Tag: arizona

Three Martini Lunch

Florida’s Dodged Bullet, The Dem Touting Trump, Redefining ‘Recession’

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Hosted by Greg Corombos & Jim Geraghty

Join Jim and Greg as they breathe another sigh of relief that Ron DeSantis is governor of Florida after yet another scandal for Democrat Andrew Gillum, who came within a whisker of winning in 2018. They also shake their heads as Ohio Democrat Tim Ryan is trying to play the “I’m not like those other Democrats” card as he tries to win a U.S. Senate seat – and Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly is trying the same lame strategy. But there’s just one problem!  And  they sigh as Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen seems to be trying to redefine a recession.

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Parsing Immigration Policy #45

A Firsthand Look at the Arizona-Mexico Border

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Hosted by Mark Krikorian
With guest Leo Banks

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Summary

Earlier this week the CBP released its latest statistics on illegal migrants it “encountered” at the Southwest border. Nearly 2.2 million migrants have been caught in the first 12 full months of the Biden administration, in addition to 500,000 “got-aways”. This week’s episode of Parsing Immigration Policy focuses on the Tucson sector of the southwest border, a 232-mile stretch that receives the third highest number of apprehensions of the nine sectors of the southwest border.

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Arizona Judge Tosses Teachers’ Union Tax Hike

Jon Gabriel, Ed.
Jon Gabriel, Ed.
713
 

While the presidential election got the most press, Arizona’s 2020 ballot had a proposition that made tax-cutters and fans of limited government very concerned. The electorate trended left that day, sending gun-grabber Mark Kelly to the Senate, giving five of nine congressional seats to the Dems, and approving Proposition 208, a tax-the-rich scheme pushed by ever-greedy teachers’ unions. Less than one percent of the campaign’s funding came from in-state sources.

The law imposed a 3.5% tax surcharge on taxable annual income over $250,000 for single persons or married persons filing separately, or $500,000 for married persons filing jointly or heads of households, to increase funding for public education. This nearly doubled the state’s highest tax rate. At the same time, it turned Arizona from one of the lowest-taxed states in the country to one of the highest.

As Californians fled to the east, they noticed Prop 208 and drove right through Arizona. Why settle a business in the Grand Canyon State if they’ll just have to move again in a few years?

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Fake Conservative PAC Attacks President Trump Endorsed Kari Lake

Clifford A. Brown
Clifford A. Brown
31113511
 

red and black heartA shadowy fake conservative political action committee ran an attack ad against Kari Lake, running for Arizona governor this year. The ad ran on the Sunday, final day, broadcast of the Waste Management Phoenix Open. This Professional Golf Association event is unique in its working-class, people’s tournament atmosphere, with a raucous crowd lining the course and no silence for every golf stroke. CBS carried the WM Phoenix Open, making this a large local market event in the hours before the Super Bowl. A quick search of both the state and federal databases shows this shadowy PAC is entirely off the radar. A reasonable conclusion is that we are seeing a technically independent Mitch McConnell/Kevin McCarthy/establishment GOP attack on the MAGA candidate.

The Waste Management Phoenix Open was great viewing, on the course or on-screen, with a hole-in-one on both Saturday and Sunday. “Clean up on 16” was the call on the famously loud hole with multistory viewing stands.

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Member Post

Kelly D Johnston
Kelly D Johnston
23187
 

Polls show that Americans are increasingly souring on Biden’s “Build Back Better” (Build Back Broke) $5 trillion massive spending boondoggle. That figure comes from the non-partisan analysts at the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) who were asked to factor in its costs over a full 10-year period. It is based on the bill the full US […]
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Vexing Vax Performance Puzzles

Clifford A. Brown
Clifford A. Brown
4213
 

justice and COVID-19Bloomberg is hardly right-wing conspiracy central, nor is it a Hollyweird lefty anti-vax, anti-fluoride media organ. So, their recent straight reporting article on the comparative efficacy of natural versus vaccine-induced COVID-19 immunity against the Delta variant is a noteworthy from the leftist scientism party line. Bloomberg reports on a very large sample study of the Israeli population, and commendably links directly to the medRxiv paper.

While not conclusive, this study reinforces a century or more of human experience and underlines the abject failure of every single Republican executive, from your favorite governor to President Trump and Vice President Pence, to compel truth-telling in public health bureaucracy web graphics. From Day 1, we should have seen a steadily increasing number of Americans with naturally acquired immunity, eventually joined by a faster-growing number of Americans with vaccine-induced immunity. The first governor to force this truth into the open will be the prohibitive favorite for presidential nomination in 2024.

medRxiv is “the preprint server for health services.” All papers, and the web portal, bear the proper notice:

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Desert Rains

Clifford A. Brown
Clifford A. Brown
23
 

DesertRainThis evening, God picked up the blue bowl of the desert sky and gently set it upside down, the pale orange inside glowing faintly overhead. Rain drizzled gently, steadily from the pale orange bowl high overhead.

The rain moved quietly across the desert valley floor. No great gusts of wind, bright flashes of lightening, or cracks of thunder heralded the soft rain, that gently settled the dust and soaked slowly into the hard-packed desert floor, gradually forming puddles just deep enough to dampen a walker’s sneaker-clad feet. Mind you, the wise desert dwellers deployed a compact umbrella or donned a rain-resistant poncho, and kept a weather eye out for drivers peering through windshields poorly cleared by seldom used wipers in poor repair. What a perfect evening for soaking in the scent and sound of gentle desert rains.

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Lee’s Ferry

tigerlily
tigerlily
146
 

Lee’s Ferry

It’s not much more than a small dot on a map; but, despite that Lee’s Ferry has had an outsized import over the years. And, where and what is Lee’s Ferry you may ask? The where is on the Colorado River about 9 miles south of the Utah- Arizona border and, as later would be determined, also as good a boundary as any between the river’s upper and lower basins.  The what is the only location along the river between the small hamlet of Hite, Utah (now submerged under Lake Powell) and Black Canyon (the site of Hoover Dam), a distance of over 450 miles at which it is possible to access and cross the Colorado River with relative ease. Otherwise, the rest of the river between these two points had steep canyon walls making access to and crossing of the river difficult if not impossible, while the Lee’s Ferry area had gentle slopes that could easily be traversed.

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Clifford A. Brown
Clifford A. Brown
87171
 

The summer monsoon rains finally broke through the heat shield in the Valley of the Sun Thursday evening, July 22. Until now we had rain on the hilltops, rain on the trees, but not on the valley. The monsoon rains bring with them the usual warnings about flash flooding and the stupid motorist law. When […]
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Blake Masters for Senate in Arizona

Titus Techera
Titus Techera
348
 

So here’s a young man running for an Arizona Senate seat in 2022. Were he to win, that would help get the GOP back in the majority, if nevertheless in opposition. His name is Blake Masters. He runs Thiel Capital for Peter Thiel. Masters is a populist running on two issues: The border wall and the restoration of the middle class. His idea, which has made him the enemy of all liberals, most of America’s elite, is that a family should be able to do alright on one income. I dunno the guy personally, we are no closer than what are called Twitter mutuals, but I’m writing to get you to support him. His politics is like J.D. Vance’s and I’m for that guy, too. I think with such senators, the GOP will finally treat its electorate with respect & take America’s troubles seriously. Once their fellow Americans get them elected, these men are very likely to retire after two terms or so. You will get public spirit instead of dooming the country to the incumbency of vaguely polished mediocrities. Do everything you can, friends!

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Kelly D Johnston
Kelly D Johnston
57149
 

Maybe We Should Ask Native-Born High School Seniors to Take the Oath of Citizenship Along With the Naturalization Test Innumerable events and venues in honor of our Independence Day dot our family’s history. When deciding where today we should commemorate America’s true birthday (yes, 1776, not 1619), we settled on George Washington’s Mount Vernon. Kudos to […]
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Three Martini Lunch

Arizona Election Laws Stand, SCOTUS Protects Donor Privacy, & Former Staff Bash VP Harris

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Hosted by Jim Geraghty
With guest Chad Benson

Jim and guest host applaud SCOTUS for upholding an Arizona election law that is similar to Georgia’s election integrity laws which dooms Democrats’ hopes of overturning them. They give another round of applause to SCOTUS for protecting donor privacy, overturning a California law which forces nonprofits to disclosing donor information. Finally, they giggle at former staff members’ complaints of mistreatment from VP Harris which seem to be a little too critical.

 

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The Platinum Rule

Clifford A. Brown
Clifford A. Brown
198
 

The Golden Rule, “Whoever has the gold makes the rule,” has turned into the Platinum Rule: “He who has the government’s American Excess Platinum Card makes the rules.” Because state politicians lack the power to spend significantly in excess of annual revenues, thanks to state constitutional balanced budget provisions, they turn to Uncle Sugar. The first taste may be free, but then come the demands. This bipartisan political dynamic has pernicious effects on the constitutional balance between states and the federal government. nationalizing much of our policy, right down to local government and so right down to where you live.

But wait, we hear all the time about states in debt, what is this state constitutional limit talk?

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CEOs Whiff on Election Integrity

Tom Patterson
Tom Patterson
145
 

Members of the Public Policy Committee of Greater Phoenix Leadership recently endorsed an editorial titled “Disenfranchising Voters is Not Election Reform.”

“As an organization of CEOs at the helm of hundreds of thousands of employees in Arizona,” they felt it their public duty to warn of efforts in the legislature not only “undermining our carefully crafted voting system” but also “actually attempting to suppress the votes of Arizonans.”

They were especially incensed by the “stringent new identification requirements for those voting by mail” and the “purge of voters from the Early Voting List.” They grouped these bills with other less important measures, then claimed that all of them had “one thing in common: making it more difficult for Arizonans to vote.”

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Member Post

Kelly D Johnston
Kelly D Johnston
67240
 

One of the more distasteful aspects of the 2020 election was local election boards accepting substantial private donations for “official” election operations. My now-former home of Delaware County, Pennsylvania, was one, accepting a $2.2 million private donation to fund the placement of 32 dropboxes and to promote voting by mail, on a narrow 2-1 vote by […]
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Arizonans Are Revolting

Clifford A. Brown
Clifford A. Brown
2619
 

Filling the restaurants and small venues in the beautiful outdoor weather. While Lord Governor Ducey talked out both sides of his mouth*, desperately trying to split the difference between Abbott/Desantis and Cuomo/Newsom, the bikers rolled back into downtown Mesa for bike night without permission or Mesa city hall control. Live music from an earlier rebellious era filled Main Street, punctuated by the sound of more Harleys rolling in. It was the sound of freedom.

Beyond the biker crowd, people jammed into every surviving eatery and watering hole, including new ones optimistically opened by small, true entrepreneurs. For the first time in nearly a year, you had to search for parking on a Friday night.

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We Are in a War for our Constitutional Republic in Every State

Clifford A. Brown
Clifford A. Brown
3118
 

Red Green AZ Jump PointArizona is a swing state that has swung hard left in key offices and will likely go entirely woke if Arizonans do not fully mobilize the working class against the real upper class. We must do so in every state for the sake of ourselves, the rising generations, and our constitutional republic. We are late in the game, as the Arizona Department of Education has already shown.

Before you reflexively roll out the usual line about “conservative” and how “class” is a leftist concept, read this excerpt from “A Modest Proposal for Republicans,” then go read the whole article after this post.

Yeah, yeah, “class” sounds Marxist, class warfare and all that, you’re supposed to be against that kind of thing, right? Wrong. Economic class warfare is Marxist, but here in the US class isn’t a purely economic concept. Class is also about culture. You’re already doing class warfare, you’re just doing it blindly and confusedly. Instead, do it openly, while using the words “class” and “classism”.

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Member Post

Clifford A. Brown
Clifford A. Brown
62
 

2021 marks the 150th anniversary of the Congressional Medal of Honor (MOH). Over time, the Medal of Honor changed in its meaning, moving from the only United States military award to America’s most prestigious military award. To accommodate degrees of recognition, for accomplishment or merit, Congress and the military services added a variety of medals, […]
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