As writers on the Blog for Arizona and others in the mainstream media have noted over the years, you can tell a lot of what a person is for by what they propose in their budget and single pieces of legislation.
The MAGA reactionary Republicans at the Arizona State Legislature are no exception.
Read what they propose and all is revealed.
- A skinny budget that reveals their intention not to want to work with the Democratic Governor.
- Bills that discriminate against the LGBTQ Community to appease their white nationalist base.
- Tax cuts and private school voucher expansion legislation that rewards their rich and large corporate patrons.
- Anti-voter participation measures to soothe the Trump Base that has been fed the Big Lie over and over again by these same MAGA Republican legislators and “news” organizations like Fox News and Newsmax.
- A proposal to ban books for sexually explicit content. Like previous attempts to enact this type of bill, what teacher is going to promote porn? As Representative Jennifer Pawlik noted on a similar measure last year, it is already illegal to do so.
- Unsafe legislation that would allow people to carry weapons onto school campuses.
The media team at Save our Schools Arizona fully captured what these people are for when they published this video today (March 14, 2023.)
Readers/voters could also tell a lot about a legislator from what they will not vote for or even allow on the floor to consider.
MAGA Republicans do not seem too keen to fully fund public education or permanently suspend the Aggregate Expenditure Limit, replenishing the $4.5 billion classroom deficit.
They also do not seem to care about helping poor or lower-middle-class children.
Kelley Murphy at the Children’s Action Alliance released a report today on the bills MAGA Republicans at the State Capitol would not allow a vote for this session.
Writing, “Every year, Arizona Legislators introduce hundreds of bills. Very few of those bills work their way through the entire process and end up on the Governor’s Desk for signature. Many never make it out of committee let alone to be voted on by the full legislature. And each year, a lot of bills never get a hearing at all. Many of those that never get heard contain great ideas with the potential to help children and families in Arizona thrive.”
Among the legislative proposals that did not get the consideration they deserved were:
- A measure to expand access for poor children to enroll in KidsCare, the health care program for impoverished kids.
- A bill to create a School Mental Health Professional Academy.
- Aid for foster children from age 18 to 21.
- A preschool pilot program at qualifying districts.
- Increased child care assistance.
- Protect Indian children and tribal family stability.
When considering who they want to represent them, voters should ask:
- Do I want the Nazi book burner or the person that will support Universal and Free Pre-K?
- Do I want the person that helps the rich or the one that will assist poor children to get health care?
- Do I want the legislator that believes in the Big Lie or the public servant that champions Democracy?
- Do I want the politician that puts gun rights over a child’s safety in school?
- Do I want the elected official that will serve just one group or one that will work for everybody?
These are really not difficult questions to consider.
They are also not hard to answer.
I remember having a heated discussion about Alanis Morissette’s Jagged Little Pill album with my daughter’s mom.
The song “You Oughta Know” in particular.
I thought she was a little young for some of that content, her mother disagreed and said it was a woman thing, a mom and daughter thing, to discuss content like that.
I wasn’t worried about protecting her from the realities of life, I just wanted to be sure she was at an age where she could understand things in context.
That’s called Parenting, MAGAts, know what your children are doing, who they’re with, that kind of stuff.
If you do that, you won’t be worried about what books your kids are reading because you’ll know.
Stop asking The Government to do the work and raise your children for you.
MAGAts just don’t get irony at all. :-)
“Arizona Senate bill to ban ‘lewd or sexual’ books called unconstitutional by experts”, https://www.tucsonsentinel.com/local/report/022723_arizona_book_ban_bill/arizona-senate-bill-ban-lewd-or-sexual-books-called-unconstitutional-by-experts/
A bill in the Arizona state Senate aimed to give parents more control over what books students read in school is unconstitutional, experts say.
SB1700, sponsored by state Senator Justine Wadsack, would allow parents to request that books be banned from Arizona public schools if they contain “lewd or sexual” content, “promote gender fluidity or gender pronouns” or “groom children into normalizing pedophilia.”
While reaction to the bill in a Senate education committee two weeks ago centered mostly around the rights of LGBTQ students to read about themselves and people like them, Arizona State University literature professor Jim Blasingame said he has other problems with the proposed legislation.
“A parent can choose what book or curriculum their student uses in a public school,” Blasingame said. “But they can’t choose for other people’s children.”
The professor, who’s taught censorship as part of his adolescent literature class for 20 years, pointed to multiple U.S. Supreme Court decisions holding that school boards cannot remove books from the library simply because members disagree with the contents. Rather, school boards must consider the educational purpose of the book as a whole, not just specific things within it that they dislike.
In a 1982 decision regarding the removal of certain books by a New York school district, the U.S. Supreme Court held “local school boards may not remove books from school library shelves simply because they dislike the ideas contained in those books and seek by their removal to ‘prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion.’”
Gordan Danning, an attorney with the National Coalition Against Censorship, said a school’s removal of a book because it mentions “gender fluidity and gender pronouns” would directly contradict that decades-old decision.
He also called the bill too broad, as “sexual or lewd in nature” isn’t defined by law.
“I suppose there might be other books that are ‘sexual in nature,’ but the problem is no one knows what that term means,” he said. “I am guessing ‘lewd’ means books intended to be sexually arousing, of which presumably there are none in school libraries.”