President (To Win Colorado)
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(D) Kamala Harris
(R) Donald Trump
80%
20%
CO-01 (Denver)
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(D) Diana DeGette*
(R) V. Archuleta
98%
2%
CO-02 (Boulder-ish)
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(D) Joe Neguse*
(R) Marshall Dawson
95%
5%
CO-03 (West & Southern CO)
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(D) Adam Frisch
(R) Jeff Hurd
50%
50%
CO-04 (Northeast-ish Colorado)
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(R) Lauren Boebert
(D) Trisha Calvarese
90%
10%
CO-05 (Colorado Springs)
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(R) Jeff Crank
(D) River Gassen
80%
20%
CO-06 (Aurora)
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(D) Jason Crow*
(R) John Fabbricatore
90%
10%
CO-07 (Jefferson County)
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(D) B. Pettersen
(R) Sergei Matveyuk
90%
10%
CO-08 (Northern Colo.)
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(D) Yadira Caraveo
(R) Gabe Evans
70%↑
30%
State Senate Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
80%
20%
State House Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
95%
5%
February 11, 2010 02:39 AM UTC
34 Comments
I may have to make that my new sig line.
are going to say we’re just attacking Norton here, but this really is bizarre. It seems like every week to 10 days, Norton shows up somewhere and says something strange. And she usually says something that goes much farther than she needs to go. She could say, “We need to fix our education system,” without saying, “Let’s abolish the Department of Education!”
She looked shocked and then said, “Good God. I always thought she was a moderate. So much for that.”
So if Norton’s trying to convince voters she’s a right wing, fringe lunatic, her plan is working.
teaching evolution in public schools yet?
There’s a lot of small towns out there, many without newspapers anymore. Who knows what she’s saying …
Give her time. Give her time.
How does this: “The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.” preclude a flat income tax?
…a flat, national sales tax rather than income tax. If she were to support a national sales tax, it would be only after ratification of an amendment repealing the 16th amendment. That way Congress never tries the old double-whammy.
And let’s defer the question of whether or not the DOE is constitutional or not, and instead ponder this question…in the approximately 40 years of its existence, has there been any measurable improvement in the overall education system? I would argue an emphatic “No,” but perhaps you guys know something I don’t? The only difference I see is now we have one extra cabinet-level department that will spend nearly a trillion dollars–maybe more–over the next decade.
We should abolish the Dept. of Labor.
We still have energy problems, we should abolish the dept. of energy.
We still have poverty, we should get rid of HUD.
Why don’t we just get rid of the entire government except for the military and just be done with it.
…departments another time.
But for now, all I’ll say is that there are signs that some other programs have done at least SOMETHING to address the issues they were meant to. As I said though, there have been no improvements by our education system derived from the creation of this department. Test scores are virtually identical to what they were in 1979. If it has a long-term track record of being dead weight…and expensive dead weight at that…then why should we keep it around?
She obviously thinks there should be reactionary changes to the US government that go much deeper than the education system. This is just a single piece of straw in the hay bale.
So scores are not always directly comparable. Although you never really said which tests you were referring to, so it’s hard to tell whether you’re just making something up.
But just out of curiosity, if you accept that there will be federal funding for education regardless (and I assume you’re not proposing the elimination of that), just how much money do you think eliminating a few administrative officials will save?
ONE MILLION DOLLARS!? (puts pinky to lips)
…and how many people work there, I’d put it at a billion or more. And I agree with BR: what in the hell has the Dept. of Ed done? I can rattle off plenty off things that DoE, Ag, Commerce, etc. have done. Can’t think of anything Ed. has done. I was public school educated up until grad school, was an educator during and after grad school, and I just can’t see the fingerprints of Dept. of Ed anywhere in there. Maybe I’m wrong.
Like I have nothing better to do than Google shit for you.
I was also public-school educated. And I did it all on my own, because I’m a fucking genius, and all the Pell grants and interest-free loans I got to put me through school came from the magical Free Market Fairy, and the government didn’t have anything to do with it!
The fact that you don’t know what the Department of Education did for you doesn’t mean they’re useless. It’s possible they were more concerned about other people. It might be that other people needed help more than you did.
Here, try this and figure it out for yourself.
http://www2.ed.gov/about/overv…
facts and emotion and swearing without actual name calling (implied is subtler).
do you need a $60 billion agency to distribute Pell grants? I take it you think that the four activities listed on the page you linked are worth over $60B a year? I don’t.
Throw it up in the air on the National Mall some time during the summer, and whoever catches it can use it for funding educational activities?
You can’t be stupid enough to think administrative expenses are $60 billion. Almost all of that money goes directly to states, schools, and students.
Here, read this.
http://www2.ed.gov/about/overv…
In particular:
Near as I can tell from a gloss over NSF’s numbers, they are at over 83% of their annual budget going to direct research or facility funding.
http://www.nsf.gov/about/budge…
The Dept. Ed. numbers are a lot tougher to disaggregate but if Dept of Ed is at 10-15% overhead and the rest goes directly to actual education, I’ll mollify your anger.
I still agree with BR’s premise: show us results. Other than making sure students went to college and got an education (and I hold that could have been done without an enormous federal department), how has the existence of Ed. changed outcomes in terms of how much better students in America are educated than they otherwise would have been without the department?
has not eliminated our war and enemy problem….
fixed these traffic jams. What good is government at all?!
davebarnes is right and BoulderRepublican is wrong: the 16th Amdt allows an income tax but doesn’t preclued other taxes.
(1) This is the entire text of the 16th Amdt: “The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.” It allows an income tax; it doesn’t forbid other taxes.
(2) To the contrary, Congress has the power to tax whatever it wants, including sales of goods, under Article I, Section 8, Clause 1, as interpreted by US v Butler (1936). Does Jane Norton think federal gasoline taxes are unconstitutional? Because they’re a sales tax.
…little bit. And I wasn’t arguing from the point of view of Jane Norton. I was simply asking…do we need a federal Department of Education? It doesn’t seem to have made any accomplishments during its tenure. The other examples you all tried to mock me with don’t hold water. Yes, we still have terrorism/war/violence despite the military, but are you speaking German and singing the praises of Hitler at the moment? No. But you would be if we had no military.
I also never said the 16th amendment precludes a national sales tax. I’m saying that, from Jane Norton’s perspective, she wouldn’t vote for legislation CREATING a national sales tax unless an amendment had already been passed to make income tax unconstitutional. And I wholeheartedly approve of the idea of getting rid of income tax, because it is the most convoluted, administratively-exhausting, easily defrauded taxes ever devised by man. We can argue over the price (how we make it “fair” to those who don’t earn as much), but in principle it’s an excellent idea.
You might want to be careful asking that on here. Some probably are!
But I think it’s entirely unfair to say that the military has failed because we still have war. But with the Department of Education, there is no real proof that the quality of education has improved at all. I would think Democrats would be in favor of this. Even if we still spent the same $64 billion, nearly 100% of it could go toward education grants and to fund public schools, rather than wasting billions trying to “keep track of how we’re doing” and other useless things.
These are Reagan-right talking points.
At the CO4 GOP primary “debate” last week, Madere likewise called for the abolishment of the Dept of Ed, which he pointed out was Reagan idea. The crowd of 400 or so gray haired Tea Party-style voters let out major applause. I think all the candidates nodded in agreement. They all called for a simplification of the tax code. Of course on this and all the rest there never came a follow up question from Adam Schrager, the intentionally useless “moderator” of the affair.
“The federal government is just good for national defense and transportation. It should be kept out of everything else,” said one of them. They all agreed. Wild applause again. Schrager moves on.
“Where’s your favorite place to be in the Fourth District?”
Chrissake.
An unknown, unlikely to win candidate like Madere can say whatever he wants. But Norton, who is supposed to be the GOP frontrunner, should be a little more careful about what she says.
Eliminating deductions other than for charity and mortgages means eliminating deductions for (at least):
* Medical expenses.
* Casualty losses.
* State and local taxes; and
* Unreimbursed employee expenses.
Those are the other most notable itemized deductions.
it is unclear if she also meant “above the line” deductions available to those who do not itemize their deductions such as:
* Unreimbursed educator expenses.
* Unreimbursed expenses of reservists, performing artists, and fee based government officials,
* Health savings accounts contributions,
* Moving expenses,
* Self-employment taxes paid (half),
* Self-employed retirement account contributions,
* Self-employed health insurance deduction,
* Alimony paid,
* Early withdrawal of savings penalties,
* Traditional IRA contributions,
* Student loan interest,
* Deductable tuition and fees, and
* Domestic production activities deductions.
Presumably she does not mean to exclude ordinary and necessary business expenses of sole proprietorships, partnerships, S corporations, trusts, estates and C corporations, which would turn the income tax on business profits into a tax on business revenues.
Where is Katie Couric when you need her? Great rebuttal, Ohwilleke.
“Well a blast of confusion coupled with delusion
Makes the best made plans sometimes fail” -Dixie Chicks
And institute a national sales tax! Let me keep EVERYTHING I make, makes exemptions for food, clothing (exempting necessities would greatly ease the regressive nature of such a tax) and tax the HELL out of plasma screen TVs and that fourth car for the three person family!
It would promote SAVINGS instead of spending (especially spending on credit!). It would allow for the real cost of labor to come through instead of the artificial cost of labor that a income tax produces. It would also treat EVERYONE equal! The rich can still make money but they also take the hit when the buy items that are luxuries instead of necessities. If you make $24k a year, if you are stupid enough to buy that plasma TV, then you should be appropriately punished by the tax code!
is mtnhigh…”
What’s the diff between (a) taxing X% of your income, and (b) taxing X% of everything you spend income on? It doesn’t really incentivize savings because whatever yuo eventually spend the savings on will be taxable at X%!
So there’s no real difference between an income tax and a broad-based sales tax, EXCEPT:
(1) A sales tax would incentivize spending on the few non-taxed items, like mortgaged real estate — and after the past decade, do we really think the fed gov’t should maximize the incentive to take out heavy mortgages?
(2) A sales tax hits the rich less than the poor, because the rich spend less of their income on taxable goods. A national sales tax is identical to a regressive income tax structured about as follows: X% on low income-earners (who spend most of their income on taxable goods); .75X% on mid-earners (who save a bit more); .5% on mid-high earners; and like .2% on the highest income earners. What a great idea.
Your two examples are both weak, for starters. Legislation of all kinds could be passed to reduce the incentive to take out “heavy mortgages.” That problem is easily fixed if every single politician in Washington weren’t thoroughly bought and paid for by the industries that depend on these risky investments.
Your second example is even less substantive. You can exempt food, common household products, etc…and perhaps even have two different classes of taxes, one of which would be the highest rate for items like yachts and planes and sports cars and diamond-encrusted toilet seats. It doesn’t have to be any more or less regressive than the system we have now–it’s just in the details.
You also forgot to mention some of the other differences, such as…it’s nearly impossible to avoid paying a sales tax (the seller has to be in on it with the buyer), so drug dealers and other under the table enterprises get hit by the tax they currently avoid. It allows us to get rid of an expensive government program that gives millions of Americans headaches every year (the IRS). There are more, but I think I’ve made my point.
I heard Ken Buck called out Jane at a candidates forum a couple weeks ago for again calling for abolishing the department of education. Shouldnt these roles be reversed with the frontrunner being the one to look well “Senatorial” and the challenger saying the crazy things to attract the right wingers? The Colorado Independent had similar observations http://coloradoindependent.com…
He’d have a case for being the frontrunner. But you can’t bank $40k in a quarter and be a serious contender for a Senate seat.
This endorsement is huge. The recent PAC funded TV ads and now Redstate’s endorsement is a shot in the arm for Buck’s ability to raise money. With attention being focused in Norton’s gaffes I expect tighter reins. With her not fairing well in forums with Ken Buck I expect she will start being a no show. Norton’s camp has to be sick about this endorsement. I think Buck will benefit much like Rubio benefitted from this same endorsement in Florida. With Redstate endorsement I expect Jim Demint will be announcing his support for Buck as well. Just my two cents.