Mere Simpletons

David Harsanyi’s Post column today is a valuable read. He exposes the scare tactics and duplicity of those conducting the campaign for the forever tax increase. Money quote:

One wishes legislators would have had this level of interest in the Priority Colorado report when it was released in January. Perhaps they could have saved a couple hundred million dollars. But as you can imagine, the report was almost universally dismissed by legislators.

“There’s a reason the Independence Institute is a political think tank,” said Joan Fitz-Gerald, Democratic Senate president, at the time. “They couldn’t get elected to anything. … They have only simplistic answers.”

Apparently, elected officials are the only ones with worthwhile ideas. Those who seek alternatives to wasteful government, it would seem, are simpletons.

It just makes you wonder: Why do Democratic legislators, complicated and cerebral as they are, always come up with the same answer: more taxes.

Perhaps someone should tell Senator Fitz-Gerald that saying Wal-Mart has failed America and promoting boycotts of the nation’s largest retailer is a simplistic solution, especially when you consider that the profits of Wal-Mart stock are helping to finance her pension fund.

I’d like critics to read the Independence Institute report Priority Colorado and then tell me why the solutions it contains are more simplistic or less valid than the one proposed in Referenda C and D. An intelligent debate would be more fun than simply listening to the “Ivory Tower Bunch” radio ads (which, if somebody can point me to available versions online, I’d appreciate it), as amusing as they are.