The Colorado Index

More than a Rumor

It appears that the rumor that Mike Coffman will be resigning as Secretary of State to run for Tancredo's seat is more than a rumor.

As with other primaries, this site will not take sides.  We will comment when politicians do dumb stuff that hurts the party.

Mount Virtus speculated this morning that Ken Gordon would quickly assume the post.  He ran against Coffman and lost last year.  Gordon would be an indescribable nightmare as the chief elections officer.  Recall that Gordon was the author of the campaign finance amendment which has cut off donations to Republicans while allowing out of state unions to funnel millions of dollars into Colorado politics in the guise of small donor committees.

Gordon also was the architect of the scheme to throw Congressional redistricting into a Democrat judge's hands when the Democrats took the Senate in 2000.  It isn't an accident that we have four Democrat Congressmen out of seven in a Republican state.  We are quite lucky it isn't five out of seven, and it might well be five out of seven after the next elections.

We can thank our judiciary for that imbalance, but without Gordon, they wouldn't have had the opportunity to mess with the system.

It isn't hard to imagine that a Secretary of State Gordon will contrive to steal as many elections as he can given his pattern.

There is one man who can keep this from happening, at least for a time.  His name is Mike Coffman.  This site can't object if Coffman retains his position and runs for Congress. 

That aside, it isn't a secret that this author is very cynical about the motives of the Denver Post, and somewhat cynical about the Rocky Mountain News.  Those two papers will have a lot to say about who gets elected in the 6th CD.  It doesn't take much imagination to see that the Denver Post, at least, would love to have Ken Gordon as Secretary of State. 

From our cynical view of the Post's perspective, the best of all worlds would be to have a Democrat win the 6th CD, but the Post knows that hell would likely freeze over first.  Suppose Coffman kept his job as SoS and ran for Congress from that perch.  If Gordon is to have his job, Coffman would have to become a Congressman-elect. 

Under this scenario, a Secretary of State Coffman could expect tens of thousands of dollars in favorable coverage from the Denver papers. 

A former Secretary of State Coffman might not be quite so well treated by the Denver papers. If he were the most likely winner, he might see himself under a vigorous attack by the Post.

We hope that Mike Coffman will see that it is in his interest to reconsider a decision that doesn't seem to benefit him and which will be seen by some, including this author as intentionally damaging the Republican party.

Crushed by Rules

I am watching my wife bring her teaching career to a close this year.  In many ways, it is a sad thing to see.  She is a good teacher, to the point that this year, one fourth of her student's parents requested her.

I've often told her that I wished that I had had a teacher like her when I was in grade school.  I don't tell her that because she is my wife.  I tell her that because I went to a one room country school for eight grades.  My teacher didn't have the strengths that my wife has and I inherited all of her weaknesses.  The president of the school board was a (member of a small religious sect) farmer who didn't have a lot of use for education and whose kids left school to farm full time after the 8th grade (I am not kidding).

My wife has kids in 4th grade writing at a level that I couldn't match in 9th grade-when I wrote my first ever essay-and probably didn't match until I was in college.  Kids don't take shortcuts in her class while I have been taking shortcuts all of my life.

No matter how successful one is in life, one thinks he might have done better with a better start.  A teacher like her would have given me a better start.

She restricts what I write about her, so I am being quite careful to tone down what is being written today.  I will say that she is known and respected in her small community.

Because some who read this would care, she is a life long Republican and only once and accidentally at that, paid union dues for a year because she didn't opt out in time.

I'm quite sad to see her leave-indeed want to leave the teaching profession.  She still loves teaching and loves the kids.  Teaching has become a burden that she no longer cares to carry. 

Today, the Rocky Mountain News has a guest editorial, Crushed by Rules.  She hasn't seen it, and won't.  Even so, I know she would agree with much of it, in particular this paragraph:

While the educators had no argument with the original intent and purpose of many of the laws and policies, they were distressed by the cumulative burden and compliance nightmare that occurs at the school level. They were particularly frustrated by paperwork without perceived purpose, a lawsuit culture that has changed the way they teach and how students learn, and by laws and rules that they do not believe serve the best interests of their students.

And this one:

Therefore, it is imperative that our elected officials, as they consider proposed bills for the 2008 legislative session, use common sense by not passing bills that will further burden our already overstressed education system with counterproductive compliance requirements.

Too often, our legislators (Democrat and Republican) have left their common sense at the door when they entered the legislative chambers. 

Rumor of the Day

It is rumored that Mike Coffman will step down from his Secretary of State position to run for Congress full time. 

A number of influential party leaders are rumored to have met with Coffman and tried to impress upon him the importance of his staying in office through the 2008 election, but to no avail.

If this rumor is true, it is hard to see how it could be good news for the party.

October 31, 2007 Sweep

Schaffer v Udall  Carbon Sequestration-an expensive boondoggle  Not long ago, Udall was hyping his bill to thin forests around Colorado mountain towns. The piker could only allocate $22 million a year for that project. It is becoming more and more clear that Mark Udall's priorities are driven by Washington based lobbies and not the needs of Colorado.

Schaffer v Udall  The Left's Visible Carbon Footprint  Today, the Denver Post published a photograph under the heading "Cloudy and sunny at the same time." The "cloud" was, of course, smoke in the Denver area from the California fires.

Schaffer v Udall  Gazette's Comments on the fires  With luck, the California fires may lead to more rational land management than Mark Udall and his "environmentalist" allies are currently willing to tolerate.

Slapstick Politics  Illegal Immigration Parodies Draw Racism Charge From Colorado Teacher  a singer from Lakewood, Colorado faced the charge of racism for his illegal immigration parodies:

Slapstick Politics  Tancredo Retirement Analysis 

Slapstick Politics  Guerrilla Teaching At CU--Unsanctioned Classes Becoming More Frequent   organizers and Ward Churchill followers like David Staub and Eric Debruin have begun to fight the "criminal polluters" who they believe control faculty retention, and challenge the "Eurocentric", "patriarchal", and "dominant hierarchies" of Boulder

Slapstick Politics  Allard Leads The Way In DC Conservation, "Market Will Dictate"  Global warming alarmists call for radical, life-altering action--an immediate halt to human activities--but even skeptics of anthropogenic global warming have no problem in finding ways not to be wasteful, and in the process reap reduced energy and office costs

Rossputin  Ranting about Columbia  Yes, the "core curriculum" is great, but what use is it if the result of the education overall is a student with no understanding of the real world, no appreciation for his or her country or the values that made it great?

Rocky Mountain Politics  Now that Tom Tancredo has decided not to run for re-election in 2008 in CD-6, whom do you think will win the nomination

Policy Media  Another broken promise: Pork  This is a huge opportunity for Republicans, if we approach it correctly. Talking about earmarks reform falls on deaf ears. It's inside baseball, Tim Russert-type politicese. But pork, corruption, bloated spending -- these are all words that Americans connect to, and revile.

Policy Media  Both Biased and Shallow   Now, we have evidence to back up what most media consumers know already: traditional media is pro-Democrat, anti-Republican. Biased as a criminal determining his own sentence.

Face the State  FTS Fact Check: Floyd Ciruli: Independent Pollster or Paid Campaigner?  We talked to several political consultants and insiders about Ciruli. They all had nice things to say, but one described him as “the guy you go to when you want a poll to conclude with certain results.” Hiring Ciruli almost always means hiring his connections—and his free ride—in the media.

Colorado Senate News  Republicans boost public safety, election security with plan to check illegal immigration "They want to slap lawbreakers on the hand a little harder after the damage already is done," McElhany said. "We want to give our public institutions the tools to prevent the abuse of our system in the first place.

Colorado Charter Schools  More on Merrifield  But then Rep. Merrifield had the temerity to write a letter to the Colorado Springs Gazette today refuting what Mike Rosen had written in his editorial about Merrifield last week

Best Destiny  An Interview Worth Reading 

Comment:    

 

SquareState.net Gives Blogging A Bad Name

This morning, squarestate.net was publicly celebrating Michael Merrifield's letter to the editor response to Mike Rosen's Friday column:

Merrifield is not one to back down to a lying bully who has a bigger pulpit, no matter what

If squarestate.net had done even a minimal amount of research, as we did, it would have discovered that Merrifield is the lying bully.  The difference is that he does his bullying in the state legislature, and he is quite open, other than in this one letter, about his attitudes.  Rosen's article is factually accurate.  The same cannot be said for Merrifield's response.

We would guess that Zappatero means that "no matter what" includes situations where the criticism is fully deserved.

This kind of unresearched political drivel is exactly what gives blogging a bad name.

Just Another Obnoxious Democrat Liar

Michael Merrifield wrote a letter to the editor of The Gazette today.  He was unhappy about Mike Rosen's comments of last week about him, so unhappy that he decided that he could reinvent the record:

I’ve also never disparaged parents who choose to send their kids to charter schools. Charter schools are a great option for some families.

If we recall correctly, Mike Merrifield was the author of an email to State Senator Sue Windels that said:

"There must be a special place in hell for these Privatizers, Charterizers and Voucherziers. They deserve it!"

The Rocky Mountain News went on to Quote Merrifield directly:

Merrifield made no apologies Thursday for the e-mail. He said his public stance against charter schools, which he contends are stripping scarce resources from public schools, isn't a secret.

"My record on charter schools has been pretty clear for a long time," he said. "It's not new news I have frustrations with the direction charter schools have gone."

Quoting again from today's Merrifield letter to the Gazette:

Rosen’s one accurate statement about me is that I briefly stepped down as chairman of the House Education Committee last year. Not out of “shame,” as Rosen writes, but because I was battling cancer and didn’t want to divert attention away from important legislation pending in our committee.

However, Merrifield "resigned" as head of the house education committee on the day after the contents of the email became public.  The Rocky reported:

Rep. Mike Merrifield abruptly stepped down as chairman of the House Education Committee Friday after apologizing to legislature for an incendiary e-mail saying there is a "a special place in hell" for charter school supporters...

"Despite the private nature of the e-mail, I deeply regret my strong language and disrespectful tone," said Merrifield, who noted the December e-mail sent to his Senate counterpart was mailed from his private home account. "It was intended to be a private communication between me and my friend." 

Not being content with lying about why he resigned in today's letter to the editor, Merrifield reinvented his position on science and math:

Schools are where we define who we are as a nation. I, for one, intend to continue to fight to see that I am proud of the definition. I’m for rigor in the classroom. I’m for strong academic standards in math and science, and every subject our children study.

In another, earlier editorial published by The Gazette, Merrifield said:

But, most important to me is that Sen. Josh Penry’s and Rep. Robert Witwer’s bill proposing graduation standards mandating four years of math and English, three years of science and two years of foreign language is old fashioned, outdated, 20th-century thinking...

If anything, we should be requiring more arts to graduate, not more math and science.

If one reads more than the few quotes we provide from the linked articles, it becomes clear that Michael Merrifield is a vicious and long time opponent of charter schools, the parents of charter school children, and those who would make charter school opportunities available to parents.  As a retired music teacher, he sees no value in math and science and helped kill a bill that would have required strong math and science standards.

So, why is Michael Merrifield willing to be caught so openly and blatantly lying about recent history?  He, like far too many Democrats, thinks no one pays attention.

October 30, 2007, Sweep

Schaffer v Udall  If I Had a Wagon...I Would Go To Colorado  We started this scoreboard when we noticed that liberal blogs and the msm was routinely calling Mark Udall a "liberal," "reliably left wing," and even "extremist

Slapstick Politics  Peace Rally In Denver; Moonbats At The World Series   here are some highlights of the anti-war shindig (and hey, they managed to attract more than a couple dozen this time!):

Rossputin  A college tramples First Amendment    was stunned to read about the effective expulsion of Hayden Barnes from VSU, a decision made by Ronald Zaccari. Mr Zaccari claims that Mr. Barnes was a "clear and present danger" because of his obviously protected free speech.

Rossputin  President bound by Constitution?  The Wall Street Journal had an article on Wednesday discussing whether the President of the United States should obey unconstitutional laws, concluding that he shouldn't, and that congressional restrictions on intelligence and wiretapping of foreigners was an intrusion into executive authority.

Rocky Mountain Politics  A look at the 6th CD, Part 1   I thought it would be interesting to give some thought to the constituencies that will want to play.

Mount Virtus  Republican Field to Replace Tancredo Begins to Line Up  But the last thing Republicans in this state should be looking for is a repeat of last year's ... showdown in the 5th Congressional.

Gang of Four  Stealing our Retirement  That's three months of my retirement - and yours - that the Denver City Government wants to take from us. Progressively More Expensive. Progressively More Intrusive. Progressively More Restrictive.

Face the State  Udall Senate Campaign Site Violated U.S. House Campaigning Rules  According to a leading Colorado campaign finance expert, the campaign of U.S. Rep. Mark Udall, D-Eldorado Springs, has likely violated federal law by illegally posting congressional footage of the congressman on his U.S. Senate campaign Web site.

Colorado Charter Schools  Wisconsin ... Funds 20% of Charter School Startup Grants  After previously funding 83% of charter school startup grant applications, the Wisconsin Dept of Public Instruction has funded only 20% of this year's applications.

Best Destiny  Tancredo Stepping Down  all too often he became the voice of extremism in a party that should be known for its logic and its reason. The word "firebrand" was invented for people like Tancredo, and it would be nice for the 6th District to be represented by somebody who has the ability to convince other people of his position. Unfortunately, I think Tancredo became a caricature too much.

Backbone America  Should Centennial exist at all?   After publishing our Backbone voter guide with skeptical comments about Centennial’s home rule plan and council insiders, I have received a number of notes supporting that skepticism. Here are two of the best:

Backbone America  Spooky Signs for US Economy  Even though the Federal Reserve will probably treat Americans to an interest rate cut on Halloween, the goblins of massive debt – consumer, corporate, and government — still loom large over the US economy.

Backbone America  Mile-high salute to my Congressman   Backbone friends heard it first:

Comment:

Conspiracy

This is just for fun.  Don't follow the link if you are paranoid.  Don't follow it if you are not.  We warned you not to follow it.  Next time you will pay attention, right?

Only Half Kidding

David Sirota is at it again.  He is the far lefty that the Denver Post has invited to be one of its "Gang of Four.

He has a new variation on Ronald Reagan's famous line:

If it moves they  want to tax it. If it keeps moving, they want to regulate it. And when it finally stops moving, they want to subsidize it." 

In what he chooses to call "Captive Industry Populism," Sirota admits that it is impossible to heavily tax internet based industries because they can easily pick up and move, offshore if necessary.  For the most part, he is writing about having states tax and regulate the captive industries  Instead, he proposes placing the tax burden those industries which cannot move.  Two examples he gives are railroads because their track isn't easily or cheaply moved out of state and hotel employees near Oakland who now have a $9 an hour minimum wage.

In short, unlike Ronald Reagan, he would tax and regulate it only if it couldn't move.

Having given this some thought, this author thinks that we ought to run an experiment in Boulder, Aspen, or perhaps in central Denver within a five mile radius of the Capital.  We could pass a couple of initiatives that would do exactly what Sirota suggests. 

He wants a high minimum wage.  How does $50/hour strike you?  Surely, a window washer or a store clerk would find $104,000/year a living wage.   All of the store fronts and high rises are "captive industries" in Sirota's definition.  They couldn't easily pick the building up from its foundation and move it out of the experimental area.  (Mega building movers think it might be possible to move the empire state building-hence the "easily.")

Obviously, just imposing a high minimum wage on the area wouldn't test the limits of progressivism.  We would need high taxes as well.  Property taxes aren't high enough anywhere in the state, according to Bill Ritter and his legislature.  It should easily be possible for a property owner to pay 10% of the true valuation of his property each year as a tax.  Likewise, income taxes are a small fraction of what they could be.  We could triple them with a surcharge for anyone who lived, owned property, or worked within the experimental area.

We are going to be just like Sirota and pretend that we can't guess what would happen to the area we chose.  Instead, we will just ask the readers to guess the answers to the following about the impacted area:  1) Would anyone choose to live there?  2) How long would businesses within the area stay open, even high paying businesses? 3) What would happen to real real estate values?  4) How soon would property owners raze their property to avoid the taxes?  5) How many window washers and store clerks would earn six figures?

At some point in time, conservatives ought to give liberals a heavy dose of their own medicine.  It is conservatives who keep dumb stuff like this out of the state constitution and left wingers like Sirota who try to put it in.  Perhaps it is time to rethink our position and see if the liberals are confident enough that they are right to risk seeing one of their areas stripped of population and value.

October 29, 2007 Sweep

Schaffer v Udall  Udall's Four Months of Lies 

Schaffer v Udall  Udall Campaign Caught Breaking House Rules 

Schaffer v Udall  The High Cost of Pandering  Not long ago, Mark Udall, Ken Salazar, Bill Ritter, and the Colorado Legislature signaled their uncertainty about keeping Fort Carson viable with an expansion of the Pinon Canyon training area.

Slapstick Politics  Tancredo To Retire From Congress  Tancredo will likely gauge a possible 2010 run against incumbent Ken Salazar against Bob Schaffer's performance next year against Mark Udall.

Colorado Charter Schools  CLCS Conference This Week   

Comment:  Baseball on our minds