State should tax biggest natural resource: Kooks

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Several people have requested that I post this opinion by Laurie Roberts at The Arizona Republic State should tax biggest natural resource: Kooks:

This state's in a bad way. The economy's in the tank and the state budget right along with it. We're desperate for leadership, and what do we get? Gov. Jan Brewer and the Arizona Legislature.

Funny, huh?

The governor is asking voters to raise the state sales tax by a penny on the dollar. This has made her so popular in her own party that even Sen. John McCain is downplaying her recent endorsement, according to Arizona Guardian. And this week, the National Federation of Independent Businesses announced plans to fight Brewer's tax, saying an 18 percent tax hike will kill jobs.

I almost feel sorry for the governor. She's stuck holding the bag and a rather empty one at that, given years of tax cuts pushed by her own party. But I think in her panic, she's overlooking an enormous revenue-generating opportunity.

Phoenix is about to tax food, something that everybody needs. She should tax one of Arizona's most astonishing natural resources, something that flows endlessly and exists in abundance.

Kooks.

To wit: from now on and henceforth, a kook tax of $1,000 shall be levied upon any public official who expends public money or public effort on an idea deemed goofy, silly, loopy, loony or just plain over-the-top odd. A tax of $5,000 shall be levied upon those officials whose actions border on idiotic, imbecilic or impossibly moronic.

I'm thinking we can erase the deficit in a matter of months – weeks, if our leaders really put their minds to it.

Robert's first list of Kooks to be subject to the Kook tax:

• Rep. Judy Burges. This Skull Valley Republican has apparently listened to one too many J.D. Hayworth radio rants, having bought into the conspiracy theory that Kenya has secretly foisted one of their own upon us, to sit up there in the White House and act like an actual American without ever proving it. (We can't, after all, take the word of public officials in Hawaii. Heck, that's a barely a real state anyway.)

And so comes House Bill 2441, which would require all presidential candidates, beginning in 2012, to prove to Arizona's secretary of state that they are red, white and blue, through and through. Burges' bill, approved this week by her Government Committee, would require anyone running for prez to produce a birth certificate sufficient to satisfy this state's second in command that he (or she) was born on American soil and is thus eligible to appear on Arizona's ballot.

In all, 40 Republicans have signed on as bill sponsors, though two of them – Sen. Pamela Gorman and Rep. Sam Crump – have since resigned to run. For Congress.

Yeah, I know.

• Sen. Russell Pearce. The powerful Appropriations chairman has mounted a campaign to post the Ten Commandments at the entrance to the state Capitol because, hey, it's not like they're the rules of any particular religion.

• Rep. Nancy Barto and Sen. Linda Gray. This duo has hit upon a way to cut the divorce rate in Arizona: simply triple the time it takes to get unhitched. Better to keep couples unhappily shackled than happily able to move on with their lives. Got to protect family values, after all, even in families that value their kids as pawns and their spouses as punching bags.

• Rep. Nancy McLain. Taking her cue from survivalists in Montana, this Bullhead City Republican wants to exempt guns made and owned in Arizona from intrusive federal regulations. Things like registration and background checks to make sure we aren't putting guns in the hands of lunatics (legislative or otherwise). HB 2307 cleared the House this week, 35-23, despite the fact that a lawsuit is all but guaranteed if it becomes law. In fact, McLain's itching for a legal fight over the right of the feds to regulate firearms. Somehow, though, I doubt she's itching for the chance to pay the legal tab when that lawsuit inevitably arrives.

• Rep. Frank Antenori. Like McLain, this Tucson Republican is pushing states' rights, only his issue is the God-given right of Arizonans to screw in whatever sort of lightbulb they want come 2012, when the feds ban the sale of incandescent bulbs. HB 2337 won tentative House approval this week. "The Founding Fathers . . . ," Antenori has said, "never intended to control commerce in lightbulbs."

Apparently, not even dim ones.