Political Economy

TABOR and Referendum C & D

http://www.state.co.us/gov_dir/leg_dir/lcsstaff/bluebook/Default.htm

The Colorado Taxpayers’ Bill of Rights (TABOR) possesses two features, which have generated a great deal of tax relief for Colorado residents during the past decade. First, TABOR places a tight cap on all state expenditures, limiting increases in per capita state expenditures to the inflation rate. Second, it mandates immediate refunds of all surplus revenues. As a result, when the state collects revenues above the limit set by TABOR, Colorado taxpayers are entitled to a rebate. Overall, between 1997 and 2002, Colorado has reduced taxes more than any other state, issuing annual tax rebates that have totalled more than $3.2 billion.

Even before it was enacted, Colorado Democrats sensed and feared TABOR's potency. In fact, during the 1992 campaign Governor Roy Romer repeatedly denounced TABOR, saying that defeating TABOR was the "moral equivalent of defeating the Nazis at the Battle of the Bulge." He personally attacked TABOR's author Douglas Bruce, calling him "a terrorist who would lob a hand grenade into a schoolyard full of children." Finally, Romer predicted that TABOR would result in an economic Armageddon and warned that the Colorado border would have to be posted with signs reading, "Colorado is closed for business."

However, since 1992, nothing of the sort has happened. In fact, Colorado's economy has been exceptionally strong. Between 1995 and 2000 Colorado ranks first among all states in gross state product growth and second in personal income growth. Furthermore, according to the National Association of State Budget Officers (NASBO), Colorado was one of only five states that did not run a deficit during fiscal 2002.

In addition to providing tax relief and fostering economic growth, TABOR has also forced Colorado residents to see the costs inherent in government programs. In other states, residents often support higher government spending because they can see the benefits of a particular program, but remain blissfully unaware of the costs that they and other taxpayers will be forced to bear.

However, in Colorado the annual tax rebates brings these tradeoffs clearly into focus. In every year from 1993 to 1999 there was a proposal on the ballot to either raise taxes or increase spending in excess of the TABOR limit. Knowing these initiatives would markedly reduce the size of their annual tax rebate, voters soundly defeated each of these measures. In 2001, for the record, an initiative to increase spending for Colorado schools did pass. However, Colorado taxpayers still received tax rebates totalling more than $900 million from fiscal 2001 revenues.

Because of this long-term success, Colorado's TABOR may well surpass California's Proposition 13 in terms of effectiveness. In 1978, Proposition 13 did an excellent job of providing taxpayers and homeowners with some much needed short-term tax relief. However, since it failed to restrain expenditures, the California state legislature eventually increased other taxes to compensate for the loss in property-tax revenue. For instance, in the years following the passage of Proposition 13, California raised the income tax, the sales tax, and taxes on beer, wine, and cigarettes. During the early 1990s, former Governor Pete Wilson even proposed increasing taxes on snack foods. This vicious cycle of spending and taxing is the root cause of California's current fiscal mess.

Overall, Colorado's Taxpayer Bill of Rights has quietly become America's most effective limitation on government. It has kept spending in check, provided tax relief to Colorado residents, and deserves a great deal of credit for Colorado's strong fiscal position.

An Extraordinary Leader

The greatest accomplishments of the twentieth century were not achieved by the scholarly Theodore Roosevelt, or the stately Woodrow Wilson, or the aristocratic Franklin Roosevelt, but by a man who was deemed as the most un-intellectual man in politics: Ronald Reagan. He brought the Soviet Union to the negotiating table and drove it to its demise. He reduced the tax burden on the American People and stimulated the American Economy for years to come. He rebuilt America’s oldest institution: Her military. He reaffirmed America’s faith in itself by speaking of her greatness and righteousness. Accolades could be sung about Ronald Reagan’s achievements, but they are the derivatives of what made him great. It was the character of Ronald Reagan that made him the most influential American. Reagan had all the virtues of a leader: Vision, Action & Consent. Reagan went to Washington without having lost his innocence and passion. His education as an actor taught him to be a superb negotiator and role player. His ability to convey to the American People his thoughts and upon finishing they would shout “Dam’n Right,” earned him the title of the Great Communicator.

In 1981, Ronald Reagan walked into a position that hosted several problems of great magnitude. The Office of the President had lost the nation’s trust. President Nixon’s Administration was tarnished by the Watergate Scandal. President Carter’s was too detail-oriented to be effective. The lack of action by Carter allowed Reagan to pose the question, “Are you better off now than four years ago?” Also, the American Economy was infected with Stagflation: High unemployment with high inflation, something by Keynesian Economics was never supposed to happen. The Carter Administration downplayed this spiralling economic slump by calling it a recession. While on the campaign trail, Reagan said that “A recession is when your neighbour loses his job. A depression is when you lose yours. And recovery is when Jimmy Carter loses his.”

Ronald Reagan’s belief in strong convictions can be easily recognised when, at the RNC Annual Gala, he said “Speech delivery counts for little on the world stage unless you have convictions, and, yes, the vision to see beyond the front row seats.” Like James Stewart in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Ronald Reagan never lost faith in America’s core principles. Reagan’s rhetoric about America’s exceptional moral standing was in keeping with the former presidents. However, the major difference between his predecessors and him is that Reagan incorporated it into his day-to-day operations. Reagan believed that Communism was inherently wicked and that containment and appeasement, which were popular ideas of the day, were not enough to defend the American People from destruction and the encroaching “evil empire.” The Soviet Union had to be brought to the negotiating table and forced into submission. Also, Reagan believed that America’s greatest resource was her citizens and that, when enticed with incentives, such as the cutting of marginal taxes, they would be more productive. With the notion of increasing production, or supply-side, the economy could be stimulated for great levels of growth.

Ronald Reagan was known for driving a hard bargain. Not always did he get everything that he wanted, but usually got almost everything by trying his adversary’s patience until there was nothing left to give up. Speaker Tip O’Neill claimed that Reagan’s style of bargaining was on the verge of blackmail. The peace talks with the Soviet Union were classic Ronald Reagan arbitration. Up until 1983, the United States and the Soviet Union were each building their nuclear arsenal to a level that would surpass the other’s level. Reagan knew that this would simply continue the uneasy peace. He created the idea of the Strategic Defence Initiative to render nuclear missiles obsolete. While many in the United States deemed this as a “castles in the air” approach, it scared the Soviets into believing it was a reality. The Soviet Union Politburo realised that it needed to change its strategy and placed Mikhail Gorbachev as General Secretary. Reagan, an avid believer in personal diplomacy, met and like Gorbachev and knew exactly how to pressure him to adopt the “Reagan approach.” He called the Soviet Union an “evil empire,” which troubled Gorbachev. He called on Gorbachev to “tear down [the Berlin] wall” for the sake of peace, prosperity and freedom. He called on Gorbachev to dismantle his nuclear arms program and, in Iceland, when Gorbachev said he would not, Reagan walked out of the peace talks. Through the constant reiteration of American values, Gorbachev and the Soviet Union began its withdrawal as a belligerent power.

Ronald Reagan carried his experience as an actor to the White House with the notion the statecraft meant a bit of stagecraft. Reagan believed that his acting background allowed him to govern more effectively. His great asset while on the campaign trail was that his opponents viewed him as a buffoon. He enjoyed not being held to high expectations, which would keep him from tackling the real issues. Reagan saw actors not as fakers, but as people who could convey noble ideas. His real-life hero was John Wayne, a man whom embodied the values of American Men of the time; whom would refuse a role because it did not fit with his public persona. Though John Wayne was charged as a hypocrite, the media missed the point that it was Marion Morrison who became John Wayne, just as it was Ronald Reagan who became the President. By having been an actor, Reagan also knew the difference between criticism and success. When a movie would be a success in the box office, what did it matter what the critic said. As President, if an economic package worked and Americans were better off for it, what does it matter what the critic says.

The American media called Ronald Reagan a lot of things, but the one that was correct was the title of the Great Communicator. To paraphrase Lady Thatcher, it is not only that Reagan was the Great Communicator, but that he had a message to communicate and Reagan’s words fight like soldiers and lifted the spirit of this nation. Reagan had an uncanny talent for uniting the American People by exemplify by preaching liberty and equality and by clearly defining what it means to be an American. Reagan had a way with the English language that could take very complex concepts and simplify them so that the American People could understand his message. After convincing the people, his strategy was simple: He would urge them to write their congressman and then cut a deal with Congress as close to what he wanted. As his aide, Dinesh D’Souza put it, “He spoke in poetry and governed in prose.”In January 1989, Ronald Reagan met with his advisors. He said, “We have had a revolution and the revolution has been a success.” Reagan’s leadership style brought the United States out of its dark ages and created a time for choosing. In ending will be Ronald Reagan’s own words: “You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on Earth, or we will sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness.”

All out to win in Iraq
By John Andrews

Why not victory?

The question haunted me all day on Sept. 11, the fourth anniversary of Islamofascist military attacks against America's seat of self-government, Washington, and our crown jewel of liberty, New York. We are a nation supposedly at war, yet the enemy is not identified, the definition of winning is vague, the national will is weak. The war itself is misnamed and undeclared.

In my town, Centennial, which firmly supports President Bush and the Republican Congress, not one house in 20 flew the flag last Sunday in memory of the Sept. 11 heroes, or in token of the will to avenge them and secure our freedom by defeating the global jihadist enemy. At my church, there was but passing mention of the World Trade Center atrocity, and no mention of the unfinished conflict it ignited.

That Saturday, I was at two gatherings where the national anthem was sung, a statewide conservative conference and the Caulkins opera house opening gala. Little of the somber tone of wartime was felt at either of them. You can bet that on Friday, the day before, imams in countless mosques around the world - including many right here - were revisiting the glories of destruction on that fall day in 2001, and inciting the faithful to further bloodshed for Allah.

But the Twin Towers and Pentagon anniversary was largely crowded off weekend front pages by Katrina coverage in both The Post and the News. The Post did find room for a story headlined, "Muslims say fear lingers." The Gulf Coast hurricane and the Islamist act of war were paired as twin "tragedies" in a Rocky headline on Sept. 12.

Storm devastation compounded with human failings is a tragedy - but a sneak attack on our homeland by foreigners bent on killing us by the millions and subjugating America to Muslim theocracy is not. It is, or should have been, a fearsome warning to mobilize this mighty land militarily, diplomatically, economically and spiritually for total self-defense and ferocious counterattack, never slackening until the enemy is crushed.
Tragedy, hell. This is war, and not just a war on "terror." Certain Muslim groups and Muslim countries are out to break the U.S. and its free-world allies, dating from at least 1979 when they hit us in Tehran. Their side is bent on victory. Our side, up to this point, clearly is not.

Coping, managing the problem, at most swatting the enemy, seems to be the extent of our objective. While Bush has been far better than Clinton, cleaning the Taliban out of Afghanistan and removing Saddam Hussein, the latter-day Hitler, from Iraq, he hasn't done nearly enough.

Here's my "Why Not Victory?" list of what President Bush and the United States should do:

1. Address Congress and call this what it is: World War IV.
2. Send another 50,000 troops to Iraq.
3. Increase the defense budget by $200 billion.
4. Institute a draft for the armed forces.
5. Declare war on Syria.
6. Put Cheney in charge of a task force to find Osama Bin Laden, Ayman Zawahiri and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
7. Name a Democrat, perhaps Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut or Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana, as Homeland Security secretary.
8. Militarize the Mexican border.
9. Summon the leaders of Muslim nations to the woodshed in Washington.
10. Assemble democracy activists from Muslim nations at Independence Hall.
11. Intensify FBI surveillance of Islamofascist front groups in the United States.
12. Break relations with the Palestinian Authority.
13. Speed up Hussein's trial.
14. Indict Kofi Annan and notify the United Nations to relocate overseas.
15. Convene a Warsaw summit of the democracies toward replacing the U.N.

Katrina was horrific, to be sure. But so were the 1918 flu epidemic and 1943 race riots, little remembered today. What mattered most then was winning the first and second world wars. What matters supremely today is winning this world war. America again stands in mortal peril. Statesmen, defined in this section last week by Paul Johnson as "selfless leaders ... seeking the common good," are greatly needed. Their stark challenge to all of us must be: Why not victory?

THE KEY TO THE COMING CRISIS OF CONSERVATISM

Speaker Newt Gingrich

Real change requires real change.

Presiding over the inherited bureaucracies, structures, and laws of the left is an inadequate basis for a long term governing majority.

Things are not working in part because the bureaucracies, regulations and systems of the left simply no longer work.

The first and greatest challenge for conservatives is to understand that presiding over and defending the left’s institutions is a prescription for failure.

The Social Security transfer payment model which worked fine when there were 42 working taxpayers for every Social Security recipient (the first year checks were paid) simply will not work when there are only two working taxpayers for every retiree (when my grandchildren enter the work force).

The bureaucratic intelligence system which focused on an even more bureaucratic Soviet Union is simply incapable of staying in touch with and analyzing the modern real time world with its diverse power centers and multiple challenges.

The education system which worked well for middle class students whose parents reinforced the teacher has failed more and more expensively in both human and money terms. A bureaucracy which spends billions outside the classroom is a bureaucracy conservatives should be transforming not increasing.

The irresponsible 1965 model of Medicaid is begging for the kind of profound transformation which was applied to welfare in 1996 (with the result that 60% of the people on welfare quit their habit of dependency and either went to work or went to school).

The model of bureaucratic public administration was codified by the civil service laws of the 1880s when male clerks using quill pens sat on high stools. For 120 years this system has evolved into greater and greater layers of red tape and inefficient processes. No amount of reform will make bureaucratic public administration as accurate, efficient, and flexible as UPS or Fedex. Yet these companies are the standards of implementation which people have come to expect in their daily life. It is government which is now the obsolete, inefficient, expensive, and frustrating outlier.

The American people instinctively know that things are not working.

When there are more than 11 million illegal immigrants and the number rises each day things are not working.

When a man carrying a knife, axe, sword and power saw with blood on it is admitted by border guards to the U.S. from Canada things are not working.

When the Supreme Court shatters private property rights on behalf of often corrupt city governments things are not working.

When the gap between Chinese and Indian students in math and science and their American counterparts remains devastatingly large after 22 years of reform (beginning with A Nation at Risk in 1983) things are not working.

When the demographic realities of living longer create clear requirements for transformation in health and pension policy and the political system simply finds it impossible to have an honest dialogue about the challenges of success (fewer people dying and more people living longer is a great success not a problem) it is clear things are not working.

When four years into the Long War with the Irreconcilable Wing of Islam, the Bureau of Prisons has to be embarrassed publicly into hiring its first Arabic translator things are not working.

When the United States energy supply relies on anti-American semi-dictators in Venezuela and dictatorships in Saudi Arabia, Libya, Iran, and Kazakhstan and an unfriendly Russian government to keep supply large enough and price low enough with no coherent American strategy for energy security things are not working.

When the amount of debt held by foreigners mounts each year and the relative productive capacity of Asian countries grows steadily larger without an effective American strategy for competing and succeeding things are not working.

When housing has become a bubble with no down payments, no payments on principle and in some cases not even complete payment on interest a looming threat to the entire economy exists and clearly things are not working.

The list could go on and on.

The United States faces a lot of challenges. Meeting these challenges is going to require a general strategy of continuing transformation across a wide range of very important and very difficult topics.

It will be impossible to govern successfully by trying to solve one or two problems at a time. That approach will guarantee that some zones break down catastrophically (an energy crisis, a housing price collapse, a terrorist attack of large proportions, etc), while the focus is on the selected limited group.

Governing in a time of dramatic change requires a parallel commitment to transformation on many fronts simultaneously.


This article illustrates the degree of frustration that conservatives hold with the federal government. The overall message is that the federal government cannot, and should not, nurse citizens from the cradle to the grave. In the last fifty years, the government has grown to the point of inefficiency trying to solve the problems of Americans. It is as the snake that ate an ostrich egg, too politically-correct to spit the egg out and not designed to stomach the problem.

Introduction

These are a couple of good reference websites:

http://www.americanrhetoric.com/

http://federalistpatriot.us/

http://www.gop.com/