"A static hero is a public liability."
–Richard E. Byrd
Tuesday Open Thread
9
That’s The Point, Scott Tipton
Always the last to catch on.
As the Durango Herald's Stephanie Dazio reports:
The U.S. Senate passed the Marketplace Fairness Act by a 69-27 vote last week. The bill generally would subject online shopping to state sales taxes. The taxes would be sent to the state where the purchaser lives.
Current law says states can force retailers to collect sales taxes only if the company has a physical presence in the state.
That can give online companies a leg up over brick-and-mortar stores that must collect taxes on all transactions.
A few years ago, Colorado tried to "encourage" online retailers to collect and remit Colorado's state use tax, which has always technically been owed on online purchases under Colorado law but uncollectible in practice due to federal restrictions on state sales tax remittance dating from the Sears Catalog era. Local retailers led by the Colorado Retail Council supported this legislation, citing the years-long drop in sales for local "brick and mortar" retailers at the hands of online merchants–who enjoyed a competitive advantage for local consumers, and use the same taxpayer-funded infrastructure for product delivery that local retailers do. What's more, local retailers are often used by consumers as "showrooms" for products they then buy online tax-free, adding insult to injury.
Colorado Republicans energetically fought against the so-called "Amazon tax" bill, claiming the measure would "hurt Colorado business," when it in fact was intended to level the playing field on behalf of local business. Ultimately, though, Colorado's attempt to push online merchants to collect and remit Colorado sales tax wound up mired in court. Meanwhile, the push for a federal solution began as other states pressed the issue–which led to passage in the Senate of the Marketplace Fairness Act last week. A key change was on the part of Amazon, the same internet retail giant who fought the Colorado tax legislation at all costs. With Amazon on board, taxation of online purchases in every state seems closer than ever.
But don't tell that to Colorado's Rep. Scott Tipton, folks.
U.S. Rep. Scott Tipton, R-Cortez, will oppose it, said his spokesman Josh Green.
“Do we really need to be raising taxes?” Green said. “It’s going to impact local businesses.” [Pols emphasis]
Now folks, as we've just explained, and as local businesses throughout Rep. Tipton's district would tell him if he listened to them, a measure of fairness for local brick and mortar retail is the point of the legislation. That's why local retailers have pushed for this for years at the local and federal level. In addition to boosting revenue for the state of Colorado, brick-and-mortar retail can finally begin to recover from a competitive disadvantage they have suffered from against large internet retailers for over a decade.
So yes, dunderhead! It's going to "impact local businesses." As in positively.
Post dips toe in (then out) of search to find out who’s funding recall campaign targeting Senate President Morse
(The most important part of the story buried once again – Promoted by Colorado Pols)
In a Spot Blog post Sunday, The Denver Post cited a story from Colorado Springs TV station KOAA reporting that organizers of the campaign to recall Senate President John Morse hired Kennedy Enterprises to gather signatures to put the recall question on the ballot.
But the Post's print version of its Morse-recall story, unlike it's Spot Blog post, did not include a reference to Kennedy Enterprises, and it didn't delve at all into the mysterious question of who's funding the Morse recall campaign, even though Post reporter Kurtis Lee quoted one of the anti-Morse campaign's major donors (without informing readers of her donation).
So The Post missed an opportunity to follow up on the query posed by KOAA-TV's Jacqui Henrich in her May 6 story, "The bigger question at hand: who hired Kennedy Enterprises despite their questionable background?"
In his piece for the print edition of the newspaper, Post political reporter Kurtis Lee quoted Laura Carno, who was identified as a "Republican political strategist who runs a political action committee in Colorado Springs and is in staunch support of the recall."
Lee didn't point out that one of Carno's organizations, I Am Created Equal (IACE), donated over $14,ooo in in-kind support to the recall effort. Lee should have informed readers about her donation, what it's being used for, and her views other aspects of the anti-Morse campaign, once considered rag-tag but now infused with real money.
Gallup Explains What Went Wrong, Except The Obvious
After misreading the 2012 presidential election and facing criticism in the aftermath, Gallup polling has undertaken an internal review and will announce the findings next month.
“We are in the process of finishing a full review of all methodological issues relating to our 2012 election polling. The process is being led by a blue-ribbon group of outside experts. We will be reporting our findings at an event on June 4 at our offices in Washington,” Gallup Editor-in-Chief Frank Newport told POLITICO’s Mike Allen in Playbook on Monday.
Once considered a gold standard in public polling, Gallup's failure to correctly forecast the winner of the 2012 presidential election, and consistent track to the right of what turned out to be voter sentiment last year, have hurt their credibility in much the same way as CNN's recent string of "breaking" misreports on the Boston bombing have tarnished what was once an inviolate reputation.
There's a larger context to Gallup's mistaken assumptions about "likely voters" in the last election, and Gallup was far from the only "credible" news source whose presumptions about the 2012 electorate were proven wrong. Based on assumptions that serviced partisan desires, datasets skewed by those assumptions, and a massive nine-figure marketing campaign, a very large number of Americans bought into an artificial and ultimately false sense of certain GOP victory. From talk-radio listener to pollster, assumptions were made first, then self-serving datasets were used to reinforce them. We called all of this as it happened, and were ourselves accused of partisanship.
Fixing the mechanics of Gallup's polling will be the easy part.
Full story: Gallup Explains What Went Wrong, Except The Obvious
Monday Open Thread
Looks like what drives me crazy
Don't have no effect on you–
But I'm gonna keep on at it
Till it drives you crazy, too.
–Langston Hughes
Finally, Republicans Have a -Gate To Occupy Them
zOMG!
An e-mail discussion about talking points the Obama administration used to describe the deadly attack on the U.S. compound in Benghazi, Libya, show the White House and State Department were more involved than they first said in the decision to remove an initial CIA assessment that a group with ties to al Qaeda was involved, according to CNN sources with knowledge of the e-mails…
The unclassified talking points have become a political flashpoint in a long-running battle between the administration and Republicans, who say that officials knew the attack last September 11 was a planned terror operation while they were telling the public it was an act of violence that grew out of a demonstration over a video produced in the United States that insulted Islam.
White House spokesman Jay Carney on Friday called the controversy a "distraction" from the facts and said the administration had raised the possibility of extremist involvement from the start.
He told reporters the administration was careful with information on Benghazi and was open with the public once facts were established.
After the attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya last September, Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney was roundly criticized for his crass politicization of the tragedy, and lashing out at the Obama administration for "sympathizing" with the attackers before the facts were known. That didn't stop Republicans from obsessing about the matter through most of the rest of the election season. As part of his post-election recap, political reporter Eli Stokols at FOX 31 wrote that "viewers and listeners so wrapped up inside [the FOX News/Rush Limbaugh] bubble with obsessive coverage of Benghazi didn’t realize how out of line they were with the rest of the country."
The underlying attack from conservatives is that the administration didn't want to publicly acknowledge the attack as an Al Qaeda operation for, you know, various reasons. Among other things, this reflects the way that foreign policy is used politically in American politics post-9/11: when useful, opportunists lead with speculation about "terrorism" with the goal of profiting from the fearful public reaction. Others do not see political benefit in fomenting public fear about terrorism.
This isn't actually new.
As CNN reported, the new twist in this story that has Republicans up in arms concerns talking points from the Obama administration, and their role in "editing the talking points" in the immediate aftermath to remove references to the possibility of Al Qaeda involvement in the attack. The administration responds, as you can read above, that they were trying to be careful in their choice of words before the facts were fully understood.
Looked at objectively, the attack on the consulate in Benghazi was a tragedy, and there are lessons for everyone involved–including decisions made by the ambassador who was killed. What the facts of the incident don't explain is the over-the-top reaction from the GOP and conservative media like FOX News, which has now attached the suffix "-gate" to the controversy. For that, we turn to the Washington Post's Chris Cillizza:
Amid the ongoing uncertainty swirling in Washington about who knew what when in regards to the Sept. 11, 2012 attack on Benghazi, Libya that left four Americans dead, one thing has become crystal clear: Benghazi isn’t going away as a political issue any time soon.
Why? Because, wherever you come down on the policy debate surrounding the attack, the politics of demanding more information and answers about what happened are an absolute slam dunk for Republicans seeking to show their base a willingness to hold President Obama accountable… [Pols emphasis]
The simple fact is that Republican base voters not only dislike President Obama but have a deep distrust of how his Administration handles virtually all of its business. Not only is Benghazi a confluence of both of those realities but it also involved Clinton, who is widely regarded as the frontrunner to be the Democratic presidential nominee in 2016 if she decides to run.
If nothing else, a bunch of Republicans who were genuinely running short of political fodder have something to jawbone. The convergence of Al Qaeda, Democratic "softness on terror," and possible 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, is too fertile ground for them not to exploit to the maximum extent possible. In the end, though, we doubt this will be any more politically useful than it was to Romney.
Full story: Finally, Republicans Have a -Gate To Occupy Them
Dave Kopel, Supposed 2013 Gun Debate “Winner”
Dave Kopel.
The Denver Post's opinion board released their list of winners and losers of the 2013 Colorado legislative session late Thursday. Without getting too far into the weeds criticizing yet another bizarrely skewed perspective on this year's legislative session, in which apparently recording devices only worked when Democrats said something stupid–we've already promised a more comprehensive look at this in a forthcoming write-up–we do have a few words to add to one of the Post's declared "winners," Dave Kopel of the conservative Independence Institute.
David Kopel. This Independence Institute researcher and University of Denver law professor emerged as gun rights supporters' go-to guy for Second Amendment information and technical knowledge on guns.
It's true that Kopel's profile was higher than ever during the reinvigorated post-Newtown debate over gun safety legislation, testifying both in the Colorado legislature and in Washington, D.C. and providing "expert" backup for Republicans unsuccessfully (in Colorado, anyway) trying to stop the bills from passing. In terms of sheer increased exposure, sure, he's a winner. But only if you don't pay attention to the results of the gun safety fight in Colorado–or what he and the organization for which he serves as "research director" actually said.
Weekend Open Thread
"All our words from loose using have lost their edge."
–Ernest Hemingway
Lazy Lobbyist’s Cutting and Pasting Goes Awry
An example of the kind of mistake that well-paid legislative lobbyists should always avoid making, supplied in a veto request, dated this past Wednesday, that we were forwarded from the Colorado Municipal League to Gov. John Hickenlooper regarding the firefighter collective bargaining bill Senate Bill 13-025.
The CML's five-page letter recites the same boilerplate objections to this bill heard in testimony. Take note of the fact that Senate Bill 13-025 is an updated version of a similar firefighter collective bargaining bill from 2009, Senate Bill 09-180, which was vetoed by then-Gov. Bill Ritter. Proponents this year believe they have made enough changes to settle the objections Hickenlooper's office originally had to the bill.
Opponents, however, apparently haven't updated their talking points a bit.
On page 4 of the CML's veto request, dated May 8th of this year, the letter's "author" misses several references to 2009's Senate Bill 180. This means, of course, that the CML copied and pasted their 2009 veto request, then started "editing" to update it. We would assume, among other things, that the members of the CML are paying salaries in 2013 for 2013 work product, not a botched rehashing of four-year-old talking points. At least they remembered to change the Governor's name from "Ritter" to "Hickenlooper."
On the other hand, maybe the staff at CML work cheap.
Denver Post Not Fooled by Hick’s Late Fracking Move
The editorial board of the Denver Post weighs in today on the legislature's failure to pass a bill that would have increased fines for oil and gas rules violations:
The bill that would have rewritten the fine structure, however, died on the issue of minimum mandatory daily fines. Sponsors could not muster the votes for the idea, which faced substantial opposition from industry and Gov. John Hickenlooper.
So, instead of compromising and accepting a bill without the minimums, the whole measure died. That shouldn't have happened…
…The governor's order that the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission address the fine structure is really more political cover than substantive policy change. [Pols emphasis]
This may all seem like inside baseball, but it has broader implications and is illustrative of the forces at work in shaping oil and gas regulation in Colorado. There must be fewer all-or-nothing battles and more realism and cooperation when it comes to industry regulation.
Fox 31's Eli Stokols reported earlier in the week that Hickenlooper badly wanted to see this bill move forward — albeit after his office lobbied heavily to make sure it was watered down — so that he could try to get out from the growing pile of accusations that he is doing the bidding of the oil and gas industry. It's not good for the Governor when Democratic lawmakers are openly questioning Hickenlooper's interference on all things fracking. Here's Fox 31 from Wednesday:
Full story: Denver Post Not Fooled by Hick’s Late Fracking Move
DCCC Promotes Romanoff in “Jumpstart” Program
The Hill's Alexandra Jaffe yesterday:
In a memo sent to donors and supporters on Thursday and obtained by The Hill, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Executive Director Kelly Ward highlighted eight Democratic candidates named to the DCCC's "Jumpstart" program.
"The newly-created Jumpstart program provides early financial, communications, operational and strategic support to help top-tier candidates get a head start in these highly-targeted races," she writes in the memo.
"The candidates named to this program are running to put problem-solving ahead of ideology and get results for the middle class families in their districts."
Former Colorado House Speaker Andrew Romanoff's 2014 bid against perennially endangered incumbent Rep. Mike Coffman figures prominently in that group of eight races being promoted by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), and the help they can bring early on with money and organizational expertise is considerable. Nothing unexpected in that, of course, but as Colorado politics slowly shifts focus from this year's epic state legislative session, and without any Republican candidates for the top of the ticket in Colorado next year as of this writing, CD-6 is where the action is.
Coffman, Davis, Denham, Fitzpatrick and Southerland are considered by House Republicans to be some of their most vulnerable incumbents heading into the cycle. [Pols emphasis]
Everybody knows it, folks.
Heritage Foundation: A BSing Too Far?
The Heritage Foundation has gone into damage-control mode in the last few days, after coming under fire from Republicans and conservative outside groups over a report it published that puts the price tag of immigration reform at $6.3 trillion.
The conservative think tank is considering hiring a high-profile public relations firm to help deal with the fallout of the report that was supposed to be their big play in the immigration debate, according to two sources familiar with Heritage.
The group has also come under scrutiny after it was reported that one of the authors of the report asserted previously that white Americans have higher IQs than immigrants…
Adds the Washington Post:
The Post’s Wonkblog pointed out that the study’s co-author has argued that there are deep-set, likely genetic IQ differences between races and that low-IQ immigrants should be kept out of the country. Heritage distanced itself from that argument, saying “its findings in no way reflect the positions of The Heritage Foundation.” The American Prospect highlighted the fact that the anti-”amnesty” study is featured far less prominently on Heritage’s Spanish-language site…
That’s not to say the opposition to immigration reform is dead or that Heritage’s numbers won’t again be used in the argument against it. But thanks to a divided right and a more nimble left, supporters are no longer easy to catch by surprise.
For decades, the Heritage Foundation has been the conservative "gold standard" for research and talking points. In this way, Heritage serves the same role nationally that the Independence Institute does in Colorado, with numerous working groups churning out ideological backup on the broadest possible range of issues.
Well folks, it seems somebody has taken a look at the changing demographics in this country, and realized that Heritage's ideological hard line against immigration reform is now a liability. And suddenly the same methodological problems Heritage has always had, even relied upon to fill gaping holes in their logic, are a huge problem that Republicans must pre-emptively smack down in the name of factuality! Good on them regardless, we guess.
Maybe they'll step up next time Jon Caldara says "guns in Colorado will never be able to get a magazine again."
Friday Jams Fest
Open Line Friday!
"Jodi Arias was found guilty yesterday in Phoenix. She stabbed the guy who wanted to break up with her 27 times, then slit his throat, then shot him. A little overkill, but still she did it. She was mad that he wanted to break up with her. I know it's strange they convicted her for that, but the War on Women."
–Rush Limbaugh, yesterday
Hickenlooper To Sign Elections Bill
UPDATE: Washington Post's Greg Sargent:
As Reid Wilson recently put it, the Colorado measure is “the Democratic comeback to voter ID.”
Reform advocates who have been briefed on Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper’s plans tell me they expect him to sign the legislation tomorrow. The measure, which has cleared both houses in Colorado, contains a number of key provisions. It requires a ballot to be mailed to every registered voter; voters choose how to vote, whether by mail or dropping off the ballot, or even in person, early or on election day. It lengthens the early voting period and shortens the time required for state residency in order to qualify to vote. It expands voter registration through Election Day. And it allows people to vote at any precinct within their county.
“The biggest problem is people showing up at the wrong precinct,” Ellen Dumm, spokesperson for Coloradans for Voter Access and Modernized Elections, tells me. “This is unique in that expands all options. It really does expand access to voting at a time when we’ve seen a lot of restriction of voting. This makes voting a lot easier.”
—–
AP's Ivan Moreno reports via the Colorado Springs Gazette:
The governor is expected to sign a measure into law that would redefine how elections in Colorado are run, allowing same-day voter registration and ballots to be mailed to all registered voters.
Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper is expected to sign the Democrat-sponsored bill Friday, according to two people working closely with the measure. They asked to remain anonymous because an official announcement had not been made.
The bill passed with unanimous support from Democrats, but not a single Republican voted for it, citing concerns about voter fraud with same-day registration. Republicans also argued the measure would be a game-changer for future elections, and some called the measure the most important of the session that was packed with contentious legislation.
The signing into law of House Bill 1303, the Voter Access and Modernized Elections Act, is one of the last major pieces of the Democratic legislative agenda to fall into place. Hickenlooper's signature was never really in doubt, it was more a question of getting the bill through without a surprise gutting or sacrifice of a major provision. Despite the over-the-top freakout that legislative Republicans and Secretary of State Scott Gessler had over the bill, the fact that it had wide bipartisan support among Colorado county clerks–the officials responsible in the first person for carrying out elections in this state–caused Gessler's increasingly strained and hyperbolic "concerns" to ring hollow. Given that the bill solved problems that Gessler had proven faithless and intransigent on, such as the unresolved status of so-called "inactive failed to vote" voters, his credibility was always weak.
Throughout the long debate over House Bill 1303, no Republican opponent was ever able to explain why this "election stealing" bill had support from county clerks in both parties–or why the most "contentious" of the bill's provisions, same-day voter registration, hasn't resulted in the avalanche of fraud they seem sure is going to result in Colorado in all the other states where it already exists.
The effect same-day registration has had in other states is an estimated 10% increase in overall voter turnout. We foresee, like the gun debate, an unpleasant reckoning for the GOP when their warnings of disaster fail to materialize. With one caveat: we do wish Gessler wasn't the one in charge of implementing this bill.
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