Say it with me: Irony.

In the post below I referred to the case where two state employees of Utah have leaked detailed information to the media from state records about people they suspect of being "illegal," including names, birth dates, addresses, social security numbers, and due dates of expectant mothers. It's a horrifying case. The otherwise neocon governor of Utah responded surprisingly quickly with a probe into who accessed and leaked the information, immediately firing one suspect and beginning the firing process for the other who has some protections as a permanent employee of the state. The story is shocking and incredibly scary for the 1300 people on that list. Firing and prosecuting the people who compiled and leaked the list will not reverse the violation that has been done to them or undo the fact that they face increased danger at the hands of local hate groups.

But there was one gem of irony in the Salt Lake Tribune's story about that second employee, Teresa Bassett of the Department of Workforce Services, that I just can't resist sharing:

This week, Bassett sought the assistance of the Utah Public Employees Association, the union representing state workers, although she was not a member of the organization.

“Teresa approached me for some advice and I gave her the advice that she probably ought to seek representation by an attorney,” said Dennis Hammer, deputy director of UPEA.

Bassett also asked to join the union, filling out a membership card that Hammer said he would hold onto until the criminal investigation into her activities is complete.

So, an employee of the department of workforce services betrays the very workers she is supposed to have been helping by releasing their private information and making them targets of hate groups, and then when she faces consequences for doing so she turns to the union she has refused to join during her fifteen years of state employment to help bail her out.

Note to Bassett: Worker solidarity. You're doing it wrong.

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Utah Republicans Reject Only Logical Solution to Education Deficit

Utah Democrats proposed a 5% tax hike for the wealthiest 2% of Utahns in order to cover a 400 million dollar hole in Utah's higher education and public education budgets. Utah currently taxes its citizens at a flat rate. That's right. People earning more than $750,000 a year pay the same rate as people earning $20,000 a year.

Of course, Utah Republicans rejected the proposal...'Cause it sounded like Communism to them...

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For those who love red rock, some good news

The Obama administration has cleaned up a few more disasters left by the Bush administration today, notably removing 77 Utah oil drilling leases issued by the Bureau of Land Management in Bush's last month from auction.

In the original BLM leases offered, oil drills could've been seen from scenic Delicate Arch (pictured above) and near four other national parks in the state. Environmental groups from throughout the American west joined a lawsuit to stop the sale, but the Bush administration carried through the auction anyway. A court later halted drilling until the threat to public land could be more carefully reviewed. Today Interior Secretary Ken Salazar took the leases off the table entirely.

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Arizona gutting public education to balance budget

I've written before about the crazy-drastic action the GOP-led Utah legislature is taking to keep their books looking good. Now Arizona, directly following the departure of the "education governor" to the Obama administration, seems to have lost their damn minds (via HuffPo).

Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Russell Pearce (R-18) and Arizona House Appropriation Committee Chair John Kavanagh (R-8) are leading a charge for massive cuts in public education across Arizona. The Pearce-Kavanagh proposal includes $631 million cut from the Arizona university system over 18 months, a 10 percent across-the-board cut for public elementary and secondary school districts, elimination of all-day kindergarten and early kindergarten, and elimination of $125 million in school tax credits currently provided to individuals and corporations who donate to public education.

Last year, then-Governor Napolitano urged lawmakers to work on a bipartisan plan to avert the impending budget crisis, but most elected officials were preoccupied with re-election campaigns. After the election, when Napolitano was named as the likely new Homeland Security Secretary, the Republican-led legislature decided to wait for the automatic ascension of fellow-Republican Janet Brewer to the governorship. In the meantime, the budget shortfall became a budget crisis.

The state budget shortfall is $1.6 billion for the 2009 fiscal year (July 2008 - June 2009) and more than $3 billion for the 2010 fiscal year (July 2009 - June 2010). Under the Pearce-Kavanagh proposal, roughly two-thirds of the money needed to meet the shortfall would be extracted from the universities. The rest of the cutbacks are primarily to elementary and secondary education and health care.

You can read a detailed account of what is going on at Arizona State in all this madness here. Seriously...shouldn't education always be the last thing that gets cut (if anything needs to be cut at all)? Is it so hard to convince yourself you can't throw away your future to make it through a (relatively) short-term crisis?

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Economic crisis leads to conservative budget hysteria

One of the most conservative-dominated states in the nation, Utah, is planning to cut its budget by 15% for the coming year, despite the fact that even the Republican governor recommended only about a 7% cut. And where is this 15% coming from?

Meals on Wheels and a host of support programs for at-risk teenagers and seniors. As the Salt Lake Tribune reports:

Salt Lake County prevention programs -- which help immigrants, teens in juvenile court and others -- stand to lose as much as 38 percent in state dollars, or $811,872, under one scenario. An estimated 17 employees at different community groups would likely lose their jobs due to reduced contracts.

Of the 3,200 students who participated in Cornerstone Counseling programs in the 2007-2008 fiscal year, about 1,300 could no longer be served. That would mean a significant reduction in the teaching of practical life skills that studies link to a drop in drug and alcohol use.

The day the [Governor John] Huntsman scenario was announced in December, Salt Lake County served 1,084 meals to seniors in their homes, a number that could drop by half if the dollars aren't replaced.

"These are people who are very frail, very sick, and we're taking food away from them," said Shauna O'Neil, Salt Lake County's director of aging. Though the governor has proposed backfilling those and other dollars, many community groups and local officials are skeptical the dollars will be found.

Acute needs, particularly those involving youth, have been prioritized at the state level. For example, programs for treating substance abuse were protected while many programs preventing alcoholism were suggested as cuts.

"This is at the point where there aren't a lot of good choices," said Lisa-Michele Church, executive director of the Department of Human Services. She hopes her agency will have some safeguards, because of its mission.

What's being overlooked, advocates say, is how much money prevention programs can save the state in the long run.

A huge chunk of money was cut by eliminating $4.7 million from DORA, a substance abuse program set up by the Drug Offender Reform Act. Its closure ends treatment for 1,400 and could lead to the need for more jails. But without a long track record of outcomes, it was more vulnerable to cuts.

An economic crisis does not mean it's time to stop spending government money. In fact, as pretty much every economist who isn't a libertarian ideologue has told us recently, it's the time to spend, not only to help support those suffering from economic decline in the markets, but because it's the only way to stimulate the markets back into productivity. Beyond this alone, however, it's difficult to see anything but conservative exploitation of the economic crisis to get out of the mandatory welfare programs they have long resisted.

These programs are life-saving programs. Cutting the budget itself is unnecessary, and cutting it at these places is morally repugnant. These calculated political moves demonstrate a marked animosity toward the under-privileged.

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