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Much has been said about the once-in-a-generation
event
scheduled for today -- the inauguration of Bill
Owens, the first Republican governor in 24 years, thereby
providing a matched set when combined with our
legislature's Republican House and perpetually Republican
Senate.
Presumably to save public expense, this inauguration will be brought to us by some Corporate Silver Sponsors, each forking over $15,000 for the privilege, and by the seven public-spirited Corporate Gold Sponsors who paid $25,000.
Thus Owens may take office on the steps of the Coors Capitol Building shadowed by the KN Energy Gold Dome, receive a 19-gun U S West salute, then celebrate at the JD Edwards/GreatWest Life Inaugural Ball.
This may be just a start. They've sold Silver and Gold sponsorships, and as soon as Owens and Dick Wadhams get more organized in office, I'm sure they'll have Copper, Tin and Scrapiron plans available for the rest of us who want to participate in public affairs.
But that may not bring in enough, so they could have to escalate and offer Platinum Sponsorships. With those resources in hand, and GOP control of the legislature, we could be seeing legislation like this in the near future:
· Colorado Motorist Protection Act. Study after study has demonstrated that the bigger the vehicle, the more likely the driver and passengers are to survive an accident -- especially an accident at the high speeds theoretically made possible by expanding the interstates in line with Owens' campaign promises.
Thus the state vehicle standards will be changed to require a minimum weight of 4,000 pounds and at least six cylinders in the engine, with special tax incentives offered for all-wheel drive and gas mileage under 20 mpg.
Wadhams will point out that this will also reduce state costs for highway maintenance and plowing, since these drivers won't demand as much in the way of pothole-filling and road-clearing. Further, since the outlawed small cars were generally driven by the economically challenged, they will be forced to move to other states, thereby reducing Colorado's social-services costs.
· Abortion Prevention Bill. The best way to prevent abortion is to prevent pregnancy, but birth-control has been deemed evil by certain lobbies whose political support is needed.
The governor's staff will pore over the Colorado Revised Statues and discover, to their horror, that fornication has been quite legal in this state for more than a generation and that adultery, while defined in the criminal statutes, carries no penalty.
Legislation will be introduced to increase the penalty for adultery, if committed by a non-member of a country club, to death by stoning. Fornication will become a class II felony, with the merciful provision that if the convicted fornicator is under 18 and has parents who contribute at the Silver Level or above, all record of the offense will be expunged following 24 hours of good behavior.
Colorado police will be given additional investigative
powers to enforce these laws, which will be hailed in some
GOP quarters as another stop toward a smaller and
less-intrusive government.
· Corporate Hate Crimes Law. Sad to say, Colorado is infested by a small but strident minority which attempts to deprive corporations of their divine right to do whatever they please.
These malcontents have opposed the subsidies given to the franchise outlets and big-box category-killer stores that bring eternal prosperity to the Centennial State. They fight against the replacement of ugly farmland with graceful and beautiful gated enclave developments. They defame noble Platinum People with vicious and unwarranted attacks on cable-television companies, monopoly railroads, ski resorts and new sports stadiums.
While the First Amendment probably protects their vicious and demented speech, hateful though it may be, they must be held responsible for the consequences of their statements, and further, hate-motivated crimes against property will carry greater penalties than crimes not so motivated.
For instance, a tagger who sprays Crips Rule
on
the side of a building would receive a lesser sentence than
a bigot who sprayed Screw the trash monopoly
on a
Dumpster.
And if this law had been in effect last year,
then every critic could have been held liable for the fires on Vail Mountain, and the resulting multiple prosecutions would have gained so much media protection that people would forget that the arsonists were still at large, thereby increasing public confidence in law enforcement.
We can doubtless expect even more as this first term proceeds -- an official secrecy act to protect local-government subsidies to developers from exposure, or provisions for the sale of naming rights to our 14,000-foot peaks -- but the vital new laws outlined above should make it clear to the world that Colorado means business.
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