Gubernatorial candidate and anti-bike crusader Dan Maes recently spoke to Denver’s Petroleum Club, according to a report in Forbes:
DENVER — Republican gubernatorial candidate Dan Maes said Thursday he would lay off as many as 4,000 Colorado state employees if elected and force a showdown with the federal government over drilling for gas and oil.
Dan Maes told the Denver Petroleum Club he would cut at least 2,000 workers “just like that” from the state budget, with projected savings of $200 million.
He didn’t specify which agencies would see layoffs.
Of course, without specifics of where he would cut, this is just more uninformed nonsense from the current former possible GOP front runner hoping to take on successful businessman and popular mayor, John Hickenlooper.
As the UN Bike Conspiracy story has spread across the InterTubz other news about Maes has been mostly drowned out.
Like this article in the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel:
The fines Dan Maes agreed to pay last month for various campaign-finance violations in his bid for the GOP nod for governor weren’t his camp’s first.
Over the past year, the campaign was fined numerous times, primarily for filing late reports for large donations, according to the Colorado Secretary of State’s website.
Maes agreed to pay $17,500 in fines last month after a Grand Junction man filed a complaint against him, alleging he improperly reimbursed himself for more than $40,000 in mileage costs, failed to include details about some of the donations and may have taken corporate money.
Or this:
Colorado Republican gubernatorial candidate Dan Maes has never run for office before. He’s a Tea Party-friendly guy, running in part on his business experience. And he’s found himself suddenly seriously competing for the party’s nomination, thanks in part to his opponent’s struggles with a plagiarism scandal.
At the same time, reports have poked holes in Maes’ self-styled image of executive experience. Tax returns show Maes as more dud than whiz.
Although running on his business acumen, Maes’ poor accounting methods and other financial problems hardly boost his credibility.
Meanwhile Hickenlooper, making a campaign swing on the Western Slope was gaining kudos and building confidence.
At a campaign stop at Mountain Racing Products, 580 N. Westgate Drive, Hickenlooper presented that idea to business people who are in somewhat competing industries: a top executive for a major oil and gas company, and small business owners whose enterprises center on the state’s outdoors.
All said that Hickenlooper’s idea of bringing people to the same table will help, if for no other reason, for each to know what the others need to maintain a good business climate in the state.
“I like the fact that he’s trying to take a stance of enhancing the ability for companies that are innovative to succeed in Colorado,” said Seth Anderson, owner of Loki Gear, 2249 Broadway, who said he was an unaffiliated voter. “We have every reason to be positive about the future. We just have to do everything the right way.”
At the Petroleum Club Maes also threatened to take on the Federal government:
Maes also called for a confrontation with the federal government over energy drilling. He challenged Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, a former U.S. senator from Colorado, saying the Department of the Interior had blocked businesses with drilling permits from going forward.
“If you have a drilling permit for the Roan Plateau, then drill. And if Ken Salazar doesn’t like it, he can come and see me in Denver,” Maes said.
While most oil and gas companies are a bit smarter than thinking a governor can waive federal permits and regulations, Maes comments do point to a stunning lack of knowledge.
No drilling permits are pending on the Roan Plateau and none are being blocked by Interior. Rather the leases that were issued for this iconic Colorado landmark in the waning days of the Bush administration (against some 75,000 protests) have been challenged in court. While settlement talks continue no permits have been filed.
Considering the precipitous drop in support for the other GOP contender, and between Maes’ imaging that blue-helmeted bicyclists will soon be peddling through the streets of our fair state, his promise to gut thousands of unspecified jobs from unspecified agencies, his history of financial missteps, and a total lack of knowledge about the issues he speaks on, a comment I hear repeatedly is that John Hickenlooper must be the luckiest politician alive.
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fired government workers, no longer have money to spend at restaurants, stores, for all kinds of goods and services sold by our small and large businesses? Even if credit does loosen up for small business, who really needs more debt to expand or to hire more employees without more paying customers and clients walking through the door?
Not only does our safety, security, services, infrastructure and our kids education suffer when we lay off firefighters, police, other first responders, teachers,etc. and quit keeping up with services infrastructure, we also no longer have their salaries contributing to our local economies.
We’re already seeing this kind of policy at work in Colorado Springs. Forget the fact that you have to pay to have a street light and live in an affluent neighborhood in order to have functioning parks and pools. Forget that if there isn’t any immediate threat of violence you can forget about getting any police help when a property crime is committed. People who can’t afford cars are being squeezed out of the job market because there is no longer evening bus service. People are collecting welfare or unemployment instead of working. because of this.
With only unemployment, people are unable to afford to contribute to the economy anywhere near the level they could back when they had a job. So Maes should subtract from his projected savings the cost of assistance to the newly unemployed and to the communities in which they will have to cut their spending to the barest minimum, the losses when they have to walk away from their homes, etc.
Unless he believes the nonsense that unemployment is such a great deal nobody getting it wants to work. Let him try living on it. By the way, what has he been living on in upscale Greenwood Village on the kind of income he’s been reporting? Besides mileage.
Maes has been promising to cut 4,000 state jobs for months. And he’s been showing that he hasn’t the faintest idea about how he would do that.
He lives in Evergreen, not Greenwood Village.
Correcting hed.
that he lives in a parallel universe filled with conspiracies that would curl your nose hairs.
He plots and he schemes and he complains about one volunteer to another, but he doesn’t read or think very much as far as I can tell.
You’d think that a guy who drives so much would do some creative thinking. He must listen to the radio so he doesn’t have to think.
If he was a creative thinker, he wouldn’t me too McInnis so much, I think.
As Mike Littwin notes, what’s even more incredible than the UN will get us with their commie one world bikes theory is the fact that he just accepted it as gospel when some total stranger handed him a portfolio, before he even had time to read the material he was handed. If that’s good enough for him, you can imagine how he reacts to every e-mail he gets and every word out of every rightie talker’s mouth. He probably thinks Sarah Palin really can see Russia from her house, you betcha.
Got my “greens” mixed up. Evergreen no place for the financially challenged either.
Well, if he’s going to cut 4,000 jobs “just like that,” he shouldn’t have any problem telling us NOW exactly what those jobs will be, should he?
What a complete and utter nincompoop this guy is.
Random would be a tad better, but I would settle for A-G.
Anti-bike crusader. I love it.
He’s kinda maybe close to actually running for office but knows nothing and now its really showing. Nothing better to get that pesky economy rolling again like putting thousands of people out of work right Dan?
Oh and all those savings he stated will be eaten up by those 4000 people applying for unemployment benefits.
Is he already cutting his proposal in half?