Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/03/08/colorado-is-a-land-of-private.html
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Doug Bruce is a colossal asshole. TABOR has destroyed all public funding and its ratcheting effects work to deliberately limit services and infrastructure spending during boom times like now. There are also conflicting laws that require spending in some areas but don’t allow for money to be shifted around from other sources. Marijuana taxes can only be spent on schools for example.
The other issue is it’s way too easy to put citizen ballot initiatives into the constitution. With enough signatures, everybody’s pet issue becomes a statewide referendum. Most people don’t give a shit about it but once it’s written into the constitution it will stay there pretty much forever.
I love Colorado (we go back 7 generations) - and the region has grown so much in just the last few years. Tons of new people flooding into the state but the infrastructure is incredibly strained. Idiots like Bruce have hamstrung our officials from being able to do anything about it.
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Colorado Springs. Yep. 9_9
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An "invitation to hug is a “homosexual encounter.” ’ only if you do it right!
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This was one of the things I was hopeful we’d see being resolved by the pot taxes CO gets these days.
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We have our own, less interesting version in Washington in Tim Eyman.
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Amendment 64 is not the panacea that many thought it would be.
http://www.9news.com/article/news/where-does-all-that-colorado-pot-tax-go/298554132
All of those taxes on recreational marijuana amount to roughly 1.3 percent of the state’s tax general collections. It’s more than just a drop in the bucket—closer to a cupful.
Still, if you got a 1.3 percent raise at work tomorrow, it probably wouldn’t be enough to make you run out and buy a house twice the size of your current one
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What is it about Colorado Springs that attracts reactionaries?
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So, this is what Galt’s Gulch looks like in the real world? Selfish assholes chopping off their own noses rather than contribute to collective quality of life?
Colour me unfuckingsurprised.
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Colorado and Oklahoma share a border of approximately 50 miles in length.
Apparently, tax policy stupidity may be transmitted by contact.
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Look closely and you’ll notice they renamed a portion of I-25 at the El Paso county line “Ronald Reagan Highway”. That tells you something about the prevailing politics in the Colorado Springs area.
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Reading through this guy’s bio (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Bruce), he doesn’t seem to be a stupid or under-educated person (graduated high school at 16; double major in history and government from Pomona; JD from USC). Equating the common good with communism shows he thinks everyone else is.
I had a look around for what thoughtful people might say about the political hack of conflating these, and maybe how to counter such an “argument”. I found this rather sharp editorial from Texas (https://www.mysanantonio.com/opinion/commentary/article/No-governor-the-common-good-is-not-socialism-11525230.php), saying, among other things:
[Texas governor] Abbot’s political philosophy is that there is no such thing as “the greater good.” All we have is the individual pursuing his or her private aims and rights that protect this freedom, chief among them being the right to private property. Anything else is collectivism, which he equates with socialism.
A quick look at the Constitution belies this view of society. In the preamble, “We the People” declare that “establish(ing) justice” and “promot(ing) the general Welfare” are, along with Liberty, constitutive of our national purpose. In other words, the social good or the public good was never reducible to what private individuals or property owners chose to do or not do.
The course of American history and many Supreme Court decisions testify to the role of the government as an instrument of the people in pursuing this justice and this public welfare. That’s not “collectivism.” That’s America!
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Is it wrong that I now want to fuck a robot after watching that?
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Huh, I see he got his legal education at a public institution. A real libertarian lawyer would have smelted his own legal education out of dirt and twigs with his bare hands.
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It’s full of military bases, the Air Force Academy, and a bunch of defense contractors.
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Also the Colorado School of Mines. Attracts troglodytes.
This guy knows:
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