The GOP’s Clown Car To Autocracy.

No, that’s not hyperbole. And, no, Donald Trump, the narcissistic and wannabe autocrat, is not on the ballot. But, across the nation, many equally seditious and treason-adjacent candidates are. They call themselves Republicans. And some of them make the conspiracy-loving Marjorie Taylor-Greene, the gun-toting Lauren Boebert, the insurrectionist Paul Gosar, and the alleged child sex trafficker Matt Gaetz seem almost moderate.

For example, in Arizona, Trump acolyte Mark Finchem will carry the Trump banner forward as the Republican nominee for Arizona Secretary of State. If he wins, he will be in control of the state’s elections. What makes this prospect frightening is that he is still a firm believer in the Big Lie – that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. Not surprisingly, he was also in Washington, DC for the January 6th insurrection. If elected, he plans to ban electronic voting machines and ban early voting making it far more difficult for low-paid workers to cast their ballots. And, given his past, imagine what he might do if, once again, the vote totals were not in favor of his preferred candidate.

In the race for Arizona governor, the GOP will offer one of two horrific choices: the Trump-endorsed bat-crap crazy Kari Lake who says she would have overturned Biden’s victory in Arizona, or the Pence-endorsed theocratic Karrin Taylor Robson. Both are legitimate threats to democracy. And, in the race for US Senate, Democratic incumbent Mark Kelly will face off against Blake Masters, a libertarian, Big Lie-embracing, billionaire-funded venture capitalist. Masters believes that our history of slavery and racism should not be taught in schools. He blames gun violence on black people. He supports a national abortion ban and the privatization of Social Security. He also reportedly compared requirements that political candidates disclose financial donations to Nazi Germany’s Kristallnacht. And he supported some views of the Unabomber.

In Georgia, former NFL running back, Herschel Walker is the GOP nominee for the US Senate. Walker, who always refers to himself in third person, has a Trump-like aversion to the truth. Indeed, his own campaign staff has called him a pathological liar. To wit: he falsely claimed to be a former FBI agent and a valedictorian graduate of the University of Georgia (his only degree is in carrying a football). And though he claims to stand for Christian values, he has a history of domestic violence, and he seemingly can’t remember how many children he has fathered. Moreover, if forced to take the most simplistic sixth grade level civics test, he unquestionably would fail. Yet he hopes to win one of the most powerful seats in government.

In Missouri, Trump-loving Eric Schmitt is the favorite for Roy Blunt’s open Senate seat. A theocrat and 2020 election denier, Schmitt worked to help overturn Biden’s win in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin. He is also an enemy of women’s reproductive rights.

In Pennsylvania, Hillbilly Elegy author and wingnut, J.D. Vance is also running for the US Senate funded by billionaire Peter Thiel. Vance is running a campaign of fear based on all of the wacko hot button social issues, such as banning Critical Race Theory in public schools (it’s only taught in law schools). He also believes women should risk staying in abusive relationships “for the sake of the children.” And like most Republicans, he believes in regulating women’s uteruses. Not guns.

Yet, as dangerous as all those candidates seem, they pale in comparison to Republican incumbent and longtime wackadoodle, Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin. Johnson, you may remember, was a participant in the attempt to decertify Biden’s electoral votes on January 6. Not only is he a supporter of the Big Lie, if Republicans gain control of Congress again, he wants to end mandatory funding of Social Security and Medicare. Instead, he proposes that the funding be made discretionary, which would mean Congress would have to vote to approve funding annually.

The list of such anti-government, anti-American, and anti-democracy candidates is long. And, if Republicans take control of Congress, they promise to impeach Biden (in retaliation for the twice impeached Trump), to investigate members of the January 6 select committee, and to ban all abortions. They will also do everything in their power to privatize education, to privatize or eliminate Social Security and Medicare, to eliminate affirmative action…their ugly, hateful list is long. But the even greater threat to the future of our nation is the departure of competent and trustworthy election officials.

In states and counties across this nation, election officials have resigned or been pushed out of office under threat of violence. They have been doxed – their personal information made public to Trump’s heavily armed insurgent militias who have harassed the officials by phone, staked out their homes, and threatened their lives along with the lives of their families. Many have been replaced by inexperienced and unqualified individuals who believe the 2020 election was rigged and who plan to make sure Trump and his allies never lose again.

If the MAGAts are able to take control of more statehouses, governorships, and secretary of state offices, future elections will be elections in name only. It will be officials who decide the “winners.” Not the voters.

When Journalism Becomes Propaganda.

Where do you go for news? Do you rely on a single source? Do you read beyond the headlines? Do you take the time to explore beyond the sound bites? Do you take the time to fact check statements by politicians? Do you check the veracity of chain emails and posts on social media?

Most people realize that news media can be biased. But do you know the extent of media bias? Of the 152 Fox News Channel statements checked by Politifact.com, 118 (77%) were found to be half true, mostly false, false or pants on fire lies. And, of the 21 statements made by Rush Limbaugh, none were true. Most other conservative radio hosts fare no better. Yet these people represent more than 90 percent of talk radio.

Of course, none of this should come as a surprise to any but the most partisan among us.

And if you think the mainstream media are liberal, you’ve been listening to far too many conservatives. Studies have shown that an overwhelming majority of the guests invited to appear on the Sunday morning network news shows are conservative. Most newscasts and newspapers are no better. Even when the media try to be objective they fail. What passes for journalistic objectivity these days consists of presenting both the Teapublican and Democratic sides of an issue. There are seldom any follow-up questions. No attempt to provide context. No attempt to get at the truth.

In states like Arizona, the only way a Democrat can make headlines is if he or she gets caught doing something wrong. Yet the same media constantly cover and promote conservative initiatives and points of view. The same is true for stories about government entities, such as the VA or the EPA. The media love to portray the government as the enemy. As mentioned in a previous post, most media reported on the toxic spill in the Animas River. But few took the time or effort to find out the causes for the spill and to put it into context with regard to other environmental accidents. For most media, the fact that the spill was caused by a contractor working for the EPA – the agency that is supposed to protect the environment – was the story. The entire story.

You can see the same mentality at work with regard to the Hillary Clinton email “scandal.” Almost all of the media have led with the story. But how many have mentioned that Clinton did nothing illegal? How many have mentioned that when Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice were Secretaries of State, they also used private email servers? How many have mentioned that the Bush White House funneled emails through the Republican National Committee’s email server, then deleted more than 20 million emails after they were requested by Congress to learn more about the outing of Valerie Plame and the run-up to the Iraq War?

You can also see conservative bias in the time and space devoted to coverage of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. They have similar poll numbers. Yet, even though Bernie Sanders has drawn larger crowds, Sanders is largely ignored while Trump is constantly in the headlines. The problem is made worse by the news editors’ desire to promote ratings or readership. Donald Trump is a celebrity. Bernie Sanders is not.

And, as long as we’re on the subject of polls, never underestimate how the media can influence issues by the way they ask questions. For example, CNN recently asked half of its poll respondents if Congress should approve or reject the Iran deal. At the same time, CNN asked the other half how they felt about a deal that would place major restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program and greater international inspection of Iran’s nuclear facilities. CNN chose only to report the results to the first question which showed that a majority think Congress should reject the deal. It chose not to report the results to the second question which showed that the majority was in favor of the deal.

Only 6 companies now own the vast majority of television networks and cable or satellite carriers. 5 corporations control the majority of radio. 5 corporations control most large newspapers. And 5 corporations control a huge portion of online media. These corporations have one agenda – to make money. They demand higher ratings and greater numbers of subscribers. If it serves their interests to distort the news in order to increase those ratings, they’ll do it. And, these days, people want to hear from angry conservatives. They want to blame their problems on undocumented immigrants. They want to read stories about an out-of-control government. Who cares if the stories are unfair and untrue?

Yet, if our news media are not accurate and fair; if they do not provide context; if they prioritize facts over truth; if they are swayed by ratings, they do not practice journalism. They are merely engaging in propaganda. And if you rely on them to make decisions, you are a victim of that propaganda. So is our nation.

You simply can’t sit back and expect the media to inform you. You have to work at it. It may be frustrating and sometimes boring work. But, with the availability of online news sources and fact-checkers, it’s not that difficult. After all, our nation was founded on the expectation of an informed voting public. Indeed, it is the most important principle on which the nation was built.

Rick Perry Reveals The Right Wing Agenda.

It would seem that 2012’s “Ooops” candidate has had another “Ooops” moment. In launching his 2016 presidential bid, he finally remembered the 3 federal departments he would eliminate: the Department of Education, the Department of Labor and the Department of Energy. And that’s not all. He would also eliminate the Environmental Protection Agency, the IRS, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and, of course, Obamacare.

He’s also not very keen on the Department of the Interior and the legal system, saying “It’s [America] in jeopardy because of taxes; it’s in jeopardy because of regulation; it’s in jeopardy because of a legal system that’s run amok. And I think it’s time for us to just hand it over to God and say, “God, You’re going to have to fix this.”

That’s the ticket.

Perry believes that we don’t have to worry about the state of our crumbling infrastructure, our militarized police departments, our over-stressed environment, our large corporate polluters, global warming, growing inequality, rampant racism, debilitating poverty, political polarization, and our for-hire Congress.

All we have to do is let God run the country. Oh, wait. How, exactly, can he do that? Since He doesn’t talk to all (many) of us, who will be his interpreter? Who will carry out His orders? Why Teapublicans, of course! According to the right, only they are the true patriots; only they have a close relationship with God; only they know what God wants.

Is that what you believe? That Teapublicans are the only moral, God-fearing politicians? If so, then how do you explain the pedophilia of Dennis Hastert? How do you explain the adultery of Newt Gingrich, Bob Livingston and so many other Teapublicans? How do you explain the war-mongering of John McCain and Lindsey Graham? How do you explain the GOP’s uncaring attitude toward the poor? How do you explain the GOP’s embrace of the rich and powerful? How do you explain the GOP’s lack of interest in preserving the environment and all of God’s creatures?

You can’t…because it simply defies explanation.

The real problem for the GOP is that Perry was, in a manner of speaking, speaking out of school. You see, his beliefs are the same as those of most – if not all – of the declared GOP candidates. And the GOP would rather not have you know about them. They don’t want seniors to know that they want to eliminate Social Security and Medicare as “socialism.” They don’t want you to know that they consider public education “socialism.” They don’t want you to know that they are against worker’s rights and any form of collective bargaining. They don’t want you to know that they are deep in the pockets of the oil companies and are paid to do their bidding. They don’t want you to know that they simply don’t care about the poor.

Don’t believe it?

Then take a close look at what’s happening in Teapublican-controlled states like Arizona, Kansas and Wisconsin. In those and other red states, the GOP has cut taxes for corporations and the wealthy and balanced the budgets on the backs of the poor, as well as the teachers and students. The results have been disastrous, yet they don’t seem to care.

Instead of admitting their mistake and addressing the problems, the GOP is doubling down. They want to expand the misery to the entire country.

Phoenix Demonstrations Expose Hearts And Minds Of Participants.

Last weekend’s so-called First Amendment demonstration really wasn’t about standing up for the Constitution. In addition to sending a message that, under the First Amendment, repulsive hate-mongers have a constitutional right to say whatever they want, it sent a message of religious intolerance. It was intended to deny Muslims their First Amendment guarantee of freedom of religion. Of course, the right-wing idiots who congregated in the street outside a Phoenix mosque at prayer time to display their cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, also threatened to exercise their “Second Amendment” rights.

Hey, idiots, the Second Amendment guarantees you the right to own and bear arms as part of a well-organized militia in order to defend the United States. It doesn’t give you the right to threaten to shoot other Americans.

The people who resort to such threats have no concept of compassion, decency or responsibility. They hide behind the Constitution and the Bible, selecting only those few passages that support their narrow-minded views and ignoring the rest. They have no concept of what it truly means to be an American or a Christian. They merely want to provoke a violent reaction in order to have the satisfaction of saying “I told you so.”

That is the bad news.

The good news is that, despite the provocation and repugnant actions of the wing nuts, the Phoenix Muslim community showed great patience in the face of religious discrimination. There was no violence. And the really great news is that, this week, a group of Phoenix citizens came out to support the Muslim community. They assembled at the mosque to show that, even in Arizona, the hate-mongers are a tiny minority of the population…people who only care about their own rights while denying the same rights to others.

We would all be well-served to follow their example.

The Balanced Budget Fraud.

It may sound like a good idea to require the federal government to balance the budget, but it’s nothing more than a thinly-disguised way for Teapublicans to shrink government and give corporations free reign to exploit people and resources.

Make no mistake, as soon as a balanced budget amendment is passed, if it ever is, Teapublicans will cut taxes at the first opportunity. That will result in less revenue, which, in turn, will result in large budget cuts. Of course, those cuts will not affect corporate welfare or the military-industrial complex. Instead, there will be cuts to regulatory agencies and safety nets. Already we’ve seen the GOP propose the repeal of the Affordable Care Act which will deny affordable health insurance to more than 16 million Americans. We’ve seen GOP-sponsored budgets that propose cuts to Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security and Supplemental Nutrition programs. We’ve seen Teapublican initiatives to defund the Department of Education, the Environmental Protection Agency, the IRS, and the Department of Labor.

All of this will be made much easier if Teapublicans can muster enough votes to pass a balanced budget amendment.

The truth is, our federal government has often operated at a deficit. Not because of bad management or negligence. But out of necessity. Indeed, the Constitution was created to replace the failed Articles of Confederation over federal deficits. The fledgling government had run up substantial debts during the Revolutionary War and, without a central government, it had no way of collecting the funds to repay those debts. And that’s but one example: Had FDR not expanded government programs to put people back to work, we likely would have never emerged from the Great Depression. Had the US not operated at a deficit, we would not have been able to conduct military operations for WWII and most of our other all-too-frequent wars.

The Reagan administration operated at massive deficits in an attempt to outspend the Soviet Union. The Bush administration operated at enormous deficits in order to create the Homeland Security Department and to prosecute the Afghan and Iraq Wars. And the Obama administration has operated at deficits (albeit steadily decreasing deficits) in order to wind down operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and to dig our economy out of the trench created by Bush.

Since 1975, only two administrations have produced surpluses, and both of them were Democrats! Taking it a step further, in the past 100 years, there have been eight Democratic presidents and nine Republicans. Five of the eight Democrats oversaw deficits smaller than they inherited, while seven of the nine Republicans oversaw deficits larger than they inherited.

Given their history, do you really think Teapublicans are pushing a balanced budget amendment out of a sense of fiscal responsibility?

Moreover, balanced budget requirements are no guarantee of fiscal responsibility. In Arizona, for example, once the legislature passed a balanced budget requirement, Teapublicans set about starving the state with tax cuts. Of course, those tax cuts have not been shared equally. The state not only cut taxes for the wealthy. It has cut corporate taxes for 24 of the past 25 years. Meanwhile, it has raised sales taxes to push the costs of government onto those who can least afford it. The resulting lack of revenue has, in turn, led to catastrophic cuts to education and other services.

Since no Teapublican will ever again agree to raise taxes, the state is caught in a downward spiral fueled by ideologues, greedy corporations, self-serving politicians, dark money donations to lapdog candidates, and a series of “studies” and propaganda from conservative “think tanks.” It’s a death spiral from which the state may never recover.

The Reality Show I’d Pay To See.

I despise virtually all of the so-called “Reality” TV shows. But there is one show I’d love to see: “Sheriff Joe’s Prison Term In Tent City.”

For years, “America’s Toughest Sheriff” has, in reality, been America’s Most Corrupt Sheriff. He has ignored court orders and enforced laws as he sees fit. He has racially-profiled Latinos. He has failed to investigate hundreds of sexual assaults in Latino communities. He has ignored the dehumanizing and dangerous conditions at his Tent City. (You know, the tents in the desert where prisoners are warehoused without heat, air conditioning, toilets and running water.) He has profited from donations to his far right wing PAC. And he has cost the taxpayers of Maricopa County more than $145 million in legal costs and misspent funds.

Now, faced with a contempt of court hearing for willfully ignoring a judge’s orders, he has admitted to guilt in hopes that he will avoid the hearing and the potentially harsher penalties that could come with it.

Let’s hope the judge sees his plea for what it really is: An attempt to settle for a slap on the wrist and a stern warning. Let’s hope the judge sentences him to time in his own Tent City. And let’s hope the judge allows cameras in the prison so we can all watch his detention officers place the sheriff in a holding area with no shade from the sun as they have done to so many others; so we can watch him eat the same gruel he has forced on prisoners for years; so we can watch him stand in line for one of his own portable toilets; so we can watch him wrinkle his nose at the stench coming from the toilets and the dump next door.

Now that’s a “Reality” show I’d watch!

Is Another Civil War Inevitable?

Some on the right believe so. To examine that dire possibility, it’s necessary to look at history – the issues that led to the Civil War and the issues created by the defeat of the Confederacy. As any school child knows, the cause of the Civil War was slavery. The primary reason the Union won was its manufacturing power. And, following the war, the South was left in poverty, even resenting the attempts of the North to help restore its institutions and economy.

While the South suffered and chafed at what it considered northern meddling, following the Civil War, the North went back to business as usual, happy that its boys were no longer dying. It never believed that its culture was all that different from the South. Sure, there were the stereotypes that anyone with a southern drawl was slow; that they didn’t believe in education and hard work. There were jokes that, in the South, a family reunion was a great place to pick up chicks. But few people in the North held a grudge.

Attitudes in the South were entirely different. Rather than admitting the war was initiated by slavery, it called the Civil War the “War of Northern Aggression.” And though the Confederacy surrendered, the South has never really admitted defeat. It kept its own identity; its distinct culture; and, of course, its racism.

You’ve heard the phrase, “The South Will Rise Again?” Well, it has – at least politically. The states of the old Confederacy are now almost completely red, with Republican governors, Republican-controlled legislatures, Republican US senators and mostly Republican congressional representatives. Like the Confederacy, today’s elected officials from the South believe in states’ rights and they have an almost universal contempt for the federal government.

In fact, the second Civil War has already begun. But, so far, it has been confined to a culture war. Rather than build their own business, southern states seem intent on taking corporations and jobs away from the North. And, to some extent, they’ve succeeded. In search of low-paid labor and lower taxes, many corporations have abandoned their places of origin and moved south, leaving the cities and former employees to wallow in poverty. Southern states have even succeeded in swaying the nomenclature to their benefit. While northern states are now known as the “Rust Belt,” southern states are known as the “Sun Belt.”

Yet the biggest differences can be measured in terms of faith, poverty, education and tax contributions to the federal government. Most of the northern states contribute far more in federal taxes than their southern counterparts. Indeed, most of the southern states receive far more in expenditures than they contribute. The southern states routinely rank among the most underfunded public schools and at the bottom with regard to the level of education. And most of the people in the southern states are devout followers, believing that their impoverished circumstances are an act of God; that they will succeed if they only pray harder.

While the South has a relatively uniform identity, the North is much more diverse. States like California, New York, Minnesota and Washington have little in common with Montana, Idaho, North Dakota, South Dakota and New Hampshire. About the only thing they share is the climate.

And though the Civil War represented a clash over slavery, it was also urban versus rural; manufacturing versus farming; the educated versus the uneducated. For the most part, those differences haven’t changed. Certainly, there are large cities, large manufacturing plants and large universities in the modern South. But the culture divide remains and, following the last 4 national elections, the divide seems to be widening.

For example, Arizona (now part of the South) has already passed a nullification bill that would challenge any federal law or regulation its legislature deems “unconstitutional.” Can the rest of the South be far behind? Even though the bill is likely to be vacated by federal courts, the attitude will remain. The southern states would rather spend the millions of dollars required to challenge the federal government than to spend the money improving their schools, nurturing business start-ups, maintaining the environment and creating jobs.

Where all of this conflict will end is uncertain.

No One More Deserving Of Contempt.

On Thursday, January 15, a United States District Court Judge called for a contempt of court proceeding against Joe Arpaio, the self-proclaimed “nation’s toughest sheriff.” It’s a development for which I have only one question: What took so long?

The oh-so-tough Sheriff Joe has a long history of deeds that are deserving of contempt. The courts have found him guilty of racially-profiling Latinos, costing the county tens of millions in unnecessary court costs and court judgments. By my admittedly incomplete accounting, Arpaio has, thus far, cost Maricopa County taxpayers at least $81.125 million in legal fees and settlements. And that doesn’t even include the tens of millions of county funds he has misspent on a variety of law enforcement toys and other unapproved items.

In addition, Arpaio’s office failed to investigate sexual assaults in a predominantly Latino area of the county. He has profited from his own political action committee. And, according to the American Friends Service Committee, his Tent City jail, which was ballyhooed as a way to save the county money, costs more per prisoner than any other prison in the state. This despite the fact that it has no heat, no air conditioning and its only bathrooms are portable latrines located next to a dump. (Of course, that is a perfect image for a prison that has one of the highest recidivism rates in the nation. Like our trash, the prisoners are dumped in the desert, surrounded by razor wire, covered with fabric and largely forgotten.)

In reality, the terrorists housed in Gitmo have better facilities. Indeed, an Amnesty International report that found that Tent City is not an “adequate or humane alternative to housing inmates…”

Despite his excesses and failings, for unexplainable reasons Joe is still admired by those who would otherwise demand accountability and fiscal restraint from their elected officials. That’s because Joe is a master of fear-mongering. Over the years, he has scared enough Maricopa County residents into voting for him that he has been elected to six terms by portraying all Latinos as drug-running, human-trafficking, murdering criminals who have crossed our borders illegally and are taking our jobs. He has also successfully pandered to his right wing base by devoting time to try to prove that President Obama is not a US citizen.

So are these the reasons why Arpaio is now facing contempt charges? No, Joe is facing contempt for simply failing to follow court orders. In other words, the get-tough sheriff who claims to pursue any and all lawbreakers is himself accused of ignoring the legal system.

If there is any justice, the highly-contemptible Sheriff Joe will be found guilty and assigned to his own Tent City where he can enjoy the odors coming from its portable toilets, which are frankly less disagreeable than the stench of corruption coming from the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office and his political friends.

The Sad State Of Arizona (2015 Edition)

Before the GOP-created Great Recession, Arizona’s state economy was based on the fantasy that construction could continue until the entire Sonora Desert was covered by homes, shopping malls and golf courses. So since the housing market crashed, Arizona’s economy has languished.

While other states were trying to mend their losses by diversifying, stimulating their economies and raising taxes, Jan Brewer and the GOP-dominated legislature chose, instead, to make cuts. Deep, desperate budget cuts. Yet, despite facing a large deficit, they chose to further reduce revenue by cutting taxes for corporations. At the same time, they put teachers out of work by cutting the funding of public schools. Indeed, since 2009, only Oklahoma has cut more from student funding than Arizona. As a result, the state’s per student funding is now just 69 percent of the national average and its student performance stands at 47th out of 50 states and the District of Columbia. Only 1 in 18 students who enter an Arizona high school will receive a degree from a college or technical school, and those who do earn a degree will likely be buried in student loan debt.

Not content with destroying schools and jobs, the GOP also did what it could to destroy tourism, the state’s 2nd-largest industry, by closing state parks and highway rest stops. And to make the state even less appealing to tourists, they passed the anti-Latino law, SB1070, which made tourists and conventions spurn the state costing us tens of millions of dollars in lost revenue.

It was as if the GOP was intent on pushing our citizens into its ideological clown car and driving us off a fiscal cliff.

Now along comes the new GOP governor, Doug Ducey, who must have frozen his brain while peddling questionable franchises for Cold Stone Creamery. During the campaign, he and his supporters ran millions of dollars in misleading attack ads accusing his Democratic opponent of raising tuition to the state’s universities. But, now that Ducey has been sworn into office, he has presented a budget that would cut $75 million in funding for post-secondary education. And, though he pledged to increase K-12 education funding during the campaign, he is attempting a shell game in which he proposes to take as much from the already stressed school administration and operations budgets as he would add for classrooms. Moreover, his budget completely ignores the hundreds of millions of dollars a court awarded public schools as the result of previous cuts to education in violation of the state constitution.

Of course, one budget item that will increase is the money allocated to corrections. True to the GOP’s commitment to line the pockets of private prison corporations, Ducey proposes building yet another privately-operated prison at a cost of $5.3 million. But there is no money for the education and rehabilitation of prisoners, so after they serve their time, they are all too likely to commit more crimes. And since the privately-operated health care system for prisons doesn’t track or treat infectious diseases, they are also likely to spread infectious diseases into our communities.

In their obviously delusional minds, Ducey and the Teapublicans still seem to believe that, by further cutting the state’s already low corporate taxes, they will be able to attract corporations to relocate to Arizona bringing with them thousands of high-paying jobs. Anyone who has ever consulted with corporations seeking a place to expand or relocate knows that’s a fantasy.

Corporations, at least good corporations, look for places to expand that offer quality transportation, abundant resources, an abundant high-skilled and well-educated workforce, abundant and low-cost energy, a high quality of living, and affordable taxes…usually in that order. Arizona’s approach will only result in the relocation of corporations that offer low-skill, low-paying jobs or gun manufacturers who are drawn to the state by our heavily-armed population and our virtually non-existent gun laws. Even then, they will only come to Arizona if the state is willing to pay for changes in needed infrastructure, provide further tax cuts and pay for other incentives. All of which explains why, when high tax states like California and Minnesota are thriving with low unemployment and budget surpluses, Arizona has failed to emerge from recession and faces annual budget deficits of $1 billion or more.

In the competition to build a sustainable, thriving economy, it would seem that Arizona can only compete in a contest of Biggest Loser against other red states like Kansas and Mississippi. And the biggest losers of all will be our students.

Scandals That Weren’t.

Since Teapublicans took control of the House in 2011, Rep. Darrell Issa, Rep. Paul Gosar and other extremists have conducted a barrage of hearings with the intent of exposing the misdeeds of the Obama administration. They began by examining government loans made to administration “loyalists” at Solyndra, a start-up manufacturer of solar panels. They moved on to the failed ATFE “gun-running” program in Arizona. After that it was Benghazi, Benghazi, Benghazi, interrupted briefly by IRS scrutiny of conservative “non-profits.” Finally, they turned to the Ebola crisis.

After dozens of hearings, numerous investigations and millions of dollars in expenses, here’s what they found:

The loans to Solyndra were initiated during the George W. Bush administration and finalized during the first year of the Obama administration. The company failed when faced with competition financed, in part, by the Chinese government. And, instead of losing millions as Teapublicans claimed, the government actually made a $5 billion profit on the sale of Solyndra’s assets.

Though Issa and his Teapublican investigations found that Fast & Furious resulted in hundreds of guns being trafficked across the border into Mexico; and though Teapublicans blamed the Department of Justice, calling for the resignation of Attorney General Eric Holder; the facts show that the blame was entirely misplaced. Yes, the ATFE allowed guns to cross the border with hopes of tracking them to the leaders of Mexican drug cartels. But, thanks to Arizona’s loose gun laws, guns have been trafficked across the border for decades. Fast & Furious was created out of frustration with the courts’ refusal to allow charges against so-called straw buyers. The hope was that, by tracking the guns, the ATFE would be able to disrupt the pipeline of illegal weapons.

With regard to Benghazi, contrary to an endless stream of Teapublican propaganda, 7 non-partisan investigations have found absolutely no wrongdoing by the administration or anyone else. There were no orders for rescuers to stand down. And absolutely no evidence of an administration cover-up. It was simply an unexpected and spontaneous attack by terrorists resulting in the deaths of 4 Americans…the kind of attack that led to many more deaths in American embassies under previous administrations. Yet, despite the findings of 7 investigations, Teapublicans are still insisting on spending millions more for yet another investigation by a “select” committee of Teapublican fools.

As for the IRS scandal, there is little evidence of wrong-doing. Yes, Lois Lerner and her IRS colleagues compiled a list of watch words indicating a political committee disguised as a charitable non-profit in order to ferret out those intent on skirting election laws to flood political campaigns with dark money. Yes, that list included numerous words used by Teapublican groups. And, yes, more Teapublican groups were subjected to extra scrutiny by the IRS. But it is also true that, thanks to the Koch brothers and other right wing billionaires, more Teapublican groups had applied for non-profit status than Democratic groups. Moreover, following a series of questionable Supreme Court decisions, Lerner’s IRS department was overwhelmed with such requests. And none of the groups affected were denied such status.

Finally, the Teapublican’s weakest attempt to scaremonger was the Ebola “scandal.” So far, only two people have died of the disease in the US. And though it appears that the Dallas hospital was ill-prepared to deal with the disease, the CDC and NIH quickly responded. There have been no further events and no “epidemic” despite the fact that Teapublicans dramatically cut the budget for the Center for Disease Control, making it unable to conduct necessary research.

And what were the Obama administration’s failures in all of these scandals? None. Yet, thanks to Teapublican control of Congress, the investigations, and the propaganda, will continue.

UPDATE: It is estimated that the direct costs of investigations by Issa’s committee have exceeded more than $26 million to date. The indirect costs of the time needed to provide thousands of documents in compliance with the committee’s demands may have exceeded $1 trillion.