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April 21, 2016 10:46 AM UTC

Get More Smarter on Thursday (April 21)

  • 17 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

Get More SmarterWe really can’t recommend eating something off the ground in the best of situations, but you should be particularly careful the day after 4/20. 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 Senate candidate Jack Graham is officially on the June 28th Primary ballot, joining GOP State Convention winner Darryl Glenn. The Colorado Secretary of State’s office announced Wednesday that Graham had enough valid petition signatures to make the ballot, but if the other petitioning candidates (Robert Blaha, Jon Keyser, and Ryan Frazier) don’t have a better “validity rate” than Graham’s campaign, we could be looking at a pretty thin group of Senate candidates after all. The Denver Post ponders the same question we brought up a few weeks ago.

 

► Would Democrat Hillary Clinton consider a woman as a running mate in a General Election? The popular parlor game, “Who Gets to be Vice-President” is picking up steam. As the Boston Globe reports:

Hillary Clinton’s short list of vice presidential options will include a woman, a top campaign official said in an interview — creating the possibility of an all-female ticket emerging from the Democratic convention in Philadelphia.

Clinton wants “the best person to make the case to the American people,” her campaign chairman, John Podesta, told the Globe. “We’ll start with a broad list and then begin to narrow it. But there is no question that there will be women on that list,” he said, adding that staffers are still focused on clinching the primary.

The development immediately injects liberal darling Senator Elizabeth Warren’s name into the growing speculation about who Clinton will choose as her running mate now that she is almost certainly on track to become the nominee.

While it may be fun to speculate on a potential Clinton ticket with Sen. Elizabeth Warren as her running mate, our friends at “The Fix” think it would be a long shot.

 

► House Speaker Paul Ryan says he doesn’t have the votes to pass a budget. Great work, Congressional Republicans. Really, really, great work.

 

Get even more smarter after the jump…

IN CASE YOU ARE STANDING NEAR A WATER COOLER…

► Mandatory Transvaginal Ultrasounds. Weird phrase, worse legislation. NARAL Pro-Choice Colorado is holding a rally to bring attention to HB-1218 at 1:00 today.

 

► The re-election campaign of Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Denver) is on the air with a new TV ad touting the importance of college affordability.

 

► Predatory lenders want the Colorado legislature to allow them to charge higher interest rates…even though the industry admits that it has enjoyed 30% growth in Colorado over the past four years. What’s the word for this? Oh, right…GREED.

 

► Former Secretary of State Scott Gessler is working for a group trying to derail efforts to raise the minimum wage in Colorado by more than 10 cents.

 

► Holy Shit! The U.S. Senate passed a bill! The U.S. Senate passed a bill! From the Durango Herald:

The U.S. Senate on Wednesday passed its first significant energy bill since 2007 in overwhelmingly bipartisan fashion.

Colorado Sens. Michael Bennet, a Democrat, and Cory Gardner, a Republican, praised the Energy Policy Modernization Act, which passed 85-12.

“This bill takes important steps toward the 21st century energy policy that our country so badly needs,” Bennet said in a statement.

Gardner, a member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said the final bill – which includes provisions that he and Bennet backed – would positively impact Colorado and other Western states.

“This legislation will increase energy efficiency, modernize our electrical grid and create more jobs in the energy sector,” Gardner said.

The bill would increase funding for research and development of energy-related technology, promotes renewable energy and seek to modernize the oil and gas industry’s infrastructure.

Seriously — look at that! The U.S. Senate passed a bill!

 

► There is a big Kumbaya press conference scheduled for this afternoon to introduce legislation intended to move Colorado back to a Presidential Primary voting state and do away with the arcane and impossible-to-understand caucus process. From Joey Bunch of the Denver Post:

Republicans and Democrats on Thursday will announce a plan for a Colorado presidential primary that would allow the state’s unaffiliated voters to participate.

More than one-third of Colorado voters — the largest bloc — are not affiliated with a party. The legislative proposal would allow them to choose which party’s primary they would wish to participate in.

Thirty days after the state primary, the registration would expire, said Rep. Dominick Moreno, a Democrat from Commerce City and one of the authors of the bill.

The measure would apply only to the presidential race. All other party caucus operations, including selecting delegates in the nomination process, would remain the same, he said.

 

► State lawmakers are considering a bill intended to assist pregnant women in the workplace.

 

► Legislation intended to study the costs of healthcare in Colorado is on its way to the Governor’s desk.

OTHER LINKS YOU SHOULD CLICK

► If you are one of those hearty souls who still get the print edition of the Denver Post, you might want to check the fine print on your subscription.

 

► Indiana Rep. Marlin Stutzman is a Tea Party Republican who likes to rant about government overspending…when he isn’t using his campaign cash to take family vacations.

ICYMI

► There’s a Colorado Pols meetup scheduled for Saturday, April 23rd in Denver. You should go.

 

Get More Smarter by liking Colorado Pols on Facebook!

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17 thoughts on “Get More Smarter on Thursday (April 21)”

  1. Encromnibation: The Revenge of the Cromnibus.  Hide the women and children, and your pensions folks.

    The Washington Post reports that the Treasury Department is on the verge of approving an application from the Central States Pension Fund – a plan that covers Teamster truckers in several states – to cut worker pensions by an average of 23 percent, and even more for younger retirees. Over 250,000 truckers and their families would be affected. Workers over 75, or those who have acquired a disability, would be exempt from the changes.

    […]

    The pension changes in the CRomnibus enable trustees of multi-employer plans — union-negotiated pension benefit funds that cover employees across entire industries like trucking or construction — to apply to the Treasury Department to cut benefits for current retirees in order to stretch the fund’s resources. This changed the ban on cutting such benefits written into the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) of 1974, which governs private-sector pension plans.

    1. The parties might want to give a sense of participation to folks whose votes they’re looking for in the general.  Not sure if this really helps them or not.

      Another reason might be that, since the taxpayers are paying, what I think is in the millions of dollars, for two private organizations to select their representatives, it's reasonable to allow everyone to participate.  The only actual law I'm familiar with is California Democratic Party v. Jones, which disallowed the "forcing open" of party political primaries.

  3. From State Sen. Morgan Carroll – the State Senate is considering SB 16-117, sponsored by Jerry Sonnenberg, which would prohibit the state Department of Health from fining any person or entity for violating clean water provisions unless that specific violation continues for more than 20 days after the department notifies the offender of their violation.

    Repeat offender? No problem. Need an occasional release of toxic waste? No problem. Just be sure whatever problems you have are curable within 20 days, and only after the state actually notices the problem and tells you about it.

  4. Can't see a Clinton/Warren ticket. She's too valuable in the Senate to waste on the VP slot, and she doesn't add a whit of diversity other than ideological to the ticket – and Clinton being President would control the Administration's ideological bent as surely as Obama has with Biden at his side.

  5. Rule out Warren for one simple reason — Massachusetts has a Republican governor and would fill her seat with a Republican if she were elected veep — which might well ensure a continued Republican Senate.  Rule out Sherrod Bown and another other Democrat from a Republican governor state for the same reason.  Columnist Bob Kuttner has suggested Al Franken, from Democratic governed Minnesota.   That works for me.  Otherwise, put Jane Sanders on the ticket for the ultimate Socialist/feminist double play.

  6. I'm thrilled the Senate finally got around to an energy bill. Wisely, the upper chamber left any mention of global warmings out of their version; God forbid if the children in the lower chamber had to acknowledge mans significant role in climate change in conference.  Will the Teajhadists in the House accept compromise as they hammer out the differences?  

    There's enough in both versions to keep the Fossilonians temporarily happy (at least until a President Sanders or Clinton is installed in January and the gloves come off when the Dems have assumed the majority in at least one chamber). 

    1. I saw that – does the bill provide for taxpayers to build oil and gas infrastructure? Sort of a low-level Keystone? I haven't had time to really look into it.

      1. Given our climate challenges it could have been better – but given the Fossilonian majorities in both chambers it was as good as we could expect. I won't hold my breath for the lower chamber to play nice in the conference sandbox.  I anticipate some Einstein will bring a snowball to the Spring gathering to prove global warmings is a hoax. 

         

  7. V, Do you really think Minnesota would let Franken go? I don't. I think they'd pitch a screamin', squallin' hissy fit. She ought to go for someone on the Left Coast. Not only would she get geographical diversity, there's a way better chance that the person she kidnaps will be replaced by another Dem. Remember what happened to Sen. Kennedy's seat?

    1. Maybe she should name john kasich.   Seriously, Franken has strong appeal to the left.  Yeah, we'd have to name a good replacement .  But with Warren we lose the seat instantly.  At least with franken we keep it at least for two more years.   I'd even go with a RINO like christine todd whitman, but the left would go crazy.

      1. I think it's Julian Castro and he'd be great, an incredibly aorticlate guy.   I also love Cory Booker but it's the Warren problem all over again.   Elect Booker VP and everybody's favorite thin man, Chris Christie, appoints his replacement, possibly giving the Senate back to the Teajadists.

        1. fyi pols,still no edit function on my Mac Safari.   But for days I have had an edit button on every thread heading.   It works, I can go into the thread and screw it up, but I haven't figured out how to get back to my posts.   Do you suppose that is a throwback to when I was an FPO?  No sweat, cuzz I hurdly nevur makte a typeaux.

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