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February 15, 2010 11:01 PM UTC

McInnis Tax-Break Kvetch Tour At Full Tilt

  • 28 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

UPDATE: From the Denver Post:

McInnis spoke Monday at a Denver plant of The Pepsi Bottling Group, which says it could lose jobs if customers have to pay more for soda. The Pepsi Bottling Group has been e-mailing employees about the tax proposal and encouraging them to write to state lawmakers to oppose it…

His speech didn’t address how reduced spending might affect jobs.

McInnis has repeatedly declined to identify specific savings he would advocate in the state budget, or present his own plan for closing the budget deficit. [Pols emphasis] And while Republicans have consistently complained that new oil and gas regulations would cost the state jobs, permits issued for new wells in the state continue to outpace new drilling in Wyoming or New Mexico, while oil and gas production in Colorado grew four percent in 2009.

Re-read that last paragraph. That, folks, is what needs to be appended to every story where McInnis caterwauls about the hard choices facing the state without offering any alternatives. Once you digest that, you form a very different impression of McInnis’ little “tour.” After reading the earlier story with some concern about its objectivity, we’re relieved to see this update.

UPDATE #2: The copy we bolded above has been removed from the Post story, now lengthier and wholly attributed to the AP–and no longer making any attempt to fact-check McInnis’ claims.

The Denver Post’s Lynn Bartels writes for The Spot:

Republican gubernatorial candidate Scott McInnis wraps up his three-city “job killers” tour at the Pepsi Bottling plant in Denver today to protest the elimination of tax exemptions he says will hurt business.

He earlier visited Grand Junction and Pueblo to rail against the tax bills.

Pepsi is impacted by at least two bills: a tax exemption on soft drinks and on energy bills for industry.

McInnis, who is vying with Dan Maes for the Republican nomination for governor, said the bills approved by the Democratic-controlled legislature are “job killers” and the worst possible thing to do to business in the current economy.

Democratic Gov. Bill Ritter and legislative leaders so they don’t like the idea of doing away with the tax exemptions either, but said their hands are tied by a nightmare budget that has seen cuts to senior citizens and K-12 education…

We assume the lack of any proposed alternative from McInnis to these cuts, since we read the whole post and everything, is because Bartels forgot to ask. It certainly couldn’t be because McInnis or Republicans have offered anything other than posturing, or at least an alternative plan for balancing the budget originating in reality. Because they haven’t–everybody knows that, right?

For reasons we’ll leave to our readers to explore, we don’t think enough people do.

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28 thoughts on “McInnis Tax-Break Kvetch Tour At Full Tilt”

  1. like they’ve ever cared about jobs or the quality of jobs or the quality of life of workers. They don’t give a shit about the workers, they only care about the bottom line which does not give Pepsi workers a more affordable education.  

  2. are for chumps. When you’re out of power – trying to get back into power – the smartest thing you can do is frame your opposition negatively and keep your own positions as neutral and ambiguous as possible.

    1. They want to cut state employee’s income by 25%. Does this apply to state highway patrol and other public servants? OH WAIT most (if not all, really) state employees are public servants. Does this cut apply to legislators? If so, what is their plan to make enough money to compensate?

      Here are the agencies who employ the people whose incomes the Republicans would like to cut by 25%:

      Department of

        Agriculture

        Corrections

        Education

        Health Care Policy and Financing

        Higher Education

        Human Services

        Labor and Employment

        Local Affairs

        Military and Veterans Affairs

        Natural Resources

        Personnel & Administration

        Public Health and Environment

        Public Safety

        Regulatory Agencies

        Revenue

        Transportation

      Now, we already know it would be political suicide for them to cut Agriculture, Corrections, Military and Veterans Affairs, Public Health and Environment, Public Safety, and/or Transportation which accounts for nearly a third of these departments. I wonder how many workers in the other departments would stand for a larger than 25% pay cut to compensate for those agencies they wouldn’t penalize.

       

  3. In China, the company is building 14 plants to keep up with rising demand. CEO Indra Nooyi said Pepsi plans to invest heavily in its beverages in China through 2015, and now is able to because it has received government permission to build the plants. Nooyi said savings from buying bottlers will give the company more money to invest.

    The company, whose brands include Gatorade, Quaker and Pepsi-Cola, earned $1.43 billion, or 90 cents per share, even with the estimates of analysts polled by Thomson Reuters.

    Sales for the period ended Dec. 26 climbed 4.5 percent to $13.3 billion from $12.74 billion. This edged out Wall Street’s $13.26 billion forecast.

    Shares of PepsiCo, based in Purchase, N.Y., rose 81 cents, or 1.3 percent, to $61.19.

    You can read the article here:

    http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/201…

    Does Pepsi care about its workers?

  4. Bullshit. She wouldn’t ask a real question of a Republican if you handed her one.

    Also on the Spot today: she has a charming little piece about legislators bringing their kids to work today because there’s no school. As usual, she quoted only Republicans.

    So what can we conclude? That Bartels quotes only Republicans because she’s got her lips planted on their butts? Or perhaps no Democrats will talk to her? Or maybe no Democrats brought their kids to the Legislature, preferring not to commit child abuse?

    Just wondering.

        1. That must have been some Denver Post input noting the context, because, as you noted in your second update, the story is entirely under an AP byline and doesn’t raise that point. Shame.

  5. Will help Doug Bruce pass his stupid issues.

    Will help un-elect Dems this fall.

    Where is our Governor on this?  His staff says he isn’t behind this…but he is.

    Backhanded ways of raising revenue will kill the messenger.

    Start cutting programs for everything. Make it hurt. Then…maybe the citizens of Colorado will wake-up when THEY are affected.  Colorado Springs is facing this and deserve to.

    If you look like you are raising taxes without public desire, you will be voted out.  Wake up.

    1. then when everyone is hurting, the majority is blamed and should be blamed.

      Junk mail, bull semen, Amazon.com, Pepsi and hi-fructose inc., all need to pay their measly 2.7% sales tax. If they can’t muster it up, then they’ve got bigger problems and shouldn’t get a bail out.  

    2. The people on the blog who represent that city think the government is lying about service cuts being necessary, and that it’s all a big conspiracy. Statewide I think you’d see a lot of the same thing.

      “Heightening the contradictions” doesn’t actually work.

  6. How many jobs are lost – either by companies leaving, or choosing not to come to Colorado – due to severe underfunding our schools?

    I would argue far more than removing special interest tax exemptions that amount to no more than financial statement rounding errors.  

  7. Appearing in GJ with Josh “Quitter” Penry and Steve “I’m broke” King probably is not the best strategy when the area’s teabaggers have already rejected McInnis and endorsed Maes.  If you can’t deceive the teabaggers, who is it that McInnis is trying to fool?

    “The U.S. economy will bottom in the next two years. It will need 15 to 17 years to recover fully, if past recessions and depressions can be used as guides.”  -Scott McInnis

    “Three or four years from now, we’re not going to have a conversation about jobs and all of that kind of stuff.”  -Scott McInnis

  8. why didn’t they crate a ton of jobs several years ago when the sales tax for state and RTD were removed from the vending machine sales?  I didn’t see prices go down.  So I’m assuming that Pepsi hired more workers…Right??  You can bet they will use this as an excuse to raise prices much more than the taxes.

  9. The jobs that “could” be lost due to the elimination of the tax exemption are jobs that’ll likely move to Mexico or China anyways. The goal of tax exemptions is to bring in desirable companies that need an extra nudge in making the decision of where to locate. Tech makes sense. Biotech, integrated media and clean energy makes sense… Companies like Pepsi don’t need the incentives

  10. The amount is so small per sale that people won’t notice it. We provide free soda at work so we’ll be paying a bit more – but that’s not going to have us eliminate the free pop.

    And unlike some business owners, I’m happy to pay a bit more in taxes if that helps our schools, etc. I want to live in a state that will be able to compete in the future.

  11. I would bet somebody at the Post added to an initial AP blurb, then the additions were dumped in favor of a longer AP story.

    Except that whoever at the Post wrote the addition had the most factual part of either story! It would not surprise me to learn that part of the decision was editorial in nature. They could prove me wrong by writing a real story tomorrow.

  12. So the AP or Post decides to cut out the one portion of the article that provides actual empirical evidence of a position?  This is egregious, no one presses the statements of one party and the data being provided by the other party supporting their positions is buried?

    A cynical person might say that this doesn’t reek of favoritism, this reeks of an attempt to create a electoral race.  Closer the race the more ads and papers sold.

    This is irresponsible journalism, plain and simple.  I can only hope the editorial department attempts to rectify this situation.

    1. or a cobbled story, it’s OK to include something like that paragraph from the Post even if it isn’t supported by what the AP reported. But when you go to a full, by-lined AP story, the Post can’t insert something like that and still leave it under Tsai’s byline.

      I would assume there’ll be a Post story on the soda factory visit that includes the context, and that’ll be the one that runs in the paper tomorrow. The AP story is a placeholder online until the Post goes up with its own coverage.

        1. I’m thinking the mechanics, if you’ve got a fully written thru AP story, a site will generally put that up until your in-house story goes up. But if you’ve got a quick dispatch, you’ll flesh it out with some bits from your own background coverage.

      2. Nothing but a blurb in “Roll Call” that offers no context.

        The Denver Post failed here, big time, and the only reason we even know that is because Pols quoted the paragraph that went down the memory hole a few hours later.

        This is very disturbing. What the hell is going on over there?

  13. There’s an interesting change in Scooty’s rhetoric concerning the long debunked Penry lie.  From the updated article:

    He also said Monday that oil and gas regulations that were rewritten under Ritter’s watch to give more weight to the environment and public health should be rewritten again to encourage industry growth.

    Is Scooty now backing off his and Penry’s lie about rules caused job loss?  Is he learning from Penry about how to spin previous lies?  As Penry said when he announced his candidacy for governor:

    “Now is no time for summer soldiers, or sunshine patriots. Now is no time to despair about losses of the past or to hunker down or throw in the towel.”  -Josh Penry

    Of course, Penry threw in that towel a few months later after he got spanked and educated about the long practiced Republican method of primogeniture succession.  So now that they have been educated about the public understanding how flagrant their lies have been, is Scooty now “throwing in the towel” on that deceit?  Or is McInnis growing more afraid that his hypocrisy might get as much exposure as Penry’s has been getting lately.

    The latest volley fired from the Daily Sentinel Editorial Board:

    In a letter on this page today, state Sen. Josh Penry criticizes this newspaper for backing the rule changes and providing cover for Ritter and the Democrats to send energy jobs packing.

    That’s fine. He’s got every right to disagree with us. We won’t hide from our record, The Daily Sentinel endorsed Ritter and the 2007 legislation that authorized the changes. We also supported most of the final rules approved by the Legislature. We did suggest last spring that implementation of the new rules should be postponed until the economy improved.

    These days Penry rarely mentions that he voted for both of those 2007 bills that authorized changes. He was a cosponsor of the bill that required the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission to consult with the state Division of Wildlife on applications for drilling permits, one of the most controversial changes.

    Penry has said the final rules went far beyond what the Legislature intended. But last year, when he was proposing changes to the rules, Penry insisted, “This isn’t a sweeping rewrite. We’re willing to give the governor about 90 percent of what he wants.

    If Penry agrees with 90 percent of the new rules, why is 90 percent of his CSB aimed at the rules?  And will McInnis continue to be embarrassed by the hypocrisy?  

    “The zeal which begins with hypocrisy must conclude in treachery; at first it deceives, at last it betrays” -Francis Bacon

      1. Has to be more embarrassing for his supporters.  And don’t call me Shirley.

        “The days of McCain and McInnis are over.”   -Don Bain, former chairman of the Colorado Republican Party

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