October 24, 2018 08:56 AM UTC

Get More Smarter on Wednesday (October 24)

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• by: Colorado Pols

The Denver Nuggets are a perfect 4-0 to start the regular season. It’s time to Get More Smarter. If you think we missed something important, please include the link in the comments below (here’s a good example). If you are more of a visual learner, check out The Get More Smarter Show.

TOP OF MIND TODAY…

► Voter Service and Polling Centers are now open. Head on over to GoVoteColorado.com for more information on voting centers, ballot drop-off locations, or for resources to check on the status of your mail ballot.

► White House officials are scrambling to put together some sort of half-assed tax proposal in order to back up President Trump’s nonsensical claims about asking Congress to approve a tax cut before the Nov. 6 election (which would be difficult since Congress isn’t in session anymore).

“In the service of whim” is how the Washington Post explains the day-to-day work of the Trump administration in this bizarre and frightening story about the work involved in inventing reality to soothe a crazy person:

The mystery tax cut is only the latest instance of the federal government scrambling to reverse-engineer policies to meet Trump’s sudden public promises — or to search for evidence buttressing his conspiracy theories and falsehoods.

The Pentagon leaped into action to both hold a military parade and launch a “Space Force” on the president’s whims. The Commerce Department moved to create a plan for auto tariffs after Trump angrily threatened to impose them. And just this week, Vice President Pence, the Department of Homeland Security and the White House all rushed to try to back up Trump’s unsupported claim that “unknown Middle Easterners” were part of a migrant caravan in Central America — only to have the president admit late Tuesday that there was no proof at all. [Pols emphasis]

“Virtually no one on the planet has the kind of power that a president of the United States has to scramble bureaucracies in the service of whim,” said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania. “Whatever Donald Trump wakes up and thinks about, or whatever comes to mind in the middle of a speech, actually has the reality in that it is actionable in some odd sense.”

► In a related story, Politico reports that officials from the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Homeland Security had no advance warning of Trump’s “zero tolerance” immigration policy demands:

Trump administration officials had no plans in place to deal with more than 2,600 migrant children separated from their parents at the border because the Justice Department gave them no advance notice of its “zero tolerance” policy, according to government investigators.

The report, by the GAO, offers the most complete account yet of the Trump administration’s implementation of a decision to criminally prosecute all adults suspected of crossing the southwest border, which created such an outcry that President Donald Trump effectively reversed it three months later.

► Republican gubernatorial candidate Walker Stapleton, a guy who is notorious for not bothering to show up for his job as State Treasurer, says that Colorado “needs a Governor who shows up.”

The mind reels.

► The debates are finally coming to an end. Candidates for Governor participated in their final debate on Tuesday, as did the candidates for Congress in CO-6. Blair Miller of Denver7 breaks down the final verbal joust between Republican Walker Stapleton and Democrat Jared Polis. 9News fact-checks the answers from Tuesday’s debate between Republican Rep. Mike Coffman and Democrat Jason Crow.

Get even more smarter after the jump…

IN CASE YOU ARE STANDING NEAR A WATER COOLER…

► An oil-and-gas industry sponsored organization advocating on behalf of Amendment 74 is trying to defend itself after getting caught saying that the Colorado Springs Gazette supports the measure. The editorial board of the Gazette actually rejects Amendment 74, and made that very clear after initially suggesting that they supported the idea.

As the Colorado Springs Gazette reports:

Despite the change in the board’s stance, the Committee for Colorado’s Shared Heritage in the past week sent out a mailer citing the Oct. 2 endorsement. Sources told Colorado Politics the mailer showed up in mailboxes last Friday, Oct. 19.

Asked for comment, Kelly Maher, a spokeswoman for Committee for Colorado’s Shared Heritage, said there was “a lag between the time a design [for a mailer] is approved and printed and the time mail actually appears in a mailbox. The retraction happened after the mail was already in the stream and there was no possible way for us to go back and remove them out of mailboxes once they’re out.

“The Committee for Colorado’s Shared Heritage would never intentionally deceive anyone,” Maher said. [Pols emphasis]

Yeah, see, the problem with that statement is that there is a history of deception here:

Pac/West Communications, an Oregon firm that produces political mailers, has been paid $1.7 million to handle all of the pro-74 committee’s mailers.

Colorado Politics reported Oct. 6 that Pac/West produced a mailer that Democrats saw as falsely implying that Gov. John Hickenlooper supported a Republican state senator — Sen. Tim Neville of Littleton — for re-election, when in fact he had endorsed Neville’s Democratic challenger, Tammy Story.

A second mailer also implied Hickenlooper supported Republican Sen. Beth Martinez Humenik, who is in a tight race for re-election against Democratic Rep. Faith Winter in Senate District 24, in Adams County. Hickenlooper endorsed Winter.

“The Committee for Colorado’s Shared Heritage” lists the Colorado Farm Bureau sits primary public backer, but most of the money for the group comes from an oil-and-gas industry funded organization called “Protect Colorado.”

► Senator Cory Gardner (R-Yuma), the head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) is predicting a “red wave” in the mid-term election. Here’s what Gardner had to say about Colorado’s race for Governor:

“I’m confident that Walker Stapleton can win this race, and will win this race.”

Bookmark this statement for November 7.

► The tentacles of Cambridge Analytica are reaching into Colorado’s election once more.

► Charles Ashby has the latest in the bizarre saga of a Republican legislative candidate who does not appear to actually live in the house he claims as his registered address. From the Grand Junction Sentinel:

Omar Carreon said Tuesday he, his disabled parents and brother have been told they have until the end of next month to leave 10 Hartig Drive, a home owned by Soper’s mother, Betty Ann Soper.

► Are Republican State Senate candidates Christine Jensen and Beth Martinez Humenik the same person? We don’t think so, but they somehow managed to provide identical responses to a candidate questionnaire from their hometown newspapers.

► Right-wing voices in Colorado are leaning into President Trump’s baseless claims of a migrant “invasion.”

► The lede from this CNN story sums up this crazy allegation perfectly:

Campbell Soup has disavowed claims made by a company lobbyist that George Soros’ foundation is assisting a caravan of migrants bound for the United States.

► As the New York Times reports, investigators are looking into suspicious packages — potentially containing explosives — that were sent to the homes of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, as well as to CNN offices in New York. 

► Workers at Denver International Airport rally for a $15 minimum wage.

Your Daily Dose Of ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

► Idiotas.

► Unless you are reading this from South Carolina, you probably did not win the Mega Millions jackpot.