Ryan shows up Obama

Paul Ryan's bold approach to federal deficits and debt will backfire, predicts Susan Barnes-Gelt in the May round of Head On TV debates. Not hardly, replies John Andrews; President Obama left a leadership vacuum on the fiscal debacle, and this lowly congressman has filled it. John on the right, Susan on the left, also go at it this month over the mayor's race in Denver, the politics of natural disasters, the 2012 presidential outlook, and results of Colorado's legislative session. Head On has been a daily feature on Colorado Public Television since 1997. Here are all five scripts for May: 1. RYAN TAKES ON THE DEFICIT

Susan: Wisconsin Republican Paul Ryan offered up a deficit plan that opened the garage door of opportunity to President Obama and Democrats in Congress. His proposal to privatize Medicare so inflamed his constituents– who voted him in by a 70% margin – that the national guard was summoned to a town meeting.

John: Nonsense on stilts. Where do I start? First, any uproar by the Wisconsin left was manufactured, not spontaneous. Second, Paul Ryan’s budgetary roadmap to keep entitlements from bankrupting the country is not only good public policy. It also exposes Obama as shallow and weak – a leader who has failed to lead.

Susan: My, my you’re cynical. Town meetings are orchestrated by the opposition? I wish the Dems were that strategic and well-organized! Sorry. Average people in both parties are horrified by cuts to programs they’ve paid into while the uber-rich and the Pentagon remain untouched.

John: The reason Americans gave Obama an electoral shellacking and fired Nancy Pelosi as speaker was that they were unhappy with the government takeover of health care and horrified at the impending fiscal disaster. Even then, the president refused to get serious about entitlements. More power to Paul Ryan for doing so.

2. RUNOFF FOR MAYOR

John: For Denver to be well governed as the capital of our state and region matters to everyone across the West. The campaign for mayor needs more energy and more honesty in the final round. The choices are Chris Romer from downtown and Michael Hancock from the neighborhoods. I like Romer.

Susan: Three surprises in the May election: A little known but very impressive young man won Hancock’s Council district – Chris Herndon beat political warhorse Chris Martinez. Debbie Ortega got a whopping 46,000 votes in the at-large race. And – less than 1600 votes separated Romer from Hancock. Hancock’s got momentum.

John: Denver is the economic engine for Colorado’s prosperity. It needs a dynamic CEO. Voters can gamble on Councilman Hancock, or they can hire an experienced businessman and dealmaker in Senator Romer. The race is neck and neck. I wish it was Republican vs. Democrat and a proper election with polling places.

Susan: Ain’t gonna happen. In two words – investment – banker. If Romer pins his strategy on his 25-years as a bond jockey, he’s –pass the marmelade – toast. People have no confidence in bankers and less in Wall Street. Hancock wins – trustworthiness, likability, authenticity and biography. Read my lips . . .

3. TORNADOES IN THE SOUTH

John: Life is fragile, community is vital, and economic growth saves lives. Those are the lessons from the Alabama and Mississippi tornadoes with their awful death toll. Nature’s random destructiveness should keep us from ever taking a single day for granted, or forgetting how much we need each other.

Susan: Yes and in the face of catastrophe, the convener of help is the federal government. The very same federal government Grover Norquist, chief manipulator of all things Republican, wants to drown in a bathtub. Political leaders in Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee and Georgia are undoubtedly rethinking their allegiance to Grover.

John: Such massive tragedy is not Republican or Democratic or political at all. A windstorm in Alabama or Bangladesh, an earthquake in Japan or Haiti, simply makes us weep for the victims. It also reminds us that developed countries survive these things better. Anti-growth environmentalism has a cost in lives.

Susan: The horrendous loss of lives and treasure isn't a political issue. But, the reality of response and recovery is political. It will cost hundreds of millions, perhaps billions to rebuild Tuscaloosa - not to mention the other places impacted. The federal government's row is critical. That's political.

4. 2012 PRESIDENTIAL RACE

Susan: The 2012 Presidential race is on. Fortunately for the Democrats, the tough economy, three wars and total beltway disarray are being eclipsed by the bombastic egotism of Donald Trump. This pro-choice, democrat-supporting buffoon has quickly replaced Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann as your party’s flavor of the month.

John: Obama and Trump deserve each other – two self-promoting con men, both hollow at the center. But Susan, you’re right. The president’s birthplace is the least of his problems. Barack the Great has not revived the economy, not made us safer in the world, not handled gas prices. He’s really vulnerable.

Susan: Obama’s successful targeting and killing of Osama Bin Laden is a game changer. Period. All the goofy birther nonsense, challenging his abilities as a leader, his patriotism and resolve are suddenly non-issues. And his call to George Bush before any public announcement was classy.

John: The TV speech never mentioning Bush was not classy. It was tough policies of the last administration, Guantanamo, interrogations, rendition, bitterly criticized by Obama but continued anyway, that finally took down the arch-terrorist. Nor does Bin Laden’s death lessen the Islamic threat. Defeating Obama in 2012 is still imperative.

5. COLORADO LEGISLATURE

Susan: Redistricting dominated this year’s legislative session. Despite the bi-partisan committee, neither party came off looking good. As in previous years, the courts will draw the Congressional district lines. Other than the shameful defeat of the bill giving in-state tuition to undocumented students, the session was a solid C-.

John: Thank goodness Coloradans voted for divided government. A Republican State House this year finally demanded budgetary sanity after four years of reckless tax and spend policies under Bill Ritter and the Democrats. I give the session a B. Hickenlooper even took on the teacher unions. Wisconsin, here we come.

Susan: Please John – you, former Colorado Senate President, know better. The state’s discretionary budget is tiny and voters weigh in on every tax increase. Both parties must stop kicking the can down the road and make some tough decisions. Divided government is fine. But where’s the leadership?

John: When you as a liberal say “leadership,” I as a conservative hear “bossiness.” Divided government makes it harder for politicians to butt into our lives – that’s good. And as a former senator, Susan, let me say this: Lawmaking isn’t easy. One hundred Colorado legislators of both parties deserve our thanks.

There is no political panacea

(Denver Post, April 24) “To the Colorado renaissance.” That’s the oilman’s toast to the steelmaker and the railroad mogul in the new film version of “Atlas Shrugged.” As Ayn Rand’s epic novel of capitalism finally comes to the screen, more timely now than when she wrote it in 1957, our state has a starring role. You never saw the aspens so golden, the individualism so heroic, the bureaucrats so villainous. Audiences applaud as the movie ends – with Ellis Wyatt having set his own oilfield on fire and gone off with the rebel messiah John Galt. His signboard of defiance to big government, “Take it. It’s yours,” brings railroader Dagny Taggart to her knees. Washington central planner Wesley Mouch has either killed Colorado’s ascendancy or delayed it. We’ll find out in Part II, next April 15.

The book is not great literature, and this isn't great cinema. But as an indictment of false collectivist compassion, it works. Let’s hope millions see it and wake up. My column of March 2009, entitled “When will Atlas shrug?”, foresaw stiff resistance to Obama’s redistributionist guilt trip. With the John Galt message in theaters, Americans’ defense of our liberties may stiffen more.

So far so good. Yet after emerging into the spring night and reassuring myself there was no smoke on the horizon from the torching of Wyatt Oil, I wondered how much real difference there is between the “Atlas Shrugged” movie and the sensationalistic sci-fi stuff like “X-Men” and “Priest” that we had just seen trailers for.

Fantasy is fantasy, after all: diverting at best, narcotic at worst. The energy time warp that could make Taggart’s trains dominant over trucks and planes by 2016, and the magic technology that could power Galt’s miracle motor, both of which “Atlas” asks us to believe in, only provide a stage backdrop for the superhuman intelligence, virtue, and charisma of John Galt himself.

It all requires the myth-spinner’s precondition, suspension of disbelief – and someone will have to tell me how that is helpful. The only basis for getting anywhere politically, economically, culturally, or morally, is practical realism about the limitations of the human condition and the imperfections of us all, not hero-worship and panacea dreams. Thirty disillusioning months of Barack the Great have surely taught us that.

Remember his megalomaniacal boast upon securing the Democratic nomination? “I am absolutely certain,” Obama said, that history will record “this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal. This was the moment when we came together to remake this great nation.” Right. Even if we did need the nation remade or the planet healed – and we don’t – this president has done neither.

Messianism is messianism: foolish at best, hypnotic at worst. The grandiosity of Barack Obama and the will to power of Saul Alinsky cry for relief. The country must be rid of them, and soon. But the antidote is not John Galt and Ayn Rand. The messianic similarities are too close. One political panacea can’t cure another.

The novel’s final scene (coming on film, year after next) tells how Galt “raised his hand and traced in space the sign of the dollar,” while nearby one of his disciples rewrote the Constitution. No sign of the Cross for the atheist Rand; no great reverence for the Founders either. Her secular religion, Objectivism, would improve on both. Right.

There is no political panacea, and most Americans know it. Those now observing Easter and Passover know it best. Keeping faith, civically and spiritually, honors liberty better than any cinematic shrug. It will not be the “Atlas” sequel on Tax Day, but the president’s dismissal on election day, that heralds our 2012 renaissance.

Wisconsinize Colorado? Yes!

(Denver Post, March 27) A useful new verb was coined the other day when Republicans joined Democrats to propose higher pension contributions by public employees and a union boss called it a “blatant attempt to Wisconsinize the Colorado budget process.” What a great idea, thought many a tired and worried taxpayer. Wisconsinize away, legislators – what took you so long?Statewide unemployment is record-awful, and metro Denver unemployment worse still. Why shouldn’t these job-secure teachers and state workers kick in a little more toward their comfy (but now shaky) retirement plans? As recession maintains its grip despite cheery official statistics, the dirty secret is out: Government employees at all levels across the land are better compensated than you and me in the private sector.

So, yes, by all means. Colorado should not only Wisconsinize downward its public pay and benefit packages, along with the union bargaining leverage that drives them. It should also New Jersey-ize transportation, Florida-ize health care, Utah-ize the schools, and Texas-ize the tax system. Other states are making hard choices for fiscal survival and economic revival – and doing it on the spending side, not with revenue grabs. We can too.

“Colorado cannot expect to grow its way out of its budget problems,” warned Charlie Brown, veteran of decades on the legislative staff and now head of DU’s fiscal think tank, in a much-noticed report last month. Our state has a revenue problem as well as a spending problem, agrees Henry Sobanet, budget director for Gov. John Hickenlooper. But do we really? It depends on your assumptions.

Former state Rep. Penn Pfiffner starts his fiscal slide show with a chart showing that total state spending from taxes, fees, and federal funds has never decreased in modern times. Never. Pfiffner is now with the Independence Institute, and he directed their Citizens Budget project, which published a “road map for sustainable government in Colorado” several weeks ago.

Working from a projected $1 billion gap between the trend lines for revenue and spending, his citizen budgeteers identified specific, realistic savings in K-12 education, health care, corrections, higher education, transportation, and pensions that would more than balance the budget – and bend the spending curve down in future years, so the structural deficit identified in DU’s study wouldn’t persist.

The resulting 168-page book (of which I peer-reviewed a chapter) plows through grainy detail in department after department until your eyes ache. No rosy generalities or unspecified “waste, fraud, and abuse” cuts for this corps of academicians and experts. No throwing grandma out in the snow, either. Their roadmap could actually get us home, provided we’re grown up enough to follow it.

“To assume,” says a bad pun and good proverb, “can make an ass of U and me.” Pfiffner and company reject the assumed inevitability of Sobanet’s revenue deficiency and Brown’s grimly rising graphs for spending on schools, prisons, and Medicaid out to 2025. They assume instead that we control our own destiny, in the problem of over-government as in every other area of political life – and all history is on their side.

Liberals such as Sen. Rollie Heath are so sure revenue is the problem that they want to raise income taxes and sales taxes. Conservatives such as Jon Caldara, who funded the Pfiffner counter-budget, are so sure it’s not that they’re proposing a tax cut. Reduce income taxes in the face of a doomsday deficit? How Reaganistically visionary. How Wisconsinish.

But then, Texas has no income tax at all, and it’s booming. Utah schools outperform Colorado with much larger classes. Florida Gov. Rick Scott turned down big money from Obama for a health-insurance exchange (which some Republicans here seem to want). New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie nixed that expensive tunnel. Grownups can do this stuff. Now is the time.

Raise or cut Colo. taxes?

Taxes in Colorado at this time of record unemployment should be reduced, not increased, says John Andrews in the March round of Head On TV debates. Maybe you'd prefer no taxes at all, replies Susan Barnes-Gelt satirically. John on the right, Susan on the left, also go at it this month over the fiscal mess in Washington and the mayor's race in Denver. But they're in rare agreement over Obama's Libyan intervention and Japan's triple tragedy. Head On has been a daily feature on Colorado Public Television since 1997. Here are all five scripts for March: 1. COLORADO FISCAL WARS

John: Liberal Democrats want Coloradans to pay more income taxes and sales taxes so politicians don’t have to control spending like the rest of us. They say it’s temporary. Fat chance. We should instead pass the competing proposal to cut taxes. That would grow the economy and create jobs as we face record unemployment.

Susan: Right. Let's eliminate taxes. Each of us can build our own roads. Home school our kids, K-12. Build our own university, public park, social service system, jail and hospital. We can change the state motto to "me for me, you for you" and have a tea party- bring your own bag, kettle, cup and burner.

John: Nice try, Joan Rivers, but you misfire with your satire. I pay my taxes cheerfully. They are the price of a civilized society. But the power to tax is also the power to destroy. In Colorado's case, the Democrats' tax increase would destroy even more jobs - and voters know that.

Susan: Colorado voters can decide whether or not they want to have great schools, higher ed, public safety, and transportation. Though the legislature can increase fees without the public’s approval, voters determine a tax increase. It may surprise you that Coloradans want to invest in themselves and the future.

2. WASHINGTON FISCAL WARS

John: With an exploding national debt and a deficit of 1.5 trillion dollars this year alone, America will be as broke as Greece unless we get some adult leadership now. Obama’s spending cut of 6 billion is pathetic. The House Republican cut of 60 billion is little better. I say 500 billion or bust.

Susan: I have an idea. Why don't all the Senators and congresspeople who want to cut taxes and abolish programs in order to stimulate the economy, quit their well-paid, richly benefitted public trough jobs and start a business and create jobs? $500 billion is nuts - unless we abolish the Pentagon!

John: Whoa, yesterday you wanted to zero out taxes, today you want zero out Congress. The sarcasm is heavy. We have too many zeroes already, Susan – too much reckless spending, on entitlements in particular. Tackle them as Rand Paul and Paul Ryan want to do, and America can still be saved.

Susan: Yes –and your party’s fiscal hawks are talking straight about social security, Medicare and Medicaid. Au contraire – they are quibbling over pennies when billions are at stake. The squeaky wheels get all the attention – at both ends of the spectrum. America needs a grown up in charge.

3. MAYORAL RACE

John: “Can’t buy me love,” sang the Beatles. Denver mayoral candidates Michael Hancock, James Mejia, and Carol Boigon hope it’s true, as front runner Chris Romer has nearly as much in the bank as the other three put together. Will the deep pockets win, or will the black-Latino-woman factor upset Romer?

Susan: Romer gets to the run off - money, name I D and Daddy. Boigon doesn't get there, despite the big bucks she and her spouse will put into her campaign. Linkhart has name ID, but no juice - a chronic elected with scant vision, leadership skills or backbone. Hancock and Mejia are vying for the second spot.

John: I was Roy Romer's opponent for governor in 1990. He waxed me. Now his son leads the race for mayor of Denver, where my son and daughters are building their lives and raising the next generation. Chris Romer's experience and leadership impress me. I wish I could vote for him.

Susan: Bet he’d welcome your endorsement. None of the top candidates has the experience balancing a complex budget, overseeing strategic investments or managing a large, diverse workforce. The race has no pulse. Denver voters must do their homework to make an informed choice.

4. DISASTER in JAPAN

Susan: An earthquake, a tsunami and the threat of massive nuclear meltdown. Japan is facing unfathomable disaster-8500 dead and 13,000 missing -so far. Radiation contamination threatens lives, food sources and long -term recovery. Though many will try to reap political advantage from this tragedy - it's too soon to reach definitive conclusions.

John: At our house this awful news was personal – my cousin’s family lives in Tokyo. Japan’s threefold tragedy and courageous response should touch all our hearts in a human way and engage our best thinking as citizens of a fragile industrialized society. But let’s avoid panicky reactions against nuclear power.

Susan: Recent events demonstrate there’s no fail-safe energy source: the Gulf oil spill, last year’s West Virginia coal mine disaster, the untold cost in lives and treasure spent to protect our mid-East petroleum dependence. Solar, natural gas, and geothermal combined with conservation must be in the mix.

John: There’s no fail-safe approach to life, period. Earth is a hospitable planet for mankind most of the time, and we are very blessed to be here, but it can turn brutally hospitable in a second. Japan’s ordeal is another reminder of worldwide human inter-dependence – economically, technologically, culturally, and yes, spiritually.

5. LIBYA

Susan: Qaddafi is a mad man and has been for 40 years. Does the US have vital interests in Libya? The despot has been guilty of human rights atrocities for 4 decades. Why are we there now? Obama promises no boots on the ground, but Qaddafi is a cornered animal - capable of anything. We cannot afford another war.

John: Madman vs. weak man. That’s the matchup between Qaddafi and Obama. Under this incompetent president, America has relinquished its role as leader of the free world. That’s what we cannot afford. US intervention in Libya, if any, should be purposeful, fierce, and decisive. So far it’s none of those.

Susan: U.S intervention in Libya shouldn’t be – period. We have no vital interest there – Our resources are spread too thin, with troops be deployed 5, 6 or 7 times. Qaddafi is a monster. But our abuse of American troops may be the real tragedy.

John: Making war is the ultimate act of political responsibility – or for this president, irresponsibility. Obama ignored the US Congress and took his lead from a UN committee, attacking Libya with no clear justification or plan. America these days uses force too often and too casually. Our Founders would be horrified.

Wrong Way Obama rolls on

President Obama has joined Mexico's side by suing Arizona for trying to protect its borders. He has joined unions in opposing the governor of Wisconsin, who is trying to protect the taxpayers. He has defied a majority of the people in this country who agree with God's determination of marriage between one man and one woman as his administration announced it no longer will defend the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in court. Where is the defiance leading and when will it end?