Recently, Tim Walz said the quiet part out loud, declaring, “We can’t afford four more years of this.” When Walz and JD Vance face off on the debate stage this week, this is one statement they will both agree on: Americans can’t afford four more years of the Biden-Harris agenda transformed to a Harris-Walz Administration.
As we and others around us grapple with skyrocketing inflation, depleting savings accounts, soaring interest rates, and wages unable to keep pace with the financial ruins from the Biden-Harris agenda, Tim Walz is right – Americans cannot afford four more years of Democrat failed policies. We’ve heard time and time again that Kamala is from a middle-class family. However, Harris continues to be oblivious to the consequences of her failed economic policies that impact our families at the grocery store, gas stations, and electricity bills. It seems she’s the only self-identified ‘middle-class’ person who is immune to the inflation crisis that she and President Joe Biden have created.
Here are the inconvenient facts for Harris and Walz. Inflation has cost the average Arizona household nearly $27,000. Everything from energy to food has dramatically increased in price. Our electric bills are up 30%, and gas prices are up 46%. Putting food on the table is increasingly expensive as grocery prices have spiked 21% since President Donald J. Trump left office. Under Biden-Harris, nothing in our lives is immune to inflation, which is a hidden tax on every American. And for growing families, everyday baby essentials have skyrocketed, with a pack of diapers increased by 32% and baby food up by nearly 12%.
While men and women are paying more for just about everything, we are also taking home less after inflation. Families around the nation have had to take out additional lines of credit just to make ends meet. Now, nearly four years into the Biden-Harris failed economy, those credit cards are maxed out, with debt reaching a record high of $1.14 trillion. Thanks to Kamalanomics, one in five Americans’ credit cards are maxed out.
Arizonans are at their breaking point, and the 2024 Democrat ticket will only make these economic crises worse. A Harris-Walz agenda is a page out of the socialist playbook. Between their costly Soviet-style price controls and a tax on small businesses that is higher than the tax rate in China, the Democrats’ agenda puts America last.
Don’t take my word for it; it was Tim Walz himself who once said, “One person’s socialism is another person’s neighborliness.” He also told business leaders, “We’re not taxing people–we’re taxing businesses.” Walz clearly doesn’t understand basic economics. When you tax a business, they pass that cost onto consumers.
These price controls and record-high tax rates will decimate what’s left of the American economy. But it’s not just our pocketbooks that are at risk. Walz, like Kamala, is a far-left radical socialist.
Together, they are the most liberal presidential ticket inhistory.
Tim Walz has a long record as Minnesota Governor that shows us how he would assist Kamala Harris in their shared mission of destroying our country. At a time when families are struggling to make ends meet, Tim Walz will help usher in his Electric Vehicle mandate nationwide, requiring Americans to drive unaffordable electric cars that cost on average $56,575, which is over the average yearly salary in Arizona.
Tim Walz has a history of implementing unconstitutional mandates and socialist policies. Walz mandated lockdown long after Covid-19 ended, keeping children out of schools, and promoting the vaccine for children as young as six years old. During the lockdowns, Tim Walz even created a hotline to snitch on people who defied his ‘stay at home order,’ an authoritarian move that took officers from fighting crime to making criminals out of church services, and business owners who did not strictly follow masking rules – a power trip that turned Minnesota into North Korea.
Walz is no less radical on immigration and border security. As Governor, he signed legislation to provide free taxpayer-funded healthcare to illegal immigrants, and he celebrated issuing driver’s licenses and car registrations to over 81,000 illegal immigrants in his state. Going even further, Walz granted illegals access to free college tuition. It’s clear that he puts illegals above American citizens. In response to President Trump’s border wall, Tim Walz said he would invest in ladders so that unvetted illegal migrants could still come over. It’s hard to believe that this current crisis at the border could get much worse, but it definitely would under the Harris-Walz Administration!
Additionally, Walz and Harris’ radical defund-the-police ticket should concern every community in Arizona and around the country. Just a handful of years ago, Walz essentially stood by while his own cities burned down and businesses were looted and violently destroyed, and then Kamala Harris helped raise money to bail the criminals out of jail. They make quite a team in these and many more areas. Americans be warned: this is what would be heading to our Arizona cities if this weak, failed, and dangerously liberal ticket has its way.
Americans can’t afford to send the most radical socialist ticket in U.S. history to the White House. With days left until election day, we must vote for a strong economy, safety in our communities, and a secure border. To do that, we must send tested and proven leaders to the White House—Donald J. Trump and J.D. Vance. Let’s make the right decision for the future of our great nation!
Congresswoman Debbie Lesko represents Arizona’s 8th Congressional District. She is currently running for Maricopa County Supervisor in District 4.
American elections were once comparatively modest affairs. They were conducted in the autumn every fourth year, beginning about Labor Day until Election Day, when everyone voted.
We went to a designated polling place and cast our confidential votes under the watchful eyes of fellow citizen volunteers. The ballots were transported under strict chain-of-custody procedures to be counted by election officials.
Accommodations were made for those physically unable to vote, but most Americans didn’t regard voting as especially onerous. We were grateful for the privilege and willing to overlook minor inconveniences. There were racial and gender barriers to voting for too long, but those are now thankfully corrected.
Elections are the process, in our democratic republic, by which we choose our governing officials. But they also play an important role in ensuring the unity of citizens by providing a process for fairly reconciling our differences.
Americans have always had strong, often contrasting opinions about how they should be governed. It once took a catastrophic war to resolve our differences but normally elections serve well to determine our way forward. Ideally, all sides get their say, nominate the best candidates they can find and then we vote. The results are conclusive and binding until the next election.
Customs change, rules evolve, and elections today look very different than a few decades ago. Yesterday is never going to come back, but it’s worth remembering that not all changes represent progress. Our elections could use a thorough overhaul.
Campaigns simply last too long. The presidential campaign is now continuous, with candidates beginning to compete by the previous Inauguration Day.
As one result, campaigns have become horrendously expensive. They are endurance contests in which the most successful fundraiser is favored. Insiders can’t get enough of the “horse race,” but ordinary citizens become bored. Considerations of ongoing policy decisions are filtered through their possible effect on the campaigns and the ever-present polls.
Perhaps this extended attention could be justified if the result was more carefully examined and higher-quality candidates. But recent elections have featured generally weak choices. This year’s candidates are widely considered to be laughingstocks, the least qualified candidates in memory. Each is fortunate to have the other for their opponent.
More importantly, Americans have lost faith in the integrity of our election processes. Fully one-third of all Americans believe Biden was not legitimately elected in 2020. In another poll, 81 percent believe democracy to be threatened.
“Not my President” buttons sprouted after Trump’s surprise victory in 2016, and left-wing pundits freely disputed the legitimacy of his presidency. Four years later, rule changes attributed to the COVID lockdowns resulted in looser security procedures and widespread suspicion of fraud. Almost half of Americans and a clear majority of Republicans believe fraud may have been extensive enough to alter the result of the elections.
This level of distrust is toxic to a government “of the people.” Whether or not you believe fraud is widespread, “innovations” like vote counting long before election day, poorly monitored drop boxes, ballot harvesting, slipshod or absent identification procedures, citizenship verification by affirmation only, and voter rolls puffed up by automatic registration at welfare offices leave many non-partisan observers skeptical. Election officials deny any problems and brand those with honest doubts as “deniers.”
The gaping hole in our defense against slipshod practices is bulk-mail voting. There is no possible way we can mail out millions of unsolicited ballots to poorly maintained voter rolls, addressed to people who presumably once lived there, and then count all the ballots that are mailed back and pretend we have a reasonably secure system.
Signature matching, far from perfect, is our main defense against cheating. Yet no signature can possibly assure the vote inside was made without undue influence by a mentally competent person for whom the ballot was intended.
Reliable data is unavailable for logistical reasons, but in a recent survey about one-fifth of bulk-mail voters admitted to some illegal behavior in their handling of the mailed ballots – and those were the ones willing to admit it.
Your precious vote only counts if it is not canceled by fraud. We need Easy to Vote, Hard to Cheat.
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.
Voters will forever be disadvantaged if they keep believing school board races are “nonpartisan.” As a formality, progressive candidates David Sandoval, Melissa Girmscheid, and Mikah Dyer are registered with no party declared. Don’t be fooled by this. They fully intend to unleash a far-left agenda if they secure seats on the Peoria Unified Board of Education this November.
All three candidates are endorsed by the sleazy, nonprofit hack Save Our Schools Arizona (SOS). SOS is a radical, union-loving, anti-parent organization with a special hatred for school choice. They even dedicated an entire page to demonizing empowerment scholarship accounts (ESA). One bullet point under “Get the Facts,” says, “The minimum ESA voucher is $500 higher than the state per pupil funding to district schools.”
To that I say, the year-over-year state ranking of 48 to 50 confirms that our public schools are a failed government experiment. At the same time, by some estimates, Arizona ranks #1 in school choice. One source said the average homeschooled student scores 15-30% higher on standardized academic achievement tests. So, it appears that $500 is well spent.
In April 2024, a columnist for The Washington Postfound that Arizona spends about $13,500 per public school student compared to an ESA average of $7,143. This prompted the writer to declare, “[I]f everyone opted for ESAs, the state would save money.” Wow, that’s a difference of nearly $6,400 in favor of parents’ choice! I promise not to hold this little discrepancy against SOS members who graduated from Arizona public schools (especially since recent state test scores show math proficiency at 34%).
Board candidate Dyer—who graduated from PUSD in May 2024—is also anti-parent. Of course, this is a rite of passage for teenagers. In an article by The Courier, Dyer spoke against the conservative parent organization Moms for Liberty, a group that was founded around the time Dyer “graduated” from middle school. Dyer told the Courier that he thinks students know how to best serve the majority of their classmates.
Sorry, Dyer, kids don’t know what’s best for kids, and neither do government schools. This is why we have parental rights legislation affirming the ultimate authority of primary caregivers. Children don’t make final decisions on anything they’re not mature enough or financially stable enough to manage on their own, especially K-12 education.
In the same article, Dyer claimed that students were “not worried about what’s happening in the restrooms” on campus. This statement effectively silenced all the PUSD students who spoke out at school board meetings last year and lined up to protest the cross-dressing boy who was allowed to use the girls’ bathrooms. I remember Dyer attending those board meetings. He even made public comments in opposition to those students’ concerns. So, I’d say he’s out of touch with his adolescent peers.
Not only is Dyer’s worldview shaped by a school district that prefers “rainbow libraries” over academics, he’s also campaigning alongside current PUSD board member David Sandoval—a leftist who discriminates against Christians. Sandoval’s claim to fame is his tenure on the board. Despite winning a seat in 2016, and re-election in 2020, he has little to no achievements in the ways of sound district policies, student safety, or academic improvement.
Sandoval voted in favor of permitting males to invade female spaces. He has no issue giving unlicensed, psycho-emotional grifters access to students’ mental health. In a hostile climate of school shootings and bullying, Sandoval doesn’t consider Student Resource Officers a high priority. If teachers and staff want to bypass state law and travel for CRT/DEI/SEL conferences, Sandoval’s vote is guaranteed. Circling back to math proficiency, within a year of Sandoval’s swearing-in, PUSD students were testing at a failure rate of 49%. On his watch, that dropped to 37% by 2023. Notwithstanding various uncontrollable factors and administrative issues, Sandoval is fundamentally lacking in leadership capabilities.
Board candidate Melissa Girmscheid is a cut above the rest having previously taught math and science in PUSD. She’s running a clean campaign to the untrained eye, but let’s be real: Girmscheid’s ideological roots and the party’s agenda won’t let her focus solely on academics. Her “endorsements and distinctions” tell the story of a candidate beholden to hazardous teachers’ unions, LGBTQ and sex-ed advocacy groups, and a “social change” movement that exists to “promote feminist ideals.” Furthermore, Girmscheid earned a seal of approval from “the only organization in the nation focused on recruiting, training, and electing Democrats with a background in science to public office.”
Earlier this year, the trio participated in a candidate forum hosted by Secular AZ—an anti-God club fixated on mythical interpretations of “separation of church and state.” During the interview, all three candidates gave a resounding “yes” to the question of reintroducing sex education curriculum. They agreed that PUSD educators should be discussing “reproductive health” and “consent” with students as young as 10 years old. There’s only one word to describe an adult who thinks about innocent children in this context: evil.
If Peoria residents want a school district that’s centered on safety, academics, and fiscal responsibility—Jeff Tobey and Janelle Bowles are the trustworthy candidates. We must reject any contender who will prioritize special interests above students, infringe upon parental rights, and plunge our education system further into darkness.
I’ve done my due diligence by bringing all this to your attention. Spread the word.
We all know that math scores have been scandalously trending downward for many years, but the folks in the government should at least be able to count.
We’re finding more and more evidence that the statistics the government is releasing to the public are increasingly suspect and unreliable. It seems like the errors are not random but perhaps manipulated for political advantage. Judge for yourself.
Let’s start with crime statistics. Former President Donald Trump said in the debate that crime is out of control, and Vice President Kamala Harris countered by citing government statistics from the FBI indicating that crime rates are falling.
But Jeffrey Anderson, former director of the Bureau of Justice Statistics, finds a surge in urban violent crime since 2019. He writes in The Wall Street Journal that “the violent crime rate in 2023 was 19% higher than in 2019.” The urban violent crime rate was up 40%, and urban property crime rate rose 26%.
How can the Left keep saying crime is down? A big reason is the FBI figures are only measuring “crimes reported to the police.” More than half of violent crimes are not reported, thanks to what Anderson calls a new era of “lax law enforcement policies” in urban areas. Police in big cities also have an incentive to undercount crimes to make their performance look better.
Next, we have jobs data. The Bureau of Labor Statistics admitted last month that it has overstated job growth by more than 800,000 positions. And in just the last year the government has also overstated job growth by almost 500,000 from the original monthly headline numbers. This is an overcount of over 1 million. In 10 of the last 13 months, the errors were in the direction of announcing too many jobs.
So President Joe Biden gets the gangbuster headlines, and the whoopsie daisy comes later when no one is paying attention.
Those aren’t just random errors. Was the Biden Labor Department finagling the data? Maybe.
Then there was the decennial Census Bureau population count. The numbers from the 2020 census were wildly wrong, as the bureau admits.
In an analysis issued in 2021 called the “Post-Enumeration Survey Estimation Report,” the Census Bureau reported which states recorded overcounts of their population, and which saw undercounts. Florida, Texas, Tennessee and other red states were undercounted by some 1.5 million residents. The overcounting was in mostly blue states like New York and Minnesota. Again, was this just an accident?
The miscount may have cost Republicans three electoral seats. This means the presidential election and control of the House of Representatives may be decided because of an error in counting heads.
These government agencies are supposed to be politically independent, and historically, they have been filled with professionals devoid of bias. But when we see the errors all bending the data in the direction of benefiting one party, one has to wonder if this is deliberate misrepresentation.
I hope I’m wrong and that these are innocent errors. But we live in an era where everything in Washington is hyper-politicized. Elections have become a blood sport. The saying is that “all is fair in love and war.” And now add politics to that.
Stephen Moore is a contributor to The Daily Caller News Foundation, visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation, and a co-founder of the Committee to Unleash Prosperity.He is also an economic advisor to the Trump campaign. His new book, “The Trump Economic Miracle,” coauthored with Arthur Laffer, will be released later this month.
Only United States citizens should be voting in our elections. That shouldn’t be a controversial statement. But of course, it’s 2024, and the Left hasn’t instituted its open border policies under the Biden-Harris administration for nothing.
The fact is that U.S. citizens can’t go into France, Australia, or any other country throughout the world and vote in their elections. Why should citizens from other countries be allowed to vote in our elections?
While it’s certainly illegal for non-citizens to vote here, the law is only as good as the mechanism in place to make sure it’s followed. That’s why it is critical for the integrity of our nation’s elections that voters prove their citizenship prior to voting. And the SAVE Act is a much-needed remedy that would address this issue head on.
Sponsored by Rep. Chip Roy from Texas, who has certainly experienced firsthand the issues that arise from the current surge at the border, the SAVE Act would require individuals to provide documentary proof of citizenship (DPOC) in order to vote in federal elections. It’s a constitutional solution to keep non-citizens from voting.
But given Congress’s propensity for inaction, states should not wait around to see if our federal lawmakers will pass the SAVE Act or another reasonable solution. Arizona has been a leader on this issue for years and has already enacted a comprehensive solution that every state should follow.
In its heyday, Mesa Public Schools (MPS) was the district to attend; the envy of the East Valley. From academics to athletics, from artistic endeavors to award-winning music programs, Mesa provided excellent programming from kindergarten to graduation. So much so, that parents would often bring their own children back to Mesa Schools, often to the same school they attended as children.
In 2011, MPS students were achieving at levels in keeping with the stellar reputation that Mesa had always experienced. But between 2014 and 2015 achievement in MPS, as well as across the state, plummeted, and MPS hasn’t been able to break the 50% achievement rate since that time. There were a few ‘events’ that occurred during this time period, only one in which your school board would have had direct input; unless they were to be extremely courageous and decide to refuse federal education dollars.
The state assessment test switched from AIMS to AZMerit, there was a full implementation of Common Core across the state, and districts began to go down the road of developing a ‘Portrait of a Graduate’. As these took hold, publicly funded schools began to face steep declines in enrollment. MPS, for example, lost a total of 8,979 students as of the 2021/22 school year according to data located here. Consider that our 15-day student count for the school year 2024/25, is 54,339, a loss of 20,610 students since the 2011/12 school year. These trends are not exclusive to MPS, and this is where your vote for school board matters.
I have a friend who has said repeatedly that if an organization, which begins with conservative values, does not hold fast to those values, the organization will ultimately become liberal. The core conservative value which directed education in MPS, as well as many other districts across the state, was focused on developing a solid academic foundation upon which students could build. This value was supported by a few other core values such as individual responsibility, discipline, working hard, perseverance, and merit. These values have been eroding over time, often due to a lack of leadership from a district’s governing board.
The trend in education in Arizona, which has been in works since at least 2014, is the Portrait of a Graduate. This has become the framework upon which other elements have been built into our classrooms such as culturally relevant teaching and social emotional learning (SEL); here is just one example of new ‘science’ curriculum adopted by MPS last spring.
When you really take a look at the Portrait of a Graduate in most, if not all districts which have adopted this framework, there is no indication that we want our graduates to be academically sound in the basics needed in order to participate in society. School boards voted to adopt this framework to develop their strategic plan, and can vote to redirect the district using a different framework; one in which academics and solid, critical thinking is the foundation.
Curriculum adoption is another area in which your school board members are of critical importance. Many curriculum options available today are infused with elements incorporating ideas which are contrary to conservative American values. Rather than using quality literature, which incorporate timeless values, stories are selected that allow students to “see themselves” in the literature. Often the material brings in concepts regarding racism, “white privilege,” oppressed/oppressor, sex, sexuality, sexual orientation, or gender confusion issues. Many examples straddle the edge of pornography and reading the text or displaying the pictures would be deemed offensive and would not be allowed at a school board meeting. Forcing these themes and concepts upon children results in confusion and anxiety. This is clearly evident as we look at the “mental health crisis” within students across Arizona. A strong conservative school board is able to push back against district leadership, and remove that which is not beneficial for our students’ learning.
Policy development is another critical piece in the quality running of a school district over which your school board members have control. Drafting clear, quality policy, and procedures which are not contrary to federal or state law is critical to improving the education students are receiving as they attend our public schools. This is a statutory mandate for school board members, and should not ever be relegated to hired district leadership.
In MPS, there has been much controversy the last few years regarding this very issue as the community became aware of Transgender Guidelines, and the Checklistassociated with the guidelines. Notice, these are guidelines, not policy; no MPS Governing Board has developed or voted on policy regarding gender dysphoria, yet the district has had guidelines in place since 2015. This fact went under the radar for several years, and only became visible because of the social contagion surrounding this topic since 2020. As a result of these guidelines, which in our humble opinion, violate ARS 1-602, and the First Amendment, teachers feel free to introduce concepts of sex and sexuality with minor students, planting seeds of confusion within young minds, which is not acceptable. Voting for a school board which will possess members who uphold parental rights, and the rights of all students will be the only way to reverse this trend, and protect all our students.
Finally, the school board is responsible for hiring the Superintendent, whose responsibility it is on a daily basis, to ensure the will of the elected board members is enacted with fidelity. This is critical, as the elected board members who represent the will of their voters, can do all things right and in alignment with their community, but if the district leadership undermines that, the degradation of our educational system continues. The Board must hire an ethical person of integrity who aligns with the values of the community, as represented by the elected members of the board.
Your vote for school board members may be the most important vote you cast this election season. Being a non-partisan race, it is important to engage with those people who are running and to investigate and research the candidates, so that you are casting an informed vote that represents your values. The future of public education, which still educates a majority of American children, depends upon it.
