Recently, the Arizona Attorney General settled civil rights cases involving Uber Eats, Postmates, and DoorDash in a case he was corporations with the “best of intentions” doing the “wrong thing.” The “wrong thing,” in this case, was offering “price distinctions based on a person’s race.”
The corporations in question planned on waiving delivery fees for black-owned restaurants. The Attorney General’s Office (AGO) found that the plan squarely violated equal access laws and the corporations were charged with public accommodations discrimination based on race.
The AGO alleged that the corporations unlawfully discriminated against non-Black owned restaurants and their patrons, in violation of the Arizona Civil Rights Act (ACRA).
“Even with the best of intentions, corporations can do the wrong thing. Altering the price of goods or services based on race is illegal,” said the Attorney General in a press release. “My office opened these investigations and pursued these settlements to protect civil rights and ensure businesses offer their services and products based on equal and neutral criteria.”
It is with the same good intentions that companies are doing the wrong thing across the country by funding “diversity,” “equity,” “inclusion,” and “anti-racist” programs in school districts.
There is little doubt that the average company participating in the promotion of programs based on the aforementioned buzz words believe that they are advancing civil rights and social harmony. Unfortunately, nothing could be further from the truth. The Critical Race-based programs are creating deep divides and distrust in communities just as the Critical theorists intended.
Given that the majority of corporations exist for the most part because of capitalism, it is hard to conceive that they would ever knowingly support programs based on Western-Marxist philosophy, but that is exactly what they are doing.
Some more cynical observers suspect that the mega-corps are funding the “antiracist movement” in order to divide the middle- and lower-classes and thus keep them conquered. While the cynics might find a rare case, for the majority of companies it is the trust they have in educators that is driving their funding decision-making.
As it stands, corporations with the best of intentions are doing the wrong thing and creating nightmares for parents and children. I have confidence that this is not the intended outcome.
Contrary to the implications made by “antiracists,” parents are not objecting to “diversity,” “equity,” “inclusion,” and “anti-racist” programs in school districts because they are bigots. It is quite the opposite: they do not want their children growing up to be the segregationists – the bigots – the Critical Race Theory-based proponents want them to be.
Companies have mostly relied on national and local chambers that mostly relied local educational organizations to decide where and what educational programs they funded. In the past, that process delivered good outcomes. Now, with the over-representation of the National Education Association by a wide margin on local school boards and state organizations like the Arizona School Board Association, the product of corporate spending on our classrooms can only lead to a proliferation of anti-capitalist, anti-corporatist, anti-American pedagogy.
As a result, it is essential that the small businesses that are the backbone of middle-America and the large corporations that benefit the most from them re-evaluate the resources they rely on to determine to whom those charitable dollars flow.
Don’t count your chickens until they hatch. That age old adage came into play Monday for Speaker of the House Rusty Bowers when he was unable to secure a yes vote one of the 31 House Republicans, leading to the defeat of three budget bills before the speaker called it a day.
The 60-member House is now recessed until Thursday while budget negotiators are expected to regroup and figure out how to get Rep. David Cook on board with 11 budget bills which need to be passed by June 30 to avoid a state government shutdown.
Cook voted with every Democrat in the House, leading to the defeat the HB2899 and HB2900, which included a cornerstone piece of budget legislation to transition Arizona to a flat rate income tax. His no-vote also led to the defeat of HB2907, a vital transportation budget bill. All three votes died on a 30 to 30 vote.
A major concern is how to garner Cook’s support without renewing an earlier rift among nearly a dozen Republicans who last week were demanding major amendments be made to some of the budget bills. Their dissension led to an 11-day recess that only ended Monday when Bowers called everyone back to work.
It is unclear why Cook remained the only member of the House Republican Caucus to not support any of the bills or amendments put forth for vote Monday. And if Cook had a reason, he wasn’t publicly sharing it.
Others, however, had plenty to say about Cook’s votes, including the Arizona Free Enterprise Club (AFEC). In a tweet, the small business groups tweeted “Shame on Rep. David Cook” after he voted with Democrats to protect the Prop 208 tax hike on small business owners.
“If David Cook continues to carry the water for Red4Ed and the Unions, Arizona will remain one of the HIGHEST small business income tax states in the country!” the tweet read.
One longtime lobbyist quipped, “yep, not a good look to seem left of the Lefties.”
Even the Republican Liberty Caucus turned on Cook, stating he helped Democrats “block the tax cuts in the current budget proposal” even though Cook has been open for several weeks about his displeasure with the budget that came to the House and Senate with Gov. Doug Ducey’s blessing.
For AFEC’s president Scot Mussi, the original budget package included some concerning special interest tax incentives, which he described as giveaways benefiting a few select businesses and industries that were unnecessary and unpopular within the Republican majority in the House.
Shame on Rep. David Cook, the ONLY REPUBLICAN voting with Democrats to protect the Prop 208 tax hike on small business. If David Cook continues to carry the water for Red4Ed and the Unions, Arizona will remain one of the HIGHEST small business income tax states in the country! pic.twitter.com/P2QOS8kAHF
Yet Mussi believed those provisions would be removed via amendments on Monday so that all 31 Republicans would be on board. Instead, every amendment put forth for the three bills considered Monday were defeated, as were the bills themselves.
As Republicans attack Cook’s votes, others like Mussi are hopeful a compromise can be worked out, so that tax cuts and tax relief can get approved. That includes the plan to transition Arizona over three years to a flat rate income tax. And Mussi says don’t believe the arguments that the budget bills are simply designed for the rich, particularly with a flat rate tax plan.
It is important to note, Mussi explained, that the recent passage of Proposition 208 now has Arizona with the ninth highest small business tax rate in the country. And Arizona’s rate is higher than nearby Nevada, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico and Texas.
“The reality is that even after the tax cuts are implemented, high income earners will still be paying nearly twice as much (4.5%) as low and middle income households (2.5%),” he explained to AZ Free News. “Additionally, opponents of the tax plan leave out the fact that much of the tax relief will go to small business owners. This tax cut package makes Arizona competitive again for small business, something opponents to the plan would not like to see happen.”
In a decision seen by some as desperation and others as a brilliant strategic move, House Speaker Rusty Bowers has ordered his 59 fellow Representatives back to work Monday to take up 11 stalled budget bills.
Whether Bowers and other House leaders can pull together 31 votes -the same number of the Republican House caucus- is unclear, but House Majority Leader Ben Toma believes it is time for members to put up or shut up.
Amendments are expected to be proposed for all the bills but there is no guarantee any bill will receive the requisite 31 votes for passage. But Toma said last week taking the bills to the floor will force each representative to go on the record with a vote, something that could come back to haunt some lawmakers if the state government is shut down due to no new budget.
Toma spent months on the budget team before the budget bills were put forth last month with the blessing of Gov. Doug Ducey. He said it is a “constitutional duty” for representatives to vote on the bills, but for those who believe what is on the table is “not good enough, they’re going to need to explain why it’s not good enough, to their constituents and pretty much everyone else.”
Among the issues is how much of the more than $1 billion surplus to spend now, how much to turn toward the State’s debt, and how much to give back to taxpayers via tax cuts. There is also disagreement over how to phase in a flat rate income tax that is expected to result in a 10 to 12 percent drop in state revenues.
Much of the opposition to the tax cuts and flat rate tax plan are based on complaints about the expected affects due to the state’s shared revenue agreement with cities and towns. If less revenue is coming into the state, then less revenue will be received by municipalities, unless the shared revenue agreement is amended.
Last week Speaker Pro Tempore Travis Grantham said it was time to look beyond who was at fault with the original budget plan that did not have better support. Instead, he said it was time to work on finding a consensus to get a budget passed so the legislature can adjourn.
But for that to happen, Grantham says some lawmakers need to realize the surplus “is the people’s money, it’s not the government’s money” and move forward with approving tax cuts.
“The issue we’re having is there is so much money in the pot and there is so many people with so many wants and so many needs we’re having trouble staying focused on the finish line,” he said. “We just need to focus on the budget, we need to focus on cutting taxes, and we need to focus on getting out of there.”
There is also the issue of 22 bills, all Republican supported and some with unanimous bipartisan support, which Ducey vetoed out of frustration with the progress being made on the budget bills. Some legislators are insisting that there needs to be assurance that those bills will all be reintroduced and signed by Ducey before they will vote for the budget.
The Senate is currently set to come back June 10, although Senate President Karen Fann could call everyone back on 24-hours. Like the House, Fann has a handful of budget-objectors in the Republican caucus whose votes are necessary for passage of the budget bills.
“15 days to slow the spread.” Do you remember that? It was all the rage in the media in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. You’d hear it on news broadcasts. You’d see it in commercials. And you’d read it as you scrolled through the various social media platforms.
But it didn’t take long before those calls to “slow the spread,” became calls to “cancel everything.” And too many government leaders across the country bought into it by instituting huge lockdowns and other draconian measures.
Certainly, COVID was an issue that warranted some action, but it never should have included crushing small businesses or trampling on the rights of the people.
And yet, here we are more than a year later. The states with the most severe COVID restrictions are experiencing much slower economic recovery than those that fully reopened.
Blue states are struggling
California still has not reopened, despite being the first state to lockdown back in March 2020. Finally, after months of inconsistencies, confusing decisions, and hypocrisy from leaders like Governor Newsom, the state appears to be poised to fully reopen by mid-June.
Not surprisingly, there’s been a mass exodus from the state, causing it to lose a seat in the House of Representatives. And those that have remained are so fed up that they are trying to recall their governor.
Soon the 425th Fighter Squadron, a Republic of Singapore air force F-16 Fighting Falcon training unit currently based at Luke Air Force Base in Arizona, will be calling Ebbing Air National Guard Base in Fort Smith, Arkansas home.
The Department of the Air Force has selected Ebbing as the preferred location to establish an F-35 Lightning II training center for Foreign Military Sales participants.
This decision, according to the Air Force, comes after several U.S. ally and partner nations showed interest in conducting F-35 training at a U.S.-based F-35 training facility. Ramp and airspace capacity constraints at Luke AFB limit expansion.
The Ebbing training center will have capacity for up to 36 fighter aircraft.
“The F-35 program is a multi-service, multi-national effort that dramatically increases interoperability between the U.S. and other F-35 partner nations,” said Acting Secretary of the Air Force John P. Roth in a press release. “We are fully committed to the F-35 as the cornerstone of the U.S. Air Force’s fighter fleet and look forward to building stronger relationships with nations who want to work by our side.”
Following this decision, the Department of the Air Force will conduct an environmental impact analysis to confirm Ebbing ANGB can support the new F-35 and F-16 missions.
The Department of the Air Force anticipates making the final basing decision in spring 2023.
