Speeding Tea Party rhetoric bangs against Ref C guardrail in Loveland

Three of four GOP 4th District Congressional candidates had skin in the game on Ref C

At last week’s 4th congressional district candidate forum in Loveland, theoretical anti-tax anti-government consensus broke down briefly during discussion of Referendum C, Colorado’s 2005 voter-supported “TABOR timeout,” which has become a litmus-test topic for state Republican candidates this year.

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WellPoint protest signals shifting mood on rate-hike status quo

By Joseph Boven 3/12/10

DENVER– Protesters camped outside the offices of WellPoint insurance in Zeckendorf Plaza Park downtown here this week to call attention to recent rate hikes put into effect in January by the company and now shocking customers across the state who are receiving their bloated bills.

Enviro attorneys buoyed by roadless rule hearing

By David O. Williams 3/12/10

Environmental attorneys were encouraged by the tone of a final 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals hearing on the controversial 2001 Clinton Roadless Rule in Denver Wednesday. Representing a coalition of conservation and wildlife groups, lawyers for the firm Earthjustice are arguing for the court to reinstate rules put in place by Pres. Clinton to protect more than 58 million acres of largely roadless public lands nationwide, including more than 4 million acres in Colorado.

Plans of attack emerge as Obama considers immigration reform

By Julissa Trevino 3/11/10

WASHINGTON– Pro-immigration reform advocates may be applauding President Obama’s immigration meetings at the White House today, but anti-immigration groups are pushing back hard. The meetings came in advance of a planned March 21 immigration reform rally on the mall and just as several anti-immigration groups have unveiled new campaigns and strategies to obstruct any coming “amnesty” legislation.

Colorado Republican senators argue against expanding maternity coverage

By Joseph Boven 3/11/10

DENVER– State Senate Republicans today opposed a bill that aims to require insurance companies to provide individual-market plans that include maternity and contraception coverage. The bill passed a second reading with the support of Senate Democrats, but Republicans said it would drive up insurance rates and swell the ranks of the uninsured. One senator made an anti-abortion argument against the bill and one argued against it for personal financial reasons.

Colorado Tea Partiers rally in capitol chambers and on the steps

By Joseph Boven 3/11/10

DENVER–Members of Colorado Tea Party and 912 groups and the libertarian think tank Independence Institute attended a “grassroots session” and rally sponsored by Americans For Prosperity at the Capitol Wednesday. The activists met with GOP lawmakers for a strategy session in the Old Senate chambers and then gathered on the capitol steps. The rally lured a familiar group of Republican lawmakers, led this time by Yuma state Rep. Cory Gardner, who is also running to represent the Fourth Congressional district in Washington.

Colorado Tea Party candidate forums stoke GOP anti-government rhetoric

By John Tomasic 3/10/10

Republican candidates for Colorado’s top offices have been spurred at Tea Party primary-election events to take strong anti-government positions that have alarmed moderate and liberal voters and that in the YouTube era might compromise their standing with general election voters in the summer and fall.

Colorado criminally failing youth suspects

By Joseph Boven 3/10/10

DENVER– Juveniles charged as adults in Colorado and awaiting trial as inmates in adult prisons find themselves part of a system that fails to educate them, provide them equal access to services like mental health care or even to ensure they are housed according to strict safety guidelines. People involved in the system admit to not knowing how many young people charged as adults are presently being held by the state and in which prisons. Colorado sheriffs frankly admitted to the Colorado Independent that their adult facilities are inappropriate for managing juvenile detention.

Rove on the Bush years: It’s everybody else’s fault

By David Weigel 3/10/10

Washington memoirs are all about settling scores. Karl Rove’s “Courage and Consequence: My Life as a Conservative in the Fight” takes that tradition to new and self-parodying heights. To read Rove’s recollections of George W. Bush’s White House is to believe that, for eight years, men of “courage and moral clarity” governed the United States and were beset by critics who refused to give them any credit. On page after page, Rove names the naysayers and picks apart their claims. He’s most at ease — his delight jumps right off of the page — when he’s able to recount times he shoved the criticisms back in their faces.

Rural electric co-op quits state group in support of Levy board election bill

By David O. Williams 3/9/10

A rift over legislation aimed at making rural electric association (REA) board elections more transparent and fair for challengers has in part spurred one co-op to part ways with the statewide association representing Colorado’s 21 REAs.

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Tea Partying Diggs Brown on global warming: ‘Dinosaurs weren’t driving cars’

By John Tomasic 3/15/10 2:30 PM

Nothing goes over at a Tea Party forum quite like jokes about Al Gore and global warming. National Guardsman Diggs Brown, who is running for Betsy Markey’s 4th District Congressional seat, drew laughs Thursday at the Northern Colorado Tea Party candidate forum in Loveland with his folksy response to a question on climate change. Brown seemed to tap into what everyone on the stage and in the audience of 400 were thinking.

“You know, in my humble opinion, the world heats up, the world cools down, the world heats up, the world cools down. I don’t know if the dinosaurs were driving cars… It just seems to me we can’t hobble our economy with cap and trade and other nonsense like that,” he said.

Reducing abortions by expanding health coverage

By Mike Lillis 3/15/10 1:25 PM

Last week, Colorado Republicans opposed a bill that would expand health coverage for maternity and contraception partly on the grounds that some contraception terminates pregnancies rather than preventing them. As the Colorado Independent reported, the Republican lawmakers were missing the forest for the trees. Women on the individual insurance market here are more likely to get abortions because abortions are covered. Women are forced however to pay prenatal and contraception costs out of pocket.

The national argument on health reform follows along the exact same lines.

Malkin’s telephone Tea Party clogs Salazar, Markey’s voice mail, email

By David O. Williams 3/15/10 1:09 PM

Apparently one of the favorite Tea Party pastimes is hanging out with a few thousand of your best, most conservative friends and flooding the voice mail and email inboxes of out-of-state moderate Democrats who may be on the fence about Obama’s health care plan.

That way the actual constituents of such Dems – like Colorado’s John Salazar, CD3, and Betsy Markey, CD4 – can’t get through to them to let them know how they feel, one way or the other.

Final push: Public-option support groups pressure Pelosi

By John Tomasic 3/15/10 10:21 AM

In the eye of the health reform storm, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has been backing away from the public health insurance option for weeks, despite a drive spearheaded on the Hill by Colorado lawmakers Rep. Jared Polis and Sen. Michael Bennet to include the option as the best way to truly extend coverage and restrain costs. That drive has been backed by a progressive-activist coalition with solid polling data to support its claims that voters favor the public option. That coalition, which includes the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, Democracy for America and Credo Action, is raising $75,000 to buy airtime to run an ad targeting Pelosi and meant to end the backpedaling.

The ad includes footage of key senators endorsing the public option. The coalition is looking to buy air time in Pelosi’s San Francisco district and in Washington. The ad closes with TV-drama-style music swelling and two sentences on the screen: “The Senate has the votes. The public option is in Pelosi’s hands.”

News biz tail-spinning toward a public option

By John Tomasic 3/15/10 9:53 AM

A new Project for Excellence in Journalism Pew study confirms what we all know: Journalism is a labor-intensive skilled trade that no longer pays, at least the way it is set up today. Advertisers hate the web and understandably so. No one has ever had to “click” on an advertisement before for it to be considered effective. Pay walls hobble the internet as medium, isolating content and slowing down surfing. Investigative news– the whipping boy of the digital media era and the jumping off point for so much profitable criticism and commentary– is going away. The market is failing journalism, just like it failed to safeguard the environment in the industrial age.

It took governments to deliver clean water and air. It may take the government to deliver healthy news. Should health reform pass this week or next, Pres. Obama, for the good of the Republic, will have to again climb the ramparts to battle Americans for Prosperity and Co. all over again just for the privilege of asking the country’s Fox News millions to fork out tax money for the real thing.

Perlmutter endorses Bennet over Romanoff in Senate primary race

By David O. Williams 3/12/10 6:21 PM

U.S. Rep. Ed Perlmutter (D-Colo.) Friday endorsed Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) over former state lawmaker Andrew Romanoff in a U.S. Senate primary race for the Democratic nod to face Republican front-runner Jane Norton in November.

Senate passes bill to expand coverage of maternity care and contraception

By Joseph Boven 3/12/10 3:35 PM

DENVER– The Senate today sent legislation for the governor to sign into law that will require insurance companies here to include maternity coverage with a majority of the policies they sell. The legislation will also require insurance companies to include contraception in all policies.

The bill, HB 1021, sponsored in the Senate by Denver Democrat Joyce Foster , faced significant push-back on its final reading from Republicans, who remained concerned the bill would force organizations and individuals into paying for contraceptive care they might find morally objectionable. The bill passed on a party line vote.

Three of four GOP 4th District Congressional candidates had skin in the game on Ref C

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