As i was writing this letter to my rep. trying to discuss the, at that point proposed GOP Ed budget, i got the news that that disastrous document had been passed. You can see how it changes the letter.
Open Letter to the Arizona GOP leadership,
I seriously appreciate you asking my opinion on this though i bet you could guess it--
(Shortly after i received your letter and started my reply, Beth came home and gave me the news of the GOP budget passing. I imagine you know some people who are celebrating. I assure you millions of Arizonans will not celebrate tonight. In fact i would venture to say the only folk happy about this move are the GOP, their rich friends and folks who haven't realized what you have done.
Yet. An intentional 2.7 billion dollar shortfall by 2013 will be felt by all but the wealthiest of Arizonans.
I am sure you can understand how this news tempers the rest of my reply.)
--call me a tax and spend Democrat (an all-too-common supposed-epithet hurled when GOP attempt to avoid their fiscal responsibility), but you know what my answer is: i say you've cut too many taxes already, created a disaster of your own making (possibly intentionally) and need to put some taxes back before this state collapses from underfunded services, dangerously underfunded. Excessive tax cutting, has created this mess, just as the AZ congressional budget analysts have noted that the proposed new GOP budget will cause even greater shortfalls. I try hard not to believe this had been done purely for political gain and, it seems, class bias, but such continuing bald-faced greed gets harder and harder to explain away as good natured American individualism.
Cutting budgets to afford tax cuts? Even after 30 years of strident insistence by the GOP (both state and national), tax cuts have yet to prove to accomplish anything significant for the vast majority of the citizenry: They are designed by the wealthy for the wealthy at the expense of the many. Tax cuts mollify the ignorant and enrich insider: what a disgraceful way to behave while calling one's self a "public servant." Just see the pattern of contracting wealth in our country, and the ever expanding permission for businesses to act as rapaciously as possible. How are those behaviors "good" for America or Arizona. They are not good for me as a social studies teacher trying to convince my students that their government acts with their best interests at heart; at the same time--
( Wait. I'm sorry. I'm sure you can tell the civility and even camaraderie i began this letter with have left me now. I feel i have just witnessed a betrayal, on your part personally, but to a larger degree on the AZ GOP's part. And not to me in particular, though once again just about the time i begin to have faith in you to act like a human being i again am faced with you acting as agent of predators out to fill their pockets at the expense of our children. Like a doctor refusing to administer services because he prefers to pay attention to his bottom line rather than his Hippocratic oath, the AZ GOP has chosen to consciously endanger the life of our state. I mean all your cuts are a bad idea at a time when our people already struggle from a staggering lack of services. I will have to write later when i can remember to be more civil.)
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