Thus goes Rule #12 of Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals.\u00a0 And thus goes Sen. Morgan Carroll, chairman of the Interim Study Committee for issues related to Pinnacol Assurance, the state’s largest Worker’s Compensation insurer.\u00a0 Just moments ago, Sen. Carroll posted the following on her Facebook page:<\/p>\n

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There is no question in my mind that this is the beginning of an attempt to demonize the company, in order to gain public political support for confiscating its cash and subsidize the Democrats’ spending habits for another year.<\/p>\n

This legislative session, the Democrats floated the idea of seizing $500 million of Pinnacol’s reserve<\/a> in order to help meet the budget gap for this year and next.\u00a0 The idea was mercifully laid over in the House.\u00a0 But it passed the Senate 19-14, will Sen. Carroll voting in favor.<\/p>\n

Pinnacol is more than capable of making its own case on the merits<\/a>.\u00a0 But it needs to avoid the mistake that many companies make, and realize that this is a political fight, not a policy argument.\u00a0 There are far too many Democrats who see all that cash and immediately, their eyes fill with dollar signs like a character in a Warner Bros. cartoon.<\/p>\n

Grabbing for the nearest pile of Scrooge McDuck’s gold may be viscerally satisfying to those who, well, don’t have it.\u00a0 But it’s a horrifying idea for at least three reasons:<\/p>\n

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1. It feeds, rather than cures, the state’s spending addictions.<\/strong> No need here to recount the sorry story of Referendum C.\u00a0 If Ref C was a drunk running a tab, pillaging Pinnacol would be a smash-and-grab from the plate glass of the liquor store.\u00a0 It provides barely a year to hobble by.\u00a0 And at the end of that year, if<\/em> it’s 1982 and not 1931, and if<\/em> revenues, always a trailing economic measure, begin to recover and if<\/em> we haven’t found those stimulus strings to be too onerous, then maybe we can survive through the next business cycle<\/li>\n
2. Argentina.<\/strong> This really is a smash-and-grab.\u00a0 It’s almost certainly illegal, and it will certainly discourage business from locating here.\u00a0 The money isn’t the state’s to take, and there’s no particularly good reason to stop at an insurance company.\u00a0 Pretty much any business with a large pile of cash lying around could find itself threatened.<\/li>\n
3. It could ruin the company<\/strong>.\u00a0 Oh, maybe not today.\u00a0 But the whole point of a Black Swan is that you never see it coming, because it’s never happened before.\u00a0 Unlike assembly lines, insurance companies like to have large pools of liquidity lying around the shop floor.\u00a0 It’s not as though they’ve converted it into gold and visit the vault every once in a while to stare at it a la Jack Benny.\u00a0 They’ve invested the money, so it’s out there working.\u00a0 But it’s also available in case there’s a large claim.\u00a0 Just suppose something more virulent than H1N1 infects a workplace.\u00a0 Suppose that Swift plant up in Weld County gets sick, and the workers get sick because they were at work<\/em>; if they’re insured through Pinnacol, guess who’s on the hook.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

   So Sen. Carroll has decided to try to turn the heat up on Pinnacol.\u00a0 It’s dirty pool against a responsible company.
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