March 24, 2016 12:52 PM UTC

Get More Smarter on Thursday (March 24)

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• by: Colorado Pols

Happy “little Purim” everybody! 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…

► The Colorado legislature (most of them, anyway) took a snow day on Wednesday. But as Megan Schrader reports for the Colorado Springs Gazette, there was no vacation from absurd rhetoric. Here’s State Senate President Bill Cadman reacting to Democratic claims that his caucus is overly-influenced by the Koch Brothers-funded Americans for Prosperity (AFP):

“It’s astounding that the same group of Democrats who generated historic recalls of their own members, who incited a lawsuit against the state of Colorado from 55 of our own sheriffs, who caused nearly a dozen counties to seek secession from Colorado, [Pols emphasis] and who pushed multiple billion-dollar tax hikes rejected by Colorado citizens, think they should be given the authority of the majority when it comes to bill assignments,” Cadman said.

As we wrote in this space this morning, Cadman is smoking something:

Got that? Recalls that were undone a year later. A lawsuit Jon Caldara “the sheriffs” lost again two days ago. Rejected tax hikes that weren’t referred by the legislature.  And above all, the “North Colorado” secession movement that was laughed off by voters and made the Eastern Plains the butt of nationwide jokes. These are the justifications being held up for opposing something the entire rest of the state, including Republicans across Colorado and members of Cadman’s own GOP caucus, support.

It’s totally insane, folks. To say this not how government is supposed to work is a huge understatement.

► It has been 31 years since the average temperature on Earth was cooler than normal (February 1985 was the last month). With any luck, it won’t take another 30 years for Colorado Senate Republicans to acknowledge that man-made climate change is an actual “thing” that we should be worried about. As we wrote on Wednesday:

Unfortunately you can’t have a grownup discussion of the objectives and merits of the Clean Power Plan with the Senate GOP, because they refuse to acknowledge there’s a problem with human emissions and climate change at all. Even if this bill doesn’t directly address the underlying purpose of the Clean Power Plan, everybody knows that’s what this debate is really all about…

…With new science and polling demonstrating both the urgent reality and public acceptance of human-caused global climate change, there’s going to come a point when this kind of rank ignorance will be disqualifying from mainstream politics, much like Holocaust denial became after Simon Wiesenthal or anti-LGBT bigotry increasingly is today.

But as you can see, at least in the Colorado Senate, we’re not there yet.

And until then, we’ll continue to see asinine legislation such as SB-157, which would suspend all Colorado efforts to meet the requirements of the new Clean Power Plan. We’ll just figure out how to cross that bridge after it burns down.

Get even more smarter after the jump…

IN CASE YOU ARE STANDING NEAR A WATER COOLER…

► Colorado finally has a Lieutenant Governor…again. Donna Lynne, an executive with the Kaiser Foundation Health Plan, has been selected by Gov. John Hickenlooper to serve as LG for the rest of his term in office. Former Lt. Gov. Joe Garcia announced in November that he  would be leaving the Governor’s office to take a new position, and it took the Governor’s office a bit longer than anticipated to formally name a replacement.

As Joey Bunch confirms for the Denver Post, Lynne will not seek to run for Governor in 2018 when Hickenlooper is term-limited.

► Congressional Republicans — including Aurora’s own Rep. Mike Coffman — are growing increasingly confounded over how to run for re-election on the same ticket as Donald Trump. As the Washington Post reports:

Establishment Republicans and their big-money allies are rushing to build a multistate defense system to protect Senate and House candidates, fearing that the party could lose its hold on Congress if Donald Trump is at the top of the ticket in November….

….The efforts are being driven by major players such as the Koch brothers’ political network, which has already begun laying groundwork in Colorado, Ohio and Pennsylvania, along with the Crossroads organizations and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

The problem here, as our friends at “The Fix” examine, is that running away from your party’s Presidential nominee doesn’t normally work out very well:

For most voters, the two parties are like the Borg from “Star Trek”. If the leader of the party — aka the presidential nominee — thinks something, then everyone with an “R” after his or her name must think it too. Even when presented with direct evidence that not every Democrat agreed with everything Obama did — Pomeroy’s ad! — voters didn’t care. Pomeroy was a Democrat. Obama was a Democrat. Done and done.

That’s the dilemma any candidate or group hoping to distance from Trump faces. It’s exacerbated by the fact that unlike 2010 or 2014, this is a presidential cycle so Trump’s name will actually be on the ballot — making it that much harder to convince voters you aren’t like him. And, there is the fact that Trump is fundamentally — and proudly — unpredictable, meaning there is no real way for a candidate trying to run away from him to develop a plan to do so.

Still not convinced? Ask Democrats how well it worked when they tried to separate themselves from President Obama in 2010 and 2014.

► Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Denver) and Rep. Jared Polis (D-Boulderish) have been selected to a conference committee of Senate and House leaders with the intention of re-writing the failed “No Child Left Behind” education policy from the administration of President George W. Bush.

► The oil and gas industry in Colorado will create 8 million jobs and make everyone rich and happy! Or, not, as the Denver Post reports:

Bankruptcies of oilfield companies large and small have been surging as prices remain at their lowest levels in a decade or more. But a bankrupt company is not the only way industry workers can be left underpaid.

An Inside Energy analysis shows a growing number of oil workers are turning to the courts, saying they weren’t paid fairly — even when times were good.

Since oil prices started dropping a year and a half ago, class-action lawsuits to recover lost wages have spiked dramatically. In Colorado, 27 wage suits were filed against oil and gas companies in 2015, up from three in 2010.  In Texas, the number of lawsuits jumped to 353 in 2015 from 36 in 2010.

Federal records show oil and gas companies are among the top violators of wage laws — particularly in not paying overtime. [Pols emphasis] The U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division was seeing sufficient problems with apparent violations by 2012 to specifically target the industry in some regions of the country.

► Congressman Doug Lamborn (R-Colorado Springs) is shaking his fist over what he calls a “war on coal” because government regulators have proposed protections for streams and rivers near mining sites.

► Legislation intended to increase local control over oil and gas drilling operations has passed out of the State House…and will almost certainly be killed in the State Senate.

► The Pueblo Chieftain profiles Republican Jerry Eller’s attempts to earn the GOP nomination for U.S. Senate. The headline says it all: “Local man confident of U.S. Senate chances.”

► Hey, lookie there! Attorney General Cynthia Coffman is actually doing her job.

OTHER LINKS YOU SHOULD CLICK

► If you didn’t get a chance to go outside with a yardstick and measure snow totals in your backyard, here’s a look at snowfall amounts in the Metro Denver area.

► Former Republican Presidential candidate Ben Carson wasn’t very good at making the case for supporting Ben Carson for President. Is it any surprise, then, that’s he is equally awful at posing as a surrogate for Donald Trump? From Politico:

Ben Carson spent the majority of his time on the set of “The View” Thursday defending Donald Trump and his endorsement of the Republican presidential frontrunner who at one point compared him to a child molester.

“Sir, I hate to ask this question, but you have aligned yourself with the man who has bashed women, made countless racist remarks and you’re Ben Carson, why would you align yourself with that?” Whoopi Goldberg asked the retired neurosurgeon.

Carson responded, saying on multiple occasions “there is no perfect person” but that Trump has a history of inclusion, referring specifically to his allowing African Americans and Jews into his Palm Beach clubs. “He insisted on Jews and blacks and helped to break that open,” Carson said, as Goldberg chuckled incredulously.

That’s right, folks! Ben Carson thinks Donald Trump is all about being inclusive…because he once allowed Jews and black people to pay money to get into his Palm Beach, florida resorts.

ICYMI

► Writers for The Simpsons predicted 16 years ago that Donald Trump would become the President of the United States. Those same writers also predicted that a Trump Presidency would end in disaster.

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