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Ritter policies mirror Obama's

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Monday headlines in newspapers across the nation proclaimed, “Conservatives score big wins in European Union parliament voting in France, Germany and many other nations.” But this is the opposite of what is happening in the United States as our government appears to be rushing toward an ultra liberal, socialist (or dare we say Marxist agenda) faster than a soft ice cream cone drips onto the hands of a child on a 100 degree summer day in middle America.

And it doesn’t stop in Washington, D.C. Colorado Governor Bill Ritter in his 2006 campaign (and United States Senator Ken Salazar in his 2004 campaign, for that matter) “ran to the right” with a somewhat non-offensive, mild agenda. With no record to run on they both appeared to be palatable candidates to many. What followed in the ensuing years, by any definition and to their detriment, was a liberal, far left agenda and list of accomplishments that would make Marx, Joseph Stalin, Lenin and Hugo Chavez proud. One historical internet reference to socialism suggests that ‘Socialism, to Marxists, is simply the transitional phase between capitalism and a higher phase of communist society.’ Is that the direction you want our State or our Country pursue?

Early this year, and again last week, conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh said that he hoped that President Obama would fail. Liberal members of Congress fell all over themselves rushing to open microphones provided by willing media and stating their outrage as to how Limbaugh could wish such a thing upon our President. But we know it was not a personal attack on our president but, rather, Rush’s opinion that President Obama’s policies will destroy this nation. He is entitled to his opinion.

The sad reality is that within his first twenty weeks as President, Mr. Obama’s actions have created a tectonic plate shift perhaps one hundred times greater than the history making 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake with regard to the long-lasting effect in will have on our nation’s economy. Additionally, more than one million lives were lost between the Shaanxi, China 8+ magnitude earthquake of 1556 A.D. (830,000) and the December 26, 2004 Sumatra 9.1 magnitude earthquake (227,898). Yet the economic disaster being crafted by current Administration policies and actions in Washington, D.C. will negatively affect the lives of tens of millions of U.S. citizens for generations to come.

The late Dr. Adrian Rogers (1931-2005) observed "You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is about the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it."

Americans voted for “the change we need,” and the change we have experienced in the last four months is more than enough to send our collective heads spinning…and more than enough for a Hollywood producer to consider a remake of “Poltergeist.”

In our own backyard, in Colorado, many are paraphrasing Mr. Limbaugh’s remarks by hoping that Governor Ritter, or to be clear his agenda, will fail. Running to the right in 2004, legislating from the left since, and now beginning his 2010 re-election efforts from the middle as a moderate, makes it quite clear that he is the consummate politician…speaking out of both sides of his mouth. While some would suggest this is fraud it is, in the very least, disingenuous. Governor Ritter’s movement on his political positions gives new meaning to "Where in the world is Waldo,” or more recently “Where in the world is Matt Lauer?” Where in the world is Governor Ritter?

Former Colorado State Senate leader Mark Hillman, in the June 8, 2009 edition of Capital Review observation of President Obama stated “His actions, as well as his words, betray him.” The same can be said for Governor Ritter and his cronies and their out-of-control, reckless and irresponsible spending habits.

In 2009: · Governor Ritter and his cronies eliminated the Senior Property Tax Exemption for approximately ten percent of the population, or 450,000 senior citizens. · Governor Ritter and his cronies created a brand new State Fee on Marriage License applications of $20, for NO services rendered; this to be added to the $10 fee a county office gets for providing the service. · Governor Ritter and his cronies created a brand new State Fee for late vehicle registrations. Previously counties could charge up to $10, one time, for late registrants. Now the State wants up to $90 more for late registrations. · Governor Ritter and his cronies raised motor vehicle fees for everyone. · Governor Ritter and his cronies have created a new surcharge for roads and another for bridges. · Governor Ritter and his cronies have forced through a green vehicle bill. I prefer white or silver vehicles. · Governor Ritter and his cronies have passed a bill to eliminate the ability of any vendor to retain any amount of state sales tax revenues to compensate for the vendor’s expenses incurred in the collection and remittance of the tax revenues to the state. · Governor Ritter and his cronies believe illegal immigrants are ‘entitled’ to in-state tuition, and · Governor Ritter and his cronies repealed the long-standing state measure which placed a 6 percent annual growth limit on appropriations to the state’s general fund with excess monies diverted to two spending areas. This, to many, destroys The Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights (TABOR), passed in the early 1990s, which took tax-increasing authority away from the Legislature and gave it to the voters. Voters down in El Paso County should note that Senator John Morse was the bill’s primary sponsor.

The list of irresponsible spending and fee happy legislation goes on and on.

It is also worth mentioning that Governor Ritter’s hand-picked Chairman of the 2008-2009 Election Reform Commission said in November 2006 that “access to the ballot for everyone is more important that determining their eligibility to vote.” Really? Really.

The fabric of our great nation is being destroyed in a matter of months as surely as the original American Flag by Betsy Ross has deteriorated over the last 233 years. Thankfully, our flag has been restored and now resides in the National Museum of American History, one of the Smithsonian museums on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. We can only hope that our nation, too, can be saved.

President Obama and Governor Ritter, your reckless spending spree and policies are killing us.

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Obama Motors revs up

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President Obama claims to "have no interest" in running General Motors. He does so with a straight face - and the same monotonous cadence that he employs whether condemning North Korea for nuclear explosions or joking with Jay Leno. But his actions, as well as his words, betray him. The significance of the bankruptcy and restructuring of General Motors isn't that it happened but the way it happened.

His protestations notwithstanding, this is Barack Obama's General Motors. Just read from his statement earlier this month:

** "Two months ago, I laid out what needed to be done to save two of America's most storied automakers."

** "I made it clear that I would not put any more tax dollars on the line if it meant perpetuating the bad business decisions that had led these companies to seek help in the first place."

** "I decided, then, that if GM and Chrysler and their stakeholders were willing to sacrifice, then the United States government would stand behind them."

Which is more absurd - his implication that he is the embodiment of the U.S. government or that a former community organizer, part-time lawyer, part-time lecturer, part-time author, and fulltime politician knows beans about running the nation's largest automaker?

Then again, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid scolded the auto execs last fall for flying - instead of crawling - to D.C. to ask for a government bailout and then arrogantly demanded that they come back when they have a "viable plan."

Not that it's ridiculous to demand a viable plan. What's ridiculous is the assumption that the Speaker, the Majority Leader and most other Beltway politicians could recognize a viable plan for a 25-cent lemonade stand - much less a multi-billion-dollar auto company.

Remember, the reason government is funded by taxes is because it produces almost nothing that people will pay for willingly.

It wasn't necessary for President Obama to interject himself into these proceedings. As Commentary magazine columnist Jennifer Rubin points out, GM and Chrysler have had bankruptcy attorneys working on those plans for months.

"Why make this all about the president throwing his weight around and personally firing the head of a major corporation?" she asks.

The simplest explanation is that Obama wants these details signed, sealed and delivered to prevent their scrutiny in a court of law where, for example, the United Auto Workers Union would not get preference over holders of secured corporate bonds.

As Hans Bader points out at OpenMarkets.org, "the UAW will receive at least ten times as much value as the bondholders even though the bondholders are owed more ($27 billion vs. $20 billion). This is neither legal nor fair."

Which brings us to President Obama's oft-repeated claim that his decisions are guided by the way they "affect the daily realities of people's lives."

Well, the ordinary folks whose retirement or savings were ravaged by automakers' plummeting stock prices are suffering doubly from Obama's devastating policy to force them to take pennies on the dollar if their portfolio also included GM bonds, which were once considered relatively safe.

By contrast, the very labor unions whose bloated benefits and anachronistic job protection schemes put GM at a competitive disadvantage are now rewarded with nearly $10 billion and 17.5 percent ownership in the company.

While Obama says UAW will be required to make "painful sacrifices," the union boasts that its members will see no reduction in 'base hourly pay, no reduction in health care, and no reduction in benefits."

Might the $13 million that UAW spent on last year's election have tipped the scales in its favor? Heavens, no!

So, GM hinges its recovery on the marketing genius of politicians who gave us Medicare, Social Security, Amtrak, a 3.4-million-word tax code, and $11.3 trillion in debt.

It's hard to imagine how a fire sale administered without Obama's oversight could have been more destructive or more expensive.

Mark Hillman served as senate majority leader and state treasurer. To read more or comment, go to www.MarkHillman.com

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The Constitution is still the supreme law

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"We must never forget it is a Constitution we are expounding"- Chief Justice John Marshall Last week I discussed the controversy over the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor as Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, focusing on the standard for evaluating nominees. This week I will examine our Constitution, the basis for that standard.

Ours is a limited constitution, one that delegates powers to a federal government and denies certain powers to state governments which they had exercised to the detriment of our prosperity. It is necessary to recall these circumstances which originally gave rise to the Constitution in order to appreciate its authority and legitimacy today.

The Constitution did not come into being in a vacuum. What we now call the founding generation could not be sure that their nation would survive. Partly because of a suspicion of distant centralized authority and partly because of an attachment to their states, many Americans were far from assenting to a national government.

The Continental Congress (1774-81) and the Articles of Confederation (1781-89) were based on the good faith of the colonies until Independence (1776), and then the states which formed in that fragile union. Nothing of consequence could be accomplished without the approval of nine of the 13 states, and no independent and powerful national legislative, executive or judicial branches existed.

The major domestic threat to our nation was faction. The comparatively small size of the states which rendered them responsive to the wishes of their constituents also made them vulnerable to domination by majority factions determined to assert their rights but loathe to accept their responsibilities.

In the midst of a depression caused by the end of wartime production and the lack of access to continental and foreign markets, many Americans were broke and in debt. The war had been financed by an almost worthless Continental currency, made worse by the states' issuance of paper money as well. As debtors and their allies soon outnumbered their creditors, state after state passed laws which, in one way or another, repudiated debts.

Such legislative acts constituted more than an attack on the property rights of one class of people by another, as wrong as that was. They also sent a signal to nations from whom we borrowed money to finance the War that those debts were susceptible to repudiation too. After all, the same factions that controlled state governments dominated the weak Confederation Congress.

Reverence for the Constitution and the laws was not necessarily in the hearts of many of our ancestors at their moment of great crisis. How to counter this? As vital to the defense of our rights as a strong legislative and executive branch are, the courts have more immediate impact than either on the lives of our people. It is there that contracts are upheld and private property protected.

Thus, the Constitution, in Article III, provides for a supreme court, and "inferior courts" established by Congress, the judges of which hold their offices "during good behavior." When combined with Article VI, which declares the Constitution, federal laws and treaties to be "the supreme law of the land," binding every state judge, we gained a truly national judicial branch. This was soon to be the chief restraint on the states which, at that time, were coining or printing money, and passing bills of attainder, ex post facto laws, and "laws impairing the obligation of contracts."

It would be strange for the Constitution to permit at the federal level what had been curbed at the state level. Thus, the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution forbids the federal government from taking private property for public use without just compensation.

But since New Deal days, Congress has passed laws which have encroached on rather than merely regulated our trade and commerce. In other words, it has been doing what the states long ago had been restrained from doing by our Constitution. And just as it once took state judges of uncommon fortitude to resist what James Madison denounced as the states’ "rage for paper money, for an abolition of debts, for an equal division of property, or for any other improper or wicked project," so now it requires federal judges of equal fortitude to resist that same impulse in Congress.

For as Alexander Hamilton put it so forcefully, we must turn for the defense of our property and other rights to "courts of justice, whose duty it must be to declare all acts contrary to the manifest tenor of the Constitution void."

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From Europe, hope for conservatism

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The left in this country has made much of the big electoral victories that the Democrats won in 2006 and 2008 -- and for good reason.  Not since 1977, when Jimmy Carter swept to victory along with huge Democrat majorities in the House and Senate, has there been such lopsided partisan rule in this country. With Al Franken seemingly a lock to win the Minnesota Senate seat, the Democrats are on the verge of a 60 vote "supra majority" that is virtually filibuster proof. The immediate future seems to all be swinging the left's way, and all the things that come with it are now a foregone conclusion: major health care reform, tax increases, deficit spending and a spate of intensive, restrictive environmental regulation. But will it last? As we know, Jimmy Carter's 1977 victory gave way in just four years to the Reagan Revolution -- and though Barack Obama is much more politically sophisticated than was Carter, a former Georgia peanut farmer who was poorly schooled in the ways of Washington, there are many similarities thus far between the two presidencies. Carter took over after a period of eight years of Republican rule and in the wake of an unpopular war and scandal; his campaign was based on a promise to "change" Washington -- to clean up government and restore the nation's image in the world. The economy he inherited was suffering from high unemployment and high inflation -- and Carter's typical "tax and spend" policies made both worse. He oversaw the expansion of government with the creation of the Departments of Energy and Education, instituted price controls and rationing on energy, oversaw the bailout of a Detroit automaker (Chrysler) and pursued Middle East Peace by promoting the cause of the Arab states over those of Israel.

Sound familiar?

But it is not a lost cause, for as Carter gave way to Reagan, Obama's left-wing policies and programs may lead to a new conservative revolution.  In fact, there are now signs from Europe that the purported "death of conservatism" has been greatly exaggerated. As the BBC reports tonight, in European Parliament elections this weekend it appears that Center-right parties have made major gains: "Centre-right parties have done well in elections to the European Parliament at the expense of the left. Far-right and anti-immigrant parties also made gains, as turnout figures plunged to between 43 and 44%.

The UK Labour Party, Germany's Social Democrats and France's Socialist Party were heading for historic defeats.

  • French President Nicolas Sarkozy's UMP trounced socialist opponents, while greens from the Europe-Ecologie party also made gains
  • German Chancellor Angela Merkel's governing centre-right grouping lost ground but finished ahead of its rivals. The Social Democrats, Ms Merkel's partners in the grand coalition, saw their worst election showing since World War II
  • In Italy, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's centre-right coalition is ahead of the socialist opposition, with 36% of the vote
  • In the UK, the governing Labour Party is expecting a serious defeat, gaining its lower share of the vote for a century
  • Spain's governing Socialists were slightly behind the opposition Popular Party, according to partial results
  • Poland's governing centre-right Civic Platform has gained ground at the expense of the Eurosceptic Law and Justice Party
  • Early results show Portugal's ruling Socialists dropped a massive 18 percentage points, losing out mainly to Greens and far-left parties

It is no surprise, of course, that the UK Labour party under the inept leadership of Gordon Browne is in trouble, but the general performance of Center-right parties elsewhere shows that the leftward swing of Europe is now at a low-ebb. The victories in recent years of Sarkozy in France, Berlusconi in Italy and Merkel in Germany has put Center-right leadership in power in the three largest European states; should David Cameron of the Conservative party in the UK sweep to power in the next general election sometime in 2010, it will be a clean sweep. Granted, conservatism in Europe is of a different sort than that in the U.S., operating as it does within an extensive social democratic framework. But the fact remains that Europe is showing a fatigue with the kind of leftist socialism that has been in vogue there over the past decade.

Will the same thing happen here? Will America reject the big government policies of Obama, Pelosi and Reid in 2010 and 2012? Or will it take longer for the fatigue associated with big government, over-reguation and high taxation to set in?

My guess is that it will. Whatever Obama's personal popularity, the fact remains that America is essentially still a center-right country that generally dislikes both big government and high taxes. It won't be long until the honeymoon associated with the economic crisis of 2008-09 to run its course; Obama will soon own the deficit spending we are embarking on, and when Americans get a taste of Canada-style health care (and taxes), it won't be pretty.

It took Carter to give us Reagan. Obama will give us another historic opportunity to move the nation back toward individual liberty and economic freedom.

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