Month: February 2013

“Conservatives gone mild”: a hopeful sign

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by David Safier

Here’s another hopeful sign that conservatives are feeling uncertain about their core beliefs, and possibly about whether pure ideology will continue to win elections for them. The number of Republicans in the state lege signing Grover Norquist’s anti-tax pledge is down.

Only 11 lawmakers, including just one of 17 Republicans in the Senate, have signed the Americans for Tax Reform’s Taxpayer Protection Pledge. Only two of the 14 new Republican lawmakers this session have signed.

That number is down from 21 in the 2011-12 Legislature, when the GOP boasted a supermajority in both chambers. And media reports listed the number of pledge signers at the Legislature as being as high as 32 in the two years before that.

Some Republican legislators say signing the pledge may have just slipped their colleagues’ minds. Not likely. “No new taxes” isn’t something Republicans just kind of forget about. Not signing the pledge is a conscious decision.

The names of the 2013 Arizona pledge signers, state and federal, are below the fold.

PHRASE COINAGE NOTE: I googled the phrase “Conservatives gone mild” to see who had used it before. Google replied, “No results found for ‘Conservatives gone mild.'” Maybe no one has used it because it’s lame, but if by chance you see it crop up anywhere, well, you read it here first.

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Tucsonans Voice Opinions on Background Checks at Gun Shows (video)

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6a00d8341bf80c53ef017c36c58ae2970b-800wiby Pamela Powers Hannley

Last week, in an historic move, the Tucson City Council advanced a resolution to require universal background checks on all sales at gun shows on city owned or city managed property.

This action was taken during the afternoon study session. Council chambers were filled to capacity later that day for the regular meeting. By far, proponents of gun control outnumbered the people against it. This was obvious because they were wearing “Common Sense Gun Laws” buttons. During the call to the audience, 20 people volunteered to speak in favor of the gun show resolution; three volunteered to speak against it– two Tea Party representatives and one gun show promoter, whose family has profited from shows at the Tucson Convention Center for 20 years. After the jump, watch the video from the call to the audience.

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Want to get some press? Bring guns to the state Capitol

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by David Safier How much press does a group of “more than 50 activists” at the state Capitol usually get? Not much, right? “More than 50”? That’s not even the lunch crowd on a slow day at an off-the-beaten-track McDonalds. But if it’s “More than 50 gun rights activists” rallying at the state Capitol, apparently … Read more

Robert Robb, Shallow Thinker Extraordinaire

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Posted by Bob Lord

The AZBlueMeanie alerted me to Robert Robb's recent blog post at AZCentral, Economic growth realities and myths. Robb's post is based entirely on a recent study for the American Legislative Exchange Council, “Rich States, Poor States,” by Arthur Laffer, Stephen Moore and Jonathan Williams. Robb pretty much employs no critical thinking in his post. He takes what ALEC and Laffer have to say as gospel, then judges the Arizona legislature based on it. 

The datum from the Laffer piece that Robb seizes on most is the outsized job growth in the 9 states with no personal income tax. 48% of the job growth in the last decade occurred in those states. The obvious implication, according to Robb: All states should strive for a zero income tax. Indeed, Robb says that Arizona should have that as a long-term goal.

But Robb doesn't bother to explore the long-term ramifications of his recipe for growth if all states took his (and ALEC's) advice. It really doesn't take much by way of critical thinking skills to noodle this out.