Rum, Romanism and Rebellion

Sylvia Allen, Steve Pierce and Al Melvin had an op-ed in this morning’s Republic taking on the paper for criticizing the state senate. Most of their response can be chalked up to some apparent immunity they have from criticism for staying up late a few nights:

It is easy to criticize from the sidelines, but questioning our dedication and calling us uncooperative and unproductive after working late nights and weekends to pass five budgets is unjust.

Of course, it can be pointed out that weeks and weeks of intransigence and foot dragging made those late nights necessary. I guess every college student who hastilly and poorly writes a long-delayed term paper should get an A if he or she stayed up all night to do it.

And, in what we have come to expect, our Senators once again blame the Democrats. They claim that Bob Burns “talked” to the Democrats. As far as I know, these “talks” were insulting (and in the end, unproductive) offers made to pick off individual members. No real effort was made by Burns or the governor to get the Democratic caucus on board on this. Unless you count the dubious honor of making a vote that enabled a budget that cut education and social services while transfering more of the state’s tax burden to the middle class as some wonderful offer.

Other than that, there are a few justifications (and whines) that really have to be addressed. I wanted to keep this post short, but what the heck. If y’all want to read more specific arguments about the piece, they’ll be after the jump.

First off, Allen, Pierce and Melvin plead that they are only “freshman legislators” (and fans of the Verve Pipe). True for Pierce and Melvin, but only in the technical sense for Allen. Allen had been appointed after the death of Jake Flake, and had been around for previous budget legislation. Pierce is a freshman, but also in leadership. These three are not innocents “thrust into the chaos.”

It is a cheap shot to blame President Bob Burns for not getting 16 votes for the governor’s tax increase and not acknowledge what he accomplished. Using several column inches on Grover Norquist’s tax pledge is a nice theatric, but irresponsible without mentioning that 46 out of 53 Republicans and zero Democrats voted for the tax referral.

This is my favorite paragraph: the whine that none of it is the fault of Burns and crew, a complaint about the unfair media and an implication that it is the Democrats fault. Kinda sums it all up.

Cheap shot? It is Burns’s job to find 16 votes. If he can’t handle this, he may want to make a run at the Maricopa Board of Supervisors where he will only have to count to three. Okay, I realize that Burns can’t take all the blame for this, he shares this responsibility with his whip, his whip who is one of the article’s authors.

Kind of funny to complain about pointing out the Norquist pledge. Many Republican legislators who signed the pledge (including the authors of this piece) not only bragged about signing it, but pointed to it as a reason for voting against the sales tax. They can tout their making the pledge, but we can’t criticize them for it.

Also funny: later in the article they complain that the Republic is too supportive of the tax referral, but here they complain that Democrats weren’t supportive. Could these guys make up their minds? Oh, wait, I’d be alleging that their decision making process is dysfunctional. Wouldn’t want to do that.

There are several paragraphs criticizing Mary Jo Pitzl for mentioning holds. They go through an odd explanation of Burns’s holds, then they want credit for Burns lifting a hold on bills dealing with AHCCCS and fingerprinting requirements. They fail to point out that part of the problem was these bills were being held up in the first place.

Here is near the end, because I may have written more than they did:

The whole state is in a crisis. Cut us some slack.

If the job is too hard, well, there are other ways to be employed.