Colorado now "A Killing Field for Tax Measures"
The dwindling Occupy Denver contagion is digging itself out from under the 2nd snowstorm in just over a week, and the only thing that stings more than the winter wind is the commanding defeat of 3 tax increases on the Nov. 2 ballot.
While protesters are pre-Occupied with staying warm by huddling around a bbq, or buried under tarps and blankets, 2 out of 3 Colorado voters gave a decisive reply to demands for increased spending on education, just one week after the President used a local University Campus to stage his latest plea to students for support.
From the Wall Street Journal
By a nearly 2 to 1 margin, voters rejected a $2.9 billion income and sales tax increase ostensibly earmarked for education. Proposition 103 would have raised the income tax rate to 5% from 4.63% and the sales tax to 3% from 2.9%. (...)
The education gambit was a sneaky attempt to undermine the state's landmark and popular Taxpayer Bill of Rights, which was approved by voters in the 1990s and has slowed the growth of government. Tabor, as it is known, caps the state budget to the growth of population and inflation each year while rebating revenues above that limit to taxpayers. The union scheme was to erode the spending caps by exempting education spending and earmarking new tax revenues to schools, which already command 40% of the state's general fund budget.
Taxes weren't the only issue on the ballot, but liberals fared no better with a new labor law. Campaign strategists ought to to start wondering about the momentum of this purple state.
Oh, and one more burst of democratic common sense: Denver voters rejected, also by nearly 2 to 1, another union measure that would have mandated that all businesses pay sick leave for all workers. In 2008, Barack Obama carried Denver overwhelmingly and Colorado with 53.5% of the vote. Tuesday's results suggest that the 'Occupy Wall Street' mood that has so enthused Washington elites has yet to reach the Rockies.
It's not all grey skies for the Occupy protesters. Michael Moore will be in Denver today hawking his new quasi-memoir, and is planning on stopping by the protest. Despite the recent tarnishing of the Occupy Movement's reputation by reports of drug dealers, violent revolutionaries and sexual predators among their ranks, you can't help but look good when standing next to a guy who exploited one of the most tragic episodes of your Colorado history, in order to make an error ridden propaganda film .
Finally, in a move that is nothing short of prophetic, the creators South Park aired an episode spoofing the Occupy Movement and Moore's visit to Colorado, the day before he arrived. I don't know how those guys do it.
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Re: Colorado now "A Killing Field for Tax Measures"
Hm, you would think this would put their silly misconception that they represent the 99% to bed. It's a mathematical impossibility for just 1% of the population to reject a tax increase...
And that picture makes me cold just looking at it.
Dec '10
Re: Colorado now "A Killing Field for Tax Measures"
Diane Ellis, Ed.: Hm, you would think this would put their silly misconception that they represent the 99% to bed. It's a mathematical impossibility for just 1% of the population to reject a tax increase...
And that picture makes me cold just looking at it. · Nov 3 at 9:30am
No reason to let math, logic or common sense get in the way of catching your death by sleeping on a filthy sidewalk in a snowstorm. Besides, maybe it's not so uncomfortable...I hear the homeless guys are cuddlers.
Edited on Nov 3, 2011 at 9:58amNov '10
Re: Colorado now "A Killing Field for Tax Measures"
It's interesting the juxtaposition of the OWS movement, which aims to affect change by sitting in a park with a sign, and the normal voter who aims to affect change by voting. The 99% seem to believe that democracy is overrated, and they can simply force government to do what they want. I just find that distinction very interesting. While you sit there with your sign, someone is actually engaging in true activism by casting a ballot.
Mar '11
Re: Colorado now "A Killing Field for Tax Measures"
As a fellow Coloradoan, I have a feeling that things might be swaying a little more "red" this time around as we all go to the ballot box.
Even though Colorado has been fairly lucky in the effects of the economic woes so many have been experiencing (only 7.5%ish unemployment at the moment) it seems as though there's a semtiment in our beautiful state (excepting of course the Socialist Republic of Boulder) that we can make a real change for the better by embracing more conservative economic values...
Diane Ellis, Ed.: Hm, you would think this would put their silly misconception that they represent the 99% to bed. It's a mathematical impossibility for just 1% of the population to reject a tax increase...
And that picture makes me cold just looking at it. · Nov 3 at 9:30am
Also....it's Colorado :-) the snow's already melted and it's picnic weather again
Oct '11
Re: Colorado now "A Killing Field for Tax Measures"
From your lips to God's ears...
Dec '10
Re: Colorado now "A Killing Field for Tax Measures"
As I've been saying to anyone who will listen, most people understand that spending money we don't have is not a solution. Wash, rinse, repeat.
And, yeah, the exceptions are concentrated in Boulder.
May '11
Re: Colorado now "A Killing Field for Tax Measures"
Beasley
Diane Ellis, Ed.: Hm, you would think this would put their silly misconception that they represent the 99% to bed. It's a mathematical impossibility for just 1% of the population to reject a tax increase...
And that picture makes me cold just looking at it. · Nov 3 at 9:30am
No reason to let math, logic or common sense get in the way of catching your death by sleeping on a filthy sidewalk in a snowstorm. Besides, maybe it's not so uncomfortable...I hear the homeless guys are cuddlers. · Nov 3 at 9:57am
Edited on Nov 03 at 09:58 am
Darwinism in action. Too stupid to get in out of the cold/wet, catch pneumonia, die.
As my brother says, "just a bit of Clorox in the gene pool."
Nov '10
Re: Colorado now "A Killing Field for Tax Measures"
Full disclosure, I'm not too far outside Denver. I was wearing my typical Hawaii shirt and sandles today. They aren't birkenstocks and I don't live in Boulder. It really isn't fair or even reasonable to say that Prop 103, or any of these tax measures for that matter were intended for education. One of the unique things we have in Colorado is the Tax Payor's Bill of Rights (TABOR) and some laws regulating how government grows and how it must shrink in lean times. The left leaning side of the isle has been chipping away at these but while they are in place it has done some interesting things. We cannot have a tax increase of any type without a vote and the typical way we get tax increases on the ballot is through signed petitions. Having that, petitions will not get female (sorry if you think it's sexist but it is what it is) signatures without a statement for funding schools. Prop 103 was a general tax increase with some non-binding mentions to education in the language but the money was to feed the general fund, not education.
May '10
Re: Colorado now "A Killing Field for Tax Measures"
South Park's take on the 1% being Cartman who has lowered the Presidents Fitness test result for the rest of the school population. Naturally the protests consist of 2 protesters.
NSFW link and contains profanity, and obscene language, and much hilarity.
http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/401180/stay-cooooool#tab=featured
May '10
Re: Colorado now "A Killing Field for Tax Measures"
Note that Colorado would have a decent governor and senator now had there been reasonable more mainstream center-right GOP candidates, instead of the two nuts nominated by the more starboard factions who also gave us Harry Reid (Angle) and Coons (O'Donnell).