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Not often is it necessary to praise our legislature, but something good should be said for the probity of the senators and representatives who labor under the gold dome every winter to contrive new ways to deprive us of life, liberty and property.
What good can be said? Apparently the General Assembly is more honest and intelligent than we citizens are, because hustlers now take their dubious crusades directly to the public.
We only have 100 legislators, and they often gather in one place. If you're running a scam, simple logistics would favor that approach, rather than going after 3,788,958 Coloradans spread across 66,618,240 acres. But even if the latter looks more difficult, it must offer a better chance of success.
First you give your organization a
motherhood-and-apple-pie title like Committee for Better
Schools,
rather than a truthful name like Five Guys
Who Want to Get Richer by Trashing a Town with a
Constitutional Amendment.
You need signatures to put it on the ballot, of course, but you can now hire people to circulate the petitions: $55,000 will fetch 89,000 signatures. Most of us think of petition circulators as idealists, rather than mercenaries, and so you can trade on that superstition.
If anyone argues that paid petition circulators should be identified as hirelings in the employ of some scheme for private gain, his Most Esteemed Right Eminence Douglas Bruce will whine that this is an abridgement of his sacred right to run Colorado.
Once your mercenaries have gathered the signatures,
you're set to campaign to Improve our schools
with
Amendment 13. But the real plan has about as much
connection with schools as it does with flights to
Saturn.
Amendment 13 would legalize casino gambling in Manitou Springs. In 1991 and 1992, Manitou residents voted overwhelmingly against gambling, and there is a provision in the state constitution which requires consent of local voters before casinos can be inflicted on a town -- but Amendment 13 would repeal that.
It would also give a monopoly on all gambling in Manitou to one company, run by five men: Randolph and Harvey Blasdel, Malcolm Guthrie, David Vance and James McKesson. They would have exclusive rights to up to 10,000 gambling machines in Manitou, although they could sell or lease those rights.
In previous efforts to turn Manitou into Monte Carlo,
they've said gambling was a year-round industry needed to
save the town. As we've seen with Cripple Creek, Blackhawk
and Central City, casino gambling actually destroys the
community in order to save the town.
It's easy to see why some towns might not want to be
saved.
I hope it will be just as easy in November to
see the better schools campaign
for what it is --
five guys with a stealth strategy to take over a town that
doesn't want their casinos. Even the General Assembly could
see through that, and if Colorado voters don't, then we
really do need better schools.
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