Gov Brewer Assumes 2010 Nomination Sure Thing
By Howard Levine
GOPUSA News
November 15, 2009

Brewer's campaign chairman is Grant Woods, a liberal Republican who has considered switching to the Democrat Party. Woods has previously served as Arizona Attorney General and was a radio talk show host. Mary Peters, former Secretary of Transportation, is also a campaign co-chair.Involving Grant Woods in the campaign is widely seen as Jan Brewer assuming that her victory in the Republican Primary is a foregone conclusion, and that she is positioning herself for the general election campaign.

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Editor's Note -- A tax and spend Republican like Brewer winning a Republican primary will be trouble for the Republican Party.

Sheriff Joe Says He Doesn't Need Feds Permission to Enforce Laws
By Howard Levine
GOPUSA News
October 19, 2009

Sheriff Joe Arpaio was a hit at the Inaugural meeting of the East Valley Chapter of the Pachyderm Coalition on Thursday, October 15 at 7pm in Chandler. Sheriff Arpaio discussed a variety of subjects including his crime suppression sweeps, the Sheriff's Department (strained) relationship with the Department of Homeland Security, Maricopa County Government, and the Arizona Congressional delegation. The meeting was organized by Jeff Dial and Lauren Hendrix. Support was provided by the State Pachyderm Coalition with Don Goldwater, the chairman, participating in the meeting and welcoming the new Pachyderm Coalition chapter to the organization. There is also a Southern Arizona chapter of the Pachyderm Coalition headquartered in Tuscon.Sheriff Arpaio said that he had the legal authority to do his crime sweeps and arrest illegal aliens under state laws and that he also has the authority under Federal law to pick up illegal aliens and turn them over to ICE. He said that having his department's authority to act as Federal immigration officers revoked would actually make his deputies' jobs easier because they would just turn the illegal aliens over to ICE and would have less paperwork to do. He did reference a mistaken citation of the US Code that he had used in a previous public announcement, and said that, yes, the citation was a mistake, but he does have authority to enforce federal immigration laws to the extent necessary for his crime suppression sweeps.

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Editor's Note -- To paraphrase from "The Treasure of Sierra Madre"Badges! We don't need no stinkin' FEDERAL badges. We have our COUNTY SHERIFF badges!!! That's good enough to enforce the law in Maricopa County.Fortunately, that's true. Our government is still a federal republic instead of a national government.

Dean Martin Strongest Republican for Gov According to Poll
by Matthew Benson
Sept. 23, 2009 05:31 PM
The Arizona Republic

Both Symington and Martin have expressed interest in running for governor in 2010, but Wednesday's poll showed Goddard leading both men. The Democrat topped Symington by 23 points, 52 percent to 29 percent. Martin gave Goddard the closest race, trailing by eight points, 37 percent to 45 percent. The remaining 18 percent of those surveyed were undecided.

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Editor's Note -- Dean Martin is stronger than Jan Brewer against Democrat Goddard. The poll was conducted by a Democrat firm, so they probably show Goddard with more support than he really has.

Cactus Conservatives Hear about Health Care Reform from Goldwater Institute
By Howard Levine
GOPUSA News
September 22, 2009

Byron Schlomach, an economist with the Goldwater Institute, spoke to the Cactus Conservatives, a political club in North Scottsdale, about issues related to health care reform.The main point that Dr. Schomack made concerning the reforms is that they do not address the root cause of the problems, and actually make the problem worse. The fundamental problem with health care is that people do not directly pay for their own health care which drives prices up. He said that out of pocket expenses for health care were 47% of the total in 1960, but they had declined to 12% in 2006. A graph was displayed showing the relationship between lower out of pocket percentage to higher health care costs. When people are not directly responsible for their own costs, they tend to get more of an item than they need are not concerned about the prices paid. This is true for health care as well as anything else.

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Editor's Note -- Health care policy needs to be reformed, but Obama's program is the wrong way to do it.

After crash, loan officers are reined in
by Catherine Reagor
Sept. 20, 2009 12:00 AM
The Arizona Republic

Most of the blame for the loans that led to the housing crash has been leveled at big lenders and Wall Street investment firms. However, all those high-risk mortgages that led to record foreclosures and fraud cases wouldn't have been as popular without the loan officers who sold them.Too many loan officers pushed mortgages that weren't safe or smart for borrowers and collected higher fees on the riskiest mortgages. Hundreds of thousands of those loan documents were later found to be fraudulent, with exaggerated incomes, forged signatures and inflated property values.To stem such abuses, state and federal regulators are imposing tough new regulations and licensing requirements on the segment of the loan industry that had none.

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Editor's Note -- More government regulations aren't the answer. Holding lenders and borrowers accountable and preventing them from getting government bailouts would be more useful. If licensing or certification were so valuable, it's likely that private mortgage brokers would have already done it with their loan officers.

State Official Says Laws Against Texting While Driving Ineffective - Education Better
Elizabeth Shell, Cronkite News Service>BR>East Valley Tribune
September 19, 2009 - 3:10PM

Legislation aside, Gutier said it’s important to get the word out that cell phone use and driving don’t mix.“People do dumb things while driving,” he said. “A national, local and state media campaign on the dangers of texting or using the phone is as important as a law on the books.”Gutier also questioned whether it’s necessary to legislate what he said should be common sense.“Let’s not become a nanny state where everything has to be legislated and mandated,” he said. “We have a lot of other issues that are more important.”He noted that the city of Phoenix has issued only a handful of citations since banning texting while driving in 2007.“I’ll support anything that saves lives, but it’s almost impossible to enforce and even less easy to prove,” Gutier said.

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Editor's Note -- The actual headline used for the article is misleading (and tilts left - no surprise).

Treasurer Martin Updates Grassroots Conservatives
By Howard Levine
GOPUSA News
September 16, 2009

State Treasurer Dean Martin spoke to the Pachyderm Coalition, a Reagan Republican political organization, about a wide range of issues including the state budget, state financial operations, the overall economic outlook, and real estate values.Martin reminded people that he instituted an 'Early Warning Chart' to help project when the state will run into financial difficulties well in advance in order to have more time to avert serious problems such as the state government is now facing. Unfortunately, former Governor Janet Napolitano, a Democrat, ignored his warnings and failed to work with the legislature to make smaller changes early in order to avoid a major disaster later. He said that his experience with confronting Janet Napolitano with facts and holding her accountable for funds she was responsible has firmly convinced him that the State Treasurer should definitely remain an elected position rather than be appointed by the Governor. An appointed Treasurer serving at the pleasure of the Governor would not be able to hold government officials responsible for fulfilling their fiduciary responsibilities because he would not be able to act independently on behalf of the voters.

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Editor's Note -- Dean Martin appears to have the vision, principles, and competence to advance from Treasurer to Governor which looks like it would be an improvement for both the state and the Republican Party.

Senate President Burns Disappointed by Budget Vetoes
By Howard Levine
GOPUSA News
September 15, 2009

Senate President Bob Burns spoke at the Legislative District (LD) 7 Republican meeting. He was talking primarily about the budget issues facing state government. He said that House Speaker Kirk Adams and he have worked with Republican legislators to pass five budgets so far this year. Unfortunately, Governor Brewer has vetoed significant parts of each budget. The current budget, Senator Burns said, still has a deficit of $3.5-4.0 Billion that has to be fixed with spending cuts. There are no more budget gimmicks left to use to fix the state's budget problems.Burns expressed disappointment with Governor Brewer's vetoes of the budgets – particularly the latest budget. In fact, Bob Burns and Kirk Adams have written a letter to Governor Brewer stating that they take issue with the line item vetoes that increased state spending as the constitutional purpose of line item vetoes is to cut government spending rather than increase it. Also, there was a policy item the governor used a line item veto on which is unconstitutional. Burns and Adams stated in their letter that they will not be filing a lawsuit, but want the governor on notice about their concerns.

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Editor's Note -- It looks like it will be a tough 2010 for Republicans in AZ even though there are good national trends. Unless Jan Brewer does not run for governor. It would be awkward to have a Republican candidate for governor running AGAINST Republican legislators.

Do You Know What Textbooks Your Children are Really Reading?
Reported by Tucker Carlson
Fox News
Linked through Jewish World Review
Linked September 7, 2009

With the school year beginning, parents must be alert as to what their children are being taught in our nation's schools. Have children, grandchildren, nieces or nephews? Watch this presentation and forward the link via the options above.We aren't sure how long the report will be available

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Editor's Note -- I watched this myself and think every parent with a child in school or college should too. You can learn how textbooks become politically correct and incorporate biases against balanced treatments of subjects, particulrly American History and scientific issues.

Useful Information from AZ State GOP
Arizona State Republican Party
Posted on GOPUSA July 16, 2008

This has plenty of useful information. The leaders for each country are listed, and candidates for all state offices - with links to web sites - are listed.

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Editor's Note -- This is a useful service provided by the state Party to Republican voters.