If Kansas were a sovereign nation, there would have already been a coup attempt against Gov. Sam Brownback. 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).
► On Thursday the Senate approved funding — all the way until October! — for construction on the VA Hospital in Aurora. The House will soon vote on the measure, which will prevent construction from (again) coming to a halt. As the Denver Post reports:
With the future of Aurora’s Veterans Affairs hospital again in doubt, the U.S. Senate on Thursday passed another short-term funding bill that would keep work going on the site until at least October.
The $150 million measure, which passed by unanimous consent, comes just days before the troubled Colorado project was set to shut down because of a lack of money.
Now the bill heads to the House, which had not voted on the bill as of 7 p.m. Thursday — although the lower chamber is expected to take up the measure by Saturday.
We realize that we are starting to sound like a broken record here, but the Post story from Mark Matthews once more does not include a quote from Rep. Mike Coffman, the Republican who represents CD-6 and also serves as the Chairman of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations for the House Veterans Affairs Committee. This would be like covering a Broncos’ game and not interviewing Peyton Manning afterward.
► Senator Cory Gardner (R-Yuma) has gone too far in his pretend attempt to make birth control available over-the-counter.
► Marcia Neal resigned her seat on the Colorado Board of Education about six months after she was re-elected to the post. As Eric Gorski reports for the Denver Post, the State Board of Education sounds like a really horrible place to be right now:
Colorado Board of Education chairwoman Marcia Neal announced her resignation Thursday in a blistering letter blaming board dysfunction and baffling decisions, behavior she speculated is driving an exodus of top talent from the state education department.
Neal, a Republican and retired teacher from Grand Junction, was re-elected in November.
In her resignation letter, Neal cited her frustrations with the board overreaching, sowing confusion and failing to communicate. “Sadly, our current board has become dysfunctional,” she wrote.
Get even more smarter after the jump…
► Governor John Hickenlooper wants to do more to encourage Coloradans to play in the outdoors. Jason Blevins reports for the Denver Post:
The first step in Hickenlooper’s “Colorado Beautiful” plan calls for development of a comprehensive map that would detail every trail in Colorado. That interactive, GIS-created map, identifying all the state’s open spaces and the trails that both explore and access those natural landscapes, will be ready by this time next year, he said.
The state Department of Natural Resources, working with GOCO and other non-profits and state agencies, by next year will identify the state’s 16 most critical gaps in trails — like the 30 miles of missing trail that prevents bicyclists from pedaling from Wyoming to New Mexico without riding on a road.
GOCO funds and support from foundations like the Nature Conservancy and corporations like DaVita will help secure either the land to develop those trails or easements allowing trail access.
► The Iowa Straw Poll is no more.
► The ongoing battle over state control over federal lands continues, as the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel reports:
A measure approved Thursday by the House Natural Resources Committee includes provisions that would give states more control over forest management decisions on federal lands and speed response to infestations and diseases, such as those affecting forest lands in western Colorado.
Included in the bill are provisions sought by U.S. Rep. Scott Tipton, R-Colo., that would expedite environmental reviews for smaller projects, possibly speeding the response to the spruce beetle and aspen decline on Grand Mesa.
The Grand Mesa, Uncompahgre and Gunnison national forests are considering treating 120,000 acres affected by the spruce beetle or aspen demise through the next decade.
► A third Democrat is preparing to enter the race for SD-31 in Denver (Sen. Pat Steadman is term-limited). Steve Sherick will soon join Erin Bennett and Rep. Lois Court in what is shaping up to be a very competitive Democratic Primary.
► Officials in Fort Collins are considering making it legal to sleep in public. What if you just want to “rest your eyes” in public?
► President Obama made a surprise visit to the Capitol in an effort to convince House Democrats to support his trade bill.
► Florida Sen. Marco Rubio can’t balance a checkbook for shit, but he might be the current frontrunner for the Republican Presidential nomination.
► #TBT: Remember when Walker Stapleton wanted the State of Colorado to invest in gold?
► Just how bad have things gotten in Kansas? The Kansas Supreme Court may have to sue Gov. Sam Brownback in federal court in order to prevent him from cutting off their funding.
► The Great Beer Boycott of 2016?
► Apparently it is now illegal to collect data on environmental pollution in Wyoming.
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On the Coffman V.A. item – I've noticed the same thing lately. Coffman is the ideal person to be answering questions about the hospital. He seems to vanish whenever there is news lately.
Why take the chance of saying anything? Whenever you see his name in an article on the hospital fiasco he's described as having a national profile fighting for vets on this issue. Why mess it up by saying something stupid, an almost guaranteed result of Coffman opening his mouth?
I see why this is good for Coffman. I don't see why reporters aren't looking for quotes from the guy in congress who is most closely connected to the issue.
Most reporting nowadays is simply repeating press release material. Don't expect much challenging of what they're fed or attempts to ferret anything out.
Polis and Perlmutter vote for fast track and using Medicare funds to pay for worker displacement.
Good. Don't you think that displaced workers should be helped?
Do you think that displaced workers should be helped by putting the Medicare system under financial duress?
Sure, because when push comes to shove, the federal government is not going to let Medicare or social security go broke. The social costs would be unacceptable. Literally and figuratively, all hell would break loose.
Don't get me wrong; they really should address the long term financing of these programs. And in the perfect world, Congress would raise the limit on earnings subject to social security taxation. But that's not going to happen in this Congress, or the next, or likely in any of our lifetimes.
In addition to raising the limit on income subject t taxation, I'm in favor of raising the retirement age further. It was only raised a few years ago to 67. Prior to that it had been 65 since the program was set up in 1935……when the average life expectancy was about 59 years.
You really believe Republicans wouldn't let Medicare go broke? Where have you been since Medicare was enacted?
Perlmutter voted no on TPA.
But yes on TAA, which, for immediate harm purposes, was the worse of the two votes. TPA granted fast-track authority. TAA took money from Medicare to pay for (not nearly enough) worker retraining.
As noted elsewhere, every president between FDR and Bush II except Nixon has been granted fast track authority, and given the stink we on the left raised about Congress interfering with the Iran negotiations one would think that we'd be consistent and stay out of the President's way while he negotiated a trade agreement that we could eventually shoot down as not being representative of the workers – when it was done.
On the other hand, Perlmutter and Polis had a chance today to vote on a bill that did not have enough money for retraining needed from other trade agreements, and at the same time it cut Medicare for the sole purpose of finding some money from somewhere to pay for the retraining.
I'm good with today's resulting votes. TAA needed to go. TPA on its own, not so much. TPP will have its day in front of Congress and, given what we've heard about it, I hope it dies a very humiliating death before the eyes of the politicians who believe that corporations need more rights in order to survive.
For anyone else feeling wonked by this discussion, I did some reading at Vox, and I think this is the deal…
The TPP, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, is a trade deal that many Dems dislike because, like all such deals, it kills jobs here and enriches multinationals because, trade.
TAA is trade adjustment assistance, or money to help the people whose jobs the TPP kills. TAA offsets part of this cost by increasing the sequestration cuts to Medicare by $700 million in the future.
TPA is trade promotion authority (also called fast-track) and requires that Congress approve the TPP with an up or down vote only– no amendments.
The Senate approved TPA and TAA already as a single bill. The House split the two issues because R's wouldn't vote yes on TAA and they weren't sure Dems would vote yes on fast-track. The plan was to get each group to pass the other's shiny turd. When most Dems voted against TAA, they queered the deal, and now the two houses have passed different laws. Senate Dems are unlikely to give fast-track authority without assistance in the package. So…is a mess.
Barack Obama's lame duck stage officially began this afternoon. Ready for Hillary?