Conservative Libertarian Outpost

What follows was edited do to late posting, and a misspell! Sorry Jon!~ 🙂

Strange Anti-Health Care Choice Bedfellows: Who’s been funding the opposition to our Health Care Choice Amendment – Amendment 63? 90% of their funding comes from Washington, DC and most of that from the unions. The SEIU, the government workers union, the NEA, and the AFL-CIO are the biggest contributors by far. Good to know that the national teachers union realizes fighting Health Care Choice in Colorado is good for, um, education? I guess if educational choice is bad for kids, health care choice would be too.

Watch my latest health care debate on TV tonight! I will be on Colorado Public Television channel 12 right after my own show Devils Advocate ends to debate our right to health care choice initiative – Amendment 63. The debate is airing on “Colorado Decides 2010” at 9pm. I will be debating Edie Sonn, Director of the Colorado Medical Society who happens to oppose the repeal of Obama Care. (Spoiler alert: the bald guy wins).

Last week’s health care choice debate here: Rocky Mountain PBS (channel 6) aired a debate I had with T.R. Reid about Amendment 63 – Colorado’s Right to Health Care Choice last week. Did I mention my opponent T.R. is a Princeton-educated sycophant of collective health care? He was the “reporter” who did that completely unbiased PBS Frontline report on how every other country is the world has a better health care system than the US. Yeah… so check out the debate online here.

Great New Education Movie! Great New Education Movie! The school system is failing our kids on a massive scale, that much is evident. But are enough people motivated to take the right kind of action and fix it? The new movie “Waiting for Superman” should open many eyes with the story of five inner-city kids whose lives hang in the balance of a charter school lottery. Perhaps that’s why the unions and status quo interest groups have attacked the movie. Waiting for Superman opened nationally this past Friday, but mark your calendars for the October 15 Colorado premiere. Until then, check out little Eddie’s post for more information and a look at the theatrical trailer.

How to Save a Billion Dollars: Colorado taxpayers are on the hook for more than $1 billion in unfunded liabilities incurred in the defined benefit retiree health plan administered by the Public Employee Retirement Association (PERA). An additional $79 million in unfunded liabilities was incurred in 2008. These are just some of the findings by Independence Institute Senior Fellow Barry Poulson in his potent new issue paper, “How to Save a Billion Dollars in Other Post Employment Benenfit Costs.” In it, Barry lays out the looming fiscal crisis driven by, among other things, flawed actuarial assumptions by PERA, and outrageously optimistic assumptions (which have failed to be realized) about the rate of return on assets held in the Health Care Trust Fund. If saving a billion dollars seems like pie in the sky to you now, give Barry’s paper a shot and find out how it can be done.

PJ O’Rourke Book Signing Event! Because PJ was so much fun last year for our annual Founders Night, we decided to bring him back for an event at Jackson’s Bar and Grill in LoDo on Monday, October 4th from 6 to 8pm. He will be signing copies of his book “Don’t Vote, It Just Encourages the Bastards.” If you’d like to join us, RSVP to Mary MacFarlane by calling us at 303.279.6536 or emailing Mary at mary@i2i.org.

The Right to Earn a Living Event: The Independence Institute, Liberty on the Rocks, and the CATO Institute invite you to join us for an evening with Timothy Sandefur, Adjunct Scholar at the CATO Institute and Principal Attorney – Pacific Research Institute for a book signing of “The Right to Earn a Living.” We’ll be having the event at our Independence Institute offices in Golden on Thursday, October 7th at 5:30pm. If you’d like to join us, RSVP to Mary MacFarlane by calling us at 303.279.6536 or emailing Mary at mary@i2i.org.

Must see TV: What’s it like for Republicans running for Congress against incumbent Democrats in the age of Obama and a Democratic majority? To find out, tune in to Devil’s Advocate this Friday as I am joined by Colorado Republican candidates for Congress Ryan Frazier, Cory Gardner, Mike Fallon and Stephen Bailey. That’s TONIGHT, October 1st at 8:30 PM on Colorado Public Television 12. Re-broadcast the following Monday at 1:30 PM. And remember to stay tuned right after Devil’s Advocate for my debate over the Health Care Choice Amendment.

Must hear podcast: Education policy analyst Ben DeGrow deconstructs the $10 billion Edujobs bailout passed by Congress in August, noting that the policy not only seriously overestimated the need to curb teacher layoffs and ignored other available solutions but also discriminated against charter schools. It remains unclear exactly when and how Colorado school districts will use the funds to hire and rehire employees. Listen to this podcast on iVoices.org.

Perspective: In this week’s op-ed, Linda Gorman stresses the importance of Amendment 63 – the Right to Health Care Choice – ability to protect Colorado citizens from the mandates found in Obama Care. Colorado citizens already face dozens of mandates imposed by our state, the last thing we need is the grandaddy of all mandates to buy a health insurance, whether we like it or not, coming down from the federal government. Read here as Linda Gorman explains how Amendment 63 will stop DC.

Until next week…

Straight on

Jon Caldara

Tags: Colorado Politics, epic fail obama, HCA 63, health care debate, I2I.org, News, obamacare, Politics, The Independence Institute, Unions

This entry was posted on October 2, 2010 at 08:37 and is filed under Economics, Editorial, Opinion, Education, Gun Control, Hoplophobia, Immigration, Law, Local Politics Colorado, News, Politics, States Rights, Wordpress Political Blogs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.