Hell No! We Won’t Go…to Obama Care.  Make Colorado a “sanctuary state” for free choice in health care. 

Jon Caldara, my boss at the Independence Institute, is calling for an amendment to the Colorado constitution that would opt our state out of the onerous health insurance mandates being forced upon us by the federal government.   Check out the Colorado Right to Health Care Choice Initiative ballot language.

Concerned citizens are rallying today (Tuesday, January 19) on the west steps of the Colorado state capitol in Denver from noon to 1 pm.   For more information visit Free Our Health Care Rally!

If you cannot attend but want to make your voice heard, visit my friend and fellow transparency activist Natalie Menten’s Web site where she has contact information for both the state house and senate, as well as our congressional delegation.

Just about the time I think pompous members of Congress and other elected officials at the state level have done everything possible to infuriate me, I read something like from the CBS News: “Copenhagen Summit Turned Junket?”  

Fifteen Democrat and six Republican members of Congress, their staff and their families spent hundreds of thousands of our dollars going to Copenhagen, including Colorado’s own Diana DeGette who bragged about her taxpayer-funded, all-expenses-paid “junket” in the Denver Post.  She concluded her second “dispatch” with this observation:

At the time of this writing, the final agreement has not yet been approved. It is almost certain that the final binding deal will not be reached in Copenhagen, but we have every reason to believe that we are moving in the right direction.

Thank goodness they don’t have a “final agreement.” It’s one of the few times, I’ve been thankful that wasting hundreds of thousands of taxpayers dollars resulted in nothing other than wasted money.

Or I read something like this about our state government: “Go on take a free ride.”  Parole bought more than 60 2009 hybrid sedans in the midst of the “worst recession since the Great Depression.”

Or this: “Road trip to Beaver Run Resort.”  Apparently Colorado spent nearly $300,000 on things like “official functions” and “customer workshops.”

If you really want to get MAD check out the US Debt Clock.

Is anyone really surprised at the anger that launched such movements as Tea Parties and 9.12 Projects or my new group Mothers Against Debt.  Please join MAD.  No dues.  No meetings.  Just a pledge to hold accountable any elected officials who recklessly spend our children’s money pushing them further into debt.  Let me know what you think of the new logo.

Congresswoman Betsy Markey’s pivotal yes vote on the controversial cap and trade legislation may come back to haunt her as she seeks re-election  to represent Colorado’s 4th congressional district.

Within Markey’s district is Weld County, the country’s  eighth largest producing agricultural county in the United States.  Reuters just reported that  Bob Stallman, head of the American Farm Bureau Federation, made the following statement about cap and trade:

American farmers and ranchers ‘must aggressively respond to extremists’ and ‘misguided, activist-driven regulation … The days of their elitist power grabs are over.’

Despite pleas from the global warming alarmist crowd, Stallman warned Americans that cap and trade would destroy farmers, ranchers and those who rely upon them.

Vast amounts of farmland could become carbon-capturing woodlands under cap-and-trade, “eliminating about 130,000 farms and ranches,” said Stallman. One federal analysis says 8 percent of crop and pasture land could be turned into trees by 2050 because trees would be more profitable than crops.

Good luck defending your vote Congresswoman Markey.

I love being right (on many levels)!  Back on June 23, 2009, I discussed Governor Bill Ritter’s “war on Weld County” and posted the following:

Thanks to Governor Ritter and his environmental policies, Weld County is seeing high paying jobs go to other states and its tax base rapidly eroding.  Ritter won Weld County in 2006.  He won’t win it in 2010.

Turns out I was right.  Of course, I did not anticipate that Governor Bill Ritter would not seek re-election and therefore could not win Weld County. 

Let the speculating and handicapping begin.   Wise conservatives will realize Ritter’s exit is not necessary good news for the Republicans.   He would have lost.

My friend and fellow blogger Randy Ketner, a.k.a.  Night Twister, did an extensive (and very good) analysis of Colorado’s political landscape for 2010.   Check it out at RedState.com.  For an analysis of Colorado’s state house and state senate visit my friend Ben DeGrow at Mount Virtus.  Both are must reads!

Governor Bill Ritter spent more than $200,000 on TV, photographs and videos of himself, an Associated Press investigation revealed.   According to AP, “taxpayers paid that amount for photos of the Democratic governor signing bills and attending a lavish production for the state film commission.”

Evan Dreyer, the Governor’s spokesman, says Ritter is simply “meeting increased demand” from social networking sites such as facebook and twitter as well as Web sites that are demanding better quality.  As a result:

Ritter’s official state Web page features 31 pages of photos of the governor, and he invites people to download them as well as videos from his galleries. Some were taken by state employees, while others were paid for by taxpayers. Among them: A video of Ritter at the National Western Stock Show that cost $375, and $200 in taxpayer-paid photos of Ritter signing a job creation bill in May.

Is this expenditure going to bankrupt the state? No, but as my boss at the Independence Institute Jon Caldara said, “this shows an arrogance on Ritter’s part that it’s OK to do self-promotion at taxpayer expense.”

It’s been a while since I’ve written about  the economic “fiasco” we’ve come to know as New Frontier Bank.  The Denver Post published a lengthy, two-part investigative piece on the billion dollar failed bank.  (Part 1 and Part 2)

The Post investigation found:

• With government inspections looming, the bank’s loan officers rewrote terms of delinquent loans, disguising steady asset deterioration, according to a former board member and records.

• New Frontier Bank executives staved off an effort by the bank’s federal regulator, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., to ban one of its high-performing loan officers accused of fraud at a previous bank. Later, that officer was convicted of theft for stealing deposits at New Frontier.

• The bank’s board authorized a $400,000 payment to one of its members whose used-car business was in financial trouble, sources said, despite a state law barring preferential treatment for bank insiders.

• After regulators told New Frontier in 2008 it needed to raise cash, bankers issued loans to at least a dozen borrowers who in turn agreed to buy stock in the bank. Such transactions can be illegal if coercion is proved.

Perhaps most important is this line:  “A federal probe into potential fraud at New Frontier is underway by the Justice Department.”  This is good news.  Taxpayers, northern Colorado residents and small businesses would like to know if we are the only ones who will have to pay the price for Colorado’s largest bank failure.

Taxpayers in Greeley will be happy to know that the city has placed online a wealth on information. On the city’s new transparency page visitors will find everything from the employee pay schedule to financial reports including the check registry.   The city even included a link with information on where to direct an open records request.

City Manager Roy Otto made a good point in a prepared press release.  He said, “During and after the last election cycle City Council members noted that they could not find this type of information on the City’s website. In fact, the information was there, it was just difficult to find.”  

Otto is correct.  Many governments provide information but it is difficult to find.  Making it easier to access is a large component in transparency.

Now, let’s hope Greeley Evans School District 6 be next.

As reported in COST, another blog to which I contribute, the Greeley Evans District 6 school board still disrespects taxpayers.  It recently defeated a modest transparency proposal from new school board member Brett Reese.  Reese asked that every school district transaction over $1000 be posted online for taxpayers to see.  D6 members Judy Kron, Mark Hinze and Linda Trimberger voted against.  That means Reese, Doug Kershaw and Bob Stack voted in favor.

But wait!  Bob Stack? He has a well-documented history of opposition to transparency.  In comments on the Greeley Report, Reese revealed his theory about why Stack voted yes.

I also quietly scribbled a note to my neighbor, Bob Stack after the vote, “nice job saving your skin”.  Work session he voted against it, in public, he voted for it. Another flip-flopper?

Make some popcorn and pull up a chair.  School board meetings have become “Must See TV.”

Veronisque De Rugy, senior research fellow with the Mercatus Center at George Mason University and my newest hero, warns in her latest article, “Starting in 2012, the cost of the debt as a percentage of GDP will explode from a mere 1.8 percent of GDP to more than 30 percent of GDP in 2082.”

She goes on to explain what this means for her daughter Juliette:

To give you an idea of what this means, if I get to retire at 65, in 2035, the cost of debt will have more than tripled from 1.8 to 7.5 percent of GDP. And by the time my daughter Juliette retires, in 2070 (assuming that she is still allowed to retire at 65) the cost of the debt will have reached 23.8 percent.

What does that mean in dollars?

To put these numbers in perspective, Edmund Andrews writes in the New York Times that this means an additional $500 billion a year in interest payments in less than 10 years, which is ‘more than the combined federal budgets this year for education, energy, homeland security, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.’

If you are worried about your child’s future, please get MAD and join Mothers Against Debt.  Be on the lookout for announcement from MAD.

Check out the Big Red Calculator, the only calculator that accommodates trillions and the official calculator of MAD.