagnosing someone via TV and the absurdly broad symptoms that the psychiatric diagnosis at issue uses, making the assertion about Trump is mentally ill ridiculous to all but anti-Trump fanatics.

Not good policy. That’s why it is illegal to practice medicine without a license. It also easily amounts to slander, also not good.

The argument is relevant. It just flew over your head. Reread the post and focus. If you still don’t get it, let me know.

The argument is relevant. It seems to have gone above your head. Reread it and if you still can’t see it, get back to me.

Using that generalized diagnostic criteria in the most non-professional distant manner that you do, Hillary Clinton is also suffering from narcissistic personality disorder, as are most politicians, celebrities and many other successful people. That is why true professionals do not diagnose patients by observing them on MSNBC. Of course, you are not even a mental health professional much less a true one.

This post is really clutching at straws. Besides, the only reason these mental health “professionals” write negative articles about Trump is to get published, get on TV and be praised by their left-wing colleagues.

Grow up (intellectually) AZBlueMeanie.

Wait, I take that back. Keep engaging in this petty criticism of Trump so the people never elect a democrat again.

Hard to believe your new found irritation with whiners but on the up side, I can’t wait for you to go after the political correctness crowd.
In addition, I am amazed at you ability to psychoanalize President Trump. Where did you get your degree in psychic psychology?

The Palestinians in Gaza voted in a terrorist anti-Israel government that will not even allow elections to change course. I cannot blame Israel for doing whenever it can to weaken a mortal enemy that wants all Israeli jews dead.

I will ignore your ad hominem attack about my reading skills and restate my question. What should Israel do? Allow food imports that conceal weapons that will kill their children?

This is the fault of the militant group Hamas, which even the Palestinian Authority has ostracized. They stand for death to Israel. Are we supposed to support and strengthen such a terrorist government? Is Israel supposed to strengthen a group that wants it dead?
What Hamas is doing to its own people is tragic but what can be done. What do you propose?

Economics is not so simple. Maybe if you liberals did not push the policy that everyone has a right to a mortgage, we might not have gone into as bad as recession.

Your commentary has hit a new intellectual low. It’s amazing how Trump makes liberals “bat shit crazy.”

More speculation than fact in this blog post and a false premise that nothing Trump has done (such as, deregulation) did anything. It’s really too early to judge. But, CNN does offer some facts:

“With July’s jobs report, employers have added a total of 1,074,000 jobs during Trump’s first six full months in office.
That essentially matches the 1,084,000 jobs created during President Barack Obama’s last six months in office. Both round to 1.1 million, and the 10,000 difference is well within the margin of error of the Labor Department estimate…

The economy lost 515,000 jobs during the first six months of George W. Bush’s tenure, in 2001, when the country was falling into a recession. But by the first six months of his second term, employers added 1.5 million jobs, outpacing Trump’s six-month total.

President Bill Clinton’s six-month totals were 1.3 million jobs added in his first term (in 1993) and 1.7 million in his second term (in 1997).
Trump’s figures could still improve: The readings for June and July are still preliminary, and other months could be revised, too.”

This latest report can only generate speculation, much of it biased.

Friese will run against Flake, if there are no strong Democrats candidates in the race. This is too good to be true for Republicans.

You cannot make the release criteria the subjective opinion of a bureaucrat concerning the requestor’s motives. You need an objective standard that applies to all and suposition is too open to abuse. If the requestor uses the information to break the law, then prosecute him or her.

Not bad for responsiveness. If your position is that nobody should get voting data, then while I disagree with you, you are being intellectually consistent. But I never heard you object to much of the same data going to the political parties, newspapers and candidates.

If you are ok with them getting the data but not a government commission, then you are being inconsistent and making the criteria for release the “gut feelings” of government employees, which is bad and open to abuse and political games.

There should be one standard for all. Either make the data private and only available by subpoena for judicial and law enforcement reasons or make it open to anyone for non-commercial purposes, as it is now.

And yet again, you evade addressing my point and try to change the topic to something that suits you. Presumedly because you have no good answer for my point.

So if you would like me to address your comment, re-read my post and comment on it and then we can move on to yours. I learned that polite procedure in kindergarten, NOT all-day, but it is never too late for you to learn it.

Once again, you evade addressing my point and try to change the topic to something that suits you. Presumedly because you have no good answer for my point.

So if you would like me to address your comment, re-read my post and comment on it and then we can move on to yours. I learned that polite procedure in kindergarten, NOT all-day, but it is never too late for you to learn it.

As always, you evade addressing my point and try to change the topic to something that suits you. Presumedly because you have no good answer for my point.

So if you would like me to address your comment, re-read my post and comment on it and then we can move on to yours. I learned that polite procedure in kindergarten, NOT all-day, but it is never too late for you to learn it.

All or almost all of the data is public information that candidates and political organizations get now. We go down a dangerous path when we decide to withhold public information for political purposes or because we question the sincerity or motives of the requestor.
In the end, the info will be released because that is the law and politics does not trump (No pun intended) the law. In addition, Kobach has agreed to not release individual data. Kiss the privacy excuse good bye.

It must be very comfortable living in you black and white world constructed with spun facts.

The party out of power always has an epiphany and concludeds that compromise and collaboration are needed because being out of power makes that their only hope for some victories. The party in power rejects compromise because they have a voter mandate to rule their way. When their roles reverse, their positions do too.

In addition, why would Republicans want to collaborate with you when you accuse us of favoring the rich and corporations and being controlled by think tanks, special interest groups and lobbyists? Do you make nice with people who insult you?

And regarding ying and yang, what yang concessions are you willing to give up on abortion, guns, voting regulation and criminal justice? Would you vote to ban partial birth abortion for some choice gains? Would you be OK with more vouchers in return for more school funding? How about voting for CCW permit holders having guns in public buildings in return for gun show background checks?

I would be interested in how far you would go in collaboration.

Your first comment was good but not your second. You are batting 500.

I am John, the good senator, not Shirley.

How about “Live free or die?” Upps, that is a license plate slogan. Do you think that is a cheap slogan? Or “Give me liberty or give me death?

The relationship between the 1st and 2nd amendments i8 is very simple: without the 2nd there would be no 1st.

Steve,
Your assessment of my motives is correct and I suspect you are also correct about Not Tom. I kept pressing because even the most devout ideolog usually gets embarrassed and answers a question after being pressed several times, but not Not Tom.

You are either clueless or evasive but either way it is a waste of time to talk with you.

I will try one more time. The freedom of information act makes almost all of what they want available. Would you make that information secret and not available to political parties and candidates and others for non-commercial purposes because that is the only way to stop the commission from getting it? You can’t keep it open to all but people whose motives you persomally do not like, especially government commissions. Focus on the issue and don’t deflect. The idea of these blogs is to discuss such issues. Are you up to it Not Tom.

Arizona law only prohibits the release of the maiden name and social security number. Everything else requested is public record. Would you change that and make it all secret to everyone? That is the only way to keep it out of the commission’s hands.
Your call Not Tom and try not to be not responsive.

So both of you want to remove voter information from the public disclosure law? Am I hearing you right or do you just want to deny it to people whose motives you do not trust? How would you write such a law?

I would invite Bob Lord to weigh in on this one.

So you are OK with government officials refusing Freedom of Information requests, whenever they are suspicious of the requestors motives? Do you really want to go down that path? I am asking this as a serious question and not as the usual right-left banter.

Sorry for the extra “is” on line 2. Ignore it.

With the exception of the maiden name and last four digits of the social security number, all of this is data is already public information that political parties get for free and anyone else can legally get for for a nominal fee (about $200,) so long as it is not used for commercial purposes.

Not sure what all this outrage is about, other than another opportunity to bash Trump.

Are you proposing that all this “personal information” be banned from everyone’s eyes?

You said, “The ‘play’ is Shakespeare’s ‘Julius Ceasar. It’s hardly a kill Trump play.” That was a misleading lie. It is parody of Julius Caesar in which Trump is killed. That was my point. I was focusing on your dishonesty.

Hardly a kill Trump play? How can you say that with a straight face, or maybe you are smirking.

Here is the Washington Post’s description of the play:

The New York-based arts organization came under fire for staging a production of Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar” starring Trump look-alike Gregg Henry in the titular role. In this staging of play, which was part of the summer’s Free Shakespeare in the Park, Caesar is a businessman known for his petulant personality, fancy suits and blondish hair with orange overtones.
His wife, Calpurnia, even has a Slavic accent, much like first lady Melania Trump.
In the play, Roman senators fear Caesar had become power hungry, so they stab him to death.

Why is there no criticism of the play in NYC depicting Trump’s murder? Have you hypocrits no shame?

So what should the penalty be for a recidivist illegal entrants? Or do you belive that we should scrap our immigration laws, laws written by such Democrat icons as Ted Kennedy. Laws that are fair and reasonable.

If Trump gets to name three Supreme Court justices, his legacy could go on for decades.

I am referring to all of the investigations and they all turned up nothing but you know that.

Of course it is an outrage and approaches an act of war. I support a full investigation, prosecutions and corrective measures. But the left needs to stop talking about Trump collusion, when an exhaustive investigation has found no such thing. Diverting the investigation and discussions to fake collusion distracts from the real work that needs to be done to protect America.

How about commenting on my comment?

Maybe Rs would be more supportive of the Russian inquiry had the Ds not turned it into a Trump witch hunt. In addition, when no evidence that Trump was involved surfaced, Ds then pushed to divert the investigation away from the Russians and into obstruction of justice claims. It is obvious that for many Ds, it about getting Trump and not dealing with Russian hacking. It has become far too political.

The important point was stated in this post, “None of the intrusions affected the vote count itself, all the officials testified.” Hillary still lost.

And by social engineering, I assume you meant the way DNC Chief Dave Podesta was the victim of phishing. I get it. You really need to stop being so picky.

The only facts present in this post are that while Russia MAY have wanted to hack into America’s election voting system to rig the election, there is no evidence that the they succeeded and some people, maybe Russian maybe not, hacked into the DNC computer and stole and distributed embarrassing and truthful emails.
The article is full of hedge words and undisclosed sources. It is smoke without fire.

Messing with elections and stealing emails is serious business and deserves better analysis than political spin and Democrat speculation and wishing.

PS: SCOTUS ruling also sends a message to liberal activist lower courts not to play executive.

What a difference a SCOTUS ruling makes. The ban, which AzBM ridiculed (“Donald Trump continues to go ‘oh for’ in the federal courts… ” and “Donald Trump is completely bonkers…”), is substantially upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court, including all four liberal judges.
AzBM attempts to minimize his miscall by saying it is a strategy to make the ban “moot.” If “moot” gets you most of what you want, sounds like a victory.

Check out legal zoom and rocket lawyer.

You forgot to mention the entire U.S. Supreme Court, including all four liberal judges, agreeing to hear Trump’s appeal of lower courts stopping his travel ban and their allowing almost all of the ban to proceed for 90 days. So much for your analysis.

Communicating ideas and information is not promoting a candidacy.

And by the way, AzBM, are you saying that when a reporter or constituent calls my office to get my opinion, I cannot answer on my government phone?
So let’s see regarding out quest to unmask (“out”) you. We can now assume that you went to Catholic school and are not a lawyer.

I would think trying to mask my identity would be more problematic. Besides, I believe that the public benefits from my transparency and my constituents should know where I stand on public policy issues. But nice try at attempting to “chill” my speech. I am sure you would love for me to go away.

AzBM is really agitated and spewing profanities. Almost makes me think he is going over the edge. Thankfully, he is an uber-liberal (Sorry, progressive.) so no need to call the police to confiscate his guns. But still, Hupp and censored should find a “safe space.”

Liberals (sorry, l meant progressives), and conservatives can argue about equality/inequality until the cows come home and get nowhere because most of them view the issue differently.
Conservatives view it as equality of opportunity and many liberals view it as equality of outcomes. Big difference!

Upon reflection, your description, alibi (just kidding), of yourself and most BfA bloggers can reasonably explain the lack of commentary. However, that would not apply to AzBM, who is a prolific and eclectic blogger and also one who engages in frequent negative attacks, insults and name calling – the kind of behavior that some (usually liberals and not me) believe creates the climate where such attacks can more readily occur. (Note: I am NOT suggesting a causal relationship nor censorship.)

But without comment.

But no comment.

I thought you were better than that.

Strange that an assassination attempt against a group of Republican congress members and staff isn’t worthy of a mention on BfA.

But you have zero knowledge to back that assertion up. Besides, I just corrected the blatant falsehood that Arizona had no such regulations. An error that demanded correction.

For most Ds, you are probably correct. However, here we have AZBM, accuser -in-chief, giving the Russia investigation team a pre-start seal of approval. It would be difficult for AZBM to continue going after Trump on any issue Mueller looks into that fails to produce, at least, an indictment.
Interesting.

How can you say, “There is no regulation of mobile home parks in Arizona?” Just look at Arizona Revised Statutes Title 33 Chapter 11!
And you do not have to a lawyer to know that. Just Google “Arizona mobile home law.”
You are making AZBM look reasonable.

So if President Trump is not prosecuted after this crack team conducts a competent investigation, then it confirms that this was about nothing or are you planning to have your cake and eat it too?

Glad you are not disputing that Trump broke no laws on obstructing.

Criminal law lawyers deal with obstruction of justice cases, not constitutionsl ones.

Let’s not overlook Harvard Law School Professor Alan Dershowitz’s opinion that no crime was committed by Trump. A little balance is always nice and when the source is AZBM, much needed.

Go to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJ15ymETv-s

So Steve Farley said he is not running with Clean Elections funding. Since he will be taking donations, will that make him corrupt? Was DuVal corrupt? How about Obama?

Do you really believe that when donors give contributions to candidates whose views they support, it is an act of corruption?

I said staff. Big difference Mr. Non-Tom.

…and Pamela, as a legislator you need to query staff on these issues before you jump to conclusions.

The jet fuel break was part of a deal made long before I was elected to the legislature. It applied to one major airline and was part of a deal for them to keep their jet maintenence operation at Phoenix airport. It involved a lot of high paying jobs.
These breaks are not as simple as they appear to be.

Can’t make it but please post Farley’s loopholes tomorrow or provide a link to the list.

I cannot wait to see Farley’s list.

I cannot count how many times I have been down the “Close the Corporate Sales Tax Loophole” path with Democrats. However, the bottom line is that almost all of these loopholes are based upon three of Arizona’s long-held and fair tax principles of:

1. Not taxing wholesale transactions because the final product is also taxed and that would be double taxation.

2. Not taxing services (Do you really want to pay a tax on your medical bills or haircuts, which are not corporate loopholes but consumer breaks.)

3. Not taxing food, prescriptions, medical equipment, etc.

I would love to see the list of 331 loopholes that Steve has identified. Has anybody seen them? Please let me know where to access them, so we can have a more targeted and specific discussion.

And please, let’s not talk about the exemption for 4 inch pipes, which turned out to only be for high pressure gas pipes, which if taxed would have had the cost passed on to the consumer as a utility company rate recoverable expense.

And by the way, why is a Democrat pushing to increase the sales tax, which Democrats always claim to be regressive?

This is more smoke and mirrors and a stealth tax increase on people.

In the fiction category that is.

“And we all know how Arizona Republicans like slimy, slithery things.”
Looks like Larry is taking BfA to a new intellectual low.

It was a campaign promise kept. Besides, Obama could never get Congress to approve the accord. He did it unilaterally – not very democratic for a Democrat.

Sure and Trump will never win the presidency.

I believe most felons were convicted of only one felony, so they get their voting rights restored automatically, after the complete their full sentence. That’s simple.

A tax is a payment to the government for services. Fines are payments to the government as a former of punishment. Restitution, which you forgot to mention, is payment to the victim as compensation for harm done. All are legal. A poll tax is an unconstitutional payment used to deter the poor from voting. These are all very different.

Not fully completing one’s sentence is not an excuse to deprive a person of their vote. It’s rationale is twofold.

First, it is based upon the belief that one who commits a serious crime has harmed society and relinquishes some of the rights those in good standing have. It is a less serious former of traditional banishment. And some of the rights never return, some do automatically and some need to be earned back, usually by good behavior..
Second, it is an enducement to fully complete one’s sentence to insure victim compensation and to balance the scales by having the offender pay his or her debt to society.

I think it is reasonable.

Voting rights for those convicted of a single felony are AUTOMATICALLY restored after they complete their sentence, finish supervision via probation or parole and pay their fines and restitution. We call this restorative justice. When they pay the price for the the harm they caused by serving their sentence and paying their debt to society and their victim, they have their voting right restored. Seems fair.
Multiple felons must meet the same requirements but must go to the court that sentenced them to have voting rights restored because a judge must be convinced that they are truly “restored” members of society and are not still criminal outsiders.

My comment dealt with how easy it currently is to register to vote in Arizona. Your comment deals with eliminating id requirements to register to vote and vote. Two different things and yours will never happen.

Sounds like you are trying to dupe moderate voters to vote Democrat by making them think that the Democrat Party has not gone far left. Well, at least you are up front about your attempted deception.
It might work because you can fool some of the people some of the time.

People can register to vote in Arizona, when they apply for their driver’s license. If they want to, they check a box. If not, they don’t check the box.

Why not ask Tucson to donate?

Nice dodge on avoiding commenting on Obama’s comment.

Unknown officials and privately? Spare me.

You mean the WSJ article saying Israel is playing it down and has complete confidence in the American intelligence community?

…went down that path.

Why was there no uproar when President Obama said that Hillary should not be prosecuted? In that case, his underlings at the Justice Department even when the down that path.

Cut through all the BS and wishful thinking and we wind up with Trump did nothing illegal and Israel has not expressed any disapproval or concern.

Why not attack people calling this an impeachable offense? They are the ones who are wrong.

So Tucson holds an election in an off-month and only 26% of the voters vote. And Dems accuse Republicans of voter supression.

Can we at least celebrate the fact that 5 of the top 10 schools in the United States are Arizona public schools, according to U.S News and World Report?

Thanks for the clarification. There are so many variables that anyone can conclude whatever they want afterwards but ultimately it is the candidate who navigates the obstacle course..

Don’t ask.

So when you blame “the voters who did not vote for her,” you mean Hillary supporters who stayed home? For what reason? Or do you mean others?
I am not playing games with you but you are not being your usually communicative self.

I do not want to put words in your mouth or Taibbi’s but are you suggesting that Trump was closer to what the public wanted than Clinton? I was not sure where you were going.

If parents only want public schools, who is sending all those kids to religious and private schools and why worry about ESAs, because nobody will use them.

My grandson goes to one of those “commercialized” charter schools. He is in the 4th grade, gets about an hour of homework a night, is learning Mandarin and his school is one of the top rated ones in the country. That’s right, one of the top in the country in spite of getting funded at the number 49th level.

Parental choice is the moral thing to do and the competition it creates will help most schools.

Linda,

Robb said taxes are “coercive” but I do not believe he said they are evil, which is a big jump. I do not know his opinion on the evilness of taxes but neither do you. Like most of us, he probably sees them as coercive but necessary in most cases.

I also take issue with your statement, “Public schools offer the best opportunity for all children to achieve the American Dream…” While most of our public schools, district and charter, are great opportunities for students, so are many private schools. I went to Catholic elementary school and high school and received a great education. What’s wrong with Brophy and Notre Dame locally?

There are many great avenues for a good education in Arizona and I am proud to have expanded parental choice in that area by supporting ESAs..

When did enforcing the law become controversial, especially a law that has remained intact in spite of attempts to change it?

7% sounds close to the advantage that the Civil Rights Act requires for minority district enrollment advantages. How can the two be reconciled?

Some takeaways from the post, or should I say the N.Y. Times article that comprises almost all of the post:

1. The alleged (but likely) attempt by Russia to help Trump get elected was apparently not because they liked Trump but because Hillary Clinton was a longtime adversary of President Vladimir V. Putin

2. The Russians hacked both the Democrats and Republicans.

3. No evidence, after all this time, has been found to link any Trump persons to the effort.

4. The leaked information was not dis-information but truthful information hacked (stolen by deception) from the DNC — Still a serious wrongdoing and hostile act against all of America but not as serious as had they fabricated information about the Democrats.

Finally, I take issue with the note well (NB) comment that the American intelligence communities high level of time commitment to this case is evidence that they are building a case or cases for prosecution. Republicans said the same thing about the long time spent investigating Hillary Clinton’s server scandal. I think everyone takes a foreign power trying to influence our elections with both truthful and untruthful information very seriously for the threat that it is and that that is the reason for the extra investigatory diligence.

Why do you oppose parental choice, a better student fit, state general fund savings (according to our nonpartisan budget staff,) district savings when underfinded special ed students leave for private schools and some evidence of improved performance for students who use vouchers?

Nice evasion of my critical comment.

…and are you saying that Thiessen made up the Laurence Tribe quote or do you just want to redefine “brilliant” and “teriffic.”

You can’t redefine your way to winning an argument. Garland was not filibustered. Have you no shame?

From The Washington Post Opinion Section by Marc A. Thiessen – some balance:

There has never been a successful filibuster of a nominee for associate justice in the history of the republic — and the idea that Gorsuch should be the first is patently absurd. By any reasonable standard, President Trump nominated a jurist of impeccable temperament, character and intellect who has won plaudits from across the political spectrum. Liberal Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe has declared that “Gorsuch is a brilliant, terrific guy who would do the Court’s work with distinction.” Former Obama acting solicitor general Neal Katyal, who introduced Gorsuch at his confirmation hearings as a “wonderfully humane and decent person,” penned a New York Times op-ed in which he suggested that “liberals should back Neil Gorsuch” because he would “stand up for the rule of law and say no to a president or Congress that strays beyond the Constitution and laws.”

Speaking of hypocrites, how about Sen. Schumer? From the Daily Caller:

“During a Sunday morning appearance on ABC’s “This Week,” Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer decried the intent of many Senate Republicans to prevent President Barack Obama from appointing the successor to deceased Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.”

“But less than a decade ago, Schumer advocated doing the same exact thing if any additional Supreme Court vacancies opened under former President George W. Bush.”

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2016/02/14/flashback-in-2007-schumer-called-for-blocking-all-bush-supreme-court-nominations/#ixzz4dJ30RhoW

As the saying goes, “It’s not over till it’s over.”

In 1982, in the case of NOW V. Idaho, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the ERA was dead. If the ERA is to be adopted, it needs to start over.

Sttop dreaming. Gorsuch will be confirmed without the nuclear option.

The illegal unmasking is the big story and big scandal and shows the anti-Trump slant of some members of the intelligence community. It also shows AZmBlue Meanie’s ultra-bias.

Good job censored but invest in a spell check program.

I plan to stay until 60,000 voters vote me out or 6 people carry me out.

I found your statement that there are only “several” progressives in the Democrat caucus to be surprising. How do you define progressive and what are the other 9 or 10 Dems?

I did say, “misleading (lying?) with statistics” but I was being a bit flippant and I do not think you are lying.

However, even using the new data with respect to ACHIEVEMENT and that is what I am commenting on based upon your “education performance” comment, Arizona is even better at a ranking of 26th and only 0.3 points below the U.S, average. I also suspect that if the feds did not require English learners to take the tests so early, we would rank even better.

My point is that while funding is too low in Arizona, our student are not performing that bad as a whole. In addition, none of the salary and funding rankings take cost of living into account.

Talk about misleading (lying?) with statistics. The claim in the second paragraph of the post takes the prize:

“It might be better to ask how much IS NOT enough. I believe there is not enough when: our educational performance is ranked 46th in the nation…”

When you go to the study and choose the score titled “K-12 Achievement” in the drop down menu, you discover that on this best measure of educational performance Arizona is not 46th but 31st and ONLY 2.1 points below the U.S average.

While we need to do a lot better, the bloggers claim that we are 46th is misleading. As we used to say when I was a cop, “BUSTED!!!!”

Connecting the dots? You need to do better than that.

Who is George Zoley?

Ooops. Make that the legislative and executive branches.

If you do not like the immigration laws that President Trump is enforcing, with some discretion, you need to change them. Given that there was no will to legalize any of the 11 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. during any of the 8 years of the Obama administration, even during the first 2 years when Dems controlled all three branches of government, I see no legitimacy in the current opposition to President Trump’s actions.
And by the way, what happened to only legalizing those with “deep roots?” You Dems now oppose Trump removing those who have been here for less than 2 years. Were you lying then about deep roots?

Francis,
You are delusional.

Tom,
I am a refugee from New York who moved here in 1993. That makes me a native.

Incumbents main advantage is having already been elected, which says the voters like them. Duhhhhhhh.

But we should kick lawmakers out after they get experience and knowledge. Heck, if I ever need surgery, I want a newbie surgeon cutting into me.

At least we agreed that her approach is flawed. Although I do not support your goals.

At least we agreed that her approach is flawed.

The ERA failed to be passed by the required number of states and was declared by the US Supreme Court to be dead in 1982 in the case of NOW v. IDAHO.

The problems in the Middle East were worsened by President Obama’s staying “above the fray.” He created a power vacuum and bad people filled it. President Trump is moving in the right direction. America needs to reassert its power for the good of the world and for our safety.

Could President Trump go too far? Anything is possible and if that became apparent to him, I would hope he would back off. But he is going in the right direction now and that is good.

Sloppy blogging AzBM. My bill does not mandate businesses to allow guns inside their premises. My bill only covers certain GOVERNMENT buildings.

Read my bill, Ed. It does not include the public schools or universities.

The 25th amendment deals with being unable to discharge the powers and duties of the office due to medical and psychological impairment and not political disagreement.

I probably should be glad that the far left continues barking up this tree and being uncivil to the President because such unreasonable attacks will further alienate voters within the mainstream of America and give credence to the president’s claim that he is being treated unfairly.

And if you found my criticism of your post to be a form of intimidation, you need to find a safe space fast.

Calling you out when you make unfounded and absurd statements is substantive discourse. You need to take criticism when it is due. How about addressing my comment, if you are a person of substance, instead of throwing a criticism back at me? You made an outrageous statement. Defend it.

AzBm now via news observations diagnoses President Trump as being delusional and possibly insane and wants to invoke the 21st amendment.

Is this the low level of political discourse BfA has sunk down to or is AzBm the editor? Is the inmate running the asylum?

Could someone explain that old West Indian saying?

Thank God AzBlueMeanie wasn’t legal council on the 1950’s House Unamerican Activities Committee because had he been, everyone would have been accused of being a communist. Better yet, thank God AzBM wasn’t in Salem during the witch hunt times. They would have decimated the forest burning witches!

Maybe Trump is the cure for the politics that has frustrated people on the right and left. He is certainly an alternative therapy!

Your last “come together” paragraph would sound more sincere had you not called the president who was just elected pus.

That has nothing to do with my comment. Please make your posts relevant and address the issue when you comment on someone else’s post.

I do not deny that Republicans want to end ACA. My comment was that I think that your perceived motive is idiotic. Comment on that!

The ERA deadline was 1982.

The Yuma guest worker program is an excellent example of how legal border crossings are a win-win for Mexico and the U.S.

Workers come and fulfill ag work needs and bring their wages back to their families and home towns, which promotes better life styles and economic development.

Rather than abandoning their families and sending back remittances, the workers strengthen their family ties and their communities.

A wall with large two-way doors is not a barrier to cross-country relations but a facilitator. Good fences can make good neighbors. It’s about mutual respect.

Ooops! I forgot paranoid.

With no proof at all, you accuse Republican lawmakers, none of whom makes over $300 million dollars a year, of voting for tax cuts for the super rich at their own expense.

Ridiculous, unfounded and highly partisan – Perfect for BfA.

If Hillary runs for mayor of NYC, she will have to repack her carpetbag and move again.

Only an American flag on display for other than retail sale purposes because you are also stealing the 1st amendment expressive right of the person displaying the flag, be it in mourning, for patriotism or protest.

Raising the minimum wage will make even Big Macs more expensive and replace fast food counter personnel with kiosks. Another example of well-meaning folks creating unintended negative consequences.

Obamacare was passed using reconciliation. “Live by the sword, die by the sword.”

If only the poor who lack your finances and common sense would follow your costly lead and abandon their Big Macks.

FYI Even though you are on an educational trip that will help you as a legislator, be prepared for the likes of Laurie Roberts to accuse you of partaking in a “legislative junket” funded by lobbyists and big business.

In an interview with Sean Hannity, Julian Assange revealed that Russia was NOT the source of the leaked DNC and Podesta emails.

This is the same Julian Assange and Wikileaks organization that were the darlings of the left for over a decade for exposing government secrets.

If they were respected then, then they should still be respected by the left now. So it appears that it may not have been Russia afterall.

No doubt bad news for those trying to delegitimaze the Trump presidency.

Oh what a tangled web we weave even when we practice NOT to deceive.

Another thought experiment:

Most liberals, oooops I mean progressives, applauded the theft of the Pentagon Papers by Daniel Ellsberg and its publication by the N.Y. Times.

Is it OK to steal government documents in hardcopy form and publish them but not in digital form? While the parallels are not perfect, it does make for an interesting thought experiment.

What makes a “hack” bad? Is it the hacker? Is it the content and whether or not you personally want it released? Or is it whether or not it damages someone you like or want elected?

Maybe as a society we should decide on a rule based upon principles BEFORE incidents happen, as opposed to judging after the hack based on unethical and personal reasons.

Hacking to influence our elections is bad in every sense and when done by a foreign government it is threatening.

But I have some questions that trouble me:

1. Does the fact that the exposed information was true have any significance?

2. If President Obama knew of the hacking before the election, does he bear some responsibility for doing nothing?

3. If the perpetrators and their motives are known, why is there no proof being offered?

Worse yet, in a few months you may be ordering that delicacy via a kiosk instead of a person.

Insults, accusations and disrespect, the true pillars of a persuasive request. But then you are preaching to the choir and a few trespassers, such as myself.

TRIGGER WARNING: This reply may contain content that snowflakes may find distressing. If you are easily offended DO NOT play or play near a safe space.

I believe I asked the question first. Nobody has to answer it but do not expect the courtesy of an answer from me, when nobody extends to me the courtesy of an answer.

Evade and attack. SOP

Why are you evading the question?

No person is responsible for all advances, even the president of the United States, and no president can advance all the issues.

BUT if OVERALL, the country and the world moved forward and Trump could rightfully share some responsibility for that, WOULD YOU ALL BE HAPPY OR SAD AT TRUMP’S SUCESS?

“Does well” means that the economy improves, terrorism is reduced and tensions around the world, especially in the Middle East lessen.

If Trump helps achieve those ends, would you be happy?

It is a pretty straight forward question.

Will you be happy or sad if Trump does well?

DuVal and some legislative Dems were more than “reticent” to challenge Republican no tax increase policies – they were fellow travelers in opposition to tax increases.

Reticent! Give me a break.

Popular vote proponents would appear less self-serving, if they also opposed the way we elect Congress because it mirrors the electoral college. But you never hear them moaning about the fact that each state gets two senators, regardless of its population. When Biden and Sanders call for Senate reform, I will take the anti-electoral college movement more seriously.

A living wage for a high school student living at home is about $6 an hour.

You begin by listing a litany of reasons why Hillary lost, none attributable to her, and then say you won because unlike other Dems, you did not pretend everything was great so let’s have four more years.

Didn’t Hillary lose because she too failed to recognize that things were not so great for many people? Wasn’t Hillary either out of touch or lying? Why do you give her a pass on your criticism of Democrat candidates, when she too said all was well?

But your blog headline only criticizes Republicans, when your own leaders and voters should have been mentioned. That is my point.

The headline should have read, “The financial mismanagement of the state by our Tea-Publican controlled legislature abetted by some of our own Democrat leaders and the voters who nixed a tax increase for education.”

NB I do not think there was mismanagement but that’s another argument.

Just as long as you also recognize that your candidates also said NO to tax increases. I would not want people to think you were a biased hypocrite.

And Democrats Fred DuVal and Eric Myer campaigned on NO TAX INCREASE platforms. Why are you afraid to blame them too? Is it party loyalty? If so, that is hypocritical.

I did not miss the point. The point was that Republicans are responsible for the fiscal shortcomings of the state because we will not increase revenue via more taxes.

My reply is that when given the chance to do that, high level Democrats and the voters also opted for no tax increases. So blame Democrats and the voters also and not Republicans who campaigned not to raise taxes

While you’re quoting Arizona Republic columnists, don’t forget Robert Robb two days ago:

“Those criticizing Ducey for not proposing a tax increase have short-term amnesia. Ducey ran pledging tax cuts, not tax increases, and was elected. His Democratic opponent pledged not to increase taxes. And voters turned down a sales-tax increase for education in 2012.”

So let’s see…. The governor, his Democrat opponent and the voters nixed tax increases. In addition, Rep. Eric Meyer, then House Minority leader, also said no to a tax increase. Hmmmmmmmmm. Sounds like one of those inconvenient truths.

Looks like it’s time for President Obama to draw another symbolic line in the sand. His weakness emboldened Russia. Hopefully that will end with Trump.

Income inequality does play a role but as incomes rise, it becomes harder for children to best their parents. That is also a factor.

My high school educated parents sacrificed to get me a good college education, which I boosted to a PhD. That made it easy for me to earn more than my parents but harder for my kids to best me.

You cannot ignore other factors. Other things are at play besides income inequality. Life is multivariate not bivariate.

Remember, this country was set up as a democratic republic. People elect leaders who they believe can best represent their views because few citizens can take the time to study each issue. This is one way that the effects of fake news is lessened but obviously not eliminated. If there is one lesson to be learned from this election it is that some bad press about a candidate is not the end of the campaign for him or her. If so, we would not have President-elect Trump.

Also, some fake news is so ridiculous that few people believe it and those that due are probably less likely to be politically engaged and vote. Who in their right mind would believe that Hilary Clinton in the midst of her campaign was running a child prostitution ring out of a DC pizzeria?

Education and rebuttal. We should teach our children to confront ideas they disagree with and not to flee to a “safe space.”

Are pay is too low to generate meaningful savings.

Funny spell check error. I meant TRUMP ADMINISTRATION.

SPELL CHECK ALERT: I MEANT TRUMP ADMINISTRATION. THAT SPELL CHECK ERROR IS ACTUALLY PRETTY FUNNY.

I believe the greatest threats are external, as they have always been – fascism, communism, Islamic terrorism.

Internally, I think it involves sacrificing freedom and independence for safety and government paternalism. But I believe the internal threats are far less threatening and they come and go. We can survive them.

I do not share your love of government because I believe in limited government, as did our founders who wrote the Bill of Rights to protect us from government.

But if you feel comfortable entrusting government with the task of filtering out false news, I might be persuaded to let the Truman administration give it a try. What do you think?

I agree that an informed population is essential for a healthy society and the information the population needs consists of both true facts, well-reasoned opinion and critical thinking skills. That is the cure for false news.

I think that cable TV and the Internet have decreased the influence of money because anyone can now be a “news” and/or commentary source. Gone are the days when three TV networks and a dozen newspapers controlled the flow of public information.

The last people I want filtering news for “truth” are the government (FCC) or near monopoly social media and search engine companies. I believe that that is a greater threat to democracy than yahoo (not the search engine) websites and crazy social media postings.

It’s not like we Republicans campaigned as moderates or “progressives” and, after election, we unmasked and filled government positions with conservatives.

We are making good on our campaign promises. Is that a bad thing? Only if you are against representative government. Are you?

The hypocrisy keeps on pouring out of this blog. You attack me for supposed unproven suspicions, which are the sole basis of the recount you are defending.

You got the sound bite down perfect but Jill’s sudden conversion to guardian of the vote is disingenuous. I suspect Jill is either raising money, trying g to stay relevant or doing penance for being a spoiler.

So you obsess about Trump making voter fraud clams without evidence and condemn it:
…first claiming WITHOUT EVIDENCE (emphasis mine) that the GOP primaries were rigged, then spending months claiming the general election was rigged. Trump falsely claimed WITHOUT EVIDENCE (emphasis mine) that millions of illegal voters voted to explain losing the popular vote by well over 2 million votes.

But you stood by silently as Jill Stein sought recounts without evidence:
Slate.com Headline – “Jill Stein Requests Recount in Pennsylvania but Has No Evidence of Fraud” and Slate is not an alt-right publication.

Are you not shamed by your blatant hypocrisy?

Improvement based upon debt via stimulus is not real growth. It is artificial growth that future generations will be hampered by.

I love the way Trump keeps pulling your strings. It’s almost as good as his decisive and non-humiliating electoral college win.

And don’t forget to look at the other side of the coin. Trump, the non-politician, was a master campaigner who ran circles around both Republican pros in the primary and the Dem pros in the general.

Ed,

No disrespect intended but as a Green Party candidate, all you do is take votes away from the Democrats. If you want to run against me as a Green candidate in 2018, let me know because I will collect your signatures.

I think there is something wrong with your figure stating that 70% of felonious cop killers in 2016 were white. The source does not cite his source and historically, about 40% of felonious cop killers are black. That figure goes back decades. It was about that in 2015, 17 of 37 offenders according to the feds.
Massive shifts like your source claims without documentation are rare black swan events, but so was Trump’s win.

Using that twisted logic, the Cubs did not win the World Series because the Indians (excuse my non-PC term) scored just as many total runs as they did.
How liberal PC, everyone gets a winners trophy!

I was clearly being facetious but I think you knew that and you were just trying to discredit me by misrepresenting my message. Or may not.
But alternately, maybe Hillary’ loss has driven you into an irrational state of miscomprehension and rude name calling. But wait! That can’t be the case because you were always that way.

Don’t ignore it in 4 years, Ed. Stay the course!

Oh! I forgot. Keep supporting high cost green energy and attacking low cost coal, natural gas, fracking and pipelines.

Keep focusing on wishful thinking explanations for your defeat and ignoring the fact that the Democrat Party has gone too far to the left. In fact, go further to the left by supporting national health care , post-birth abortion and a 100 percent tax rate for income over 200,000 dollars. Do the full left wing Monty.

Most of the post-election violence I have read about and seen on TV is coming from the left and it is pretty ugly. Also while white supremacist no doubt choose Trump over Clinton, much like communists chose Clinton over Trump, to say that Trump’s base was made up of white supremacists is unsubstantiated and not true.

Mandate or not, he campaigned on issues and is expected to stay true to them. If popular support is lacking, he will be stopped by Congress. That is how our system works.

Trump’s win is not my statement. It is the mandate of the U.S. constitution and it is not arrogant. It is the law.

Trump has a mandate because he won under our system and the win was significant. If Dems or anyone else had an issue with the electoral college after Bush v Gore in 2000, they had 16 years to fix it. They not only did not fix it, they did not even try.

Trump won fair and square and he is our president. Oppose him if you want but respect the win and accept the mandate.

That “evidence” is extremely tenuous and makes the Hillary email and Clinton Foundation evidence look like cables from the support structure of the George Washington Bridge.

Beyond that, the evidence amazingly jumps from communication to “coordination,” which suggests it is both tenuous and biased.

And while were are looking for a “broader set of observations,” remember that AzBM’s referenced source said that the Russians claim to have been communicating with the Clinton campaign also. Was there Russian-Clinton coordination? I think that is also very unlikely.

Nothing but an allegation based upon one Russian official’s statement, who could just be playing the US press.

Plus AzBM’s source, Bloomberg Politics, also reports alleged multiple contacts between Russian officials and Clinton’s team in the same article alleging Trump team contact, which AzBM conveniently failed to report!! AzBM looses all credibility, even though he had none.

The FBI found no evidence of any contacts.

This isn’t even smoke. It’s just more AzBM post-election pus.

I can only pity AZBlueMeanie. AzBlueMeanie has decended into a dark pit of cynicism and despair and seems to have devolved into an inflamed boil that will periodically expelled pus, such as today’s post.

I am not gloating nor am I attempting to one-up my former opponent Paula Pennypacker’s expertise on Ohio but I think you also have to factor coal into the Ohio explanation.

I just Googled “Ohio and Coal” and the second result was from the Ohio Coal Association and it led with, “Ohio coal miners and their families will never forget Hillary Clinton’s insulting promise to “put them out of business.”

OshKosh B’gosh!

AzBlueMeanie where are youuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu!

True

Even when I make a positive non-political comment, some of you go into instinctive attack mode. Get treatment.

As per my SOPs, I seat belted myself into my desk chair prior to reading AZBlueMeanie’s post so that his usual spin would not toss me about the room, only to find “no spin.”

Granted that his post consisted almost entirely of excerpts from three other commentators but they too were “no spin.”

Amazing.

One man’s rouge is another’s whistle blower. Time will tell.

CBS news reports that Hillary server emails were found on Carlos Dangers laptop and they are NOT duplicates of one’s already in FBI custody. The whole Clinton narrative is unwinding and election day is near. If Trump wins, and the polls are close, there will be no Republican Supreme Court blockade. Problem solved.

All the classified ones on her private server, not to mention the ones that might be on Carlos Danger’s laptop.

True to BFA form, another comment that ignores my comment and redirects the discussion to something else.

I said,

You missed your calling, AZBlueMeanie. You should be a Three Card Monte dealer because you are really good at taking peoples’ eyes off the real issues, such as Hillary’s emails, dropping poll numbers and the Clinton Foundation, aka Bill and Hillary’ ATM cash machine.

How about commenting on that?

Are you sure it was a lawsuit and not just a press release?

You missed your calling, AZBlueMeanie. You should be a Three Card Monte dealer because you are really good at taking peoples’ eyes off the real issues, such as Hillary’s emails, dropping poll numbers and the Clinton Foundation, aka Bill and Hillary’ ATM cash machine.

If the DOJ’s policy is not to interfere with elections, then why did they announce that they were prosecuting Sheriff Arpaio only a few weeks before the election and why were all of you not incensed? What hypocrisy?

Do you think President Obama emboldened Baltimore rioters? That’s where your illogical thinking winds up. I do not think Trump promotes anti-Semitic acts any more than Obama promotes rioting. How about you Craig?

Nobody is talking about any cuts to the current budget.

According to the Wall Street Journal today:

“Metadata found on the laptop used by former Rep. Anthony Weiner and his estranged wife Huma Abedin, a close Clinton aide, suggests there may be thousands of emails sent to or from the private server that Mrs. Clinton used while she was secretary of state, according to people familiar with the matter. It will take weeks, at a minimum, to determine whether those messages are work-related from the time Ms. Abedin served with Mrs. Clinton at the State Department; how many are duplicates of emails already reviewed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation; and whether they include either classified information or important new evidence in the Clinton email probe.”

And Huma told the FBI that she had turned over to them all devices she used that might have Clinton emails. How could she forget a device with thousands of emails? Another coverup but this one may get Huma arrested for lying to the FBI, which is a crime.

Between this and the Clinton Foundation scandals, will it be a Trump/Kaine race by the end of the week?

You didn’t accuse Trump of direct involvement because that would have entailed Trump spray painting it himself or directing others to do it and that is about the only thing that could be more idiotic than your original post.

Really, Craig? They were good enough in the post after this for you to link Trump to anti-Semitic graffiti. Looks like the Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s chickens are coming home to roost again.

Using that twisted logic, do you blame President Obama for the Baltimore riots? I have seen a lot of strained illogic in this blog but your post takes 1st. place.

My comment was meant to criticize calling Yarborough corrupt, when everything he does is legal. That is irresponsible and evil. As always, nobody replies to that but all respondents change the subject or levy personal attacks against me. Finding logic and rational debate is difficult in this blog.

Should people on Medicaid only be allowed to choose government hospitals and government clinics because they are spending public money? Is education less a right than healthcare?

Check out what lawyers take from lawsuits.

10% is not a lot.

Read today’s paper. Bill does OK by the foundation.

So Rep. Eric Meyer was corrupt when he voted for Medicaid expansion because he is a doctor. No. So Pres. Obama is 100,000 more times corrupt than me because he got that much more in donations than me. NO So Hillary is corrupt for taking all that Wall Street money. ?????? Wait. LET ME REASSESS MY POSITION.

All of this moralizing would sound more sincere were all of you also incensed over the Clinton Foundation.

So if this is all legal and sanctioned by the Arizona Supreme Court, where is the corruption besides in your head?

Are you saying the 9th Circuit supports voter supression?

I thought this blog belonged to AZBlueMeanie. Is he on vacation?

Trump’s comments were crude and vulgar but they were a long time ago and were just words. If Hillary’s including Bill in her campaign, general dishonesty and attacks on Bill’s victims don’t disqualify her, how can I disqualify Trump?

Fair enough but you must see some hypocrisy, especially because Hillary is using Bill to campaign for her. And there is a difference between personal forgiveness, which I believe you alluded to, and sweeping it under the rug, which they seem to be doing also.

We are not talking about that. You need to keep up.

You evaded the question? Have you no answer?

You evaded the question. Have you no answer?

You evaded the question? Have you no answer?

If you think the words of Trump and the alleged words of McCain make them unfit for office, I can only imagine how you feel about Bill Clinton who cheated on his wife in an unbalanced power relationship with an intern in the White House.
Wait. Bill is your hero and campaigner-in-chief for Hillary.
So words about infidelity are irredeemableo but actual infidelity gets a pass? Could someone explain that?

The issue is not how are they (Clinton and Trump) doing in the polls after the VP debate but how did the VP debate affect their polls and a “before and after” analysis is needed to judge that. Such a comparison saw Trump’s post-VP slide reverse and even displayed a slight bump up.

I follow the Real Clear Politics polling list and track Rasmussen and LA Times/USC. (I dropped Reuters after it played with its formula in a suspicious manner. ) In Rasmussen, the pre/post Trump bump was +2 and in the LA Times/USC it was +3.

But since I originally posted my blog comment, I saw of an actual poll that asked people who watched the VP debate who won. That flash poll by CNN, which had more Dems responding, straight up said Pence won:

“CNN released a poll after the vice presidential debate on Tuesday night. The poll was made up of 41% Democrats and 30% Republican voters.
Despite the lopsided numbers the voters gave Mike Pence the win last night over Senator Tim Kaine.” (from The Gateway Pundit)

However, recent campaign developments make the question of who won the vp debate yesterday’s news. The new trump revelation/scandal, that Trump is more like Bill Clinton than I ever imagined, has stolen the show, so I am signing off of this comment string.

Marc,

The issue is who won. I did not see your comment on that. Some might call that “spin by omission.”

AzBM, stop the spin. Pence came off better and the national polls reflect this as Trump’s national numbers have gone up a bit. It is still a razor thin general election with Clinton having a better advantage in the electoral college, but blog readers deserve better than your unending spin. It really destroys your credibility as a commentator. Although if you see yourself as a counselor and comforter for distraught Hillary fans, I guess you do perform a service.

While the true effects of the debate will not be known until the polling companies release their data Thursday (tomorrow), RealClearPolitics did release one poll result today. The LA Times/USC tracking pool saw Trump gain one point from +3 to +4. The +3 was for polling between 9/20 and 9/26 (pre-debate) and the +4 from 9/21 to 9/27 (one day post-debate.)

If Trump “derailed” in the debate, you would expect to see a slight drop in the first poll which has some post-debate responses. It’s still too early to tell and while Republicans may be from Mars and Dems from Uranus, conclusions that Trump “derailed” are, at this point, out of this world.

…and Dems don’t single shot. Are you kidding?

McSally not McNally. Damn spellcheck!

Why is Martha McNally a congresswoman? Because she knows where and when to debate.

I think it was close with Trump winning due to his better handling of safety and jobs. But we will not know who won until the polls come out on Thursday. In the end, pundits, supporters and other interested parties do not decide who wins. The winner is who picks up votes.

I think it will be close on the national percentage but Trump will win more votes in Ohio and Pennsylvania and if I am correct, that’s a big win for Trump. At worse for Trump, there will be little change in the numbers.

Without a doubt, the TV networks were the biggest winners because debate 2 will be heavily watched because this race is not over.

Let’s not forget that some Hillary supporters attacked Lauer and Fallon for not going for Trump’s jugular vein, which could be seen as an attempt to intimidate the future debate moderators.
Also, a Washington Post (pro-Hillary paper) analysis of coverage found no significant media bias in coverage. Not sure I agree but this comes from a pro-Hillary paper.

Also, if Hillary is the seasoned government veteran and Trump the newbie, why not have higher expectations for her?

AzBM where are you? I said something negative about Hillary!

Lets not forget Hillary:

“During her tenure as secretary of state, Clinton made weapons transfers to the Saudi government a “top priority,” according to a new report published in The Intercept. And even while Clinton’s State Department was deeply invested in getting weapons to Saudi Arabia, the Clinton Foundation accepted millions of dollars in donations from both the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the weapons manufacturer Boeing. Christmas presents were being gifted all around.”

Go to: http://fpif.org/hillary-clintons-state-department-armed-saudi-arabia-teeth/

I do not see it that way. It is an absurd comparison and one meant to demean and it looks more like a glib remark than a scholarly analysis.

“Rational” people, liberal or otherwise, do not cite those who compare people they oppose with chimpanzees. And talk about tribalism, Mr. Hannan talks like a chief when he writes, “A typical Trump supporter is a much different type of human.”

Just two more examples of the name calling and hypocrisy that emanates from political ideologues, sadly on both sides of the political spectrum.

Ouch!
Just said well.

I’m self-appointed.

My original assertion saying that Clinton’s resurrecting the old birther controversy against Trump was a mistake and just an attempt to get public attention away from her ill health appears to be wrong. New data from the LA Times/USC Tracking Poll, which Clinton’s internal polling must have also shown her, reveal that Clinton is loosing black support and Trump is picking some up. Thus, the birther shift may be an attempt by Clinton to shore up the black vote, which Democrats have always taken for granted.

From the news story:

Trump saw a 16.5 percentage-point increase in backing from African-American voters in a Los Angeles Times/University of Southern California tracking poll, up from 3.1 percent on Sept. 10 to 19.6 percent through Friday.

Meanwhile, the same poll showed Clinton’s support among that group plummeting from 90.4 percent on Sept. 10 to 71.4 percent.

Don’t forget nearly doubling the national debt.

In the meantime, Trump has climbed slowly in the LA Times/USC Tracking Poll from tied on 9/12 to +6 today.

Keep pre-occupied with foolish historic attack stuff, while Trump inches closer to the White House.

As Hillary’s chief “Master of Spin” on this blog, both before and after the primary, I thought you had all the time in the world.

By the way, the key group regarding the effect of the newspaper endorsement is independents and the poll says that they trust the media even less, at only 30%. Thanks for making me feel even better about the minimal effect of the Hillary endorsement. The percentages of Rs and Ds matter little in this discussion because other polls show almost all Ds and Rs are locked into their candidate. So I restate my point, the newspaper endorsement of Hillary will have little effect because the moveable voters trust the media even LESS that the average voter.

And I think you are the one playing “this game of ‘fun with facts and figures.’”

Or should I say spinning them, Master.

As Hillary’ chief master of spin on this blog, both before and after the primary, I thought you had all the time in the world.

By the way,

Thank God, according to Gallup, only 32% of Americans trust the media. Otherwise this might have been a problem. That’s less than Hillary, who 67% of Americans mistrust according to the latest NY Times/CBS poll. So Hillary is 1% ahead of the media in the trust category. It’s a start.

I did not. But what is the intellectual basis of zombie-eyed? Repeating the ad hominem attack of another does not relieve one of responsibility.

It is not an ad hominem attack, if it is pertinent. We’re that not so, all attacks would be ad hominem.

I am not defending anyone. I just think personal attacks are wrong and juvenile.

Four ad hominem attacks in the post’s first sentence. You must have been king of the schoolyard in grade school.

Its never your fault. Always somebody else. Nice unchallenged world you live in.

Wow! It only took Obama seven years to deliver a pay raise for the middle class. Finally hope caused change.

I was here over a decade before I ran for the legislature. Can Hillary say that?

Hillary lie and cover up over.

Including Hillary? Oh wait. I forgot she is a carpetbagger.

At 9:51 AM, the temperature was 79 degrees and the humidity was 54%. Quick, find a better talking point!

Actually, I was a cop there for 20 years and always wore a bullet proof vest. I passed out zero times.

And cough…and stumble…and cough…and fall…and on and on and on….

As a native New Yorker, I can attest to the horrors of 80 degree New York City weather. We used to drop like flies. NOT!!!!

So saying that you “regret” saying something is not an apology. That is true only in the world of political spin. In the interest of keeping Blog for Arizona out of court, maybe it should end all AZBlueMeanie posts with “Paid for by a Hillary 2016.”

And the email scandal may just be heating up.

I meant illogic not illogical. Automatic spell correction can be a pain.

In the end, it always degenerates to ad hominem attacks. To some on the left, conservatives can not only never be correct but are demons with dark hearts and motives.

It is hard to imagine what twisted histories and illogical brings a person to such a place but I really feel sorry for such people. They will never be invited to collaborate or contribute to public policy development because they have exiled themselves to a place even people sympathetic to their beliefs don’t want to go.

Not at all and disagreeing with liberal policies is not sacrificing others. Surely you are not such an extreme cynic and ideologue.

So when liberals stay true to their beliefs, the ones they campaigned on, it is a profile in courage. When conservatives do it, it is disgusting. Talk about dual standards!

So police are retaining mountains of data heavy police body camera videos for years and years and Pima County needs to dumb digital ballot images after a couple of days?

“George Will’s mini-me” is a cheap anti-intellectual ad hominem attack. It cheapens you and the blog. Can’t you rise above that?

Big difference between a candidate getting a small percentage of his or campaign money from out of state donors and an initiative drive funded by an out of state union.

Please answer the question.

Please answer the quesrion.

Districts are rigged to be non-competitive mostly due to the federal voting rights act that mandates minority districts be over-packed with minorities (Dems) to insure the election of minority candidates. For every over-packed Democrat district there must be a comparable over-packed Republican district – that’s math. Arizona’s state independent commission could not change that. So what do you value, guaranteed minority districts or competitive elections?

Does anyone believe that the populists who put initiative into the Arizona constitution did so so that a California union upset with hospital execs could seek revenge by paying professional petition circulators to gather petition signatures to cap their wages?

…and clearheaded enough to see it!

And candidates and reps who have endorsements from other groups are aligned with them but you said that they had to give promises for their endorsements. You don’t know that. Did you say that because your groups approached you and required promises? I doubt it.
My point is that if you get elected and expect to be respected by other members, don’t disrespect us by saying that we exchange endorsements for promises. It rarely works like that.
But don’t worry. I’m probably the only R in the legislature who reads this blog and I just think you misspoke on that one. It happens.

“…rest assured there are promises behind each endorsement” is a pretty damning indictment. Any facts to back such a definitive statement up?
Also, in the interest of transparency, how did the groups that endorsed you get you to promise things and what did you promise?

You found nothing. Stringer did not get any money from any dark money groups and he and any R or D cannot control what so called dark money groups do.

Once again, get real.

By the way, I looked at the campaign database and Stringer has not accepted any donations. How can you say he has accepted a donation from the American Federation of children? Putting an * around a lie does not make it true.

By the way, I looked at the campaign database and Stringer has not accepted any donations. How can you say he has accepted a donation from the American Federation of children. Putting an * around a lie does not make it true.

The suggestion that campaign contributions or help from any group, including dark money groups, buys candidates is absurd. We’re it true, then believers of this unfounded belief would ethically have to call for the removal of almost every politician in the country, especially Hillary and President Obama.
And while we are on the subject of the absurd, does that mean that targets of dark money groups are angelic victims?
Get real!

Longitudinal studies are the most powerful of all research methodologies. However, correlation does not equal causation. One theory is that taking the child away from the mother at such a young age has a negative emotional effect on the child. Other possibilities also exist. But either way, the study argues against All-Day K.

FYI – ESL students are not left back for reading deficiencies in the 3rd. grade. In fact, when the dust settles, hardly anyone will be left back.

Also, you forgot parents in you list of resources.

Count me out,.

You forgot to mention Sanders’ finding out that the DNC conspired in a most nasty way to stick it to him. I think that more than negates the others things you mentioned occurring during Bernie’s “damn good week.”

Also, I do not think they booed Sanders. I think they booed his statement that they support Hillary – big difference. Hard to believe that this conservative R can take the pulse of a D crowd better than AZ BlueMeanie.

Your best description is “mentally unstable Tunisian man?” You cannot acknowledge a radical Islamic motivation, even if he was a “lone wolf” with no ties to ISIS? Do you really think that there was no political motivation here?

I guess you can’t spell it.

Had I filed my re-election petitions a day late, I doubt AZ Blue Meanie would be stepping up to help get me on the ballot anyway and not because stepping up would interject transparency into his posts by revealing who he or she is.

Can you spell facetious?

“Politically polarized” is a negative spin word and should be abandoned. I do not see having a large number of voters committed to a political philosophy as a bad thing. What’s wrong with commitment to one’s ideals?

It is fair to say that southern policing has historic roots in the slave patrol but not American policing and I emphasize historic and not operational roots.

So much for concern over voter supression.

The Night Watch came before the slave patrols. The fact that they later ran at the same time does not erase the fact that the roots of American law enforcement were before the slave patrol.

Since you did not challenge my comment on the three-fifths compromise but merely talked around it, I see no need to defend it.

Two major historical inaccuracries need correction. First, the roots of American law enforcement were in the colonies and were grafts from the British system, starting with the Night Watch. The Southern Paddy Rollers came much later and we’re unique to the South.

Second, the three-fifths compromise was proposed and supported by anti-slavery Northerners as a way to limit the power of pro-slavery Southern states in Congress and it worked by keeping their representation below 50%.

I also disagree with other points raised but these two cried out the loudest for correction.

As far as I’m concerned, anything that causes Laurie Roberts to remove her incisors from Republican flesh must be big.

What Christian LEADERS are calling for gays to be killed? Names please.

Just what will keep us safe, a compassionate response to terrorism.

Doesn’t the term “radical Islamism” only apply to people who hold radical Islamic viewpoints and not to the overwhelming number of people of the Islamic faith who do not hold extreme views?
You know, just like religious extremist only applies to religious people with extreme views and not Mother Theresa.
Am I missing something or am I hopelessly politically incorrect and properly grammatically correct?

Your post also makes clear that the Kansas Supreme Court ruling only dealt with the equity issue involving block grants and not the adequacy part of the lawsuit. Thus, your post’s title is still misleading because the Kansas Supreme Court never ruled that Kansas’ state funding, which is around the national average, is inadequate.

Yet another ad hominen attack that dodges the issue my comment raised.

The issue for the courts was not the amount Kansas spends, which is near the per student national average, but with the way it is distributed via block grants.
Your headline is misleading because it suggests that total Kansas spending is inadequate.

Sorry, Debbie. I apologize on behalf of the Pope and myself.

Blog posting positions can confuse those over 60.

Actually, my point is we should judge less and give people the benefit of the doubt, especially the Pope.

I believe that for most people, their position on abortion is determined by whether or not they believe the fetus to be a developing person or not. If you believe the fetus is a person then ethics and decency demand you oppose abortion, except to save the life of the mother. If you do not believe the fetus is a person yet, then abortion is not ethically different than pulling a tooth.

I do not vilify people who are pro-choice, if they sincerely believe that the fetus is not yet a human being. I think they are wrong but not evil and I do not shun them. So why do some pro-choice people shun the Pope, knowing that his abortion position is based on his belief that the fetus is a human being?

Certainly can’t be a reflexion of President Obama’s economic policies.

Would I be able to take off from work on the day I mail in my early ballot?

If they are just taking a cut, who is making their school #1 in the state?

Basis High School in Scottsdale, the #1 school in Arizona, has over 50% minority students. And I believe over one third of charter school students are minority group members. That is not consistent with your narrative that charters “attrit” minorities.
I suspect any minority population lag in charters is due to geographic issues.

Except that the state trust is fed by both interest AND revenue from new land sales. In addition, Property 123 suspends withdrawals, if the fund’s balance goes down.

Ad hominem attacks don’t count as substantive replies, nor do diversions to different topics.

My comment was that Prop 123 does not threaten the trust fund because the draws stop, if the fund balance goes down. That is a safety trigger.

Would anyone care to comment on that? It is an important pro point for Prop 123 and neutralizes the opposition argument of jeopardizing the trust. Or is this blog just about preaching to the choir and attacking opponents.

My typo and, unfortunately, no substantive or relevant reply to my post.

Finally an opponent admits that Property 123 cannot jeopardize the fund by having it decrease it size.

The legislature did not misappropriate one cent of Property 301 sales tax money. Every cent went into segregated funds that the legislature had no control over. Where do you people get your facts?

Craig,

Re your statement, “As far as chalking this up to “simple incompetence”, that works. Once..,” Incompetence can repeat itself many times and even sustained incompetence is incompetence and not conspiracy.

My point is that there is no evidence of conspiracy her so going down that road is tin foil stuff. I think it was a massive mistake but if you have evidence to the contrary, show me before you buy into a massive racist conspiracy.

Like most tin foil conspiracy theories, this one is built on a mountain of unscientific and anecdotal manure.
Rule #1 in government analysis: Never ascribe to conspiracy what simple incompetance can explain.

I should add that that point attracted my attention and critique because it was part of a backhanded criticism of me, which also was unsupported and absurd.

I am not defending what happened but your accusation was so ridiculous that it begged for criticism. Glad you have backed away from it even though you are too proud to admit how foolish it was.

Amazing how you can twist any and all facts to fit your theories. So the one polling place at Fort McDowell was not an example of serving a minority community but was merely an overflow polling place for Fountain Hills voters.
Do you really believe that?

Almost every four-year degree requires at least three Humanities courses and three Social Behavioral Science courses and a few more can be taken as electives.

The best advice to students not set on a liberal arts occupation is to major in a field that gets you a job that pays well and be satisfied with about ten liberal arts courses.

Art History majors should take at least one course in coffee making so they can work at Starbucks.

Donna,
Thanks for the shout out.

That applies to local matters, not to matters of statewide concern.

My bill SB1017 does not prevent municipalities from issuing municipal service access cards. It just prohibits municipalities from calling them identification cards, if they do not properly vet the applicant’s identity. If the do vet it properly, they can call it an id card. It is about stopping identify theft and eroding the legitimacy of the state id card.

The decision of a STATE court in another state should be honored in Arizona. Are you serious? That policy would cause chaos and conflicting confusion.

How appropriate that you made this comment on the same weekend that the X-Files returns.

Had you followed the bill’s link, which you included in the post, you could have read the bill’s summary, which states that this lowers the allowable lead level and conforms AZ law with federal law. But then you would have lost the excuse to bash Republicans.

Your criticism of my SB1057 bill made no sense. Could you clarify? The bill says that if a government entity makes an act a crime and does not specify a men’s rea, it will be assumed to be intentional – the most difficult one to prove. Don’t you know a reform bill when you see it?
Do you really think people should be made criminals for accidentally committing a prohibited act!

I would be interested in the opinions of all of you, especially Mr. Meanie, about what the budgetary policy implications of this post are for the Arizona budget that I will be helping to constructing this Spring.
If indeed a recession is looming, should we limit increases to baseline spending and salt money away in the “rainy day” fund to help weather the coming storm?

Linda,

I suggest you run for cover because when I said that everyone does not need a college degree and vocational skills were best for some students two years ago, I was pummeled by your colleagues on the left. You need to either leave the state or change your name.

Well said and you would think that everyone would be grateful that we have one of the best high schools in the country as part of our public school system.

State Senator John Kavanagh

There is a difference between something actually causing another thing to happen, something contributing to another thing happening and things being merely coincidental. I think that your analysis connects “causal dots” to quickly and too tenuously.

I also believe that your statement, “The connection between police violence and the reliance on law enforcement to raise revenue, however, is but the last link in a chain of causation that begins with federal tax policy,” involves too many dominoes and even reliance upon the “butterfly effect.” (The flap of a butterfly’s wings changed the air around it so much that a tornado broke out two continents away. – Urban Dictionary.)

That said, I believe that in some cases, but only a very small number of cases, revenue seeking through fine-generating policing contributed to but did not cause incidences of police-citizen violence and even deaths. I say contributed and not caused because, were the link causal, many more people pulled over for minor, fine-seeking offenses would be involved in violent encounters with the police. That is not happening.

I also believe that you need to present data to establish the causal link you claim occurred in Phoenix. Did the budget cuts actually increase police traffic stops significantly? Was there a coincidental increase in police-citizen violence during such stops? Can you rule out other causes for the violence, if present at all?

If you have such data, then a conversation on causality can begin. Until then, the CAUSAL claim is unsupported speculation and risks unnecessarily confusing and alarming people, especially minorities.

Donna,

I did not speak to Jindal. He did not pick up.

Cheri,

ALEC does not get involved with 2nd as amendment issues. Please update your talking points.

Steve,

Thanks

All of the conservatives I have spoken to identified mental illness as the biggest problem. Yet few gun control advocates want to talk about that issue.

Wow. Criticizing a politician is now campaigning. Should the Arizona Republic register as a political committee?

We Republicans are not especially keen on recycling?

How about Paula’s Law, which would impose 5 year sentence on anyone who leaves a political party and then tries to return. Sounds like something Rs and Ds could agree with.

Agreed. It also muddies the debate by creating associations that are not accurate and it evokes emotional responses that can crowd out logic.

Or calling conservative blacks Uncle Toms.

Or Harry Reid comparing Republican health care foes to those who clung to the institution of slavery

Etc…….

Please Craig, how about a little balance.

Correct! Paula is on a non-crow and non-GMO diet.

Regarding Pennypacker, it’s a redhead thing. You wouldn’t understand.

I appreciate your not disagreeing with my statement agreeing with your statement that there really is no surplus. That was my point and I hope your Democrat legislative members agree with us.

Glad you agree that we do not have a surplus. Please spread the word to Democrat legislators who are saying we should go into special session and spend it.

PS. The stadium tax was not passed by the legislature. It was as voter initiative. Don’t blame us for this one, although you didn’t quite do that.

The data Forbes uses is government data.

The story quickly becomes a non-story, when you get past the public “teaser” part. It goes on to say,

“Six of those phones belonged to suspected prostitutes. The seventh belonged to Shaun McClusky, the second-vice chair of the Pima County Republican Party, who briefly ran for mayor in 2011 and now runs a property management business. All the politicos who appear on the police document are in connection with McClusky’s phone…McClusky has not been charged with any crime. He said he was investigated, and later cleared of wrongdoing, by Tucson police because he is a property manager for one of the houses used as an illegal massage parlor.”

Regarding the participation rate, not everyone paints your positive Obama defensive position. Go to: http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2014/01/15/u-s-unemployment-retirees-are-not-the-labor-exodus-problem/2/

In particular note this assertion:

“On the other side are those such as senior fellow and director of Economics21 at the Manhattan Institute, Diana Furchtgott-Roth who, in a Jan. 14 piece for RealcCearMarkets.com noted that “since 2000 the labor force participation rates of workers 55 and over have been rising steadily, and the labor force participation rates of workers between 16 and 54 have been declining.”

Also note:

By far the biggest contributors to the drop in participation were:
1. that the population of those aged 25-54 increased by 1.12 million, and yet its labor force actually shrank by 1.53 million—a net loss of 2.65 million; and
2. 2.53 million people aged 16-24 failed to enter the labor force compared to the rate in 2003..”

Those facts need to be considered also. Your sources do not reference them. Maybe they are unaware.

How about the 93+ million people not participating in the work force, creating a participation rate of only 67%, a low number not seen since 1977.

Were a Republican president, I doubt these facts would have escaped your rosey assessment.

And your take on the effects of the $15 minimum wage for fast food workers.

Since 2007, the US has lost 1.4 million manufacturing jobs and gained 1.4 million waiter and bartendin jobs.

And if you want to see “innovation,” raise the minimum wage for fast food workers to $15 an hour and watch robots replace many of those workers.

If you Democrats buy O’Halleran from us Republicans, keep in mind our no return policy.

Even a pound of tofu eats up (absorbes?) a little over 300 gallons of water according to the Huffington Post. What’s a responsible person to do?

Makes my swimming pool seem like a conservationist’s dream.

Not letting voters know the party affiliation also gives incumbents an advantage when voters know little or nothing about either candidate because in elections, name recognition matters.

An unanticipated consequence of making a college degree readily available to all is that employers now require college degrees for jobs that do not require them. They do this because the quality of high school diplomas is down, they need to reduce the number of applicants to process and because they can.

This does the greatest disservice to those not academically inclined or enabled who only have high school diplomas but are ready, willing and able to do such jobs and often do them better because they do not feel that their college skills are being wasted on a lesser job.

We need to better balance our educational outputs with our job needs. It is fine to saddle a student with a $50,000 loan debt, if it made him or her a barrister but not a barista at Starbucks. There is a great need for less educated people in noble and profitable professions that do not require university degrees and the debt that often goes with acquiring them.

Of course, whenever I say that I get pummeled as an elitist. Fortunately my plumber agrees with me because he makes over $100,000 per year without a university degree and he is his own boss.

There are too many factors that influence the number of reported abortions to allow one to just look at the variable “passing restrictive abortion laws recently.” Seems a better measure would be abortion rate but even that is confounded with many variables, some hard to measure.

However, using “passing restrictive abortion laws recently” is really ridiculous because states that passed such laws were probably already very restrictive on abortions and, thus, had fewer to start with. It is hard to have a big decline when you are already on the low end of the scale.

It’s like saying Weight Watchers does not work because its long time members did not lose as much weight in the past year as everyone else. Maybe it is because they previously lost a lot of weight.

Life is multivariate and not bivariate. Life is complex. Somebody should tell AP that fact.

Dear Bob,

I appreciate your response and really do not know where to begin. This is such a complicated issue and so many points have been raised that it is hard to address all of them in writing, not only due to the length required but also to the fact that give and take becomes delayed and it is hard to clarify the points of both sides. But I will make due with the format.

I think it is important to condemn the rioters because what they are doing is legally and morally wrong and not only self-destructive but also destructive to the community. Property was lost, jobs are gone, a senior center is history and whatever convention and tourism business Baltimore was going to get is also gone. The biggest losers in this mess are the law abiding poor residents who did not riot and rely on those businesses, services and jobs. Condemnation is in order and while failure to condemn is not promoting rioting, it is certainly not helping to deter it in the future.

I do not deny that poverty is one of many contributing factors to this situation but I would hesitate to say it is the main one because most poor people do not commit crime, much less riot. To some degree, it is the blame poverty mindset that contributes to racial profiling, which I believe is really social class profiling, which focuses on blacks because they are, for many reasons, disproportionally poorer than whites. And regarding racial profiling, I agree that some cops do it but it is not as prevalent as you might believe, especially when you use crimes committed by racial group within an area instead of the racial composition of an area alone.

By the way, for additional insight into the problem of poverty and crime, I recommend “The Unheavenly City Revisited” by Banfield.

Much of our differences in opinion and perspective I suspect stem from our views of the police. You see them as terrorists (“terrorizing the poor”) and I see them as mostly decent people who are into public service with some bad apples.

I also do not like to jump to conclusions about these force incidents. After all, the cop in Ferguson was publicly crucified and in the end exonerated and the victim had just completed a strong-arm robbery, which was public knowledge that was ignored by many police critics..

Of course, I am not saying that all the recent incidents involved misunderstood cops. I suspect some will and should be going to jail. But you need to get all the facts. At first glance, the Baltimore case looked bad for the cops but then they mentioned a witness, another prisoner in the van, who said it sounded like Gray might have done it to himself. Nobody but the police have questioned this witness, so I am not judging his credibility or his statement but it raises questions that argue against a rush to judgment. (Note that I too am concerned about the reason for Gray’s arrest, which seems unjustified. However, I do not have a problem with police chasing people who run when police arrive for the purpose of a stop and question.)

Regarding your response to my political correctness observation, you did respond but you did so by saying that Obama and Mayor Rawlings-Blake did not really mean what they said (condemning the rioters) and were just being politically correct. How can you say that? What proof do you have? (I might add that you have a tendency to ascribe motives to others without any factual basis. That is wrong and because you lean towards negative motives, you may be a cynic – not a good place to be. You should wean down to skeptic. It is healthier.)

Regarding your comments on my second point, you missed the point. I was trying to point out that these incidents (assuming Gray did not self-inflict his wounds but were the product of brutality) could just as easily happen in a minority-controlled city, which by definition is not politically oppressive unless you believe that the black mayor, black city council, black police chief and black prosecutor are oppressors. But you did not make that case and I doubt that you could.

That raises the public policy issue that these incidents are not so much about race as they are about other dynamics, which I personally think are social class, street culture and a lot of misunderstanding and mistrust between the police and some residents. That is where the discussion should be and where I tried to steer it. But you cynically (skeptically?) suggested I was being race obsessed.

I found your closing personal attack against me to be beneath the level of what I had previously come to expect of you. (You said, “ Oh wait, if all the Blacks are in prison, you won’t be able to rip them off with petty fines in order to offset the tax cuts you gave to your wealthy patrons, and those private prison contracts are expensive.)

Again, you have a tendency to think you can read other peoples’ minds and ascribe negative motives to them. Not a good place to be but I will chalk that last jab against me to frustration. Work on making the leap from cynic to skeptic. It worked for me.

Bob,

I would be interested on your take on my two observations. After all, blog postings are supposed to be about discussion.

Nothing justifies a “rough ride” and if that is what happened, the person or persons responsible would be and should be held criminally liable.

Nothing suggests that. I have not heard anyone even imply something so absurd. I certainly do not believe that.

And how do we fit looting the liquor store, throwing bottles and rocks at the police and burning down the senior center into this exculpatory narrative. For once I agree with President Obama. The rioters were thugs. It feels so good to be bipartisan.

Two observations on condemning the rioters:
1. It was ok for both sides to condemn the rioters (Fox News, President Obama and Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake among many others) until a liberal commentator declared it non-PC and the mayor and many liberals retreated from the statement. You have to wonder how much of that reaction was true re-examination of the position versus politics.
2. Are the rioters oppressed, at least politically, given that the city government, city attorney and police leadership are all black? How can a group in political control be oppressed, at least politically oppressed? What dynamic is happening there?

It is 2 hours and 1 minute into the hearing. Those who publish misleading or incomplete information should correct it, when they become aware of new information.

It is 2 hours and 1 minute into the hearing.

I acknowledged it 2 hours and 1 minute into the video.

When I was explaining my vote and voting on that bill. Just keep watching. I am on the floor voting now, so I cannot turn on the video to find the time.

If you keep watching the video, you will see that I do acknowledge it voluntarily. You need to watch the entire discussion.

We can argue about whether something else I said was spin or not but I stand by my comment. I did not conceal the inflation figure as reported.

I did not conceal the inflation-adjusted figures during the Approps hearing. You should have watched the hearing or its archived tape before making baseless accusations. That is poor journalism and blogging. Talk about the pot calling…

Don’t forget that for every Democrat bill advancing there was a Republican committee chair who agreed to hear it and Republicans on the committee who voted for it. That too was not reported.

There are many possible variations to consider and I agree with you on some of your points but keep in mind that I need 16 and 31 to get it to the voters.

Changes may be made.

Counter-point taken. But most of the general public does not have the time nor the inclination to speak or even message in, which is why we have a representative form of government. The public does not speak but selects who votes in committee.

That is generally not true. The only time speakers are limited is when the agenda is long or a large number of people have requested to speak.

My aim is to get some restrictions enacted. If injunctive relief does not work, I will add penalties. If I cannot control out of state callers, I will run for the office of president.

In this case “Go big” would lead to “Die hard.” My bill should get the support of voters who do not want to receive annoying calls and campaigns that do not want to call voters who they upset and who take it out on their candidate.

If an act is not prohibited by law, then it is a legal act. The government does not have to pass a law legalizing the chewing of gum for it to be legal to chew gum.
The premise of your post is flawed.

In COW, not only are committee amendments debated and voted upon but amendments made by individual members are also acted upon.

Thank you Bob. The election victory, especially the tough primary, was exhilarating. Now I know how the Earth feels being at the center of the universe.

It is a pleasure to see a Dem who has moved past the first stage of grief, denial, and is actually talking policy, even though I abhor the policy being promoted.

It is obvious that a person who donates more than another has more influence than non-donors or other donors but the issue is whether or not that extra influence can tip an election. If it cannot, it is wasted money.
Many factors are at play, such as what percentage of the campaign funding comes from the big donor, how does the public feel about the candidate or issue, who is the opponent, district registration, voter turnout, off-year or presidential year, if an off-year, the popularity of the president and much more.
That is what I mean by too simplistic.

How do you explain the passage of SB1070 and Arizona’s pro 2nd amendment bills that most big money donors and business interests opposed.

Also, was the passage of the Medicaid expansion a victory of money interests (health care interests) who bought off Dems? I do not think so.

This theory is too simplistic.

While I appreciate the win based upon the source, I feel it unfair to Russell Pearce because he is on the injured reserve list.

Of course I meant Beverly Hillbillies, where Jed and his kin move to the suburbs and bring their country lifestyle with them. In Green Acres, city folk bring their customs to the county.

Don’t forget that the “poorly performing Democrat president” is also a factor.

If the Arizona Republic is the Republican Party media arm, why do they allow Montini and Roberts to tag team attack Republicans on an ongoing basis?l

HB2483 only prevents zoning regulation of firearms discharge. All other restrictions, including no shooting within a 1/4 mile of An occupied buildings, would still apply.

State Representative John Kavanagh (sponsor)

I believe low taxes create jobs but I am not supportive of targeted tax breaks.

That’s all for this series of posts.

Beats a wink of the eye.

I cannot quote a figure because I have not heard from CPS or the governor on how much is needed. Also keep in mind that CPS does need money but that is only part of the problem. The agency has operational issues too.

Prioritizing is not robbing anyone. It is budgeting. I think you know that.

Finally, I see that you chose door number two, which is to wage a political and ideological battle with the Republicans, which is an acceptable option. However, it does not make you part of the solution. It would were the political scales nearly balanced in Arizona but they are not. In fact, owing to it being a midterm election year and owing to President Obama’s drop in popularity, Rs will probably pick up seats in the state legislature. Thus, your role will be meaningless in the short run. In the long run, who knows.

You are putting words in my mouth and surrounding them with talking points, which accomplishes nothing other than making yourself feel good.

Also, didn’t you read the part of my post that said, “And while I am open to getting rid of some of the “picking winers and losers” tax credits we have passed, I recognize that that too will not happen, so I look for the doable.”

The voters just voted a tax hike for education down.

Why do you refuse to acknowledge that I intend to take care of the understaffing that contributed to the 6,000 uninvestigated calls? I said three times that I intend to increase CPS’s general fund appropriation. Are you so partisan and ideological that you cannot bring yourself to admit that a Republican is willing to increase social service spending?

Regarding the tax increase, I too would oppose it. But YOU need to address the reality of the situation. Money is needed for these ancillary social programs for CPS kids and families. The money has to come from somewhere and the somewhere will not be a tax increase. FTF has a lot of money and I think some of it would be better spent on children and families under CPS supervision. Therefore, I propose diverting 25% of FTF taxpayer funding SO LONG AS THE VOTERS APPROVE. It is a matter of which needs are greater and I think CPS kids have greater needs. And while I am open to getting rid of some of the “picking winers and losers” tax credits we have passed, I recognize that that too will not happen, so I look for the doable. What do you look for and I hope it is more than just political jousting?

Regarding your question, “How would the money you want to redirect help deal with the current 6,000 case backlog? ” It would not and is not designed to do so.

In my first post I thought I addressed that issue, when I said, “None of this money will be used to fund CPS enforcement, which will get another increase this session from the general fund.” I then re-stated that point in my second post, when I said, “I would fund items 2 and 3 from the general fund.” Note that items 2 and 3 were:

2. Increase Child Protective Services (CPS) staffing, training, compensation, supervision, and resources to bring caseloads down and give dedicated caseworkers the chance to succeed.

3. Repair CPS systems to keep children safe.

If the misunderstanding is about not defining the term “general fund,” then it is the money that the legislature appropriates each year as opposed to monies derived from the federal government and other sources not controlled by the legislature. I hope that that clears up the misunderstanding.

You are also correct in your assessment that I am doing this because other funds are not available in this amount (about $45 million per year) and a tax increase is not going to pass because it needs a 2/3 vote. Also keep in mind that the voters just nixed a tax increase for education, so realistically, this is probably the best way to fund these CPS children and family social service needs.

First of all, I am not attempting to overturn the will of the voters. My bill will be a referral to the ballot that will allow the voters to redirect the money that they originally directed.

Second, I am talking about the types of programs that the Children’s Action Alliance is pushing based upon their public gatherings. I have copied their six recommendations below. My proposal would fund items 1, 4, 5 and 6. I would fund items 2 and 3 from the general fund.

CAA Proposals:

1. Reinvest in prevention and community support, so fewer families ever reach the breaking point. Child care assistance, mental health services and professional mentoring for struggling parents would go a long way to preventing abuse and neglect and reducing the overwhelming workload on CPS.

2. Increase Child Protective Services (CPS) staffing, training, compensation, supervision, and resources to bring caseloads down and give dedicated caseworkers the chance to succeed.

3. Repair CPS systems to keep children safe.

4. Build real partnerships with foster families, grandparents and other relatives caring for children.

5. Build partnerships with community-based agencies to help children recover and build successful lives. Today, we’re not making good use of many of these assets.

6. Use evidence-based strategies that work to give neglected children safe and healthy families. Many overwhelmed parents who have committed no crime but have crossed the line into neglect can get back on track so that children can stay safely in their own families.

For the record, my proposal would only fund educational and support services for children under the supervision of CPS, their families and foster families. None of this money will be used to fund CPS enforcement, which will get another increase this session from the general fund. I will also include a non-supplanting clause. This simply alters First Things First priorities a bit and expands the scope of services for this designated population. First Things First will still administer the money.

It appears that funding levels also do not pay a major role because all these schools get roughly the same amount of money. Besides, if money were as big a factor as some allege, we would all be moving to Newark and Washington DC to give our children a great education. However, some schools in poor neighborhoods do excel without extra funding. Maybe we should emulate them more.

Because it costs too much and the vouchers are not unlimited. I should have said as the middle class. But if you believe in equal healthcare access, why not education?

So much for pro-choice. Why shouldn’t poor kids have the same educational opportunities and choices as the rich?

Let’s not forget that children who use the vouchers do not go to public schools, which is a tax savings. And while some may have gone to the non-public school anyway, if the state has the responsibility to educate children, what’s the problem? Besides, most of the vouchers go to low income children, who would not be attending the non-public school were it not for the vouchers.

Please cite your data sources and specify in which direction you believe their error will fall?

I am glad that you are not holding your breath. I would hate to be even indirectly complicit in your suicide.

A bill to put it on the ballot would never pass. That said, my bill at least improved the situation.

Like it or not, prior to my bill becoming law, candidates could legally set up a campaign committees, collect donations, collect nominating signatures and campaign, so long as they said they were only “exploring” or “thinking” of running and did not turn in their signatures. That was a deceptive insult to voters. My bill allows candidates tell the truth. I think that is a good thing.

Let’s not forget the $16.5 trillion in national debt that the Obama administration is placing on our children.

Educators and proponents of education have spent the last four years complaining that budget cuts have decimated education in Arizona. It’s not just conservatives speaking critically of education.

…and the necessity to do so.

Actually, it’s a two-fer and getting a response from me is not all that difficult.

Bob,

I am willing to increase spending, although funds are limited. I would put most of any current increases to mental health spending into the seriously mentally ill part of the budget, especially hotlines and response teams. However, I would like some clarification on your (Bob’s but others are welcome too) position on mental health and the shootings. I am not surprised that you want more funding. Most do and the left was especially critical of past budget cuts in all areas, including mental health. But where do you stand on the other mental health issues I raised? Those are the tough ones.

Those issues, which I raised in my initial post, are copied below:

“That means we insist that all states properly report mental patients not allowed to posses weapons to the national database. Many states do not do so properly. We needed to develop sophisticated applications so it is easy to run the gun checks on buyers at gun shows so all buyers are checked. We need to evaluate laws allowing for detention for evaluation and commitment of the dangerously mentally ill to make sure we can intervene legally and medically before it is too late.”

All raise significant civil liberties issues and false positive issues, where we taks a seriously mentally ill person in for evaluation and he or she is not really dangerous. While Arizona’s commitment laws are ok (I am told), in states such as Connecticut it is very hard to pick up even dangerously ill persons. The data base for gun checks also raises privacy issues that the left (and often right) are sensitive to. Are you willing to go down the reform road regarding mental illness that I proposed?

My initial question was in response to criticism of Horne’s proposal and I simply asked what the writer would propose. There is nothing insulting or surreptitious about that unless you are a real cynic and ascribe the worst motives to those who disagree with you.

I reach out for information to many sources, right, left and center, that is how you get to sound policy. I also listen to the people you referenced, plus I read the Wall Street Journal, N.Y. Times and Arizona Republic everyday. While I am active in ALEC, I am also active in NCSL.

Regarding my offending people, let me make two comments. First, I asked a simple question and was met with a lot of negative criticism, sans the referral to the video. It was not insulting to point that out and the gun reference was tongue in cheek and I think you know that. Also, people who read and post on these blogs are not political novices and can handle debate and I suspect any offense is feigned. If not, I offer my apology.

Now that I showed my hand with the post you referenced I made as you were writing yours, let me see your hands. What do you people think will work? I am especially interested in your take on the mental illness issue.

I watched the video Cheri posted and while it contributed some information arguing against arming some school staff, it also suggested that regular cops might also fare poorly in such encounters. However, the news simulation on the video was not representative of the actual situations trained armed school personell would encounter. In the simulations shown, the armed “good guy or gal” was taken by surprise in a crowded room. A more likely scenario would be for the trained school person to hear an alarm, get a weapon and hopefully a bulletproof vest, and head towards the scene of the shooting intruder with the advantages of knowing the area better and having the element of surprise and a bit of planning However, fear and confusion would still be factors, but less so.

It is important to heed the statement of the police expert in the video who conceded that regular cops also do not have the training to perform well in such situations, which argues against putting them in classrooms too. Besides, what do you do when the only armed person in the school is the police officer and the shooter kills him or her from a distance or up close by surprise? Then the shooter has no opposition for the 10 to 15 minutes it takes other police to arrive. Just because the shooter is mentally ill does not mean he is not cunning.

So what do you do? I am not sure. I can tell you that putting a cop in every K-12 school, public, charter and private would probably cost over $300 million in Arizona alone and I do not think it would work well. And it might trigger what criminologists call displacement and these crazed killers would then attack kids in unprotected areas, such as on school buses, in parks, in shopping malls, movie theaters, sports venues, museums, etc. Then what do you do? There aren’t enough cops to put one everywhere.

What about getting rid of guns? Second amendment aside, there are about 300 million guns in the US. and probably as many high capacity magazines. Neither I or even most liberals would support rounding all the the guns up and the second amendment clearly and thankfully would prohibit that. In addition, the assault weapon ban is more feel good legislation than meaningful solution. Assault weapons are little more than semi-automatic rifles with mean looking accessories. Banning them still leaves many more similar rifles with similar shooting and firepower capabilities, almost exclusively owned by law abiding people, such as myself, who use them responsibly. Even banning high capacity magazines is questionable because it takes only a second or two to put another smaller magazine in and after someone empties one regular magazine, I doubt anyone is going to be close enough to disarm the shooter in that second or two window before the next magazine is loaded. Only an armed person can stop such an armed maniac.

Which brings me to where I think we can do the most to stop these incidents. Almost all of these shooters are seriously mentally ill, often psychotic persons suffering from schizophrenia. We need to prevent them from getting guns, insure that they are picked up for evaluation and treatment when they become dangerous and treat them either in institutions or as out patients with intensive monitoring to insure they stay on medication. And if they cannot stay on medication in the outside world, then they should be institutionalized. That means we insist that all states properly report mental patients not allowed to posses weapons to the national database. Many states do not do so properly. We needed to develop sophisticated applications so it is easy to run the gun checks on buyers at gun shows so all buyers are checked. We need to evaluate laws allowing for detention for evaluation and commitment of the dangerously mentally ill to make sure we can intervene legally and medically before it is too late.

Alternately, we can personally attack each other in blogs and in the end do nothing until the next tragic event and then we can attack each other in the blogs again.

I sense a lot of hostility here in response to my simple question meant to understand the left’s position, especially regarding serious mental illness and gun violence.
Forget I ever asked and reached out for dialogue.
Thank God you people don’t like guns.

What is your proposal?

That was sarcasm. I thought it was obvious.

You cannot trust liberals either. At the height of the budget cuts, First Things First, another voter protected program, sat on over $300 million dollars of tax money and did nothing to ease the cuts to child-related programs. That’s what I mean by operating in a vacuum and having no flexibility.

The new beds are to relieve overcrowding, which I assume you believe needs to be corrected.

I keep asking for input but never get answers from Bess. Oh well. Looks like only the two of are scrolling down this far for this posting, so its time to move on.

See you all at a future posting.

How long need it be in effect to allow conclusions to be drawn from the experiences in the four states?

I appreciate Bess1919’s comments, especially her unintended but present anyway support of my original posting that “Maybe it has a positive perception because the majority of people do not know what the word means.”

I appreciate her qualifying her Republicans are stirring the pot opinion with “I think” because that is intellectually honest and suggests a mind that knows it is difficult to ascribe motives to others. We need more of that, especially in left and right wing blogs where demonization is popular.

However, everybody is still dodging my question. It was, “If all these horrible things will occur should guns be allowed on college campuses, then why haven’t they occurred in the four states that permit guns on campuses? This is an important question because the proof is in the pudding. All of the other arguments melt, if when guns are allowed on campuses, nothing bad happens. So will someone address that issue. Please.

I would like to respond to a few points. First, no offense take to anyone.

Second, while I read the arguments written here and stated on the Brady website against guns on campuses, nobody addressed the question that I posed. It was, “If all these horrible things will occur should guns be allowed on college campuses, then why haven’t they occurred in the four states that permit guns on campuses? This is an important question because the proof is in the pudding. All of the other arguments melt, if when guns are allowed on campuses, nothing bad happens. So will someone address that issue.

Third, regarding, Michael’s post, I was surprised that you appear to be ok with guns on college campuses, if concealed and being carried by a CCW permit holder and I believe that that is what the Gould bill proposes. He adds the option of gun checking at the main building entrances. Sounds like an unmanageable compromise that might also be dangerous, if nobody is guarding the gun lock boxes. I agree that the guns on college campuses should be concealed and the bearers have CCW permits. I also agree that they should not be extended to K-12 institutions, except maybe by specially trained employees, training beyond the CCW permit.

I do not disagree that Arizona’s ed funding is low but everybody needs to be disturbed by the lack of correlation between spending and achievement. Obviously, what happens at home is a major factor that we have little control over. I think that that is the real issue to be addressed. Kids in Washington DC and Newark perform dismally in spite of spending topping over $20,000 per student. Yet the children of recently arrived immigrants, often Asian, become national science foundation award winners, often after limited years in this country. By the way, its not race but culture and the American culture needs a tuneup.

As promised

3. Regarding guns on college campuses. Four states currently allow it and I am waiting to see what evidence of carnage opponents of the bill can present. I have not heard of any but I am open minded. Maybe one of you can offer up some. I am also confused about how every day people mix together in supermarkets, malls and other public venues with some among them possessing guns and the result is not carnage. Do you folks believe that people on college campus are less responsible than the general population? (Warning: a straw man has entered the room! All progressives to your battle stations!) I do not think so.

Finally, a closing point on why progressive is deceptive. If you read a book that might be out of print but worth the hunt called Logic and Contemporary rhetoric, the author in discussing logical fallacies talks about the use of emotive language. In particular he singles out spin words. These are words that possess a positive or negative spin and are used to sway people not with facts but with the emotion of the spin. Government workers are government employees. That is the neutral term. If you are trying to portray them in a positive light, you use the spin word public servant. If you are attacking them, call them bureaucrats. People getting financial or related help from the government are getting public assistance. If you oppose it, call it welfare and conjure up all the negative images that have attached to that word. If you support it, call it an entitlement. But in the end recognize that when you choose a spin word over a neutral word, you are being deceptive and non-transparent.

Regarding the comments:

1. I am not calling anyone ignorant. I cite Gallup who found in a poll that most people do not know what the word progressive means. That does not make one ignorant. Nobody knows the definition of every word but that does not make everyone ignorant. Of course, I know that Bess knows that that is not what I meant to say and she said it to make me look bad. That’s creating a straw man argument and is a great debater’s trick but it does not advance civil and productive discussion.

2. Regarding ed funding, I think columnist Charles Krauthammer gives us cause to stop and think before we assume that the answer to all education problems is more money when he said in a recent column, “Where to begin? A country spending twice as much per capita on education as it did in 1970 with zero effect on test scores is not underinvesting in education. It’s mis-investing.” That is not to say that I do not support more ed funding, but I do not have as much faith in its power to improve students as you progressives do – Oops, I meant liberals.

More to follow

Maybe it has a positive perception because the majority of people do not know what the word means. See Gallup http://www.gallup.com/poll/141218/americans-unsure-progressive-political-label.aspx

Progressive is a positive “spin word” for liberal. as such, it is deceptive and non-transparant.

Regarding your statement that, “A violation of the Open Meeting law has never resulted in the removal of an elected official in Arizona, to the best of my knowledge,” Attorney General Tom Horne cites five recent cases involving a water board member and four school board members. (See http://findarticles.com/p/news-articles/arizona-capitol-times/mi_8079/is_20111003/arizona-attorney-general-tom-horne/ai_n58281040/) The removal of Mathis was not a first. In addition, the Arizona Constitution does not require a judicial determination to remove an IRC member. The governor makes the charge and the Senate acts as the trier of fact but only by a supermajority- that is what the Arizona Constitution calls for.

Also note that even Senator David Shapira concedes that if the open meeting law charges against Mathis are true, they would amount to the gross misconduct that justifies her removal. See: http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid65110967001?bckey=AQ~~,AAAABvZFMzE~,IXjx0MpOF0rNOCQhOSck4M1TuJXcSHmq&bclid=65043824001&bctid=1259110661001

Further, the legislative immunity you speak about is not against allegations of open meeting law violations, criminal conduct or the gross misconduct that triggers an IRC removal. That immunity protects members from being questioned about their reasons for voting on matters but not against unlawful conduct or the IRC removal process enshrined in the constitution.

Attorney General Tom Horne’s court filing, which was an attempt to get answers from the IRC members details far more than a technical violation of the law.” If the testimony from other commission members that he details in the report is true, then the chairwoman and one or two other commissioners violated the heart and soul of the open meeting law, not to mention possible bid rigging on the part of the chairwoman. To read the attorney general’s filing, go to: http://www.azag.gov/press_releases/sept/2011/Petition.pdf

To hear more details on my points, go to: http://www.azpbs.org/horizon/detailvid.php?id=3147

Personally, I am surprised that most Democrats are being so defensive of such abhorrent behavior.

You misrepresent the law by dismissing some significant limitations on enforcement of SB1070 with your use of the phrase, “Though a few exclusions are thrown in…” SB1070 requires police officers to reasonably attempt to determine the immigration status of a person involved in a lawful stop, detention or arrest in the enforcement of any other law or ordinance, where reasonable suspicion exists regarding the immigration status of the person, when practicable, except if the determination may hinder or obstruct an investigation. That is a fair representation of the law.

The significant hurdles that must be overcome before a police officer can question someone about his or her immigration status are:

1. The person must first be stopped for breaking another law (besides being in the country illegally).
2. Independent facts must be present to create “reasonable suspicion” (see Terry vs. Ohio) that the person is here illegally.

In addition, if it is not practical to ask the immigration question at that moment due to more pressing demands on the officer’s time (robbery down the street) or if asking the immigration question would hinder an investigation (such as scaring a victim or witness into not cooperating), the police do not have to perform the immigration inquiry.

I agree that police MUST ask the question when the law requires it but the exceptions to the MUST cannot be dismissed with a cavalier “Though a few exclusions are thrown in…” aside.

People tend to choose the facts and figures that best advance their agendas – a natural but not always honest approach. In the case of education, liberals always judge Arizona’s educational system by how much we spend and not by how much we achieve, as measured by student scores on standardized tests.

If you look at Arizona’s national rankings on school academic achievement, we tend to usually come in a bit below the national median. That ranking would probably be above the national median were our schools not overpopulated with the children of illegal immigrants, who due to their lack of proficiency in English, drag Arizona’s scores down.

I know that I will be accused, once again, of playing the “illegal card,” but it is unavoidable because so much of Arizona’s problems are aggravated by illegal immigration and education is one of them.

Many liberals would have us spend more per child, which conservatives do not necessarily oppose, and then judge achievement not by standardized tests that facilitate inter-state and inter-school comparison, but by subjective tests like portfolio submissions. That’s what bugs conservatives.

The stated main point of my post was that Rep Farley grossly misrepresented my position. All the commentators seemed to miss that point. That’s just my comment on the commentators.

Representative Steve Farley grossly misrepresented my position on state university tuition aid to low income students when he stated, “Rep John Kavanagh (R-Fountain Hills) called for slashing all need-based financial aid to the state’s universities as a way to pay for the $44 million cuts for the U of A and $50 million cuts for ASU.”

My proposal is to limit not eliminate university tuition aid to students, except those on academic and athletic scholarships, to 60% of the current tuition. Thus, the minimum payment would be 40% of the current $5,000 tuition – a reasonable $2,000. It should also be noted that I would not prevent students from applying non-university sourced aid to pay all or part of the $2,000. Since students with family incomes under $50,000 are eligible for Pell grants and the average grant is about $2,300, most needy students would still be paying no tuition. I would not call this “slashing all need-based financial aid,” as Farley erroneously and unfairly states.

My main reason for limiting such aid was fairness to the average taxpayer who does not possess a four-year college degree because studies touted by the universities show that a four-year college graduate earns about $1,000,000 more in his or her lifetime than a non-grad. My Republican idea of “economic justice” is that it is unjust for people making less than college grads to pay for the education of those destined to earn more than they ever will. I also believe that most students would take their classes more seriously were they paying something for them.

Another reason why the $2,000 figure seems reasonable to me is because that is what I paid in tuition per year 40 years ago when I went to NYU. I helped pay my tuition by working 16-32 hours per week and taking out student loans, which I repaid once I got my higher than average job due to my college degree. In retrospect, I am glad that I did it that way because there is a special dignity in self-reliance. It’s a type of self esteem that cannot be derived from a handout.

But back to my main point, Farley’s statement that I “called for slashing all need-based financial aid to the state’s universities” is not true and I wanted to set the record straight.

State Representative John Kavanagh

Regarding your statement, “In a subsequent comment Kavanagh suggested Fred Duval might want to pay me to stay away from him. Because being in any way associated with a liberal blogger who hurt John Kavanagh’s fee fees by describing Andy Tobin accurately would totally bring down Fred’s campaign, I guess,” you guessed wrong. I simply meant that a candidate whose platform includes civility might want to distance himself or herself from a person who calls opponents demagogues.

I would also like to add that your statement that I harbor “meanspirited (sic) bigotry against transgender people” is wrong and uncivil. How can you know what I think? How can you know my “spirit?” That statement also suggests that you have developed an unhealthy level of cynicism.

I know that was your main point. I was just pointing out the inconsistency of your praising Duval for saying,

” It’s time to change Arizona’s politics. We have to be able to disagree with one another, and debate our disagreements, without playing the hate card. I am committed to changing Arizona’s politics, and rooting our work together in a politics of respect.”

…and then bashing Tobin IN THE SAME POST.

I was giving you advice.

You should contact Duvall. He might pay you to not support him.

Don’t forget Ablesser’s being absent for 40 percent of the votes.

I am always glad when an innocent life is allowed to live.

At least he was there to vote. Ablesser missed about 40 percent of the votes.

Correction: The ends do not always justify the means.

You people should focus on what is philosophically right and what is not prone to being gamed instead of judging things by how it benefits or hurts your cause. The ends usually do not justify the means.

If you don’t support the party system, why are you democrats?

Johnson got away with a lot of falsehoods in selling the top-two primary. For a better review of the issue, go to another Horizon show where I debated him. Go to: http://www.azpbs.org/arizonahorizon/detailvid.php?id=2989

The top-two open primary is yet another attempt by so called “moderates” to moderate Arizona politics. First they tried term limits, which made things worse by banishing officeholders who made friends across the aisle that facilitated compromise. Then they put forth Clean Elections, which made things worse by providing a funding source for extreme candidates who could never raise adequate donations on their own.

And now open primaries, which if it brings in more candidates is every incumbents dream. In addition, in Arizona with its overpacked D and R districts, the November elections will be mostly R vs. R and D vs. D. Of course the open primary is every third party’s nightmare because they will never make it into November and their input will be mute.

I debated Paul Johnson on this issue last July 19th on Horizon. While I did not know it at the time, his statement that the Morrison Institute supports the so called “top-two” open primary or “jungle primary” was false.

There are many good reason to reject this “pie-in-the-sky” reform and I mention them on the show. Go to: http://www.azpbs.org/horizon/detailvid.php?id=2989

Smart Schools Plus is not privatized education. Private and parochial schools are privatized education and charter schools are semi-privatized education. Smart Schools Plus is a gimmick that public schools use to cut costs and sometimes reward long-time public school teachers. When we tried to end the program, the loudest protests came from the public schools who created the program and save money using it to the detriment of the pension system and new young teachers who are deprived of job openings to fill.