Arizona’s future belongs to its citizens. Only their votes should decide it, foreign money should not influence it, and they should not be left waiting weeks for answers after every election.
Proposition 144 puts those principles into Arizona’s Constitution.
You can read it for yourself. It is short, fits on one page, and in less than 200 words, it ensures that only US Citizens can register and vote, requires that every voter must show government issued ID before casting their ballot, bans foreign money in any of our elections, and allows all voters to tabulate their ballots on election day at their polling place and have their votes posted election night.
Together, these reforms will result in more secure elections and faster and more accurate election results.
Prop 144 Will Speed Up Results with On-Site Tabulation
Rarely do Republicans and Democrats find common ground on election policy. But in this year’s Maricopa County primary, officials from both parties recognized the benefit of an option Prop 144 would guarantee statewide: on-site tabulation…
Remember the pop-culture definition of insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result? This fits like a hand to glove when we contrast the Prop 428 campaign against Peoria Unified School District’s (PUSD) failed leadership, increased cases of adult sexual misconduct, and dismal academic performance.
Peoria voters should understand that Prop 428 is not a new tax—it’s a continuation of the 13% maintenance and operations (M&O) override that’s been in place since the mid-90s. When voters rejected the M&O during the 2025 special election, it sparked panic among administrators (a.k.a. the 6-figure mafia) and teachers’ union members (a.k.a. union thugs). Educators—including those who stay silent when unethical and immoral conduct occurs on campus—are suddenly very vocal about Prop 428.
When I reviewed the fiscal 2024-25 State Superintendent Annual Report, I discovered that PUSD’s local, county and state M&O total revenue was nearly $290 million. Am I the only one who wants to know exactly how, when and where that money was spent in two years?
I emailed the school board and the Deputy Superintendent of Business Operations, Marcie Rodriguez, to request a presentation clarifying the district’s spending patterns. I also asked for confirmation on whether interim superintendent Tahlya Visintainer—who also oversees human resources—is still reaping Chief Personnel Officer pay and benefits. This is the position she held until Dr. Ryan LaDouceur was ousted from the interim superintendent role.
One PUSD educator reached out to seek my support for Prop 428. She shared her love for teaching young students and said that since the 2025 override failed, her school’s financial shortfalls sometimes forced staff members to choose between purchasing toilet paper or copy paper. She said she also solicited donations from relatives and community members when she couldn’t purchase the items directly.
I did my due diligence of making a public comment and requesting a resolution for every teacher in this predicament. I also included it in my email to the board and Rodriguez, letting them know it’s entirely unacceptable for any high-level employees to receive perks, bonuses or special allowances when the most important people in the district (namely students) don’t have access to daily essentials.
I will post an update once I have answers to these questions.
I don’t believe the teacher who reached out to me was a union thug with a sob story. Union members are typically the bullying type. Their tears are false and their demands are tough. Teachers’ unions don’t exist to enhance students’ learning experience—they don’t even exist for teachers! Most members I know are activists who serve as the school district’s militant. They await deployment, coming out in ranks whenever the community needs to be manipulated or intimidated into silence.
Case in point, the Peoria Education Association (PEA) president Devon Moseler sits like a guard near the podium at every PUSD board meeting. Also, when former PEA president Trina Berg makes a public comment, her requests and suggestions usually top the agenda for the next board meeting. But who knows, this could all be a coincidence, right?
PEA President Devon Moseler at Peoria Unified board meetings.
As of publication, PUSD received its third notice of claim. Similar to the two students who filed a complaint against the district in the Centennial High School situation, this alleged victim has also claimed that the district was grossly negligent in the case involving former Peoria High School basketball coach Patrick Battillo (a.k.a. “Mr. ORNG”). ABC 15 Newsreported that Batillo was convicted of attempted exploitation of a minor and sentenced to three and half years in April.
For those unaware, PUSD has been served with four legal notices in one year—all of them accusing the district of negligence and failing to protect students from employee sexual misconduct. The two from Centennial HS students and one from a Peoria HS student are a combined total of $27,650,000, as of October 9. No amount has been disclosed in the case of former Sun Valley Elementary students who were abused by former teacher Ricky Ordway. Meanwhile, the district’s Prop 428 is an estimated $33,000,000, with an expiration date of seven years.
Since M&O funds are less regulated in terms of how the dollars are spent, is it not possible for the district to campaign on promises of improved arts, athletics and special needs programs but then reallocate those funds to cover expenses associated with pending lawsuits? Someone who knows how these things work should reach out to me. I think PUSD is luring voters into a bait and switch, and the teachers who support Prop 428 probably won’t see more than a few dimes if the measure is approved.
On the contrary, if voters pass Prop 320, they’ll remove some of the administrative controls that have led to financial mismanagement and corruption in many public schools. This statewide ballot measure requires districts with over 7,500 students, or counties with more than 500,000 residents, to allocate 60% of its operation budget to classrooms and teachers. In this case, the auditor general determines what meets the threshold or definition of “direct instructional expenses.” This is why organizations like the Arizona School Board Association (ASBA) and Save Our Schools Arizona (SOS) oppose Prop 320. They want to maintain the status quo and stick taxpayers with the bill.
Nevertheless, Peoria taxpayers don’t owe the district anything. If one or two failed overrides can cause everything to fall apart after 20 years of guaranteed 13% approval, then there’s a bigger problem that more money won’t fix. Students are falling through the cracks, school sites are lacking basic necessities, alleged predators and failed mandated reporters are thriving after leaving the district. It appears the only way to hold PUSD accountable is to let Prop 428 fail. At least with Prop 320, we have some assurance that site funds will go towards education.
With enrollment declining in PUSD, staff reductions and school closures are expected. This is what competition looks like in a state with a robust school choice movement. When we add up multiple cases of alleged adult sexual misconduct, anti-ICE protests, and a majority of students graduating without basic life skills, it’s clear why parents are exploring other options. A loss of market share in government education is net positive for the state and the nation at large. Parents are stepping up to do what God called them to do (Proverbs 22:6).
All this to simply say, Prop 320 makes sense but passing Prop 428 is insane.
Remember, elections have consequences.
Tiffany Benson is host ofThe Myth of Education Podcast. She has been a parental rights and student safety advocate since 2022.
There are some principles we like to think America settled a long time ago. Racial discrimination is wrong. Government should not treat people differently because of the color of their skin. And our public institutions should judge individuals based on their merit and character – not their race. Unfortunately, those previously settled principles have been completely undermined by the radical “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” (DEI) program.
This November, Arizona voters will have an opportunity to reaffirm that principle by voting YES on Proposition 142. The measure would strengthen Arizona’s constitutional protections against race-based discrimination and preferential treatment, close an existing loophole tied to federal funding, and prohibit some of the craftier ways public institutions have used to preserve race-based DEI policies and practices.
Isn’t Racial Discrimination Already Illegal?
Most people already believe it is unlawful for the government to discriminate based on race – and didn’t Arizona already prohibit it anyway?
Arizonans certainly thought they had.
In 2010, voters passed Proposition 107 by an almost 20-point margin, amending the state constitution to prohibit the state from discriminating against, or granting preferential treatment to, any person based on race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in public employment, public education, and public contracting.
This should have closed the door on government-sanctioned racial preferences in Arizona.
It is a common cliché to say that social media and the deluge of content we consume each day have significantly hampered, if not entirely destroyed, our attention spans. Sometimes it seems like memory itself may be a vestige of a bygone era, when we connected current events to past decisions and, almost like magic, learned to take different actions.
Current high energy prices are blamed on the war in Iran, which started seven months ago. While true, not all cost increases are the result of this relatively new market dynamic.
Numerous federal and state policy and regulatory choices made over more than a decade have played their own roles in current and past pain at the pump.
As recently as 2024, energy was rarely spoken of without its companion “sustainability,” by which advocates meant “transitioning” away from reliable fossil fuels to more intermittent sources (though this last part was not said out loud).
Actions matched that rhetoric. On day one in office, President Joe Biden canceled the Keystone XL pipeline project and was applauded for it. If he had not canceled it, more crude oil would have been brought to U.S. refineries, boosting fuel supplies and supporting lower prices. The Biden administration was overtly hostile to increased fossil fuel exploration and production, taking aggressive actions to strictly limit emissions from fossil fuel-powered electric generation plants, which would have led to numerous baseload plant closures for noncompliance.
Let’s not forget the 2024 LNG [liquified natural gas] export pause, where then-Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said that LNG was in the “rear-view mirror,” at CERAWeek, one of the world’s largest energy events. At a time when U.S. LNG companies were stepping in to fill the supply gap following Europe’s divorce settlement from Russian gas, our policymakers decided to hit the brakes.
Then there is the matter of the small refinery exemption (SRE) to the Renewable Fuel Standard, the federal requirement that fuel sold in the United States contain a minimum volume of renewable fuels. Enacted in 2005, this policy has incentivized numerous refineries to keep production below 75,000 barrels per day so they do not have to comply with onerous renewable fuel blending requirements. But good intentions do not make good policy. The program has been mired in overly bureaucratic administration and compliance nightmares, all the while keeping production at SRE-eligible refineries depressed.
There are also a host of state policy actions specifically designed to raise energy prices.
Cap-and-trade programs, which some states have adopted, put a price on emissions which increases fuel costs through refineries having to pay fees for producing gasoline and diesel. Likewise, low-carbon fuel standards, which also exist in a handful of states, add compliance costs and reduce refinery input flexibility, both of which increase your price at the pump.
State anti-energy price actions go beyond just costly emissions schemes and fuel blends. Led by California and New York, a handful of states have banned fracking or strictly curtailed oil and gas exploration, and across the Northeast, states have fought tooth and nail to block pipelines that bring crude oil and refined products to market.
The elected officials who run these states failed to investigate the real-world confluence of the results of these policies for energy availability and prices. They were focused on pursuing at any cost net zero, sustainability, ESG and “renewable” intermittent sources of energy.
Now they’re all preaching the gospel of energy affordability as if it can just be plucked out of thin air when needed.
Residents of states like California, Washington, Oregon, New York, Maryland and a few others are currently living with the natural result of decades of anti-fossil fuel policy agendas. But that’s not convenient to discuss.
Rather, amid price increases, those looking for a short-term political fix are, predictably, dusting off the usual playbook: export bans and additional taxes on companies for making a profit while serving market demands. And while those things may be tempting, especially with voters heading to the polls in a few weeks, we know, from memory, that they will have the opposite of their intended effect.
Instead, our leaders at both the state and federal levels should take a real, objective look at the energy policies on the books and ones under consideration and assess them through a simple lens: will this actually make energy more abundant and, therefore, more affordable?
It doesn’t take an expert to know which path to choose.
If memory serves, we’ve done it before. Hopefully, we can do it again.
Tala Goudarzi is a contributor to the Daily Caller News Foundation, partner at the Torridon Group, and the former Acting Assistant Secretary of the Office of Fossil Energy (FE) at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).
In George Orwell’s 1984, Big Brother needed telescreens, microphones, and cameras to watch citizens, extinguish the idea of a private life, and to tightly control their “decisions”.
Today, technology makes that job considerably easier. And some policies kick the door wide open to this kind of government invasion of privacy and manipulation.
Programs to tax, track, and limit citizens’ vehicle miles traveled (VMT) are exactly that kind of threat, and many states are experimenting with them to their own detriment. California, as per usual, is the cautionary tale to our West, perfectly demonstrating the extreme costs and loss of freedom that could come with importing these VMT ideas into Arizona.
Arizonans have a chance to stop this kind of government overreach before it takes hold here…
Thirteen states from Vermont to Hawaii have written a hard deadline into law: 100 percent carbon-free (CO2-free) or “clean” electricity, most by 2040 or 2045. Lawmakers sold these mandates as a bargain: cheaper power alongside cleaner air. Voters in those states are struggling with ever-increasing electricity bills. Which are increasing faster than non-mandate states.
The metric politicians lean on to make that case is the “levelized cost of energy” (LCOE), which ranks wind and solar as the cheapest sources of generation on the grid. The U.S. Energy Information Administration itself cautions that the ranking is misleading because LCOE reflects the cost to build and run a single generator. It says nothing about whether that generator can deliver power at 6 p.m. on a windless February evening, exactly when a grid needs it most.
Energy analysts, Isaac Orr and Mitch Rolling, answer the question EIA’s own number dodges. Their “Always On Levelized Cost of Energy” (AOLOC) model adds back everything a bare LCOE figure leaves out: backup generation, transmission, overbuilt capacity and the power curtailed to keep intermittent resources reliable.
Run through Minnesota’s grid, the model puts wind’s real cost at roughly $272 per megawatt-hour and solar’s at $472. Treat those as modeled estimates, not quoted market prices, but they are the most honest attempt anyone has made to price what these mandates actually cost.
Set those figures next to new natural gas plants, a resource that needs no matching backup fleet and can be built wherever demand is, saving transmission buildout, rather than wherever the wind happens to blow, which needs vast amounts of expensive transmission.
Twelve more states carry the same 100 percent commitment on their books. Together, representing more than a quarter of the nation’s electricity use, they all lean on the same LCOE sales pitch that Minnesota did.
A nationwide review of utility rate filings by Orr and Rolling already shows the pattern in the data: states with these mandates sought rate increases 32 percent larger than states without them from 2020 through 2025, with prices climbing at nearly double the pace of non-mandate states, despite slower population growth.
Reliability is eroding on the same timeline. MISO, the grid operator serving Minnesota and fourteen other states, already counts wind and solar for only a small fraction of their rated capacity during the hours the system is under the most strain when it is very hot or cold, because they cannot be counted on to deliver when needed.
That is not a regional quirk. The North American Electric Reliability Corporation’s latest long-term outlook puts 13 of the 23 grid regions it tracks nationwide, including MISO, PJM, ERCOT, and much of the West, at elevated or high risk of a shortfall within five years, as retiring plants outpace the firm generation meant to replace them.
Wind and solar cannot fill that gap on command, and NERC warns the shortfall will force emergency responses, such as rolling blackouts, and no governor wants to explain that to constituents.
None of this argues against cleaner electricity. It argues against buying it blind. Before a state locks in a mandate and before a utility retires one more dispatchable plant, regulators should require a single disclosure: the full cost of the replacement power, including backup, transmission, storage, subsidies, and curtailment, not just the price of the generation.
Voters were promised a bargain. They are learning that this was a false promise. Electricity is far too important to ignore facts and charge ahead with ideology-driven, expensive, often dangerous net-zero mandates.
