Want to know why Republican legislators think they don’t have to pay up the billion dollars they owe our school kids because they illegally ignored the voters’ demand back in 2000 that school funding has to keep up with inflation? Howard Fischer covers the story in detail, but for your reading pleasure, I’ll paraphrase, loosely, the four arguments presented by the attorneys representing state legislators.
1. We don’t have the money, so there’s no way we can come up with the billion dollars. You know we’ll never raise taxes, right?
2. It’s not fair to make today’s taxpayers pay for something that taxpayers should have funded before. I mean, some of them weren’t even here back then, so why should they have to pay? And some people who’ve left the state will be off the hook, so how fair is that? Better to screw over all the kids than be slightly unfair to some adults.
3. The courts can’t make us pay. They can just say we acted illegally and leave it at that. Because, I don’t know, “Rule of Law” or something.
4. Our lawyers told us it was fine to ignore the will of the voters, and we were just following their advice. And these were the good lawyers, not the bad lawyers we always complain about.
The best line in the Howie Fischer article came from the lawyer representing the schools. Arguing against the idea that there’s no way the legislators can come up with the money, because of course they’ll never raise taxes, he countered,
“‘I don’t want to’ is not a legal defense.”
Apparently, “I don’t want to,” followed by “and you can’t make me,” makes perfect sense to petulant children, deadbeat dads and Republican legislators.
This article appears in Dec 4-10, 2014.
We could always compare it to the MIT Professor Jonathan Gruber who thinks “Americans are too stupid to understand what’s going on anyway.”
Do you know how much more stupid and evil this makes Nancy Pelosi look?
This is exactly how the Democrats fleece the public.
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/12/09/issa-invokes-forrest-gump-asks-jonathan-gruber-are-you-stupid/
It has to stop.
Politicians of both stripes rely on voters feeling too weary, uninformed, disinterested or powerless to make a difference or challenge blatant malfeasance. This explains why the Republicans in the Arizona legislature believe they can simply refuse to pay the monies owed to local school districts and how the City of Tucson can ask voters to forgive and forget the quarter of a billion in Rio Nuevo funds they misplaced.
“Oops” is no exculpatory than “I don’t want to.”
More Leftist propaganda from the Weekly. What a shocker.
It certainly looks like we have lawmakers who refuse to follow laws – laws that in this case were approved by a majority of voters. Perhaps better put, the lawmakers refuse to respect laws and who want all the rest to give up and go away. They should all just do the job of governing and fund the schools – all of them.
Okay, David. You sound like you might have the solution in hand, is it workable or is it a sloppy mess. What programs would you cut to restore this money? It’s only $1B so making our politicians look like fools should be an easy task. Please, feel free to paraphrase though I would welcome an original thought.
Looks like several posers, or just plain trolls, rushing to the defense of our criminal, Taliban-like-lege by posting their usual hate-mail, character assassination of Pelosi, and invoking right wing propaganda blogs in their fact free rants, as if their lynch mob mentality was somehow legit just by their saying so. But these are the same stooges that gobble down the Republi-klan lie machine manure by the shovel full. So no news there.
Paying for it is easy: repeal some of the corporate tax cuts passed since 2000 (when the voter mandate was passed).
JTrue67 – while I completely agree with your sentiments about the AZ legislature – truly horrible and not at all working in the interest of improving and preparing AZ for the near and long-term future, I think using name-calling terms like that hurts your cause. Just my 2 cents.
Some politicians favor an uneducated workforce because it reduces payroll costs for business. Of course, it also reduces the liklihood that high tech employers will relocate to Arizona. But hey, that still leaves mines and quarrys, antique fighter planes and, well, cleaning up after rich people. Talk about your oligarch utopia…
None of you whined that “it’s for the children” as you stole and misused Deseg money to expand hiring, bloat administration, and improve benefit packages.
You made your bed…lie in it.
Doggone it, David, there you go again. Here I am trying to feel the Christmas Spirit, and you bring up the condition of the logic of those who run our fair state. The voters said do this. The Leg. majority said we would rather give tax cuts to corporations than do what the voters said. The Leg said we can’t follow what the voters said because we have reduced our revenues by giving tax cuts to corporations. The Leg. is unwilling to admit that all those tax cuts have hurt our state and have not yielded any returns in terms of new jobs and new revenues from wage-earning taxpayers. The public did not give us very many new members of the legislature. The courts are our only chance to restore these wrongs. The rule of law is very critical if we are to remain truly American. This has nothing to do with Pelosi, Obama, or anyone else when it is finally decided. FIX ARIZONA and fix our public schools! MERRY CHRISTMAS and HAPPY HANNUKAH!
Arizona voters weren’t bothered much by the lawless Republican legislature. They gave their approval by re-electing them and keeping the Republican majority. People are satisfied with the way things are in Arizona. Sigh.
…as the US approaches $19 Trillion dollars of debt. Just tickled about that.
This is what happens when people become disengaged and are too confused to go to the polls anymore. The right-wing elements keep going at it as if it were a game of checkers. David keep exposing what is happening, many of us appreciate the news from your point of view.