Let parties compete locally

(Denver Post, Sept. 20) Some ideas are so dumb, they could only be in the New York Times. “One-party autocracy” in the world’s fastest-growing economy, China, has “great advantages,” according to Times columnist Thomas Friedman. Of course, you’d want the rulers to be an “enlightened group of people.” But Friedman certifies the Beijing autocrats are just that. Right. My subject today happens to be local government in Colorado, not central government in China. I’m addressing the problem of "suppose you held an election and nobody came" – illustrated by five metro school districts calling off their elections for lack of candidates. But Friedman’s howler is apropos. Our schools, transit, and municipalities will run more and more Chinese-style if something doesn’t change. The American way is not paternalistic rule by the enlightened. It’s two-party competition. Yet our state, like most others, bans such competition in elections below the county level. What’s good enough for electing legislators, governors, and even presidents – hot political rivalry between Democrats and Republicans, with other parties also in the mix – is deemed not good enough for picking the mayor, council, school board, or RTD Board. Why?

Nonpartisan local governance is a utopian relic from the Progressive era a hundred years ago. Scientific administration by altruistic experts in the “cities of tomorrow” was supposed to replace self-interested power struggles. Do you see any evidence that it worked out that way? Me neither.

Thank goodness the country at least retained a competitive partisan arena in which power could check power at the state and federal level. Imagine how many presidential terms such aspiring progressive autocrats as Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson might have wangled from our grandparents, absent a raucous opposition party to say “Not so fast.”

We know of nothing autocratic about Littleton School Board president Bob Colwell or RTD Board chairman Lee Kemp. Both are no doubt good men. But Colwell and two other Littleton incumbents will take another term this fall by default. No opponents filed against them, so the election was cancelled as state law provides. As for Kemp, he was elected unopposed last time. So were seven of his 14 fellow RTD directors.

Fewer than half the RTD director elections in the past decade have been contested races. School board elections are often uncontested as well. Districts in Aurora, Cherry Creek, Commerce City, and Adams 12 have joined Littleton in calling off their 2009 elections. The school boards association is “no longer surprised when races fail to generate interest,” the Denver Post reported.

Even when local citizens do get to choose between candidates, knowing what you’re getting isn’t easy. When voters in my city of Centennial mark their mail ballots next month, for example, they will have to rely on whispers to know which of the contenders for mayor and council are smaller-government Republicans or bigger-government Democrats. It’s like guessing on unlabelled canned goods at the food bank.

Localities tax and spend on our behalf in the many millions of dollars; schools and RTD spend in the billions. Vital ideas and values are involved. Public safety is involved. The stakes are too high to continue with these milquetoast nonpartisan elections. For better government, we should choose the responsible officials via party nominations and platforms.

Competitive political parties are the best idea the Founding Fathers never had. American self-government has thrived under them for two centuries, expanding opportunity and safeguarding liberty – not to perfection, but far better than the enlightened one-party Chinese.

Now Colorado should let the parties compete locally. Lift the lid. Gun the engines. The unions won’t like it; they make hay in the shadowy, apathetic status quo. The media will also object, fearing erosion of their dominance as information brokers. The Democrats, shrewder behind the scenes than Republicans, won’t welcome the change either. But it’s time.

Obama shortchanging defense

(Denver Post, Sept. 6) Peace and prosperity are what ultimately lift the polls and win national elections. A big reason why the president and congressional Democrats fear losses in 2010 is not just their unpopular health care takeover. It’s that many Americans neither feel safer nor richer in September of the young hero’s first year. Remember last January? Obama was going to exit Iraq, win Afghanistan, and tame Iran. His pork-laden stimulus bill and eye-popping deficits would “save or create” countless new jobs, keeping unemployment below 8% (it’s now in the mid-nines). He was hailed as the next FDR. But campaigning turned out to be easier than governing. Colorado has particular reason to feel bait-and-switched. Only about a thousand stimulus-related jobs were identified in the state by a recent Denver Post survey. Meanwhile our economy, long accustomed to strong defense employment and thriving military installations, sees zilch from a White House that loses no love for the Pentagon.

Never mind that when speaking at Invesco Field a year ago, the future president pledged to “rebuild our military” and proclaimed his “sacred commitment to give (our forces) the equipment they need in battle.” Or that Vice-President Biden, addressing Air Force cadets in June, asserted we need a “robust, vibrant, and growing” air arm, because “peace without military strength is an illusion.”

If Biden is right, and many of us believe he is, then his boss’s budget priorities are doubly wrong. They’re not only misguided for keeping the peace, and for war-fighting if necessary. They also miss obvious opportunities for recession-fighting and job creation.

“Everyone in Congress who is defense-minded, Democrats as well as Republicans,” says Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-Colorado Springs), “is astounded at the way defense is being slashed while dollars are thrown at everything else” in the name of economic stimulus.

The $1.2 billion Obama is refusing to spend on missile defense, for example, is “laughably small” in comparison with his projected budget deficits in the trillions, Lamborn points out. So the rationale must be an “anti-defense bias,” he believes, and not some theory of how to revive the economy. After all, FDR’s own military buildup following 1940 did more for prosperity than all his stimulus spending in the 1930s.

It’s bizarre to see this president flexing his political muscles to kill some of our most successful military programs and the jobs that go with them. His veto threat recently killed the F-22 Raptor program, which builds the most advanced, stealthiest, longest-range strike fighter in the world, and employs tens of thousands of skilled American workers. Lockheed, a major Colorado employer, will lose work as a result. The company may later enjoy big contracts for a successor fighter, the F-35 – but back-loaded stimulus is no stimulus at all.

By itself, the F-22 cancellation doesn’t prove much about Obama and the Democrats. Some Republicans sided with them, including military hawk Sen. John McCain, budget hawk Sen. Tom Coburn, and Defense Secretary Robert Gates. But this free-spending administration has been stingy on one weapons system after another – the F-18 Hornet, the next airborne tanker, the Future Combat technology for ground forces, and as mentioned before, anti-missile defenses.

Cutting the missile interceptors, warns Rep. Mike Coffman (R-Aurora), “poses a direct and grave danger to our national security at a time when we face threats from North Korea and potentially from a resurgent Russia and a nuclear-armed Iran.”

Agreed, congressman. But you are talking reality, whereas this administration operates on far-left ideology. It’s driven by Barack Obama’s fixation with green jobs despite their economic downside (witness Spain’s awful experience), and by his vision for “a civilian national security force that's just as well funded” as the military. Those notions may earn a rebuke from voters at next year’s election, which can’t come soon enough.

Sabotaging our competitiveness

“If a foreign power had done this, we would consider it an act of war.” So said a blue-ribbon panel, outraged by bad education policies. I say the same about Colorado Democrats’ economic mismanagement. Bill Ritter’s tax-hike threat this week is the latest absurdity. Now that Obama’s socialistic interventions and massive stimulus have failed to cure the recession, policymakers in each state must look to their own toolbox for policies to revive prosperity. Gov. Ritter, his legislative majority, and their liberal allies are making all the wrong moves at the worst possible time. Deliver us. There’s more than Republican rhetoric to back up my indictment. For witnesses I call Arthur Laffer, the father of supply-side economics; Stephen Moore, economist for the Wall Street Journal; and Jonathan Williams, fiscal analyst for the American Legislative Exchange Council. They’ve authored “Rich States, Poor States,” the ALEC economic competitiveness index for 2009.

The book’s findings should both please and worry Coloradans. For the decade through 2007, our economic performance ranked 10th among the states, based on personal income growth, employment growth, and population growth. ALEC’s data belie the lament that fiscal restraints are “strangling Colorado” (Susan Barnes-Gelt in a recent TV debate) or that tax cuts would make this “a state we want to leave” (reader Robert Schmidt after my Aug. 2 column on the car-tax backlash).

Mr. Schmidt can move away if he wants, should Initiative 10 with its reduction of income, vehicle, and phone taxes pass next year. But most people tend to vote with their feet in the other direction. Laffer, Moore, and Williams report that in the 10 states with lowest personal and corporate tax rates, population grew more than twice as fast as it did in the 10 states where tax rates were highest. “Strangling” indeed.

Overall, it’s clear our state was doing something right since 1997, despite shifting party control in the General Assembly and Governor’s office. Colorado families benefited hugely from what Laffer and his colleagues call the “shocking power” of tax and regulatory policy to lift or depress prosperity. Why now, of all times, amid a global economic downturn, would the Ritter crew decide to push every policy lever into full dive?

The “Rich States, Poor States” index puts Colorado 2nd nationally in terms of favorable economic outlook to keep gaining wealth and population, based on a scorecard for 15 variables. Eight of those measure taxation. The others look at debt burden, public employee burden, workers’ compensation, minimum wage, right to work, the liability climate, and fiscal guardrails such as TABOR.

The big-government zealots now in power could not be more backward in their handling of these levers if they were using a checklist. Democrats have raised property taxes and car taxes. They boosted the minimum wage via the 2006 ballot and blocked right to work via the 2008 ballot. They also tried an energy tax and a TABOR-buster in 2008. They’ll seek more debt and taxes for RTD in 2010.

They’ve added over a thousand jobs to state payrolls in each of the last two budgets, deficit woes notwithstanding. This spring they attempted to raid the workers’ comp agency, Pinnacol, and they’re prepping for another try this summer. Our Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, lauded by Laffer, is Dracula as far as Ritter is concerned. Reelect him next year and it’s gone the year after, he has said. Legislators are prepping for that as well.

If Coloradans let this economic rampage continue, Arizona, Utah, Nevada, and other highly-ranked states on the ALEC index will be quick to pounce. Our loss is their gain. Wealth will flow out of state as surely as water flows downhill. But what a fiasco, to sabotage our state’s competitiveness that way. What a shame.

Will car tax undo Dems?

(Denver Post, Aug. 2) Or will they undo it? Enroute to a defeat for governor of Virginia, the Democrat blamed his loss on “the slogan from hell: ‘No Car Tax.’” That was Don Beyer when Jim Gilmore beat him in 1997. Unseated as governor of Arkansas, the Democrat realized he had “unwisely raised the state motor vehicle tax,” writes biographer Nigel Hamilton. A visitor “found him on the floor, bawling like a baby,” and railing at Jimmy Carter. That was Bill Clinton after Frank White humiliated him in 1980. If Coloradans oust Bill Ritter in 2010, our gentlemanly governor will control his emotions better than Slick Willie. But his undoing could be identical to that of Clinton and Beyer – misjudging how mad Americans can get when government messes with their cars, trucks, campers, and trailers. Some genius, maybe the same consultant that’s charging CU almost a million dollars for logo design, coined the acronym FASTER for Ritter’s bill that boosted vehicle registration fees and late penalties, effective July 1. The bill is supposed to raise $250 million a year for roads. But the only thing that’s going faster so far is Republican hopes.

The surprise has people steamed. In a puny concession praised by Post editors, Ritter offered to roll back the late charges on non-motorized vehicles, such as boat trailers. Thanks a lot. In a defensive crouch panned by the editors, county clerks met citizen anger with canned complaint postcards and extra guards. The brouhaha is far from over.

The average additional hit of $32 per vehicle, or even the maximum penalty of $100, may sound trivial at a time when politicians talk in trillions. But like a candidate’s $400 haircut, a Pentagon platinum toilet seat, or that British parliamentarian’s moat-cleaning allowance, it’s the kind of crazy-making detail that infuriates recession-weary taxpayers.

Insult follows injury when you hear that the last two letters in FASTER – Rep. Joe Rice’s legislative masterpiece, which has GOP strategists taking aim at him – stand for “economic recovery.” Can Dems really believe picking our pockets is the right remedy in hard times?

Freda Poundstone, Republican former mayor of Greenwood Village, knows it isn’t. The grande dame of citizen petitions in Colorado, author of a 1974 constitutional amendment that bears her name and halted Denver’s annexation march, hopes to get on the 2010 ballot with a petition to halt the revenue grab. Her Initiative No. 10, currently gathering signatures, would cut taxes on vehicles, income, and phones – VIP for short.

Annual car registrations would be capped at $10, vehicle ownership and sales taxes would phase down, state income tax would drop from 4.63% to 4.5% with further cuts in fat economic times, and telecom taxes of all sorts would end. Colorado Tax Reform is the sponsoring group. I was an early signer.

Initiative No. 10 gains urgency from a little-noticed 2008 ruling of the state Supreme Court, Barber vs. Ritter, which effectively wiped out the inconvenient distinction between what’s a tax, subject to TABOR limits and voting, and what’s a fee at the legislature’s discretion. Unless we the people can win the next round of ballot battles and rebuild fiscal guardrails, Colorado could follow California over the cliff.

This election will be a doozy. Ritter wants rid of TABOR, even though Arthur Laffer and Stephen Moore in their new book “Rich States, Poor States,” crunch numbers to prove it’s been “a boon to the economy of the state,” tenth strongest nationally since 1997. But disgusted motorists may want rid of Ritter and his party. Then there’s Poundstone with her petition, and that Clear the Bench campaign seeking to fire four justices.

The political rehab for automobile casualties, where Beyer and Clinton once checked in, could be adding a Colorado inmate 15 months from now.

How Ritter got my vote

John's Denver Post column 7/19(Salida – Nov. 15, 2010) What a year it’s been. Who knew my fellow Republicans would be so unforgiving? Here I am, exiled from Denver’s red suburbs and hiding out in Ed Quillen’s attic, merely for having endorsed Gov. Bill Ritter in the recent election. Where’s the sin in that? It was an unusual move for unusual times. Since the fall of the economy and the rise of Obama, ours have been unusual indeed. Ritter “grew in office,” as they say, but he grew rightward and became that rarity, an irresistible Democrat. Smitten, I signed up. The family disowning me was harsh.

Our governor’s reinvention of himself began in late 2009. Democrats everywhere were getting panicky as the recession dragged on, prolonged by Obama’s clumsy mixture of taxes, regulations, bureaucracy, and bailouts. Republicans won the governor’s races in Virginia and New Jersey. Ritter’s poll numbers and fundraising were anemic. He fled the state, ostensibly for some golf at Hilton Head.

Then came the confessional press conference. Boy Scout Bill wasn’t vacationing in South Carolina after all. He had followed his heart to Chile. Stolen hours at the mansion with an old college econ book had nerved him for the secret weekend in Santiago, tutoring with Chicago-trained free marketeers. “My soul mate is Milton Friedman,” he gushed. The YouTube video got a million hits in 48 hours.

Statehouse reaction was mixed. Adam Schrager of 9News said Ritter’s rift with the White House made him the new Ralph Carr, a profile in courage. GOP chairman Dick Wadhams voiced suspicion, but admitted he’d prefer a Ritter roaming right to a Schwarzenegger lurching left. Speaker Terrance Carroll, an ordained minister, offered the governor pastoral counseling.

But as the 2010 session began, legislators had their hands full with what Ritter called his “New Democratic agenda on old Democratic principles.” He called for a zero corporate tax to attract jobs, a rollback of the unpopular 2009 vehicle fees, and a drilling-friendly rewrite of oil and gas rules. Dems should take their cue from the frugal Grover Cleveland, the tax-cutting JFK, and the deregulating Jimmy Carter, the governor said.

The ex-president was furious, however, when Ritter remarked on “Meet the Press” that Carter’s warning about “inordinate fear of communism” was off base. “My party’s much bigger problem, including the current president,” asserted Ritter, “has been inordinate fear of capitalism. I’m out to change that.” The Coloradan’s popularity shot up when the Georgian angrily counter-attacked.

“Our QB calls his own plays,” boasted a Ritter campaign ad after he rescinded the executive order for labor unions in state government, redirected money from Planned Parenthood to crisis pregnancy centers, and urged voters to toss four activist justices off the state Supreme Court. New York Mayor Robert Wagner, who once ran for another term on a reform platform against his own previous term, had nothing on our Bill.

Is it any wonder some of us Republicans decided this fearless troublemaker was worth reelecting, if only to bedevil Obama, Huey Long-style? Ritter was on a roll. He put Bill Owens and Hank Brown on an economic recovery board with Charlie Ergen and Norm Brownstein. He named Lt. Gov. Barbara O’Brien his school voucher czar and replaced her on the ticket with GOP Rep. Amy Stephens, whom he called “Sarah Palin South.”

Politically written off not long ago, the Democratic incumbent led as election day approached, bucking a national trend of revulsion against his party that looked to rival 1994. At the end, though, Ritter’s better-funded and more credibly conservative Republican challenger surged past him, and Colorado went red again.

Tough luck for our gamecock Guv, but no great heartbreak for me. This was one election where good ideas couldn’t lose. Can I come home now, honey?