There’s Never Enough Tax Increase

Buried in this Denver Post article about post-election recriminations is a salient example of what the big vote meant to the tax-and-spenders:

Advocates for public education blamed the loss of Referendum D on the failure to set aside enough money for public schools.

Lisa Weil, co-founder of Great Education Colorado, said Referendum D would have had a better chance of winning voter approval if schools, and not roads, received more money.

Referendum D called for using $1.2 billion of the borrowed money on 55 road projects around the state.

“Transportation is not the highest priority of Coloradans right now,” Weil said, touting her organization’s polling results that said voters would have been more supportive of letting the state borrow money to pay for school construction projects.

Great Education Colorado (so-called “advocates for public education,” as if that is a controversial position to take) – a front for the teachers union – advocates tirelessly for more taxes, more funding for schools, and no accountability. It would be a waste of anyone’s time to ask some basic questions in response to the quoted passage above.

The fact that Colorado spends more than a total of $9,000 per public school student per year, and spends it inefficiently, should cause more taxpayers to demand more from what is already being added in on a yearly basis, thanks to Amendment 23. Yet Great Education Colorado could never answer the question: how much money is enough?

And, if successful passage of Ref D depended on how it was sold – not on any real need (are the roads crumbling, or aren’t they?) – what more do you need to know about this group’s values and priorities? Beg and plead for even more money from the taxpayers – because it’s “for the children” – so we can devour more from the government trough.

How about finding what works in education and spending our money more wisely? Just ONE DAY after they won the biggest tax increase in state history, and they’re complaining about it already.

In other news, reports released the day after the election show that some of the same deep Democrat pockets that won the state legislature gave significant sums to the Ref C campaign in its waning weeks. I think this sums up the point well:

It was the first time in the campaign that the pro-Ref C camp did not release its donors early – a tactic opponents said was intended to shore up Republican support for the tax measures.

“That would have turned off every single Republican,” said Jon Caldara, the leading Ref C opponent and president of the Independence Institute.

He said he believed some Republicans who voted yes would have voted no if they knew Gill and Stryker had given to the campaign.

Yes, but all is fair in politics. I hope some Republican voters wake up and see they’ve been hoodwinked. Their governor settled for a bad deal and has alienated his base to pal around with Andrew Romanoff and Joan Fitz-Gerald, while taking money from Pat Stryker and Tim Gill. I’m disappointed, to say the least.