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March 01, 2010 11:19 PM UTC

What Larry and Grizwald Didn't Know

  • 46 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

The Denver Post’s Lynn Bartels wrote Saturday for The Spot:

You’ve got to hand it to Scott McInnis’ campaign for its clever jab at Democratic rival John Hickenlooper as told by Larry the Lynx and Grizwald the Bear.

McInnis, one of two Republicans running for governor, managed to combine Hickenlooper’s gubernatorial campaign open house today with Frontier Airlines’ move of jobs from Denver to the Midwest.

McInnis blames Hickenlooper, saying the Denver mayor ignored warnings its tax policies were going to drive Frontier away…

So it’s a cute little hit, yes–great low-context fodder for The Spot. In short, GOP candidate Scott McInnis thinks–or at least he implies here–that the city of Denver didn’t offer enough in the way of incentives to convince Republic Airlines to keep certain Frontier Airlines jobs at DIA after Frontier was acquired by them.

But a trip down Lexis/Nexis memory lane reveals a very different Scott McInnis: McInnis as Colorado House Majority Leader fiercely opposed giving ‘large incentives’ to United Airlines to locate their maintenance facility in Denver during Denver International Airport’s construction. Here’s a report from The Bond Trader from mid-1991:

House Majority Leader Scott McInnis, R-Glenwood, has suggested that if the state is to provide such large incentives, then lawmakers should create a new authority to manage the airport.

Later in 1991, McInnis suggested that we should stop trying so hard to win United’s contract at the new airport, from the Associated Press at the time:

United spokeswoman Lynn Martenstein acknowledged that the process has frustrated some local officials, but she said a final decision on the maintenance base will come “very soon.”

She said incentive proposals changed often and each change required a new review. The airline still considers Louisville a contender, she said.

Colorado House Majority Leader Scott McInnis says his state should follow Kentucky’s lead.

“United has a ring and is pulling Colorado by the nose,” said McInnis, a Republican. [Pols emphasis] But Democratic Gov. Roy Romer says the state will stick to its $ 330 million offer…

So the issue here is not really about whether the Denver city government should have dropped its trousers to whatever extent Republic Airlines would have found necessary to reconsider its decision relocating parts of Froniter Airlines’ operations away from Denver–you’ve got your opinions about that, the debate over tax incentives to encourage businesses to do things is as old as dirt.

The real story here is McInnis squawking hypocrisy once again–flagrantly contradicting his own record in order to attack his opponent. And above all, McInnis is counting on you not having access to 19-year-old news, or media outlets with enough institutional memory, to know any better.

But we think Larry the Lynx and Grizwald the Bear deserve the truth.

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46 thoughts on “What Larry and Grizwald Didn’t Know”

    1. Let’s be reasonable here. McInnis might have a very different view about incentives for airlines now that he’s running for governor, but you got it right the first time — he’s a Grade A hypocrite; nothing in this particular round of pandering over the weekend made him a liar.

  3. and more about Scooter’s Rebub philosophy of laissez Faire economics:  let everybody merge, reduce wages, to hell with the work force and actually producing a product that people want, just one that is ‘cheap’.

    This story from Milwaukee is interesting as it really speaks to what happens when unfettered mergers occur and when holding companies own airlines (or any other business) and are not in the business of operating a business but merely being a holding company.

    While the story is about the Midwest ‘brand’ being dead (Midwest is the other airline besides Frontier that Republic acquired) it is about much more than that.

    http://www.jsonline.com/busine…

  4. I’ll give you this you are quick to jump on Scott so lets be clear about what the release said:

    Despite clear, published warnings from Frontier’s new parent company that the city tax structure was uncompetitive and could cause the company to pull the Frontier headquarters out of Denver, no action was taken and Colorado is losing many quality jobs.

    He was talking about a whole different animal (pun intended)in 1991.  In his release he talks about the cities tax structure not tax incentives(which may have played a part in their decision).

    One other point. Romer staffers I worked with were as frustrated with United Airlines as Scott only he voiced his frustration out loud at their tactics.  

    1. What on earth can that mean, other than it isn’t full of incentives and give-backs?

      And I’ve got news for you (apparently it’s news), Ellie, everyone who gave any thought to the United deal back in ’91 was frustrated at the airline, but calling out the governor from an opposing partisan position wasn’t something we could all do!

      1. Romer could give as good as he got from an opposing partisan position so don’t try that piece of puffery BS.

        Glad to see you admit Scott wasn’t the only one frustrated in ’91.  Sort of takes the zing out of the entry except to give you and others something to bitch about.

         

        1. So McInnis complained back than about the same thing he’s attacking Hickenlooper for NOT doing now, and that takes the ‘zing’ out of this post? How the hell is that?

          You need to think about this gobbledygook before you publish it. You can’t take it back.

        2. So, wait, your point actually is that McInnis will attack a Democratic opponent about airline headquarters subsidies no matter what the argument is? That’s your point?

          And no, it looks like McInnis takes his own “zing out of the entry,” whatever the heck that means, because it looks more and more like every position he takes is simply to score a political point, not because it has anything to do with his core values (ha!) or the facts.

    2. it is the inconsistency with his 2010 position.

      I tend to agree with McInnis 1991 and disagree with McInnis 2010: incentives demanded by industry drive sub optimal public choice and pits citizens of Colorado against citizens of of the world in an eternal race to payoff companies for the right to make money.

      It is a losing strategy in the end, because in the end someone will be cheaper.  

      1. Will the McInnis model 2011 be similiar to the McInnis model 2010, or will he go retro and give us McInnis model 1991?

        Or maybe we’ll get the McInnis model 1998, September release. That model only ran for 7 months but I think it was one of the better ones.

        1. The one who got in a spat with Rep. Pete Stark and felt threatened by the 72-year-old Democrat. So threatened he applauded a call to the cops by the committee chairman hoping to defend McInnis from the septuagenarian.

          Stark “threatened me with physical harm,” said Rep. Scott McInnis of Colorado, a Republican who sits on the committee.

          “I think it was entirely appropriate for the chairman of the committee to call the sergeant at arms and the Capitol Police,” McInnis said. “I considered that a bodily threat and I fully intended to defend myself. To calm this down — that is why the chairman did that.”

          Rep. Kenny Hulshof, a Missouri Republican who sits on the committee, read what he described as a transcript of the meeting.

          In it, he quoted Stark as saying to McInnis, “You little fruitcake, you little fruitcake, I said you are a fruitcake.”

  5. by hiding his hypocrisy and touting his clever political skills.  Oh wait that would imply that Bartels knows how to do her job as a political reporter instead of a Republican stenographer.  Not only is it not “liberal bias” but it is not true political journalism.  You can’t be complicit in a cover up if you don’t know how to do your job.  Incompetence saves Bartels from journalistic corruption.

    3. There’s a reason behind the drop in the quality of her work over the last year since the Rocky went under, and the reason is not that she’s a shoddy journalist. She may have become a shoddy journo in that time span, and what the real reason behind the slide is anybody’s guess, but this isn’t how she always was.

      I agree with everything else you said up to that, though.

      1. She couldn’t even get the city correct where the Dems held their state convention a few years ago.  

        Just one error of many I observed, or if not error, leaving obvious questions unanswered.  

          1. She uses words instead of her lips to give dominating men like Singleton what they want in exchange for money.  No wonder she never blushes when she gets in these positions.  Real journalism and ethics have no place on the street.

          2. is her inability to cover the story as anything other than a horse race.

            The real issue here is whether local governments should pay ransom money to keep jobs in the area or should they invest in infrastructure to provide competitive environments for companies so they can prosper in the area.  The problem with providing incentives is that it looks like the employees are being held hostage and if governments don’t pay the ransom then the employees go bye bye.  The acquiring airline didn’t do anything wrong to try and seek a sweetheart deal but was it really in the best interests of the region to hold onto these jobs versus using that taxpayer funding to upgrade DIA and keep it a first class facility.  Bartels could have helped highlight the real issue but chose to lie down on the job and spin the McInnis complaint as brilliant politics.  Pretty sleazy journalism all around.

  6.  

    Yes, McInnis said those things, but he was right.

    The United maintenance facility shakedown was a bad deal for Colorado and McInnis knew it.

    Nowhere in your post do you mention that the $600 million facility that ended up in Indianapolis actually closed several years ago.

    Enough with the gratuitous slaps at McInnis.

      1. He’s a hypocrite. He can’t say Hickenlooper should have given Republic anything they asked for when he (rightfully) didn’t want United getting the same treatment.

        He’s just a hypocrite, that’s all. He’s proven it over and over. It’s hardly “gratuitous” to point it out.

        1. I don’t think it’s hypocritical to support one deal and oppose another.  Especially if they are totally different.

          Governor Romer called the legislature into special session in 1991 for the specific purpose of debating the United deal, and McInnis opposed it.

          I can’t say that I know what the city offered Republic to move it’s HQ to Denver, and Pols doesn’t mention it in the post.

                1. to provide anything resembling a fact regarding some supposed hypocrisy by Hickenlooper, I think it is safe to assume that HTAT is following in the footsteps of his idol Mark Sanford and is a total phony and big liar.  This is what passes for intellectualism in the Republican Party.  Make a lie and then stand by it while refusing to provide any real facts and then play the outrage card when anyone calls them out on their lie.  No wonder reality has a leftist bias.  It’s called the facts folks and HTAT didn’t provide ONE (1) fact to support his statements.  What a liar which is to say a typical Republican.

              2. Throw out some hokey statement without anything resembling a fact and then proceed as if it were true.  Standard Republican MO.

                I would to see them put up some non-political reasons why McInnis is condemning Democrats for not getting government involved in a private business transaction when he has spent his entire career promoting the benefits of private enterprise or tell us about the McInnis conversion and how he came to believe in big government intervention.  How can he speak out of both sides of his mouth and not be called a forked tongue white man?

        3. saying that McInnis can be a hypocrite because Hickenlooper did it once is kind on the lame excuse making side.

          My take on it Ellie is that when companies get bought it is natural to assume that some consolidation is going to take place.  Republic tried to get a sweat deal and then proceeded with their merger plans.

          The silliness in this whole affair to me is that McInnis who is a staunch anti/small government proponent is saying that government didn’t do enough when his entire career is built on government doing less.  How can he castigate Hickenlooper for not paying ransom money to Republic if he sincerely believes that free market forces should run wild and government should butt out.  Talk about inconsistency.  Either he believes in limited government or he believes in government intervention.  This latest complaint clears up nothing about what he believes in except that he believes criticizing Democrats will get him elected.  We call that disingenuous pandering where I come from which is not a good quality for to have in a person who aspires to lead this great state.  Mark it as a negative on McInnis’ character.

          1. That’s exactly it. It’s like Jane Norton blasting the jobs bill because it was too small when her entire career (or at least the post-Lt. Gov. part) is built on keeping bills too small.

            But then again, both GOP front-runners are finding out how hard it is to bob and weave their way through the Tea Party gauntlet this year.  

        4. I don’t want to put words in your mouth. But I think with your statement you are saying that yes McInnis is a hypocrite in this case. But since Hick has also been a hypocrite at times, we should not call McInnis on his hypocrisy.

          Is that the correct interpretation of your statement? And if so, is your argument that any hypocrisy ever by Hick makes this an off-topic discussion? Or is it only if they are evenly hypocritical?

          And if the requirement is even, do you think Hick is as big a hypocrite as McInnis?

          1. she then makes an unfounded claim that Hick is a hypocrite, without any information to demonstrate it, then asking us to prove Hick is not !

            I find that a little hypocritical…

            1. her candidate never murdered a prostitute and covered up the crime back in the early ’90s. While that’s still hanging out there, I don’t care what qualms she has about Hick’s policy statements.

            2. Ellie’s argument is that McInnis is excused from hypocrisy/changing his mind because Hickenlooper might have done the same at some unspecified time in the past.

              Specious.

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