Mount Virtus

I received the following report concerning the latest meeting of the Denver Metro Young Republicans:

Karen Bauer, one of three people removed from President Bush’s Social Security meeting posed as a Rocky Mountain News journalist while grilling Jay Bob Klinkerman at a regular meeting of the Denver Metro Young Republicans. Klinkerman is chair of the Colorado Young Republicans, a group unaffiliated with the Denver Metro Young Republicans.

Ann Imse, staff writer for the Rocky Mountain News and photographer Evan Semon, escorted Bauer into the meeting.

“They were waiting in the restaurant area until our meeting began. They then joined our meeting in progress in a private room. They declined signing our guest form or to introduce themselves which is standard at our meetings,” said Jude Sandvall, President of the Denver Metro Young Republicans.

It was only discovered after the harsh questioning of Klinkerman that Bauer was not a reporter and that she had shown up with Imse to intentionally confront the Young Republican chair.

“The sad thing is that we have enjoyed a great relationship with the press media in the past. Ann Imse’s behavior is beyond our worst expectations in her attempt at deception. I’m truly disappointed with the Rocky Mountain News,” concluded Sandvall.

The Denver Metro Young Republicans have been meeting at On the Border Cantina for more than 7 years on the 4th Tuesday every month at 6:30pm. They are independent from any State or National Young Republican organization and have been in continuous existence for more than 40 years in the Denver Metropolitan region.

Sorry to see the media has to use fraudulent and paranoid tactics to infiltrate the Young Republicans, the “nerve center” of the vast right-wing conspiracy.

Thanks to Jay Klinkerman, current chair of the Colorado Federation of Young Republicans, for providing the shocking story.

News like this could put a damper on the search to buy a first home. But then again, since most of the prices listed in the article are outside of our range, it could be best just to ignore the story and move on. Motto for the cost-conscious House Hunter searching through endless listings and making visit after visit: “I only need to find one.” And it ain’t going to be in Cherry Hills… NOT EVEN CLOSE!

This article in today’s Rocky Mountain News on the organized Family Research Council rally against the judicial filibuster highlights an event that will likely prove to be further fodder for the fearmongering Left, but it was good to see some pre-emptive remarks at the rally:

“This is a way of Salazar and these people on the left of trying to silence debate,” [President of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights Bill] Donohue said. “When you use, ‘theocracy,’ that’s saying we’re like a bunch of ayatollahs, (that) we’re radicals. Who’s using the incendiary language? He is. . . . What Salazar is doing (is) he’s muddying the whole concept of the First Amendment.”

“We’re not going to be a theocracy, so stop with the scare language,” Donohue said.

Donohue is exactly right on this point. If anyone with common sense and a serious perspective on history would stop and consider the idea of an interfaith rally featuring both evangelical Protestant and Catholic leaders, to label such a movement as proto-theocratic goes beyond the absurd. These are people of serious faith and moral values concerned that self-appointed black-robed lords have overstepped their Constitutional roles. We share the not-so-radical common goal of expecting the Senate to fulfill its Constitutional duty - to give “advice and consent” to the President in his nominations to the federal bench.

Tell me: is that so scary?

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Welcome to the home site of the newest book reviewer for Mind & Media, a Christian-themed site. I will be reading publisher’s copies of newer books and occasionally posting reviews on this site - for your enjoyment and edification, I hope. Thanks to Stacy for the opportunity!

Remember Paul Marrick and Wayne Rutt, the Fort Collins parents who were disgusted to see the electioneering the teachers’ union did at the expense of their children and decided to do something about it?

Well, these days they’ve taken their determined efforts even further by launching the organization Parents for Truth in Education to raise awareness and to raise funds for their formal complaint against the teachers’ union. You can also get up to speed concerning the facts and issues by reading their news clippings. Check out their brand-new website.

To top it all off, Wayne and Paul have been given a microphone and a platform to get the message out not only about this particular case but about any future issues that may arise. Tune in on Saturdays from 2 to 4 pm to 1310AM KFKA in Greeley for the debut of “The Truth According to Us.”

And remember, the hearing against the Poudre Education Association is scheduled to take place on May 2. Wayne and Paul have sacrificed a lot to bring their case forward. Of course, the cause is bigger than these two men who are carrying the banner right now. So if you want an educational system that is more accountable, more responsive to parents, more free of politics, and more dedicated to excellent teaching and learning, then do what you can to show your support (contribute, listen, send them some encouragement, spread the word around), and I’m sure Wayne and Paul and many more will be grateful.

It is fairly safe to say that Colorado voters gave Democrats the majorities in both houses of the state legislature last fall because of their promise to “fix” the state’s budget problems. Events this week on two fronts show why voter trust was misplaced.

First, Democrats tried to renege on a small compromise they made in HB 1194 (aka the “no refund for you” Romanoff rip-off) only a day after the House approved the bill to send to voters as Referendum C on this fall’s ballot. Part of the deal to make HB 1194 more fiscally palatable involved the suspension of 19 different tax credits during the plan’s five-year tenure. The next day Democrats tried to push a late bill into committee that would have instantly restored a $38 million child care tax credit that had been included in the HB 1194 deal. Fortunately, they were called on it and backed off. But the temptation for these Democrat legislators is almost too powerful to resist.

The inclination among the overwhelming number of Democrats is to believe that your tax dollars really belong to them. It’s analogous to a group of unsupervised little kids let loose in a candy or toy store, grasping for the objects that catch their eye. Only when the fiscally-conservative Republican adults spot them sneaking the Matchbox car or doll into their pocket do they grudgingly put it back on the shelf. Frankly, I prefer having the adults in the majority, so we can keep more eyes on our tax dollars.

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Former US Congressman and current Republican National Committeeman Bob Schaffer weaves his own family into a clear, straightforward, and common sense case for Social Security reform:

Our five-year-old daughter Mary was named after her great-grandmother Mary who is in her nineties. It is interesting how critics of President Bush’s plan to rescue Social Security act like we must favor one Mary at the expense of the other if we support the president.

It is a worn tactic perfected by people in Washington, DC who like to avoid responsibility by pitting one group against another. We sure hope it doesn’t work this time.

Improving Social Security must not be delayed. The first wave of baby boomers will retire in three years. Ten years later the system will begin paying out more benefits than it collects in tax revenues.

This imbalance will force politicians to search for other sources of cash to make up the difference. Future Congresses will have few options: They could raise taxes, cut retirement benefits, slash spending, bloat the debt and devalue the currency. Or, Congress can act now to put Social Security on a path toward permanent solvency.

As grandchildren, parents of five and ourselves baby boomers, we don’t need many more reasons to believe future generations should enjoy more secure retirements. But that would require courage from America’s leaders.

When Social Security was created in 1935 Great-Grandma Mary was twenty-one. Back then, there were forty-two workers paying into the system for every retiree receiving benefits. These workers also lived much longer than demographers had predicted.

They had courage. They worked America out of the Depression. They and their kids won World War II. After that they made lots of babies – who, upon entering adulthood, did not make lots of babies.

By the 1950s the number of workers paying in for every senior collecting benefits had fallen to sixteen. Today there are just over three. Sometime after young Mary enters the workforce this ratio will shrink to two workers per retiree.

Great-Grandma Mary paid about 2-percent of her payroll in taxes to the system. Today, we are taxed at 12.4-percent. It is obvious that as time goes on, Social Security is a losing proposition for young Mary and her siblings.

In 1935, the rate of return on Great-Grandma Mary’s investment in the system was a respectable 8-percent. Today, we can expect a dismal 1-percent return on the money we contribute to Social Security. Young Mary will get about a negative-1-percent return on her contribution if President Bush’s critics win the debate.

The president has pledged to make no change to Great-Grandma Mary’s benefit schedule nor any in the soon-to-retire category.

But when it comes to our young Mary, Bush wants to give her a choice between investing a portion of her Social Security payroll tax — about 6 percent on average — into a tax-free personal account, or remaining in the current low-earning system. Those opting for personal accounts would actually own their account and it would be invested within secure parameters for respectable growth.

Ideally, these personal account holders could pass their earnings on when they die to their heirs. Unlike today, the government would no longer be able to raid these funds to finance other spending. As we see it, the goals of higher returns and fixing Social Security’s current problems go hand in hand.

As younger workers’ savings grow in voluntary personal accounts, over time these accounts meet more of Social Security’s financial obligations. Actuaries believe such a plan can restore Social Security surpluses by 2025 and eventually eliminate the program’s $10.4 trillion unfunded liability.

Improving young Mary’s rate of return must be a key part of any Social Security reform plan. Like her great-grandmother, she deserves a secure retirement.

Republican Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum wrote last week for National Review, defending his party’s determination and ability to bring about such reform this year. There are a lot of skeptics out there, and with good reason. I’ve about given up hope that a reasonably good Social Security reform package - one with personal accounts - can make it through both houses of Congress in 2005. But maybe, just maybe, we’re “misunderestimating” the President. For the sake of people in my generation and the future welfare of these great United States, I hope the reform comes sooner rather than later. Thanks to great leaders like Bob Schaffer, we can help keep the issue on the front-burner.

From the case files of “Why Putting More Money into the Education System Doesn’t Mean Better-Educated Students”…

The Washington Times reports today on a high-ranking D.C. schools bureaucrat who is really raking in the dough:

Robert C. Rice last year earned a $124,923 salary as the school system’s assistant superintendent for standards and curriculum and acting chief academic officer, records show. When he was promoted to interim superintendent for five months last year, his salary rose to $175,000 a year.

Mr. Rice stepped down from the interim job in September, but pay documents show he is still receiving his interim salary as a “special assistant to the superintendent” — a position created for him. The newly created job makes Mr. Rice one of the highest-paid employees in the school system and in city government.

The school system last year had one special assistant to the superintendent, a position that paid $52,936 a year, according to pay documents. This year, pay documents show that the system has two special assistants to the superintendent: Joyce Matthews McNeil, who earns $64,101 a year, and Mr. Rice, who makes $175,000 a year — or $210,000 a year, including benefits.

D.C. Schools spends more per pupil by far than any of the 50 states, and the district’s students consistently rank at the bottom in achievement statistics. By now, we should all be comfortable in pointing out that K-12 public education in the United States needs to focus more on outputs than inputs - when the system cries out for more money, there’s an opportunity to step in and promote the increasingly mainstream ideas of school choice and accountability, empowering parents, and decentralizing bureaucracy.

Stories like the one today in the Times should only feed the momentum of great new innovative ideas - like that of the “65 percent solution” promoted by educational entrepreneur Patrick Byrne. He wants to start initiatives all across the nation that require 65% of public education funds be spent in the classroom.

George Will highlighted the idea in a recent column. Mike at Best Destiny has also taken a look at it. The idea is simple: instead of pouring more money down the drain, reallocate more of the resources that are already there into the area where it will have the most direct impact. Of course, such a plan is not a panacea but definitely another promising idea on the road to education reform and certainly worth consideration. If such a proposal were passed in Colorado, another $370 million a year would head into the classroom without raising taxes one dime.

Or we can create new $175,000-a-year administrative jobs, like the not-so-successful D.C. school system. You decide.

Captain Ed has spoken loud and clear about the Republican Party, its not-so-distinguished Senators, and the case of judicial nominations. Here’s a snippet:

Not. One. Dime. And when a vote does come, those Republicans who wind up supporting the minority’s extortion over the majority in defiance of the Constitution will never see another dime from me — but their opponents will, at every level of contest. Honestly, with Republicans like these in the Senate, we may as well have Democrats.

Even before I read Captain Ed’s post, I had already taken a very solemn “Not One Dime” vow. In fact, this week I mailed back a solicitation to renew my Republican National Committee membership with a big ZERO next to the contribution amount and a concise but pointed note to Ken Mehlman indicating that no Republican candidate or organization is going to get any of my hard-earned money until they follow up on their campaign promises and make use of the majority in which we have work so hard to help elect them to serve.

Those of us who have faithfully supported the Republican Party, like Mike and Clay and myself (not to mention eminent center-right Republican icons like Hugh Hewitt and Bob Schaffer), are strongly urging Senate Republicans to break the judicial filibuster. Many of us have also expressed our profound disgust at the lack of leadership on this issue.

Say it with me: “Not One Dime!”

Join the rising chorus of voices, led by Hugh and Captain Ed and others: “Not… One… Dime!!!”

Shout it loud, and shout it proud: “NOT ONE DIME!!!!”

Now go tell the Senate leadership to break the filibuster.

It’s been a few months, but the Mile High Delphi crew is back online with their insightful and statistical analyses of Colorado politics.

Two interesting summary quotes from a recent Blogicus Maximus post:

“…[We] put the probability of the GOP taking back the State House at 80%” and “…[We] will begin our probability of either party controlling the State Senate next year at 50%.” Read the basis for their predictions.

Colorado Republicans have serious reason for hope and optimism in 2006, but a lot of hard work, discipline, and funds are going to be needed to make Mile High Delphi out to be a true genius.

Straight from the reporter’s mouth

Lynn Bartels, political writer for Denver’s Rocky Mountain News, gives some personal insights in a long Q & A she had yesterday over at The Dead Governors website. Bartels proves to be candid, often witty and self-deprecating, but above all fair-minded. She may lean a little left of center but she’s by no means an agenda-driven journalist.

That being said, it is interesting to point out what Clay has already highlighted: Bartels stated flat out that Bob Beauprez can win any office in Colorado he runs for. That must have been a real downer for the Dead Governors and their “Draft Hick” campaign to get the Denver mayor on the statewide ballot.

Another interesting passage in the interview is the Rocky reporter’s response to a question on blogging. Though Bartels believes political blogs will play a larger role than ever in the 2006 election cycle, her earlier experiences with them have left a sour taste in Bartels’ mouth. She wrote:

Last year, a Colorado blog blasted the Rocky for failing to report the controversy surrounding the mix-up over Pete Coors’ photo in the New York Times, and the quip from his campaign spokeswoman. What happened is the NYT mistakenly used his mug shot in a brief about a KKK member convicted of killing a sharecropper.

“It cold [sic] have been worse,” joked Coors’ spokeswoman, Cinamon Watson. “Pete could have been identified as John Kerry.”

Of course, the Political Correctness Police went nuts and her comment went national. That story and her comment were broken by yours truly. And for a blog to report we had ignored the story when we were the newspaper responsible for the story was insane.

I wrote the blog and they posted my response, but they kept their report up. So, if you logged on to the blog, you read their inaccurate posting, then eventually got to my response. And in their response to my posting, they insinuated it was somehow the Rocky’s fault they couldn’t find our stories on line.

She certainly wasn’t referring to this post by our friend Joshua.

Need a tutorial on Colorado politics? A political reporters’ inside perspective? To read some witty and colorful barbs? Go read through the whole interview.

Update: I hit the ‘Publish’ button too quickly. I wanted to highlight the following candid and intriguing anecdote Bartels made:

One night at the GOP convention in New York City I had dinner with Laura Teal and her husband George. She had worked on Bob Shaffer’s [sic] campaign. When we were done, she said, “How does it feel to have had dinner with the right wing nuts of the party?”

And that statement was an eye-opener because I had so much fun with them and it made me realize about labels. And I said, “What about having dinner with the liberal media?” And I think that was an eye-opener for her too, because I think she believed I really gave Bob a fair shake in the primary.

The homosexual advocacy group Equality Forum is organizing a celebration event at Philadelphia’s Independence Hall on the 4th of July that will include commemorations of “gay icons in U.S. history,” a recent news report says.

Among the “outed” figures? You guessed it… Abraham Lincoln.

“[Former N.J.] Governor [James] McGreavey showed mainstream Americans that homophobia has kept those who seek elected office in the closet,” said Malcolm Lazin, executive director of Equality Forum. “These public officials include Abraham Lincoln, who saved the nation, emancipated slaves and founded the modern Republican Party.”

Lazin said he has read The Intimate Life of Abraham Lincoln. “As a gay man and an amateur American historian, I find the evidence indisputable that the 16th President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, was a gay man,” he said.

“Anyone not blinded by homophobia will recognize that the president who preserved our republic was gay. It is time that U.S. historical figures be emancipated from the closet,” Lazin added.

Ah, the lofty credentials of Malcolm Lazin, the amateur historian, telling us that all the professional historians who have debunked C.A. Tripp’s shoddy, agenda-driven The Intimate Life of Abraham Lincoln - not to mention the thorough, knowledegeable and reasoned critique from Tripp’s former colleague Philip Nobile - are plagued by homophobia. Welcome to the vast right-wing conspiracy, academia.

Are radical pro-homosexual advocacy groups so insecure about the depraved lifestyle they flaunt that they have to enlist great American historical figures as closet homosexuals on the most dubious, flimsy, and phony of evidence? The answer seems to be ‘yes.’

Right now, I’m probably feeding their insecurity by bringing more attention to the Equality Forum event than it deserves. If I weren’t worried that politically-correct American educational bureaucrats might some day soon decide to include Tripp’s debunked Lincoln thesis in a fourth-grade history curriculum, I’d probably just yawn in pity.

To the radical activists: go on with your agenda, if you must. You are free to do so. But stop lying and distorting history in the process. How about an honest discussion?

Call me ‘homophobic’ and play the ad hominem game all you want, there is NO serious evidence that our 16th president was gay. The more you try to press the point, the sillier you look.

Erratum: The correct title of Tripp’s book is The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln, not The Intimate Life of Abraham Lincoln. The title of the book was incorrectly cited in the CNS News article above, and I didn’t catch the fact until later.

Memo to Hugh and other Cleveland Indians fans: it looks like my Detroit Tigers are calling out your team for a little mano e mano:

“Forget the other teams,” [Tigers designated hitter Dmitri] Young said to the strains of “Cripple Creek,” “it’s going to come down to us and Cleveland. No disrespect to the Twins and White Sox, I just feel that club, the doggone Indians, is going to be the thorn in our side.

“That’s our rival,” he said. “There are a lot of parallels between us. We’ve progressed the same.”

I’m not sure I’m ready yet to subscribe to Dmitri’s assessment: the conventional wisdom has me leaning towards believing that the Minnesota Twins are the team to beat in the American League Central. But the long baseball season has scarcely begun, and the outspoken Tiger hitter may prove correct after all.

And hey, I like the idea of a two-team contest for the division title between my boys in blue and the latest incarnation of “The Mistake on the Lake.” Such a pennant race could bring out the best - and the worst - in this baseball fan.

Yes, Detroit lost the first 2005 installment of the rivalry, sandwiching a dominant 11-1 victory performance between heartbreaking 4-3 and 7-6 losses during the past weekend’s series.

And, yes, it is true the Tigers may have lived in Cleveland’s shadow for a long decade-plus stint, but I have one question for Mr. Hewitt, two decades my senior: which of us can remember our respective team winning a World Series crown in our lifetime? (Unless Hugh wants to claim childhood remembrances of the famous “Dewey Defeats Truman” headline - 1948 was Cleveland’s last world championship - I think we all know the answer.)

A heated pennant race between my Detroit Tigers and those pesky Cleveland Indians this year? In the words of Vietnam veteran John Kerry, who also is a United States Senator: “Bring it on!”

Thanks to all those who listened to my first live on-air radio interview - and thanks once more to Senator John Andrews and the crew of Backbone Radio for having me on the air and spending more time discussing my blog than I had anticipated. But I appreciate that!

Welcome to all those who are making their first visit here as a result of the on-air mention. Be sure also to visit the main page of the Rocky Mountain Alliance and follow the links to read the quality writings of my fine cohorts.

To find out more about the work of the Independence Institute’s Education Policy Center, including the paper mentioned on Backbone Radio, go here.

Feel free to e-mail me if you have any questions or comments about either my blog here, or about the Education Policy Center, teacher strikes, or some related topic.

I have been invited to be interviewed tonight on Backbone Radio with Senator John Andrews. If you’re in the Denver metro area, tune in to 710 KNUS AM at 7:30 p.m. to hear us talk about the costliness of teacher strikes. I know you won’t be going out to practice your golf game this evening, so it’s either me or the TV movie of the week. I’ll let you decide.

If you’re not in the Denver metro area, you can listen online by going to the 710 KNUS website and clicking on the “Listen Live” icon in the upper-right corner.

The radio invitation comes on the heels of my Monday Speakout column - “Don’t pay teachers for days on strike” - in the Rocky Mountain News. That opinion piece stemmed from my research which led to the Independence Institute Issue Backgrounder “No Work, No Pay”: The Lesson of the 1994 Denver Teachers’ Strike.

If you aren’t local but want an idea of what it looks like today out here in the Denver area, check out Jim’s blizzard photoblogging.

A log from snowed-in metro Denver…

Have Americans again lost interest in international events? Has too much time passed since 9/11 and the subsequent Afghanistan and Iraq wars so that people think we’ve achieved some sort of detente, normalcy, or new Pax Americana? Have we overcome the naivete - so typical of our nation - regarding threats from abroad and political developments a half a world away?

Many of those who spend lots of time online know that there are dozens of excellent bloggers keeping us regularly attuned to events in Iraq, Lebanon, Egypt, Iran, Afghanistan, North and South Korea, China, and elsewhere. Their work is tremendously appreciated, as I must confess my own tendencies to get absorbed with national and even state and local news stories that keep me from observing the big picture.

Did you realize we just passed the momentous 2nd anniversary of the liberation of Baghdad, of the famous crumbling of the Saddam Hussein statue in Paradise Square? Two years ago! We and our allies - along with the Iraqi people - have experienced significant turbulence in the intervening time, and now only days ago the Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani was sworn in as the first non-Arab president of an Arab country. Remarkable stuff, really. During another week, one where the world wasn’t mourning the loss of a well-loved and important pontiff, perhaps the story would have received better coverage domestically.

In times like these, the songs of Eric Free and his recent album Saddam Insane seem especially needful and poignant. America’s once heightened awareness of the global war against Islamofascist terrorism and its evolution into an ambitious project to import democracy en masse to the Middle East has faded a bit. Eric’s creative musical touches help to bring some of the issues back into focus, with song titles like the “Jacques Chirac Jig” and “Bad Mullah Blues.” They range from light and fun to reflective, but many of the songs convey the messages many Americans could stand to hear at this time.

Check out Eric Free’s serious and less-serious blog pages and test out some of the songs, while you’re there.

It’s a Friday, and I couldn’t resist highlighting this Washington Tims story from yesterday on a new Harris survey that gives some not-so-shocking insights into what women want in their men. Some of the findings (with my comments in italics):

• 75 percent of women said their ideal man buys his grooming products at a grocery store or drugstore, not a salon.
A salon… what’s that?
• 72 percent of women said their ideal man spends his free time doing home-improvement projects.
My wife prefers that I try to fix things when possible but realistically just hopes that I don’t break anything in the process.
• 41 percent of women said their ideal man spends his time watching sports.
Yes, but only once in awhile…
• 47 percent of women said their ideal man spends his money on electronics, compared with 9 percent who answered “designer clothes.”
Quite often I’m not sure I even have discretionary money to spend. But it would be electronics and books. Clothes rarely, if ever, make the top ten.
• 90 percent of women said they prefer low-maintenance, easygoing guys.
I wish I’d known that when I was dating. Nine out of 10 women would have liked me? I had no idea. Doesn’t matter now, anyway, since I found one who is very compatible with my “low-maintenance, easygoing” ways.

Most fortunately, I am happily married to a very understanding woman, who appreciates my “manly” qualities while tolerating - and occasionally even appreciating - my quirks and eccentricities, as well.

But I would have been curious to see the polling result about where blogging fits into the realm of what women want in men. It probably doesn’t show up on the cultural radar screen yet. I can only imagine….

A couple of fine gentlemen from Northern Colorado - who are doing courageous, stand-up work to help parents and taxpayers take back their schools from the corrupt unions and their ties to the bureaucratic educational monopoly - need your help. I’ve written about them before. If nothing else, please take time to read the following letter from one of the two crusaders:

Dear Friends:

My name is Wayne Rutt. Together with Paul Marrick, I have filed a complaint with the Colorado Secretary of State against the Poudre Education Association. This is the teachers union in the Fort Collins school district. The hearing is scheduled for 9:00 AM on May 2, 2005, at 1120 Lincoln Street in Denver.

As outlined in our complaint we believe that the union, directed by their president who is paid as a school district employee using tax money, conducted a political campaign for the election of Bob Bacon. Using teachers, and school resources, during the school day they campaigned at the expense of our children.

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