US Congressional District 9 Candidates Part 2

I blogged the CD 9 debate some time ago.  I want to finish this now.

This is an hour long debate, I'm not exactly sure where I ended this last time, I'm going to pick it up half way, well at the 26:47.

At this point in the debate, they are talking about how to balance the budget, Vernon Parker.  The refusal to raise taxes has become religious dogma to this Republican party.  I don't mind lowering the tax rate as long as we close loopholes.  I think the overall goal is to raise revenue.  We have to raise revenue to pay for our aging population.  He also wants to flat out cut federal departments:  the Department of Education, Energy.  There is no role for the federal government in education or energy for the Republican party.  It's an uncompromising, extreme federalist position that I happen to disagree with.  The federal government has a role.

Can I go ahead and skip Wendy Rogers from here on out?  She is extremely, well extreme.  Just one more, she'll cut social security and medicare (well she uses the word reform), but not defense.

Sepulveda up next.  Again, I'm totally in favor of cutting the corporate income tax that no corporation actually pays.  Let's cut the rate and the loopholes.  The poor do not pay income tax, true, but they do pay taxes, payroll and sales tax.  Republicans want to cut the corporate tax cut, but increase taxes on the poor.  Strange.

Schapira up next.  Democrats of course go after defense first.  But we have to look at revenue especially by increasing taxes on the rich.  This won't get us all the way there given our demographic pressures and the growing cost of health care.  He's after the Republicans.  They want to break the promise to our seniors and increase taxes on the poor.

Sinema up.  Bush tax cuts have not helped the middle class.   Broaden the base and lower the rate.  This is common sense.  Strange only Democrats are proposing this.  Cutting cold war relics in our defense is also common sense, strange also the Republicans are so stubborn on this.

Closing comments:

Jeff Thompson:  Very angry.  Extreme.  He would be a terrible candidate.  I'm guessing he won't be selected.

Travis Grantham:  Another extreme candidate. 

Andrei Cherney:  He's extremely smart, a Harvard grad.  He's worked in Bill Clinton's administration.   He's against bailing out the big banks.  I'm wondering what his alternative to the bailouts?  Not an easy thing to do with a teetering economy. 

Krysten Sinema:  She is touting her moderate, working with both sides of the aisle credentials.  Quickest way to my heart I would say.

David Schapira:  He's been playing a dual role, he's on a school board and a member of the State Senate.  He has a strong bias toward education, though, it seems like enhancing the funding of our current system.  I haven't heard much from him on specific reforms.  Good position if you think our current system is the best one, something I don't believe in.

Martin Sepulveda:  Government is best when it governs the least.  We don't need the government in every facet of our lives.   He served nine years in the Chandler city council.  He was born and raised here.

Wendy Rogers:  She goes to the office.  She has to meet pay roll. 

Vernon Parker:  He would honor social security, in response to Schapira.  He has a lot of endorsements.

The person who is moderating the debate closes with a plea to work together, to compromise.  There are good ideas on both sides of the aisle.  Yes!  Second, he quotes Thomas Jefferson citing the importance of a strong and effective press.  

Jerry Lewis for State Senate

Tonight, I crossed party lines to attend a meet and greet for Jerry Lewis who is running as a Republican for the State Senate in my legislative district.  He is the same person who took out immigration pariah Russel Pearce in a recall election.  He wasn't in my district then, but the lines have been re-drawn and he's in my district now.  He'll be running against Ed Ableser in November, someone who I've spent some time canvassing for already.

I went into the event tonight already with some expectations.  I figured Jerry Lewis was a moderate, was substantive, and would be someone I could, in theory vote for.    And I do have some concerns about Ed Ableser.  I've been told he's a pretty down the line liberal and I've read that he has missed 40% of his votes.  From Robb:

The Arizona Capitol Times reported on voting participation by state legislators. Most of them voted a high percentage of the time. I leave to you whether that’s good or bad.

The worst voting record in the Legislature by far belonged to Democratic state Representative Ed Ableser. He missed nearly 40 percent of the House floor votes.

When legislators miss a lot of votes, they usually have good excuses – personal or family illness, unusual business demands. Ableser, who is running for the Senate this year, had one I hadn’t heard before: He doesn’t like the legislators the voters in other districts elected.

The Capitol Times quotes Ableser as saying: “They’re nuts. The Tea Party has taken over the state and made it a complete mockery. I’m not going to participate in that.”

Well, now. Perhaps Ableser should ask that the election in his district be delayed – so he can see who gets elected from other districts and therefore how much time he really wants to spend doing the job.

 Back to Lewis, I admit I was kind of taken by him.  He's incredibly nice and engaging (though at times a bit long-winded).  He has an impressive resume.  He has really smart, authentically sharing views on immigration that I'm totally on board with.   He seemed to have a pretty strong libertarian ideology but tempered by a ton of pragmatism.   He actually spent several minutes talking with me and my wife, which is a precious opportunity for me and I'm grateful for it.

I asked him point blank his opinion on Obamacare.  I did make the mistake of prefacing my question with a disclosure that my daughter has a chronic illness.  He gave a sensible answer:  it's the law, let's work with it to improve it, but until the Republicans come up with something better, this is what we have.  Having said that, I got the impression he had a tendency to say what he felt people wanted to hear.

The person who hosted this house party attends my church congregation and invited many members of the church to attend. Someone, who I respect, stood up and gave a tearful endorsement for this person as someone who has a pure and honest heart.  Also, he was, at one time, a ecclesiastical leader of my parents congregration and knew my parents by name.

I can easily see myself voting for Jerry Lewis, but I would love to get a chance to have a similar discussion with Ed Ableser before this is all said and done.  I also can't wait to watch the upcoming debates.

We Need a Free and Open Economy

I use facebook almost exclusively for political conversation.  The other day a conservative fb friend of mine linked the following picture:

Here was my comment:

Which is why we need to be much more concerned with unemployment than with debt/inflation - knowing that there is some overlap of these issues, but not a perfect overlap.

This coincides with and is inspired by a lot of commentary out there that unemployment should be our top priority.  This resonates with me because of my Dad's perpetual unemployment (and underemployment) problems has been a dibilitation that he passed on to me.  Not that I have had my own direct problems with this, but the fear of it has definitely kept me from taking bigger career risks (or any career risk) and has limited from really putting myself out there for far too long.

I'll spare you his response to my comment, but let me give you my out of context follow up to his response:

The overall economy consists of overall buying/selling, consuming/producing. It doesn't matter whose doing it. We're all people afterall whether our paycheck is coming from a gov't entity or a private company, work is work.

You can make the argument that accumulating a bunch of debt forces us to pay interest on that debt, which is why I think there is some overlap between jobs & debt, just not a perfect overlap.

And certainly, if gov't stopped borrowing completely, a bunch of people get laid off in the short term - and there's simply not enough jobs in the private sector, again in the short term, to absorb that.

So, if your priority is debt, you are willing to live with higher unemployment. If your priority is jobs, you are still concerned about debt as it relates to jobs, but you may be more willing to borrow in the short term. Similar to if say, I lose my job, I'm willing to borrow to put food on the table until I can bridge the gap until I find my next job. Food is higher priority for me than debt.

So, Reagan's point, a job is the best social program is something I 100% agree with, which is one reason I think unemployment has more urgency than our debt in the short run.

This is the part of my comment I want to highlight:

 And certainly, if gov't stopped borrowing completely, a bunch of people get laid off in the short term - and there's simply not enough jobs in the private sector, again in the short term, to absorb that.

Ok, this argument makes sense, but then Obama went ahead and issued an executive order to allow young illegal immigrants to stay in the US without fear of deportation.



In his press conference, he gets heckled by some conservative hack complaining that allowing these immigrants legal access to our economy would affect jobs at a time when there are none.  He basically makes the exact same argument as mine, but in this context my impulse is to disagree.

AAAARGGG, a contradiction inspired by my allegiance to team Democrat.  So, what do I do with this insight.  Do I shift on immigration or on government size?  Well, sorry, given those alternatives, I will never shift on immigration.  All things being equal, I want more freedom, less government and less restriction.  I would rather error on the side of the people.

What am I getting at exactly?  Well, even in times of high unemployment, we need to find ways to cut the waste of the government and allow local communities and neighborhoods find ways to solve their problems.  I think there are some problems that demand federal, state, and local government involvement, but where private and non-profit institutions step in, the government should step away.

Laying off people in government jobs that are providing marginal benefit to society can only help our economy, forcing, allowing that person to find a way to make a more positive contribution to the economy elsewhere.  There's not such a thing as too many people.  Our economy is big enough, diverse enough, and vibrant enough to absorb influxes of new people.

I strongly support the Dream Act, and I cannot relate to people who don't.