I am a proud graduate of the University of Missouri-Columbia School of Journalism but I am disgusted at the current state of my chosen major. Nothing should be more appalling to any journalist, or any U.S. citizen for that matter, then the prospect of more government involvement in the news business.

Consider the Federal Trade Commission’s “Potential Policy Recommendations to Support the Reinvention of Journalism.” A government agency suggesting the “reinvention” of news should frighten everyone. Freedom of the press is under attack.  Under the false premise of wanting to help journalism find a sustainable business model, the FTC actually wants more control over news gathering and dissemination including:

• industry “licensing” with “government’s help and support”
• “creation of government fostered pilot programs” to explore new business models
• a journalism division of Americorps
• more funding for public broadcasting
• grants to universities for “investigative journalism”

One big question comes to mind.  When government is controls the funding for journalism, who will be left to investigate government? What a disappointment we must be to our Founders.

There is no way to overreact to this “Discussion Draft.” As someone with a deep love for the First Amendment, I can only hope that the citizenry will muscle some collective outrage and bring a halt to the nationalization of information.

Colorado Democrat State Party Chair Pat Waak is simply glowing over the new jobs report that caused the stock market to tank today.  In the press release posted below, Waak claims that hundreds of thousands of mothers and fathers “here in Colorado and across the county were able to return to the workplace after a period of unemployment.”

Perhaps she missed the memo that most of the 431,000 jobs created were temporary Census Bureau jobs. But everyone else read it.  The Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeted more than 323 points, suffering its third largest decline this year and closing below 10,000. And at 9.7 percent, the unemployment rate is still well above the stimulus projected rate of 8 percent. Chances are it will go up again once the census jobs are complete.

She goes on to urge Republicans to join Democrats as they continue to expand government payrolls at the expense of the private sector. I doubt she will get many takers.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Contact:

Grace Lopez Ramirez
(303) 623-4762 x112 Office
(303) 877-8173 Cell
glramirez@coloradodems.org

Colorado Democratic Party Chair Waak’s Statement on May Job Numbers

DENVER — Today, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released the May jobs report.  In that report, the Bureau announced that 431,000 jobs were created last month, including 41,000 private-sector jobs.  As a result of that job creation, the unemployment rate fell to 9.7 percent.  As those numbers illustrate, national job growth is now a continuing trend, stemming in large part from bold Administration actions including the Recovery Act, tax credits for working Americans, extended unemployment benefits, and hiring incentives.  Those actions are putting money into the pockets of middle-class Americans and fueling economic recovery and job growth.  Over the next several weeks and months, President Obama and Democrats in Congress will seek to build on those efforts with additional recovery legislation, including by extending unemployment benefits for several more months, providing critical assistance to states, and expanding job-creating tax credits.

In response to the news on May’s jobs numbers, Colorado Democratic Party Chair Pat Waak issued the following statement:

“Today’s job numbers tell the story of the good news that echoed last month through hundreds of thousands of American households as mothers and fathers here in Colorado and across the country were able to return to the workplace after a period of unemployment.  Although our national unemployment rate remains far too high, we are beginning to emerge from the catastrophic recession of the last two years.  Even as we do, President Obama and Democrats remain committed to doing everything possible to promote continued economic growth and job creation.

“It is simply not possible to replace the 8 million jobs lost in the economic fall-out of the recession overnight.  However, today’s numbers illustrate that our country is now moving in the right direction, in large part due to the decisive actions taken by President Obama and Democrats in Congress to promote economic recovery.  We have come a long way from one year ago, and our economy continues to improve.  Gov. Ritter is taking aggressive steps to help Colorado regain economic health and restore economic growth and opportunity throughout Colorado. Companies continue to relocate to and expand in Colorado.

“In the coming weeks and months, Democrats in Washington will work to solidify that improvement.  I hope that Republicans in Congress can finally be counted on to put away their destructive economic policies of the past and join with Democrats in cementing positive growth.”

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A little noticed article in the Fort Collins Coloradoan raises some big questions.  The newspaper reports that bills introduced into both the House and Senate would provide tax cuts for small breweries such as the Fort Collins Brewery and New Belgium Brewing Company.  The purpose of both pieces of legislation is too make the breweries more competitive with larger breweries and to create jobs:

Paul Gatza, director of the Boulder-based Brewers Association, said research conducted at Harvard indicates that the bill would create 2,700 jobs in the first 12 to 18 months and an additional 375 for the next four years for the nation’s breweries.

‘A company the size of New Belgium could save around 12 percent on its annual federal excise bill every year,’ Gatza said. ‘For everyone else in the Fort Collins region, it would mean a 50 percent cut on federal excise tax.’

Congresswoman Betsy Markey, whose district includes both the Fort Collins Brewery and New Belgium Brewing Company , is a co-sponsor of the House bill.

Now for the rest of the story…

Does Markey’s support for tax cuts signal a change in economic and political philosophy?  Could the woman who voted yes on Cap and Trade and ObamaCare, two enormous tax increases, suddenly realize that tax cuts actually spur economic activity and create jobs? Color me skeptical.

Or could her support for the tax cuts be for a different purpose?  According to the Federal Election Commission, New Belgium founder Jeff Lebesch and CEO Kim Jordan donated $4800 each to her campaign. I’ll let you decide, but at least now you know the rest of the story.

Democrat senate candidate and former Colorado Speaker Andrew Romanoff doesn’t want to “politicize” the controversy surrounding the White House’s job offers if he were to drop out of the Senate race, clearing the field for Governor Ritter appointed Senator Michael Bennet.

Several stories worth reading:

Denver Post’s Romanoff confirms job offers

Email with job descriptions from White House to Andrew Romanoff

Politico’s White House stumbles

Politico’s White House wants to avoid primary

Couple of points: This type of political “horse trading” is unethical at best and illegal at worst. Time for a special prosecutor. In Colorado we don’t like this type of political corruption.  Second, this president sold himself as being above the political fray.  So much for Obama’s embrace of transparency.

In video captured by Who Said You Said, Congresswoman Betsy Markey asks “since when did hope and change become a bad thing?”

I’ll answer that. When the national debt exploded and now is over $13 trillion, more than $42,000 for every man, woman and child in the United States. And if they have the nerve to be taxpayers, then their share of the debt is more than $117,000. Throw in ObamaCare, “stimulus,” nearly 10 percent unemployment, cash for clunkers, card check,  cap and tax and other reckless spending, and I can honestly say that under this Congress and the Obama administration, hope and change are horrible things.

Taxpayers should write a big thank you note to the members of the Douglas County School Board. They had the nerve to say “NO” to the school bullies that defend the education establishment.

The Douglas County School Board won’t use taxpayer dollars to sue taxpayers for more — you guessed it — taxpayer dollars, according to a story from Face the State. The state’s third largest school district won’t join Greeley Evans District 6, the Poudre School District, and 15 others across the state in the Lobato v. Colorado case, a.k.a. “Lobatomy v. Colorado.”

Despite pressure from the Colorado Association of School Boards (CASB), the Douglas County School Board ultimately sided with Attorney General John Suthers who believes this issue should not be litigated but rather legislated.

Our board has taken a look at it, and we feel that the issue involved is properly dealt with by the elected Legislature, and not the courts, said John Carson, president of the Douglas County School Board.

Even without Douglas County, CASB raided taxpayers’ wallets to the tune of nearly $245,000 to litigate this case.

Thanks to my friends at Complete Colorado for pointing me to this story. You can hear either Todd Shepherd and Justin Longo,of Complete Colorado on my show every Wednesday morning at 9:30 a.m. on 1310 KFKA for a media wrap up including the most over and under reported news stories of each week as well as stories that could only happen in Boulder.

No regular readers or regular listeners can forget what the failure of New Frontier Bank did to our community.  I’ve said repeatedly how much I hate bailouts because government picks winners and losers, and Northern Colorado was slapped with the “loser” label.

A Fox Business report reminds NoCO residents of our “loser” status. Unlike NFB,  ShoreBank, a Chicago area community lender with ties to the Obama administration, will get a bailout rather than a notice of closure. According to Fox, some of the nation’s largest banks, along with the federal government, will pony up hundreds of millions of dollars to rescue ShoreBank. The bailout leaves some wondering if ties to the Obama administration helped secure rescue rather than closure:

The bailout has been controversial. Senior Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett served on a Chicago civic organization with a director of the bank, and President Obama himself has singled out the bank for praise in lending to low-income communities.

Another hundred million reasons why the federal government disgusts Americans.

Liberal Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper, Democrat candidate for Governor, claims a Republican Governors Association ad stating Denver has lost 39,000 jobs under his tenure is costing the state more jobs because the ad didn’t praise him. Seriously.  The Denver Business Journal reports:

The Denver mayor said the ads did not note that Denver had done better in retaining jobs than many other large cities in 2009. And he added that they are causing companies considering relocating to Colorado to think twice when they hear that Denver has lost 39,000 jobs, as the ads claim.

Hickenlooper, who is trailing GOP front runner Scott McInnis in the latest Rasmussen poll, then employed the universal mom-ism — “If you can’t say something nice about someone then don’t say anything”:

Hickenlooper urged that the gubernatorial campaign be one free of negative ads, saying that doing so will convince companies that they want to come to a state like that and will become “its own form of economic development.”

I guess in Hick’s world, the RGA ad would have said: Yeah we lost jobs but, hey, we aren’t Detroit.

I can’t take credit for the title.  It comes from Poudre School Board member Patrick Albright who, along with fellow Director Barbara Schwerin, had the courage to stand up against the prevailing majority that voted to use taxpayer money to fund Lobato v. Colorado, a class action lawsuit to sue taxpayers for more K-12 funding.

In an email to me, Director Albright described how he called out the school board for its hypocrisy.

The school funding system they seek to overturn is codified into law by the school finance act–this year it was HB10-1369. I asked “What did the Board due to oppose this supposedly unconstitutional legislation that you seek to overturn?” Well, here is what the Board did: We paid a lobbyist (Fofi Mendez) to lobby the legislature in favor of, among other things, passage of HB10-1369.

I asked them “Do we really want to spend taxpayer money to fund a lawsuit to overturn an act that we spent taxpayer money to lobby in favor of?”

The answer?

Yes.

Despite having eliminated 139 full-time employees and offered early retirement to another 63 in order to cover a $12 million budget shortfall, the PSD board decided to give $25,000 to the cause of suing parents and taxpayers in Colorado.

In addition to the cost, Albright cited his concern of an unelected judiciary deciding “adequate” K-12 education funding and the lawsuit’s “unspoken” purpose to further weaken the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights.

Director Jim Hayes won’t lose any sleep over destroying the only line of defense between parents’ pocketbooks and the education lobby. Albright provided what he called the “quote of the evening.” After Albright defended TABOR, Hayes explained how the voters were duped into voting for it:

You say the public has spoken. Well, I disagree. I think the public is naive and easily swayed and the money has spoken.

Poudre School District residents can take some comfort in knowing they aren’t alone.  While crying poverty, the school bullies in Greeley Evans School District 6 voted to do the same thing with nearly $18,000 of parents’ and taxpayers’ money.

A new video from Mothers Against Debt (MAD) puts our reckless spending and massive national debt into perspective.  We should be charged with child abuse and crimes against the economy.