The rising costs of Gov. Jared Polis’ full-day kindergarten program is part of an estimated $100 million in additional costs lawmakers will need to cover
Author: Mike Rosen
With their majority in both houses of the state legislature and the office of governor, Democrats exploited their monopoly on state government to ram through a measure that commits Colorado to a nationwide plot to subvert presidential elections. It’s called the National Popular Vote (NPV) Compact.
It’s a devious scheme to circumvent the Electoral College which was brilliantly crafted by our founders to conform with the constitutional republic they created, as codified in Article IV, Section 4 guaranteeing to every state a “republican form of government.” And decidedly not a direct democracy. The word “democracy” appears nowhere in the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence. The notion that we have a national popular vote for president is a fiction. What we have are 51 separate elections, one in each of the states and the District of Columbia. It’s only as a matter of curiosity that we tally the votes of those 51 popular elections to produce a national total. But it has no force of law.
The democratic principle of “one person one vote” applies more appropriately to the US House where seats are apportioned strictly by population; but not in the Senate where each state gets two votes regardless of population. Electoral votes for president are also assigned among the states to disproportionally favor states with low populations, and they’re cast winner-take-all (except in Nebraska and Maine) rather than proportionately based on a state’s popular vote. James Madison explained that, “The immediate election of the president is to be made by the states in their political characters.” That is, as individual entities not as members of any collective “compact.”
By Kimberley A. Strassel
Sept. 5, 2019 6:49 pm ET
The Planned Parenthood Reproductive Health Services Center in St. Louis, Mo., May 30.PHOTO: SAUL LOEB/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
This year’s Democratic presidential candidates have a favorite whipping boy: “powerful interests.” Get ready to hear again in coming weeks how the National Rifle Association rules Washington, how the Koch empire dominates politics, how the right is pouring “dark money” into its agenda. And then remember that these are among the biggest whoppers of the 2020 election. One side will do battle with the aid of a huge and savvy nonprofit political empire—and it isn’t the right. Though the sooner Republicans understand that, the better.
A helpful tutorial arrived this week, “Power Grab,” a new book by Republican former Rep. Jason Chaffetz of Utah. Mr. Chaffetz has been digging into nonprofits since his time as House Oversight Committee chairman, and the book details how powerful the liberal nonprofit sector has grown. It may surprise many Americans—those who read daily stories about conservative “influence”—that the likes of the NRA, Judicial Watch and the National Organization for Marriage barely rank by comparison to the assets and revenue of Planned Parenthood, the American Civil Liberties Union or the Nature Conservancy.
These aren’t only big political players; they’re the biggest political players. In 2018 the nonprofit watchdog Capital Research Center analyzed grants handed out in the 2014 election year by six big foundations on the right (including the Bradley and Charles Koch foundations) versus six on the left (including the Open Society and Tides foundations). Liberal public-policy charities, organized under chapter 501(c)(3) of the tax code, bagged $7.4 billion of this foundation money in 2014. For conservative charities, the figure was a mere $2.2 billion. That $7.4 billion also dwarfed total 2013-14 campaign receipts to federal, state and local campaigns ($4.1 billion) and spending that cycle by independent groups ($830 million).
Mr. Chaffetz’s contribution is to refocus attention on the way liberal charities channel their huge funds into political work that benefits the Democratic Party. We’ve long known that some of them engage in nominally nonpartisan voter registration, conveniently only in places likely to yield Democratic votes. The Chaffetz book adds new data highlighting contracts between liberal charities and overt political organizations.
The Adams County Commission during a lengthy public hearing about strengthened oil and gas regulations on Monday, Sept. 3, 2019. (Amanda K. Clark, Special to The Colorado Sun)Commissioners adopt 1,000-foot residential setback rules, double the state’s mandate, in package of measures passed after 5 hours of public comment
In the first test of new state regulations giving more control of oil and gas activity to local governments, Adams County’s commissioners on Tuesday adopted tough new rules including a 1,000-foot setback from residential areas, double the state mandated distance of 500 feet from occupied buildings.
Other measures passed by the five-person board include enhanced safety measures at well sites, the use of quieter and cleaner electric drilling equipment, and the identification of three alternative sites for each proposed oil and gas development that the county will consider with public health and safety in mind.
The Adams County decision came after more than five hours of public comment, including statements from residents, members of the oil and gas industry and environmental advocates.
“We take pride in being able to find common sense solutions and to proceed reasonably, and I think that’s what we are doing today,” Adams County Commissioner Steve O’Dorisio said. “We are establishing significant improvements to protecting health, safety and welfare while also showing flexibility in areas where we saw a need for greater scrutiny and more work to be done.”
But advocates for the oil and gas industry called the Adams County rules a de facto ban on drilling and said they push the limits of “necessary and reasonable” regulation described in Senate Bill 181, which this year rewrote Colorado rules for energy development.
“Senate Bill 181 granted local jurisdictions authority to regulate natural gas and oil development to an extent that is necessary and reasonable. Regrettably, many of the regulations of the code as adopted by Adams County today extend far beyond those which are necessary or reasonable,” Lynn Granger, executive director of the Colorado Petroleum Council, said in a written statement that, among other things, raised concerns about the county’s air-quality monitoring requirements. “As drafted, a number of the provisions leave more questions than answers, which in turn provides a great deal of uncertainty for operators in the county.”
(Reuters) – New environmental regulations in Colorado have chilled investment in the state’s oil and gas fields as companies grapple with how local officials will respond to a law giving them more power to restrict energy production.
Colorado now ranks fifth among U.S. states in oil production at about 500,000 barrels per day (bpd), up from just 90,000 barrels in 2010.
That boom, however, has come just as state politics has shifted to the left with an influx of urbanites who tend to oppose fossil-fuel development.
The Colorado law is one sign of pushback to the oil boom in the United States, which last year became the world’s leading producer, overtaking Saudi Arabia.
They had planned to ask voters in November 2019 to repeal and replace Senate Bill 181, but last week the Colorado secretary of state’s office rejected four versions of their proposed ballot initiative. State officials said the proposals violated a law requiring initiatives to address only one subject.
John Brackney, a former Arapahoe County commissioner and one of the leaders of the repeal effort, said the group decided not to appeal the secretary of state’s ruling and instead will wait to see how the new rules take shape before deciding whether to ask voters to overturn it.
The proposal, announced Wednesday by Gov. Jared Polis and Democratic state lawmakers, would set a uniform nicotine tax at 62 percent. That would lift the taxes on a package of cigarettes to $2.49 from 84 cents.
