Mount Virtus

The folly that was the CNN-YouTube debate needs to be answered not only with sharp criticism but with an exemplary alternative: A great idea has been put forward by Human Events and the conservative blogging community over at RedState. Check it out.

For the second consecutive year, State Sen. Nancy Spence, R-Centennial, is coming forward with a bill to provide state dollars to schools that develop and implement performance-based compensation plans for teachers - a reform idea that has gained tremendous bipartisan support nationally.

Last year I provided legislative testimony highlighting the new body of research showing the effectiveness of merit-pay programs. On a party-line vote, Democrats in the committee killed it.

This year, the Governor’s P-20 Education Council has included a tepid endorsement of “alternative teacher compensation.” With this new political reality, there may be a better chance to see Colorado become a progressive leader in educator pay. But the devil will be in the details. Forces that worked to derail Spence’s 2007 bill may work to water down the 2008 version. We shall see.

The Rocky Mountain News today published an article which may qualify as one of the richest, most revealing local political stories of the year. It begins:

On the day he issued his executive order making unions a bigger player in state government, Gov. Bill Ritter and union representatives assured Coloradans they weren’t going to rock the boat.

But behind the scenes, the waters were anything but calm, e-mails and other documents provided by Ritter’s office in response to a Rocky Mountain News open records request show.

Ritter’s senior staff scrambled in the hours leading up to his announcement to deal with what they accurately predicted would be “a good deal of backlash.”

And a group representing seven Colorado unions rushed Ritter a “personal and confidential” letter urging him not to sign the order because it did not go far enough.

There is something pleasingly ironic about the thought of Ritter and Company working overtime on PR damage control in response to an article that highlights their earlier missteps at attempting to perform PR damage control. Here’s the nub of the perception problem: While the governor repeatedly has downplayed the order by asserting that he is the CEO of state government, labor union leaders have a lot more sway than his administration cares to admit.

After all, the timing of Ritter’s “important” state government business (i.e., his unionization executive order) was determined by union leaders’ behind-the-scenes plans.

I’m sure today’s revelations by the Rocky Mountain News will further unsettle the confidence of many Colorado business leaders and other citizens in Gov. Ritter’s leadership.

Cross posted at Ritter Watch

After an extended holiday weekend that included technical problems with this blog finally being resolved (or so it appears), the long silence is over. More to come shortly.

Psalm 28:6-9

6 Praise be to the LORD,
for he has heard my cry for mercy.

9 Save your people and bless your inheritance;
be their shepherd and carry them forever.

May you have a safe and blessed Thanksgiving holiday, a time of growth in your gratitude to God and others.

I haven’t commented much on the Republican primary in Colorado’s 6th Congressional District, but I wrote in a post two weeks ago:

The primary race for the safe Republican seat now appears to be mainly between Coffman and State Senator Ted Harvey.

I’ve been aware of the word on the street (and in the press) that Wil Armstrong, son of former U.S. Senator Bill Armstrong, was interested in throwing his hat into the ring. But not having sources that could confirm any activity coming from that corner, I didn’t give attention to his candidacy.

Until yesterday, that is, when I received a Thanksgiving card from the Wil Armstrong family with a friendly message on the inside and a family portrait on the front. Nothing overtly political about the card at all. Even so, two key facts are worth considering here: 1) I’ve never met Wil Armstrong or any member of his immediate family; and 2) I don’t live in the 6th Congressional District.

I’m not sure what list my name and address came from to receive this card, though I could venture a few guesses. For now, I’ll consider it a friendly introduction.

But perhaps it’s also a subtle indication that Armstrong is a serious contender for the 6th Congressional District. And perhaps he or someone close to him has read this blog (after all, it was exactly 18 months ago I published a report on the Republican State Assembly written by his then 11-year-old daughter Elizabeth) and wants to see more attention. Well, if so, it worked.

I stand a bit afar from events in the 6th to handicap the race too well. Will it be Secretary of State Mike Coffman, State Senator Ted Harvey, State Senator Steve Ward, or Armstrong? With such a short timeline to caucus and the assembly, along with a crowded and well-qualified field, I’m not brave enough to venture any predictions. Maybe a conservative blogger who lives in the 6th can give more insight.

For now, I’ll just graciously accept the warm Thanksgiving wishes from the Wil Armstrong family.

The Pueblo Chieftain joins other Colorado newspaper editorial voices in rejecting the arguments made for Gov. Ritter’s executive order unionizing state employees:

While he hopes his partnership arrangements will lead to new efficiencies, just the opposite could result. Unions are notorious for demanding - and receiving - work rules that often run counter to efficient operations. In addition to high medical insurance costs, old-line industries such as steel and autos had work rules that made them less competitive than those plants which operate without unions.

The governor maintains that the restrictions on the state budget ensconced in TABOR would limit the amount the state could meet in future union pay demands. But there’s always the possibility that other state functions would have to be cut to meet such demands in the future. Since this executive order is not writ in stone like legislation passed by the General Assembly, there could be an evolution toward demands for higher pay, even though Colorado’s state employees are already among the highest paid in the nation.

Besides, any government worker protected by Civil Service should not need a union as well. It simply creates another layer of difficulty when it comes to firing an unproductive or disruptive employee.

We wish Gov. Ritter had simply ordered every member of his Cabinet to open lines of communications with their employees and order those supervisors under them to do the same. Now, by issuing this executive order, the governor has invited the law of unintended consequences into the room.

To summarize, the Chieftain, like others, sees Ritter’s order as unnecessary, counterproductive, and harmful. Might it not be time for a mea culpa from the governor?

Cross posted at Ritter Watch

Liberal Democrat and Colorado Congressional candidate Jared Polis, with whom I frequently disagree on this blog, is to be commended for deciding to take a look at what’s going on in Iraq himself:

Polis, former chairman of the state education board, is leaving today to spend a week with relief agencies, Iraqi civilians and two deployed Colorado lawmakers.

Polis said the point of the trip is to “get a broader picture of what’s going on” in Iraq, not “hold a large turkey for photo ops.”

Contrast Polis’ apparent open-minded with the self-blinding attitude of his chief Democrat primary opponent, who typify the Left’s talking points that dominate with their party in Congress:

Fitz-Gerald’s campaign said the trip isn’t necessary.

“The facts on Iraq are clear and have been,” she said. “We should end the war immediately and bring the troops home. When Jared gets back, I hope that he agrees [sic] me.”

Will the Party establishment and the Left in Colorado’s 2nd Congressional District rally enough to support another candidate with the blinders on? Another Democrat pol with her head in the sand? Maybe someone should subscribe Fitz-Gerald to the dispatches of Michael Yon or Michael Totten. Or how about a front-page glimpse (believe it or not, at last!) at today’s New York Times.

Look, Polis’ trip to Iraq may turn out to be all for show. But then again he may be genuine, in which case I hope he takes time to meet with some of our enlisted troops, our young officers, as well as local Iraqi leaders and tribal chiefs. Who knows? He might end up getting a taste of the Brian Baird treatment.

If Polis dares to talk about the progress taking place in Iraq before the primary election, he may incur the wrath of MoveOn.org and the other well-heeled doctrinaire defeatists who are fighting for the helm of the Democrat Party. Then again, Polis has plenty of his own cash, too.

This could turn out to be an interesting race in Colorado’s 2nd Congressional District. But only if one or more of the candidates is willing to make a grown-up assessment of our Middle East foreign policy by going to really look for himself.

The Colorado Springs Gazette’s editors decry Gov. “Back Room” Bill “Bag Man” Ritter for his executive order unionizing state employees:

For the second time in less than a year, Gov. Bill Ritter has gotten into political trouble by throwing a bone to his labor union friends. In this case, however, he didn’t just throw them a bone, but a sirloin steak, by granting state employees de facto collective bargaining powers in an executive order issued late in the afternoon of Nov. 2.

Contributing to the backlash this time around is the secretive, unilateral way the political payoff was orchestrated, and the slick, Clintonesque way the governor has tried to spin the issue by playing semantics.

Ouch - it’s worth reading the whole thing. The Gazette joins other Colorado newspapers of various political stripes in denouncing Ritter’s actions - including the Denver Post, Rocky Mountain News [link not available: something to be fixed in the site redesign], Fort Collins Coloradoan, and Grand Junction Daily Sentinel.

With input yesterday from Colorado Attorney General John Suthers comes the first evidence that Ritter’s union executive order will cost taxpayers money after all - despite the protests of the governor’s office:

Suthers told the committee Wednesday that he expects leaders of other state agencies to seek out legal advice on how to handle labor-relation issues in light of the new bargaining power of state workers. That, in turn, will probably require his office to either contract with or hire lawyers with labor-law experience, he said.

“There is no question in our mind that there is going to be an increase in demand for legal services in our office,” Suthers said after the meeting.

Suthers, a Republican, said he cannot yet put a dollar amount on the extra costs.

The governor’s office seems to have been caught flat-footed on this one, as Ritter’s spokesman can only bring himself to say “we disagree” with Suthers’ analysis:

Ritter has said be believes the order will be cost-neutral. Evan Dreyer, Ritter’s spokesman, disputed Suthers’ contention that the order will necessitate extra funding.

“We, obviously, can’t speak for his office,” Dreyer wrote in an e-mail. “But we disagree this will create the need for additional legal staff or that type of analysis.”

First, the governor tries to tell us it’s not really collective bargaining. Then he stands stubbornly by the defense that it will be “cost-neutral” without having any sort of persuasive objection when clearly contradictory evidence is presented.

I believe it’s safe to say things aren’t proceeding as Ritter had planned.

It was definitely time for a site makeover. So welcome to the new design of Mount Virtus, with all the same content and links and features, but a new look.

The Pueblo Chieftain’s Charles Ashby reports (H/T Mike Saccone) that Gov. Bill Ritter and the Democrats are trotting out a Republican state department chief as safe cover for his executive order:

A Republican Cabinet member in Gov. Bill Ritter’s administration already has found the governor’s plan to “partner” with state workers beneficial to running his de- partment.

But Russell George, executive director of the Colorado Department of Transportation, would have done that anyway, the former GOP House speaker said.

“It’s very much in my nature to want to know the people I work with,” said George, who previously was head of the Colorado Department of Natural Resources under former Gov. Bill Owens. “So, as I got here, I would have worked out some arrangement anyway. This is what I’ve done in the past.”

To George, it makes little difference that Ritter wants all of his departments to create formalized “partnership agreements” with state workers, which allow them to form or join unions to negotiate on their behalf.

The point, Ritter and George said, is to help state government operate more efficiently.

But the story begs the question (several times over): If George was able (as many managers do) to establish a “partnership” with employees in his department before Ritter issued his order, why was the order needed? How does setting up unions as “exclusive representatives” of state employees - which Ritter’s order authorizes - enhance the relationship between management and employees? Couldn’t Ritter have instructed his department heads to follow George’s model of building partnerships without contracting out to third-party private labor unions?

More questions are begged of the reporter who wrote the story, such as: Where’s the other side of this story? (Or the other story today by Ashby, that cites alleged poor management at the state mental hospital as something that would be remedied by giving unions the status of exclusive representative. But this story begs similar questions - questions left unexplored and unanswered.)

Yet instead of having an open debate on these matters, Ritter signed the new policy into effect by fiat. And now it looks like he is doing some serious PR repair duty. Meanwhile, Coloradans await the tough but obvious questions from reporters.

Repeating himself at the Dead Governors site and at the Denver Post blog, Lefty political hit man David Sirota plies his latest act of deception with the headline: “Business to CO GOP: ‘Where’s The Evidence’ To Back Up Attacks On Ritter?” Sirota links to a Denver Business Journal piece titled “Mixed reaction to union order” to make his point.

The problem? First, Sirota willfully ignores the obvious split in the business community between the self-interested and conflict-averse Chamber of Commerce sector and the more entrepreneurial, independent-minded small business sector. Sirota cherry-picks the apathetic responses of the former (you can read his posts for the excerpts) and disregards the strong anger from the latter:

One of the sharpest criticisms of the governor’s move came from Tony Gagliardi, Colorado state director for the National Federation of Independent Business, a small-business advocacy organization.

“The governor’s move is sure to create a larger division between labor and business, a division that cannot be good for the citizens of this state and our economy,” Gagliardi said in a statement that followed Ritter’s order on Nov. 2.

Michael Severins, president and CEO of the Mountain States Employer’s Council, which represents 2,600 employers in Colorado and Wyoming, fears the governor’s order — coupled with brouhaha over HB 1072 earlier this year — may scare away businesses looking to move operations to Colorado.

If more state workers join unions, Severins is concerned that they’ll get more organized and infiltrate the private sector.

“That will present a business environment that will be totally different than it is now,” he said.

Severins also worries that with Ritter and the Democrats in control in Capitol Hill, the executve [sic] order won’t satiate organized labor’s appetite next session.

“I question what else is coming down the pike,” he said. “Do we need to take a more defensive posture?”

But it’s even worse than that, because the response from the Chamber of Commerce sector hasn’t been as completely tepid as Sirota’s selective quotes would lead his readers to believe. Case in point: he cites the “personal opinion” of a spokesperson for the Colorado Association of Commerce and Industry (CACI) as evidence that “leading business voices are even applauding Ritter’s decision to make the move via executive order.” But he neglected the paragraphs immediately following:

CACI’s executive committee on Wednesday issued a statement raising questions about the “substance, process and appearance” of Ritter’s order.

The statement raised concerns that if state workers negotiate for fewer hours and more time off, it might delay the processing of applications for permits, requests for rulings and other actions that may be required by state agencies.

CACI also worried that wage increases negotiated by the union could divert funds from the organization’s priorities such as transportation and higher education.

“CACI does not believe that the executive order was necessary or that it serves the interests of the citizens and businesses of Colorado,” the statement said.

Once again, the facts of the story don’t quite match what Sirota would have you believe, as he and his allies have been shown to lie and to obfuscate on this issue.

“Where’s the evidence?” Sirota asks.

Reply: “Right in front of your face.”

Rather than take on all the lies and distortions in the debate over Gov. Bill Ritter’s unionization executive order en masse, it makes more sense to deal with them one at a time. For starters, in two previous posts (here and here), I highlighted the internal contradictions and patent inaccuracies in the Left’s attempt to deny that the order constitutes “collective bargaining.”

Lefty political hit man David Sirota, who recently appeared on a TV show hosted by my boss Jon Caldara at the Independence Institute, told this to his “progressive” buddies at the national Left-wing echo chamber known as Huffington Post:

The most absurd attack on Ritter is the one that claims he acted in secret - even though, of course, he campaigned on a pledge to support more rights for workers and even though he has long ago responded to the GOP’s Open Records Act requests about his deliberations over employee partnerships. [emphasis added]

Sirota cleverly uses very vague and elusive language: “a pledge to support more rights for workers.” Calling it the “most absurd attack,” his defense of an alleged open process behind Ritter’s policy stands on: 1) A claim that Ritter campaigned publicly on the issue and 2) An acknowledgment that Ritter turned over some documents related to the crafting of the policy when asked. The second point is weak, filler material: What if no one had asked?

Re the first point, in the same post Sirota links to “research materials” generated by his own Progressive States Network organization. In those materials, one of the points reads:

During his campaign for governor, Bill Ritter promised to support giving state workers a bigger voice. In speeches as a candidate, he said he supported collective bargaining rights for public employees.

Neither in his post nor in the alleged “research materials” is a source or reference given to substantiate this claim. The burden of proof lies on Sirota and his cohort to produce the documentation, video or audio of Ritter publicly declaring his desire to authorize the unionization of state employees during his gubernatorial candidacy. A search of Colorado media sources generates not a single mention of the topic, and the Lefties know that the campaign included no such debate.

But the utter lack of evidence hasn’t stopped the repeated assertion that our governor campaigned on the plank of instituting collective bargaining for state employees. “The most absurd attack” - does Mr. Sirota wish to make a retraction? Or does he wish to publish the verifiable evidence that supports his claim?

Another Lefty lie debunked, more to come….

On Friday I highlighted the Left-labor-Democrat coalition’s internal confusion about whether or not Gov. Ritter’s executive order constitutes collective bargaining. Over the weekend, Denver Post editorialist Bob Ewegen - who has actually earned a degree in labor relations - set the record straight with some important observations:

The ground rules for collective bargaining in the private sector are spelled out in the 1935 National Labor Relations Act, which does not cover public employees. Ritter’s order basically paraphrases those federal regulations to apply to state (but not city or county) employees. The NLRA specifies how unions can be certified as “exclusive bargaining agents” for eligible employees in a specific workplace (”bargaining unit”). Supervisors above a certain level can’t be in the union.

Ritter likewise defines the possible bargaining units (”partnership units”) within state government, excludes supervisors, stipulates how unions (”employee organizations”) can win exclusive bargaining rights, requires department heads to “negotiate, in good faith, a partnership agreement (contract) with the certified employee organizations” and outlines what those contracts can cover and how they can be enforced.

If that’s not collective bargaining, then it’s at least the walking duck equivalent, perhaps best described as “collective quacking.”

An ardent opponent of TABOR and far from a fiscal conservative or a Republican partisan, Ewegen just stepped in to tell the less responsible voices on the Left to at least come to terms with facts and reality on the unionization of state employees.

Of course, the problem really isn’t that the Left has failed to come to terms with the facts. It’s that the Left doesn’t want the average Colorado voter to think about the implications of the governor’s action. Again, as Ewegen points out:

Ritter insists he only wants these “partnerships” to “bring managers and employees together to make government services more effective, efficient and reliable for the public.” But you can search the annals of labor history and never find firebrands like Mother Jones exhorting workers to arise and “identify and implement efficiency measures and eliminate waste and redundancies,” as Ritter urges them to do. CAPE/SEIU, whose 5,000 members make it by far the largest state employee organization, openly proclaims that Ritter’s order will ” enable us to negotiate job and service improvements directly.”

CAPE/SEIU’s immediate goal will be to boost the state contribution to its employees’ health care benefits - an area where Colorado ranks 49th out of the 50 states, according to a report by Workplace Economics, Inc.

Obviously, union organizers hope these baby steps will some day lead to full-fledged bargaining rights, including setting wages, hours, work rules and other mainstays of private sector unions. Business interests - and Republicans wary of the huge sums employee unions can spend to elect Democratic politicians sympathetic to their aims - fear that may indeed prove to be the case.

Joshua also has similarly explained this dynamic, which I’ve pointed out to readers. Though he is undoubtedly more sympathetic with the results, the Post’s deputy editorial page editor also gets it.

Not much time or effort is needed to deduce why Colorado’s well-subsidized Lefty propaganda echo chamber is more interested in confusion, distortion, deception, and hyperbole. They know that Ritter’s new policy is politically beneficial to the interests of their “progressive” coalition, but not to most of Colorado’s citizens or its economy.

It’s the same reason behind Ewegen’s explanation for much of the outrage on the Republican side: Ritter’s unionization order empowers labor organizations to increase their already rigged in-state campaign finance advantage. More cash automatically deducted from the coffers of state workers into Democrat campaigns and 527 groups means less the Lefty millionaires have to spend to buy Colorado elections themselves.

It’s been kind of funny to watch the Democratic Party coalition in Colorado dance around the term “collective bargaining” since last Friday afternoon’s executive order from Gov. Bill Ritter. Here is a sample:

Denver Post (11/4/07): “Mitch Ackerman, president of Service Employees International Union Local 105, called the partnership with Kaiser a ’21st century model of collective bargaining,’ a departure from the traditionally adversarial relationship between managers and workers.”

Colorado Federation of Public Employees Press Release (11/6/07): “Union Leader Says Partnership is Not Collective Bargaining”

Bill Ritter, Rocky Mountain News Speakout (11/6/07): “Twenty-nine states provide collective-bargaining rights to their employees. What we have crafted for Colorado is not collective bargaining.”

Erin Rosa, Colorado Confidential (11/9/07): “What do state employees think about Gov. Bill Ritter’s executive order to bring collective bargaining to the workforce?”

Progressive States Network “Fact Sheet” (touted by David Sirota, and worthy of a herculean effort in de-bunking itself): “EXPERT: RITTER’S MOVE ‘NOT REALLY COLLECTIVE BARGAINING’ - Chip Taylor, legislative director for Colorado Counties Inc., told the Rocky Mountain News that conservatives are misleading the public with their rhetoric about Ritter’s executive order. “There’s a no-strike clause, and it doesn’t allow for binding arbitration,” Taylor said. “It’s not really collective bargaining.”

Elsewhere on the same fact sheet, we find headings such as: “COLLECTIVE BARGAINING NOT NEW IN ROCKY MOUNTAIN STATES” and “KENNEDY ISSUED AN EXECUTIVE ORDER TO ALLOW FEDERAL COLLECTIVE BARGAINING.” If Ritter’s order isn’t to be considered “collective bargaining,” then why are these cited as arguments in its favor?

So is the order “collective bargaining” or isn’t it? A look at the standard definitions accepted in the dictionary give a clear answer: Yes, it is.
The more the Left can confuse Coloradans about what the order is and where the order promises to lead state government, the more they hope voters in this individual-rights friendly Western state will throw up their hands and give them a pass. And they can continue their happy, heavily-funded socialist experiment on our fair state.

But it appears sometimes they even confuse themselves. And heading into the weekend, I find that quite amusing.

On Monday I wrote about Gov. Ritter’s plan to impose Greenhouse Global Warming hysteria on Colorado’s public school classrooms. David Harsanyi’s Denver Post column today explores the issue with more skilled and entertaining prose:

Not long ago, Ritter assembled the P-20 Education Coordinating Council to foster a “seamless education system from pre-school to grad- school.” Nowhere in the literature of the P-20 Education Coordinating Council - and I’ve looked far and wide - does it mention anything about the educational system being used to politically indoctrinate children.

Yet, the Climate Action Plan says that “the state will work through the Governor’s P-20 Education Council and others to make sustainability curricula become standard fare in K-12 classrooms throughout the state.”

Standard fare? I’m a weird person. I don’t want social conservatives teaching my kids about creationism. I don’t want Republicans teaching my kids about balanced budgets. And I don’t want Democrats teaching my children global-warming hysteria.

Harsanyi brings a certain logical consistency to his argument that others do not. Environmentalists on the secular Left don’t want taxpayer dollars to fund Creationism in the classroom but have no problem spending your dollars indoctrinating kids into the shaky pseudo-science of Greenhouse Global Warming.

Harsanyi and I agree on the simple policy remedy, a pro-freedom solution:

Give parents a choice. Let them take their hard- earned tax dollars and pick a school that conforms to their value system. For instance, schools that avoid political indoctrination and teach kids subjects of value.

Some would suggest that to truly prepare kids for Ritter’s “New Energy Economy,” a level of proficiency in English, math and hard science would serve them best.

Read the whole thing.

On this coming Veterans Day weekend, be sure to thank the troops for what they’re sacrificing for us. Go to America Supports You - and thanks to the NRSC for putting up a splash page that links to this tremendous site.

After you send a note of thanks to our troops, remember to thank a veteran. They have given so much for our freedom.