Posts Tagged ‘Mike Rosen’

“Clear the Bench Colorado”

November 1, 2009

Judicial arrogance is nothing new, yet this past week the Colorado Supreme Court established a new benchmark in being better than thou. From Mike Rosen at The Denver Post

The liberal majority on the Colorado Supreme Court has taken judicial chutzpah to a new level.

In a 4-3 decision last week, they overturned two lower court rulings and declared that, henceforth, unelected judges rather than elected legislators will determine how much money Colorado taxpayers must spend on K-12 education. The victorious plaintiffs in the case included the usual suspects: the teachers union and other educratic organizations.

This will encourage a spate of “adequacy” lawsuits which activists hope will mandate an additional $3 billion in school spending on top of the $4.7 billion we already spend. Given the current state of the economy, this is obviously money we don’t have.

Full Story

Actions and arrogance often lead to grassroots movements that seek to reign in such behavior. Be that The Tea Party, Gun Owners of America, or a new group in Colorado.

Clear the Bench Colorado is just such an organization. If you are from Colorado, or have an interest there click on the link. The Colorado Supreme Court is one of, if not the most partisan high state court in the country. The law should be above politics, period. If you think this doesn’t concern you, think again, because the same thing may be coming to your state soon!

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Posted in Economics, Editorial, Opinion, Education, Law, Local Politics Colorado, News, Politics, Wordpress Political Blogs | 4 Comments »

Political Economies: Command and Demand

October 2, 2009

What follows does not address the obamacare debate, however it is directly the center of what is just plain wrong with what is going on in D.C.

By Mike Rosen

Posted: 10/01/2009 01:00:00 AM MDT

There they go again. The latest stop on the world anarchist tour was Pittsburgh, site of last week’s G20 summit of international finance ministers and governors of central banks.While the grownups met indoors to discuss cooperation in the global economy, goons of various persuasions and incoherent causes did their thing on the streets. OK, they weren’t all violent goons. There were also some better-behaved familiar goofballs like Cindy Sheehan and assorted greenies, pacifists and socialists.

But the anarchists were the most committed. They were a mostly youngish mob bedecked in standard revolutionary garb: faded jeans, black T-shirts, bandanas and ski masks to cover their faces. Their contribution to the world economy consisted of throwing rocks, bricks and trash cans at cops, breaking Starbucks windows and assaulting ATMs. Those whose faces were uncovered seemed to be smiling more than scowling. But, of course, this is what these people do for fun.

As anarchist festivals go, this one was relatively tame. Property damage was under $100,000 and fewer than 100 people were arrested. Small potatoes compared to the riot at the G8 summit in Genoa in 2001 and the violence in Montreal, Seattle and Turin, Italy, at other gatherings of world economic and political leaders.

One group of anarchists, apparently auditioning for “American Idol,” taunted police officers with a chorus of: “We all live in a fascist bully state,” sung to the tune of the Beatles’ “Yellow Submarine.” They probably missed the irony. It’s only because of the civility and restraint of democratic governments like the ones these sociopaths so revile that they can get away with their antics. If they actually lived in a fascist bully state they’d have been shot, carted off to a concentration camp or a reeducation center. Icons of the world’s “People’s Democratic Republics” like Stalin, Mao, Castro and Guevara (the guy on the anarchists’ T-shirts) haven’t been so tolerant of dissent.

Anarchists have only a childish concept of what they’re against and not a clue about what they would have replace it. When better-armed anarchists break into their home, who are they going to call? Don’t bother dialing 911; nobody will be there.

In the anarchist paradise of their dreams, do they imagine that mattresses will replace banks as financial intermediaries? Political economies come in only two forms: command and demand. In a command economy, government decides what gets produced, how it’s done, who does it, and how it’s distributed. In a demand economy, the capitalist alternative, those choices are made freely in the market — with varying degrees of government intrusion. The debate among rational adults is over the degree of government intrusion. Once set in motion, government intervention and control tends to expand, becoming ever more difficult to reverse until it metastasizes into a command economy. History has shown us repeatedly and dramatically that command economies don’t work. They produce neither prosperity nor freedom.

By contrast, the tea party folks who have taken to the streets in the age of Obama understand the danger of excessively intrusive government and are trying to stand athwart it. They know what they’re for. But they’re rookies at protests and demonstrations. They’re not quite sure what to do. They certainly don’t want to break anything and they even clean up after themselves. This is not what they do for fun. Most of them would rather spend weekends with their families and are too busy earning a productive living on weekdays. When they turn out there are no face masks, no confrontations with police and no violence.

Isn’t it curious that the same Democrat politicians and liberal media types who condemned and ridiculed the law-abiding tea partiers haven’t uttered a peep in disapproval of the nasty rabble that made a ruckus and dirtied their diapers in Pittsburgh?

Mike Rosen’s radio show airs weekdays from 9 a.m. to noon on 850-KOA.

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Rosen: Sotomayor won’t disappoint liberals

July 23, 2009

The soon to be anointed Justice Sotomeyor performed pretty much as I expected her to during the Senate conformation hearings. She doesn’t really frighten me so much as the next appointee sticks into a job for life. After all, replacing a sexist constitution hating member of the Supreme Court with another will not make all that much difference. The next one though? The impostor in chief just might get a Second Amendment ruling of the people kind… In any case Mike Rosen summed up the hearings pretty well. Read on;

Predictably, the confirmation hearings for Sonia Sotomayor were mostly for show.

The senators played their roles, just as Sotomayor played hers. Democrats sang her praises and lobbed her softballs. Republicans homed in on her controversial decisions, which she deftly parried with contradictory assertions, evasions, rationalizations, circumlocutions and lateral arabesques.

When pressed to explain how she might rule on future cases, she liberally invoked the “Ginsburg rule,” institutionalized in 1993 when Ruth Bader Ginsburg refused to answer hypothetical questions during her confirmation hearing. (How do they get away with that? If you were interviewing someone for a job, wouldn’t you want to know how they’d deal with future contingencies?)

Alas, in politics, this is the way the game is played. Nominees hold their cards close to the vest. Candor takes a back seat to tap dancing, carefully crafted ambiguity, and declarations of motherhood and apple pie. Even Justices Samuel Alito and John Roberts pulled their punches as nominees. The last Supreme Court candidate to say what he really believed — and eloquently, at that — was Robert Bork. He wasn’t confirmed.

As was expected, conservatives were unsatisfied with many of Sotomayor’s answers. But the mixed reviews on the left were more interesting. Pragmatists within the liberal establishment, rooting for Sotomayor, took her coy answers at face value and declared her to be respectably moderate. E.J. Dionne asserted that “she is the most conservative choice that President Obama could have made.” NPR’s oh-so-liberal judicial “reporter” Nina Totenberg hilariously opined on the “Charlie Rose” show that Sotomayor may be even more conservative on some issues than Justice Anthony Scalia!

Maureen Dowd lamented Sotomayor’s retreat from her earlier preening about the superiority of “a wise Latina woman” but explained why it was necessary. “As any clever job applicant knows,” admitted Dowd, “you must obscure as well as reveal, so she sidestepped the dreaded empathy questions — even though that’s why the president wants her.”

On the far left, political pragmatism gave way to doctrinaire ideological grandstanding. This was their moment to proudly proclaim their judicio-political creed. Dahlia Lithwick told MSNBC she was upset that Sotomayor and the Democrats “bought into [Chief Justice Roberts‘] notion that judges call balls and strikes” rather than ruling on their personal opinions.

Rabbi Michael Lerner, chair of the Network of Spiritual Progressives — and a socialist, one-world, Kumbaya utopian of the first order — urged Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee to “make statements that explain why a liberal or progressive worldview is precisely what is needed on the Supreme Court.” If they had any backbone, Lerner said, they should declare: “We intend to vote for you, Judge Sotomayor. But we hope that you overcome this notion that you’ve been putting forward that your task on the Supreme Court is simply to enforce the law . . . we hopePresident Obama picked someone who was not just a passive ratifier of precedent, but a creative thinker who could look at the needs of American society today and help shape laws that fit these new realities.”

Lerner then rejected the “false notion that law is somehow impartial” and condemned the “rich white men” who made those laws and the “corporate power” they serve. Whew, what a mouthful!

Liberals needn’t worry. Sotomayor will be reliably “progressive,” if not the left-wing revolutionary Lerner hoped for. To believe otherwise, you’d have to imagine that theObama team got suckered by a closet conservative. No way. Only Republican presidents make mistakes like that. We’ll see soon enough when she takes her seat and starts casting votes and writing opinions. I’m betting Sotomayor will beRuth Bader Ginsburg with a Latino flavor.

Mike Rosen’s radio show airs weekdays from 9 a.m. to noon on 850-KOA.

SOURCE

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Posted in Editorial, Opinion, Education, Law, mysandry, News, Politics, Wordpress Political Blogs | 14 Comments »

Freedom of speech, for some at least…

May 2, 2009

Freedom of speech or expression is an enshrined right placed within the Bill of Rights. That said, recently there have been way to many occurrences by those that see it as an anachronism. A simple web search will turn up more instances than I can possibly cite for reference but you are free to do so if you wish.

Having said that, I believe that the entire Constitution and Bill of Rights is a complete package. You can’t pick and choose which parts you will support, and those which you will not. They, each right, support one another. Bust the package, and you break the whole thing.

Does this mean that you can’t yell “fire” in a theater? Well, if the place is in fact on fire then I would submit that giving warning about it is in fact a civic duty. Does it mean that members of, by example the Ku Klux Klan or the New Black Panthers can spread what they consider to be legitimate ideology? Yes, it does, like it or not.

If we as a people allow one group to be silenced then any group can be subjected to the same treatment. Think about it.

Free Speech for some:

Former Colorado congressman Tom Tancredo was recently invited to the University of North Carolina to share his views on U.S. immigration policy and tuition subsidies. Even before he began his talk in a UNC classroom on April 14, protesters stood with signs and banners, shouted obscenities and otherwise behaved rudely.

Just a few minutes into his speech, when Tancredo made a reference to illegal immigrants, demonstrators moved to the front of the room, blocking the audience’s view of Tancredo with a banner that read: “No one is illegal.” Seconds later, one of the protesters broke a window. University security officers, standing by, shut down the event.

That was it. The speech was vetoed by uncivil, violent dissenters intent on denying Tancredo’s willing audience their right to hear his message.

An angry, chanting mob at UNC labeled Tancredo a racist and a radical. He’s most certainly neither. He’s opposed to illegal immigration, regardless of race. And there’s hardly anything radical about securing our borders and enforcing our immigration laws. What is radical in this instance is the behavior of these student demonstrators and their implicit notion that the U.S. should have open borders.

Their beef that “no one is illegal” is an offense to liberal, politically correct phraseology. So let’s rephrase it. The immigration status of people who cross our borders or remain in this country without the permission of our government is illegal. There, is that better?

If you treasure our Constitution’s guarantee of your individual right to freedom of speech, you must necessarily extend that protection to others — including those with whom you disagree. You must also take the risk that other people will listen to them, just as you want people to listen to you. If you refuse to make such allowances, your hypocrisy undermines the fundamental principle of free speech and endangers its very existence.

The First Amendment is not absolute in any of its applications, from speech to religion to assembly. Libelous speech is not protected; religious freedom does not extend to human sacrifice; and freedom of assembly doesn’t give you license to trespass on someone else’s property. But one’s free speech cannot legally be muzzled simply because someone else disapproves of it.

How ironic that left-wing college activism was launched at the University of California- Berkeley in the 1960s as the “Free Speech Movement.”

For today’s college lefties, free speech is a one-way street. They justify this double standard with an arrogant, self-absorbed, self- righteous belief that the ends justify the means, that they alone have a monopoly on truth, and that heretics cannot be tolerated. The broken glass that halted Tancredo’s speech is a symbolic flashback to the forebears of these UNC student thugs: the SS and Hitler Youth gangs that terrorized Jews. The violence is only different in degree. Student lefties have pushed pies in the faces of conservative speakers on campus. On principle, that is no less an affront to the First Amendment than clubs or guns.

These militant brats childishly call others “fascists” without understanding the meaning of the term while behaving like fascists themselves. But even more inexcusable is the complicity of grownups, those feckless university administrators responsible for protecting dialog and inquiry at centers of higher learning who allow students to stifle free speech.

SOURCE

Tom Tancredo: We should stop flu at our borders

Silent protest at PC marks Tancredo talk in contrast to the pure thuggery above.

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Posted in Editorial, Opinion, Education, Immigration, Law, News, Politics, Wordpress Political Blogs | 3 Comments »

Mob Rule being voted upon yet again

March 22, 2009

The dingbats in Colorado are yes, once again seeking to take away self determination from those that are in fact just too stupid to know what is good for them. As usual it is a scheme that will allow the more populous states to decide just who will lead the nation. Colorado will become destined as a flyover state in perpetuity. No more raving leftest clogging up I25, much less visits from politicians in need of teleprompters, or much of anything else from the powers that be irrespective of political association. I question though.Why is it always the leftest (read Democrats) that want to take away the ability of the people of Colorado to have any input whatsoever in the national political process? House Bill1299 is nothing more than yet another scheme to impose mob rule. Mike Rosen, as always does a great job exposing people for what they in fact truly are.

Another Electoral College prank

By Mike Rosen

Posted: 03/20/2009 12:30:00 AM MDT

Like the “undead” returning from the grave in your typical vampire movie, the perennial campaign of Democrats in the Colorado legislature to sabotage the Electoral College is back.

House Bill 1299, which passed the House on Tuesday in a party-line vote, is a virtual rewrite of earlier failed efforts: Senate Bill 46 in 2007 and House Bill 223 in 2006.

It would commit Colorado to a compact of states that pledge to cast all their electoral votes for whichever presidential candidate gets the most popular votes, nationally, regardless of who gets the most votes in our state.

In other words, Coloradans would risk sacrificing their own choice for president to the whims of voters in other states.

For example, suppose a majority of Coloradans vote, let’s say, for Mitt Romney in 2012 with Barack Obama finishing a distant second (I can hope, can’t I?). Romney goes on to win in 34 other states, runs up a majority of Electoral College votes and would normally be elected president.

Obama wins in only 15 Democrat “blue” states like California, New York and Illinois. But because the large populations in those states produce more popular votes for Obama than Romney, Coloradans are forced to cast all our electoral votes to him, with none going to the Colorado winner, Romney. Consequently, the states of the compact dictate the outcome of the election, the Electoral College is subverted and a candidate lacking in broad, national support wins the presidency.

The supporters of this goofy idea are overwhelmingly liberal Democrats. Their overriding goal is to win the presidency for their party by any means. They believe this will be easier if they can circumvent the Electoral College which leverages the voice of less populous states that tend to vote Republican. HB 1299 contrives to tip the scales in favor of northeastern states and California with large Democratic majorities in heavily populated cities.

As a matter of ideology, liberal populists disapprove of the Electoral College, preferring a national popular vote for president. They say that’s the way it’s supposed to be in a democracy. But we are not a democracy — never have been, and most definitely never should be.

The Founders abhorred pure democracy, and purposefully created a constitutional republic, an ingenious combination of democratic institutions and, yes, anti-democratic safeguards like a Bill of Rights to protect individuals from the tyranny of the majority; representative government, filtering majoritarian passions; a Senate with two seats for each state, regardless of population; federalism; the separation of powers; judicial review; the presidential veto; and the Electoral College.

We’re not a collective, amorphous blob, but a confederation of individual states, each retaining some sovereign powers, unique qualities, values and agendas. The Electoral College is a constant reminder of that. We do not now have, nor have we ever had a national popular vote for president.

We have 51 separate elections in each of the states and the District of Columbia to determine how electoral votes are cast. It’s only out of idle curiosity, devoid of legal status, that we aggregate those 51 election results to produce a national total. It has no Constitutional or legal standing.

HB 1299 would render Colorado irrelevant. Why would a candidate waste time and resources here to pick up a small differential of several thousand votes from Colorado’s 2 million, when more than 20 million votes are at stake in New York and California?

Doing away with the Electoral College, straightforwardly, by amending the U.S. Constitution would require ratification by three-quarters of the states. The Democrats who continue to resurrect this interstate compact conspiracy know there are enough small states to block any such amendment to the Constitution. So they’ve come up with this cynical ploy.

Colorado should refuse to be a party to it.

Mike Rosen’s radio show airs weekdays from 9 a.m. to noon on 850 KOA. E-mail him at mikerosen@850koa.com.

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Posted in Education, Law, Local Politics Colorado, News, Non Compos Mentis, Politics, Wordpress Political Blogs | 2 Comments »

“Never let a serious crisis go to waste.”

February 6, 2009

“It’s the economy stupid.” Remember that? I do, and then I also remember George H.W. Bush’s statement “Read my lips, no new taxes.”

The current mess that the economy is in makes George Bush a handy whipping boy. While at the same time conveniently forgetting that it was the Congress that forced those in the market to grant loans and general credit to people that just plain were not qualified. Now that same Congress is playing what basically is the same hand in a card game called  “The House of Cards.” What follows are two similar, but different approaches for caging the tiger. While at the same time pointing out the fallacies of the Democrat proposal (s) that simply continue to hang onto the tigers tail.

First, from Mike Rosen from the Rocky Mountain News;

Here’s the opening paragraph from a New York Times story by reporter Robert Pear (please note that this is a news story in the oh-so-liberal New York Times): “The stimulus bill working its way through Congress is not just a package of spending increases and tax cuts to jolt the nation out of recession. For Democrats, it is also a tool for rewriting the social contract with the poor, the uninsured and the unemployed, in ways they have long yearned to do.”

Reinforcing that assessment is this quote from White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel: “Never let a serious crisis go to waste. What I mean by that is it’s an opportunity to do things you couldn’t do before.”

It would be bad enough if HR 1, The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 – a gargantuan $900 billion so-called economic stimulus bill – were merely an overblown accumulation of largely misdirected, politically motivated or wasteful government spending. Examples in the bill abound, like $50 million for the National Endowment for the Arts, $4 million for ACORN or $75 million to discourage cigarette smoking. But those items are nickels and dimes. Calling it “pork laden” is too kind.

FULL STORY HERE

Then, from CNN we have a Libertarian perspective;

Editor’s note: Jeffrey A. Miron is senior lecturer in economics at Harvard University

CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts (CNN) — When libertarians question the merit of President Obama’s stimulus package, a frequent rejoinder is, “Well, we have to do something.” This is hardly a persuasive response. If the cure is worse than the disease, it is better to live with the disease.

In any case, libertarians do not argue for doing nothing; rather, they advocate eliminating or adjusting policies that are bad for the economy independent of the recession. Here is a stimulus package that libertarians can endorse:

Repeal the Corporate Income Tax: Repeal would spur investment, improve the transparency of corporate accounting, slash compliance costs, and avoid the distortions caused by the special-interest provisions in the tax code. Repeal can work fast, by raising companies’ share prices, increasing cash flow, and allowing corporations to lessen their need for bank lending.

hus repeal provides short-run stimulus and enhances long-run efficiency. Recent estimates suggest that tax cuts are at least as effective as spending increases in raising GDP. The adverse impact on the deficit is likely to be less than the $300-$350 billion in revenue the corporate tax takes in per year, since repeal spurs growth and therefore the revenue from other taxes.

Increase Carbon Taxes While Lowering Marginal Tax Rates: Reasonable people disagree about how much the U.S. should reduce its use of fossil fuels, but crowded highways, air pollution, and global warming all suggest that some reduction is desirable.

The effective way to accomplish this is higher gasoline or other carbon taxes, not the messy, complicated green spending in the Obama plan that will morph into pork in many cases. If higher carbon taxes are combined with lower marginal tax rates, the private sector faces better incentives on both counts. This approach avoids the higher deficits implied by Obama’s green initiatives.

Moderate the Growth of Entitlements: The elephant in the room amidst the stimulus debate is the impending imbalance in Social Security and Medicare as the baby boom generation moves into retirement. Without reductions in benefits, taxes will have to increase substantially, generating a major drag on the U.S. economy.

FULL STORY HERE

Both people have very defined ideas. Which beats the Democrat idea of tossing good money after bad IMO. What do you think..?

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Posted in Economics, Editorial, Opinion, Education, Immigration, Law, Local Politics Colorado, News, Politics, Uncategorized, Wordpress Political Blogs | 1 Comment »