November 09, 2015 11:16 AM UTC

Get More Smarter on Monday (Nov. 9)

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• by: Colorado Pols

Enjoy your Monday — it’s better than a poke in the eye. It’s time to Get More Smarter with Colorado Pols. If you think we missed something important, please include the link in the comments below (here’s a good example).

TOP OF MIND TODAY…

► Republican Presidential candidate Ben Carson is not handling his “frontrunner” status very well. On the eve of Tuesday’s Republican Presidential candidate debate in Milwaukee, Carson is racking up one embarrassing headline after another. Carson, naturally, is blaming the media for reporting about his bizarre statements and claims; in response, the media and his fellow candidates are basically telling Carson to stop whining.

Famous rich person Donald Trump smells blood in the media waters and is going in for the kill — but is he too anxious to stick a (metaphorical) fork in Carson?

► Oil and gas drilling is more dangerous than previously thought; a new report shows that eight people died in Colorado in 2014 while working for oil and gas extraction companies — more than previously calculated.

Get even more smarter after the jump…

IN CASE YOU ARE STANDING NEAR A WATER COOLER…

► Democrats are feeling good about their chances of taking back control of the U.S. Senate in 2016, as Politico reports:

Democrats need to pick up five seats (or four if they win the White House) and are working aggressively to expand the map and capitalize on what they hope will be a Hillary Clinton wave. Republicans acknowledge the landscape tilts heavily against them but believe most of their incumbents are well positioned…

…But the GOP hasn’t landed a candidate against Sen. Michael Bennet in Colorado, their best shot at putting Democrats on the defensive. Wicker pledged to find “someone who is every bit as electable as [GOP Sen.] Cory Gardner,” the party’s best Senate recruit last year who defeated Democratic incumbent Mark Udall.

Republicans do have state Sen. Tim Neville running for the GOP nomination in 2016. While they may still be trying to recruit other candidates, it’s unlikely Republicans will find a candidate capable of defeating Neville in a Primary.

► Oh, wait…we almost forgot about Peggy Littleton. The El Paso County Commissioner said late last week that she is considering running for Senate, and she is sufficiently far right enough that she could give Neville a tough race in a Primary. In a General Election against incumbent Sen. Michael Bennet, not so much. Littleton is a little bit…what’s the word we’re looking for? Oh, right: Crazy.

► Governor John Hickenlooper is not happy with Colorado’s Congressional Republicans after the latter refused to support a new federal budget last week. From the Colorado Statesman:

A measure to reauthorize the Export-Import Bank of the United States received broad bipartisan support in the House Oct. 27. The bill passed 313-118, but Colorado’s four GOP House members voted “no.”

A five-year extension of the bank’s authority is expected to be ironed out in a House-Senate conference committee. That’s an unusual destination for a reauthorization effort that has been routinely granted by Congress for decades.

The bank, established by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1934, provides insurance and loan guarantees to oversees buyers of American goods. The bank’s authority lapsed in July after House leaders declined to take up reauthorization prior to a summer recess.

Supporters, including Hickenlooper, say the agency provides vital support to businesses and the economy overall.

In a statement to The Colorado Statesman, Hickenlooper’s office expressed dismay over opposition to the bank’s reauthorization by Colorado Republican House members.

“The governor is aware of the vote and believes it to be embarrassing and disappointing that anyone in the Colorado delegation doesn’t see the value of the Export-Import Bank to Colorado companies,” said Hickenlooper spokeswoman Kathy Green. “Every single other industrialized country has a government-backed bank that functions like the Export-Import Bank. It uses no tax revenue and creates thousands and thousands of jobs.”

► The Supreme Court will listen to the Little Sisters of the Poor and their allies at the Home for the Aged on yet another birth control-related challenge to Obamacare.

► Colorado will soon have a vacancy in a District Court position, and Senators Michael Bennet (D-Denver) and Cory Gardner (R-Yuma) are organizing separate search parties to look for their preferred replacement candidates.

► KUNC Radio takes a look at the ongoing battle between Gov. John Hickenlooper and Attorney General Cynthia Coffman over the latter’s insistence on including Colorado in a multi-state lawsuit in opposition to a Clean Power Plan that the Governor’s administration supports. As KUNC posits, “How can one state both support and oppose the same thing?”

► John Tomasic of the Colorado Statesman helps Republicans understand what went wrong after a veritable drubbing at the polls last week:

Conservative campaign forces lost badly in the Jefferson County school board elections this week. They lost unaffiliated voters and they lost Republican voters — and it wasn’t for lack of trying.

“I’m a conservative and I can tell you that these school board people were not conservatives,” Jeffco voter Robert Zurbin told The Colorado Statesman on election night. He was one of a crowd of hundreds at the Denver West Sheraton celebrating the landslide recall of three conservative school board members.

Dr. Zurbin is a passionate and curious figure. He is the author of a long list of publications about colonizing Mars. Motherboard called him a “right wing bulldog for space travel.” Pixies frontman Frank Black wrote a song about him. Zurbin is also the man behind a natural gas capturing system being developed by Pioneer Energy, the company he founded, and he has been an advisor to Newt Gingrich.

Zurbin is not a socialist. He opposes over-reaching government. But he was clearly upset about the way education reform politics has thrown the district’s school system into turmoil over the last two years. He suggested the recalled board members were radical figures who, to whatever extent they realized it, were acting according to the dictates of party politics more than they were acting according to the demands of public education.

► Poor Jeb! Bush. The more that voters hear about the former Florida Governor and 2016 Presidential hopeful, the less they like him.

► The editorial board of the Denver Post thinks it is time to revisit a misguided 2005 law that made it more difficult for local governments to partner on broadband Internet service projects. Results from last week’s election back up that argument.

OTHER LINKS YOU SHOULD CLICK

► Remember the three Garfield County Commissioners who decided to cut a small amount of funding that was otherwise meant for Planned Parenthood? Yeah…that backfired.

► Sorry, Obamacare haters, but the President’s signature health care legislation is not actually “killing jobs.” As the Washington Post reports, health care-related jobs have actually increased in the aftermath of the Affordable Care Act: “Anyone who wants to call the ACA a “job killer” is either ignorant of or not interested in the facts.”

► Roll Call puts together a nice calendar combining the 2016 Senate and House schedules; now you can see how little Congress bothers to work in one screen!

ICYMI

► The Denver Broncos are no longer undefeated, and Peyton Manning is still 3 yards shy of the all-time record for career passing yards.

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