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#AZ Democratic Budget Shows Difference in Priorities, Values & Spending (video)

Posted on June 10, 2021 by Pamela J. Powers

Arizona Republicans have been twisting arms for weeks to find 31 of their members in the House and 16 in the Senate to pass their budget that includes $12.5 billion in tax giveaways and a flat tax. (You didn’t expect the Republicans to actually “Invest in Ed,” did you?)

While the Republican budget is languishing, let’s talk alternatives. Governor Doug Ducey and the Republicans like to brag about how great the Arizona economy is, how much money the state has, and their plans to give money back to the “taxpayers”.

There are several major problems with the Republican narrative:

The “taxpayers” who benefit the most from the Republican budget are Arizona’s wealthiest. (You’ll remember Prop 208 required wealthy Arizonans to pay a fee to fund public education. Ever since that passed, Ducey and his cronies in the Legislature have proposed multiple methods to eliminate the impact of Prop 208 on the ~30,000 people who would otherwise have to pay it. )
The gap between rich and poor in Arizona has been widening, and their budget — particularly the $12.5 billion in tax breaks — would make that worse.
The state is currently flush with funds thanks to federal relief during the pandemic and online retail purchases by people who remained employed during the pandemic.
It’s NOT time to give our tax dollars to the rich and ignore the needs of the people of Arizona. The Democratic budget restores or increases funding for education, healthcare, housing, food and security; these priorities are left out of the Republican budget to make way for Welfare for the Wealthy.

Each year Legislative Democrats assemble their budget to show the people of Arizona that there are alternatives. Below are budget recommendations from Arizona’s Democratic Legislators. The full document can be found here. The JLBC overview of the Republican budget is here.

Continue reading #AZ Democratic Budget Shows Difference in Priorities, Values & Spending (video)

Defund the Police? Balancing ‘Social Control’ & ‘Social Investment’ (video)

Posted on July 1, 2020July 21, 2020 by Pamela J. Powers

What does “defund the police” mean to you?

Following the tragic and unnecessary deaths of George Floyd, Dion Johnson, Rayshard Brooks, Carlos Ingram Lopez and others at the hands of law enforcement officers, there have been calls to “defund the police.”

Often the same people who say “defund the police” also add “that doesn’t mean take away all of the funding.” When I ask what it does mean, the explanations often get mushy. Recently, I read “What Defund Police Really Means: Replacing Social Control with Investment” by former Labor Secretary Robert Reich.

In this Guardian article, Reich talks about increased spending in social investment beginning in the mid 1960s through President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. Beginning in 1964, the War on Poverty efforts rolled out Medicare, Medicaid, Head Start, Food Stamps, cash assistance to the poor, equal opportunity programs, the voting rights act and more. By the early 1970s, these programs were working to reduce poverty, particularly among African Americans.

In 1971, future Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell wrote the now infamous “Powell Memo,” which author and historian Bill Moyers labels a “Call to Arms for Corporations, “ excerpted …

Continue reading Defund the Police? Balancing ‘Social Control’ & ‘Social Investment’ (video)

When a Crisis Hits, #PublicBanks Respond Quickly (video)

Posted on June 25, 2020 by Pamela J. Powers

It took Arizona three months to reach 20,000 cases of COVID19. After Governor Dour Ducey opened up the economy in early May, it took only three weeks to add another 20,000 cases. Arizona now has the WORST outbreak of COVID19 in the nation.

In addition to our state’s disregard for solid public health policies, such as a longer shelter in place directive or wearing masks in public, the state government has been shamefully slow and stingy in distribution of aid. Only 6 percent of the 16,000 Arizonans who applied for eviction relief have received it, and renters face an eviction cliff in mid-July if the Governor doesn’t act. Distribution of unemployment, pandemic unemployment, and federal aid that passes through the Governor’s office has been equally slow and minimalist. What is the point of forcing more strife onto people? Why the slow distribution of funds?

Continue reading When a Crisis Hits, #PublicBanks Respond Quickly (video)

#AZLeg: Look Beyond Tax Credits & Take Comprehensive Approach to Housing (video)

Posted on February 18, 2020February 14, 2023 by Pamela J. Powers

There are multiple reasons why Arizona has an affordable housing crisis. Chronically low wages; years of under-funding social safety net programs; high student loan, credit card or medical debt; and aggressive evictions have forced far too many Arizonans to live with housing insecurity.

Wages in Arizona are 85% of the national average. Only 6% of Arizonans who are eligible for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) actually get it. In Pima County, the eviction rate is 30 per day– that’s roughly 1000 per month.

To use a medical analogy, HB2732 (affordable house tax credits) treats the symptoms of the affordable housing crisis– not the disease. The disease is poverty.

‘Democracy in Chains’ Connects Dots on Libertarian & Republican Strategies (video)

Posted on April 29, 2019June 23, 2021 by Pamela J. Powers

If you often scratch your head at the bad bills that the Republicans pass in Congress and in the state legislatures and wonder what their end game is, you should read Democracy in Chains by Nancy McClean.

What you may think are random bad ideas that have somehow gotten into law are actually part of a grand scheme that has been playing out since Brown versus the Board of Education attempted to desegregate public schools in the United States.

An academic, McClean has studied the articles, books and letters of James Buchanan, the economist not the former president. Buchanan was the primary theorist of public choice theory. In the 1950s, public choice theory was used as a rationale to close all of the public schools in the state of Virginia (rather than comply with desegregation) and is being used today to support state-funded vouchers for private and religious schools. In Virginia in the 1950s, the state gave money to white parents for private school vouchers and allowed hundreds of black children to go uneducated for years. Needless to say, this was a travesty of justice.

Continue reading ‘Democracy in Chains’ Connects Dots on Libertarian & Republican Strategies (video)

#AZ House Republicans Pass $7.25/hour Minimum Wage for Students (video)

Posted on March 1, 2019February 15, 2023 by Pamela J. Powers

The worst vote of the 54th session has to be the Republican passage of the sub-minimum wage on Thursday. Rep. Travis Grantham’s HB2523 would allow employers to pay full time students, who work part time and are under 22, the federal minimum wage of $7.25/hour, instead of the voter-approved minimum wage of $11/hour.

Republicans and Democrats debated HB2523 for more than one hour the day before during Committee of the Whole (COW) and again when we explained our votes on Thursday. It passed on a strictly party line vote.

After mulling over the speeches from both sides of the aisle, I think there are some of the Republicans who truly believe paying $7.25/hour to full-time students is good idea. I wonder how many of them own restaurants, farms, retail stores, or other small businesses that would benefit from cheaper labor. Hmmm…

This vote needed 3/4 on HB2523 because it is an attempt to change the voter-approved Prop 206 Citizens Initiative that raised the minimum wage in 2016. During the COW debate, I proposed an amendment to add a Prop 105 vote to HB2523, but Republicans said it was not necessary. (The Rules Attorneys said it was necessary. Who are you going to believe?)