Brewer clueless on insult to GOP

(PNI) From the political notebook:

Gov. Jan Brewer recently sent out another appeal to Republican Party activists asking them to eschew primary fights over her Medicaid expansion. The letter merely reinforced that the governor still does not understand the magnitude of what she has done.

She did not just force through her Medicaid expansion over the opposition of most legislative Republicans and activists. She shut out three-quarters of Republican lawmakers from any meaningful input into the state budget, the most fundamental of all governing documents. She emasculated the Republican legislative majority in a way that Democratic Gov. Janet Napolitano never did.

Yet this shouldn't be a topic of debate and discussion in Republican primaries? What the hell should be discussed in the 2014 Republican primaries? What kind of NBA draft candidates think the Suns had?

Primaries are where parties sort out internal squabbles about policy, personnel and procedures. Brewer says that the soundness of her policy (Medicaid expansion) and the propriety of her action (orchestrating a temporary coup of both legislative bodies) shouldn't be debated in Republican primaries because that might help Democrats win additional legislative seats in the general election.

In the first place, that's only true in a small number of districts. In several districts in which Brewer co-conspirators face a potential primary challenge, Republicans could stage a bare-knuckle cage fight and still win the general election.

But much more troublesome is the suggestion that primary voters shouldn't be given choices and robust debate.

The problem isn't with the fight. The problem is the late date of Arizona's primary election, which makes it difficult for either political party to recover from a robust primary sufficiently to fairly contest the general election.

Having a primary in Arizona during the dog days of August is nuts. A June primary would better serve the electorate by permitting sharply contested primaries and fully competitive general elections.

Arizona Sen. John McCain has twice exercised uncharacteristic diplomacy to avert the so-called nuclear option in the Senate over filibusters. In 2005, he neutralized an effort by Republicans, then in the majority, by getting a critical number of Democrats to effectively commit not to support a filibuster of the judicial nominees of then President George W. Bush.

Last week, he neutralized a similar effort by Senate Democrats by getting Republicans to stop blocking most of President Barack Obama's executive-branch nominees.

This sounds unkind, but next time, I hope McCain just lets the place go kaboom.

The filibuster is an extra-constitutional measure that thwarts, rather than furthers, the checks and balances the Founders devised. The Constitution states the circumstances in which an extraordinary majority of the Senate is required: approving treaties, amending the Constitution, impeachment. By implication, everything else was intended to be done by a simple majority.

The filibuster, and even worse the practice of a single senator putting a hold on a nominee, gives dissident senators more power than the Founders intended. The "advice and consent" power rests with the body, not individual senators.

Phoenix leaders told voters that, if they approved a bond to expand and improve the convention center, private investors would build a new downtown hotel to support it. That turned out not to be the case, and Phoenix taxpayers had to build the hotel, as well.

When Phoenix leaders conned legislators into picking up half of the cost of the expansion, they promised that it wouldn't actually cost the state anything. Extra revenue generated by the expansion would produce significantly more than the state's share. If not, Phoenix would make up the difference from its state-shared revenue.

Now that the time has come for an accounting, Phoenix wants to renege or renegotiate. The excuse is that it's been a hard economy and the Legislature contributed to the convention center's underperformance by passing SB 1070.

So, in addition to paying for half of the cost, the state has to allowthe convention business to control the state's immigration-enforcement policies?

The state had no business making such a special deal with a single city in the first place. It certainly shouldn't agree to let Phoenix off the hook for its false promises.

Reach Robb at robert.robb@arizonarepublic.com.

Copyright 2013 The Arizona Republic|azcentral.com. All rights reserved.For more information about reprints & permissions, visit our FAQ's. To report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification. To view our corrections, go to corrections.usatoday.com.

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Gun-buyback stand shows Brewer is 2-faced

(PNI) Our governor has been saddled with many labels during her reign, but I'm afraid I'm going to have to add another: hypocrite.

This freedom-loving, finger-waving defender of personal liberty, individual initiative and the American way has signed into law a bill that denies the right of an individual to dispose of his/her personal blunderbuss as he or she chooses. If you want to get it off the streets through a buyback program, for whatever reason, you can't. It has to be resold! Big sister has spoken.

For shame, governor. Your effort to elevate the lowly firearm into the equivalent of religious icon is turning our state into the butt of late-night jokes. Keep your hands off my guns -- coming, or going.

--Mike Sheehan,

Grand Canyon

Rep. Issa, look in mirror

While Benghazi was and is a tragedy, I wonder where the concern from Congressman Darrell Issa was when, in 2011, he voted to deny the State Department's request for increased funding for the embassy security budget.

Keep in mind that Issa's vote to deny this request was as the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Now as the chairman of this same committee, he is asking how the Benghazi tragedy happened! If you want to talk about knowingly placing embassy personnel at risk, you need to look no further than this vote.

The State Department can only spend money as appropriated by Congress. Had this money been approved, the Benghazi fiasco might not have happened.

--Scott Peterburs, Mesa

Benson exploits 3 victims

Shame on Republic cartoonist Steve Benson for using the story of the three kidnapped victims in Cleveland to make comment about the Republican Party (Opinions, Friday).

These three women in Cleveland went through hell for nearly 10 years. One reportedly was beaten to force five miscarriages. To equate the Republican Party with the diabolical actions of the captor is beyond imagination.

Benson should let these women come back to some kind of a normal life and not use them for his political agenda.

--Joe Callahan, Peoria

A pension-reform idea

Pension plans for public employees do not focus the employee on saving for retirement. This is unfair to the employees who are "dependent" on the taxpayer while they are working and then are "dependent" on the taxpayer, and the pension plan's investments, for their future.

Promising police, firefighters, teachers and other municipal workers an absurd retirement income does not encourage those workers to take even a modicum of responsibility for their own futures.

We would be much better served -- and public employees would be much better served -- if we structured a sound retirement strategy that included saving and personal investment, without limiting contributions and taxing away profits made by employee investments.

If we did this smartly, with the focus on the future rather than the immediate benefit, thewhole system would function better, which is good for all!

--Scott Keeffe, Scottsdale

Comparing cover-ups

Do you remember what led to impeachment proceedings against President Nixon? It was a cover-up of a break-in of a Democratic Party office.

Does that have the same weight as an administration that stood by and watched an ambassador and three others die and then lied to the American public about it?

Amazing how our values have changed in such a few years!

--Gary Yohe, Phoenix

Stay to right, slow driver

Regarding "Like to speed? Go around" (Opinions, Thursday):

The problem is not necessarily speed but traffic flow. While the posted speed is 65 mph, that does not mean you should labor in all the lanes going 65.

Most states have signs indicating "Keep to the Right Except to Pass" or "Slower Traffic Keep to the Right." However, Arizona's Legislature, with its Wild West mentality, will not post those signs.

I already leave 15 minutes early to dodge the inconsiderate slow driver, cellphone talker and texting hog and broken-down handyman and landscaping trucks in the left and middle lanes. It is dangerous to pass these self-centered people.

I want to be able to choose whether or not I want a speeding ticket.

Think about other citizens. Keep to the right.

Another problem is traffic-light synchronization. I encounter 24 lights on my way to work. I don't care what speed I travel, I will hit 18 of them. Talk about safety, environment and pollution.

--Bob Lament, Phoenix

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Brewer still thinks it's 2010

(PNI) Gov. Jan Brewer vaulted to national attention when she signed Senate Bill 1070. She's not about to let go now.

Much of her Republican Party, recognizing that a tough enforcement-first stand leads to political irrelevance, have begun to push for a different future. Brewer has turned down every opportunity to join them.

She offered little encouragement to Sens. John McCain and Jeff Flake when they helped broker an immigration-reform framework. She gave no support to a budding statewide coalition seeking to change Arizona's image on this issue.

And this week, she reiterated her stand that young immigrants granted legal status by President Barack Obama cannot get Arizona driver's licenses.

It is a coldhearted decision that slaps the most-sympathetic faces in the immigration debate: those brought into this country at a young age and who, because of that, are American in every way but one.

Other GOP governors with an eye on the future have altered their stances. But not Brewer. She seems content to remain in 2010.

We wish she could make the pivot so many other Republicans have. Brewer could be a gust in the sail of those seeking to remake Arizona and the GOP's image. Instead, she's an anchor holding them back.

Copyright 2012 The Arizona Republic|azcentral.com. All rights reserved.For more information about reprints & permissions, visit our FAQ's. To report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification. To view our corrections, go to corrections.usatoday.com.

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Brewer faces political struggle to expand Medicaid

(PNI) From the political notebook:

A lot of attention has been paid to the substance of Gov. Jan Brewer's Medicaid-expansion proposal. Less attention has been paid to a political and legal question that may be more important in determining its fate: How many Republican votes does it need in the Legislature to be enacted?

The assumption is that all the Democrats in the Legislature will vote for it. They may be tempted to attempt to bargain for something else in exchange for their support. If they are serious about the priority they claim to put on the expansion, they will forgo that temptation.

Republican votes for expansion will be tricky to come by. If Brewer has to sell not only the expansion but what Democrats want in exchange for their votes in favor, it might become a bridge too far.

So, assume Democrats play it straight and Brewer can pocket their votes. If the expansion only needs a simple majority to be enacted, that would require just three Republican votes in the Senate and seven in the House. Not much of a hill.

But Brewer's Medicaid-expansion proposal arguably needs more than a simple majority. Brewer is asking the Legislature to give the state agency that administers Medicaid authority to levy a provider assessment to pay the state's cost of providing Medicaid coverage for childless adults.

In 1992, voters approved an initiative that requires a two-thirds approval from both houses of the Legislature for any "net increase in state revenues." It explicitly includes "the imposition of any new state fee or assessment or the authorization of any new administratively set fee."

That would certainly seem to cover what the governor is proposing. The Governor's Office, however, is arguing that the assessment falls within an exception to the rule for "fees and assessments that are authorized by statute but are not prescribed by formula, amount or limit, and are set by a state officer or agency."

That's a stretch. While there might not be an amount set in the authorization to the penny, there's a clear understanding about its size. The number is in the governor's budget and proposal. Claiming that exception would be a dubious wink and a nod at a voter-approved constitutional requirement.

If the two-thirds approval applies, that raises the number of Republican votes Brewer needs to seven in the Senate and 16 in the House. The hill just became steeper.

There is an informal rule in both the Senate and the House that leadership will not bring any bill to the floor that doesn't have the support of a majority of the majority. That would require nine Republican votes in favor in the Senate and 18 in the House. Even steeper.

Put another way, if "the majority of the majority" requirement prevails, just nine of 30 senators or 19 of 60 House members could block the expansion.

The governor might be able to bargain for an agreement from leadership to bring Medicaid expansion to a vote without "the majority of the majority" requirement as part of a broader deal. But it would require pretty bruising negotiations. Permitting a vote on a Medicaid expansion opposed by a majority of his caucus would be particularly difficult for Senate President Andy Biggs.

My bet is that sequestration at the federal level occurs. Those are the budget cuts Congress adopted on a standby basis if the so-called supercommittee didn't come up with an alternative way to cut the deficit. They were designed to be so unpalatable that the supercommittee couldn't fail. It did anyway, and Congress and President Barack Obama are no closer today than then to agreeing on an alternative.

Republicans don't like the sequestration cuts because they fall disproportionately on defense. The House has passed an alternative that puts more of the burden on domestic spending.

Democrats aren't willing to come up with alternative cuts. They insist on more revenue and fewer cuts overall. It's becoming increasingly obvious to Republicans that the choice isn't between sequestration cuts and some alternative set of spending reductions. The real choice is between sequestration cuts and no cuts.

Despite deep misgivings about the effect on defense, I think Republicans will opt for the sequestration cuts rather than no cuts. At this point, deficit hawks in the Republican Party are stronger than the defense hawks.

Reach Robb at robert.robb @arizonarepublic.com.

Copyright 2012 The Arizona Republic|azcentral.com. All rights reserved.For more information about reprints & permissions, visit our FAQ's. To report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification. To view our corrections, go to corrections.usatoday.com.

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Cancellation at Paris hotel lands Brewer in hot water

(PNI) Quel faux pas?Best Western doesn't have the best hotel digs, it seems, at least if you're Gov. Jan Brewer and company.

While the state's executive-in-chief was showing off Arizona to CEOs and government leaders abroad, she managed to raise eyebrows back home. Her staff last week released records showing Brewer and two staffers generated a $4,100 bill that included cancellation fees for a Paris Best Western.

It was a major diss to Best Western, which is headquartered in Phoenix -- and creates jobs and tourism in Arizona.

Brewer spokesman Matthew Benson said the Parisian hotel -- a top-tier hotel in the chain -- "wasn't the most suitable location for a business trip." He later added that construction in front of the hotel wasn't conducive to high-level business meetings.

Next time the governor trots across the globe in hopes of expanding business investments, maybe she should remember the businesses in her own backyard.

Skewered Brewer? Brewer's unintentional endorsement of President Barack Obama during an interview at the Republican National Convention spurred some e-mails from supporters and opponents. During the interview, Brewer said, "And I know that if President Obama is elected in November, which I hope that he is, that he will be able to come together with all of us and come up with a solution and I believe he will secure our borders and therefore we can resolve all those other issues; it's a simple matter."

Here are some of the comments she received:

"Governor, I think you forgot your medication this morning -- or, if you do endorse Obama, I will never vote for you." -- John Gross, Pima County.

"You're an idiot. Don't ever run for a national office after rolling over on your party." --Terry Curtis, Arizona.

"That was not a slip. That is how you feel and you have now lost all my financial support." --Todd Iverson, Arizona.

Mecum's next big splash…Brett Mecum has worked behind the scenes in politics, supporting candidate campaigns as the executive director of the state Republican Party. Until he got canned from the job a year ago.

Now he's angling to be the candidate. Mecum is one of 13 people running for the Central Arizona Water Conservation District board, which oversees the Central Arizona Project canal and handles reimbursement to the feds for the construction of the massive aqueduct.

It would be quite the change of pace for Mecum, given he made headlines for criminal speeding (109 mph, according to speed cameras) and helped fan the flames on partisan races. The district is nonpartisan.

Don't forget to pay… Need a reminder to pay your property taxes? Republican Maricopa County Treasurer Charles "Hos" Hoskins, the county's tax collector, has you covered. His large, bright-yellow billboards that get erected across the Valley in September and October are back. You can't miss them, or the large Maricopa County seal that takes up about a third of the billboard -- making some other Republican county officials cringe.

The message is simple: "If you own property, you owe taxes. Pay online at www.treasurer.maricopa.gov."

The billboards cost about $52,000 to $60,000 a year from the Taxpayer Information Fund, which comes from fees charged to investors who purchase delinquent tax liens, Hoskins said.

Compiled by Republic reporters Mary Jo Pitzl, Yvonne Wingett Sanchez and Michelle Ye Hee Lee. politics.azcentral.com.

Copyright 2012 The Arizona Republic|azcentral.com. All rights reserved.For more information about reprints & permissions, visit our FAQ's. To report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification. To view our corrections, go to corrections.usatoday.com.

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