Americans are getting fed up with their government. Why not remove some useless government-provided “stuff” from our lives? It would be cheap and easy.
For example, Daylight Savings Time (DST) can’t compete for attention with issues like inflation, immigration, and geopolitical threats, so it just hangs around. We would be better off without it.
DST was implemented during World War I to help conserve fuel and extend the working hours for which there was sunlight. Some of the early objections to DST were that it was a bad idea to tinker with God’s time and that it upset cows’ digestion to be fed earlier in the day. We blew past these, but no compelling replacement rationale for DST has ever developed.
Although it has been marketed as a fuel saving strategy, an Energy Department study in 2008 showed no effect on overall vehicle gas consumption attributable to DST. Other academic studies also found no benefit in crime statistics, travel times, or trade due to DST, while school and work attendance suffer slightly during the shifts.
Two states, Hawaii and most of Arizona, don’t observe DST anyway, so we have only to endure badly timed phone calls from the East Coast and remembering to adjust the times of televised sports broadcasts. Twenty states have petitioned to go on DST permanently but lack the required federal permission to do so. So, the semi-annual shifts persist as an unattractive irritant with little constituency, which exist mainly because of political inertia.
Then there’s our old friend, the humble penny. Americans have considerable nostalgia for the little guy: a penny saved is a penny earned and all that. Plus it has a picture of Lincoln on it. But cumulative inflation over the years has left the penny less than valueless. In 2024, it cost the U.S. 3.7 cents to produce and distribute a penny, something so colossally stupid only government could even contemplate it.
Moreover, pennies make cash transactions more cumbersome and thus more time-consuming. The average American makes about one cent every two seconds, so if it takes her more than two seconds to fish out and spend a penny, you’re losing money there too.
All these small injuries add up more than you might think. Last year, the U.S. minted 3.2 billion pennies, mostly because they are so worthless that they’re often not returned to circulation, ending up “under the couch cushions.” Do the math.
This is a true no-brainer. There isn’t a significant pro-penny political constituency, and it is logistically simple for Congress to simply order the U.S. Mint to stop making pennies. We eliminated the half-penny in 1857, and life went on. The retail economy is going over to credit cards anyway, so the nickel should also be slated for elimination before long.
HOV lanes were created in the 1970s and 80s in an effort to reduce the total number of cars on the road and (again) reduce fuel consumption. Their creation was part of the great surge of interest in reducing hydrocarbon emissions in the belief that eliminating greenhouse gases would be a feasible way to save the planet.
HOV lanes have never come close to achieving the anticipated result. According to the Reason Foundation, HOV lane miles have gone from 1,500 in 1985 to over 4,000 today. Yet carpooling among commuters dropped from 19.7% in 1980 to under 9% by 2019. The number of people who commute solo has actually risen from 64% to 80% in spite of all the inducements.
The massive investments in transit by our centralized transportation planners have also been fruitless, actually reducing the number of commuters using transit from 6.4% in 1980 to 5.0% in 2019.
Why have HOV lanes failed? Mostly because drivers just aren’t that interested. But enforcement is costly and ineffective. Studies have found that up to 84% of vehicles in HOV lanes are there illegally.
Moreover, during peak periods when freeways are slowed by overutilization, HOV lanes can contribute to the problem by taking a much needed but underutilized lane out of commission. The added freeway congestion meanwhile contributes to the emissions problem HOV lanes are supposed to ameliorate.
It’s time. Just do it.
Dr. Thomas Patterson, former Chairman of the Goldwater Institute, is a retired emergency physician. He served as an Arizona State senator for 10 years in the 1990s, and as Majority Leader from 93-96. He is the author of Arizona’s original charter schools bill.
At the April 1 meeting of the Scottsdale Unified School District (SUSD) Governing Board, the main topic of discussion was once again the FY2025-2026 budget. As usual, SUSD Chief Financial Officer Shannon Crosier presented slides filled with numerous figures and did her best to put a positive spin on the information, carefully avoiding direct answers to the questions posed. At times, questions from Board Members Pittinsky and Sharkey seemed to include the answers, perhaps as a reminder of the narrative they were expected to follow.
However, the information presented made it clear that Superintendent Dr. Menzel is once again cutting teachers and instructional staff to deal with the financial impact of declining enrollment. Much of this decline can be traced back to his mismanagement of the district and the implementation of controversial policies like social-emotional learning (SEL), which critics argue undermine academic instruction and teacher morale.
Proponents of SEL, including Dr. Menzel, argue that by addressing students’ psychological challenges, academic achievement will follow. However, independent research, especially outside the U.S. teaching establishment, shows little evidence supporting this theory. You don’t need another study to confirm this; just look at the student proficiency scores in the Arizona Auditor General’s annual school district spending analysis report.
In FY24, SUSD spent 54.4% of its budget on instructional services, slightly below its peer group’s average of 55.2%. Over the past five years, spending on instruction in SUSD has dropped by 1.7%, while spending on student support has increased by 2.6%. During this period, SUSD’s enrollment has decreased by 8.4%, a trend that directly correlates with Dr. Menzel’s tenure. In the 2024 financial report, SUSD cut 59 instructional positions, added 71 student support positions, and increased the number of support and administrative roles by 44. As enrollment continues to fall, instructional spending declines, while support services and administrative costs rise. Yet, despite this shift in priorities, the effectiveness of SEL in improving academic performance has not been proven. Rather, the opposite is true.
For example, in FY24, in SUSD, only 55% of students passed the state math assessment, 61% passed English Language Arts (ELA), and just 41% passed science—an average drop of 12% since 2019. These results point to an inverse correlation between increased spending on support services and academic performance. This fact is well-documented in various unbiased studies.
Dr. Menzel, however, seems undeterred by the data, continuing his agenda of reducing instructional positions while increasing funding for social-emotional support services, including hiring more social workers and psychologists. All of this is happening despite clear declines in academic achievement.
At the meeting, it was apparent that Dr. Menzel has little regard for Board Members Carney and Werner’s requests for cost-cutting measures they made during the first budget meeting. In response to a question from Member Pittinsky about the possibility of future funding, Dr. Menzel stated, “There’s a path to land the plane to address those priorities of the board.” A “path” to address the Board’s priorities? The Governing Board is legally responsible for the district’s financial performance, and Dr. Menzel’s role is to present options that align with the Board’s priorities now, not at some unspecified future date based on potential additional funds.
Crosier claimed that the district had reviewed its costs carefully and had cut 13 positions from district-level departments. However, when questioned, she revealed that only one of those positions was not vacant and that no one had lost their job or experienced a reduction in force. So, how does this translate to cost savings?
When Member Carney inquired about her request for cuts to discretionary spending—such as travel, conferences, and consulting fees, Crosier had no answer. Carney also asked what steps she had taken to preserve the full-time assistant principal positions, which were requested by the Board, community members, and teachers alike. Once again, no answer.
Dr. Menzel’s disregard for the Board’s requests, coupled with his continued expansion of district staffing in non-instructional areas, raises serious concerns. One slide presented during the meeting, titled “Department Level Positions History – All Funds,” listed changes for FY25-26, but the data presented was incomplete and lacked the actual number of staff in each department. Showing the true staffing numbers would prompt uncomfortable questions, such as, “Why are these positions necessary?” and “Are they more important than keeping teachers in the classroom?”
According to the Auditor General, SUSD’s per-student administrative spending is 15% higher than the peer group average. Meanwhile, the public comment portion of the meeting included heartfelt testimonies from teachers, including the president of the Scottsdale Education Association (SEA), who expressed the growing difficulty of teaching amid rising costs, particularly healthcare. Next year, the district plans to offer teachers only a 1% raise while shifting more of the healthcare burden onto the teachers.
We heard stories from teachers struggling to make ends meet, including one who is leaving the district after years of service, and others—one with 27 years of experience—facing insurmountable medical expenses.
Because state funding for education is based on enrollment, the root of the district’s financial troubles lies in the decline of enrollment, which has been exacerbated by Dr. Menzel’s policies and his focus on non-academic priorities. The Auditor General tracks school district enrollment and assesses the financial risks associated with declining enrollment. According to these trends, SUSD has been rated as “high risk” due to its decreasing enrollment numbers.
In FY24, while districts across the state facing declining enrollment worked to reduce operating costs, SUSD failed to make similar adjustments. The statewide average teacher salary increased by 34.6% between FY17 and FY24, reaching $65,113, while SUSD’s average teacher salary rose by just 27.7% to $63,151—$1,962 below the state average. This is a 1.5% decrease in the average teacher salary for FY24 from FY23. Moreover, the average base salary for teachers with less than three years of experience rose by 24.4%, while those with more than four years of experience saw an increase of less than 0.5%. This discrepancy is contributing to the loss of experienced teachers, many of whom are leaving the district. This creates a younger teacher population at SUSD. Recent teaching graduates are more likely to support Dr. Menzel’s policies than older graduates. This is what he wants.
Several speakers at the meeting called for more state funding to address these challenges. While their frustration is understandable, their anger is misplaced. The real issue, as outlined by the Auditor General, is not a lack of state funding but rather mismanagement by Dr. Menzel and the Governing Board, which has consistently approved budgetary decisions that prioritize administrative and support staff over instructional spending.
According to the Auditor General in FY24, statewide school district spending increased by over $500 million to $13.1 billion, with per-student increases, including instruction, over FY23. Despite this increase in funding, the district allocated a smaller portion of the increase in spending to instruction than in prior years. As a result, the FY24 instructional spending percentage is the lowest since the Auditor General started monitoring in FY2001.
The decline in enrollment, because of Dr. Menzel’s continued focus on implementing SEL and bloating administrative positions, will only worsen SUSD’s financial situation. The Governing Board will need to face this ongoing problem for years to come unless drastic changes are made.
Rather than calling for more state funding for education, the SEA should be calling for the removal of Dr. Menzel as the first step in making the changes needed in SUSD.
Unfortunately for students and parents alike, rather than “landing the plane”, what we are witnessing is a controlled crash of the SUSD plane.
Mike Bengert is a husband, father, grandfather, and Scottsdale resident advocating for quality education in SUSD for over 30 years.
Adrian Fontes has proven himself to be good at two things during his tenure as Arizona’s Secretary of State: losing in court and throwing tantrums. It’s really unfortunate. The state’s top election official is not supposed to be taken to court on a regular basis—especially for, you know, his repeated attempts to undermine election integrity. And of course, throwing tantrums should be more characteristic of toddlers, not a government official. But Fontes can’t help himself.
In his latest tirade, Fontes joined Hillary Clinton’s old consigliere Marc Elias on Democracy Docket to whine about President Trump’s recent executive order to preserve and protect the integrity of American elections. Toward the end of the discussion, Elias asked Fontes about the multiple lawsuits against his Elections Procedures Manual (EPM), which he lost to us and Arizona Republican lawmakers. As has become all too common with our Secretary of State, he responded how you would expect someone to respond when he knows he can’t win. He attacked our organization and degraded our 15,000 activists and donors.
Yes. That’s right. The top election official in our state, who is supposed to remain unbiased and simply do his job to protect election integrity, lashed out against us and told people not to donate to us because we won our lawsuit against him and his illegal EPM.
Ummm…news flash, Mr. Fontes. One of the reasons our donors support our cause is to stop government officials like you from circumventing the law. So, when we win, they feel good because their money was put to effective use.
But we shouldn’t expect someone with such low character as Adrian Fontes to understand that. After all, this isn’t the first time he’s tried to use the power of his office to attack and intimidate organizations like ours that participate in the election process…
Arizona families have watched a quiet crisis unfold in their local school districts. Board meetings once focused on academics and fiscal responsibility have become battlegrounds for political agendas and bureaucratic overreach. Parents have been silenced, transparency denied, and accountability brushed aside.
In the past few years, Arizonans have witnessed a series of troubling events that show just how far some school boards have strayed:
In Scottsdale Unified, the board president’s father compiled a secret dossier on outspoken parents—including photos of their children—an alarming breach of public trust.
Washington Elementary severed ties with Arizona Christian University over student teachers’ religious beliefs, only to reverse course after legal pressure.
In Isaac School District, state officials placed the district under receivership after uncovering a $15 million financial crisis, triggering multiple investigations.
These aren’t isolated incidents—they’re symptoms of a larger collapse in trust, academic focus, and respect for families. And for too long, parents had no organized way to push back.
A Movement Takes Root
That tide is now turning—led by unapologetically conservative school board leaders who are rejecting political indoctrination and delivering real results that put students, families, and local values back at the center of education.
Founded in 2021, the Arizona Coalition of School Board Members is a non-partisan, 501(c)(3) nonprofit committed to restoring integrity, local control, and academic excellence in our public schools. This isn’t a national agenda—it’s a homegrown movement, created by and for Arizonans, to restore excellence and accountability in our schools. While others raise awareness, the Coalition equips board members with the tools, legal support, and training to lead with confidence and principle.
Unlike legacy education groups that push top-down mandates, the Coalition promotes governance rooted in Arizona values—academic rigor, parental involvement, and education freedom. With members in more than 50 school districts across 10 counties, the Coalition is building a movement of student-first leaders who aren’t just calling for change—they’re delivering it.
Real Wins Across Arizona
Coalition-backed board members aren’t just talking about reform—they’re making it happen. Here are three local victories already making an impact:
Apache Junction Unified – Cell Phone Use Policy Limits phone use during the school day, restoring classroom focus and discipline. It’s a practical fix to a problem every parent and teacher sees daily.
Higley Unified – Staff Health and Safety Bans COVID-19 vaccine and mask mandates for staff, reinforcing health freedom and parental values. This affirms the district’s commitment to individual rights, medical privacy, and protection from government overreach.
Peoria Unified – Student Privacy Policy Ensures multi-occupancy restrooms and overnight accommodations are designated by biological sex, while offering private alternatives as needed. It’s a firm stand for parental expectations, student safety, and local authority.
Empowering Voters, Building Leaders
Change doesn’t happen without an engaged public. That’s why Friends of the Coalition, a 501(c)(4), is leading a statewide voter education effort focused on school board elections and the issues affecting classrooms, transparency, and parental rights.
More than 500 individuals have attended our free School Board Bootcamp, designed to demystify the board member’s role. Dozens of those participants have since been elected—first in 2022, and again in 2024.
This is more than education—it’s about building a conservative leadership bench. Graduates of this movement are now serving in school districts, the Arizona State Senate, and even the Arizona Corporation Commission.
This Is the Moment
Arizona’s public education system is at a crossroads. Will it continue down a path dominated by bureaucracy and ideology—or return to a model that respects families, demands excellence, and puts students first?
With the Federal Department of Education steadily returning power to states and local communities, school boards now carry unprecedented responsibility. That shift brings both urgency and opportunity. Local leadership is no longer secondary—it’s the front line.
Thanks to the Arizona Coalition of School Board Members and Friends of the Coalition, Arizona conservatives are executing a strategic, multi-pronged plan—educating voters, equipping leaders, and empowering bold school board members.
This isn’t rhetoric. It’s results.
Whether you attend a Bootcamp, become a Coalition member, support candidates who share your values, or make a tax-deductible gift to sustain this work, there’s a role for everyone in this movement. The future of Arizona education will be decided by those who show up.
News broke last week that the Biden Department of Energy (DOE), led by former Secretary Jennifer Granholm, was so dedicated to the Biden White House’s efforts to damage the dynamic U.S. LNG export industry that it resorted to covering up a 2023 DOE study which found that growth in exports provide net benefits to the environment and economy.
“The Energy Department has learned that former Secretary Granholm and the Biden White House intentionally buried a lot of data and released a skewed study to discredit the benefits of American LNG,” one DOE source told Nick Pope of the Daily Caller News Foundation.. “[T]he administration intentionally deceived the American public to advance an agenda that harmed American energy security, the environment and American lives.”
And “deceived” is the best word to describe what happened here. When the White House issued an order signed by the administration’s very busy autopen to invoke what was supposed to be a temporary “pause” in permitting of LNG infrastructure, it was done at the behest of far-left climate czar John Podesta, with Granholm’s full buy-in. As I’ve cataloged here in past stories, this cynical “pause” was based on the flimsiest possible rationale, and the “science” supposedly underlying it was easily debunked and fell completely apart over time.
But the ploy moved ahead anyway, with Granholm and her DOE staff ordered to conduct their own study related to the advisability of allowing further growth of the domestic LNG industry. We know now that study already existed but hadn’t reached the hoped-for conclusions.
The two unfounded fears at hand were concerns that rising exports of U.S. LNG would a) cause domestic prices to rise for consumers, and b) would result in higher emissions than alternative energy sources. As the Wall Street Journal notes, a draft of that 2023 study “shows that increased U.S. LNG exports would have negligible effects on domestic prices while modestly reducing global greenhouse gas emissions. The latter is largely because U.S. LNG exports would displace coal in power production and gas exports from other countries such as Russia.”
An energy secretary and climate advisor interested in seeking truth based on science would have made that 2023 study public, and the “pause” would have been a short-lived, temporary thing. Instead, the Biden officials decided to try to bury this inconvenient truth, causing the “pause” to endure right through the final day of the Biden regime with a clear intention of turning it into permanent policy had Kamala Harris and her “summer of joy” campaign managed to prevail on Nov. 5.
Fortunately for the country, voters chose more wisely, and President Trump included ending this deceitful “pause” exercise as part of his Day One agenda. No autopen was involved.
So, the thing is resolved in favor of truth and common sense now, but it is important to understand exactly what was at stake here, exactly how important an industry these Biden officials were trying to freeze in place.
In an interview on Fox News Monday, current Energy Secretary Chris Wright did just that, pointing out that, fifteen years ago, America was “the largest importer of natural gas in the world. Today, we’re the largest exporter.”
He went onto add that, “the Biden administration put a pause on LNG exports 14 months ago, January of 2024, sending a message to the world that maybe the US isn’t going to continue to grow our exports. Think of the extra leverage that gives Russia, the extra fear that gives the Europeans or the Asians that are dying for more American energy.”
Then, Wright supplied the kicker: “They did this in spite of their own study that showed increasing LNG exports would reduce greenhouse gas emissions and have a negligible impact on price.” It was an effort, Wright concludes, to kill what he says is “America’s greatest energy advantage.”
This incident is a stain on the Biden administration and its senior leaders. The stain becomes more indelible when we remember that, when asked by Speaker Mike Johnson why he had signed that order, Joe Biden himself had no memory of doing so, telling Johnson, “I didn’t do that.”
Sadly, we know now there’s a good chance Mr. Biden was telling the speaker the truth. But someone did it, and it’s a travesty.
David Blackmon is a contributor to The Daily Caller News Foundation, an energy writer, and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.
In 2022, the Arizona Free Enterprise Club crafted the blueprint to stop illegals from voting in our elections, authoring landmark legislation that was signed into law, becoming the first state in the nation requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote with HB2492. Now, states around the country are taking notice and adopting our model, and just last week President Trump signed an Executive Order to do it nationally. Arizona was just the tip of the spear, and the dominoes are finally beginning to fall.
As of this week, two states require proof of citizenship to register to vote. Arizona was the first with HB2492. Earlier this year, Wyoming became the second. And now, the Texas Senate is considering a bill that is nearly identical to the Arizona Model, which would make them the third.
Arizona has long been at the forefront of this issue. In 2004, Arizona voters overwhelmingly approved Prop 200 to require proof of citizenship to vote. After nearly a decade of litigation, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed us to only implement the requirement on our own voter registration form but prevented us from requiring it on the federal form. The result over the decade following the decision was the complete proliferation of the “Federal Only Voting” list, amounting to tens of thousands of potential noncitizens registering and voting in our elections…
