VoteNo59.com | Colorado Amendment 59

From VoteNo59.com:

Amendment 59 (or “SAFE”) is the proposed amendment to Colorado’s constitution that would increase your taxes by forever funneling your TABOR rebate back to the government, ostensibly to fund P-12 education.

You should vote NO on 59.  Why?  Because:

• It is a permanent tax increase.
• It isn’t about increasing funding for Colorado’s government schools.
• It violates property rights.
• It increases government interference in our economy and our lives.
• It will be bad for Colorado’s economy.
• It will be another boondoggle.
• It is deceptive.

Find out more at: http://www.VoteNo59.com

Boulder Ballot Issue 1B: Follow the money to the “Worthy Causes”

Update to: “Worthy Cause Tax”: It’s not Your Penny to Give.

In a letter published in the Boulder Daily Camera, Rich Miller writes:

Citizens for a Worthy Cause sent out a glossy mailing this past week, encouraging voters to approve Boulder County 1B.  Issue 1B will continue an existing sales tax and allow county commissioners to distribute our tax dollars to the charities of their choice. … And who are these Citizens for a Worthy Cause? No individual citizens contributed, only non-profits who stand to benefit from 1B at our expense.

Rich Miller has made an excellent insight. (Ralph Shnelvar has also noticed.)

Ten of the fifteen organizations that donated to Citizens for a Worthy Cause have received revenue from this sales tax.  These ten organizations have donated almost $27,000 to extend the tax this year, and have received more than $1.8 million in sales tax revenues from previous years.  I flush out the details below. (As Rich also did in his on-line comments.)

In a previous article I made the case that Ballot Initiative 1B, which would extend the “Worthy Cause” sales tax, “is immoral — regardless of how worthy the causes are.”  As a compulsory charity, “it is intolerant to people’s values and unfair to charities that must earn our donations. It undermines both the responsibility of donors and the accountability of non-profits that receive forced donations.” Those who voted for the measure could have raised the money in this year’s Worthy Cause Fund had they each donated $50.  Instead, they force us all to donate.

Colorado’s Secretary of State office lists the contributors to Citizens for a Worthy Cause here.  Boulder County lists the recipients of the tax revenues here.   What follows are the dollar figures for each organization, and links to where you can make a voluntary donation.

Colorado Democracy Alliance wants to “Educate the Idiots”

From Face the State:

In a confidential internal memorandum obtained by Face The State (PDF), the Colorado Democracy Alliance outlines a roster of “operatives” who worked for Democratic victory in the 2006 general election. The document outlines specific tasks for various members of the state’s liberal infrastructure, including a campaign to “educate the idiots,” assigned to the state’s AFL-CIO union. Among the operation’s intended targets: “minorities, GED’s, drop-outs.”

The above is from page 2 of the “strategy group” document.  Read the rest here.
(Image courtesy of Mount Virtus.)

Amendment 49 | The Ivory Tower Explanation

Jon Caldera explains the proposed Amendment 49 to the Colorado constitution.

From EthicalStandardsNow.org:

Government should not be the bagman for special interests. Amendment 49 will prohibit governments from bundling money from public employees’ paychecks and delivering the cash to special interests who use it to lobby politicians. Government should be using our tax dollars to provide crucial public services, not to funnel money to political organizations. Amendment 49 keeps lobbyists in line.

Here are its endorsements.

American election choices: theocrat or socialist?

Writes Ari Armstrong on why Libby Szabo lost his vote for Colorado’s State Senate District 19:

In races across the country, voters face terrible choices, with theocrats on one side, socialists on the other.

Nearly a year ago, I sent a letter to various candidates asking them to endorse the separation of church and state. While I never got around to sending the letter to the state senate candidates,  Szabo has made it clear that she strongly endorses faith-based politics. Which is why I strongly oppose her.

I have been arguing for months that a major reason Republicans have killed themselves in Colorado is their unflagging commitment to faith-based politics. …

Maybe someday Colorado Republicans will learn that the Interior West leans toward liberty and away from faith-based politics. There are some hopeful signs. Until then, I guess I’m a Democrat by default, as much as that sickens me.

Read the whole post here.

Ballot Issue 1B: “Worthy Cause” Tax, It’s Not Your Penny to Give

The Daily Camera published my article on the 2008 Boulder County Ballot Issue 1B today. (print version)

Update: The so-called “Citizens for a Worthy Cause” that support this are really the very organizations that receive the tax revenue.  See here.

Ballot Issue 1B: It’s not Your Penny to Give
by Brian T. Schwartz

Would you call the police on someone who didn’t donate to a charity that you consider to be a “worthy cause”?  If not, then you should oppose County Issue 1B in this November’s election, which would extend the so-called “Worthy Cause” sales tax.  This tax is immoral — regardless of how worthy the causes are. It is compulsory charity, or charity at gun-point. It is intolerant to people’s values and unfair to charities that must earn our donations. It undermines both the responsibility of donors and the accountability of non-profits that receive forced donations.

Why Only Bush Could Bring Socialism to America

Writes economist Bryan Caplan at George Mason U.:

If a Democratic president were backing a $700B bail-out, I have to think that Republicans would be crying “Socialism!” But if a Republican president does the same, the bail-out’s natural enemies keep silent out of loyalty or ingroup bias. It’s a lot like the contemporary Republican reaction to Nixon’s price controls – if our boy is doing it, how bad can it be?

The scary thing is that once party Y gives the Inane a chance, party X may be able to finish the job without credible resistance. After party Y surrenders the rhetorical high ground by embracing the Inane, what’s to stop party X from making Inanity a way of life?

Read the whole post here.

Amendment 46: Fairness in hiring, admissions

In today’s Denver Post, Jessica Peck Corry of the Colorado Civil Rights Initiative writes:

The Colorado Civil Rights Initiative would once and for all prohibit our government from discriminating on the basis of race or gender in public education, public contracting, and public hiring.

Every day in Colorado, our government preaches to women and minorities that we are intellectually inferior second-class citizens. We’re told that because of our biology and past discrimination, we need special preferences to succeed. Nothing could be further from the truth. Disadvantage and discrimination transcend race and gender lines in today’s America.

Read the rest here.

Colorado Amendment 48: Fertilized eggs are not people

From the Colorado-based Coalition for Secular Government:

Colorado’s proposed Amendment 48 — the ballot measure that would grant full legal rights to fertilized eggs — would usher in disastrous government controls on abortion, birth control, medical research, and in vitro fertilization. It would violate the rights of real men and women — based on the faith-based fiction that a fertilized egg is a person with the same moral standing as a born infant. Yet the biological facts of pregnancy show that the embryo/fetus becomes a human person with rights only when born.

Find out more by reading a new CSG issue paper by Ari Armstrong and Diana Hsieh:
Amendment 48 Is Anti-Life: Why It Matters That a Fertilized Egg Is Not a Person

Colorado Amendment 59 vs. liberty and prosperity

Ari Armstrong has written two good posts against the proposed Colorado Amendment 59 here and here.  He writes:

Those wishing to forcibly transfer more money from those who earn it to those who want it constantly review the benefits (real or imagined) of higher tax spending. What they generally ignore are the costs.

Sure, when the government transfers money from Alice to Ben, Ben gets to spend the money on something he wants. But Alice has less to spend on her needs and those of her family, and those with whom Alice does business also suffer.

When people evaluate economic opportunities, they tend to move to where they can keep more of what they earn — to spend, invest, or give away as they see fit — and live and work as they deem best, rather than as politicians demand. We Coloradans enjoy a relatively strong economy in large part because it remains a relatively free economy. Higher taxes threaten to alienate vibrant businesses, entrepreneurs, and young workers.

Higher taxes also reduce liberty. People have a right to enjoy the fruits of their labor. Regardless of whether politicians and activists mean well in forcing some people to surrender their money to others, the practice is morally wrong.

As Ben DeGrow points out, Education Week has written that

State Treasurer Cary Kennedy (no relation to RFK Jr.) said that Democrats would win a ballot initiative to “drive a stake in the heart” of the state’s Taxpayers Bill of Rights…

Funny that she uses a vampire metaphor to describe the Taxpayers Bill or Rights, which limits government’s ability to tax.   Wouldn’t appropriation of people’s wealth through taxes be analagous to a vampire’s sucking blood? (Thanks to Ari Armstrong for pointing out the irony of the metaphor.)

Also, check out Barry Poulson’s Issue Backgrounder and video critique. The Cauldron also has an amusing narrative.