America asleep in a dangerous summer

(Andrews on Townhall 6/2 and in Denver Post 6/3) Global war or global warming: which concerns you more? The question sharply divides Americans, a split that makes me fear for my country. The freest, strongest, most innovative and prosperous nation in history ought to know better. The twofold story line from the media and many politicians right now is that (1) we have been in Iraq too long for no reason, and (2) every day brings us closer to catastrophe from alleged human-induced climate change. The agenda is therefore to speed up the Kyoto-style self-flagellation while slowing the fight against jihadist Islam.

This is utterly upside down. An unproved, slow-moving environmental worry is elevated to crisis proportions by our elites – while an avowed human enemy at the gates, committed to killing us by the millions and destroying the United States, is wished away. What folly.

Both jihad and climate should concern policymakers and the public, no question. But the inverted priority we give them will astound historians (assuming the history is written honestly and in our language, not in Arabic under Sharia theocrats). How could these 21st century Americans be such fools and fainthearts, posterity will ask, that hypothetically higher sea levels frightened them more than nuts with nukes?

We need to look hard at the American mind and the American spirit, summer 2007. A certain sleepy softness and unseriousness, a certain childish emotionalism, is evident in the national mood these days that does not bode well for survival in a dangerous world.

You may be more convinced by Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, I by Dennis Avery and Fred Singer’s Unstoppable Global Warming Every 1500 Years. You may feel your conscience pricked by CAIR, the Muslim lobby in this country, charging that Islamophobia is the ultimate terrorism, while I shudder at the jihadists’ deadly capabilities as documented by Lawrence Wright in The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11. Fair enough; no oracle is final in such matters.

Yet can’t we agree that an armed psychopath in our house is more of a threat than a finger raising the thermostat one degree? (Not that it’s certain any such human cause exists; it may be no more than a cyclical brownout of the planetary air conditioning.) And shouldn’t we admit that “in our house” is literally true, when it comes to thousands of Islamic radicals who have slipped across US borders and now stand to gain instant legalization under the Bush-Kennedy amnesty bill?

Among our opinion-shapers and political leaders, passivity toward the illegal-alien invasion aligns roughly, though not exactly, with passivity toward global jihad. President Bush, unbending as he is on Iraq, still naively insists Islam is a “religion of peace,” and he misleadingly calls the battle against Al Qaeda and Wahabbism a “war on terror.” John Edwards now dismisses even this term as a “bumper sticker,” and his fellow Democratic candidates hurry leftward to keep up.

Contrast this passive stance toward real people seeking to have their way with us (the jihadists by mayhem, the migrants by demography) to the hyperactive policies urged by many leaders on global warming – a theoretical threat supposedly justifying bigger government, vast expense, and widespread sacrifice. What you see is an American elite that has lost its nerve, its head, its soul, or all three.

Ivan Denisovich, Solzhenitsyn’s everyman trapped in the Soviet gulag, observes that the resilient and defiant inmates survive but the groveling self-doubters perish. Societies are no different. A nation stupefied like some battered spouse with the half-notion that we had it coming, both as to jihad and Kyoto, is hard to be hopeful for. Whereas an awakened America, recovering its “Don’t tread on me” spirit, can defeat the Islamofascists as well as save the polar bears. Wake up or sleep on; the choice is ours.

Road scholarship for Ritter?

(Andrews in Denver Post, May 20) Memo to Gov. Bill Ritter, from the Selection Board: Your application to become a Road Scholar for Colorado is welcomed by our board of taxpayers, businesses, and motorists. Transportation excellence is vital for economic growth, so to succeed politically, you will need a high mark in highways. But you were graded “incomplete” on transportation by House Republican leader Mike May for the legislative semester that ended May 4. Unlike your predecessor, Bill Owens, who had a statewide highway bond on the ballot at this point in his freshman year, you have done no more than form a study panel.

On roads, as on health care, your Colorado Promise has produced only procrastination so far. It’s still early, though, and we believe that with the old Ritter work ethic, you have the potential to be a star of innovation for better roads in our state.

“Think outside the box,” you told the 32-member Transportation Finance and Implementation Panel as they set to work last month toward a November deadline. We hope you meant: get past the antiquated notion that taxes must pay for all roads and government must run them all. Any good Road Scholar in the 21st century knows better.

Gasoline tax and other revenue will meet only $75 billion of a projected $178 billion in Colorado transportation needs out to 2030, your April summit was told. A hundred billion shortfall is real money, even by Democratic standards.

This isn’t a partisan issue, however. You commendably chose Russell George, a Republican from the Western Slope, as your CDOT director. And some of your fellow Democrats, including State Treasurer Cary Kennedy and State Senator Chris Romer, are on record agreeing we must think outside the taxation box toward high-tech tolling.

As leaders in a party that usually favors government solutions, why would they entertain a market approach in this case? Why would Gov. Jon Corzine in New Jersey and Gov. Ed Rendell in Pennsylvania, your Democratic counterparts, be seeking lease operators for their toll roads? Our summer homework assignment to you is to find out.

A toll is really just a user fee, after all. People are accustomed to buying cable and cell service that way, and increasing numbers now buy access to E-470 or the north I-25 HOT lanes through a similar cashless electronic system. If business slumps, private bidders can take over the risk, as recently occurred with the debt-ridden Northwest Parkway.

“Demand-based pricing” is the term Chris Romer prefers to “tolling.” He says it’s the only ultimate answer to overuse of a scarce but free resource. (Think jammed aisles and empty shelves at Safeway, if all the groceries were unpriced.) London and even New York City have lessons for us in managing road congestion with pricing, says the son of former Gov. Roy Romer.

Roy, the father, once famously said he would “roll over and crush” opponents of a highway tax increase; it lost anyway. Chris, the son, shuns such bulldozer rhetoric for a mild academic tone, much like his economist brother, Paul Romer of Stanford.

Paul, who has been mentioned for a Nobel Prize, told REASON magazine in 2001 that embracing freedom and markets is the key to “a much more satisfying and rich human experience.” It may also be the best exit from a gas tax dead-end. In a study just out, REASON’s transportation expert, Robert Poole, pegs toll roads with private concessionaires as this century’s way forward.

Beware the “failure of imagination” that believes all the policy levers have been found, Paul Romer warns in a recent article. 21st century political winners will be those who “more effectively support the production of new ideas in the private sector,” he adds. To progress as a Road Scholar, Governor, take a seminar with the three Romers.

Desire, deficits, and light rail

(Andrews in Denver Post, May 13) Metro Denver’s ill-fated love affair with RTD has dragged on for a third of a century. Like many a dysfunctional relationship, it has featured cosmetics and broken promises on one side, gullibility and an open checkbook on the other. Can this marriage be saved? While the cycle of hope and betrayal has flopped as public policy, it might fly as theater: “A Desire Named Streetcar.” The latest embarrassment is an admission of huge budget deficits for the FasTracks light-rail plan, hilariously paired with Pollyanna assurances from RTD officials. Tennessee Williams was never this entertaining.

True, these trains of tomorrow aren’t quite the trolleys of old, and their tracks don’t all share streets – though some do. But the panting, irrational desire has long been with us for a rail system that gets the OTHER guy onto transit so traffic is less congested for your car. The Regional Transportation District started collecting sales tax in the early 1970s on the promise of building such trains by 1980. Dream on.

Those 93 miles of rail never happened, nor did the tax cut that was to follow them. Decades later, the agency finally built the Five Points line, then Southwest, then Southeast, without increasing taxes. Voters in 2004 approved FasTracks, a 67 percent tax hike to construct 119 miles of light rail on six lines by 2017. But deficits now have the tracks going nowhere fast.

RTD admitted in February that the $4.7 billion construction cost has become $6.5 billion. In April, general manager Cal Marsella also conceded that “revenues are coming down pretty fast.” A billion dollars short on the income side, plus $1.8 billion in expense overruns, suddenly leaves the project barely half funded. The choice facing taxpayers and commuters appears to be either thwarted desire (yet again) or heavier alimony.

Au contraire, says Marsella. “We’re still going to deliver the program as advertised,” he insisted in a TV debate on April 20. Maybe even better than advertised, if you believe his sales pitch in a front-page Post story on April 15. There the glib GM touted a previously unmentioned “maglev” supertrain to DIA and a private-partnership escape route from the budget trap. Marsella enthuses that the private angle “opens opportunities for any and all alternatives” to rescue FasTracks.

As a privatization advocate, I’d like to believe that. But according to mass-transit analyst Randall O’Toole of the Thoreau Institute, the key is giving a private partner both a downside for cost control and an upside for profits. He warns that if Denver lets bidders pass through their overruns, as was done for the “design-build-operate-maintain” deals in New Jersey, Minnesota, and his home state of Oregon, taxpayers gain nothing.

With unions reclaiming bus routes that used to be competitively bid, tough contracting in RTD is out. So color me skeptical. O’Toole also notes that airport lines are the poorest performers in any rail system. And he is now a very credible Cassandra, having predicted the FasTracks budget fiasco in a 2004 study.

I like his recommended alternative to rail in that study, bus-rapid transit (BRT) lines and high-occupancy/toll lanes. HOT lanes on north I-25 are relieving congestion and yielding double the predicted revenue, as the Colorado Tolling Enterprise chairman reported in a letter to the Post last Monday.

In the statute letting voters okay RTD’s big (but now insufficient) tax hike, a provision allows for its repeal in the same manner. We should repeal the higher tax this November. The old rate, six tenths instead of a full penny, could fund the BRT-HOT approach and leave us money ahead. For mobility, Coloradans don’t want to be like Blanche in “Streetcar,” dependent on the kindness of strangers. We prefer the freedom of our own vehicles, thank you.

Call to Action gains urgency

Will legislative Dems go along with Ritter's property tax increase in these final days of the 2007 session? Your voice could make the difference. Click here for our action links and contact directory -- and please do your part!

Caution: Legislators at work

(Andrews in Denver Post, April 15) Knowing I had been a state senator, a friend recently asked me to update her on this year’s session of “the Colorado Congress.” I gently suggested she start by thinking of it as the Colorado General Assembly, since the only Congress is the one in Washington, DC. Civic illiteracy about our state legislature is common, alas. Most people couldn’t name their own legislator to save their lives, let alone tell you we have a 35-member Senate and a 65-member House that meet for 120 days each year – let alone spout bill numbers such as HB-1355 on health or SB-61 on schools (and hundreds of others).

This may not be bad. Economists talk of rational ignorance, meaning that we don’t bother informing ourselves if the hassle of finding out appears to exceed the benefit of knowing. Good old American self-reliance leads a lot of folks to conclude they have more important things to think about than what the government types are up to – although that has begun to change under the left-liberal push to politicize every aspect of our lives.

But the risk of rational ignorance, where the General Assembly is concerned, is that those representatives and senators with their avalanche of ambitious bills might be monkeying with your liberty, your prosperity, and your values, while you are innocently paying attention to things like earning a living and raising a family.

If shrugging off the legislature was ever a safe bet, it no longer is. Voters in 2004 and 2006 terminated legislative and executive control by my fellow Republicans, for whom government solutions are not the first choice. They handed control to Sen. Fitz-Gerald, Rep. Romanoff, Gov. Ritter, and the Democrats, for whom government solutions ARE the first choice. While the change may have been warranted, it heightened the hazards of political inattention. With a driver who favors the gas pedal replacing one who favored the brake, passengers want to be more alert.

So this week do yourself a favor and get up to speed on what the politicians have in store for our pocketbooks and way of life during their final 20 days before adjourning. Tomorrow is Tax Day, and Thursday is Patriots’ Day. State reps and senators are finally facing many of the tough issues they procrastinated (like any of us) during the first 100 days. It’s now or never if you want to protect yourself from what they might do to you, or avail yourself of what they might do for you.

Taxing and spending, regulating and litigating, subsidizing and penalizing, prohibiting and mandating: such is the busywork of any legislature in any year, sometimes beneficially but often not. That’s certainly true in blue Colorado in these hyperpolitical times, with Dems now holding all three branches of state government. (Yes, they’ve also got the state Supreme Court by 5-2). I don’t say this is harmful, I just say it bears watching.

The 2007 session has already set the stage for numerous local tax increases, and Ritter wants to hike your property tax as a finale. Bills are pending that would raise energy prices, housing prices, and health insurance prices. Owning a gun for self-defense, condom lessons for kids, what a family is and who may adopt, honoring our troops and flag: these contentious matters await decision as well. Hadn’t you better weigh in, pro or con?

A tin ear for the sweet sound of democracy was displayed of late by certain legislators in both parties. The whining from Reps. Borodkin, Stafford, and Merrifield, along with Sen. Windels, about public input and inquiry as much as told Coloradans to pipe down and butt out. Bad show, but citizens should ignore it and press on. All 100 members of the Colorado Congress – oops, General Assembly – work for us, remember.