Mount Virtus

In a campaign characterized by hypocrisy, deception, and cowardice, the opponents of Colorado’s Amendment 47 (Right-to-Work), Amendment 49 (Ethical Standards), and Amendment 54 (Government Contracting Reform) are at it again.

The People’s Press Collective documents the latest misleading campaign flyer from Protect Colorado’s Culture of Corruption Future, noting: “You won’t be surprised that they’re still abusing Colorado’s real heroes as puppets for their elaborate LIES.”

Indeed. At this point, I’m not sure how low the opponents of good government and worker freedom would have to go to take me by surprise. The campaign isn’t over yet, though.

To his credit, State Rep. Cory Gardner is spearheading a grassroots effort to support public charter schools and the families they serve. Recently the Adams 12 school board unanimously decided to support legislation unfriendly to charter schools (see Resolution 1.3). Adams 12 effectively wants to beef up its own authority to deny charters, to limit parents’ authority to appeal rejected charter school applications, and to undercut charter schools’ already sub-par funding.

But Cory Gardner (R-Yuma), a rising star in the GOP, took the initiative to craft a letter alerting charter school parents and supporters to the attack and urging them to get involved in the fight. In all, 17 Republican state representatives and 9 Republican state senators signed their names to the letter. I know there are Democratic charter school supporters out there, too. Let’s see how many of them get involved as well.

Meanwhile, charter school parents and friends need to step up and make their voices heard. A year and a half ago I wrote that State Senator Nancy Spence deserves to win Colorado’s Charter School Champion Award. It’s time to add Cory Gardner to that category, too.

This presidential election year, more than any in recent history, is calling for Republican volunteers to get in the game here in Colorado. The race between John McCain-Sarah Palin on one hand and the not-so-dynamic duo of the Obamessiah and Slow Joe Biden on the other is calling you to get involved.

There are a dozen Colorado “victory centers” - meaning, probably one very near you - where you can get involved. Maybe I’ll see you on the trail this Saturday.

Locations and contact information below the fold: Read the rest of this entry »

A timeout during the heated election to write: If there’s one issue showing true bipartisan momentum in the interest of the public good, it’s financial transparency in government. Expect the issue to be up front during Colorado’s 2009 legislative session. For now, you can read a Denver Post op-ed co-authored by my Independence Institute colleagues Amy Oliver and Stephanie Kubala.

Check it out, and see where the transparency issue has taken hold already, and what promise it holds for Colorado.

Passing thoughts on the “bailout” debate…. John Hawkins at Right Wing News:

If the history of government intervention in this country has taught us anything, it’s that we should be much more afraid of the long term ramifications of the government rushing through an emergency “solution” to a problem than the actual problem the government is trying to “solve” in the first place.

Agreed. In that spirit, the Heritage Foundation has an excellent piece urging Congress to live up to its “deliberative” role in this debate.

Meanwhile, Rossputin has recanted his initial tentative support of the administration’s $700 billion bailout plan, writing:

[Federal Reserve Chairman Ben] Bernanke is warning us that doing nothing poses serious risks to the economy. Indeed, I believe that’s true. But doing this bailout and doing nothing can’t be our only two choices.

On this question, I say we should again look to the Heritage Foundation, which correctly urges Congressional lawmakers to seek the following goals:

• Don’t prop up failed institutions
• No price supports
• Don’t allow the government to become permanent “owner of last resort”
• Limit legislation to the immediate need and don’t let it become a Christmas tree of special interest goodies
• Avoid (or at least limit as much as possible) “moral hazard”
• Carefully define the Federal Reserve’s role as “lender of last resort”
• Limit taxpayer exposure and keep actions temporary
• Assure market liquidity but make sure insurance prices reflect market risk

These are good principles to judge any Congressional action by. The choices aren’t between the Paulson Plan and nothing. As a general rule, government intervention is to be avoided, but as the Heritage report wisely points out:

But there can be rare situations in which a wave of bad decisions in one sector has such dire consequences for the most basic operations of the economy that other sectors are threatened, jeopardizing the functioning of the entire economy. We are in such a situation. And in these rare cases another principle comes into play: Government institutions have a critical role in helping to assure the integrity of the market’s infrastructure, from the sanctity of contracts to the liquidity of the financial markets. When government fails to carry out this role in critical times, such as its failure to maintain liquidity after the stock market crash of 1929, the results can be catastrophic. As economist Milton Friedman explained, the failure of the Federal Reserve to maintain liquidity and functioning credit markets helped trigger and deepen the Great Depression.

Let’s just make sure it’s done right — and with Congress in charge of seeing it done right, I don’t have much hope or confidence. That’s where I am right now.

What do people think of the deceptive Protect Colorado’s Culture of Corruption Future ads against Amendment 47 (Right-to-Work), Amendment 49 (Ethical Standards), and Amendment 54 (Government Contracting Reform), when a few pertinent facts are included with them?

KRDO in Colorado Springs bothered to ask the man on the street (follow the link for video):

“There’s nothing exactly covering union dues, union this or union anything,” says Colorado Springs voter Todd Landsborough. “You know what’s interesting, is this thing right here, you can put that in the garbage can. I mean it’s totally misleading.”…

“I’ll probably go online and write them a letter, ‘I think you guys are phony as hell,’” says [Colorado Springs voter Andy] Colon.

Give the average voter the facts, and he’ll recognize the special interest groups’ deception for what it is. And he might just react angrily, too.

I think Colorado’s Democratic powerhouses behind Amendment 59 need to get on the same page. It was only last month that State Treasurer Cary Kennedy was overheard saying that Amendment 59 will “drive a stake in the heart” of the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights.

In yesterday’s Denver Post, however, outgoing House Speaker Andrew Romanoff sought to argue that under Amendment 59 “‘the heart’ of TABOR — that all tax increases must have voter approval — would be preserved.”

Uncle Charley came to the valid conclusion:

Romanoff and Kennedy need to talk to each other: How do you preserve TABOR’s heart after a stake has been driven through it?

Exactly. Someone needs to cartoon this… If you’re going to take away all future TABOR refunds forever, I at least need to be able to laugh at your self-defeating contradictions on the way there.

One month ago, when we learned Barack Obama had picked someone even more gaffe-prone than himself to be his running mate, I said: Let Joe Biden speak for himself!

Last week the 3rd-most liberal U.S. Senator Biden basically announced his intention to lose western Pennsylvania by saying “no coal plants here in America”:

Then yesterday, the self-professed high-IQ Joe Biden declared his monumental historical illiteracy to Katie Couric:

Jessie Walker on Reason.com had the best retort:

And if you owned an experimental TV set in 1929, you would have seen him. And you would have said to yourself, “Who is that guy? What happened to President Hoover?”

Maybe the next thing we’ll learn is that Abraham Lincoln telephoned Ulysses S. Grant after the British surrendered at Yorktown to congratulate him on the big victory.

Keep talking, Joe Biden.

Channel 7 reports that Gov. Bill Ritter has turned down an offer from Jon Caldara to withdraw Amendment 49 from the Colorado ballot in exchange for Ritter revoking his executive order that unionized state government:

Jon Caldara, head of the Independence Institute, a conservative think tank, said he also wants Ritter’s word to oppose any effort to pass a paycheck deduction into law.

Not exactly, at least if you read the letter Caldara sent to Ritter yesterday:

…These same opponents have been champions of your Executive Order D 028 07, which drastically reshaped labor relations by introducing collective bargaining to state government.

I therefore propose withdrawing Amendment 49 from the statewide ballot, contingent upon your repeal of Executive Order D 028 07 and your word to oppose any effort to bring it forward via legislation….

The issue is not “a paycheck deduction” but more broadly “collective bargaining,” which grants unions monopoly representation over state workers to negotiate on their behalf for wages, working conditions, and the like.

Rocky Mountain News blogger Bridget Johnson (who has kindly linked to this blog on several occasions) makes a similar error with her one-line description:

Jon Caldara offers to withdraw Amendment 49 if Gov. Ritter agrees to withdraw his executive order that overturned Gov. Owens’ executive order on paycheck protection.

No, wrong executive order. Ritter’s order overturning Owens’ “paycheck protection” order was D 006 07. The story from Johnson’s own Rocky Mountain News properly identified (congratulations!) the order in question as the one “allowing state workers to unionize” (D 028 07).

Most egregious was the Denver Post’s headline for the same story (at least the online edition) this morning: “Ritter declines offer on right-to-work measure.” Confusing, misleading, inaccurate … what other words should I use? Maybe the headline writer should talk to the reporter who wrote a fairly good story.

Right-to-Work is Amendment 47, which frees workers from the obligation to subsidize unwanted union representation. The initiative at hand is Amendment 49 (aka Ethical Standards), which stops government from bundling and collecting money to special interest groups through payroll systems. Amendment 49 is not, never has been, nor ever will be Right-to-Work.

All these observations today from a supposedly unaccountable, pajama-clad blogger. While there are many things MSM is capable of doing that individual bloggers cannot necessarily do, we’re still glad to be here to provide a little correction and clarification as needed.

Writing at Bloomberg News, economic analyst Kevin Hassett unravels the story behind the recent financial meltdown (H/T Rossputin). An opportunity to avert the crisis came in 2005 with the introduction of legislation to provide a “world-class regulator” of government-sponsored mortgage loan institutions Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Then-Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan noted that failure to address the problem was “placing the total financial system of the future at a substantial risk.’”

Here’s the key passage from Hassett’s article (though you should really read the whole thing - it’s not terribly long):

If that bill had become law, then the world today would be different. In 2005, 2006 and 2007, a blizzard of terrible mortgage paper fluttered out of the Fannie and Freddie clouds, burying many of our oldest and most venerable institutions. Without their checkbooks keeping the market liquid and buying up excess supply, the market would likely have not existed.

But the bill didn’t become law, for a simple reason: Democrats opposed it on a party-line vote in the committee, signaling that this would be a partisan issue. Republicans, tied in knots by the tight Democratic opposition, couldn’t even get the Senate to vote on the matter.

Hassett highlights the fact that many Democratic politicians benefited greatly from the groups lobbying against the remedy. For example, the Obamessiah has received $125,000 during his brief career from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac employees and PACs. With judgment like this, why should we trust Barack Obama now?

For all his faults, Hassett also points out that the Republican candidate for President, John McCain, “was one of the three cosponsors of S.190, the bill that would have averted this mess.” Of course, neither side shoulders the blame alone. Republican Congressional leaders, foreshadowing their 2006 defeats, failed to show enough leadership to push the issue over Democratic opposition. Without the real sense of imminent disaster, they were doing what politicians tend to do. But by no means should we blame the “free market”.

Of course, there are other major fiscal problems underlying recent developments, but the subprime mortgage meltdown via Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is the immediate cause. It’s instructive to see where the respective Presidential candidates have stood. If John McCain were in the White House, we at least have a reasonable expectation that he could exert more leadership behind a solution like the 2005 bill he co-sponsored. With Barack Obama in charge, however, it looks like all we could “hope” for is a little spare “change,” while the lobbyists help pay his bills.

Rank liberal blogger David Thielen among the confused and misinformed about Amendment 49. Now David and I have a cordial relationship, so the misinformation and illogic in his attack on Amendment 49 deserve a cordial response.

First, though, I have to say David did the most admirable job I have yet seen in trying to argue against the Ethical Standards Initiative. His case is miles ahead of the deception and hypocrisy in the well-heeled opposition Protect Colorado’s Culture of Corruption Future.

Nevertheless, David still comes up short. His primary problem is rooted in the fact that he thinks Amendment 49 somehow will affect the Colorado Labor Peace Act. Simply put, it doesn’t. (Read the ballot language for yourself.) Even so, David goes as far as to offer a quote from the Chamber of Commerce [his link is broken, so I'm not sure to which Chamber he's referring] about the importance of the Labor Peace Act. That’s fine, but no reason to oppose Amendment 49. Else, why would the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce and Colorado Springs Chamber of Commerce both endorse the good-government initiative?
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With the aid of Governor Bill Ritter, the labor leaders behind Protect Colorado’s Culture of Corruption Future - the group with a rap sheet of deception, hypocrisy, and avoidance of public debates - are preparing to practice extortion, subjecting the votes of the people of Colorado to blackmail:

Business and labor leaders planned to meet Tuesday night to discuss a compromise in which four contentious union-backed measures would be pulled from the state’s November ballot, according to sources.

Labor, in return, would receive financial support from businesses to fight a union-restricting measure.

It’s the last sentence that is key. What labor leaders are doing goes beyond the simple give-and-take of negotiation. They are demanding money to get rid of their economy-busting proposals. Thus, it moves into the realm of extortion and blackmail.

Last week on KOA, former Gov. Bill Owens correctly described the terrible precedent this forced extraction of political money will create (listen to the audio here). Here’s a transcribed snippet:

If we do this this time, any time anybody tries to put something on the ballot that Labor doesn’t like, they’re simply going to blackmail the private sector. I think it’s a bad principle.

From an Ethical Standards Now press release issued today announcing that the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce has endorsed Amendment 49, Jon Caldara expounds:

“The votes of Colorado citizens should not be subject to blackmail,” Caldara said. “This is the same kind of underhanded activity that justifies the need for Amendment 49.”

Exactly. Once again, the underhanded activities of Amendment 49 opponents make the case for why the clean-government reform is needed.

(Full disclosure: I also happen to work for the Independence Institute, which has provided the intellectual ammunition behind the Ethical Standards Initiative.)

With the recent story of Boulder liberal Mark Udall refusing to return contributions from admitted tax cheat (and fellow Democratic Congressman) Charlie Rangel, the list of dirty money flowing into the Udall campaign continues to grow. Wait, but there’s more. Over at Schaffer v Udall, I unearthed Udall’s “sweatshop” connection. Yes, it looks very much like retired “sweatshop” owner Susie Tompkins-Buell organized a $50,000 San Francisco fundraiser for Udall in 2007.

Charlie Rangel. Norman Hsu. Jack Abramoff. Susie Tompkins-Buell. All giving money to and/or organizing fundraisers for the Mark Udall campaign. Nearly all of the money kept by Udall. Reporters need to ask some hard questions, like should he at least consider returning the money?

Protect Colorado’s Culture of Corruption Future has sought to oppose Amendment 47 (Right-to-Work), Amendment 49 (Ethical Standards), and Amendment 54 (Government Contracting Reform) with hypocritical attacks; sleazy, deceptive TV ads; more sleazy, deceptive TV ads; sleazy, deceptive mailers; and dishonest fabrications at “educational” forums.

Now Face The State reports that Jess Knox, the spokesman for Protect Colorado’s Future, is afraid to debate at least two of the issues (Amendments 47 and 49) in public. Hmmm, I wonder why? You figure it out.

Michael at Best Destiny, a Jefferson County teacher by day, writes:

Yesterday, the union representative at one of my schools came back from a district-wide meeting in breathless distress over this year’s ballot. She said that, based on what was told to her in her meeting, there was the potential that the passage of Amendment 47 could mean the “end of teacher representation, and the school district would no longer have to follow any rules about how they ordered you to spend your time.” She even went so far as to say that the passage of 47 would be more devastating for schools than the failure of either the Mill Levy increase or of the Bond election.

Another anecdote that shows the teachers union - in this case, the Jefferson County Education Association (JCEA) - to be a font of disinformation and fear-mongering. Amendment 47, of course, is the Right-to-Work initiative. As the official Blue Book draft points out, Amendment 47 simply “eliminates the possibility that any employee can be required to pay for the cost of collective bargaining or join a union as a condition of employment.” Nothing more. Nothing less.

What’s most absurd about the reported comments is that overwhelmingly teachers in Colorado (and all teachers in Jefferson County) already have essential Right-to-Work protections. Public educators are not compelled to join or subsidize any labor organization. It’s hard to imagine how a law that would not change conditions for teachers could remotely, in any way, threaten the “end of teacher representation.” And I would be interested to hear the case for how Amendment 47 would prove “devastating” to schools.
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The editors of the Rocky Mountain News slam the deception of Protect Colorado’s Future (previously covered here and here), and give a major thumbs up to Amendment 49 on Colorado’s ballot:

As you may have guessed, we support Amendment 49 - just as we previously supported various versions of this policy at the local level. It would block state and local government agencies from deducting dues or fees from employee paychecks for unions or other membership groups….

The free deduction and collection of dues is a special benefit denied to most other worthy civic organizations.

Should Amendment 49 pass, unions and other organizations benefiting from free collections would simply share the same fundraising challenges that other groups successfully confront all the time. And that would hardly be the end of the world. Banks routinely set up automatic withdrawals so that their customers can pay any number of bills or, say, make retirement contributions. Deducting union dues should be a snap.

A number of jurisdictions - including Arapahoe and Douglas counties - have already enacted a local version of Amendment 49. A yes vote would extend this basic provision of fairness throughout Colorado. [emphasis added]

Arapahoe and Douglas are two of 12 Colorado counties - also including Jefferson, El Paso, Larimer, Weld, and Mesa - that have tested the policy by passing it at the local level.

The Rocky Mountain News joins the Pueblo Chieftain, Grand Junction Sentinel, Colorado Springs Gazette, former Gov. Bill Owens, former U.S. Senator Hank Brown, and a host of civic and professional organizations and community leaders in endorsing Amendment 49, the Ethical Standards Initiative.

Please read the entire Rocky editorial - one of the strongest, most persuasive cases for Amendment 49 that I’ve seen.

(Full disclosure: I also happen to work for the Independence Institute, which has provided the intellectual ammunition behind the Ethical Standards Initiative.)

Face The State has a great story on a forum hosted by Lefty non-profit groups to “educate” about various initiatives on Colorado’s fall ballot.

As reported, a spokesman for the well-heeled group Protect Colorado’s Future lied directly to the audience about two initiatives his group opposes. First, he deceived attendees about the effects of Amendment 47, the Right-to-Work initiative:

“In places where they’ve been successful in passing these laws in other states, there is data that has shown workers make about $5,000 less per year and infant mortality is actually 21 percent higher,” said [spokesman Daniel] Klawitter on Amendment 47, the right-to-work measure.

But Kelley Harp, spokesman for the Amendment 47 campaign, questioned those statistics. “The facts are this: Amendment 47 will guarantee a fundamental freedom for all workers in Colorado, and there is strong evidence that right-to-work states perform better economically than non-right-to-work states.”

According to Harp, states that have adopted right-to-work laws have seen an increase in economic development and jobs. From 2001 to 2006, right-to-work states increased payrolls by 6.4 percent, vs. 2.9 percent in non- right to work states. These states have also seen lower unemployment rates.

Kelley Harp happens to be correct about the economic effects of Right-to-Work, as I documented before (here and here).

But Protect Colorado’s Future wasn’t finished with the lies:

Klawitter later answered questions about the impact of Amendment 54, but members of the campaign say some answers were factually inaccurate. The proposal, if passed by voters, would prohibit government contractors holding no-bid contracts from making campaign contributions to political parties and candidates. It would not, however, restrict individual contributions. A handout from the event read,”Amendment 54 would prohibit any person, or family member, or anyone who works on a government contract from contributing to a candidate and/or advocating for an issue at any level.”

One audience member wanted clarification on this point and asked, “Will Amendment 54 prevent individuals from contributing to candidates and campaigns? Since I’m in a union, I wouldn’t be able to give my money candidates I want to represent me?”

“Yes and yes,” Klawitter responded. Officials from the Amendment 54 campaign say Klawitter and his handout are wrong.

This is patently false - all one has to do is read the non-partisan Legislative Council’s blue book analysis of Amendment 54. The restrictions don’t affect “anyone who works on a government contract.” They affect:

‚the contracting entity’s officers, directors, or trustees; any individual who controls at least 10 percent of the shares of or interest in the entity; and in the case of a collective bargaining agreement, a labor organization and any political committees it creates to make campaign contributions.

We already knew that Protect Colorado’s Future is wedded to deception and more deception in its television advertising.

Now it seems they are also willing to lie straight to people’s faces.