If the Denver Post can take a glimpse, so can I. Not that I am excited by the prospect of taking a glimpse at a school full of icky girls. But here goes anyway….
About 120 sixth- and seventh-grade girls who enrolled in the Girls Athletic Leadership School now inhabit the third floor of Calvary Temple, near Cherry Creek mall.
G.A.L.S. is the only single-gender public school in Colorado, aimed at empowering girls and providing them opportunities denied in a co-ed setting.
Interesting factoid about the Girls Athletic Leadership School. What a clever acronym, too. Maybe it’s time for an all-boys charter school. Let’s call it the Gents United Youth School (G.U.Y.S.). I’m all about equity and balance, you know. Anyone with me on starting G.U.Y.S.?
(Seriously, given its unique status and the 120 Denver-area girls it serves, I do wish the G.A.L.S. all the best.)
Anyway, as the Post story points out, the school is focused on serving a poorer, minority student population with the Expeditionary Learning program. But the school’s website also explains that the mission and long-term goals are bigger than just Denver:
The mission of The Girls Athletic Leadership Schools (GALS) is to develop a national brand of public girls’ schools predicated on best practices in gender-based and active learning. The schools provide an innovative and necessary educational option that engages health and wellness as a key-contributing factor in optimizing academic achievement and self-development.
The school has opened this year with 6th and 7th grade girls, so it’s obviously too late to get on board this year. But families interested in applying through the charter school lottery for next year can connect with the school on the enrollment page.
Other new schools for 2010-11:
Let’s help Colorado’s own Ryan Frazier get some more nationwide attention. Please vote for Ryan in thie “Right Klik” poll linked here:
http://www.rightklik.net/2010/09/ten-buck-fridays-september-5-10.html
SHARETHIS.addEntry( { title : 'Vote for Ryan Frazier in this online poll', url : 'http://rossputin.com/blog/index.php/vote-for-ryan-frazier-in-this-online-poll'}, { button: true } ) ;Link to Original post at Rossputin.com.
Let’s help Colorado’s own Ryan Frazier get some more nationwide attention. Please vote for Ryan in thie “Right Klik” poll linked here:
http://www.rightklik.net/2010/09/ten-buck-fridays-september-5-10.html
SHARETHIS.addEntry( { title : 'Vote for Ryan Frazier in this online poll', url : 'http://rossputin.com/blog/index.php/vote-for-ryan-frazier-in-this-online-poll'}, { button: true } ) ;Link to Original post at Rossputin.com.
Associated Press
Monday, September 6, 2010
Imagine if you couldn’t speak for yourself, and there was no one to tell your story for you. Well, now there is.
Crossposted at RedState
I received the following note on Facebook from someone mistakenly thinking I’m a supporter of Dan Maes. I’m leaving out the name of the sender:
Subject: Urgent!!! This is bigger than Dan Maes and also about the GOP trying to by-pass the system and ignor Everyone,The following has the details of tomorrows meeting and what we are doing to try and stop them.
TOMORROW – Dick Wadhams is calling an emergency statewide meeting of the GOP to change the by-laws so that they may completely circumvent the People’s voice. Did we or Did we not GET involved because we are sick and tired of being ignored and having the powers that be running the show with complete and utter disregard for the people? Whatever your current views on certain races are – you must agree that the State GOP and powers that be are hell bent on destroying the people and their ability to participate in the process. United we stand, Divided we fall.
This is a crucial time in our lives- Our founding fathers sacrificed their lives, their families and their fortunes! What are we going to do????
This is serious, I mean this is bigger than just Dan Maes. This is a takeover by the GOP. They will not listen to us. They want to by-pass the system and ignore We the People.
PLEASE come to a “PEP” Rally tomorrow at 1:30pm…..at 5950 S. Willow Drive, Greenwood Village 80111. Pease wear your Dan Maes shirts (or a RED shirt). We must not allow them to do what they are planning on doing!!!!
We need you, your voice and we need to stop the Colorado GOP!
The Colorado GOP is calling for all county chairs to meet so they can vote on changing the by-laws and request to be able to support any candidate of their choice. They are ignoring the voters and the electoral process. This is unbelievable! Dan has done nothing wrong!!!
We are meeting in Colorado Springs at the Shops at Briargate (in the far west parking lot by Starbucks) to car pool at 12:00pm. Please come join us. PLEASE!!!
We are meeting at 12 noon at the Shops at Briargate- Please forward to only Dan SUPPORTERS!
Peace, Love, and Blessings
XXXXXXX
Following is my response:
So now what, Irene? The Tea Partiers and others who correctly complained about “party trumps person”, who have recognized that blindly supporting a Republican primarily because he’s the Republican candidate has brought the nation to ruin, are supposed to get angry because some Republicans are actually coming to agree with the complaint?
Are you seriously saying they should be forced to support a candidate they think is no good? That’s like saying all Republicans should have been forced to support John McCain, something many of us didn’t do.
And John McCain makes Dan Maes look like a guy who sticks with his positions!
Give me a break. Dan is a TERRIBLE candidate who can’t and shouldn’t win. He’s an accidental candidate who got here by not telling people who he really is and by the collapse of the other candidate who was never inspiring to begin with.
This may be a crucial time in our lives, but not because of Dan Maes.
Finally, the people in the GOP who want to support someone else are NOT saying that you don’t matter or that your votes don’t matter. They are saying that you can do that on your own dime but they don’t want to go along for the ride. Trying to force them to support someone they deeply oppose represents your doing everything that you would complain about them doing in a parallel situation.
It’s not as if they’re trying to get Maes off the ballot or replace him as the GOP candidate at this point, since it can’t be done without Maes’ agreement, which is not forthcoming.
I completely support Wadhams’ move. Preventing someone from supporting the candidate of his or her choice is unAmerican. You should be ashamed for sinking to tactics which you would criticize in any other situation.
Those who supported Dan Maes should put their egos aside and recognize that they’ve made a huge mistake. They should learn from the lesson that having no qualifications for a job does not make you the best candidate for the job, even if you’re in an anti-incumbent mood.
I’m so sick of the rhetoric and tactics of Maes supporters. I’m embarrassed for you since you apparently don’t have the sense to understand when you should be ashamed of yourself.
SHARETHIS.addEntry( { title : 'More Maes supporters losing their minds', url : 'http://rossputin.com/blog/index.php/more-maes-supporters-losing-their-minds'}, { button: true } ) ;Link to Original post at Rossputin.com.
I received the following note on Facebook from someone mistakenly thinking I’m a supporter of Dan Maes. I’m leaving out the name of the sender:
Subject: Urgent!!! This is bigger than Dan Maes and also about the GOP trying to by-pass the system and ignor Everyone,Following is my response:
So now what, Irene? The Tea Partiers and others who correctly complained about “party trumps person", who have recognized that blindly supporting a Republican primarily because he’s the Republican candidate has brought the nation to ruin, are supposed to get angry because some Republicans are actually coming to agree with the complaint?
Are you seriously saying they should be forced to support a candidate they think is no good? That’s like saying all Republicans should have been forced to support John McCain, something many of us didn’t do.
And John McCain makes Dan Maes look like a guy who sticks with his positions!
Give me a break. Dan is a TERRIBLE candidate who can’t and shouldn’t win. He’s an accidental candidate who got here by not telling people who he really is and by the collapse of the other candidate who was never inspiring to begin with.
This may be a crucial time in our lives, but not because of Dan Maes.
Finally, the people in the GOP who want to support someone else are NOT saying that you don’t matter or that your votes don’t matter. They are saying that you can do that on your own dime but they don’t want to go along for the ride. Trying to force them to support someone they deeply oppose represents your doing everything that you would complain about them doing in a parallel situation.
It’s not as if they’re trying to get Maes off the ballot or replace him as the GOP candidate at this point, since it can’t be done without Maes’ agreement, which is not forthcoming.
I completely support Wadhams’ move. Preventing someone from supporting the candidate of his or her choice is unAmerican. You should be ashamed for sinking to tactics which you would criticize in any other situation.
Those who supported Dan Maes should put their egos aside and recognize that they’ve made a huge mistake. They should learn from the lesson that having no qualifications for a job does not make you the best candidate for the job, even if you’re in an anti-incumbent mood.
I’m so sick of the rhetoric and tactics of Maes supporters. I’m embarrassed for you since you apparently don’t have the sense to understand when you should be ashamed of yourself.
Link to Original post at Rossputin.com.
For one of the few times (or maybe the only time) in my memory, doing my radio show on Sunday may have changed my mind – or at least made up my mind – about a political issue.
To start, let me say that at this point in the race for governor, I strongly prefer Tom Tancredo to the other candidates. John Hickenlooper is a radical environmentalist leftist-in-moderate-clothing who will preside over redistricting us (non-leftists) to death if he gets the chance. Dan Maes is an incompetent man of too many stories and too many questions even though I think he mostly has conservative gut instincts.
Tom Tancredo is a man who means what he says and says what he means. Even though I am not in agreement with him on the aggressiveness of his anti-immigration views (not just anti-illegal immigration), I feel that he’s a trustworthy and principled guy. I am not at all sure he has the skill set to be the CEO of a state…but I am not sure he doesn’t have it, and I am sure Dan Maes doesn’t have it.
John Hickenlooper’s popularity outside of Denver, and his ability to increase that popularity with advertising, is quite limited, especially in an anti-Democrat year like this.
It’s not absolutely inconceivable that he could be beaten, even in a three-way race, but it would require one of the other candidates to get no more than 20% of the vote, perhaps no more than 15% of the vote.
It is inconceivable to me that Dan Maes can beat Hickenlooper in a 3-way race, which means that Tancredo has the only chance.
I went into the radio show last night thinking that with enough beating up on Dan Maes, not least by the media whom I expect to put out more negative information about him, enough conservatives and Republicans could be convinced to vote for Tancredo that Tom might have a decent shot.
And that possibility left me wondering whether it makes sense for anti-leftists of all stripes to allocate some of our limited resources, whether in terms of time or money, to Tom’s campaign to try to help him to victory. I was leaning toward saying we should.
After Sunday’s radio show, I’m not so sure.
In particular, two of the three calls we got while I was interviewing Tancredo were people who said they were long-time fans of Tom’s. One, an older lady, said he had always been the only politician she felt she could trust and that she gave him a hug when she met him at a Republican event some months ago. The other caller was a gentleman who was also a long-time supporter of Tom’s. They both said, however, that they were supporting Dan Maes for governor.
While I don’t think there are nearly enough of these people to give Dan Maes a victory, they represent precisely Tom’s electoral challenge, and I do think there probably are enough of them – people who will vote for the “R” no matter what, like yellow dog Democrats, ham sandwiches, etc. – that they could keep Tancredo from winning. In other words, they will keep the vote split too evenly for either to win.
It was remarkable when the woman said that she thought Dan Maes was a man of integrity because of his stated views on issues. It showed a lot about how when people get emotionally involved with a candidate, their choice becomes for the next few months until the election akin to a secondary religion, not susceptible to criticism based on facts or logic. The idea that Dan Maes must be a man of integrity because he said some right things about taxes or regulation or whatever in the face of his repeated lies or errors of omission is stunning unless viewed in the sense of someone with a religious attachment to his or her candidate.
Other supporters of Maes hitched their wagon to his horse early on and want Maes to succeed because they’ve staked their own political capital and their own hopes for moving up in GOP party hierarchy on a Maes victory. This isn’t quite religion, but the behavior of such people is the same. They refuse to admit that their candidate is fatally flawed, if they admit that he’s flawed at all.
The more I come to believe that many Republicans, especially those who are not political junkies like me and the readers of these pages, will just vote for the Republican in November, while many others who are paying attention (as well as quite a few independent voters) will vote for Tom Tancredo, the more I think Dan Maes will still get more than 20%, but less than 1/3 of the vote. Hickenlooper will get 40%, and that will be the end of it.
This has a couple of ramifications for me: First, I’m starting to think that conservatives should not spend money on this race. People get the government they deserve. George W Bush and Republican idiocy earned us the penalty of Barack Obama. Scott McInnis and Dan Maes, and the supporters of both, will earn us the penalty of John Hickenlooper. Too many voters are too stupid, too loyal, or too mind-numbed to realize that not only can’t Dan Maes win, but he shouldn’t win.
Dan Maes only won the party’s nomination because Scott McInnis was so unpalatable (even before the plagiarism scandal), and because he was a fresh face. He has absolutely zero relevant experience. He is sort of a blank slate upon which Tea Party activists and other political newbies (not that all Tea Party activists are rookies at this game) projected their fondest hopes and dreams. And who does that description remind you of? (Hint: he’s President of the United States)
Sure there were some real supporters of Maes, but many Maes votes were really protest votes against McInnis. Furthermore, the undervote in the primary was likely the cause of McInnis’ loss in that those who were supporting McInnis were more disgusted than those who were supporting Maes. Maes is the accidental nominee. He’s the guy who got to third base on a wild pitch and two errors and is telling people he hit a triple.
But there are enough Republican voters who will say “He would have hit a triple if the pitcher hadn’t thrown the wild pitch first” that Maes will still probably get enough GOP votes to keep Tancredo from winning while Maes himself has no chance that I can see. The state GOP won’t help. The Republican Governors’ Association won’t help. Most of the GOP big hitters have abandoned him. He won’t raise even half of what Tancredo raises, and Tancredo won’t raise half of what Hickenlooper raises.
The more I think about it, the more I think this race is over and that conservatives and libertarians should focus on making sure that Ken Buck, Ryan Frazier, Scott Tipton, Cory Gardner, and a slew of state legislative candidates win. Send your money to them. Volunteer for them. Vote for Tancredo or Jaimes Brown (Libertarian) or Jason Clark (Independent). I’ll probably vote for one of the latter two, actually, though I haven’t decided yet other than that I know I won’t vote for Hickenlooper or Maes.)
I really like Tom Tancredo personally. I like talking with him over a beverage. He strikes me as the most direct politician I’ve ever known. But he’s very controversial, even divisive, including among Republicans. He’s not difficult to demonize from a distance, though it won’t sell with people who really know him. The problem is not that many people really know him, and he can’t get enough people to know him in two months.
It pains me to say it, but my inclination at this point – with apologies to Tom Tancredo – is to give up on the governor’s race and do everything we can to take back a majority in at least one house of the state legislature.
Indeed, to the extent that we maintain a divisive dialog among Republicans and conservatives about the governor’s race, we damage the likely enthusiasm to contribute to, volunteer for, and fill out ballots for down-ballot races which are so critical in 2010.
It should be noted that one of the people whom I mentioned earlier in terms of supporting Maes no matter what because he’s spent his own political capital and has his own in-party hopes tied to Maes’ success has posted a note to Facebook saying that he has hired a law firm to try to get Tom Tancredo disqualified from election and to make sure “the people know that Tom Tancredo is on the ballot illegally whether or not the Colorado Secretary of State agrees.”
To me, this is a fairly disgusting move, essentially saying that even if the appropriate regulator says that Tancredo’s candidacy is absolutely legitmate, they intend to tell people it isn’t. It’s reprehensible and shows what depths people will stoop to in order to win their political battles, even if the battle is in support of the worst Republican candidate I’ve seen for major office in my several years in Colorado.
The move shows that it’s not about good government or a good candidate, but just trying to beat up another conservative even if they have to effectively lie to do it.
It’s a stark contrast to Tancredo himself: when I suggested that the dynamics of the race were such that he’d have to spend a lot more time attacking Maes than Hickenlooper, Tancredo said “I hope not” and that fighting against a Republican is “the worst part of all of this.”
Maes and his supporters, not all but too many, seem to be birds of a feather, willing to say anything to win in order to extend their already undeserved 15 minutes of fame. Maes does not deserve the support of any voter in Colorado. Tom Tancredo does, but the dynamics of this race are such that we are still very likely to be looking at a horrific sight of John Hickenlooper moving into the governor’s mansion.
Time for Republicans and conservatives to focus on winning races we can win while doing what we can to keep the governor’s race from opening a Referendum C-type wound within the just-healing-from-that-fiasco GOP. As far as the punishment that deserves to be doled out to those who gave us Scott McInnis and Dan Maes, we can do that after November.
SHARETHIS.addEntry( { title : 'Struggling with the governor's race', url : 'http://rossputin.com/blog/index.php/struggling-with-the-governor-s-race'}, { button: true } ) ;Link to Original post at Rossputin.com.
For one of the few times (or maybe the only time) in my memory, doing my radio show on Sunday may have changed my mind – or at least made up my mind – about a political issue.
To start, let me say that at this point in the race for governor, I strongly prefer Tom Tancredo to the other candidates. John Hickenlooper is a radical environmentalist leftist-in-moderate-clothing who will preside over redistricting us (non-leftists) to death if he gets the chance. Dan Maes is an incompetent man of too many stories and too many questions even though I think he mostly has conservative gut instincts.
Tom Tancredo is a man who means what he says and says what he means. Even though I am not in agreement with him on the aggressiveness of his anti-immigration views (not just anti-illegal immigration), I feel that he’s a trustworthy and principled guy. I am not at all sure he has the skill set to be the CEO of a state…but I am not sure he doesn’t have it, and I am sure Dan Maes doesn’t have it.
John Hickenlooper’s popularity outside of Denver, and his ability to increase that popularity with advertising, is quite limited, especially in an anti-Democrat year like this.
It’s not absolutely inconceivable that he could be beaten, even in a three-way race, but it would require one of the other candidates to get no more than 20% of the vote, perhaps no more than 15% of the vote.
It is inconceivable to me that Dan Maes can beat Hickenlooper in a 3-way race, which means that Tancredo has the only chance.
I went into the radio show last night thinking that with enough beating up on Dan Maes, not least by the media whom I expect to put out more negative information about him, enough conservatives and Republicans could be convinced to vote for Tancredo that Tom might have a decent shot.
And that possibility left me wondering whether it makes sense for anti-leftists of all stripes to allocate some of our limited resources, whether in terms of time or money, to Tom’s campaign to try to help him to victory. I was leaning toward saying we should.
After Sunday’s radio show, I’m not so sure.
In particular, two of the three calls we got while I was interviewing Tancredo were people who said they were long-time fans of Tom’s. One, an older lady, said he had always been the only politician she felt she could trust and that she gave him a hug when she met him at a Republican event some months ago. The other caller was a gentleman who was also a long-time supporter of Tom’s. They both said, however, that they were supporting Dan Maes for governor.
While I don’t think there are nearly enough of these people to give Dan Maes a victory, they represent precisely Tom’s electoral challenge, and I do think there probably are enough of them – people who will vote for the “R” no matter what, like yellow dog Democrats, ham sandwiches, etc. – that they could keep Tancredo from winning. In other words, they will keep the vote split too evenly for either to win.
It was remarkable when the woman said that she thought Dan Maes was a man of integrity because of his stated views on issues. It showed a lot about how when people get emotionally involved with a candidate, their choice becomes for the next few months until the election akin to a secondary religion, not susceptible to criticism based on facts or logic. The idea that Dan Maes must be a man of integrity because he said some right things about taxes or regulation or whatever in the face of his repeated lies or errors of omission is stunning unless viewed in the sense of someone with a religious attachment to his or her candidate.
Other supporters of Maes hitched their wagon to his horse early on and want Maes to succeed because they’ve staked their own political capital and their own hopes for moving up in GOP party hierarchy on a Maes victory. This isn’t quite religion, but the behavior of such people is the same. They refuse to admit that their candidate is fatally flawed, if they admit that he’s flawed at all.
The more I come to believe that many Republicans, especially those who are not political junkies like me and the readers of these pages, will just vote for the Republican in November, while many others who are paying attention (as well as quite a few independent voters) will vote for Tom Tancredo, the more I think Dan Maes will still get more than 20%, but less than 1/3 of the vote. Hickenlooper will get 40%, and that will be the end of it.
This has a couple of ramifications for me: First, I’m starting to think that conservatives should not spend money on this race. People get the government they deserve. George W Bush and Republican idiocy earned us the penalty of Barack Obama. Scott McInnis and Dan Maes, and the supporters of both, will earn us the penalty of John Hickenlooper. Too many voters are too stupid, too loyal, or too mind-numbed to realize that not only can’t Dan Maes win, but he shouldn’t win.
Dan Maes only won the party’s nomination because Scott McInnis was so unpalatable (even before the plagiarism scandal), and because he was a fresh face. He has absolutely zero relevant experience. He is sort of a blank slate upon which Tea Party activists and other political newbies (not that all Tea Party activists are rookies at this game) projected their fondest hopes and dreams. And who does that description remind you of? (Hint: he’s President of the United States)
Sure there were some real supporters of Maes, but many Maes votes were really protest votes against McInnis. Furthermore, the undervote in the primary was likely the cause of McInnis’ loss in that those who were supporting McInnis were more disgusted than those who were supporting Maes. Maes is the accidental nominee. He’s the guy who got to third base on a wild pitch and two errors and is telling people he hit a triple.
But there are enough Republican voters who will say “He would have hit a triple if the pitcher hadn’t thrown the wild pitch first” that Maes will still probably get enough GOP votes to keep Tancredo from winning while Maes himself has no chance that I can see. The state GOP won’t help. The Republican Governors’ Association won’t help. Most of the GOP big hitters have abandoned him. He won’t raise even half of what Tancredo raises, and Tancredo won’t raise half of what Hickenlooper raises.
The more I think about it, the more I think this race is over and that conservatives and libertarians should focus on making sure that Ken Buck, Ryan Frazier, Scott Tipton, Cory Gardner, and a slew of state legislative candidates win. Send your money to them. Volunteer for them. Vote for Tancredo or Jaimes Brown (Libertarian) or Jason Clark (Independent). I’ll probably vote for one of the latter two, actually, though I haven’t decided yet other than that I know I won’t vote for Hickenlooper or Maes.)
I really like Tom Tancredo personally. I like talking with him over a beverage. He strikes me as the most direct politician I’ve ever known. But he’s very controversial, even divisive, including among Republicans. He’s not difficult to demonize from a distance, though it won’t sell with people who really know him. The problem is not that many people really know him, and he can’t get enough people to know him in two months.
It pains me to say it, but my inclination at this point – with apologies to Tom Tancredo – is to give up on the governor’s race and do everything we can to take back a majority in at least one house of the state legislature.
Indeed, to the extent that we maintain a divisive dialog among Republicans and conservatives about the governor’s race, we damage the likely enthusiasm to contribute to, volunteer for, and fill out ballots for down-ballot races which are so critical in 2010.
It should be noted that one of the people whom I mentioned earlier in terms of supporting Maes no matter what because he’s spent his own political capital and has his own in-party hopes tied to Maes’ success has posted a note to Facebook saying that he has hired a law firm to try to get Tom Tancredo disqualified from election and to make sure “the people know that Tom Tancredo is on the ballot illegally whether or not the Colorado Secretary of State agrees.”
To me, this is a fairly disgusting move, essentially saying that even if the appropriate regulator says that Tancredo’s candidacy is absolutely legitmate, they intend to tell people it isn’t. It’s reprehensible and shows what depths people will stoop to in order to win their political battles, even if the battle is in support of the worst Republican candidate I’ve seen for major office in my several years in Colorado.
The move shows that it’s not about good government or a good candidate, but just trying to beat up another conservative even if they have to effectively lie to do it.
It’s a stark contrast to Tancredo himself: when I suggested that the dynamics of the race were such that he’d have to spend a lot more time attacking Maes than Hickenlooper, Tancredo said “I hope not” and that fighting against a Republican is “the worst part of all of this.”
Maes and his supporters, not all but too many, seem to be birds of a feather, willing to say anything to win in order to extend their already undeserved 15 minutes of fame. Maes does not deserve the support of any voter in Colorado. Tom Tancredo does, but the dynamics of this race are such that we are still very likely to be looking at a horrific sight of John Hickenlooper moving into the governor’s mansion.
Time for Republicans and conservatives to focus on winning races we can win while doing what we can to keep the governor’s race from opening a Referendum C-type wound within the just-healing-from-that-fiasco GOP. As far as the punishment that deserves to be doled out to those who gave us Scott McInnis and Dan Maes, we can do that after November.
SHARETHIS.addEntry( { title : 'Struggling with the governor's race', url : 'http://rossputin.com/blog/index.php/struggling-with-the-governor-s-race'}, { button: true } ) ;Link to Original post at Rossputin.com.
The Denver Channel is reporting that a student was ordered to remove two large flags flying from his pickup because they might make other uncomfortable.
A high school student in Northglenn is upset that campus security told him to remove the large American flags flying from his pickup truck because it might make others uncomfortable.
Apparently the security officer didn’t recognize the student’s flags were the same as the star-spangled banner flying from a flag pole in front of the school.
The principle at Northglenn High School seems reasonably sane.
“I am unaware of that situation. So I need to talk to that person, see why they did that, if they did that,” said Northglenn High School principal Dr. Mary Lindimore. “We have ‘em in the hallways upstairs. So we promote flying of American flags.”
…
When 7NEWS asked Lindimore if she could imagine any scenario in which the American flag would disrupt the educational environment, Lindimore said no.
It is never inappropriate to fly the American flag in America. Anyone who’s offended by that needs to seriously reconsider which country they live in.
(h/t Gateway Pundit)
So you move to the US from a foreign country, go to work, save your money, and then decide to strike out on your own to start your own business. Pretty much the American dream, huh?
Not if you’re the Colorado Public Utilities Commission:
All Colorado cabdriver Edem “Archie” Archibong wants is to fulfill the next stage in his immigrant success story — to start his own business.But Colorado’s heavily regulated taxi industry isn’t cooperating, causing some local politicians to ask why government is getting in the way of the free-market system.
Mr. Archibong, a Nigerian native and married father of two, came to the U.S. legally in 1977. He joined the Army, where he worked as an optical technician and later started driving a cab to support his family. In 2008, he helped lead a group of 150 Denver-area cabdrivers, many of them legal African immigrants, with plans to start a taxi company called Mile High Cab to serve five Denver-area counties.
In July, the Colorado Public Utilities Commission (PUC), which oversees the local taxi industry, ruled that Mr. Archibong’s startup had its financial house in order. The entrepreneurs pooled their collective savings to start the company, eschewing cumbersome bank loans.
But the PUC said Mile High Cab would hurt the public interest.
That’s right. More cabs and more competition would hurt the public, according to the PUC. Why it wouldn’t be a simple matter to let the public decide this is apparently beyond the reasoning capacity of the PUC.
In fact, it’s a perfect example of how regulatory bodies often become captive to the industries they’re supposed to be regulating. Since they establish barriers to entry, they then become overly concerned with the health of the existing entities.
It’s also an example of how regulatory bodies will almost always seek to expand regulation, rather than contract it, in order to solve a problem. A 2008 report by the PUC to the legislature shows that when the legislature had the opportunity to prevent this situation from arising, it took the opposite fork.
During the discussion and debate at the Legislature, multiple amendments to the original bill were proposed. Each of these amendments sought to balance the nature and scope of taxi regulation in Colorado in various ways. For example, in its early form, the bill stated a legislative declaration that “competition in the motor vehicle carrier industry will benefit Colorado consumers, making for greater choice and convenience.” The introduced version of the bill included a criminal history background check; the requirement that the operator meet certain safety, insurance and service quality standards; and the requirement that the Commission not limit the number of companies authorized to provide taxi service. Amendments were drafted, but not adopted, that required the Commission to conduct a study regarding expanding taxi service in rural areas; mandated the Commission to prescribe taxi rules regarding wheelchair access, refusals of service, taxi hailing without dispatch, reasonable lease rates, and the use of alternative fuels; prohibited unreasonable lease rates and fees to process credit transactions; and required companies to have at least 25 vehicles in populous base areas; required the companies to operate vehicles that are less than eight model years old, and to have a central dispatch open at all times.
Ultimately, after much discussion and debate, House Bill 07-1114 repealed the prohibition that precluded the Commission from regulating the lease rate charged to a driver by a common or contract carrier as found in § 40-3-103, C.R.S. (emphasis added)
That’s it. The bill started out with reasonable consumer protections in return for letting as many companies operate as could meet those standards, quickly became a hobby horse for a couple of dozen special cases, at which point the sponsors decided that the best solution was to ditch the deregulation aspect of the bill and add regulatory authority to the PUC.
As the report points out, cab drivers are independent contractors, leasing their vehicles from the cab companies. Right now, many of the cabbies are charged $800 or $900 a week rental. To make up this fixed cost, the cabbies often have to drive 12 or 14 hours a day. The PUC formerly had no oversight of these arrangements, but has for the last three years, and hasn’t seen fit to do anything about them. It’s obvious why. Cab companies get to testify about over-capacity, and seek to protect their (literal) rent-seeking by limiting the number of cabs.
This arrangement serves the cab companies just fine. It may very well be that the number of cabs is optimized for their close-to-extortionist lease agreements. But for the rider who wants faster service or a lower fare, or for the cabbie who wants negotiating leverage, it’s not such a good deal.
With control over the number of available cabs, the fares, and the lease arrangements, the PUC has done little more than to discredit (once again) the idea of central planning. The right answer is to remove the PUC’s control of all three elements, and let normal market forces work their magic. If Yellow Cab or Metro Cab drivers find they can’t make their leases, Yellow Cab and Metro Cab will find themselves with fewer drivers. Some drivers will leave to join Mile High Cab. I can certainly see where Mile High Cab could even work with finance companies to help refugees from Yellow and Metro who want to work, but who haven’t yet set aside enough cash to buy a car.
To maintain standards, let fares decide – on the spot – whether they want the cab that pulls up or the next cab in line; no reason anyone should have to ride in an unsanitary vehicle.
The members of the PUC are appointed by the Governor and approved by the Senate. All terms of the current Commissioners will expire during the term of the next governor. As a member of the House, I won’t have any say in the matter. But I’d certainly encourage my colleagues in the Senate to ask about new nominees’ positions on regulation the markets. And I’d happily sponsor legislation similar to the original HB07-1114.
The following column originally was published September 3 by Grand Junction Free Press.
Under Nanny State, we don’t feel like dancing
by Linn and Ari Armstrong
The grocer looked incredulous: “What’s 3.2 beer?” While visiting New York City, your younger author Ari had asked about alcohol restrictions in grocery stores, noting that most grocers in Colorado can sell only low-strength beer.
In New York you can buy regular beer in grocery stores, and so far this has not caused social mayhem. (Colorado’s liquor police needn’t worry; New York has plenty of other sales restrictions.)
But in New York it’s illegal to dance in most clubs and bars. Yes, dance, as in, move your feet and sway your hips to music. Politicians couldn’t possibly allow people to freely dance; think of the children. If people were able to dance at will, what might they think of next? It would be anarchy! You can drink a beer, and you can listen to music at the same time, but adding a little jig to the mix, never mind a moonwalk, is entirely out of the question.
“While it sounds like a joke,” LegalizeDancingNYC.com admits, “the NYC Cabaret Law is very real and has for the last several years adversely affected our city’s economy, culture and community.” The organization holds that “dancing is a fundamental right that need not be regulated by government and that a flourishing dance culture is good for the NYC economy and culture.”
While dancing didn’t merit a mention in the Bill of Rights, it’s still pretty important, and certainly politicians have no business restricting it.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg has admitted, “We have dance police. This is craziness,” reports the New York Times. However, reports the paper, a 2008 proposal to ease the dancing restrictions fell apart because it threatened other onerous controls on bars. That is unfortunate; the paper notes that the law has been used in the past to thwart interracial dating and more recently to lock up establishments deemed by the authorities to be a nuisance.
The anti-dancing laws are a real problem for the phenomenally talented New York pop band Scissor Sisters. (Ari caught the New York show on August 24; the band will play in Denver soon.) They even have a song out called “I Don’t Feel Like Dancin’,” but we dare you to listen to it without at least feelin’ like dancing.
Sister singer and fashion diva Ana Matronic said at the show (we’re closely paraphrasing): “Elect us as mayor and the first thing we’ll do is get rid of the f’ing cabaret license” and free up dancing. (She said the band had a license for the show.)
Maybe if we elected one of the Sisters to office in Colorado, we could finally get rid of the anti-freedom restrictions on liquor sales. Incredibly, the Denver Post reports, some have even proposed reinstating the “blue laws” outlawing Sunday liquor sales because of “the damage to convenience and grocery stores’ bottom lines.”
How about this: let stores sell whatever they want to willing customers. It’s called a free market, also known as liberty.
But at least in Colorado we don’t have Big Nanny forcing businesses to post calorie listings. In New York McDonald’s posts on its menu board that “2 for $3 McGriddles” sport 1120 calories. A big donut at Gristedes market is 450 calories.
We have nothing against restaurants posting calorie notices, so long as they do it voluntarily in accordance with their customers’ shopping preferences. But mandatory postings violate the rights of property and voluntary association.
Moreover, mandatory calorie postings insult the intelligence of shoppers. Do we really need some bureaucrat to tell us that deep fried sugar is bad for you? Consumers can make wise decisions without the “help” of meddlesome politicians.
Indeed, by encouraging people to depend on politicians and bureaucrats for their health and safety, Nanny State laws ultimately stunt people’s independent thinking. Nothing is more dangerous than that, whether for people’s health or the health of the republic.
It’s easy enough to mock Nanny State laws like restrictions on dancing or grocery-store beer sales. But never forget that, once government gets in the business of forcing us to do what politicians think is good for us, it can very quickly cross the line from Onion-worthy headlines to frightening Orwellian-style police-state action.
Consider persecution of homosexuals. The founding members of Scissor Sisters happen to be gay, so, unsurprisingly, their music touches on related issues. But until 1980 New York adults could be arrested and criminally prosecuted for consensual gay sex, and not until 2000 did that state’s legislature formally repeal the sodomy laws. Former Colorado legislator Jerry Kopel points out that our state repealed sodomy laws in 1971.
Throughout much of the Middle East, religious zealots continue to murder homosexuals — as well as women caught in adultery charges — under Islamic sharia law.
The only proper job of politicians is to protect individual rights. If we’re worried about public morality, nothing is so perniciously immoral than allowing some to forcibly control the consensual acts of other adults.
For the first time in the history of Colorado’s “merit selection and retention” process for placing and removing the occupants of judicial office, Colorado Citizens are being presented with substantive information not only on the three incumbent Colorado Supreme Court justices who will appear on the November ballot, but also on the three nominees (the governor will pick one of the three) to replace outgoing Chief Justice Mary Mullarkey, who announced in June that she would resign rather than be held accountable by Colorado voters this November).
Thanks to the increased attention on the Colorado Supreme Court this year, and the consistent efforts of the legal-affairs journal Law Week Colorado for longer than that, the public applications of the three finalists (complete except for removal of purely personal information shielded for privacy reasons – entirely appropriately) which include some relevant background on the candidates for judicial office – were made public. The public applications may be viewed in their entirety on the Law Week website (”Governor’s Office Makes Public Applications Of Justice Finalists“) or downloaded to review in detail.
The governor’s office has even requested public input on the nominees – providing Colorado Citizens the opportunity to weigh in on who will become Colorado’s next supreme court justice; but act fast, the governor is expected to make a decision next week (”Speak Now, or Forever Hold Your Peace… Governor’s Office seeks public comment on Colorado Supreme Court nominees“).
The Denver Post – which, after noting in February that “Four Colorado Supreme Court justices face a tough vote in elections” was largely silent on this important issue until very recently (possibly in response to criticism that their [lack of] coverage may have been influenced by the fact that the Post is being paid $1.6 million per year as the Colorado Supreme Court’s current landlord) when an article acknowledged that “four state Supreme Court justices [may not] survive an attempt to remove them from the bench this election.”
Bygones.
Denver Post courts reporter Felisa Cardona has written up a series of profiles of the three finalists to become the next Colorado Supreme Court justice – the third and last of which (”Supreme Court Finalists: Candidate’s writings show clarity of thought“) appears in today’s (Monday) paper.
Clear The Bench Colorado commends the Denver Post for (finally?) shedding some light on the individuals who may next be elevated to our highest court. We have called upon the Denver Post editors to join us in requesting greater transparency in the process by which the nominees are selected, as well – and most importantly, to join us in holding the incumbent justices accountable to the Colorado Constitution, the rule of law, and (ultimately) to the citizens of Colorado.
We The People can (indeed, as citizens, we must) hold our public officials – both elected and appointed – accountable. Be a citizen, not a subject – get informed, then exercise your right to vote “NO” this November on the four (er, three remaining) ‘unjust justices’ of the Colorado Supreme Court’s “Mullarkey Majority”- (Justices Michael Bender, Alex Martinez, Nancy Rice – soon to be minus Chief Justice Mary Mullarkey) who need YOUR approval to continue taking away your constitutional rights: your right to vote on tax increases, your right to defend your home or business against seizure via eminent domain abuse, your right to be fairly represented in the legislature and Congress, and your right to enjoy the benefits of the rule of law, instead of suffering under rule by activist, agenda-driven “justices.” Support Clear The Bench Colorado with your comments (Sound Off!) and contributions – and exercise your right to vote “NO” on giving these unjust justices another 10-year term!
Much has been made in recent days of the NY Times’ weekend story entitled “Democrats Plan Political Triage to Retain House.” The short version of the story is that the Democrats will abandon trying to help incumbents whom they think are pretty much dead in the water – the apparent poster child being Colorado’s own Betsey Markey, who was against Obamacare before she was for it, and is going to get demolished by State Rep. Cory Gardner. They’ll take the money they would have spent on those lost causes and try to focus it on enough closer races to keep their House losses below the 40 seats the GOP needs to take back a majority.
Nancy Pelosi, who until recently has never expressed any fear of losing her gavel, is singing a different tune: “She called out Democrats who were delinquent on paying their party dues and instructed members with no re-election worries to tap into a combined $218 million from their campaign accounts to help save their majority.”
Some Republicans argue that it would be better for the GOP, especially for their prospects in the 2012 presidential election, for Democrats to keep control – but not enough of a majority to get anything done – so that Republicans can run against the image of an utterly ineffectual Democrat government. I think that’s too clever by half. Having control of the House brings so much power and visibility, the GOP would be crazy to even consider thinking not having it might be a good idea.
The main value, of course, is the committee chairmanship. The party with the majority controls the committees, meaning they control what subjects become committee hearing topics and who is summoned to testify before those committees.
Imagine the value, not just political, but in terms of true education for the citizens, of hearing Donald Berwick, Obama’s socialist recess-appointee to run the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, pontificate on the virtues of British socialized medicine…which is bankrupting England while providing a far lower quality of care than we receive here. Imagine the value of making EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson explain the radical – I would argue insane – positions her organization is taking in trying to control the nation’s economy.
And, politically, imagine the value of the GOP finally being in a position to prove that it is currently the Party of No, but not the Party of No Ideas, as the left likes to portray it.
This presumes of course that the Republicans have ideas and that they’re willing to campaign on them. So far, few other than Paul Ryan (R-WI) have shown that courage. But I think Ryan is leading the way toward, dare I say it, a new spirit of intellectually- and philosophically-based government, a government which can (and should) be truly based on outcomes rather than claims of good intentions. It remains to be seen whether the GOP leadership understands that the public is ready for principle-based leadership – and that it has almost always been a success when tried.
Meanwhile the Democrats have a real problem: their own agenda and the president. As Politico.com points out, several Democrats who voted against Obamacare are running ads trumpeting their opposition to Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi’s signature “achievement", while not one of the 219 House Democrats who voted for the legislation is running an ad highlighting their vote or their part in destroying the quality and raising the cost of American health care.
A few political bettors have apparently read the NY Times article and think the Dems may have some success, with the chances of the Democrats keeping control of the House rising by 8%, a very large move in a short time with no “real” news. Still, the betting still has the Democrats with just under a 1/3 chance of keeping the House, quite a remarkable thing to see given the party’s 77-seat majority.
Nancy Pelosi seems like to be encouraging her minions to spend millions of their campaign war chest dollars on hopeless races.
A little research into the history of campaign finance shows that one of the most imbalanced years in terms of various industry groups giving to Democrats more than giving to Republicans – which is what’s happened in this cycle – was the 1994 cycle. And since money is fungible – meaning it will have the same effect, or lack of effect, whether it comes from Democrats’ campaign coffers or a trial lawyers PAC, it’s hard to see Pelosi’s efforts having much impact. In all but the closest races, wherever a Republican is tied or in the lead in polls now, I expect the Republican to win by a wider margin than the current polls show, even if the Democrat spends 50% or 100% more money than the Republican.
A really expensive ad campaign trying to get me to buy rotten meat won’t overcome the cheap and infrequent ad campaign reminding me that no matter how that stuff is packaged, it’s still rotten.
That said, one can’t underestimate the importance of the Republicans having at least some money to respond to the Democrats packaging their rotten meat as gourmet steak tartare. Furthermore, if the election ends up being closer than I currently expect, it’s not out of the question for several million dollars dumped into a small number of races to be the difference between a GOP and Democrat majority. I don’t think the election will be that close, and political betting still has an over 40% chance of the Republicans taking 50 seats or more. (They need 40 to have the majority because the Dems have a 77-seat lead right now and there are two vacancies.)
One likely (and pleasing) outcome could be Democrats spending millions to defend seats they lose anyway, and then not having that money available in 2012. If I were a relatively safe Democrat sitting on a pile of campaign cash, I’d be very worried about that outcome, especially if a strong GOP presidential contender were to arise for 2012, someone whose coattails could pose electoral danger for a Democrat who manages to skate through this cycle. Therefore, I think Nancy Pelosi will have minimal success in her call for Democrat congressmen to spend their money helping other Democrat congressmen. I also think her lack of fund-raising success will snow-ball, with more and more industry groups moving away from donating to Democrats, as the securities industry has done in rather spectacular fashion, going from 70% to Democrats in March, 2009 to 68% to Republicans in June of this year.
DCCC Chairman Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) and Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama are about to reap the whirlwind. It couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of tyrants.
SHARETHIS.addEntry( { title : 'Democrat "Triage" won't stop their bleeding', url : 'http://rossputin.com/blog/index.php/democrat-triage-won-t-stop-their-bleeding'}, { button: true } ) ;Link to Original post at Rossputin.com.
Much has been made in recent days of the NY Times’ weekend story entitled “Democrats Plan Political Triage to Retain House.” The short version of the story is that the Democrats will abandon trying to help incumbents whom they think are pretty much dead in the water – the apparent poster child being Colorado’s own Betsey Markey, who was against Obamacare before she was for it, and is going to get demolished by State Rep. Cory Gardner. They’ll take the money they would have spent on those lost causes and try to focus it on enough closer races to keep their House losses below the 40 seats the GOP needs to take back a majority.
Nancy Pelosi, who until recently has never expressed any fear of losing her gavel, is singing a different tune: “She called out Democrats who were delinquent on paying their party dues and instructed members with no re-election worries to tap into a combined $218 million from their campaign accounts to help save their majority.”
Some Republicans argue that it would be better for the GOP, especially for their prospects in the 2012 presidential election, for Democrats to keep control – but not enough of a majority to get anything done – so that Republicans can run against the image of an utterly ineffectual Democrat government. I think that’s too clever by half. Having control of the House brings so much power and visibility, the GOP would be crazy to even consider thinking not having it might be a good idea.
The main value, of course, is the committee chairmanship. The party with the majority controls the committees, meaning they control what subjects become committee hearing topics and who is summoned to testify before those committees.
Imagine the value, not just political, but in terms of true education for the citizens, of hearing Donald Berwick, Obama’s socialist recess-appointee to run the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, pontificate on the virtues of British socialized medicine…which is bankrupting England while providing a far lower quality of care than we receive here. Imagine the value of making EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson explain the radical – I would argue insane – positions her organization is taking in trying to control the nation’s economy.
And, politically, imagine the value of the GOP finally being in a position to prove that it is currently the Party of No, but not the Party of No Ideas, as the left likes to portray it.
This presumes of course that the Republicans have ideas and that they’re willing to campaign on them. So far, few other than Paul Ryan (R-WI) have shown that courage. But I think Ryan is leading the way toward, dare I say it, a new spirit of intellectually- and philosophically-based government, a government which can (and should) be truly based on outcomes rather than claims of good intentions. It remains to be seen whether the GOP leadership understands that the public is ready for principle-based leadership – and that it has almost always been a success when tried.
Meanwhile the Democrats have a real problem: their own agenda and the president. As Politico.com points out, several Democrats who voted against Obamacare are running ads trumpeting their opposition to Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi’s signature “achievement”, while not one of the 219 House Democrats who voted for the legislation is running an ad highlighting their vote or their part in destroying the quality and raising the cost of American health care.
A few political bettors have apparently read the NY Times article and think the Dems may have some success, with the chances of the Democrats keeping control of the House rising by 8%, a very large move in a short time with no “real” news. Still, the betting still has the Democrats with just under a 1/3 chance of keeping the House, quite a remarkable thing to see given the party’s 77-seat majority.
Nancy Pelosi seems like to be encouraging her minions to spend millions of their campaign war chest dollars on hopeless races.
A little research into the history of campaign finance shows that one of the most imbalanced years in terms of various industry groups giving to Democrats more than giving to Republicans – which is what’s happened in this cycle – was the 1994 cycle. And since money is fungible – meaning it will have the same effect, or lack of effect, whether it comes from Democrats’ campaign coffers or a trial lawyers PAC, it’s hard to see Pelosi’s efforts having much impact. In all but the closest races, wherever a Republican is tied or in the lead in polls now, I expect the Republican to win by a wider margin than the current polls show, even if the Democrat spends 50% or 100% more money than the Republican.
A really expensive ad campaign trying to get me to buy rotten meat won’t overcome the cheap and infrequent ad campaign reminding me that no matter how that stuff is packaged, it’s still rotten.
That said, one can’t underestimate the importance of the Republicans having at least some money to respond to the Democrats packaging their rotten meat as gourmet steak tartare. Furthermore, if the election ends up being closer than I currently expect, it’s not out of the question for several million dollars dumped into a small number of races to be the difference between a GOP and Democrat majority. I don’t think the election will be that close, and political betting still has an over 40% chance of the Republicans taking 50 seats or more. (They need 40 to have the majority because the Dems have a 77-seat lead right now and there are two vacancies.)
One likely (and pleasing) outcome could be Democrats spending millions to defend seats they lose anyway, and then not having that money available in 2012. If I were a relatively safe Democrat sitting on a pile of campaign cash, I’d be very worried about that outcome, especially if a strong GOP presidential contender were to arise for 2012, someone whose coattails could pose electoral danger for a Democrat who manages to skate through this cycle. Therefore, I think Nancy Pelosi will have minimal success in her call for Democrat congressmen to spend their money helping other Democrat congressmen. I also think her lack of fund-raising success will snow-ball, with more and more industry groups moving away from donating to Democrats, as the securities industry has done in rather spectacular fashion, going from 70% to Democrats in March, 2009 to 68% to Republicans in June of this year.
DCCC Chairman Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) and Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama are about to reap the whirlwind. It couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of tyrants.
SHARETHIS.addEntry( { title : 'Democrat "Triage" won't stop their bleeding', url : 'http://rossputin.com/blog/index.php/democrat-triage-won-t-stop-their-bleeding'}, { button: true } ) ;Link to Original post at Rossputin.com.
For the first time in the history of Colorado’s “merit selection and retention” process for placing and removing the occupants of judicial office, Colorado Citizens are being presented with substantive information not only on the three incumbent Colorado Supreme Court justices who will appear on the November ballot, but also on the three nominees (the governor will pick one of the three) to replace outgoing Chief Justice Mary Mullarkey, who announced in June that she would retire rather than be held accountable by Colorado voters this November).
Thanks to the increased attention on the Colorado Supreme Court this year, and the consistent efforts of the legal-affairs journal Law Week Colorado for longer than that, the public applications of the three finalists (complete except for removal of purely personal information shielded for privacy reasons – entirely appropriately) which include some relevant background on the candidates for judicial office – were made public. The public applications may be viewed in their entirety on the Law Week website (”Governor’s Office Makes Public Applications Of Justice Finalists“) or downloaded to review in detail.
The governor’s office has even requested public input on the nominees – providing Colorado Citizens the opportunity to weigh in on who will become Colorado’s next supreme court justice; but act fast, the governor is expected to make a decision next week (”Speak Now, or Forever Hold Your Peace… Governor’s Office seeks public comment on Colorado Supreme Court nominees“).
The Denver Post – which, after noting in February that “Four Colorado Supreme Court justices face a tough vote in elections” was largely silent on this important issue until very recently (possibly in response to criticism that their [lack of] coverage may have been influenced by the fact that the Post is being paid $1.6 million per year as the Colorado Supreme Court’s current landlord) when an article acknowledged that “four state Supreme Court justices [may not] survive an attempt to remove them from the bench this election.”
Bygones.
Denver Post courts reporter Felisa Cardona has written up a series of profiles of the three finalists to become the next Colorado Supreme Court justice – the second of which (”Supreme Court Finalists: Breadth of experience seen as balancing youth“) appears in today’s (Sunday) paper.
Clear The Bench Colorado commends the Denver Post for (finally?) shedding some light on the individuals who may next be elevated to our highest court. We have called upon the Denver Post editors to join us in requesting greater transparency in the process by which the nominees are selected, as well – and most importantly, to join us in holding the incumbent justices accountable to the Colorado Constitution, the rule of law, and (ultimately) to the citizens of Colorado.
We The People can (indeed, as citizens, we must) hold our public officials – both elected and appointed – accountable. Be a citizen, not a subject – get informed, then exercise your right to vote “NO” this November on the four (er, three remaining) ‘unjust justices’ of the Colorado Supreme Court’s “Mullarkey Majority”- (Justices Michael Bender, Alex Martinez, Nancy Rice – soon to be minus Chief Justice Mary Mullarkey) who need YOUR approval to continue taking away your constitutional rights: your right to vote on tax increases, your right to defend your home or business against seizure via eminent domain abuse, your right to be fairly represented in the legislature and Congress, and your right to enjoy the benefits of the rule of law, instead of suffering under rule by activist, agenda-driven “justices.” Support Clear The Bench Colorado with your comments (Sound Off!) and contributions – and exercise your right to vote “NO” on giving these unjust justices another 10-year term!
From an article by Linn and Ari Armstrong:
We have nothing against restaurants posting calorie notices, so long as they do it voluntarily in accordance with their customers’ shopping preferences. But mandatory postings violate the rights of property and voluntary association.
Moreover, mandatory calorie postings insult the intelligence of shoppers. Do we really need some bureaucrat to tell us that deep fried sugar is bad for you? Consumers can make wise decisions without the “help” of meddlesome politicians.
Indeed, by encouraging people to depend on politicians and bureaucrats for their health and safety, Nanny State laws ultimately stunt people’s independent thinking. Nothing is more dangerous than that, whether for people’s health or the health of the republic.
Read the whole article, which starts of describing New York’s Cabaret Laws, which restricts dancing in most clubs and bars: Under Nanny State, we don’t feel like dancing.
For more on nanny state restrictions, see Radley Balko‘s What’s the Matter With Chicago?
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