Tom Purcell: The era of limited government is long gone in America — especially if the birds currently running the joint have their way. I figure if we can’t beat them, we may as well join them. 

The recently publicized raise to $500,000 a year for the manager of the Maricopa County Hospital System along with a host of other outlandish pay raises for local public servants can only be described as legalized robbery. Those raises and associated benefits (pensions) are terrible burdens to pass on to the next generations. The pitiful rationale given for all the publicized raises, “This puts our officials on a salary par with comparable office holders,” is ludicrous.” When the U.S. president earns $400,000 per year, the Supreme Court chief justice earns $223,500 per year, and a senator earns $174,000 per year, one wonders why some public officials earn more than that and why they should.

The Value Added Tax (VAT) is coming. You can see it looming on the horizon from miles away, as federal spending outpaces revenues and future debt grows to unsustainable levels.

WASHINGTON - Uncle Sam has just become the 800 pound gorilla in the U.S. mortgage market. The Bush administration is seizing troubled mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in a bid to help reverse a prolonged housing and credit crisis.

Big spenders abound in government halls across the East Valley, according to a government watchdog group that analyzed the spending habits of county and municipal officials.

Hollywood has a deep, longstanding bias that gives the public a skewed view of American business, actor and author Ben Stein said Tuesday in Phoenix.

 “President Bush is the first president to accomplish what?”

In the Dec. 14 Letters to the Editor, Sal Gomez stated, “majority rules is the basic tenet of our government and the Constitution” (“Basic tenet of our government,” AFN). It appears Mr. Gomez needs a history lesson, even more so than his fifth-grade son. Our Founding Fathers set up our Constitution for a republic, borrowing from the experience of the Romans. Not everything would be under mob rule (democracy) and voting was allowed so that government would be subject to strict rules. That’s what our Constitution is, a restraint on government, and that is why those in power for the past 100 years or so have ignored the Constitution… it rains on their parade.

The state of Arizona has to improve government transparency in order to give ordinary people like me a say in important decisions. I have opinions about policies and budget concerns, yet last week’s budget bills were passed with such short notice that I did not have enough time to give any input. My opinion is that big decisions should not be made at the 11th hour and then thrown at the public with hardly any time to react. Even some legislators complained about this lack of notice. Government transparency is a right of the public and I deserve for my voice to heard and at least considered when it comes to how state money is being spent.

The current American political landscape would appear to have us divided into red and blue states, but I would argue that this is a "convenient delusion" as liberals and conservatives actually have one really big thing in common - they both want to run our lives.

The people have spoken. They want their government back.

WASHINGTON - Government regulators are trying to shut down a company they say secretly downloaded spyware onto the computers of unwitting Internet users, rendering them helpless to a flood of pop-up ads, computer crashes and other annoyances.

Tina Dupuy, guest commentary

Sunday’s Tribune had the perfect confluence of articles and editorials. Perhaps the best one was the Tribune’s own editorial asking the public what level of government intervention they want. Hopefully people consider this as they grade the newly elected local and federal politicians.

Mesa voters had no problem on Tuesday approving financing for basics such as law enforcement, streets and utilities, but barely approved money for parks and even flood control; they want to be consulted on big expenditures and they put a stop to eminent-domain abuses.

There's been lots of discussion lately about compassionate conservatives, or are they uncompassionate? Excellent letter to the editor by Steve Ball ("You want good intentions or positive results?" Aug. 24).

Gov. Jan Brewer on Thursday said that business owners play a big part of what she calls the "Arizona comeback."

As is the case every year, the latest Kids Count Data Book has good news and bad news for Arizona. As the Tribune's Mary K. Reinhart reported on Wednesday, the latest report shows Arizona kids generally get a healthy start in life but too often drop out of school and get into trouble later on.

Better times and the breaking of some logjams among private investors have brought $564 million in investment to downtown Scottsdale, which, as the Tribune reported Sunday, is producing everything from a purple- and orange-colored new-age hotel to high-rise towers to a flowering entertainment district.

A fundamental flaw in thinking underlies the conclusions of a new major study that looks at the future of the Valley and four other fast-growing metropolitan areas of the Mountain West - the federal government needs to step in to save us from our own successes.

WASHINGTON — A new definition of desperate times: Even as the government threw a stunning new $30 billion lifeline to American International Group on Monday, the beleaguered insurance giant confirmed it had lost more than twice that much, $62 billion, in a single three-month period.

With the blizzards of 2010 receding, the nation's capital is back to fretting about why our political system is so messed up that nothing is getting done.