Our guest blogger is Henry Fernandez, a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress Action Fund focusing on state and municipal policy.

Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s unconstitutional Latino witch hunt will no longer be subsidized by the State of Arizona. It turns out that while Arpaio had his deputies stopping anyone who looked like a Latino immigrant, there were 60,000 real felons running around Arizona. Apparently Governor Janet Napolitano has had enough. This week she took $1.6 million from Arpaio and redirected it to a new state-run fugitive task force to get real criminals off the street. Of course this was supposed to have been Arpaio’s job all along.

For those not familiar with Arpaio, he is a media hound, once even doing a pilot for a comedic Fox TV police reality show. On another occasion, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals struck down his efforts to run his own reality show via webcam over the internet because it violated prisoner rights. The U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear his appeal. How any of this clowning would have reduced crime remains unclear.

Without his own show, Arpaio encourages TV news cameras to ride along with his deputies as they hunt down undocumented immigrants. Lacking any particular insight into who is or is not an immigrant, Arpaio’s tactics have consistently disrupted the lives of Latino U.S. citizens and terrorized families in Phoenix and surrounding towns. He even requires that victims and witnesses of crime prove their immigration status. This absurdity actually encourages crime by ensuring that many immigrants will not report crime.

48,000 individuals charged with or convicted of felonies, including violent crimes, are currently on the loose in Maricopa County. Despite the obvious need to apprehend these people, Arpaio spends his time elsewhere. Cameras in tow, he sweeps into Latino neighborhoods with large numbers of deputies and stops as many people as possible on the basis of alleged motor vehicle violations, looking for undocumented immigrants. That these immigrants are generally hard working and not a threat to anyone, does not matter to the Maricopa County Sheriff’s office. Nor does the fact that lots of citizens who do not realize their tail light is burned out are subjected to interrogation to prove their right to reside in the United States.

The Bush Administration’s Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE) has cheered on Arpaio’s behavior. ICE’s lack of concern for the civil rights of Latinos is not surprising given the large number of lawsuits currently pending against ICE by Latino citizens who allege that their homes were invaded by gun wielding federal agents demanding that they prove their right to reside in the country in which they were born.

Reasonable elected officials in Arizona have long called for an end to Arpaio’s defiance of the Constitution. Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon has asked the FBI to investigate Arpaio for a “pattern and practice of conduct that includes discriminatory harassment, improper stops, searches and arrests.”

The Governor’s decision will make Arizona residents safer, even if it does not stop Sheriff Arpaio’s quest for attention.

Sen. John McCain promises that, as president, he would “cut taxes and balance the budget.” But his current economic plan would create deficits as deep as 5.7% of GDP by the end of a two term presidency — the highest federal budget deficit in 25 years — and would accumulate the biggest debt since the second World War, according to a new analysis by the Center for American Progress Action Fund. McCain’s current fiscal plan would recklessly exacerbate the fiscal irresponsibility of the Bush Administration further by gutting revenues far below the average level of the past 25 years.

For the past 25 years, deficits have never been more severe than 5% of GDP, with surpluses as high as 2.4% of GDP in the year 2000. Under McCain, yearly deficits would increase sharply, beginning with $505 billion in FY2009 (3.4% of GDP) and skyrocket to $1.2 trillion (5.7% of GDP) by FY2017. In 2018 these deficits would reach 6% of GDP, tied with the largest deficits since WW2 in 1983. Current Bush policies would keep the deficit in 2017 to $660 billion (3.1% of GDP).

According to the study, McCain’s economic plan, (which includes a corporate tax cut, a full repeal of the AMT, and an extension of the Bush tax cuts) would leave a debt of $12.7 trillion (the highest since 1951 when America was still holding debt from WW2) by the last budget of a two term presidency starting in 2009 (FY2017). This debt is $3.5 trillion more severe than the one resulting from an extension of current Bush policy, which would leave a debt of $9.2 trillion (43% of projected GDP).

McCain would slash government revenues, which have averaged 18.3% of GDP for the past 25 years, to their lowest levels since before 1962. Revenues would average only 16.3 percent of GDP for the duration of his two terms. Under current Bush policy, revenues would remain above 18 percent of GDP.

This analysis currently incorporates the most generous possible savings McCain has offered thus far: an $18 billion cut of wasteful earmarks and a $15 billion “freeze” in wasteful spending, with the savings grown at the rate of GDP growth over his presidency. These “savings,” which come no where near paying for his reckless tax cuts, already include “heavy cuts in after-school pro­grams, student aid, public broadcasting, and job training.” To fill the gaping remaining hole, McCain supporters have suggested policies that would lead to “massive cuts” in Social Security.

Read the full report.