Liquid Nixon

The Republicans in the Arizona Legislature passed a budget that includes cuts to the State’s Medicaid program (AHCCCS) $385 million affecting 310,000 people.  Peter Fine (CEO of Banner Health) reported on March 9^th in the Arizona Republic on a survey released by ASU's W.P. Carey School of Business predicting 42,000 jobs lost – most of them high paying if these cuts were made. 

On Monday the legislature was trying to pass tax cuts they HOPE will bring in an unspecified number of manufacturing jobs.   It will cost Arizona as much as $942 million.  Is there logic here somewhere?  Loose 42,000 jobs and cost 310,000 people their healthcare while simultaneously hoping to get an unspecified number of jobs and winding up with a total of hundreds of millions more in budget deficit.

By the way they will also spend $8.3 million on a special election rather than raise the necessary taxes themselves.

On Thursday, the President made a prime time speech about saving the Gulf Coast and New Orleans. He made several proposals that will require a great deal of money to rebuild the area but he made no mention how this would be funded. Already I hear Republicans saying there must be some “offsets”. I wonder who will be affected by these “offsets”, the middle class? There are several things he could do, he could reduce the cost of the Iraq war by bringing our military home, he could rescind the tax cuts he already gave the rich and he could prevent the repeal of the Estate Tax (a cost that would exceed $138 billion, according to Sen. John McCain).

The President spoke of a mix of government and private companies to do the rebuilding. I wonder if Halliburton or other politically connected companies are going to get no-bid contracts. Will the companies chosen pay living wages? The President has already suspended the Davis-Bacon act that would guarantee workers be paid at the prevailing rate for the area.

I also wonder how much money and how many lives could have been saved if the levees had been fixed instead of cutting the budget of the Army Corps of Engineers in order to give tax breaks to the rich.

“Misleading,” “specious,” “bogus,” and “disingenuous” are all terms used by the Media, such as USA Today, New York Times and NBC to describe the political ads by George Bush about John Kerry. The latest ad about the Patriot Act is no different. It is a total distortion of the facts! John Kerry is not trying to repeal the Patriot Act but to strengthen it. Kerry along with Republicans Larry Craig and Arlen Specter and others have recognized the need to fix the Patriot Act to improve its effectiveness as an anti-terrorism tool and prevent abuses that violate civil liberties. They have co-sponsored legislation to achieve this goal (S.1709).

Under the Craig-Specter-Kerry approach, the government will have more power to go after terrorists than before the Patriot Act, not less. They do not eliminate a single government power. Instead, their approach creates new checks on abuses that still leave the government with far more power to attack terrorists.

Bush says at the beginning of his ad: “I’m George W. Bush and I approved this message.” This proves that Bush is so afraid of his own record that his only chance in this election is to blatantly lie about his opponent.