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My mail-in ballot sits in an in-basket, and someday soon I will fill it out and walk it up to the courthouse. The post office is closer, but I feel better handing it to someone in the county clerk's office.
And I've got to figure out how to vote on Referendum C.
Giving the state government more money than it would
otherwise get almost certainly means more subsidies for big
companies, all under the guise of economic
development,
and I have trouble supporting that when
I'm not a stockholder in one of those favored
enterprises.
The state also keeps wasting money on the War on Drugs,
as well as on boondoggles like Project Beanpole,
which was supposed to link schools and county seats with
high-speed data lines -- and to date, I haven't heard of
any data flowing through those expensive fiber-optic
cables.
And, let's face it. Whether Referendum C is technically
a tax increase
or not, it has the same effect as
one. If it passes, the state will not refund money it
otherwise would have. We have less money, the state
government has more.
But the opponents of Referendum C are sure working hard at persuading us to support it.
What a bunch. Let's start with Grover Norquist of Washington, D.C., head of an outfit called Americans for Tax Reform. He opposes Referendum C. He has offered to debate the issue with our governor, Bill Owens -- in Washington.
Norquist apparently thinks Coloradans should heed him even though he doesn't think we're worth the trouble to visit. And what the hell business is it of his whether it passes or doesn't? He doesn't have to live with the consequences either way. We do.
At least Dick Armey, former Texas U.S. representative and house majority leader, twice bothered to pack his carpetbag and venture from his Washington lobbying office to tell us to vote against it. But again, he doesn't have to live with the consequences.
There's Doug Bruce, author of the TABOR amendment to our state constitution. It has a provision allowing for just this kind of election. Bruce against Referendum C. Last summer, I asked him whether the expansion of a water conservancy district, which would raise property taxes in the affected area, would require a TABOR election. He couldn't give me a straight answer to something that he of all people should know, so it's hard to believe he knows what he's talking about.
There's John Andrews, former state senator now running
the Colorado branch of a California think-tank, complaining
about credit-card government.
It would be easier to
take him seriously if he addressed some of those complaints
toward the borrow-and-spend Republican regime in
Washington. But in the gospel of this John, fiscal
irresponsibility is fine as long as it comes from the
GOP.
And the television ads. Marc Holtzman stands there
talking in issue ads
opposing Referendum C. And
we're supposed to believe that he's doing this out of a
sense of public duty, not because he's trying to increase
his name recognition for when he runs for governor next
year?
Another anti-C ad has normal citizens grumping about
the politicians
in our statehouse and how they can't
be trusted with more money. Is Gov. Owens really a wastrel
and spendthrift? He's one of them. And aren't these evil
politicians
the people we elect to do the public's
business?
Perhaps the worst of the anti-C ads tries to make this
into a family values
issue, implying that families
would be better off without state government. I don't know
about their families, but I know that we couldn't afford
private tutors for our children, so we had to send them to
public schools which get state money. Private colleges were
out of the question, too, so they went to state schools --
the institutions John Andrews wants to close.
We've never been able to purchase our own estate with miles of hiking trails, so often we visit a nearby state park. Nor can we afford to purchase every book or magazine we need or want, so we rely on the public library, which gets some state funds. We can't afford to send out our own thugs when we've been wronged, so we rely on state courts for justice. We can't afford an armored Humvee when we travel, so we rely on state government to protect our highways, and we can't afford our own airplane, so we rely on state highways.
In other words, if you're stinking rich, your family
probably doesn't need our state government. But the rest of
us do, and the anti-C crowd doesn't seem to get that. If
the family values
canard is the best argument they
can come up with against Referendum C, then I'm voting for
it.
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