Arizona Government Buildings: For Sale by Owner

by Pa Rock
Amused Taxpayer

Let’s say that Claude and Maude, a well established married couple, have run into some serious financial difficulty. Their bills have been rising for the past few years, and they have cut their budget to the bone. This year the bills are still going up, and they can’t make any more cuts in spending.

What are Claude and Maude to do?

One option, of course, is to increase their income by one or the other taking a second job, but neither wants to make that sacrifice. It looks hopeless, but Claude, who is a product of the Arizona school system, suddenly has a brain fart. Their house, he points out to Maude, is paid for. Why not sell it and then rent it back from the new owners. Claude reasons that in a few years when times are better, they can buy it back – and meanwhile they will have enough ready cash to maintain their lifestyle – at least temporarily.

Okay, it doesn’t take a PhD in economics to see the gaps in logic of Claude’s proposal, yet that is exactly the course that the Arizona legislature seems hell-bent on pursuing.

The state is currently facing a budget shortfall of between three and four billion dollars, and instead of seriously looking for ways to increase revenue, such as through tax increases on corporations or the wealthy, they are pursuing a limited sales tax (one which will put the state’s financial burden primarily on the backs of the poor), and cutting business taxes. It has reached a point where even the dumbest members of the legislature, a quorum to be sure, realize that all of that nonsense (and all of their huffing and puffing) still won’t bring the budget into the black.

So here’s the new plan that is being bandied about the halls of the state legislature. (You might want to sit down and put your feet up before continuing, because this is a doozie!)

Members of the Arizona State Legislature are recommending that the state sell off its House and Senate buildings (and perhaps several other state buildings as well), and then lease them back from the new owners. The estimated cash influx from this scheme would be about $735 million, far short of the state’s projected deficit. When times get better, of course, they would buy their legislative chambers back.

And you know what, as a proud taxpayer of Arizona, I say “Go for it!” I just hope the new owners shop around for perspective renters. Those buildings would be far better utilized as flea markets or storage sheds. Sheriff Arpaio would probably be happy to rent a couple of his tents to the legislators for their meetings. Hell, he might even provide the catering.

Sorry, Senator. You cannot have Grey Poupon on your stale, green baloney sandwich! Only the guards, ...ur...uh...legislative pages, get condiments!

Arizona Paranoia

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

Last week I posted a piece entitled “The Lunatic Fringe” which was mildly critical of Arizona’s legislature, an elected body that seems to feel their only purpose for existing is to write legislation to make it easier for any miscreant to buy guns. (That was somewhat of an unfair characterization, because the legislature also expends energy trying to find ways to lower business taxes and taxes on the rich – and to find ways of harassing anyone who had the audacity to be born brown!) But providing the public with easy access to firearms remains the legislature’s top priority.

As mentioned in “The Lunatic Fringe,” our state legislature is in the process of passing a bill that would eliminate the requirement for people to have permits in order to carry concealed weapons. One legislator even referred to the ability to walk around armed as a “God-given right.” (The “lunatic” in the piece was a murderess and vigilante - and child killer - named Shawna Forde, but, for my money, the legislator who got her right to carry directly from God is also qualified to be in Shawna’s good company.)

The reason I dredge up this post from last week is that it generated an interesting response from an anonymous reader. The reader felt that the bill to eliminate the need for permits was some sort of plot. Basically it would result in increased crime, thereby giving the government an excuse to come kicking in doors and confiscating the guns of private citizens.

Can you say paranoid and delusional? The legislature hands the fringe a gift, and their first response is to shoot it!

The National Rifle Association, which boasts of zillions of citizen members but is primarily funded by gun manufacturers, profits by keeping the paranoids stirred up – and their public enemy number one is, of course, our federal government. Former President George H.W. Bush (the sensible Bush) angrily resigned from the NRA in 1994 because the organization had referred to federal agents in one of its mailings as “jackbooted government thugs.”

Now the unofficial NRA banter is that “Obama wants to take your guns away.” Never mind that there is absolutely nothing to back that statement up, it still stirs the rabble and sells guns and ammo – lots and lots of guns and ammo! Wayne La Pierre, the executive director of the NRA, undoubtedly fell to his knees and thanked the ghost of Charlton Heston when Obama was elected! Demonizing a black, liberal Democrat to an army of knuckle-draggers has been a piece of cake for his propaganda machine. NRA board member and rocker Ted Nugent is probably hitting notes that he only dreamed of before! Obama makes a much scarier boogey man than John McCain ever could have been.

Related Factoid: An article in this morning’s Drudge Report entitled “Federal Agents Hunt for Guns One House at a Time,” which discussed the flood of U.S. arms into Mexico, noted that “Mexican officials in 2008 asked federal agents to trace the origins of more than 7,500 firearms recovered at crime scenes in Mexico. Most of them were traced back to Texas, California, and Arizona.”

Gotta love the buffoons in the Arizona State Legislature - surely each and every one proudly carries an NRA membership card!