Month: July 2018

GOP candidates demonstrate contempt for their GOP primary voters: no debates!

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There has been an interesting reveal from the The Arizona Republic fka The Arizona Republican this week.

Its editorial board is currently conducting interviews with candidates for the purpose of making primary endorsements.

It turns out the GOP candidates for governor and U.S. Senate are willing to meet with the editors of the The Arizona Republican, but they are not willing to debate one another in the GOP primary.

These GOP candidates demonstrate contempt for their GOP primary voters by refusing to debate. The Arizona Republican should withhold its endorsement of any candidate who refuses to debate his or her opponent and demonstrate such contempt for primary voters. (The Arizona Republican will, of course, endorse the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry approved establishment candidates Doug Ducey and Martha McSally, because rubber-stamping the chamber endorsed candidates is what they have always done).

This is why editorial endorsements carry so little weight these days.

In any case, Gov. Doug Ducey, challenger Ken Bennett meet for first time before Arizona GOP primary:

In what will likely be their only face-to-face discussion of policy issues before the Republican primary election, Gov. Doug Ducey and his challenger, former Secretary of State Ken Bennett, exchanged polite verbal jabs Friday during a meeting with The Arizona Republic editorial board.

Ducey has declined to debate Bennett at two forums next week: one co-hosted by The Republic and Arizona PBS, and another sponsored by the Clean Elections Commission.

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Arizona Legislature

Stop Thief! Community Forum on Restoring Fair Taxes

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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

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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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Amazon Affiliate Ad

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By Michael Bryan I’m about to get a little tedious for those of you who know what an affiliate link is and how it works; you folks can just ignore this little note. For those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, here’s the skinny: I’ve added an Amazon affiliate link to the … Read more

Fiddling While Rome Burns? Yeah, Kind Of

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Democratic Senate candidate Deedra Abboud was asked what legislation she’d introduce if elected. Her response (I’m going by memory, so this may not be exact): “Children shall not be placed in cages in America.”

Campaigns are about messaging. Abboud’s message in her short response was loud and clear: The madness needs to stop, and her priority number one was stopping the madness.

Contrast that to Abboud’s primary opponent, Kyrsten Sinema. Sinema is running ads about her priorities. Priority number one for her is working across the aisle to improve veterans’ health care.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with improving veterans ‘ health care, right? Of course not. Just the opposite. We owe a debt of gratitude to our veterans, even if many of the wars in which our political leaders induced them to serve were for causes less than noble. Regardless, they made huge sacrifices for the good of all of us. We owe them.

The thing is, though, there’s also nothing inherently wrong with fiddling, either.

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