AZ News & Blogs 5/28/2010

• Goldwater Institute appeals matching funds ruling 
• With less than a month to go before Clean Elections candidates start getting matching funds, the Goldwater Institute is falling back on its last line of defense to scrap the public financing system for the 2010 elections. The Goldwater Institute on May 25 filed an emergency motion with U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, requesting that ...
• School Vouchers vs. Tax Credits 
• Under a constitutional tax credit program such as Arizona’s, the state has no power to pressure/encourage taxpayers to do anything that the state could not do directly. Taxpayers can choose to give no money to religious charities, or to give all their money to them. The state is unable to affect their decisions in any way.
• Vouchers, Tax Credits, and Social Conflict 
• Yesterday, I contended that education tax credits substantially avoid the compulsion inherent in school voucher programs — that vouchers compel all taxpayers to fund every kind of schooling (including ones they may strongly object to) whereas tax credits do not.
• ‘All Your Income Are Belong to the State’ 
• It would be fine for the Arizona Republic to report that critics refuse to accept the Arizona Supreme Court’s interpretation, and that they are hoping the U.S. Supreme Court will see things their way (FYI: not gonna happen). But it is not okay for the Republic, on its “news” pages, to take sides in a case now before the U.S. Supreme Court by adopting the legal assumptions of the program’s critics.
• Update on the Arizona Immigration Issue 
• First, it seems that I wasn’t working off the latest version of the bill — which I should add is awfully hard to find.
• Well, we at Cato certainly agree that Arizona’s law will not solve a problem that demands a comprehensive federal solution, but that doesn’t mean federal officials can simply decline to perform their duties under the law as it exists.
• My thoughts:  Yes, it is difficult to navigate Arizona's websites to find bills and track them.  It would be nice if they came up with a more transparent system.