AZ Proposition 204, Explained For People Who Have Working Brains

Arizona-based fans, I'm calling a huddle here for a minute. How many of you are familiar with Prop 204? It's a ballot initiative that would keep the temporary sales tax increase that we approved last election, to the tune of $1 billion for public schools. Republicans, like the Center for Arizona Policy, Secretary of State Ken Bennett, and State Treasurer Doug Ducey don't like it one bit. Bennett tried to disqualify it from the ballot, and now Herr Ducey has a new bone to pick with Prop 204: it's "fifteen pages long, single-spaced".

Apparently, this is too much for our dear state treasurer, who likes his books 15 pages long, with pictures of dogs on bikes and only one short sentence every other page. He's so perturbed about this page length issue that he's made a commercial to complain about it. Well, listen up, Ducey:

1.) The revenue from this proposition isn't coming from a "tax hike", because it's actually maintaining the current sales tax rate. If you truly understood math, you'd know that "constant" does not equal "increase".

2.) Monies in the fund are not going towards "bigger bureaucracy" as stated in the many commercials I've seen against Prop 204. If you'd actually read the proposition, you'd see that the money gets distributed to school districts with only $1 million out of the total $1 billion going towards administrative costs, with all surplus going to the payment of education-incurred state debt and/or facilities upkeep for needy school districts.

3.) A large part of the proposition sets up need-based scholarships amounting to 50-60% of total revenue, which from what I gather about you would apparently threaten your job. Wouldn't that just be sad if a third-grader could beat you in reading comprehension?

4.) It puts an end to the AZ GOP's sociopathic compulsion to cut education budgets willy-nilly while throwing heaps of our tax revenue at Joe Arpaio's birther quests to exotic Hawaiian resorts.

5.) It also helps out reservation schools and implements a system of accountability, which I guess you don't like because those Indians are just fine on their own, right? HAHAHA wrong.

6.) The proposition places the revenue out of the hands of the AZ GOP and their so-called "sweep funds", which is just code for stealing from the poor to give to the rich. If only we could keep social programs out of your foul grip as well...

7.) Guess what? It also sets up a fund for infrastructure development! You know, that thing that you Republicans liked so much when you could lay claim to it as President Eisenhower's idea. Too bad he's doing backflips in his grave over you people right now.

8.) Wouldn't you know it, we're back to social programs. A children's health care fund paid for by federal money, the tobacco tax, and private donations? Really? You want to kill that, all because the proposition that sets up its legal framework is too long for you to handle? Well, you'd better buckle up, because I'm a college student right now (incidentally, at one of the universities that your fellows love screwing out of budget money so much), and I'd like to give you a peek at my homework for this weekend. I'll be reading 27 pages by Wednesday for my Native American music class, in addition to 135 pages by Wednesday for Colonial Latin American History. That second one is an entire book, by the way, and both assignments are single-spaced. So do us all a favor and get off your high horse about 15 pages before me and my 162 pages tell you do to something obscene, along with that high horse you rode in on. If you're willing to make this much noise over 15 pages at the expense of Arizona's children, then I'd hate to see what you'd do if you had my homework load.

9.) I'm starting to see why you guys hate this proposition so much. Another section about using taxes collected from businesses to keep children and the general homeless population from starving! I'd accuse you of being Dickensian, but if you can't even fight your way through 15 single-spaced pages in a PDF- that, I should add, is also public record- then I really doubt that you've even cracked a Dickens novel. And not being able to read is no excuse: after all, you've always got Wishbone's version of Oliver Twist (parts one, two, and three)!

10.) I would go on about how the proposition includes measures for re-evaluating the revenue and disbursement structure every five years, as well as outside auditing by state and local courts, but I'm probably fast approaching the threshold of your attention span. I should probably start wrapping it up so you can go back to dreaming about ice cream and how best to defraud your franchisees once you leave state office and rejoin the rest of us out here in the real world. With luck, your pals in the legislature will fail at realizing their Hobbesian fantasies in the lives of your fellow Arizonans, but if they should succeed, I'd simply call it poetic justice.

You may be wondering how I was able to gather so much information about Prop 204 in so little time. After all, your commercial made it sound so daunting: "fifteen pages... single-spaced". Well, you wanna know my secret? Do you? Of course you do. Now lean in close... Here it comes...

My secret is...


(wait for it...)


I READ IT (and you can too!). And what's more, I didn't die from brain overload. No really, you should try it sometime. Reading, that is. It's pretty great. At least, I think so.

So does Wishbone, and he's a dog, for crying out loud.