Colorado Politics

Colorado Politics
By Daniel G. Jennings
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Democrats in Colorado and the nation are making a terrible mistake by not launching a savage attack upon Ward Churchill, the foolish prof at CU Boulder who can’t tell the difference between Sept. 11 victims and Nazi war criminals.
Churchill is an arrogant elitist who never sweats, earns a six figure income, and spends his time denigrating the common folk and their values. In other words everything Democrats should be against. Yet Colorado’s Democratic establishment either pretends Churchill doesn’t exist or defends his stupidity.
The Democrats have a hard time communicating with common people these days because they take the side of the common folk’s enemies in the culture war. Imagine what would happen if Colorado’s Democratic establishment launched a destroy Ward Churchill at all costs campaign. Well first Democrats would get a lot of street level cred among working folk they’d actually be standing up for Joe Six-pack and his values not drinking lattes with the college professors and trading jokes about how ignorant average Americans are. Second, a lot of Republicans would have heart attacks they get Joe Six-pack’s vote because Joe Six-pack knows they’ll fight for America. If Joe Six-pack thinks that Democrats will stand up for both his overtime pay and his country he’ll vote Democratic.
After all why should working guys and gals vote for somebody who sides with the arrogant elite.? Average people know that the morons who call America evil will ship their jobs overseas next week. Today’s Democratic politicians don’t seem to grasp this fact.
Of course the Democratic politicians of the past grasped it. In the 1950s the Kennedy family were big friends of Sen. Joe McCarthy. As a young lawyer Bobby Kennedy worked for McCarthy, JFK was a supporter of McCarthy in the US Senate, and the boys’ father Joe Kennedy gave money to McCarthy. This didn’t hurt the Kennedy’s or stop JFK from being elected president. In the 1990s, Bill Clinton got elected President partially by attacking a rapper named Sister Souljah who told her fans to kill police officers. Notice that JFK, RFK and Slick Willy are all liberal icons nowadays. Maybe it’s time for Democrats to stop listening to college professors and start reading political history.
Referendums C & D
Where do I stand on referendums C & D, the issues the State Legislature has placed on the state ballot to restore their powers to impose new taxation? Frankly folks I oppose them because I smell a rat here.
The legislature’s logic in putting this nonsense on the ballot is simple. They want to overturn the Bruce or TABOR amendment which requires that all tax increases be put to a vote of the people. The argument is that without increased taxation powers the legislature can’t address the state’s budget crisis, and won’t have money to adequately fund things like education, transportation and prisons.
This is nonsense folks, the TABOR amendment gives the legislature a simple solution to this problem. The legislature could simply ask the voters to raise taxes or approve new taxes to pay for these things. That’s what the RTD did when it needed money to expand the light rail and guess what voters approved that. In fact they did it twice approving both T-Rex and FasTracks. The same with the district that finances the museums and cultural facilities in Denver.
If the state needs money for universities, roads, public schools, prisons, etc. Simply place measures on the ballot asking for a tax increase to pay for them. The state constitution gives the legislature the power to do this. Yet our brilliant legislators won’t use that power? Why?
One big reason comes to mind: if there are more referendums on the ballot special interests will spend their money on the initiative process rather than on lobbying the legislature. Legislators would rake in less money in the form of graft and campaign contributions. More than a few legislators would have to spend more time at their regular jobs at the used car lot or the personal injury law firm to pay their bills. Obviously legislators don’t like this.
The initiative process is far harder to influence than the legislature, if a legislator doesn’t vote the way the moneymen want they can stop writing checks to him. There is no way to exercise such control over the average voter. You can spend money on advertising but advertising is just as likely to alert voters to referendums they will vote against than promote them. Special interests want a clique of good old boys at the state capitol they can ply with steaks and cocaine not average people who will vote the way their conscious tells them.
Beyond that the last thing the politicians want is money dedicated for one purpose by voters. If voters approved a tax increase for education, the legislature wouldn’t be able to steal that money and say spend it on a new prison built by a big corporation that writes lots of checks to legislators and their cronies. Legislators want a blank check they can spend on anything.
Even more hypocritical than the legislature are the media and self proclaimed community leaders. If these people really cared about education or transportation in Colorado, they’d forget about the legislature and start collecting signatures for ballot initiatives for tax increases to pay for such things. The truth is that the journalists, politicians, business leaders and community activists promoting C and D are nothing but shills for special interests who want the key to the state treasury.
Fortunately the people of Colorado are not complete morons. According to polls 66 percent of our state’s population plan to vote against C & D. The average person sees this garbage for what it really is: a power grab by professional politicians and their paymasters.
My guess is that Referendums C & D will go down to defeat and the politicians will in a few months meekly put a series of referendums raising taxes to pay for specific items like education and roads on the ballot. These will easily pass and “The Budget Crisis” will end. Then “The Budget Crisis” will be exposed as the fraud it is and the folks behind C & D revealed as nothing but snake oil salesmen.