Quintessential Goobers

The Arizona Republic's Clay Tompson claims you're goober if you don't help others by contributing to the Seasons for Sharing campaign. Let me propose an amendment to that. You're a goober if you don't patronize local businesses. That camera or computer you're thinking about buying at Amazon.com where you won't get charged Arizona sales tax. Think about buying it from a local store, especially one owned locally. You'll help a local working family have a merry Christmas, and you'll help fix the state's budget deficit with your sales tax contribution.

No Tax Breaks for Companies that Won't Hire Arizona Workers

We need a scorecard for every company doing business in Arizona. Let's start with four columns. Column 1: the tax breaks they've gotten. Column 2: the new jobs they've created in Arizona. Column 3: all the defense contracts they're working on. Column 4: all the jobs they've outsourced to foreign countries. If a company's column 2 is zero, then we take back everything in column 1. If column 4 is greater than zero, then we take away everything in column 3.

I love tax breaks, but prove you deserve them if they're supposed to create jobs. I love loyalty, too. If your company gets American defense contracts financed by our tax dollars, then nowhere in any of your businesses are you allowed to have a policy that prohibits hiring American workers.