"Phoenix Rising"

Arizona has been taking much abuse lately.  Already under fire for attempting to stop the illegal alien invasion, and the devastating affect it has had on our quality of life here, the shootings in Tucson opened wide the liberal floodgates of vitriol.  Before we learned it was the work of a madman the media was quick to jump on it and blame the tragedy on Arizona's despicable decision not to want to spend another three billion dollars to provide more schools to educate 400,000 illegal kids, build more prisons to house illegal felons, provide medicare and WIC and welfare benefits to illegal families and subsidize every hospital emergency room for whom illegal aliens use as a "routine care" clinic.

Arizona was fortunate; it only needed to look west at California and its $120 billion dollar budget and $25 billion dollar deficit, to learn that we can't go that route.   California's legislature has been under Democratic control for over three decades and they long ago steered onto the reckless road to bankruptcy by failing to enforce immigration laws.  Crime rates have soared, whole cities lay in ruins (yesterday Forbes magazine designated four of the top five "miserable cities in the U.S." belong to California.)  Resource-rich California with its international ports, its cattle ranches, oil fields, rich agricultural valleys and it's Silicon Valley, has still not been able to provide for the millions of illegal immigrants sufficient schools, hospitals, prisons or social programs to accommodate the massive influx of illegals.

Arizona is a relatively poor state.  The economy is largely mining now that housing construction has plummeted off the cliff.  The state is trying to deal with the costs of social programs put in place during Democratic Governor Janet Napolitano's term; all day Kindergarten, state child care, federal court mandates to build more schools to house illegal kids, health care for hundreds of thousands, many of them anchor babies who, by law, are eligible for any social program afforded American citizens.  Arizona is also spending $400,000 dollars per year to teach English to Hispanic kids but last year the Clinton-appointed 9th Circuit Court of Appeals out of San Francisco has ruled that this amount is not nearly enough and has mandated that Arizona must establish "English Only" classes for all illegal children and it must allocate additional millions of dollars to do it.  Federal surveys rank Arizona 49th among the 50 states in education funding but a separate objective private party survey actually had Arizona 5th in education funding when you eliminate the 400,000 illegal children from the survey.  It is asinine to compare Vermont  or New Hampshire or Ohio, with very few illegals, to that of Arizona which must bear the cost of the illegal invasion.

Despite all of these problems I have high hopes that Arizona will resolve their problems and, like the mythical Phoenix, rise again.  We have an increasing migration of California liberals, who after messing up California, have come to Arizona demanding the same liberal programs which destroyed California.   However, the majority of Arizonans remain largely conservative and our state house is under conservative control.  Arizonans are still giving a good fight for those who believe in the integrity of our borders and the belief that individual freedoms must never be sacrificed on the altar of big government largess.

Arizona will continue to be under attack by the left.  They will always choose to vilify Arizona as full of hate-filled people.  It seems that the main stream media will continue to give wider coverage to a tragedy in Tucson than the fraternity massacre in the Midwest or other heinous crimes.  That's okay, Arizonans are tough; they can take it.

So to all you folks out in the other 49 states, pray for us; we may be your last bastion of hope against the increasing government control over your lives.  I know this for sure:  we're at the battlefront in the war against illegal invasion...and we're not getting much help from anyone else.