Mount Virtus

It’s a classic trick to try to extort taxpayers, yet Bill Ritter and Colorado Democrats are acting as if we’re too naive to see it.

Mr. DNA at Rocky Mountain Right yesterday highlighted a story in the Denver Post where Ritter and other Democrat leaders made an absurd and startling revelation - blaming the Republicans (who are in the minority across the board) for the inability to move forward a transportation agenda:

“I feel like this conversation broke down around politics, that we tried to get the Republicans interested in looking at how we would put together different pots of money,” Ritter said. “We began our conversation very early in the session and could not get the Republican leadership to act on it at all.”

Senate President Peter Groff, D-Denver, said Democrats could never get Republicans to sign on to a plan.

“So, we are now just crossing our fingers and hoping a bridge doesn’t fall down between now” and January, when lawmakers can try again, he said.

What’s the problem? Well, if you go on to read the rest of the story, you’ll see the problem really is that some Democrat legislators (whose party has a 40-25 advantage in the House, and a 20-15 majority in the Senate) wouldn’t go along with Ritter’s plan, because it would have involved voting for a tax increase in an election year. So that’s the Republicans’ fault?
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A busy day, not much time to blog. For those of you following Bill Ritter’s property tax hike on trial, Jon Caldara reports that closing arguments are set for tomorrow morning at 10:00.

With Gov. Bill Ritter’s property tax hike still on trial, the Rocky Mountain News reports that state treasurer Cary Kennedy - who thought up the mill levy “freeze” idea - made a remarkable concession on the witness stand:

State treasurer Cary Kennedy conceded today on the witness stand that a bill passed last year by the legislature alters the way taxes are calculated with the net result that many property owners pay more.

But Kennedy continued to insist the 2007 law, SB 199, does not violate Colorado’s Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights.

O-k….
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In the current 24/7 political news cycle, with its rapid-fire sound bites and he said/she said sensationalism, it’s not often enough that bloggers step back and look at the big picture of what’s unfolding in the 2008 Presidential election. Hats off to my friend Michael at Best Destiny for some keen (and honest) insights in the wake of last night’s Democratic primary results from Indiana and North Carolina:

With the Left lurching through its own 60s-esque upheaval, and the GOP tragically unable to get its footing over the last four years, it’s very hard to see how this isn’t a time of seismic change in the American political world.

This is a time for ideals and orators and men of character and greatness. I don’t know who those men–or women–would be, but I’m a little bit fearful that if this country can’t find them soon, we might just be in for a long, bumpy ride into relative irrelevancy.

You really should read the whole piece, but it is the conclusion I quoted that gets to the heart of the matter, and it’s because electoral politics in a representative democracy by its very nature tends to be short-sighted.

There well may be “seismic change” ahead. Traditional coalition fault lines and the beloved Red State-Blue State model may disappear and give way to a new conventional wisdom about national politics.

What will happen in the 2008 election? All bets are off.

Where will the 2008 election leave our country? My hunch is that our major political candidates will be among the last to figure it out. And we may just reap what we have sown.

From this morning’s Rocky Mountain News:

As Democrats raced Tuesday to write what were the final chapters of the 2008 legislative session, Republicans passed around a playbook for taking back the House and Senate this fall.

Not exactly big news, but a fun story nonetheless. Take for example the response of the Democratic Speaker of the House, who must still be feeling the stinging blow of not finding enough support for his plan to gut TABOR:

“I think that’s disappointing but not surprising,” said House Speaker Andrew Romanoff, D-Denver. “When you’re in the minority, you can either take pot shots at the party in charge or you can actually work together and solve problems.”

The legislative session is behind us. And maybe, just maybe, the people of Colorado are looking for solutions to problems that don’t involve more raids on their pocketbooks or sops to labor leaders and other special interests.

But then there’s the response from Gov. Bill Ritter:

“What is interesting and a little disappointing is that spending taxpayer dollars on that kind of rhetoric only feeds the cynicism that people already have when it comes to politics and government,” Ritter’s spokesman Evan Dreyer said, responding to the Republicans’ criticism.

Translation: Criticize Ritter, and be guilty of feeding public cynicism in the political process. Clever.

In its “playbook fact check,” the Rocky apparently found two questionable points in the Republican message. And on one of the two points (”Gov. Ritter has disrupted the 100-year peace between business and labor in the state, setting off a ballot war that could have disastrous consequences for our state’s business climate and its economy.”), the Rocky itself needs a fact check (Ritter started the labor-business battle even before his Nov. 2 executive order).

So altogether, not bad. One might even say Bill Ritter and the Democrats running the state legislature have made it easy for Republicans to do the job of criticizing them with an unusually small amount of spin. Meanwhile, the Democrats and the Ritter administration are closer to spinning out of control.

Yesterday was the first day of the court hearing on the lawsuit by the Independence Institute (where I work) and Colorado taxpayers against Gov. Bill Ritter’s unconstitutional property tax increase.

Today’s Denver Post explains a key issue behind the plaintiffs’ argument:

They noted that in 1993, the General Assembly amended the School Finance Act to ensure that the property taxes raised for the local share of total program funding for public-school education in each school not violate the revenue cap of the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights.

But with passage of the 2007 amendment, Ritter used it to freeze mill-levies, the opponents charged. The freeze holds mill levies — the rate at which taxes are charged — in place when they normally would fall, allowing local school districts to collect more tax money. The state, in return, can use the money it saves for other purposes.

“These are property taxes,” said lawyer Richard Westfall in his opening statement Monday in the weeklong trial. “Evidence will show the purpose of the amendment was to shift the tax burden from state to local citizens.”

Over in his account of the first day’s proceedings, Jon Caldara has a great analogy for this transfer:

…[L]et’s say your employer starts paying your personal home mortgage for you so you don’t have to, did he just give you a pay raise? The state lawyers in court today would argue no, because your boss didn’t give you a larger paycheck. The rest of us would recognize it as a raise because one of your big expenses is now being paid by someone else, giving you more cash to spend on other things. The mill levy freeze is helping pay the state’s bill to local school districts - money the state now doesn’t need to pay them.

And our state constitution is very clear. If the state gets more money to spend, it has to the voters for permission first. Our constitution simply says Ask First!

The Post also picks up the solitary argument from the other side’s team of lawyers:

But lawyers for Ritter and the Colorado Department of Education told Habas that TABOR’s revenue and spending limitations are not absolute and that the mill-levy freeze is proper. The TABOR limitations can be changed, weakened or done away with entirely, if voters approve, argued lawyers John Mill and Mark Grueskin. And that is exactly what happened, they told Habas.

The fundamental flaw in the taxpayer-funded government attorneys’ argument is that the de-Brucing elections voters faced in many school districts were not advertised as authorizing tax increases. Caldara highlights an example in the testimony from an elected school board official in El Paso County’s Cheyenne Mountain School District:

He is on a small school board and helped campaign for his school district’s successful de-brucing. He held himself out to his small community and promised that if they voted to pass the de-brucing it would allow the district to keep an extra $120,000 or so in extra revenue. He promised his community it WOULDN’T RAISE TAXES. Bill Ritter’s mill levy freeze has made him into a liar.

Bill Ritter’s mill levy “freeze” made this school board member into a liar, and many other Colorado voters into fools. Stay tuned here and at Jon Caldara’s blog for updates on Day 2 of Bill Ritter’s tax hike on trial.

Liberal Denver Post columnist Susan Greene expresses her frustrations with the Democratically-led state legislature:

After citing budget reform as a top priority, House Speaker Andrew Romanoff has tabled the issue without even a vote in committee. Better to let voters decide than force lawmakers to get their hands dirty, especially in an election year.

After working to raise severance taxes on oil and gas drilling, the legislature has dropped the effort without explanation.

After a blue-ribbon panel met for eight months on transportation funding, lawmakers passed none of its major recommendations.

And after promising voting reform before November’s election, they rubber-stamped a bill to recertify voting machines that the state recently decertified, then called it a day.

The Democratic majority ends its session tomorrow having punted on most of its priorities.

All I can say is, were the legislature quite as unproductive as Greene describes. The only good news is that the last 120 days could have been worse for the Colorado taxpayer. In addition to the wasted time spent debating trivial issues, we could actually be paying a higher car registration tax or even more costly nannyist regulations.

Dare we say the Democrat majority has been afraid of drifting too far Left and losing its power? Well, they still have the massive unconstitutional property tax hike hanging around their collective neck.

If you’re a limited government conservative and you want to stay informed, you really ought to be reading Jon Henke and company over at Q and O. I met Jon at Samsphere in Chicago: he has a wealth of blogging experience, key insights into strategic roles of new media, and a realistic, no-holds-barred view of the political landscape.

Today, following off a Robert Novak column, he makes a point about the chronic, compulsive inability of many Congressional Republicans to get their act together on spending and fiscal issues, a point that is difficult to refute:

Reelecting these guys is like sending Norm Peterson to lead an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. They’re whipped by Democrats and by the public choice incentives. There’s just no significant ambition to limit government. More importantly, they have no ideas for how to limit the size of government.

To some extent, that’s a failure of the existing Republican leadership. But it’s more of a failure of the larger Limited Government movement that has been captured by Washington, DC. We’ve developed an entrenched bureaucracy devoted more to sustaining and propagating itself than to actually limiting government.

First, many of the GOP members of Congress need to admit they have a problem. Second, members of the Limited Government movement need to decide to stop enabling them. (And not necessarily in that order….)

At long last, court hearings begin today in the case of Gov. Bill Ritter raising Coloradans’ property taxes without a constitutional vote of the people.

From the Denver Post:

The freeze is estimated to bring in $117 million this year and $3.8 billion over a decade, up from an initial estimate of $1.7 billion when it was passed.

Richard Westfall, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said the two sides will call about 10 witnesses, likely including school finance experts, the state treasurer and school board members. Dreyer said Ritter is not expected to testify.

“A lot of the discussion is going to be about addressing pretty esoteric points in the school finance act,” Westfall said.

The trial is scheduled to last a week. It will be heard by Judge Christina Habas, who was appointed by Gov. Bill Owens in 2003.

If the judge rules against the freeze, the state could have to somehow refund the freeze money it has already collected.

“We think the evidence is very clear,” Westfall said. “The voters didn’t approve it.”

Reminding readers that “it’s not the cash, it’s the constitution,” Jon Caldara’s blog offers updates on this week’s legal proceedings to see who will win Round 1: the Governor or the taxpayers. Regardless, the case will end up being appealed to the Colorado Supreme Court.

Republican Presidential candidate John McCain was in town on Friday to lead a townhall discussion on his health care policy. Last week local health care guru Brian Schwartz previewed McCain’s arrival with a lukewarm analysis of the candidate’s plan to reform health care, summed up here:

So this tax-credit idea, while sort of on target, is even more social engineering via tax policy, instead of undoing existing tax policy that has created the problem in the first place.

Joshua Sharf, who saw the candidate in person, was left with a more favorable view of the tax credit proposal, but thought the good idea in McCain’s policy was watered down with many bits of “nanny-state hectoring.”

Joshua also noted McCain’s well-developed skills of personal retail politicking:

One moment stood out for me. I don’t think it was a planted question, but when one woman who runs a laser- and massage-therapy clinic with her husband asked a question, McCain interrupted to prompt her to define and discuss laser therapy and its benefits. It was obvious he knew the answer, but just as obvious that he wanted her to say it. He didn’t need to prove how smart he was by lecturing; he could do it just as well by letting her talk with pride about her work.

My guess is McCain wins more votes with his approach on the stump than with his health care plan.

Before the Wings-Avs series, I said I wouldn’t write anymore about it until the series was over. Well, it’s over… and how. Simply put, the Red Wings dominated. And this blogger smiled.

My condolences to Constructively Reasonable. Your consolation will be having lost to the eventual Stanley Cup champion.

Nancy Mitchell in the Rocky Mountain News reports today about the Colorado Student Assessment Program:

Colorado’s $22 million testing program appears headed for replacement after more than a dozen years and scant evidence of improvement in recent results.

In other words: Not enough kids are learning fundamental reading skills at the critical junction of 3rd grade. Therefore, some people say it’s time to modernize and improve the CSAP, and others want to scrap testing and accountability altogether.

The first group has the right idea, provided updating the state’s assessment system is done correctly. The second group makes an absurd flight from logic. Imagine if the news story were about a state-funded auto emissions testing program in which the same percentage of cars were failing after 12 years. Who would use the flat results to argue that the solution is to scrap the testing program?

Maybe some change in the testing procedure would be helpful, but if the goal were to reduce emissions then other policies or incentives would be promoted. Not getting rid of the test. How then would we know the results?

The problem here is that some people want to get rid of the CSAP because having kids learn to read is not exactly their primary goal for schooling. Others don’t like the fact that it highlights the failures of some schools in the public education system. While updating the CSAP may yield some measure of success, don’t think that getting rid of the test will make Colorado’s education problems go away.

Meanwhile, Michael at Best Destiny has his typically keen insights about the announcement of preliminary CSAP results.

Obscure question: What special connection does the name Katie Casey have to baseball aficionados today? Well, it was 100 years ago today (May 2, 1908) that America’s universal musical standard Take Me Out to the Ball Game was published. Jack Norworth penned the words; Albert von Tilzer the unforgettable melody.

To clear up the connection, Norworth’s and Van Tilzer’s Tin Pan Alley creation was written to be sung by a young female character:

Only a handful of fans realize that the two verses of the song are about Katie Casey (later changed to Nelly Kelly), a girl who was mad with baseball fever as she asked her young beau to take her to a ballgame rather than a show. This faint whiff of romance added to the song’s success on vaudeville, where singers (including Norworth’s wife and star, Nora Bayes), actors, even acrobats, incorporated the hit into their acts. Also adding to its immense popularity, the song was featured during intermissions at the early twentieth-century nickelodeons where it was accompanied by “lantern slides,” photos touched up with paint that provided the audience with a visual component to the song as the lyrics scrolled across the bottom of the screen. This way, when Katie Casey made the pitch to her date, everyone in the audience could respond in song: “Take me out to the ball game…”

Next time you’re enjoying America’s pastime at one of her beautiful ballparks, and you rise for that 7th inning stretch, think of Katie Casey and an enduring classic that has lived for a full century.

Of course, the question remains: Would Norworth’s and Von Tilzer’s character recognize the sport, and would she want to be taken out to the ball game today?

It’s the first day of May, and big flakes of snow are falling in my backyard. Yesterday it was 80 degrees and sunny. Call it springtime in Denver. Maybe global warming is taking a holiday.