Last night the Arizona Senate Judiciary Committee heard a bill that, if passed, would refer to voters in November 2012 a proposal to prohibit taxpayer-funded elections.  It's a straightforward amendment to the Arizona constitution that effectively bans the current...

MSNBC liberal talk show host Rachel Maddow likes the word "awesome."  On HBO's Real Time with Bill Mahr, Maddow teamed up with Pres. Reagan's former budget director David Stockman and poured a bucket-full of bunk about Reagan's economic record.  Wall Street Journal...

We've written before about the failures of film tax credits.  Here's another post.   If there are better examples of tax policies gone bad, I'd love to see them.  Check this one out that ran in the Boston Globe. Mass. tax credits used to cover movie stars' wages...

Lost in discussion about Gov. Brewer's FY11-12 budget proposal is the fact that she proposes to control future state spending by limiting revenue (and expenditure) growth to an ongoing 10-year rolling average.  While we would prefer a limit based on the state's...

If you thought Pres. Obama was a died-in-the-wool liberal, who would risk his presidency (and the number of Democrats in Congress) on his ability to ram through as much of a leftist agenda as quickly as possible, you were right.  But if you've also concluded that he...

There's been much discussion about ASU professor Paul Bender's eligibility on Arizona's Independent Redistricting Commission.  Bender appears not to qualify because he is the Chief Justice of the Fort McDowell Nation Supreme Court (commissioners generally cannot have...

It's rare when a state program ends.  But a bit of good news occurred last year in the legislature when Arizona lawmakers refrained from extending the dismal motion picture tax credit (we lobbied aggressively to kill the program).  It shouldn't have been a difficult...

Republicans were elected overwhelmingly nationally.  There was a backlash against incumbents, special interests, and Obama successfully (in some cases) pursuing his leftward agenda. Candidates for state legislative offices benefited from the wave, too.  In Arizona,...

If a rematch between Harry Reid and Sharon Angle were held a week from today, she might actually win, given Sen. Reid's tin ear when it comes to wasteful spending. But there is no rematch.  He won, she lost, and Reid continues to staunchly defend bringing home the...

Being a part of a legislative or executive blue-ribbon commission is a thankless and often dreadful job.  By definition, a commission's recommendations reach a consensus . . . a compromise.  Countless hours of hard work (usually unpaid), collaboration with colleagues...

The federal deficit commission pre-released their report yesterday and we will write more about it later, but the NYT's Paul Krugman doesn't like what he sees so far.  Krugman has been calling for higher taxes and higher spending to improve the economy and he doesn't...