I’ve just updated my 2008 guide to the Colorado ballot to include a link to a new website with all the main reasons why you need to Vote No on Amendment 59 (H/T The Daily Blogster). Quite simply, big-spending liberal politicians want to take away your TABOR refunds forever – and they’re deceptively hiding behind schoolchildren to do it.

So in case you needed the simple reminder, please Vote No on Amendment 59 and avoid getting ripped off.

Apparently the Lefties are willing to pay quite a bit for you to help them campaign here in Colorado. I got this email recently:

Get Paid To Ensure A Progressive Majority In The Colorado Legislature

Earn $500 For 4 Days

Walk Precincts And Drop Literature For The Colorado Citizens’ Coalition

Saturday, November 1st- Election Day Tuesday, November 4th

The Colorado Citizens’ Coalition is the group dedicated to using grassroots organizing to educate voters about the progressive candidates for State House and State Senate.

To get involved contact Final Four Director Cory [N] at [PHONE #] or [EMAIL]

Join the Colorado Citizens’ Coalition for the Final Four Days to make a difference this election cycle. We are recruiting a team of more than 300 paid canvassers state wide to go door to door in the tightest state level races, drop off literature and talk to voters about the progressive choices for the State Legislature in their area.

You can earn $100 per day or $500 if you work all four days.

Please contact Final Four Director Cory [N] at [PHONE #] or [EMAIL] if you have any questions or to apply for a position. [emphasis added; name, phone number, and email address removed]

What do we know about Colorado Citizens’ Coalition?

The Colorado Citizens’ Coalition’s financial disclosures show the group is primarily supported by unions, left-leaning political groups and three wealthy political operatives, Pat Stryker, Tim Gill and Rutt Bridges.

The three millionaires, according to the disclosures, have given the coalition $422,500 since mid-June.

Colorado Citizens’ Coalition (CCC) has the same ultra-rich liberal funders as the Colorado Democracy Alliance (CoDA). Mark Grueskin, attorney for CoDA, filed the Secretary of State paperwork for CCC. The bookkeeper for CCC is Julie Wells, who also keeps books for most of the 527s operating under CoDA. So it’s safe to say there is some kind of cozy “progressive” relationship there.

Anyway, if all that’s true, should we guess that the sender of the email perhaps meant “educate the idiots” instead of “educate voters”? Or maybe they’re really just sensitive right now, and decided to tone down the rhetoric a bit.

Now that the whistleblower has come forward to verify the authenticity of the Left-wing Colorado Democracy Alliance documents, including its “Educate the Idiots” campaign, here’s a video of Republican state house candidate (and longtime blogger) Joshua Sharf posing the issue to Democrat opponent Lois Court at a recent televised forum:

And if you want to know more about what issues distinguish the two candidates, here’s a glimpse at their closing statements:

It’s an uphill battle for Joshua to win this race in a majority-Democrat district, but he is making an impression as an aggressive and articulate candidate for rock-solid conservative Republican principles. Party leaders should take notice.

The Rocky Mountain News today takes a closer look at Protect Colorado’s Future and its use of “real” people in advertisements to foist its deceptive messages on the public:

Firefighter Joel Heinemann says he would rather run into a burning building than face a movie camera.

Yet it’s his face Coloradans are seeing in television ads and home flyers urging a “no” vote on Amendments 47, 49 and 54.

Heinemann is a “messenger,” one of about a dozen firefighters, police officers, nurses and teachers who volunteered to enter the political limelight to speak against three ballot initiatives they believe are anti-union.

Of course, it’s also important to note that Joel Heinemann is president of the Littleton firefighters union, and that Denver Deputy Sheriff Jeff Shaw helps to negotiate the Fraternal Order of Police union contract. As the Rocky points out, Protect Colorado’s Future has used Shaw’s image to say these amendments “will stop law enforcement from lobbying for better body armor,” when the contract Shaw negotiated has nothing to say about body armor or safety issues.
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If you have yet to visit my page with information and recommendations on the long list of initiatives and referenda on Colorado’s 2008 ballot, now is the time to stop by. After all, thanks to the clever and capable stylings of Colorado cartoonist Ben Hummel, the page is now illustrated!

Much ado has been made out of the 11th-hour deal that pulled four labor union-sponsored initiatives from the Colorado ballot. As opined by the editors of the Rocky Mountain News:

On Thursday, labor peace was restored in Colorado. At least until the 2009 legislature convenes.

The announcement that two labor-backed groups would remove Amendments 53, 55, 56 and 57 from the November ballot – and in return business groups would fund a joint business-labor campaign to defeat Amendments 47, 49 and 54 – is a positive development. The state’s economic health was in the crosshairs of the labor measures, a couple of which probably had a good shot at passage.

There’s no doubt that the “economic health” and well-being of Colorado families and businesses is safer as a result of these four measures being off the ballot. Union leaders may have believed these measures would benefit their members and other workers. But they never believed that workers’ economic bottom line was more important than maintaining and increasing their own power.
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A controversy is brewing over the authenticity of the Colorado Democracy Alliance (CoDA) documents, specifically the memo discussing their plan to “Educate the Idiots”. Ironically, the satire blog by the same name has all the scoop on the controversy – here and here.

Can’t wait for Sunday’s story in the Denver Post. It looks to me like the Lefties in CoDA are scrambling hard to cover up. We’ll see.

Update: A trusted reader says you can also watch on Channel 23 in Colorado Springs.

Update: I added a link to Michael’s blog.

Please tune in tonight at 7:30 PM to KBDI 12 (in the Denver metro area) for an important episode of Independent Thinking with host Jon Caldara. Guests Jefferson County teacher Michael Alcorn and I will discuss what Amendment 49, the Ethical Standards initiative, does, and the effects it has (and doesn’t have) on teachers and other public employees.

For those of you heading out to theaters to catch the premiere of An American Carol, please don’t forget to set your TiVo or VCR to record. But in case you forget, the episode is scheduled to re-air next Tuesday, October 7, at 5:00 PM on KBDI.

With four measures pulled off the ballot and a new guide to link to, I have updated my Colorado Ballot 2008 page this morning. Please be sure to check it out for the latest.

A couple quick reminders for readers: Tonight Mount Virtus and several other Right-leaning Colorado sites will host a group live blog of the vice presidential debate, starting at 7 PM local Mountain time. One more participant has joined us: NightTwister. Just log on to the main page of this site at 7:00 or thereafter, and you’ll see the live blog going.

One more reminder: If you have the slightest interest in volunteering to help the Republican presidential ticket and your state and local candidates, this weekend is the best time to get involved. Details of where to go and who to contact are here.

Denver attorney Ted Trimpa is being touted as the great mediator, the great savior, in negotiating a compromise between business and labor to remove four anti-business initiatives from the ballot.

Who’s doing the touting? Why, the liberal Dead Governors blog, of course:

For those of you who don’t know about Hogan and Hartson’s Ted Trimpa, well, you should. He’s the one who brought this pact, the most unlikely partnership since Referendum C, together, helping reinforce his growing waterwalker mystique. It’s also true that labor wasn’t really looking forward to taking the blame for the potentially serious unintended consequences of a couple of these proposals. The infusion of cash to fight the anti-labor initiatives will help, as will the new and respected business community spokespeople getting out the message–that while the idea of Amendment 47 (and 49 and 54) “sounds good,” the details are devilish.

Well, after all, the Denver Post reports:

Cole Finegan, a managing partner at Hogan & Hartson, said some “outside” union money helped close the deal.

“Ted Trimpa got the deal done,” Finegan said.

But what do the ColoradoPols and Denver Post not tell us about Ted Trimpa that might be important? Interestingly, Trimpa is one of the leading members of the Colorado Democracy Alliance (CoDA) “Strategy Group & 527 Coordinating Operatives” (PDF) (his name is somewhere between Rutt Bridges and Andrew Romanoff). Trimpa also has worked as liberal billionaire Tim Gill’s political adviser, and is clearly intimately connected with the inner workings of CoDA.

So in whose interest did Trimpa help negotiate this deal? The state of Colorado? Hardly. Rather, it appears he is working on behalf of the “progressive” Colorado Democracy Alliance, which is committed to “increasing CO union power” and to “Educate the [racial minority] Idiots”. This time, the Left is trying to “Educate the Idiots” with lies about Amendment 47, 49, and 54. Trimpa’s deal scored $3 million in cash to relieve Big Labor of some of the burden to attack these amendments.

The four economy-busting union ballot initiatives (53, 55, 56, and 57) that Ted Trimpa and his labor leader friends negotiated off the ballot were only there in the first place to serve as extortion. Trimpa is hardly a disinterested third-party in these negotiations. ColoradoPols is a little too glib in shouting his praises to the sky.

If you haven’t seen or heard it by now, Colorado’s “progressive” Democrat coalition got a little more behind-the-scenes exposure yesterday than they would like. A series of slowly leaked documents by Face The State are uncovering the inner workings of the coalition – known as the Colorado Democracy Alliance (CoDA). The light of the day has given us some useful insights.

We are starting to see what the Left’s agenda for Colorado is, why they have coordinated the spending of so much money to take over the state legislature, the governor’s office, and so much more. No document has received quite as much attention as this one:

In a confidential internal memorandum obtained by Face The State (PDF), the Colorado Democracy Alliance outlines a roster of “operatives” who worked for Democratic victory in the 2006 general election. The document outlines specific tasks for various members of the state’s liberal infrastructure, including a campaign to “educate the idiots,” assigned to the state’s AFL-CIO union. Among the operation’s intended targets: “minorities, GED’s, drop-outs.”

Individuals named in the document, marked “CONFIDENTIAL,” “for internal use only,” and “DO NOT DISTRIBUTE,” are high-level elected Democrats including House Speaker Andrew Romanoff, former Senate President Joan Fitz-Gerald, as well as Gov. Bill Ritter’s press aide and former campaign chief Evan Dreyer. All are specially marked as “off-the-record or covert.”

That’s right: Gov. Bill Ritter’s spokesman, and the two top Democrat leaders in the state legislature (at least at the time). What do they think about minorities being called “idiots”? Some intrepid member of the press will have to ask them. Or maybe they should ask the CoDA “strategy group” members who populate the media-manipulating organ ProgressNow, the phony watchdog Colorado Ethics Watch, and more?
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(Compliments of Jon Caldara’s blog)

It’s kind of nice seeing all those major newspaper endorsements of Amendment 49 at the end, too.

Here’s a nice, clear contrast in leadership for you. Last Thursday, Gov. Bill Ritter sent out a press release announcing ways to save state taxpayers money. First on the list:

Implementing a hiring freeze for the Executive Branch effective Oct. 1.

For those doing the math, that left a few extra days to give all departments notice to fill all open positions.

In 2002, then-Gov. Bill Owens, also facing a fiscal crunch, issued an executive order with a similar purpose:

Pursuant to C.R.S. § 24-2-102(4), I order a hiring freeze applicable to state government. This hiring freeze is effective immediately. [emphasis added]

It will be interesting to see how many last-minute hires came in before Bill Ritter’s “slow freeze” went into effect.

Protect Colorado’s Culture of Corruption Future, opponents of the good government reforms Colorado Amendment 49 and Amendment 54, must be going after the world record for most deceptive campaign. They’re certainly making a run for it, as their latest effort may take the cake. In today’s Rocky Mountain News, CBS4 reporter Raj Chohan dissects their latest out-of-this-world fable:

A new political commercial suggests that a trio of Colorado ballot measures would give special breaks to multinational corporations such as Halliburton. The 30-second spot comes from a union-backed group called Protect Colorado’s Future.

Ad: This is a voter alert. Colorado ballot amendments have built-in loopholes. Amendments 49 and 54 would not apply to multinational corporations.

The claim is misleading. Neither of the amendments addresses multinational corporations….

But obviously it’s true: these amendments are about the operation of Colorado government. Before Protect Colorado’s Culture of Corruption Future gets any other absurd advertising ideas, let’s be clear what else these amendments don’t apply to: international terrorism, global warming, Lyme disease, and male pattern baldness, to name a few.

Special interest opponents are throwing their millions of dollars wildly into the air, hoping that some charge or another will stick that will scare voters from supporting ethical reforms that would hurt lobbyists’ bottom line. Here perhaps is my favorite part:

Ad: Multinational corporations are pushing Amendments 47, 49 and 54.

It is true that Amendment 47, the right-to-work measure, has received funding from CoorsTek, a multinational corporation, as well as national business groups. The backers of Amendment 47 have raised nearly $1.2 million. However, Amendment 49 is operating on a shoestring budget of a little more than $100,000, most of it coming from the Independence Institute, a Colorado- based free-market think tank….

Or as Face The State observed:

While recent opposition ads proclaim that “evil” multinational corporations support Amendment 49, [Jon] Caldara laughs, jokingly wanting to know when those evil corporate checks will start rolling in.

Here’s the laundry list of Protect Colorado’s Culture of Corruption Future deception:

• First sleazy, deceptive TV ads
• More sleazy, deceptive TV ads
• First sleazy, deceptive mailer
• Another sleazy, deceptive mailer
• Purely dishonest fabrications at an “educational” forum

And now this. Honesty, truth, and credibility must not count for much when you have raked in nearly $7 million from labor unions across North America to throw around your political weight.