Arizona Legislature

Stop Thief! Community Forum on Restoring Fair Taxes

Arizona Legislature
HB2479 was was a sales tax exemption with an unknown price tag. Despite being hotly debated, it passed the House on a bipartisan vote.

LD9 House incumbents– Dr. Randy Friese and I– will be the featured speakers at the Stop Thief community forum on tax giveaways on July 31 at the IBEW Hall.

As many of you are aware, Arizona is upside down on its mortgage. Thanks to years of Republican tax cuts, our state gives away more than $13 billion in taxes and spends just $10 billion to run the state. For years, the people of Arizona believed the lie that our state is broke. Now the veil has been lifted. The people realize that our state has plenty of revenue. The problem is that the majority of our Legislators vote to give the money away–rather than spend it on much-needed services– like public education.

Austerity is a lie. Arizona has the money to fund public education. The problem is: the Legislature gives our taxes away. It’s time to end crony capitalism in Arizona.

When the Arizona budget comes up short because of the tax giveaways, loopholes, and sweetheart deals, Republicans cut funds from K-12 education, the universities, the community colleges, healthcare, and environmental protections. OR they suggest raising sales tax to fill in the budget gaps caused by tax cuts for the rich and for the corporations. (Unfortunately, some Democrats go along with more tax cuts for the powerful and more sales tax for the rest of us.)

The Arizona Legislature should be funding the People’s To-Do List– education, healthcare, infrastructure, and safety and security– not the corporate wish list.

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The History of Political Polarization in America

By Michael Bryan

On the excellent podcast, The Ezra Klein Show, hosted by Mr. Klein, the editor-at-large of Vox Media, former reporter Sam Rosenfield gave some excellent recommendations for further reading for those who want to better understand America’s polarized politics. Sam himself is the author of “The Polarizers: Postwar Architects of Our Partisan Era”.

The discussion on the podcast is well worth a listen and the books Mr. Rosenfield recommends are an excellent backgrounder for how we got to today’s political moment. To see those recommendations follow the “continue reading” link…

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