Brewer celebrates Arizona’s Super Bowl by signing crushing budget proposal

Newly-appointed Gov. Jan Brewer made her first major move Saturday morning, and it was a lulu. She signed off on the Arizona Legislature’s controversial budget plan, which will ravage the state’s universities to the tune of $142 million, deal a punishing blow to K-12 education, pummel health care programs, and spell the end of thousands of government jobs.

It’s not much of a surprise, since Brewer called the special session – as urged by Republican lawmakers – that enabled the budget to be rushed through the Legislature in record time in the first place. Here’s what adds insult to injury: According to the Arizona Guardian, Brewer put her John Hancock on the budget right before jumping on a plane to attend the Super Bowl in Florida. Thanks a lot, Jan: You didn’t just put a damper on our Sunday, you put a damper on our year.

Arizona’s new governor gets a nay for not raising a finger to oppose the anti-education ideologues in the Legislature.

College Republican supports Republicans over college

Want a vivid, revealing glimpse into the mentality that’s driving the Arizona Legislature’s determined efforts to crush higher education? You can do no better than to read and absorb the words of UA College Republican President Ry Ellison, as quoted in Friday’s Daily Wildcat.

“”I support the governor and the budget cuts,”” Ellison said. “”Cuts have to be made in all aspects including education. These hard decisions have to be made.”” For Ellison, evidently, supporting the so-called “”party of fiscal restraint and responsibility”” supersedes supporting the university that gives him a forum for his views in the first place.

For reminding us of the deadly power of ideas to trample reality (at least when they’re in the hands of reality-immune ideologues), Ellison gets a nay.

Legislators steadfastly ignore effect of imminent stimulus package

Haven’t our legislators been reading the news? Arizona is set to receive a queen-sized slice of President Barack Obama’s proposed stimulus package – up to $1 billion – which would go a long way toward plugging the state’s much-ballyhooed $1.6 billion deficit. Against the protests of Democratic lawmakers, the majority of legislators firmly refused to take this into account when considering the budget.

Were legislators to hold off on voting on the budget until the package is passed, they’d certainly be obliged to cut significantly less from education, as well as from health care and every other public service they’re hacking away at. We suspect, sadly, that they’re well aware of this fact, and that it explains all too well why they’re eager to get this budget plan through before the federal funds arrive. That’s what happens when you exalt abstract ideas to the detriment of real-world consequences.

Arizona lawmakers get a nay for railroading a brutal and needlessly cruel budget plan through the Legislature.

Students, faculty, legislators turn out for pro-education rally

If you doubt the intensity of the uproar against the Arizona Legislature’s attempt to gut the state’s universities of vital funding, or if you suspect that no amount of public hand-wringing or calls for action will be enough to overcome student apathy, look no further than this fact: Arizona Board of Regents officials told the Daily Wildcat that Wednesday’s titanic protest at the state capitol was the biggest they’d seen since the Vietnam War. Civic engagement doesn’t come more committed than that.

1,100 UA students were present -the most impressive turnout from any university. The students aren’t the only ones who deserve praise for turning out in droves, however: the Arizona Students’ Association – which drove the protest – and every public figure who supported it, from Regent David Martinez to President Robert Shelton to the lawmakers (including a few Republicans) who turned out at the rally to show their support, deserves kudos.

They get a collective hooray for standing up for education.

Editorials are determined by the Daily Wildcat opinions board and written by one of its members. They are Cody Calamaio, Justyn Dillingham, Taylor Kessinger, Heather Price-Wright, and Nickolas Seibel.