CO-04 (Special Election)
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(R) Greg Lopez
(R) Trisha Calvarese
90%
10%
President (To Win Colorado)
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(D) Joe Biden*
(R) Donald Trump
80%
20%↓
CO-01 (Denver)
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(D) Diana DeGette*
90%
CO-02 (Boulder-ish)
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(D) Joe Neguse*
90%
CO-03 (West & Southern CO)
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(D) Adam Frisch
(R) Jeff Hurd
(R) Ron Hanks
40%
30%
20%
CO-04 (Northeast-ish Colorado)
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(R) Lauren Boebert
(R) Deborah Flora
(R) J. Sonnenberg
50%↑
15%
10%↓
CO-05 (Colorado Springs)
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(R) Dave Williams
(R) Jeff Crank
50%↓
50%↑
CO-06 (Aurora)
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(D) Jason Crow*
90%
CO-07 (Jefferson County)
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(D) Brittany Pettersen
85%↑
CO-08 (Northern Colo.)
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(D) Yadira Caraveo
(R) Gabe Evans
(R) Janak Joshi
60%↑
35%↓
30%↑
State Senate Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
80%
20%
State House Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
95%
5%
January 20, 2014 06:26 AM UTC
39 Comments
Interesting article. And I think there's a lot to this. I've met a lot of people where the money is the means to grow the company, but I've also met a lot where the money is how they measure their success. This article For the Love of Money has real good points about that second group.
Definitely worth reading. Thanks for the link, Dave.
And now for some really good news – Three Myths on the World's Poor (the whole article is well worth reading!)
The first and last ones are completely meaningless absent some perspective.
1) Poor contries now have higher per-capita incomes. So what if the distribution is wrong? Is the US a richer contry that 30 years ago? Sure, if you're rich, not at all if you're poor and uneducated. Wages have not kept up with inflation at the low end, despite GDP gains.
Are these banana republics better at bringing their resources to the world market? Are those resources held by a fortunate few? If so, per-capita income goes up, the well-being of the average schlub, not so much.
3) Decreasing child mortality leads to decreasing fertility. Only with government intervention and public-health efforts. Since foreign aid is so valuable (#2) and a significant faction in our politics wants to make our foreign aid as political and divorced from empirical reality as their domestic policy efforts, there is no guarantee of this correlation. Large families to support aging parents is the cultural reality in vast swaths of the world, and the political-economic means to break this cycle is not guaranteed.
Exactly. I can remember when many of the South American banana repulics were supposed to be suuccess stories because of growing GDP and per capita income but all the increased wealth just went to the same old established elite and didn't improve the average persons life at all. Any of these measures can easily coexist with widespread poverty, poor living conditions and poor general health.
Sometimes I think you just look for any hook to hang the argument that everything sucks and the problems we face eliminate any good changes. If you read the article you would see that it's not all going to a few at the top:
Yes we face some serious problems. That doesn't mean the world's not getting a lot better.
Well it is here. The middle hasn't made any progress in decades. In many areas the middle has lost ground. All the wealth growth is at the top. In places like China they pretty much had nowhere to go but up. What's the excuse here?
That talks about per capita wealth. It says nothing about distribution. Middle income nations can mean that the rich got better at exploiting, or that the income gains were evenly distributed. This article presents no evidence for either position, Professor Pangloss.
And finally, in the really poor prediction category we have from Newsweek Why the Web Won't Be Nirvana
And, in the really excellent prediction category…Chris Christie is toast. The RGA will ask him to resign in less than a month and there will never be a POTUS named Christie.
Any bets??
According to Tom Tomorrow, poor Mr. Christie is just a tender soul being taken advantage of by his merciless staff:
But yeah, I think his Presidential ambitions, at least, are burned toast.
I didn't think he'd ever make POTUS before bridgegate so….
ANother piece of good news out of all this is that clearly a number of politicians in New Jersey didn't give in to Christie's demands. New Jersey may be electing a better, more honest caliber of people. And that's wonderful.
I've never heard of a Governor, or any other office holder, demanding endorsements from mayors or other pols who belong to the other party. Have I been missing something? Isn't it enough that so many voters cross over to vote for you that you have no chance of losing, regardless?
If this is what his team thought he expected of them, there's a reason. I don't see how any of this would have occurred to to them otherwise. Most political ops don't decide that they need to strong arm endorsements out of elected officials from the opposing party, or strong arm anybody for that matter, when they are on course to completely cream the other party's candidate. Kind of like Watergate, another example of completely unnecessary bad behavior, though of a different kind, when there was no way Nixon was going to lose that election anyway. It's ridiculously over the top for no parctical purpose.
Shows you the size of his ego.
No.
Happy Birthday, Martin Luther King, from Stevie Wonder!
Very nice MamaJ. I love this piece.
Here is another reason we need to tighten up Colorado's Ballot Initiative process:
About the only positive thing I can say about this is that hopefully those benighted Californians will spend a lot of their money here in Colorado in a failed effort to gather 86,000 signatures.
I don't see why this foolish "mandatory marriage class" initiative proves a need to tighten up the initiative process. If people feel like it's a stupid initiative, then they won't sign it.
I notice that this initiative doesn't include any same-sex provisions. Colorado's OK with same-sex civil unions since 2013, ( a good use of the initiative process), but doesn't allow same sex marriage. This initiative, in the unlikely event it passes, also wouldn't prevent people from living together and declaring themselves to be common-law married, which is legal in CO, and still necessitates a legal divorce.
Disagree. Not because of this particular idiotic (and it is idiotic) thing but in general. I believe in electing legislators to legislate. Legislation or constitutional amendment via the inititive process ought to be much harder so only those things that have overwhelming broadbased support but are still being ignored by our elected reps should be able to clear the threshold.
It's a silly idea to legislate this. Maybe pre-marital counseling is a good idea, but it should be a matter of choice. Funny how conservatives complain about govt. interference except when it's their agenda.
Also the burden for paying for it would make marriage one more thing that becomes a much bigger bite for lower income people. And there's the fact that they have not a single scrap of evidence that whatever education classes they propose would decrease the divorce rate. That sounds like I would have a more favorable view if they did have data to suggest premarital education classes are effective in lowering the divorce rate. I wouldn't.
This is a ridiculous proposal. Who would get to decide what constitutes proper premarital education?
Mama, the reason I believe this foolish mandatory marriage class initiative proves a need to tighten up the initiative process is because I resent being a playground for nitwits wanting to test market dumb ideas at taxpayers' expense. Especially if by some miracle they pass and we have to spend even more money to rid ourselves of them (do you remember Amendment 2? — we won't even discuss TABOR).
So what kind of criteria would you put in place for initiatives? 2 was unconstitutional – that would be a good test. What else?
Not the content of the initiative. — just raise the bar on the process of getting one one the ballot. That should in and of itself raise the level of quality and seriousness of the matter.
Also require that an equal number of qualifying signatures come from each state Senate district.
Exactly. It's not about the content. It's about raising the bar so only proposals that can garner very widespread support, thus demonstrating that there is broad consensus for the need for direct democracy, not the usual way of legislating in our system, can advance. What cannot demonstrate that level of consensus should be handled in the normal legislative process by those we elect to represent us. As for constitutional amendment, that should be as difficult as it is at the federal level. The state constitution, like the federal, should be essentially stable, hard to mess with and uncluttered with specifics that should be left to the legislative sphere.
I hate voting for any budget related amendment because I don't believe any of them belong in the constitution but, with the system we have now, feel forced to vote for some because the other side is going to have such an easy time passing far worse ones.
The only amendmenst I would really like to vote for would be for abolishing our easy as changing socks requirements for amendments and the intiative process.
The combined wealth of the world's richest 85 people is now equivalent to that owned by half of the world's population …3.5 billion people..
In a report titled "Working for the Few" released Monday, the global aid and development organization detailed the extent of global economic inequality created by the rapidly increasing wealth of the richest, warning of the major risks it poses to "human progress."
According to the report, 210 people have become billionaires in the past year, joining a select group of 1,426 individuals with a combined net worth of $5.4 trillion.
It added that the wealth of the richest one percent of people in the world now amounts to $110 trillion, or 65 times the total wealth of the bottom half of the world's population.
http://www.nbcnews.com/business/worlds-85-richest-have-same-wealth-3-5-billion-poorest-2D11958883
Aren't you pooh-poohing all that good news out of Chile, Turkey and Botswana . . . ???
Ok, in all fairness, and complete open-mindedness, I guess there are places where things are undeniably better than they once were . . .
. . . but, there's nowhere that anything's better than it ever was than at the very tipity top:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/20/opinion/krugman-the-undeserving-rich.html
(. . . of course, the first moment that that all begins to start trickling down, it's going to be a veritable tsunami !!! — It's the "Annie" version of "Happy Days are Here Again." Just you wait . . . )
Thanks for putting that link up. Krugman nails it. The ever widening gap in income and wealth in the United States is a serious problem. Heaven forbid the uber rich focus any real attention on the issue. Slap together a window dressing panel at Davos and scowl a lot and look concerned, then jet back home and carry on. Problem solved.
Utterly bizarre.
Sad news today. Former State Senator Dave Wattenberg from NW Colorado has passed away.
Can't help but label the convenient showing of conservatives at today's MLK marade as a dog and pony show. Coffman's been in office for what – 25 years now, and he just now noticed the existence of MLK events once Andrew got into the race. What a joke!
In the world of strategery we call that tactic 'outreach.' Its a Big Tent Party! The New ™ Colorado GOP, complete with recycled candidates from years gone by.
yeah, it was funny how Lynn Bartels was carrying the water for them in the Denver Fish Wrap (Post) today. Oh, I'm sorry, was my honest observation an insult to their "sincere outreach"? 😉
The attitude of –look how far and inclusive the GOP is! They came to a parade–contributes to the general dumbing down of American politics. MLK didn't fight to win vacuous displays of 'unity' or whatever vague feel-good idea the GOP think they are promoting (other than themselves which, face it, is the real purpose here), but real change in real people's lives. His Poor Peoples Campaign was pushing to make sure LBJ kept his promises in the Great Society and he was most distressed it was getting derailed by foreign militaristic conservative John Birch Republicans and LBJ himself in Viet Nam.
MLK died organizing a labor strike and was actively working to expand the programs that today’s GOP is fixated on dismantling. So, yes, it’s more than a little hypocritical and self-serving and, yes, the Denver Fish Wrap – ‘it doesn’t matter if we stink, where else ya gonna go?’—is abetting.
fair and inclusive… Can we get someone to introduce a bill to make Pols add back in the edit/preview function?
With all the complaints I bet they would if they could manage it. Here's what I do except when I'm in a hurry. I right click "cut" while using Ctrl, hit the "paste" symbol above. That gives you a box to right click paste it in. In that box the misspelled words are underlined. I correct then hit OK which puts it all back into this box. Not a complete edit solution but something.