The world according to S. AZ Republican legislators

by David Safier

This morning I attended an LD-25 and LD-26 legislators' forum at the YMCA on N. Shannon. Only 3 pols showed up: Vic Williams and Al Melvin from LD-26 and Peggy Judd from LD-25.

Forum, however, is the wrong word. It was more like a Republican PR road show. The audience — and it was a large group with lots of activist Democrats hoping to ask tough questions and get answers — was told to sit on its hands while the three Rs gave stump speeches and answered softball questions. It was a dull and dismal affair.

But I still learned a little bit anyway.

Al Melvin said every Republican has a poster in his/her office that reads, "Jobs are Job #1." I guess their way of tackling Job #1 is by cutting education and health care with one hand and cutting corporate taxes with the other. Jobs, jobs, jobs.

Peggy Judd comes off as a sweet, well meaning person. I don't know enough about her to say if she really is that way, but that's how she seems. Also more than a bit naive. She said Arizona is "such a generous state, and we're so good . . ." It seems she thinks our good hearts are what got us into all this budget trouble. The fact that we keep failing our commitment to our children and we want to ride immigrants out of the state on a rail must be part of our generosity and goodness in her world.

Leave it to Melvin to give Judd's naive-but-sweet statement an evil spin. He said, "We Americans are a generous people, but we're generous to a fault." Yes, Al, I guess generosity is a fault, kind of like loving your neighbor. The road to Hell is paved with too much generosity. We need to be good Christians and make sure people in need don't get any help from the state, unless, of course, they're corporations job creators.

Melvin again. He said he's proud Arizona has sent the signal to businesses around the country that we know how to create a balanced budget. I'm sure businesses everywhere can't wait to move to a state where we recklessly cut every program in sight and then pat ourselves on the back. Our state slogan should be "Cuts? You ain't seen nothin' yet."