Mount Virtus

"Happy to come back to Michigan, but I miss the mountains!"

Ben on Social Media

Home Archives for Ben

By Leave a Comment

New Poll Shows McCain Upsetting Left’s Plans to Turn Colorado Blue

Via Politico's Jonathan Martin and Hot Air's Ed Morrissey, a new poll shows Republican presidential candidate John McCain with a commanding, double-digit lead here in Colorado versus either Democrat contender - Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton: McCain 51, Obama 39 McCain 52, Clinton 40 Something is happening on the way to the Left's plan to turn Colorado blue: Their leaders are generating more disdain than those who have sold out conservatives on the Republican side. I'm not sure whether to laugh or cry. While it takes longer for things happening at the state level to reach the average voter, one can almost imagine some of the reaction against Obama and Clinton trickling down to their inept liberal buddies - like Gov. Bill Ritter … [Read more...]

By Leave a Comment

Union-Only Sign in Denver Raises Legal Questions, Political Stakes

Face The State features a story today about a Denver construction site that has posted a sign restricting work to union membership:A sign at a downtown Denver construction site warns, "If you are not currently an active member of a building trades local union, you are NOT allowed to work on this site." Picture by Steve Brown - Posted at Face The State This story prompts a reaction from two different angles. First, from the legal technical policy wonk side.... Under existing federal law that dates back to the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947, private sector "closed shops" are illegal. Simply put, a "closed shop" requires workers to be union members when they're hired. That seems to be the message of the sign, which would make it patently … [Read more...]

By 1 Comment

Teachers Union Corruption and Abuse Served Up South of the Border

I am critical enough of the Colorado Education Association and the National Education Association. But to be fair, NEA/CEA has been outdone by their counterparts to the South: Mexico's National Union of Education Workers. The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) has documented the waste and corruption and horrible inefficiencies of the Mexican education system due to the union's political power and influence (H/T Mark Krikorian at The Corner). Teachers unions in this state and country have caused their own significant share of problems, but their work is cut out for them to match the scale of abuse and destructive influence that CIS has documented about their sister union south of the border. Wow. … [Read more...]

By Leave a Comment

Chesser Documents the State Template for Climate Change Rip-Offs

At the American Spectator, Paul Chesser writes about some of the highlights of his work he has documented, connecting the dots to compare how different states adopt climate change policies. His conclusion should be upsetting to taxpayers:Every state amazingly produces the same strategies: increased taxation upon coal-fired energy generation; higher electric bill surcharges; increased tailpipe emissions standards to encompass CO2; subsidized mass transit; "green" standards in school curricula; and more. Can you feel the pain? CCS and the climate commissions can't. Seems they promise only positives, as the new taxes and regulations that they always recommend are amazingly said to save state economies money and create jobs. Indeed, Colorado … [Read more...]

By Leave a Comment

Typically White Merchandise

If you're like me, you may identify closely with the famous Barack Obama phrase: "typical white person." But I was never moved by the entrepreneurial spirit like a couple friends of mine who created the Typically White website, where you can go to order "Typically White" shirts and bags. Who knows? You might find a great present to one of your conservative - or any typically white - friend or family member. … [Read more...]

By Leave a Comment

Tackling Colorado Socialized Medicine

Every once in awhile I step back and realize that I should bring my readers' attention to people with important ideas who they may not have heard. In that spirit, one of Colorado's brightest and most articulate writers challenging the effort to socialize medicine is Brian Schwartz, who introduced a free market proposal to the state's blue ribbon commission on health care reform (since the proposal advocated for more freedom, it was unsurprisingly rejected). Besides blogging regularly at wakalix, Brian also is quite prolific in penning published columns. His latest, assailing the arguments behind "universal health care," appears in the Pueblo Chieftain (H/T We Stand Firm). If you are interested in health care reform, make sure you … [Read more...]

By Leave a Comment

Government Waste, Toledo-Style

Colorado center-right bloggers take notice: One of the sharp and ambitious bloggers I met at Samsphere in Chicago a couple weeks ago - Maggie Thurber - shows the power of doing a little original research to expose government waste on public swimming pools in her Toledo backyard:For sake of argument, let's estimate that individuals likely to use the pool facilities will do so five times during the season. This seems a reasonable estimate considering the number of days the pools are open. Using this assumption, the pools had about 5,000 unique visitors. The 2006 Census data shows that there are 74,896 children (under 18 years of age) in Toledo. Even if every visitor to the pools was a child, we would be serving less than 7% of the kids in … [Read more...]

By Leave a Comment

Affirmative Action for Complaints Against Colorado Civil Rights Initiative?

Face The State is onto another big story, uncovering facts about complaints filed against the Colorado Civil Rights Initiative - which recently qualified for the November statewide ballot. Face The State's report has uncovered serious issues with two of the major complaints, issues neglected in the drive-by media coverage. Here's the first:On February 26, Chloe Johnson filed a complaint with Secretary of State Mike Coffman's office alleging that she was tricked into supporting Amendment 46, also known as the Colorado Civil Rights Initiative, a ballot effort designed to end race and gender preferences in government hiring, education, and contracting. The complaint was formally dismissed by the state's Office of Administrative Courts … [Read more...]