No, I don’t mean the implicit violence in depicting a boy and a woman symbolically torn in half.  I mean the Spanish. Where is the rest of the Spanish?

If you are a Colorado voter who can only read Spanish, all this flier from Mi Familia VOTA tells you is that Amendment 46, Amendment 47, Amendment 49, and Amendment 54 are “attacking our students” and “attacking our teachers”, as if paragraphs of dense legislative verbiage had suddenly metamorphosed into living beings and launched themselves on mindless gibbering rampages of verbal assault through the lunchrooms and faculty lounges of our local schools. Beyond the alarming (and dishonest) scare lines, there’s no explanation of how or why these ballot measures purportedly “attack” students and teachers.

Why, it’s almost as if Mi Familia VOTA didn’t see a need to give Spanish speakers the whole story. As if they just assumed the Spanish speakers would be easily alarmed and easily led to vote against these amendments. As if they felt the Spanish speakers didn’t require (or deserve?) any effort to persuade them - just marching orders.

Interesting.

It’s just as well, I suppose, since the arguments made (in English only) are so blatantly dishonest and deceptive that translating them would only have insulted the Spanish speakers’ intelligence, too.

On the page with the violently torn-in-half boy, Mi Familia VOTA alleges that Amendment 46 would prevent thousands of Hispanic students from attending Colorado’s best colleges. How, exactly? If the admissions standards and scholarships are racially and ethnically blind, and are applied in like fashion, the students getting into Colorado’s best colleges will be…Colorado’s best students. The right way to ensure representative demographics in Colorado’s colleges is not to perpetuate racial and ethnic quotas and preferences, but to make sure the admissions process is colorblind, and that an equally colorblind K-12 education system has prepared students who desire to go to college to earn, fairly, a place in a college suited to their interests and abilities, and to compete for merit-based scholarships to pay for it.

Mi Familia VOTA also claims to speak for all teachers here, by claiming that “the teachers of Colorado” are against it. Really? All of them? Surely there must be some teachers who recognize that Amendment 46 is a good idea – I guess their opinions don’t count. I think if I were still teaching kids, I would resent that.

On the page with the violently torn-in-half woman, Mi Familia VOTA trots out the standard leftist/union anti-capitalist boogeyman to scare (English speaking) voters into believing that corporations are going to take away the rights of teachers and hoard them up like magic beans to empower themselves to who knows what nefarious ends. (Big corporations – is there anything they can’t do?!?) But Amendments 47, 49, and 54 will not take away the rights of teachers or anyone else to fight for better schools – these measures protect the rights of teachers and others by preventing unions from forcing them to join a union as a condition of employment, save taxpayers money by eliminating the expense of collecting and processing the unions’ dues for them gratis, and protect all Coloradans from the effects of dirty campaign donations and quid-pro-quos by removing a corrupting influence from state government. What Mi Famila VOTA isn’t telling voters (neither the English speaking nor the Spanish speaking ones) is that opposition to Amendments 47, 49, and 54, the organization is tacit approval of workplace coercion, the state subsidizing of union finances, and continued corruption of public officials by special interests…that’s something they’d rather not discuss in ANY language, I bet.

And let’s be clear what is meant here by “fighting for better schools”: they mean government schools dominated by unions, with dues collected (at taxpayer expense) from teachers who often have little choice in the matter. Mi Familia VOTA is not fighting for the rights of individual teachers or even all teachers as a group, but to protect the power base of teachers’ unions, which all to often work against the interests of teachers and students alike.

(Hmm…how interesting. I inadvertently typed in the URL www.mifamiliavota.org, and it took me to an abandoned domain containing a page titled “People for the American Way“. Gee, you think maybe there’s a connection between Mi Familia VOTA and PFtAW? The About page on the .net site doesn’t say…)

An alliance known as Colorado Concern has emerged as a key player in the latest talks, which involve the terms over which labor groups would pull their four measures if business leaders help them fight three other measures including a controversial “right to work” amendment.

Talks began Sunday but sources said they were suspended Tuesday night at the governor’s mansion before a deal could be reached about how much money it would take to mount a concerted campaign to defeat three measures viewed as anti-union.

Talks began Sunday but sources said they were suspended Tuesday night at the governor’s mansion before a deal could be reached about how much money it would take to mount a concerted campaign to defeat three measures viewed as anti-union…

An e-mail, obtained by the Rocky and addressed to Colorado Concern board members, details some of the terms of the negotiations, including finding ways to get business leaders involved in advocating against the “right-to-work” amendment and the two others.

“We are asking ALL members of the Executive Committee to reach out to your respective networks to secure other individuals from the business community – whether affiliated with Colorado Concern or not – to help with this effort,” wrote Colorado Concern Executive Director Janice Sinden in the e-mail.

The aim seems to be to reach a compromise agreement by October 2, in which Big Labor would withdraw their ballot measures (Amendments 53, 55, 56, and 57) in exchange for Big (Statist) Business coming out in opposition to Amendments 47, 49, and 54.

Looking at Colorado Concern’s “Public Policy and Advocacy” page, I’m struck not by what is there (lots of talk of hobnobbing with government officials and politicians to promote “business interests”), but by what is missing: any mention of free markets, fighting against anti-business regulation, or promoting capitalism.  I guess when an organization leads the fight for massive tax increases and watering down property rights and ingratiates itself to a governor who is beholden to Big Labor by helping pay off his campaign debts, nobody should really be surprised when it looks to hold hands with Big Labor to oppose commonsense reforms.

• Amendment 47: Prohibition on Mandatory Labor Union Membership and Dues [PDF, page 43]
• Amendment 49: Allowable Government Paycheck Deductions [PDF, page 44]
• Amendment 54: Campaign Contributions from Certain Government Contractors [PDF, page 56]