Initial Thoughts On 2010 Election Results

Well, we know most of this year’s election results. Some of those results are good and some aren’t so good. Here are some initial thoughts I have this morning.

Governor
John Hickenlooper is our next Governor, despite running a fairly lackluster campaign and never really developing an image. My hope is Hick doesn’t take his base for granted in the same way that, unfortunately, Gov. Ritter did. But just as was the case for President Obama, one of the most overlooked aspects of executives is who they put into power around them. I don’t think enough of Obama’s economic advisers have average Americans’ best interests in mind. I don’t have any idea of who Hickenlooper will put into place around him, but those personnel choices will be critical in the kind of governing he will do. I’ll talk more about him as I bring up other races below.

Blue Dogs
Rep. John Salazar was beat by his last opponent, Scott Tipton. Salazar was an alright Dem based on his overall voting pattern, but he did vote against key legislative items (global warming bill being the largest in my mind). More importantly, he chose to publicly rebuke his party. Overall, I’m not going to miss him very much.

Rep. Betsy Markey lost by a wide margin last night. This is a Dem Rep. I will miss, association with the Blue Dog caucus notwithstanding. Contrary to Salazar, she actually voted to do something about global warming and more importantly, she decided to show some real courage by defending her vote. She took the time to explain to her CO-04 constituents why that vote, and others she took, were important to them. The right-wing Denver Post editorial board took her to task for being “too liberal for her district”. I won’t hold my breath waiting for them to take Cory Gardner to task for being “too conservative for his district”. This seat was high on the Republican Teabagger hit list and could be characterized as a lost cause in a right-wing wave election. Hopefully a Democratic wave election hits again soon.

CO-07
Rep. Perlmutter won re-election, which I find interesting. The 7th is a district that is up for grabs and the fact that he held his seat in a wave election speaks volumes about his campaign effort.

TABOR Measures
Thankfully, 60, 61, and 101 lost big time – between 2:1 and 3:1. In context of the other races, this means a lot of Unaffiliateds and Republicans voted against the measures along with Democrats. These measures would have destroyed Colorado’s economy. We at least have a chance to still save most of it, if we’re willing to have honest discussions about the importance of investing in ourselves and our state.

Colorado Politics: CU Chair; Environment vs. Jobs; Ozone Pollution; Oil & Gas Poll

It’s interesting that this piece of news didn’t garner much discussion: The University of Colorado is looking to hire an endowed chair in conservative thought and policy.  This is the result of something the Cons have perfected: play the refs and get the bonus.

CU is currently developing a $9 million program which will bring nationally recognized conservative scholars to teach on the Boulder campus. The program will allow CU to create an endowment for a visiting chair in conservative thought.

What exactly is the push for this crazy idea?  It all arises from the Republican penchant for self-victimization.  The whole world is out to get every singe Con-servative, according to them.  The push is coming from entities like the American Enterprise Institute and the Independence Institute who have conducted “studies” demonstrating how crazy liberal every public college in America is.  What doesn’t get related by the corporate media is AEI and II are funded exclusively by conservatives.  Their “studies” are slanted from the start to show what they want them to show.  Because they’re so well funded and organized, they can push things like hiring a “chair of con-servative thought”.  How then, you might ask, could a place like CU in “ultra-liberal” Boulder even consider such a thing?  This is what happens when a partisan like Bruce Benson is hired as University President.  I haven’t read any stories about how CU is suddenly swimming in cash due to Benson’s superior fundraising abilities.  But CU is suddenly getting a chair in conservative thought.  Gee, I wonder how that happened.  Can you imagine the screams from the Cons if CU were to hire a chair in progressive thought?

More topics below.

*****

Random Stories 6/10/08

Salmonella in tomoatoes across the U.S. Sounds like a silly B-movie, doesn’t it? Nope, just par for the course in recent years. Do you know what salmonella is?

Salmonella can be transmitted to humans when fecal material from animals or humans contaminates food.

Isn’t it disturbing in this day and age of super-duper antibacterial soaps being advertised everywhere that our food supply is constantly having problems with E. coli, salmonella and others? The FDA is supposed to be in charge of maintaining the safety of our food. The FDA, under the advancement of conservative ideology over the past 30 years, has had its powers slowly stripped away from it. It is a shadow of its original self. They have neither the money nor the personnel to adequately oversee our food. But Republicans have prioritized $12 billion per week to occupy another country. Is any of that in the news? Of course not. Because the liberal media has decided not to cover it, apparently. Yeah, that makes sense.

*****

The soil that NASA’s Phoenix lander dug up last week is more dense than expected. It’s clogged up what’s essentially an oven on the lander. Soil samples will be heated and the resultant gases released will be analyzed. The soil has been vibrated on the screen above the oven, but didn’t cause enough of it to fall into the oven. If similar efforts continue to fail, scientists said they will try to vibrate the next soil sample before it reaches a different instrument.

*****

Child poverty in Colorado “leads” the nation.

Roughly 180,000 of the state’s children — infants through high schoolers — lived in poverty in 2006, according to the report. That is a 73 percent increase since 2000, researchers concluded by using census and community survey data for the annual statistical review, KidsCount.

Keep those dates in mind. Who was President, who was in charge of Congress, who was the Governor, and who was in charge of the state legislature? Not Democrats, that’s for sure.

Additionally, TABOR was in full effect for this entire time period. What’s TABOR? It’s a mis-named initiative, the TAxpayers’ Bill Of Rights. It doesn’t grant rights to taxpayers as much as restrict the state government from levying taxes. After the 2001-2002 recession, Colorado had severe limitations placed on it by TABOR and other measures so that spending couldn’t be maintained for things like education, transportation and services. So in 2005, a group of people helped pass Referendum C, which gave TABOR a five-year time-out from spending limitations. Under Ref C, funding has been redirected to programs that were in danger of shutting down.

Referendum C went into effect starting in 2006. Will child poverty levels decrease as a result? It’s obviously too early to tell. But this is just one more example of why TABOR and other constitutional restrictions on tax collection and spending need to be completely repealed. In addition, amendments to Colorado’s constitution need to have higher standards to meet before adoption. It’s far too easy to mess things up, as competing interests have easily demonstrated in the past 15 years.

Colorado Transportation Solutions Stuck in Neutral

Leslie Robinson at Colorado Confidential wrote a very good piece regarding Gov. Ritter’s Transportation Panel, their recent findings and a meeting on the West Slope. The quote that sums up everything is at the end:

“People say they don’t want toll roads; they want free roads,” [Jennifer] Schaufele [from the Denver Regional Council of Governments] said. “Unfortunately, there are no such things as free roads.”

Or how about this one:

“People take our roads for granted,” added Colorado Transportation Commissioner Doug Aden. “So unfortunately, they won’t react until the crisis is upon us.”

As usual in Colorado, the problem with finding solutions boils down to the crippling effects of TABOR. The problems don’t stop there: in addition to being unable to raise taxes to fund maintenance, federal dollars have dried up and driving miles have only increased since 1992.

As Jennifer’s quote summed up: here’s what’s going to happen: people will continue to insist on driving on roads for free until they fall apart. Then it will be all the big, bad government’s fault for not keeping them up to date, despite the hamstringing they imposed on said government. The right-wing’s talking points on taxes sure worked out well, didn’t they?

Catching Up: CO Legislature Update

I’ve been busy preparing for another work trip out of town. But things don’t stop happening. The next couple posts will be a collection of things that caught my eye.

CO Legislature & Bills Update

Plenty of things happening under the dome. On Tuesday, the Senate Finance Committee approved HB08-1269, which would help reduce the threat of devastating wildfires in Colorado’s forests by providing incentives for products that use timber killed by the bark beetle infestation. The bill was sponsored by Senator Dan Gibbs (D-Silverthorne). I’ve detailed efforts to battle the mountain pine beetle in previous posts. Two solutions include treating the trees with insecticide and chopping up afflicted trees. It’s more expensive to cut down and chop up the trees. It might prove more hazardous to the long-term health of the ecosystem to use insecticide.

On Wednesday Governor Ritter signed HB08-1160 (more details here), which will expand homegrown energy opportunities for agricultural producers and rural communities statewide.

The science building at Auraria in Denver had funding renewed this week. Revenue from federal mining leases will be used to purchase Certificates of Participation in order to accelerate capital construction projects. The state is facing a backlog of projects as it continues to suffer under the effects of TABOR and other budgetary limitations, brought about by anti-investment zealots.

The CO House passed the 2008-2009 budget bill. If passed by the Senate and signed by the Governor, 55,000 more children will have health care and $63 million will be made available to Coloradans looking to go to college. Republicans thought those items, and more, weren’t a good idea and voted against the bill. By the way, the budget remains balanced under Democratic leadership.