< PREVIOUS ] [ 2003 Index ] [ Ed Quillen HOME ] [ SEARCH ] [ NEXT >
Little wonder that Colorado's economy continues to be in trouble. Last week, our leaders demonstrated a fundamental misunderstanding of how our system has worked.
For generations, substantial portions of the Colorado system have been based on having Texans come up here in the summer and spend freely on vacation cabin rentals, fishing tackle and licenses, rodeo tickets, bourbon, chicken-fried steaks, emergency rescues and repairs of off-road vehicles which were driven into impassable places, related medical care and the like.
In other words, Texans are supposed to come to Colorado in the summer and spend money here. And last week, a Texan came to Colorado and took money.
It happened Monday, when a part-time rancher from Crawford, Texas, got off an airplane in Denver and departed four hours later, after collecting $1 million. In his company were all manner of wealthy and powerful Coloradans -- the very people who should understand that Texans are supposed to spend money here, not take it away to spend somewhere else.
Perhaps there are good reasons, though, for Colorado's
movers and shakers -- most of them self-proclaimed fiscal
conservatives who know the value of a dollar -- to spend
$2,000 apiece for a couple of sandwiches. The money will go
to Bush's re-election campaign, and as our governor
explained on Monday, He needs to finish the job he
started.
So, what remains to be done? Why donate to the Bush re-election campaign? After extensive research, I've come up with a few reasons:
· Too many people still have jobs. The
unemployment rate was about 4.5 percent when Bush took
office, and now it's over 6 percent. Another term should
get it up to about 8 percent. That will reduce wage
pressure,
and that should improve corporate profits --
if there's anybody left who can afford to buy the corporate
products.
· Too many trees remain standing. As Ronald
Reagan once observed, trees are a leading source of air
pollution. As studies at an experimental forest in Colorado
have demonstrated, trees waste water that could be used for
the beneficial growth of more subdivisions. Another Bush
term, with the expansion of the Healthy Forests
Initiative,
should go a long way toward fixing this
problem.
· Not enough Americans are in prison. Not
everyone thinks this is a problem, of course -- Supreme
Court Justice Anthony Kennedy recently complained about the
inflexible sentencing laws, and federal judge John Martin,
Jr., resigned rather than be part of a sentencing system
that is unnecessarily cruel and rigid.
But the judges will get with the program if there's another term -- Attorney General John Ashcroft has announced plans to track the sentencing records of judges, and so the 2.1 million Americans now in prison should get more company.
· Not enough people hate the United States. There
are still thousands of boys being born every day in the
Middle East who are not being named Osama.
In Spain
-- a nation whose government supported the American
invasion of Iraq -- only 64 percent of the population has a
negative opinion about U.S. actions there. In Russia, it's
78 percent, and in Indonesia, 83 percent.
These are high figures, to be sure, but they indicate that there's still some distance to go to complete the first-term job of creating universal disapproval of the United States.
· The national debt is not growing quickly enough. The first Bush administration has made substantial progress here -- in three years, they've turned an annual surplus into $400 billion or more of annual deficit. But with more tax cuts for billionaires, they should be able to get this into the trillion-dollar range if they get another term.
· Natural gas prices aren't high enough. They're only supposed to rise 43 percent in Colorado this winter, and while that should please many of the Coloradans who attended the fundraiser (since they're from the oil-and-gas industry), there's clearly some room for improvement in their portfolio positions while the rest of us turn down the thermostat and shiver this coming winter.
There may be other reasons to donate toward another term. For instance, there are about 200 nations and America has a military presence in only 125, which leaves some room for growth. And a lot of normal people still have medical coverage. Plus, sometimes whole days pass without any Americans being questioned about their choice of reading material.
But all this goes a long way toward explaining why those Coloradans who can afford to spend $2,000 for lunch were willing to reverse our traditional economic direction, and send it off with a Texan, rather than invite Texans to spend it here on a summer day.
< PREVIOUS ] [ 2003 Index ] [ Ed Quillen HOME ] [ SEARCH ] [ NEXT >