Balanced Budget Amendment Would Nuke National Security

A number of campaign mailers received this season indicate support for a Constitutional amendment for a federal balanced budget. One can understand the frustration when the federal government seems unable to accomplish this.

A balanced budget is an excellent goal and many point out that several states have balanced budget amendments and they have operated under them just fine.

However, if we pass a balanced budget amendment for the federal government, we might as well surrender to the Chinese immediately!

Center for Arizona Policy Isn't Quite Pro-Life Enough!

The Center for Arizona Policy, (CAP,) the state's foremost lobbyist for conservative christians, seems so focused on trying to outlaw abortions that they have lost sight of what it truly means to be "pro-life."

Currently, Arizona is the only state in the union that refuses to participate in a federal children's healthcare program. As a result, 30,000-50,000 Arizona kids will be without health insurance.

Yet CAP stands mute.

I thought that they considered themselves "pro-life from conception to grave."

Should we outlaw abortions just to deny those children healthcare later? As far as CAP is concerned, heaven and earth should be moved to try to save one single fetus and yet, they won't fight for the healthcare of breathing children?

The shocking thing is, this problem could be solved by one, single letter from the lobby's president, Cathi Herrod...

The REAL "Job Creators" Are Not the Wealthy--They're YOU!

Don't be deceived by the verbal gymnastics that refer to the rich as "Job Creators." The fact is, there is only one true creator of jobs and that is: CONSUMER DEMAND!

One writer defined "Job Creators" this way:

"In Republican/Tea Party political theory, 'Job Creators' are wealthy because they are industrious, virtuous, hard working people and can use their vast wealth to create jobs by hiring people to work for them. The idea that this euphemism is trying to convey is that taxing these people would hurt the economy because then their money would be going to the government...which will only waste tax money on things like social services." (*1)

Of course, only the rich have the money to build factories, but the only time they ever would build one is when they anticipate consumer demand for the product!

Arizona Refuses Federal Money for the Disabled

What if there was a program that equipped disabled individuals to leave the welfare rolls and enter into gainful, tax-paying employment?

In fact, there is one and it's very popular.  Many disabled people come to Vocational Rehabilitation (VR) wanting to pull themselves up by the bootstraps, get off the welfare rolls and become tax-paying citizens instead.

So successful is the program that the federal government offers to pay three-quarters of the cost.  Yet die-hard tea-partiers in the Arizona Legislature have refused this "dirty Obama money" for several years.  As a result, people who are genuinely motivated to get off of welfare have been sitting on waiting lists, still collecting government checks, for years.

ALEC FACT CHECK: Can Churches Take the Government's Place in Supporting the Poor?

Proponents of ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council) are trying to convince the Christian Right that it should be the church and not the federal government that should provide for the needy and the disabled, but consider this fact check:

Drug War Cost Could Go a Shockingly Long Way if Spent on Education

Sometimes it's difficult to picture the huge amount of money we are spending on the failed war on drugs.  This article takes just one line item from the cost of the drug war and shows how shockingly far that money would go if it were spent on education instead...

In a June 2010 report entitled "The High Cost Of Incarceration," (the link to this PDF is below,) the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) found that there are 561,526 NON-VIOLENT drug users incarcerated in the U.S.  The cost to tax payers is $26,000 a year (or $2166.67 a month) per inmate.  This means that we are spending $1.2+ billion ($1,216,639,666.67) every month to incarcerate non-violent drug users.  Of course, this is just the cost of incarceration alone.  It does not include the costs incurred by law enforcement or the courts to convict these people.

Now let's take a look at the population of school children in America.  According to childstats.gov, (whose link is also included here,) there are approximately 50 million school-aged children (age 6-17) in 2013...

SO WHAT ELSE COULD BE DONE WITH THIS MONEY?

* After only 5.75 months, we could buy a $140 computer tablet for every schoolchild age 6-17!!!