David Safier by David Safier Imagine having a real live educator as our Superintendent of Public Education. It would be the first time Arizona would have an educator in that office for almost 30 years. If you haven't had a chance to hear and meet Dr. Garcia, he'll be in Tucson Thursday, 5:30-7:30, 423 E. 9th St.
by David Safier I may only know a few teachers in the Sunnyside school district, but I know teachers. People in the classroom don't spend a whole lot of time thinking about the superintendent or the school board. They know who they're working for: the students in their classrooms. If teachers are happy with what's … Read more
by David Safier The group, Democrats for Education Reform (DFER), is made up of Democrats who are in bed with the conservative "education reform" movement. You can find lots of information about the group and its links to the corporatization/privatization movement in an earlier post. You can also read about the three Democrats in our … Read more
by David Safier
I don't know, maybe the end days are at hand. When the Brewer lies down with the Liberals and Barton is, well, Barton . . . Can someone dig up an appropriate quote from Revelations? Something better than Michele Bachman's "leaf is on the fig tree"? (What the hell does that mean anyway?)
Gov. Brewer is pleading with Republicans to leave Obamacare alone. Kill it and Arizona's economy will be crippled, she said.
“The bottom line is we need that money in our economy to save rural hospitals and jobs in the rural areas,” the governor said, as well as making sure hospitals in metropolitan areas, where most AHCCCS patients are seen, get paid. “It’s all about jobs and getting back federal dollars that our taxpayers have paid to the federal government, to bring them home.”
There's more to her calculation — I should probably say "her advisors' calculations" — than I realized. The only reason the lege was able to take people off of Arizona's Medicaid program AHCCCS was because the voter mandate said the state was only required to use "available" funds for the program. When the funds dried up, the lege was able to cut back. But now the state has a surplus.
Since [the budget crisis], state finances have recovered. It ended the last fiscal year with close to $1 billion in the bank, plus another $450 million in a “rainy day’’ fund — money Brewer said she fears a court would force it use to fulfill the voter mandate.
Brewer's people understood, if we didn't take a billion from the feds to fund the Medicaid expansion, the state might be forced to pay for the program. Kill Obamacare and you wipe out the Medicaid expansion money. Brewer may dislike Obamacare intensely, but she's gotta root for it regardless.
Then there's Rep. Brenda Barton.
by David Safier The markets are closed for the day. K12 Inc. ended yesterday at $28.59. It dropped to $17.60 at today's close, a fall of almost 40%. The primary reason is that its earnings are lower than projected, because its enrollment is lower than expected. I don't know if this is a typical stock … Read more