A question fresh from the rumor mill: is Vic Williams contemplating a primary run against Al Melvin?
The talk is that Williams has been meeting with educators, possibly to mount a run against Melvin. The story goes that he would present himself as a moderate alternative to Melvin. Sounds plausible, but I’m wondering what the point of it all would be.
I mean, let’s face it, Williams may have put on an impression that he is a “moderate” Republican in the mold of Toni Hellon and Pete Hershberger, but his actual voting record shows little evidence of this. I guess the fact that he expresses regrets that he “had to vote that way to stay relevant” is what he thinks qualifies him as a moderate.
“I Vote the Wrong Way, but Feel Bad About It Later.” One heck of a campaign slogan there, Vic.
And speaking of new definitions of the word “moderate,” Melvin is now calling himself a moderate. In a speech in Saddlebrooke, he refered to himself as a “moderate” in opposition to liberals in the Republican caucus (eh?) and to two “loser-tarians” (likely Ron Gould and Pamela Gorman). Gould took issue with the word “loser-tarian” on his blog (you expected him not to?) but agreed that Melvin is a moderate. The very fact that Melvin and 13 other members of the Senate Republican caucus could be characterized as “moderate” with no sense of irony or humor gives you an idea of how askew the conversation is on West Washington these days.
21 Comments
Vote Vic “The Bladder” Williams. When the going gets tough, he gets going.
You gave Sen. Melvin one day of nicey-nice I see.
So if the GOP shouldn’t be cutting anything, exactly what taxes should be raised to bring in an additional $2B in taxes this year and from what I hear $4B next year. What is this “magic bean” of taxes that will solve our problem? Apparently the rest of us can’t seem to get our heads around that but I’m sure you have it all figured out.
Hey…I did Melvin better than the Yellow Sheet did, they ran the cancer story and the Saddlebrooke meeting story on the same page.
I’m not saying that the Republicans shouldn’t cut any program. Hey, that’s their deal. But, it is silly for them in a budget crisis to keep cutting taxes and pretend that somehow that will be the solution. It is also ridiculous for them to argue that Arizona is over-governed and over-taxed as if we are some Scandinavian style social democracy.
Maybe y’all think we don’t need public schools and we can turn over our prison population to the lowest bidder, but I ain’t going to agree to that.
OK, well that’s better than your normal responses. I still don’t agree with you.
As I’m sure your aware, the business tax cuts that were vetoed by the way were intended to position Arizona to attract businesses. You can say you disagree with that but certainly you would agree that the favorable editorial by the Wall St. Journal was averstising that no TREO or any other business outreach could have given this state. That was the business community sitting up and saying that AZ would be attractive to companies leaving CA.
So, again, I’ll ask the question, what tax(es) should be incresed to make up $6B in revenue for this year and next to match up with those cuts that you might subscribe to? Even the sales tax increase, at best, would bring in $1B and I don’t actually think it would come close to that. We’ve already put the state property tax back into play, there’s 1/4 B. So at best case you still have 4-3/4 B to make up. If anyone knows what this “magic bean” of taxes is, please call your legislators.
Property tax, excise tax, soda tax, hell whatever they tax back east.
Yeah, and New Jersey, the state with the highest taxes in the country, is on the top 10 list of states facing impending financial doom that was published this week.
So then what? Raise them more?
Been fun folks but I gotta go back to my rednek ant-eye education prahvate prison guard advocatin’ life.
There is a lot we could do. A more progressive income tax would be a good start (say at least a 10% increase on any income over $250,000), followed by increasing the sales tax base to include luxury items, lowering the cap on the homeowner’s rebate so that it only benefits those that truly need it, get rid of private school tax credits and industry-specific tax credits, continue the state equalization tax, and repeal last year’s prop 100 and establish a real estate transfer tax.
These reforms alone would put us in the ballpark of 2 billion in new revenue, which is the latest estimate of our shortfall. Not to mention, this excludes all the non-tax revenue enhancements we could enact.
Raise them in New Jersey or here? Because here, we could definitely raise them more.
Dumber:
Has Williams had his prostate screened?
Maybe they should just install a urinal in the back of the chamber so he won’t have to walk so far.
What “Even Dumber-er” fails to mention that Arizona is on the same list of “failed states” along with New Jersey.
http://www.azstarnet.com/metro/317249.php
Every year, the Legislature’s priority is cutting taxes. It does not matter what tax gets cut, or what the State’s circumstances are at the time, as long as a tax gets cut. Limited in imagination, and unable to see past the dubious beauty of their own rhetoric, the legislature considers cutting revenue to be a remarkable acheivement akin to putting Neil Armstrong on the Moon.
The excuse for these tax cuts every year is that doing so will stimutate the economy. Given that we have cut taxes by hundreds of millions in recent years, and Arizona is suffering the effects of the recession as much if not more than many places, any thinking individual can see that this is complete bunk.
One of these, the so-called “Single Sales Factor” legislation, was written for the benefit of one corporation, and failed to lead to the additional jobs and economic expansion it promised. Particularly absurd was a property-tax break written to benefit the same company whose mismanagement led to a pipeline explosion that threatened a neighborhood on the West Side. We were actually told that this was critical to jobs even though the company had (and still has) very few employees.
The issue of the equalization tax is particularly egregious and has been discussed in detail elsewhere. Sold as a boon for business, it was actually calculated to benefit a handful of large coprorations (most notably APS). One perplexed small buisinessman came to me wondering why the Chamber of Commerce was asking him to support a tax cut which only meant $12 to $15 to his yearly bottom line but could conceivably devastate his local schools. For most homeowners, the cut was much smaller, an amount that hardly could have stimulated economic activity.
Yes, it is possible to over-tax, but at some point any conservative remotely interested in maintaining a shred of intellectual integrity has to admit that cutting taxes soley for the sake of cutting taxes is irresponsible. It cannot be regarded as mere coincidence that within a few years of cutting taxes by $250 million that we face fiscal collapse.
The first thing we should do is take a good hard look at these special-interest tax cuts and analyze if they actually produced the economic and other public-policy benefits that were promised. Clearly, we can no longer afford to do Marty Shultz any more favors regardless of how much we like him. Meanwhile, the Governor’s cynical attempt to shift responsibility for paying for the machinery of government to working people through a sales tax should be rejected until the APS’s and Intells of the world are made to pay their share as well.
You all sure have taken the high ground in the “battlefield of ideas”.
I have to hand it to all of you — You Rock!
I hear that Vic is thinking this. There are going to be “others” running for the House seat he occupies now. Others like Trent Humphries (I hear)…just a rumour. This has Vic’s bladder flowing a little in the old pants area…given that Young Wright will likely be reelected and there can only be one more. Humphries and some other hard right conservatives might put Williams out…
So…why not run in the primary and take on Melvin…except that I can’t imagine many of us in education really really think that Williams is the answer.
Cage is the answer.
If there is anyone in our profession talking to Vic Williams about supporting him, they should hang their heads in shame. When you really need the guy, he bails on you because he has to remain “viable” within the GOP caucus. Neither of the two Republican officeholders in LD26 gives a damn about public schools and swapping one for the other is like swapping hemorrhoids for shingles.
Yeah Bruce, you’re one to give lectures on “the high ground.”
Any word yet on an apology for your comments about the South Side yet?
Why should Bruce apologize? Americans with Dark skin from Africa don’t object to being called black. Some Americans with a South and central American Background have brown skin. Right or wrong people are referred to by the color of their skin all the time in newspaper and on television and in political speech’s by Democrats.. Now you and certain groups want to try and use this for their own political gain? You live in a glass house so don’t throw rocks.
Has it ever occurred to the nitwits at the lege who obligingly hand APS every tax break it clamors for that APS isn’t going to have a very easy time of packing up and moving out of the state? How do they justify tax cuts to a large utility in Arizona as “attracting businesses”?
Thank goodness Walt is here to set us straight! Say, Walt, do you collect a union negotiated pension?
Kral -
“Cage” match?
“Cage matches? Yeah, they work, how could they not work? If they didn’t work, everybody would still be in the cage.”
Tom:
You’re absolutely right about the tax cuts.
But what can you expect when Republicans took over the legislature in 1964 and haven’t relinquished it since.
Most of that time we’ve also had a Republican Governor, and even when the Governor is a Democrat all that means is that there is gridlock for a few years before resuming course to the right.
If you like the system the legislature has set up in Arizona then give the GOP credit. If you don’t– well, you’d have to come up with a lot of spurious logic to trace it all the way back to JFK-era Democrats.
And what in the world is wrong with giving less of your money to the government in the form of taxes. Honestly, what is wrong with you people?
Flipper,
and what is wrong with wanting to invest less in education, health and the overall welfare of society? What is wrong with you?