Peoples Press Collective

CNN: Doctors opt out of Medicare

Should we expect more of this if politicians expand government-run health programs? From CNN: When you think of low-paying jobs, doctor doesn’t usually come to mind.But with a 21% cut in Medicare payments slated to take effect later this month, physicians who say they are making an OK living may be reduced to [...]

PPC-SPAN | Colorado Congressional District 4 Debate

CD 4 Debate Part 1 CD 4 Debate Part 2

One State Down 49 to Go, ACORN ordered OUT of Ohio

#acorn #redco #teaparty #tco

ACORN is out of Ohio's elections

In legal settlement, group agrees not to return to state
Thursday, March 11, 2010 2:53 AM
By James Nash
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

ACORN, the liberal group notorious for allegedly trying to inflate voter rolls through fraudulent practices, has seen its last election in Ohio.

The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now will permanently surrender its Ohio business license by June1 as part of a legal settlement with the conservative Buckeye Institute for Public Policy Solutions, both sides said yesterday.

ACORN was active in Ohio in the 2006 and 2008 elections, working to register thousands of low-income people to vote and get them to the polls. The group's efforts were marred by irregularities, including one case in which ACORN workers allegedly induced a Cleveland man to register to vote 72 times, offering cigarettes as an incentive.

Read the rest at the Columbus Dispatch.

We Told You So: Transportation Edition

It’s a transportation policy wonk-fest on tonight’s Independent Thinking. I will be joined by Chuck Plunkett from the Denver Post, and Randal O’Toole, director of the Independence Institute’s Center for the American Dream and Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute. Tune in for a lively discussion about trains, buses and automobiles, and the future [...]

Colorado Democrats Want to Continue Using Taxpayer Dollars to Promote Themselves

#redco #tcot #teaparty #localteaparty
From Colorado Senate News.

COLORADO SENATE REPUBLICANS Dems kill proposed ban on elected official promotions

On a party-line vote, Democrats defeated Senate Bill 105, which would have protected taxpayer money from being used to promote elected officials.

“It is important that our citizens know we never use their money to promote ourselves,” said Sen. Bill Cadman, R-Colorado Springs, who sponsored the measure. “We all have campaign funds for that reason.”

The state’s top economists have found that Colorado’s elected officials have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars promoting themselves and their official duties over the past year. In January, an Associated Press report revealed that Democrat Gov. Bill Ritter spent over $200,000 to pay for photographs, videos and TV ads promoting his accomplishments. State Treasurer Cary Kennedy also used her office budget to run TV ads informing the public of the “Great Colorado Payback,” and she featured herself prominently in the commercials.

Cadman said under his bill the state could still spend money informing citizens of the kind of services that are available to them, but elected officials would just be prohibited from making themselves the centerpiece of the promotion.

“Taxpayer funded public service promotions should never be public servant promotions,” Cadman said.

Tax Foundation Takes On Amazon Tax

Yesterday I wrote a lengthy article about the Amazon Tax. In this follow-up I review an important new study from the Tax Foundation, "'Amazon Tax' Laws Signal Business Unfriendliness and Will Worsen Short-Term Budget Problems."Note that, in my previous...

Big Cost to Fixing Up Colorado Schools? Time to Think Outside the Box

Ed News Colorado reports from yesterday’s State Board meeting about the state of school buildings: Colorado schools have $17.8 billion in maintenance and renovation needs over the next eight years, according to a statewide schools facilities study released Wednesday. The study, required as part of the 2008 Building Excellent Schools Today law, was the first-ever comprehensive structural [...]

Colo. Springs Candidate Forum Goes to Ken Buck, Dan Maes, J.J. Ament

Tuesday night featured another in the latest of well-attended grassroots debate sponsored by conservative or pro-liberty groups: Candidate Debate 2010 in Colorado Springs. It got the attention of one Colorado Pols diarist, and made for a couple humorous anecdotes reported by the Denver Post’s Lynn Bartels. After the forum — which included Colorado candidates for U.S. [...]

The left continues to eat their own…

The radical leftist ACLU is challenging President Obama’s hint that they may return Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to the military tribunal system. It’s amusing to watch the left’s circular firing squad…a strategy of failure which is normally reserved for Republicans.

Please see my article for Human Events:
ACLU Assaults Obama on KSM Trial

(Some of you may have noticed that my postings this week have been short, or have been guest-postings, or otherwise somewhat easier for me to produce than my usual work. The reason is that I am on a week-long ski trip with my 4-year old daughter in Utah and I’m trying to keep my typing to a minimum…)

Link to Original post at Rossputin.com.

Obama coddles insurance companies

Jacon Sullum explains at Reason.com: “We allow the insurance industry to run wild in this country,” President Obama declared on Monday. “We can’t have a system that works better for the insurance companies than it does for the American people.” Yet Obama’s plan to tame health insurers would boost their business, protect them from competition, and [...]

Candidate Debate

The candidate debate sponsored by the The Constitutionalist Today was a great success. My lasting impression is that we are very fortunate this year to have a field of great candidates in this most important of election years. We will need to carry on and amplify the enthusiasm I saw last night on into November [...]

Kudos to Mike Coffman for Leading on New Balanced Budget Amendment

Hats off to Colorado’s own Congressman Mike Coffman for stepping up to the plate and co-leading the effort to bring back the Balanced Budget Amendment. Coffman lays out the case in The Hill blog: Adoption of a constitutional amendment to require a balanced budget is an enormous task and will take an immense amount of political [...]

Does the Obama Administration threaten your recreational fishing?

The original ESPN story was over-hyped, but it sounds in-character for Obama and his radical environmentalist friends, and the truth is not as cut-and-dried as Administration apologists would like you to believe.

Here’s the story that started the recent hubbub:

http://sports.espn.go.com/outdoors/saltwater/news/story?id=4975762

A Fox News story says that the ESPN story is probably overboard, and certainly government spokesmen are denying that the regulations being considered related to recreational fishing.

Also, ESPN has issued this clarification.

However, the Administration’s Interim Framework released three months ago clearly and repeatedly mentions recreational fishing as one of the uses of waterways, including the Great Lakes, that would be part of what is regulated.

So, when you read denials from left-leaning sites such as the one that one of my leftist readers sent me HERE, look out for the outright lies such as the one that the Interim Framework ” says zip about recreational fishing". Just search the document (linked above) for “recreational"…

Link to Original post at Rossputin.com.

Taxpayer Day at the Capitol Photos

Wednesday’s Taxpayer Day at the Denver State Capitol, sponsored by Americans for Prosperity Colorado, The Independence Institute, 9.12 Project Colorado Coalition, The Gadsden Society, Liberty on the Rocks, Peoples Press Collective, and the Western Slope Conservative Alliance, was attended by approximately 150 people. The rally was peaceful and inspiring due to some great speeches by Amy Oliver, Jon Caldara, and...

Do you work for a small business in Colorado?

Do you work for a small business in Colorado? Most Coloradans do! John Hickenlooper started as a small business owner. He brewed beer. His brewpub biz got so big that he forgot what it's like to work for or own a small business. Indeed, he forgot what it's like to own a business. John Hickenlooper became a government union man! He went where the campaign contributions are—the executive suites of Colorado's unions. Now John Hickenlooper wants you to pay higher taxes. He's drunk with power. And he wants more power. He wants you to elect him governor. He doesn't care about your small business. He doesn't care about your job. John Hickenlooper cares about his job and his political career. Not about you or your job. John Hickenlooper cares about the jobs of government workers. His job and government workers' jobs are expensive. Very expensive. That's why John Hickenlooper wants you to pay more taxes. He wants you to payer higher taxes for more government. He wants to hire more government workers and unionize all of them. He wants you to pay very high taxes. Like in California. Even if you don't have a job! John Hickenlooper's rich and famous. Make him powerful, too. If you want to be unemployed and pay high sales taxes, property taxes and car taxes, vote Democrat.

Stop the ‘Amazon Tax!’

The Colorado legislature and governor recently imposed a new law saddling online retailers and their customers with severe tax liabilities and red tape. But the only way Colorado can try to tax an out-of-state company (such as Amazon) is if that compan...

Another Good Site with School Choice Information for Colorado Parents

I’m pretty partial (OK, I’m very partial) to the School Choice for Kids website (or Opcion Escolar Para Ninos, en espanol) as an invaluable source of information for parents in Colorado who want to exercise their educational options. But it’s not the only source out there. Denver’s Piton Foundation and 9 News have teamed up to [...]

Amazon Tax will put mom and pop e-commerce shops out of business, enrich union leaders

What Democrats don't get is that the Amazon Tax will destroy mom and pop shops and small business jobs in Colorado and across the country. It won't bring business to Colorado retailers, but it will hurt their online businesses. Amost every brick and mortar store also has a web site that sells out of state. If every state follows Colorado's lead, the cost of the software and staff needed to comply with the Amazon tax will be prohibitive for most small mom and pop shops. To comply with states' sales tax laws, online merchants have to buy services that track not just states' sales taxes, but also sales taxes imposed by municipalities and counties. Then they have to buy and maintain software that makes sure that they collect taxes from customers and remit those taxes to the states and their municipalities. It's very complicated and time-consuming to comply with such laws. So millions of mom and pop shops will just shut down their internet businesses because the cost of complying with the Amazon Tax will be prohibitive. The winners will be Amazon and other big companies that can afford the software and staff required to comply with the Amazon Taxes. Under Obama, of course, unions want to pass card check laws that would make it easier for unions to organize Amazon and other big online merchants. So the Amazon tax would enrich union leaders. The Amazon Tax would increase sales tax revenues for the states until it wouldn't. For as small businesses dropped their e-commerce businesses because they couldn't afford to comply with the Amazon tax, their incomes would fall, reducing states' income tax revenues. They would lay people off. That would cost more income taxes and increase unemployment benefits costs. What we have here are power-greedy, tax and spend Democrats putting their political interests ahead of the interests of millions of mom and pop shops and other small businesses. Democrats always have been anti-small business because they hate people who take risks, make money and make them look weak, stupid and dependent. The Amazon Tax just punctuates the anti-small business instincts of the left. LINKS: Amazon Tax laws signal business unfriendliness and will worsen short-term budget problems. Joseph Henchman, Tax Foundation special report. Colorado Senate Majority Leader John Morse goes all Shakespearian on Amazon.com. By J. L. James. Amazon fallout for Colorado Dems. By Ben DeGrow. Stop the 'Amazon tax'! Ari Armstrong. Online tax issue needs federal fix; Though frustrating, Amazon's decision to drop state affiliates wasn't surprising and shows a need for much broader solutions. Denver Post editorial. Colo. Governor Bill Ritter Shows DA Roots: Treats Amazon Like Criminal Defendant for Affiliate Move. Ex-Pat Ex-Lawyer.

Republicans blast Democrats for anti-small business Amazon tax

The Democrats' "Amazon Tax" has put them on the defensive in Colorado's legislature where the Republican minority is demanding that the anti-small business tax be repealed immediately. Tax and spend Democrats are trying to blame Amazon, not their tax, for dropping its Colorado affiliates because of the tax. As an Amazon customer who's never bought anything on Amazon.com through an affiliate, I really don't care. As a retired small business owner who was an Amazon affiliate and found the relationship worthless, I really don't care. As a small-government conservative, I find it amazing that Colorado Democrats are so willing to offend Colorado's small business owners and their workers. Why are the Democrats so willing to tag themselves as the anti-small business party? Are Democrats and their union supporters trying to help big businesses by driving the mom and pop shops out of business? Are they just trying to put more people on unemployment so they can pretend to help them with more expensive unemployment benefits? Please click on the headline to see my questions about the tax, Amazon and affiliates:

Taxpayers for Liberty: Who Is This Group Playing in U.S. Senate Race?

Update: Scanned copy of the March 5 Taxpayers for Liberty letter posted below. Yesterday I received a strange mailing from a group called Taxpayers for Liberty. (Many of my fellow conservative, politically-active Colorado friends likely received the same.) It’s a self-described 501c4 organization with a Denver P.O. Box and an executive director named Andrew O’Neill — [...]

Defeat ObamaCare’s “moral narrative”

Paul Hsieh, M.D. writes: The key is Obama’s declaration, “I don’t know how this plays politically, but I know it’s right.” Ultimately, Obama and his liberal base believe that government-guaranteed health care is a “moral imperative” — i.e., “it’s right.” And that will also be the key to defeating it. As Leonard Peikoff [...]

Amazon Fallout for Colorado Dems

Despite the best efforts of Colorado statehouse Democrats to turn around and point the fingers at the e-e-e-eeevil Amazon.com, they (with the exception of Sen. Gail Schwarz) are all responsible for paying no heed to the warnings and ultimately killing many small Colorado Internet businesses. Speaking of difficulty in taking responsibility, WhoSaidYouSaid has posted a YouTube [...]

Colorado Senate Majority Leader John Morse Goes All Shakespearian on Amazon.com

Master Thespian John Morse, Colorado Senate Majority Leader, goes off on a rant over Amazon.com’s small act of defiance against his tax increase and privacy invasion. This is so laughable it has to be seen to be believed/appreciated: For those who don’t know, the Democrat-controlled Colorado legislature two weeks ago passed what have come to be [...]

Kathleen Conti will challenge Rep. Joe Rice in Colorado house district 38; Rick Gillit drops out

Littleton Republican Kathleen Conti will challenge Democrat Rep. Joe Rice in state house district 38. Rick Gillit, a member of of the Englewood city council, has dropped out of the race for the GOP's nomination to challenge Rice. Conti owns a small business. Tom Munds reports, Conti has an extensive business background. She built two successful businesses over the past two decades and now is a principal associate for SMM Foods. She and her husband operate their office out of her home while the manufacturing facility is in Golden. The Republican challenger and her husband Ralph have lived in the Denver metro area for years and moved to Littleton in 2007. They have two sons, Andrew, 20, and David, 18. Conti said she has been active in grassroots movements more than in the regular Republican Party events. She also has been active in the community. Her activities include a trip as a volunteer to help the Haitian earthquake victims.

Arapahoe County commissioner: Jim Dyer won’t seek re-election, Nancy Sharpe, Lauri Clapp want job

Arapahoe County Commissioner Jim Dyer, a Republican and a former state senator, won't seek re-election in district two. Greenwood Village Mayor Nancy Sharpe and former State Rep. Lauri Clapp will seek the GOP's nomination to succeed him. The race is expected to be spirited. Sharpe is highly respected and very popular, and she's expected to have little trouble raising money for her campaign. Clapp lost a race for the state Senate in 2008, which wasn't a good year for Republicans. Dyer is supporting Sharpe and explained why to Lynn Bartels. Impact graphs from Bartels: Dyer said he is backing Sharpe, saying Clapp would be a “disaster” and he fears if she wins the nomination, Democrats will take the seat in November. He charged that Clapp ran a lackluster Senate campaign in 2008, and lost what had been a Republican seat to Democrat Linda Newell “I worked very hard in that campaign,” Clapp countered. “It just wasn’t a very good year for Republicans. “I have a very good reputation in Arapahoe County. I have an excellent reputation as a legislator. Not only am I going to win this primary, I am going to win in November.

Colorado Attorney General John Suthers endorses Jane Norton for U.S. Senate

Colorado Attorney General John Suthers has endorsed former Lt. Governor Jane Norton for the U.S. Senate. “Jane Norton is a person of principle and integrity, and I am certain she will be an exceptional representative for the citizens of this state in the U.S. Senate,” commented Suthers. “She has a proven track record of experience in tackling and solving big issues, and I believe she is the right person to stand up for Colorado’s law enforcement community in our nation’s capitol," he said. “Jane Norton is just what we need in the U.S. Senate: a Colorado conservative,” continued Suthers. “She will be a strong voice for common sense solutions to the challenges we face,” he said. “The people of Colorado couldn’t ask for a better Attorney General than John Suthers,” said Norton in a press release. “He is a true statesman and model of how to solve law enforcement challenges through cooperation and hard work. I am proud to have his backing as we continue to work to return Colorado values to the United States Senate." Suthers who so far is running unopposed for re-election as attorney general, is a former U.S. Attorney and former member of Governor Bill Owens’ cabinet. He currently serves on the executive committee of the National Association of Attorneys General and as chairman of the Conference of Western Attorneys General.

Big Day Tomorrow… Come Out and Join Us!

Tomorrow is a big day in the land of liberty. We’ve got two events going on, back to back. The first is Taxpayer Day at the Capitol. The Independence Institute is proud to join forces with Americans for Prosperity and other liberty minded organizations including The 9-12 Project Colorado Coalition, The Gadsen [...]

The Democrats’ Strategy for 2010

Only a few months into 2010, the Democrat Party’s strategy for November is emerging. Just like the CPSU, the Democrat Party has become a centralized party: as an outsider, I’m not sure who’s in charge–the DNC or OFA–but clearly they work together for the common goal. The first step is to clear the path for the [...]

PPC-SPAN: Congressional District 4 Candidate Search 2010

PPC can only make event coverage like this possible through the generosity of viewers like you! (unlike the lefties, we ARE NOT funded by any outside group):

Enhanced Teacher Training Short-Term Answer, Online Technology is Future

Are great teachers just born that way, or is there a proven method to train many instructors to become much more effective? In one of the most fascinating (and longest) education articles out there, Elizabeth Green wrote in the New York Times Sunday magazine about “Building a Better Teacher.” The experts she talked to suggest [...]