U.S. Senate
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(D) J. Hickenlooper*
(R) Somebody
80%
20%
Governor
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(D) Joe Neguse
(D) Phil Weiser
(D) Jena Griswold
60%
60%
40%↓
Att. General
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(D) M. Dougherty
(D) Alexis King
(D) Brian Mason
40%
40%
30%
Sec. of State
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(D) George Stern
(D) A. Gonzalez
(R) Sheri Davis
40%
40%
30%
State Treasurer
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(D) Brianna Titone
(R) Kevin Grantham
(D) Jerry DiTullio
60%
30%
20%
CO-01 (Denver)
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(D) Diana DeGette*
(R) Somebody
90%
2%
CO-02 (Boulder-ish)
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(D) Joe Neguse*
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90%
2%
CO-03 (West & Southern CO)
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(R) Jeff Hurd*
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80%
40%
CO-04 (Northeast-ish Colorado)
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(R) Lauren Boebert*
(D) Somebody
90%
10%
CO-05 (Colorado Springs)
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(R) Jeff Crank*
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80%
20%
CO-06 (Aurora)
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(D) Jason Crow*
(R) Somebody
90%
10%
CO-07 (Jefferson County)
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(D) B. Pettersen*
(R) Somebody
90%
10%
CO-08 (Northern Colo.)
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(R) Gabe Evans*
(D) Yadira Caraveo
(D) Joe Salazar
50%
40%
40%
State Senate Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
80%
20%
State House Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
95%
5%
June 26, 2009 03:15 PM UTC
27 Comments
from a Bill Ritter press piece:
1.5 years after state and local government first began to see the downward trends of tax generation we have a 1st attempt to cut whole programs.
Although the democrats have been forecasting billions in entitlement program shortfalls, why is it 45 days after a full legislative session that the Guv. has decided that the time is now for readjust state government? Don’t good managers continually look at capital and expense investments in relation to the productivity of their organization and its revenues?
After wasting 5 months of the legislatures time, in which they could have helped the Guv. make these adjustments to state government immediately, we have a summertime effort that cannot be fully implemented until the legislature returns.
What’s that a delay until March 2010 or piss away more money on a special legislative session because after 1.5 years they finally get the fact you need to manage the state.
The Guv. is a great guy and a very fine father and husband.
Its too bad he didn’t manage the state in the way he puts 4 kids through private school on a $90,000 salary. Of course its that college kid who wants to achieve that gets admitted to college and chooses to load up on college debt.
as have the members of the General Assembly. They began making adjustments last year and made additional ones continually through the entire legislative session based on the latest revenue stream and projections. The final budget which begins next week for the new fiscal year was based on the projections from both the Governor’s office and the ones from the legislature at the time the budget was enacted in April of this year. No one knew that state tax revenues would take another nose dive or how steep it would be.
Now that we know, Gov. Ritter and the legislature are going to take additional steps to balance the state budget which is precisely what they should do.
Underneath your comments, is an implied assumption that Gov. Ritter and the General Assembly are clairvoyant and know precisely what the revenue stream will look like months or years in advance. Just one example puts that assumption in the grave. When President Bush was inaugurated in 2001, the federal budget projections were for an $800 billion surplus each year for eight years. With 9/11 and the dot.com bust the surplus evaporated in a year. As anyone who has been involved with either the federal budget or the state budget, revenue projections are notoriously inaccurate even in the near future.
So you’re agreeing that Ritter and Bush approaches to spend, spend, spend mirror one another; thank goodness the Guv. is breaking this cycle of recklessness.
My point is the fact budget projections, including revenue projections, are not a science and even the most sophisticated ones rarely work out as planned.
In Colorado, both the Governor and the General Assembly have economists and staffs who attempt to project what the revenue stream will look like for every budget year. The two staffs differ sometimes. From time to time adjustments need to be made because of falling revenue but no one can predict with certainty how much the revenue stream will decline or how long the decline will last.
The new budget year that begins July 1st was based on the honest predictions of the staffs who are charged with watching the economic picture. The decline has turned out to be steeper than expected. The Governor and the legislature are now doing what they normally do in these circumstances . . . they are adjusting the budget to compensate for the additional decline in revenues.
no governor of Colorado can be as reckless with the state budget as Bush was with the federal budget. Because of our state constitution, every governor and the members of the general assembly are required to balance the budget so there is no way you can equate any of our governors to the former President Bush.
TABOR
Ask before you touch others things … lest you be labeled a predator.
in much the same way that starvation is a solution to obesity.
It causes governments (state, county, local) to spend at the TABOR limits every year, whether they need to or not, just so they can spend more next year.
the TABOR limits were above what they otherwise would have spent. If that was ever the case (maybe in the late ’90s), it hasn’t been the case since the first economic contraction in 2000, the subsequent ratchet-down effect, and the inability for the TABOR limits to come back up to reasonable levels.
More accurately, TABOR causes a disintegration of the state, and a displacement of responsibilities to local governments (which can de-Bruce, and almost universally have de-Bruced), at a loss of efficiency (lost economies of scale, particularly), a loss of capacity to maintain and improve statewide infrastructure (thus leading to further long-term economic decline), and a loss of distributive justice (the poorest regions receive less state-wide redistributions). Everyone loses, and the poorest lose most of all.
The problem is not TABOR, but the mentality to spend then tax. It’s a bankrupt principle
More accurately (Harvey) your cognitive grooming is not supported by the electorate … but if you can generate a few more astroturf non profits and get the Denver Chamber buy-off the SEIU you just might pass another corrupt ballot measure.
that would be evidence of the utility of burning witches? Democracy is a wonderful thing, that serves to better align the interests of those who govern with those who are governed. But, like all wonderful things, it is not flawless, and our Founding Fathers understood that well (read the Federalist Papers, not to mention the Constitution). The purer the democracy, the more in-roads popular misconceptions have into public policy. Our national constitution is designed precisely to avoid that the whims of the moment hold sway, and that not only popular will but also informed reason play essential roles in determining our public policy.
What you call “cognitive grooming” is what the rest of the world calls “informed analysis.” You demonstrate with almost every post your aversion to the latter, and it is no surprise that you express that aversion again in this instance. Take your most recent post on another thread, in which you posit a pseudo-economic theory and an assumption of causation based a single instance of correlation (one which does not hold up when other examples are investigated): I linked to a list of scholarly articles which explain why your assumed linear relationship is well-understood not to exist in reality.
Libertad, you spew blind ideology, ignoring the constant flow of refutations that both evidence and logic present, contributing only noise to discourse. That’s okay: Noise is easily dispensed with, when others are open to the persuasion of information and analysis. One of the most crucial jobs for those who are not brain-dead (so, no worries, Libby, you can just sit back and relax) is to cultivate that among the electorate, because democracy requires above all else a well-informed and well-educated electorate that does not just blindly follow discredited dogmas, but rather has an ever-growing capacity to assess ever-more accurately the competing analyses of competing claims to truth.
and one of your best!
you and Harvey have a really warped sense of community duty. When viewed through rosy socialist spectacles, I clearly follow your premise to equalize and redistribute.
This country is founded on the careful delimitation of local control. The Bill of Rights is the first ten amendments of the Constitution: Someday you might want to take a look at the core text of the constitution that precedes it. It was drafted in response to the utter failure of the Articles of Confederation which, like you, was possessed by the oft-demonstrated delusion that no government is better than a well-designed government. The Articles created a situation in which the United States was a fiction rather than a reality, and would not have long survived. The solution was to draft a constitution that gave the federal government some teeth, so that it was not just a vehicle for the immediate and local interests of its constituent parts (and, if you want to complain that it still is, then take a careful look at what aspect of our governance structure leads to that result: Not strong central government, but rather regional representation).
Before you, in your infinite inability to understand nuance, complain that I am arguing for tyranny, let me be clear: I believe in a balance between deference to more local control (with the ultimate repository of sovereignty being in the individual), and a careful delegation of authority upward, as needed, to coordinate the efforts of all constituent members and sub-groups. That’s what federalism really means.
So for you to sing your uninformed refrain that any compromise of local control is an afront to the values and ideals we all cherish is such a complete bastardation of the values and ideals upon which this country is founded that I find it difficult to bear. The problem with your vigorous vocalization of utter ignorance is that there are undoubtedly some who will mistake it for knowledge. That is a result that all reasonable people of good will must steadfastly pre-empt. Fortunately, in your case, it’s not difficult to tear your empty rhetoric to pieces, over and over again.
My premise is not “to equalize and redistribute.” I believe in personal responsibility, and in fairing better or worse according to one’ own efforts and determination. And, as I have so often reiterated, I am a huge admirer of market dynamics, and believe that the market is a robust tool for the production of wealth and implementation of public policy (a point of view diametrically opposed to your baseless claim that I want to “equalize and redistribute”). Again, you are so trapped in a comic-book reality of black-and-white truths, in which anyone who is not as shallow and simplistic as you is clearly the devil, that you just can’t get that. The real battle isn’t between those fictional enemies you battle with your righteous sword unsheathed, nor is it even between Republicans and Democrats, but rather between fools and thinkers.
Libby, it is almost embarrassing how clearly you place yourself in that ongoing struggle.
I was referring to the balanced budget requirement in the Colorado Constitution, not TABOR.
His polls are holding steady at right around the same numbers I’ve been quoting for several months.
We have game night at work on Thursday evenings and last night we had a 6 person game of Age of Kings. The other 5 ganged up on me and after 3½ hours… I won!
…flitting back and forth to D.C., seeking new markets worldwide, and……blogging!
You are right about old age and not so much treachery as getting wiser. I can almost always move ahead in traffic faster than the “kid” shooting for any open spot. I look at the cars ahead in the several lanes and by type (youth or old fart) and perhaps license plate (homie, tourist) can pretty well figure out who will have the lead foot and who is dawdling.
That’s impressive, but that sounds like an awful lot of work to arrive somewhere maybe a minute ahead of someone else.
and I won’t mention how 2 weeks ago they kicked my butt.
Mark Sanford missed being a pg.14 side note and largely forgotten. Timing is everything…
from the Boulder Daily Camera – kudos to them for doing the logical thing.
but also because of court cases that say
http://cannabisnews.com/news/2…
That’s quite a bit of pot to preserve, and while the Boulder police may be more liberal than others, I don’t think they have a grow room or any hydroponics in the station.
This case is a little different than the ones in that article, however, in the sense that the marijuana wasn’t seized by the police and then ordered returned by a judge; it was stolen property being returned to the victims by the police.