Archive for October 2nd, 2013

Fairness and Compassion, Liberal-Style

Posted by Joshua Sharf in Colorado Politics, Denver on October 2nd, 2013

One of the manifest failings of conservatives in the battle for public opinion has been to cede arguments based on fairness and compassion to the Left.  Conservatives care about fairness and compassion every bit as much as liberals do.  However, following the advice of Milton Friedman, they have been reluctant to make arguments on that basis. In part, this is because they pride themselves on making fact-based and (in the case of the more libertarian-inclined) philosophically clean arguments.  In part, this is because they consider fairness and compassion to be subjective, and a slippery slope to accepting the basic liberal thesis of an activist government.

Ultimately, this has been a mistake, leading many in the middle to conclude – incorrectly – that since conservatives only talk about poverty in terms of numbers, rather than people, conservatives don’t really care about poor or vulnerable people.

At Monday night’s City Council meeting, we got a chance to see what happens when conservatives make fairness and compassion arguments, and defend the poor and vulnerable.  Virtually every one of those testifying against the Bag Tax brought up the fact that it would disproportionately hurt the poor.  Here’s how liberal Democrat Paul Lopez, who was a strong supporter of Occupy Denver, responded:

 

If you’re on SNAP benefits, you’re food is paid for. If you can carry five bags, that’s fifty cents. It’s not that big of an impact.

In his manner, his style, and his words, he sounded exactly like every liberal’s caricature of a conservative talking about how the poor don’t carry their weight.

Here was Councilman Debbie Ortega:

 

You know, I get the Mayor’s concern about the fee and the impact to people. I just had the budget office pull for me a list of all the fees that we’ve done in the last two years, and we’ve got over twenty-three different fees that have been brought forward, so to say that we’re concerned about a 5-cent fee when – and, and that’s not all of them that are on the table. We’ve got some others that are being discussed right now. So I’m not real sure what the real angst is, about a 5-cent fee…

Wow, we’ve already jacked up fees on poor people twenty-three times over the last two years, so why do they care about about five cents every time they pick up some groceries?

This is what happens when conservative learn to properly point out that liberal policies hurt the poor the most, and conservative policies offer them the best chance at a better life. Liberals react by saying the same, tone-deaf things that conservatives have earned a reputation for saying over the last few years.

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A New Challenge to Amendment 66

Posted by Joshua Sharf in Budget, Colorado Politics, Taxes on October 2nd, 2013

Late this afternoon, a lawsuit was filed challenging the validity of many of the signatures gathered by the supporters of Colorado Initiative 22, now Amendment 66, which seeks to raise state income tax and create a two-tiered tax system for the state.

The lawsuit was filed in Denver District Court by a bipartisan pair of former state legislators, Norma Anderson (R) and Bob Hagedorn (D), and has not yet been scheduled for hearing. According to the press release by Coloradans for Real Education Reform, its primary charge is that the IDs of many of the petition-gatherers were not properly validated by notaries.

If upheld, this challenge could invalidate as many as 39,000 of the nearly 90,000 signatures ruled valid by the Secretary of State’s office. (Initiative supporters had turned in just over 165,000 signatures, of which just under 76,000 were rejected as invalid.) The Initiative needs a little over 86,000 signatures to qualify, so this section alone would invalidate far more than enough to keep the measure off the ballot.

Colorado had long had what was regarded as one of the nation’s least restrictive ballot access requirements for both statewide initiatives and proposed constitutional amendments. A 2009 law, HB09-1326, passed with strong bipartisan majorities in both houses of the legislature, tightened up those requirements in a number of ways. It contained restrictions on signature-gatherers, including those that are being challenged in this section of the lawsuit.

Part of the 2009 law requires that circulators sign an affidavit on the petition sections they submit, stating that all of the signatures on that section were gathered in their presence, and that to the best of their knowledge, the signers’ information is correct.

The revised section, Colorado Revised Statutes 1-40-111, reads that:

(C) The circulator presents a form of identification, as such term is defined in section 1-1-104 (19.5). A notary public shall specify the form of identification presented to him or her on a blank line, which shall be part of the affidavit form.

(II) An affidavit that is notarized in violation of any provision of subparagraph (I) of this paragraph (b) shall be invalid

The plaintiffs argue that in many cases, the circulator himself wrote down the form of ID that was presented, rather than the notary, as is required by law. This would seem to defeat the purpose of having the notary verify the identification.

The 2009 law also inserted language stating that, “that he or she understands that failing to make himself or herself available to be deposed and to provide testimony in the event of a protest shall invalidate the petition section if it is challenged on the grounds of circulator fraud.” This would seem to mean that signatures gathered by any circulator whose affidavit is being challenged, and who won’t or can’t testify for this case would be thrown out, as well.

While a 2010 lawsuit (Johnson v. Beuscher) did challenge the validity of some signatures under the new law, this particular section was not used in that suit.

It would also seem that the filing of the suit by members of each party, neither of whom has a reputation for anti-tax activism, would lend it credibility. Part of the reason for the late date of the suit is the late date of the filing deadline; signatures were submitted in August, and the Secretary of State only issued his ruling on the petition on September 4.

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