School tax hike would waste your money

Referendum C set TABOR’s tax baseline at the highest amount collected between 2005 to 2010. Ref C’s big-spending advocates promised that its tax burden would last only five years. But Coloradans still pay $1 billion each year. Now our state wants Amendment 66, an additional $1 billion annually. Rather than its ever-expanding bloated budget, the state should eliminate inefficiencies and consolidate or privatize government functions.

Education consumes 37 percent of the budget, roughly $10,000 per pupil. Still, despite billions of tax dollars spent on education, pupil achievement remains essentially flat. Moreover, the state will impose more regulations, taking yet more control of their children’s schooling away from parents.

High taxes stifle the economy, reduce the amount individuals have to spend, and limit the ability of businesses to expand or to maintain employee benefits.

Amendment 66 carries a $1 billion price tag that will grow every year. Its goals cannot be measured. Colorado taxpayers deserve better.

Will Coloradans fire two legislators?

The recall elections facing Colorado state senators John Morse and Angela Giron are worth doing,says John Andrews in the July round of <em>Head On TV</em> debates. Susan Barnes-Gelt disagrees, branding the recalls an NRA-driven waste of money. John on the right, Susan on the left, also go at it this month<!--more--> over Obamacare's troubles, Liz Cheney's US Senate bid, NSA leaker Edward Snowden, and the Zimmerman verdict. <em>Head On</em> has been a daily feature on Colorado Public Television since 1997. Here are all five scripts for July: 1. Recall Giron & Morse?

Susan: Dem. State senators Angie Giron - Pueblo & John Morse – Colorado Springs face recall elections because of their responsible votes on gun safety. Election day is September 10 – turnout will be low. Recalls are a waste of taxpayer money. National NRA’ers should foot the bill.

John: Never since 1876 have Coloradans tossed out a legislator in mid-term for breaking faith with the people they’re supposed to represent. Morse and Giron brought this on themselves by signing up with the New York gun-grabbers in disregard of grassroots 2nd Amendment values. Let the people decide.

Susan: Every elected must balance the diversity of opinion of those he or she represents with the dictates of her (or his) personal values. The ideologue luddites who control our elections, ignore that balance, imperiling democracy in the process.

John: Owning firearms for self-defense is paramount in our constitution, which Morse and Giron swore to uphold. Arguably the didn’t. Having a vote on whether they’re now fit to continue in office – which is all the recall election is – you call “imperiling democracy”? That is democracy.

2. Snowden: Patriot or Traitor?

Susan: Is Edward Snowden, the American who leaked confidential information about the US government’s domestic spying – a patriot or a traitor? Both, I’d say. He exposed serious NSA violations of the 4th Amendment – privacy, potentially risking American lives. Global espionage is dirty business.

John: Point one, the NSA is not about domestic spying. Its anti-terrorist data mining looks for impersonal patterns in the public domain, not private information. Google does the same. Point two, Edward Snowden is no patriot. He wants to bring America down. Look at where he seeks asylum.

Susan: You’re giving him too much credit. Snowden is a young, naïve fool, who did something stupid. The American public is split about his guilt or innocence, reflecting anxiety about the erosion of personal privacy resulting from the internet, social media and the workplace. Government sanctioned spying is unacceptable.

John: Edward Snowden is an accomplice of our enemies and a traitor to his country. His hollow talk of free expression is belied by the repressive regimes he went running to. Brutal Beijing. Murderous Moscow. Tinpot dictators in Latin America. Even they won’t have him. What a scum.

3. Zimmerman Verdict

John: Two young men, confused and scared, got into a fight. The one on the bottom, fearing for his life, pulled a gun and killed the other one.. After a fair trial with the whole nation watching, the jury said self-defense. That’s the George Zimmerman-Trayvon Martin story. Period.

Susan: Wish that it were so simple. Obama got it right – it’s about race – not self-defense. A white guy vigilante armed with a gun is threatened by a black youngster in a hoody, armed with Skittles? And the jury of peers? Six white women from the south? The prosecutor should have asked for a change of venue. Justice was not served.

John: Yes, a lot of people want Travon Martin’s death to be about race. It caters to the white guilt syndrome, the black victim industry, and those who enjoy believing America is sick. But there was zero evidence for that. Zero. The prosecution admitted it. Black-on-black crime is the real tragedy.

Susan: Your Backbone Colorado puts Lake Woebegone to shame. In Backbone, not only is every kid above average and one day sunnier than the next, but the hard cold reality of human prejudice – sanctified by ignorant elected’s – like Florida’s Rick Scott and the Fox News boys – does not exist.

4. Obamacare in Trouble

John: Obama’s health care law is a bigger and bigger mess. Its very name is an Orwellian lie. Affordable care? Costs are rising. Patient protection? Quality’s going down. Democratic Senator Max Baucus, who helped write the law, calls it a train wreck. The White House is panicked. America deserves better.

Susan: Costs are rising because private insurance companies and for-profit hospitals conspire in gouging the public. Quality healthcare and ‘for profit’ make about as much sense as organic spam or homemade twinkies. There’s a reason why conservative states like Arizona are opting into Obamacare – it makes sense.

John: Nice try, but most states have opted out. Millions of individuals eligible for Obama’s supposed free health care have not signed up either. Thousands of companies have cut back hiring. This thing is a job killer. The president delayed his own corporate mandate. In defiance of law. Stop the madness.

Susan: The 14 states opting out of Obamacare are leaving $9 billion on the table and 3.6 Americans without insurance. All tolled, those states will spend more than $1-billion more taxpayer dollars, on uncompensated care than they would by accepting the federal expansion. Now that’s madness!

5. Liz Cheney Seeks Wyoming Senate Seat

Susan: Dick Cheney’s daughter Liz packed up her carpetbag and moved to Wyoming – though she hales from Dallas & DC – to mount a primary challenge against 3-term Republican Mike Enzi. Young Liz makes up her own rules. We’ll see if her DC arrogance plays in Wyoming.

John: You Democrats are bossy. You’re already the governing party. Now you tell Republicans how to be the opposition party. We’ll manage that ourselves, thank you. It’s a free country. Conservative Wyoming can make up its own mind whether Liz Cheney or Mike Enzi can best stand up to Harry Reid.

Susan: C’mon John, Enzi’s voting record is down-the-line conservative. It’s his congenial, western personality that’s motivating Ms. Liz. Harry Reid isn’t the problem. The problem is the crude, strident tone that dominates your party. Wyoming voters won’t buy it.

John: Naturally the White House and the liberal media prefer GOP senators who politely compromise and cave. But most of us Republicans want fighters, Ted Cruz types. Hence the Wyoming shootout. If cowgirl Liz can show more testerone than cowboy Mike, into the Senate with her.

When the governed stop consenting

(Denver Post, July 15) The recall elections pending for two state senators and the movement for ten rural counties to secede from Colorado, along with the chaos in Egypt, got me to thinking about political legitimacy. No, it’s not a topic trending on Twitter right now. Stop 20 people on the street, and 19 of them couldn’t define it if you put a gun to their heads. But legitimacy matters, and it actually relates to guns in a couple of ways. If we start to lose it in this country, as they already have in Egypt, look out. So bear with me. Political legitimacy is the minimum level of confidence that a government needs to have among the populace to keep civil order from breaking down and anarchy from breaking out. President Morsi’s elected regime in Cairo couldn’t sustain its legitimacy. Now the generals who toppled him may not be able to sustain theirs either. Rough waters ahead for a rudderless ship of state.

All this may seem like a far cry from the cat fight between liberal Senate President John Morse and his conservative Colorado Springs constituents, or the semi-comic rural revolt out in Akron last week, where a ballot issue to form the new state of North Colorado was kicked around. It’s not, because the same deadly serious political realities are involved.

The power for a few of us to rule the rest of us by passing laws and compelling obedience, taking our money or property, locking up the uncooperative, and even using lethal force, isn’t a natural thing like gravity. It’s a social convention like language. To endure and succeed over time, that power requires what the Declaration of Independence calls “the consent of the governed” – which shows signs of strain in our state right now.

“Hey, we didn’t sign up for this,” the petition-signers against Morse in Colorado Springs and his fellow Democrat, Sen. Angela Giron in Pueblo, as well as the angry farmers in Weld and neighboring count I saying that Denver’s Civic Center will end up like Cairo’s Tahrir Square, a seething mass of violent protesters? Of course not. The headlines from near and far are simply evoking once again the concern explored in my 2011 book, “Responsibility Reborn,” that the old age of nations will overtake America if we don’t pick up our game.

Legitimacy doesn’t collapse all at once. It frays, fades, and falters over time. American self-government has been steadily losing its grip on popular consent for at least a generation. Polls show it. To renew itself, the country needs a higher order of statesmanship from politicians in both parties than what we’re now getting – and a higher order of citiies, are saying in effect. Are they fed-up freemen or merely sore losers? Opinions will differs? Of course not. The headlines from near and far are simply evoking once again the concern explored in my 2011 book, “Responsibility Reborn,” that the old age of nations will overtake America if we don’t pick up our game.

Legitimacy doesn’t collapse all at once. It frays, fades, and falters over time. American self-government has been steadily losing its grip on popular consent for at least a generation. Polls show it. To renew itself, the country needs a higher order of statesmanship from politicians in both parties than what we’re now getting – and a higher order of citizenship from we the people than what you and I see in the mirror.

Secession by the Greeley gang isn’t going to happen. Still it must be heeded as what our therapeutic age calls “a cry for help.” Recall of the two state senators by voters may or may not happen. (And recall of our U.S. senators definitely won’t, despite Tea Party voices in favor; it’s not constitutional.) But we should view all of this as symptoms of legitimacy at risk, and think hard about how to rebuild a deeper, wider consent.

Even if you are not interested in politics, politics is interested in you. So warned Pericles, 2500 years ago in the Athenian republic. That’s “res publica” from Latin. It means the public thing, everybody’s concern. No one can opt out, sorry. We’re all in this together.

It's called weather, Chicken Little

Recent wildfires in Colorado aren't a symptom of catastrophic climate change,says John Andrews in the June round of Head On TV debates. Susan Barnes-Gelt disagrees, alleging that earth is warming at a dangerous rate. John on the right, Susan on the left, also go at it this month over the NSA data dragnet, rumblings of northern Colorado secession, and the 2014 races for senator and governor. Head On has been a daily feature on Colorado Public Television since 1997. Here are all five scripts for June: 1. FOREST FIRES & CLIMATE CHANGE

Susan:  Think there’s a relationship between wildfires raging in Colorado and climate change? Nah. Just because earth’s average temp has risen nearly 2 degrees since 1915, and projected to rise another 2 – 11 over the next century.  - Unprecedented floods, droughts, & rising seal levels. Just Ma Nature being cranky. Right?

John: Liberal crybabies call it climate change and get their diapers in a knot. Ordinary people call it weather and get on with their lives.  Temperatures stopped increasing 16 years ago, and soon the worriers may again proclaim global cooling, as in the 1970s. Colorado forest fires are as old as the forest itself.

Susan:  The gentleman doth protest too much . . . Alaska had 90 degree temperatures last week. Unprecedented! Keep whistling Dixie if it makes you happy. But if I were you, I wouldn’t make plans to retire to South Florida anytime soon.

John: I can’t whistle anything in this drought.  My lips are too dry.  But Susan, look – global warming, climate change, greenhouse gases, carbon credits, cap and trade – the whole thing is a giant scare tactic cooked up by guilty rich liberals and power-hungry politicians. Exhibit A: Al Gore, the world’s biggest hypocritical fraud.

2. NORTHERN COLORADO SECESSION THREAT

John: Suppose there was a 51^st state with liberty as its motto, world-class agriculture as its economy, and Greeley as its capital. That’s the vision of conservative leaders in Weld County and northern Colorado. Far-fetched? Maybe. But they mean it. The state’s ruling liberals are that far out of touch.

Susan:  My first ever political campaign was – Norman Mailer / Jimmy Breslin “make NYC the 51^st state’ 1969 mayor/comptroller effort.  It was a fun, lively, engaging and quixotic experience for a sassy NYU student.  Colorado redux? Quixotic without the fun and lively!

John: When Weld, Mesa, and other counties threaten to form a separate state of North Colorado, seeking local voter approval this fall, they can’t realistically expect a green light from the legislature and Congress. It’s a deadly serious sign of the times, however. Bloated government plus diminished freedom equals grassroots revolt.

Susan:  The problem isn’t bloated government.  The problem is irrelevant government. Like spending $50 billion to build the Berlin Wall at our border with Mexico. Why not invest the money in roads and bridges?  The problem is no local, state or federal leadership – what’s next?  Anarchy?

3. NSA DATA DRAGNET: ARE WE WORRIED?

John: The NSA data dragnet is scary. 1984 has arrived.  But Americans have ourselves to blame. We want protection from Islamic terrorism.  We love our electronic connectivity with no thought of privacy from corporate providers. Big Brother government was bound to be next. One and one make three. But I hate it.

Susan:  I hate it too.  The question is how far is too far.  Holder’s squelching of the Associated Press is too far – an attempt to staunch leaky spigots in the government – not save the country from terrorists.  Of course 1984 is here.  It arrived in 1998 with the internet boom.

John: Claims from our leaders in both parties that the all-knowing NSA database is necessary and safe do not reassure me at all.  Rather they indicate that most of those leaders and both of those parties have forgotten that absolute power corrupts absolutely.  This issue is huge.  It could make Rand Paul president.

Susan:  Oregon’s Senator Wyden and Colorado’s Mark Udall both have access to classified security info.  They dispute spying on American’s phone records has stopped 50+ terrorists plots. The two Dems introduced a bill to limit unchecked surveillance.  Here’s hoping the Repub’s  fall in line.

4.  HICK IN TROUBLE FOR 2014?

John: Gov. John Hickenlooper is the ice-dancer of Colorado politics. Picture a tutu.  He has skated along with high popularity and low accomplishments. But his failure to lead is glaring. Coloradans heavily disapprove his reprieve of the murderer Nathan Dunlap.  Polls indicate even a no-name Republican could now beat Hick.

Susan:  Hick’s Hamlet routine on Dunlap may have moved the approval needle.  Yup, from 70% to 55.  On the other hand unless Hank Brown or your boss, Bill Armstrong or possibly Becky Love Kourlis throw a hat in the ring, Hick’s a sure bet for re-elect.

John: Your sure bet belongs at the racetrack, not the Hickenlooper dog and pony show. His unpopular gun bills, tax increases, and dangerous mess in the correctional system add up to weakness bigtime. The façade is crumbling. He’s vulnerable to Gessler, Brophy, or Tancredo. And there will be others.

Susan Gessler has huge problems.  It’ll be tough for him to raise money. Respected Repub’s won’t support him.  Chances are, he can’t even hold on to his Secretary of State gig. Tancredo & Brophy? Non-starters.  Hick’s got  problems, but the R’s don’t have a bench.

5.  SENATORS UDALL & BENNET POLLING POORLY

Susan:  Approval ratings for Congress are in the low single digits.  Both our Senators – Udall and Bennet are well below 50-percent.  Does this mean they are vulnerable? Unlikely.  Bennet’s not up until 2016 and no one, I mean NO One has surfaced to take on Udall next year.

John: 2014 will be a good year for the party of more freedom and less government, the Republicans. Senate Democrats will feel the voter backlash from Obama’s health care mess and his tangle of scandals. Michael Bennett and Mark Udall are both mediocre senators. A conservative darkhorse could unseat the liberal Udall.

Susan:  Once again John, you cannot beat someone with no one.  And El Paso County state legislator Amy Stephens, a far-right wing nut, went rogue and supported Obamacare. Truth is, the Republican bench in Colorado is so weak, they can’t come up with a folding chair.

John: Udall has been a lackluster senator, Hickenlooper a lackluster governor.  Neither is riding a wave of popularity. Obama’s unpopularity hurts them both. Each will face a strong challenger, mark my words. It’s still early. Sen. Ben Campbell and Gov. Bill Ritter looked strong at this point too. Neither was reelected.

How to run against Hickenlooper

(Denver Post, June 2) “Colorado can do better.” Four words, scarcely a sound bite. But if you start hearing them in reference to Gov. John Hickenlooper as 2014 approaches, you’ll know the election is not a walkover for him after all. Because when it comes to policy results from the state’s chief executive, those words are true. Leave personalities out of it. We don’t know who the incumbent Democrat’s ultimate Republican opponent will be. We don’t even know if Hick will run again. We just know that current state-to-state comparisons don’t flatter Colorado. Jobs, schools, roads, public safety – none of these yardsticks indicate top performance by the governor.

Never mind his gibe that GOP gubernatorial hopefuls “sat around the campfire and figured out they’ve got to act excited” about winning next year. Never mind his coyness about presidential ambitions in “The New Yorker.” The fact is, Hickenlooper has not led. So on the fundamentals, as they say in sports, he is beatable.

For the same reason the Rockies changed managers and the Buffs changed coaches, Coloradans could decide to change governors. It will be game on, the minute a forceful challenger – unfazed by Hick’s folksy mystique – starts connecting the dots and asking him the obvious questions.

Why is it, Governor, that Colorado has the worst unemployment rate of any state between the Mississippi and the Sierras, with the exception of Arizona and Nevada? Are we supposed to be content with that? Whatever became of your “TBD” job-creation plan? Will it remain “to be determined” throughout your second term, if we reelect you?

What makes you think, sir, that this fall’s ballot proposal for raising Colorado’s income tax rate to pour another billion dollars into status-quo public schools is either economically or educationally beneficial?

You’re not aware of the research showing that states with lower income tax rates (or none at all) outperform the rest on economic growth? (See the American Legislative Exchange Council’s study, “Rich States, Poor States.) You see no benefit in going with Louisiana, Nebraska, Ohio, Indiana, Oklahoma, North Carolina, Maine, Arkansas, and Missouri down the tax-cutting road?

How can you still believe in the education-spending tooth fairy, Governor, after America has seen no improvement in test scores while real dollars per child in the public schools have tripled since 1970? Can we put you in touch with some of your counterparts – Bobby Jindal in Baton Rouge, Jan Brewer in Phoenix, Rick Scott in Tallahassee – for a tutorial on how parental choice is helping every child in their states, poor kids above all?

As for transportation, sir, we know your motor scooter (or state limo) zips through traffic quite effortlessly. But has anyone told you about the congestion still prevailing on I-25, despite light rail? Or about the slow crawl on I-70 to the mountains in ski season and last Memorial Day weekend? Why is the Hickenlooper highway expansion program also TBD?

At the risk of sounding like Columbo, Governor, just a couple more questions. Who allowed the massive state parole breakdown that cost Corrections Director Tom Clements his life? And why the spike in metro Denver gang violence? And the marijuana legalization that has the whole country laughing at us – with more of a campaign couldn’t you have defeated that? We hardly recognize our state any more.

Gov. Steve McNichols (D) in 1962 and Gov. John Vanderhoof (R) in 1974 were thought to be safe incumbents. They lost to John Love and Dick Lamm, respectively. Gov. Roy Romer (D) was thought a lock in 1990, and he was. I got creamed. Will voters in 2014 decide Colorado can do better than Gov. John Hickenlooper? Place your bets.

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John Andrews (andrewsjk@aol.com) is director of the Centennial Institute at Colorado Christian University and a former state senator. He was the Republican nominee for Governor in 1990.