SEIU Brings Union Protests from Wisconsin to Colorado

by Lesley Hollywood | 2:01 pm, February 20, 2011

Wisconsin is in a state of unrest.  Tens of thousands of people are protesting Wisconsin’s massive budget repair legislation that will weaken the State Employees Union.   Democratic legislators are fleeing their offices to prevent the assembly from reaching a quorum and passing this bill .  And as Wisconsin is facing a a deficit of $137 million — a deficit projected to increase [...]

Logical fallacies abound

by Rossputin | 5:35 pm, February 19, 2011

I just heard some ranting leftist in Wisconsin who got her 15 seconds of fame shouting “We’re doing this for the kids.”  More: “It’s because of unions that we have weekends, the 8-hour work day, and collective bargaining.”  (Which of those strikes you as not belonging in the list of important innovations, especially for the over-protected class of government employees?)  And continuing: “If we don’t do this (protest against Wisconsin Governor Walker’s budget and public sector union reforms), our kids won’t have weekends or 8-hour work days or collective bargaining!”

I loved hearing that because it shows just how ridiculously extreme the left’s goals are.  Noboby believes the first two things are at risk, and few believe the last is an important “right”, particularly in the public sector.

The main thing likely to beat the left is a growing awareness of what they’re really about.  The great awakening of the nation began with the election of Barack Obama, and the result of the initial political indigestion was the November 2010 electoral regurgitation all over Democrats.  Wisconsin continues to pour Progressive Ipecac down our throats, with a result predictible to all but those doing the pouring – and you’d think the ones at the most risk, standing right in front of the recipients, would know better.

Square State: Promoting Pro-Union Rally With Violent Rhetoric

by T.L. James | 1:54 am, February 19, 2011

I’m sorry… but how exactly does this comport with the Left’s past six weeks of handwringing over the need for “civility” and an end to “violent rhetoric”? Tuesday February 22nd, 2011 there will be a rally in support of Wisconsin workers protesting their Governor’s violent through the barrel of a gun threats to outlaw collective [...]

Charles Johnson Supports Violent Rhetoric, Hitler References at Protest Rallies

by T.L. James | 10:47 pm, February 18, 2011

Well, at least that’s what one could be forgiven for thinking after reading this post at Little Green Footballs: I’d just like to say that I stand in solidarity with the workers and students of Wisconsin tonight, and against the right wing’s war on employee unions. What about the abundant Hitler references? What about the [...]

Are the Collective Bargaining Protests in Wisconsin Only the Beginning?

by Amanda Teresi | 6:41 pm, February 18, 2011

Collective Bargaining With the recent protests in Wisconsin that are now headed toward Indiana, Ohio and possibly New Jersey, we must consider as a nation exactly which direction we plan to go. If we are going to cut the budget and reduce our nation’s $14 trillion debt (which we have no choice but to do) [...]

Grand Junction Could Use Some Common Sense Economics

by Ari Armstrong | 2:14 pm, February 18, 2011

The following article by Linn and Ari Armstrong originally was published February 18 by Grand Junction Free Press.”The first law of economics is scarcity, and the first law of politics is to disregard the first law of economics.” So opines Thomas Sowel…

Watch Devil’s Advocate On The Petition Process Tonight

by Mike Krause | 1:31 pm, February 18, 2011

Tune in to the Independence Institute’s public affairs television show Devil’s Advocate tonight as host Jon Caldara is joined by Elena Nunez from Colorado Common Cause and Danny Katz from Colorado Public Interest Research Group (CoPIRG) for a conversation about SCR-001, the ongoing effort in the legislature to refer a measure to the ballot to [...]

Momentum Growing to Expand Private School Choice in Many States in 2011

by Eddie | 12:36 pm, February 18, 2011

Friday seems like a good time to take a step back and look around the country at a slate of school choice legislation. Writing on the Flypaper blog, Jamie Davies O’Leary highlights a number of proposals in Ohio that are being given serious consideration, including:

Expanding the Cleveland voucher program statewide, removing all enrollment caps and [...]

Jack Daniels Explains The Deficit

by Mr. Bob | 9:48 am, February 18, 2011

#tcot #teaparty #congress #spendingcutsMost of us who have a few miles on have seen these scare tactics before but perhaps those of you new to the tools Democrats use to discourage cuts in spending, or even the cuts in the increase in spending need be …

The War in Wisconsin

by Rossputin | 8:26 am, February 18, 2011

http://spectator.org/archives/2011/02/18/the-war-in-wisconsin

Perhaps thinking they’re taking inspiration from Egypt but doing so in the most perverse way, Wisconsin’s State Senate Democrats fled the state on Thursday rather than going to work where their presence would have caused a quorum allowing a vote they know they’ll lose regarding the state budget.  It’s not the budget vote precisely that they’re avoiding but rather a provision that would essentially strip teachers unions of collective bargaining rights, something no public sector employee should have anyway.

The police were sent, without results, to find even one Democrat to bring back to the Wisconsin State Senate.  The leftist Washington Post columnist Greg Sargent spoke to one of the brave Democrats who said they would all say away until the collective bargaining provision was taken out of the budget.

The War in Wisconsin is, due to its relatively simplicity, perhaps the clearest yet demonstration to the American people of three key facts, most of which everyone knows deep down but only a small subset (often called “conservatives” or those evil “libertarians”) actually believe:

• Democrats care more about protecting union wealth and power than any other political goal,
• Democrats care only for outcome, not for rules, process, or even democracy itself if the people inconveniently elect Republicans, and
• The media is made up of partisan Democrats in a way which makes them a reliable source of propaganda and an unreliable source of information.

Please read the entirety of my article at the web site of the American Spectator:
http://spectator.org/archives/2011/02/18/the-war-in-wisconsin

What Does Cutting the CPB Really Mean for Sesame Street?

by PerlStalker | 7:16 pm, February 17, 2011

House Republicans have proposed stripping Federal funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. CPB funds, among other things, National Public Radio and the Sesame Workshop. Obviously, they’re a little upset at that and have been using the popu…

Denver Mayoral Candidate Promises to “Reduce the Bureaucracy.” How About Some Examples?

by Mike Krause | 5:38 pm, February 17, 2011

As the Denver mayor’s race heats up, jobs and the economy are emerging as a major campaign theme. This means that to make an informed decision, Denver voters like myself are going to need to wade through the looming avalanche of “pro-business” and “job creation” rhetoric by candidates to separate empty promises and magical [...]

Taxpayers Push Back, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker Goes Bold, Unions Raise Ruckus, Democrat Senators Run Away

by Ben DeGrow | 3:35 pm, February 17, 2011

Update II, 4:05 PM: Writing on the Townhall blog, Guy Benson offers up some exclusive video footage of the Wisconsin Democrat senators running away. John Hayward at Human Events offers some fascinating insights and concludes with a bit of powerful advice: “Governor Walker should take a page from the handbook of New Jersey governor Chris [...]

Hickenlooper wakes up Pace: Businesses pay the bills

by Michael Sandoval | 1:38 pm, February 17, 2011

Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper
Colorado state Rep. Sal Pace, D-Pueblo, was rebuffed by Gov. John Hickenlooper in a way that made the Democratic governor look like a model of fiscal austerity, versus the whining entitlement sentimentality of his fellow Democratic party members. But what does Hickenlooper do if the entitlementistas in his own party don’t accept his budget plan?

Threatened by Tighter Budgets, More States Challenge Teacher Union Perks

by Eddie | 1:37 pm, February 17, 2011

It was exactly two years ago today that President Obama flew to town to shake lots of bills off the magical money tree for Colorado public schools. Now the federal dollars (borrowed from my future) have dried up. Our new governor John Hickenlooper bore the news to the Joint Budget Committee (JBC) on Tuesday: $332 [...]

Fox & Beck, 3 small errors and one big one

by Rossputin | 8:10 am, February 17, 2011

I don’t know whether my strep-addled brain is somehow more attentive of detail than my usual brain, but I noticed three small errors – and one big one – in their broadcasts in the past 24 hours.

First, let’s dispense of the small ones:

In a story discussion a bank’s foreclosing on active duty soldiers, they posted the non-word “Millitary” on the screen.  Perhaps it was an attempt to be clever, but I thought they simply misspelled “military”.

In an interview with Florida Representative Connie Mack, the caption called him “Florida Congresswoman Connie Mack”, something I’m sure his wife, Congresswoman Mary Bono Mack, would be surprised to learn about him.

In Glenn Beck’s Wednesday show, a caption on the screen said “Isreal” instead of “Israel”.  Come on, guys, that’s pretty basic, especially for a show which spends plenty of time discussing the Middle East.

But my big problem was during Beck’s Tuesday show when he was going through potential government policy reforms and showing those reforms’ potential impact on the federal budget deficit.  One of those items was, and I may get the wording slightly wrong, changing the way inflation is measured for Social Security benefit increases.

Beck said this amounted to suggesting that government “lie” to the people.

Glenn Beck is a good entertainer and a decent source of information on certain issues, but someone who is posing himself not just through rhetoric but even through attire as professorial, he has a responsibility to be accurate, especially when it comes to a program which is high on the list of things bankrupting the country.

Beck was wrong in two ways.  First, the 1996 Boskin Commission reported that

Changes in the CPI have substantially overstated the actual rate of price inflation, by about 1.3 percentage points per annum prior to 1996 (the extra 0.2 percentage point is due to a problem called formula bias inadvertently introduced in 1978 and fixed this year). It is likely that a large bias also occurred looking back over at least the last couple of decades.

To be sure, it’s possible that problems in the composition of the CPI could understate inflation, but data strongly suggests that the overstatement of inflation, which is used to create the annual cost of living adjustment (COLA) for the main Social Security program, has cost the country over $100 billion annually in over-generous COLAs to Social Security recipients in the decade or so prior to the current recession (during which there have been no COLAs).

A report on “The Boskin Commission Report: A Retrospective One Decade Later” from an economist with Northwestern University and the National Bureau of Economic Research says that while the Boskin Commission may have overstated the upward bias in the calculation in one area, it understated it in another area, concluding that “…today’s bias is at least 1.0 percent per year or perhaps even higher.”

To be sure, these views are not without their detractors; some argue that other substitution effects mean that CPI measurements actually understate inflation, though I don’t buy those suggestions. It’s interesting to note that more than a dozen studies in the  mid-1990s about the bias in the Consumer Price Index showed a positive bias, namely a bias which caused the government to make overly large annual increases to Social Security recipients at a cost to taxpayers on the order of a trillion dollars from the mid-90s to the middle of the last decade.

Trying to fix this problem is anything but “lying to the people.”  If anything, it was Beck’s characterization that was a distinctly unhelpful lie, though perhaps the word “lie” implies an intent to deceive which Beck might not have had.

The second way in which Social Security’s inflation calculations deserve attention are where the system uses wage inflation to index benefits (and taxes).  According to the Social Security Administration’s web site, “When we compute a person’s retirement benefit, we use the national average wage indexing series to index that person’s earnings. Such indexation ensures that a worker’s future benefits reflect the general rise in the standard of living that occurred during his or her working lifetime.”

This implicitly acknowledges that benefits are calculation to outpace an actual cost of living.  Whether or not that’s appropriate is a multi-faceted discussion which should include not just the fact that it costs taxpayers billions of dollars a year but also the moral/ethical question of whether the system should have as a goal to reward retirees for a “rise in the standard of living”.  I’ll save my view on this for another day.

But for today, it must be stressed that looking at replacing wage indexing with price indexing is far from “lying” as Glenn Beck would have us believe.

To be fair, I think it’s more than Beck doesn’t understand the issue than anything else.  It’s hard for me to imagine that he’d support methods which seem to have, for decades, bloated the benefits paid out by the Social Security System, to the massive financial detriment of future generations of Americans.

When the bigger and – I hope for Beck’s sake – more well-informed discussion about Social Security begins in earnest, I hope that it will encompass the larger point that Social Security was not meant to be a full-fledged retirement program for its beneficiaries. It was meant to keep people from starving, but still assumed that people would take some responsibility for their own retirements.  We need to get back to that frame of mind, not least because the Supreme Court has ruled (twice) that the government has no contractual obligation regarding Social Security, that it is neither investment nor insurance, and that the revenue taken in through the payroll tax is, for spending purposes, no different than any other federal government tax revenue.

The first step toward returning to a modicum of self-reliance regarding one’s latter years’ financial situation is for people to be made well aware that Social Security’s days of over-generous COLAs are done.  This isn’t to punish seniors; indeed, the changes can be made very gradually so that nobody in or near retirement would be impacted.  These are changes we must make to save our children and their children from living through a national bankruptcy which we either forced on them or didn’t have the political will to fix (the former being Democrats and the latter being both Democrats and Republicans).

And if seniors fight the changes because of Democrat spin – don’t forget Dems want as much money flowing through government as possible, forever – every honest rhetorical step should be taken against them, including pointing out that this is basically a “reverse inheritance” (to quote Jason Mattera), forcing their grandchildren into tax-induced penury to fund their retirements.  It’s immoral and it has to stop.

Colorado SB 11-168: The health care Authority will enforce your “cooperation”

by Brian Schwartz | 6:30 am, February 17, 2011

Colorado’s health care authoritarians are back with their version of single payer medicine. No, it’s a “public option. No, it’s a “health care cooperative.” If this idea is so good, then they should start their own co-op w/o government force, & let people join & fund at will.

Hickenlooper Takes an Axe to the Colorado Budget

by PerlStalker | 11:47 pm, February 16, 2011

It wasn’t unexpected, of course. Colorado is facing a billion dollar budget whole next year and, since TABOR prevents Colorado from raising taxes without a vote of the people, the only solution was massive spending cuts. The hardest hit was education, …

High Speed Rail – Obamatrain, 1979

by T.L. James | 11:03 pm, February 16, 2011

Atlas Shrugged it ain’t, but if the Obamatrain boondoggle promised trains half as slick as Supertrain, I suspect it would get a lot more support.

Leadership Program of the Rockies 2011 Annual Retreat

by Rossputin | 6:42 pm, February 16, 2011

As I do each year, I’d like to offer my strongest encouragement for all supporters of liberty, free markets, and clear thinking – and those who just enjoy a great event with stimulating discussion and good food and drink – to attend this year’s Leadership Program of the Rockies Annual Retreat at the Broadmoor Hotel in Colorado Springs on Friday and Saturday, February 25 and 26.

You can get Retreat details on speakers and package prices here:
http://www.leadershipprogram.org/retreat

Registration is scheduled to close on Friday, February 18th.  Sign up before then!  (There are discounted rooms at the Broadmoor for the event; I think the Broadmoor is the nicest hotel in Colorado.)

The dinner keynote speaker on Friday evening is Charles Krauthammer, a guy who all non-leftist “junior” columnists (like me) hope to be when we grow up.  (George Will as well.)

Other confirmed speakers so far include:

Brian WesburyGrover NorquistDaniel HannanStephen Hayes K.T. McFarland

The Retreat is always a great combination of education and entertainment.  And as someone who lives near Boulder, I always appreciate being around other liberty-oriented people who seem so scarce in my neck of the woods.

I look forward to seeing many of you at the LPR Annual Retreat.  Please go sign up today!

Also, please join LPR’s Facebook “cause” and keep in touch with LPR’s activities and successes here:
http://www.facebook.com/l/c4546AI1d06MkRSKG__bal_IUMg;www.causes.com/causes/561155-leadership-program-of-the-rockies

Iran sends warships through Suez, raising the tension even higher

by Mr. Bob | 4:37 pm, February 16, 2011

#iran #religionofpeace #tcot #teapartyThe Iranians warships are heading through the Suez Canal to dock for a year in Syria it appears and, according to Israel it’s just to provoke them into a confrontation. Obviously, the Iranians have no problem pokin…

Sometimes the Headline Says it All on Transparency

by Michael | 7:16 am, February 16, 2011

“State Transparency Website Not Transparent Enough”–that’s the title of a recent 7NEWS story (video) discussing Rep. B.J. Nikkel’s (R-Loveland) transparency efforts, including the CDOT transparency measure passed 65-0 in the House earlier today.
While Nikkel gives the current state online database–Transparency Online Project or TOPS–a “C” for content, it is the confluence of both that content [...]

Motive Force or The Information Superhighway?

by Joshua Sharf | 9:31 pm, February 15, 2011

Tax Day has never been this anticipated.  Go file your return, and then catch a matinee of Atlas Shrugged.  Tom’s already posted the trailer. Most of the concerns in his post center around fidelity to the book.  The compromise between strict fidelity and actual movie-making is always an issue when dealing with a beloved book [...]

Looking for Torah in Ayn Rand

by Joshua Sharf | 6:32 pm, February 15, 2011

Of all the rhetorical baits-and-switches the Left has pulled over the last 100 century or more, perhaps none has been as complete, enduring, or damaging as the identification of “Jewish values” and liberal politics. The historical roots are in European socialism, and there is even some evidence that the prominence of leftist Jewish political activity [...]

A Pipe Dream Referred

by Jon Caldara | 6:03 pm, February 15, 2011

Call it a year of terrible referred measures. Something awful must be in the air down at the Capitol. In addition to a referred measure that will inhibit ordinary Colorado citizens from petitioning their government, there is yet another abomination coming down the pike: “universal” health care coverage for Colorado. Or as I like to [...]

CDOT Transparency Bill Sails out of House, 65-0

by Michael | 5:32 pm, February 15, 2011

Rep. B.J. Nikkel’s HB 1002, designed to close a gap in the state’s online transparency offerings for Colorado’s Department of Transportation, passed out of the House today on a 65-0 vote.
The bill still needs Senate approval, as well …

Check Out The Audio Of Our Sentencing Reform Panel Event

by Mike Krause | 2:21 pm, February 15, 2011

In early February, the Independence Institute, the Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition, and the Pew Center on the States held a panel event on the ongoing work of the Colorado Commission on Criminal and Juvenile Justice (CCJJ) and the prospects for criminal sentencing, parole, and other criminal justice related reforms in the 2011 Colorado General [...]

Obama gives the finger to budget cuts- increases spending to NPR

by Mr. Bob | 1:36 pm, February 15, 2011

from the Washington Examiner #tcot #teapartyNPR thanks Obama for budget 'vote of confidence' | Byron York | Beltway Confidential | Washington Examiner

Don’t Shoot, But Is the Parent Trigger Idea Ready to Giddy Up in Colorado?

by Eddie | 1:01 pm, February 15, 2011

Here we are waist-deep into Colorado’s legislative session (at least I’m waist-deep, most big people are probably more like knee-deep). Pretty soon I may not be able to see the forest for the legislative bills. But there’s one policy idea from more than 1,000 miles away that has my attention right now. A few days [...]

I am not seeking a 2nd term as state chair of the Libertarian Party of Colorado

by David K. Williams, Jr. | 12:43 pm, February 15, 2011

I recently sent this email to the Board of Directors of the LPCO:Dear Board:I want to thank the Libertarian Party of Colorado for allowing me to serve as the State Chair for the past two years. With my term expiring at the next state convention, I have…

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