The Colorado Index

Another Month, Another Post Call For a Tax Increase

The Denver Post quotes  Larry Kallenberger, executive director of Colorado Counties, Inc:

"We've got to revive the Referendum C coalition" to fight for transportation

It's not clear that the Ref C coalition will ever again be "revived."  The Republican governor who lent his prestige to Ref C has been replaced with a Democrat, Bill Ritter, who now has a reputation for establishing blue ribbon panels and not much else.

The Denver Post and the Democrats so destroyed their credibility with their dishonest bait and switch campaign for Ref C that it is hard to see a similar campaign succeeding.

As with all of the monthly pleas for more taxes, the editors at the Denver Post never think small:

• The fight must be worth winning. Last-minute efforts in this year's legislature to cobble $180 million in new funding might have done more harm than good if the public believed the problem had been solved while in fact roads were sure to get worse. A ballot measure should probably seek at least $1 billion a year in new revenue. That money must be a permanent addition to the Highway Users Tax Fund, not the kind of "now you see it, now you don't" supplemental funding provided by previous laws.

• Don't try to bypass the voters. This year's fiasco resulted in part from efforts to cobble together a package of "fees" that don't require a vote of the people, rather than taking the case for better highways to the public.

• Some of the new money should go to hard-pressed city and county road and bridge needs. That way, local leaders can tell their citizens, "If you vote for this, we can patch the potholes on South Elm Street."

What is really a shame is that this author voted for Ref C and thinks that good highways are a must.  Yet having seen the Ref C money squandered away by the legislature for things that the public never approved this author has learned his lesson.

The lesson of Mark Foley

Last Tuesday evening, I decided to attend a meeting of the Pikes Peak Republican Club.  The subject of the meeting wasn't important to me.  I had asked to be included in their regular email invites at the county assembly and had missed the first meeting after that date.

The program started at 7 pm with a 5 pm meal for those who went early.  I ate at home.  The big news on KOAA at 6 pm was that our DA, John Newsome, had been video taped drinking heavily with his deputy, and a short time later, driving away in a county vehicle.

John Newsome was to be the 7 pm speaker at PPRC.  I expected that I would be the only one in the room, other than Newsome, who knew of the brewing (pardon the pun) scandal.  Sure enough, the subject never came up.  I didn't want it to appear that I had made a special trip to ambush John Newsome, so I kept quiet.

More than keeping quiet at the meeting, I resolved not to write about the meeting, again because of the fear of perceptions.  Indeed, I resolved not to write about John Newsome at all.

Had I done any writing, I would have had nothing but positive things to say about his talk.  He has a common sense approach to every aspect of his job.  The talk was impressive.  The responses to the questions, even those that were very mildly hostile, were all impressive.  On the surface, ignoring the drinking, he is exactly the kind of DA I want.

We can't ignore the drinking.  While Newsome's initial response to KOAA was ham handed, he has recovered about as well as any politician could.  Even so, a very promising career will very likely be terminated when Newsome is term limited out of the DA's office.  That video tape will haunt his future.

Unfortunately, this essay isn't about John Newsome.  It is really about Greg Garcia's response.  I wrote about it here earlier.  I didn't say this, but it undermines my attempts to use my blog to get the Denver papers (and Politicker) to treat Republicans more fairly, or at least, to get them to treat Democrats equally unfairly.

But, there's more.  Many Colorado Republicans consider themselves "values voters."  They didn't vote for Pete Coors because he was a beer baron.  In 2006, some didn't vote for anyone because Dennis Hastert didn't get rid of Mark Foley, and instead allowed the Democrats to dump an October surprise on the party.

There is a parrellel between Hastert's mindset and Greg Garcia's mindset.  Candidates who run as values candidates take, and must hold the high ground as moral exemplars.  Once they lose the moral high ground, any attempt to protect or rescue them erodes the values ground away from the whole party.  Dennis Hastert is once again a farmer because he forgot that simple fact. 

The party cannot be seen as shielding Mark Foley, John Newsome or any other office holder who slips off the pedistal without shedding voters.  That lesson isn't even two years old and yet it seems to have been forgotten here in El Paso county.  That is why tomorrow morning's meeting is such a bad idea.

An Ill-Advised Meeting

The Gazette has all but buried a report on page 4 of today's Metro section of a meeting called by Greg Garcia, El Paso County Republican chairman.

Republican elected officials in El Paso County will meet in private Saturday to discuss the "predatory press" in the wake of a television report that showed District Attorney John Newsome drinking alcohol and then driving.

Party Chairman Greg Garcia announced the meeting in an e-mail Thursday to elected officials that was obtained by The Gazette.  Garcia said the e-mail "was not meant for public scrutiny" and he wouldn't discuss it because The Gazette declined to identify who forwarded the e-mail.

The e-mail said:  In light of the recent immoral and unethical reporting by KOAA about our outstanding district attorney, John Newsome, I would like to invite you to an hour-long meeting on Saturday, May 10, from 8 a.m. to 9 a.m. at party HQ to discuss and brainstorm the issue of predatory press.  What has happened to John could happen to us all."

This is a public relations nightmare.  One of the complaints that Republicans should have is about how quickly the press buries stories of Democrat misconduct.  Now, Greg Garcia has handed the Denver papers an excuse for doing just that.

The fact is that John Newsome screwed up in a way that in an earlier election has handed over the office to a Democrat.   You can't put lipstick on that pig and make it look good. 

KOAA did the party a favor.  It is much better to know that there is (or was) a problem long before an election.  Given enough time, elders can decide what, if any, action should be taken.  If KOAA meant to harm the party, the way to do it would be to wait and have it be an "October Surprise."

Just the act of calling this meeting has very likely lost the party votes in November.

Phyrric Victory?

Vince Carroll writes again about the Trial Lawyers attempt to blackmail other professions into forcing Mark Hillman to drop his initiative that would have capped their fees.

It was a ploy reminiscent of the Cold War strategy of Mutual Assured Destruction, and it quickly paid dividends: On Wednesday, the trial lawyers triumphantly announced that after "recent negotiations," both sides had withdrawn their initiatives.

Unfortunately, to do what they did, they clearly violated their own ethics rules as we have written elsewhere. 

Under the current system, where lawyers directly control their own ethics rule making and enforcement, that may not be particularly worrysome to anyone in the legal profession.  It should be.  The system is completely out of control.  This victory is just another public illustration of that fact.  When there are enough illustrations, the public will demand reform.

That reform can, and almost certainly will include a requirement that the legal profession clean house - that it immediately rid itself of lawyers and judges who have felt free to damage the public in open violation of their ethics rules.

It won't do the trial lawyers who won this victory much good to have won if they no longer have a license to practice law.  That would be the classic definition of a Pyhrric victory.

Following California into the Abyss

For several days we have been reading and rereading a Competitive Enterprise Institute essay on California's Energy Policy.

We wish that Mark Udall and Bill Ritter would take a hard look at the essay because it appears that they are trying to follow the California model without admitting as much:

Among other policies, global warming activists call for an effective moratorium on new electrical plants lacking carbon capture and sequestration (CCS), and increased energy efficiency and use of renewable sources. Since it may take two decades to find out whether CCS is economical and decades more to build the infrastructure, and renewables just cannot provide enough, this constitutes a ban on new plants. How then do we meet U.S. electricity needs as the economy and population grows?

Many policy makers and environmental activists assert that the rest of the country can simply replicate California’s demand-side management (DSM) programs, which consist of an assortment of subsidy programs to retrofit buildings and subsidize energy-using equipment. California supposedly shows that we can have it all—a growing population and economy and lower overall energy consumption and emissions. Adopt the “California model” nationwide, they claim, and America will become so much more energy efficient that we will not need new electrical capacity for decades. This will give us time to develop a non-carbon energy system. Many states are set to follow the California model, and several key lawmakers [ including Mark Udall, John Salazar, and Ken Salazar ] are pushing Congress to enact similar interventions at the federal level.

CEI then proceeds to explain why the California model won't work elsewhere:

1.  California is an energy importer; 2. It has a mild climate which cuts both summer and winter energy consumption; 3. California has moved away from energy dependent industry; 4. Real estate prices are forcing many Californians into smaller homes.

Here in Colorado, Bill Ritter is in the process of creating a regulatory environment that is hostile to coal fired electrical generation.  He has stacked the Public Utilities Commission with anti coal folks, and he has more recently directed the state health department to outlaw coal plants on health grounds:

The order also says that the state needs to evaluate whether the state should allow any new conventional coal-fired power plants to be built and asks the department to make recommendations on alternatives within the next year.

Do read the CEI essay.

The Costs of Going Green

The Grand Junction Sentinel is discovering that going green has costs in jobs and electric bills:

Now, however, Xcel faces opposition from another source. The Colorado Office of Consumer Counsel, the state-funded entity that lobbies for the interests of state utility customers, said Xcel should delay closing the two plants.

The reason? Natural gas prices are rising and may soar dramatically in coming decade, said OCC Director Jim Greenwood. And that could mean an even greater jump in the prices consumers pay for electricity than the rate increases just recently announced.

It appears going green isn’t as simple as picking a more environmentally friendly technology and switching to it. That nasty old brute — cost — often gets in the way.

It seems that the Sentinel was planning to use taxpayer subsidies, which it deemed to have no real costs, to help it build a new green building.  When it discovered that the subsidies weren't there, it changed its plans to stay within the budget:

Private businesses face similar tough choices. For instance, The Daily Sentinel will begin constructing a new building off H Road, near the airport, later this year. The Sentinel is committed to making the new building as green as possible, within budgetary limits. The building will include solar panels and many measures designed to conserve energy. But all of those measures will be more costly than was originally hoped, especially when some of the expected incentives for going green proved not to be available in this case.

The Sentinel does come to the right conclusion, that the goal of going green must be tempered by the realities of cost.  Now, if only we can get politicians like Mark Udall, Ken Salazar, John Salazar, and Bill Ritter to acknowledge that the price of gasoline can't be allowed to go to $10 a gallon without doing the economy real damage, we may yet save ourselves from the green slime.

Mark Udall: Still Cranking on the Big Blue Lie Machine

It is becoming more and more clear that Mark Udall and John Salazar are economically challenged or that they believe the people who plan to vote for them are incapable of understanding that they are cranking on the Big Blue Lie machine.  We lean toward the latter.

Take the latest DSCC press release.

The first half claims that simply by releasing a few million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, Mark Udall and Ken Salazar can drive the price of gas down by 25 cents a gallon.

The second half ends with a Mark Udall quote:

“We’re not going to drill our way out of this,” [ Mark ] Udall said.

So, putting a few million barrels into the market from the SPR is a magic fix, but matching that with drilling won't be equally effective?  There is something missing from this argument:  Consistency.

Ben DeGrow has a good take on this.

John Suthers

We read in the Denver Post that John Suthers favored getting rid of TABOR when Andrew Romanoff was trying to push it through the legislature:

A slate of politicians, fiscal analysts, higher-education leaders and interest groups favored Romanoff's proposal, including Ritter and Republican Attorney General John Suthers, when it was being referred through the legislature.

It would end TABOR's revenue caps and tax refunds and put the additional dollars toward K-12 funding and a state savings account.

We well recall the infighting in the Republican party over Ref C.  It divided the party and gave us the gift of Bill Ritter.  Some Republicans proved themselves willing to vote for a Ref C but the Democrats immediately pulled a bait and switch to put the money into their priorities, ignoring the priorities of the voters.

After that lesson, voters are very unlikely to vote to get rid of TABOR.  Serious statewide Republicans who support getting rid of TABOR aren't likely to get a nomination for a new statewide office, and most must know it.

That brings us back to John Suthers.  We wonder if he has decided that he will retire from politics after he is term limited out of the Attorney General office.  He is acting like it.

Restarting the Sweep

It is always hard to look into the future, especially the future of a blog.

We got a phone call yesterday that suggests that some other conservative bloggers may not be getting the traffic that they did when we were running the sweep.  We were a bit surprised because our traffic has not changed enough for us to notice.  There are two automated systems out there which we thought would take up the slack if we stopped.  Apparently, they do not.

Our goal has always been to help conservative bloggers.  We are going to try to figure out how to restart the sweep with a goal of restarting it in late June.  Our life is jam-packed until then.

Doing the sweep is an enormous burden if one person does it alone.

We will need to find several folks who are willing to help on a regular basis.  Many hands make light work.  The sweep ran and will run six days a week.  We would like to find at least five other reliable and trustworthy folks who will be willing to do one sweep a week and more when others have social engagements and are otherwise occupied.

This news is too new for us to say how it will impact our other blogging projects. 

We have one project that we do want to put very high on our priorities, higher than blogging.  We have promised others that beginning in July we will work to put a 2010 initiative on the ballot that both protects the public from unethical judges and lawyers and provides a mechanism for members of the the public to be made whole when misconduct occurs.  Neither of those protections currently exist. Legislators, including Republican legislators, have proven reluctant to provide them.  The situation is exactly what the initiative process is designed to correct. 

Bentley Rayburn Press Release

This press release was sent to us Friday with a Sunday date.  We are a bit slow in getting it up.  Because it is the only Rayburn PR waiting publication and because it is so short, we are publishing the whole release here:

BENTLEY RAYBURN CAMPAIGN OFFERS CONDOLENCES OVER THE PASSING OF BOB ISAAC

(COLORADO SPRINGS) -   The Bentley Rayburn Campaign wishes to express their deepest sympathies and offer condolences to the family of Bob Isaac.  Former Mayor Bob was the first popularly elected Mayor of Colorado Springs and has remained one of the City’s most beloved political figures.  He is one of the community’s most commendable leaders and will be sorely missed.

“Mayor Bob was a visionary in this community and a true role model.  Although my campaign has received many endorsements, I am extremely honored to have had Mayor Isaac’s support and I offer my condolences and support to the Isaac family ,” Bentley Rayburn said.