First, let's start with the good news: Republican U.S. Senate candidate Bob Schaffer announced that he raised more than $717,000 in the second quarter (April-June). As pointed out in the campaign press release: Walt Klein, Schaffer campaign consultant said "Schaffer's contributions averaged more than $119,000 a week in the brief time Bob has been a candidate – a remarkable start for the long campaign ahead." There were 1789 individual contributions to Schaffer, with more than 83% coming from Colorado. The full report will be available on July 15th. [Full Disclosure: Mt. Virtus was part of the 83+%, contributing a small amount to Schaffer in June.] Schaffer's $119,000 a week surpasses liberal Boulder Democrat opponent Mark Udall, … [Read more...]

In his latest Townhall column, George Will tackles the problem many union leaders have employing force rather than seeking favor: Democracy is rule by persuasion, but the unpersuasive often try to coerce the unpersuaded. Recent days have provided two illustrations of this tendency, both of them pertaining to labor unions, whose decades of declining membership testify to their waning power to persuade workers that unions add more value to workers' lives than they subtract. Will devotes much of his column to the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision in the Davenport case. I won't retread that issue now (previous Mount Virtus coverage featured here), except to say you can tune in at 10 o'clock this morning local Denver time to the Mike Rosen … [Read more...]

A scathing editorial in yesterday's Denver Post calls out Colorado Democrats for bowing to Big Labor with their support of HR 800, the poorly-named Employee Free Choice Act (read here, here and here). Though all Democrats in the state's delegation voted for the bad legislation, the Post specifically singled out bill co-sponsor Boulder liberal Mark Udall - the man who would be U.S. Senator- first for his anti-business agenda: The proposal, which passed the House with support from Rep. Mark Udall, contained an offensive and little-known provision that would have allowed a government arbitrator to impose a two-year contract on businesses and workers that actually specified wages and working conditions. Neither the employer nor the workers … [Read more...]

Liberal distortions about Republican U.S. Senate candidate Bob Schaffer's early fundraising totals continue to circulate among the blogosphere's left-wing echo chamber without any serious reflection or criticism. The latest repeat of an unsubtantiated rumor that the $717,000 has fueled the fire for a more "moderate" Republican to join the race shows up at a site called The Political Realm: Bob Schaffer, Udall's likely opponent, apparently has some Colorado Republicans worried that he may not be able to keep up with Udall's strong fundraising. Of course, I already refuted the distortion earlier, but Denver Post columnist David Harsanyi has taken the explanation even further on a new blog to which he contributes: Republicans of a … [Read more...]

Boulder liberal Mark Udall has cast his lot with the Democrat caucus and corrupt union leaders at the expense of law enforcement and defrauded workers. Udall voted to defeat an attempt that would have spared the modest budget of the Office of Labor Management Standards (OLMS) from draconian cuts. So, apparently, OLMS was a highly ineffective and wasteful branch of government, right? The Democrats just wanted a leaner and more efficient operation, right? Wrong on both counts. As John Fund noted in yesterday's Opinion Journal: In the past six years, the Office of Labor Management Standards, or OLMS, has helped secure the convictions of 775 corrupt union officials and court-ordered restitution to union members of over $70 million in … [Read more...]