January 18, 2017 11:29 AM UTC
Get More Smarter on Wednesday (January 18)
1 Comments- by: Colorado Pols
Your job ends on Friday and you have to move out of your house; kind of a weird way to end eight years as President. 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). If you are more of a visual learner, check out The Get More Smarter Show.
TOP OF MIND TODAY…
► Donald Trump can replace the “-elect” from his title on Friday when he is inaugurated as the 45th President of the United States. Meanwhile, officials in Washington D.C., Colorado, and across the country are preparing for a weekend of protests and marches. As the Denver Post reports:
Thousands of Coloradans plan to make the nearly 1,700-mile trek to the nation’s capital for the Women’s March on Washington; more are expected to attend sister marches in Denver and across the state.
Hailing from all walks of life, and marching for a variety of causes, several participants said it was their wish that the demonstrations help weave together the spectrum of activists looking to oppose Trump over the next four years.
“Marches make a difference. Activism makes a difference. If you don’t like what’s happening in Washington, then get involved,” said Polly Baca, a former Colorado state lawmaker who participated in the 1963 March on Washington.
While many Democratic elected officials are skipping Trump’s inauguration, Colorado Democrats such as Rep. Jared Polis (D-Boulder) and Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Denver) are planning on attending Trump’s big day on Friday. Perhaps Polis and Bennet just want to see if the band “3 Doors Down” really is still alive.
► Governor John Hickenlooper wants Colorado lawmakers to consider a couple of proposals designed to raise more money for public education. As Brian Eason reports for the Denver Post:
Gov. John Hickenlooper on Tuesday asked Colorado lawmakers for a 50 percent increase in sales taxes on recreational marijuana starting July 1 to send an additional $42 million to public schools.
The Democrat wants to increase the recreation sales tax on pot to 12 percent effective July 1, the same day the levy is scheduled to fall to 8 percent. The current tax rate is 10 percent.
The move is part of his plan to fill a $135 million shortfall in school funding caused by a constitutional provision that mandates a cut in residential property taxes — a primary source of money for local classrooms.
In addition, Hickenlooper proposed to cut the senior homestead property tax exemption in half, freeing another $68 million for schools. The shift would allow seniors to claim a tax break on the first $100,000 in their home value, rather than the first $200,000 allowed in current law.
Republican legislators are instinctively opposed to doing anything that would increase revenue while they wait for the Free Market Fairy to fix all of our problems.
► Tennessee Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander is all but carrying Betsy DeVos across the finish line as she seeks to secure approval as Donald Trump’s Secretary of Education:
After postponing the secretary of education nominee’s hearing for a week, the chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee (known as HELP) rescheduled it for last night at the very unusual time of 5 p.m. (It then started 15 minutes late.)…
…Despite howls of protest from every Democrat on the committee, Alexander allowed each member to ask five minutes of questions. He permitted just one round of questioning, compared to the three rounds that Rex Tillerson and Jeff Sessions faced last week. Most committees also give members 10 minutes per round, not five…
…Furthermore, Alexander scheduled DeVos’s grilling before the U.S. Office of Government Ethics has even completed a review of her potential conflicts of interest. Eight years ago, Republicans insisted that every Barack Obama nominee be cleared by the OGE before a hearing was held.
As the Washington Post reports, DeVos made a number of very strange statements in her first confirmation hearing on Tuesday.
Elsewhere, Senate Republicans may be rubber-stamping Trump’s cabinet picks, but they aren’t in any hurry to complete their work; Trump will begin his first term as President on Friday with less than half of his proposed cabinet approved for work by the Senate.
Get even more smarter after the jump…
IN CASE YOU ARE STANDING NEAR A WATER COOLER…
► The Colorado Independent takes a closer look at protests against Republican plans to repeal Obamacare — including the idea that a national spark was struck in Colorado over the weekend.
► Efforts to repeal the death penalty in Colorado are ramping up in 2017, as Peter Marcus reports for the Colorado Springs Gazette:
The Better Priorities Initiative of Colorado hopes to build off of work in the right-leaning state of Nebraska, where the legislature there repealed the death penalty in 2015, despite opposition led by Republican Gov. Pete Ricketts.
The Nebraska legislature repealed the death penalty over the governor’s veto, becoming the first conservative state in more than four decades to abolish the death penalty…
…A bill from Senate Democratic Leader Lucia Guzman of Denver is expected to be introduced as early as Wednesday.
► More guns in schools. Yeah, that’s what we need right now.
► State Sen. Owen Hill (R-Colorado Springs) is a little too embarrassed to tell constituents about the “legalizing switchblades” legislation he is carrying this legislative session.
► We’re #1! Oh, crap. The earth is getting hotter and breaking records every year.
► State Senator Mike Johnston announced on Tuesday that he will seek the Democratic nomination for Governor. From the Denver Post:
The 42-year-old former state senator’s debut is the start of what is expected to be a competitive contest for the party’s nomination. Former Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and U.S. Rep. Ed Perlmutter are considering making a bid — two big names that will draw significant money and attention.
Johnston’s campaign slogan is “Frontier Fairness” and he positioned his campaign toward the left end of the Democratic spectrum as he seeks to reach out to a party that remains divided by the feud between loyalists to Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.
“Frontier Fairness.” You can’t make this stuff up (well, you can…but you shouldn’t).
► Kathleen Staks is the new executive director of the Colorado Energy Office.
► Former President George H.W. Bush won’t attend Donald Trump’s inauguration because he doesn’t want this to be the last thing he does in life. Bush apparently told Trump that sitting outside in January could literally kill him.
Both Bush and his wife, Barbara, have been hospitalized due to separate ailments.
► Another one of Donald Trump’s cabinet nominees is breaking with the President-elect on issues regarding Russia.
► Bruce Finley of the Denver Post reports on some new common-sense regulations for the oil and gas industry in Colorado:
Federal land managers’ rule aimed at reducing burn-off, venting and leaks by oil and gas companies that gain the right to operate on public lands took effect Tuesday after a federal judge rejected an industry challenge.
Oil and gas companies that obtain leases to extract oil and gas from federal public land now must take steps to control their emissions into the atmosphere.
For years, companies have disposed of methane gas they could not process by opening valves and venting it and by partially burning off or “flaring” gas because they did not put systems in place to capture the gas for sale or use it on-site. Bureau of Land Management data show that companies between 2009 and 2014 wasted enough gas to power 5.1 million homes for a year. They wasted gas on which they otherwise would have had to pay royalties to state, tribal and federal governments.
► Donald Trump’s Twitter Account, which may or may not be making autonomous decisions about the fate of the free world, is starting to get a little monotonous. As CNN reports:
No, Donald Trump, NBC’s “Today” show is not doing “badly.”
It is actually America’s highest-rated morning show among 25- to 54-year-olds, the key demographic for advertisers, and it is just 100,000 viewers behind ABC’s “Good Morning America” among all viewers.
The high-rated morning show attracted Trump’s ire on Wednesday by broadcasting a report that cast doubt on his job-creating record.
The report — part of a new franchise called “Today’s Fact Check” — called Trump’s impact “very small or non-existent.”
Trump called that assertion “fake news.”
A media outlet reports something critical of Trump, and the President-elect immediately condemns it as “fake news” and asserts that said media outlet must be failing to attract viewers/readers. Rinse and repeat. This is getting kind of lame, Mr. Trump.
OTHER LINKS YOU SHOULD CLICK
► The New York Times considers some dubious stock trades made by Tom Price, Donald Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services:
Mr. Price, who will testify at a Senate confirmation hearing on Wednesday, has bought and sold stocks worth more than $300,000 over the last four years, The Wall Street Journal reported last month. His trades included shares of at least two companies that stood to benefit from legislation he voted for, had sponsored or was involved in. Democratic lawmakers have called on the Securities and Exchange Commission to investigate the trades for potential violations of the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act, which prohibits lawmakers, their staff members and executive branch officials from trading on nonpublic information. Experts say Mr. Price’s trades may have also violated House ethics rules. The Trump transition team says Mr. Price, who is chairman of the House Budget Committee, did nothing wrong and will sell his stocks to avoid conflicts of interest if confirmed.
► President Obama commuted the sentence of Pvt. Chelsea Manning, who was serving a 35-year sentence for exposing classified materials to WikiLeaks.
ICYMI
► This is a repeat from Tuesday that is important enough to remain in this space: Check out this Seattle Times story from late last week about what happened in Washington state when Republicans dismantled health care reform in the 1990s.
Don’t forget to check out The Get More Smarter Show. You can also Get More Smarter by liking Colorado Pols on Facebook!
Gotta admit, that senior homestead exemption was nice while it lasted. It also made it a lot easier for the Geezer Class to vote for school mill levy increases. It saved me about $600 this year ( sob). But lord, isn't marijuana taxed enough already? How about a tax on Internet trolls?