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There was an excellent World Series game on Wednesday night, but an overpowering sense of civic obligation compelled me to miss the middle innings so that I could watch the candidates' debate. (Actually, I wanted to tape the debates and watch them after the game, but my 15-year-old daughter, the only one in the house who has mastered the arcane secrets of VCR programming, was not available.)
Josie Heath might win, despite what the polls say, if she'd just change her approach in minor ways.
For instance, she said taxes should be raised for those
making over $200,000 a year. But she said it with all the
passion of a teacher assigning algebra homework. She should
have tried something like this: Unlike Mr. Brown, I
believe taxes should be raised on the wealthy. My husband
and I made $780,000 last year. America has been damn good
to us. People like us benefit the most from almost
everything the federal government does. We should pay more,
and I don't care if I am denounced as a traitor to my
class.
She might have hammered Hank Brown about how he promotes
his fifth-generation Colorado roots. Hank walks around
one of his wife's farms and talks about traditional
Colorado values. Well, it was federal silver subsidies that
opened up a lot of this state, and federally enacted sugar
quotas and federal cheap-labor bracero programs that kept
Hank's Weld County in business for a long time.
Mr. Brown is continuing that fine Colorado tradition,
since he draws federal subsidies for his farms even though
he speaks so highly of individual initiative. It's time we
started some new traditions of actually doing things for
ourselves, instead of begging for help from Washington when
we're not bragging about our hard work and
self-reliance.
She said we needed a national energy policy. That isn't right, because we already have a national energy policy. It consists of forcing people to drive wasteful cars merely to transact ordinary business, of encouraging the construction of inefficient homes, of being so dependent on feudal sand kingdoms that we haul American youths half-way around the world to put them where they'll get shot at and engulf us another undeclared war.
We have an energy policy. We need a new energy policy.
To be fair, I should mention that Hank said the major need is a line-item veto, to eliminate waste. He's very much against government waste, although he did not mention any specific wastes. Why is it that every candidate since Marc Antony has been against government waste, and we still have government waste? Do they keep it around, just to have something easy to campaign against?
Most disappointing, though, were the questions posed by
Ralph Allen, a political specialist.
He stuck to
issues where one senator more or less doesn't matter much.
He should have asked better questions:
Since one of you will be replacing Sen. Armstrong,
tell us your policy on arranging tax breaks. Will you limit
it to friends, or make personalized tax laws available to
everyone?
Who's worse to take money from, a hustler like Larry
Mizel or a sexist PAC like EMILY? Or does it
matter?
How much would I have to contribute to your campaign
in order to be assured of getting an appointment with you
whenever I wanted one? And how much will you charge for
halting an investigation?
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