Colorado

The Denver Post, Democrats and Gov. Hickenlooper are showing their true colors. They  are spend and tax liberals who are willing to destroy private sector jobs in Colorado in an effort to preserve the jobs of ineffective teachers, unneeded school administrators and state employes who have little useful work to do. The Post endorsed higher taxes in an editorial this morning.

The Denver Post editorial page writer, Alicia Caldwell, continues to hype the findings of its panel of former members of the Colorado General Assembly. I posted the following in the comment section that follows the Post's defense of the panel's feckless findings:

With all due respect, the Big Government spend and tax Republicans and Democrats on the Panel fufilled the mission that the Big Government Denver Post editorial board gave them. 

The mission was to justify higher taxes, protect bloated government programs, call for increased spending on K-12 education and try to stop spending cuts in higher education, subsidies and tax credits for special interests and cuts in spending on transportation. 

Mission accomplished. The panel's report is credible only in the eyes of its members, a few Denver Post editorial writers, public employee unions, the Denver Metro Chamber and contractors and academics who slop at the public trough.

Even the Republicans on the General Assembly Joint Budget Committee appear to be protecting their contributors in the gimme community of government contractors. Frank McNulty, the Speaker of the House, a GOP lawyer, refuses to restructure and cut K-12 education spending and delay new spending on roads, bridges and infrastructure. He's even protecting the increase in the car tax, which the transportation lobby loves. However, Speaker McNulty said last week that higher education will take a spending cut this year.

Colorado continues to look like an Illinois wannabe.

Politicians have neither the skills nor the credibility to fix the state budget in ways that will encourage consumers to spend and businesses to grow in Colorado. 

What Hick and the legislature should do is hire Bain or some other strong management consulting company (not the big accounting firms) that doesn't work for state or federal governmental agencies to put together a turnaround plan. 

What the Post should do is hire two or three strong private sector economists, budget analysts and strategists to write a series of articles that show the public and the politicians how Colorado's laws and regulations can be changed. 

Show how the laws and budgets can be fixed so that Colorado won't follow Illinois, NY, California and other states into some form of default or bankruptcy. It is clear that the current editorial page staff doesn't have a clue.

Frankly, if you haven't figured it out already, I think the Post's panel did a tremendous disservice to Colorado. It was disingenuous and dishonest about what can and should be done. Maybe the panel's members just don't know any better.

Colorado House Speaker Frank McNulty said this morning that he backs Dick Wadhams for re-election as chairman of the Colorado Republican Party. McNulty told a breakfast meeting of the Arapahoe County Republican Mens (and women's) Club that Wadhams did a  very good job navigating Colorado Republicans through the 2010 elections. "Dick is the right guy to lead us through the 2012 elections," McNulty said. Wadhams has announced that he is running for a third two-year term as chair. A new GOP central committee will elect the state pary's chair on March 13.

In response to my question, McNulty also said that he opposes the Medical Marijuana bill (HB 1043), which would make it easier to grow, sell, prescribe and buy pot. He said pot legislation "will go through several iterations" in the 2011 session of the General Assembly.

In response to a question about cutting the car tax increase that was enacted last year, McNulty said cutting would be a symbolic victory and that he is focused on winning real victories, not symbolic ones. In other words, he's not going to make repealing FASTER or cutting the car tax until he achieves his major goals.

McNulty said that the top priority for House Republicans is to cut state spending and to reform job killing regulations on the oil and gas and other industries. His second and fall back priority, he said, is to stop the Democrat-controlled Senate and Gov. John Hickenlooper from increasing spending.

However, McNulty said, he is not for cutting spending on K-12 education.

Higher education is another story, he said. The most money in the state budget that can be cut goes for higher education, which will take a hit, McNulty said.

When I asked whether the legislature can take power away from the faculty in higher education so that they no longer can block cost cutting efforts, McNulty said that Republicans will try to give the top executives and boards of the state's universities and community colleges more power to cut costs by reforming civil service laws that make it very difficult for them to layoff people. 

I hope to post clips of McNulty's comments this evening.

LINKS:

Medical Marijuana (HB11-1043.

Former Interior Secretary and Colorado Attorney General Gale Norton no longer faces ethics charges by Obama Democrats, the U.S. Justice Dept. announced. The announcement deserves more attention than it will get from the media. LINK: Former Interior Secretary Gale Norton won't face charges, by Dan Berman.

President Obama and Colorado's Democrats in Congress apparently will agree to extend the Bush tax cuts and avert more Obama tax hikes only if Republicans agree to higher spending on extended unemployment benefits.

 Extending the unemployment benefits will ensure high levels of unemployment for years to come. Too many of the unemployed make more by avoiding low-paying jobs and staying on the dole. If the benefits were cut, unemployment rates would soon dip. How much they would drop if benefits weren't extended is hard to predict. At least I haven't seen any predictions on what would happen if benefits weren't extended.

Both Democrats and Republicans are playing to their bases in the deal that Obama announced last night, which is subject to approval by hard left Democrats who control Congress until next year.

Republicans are reasonably assuming that averting the Obama Democrats' tax hikes and new tax cuts that will be part of the deal will help the economy more than the additional spending will hurt it.

The tentative agreement to exempt estate, or death taxes, on the first $5 million in an estate and then tax the balance at 35% looks like a pretty good compromise, too. Of course, it would be smarter to completely eliminate estate taxes, but the redistributionists make that politically impossible.

Compromise has made America the wealthiest country in the world, and it's good to see a little compromise after two years of Obama's way or the highway.

Mark Udall and Michael Bennet voted for higher income taxes for those who make over $250,000, putting their belief in wealth redistribution out there for all to see. The two Colorado Democrats joined 51 other Senate Dems in voting for a prolonged recession when they voted on a bill that would extend tax cuts only for those who earn less than $250,000 a year. 60 votes were needed to pass the bill. Now the Dems and President Obama are settling down to wring as many concessions out of Republicans as they can before they vote to extend the tax cuts for everyone as demanded by voters on Nov. 2. Top priority for the Dems is extending unemployment benefits for the long-term unemployed. Distasteful as that will be for conservatives, they'll cave on the unemployment benefits to prevent the Obama tax hikes. That's politics, and if extending unemployment benefits will preserve the Bush tax cuts, so be it.

Colorado Republicans should read the Colorado Statesman's strong interview with Dick Wadhams, chair of the Colorado Republican Party. He says he's 50/50 on running for a third term. This interview looks like the beginning of his campaign for re-election, but it also could be the beginning of his a 2012 campaign manager's job search. InnerView with Dick Wadhams, by Ernest Luning and Jody Hope Strogoff.

Tom Tancredo says in a note posted on Facebook that he would be happy to register as a Republican in an effort to bring the Colorado GOP and fringe liberty groups together.

He suggests that Dick Wadhams, the chair of the Colorado GOP, and leaders of the liberty groups meet and try to seek common grounds. This strikes me as an exercise in futility. There always will be fringe groups, the major parties' candidates always will try to appeal to them up to a point, and both parties already are led and governed by politicians whose views are on the fringes of the mainstream voting public.

Rather than appeal to the small fringe groups, the parties are seeking to bring in the much large groups of independents. In 2010, the GOP won back a majority of independents after losing them in 2008. In 2012 both parties will fight over the independents, not the extremists.

As Governor-elect John Hickenlooper and the General Assembly's joint budget committee ponder Colorado's $1.1 billion budget deficit for the fiscal year beginning next July 1, they will study the good intentions and outcomes of Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour's long efforts to deal with declining revenues and soaring Medicaid expenditures. Barbour's a possible presidential candidate for 2012. He has a take a "nothing's untouchable" approach to budget cutting, notes The Wall Street Journal. State tests limits of spending cuts, by Deborah Solomon.

Some $7 billion in wasted corn ethanol subsidies will expire Dec. 31, and one of the chief supporters of those subsidies, Al Gore, says those subsidies are a huge mistake that will be politically difficult to fix. Because there are corn ethanol plants in Colorado, its Congressional delegation has voted to impose ethanol subsidies and taxes on voters and force drivers to buy gasoline that is 10% ethanol. This reduces milelage by 12% to 15%. Will Senators Mark Udall, Michael Bennet and the rest of the state's delegation do the fiscally and ethically responsible thing and vote against extending the subsidies and forcing drivers to buy ethanol? Don't bet your farm on it. LINK: U.S. corn ethanol was not a good policy—Gore, by Gerard Wynn.

We're still waiting for Colorado's Senators Mark Udall and Michael Bennet to speak out against the TSA's sexual molestation and use of dangerous body scanners at the nation's airports. The TSA's scanning and molestation scandal  is turning into a war that is pitting the Left's  insistence on political correctness and universal screening against Americans' demands for profiling, personal privacy and liberty.

In addition to the AWOL Udall and Bennet, we have yet to hear from Diana DeGette, Ed Perlmutter, Jared Polis, John Salazar, Mike Coffman and Doug Lamborn. I just checked the web sites of the incumbents who will be in the 112th Congress. None have issued press releases on the TSA scandal. They're hunkering down. These big government types appear to be hoping the controversy will just go away.

It won't. It will only grow as more Americans experience what cya politicians and bureaucrats have dreamed up for them. What the Obama administration is telling us that more terrorists' attacks are expected.

If they aren't stopped, it won't be because the politicians didn't try to stop them. If you're worried about being blown out of the air, don't fly. If you object to Big Brother And Big Sister getting in your pants, don't fly. If you think it will happen to someone else, fly.

LINKS:

Getting touchy at the airport, by Tobin Harshaw. Biochemist says 'naked" X-ray scanner may be unsafe, by Declan McCullagh. Researchers: TSA misleads public on scanner safety, by AVweb staff. Don't touch my junk, by Charles Krauthammer. The T S of A takes control, by George Will. Enduring the bare necessities in airport screening, by Kathleen Parker. How to think about the tiny cancer risks posed by airport scanners, by Michael C. Dorf. TSA terrifies, too, by Al Lewis. $11,000 fine, arrest possible for some who refuse airport scans and pat downs, by John Lantigua. TSA pat-down leaves traveler covered in urine, by Harriet Baskas.

When the Denver Post endorsed Michael Bennet for the U.S. Senate over Ken Buck, it said that not only is he a friend of the Post's, but he's not really the Obama Democrat that his votes showed he was before the election.

Sen. Mark Udall wants to put Colorado's coal and petroleum producers out of business. He wants to send consumers' utility bill even higher. And he wants to pick winners and losers among developers of new businesses in the energy and other industries.

He thinks he knows what's best for Colorado, and he won't listen to anybody who disagrees, including voters who almost defeated Sen. Michael Bennet and sent three Colorado Obama Democrat members of the U.S.House packing.

Just how out-of-touch with Colorado economics and economic reality in general Udall is can be seen in this article that he recently co-authored with a couple of other Obama Democrats in the Senate. LINK: Clean energy: Economic key to 21st Century, by Debbie Stabenow, Kay Hagan & Mark Udall.

Both of Colorado's House Republicans voted for fiscal responsibility on the Emergency Unemployment Compensation Continuation Act (HR 6419). All five Colorado House Democreats continued to vote for spend and tax Obama Democratic policies when they voted for the bill, which failed 258 to 154. A two-thirds super majority was needed to pass the bill.

U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette writes that the Nancy Pelosi and Obama Democrats' problem is that independents didn't get the memo. She thinks that if she screams louder, more often and more repetitively, voters will buy her big lies. No, Diana, you can't sell today's very well informed independent voters your bad policies on health care, climate, energy, education, financial reforms and amnesty for illegal immigrants. You have to listen to voters and change your policies. But you won't do that, so you'll be in the minority in the U.S. House for a very long time.