On the plus side, it’s not so windy today. It’s time to Get More Smarter with Colorado Pols! If you think we missed something important, please include the link in the comments below (here’s a good example).
► Republican Presidential frontrunner Donald Trump says he stands by his comments that the United States should temporarily bar all Muslims from entering the country. In the 36-48 hours since Trump announced his newest foreign policy idea, politicians on both sides of the aisle have strongly condemned The Donald; Colorado Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Yuma) called Trump “a buffoon,” and Rep. Ken Buck (R-Greeley) said that Trump was “a fraud.”
Annnddd…then there’s Rep. Mike Coffman (R-Aurora), who whiffed not once, but twice in attempting to respond to Trump’s comments by trying not to respond to Trump’s comments. As Colorado Pols wrote earlier today:
In the last week, Coffman has also refused to condemn the remarks of State Rep. JoAnn Windholz, whose Commerce City district is within the boundaries of CD-6, even though his hometown paper called for Windholz to resign over her disgusting comments in the wake of the Planned Parenthood terrorist attack. Coffman had plenty of cover here, too, to speak out about Windholz’s statements, and he just skipped right along in silence.
Does Mike Coffman believe that Donald Trump is right in saying that the United States should temporarily bar all Muslims from entering the country? Does Mike Coffman believe that the Planned Parenthood attacks were the fault of Planned Parenthood (which is Windholz’s belief)? We don’t know, because he won’t say.
And it speaks volumes.
► Love him or hate him, you’ve got to give this to Donald Trump: The man understands the principle of leverage. While (most) Republican elected officials were being openly critical of Trump’s Muslim comments, Trump once again dangled the “I-word” on Tuesday:
A new poll indicates that 68% of my supporters would vote for me if I departed the GOP & ran as an independent. https://t.co/ztP5d2ctZl
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 8, 2015
Republicans don’t have any good options for dealing with Trump right now. If Trump ends up becoming the GOP nominee for President, his litany of offensive comments will be the albatross that hangs from every Republican neck in 2016. If Trump decides to leave the GOP and run for President as an Independent, he will suck enough votes away from Republicans to make it impossible to defeat Democrat Hillary Clinton in the General Election.
Thus, many Republicans have resorted to crossing their fingers and repeating the mantra, “Trump will not be the Republican nominee.” But his Hairness isn’t going anywhere: “I. Will. Never. Leave. This. Race.”
Get even more smarter after the jump…
► Colorado Sen. Cory Gardner says that President Obama’s strategy for dealing with ISIS has been “ineffective,” so Gardner and a handful of his colleagues wrote a letter to the President telling him as much and calling on Obama to present a “military strategy” for defeating ISIS.
Included in the letter was a detailed strategic proposal from the Republicans to…nah, just kidding. Gardner and friends don’t have their own solution.
► Interior Secretary Sally Jewell is presenting a plan for cleaning up abandoned mines in the Western U.S. As Bruce Finley reports for the Denver Post:
The White House push — to ensure cleanup costs “are not solely borne by the taxpayer,” Jewell will testify — would levy an abandoned mine lands fee on uranium and metal mining assessed on the volume of minerals extracted, starting Jan. 1.
Funds collected — an estimated $1.8 nillion through 2026 — would be split for projects on federal and non-federal lands.
► Republican Presidential candidate Marco Rubio has a “water thing.” As Politico explains:
Rubio, of course, became famous five years later for diving for his water bottle and taking a sip in the midst of a roughly 14-minute nationally televised response to President Barack Obama’s State of the Union speech. He responded in good humor by tweeting out a picture of the empty bottle, and over the next week his PAC raised $100,000 off the sale of water bottles.
But the water tic has persisted and remained noticeable on the campaign trail this fall, drawing comment from those who have worked with and watched the Florida senator. Like Richard Nixon’s perspiring or John Boehner’s crying, Rubio’s need for constant hydration is a bodily quirk that impinges on his political life.
The 44-year-old senator takes care to ensure the availability of water at his public events and can be particular about how he takes it. His advance team has mandated exact requirements for the vessels he will drink out of: stemless glasses — not stemmed ones or water bottles. He reaches for it constantly during public remarks. Its absence has thrown off his delivery, and he and his campaign have acknowledged its presence by attempting to turn it into a joke. On the trail, he has even asked hecklers to time their outbursts around his breaks for it.
“Marco does have a water thing,” said one longtime Rubio associate who has been affiliated with his past campaigns. “I don’t know what it is. He says he just gets thirsty, but it’s clear it’s just a nervous tic. It’s something he just has to have around, like a security blanket or something.”
► The World Trade Organization has approved more than $1 billion in additional export taxes on agricultural goods shipped from the U.S. to Mexico and Canada.
► The man accused of killing three people in a terrorist attack at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs will be formally charged today.
► A state audit on the Secretary of State’s office finds that its “business friendly” fee policy may not be so friendly to everyone. From Ed Sealover of the Denver Business Journal:
Former Secretary Scott Gessler dropped the business-filing fee to $1 for much of 2012 and then repeated the practice in 2014. The moved was one of several aimed at making Colorado a more business-friendly state.
But Tuesday’s audit found the incremental enactment of the fee holiday put an inordinate burden on some companies more than others to fund the office.
“The department’s fee-setting practices effectively subsidized the fees paid by businesses filing during the department’s fee holidays with fees paid by businesses filing outside of the holidays,” said Jarrett Ellis, legislative audit supervisor. [Pols emphasis]
► The Colorado Supreme Court is hearing arguments today about the legality of local governments banning fracking within their jurisdictions.
► Republican Presidential candidate Jeb! Bush continues his downward slide in the polls, but it’s not for a lack of spending money. The “Right to Rise” super PAC formed to support Bush’s Presidential campaign has already spent more than $50 million.
► Stop us if you’ve heard this before: House Republicans are preparing a “stopgap” funding measure to keep the lights on in the federal government because this “governing” thing is so hard. From Politico:
House Republican leaders are preparing a short-term stopgap spending bill to avoid a government shutdown, multiple sources said. It will move to the floor for a vote on Friday, just as the current funding bill lapses.
GOP leaders are still wrestling with how long the new bill would fund the government for, but several aides on both sides of the aisle said it would extend spending authority until sometime from Dec. 16 to Dec. 18.
The stopgap is necessary because Republicans and Democrats have not reached agreement on a long-term spending package to keep government open until October 2016. Republican leaders are intent on giving lawmakers three full days to read any omnibus spending bill, which bolsters the need for a short-term bill. Without a bridge measure, the government would shut down December 11.
Never fear, America! Republicans will make sure that your government is funded until at least Dec. 16th, and maybe even until the 18th!
► There’s another brewing political scandal in Adams County, which has long battled Jefferson County government over the right to be called “most corrupt and inept” in Colorado.
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Remember that Gessler not only wrecked his department's budget with the fee holidays, but he chose to blame his busted budget on the implementation of Colorado's new voting law, HB1303.
Back in private practice at Adroit Advocates, Gessler now advises clients
He is taking credit for Colorado's progressive and successful election laws, which he fought tooth and nail. Well, at least he doesn't have to moonlight to make it on that measly $68K a year Secretary of State salary any more.
Another bush does the family business proud http://www.liberalamerica.org/2015/12/09/jeb-bush-george-p-bush/
"$1.8 nillion" doesn't sound like anything at all… $1.8 million, maybe.
you had me for just a second there, Alva…
LOL