Dear Governor Brewer,
I know you've received a great deal of correspondence in regard to your position as our state's Racist in Chief. That must be taking up an awful lot of your time, but I hope you'll fit my letter into your busy schedule, because this isn't about that.
This is about the special election you wanted, the one wherein the citizens of Arizona get to decide whether or not to impose upon themselves a one-cent sales tax. With the threat of even more cuts to education and public safety held over our heads, it doesn't seem so much like a vote as participation (from the bad end of things) in an overt act of blackmail.
I'm actually one of those lucky people who gets to send in an early ballot. I just wanted you to know that I filled out that ballot today and will be sending it in tomorrow, a good two weeks ahead of schedule.
I voted 'no'. It's not just that, as a guy with no kids, I have no skin in the game. My decision was based more on principle than greed; I am, after all, not a Republican.
First of all, it's not as though Arizona is doing a very good job of educating our children, regardless of how much we spend (or don't spend). We're what, 49th overall? Thank God for Arkansas, I guess. I also believe we are over-policed, with multiple layers of law enforcement, each with bloated budgets and too much power.
The other thing is that I don't believe that you, or any of your conservative cronies in the state legislature, would really be so stupid as to cut education funding even deeper than y'all already have. It would be - even in a state with such a large retiree population - political suicide. If that would shorten y'all's reign of idiocy in Arizona, well, I'm all for that.
On the other hand, it almost seems as if you want to further slash scholastic appropriations, which would explain why you would foist this sales tax vote upon a public that is notoriously averse to taxation. But that would be giving y'all way too much credit.
I figure if the majority of voters agree with me, and I suspect they do, that you'll find that money elsewhere. Maybe it will come from property taxes, maybe it will come from an increase in corporate taxes, maybe you'll turn I-10 into a toll road. I don't really care how you do it, or if you do it at all.
Arizona already has one of the highest sales tax rates in the country. Now the City of Phoenix has implemented a 2 percent sales tax on food, I hardly think that now is the time for you Republicans to ride in on our backs to save education and public safety funding from the perilous position in which y'all have put them.
I hope this letter has, at least momentarily, taken your mind off the fact that the anti-immigrant bill you signed has made our beautiful state appear to be so terribly ugly on the national stage. And, ah, good luck in November.
Don't worry. It'll probably be okay. Thanks to generations of GOP efforts, most of us are just as dumb as you are.
pH 4.28.1o
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