End of year
Last year at year end I made some predictions What’s Going To Happen in 2010 Colorado Politics
I missed a few – but I also got some right.
So let’s do it again.
2011
The script is already written for the biggest local political story, whether it’s treated as such or not. redistricting will start with polite bi-partisan baloney. It won’t be sincere, but I don’t think the D’s will fall for the R’s let’s compromise by giving us everything we want So it will be partisan and somewhat rancorous. The lines will move, but not that much. CDs 1, 2 5, and 6 will remain safe and none of the incumbents there will be seriously primaried, nor challenged (as long as there’s no Appalachian Trail hiking)
The state budget will be balanced. There will be cuts in education spending.
Colorado oil and gas production will follow the prices. Retail gasoline prices will go up, gas taxes will not.
RefC expires. There will be a TABOR law suit in Colorado. The basic gist will be that TABOR is unconstitutional because the net effect is that Colorado does not have a “republican form of gov’t” as guaranteed by Article 4, Section 4 of the US Constitution because the elected legislators cannot raise taxes. And because of Amendment 23, the Gallagher Amendment and one or two others, in fact, the elected Legislature cannot follow all the Colorado Constitutional requirements when budgeting.
The public arguments about TABOR will boil down to -“less filling – tastes great”- higher taxes or lower taxes, but there is no denying TABOR gives the Colorado voters of 1992 more say in our budget than we had on theirs. No other states will adopt TABOR in 2011, though some will continue to talk about it.
Dave Schulteis will say some outlandish things, though perhaps not as insane as claiming that babies of unwed mothers should be born with AIDS. Perhaps. So will Laura Boggs, though perhaps not as harsh as schools are stupid. Perhaps.
Doug Bruce will not pay the fine just levied. The SOS will not be serious about collecting. Jose Silva will continue to owe for similar violations. As will some of Gessler’s former clients.
At least one Colorado legislator will claim that Colorado should start stockpiling gold and silver. At least one Colorado legislator will claim that Colorado should bid on the next available Olympics.
The “Consumer Finance Protection Agency (CFPA)” will continue to come to life. As deadlines for CFPA’s progress approach, the banks and sympathetic politicos will demonize Elizabeth Warren as an overreaching liberal hack out to destroy the best banking system in the world.
Despite campaign rhetoric about 50%, an end to earmarks, and other hoopla about less spending, the Obama tax cuts will drive up the deficit.
The 2009 healthcare reform will not be repealed. (Well, except for the death panels and the 16,500 new IRS agents.)
The end of DADT will be forgotten so fast that by the end of next year people will mistakenly believe that it was ended years earlier.
The 2012 presidential election cycle will start in earnest any minute now. There will be no serious D challenger to the President. There will be a large, cacophonous R field. (2012 – Iowa and New Hampshire will go first. Palin will not win the Colorado caucus and the eventual R nominee will not have won Colorado.) Birthers will get local media through 2011.
The Av’s will not win the Cup (nor will the Blackhawks repeat). The Broncos will draft for offense. The Nuggets will go out no later than round 2. The Rockies will be fun to watch – if they stay healthy, they will win 88+ and contend. Colorado will suck in the Pac 10 12, worse than Washington State and worse than Utah in football. (Dan Caplis will not criticize da Buffs, unless he can blame a D.)
H-Man will continue to owe me $50.
on DADT, Mike Rosen wrote a hate-filled rant. I predict it may be forgotton before 2011 starts. You forgot (?) Net Neutrality – perfect for 2011 … lots of Sturm und drang. I predict that I will learn from the group about western CO shale oil plays. Christine will be asked ‘are you now, or have you ever been’ a witch?
Rosen, the long time military commander and combat vet, maybe he does have a legitimate viewpoint and just didn’t articulate it well. Oh wait…
I read his piece. He could have lifted it straight form 1948 and substituted homosexuality for race. I ‘m not saying race and sexuality are the same thing. I’m saying giving both their proper weight make the US military better, not worse.
The state will stay broke.
The Qwest merger will cost Colorado 6000 jobs. Gov. Ritter told me that 4k he knows of will off set the loss.The Qwest executives will get huge golden parachutes (that was the intent of the merger.)
The economy will slowly improve, though nationally a 2nd housing bubble is in play.
Iran and N. Korea will continue to cause problems.
Another 10 to 15k people in Mexico will be murdered in the on going (lost) drug war.
The prison population will continue to grow.
Conservatives will rail for privitization of DOC.
My knees will get worse, no significant remediation on climate change will occur in the US, there will be a couple of hundred murders in Colorado and 20% will go unsolved, and there will be thousands of rapes, many of which will go unprosecuted, and tens of thousands of robberies and car thefts.
Iran has oil so their problems will be relevant to the world. NK is starving, has nukes but no oil or significant amounts of rare earth, so unless or until they do something violent outside the peninsula the world will not care.
Qwest has such talented leadership, if we measure the size and frequency of their parachutes.
Maybe we could invite the Mexican border states to join the US as #’s 51- 56 next year. (Baja and most of Sonora were supposed to be on the north side of the border anyway after 1848 except that Trist blew it and the US Senate had bigger fish to fry so ratified rather than correct.) And then the next layer down the year after to be #57-62. At the same time we make arrangement with the Federales and governor of Chiapas to set up joint Mexican/US checkpoints at the Belize and Guatemalan borders and all the Mexican international airports. LIkewise, the US and Mexico partner on a real registry for the production and sale of anhydrous ammonia, red phosphorous, phenylacetone, and especially pseudoephedrine .
I could get behind privatized corrections when you can show me a state that has done it for more than 10 years that has had better outcomes and lower cost.
Happy New Year!
It’s skyrocketed since 1973. This was last year but it had the rate at something like 721 per 100k. The most in the world. 30 to 30 % for drugs, 42% reincarceration rate.
The land of the free has plenty of folk making money on locking people up.
It would be nice if I wasn’t so dyslexic. It should read 30% to 40% for drugs.At teh height of teh Great Deperssion the # was like 100 per 1000k.A chart with a correlation to the unemployment rate shows no correlation at all.
Whatever he says will get a LOT less play from the media, since he won’t be able to say it from the well of the Senate or in Senate committee hearings (he’s gone – Lambert replaced him).
I thought I recalled him
quittingstepping down.Ok- revised – Senator Lambert will say some outlandish things, though perhaps not as insane as claiming that babies of unwed mothers should be born with AIDS. Perhaps.
will still be delinquent.
most Tea Partiers, who know next to nothing about what it actually says, will decide they aren’t all that crazy about it after all. All that common welfare stuff sounds so commie. I mean don’t commies talk about “the people”, isn’t common good anti-capitalist and isn’t welfare a bleeding heart liberal plot to destroy America?
Fox viewers will remain the most ill informed and believe the most stuff that isn’t true.
The governor of Hawaii will get nowhere with the birthers because whatever he does to prove Obama was born here in the US will just be another commie-Dem, America-hating plot.
The tension on the right between the Palin and the Palin-not-so-much factions might be enough to cause some disruption within the GOP Borg but, sadly, not enough to cause terminal implosion.
Gessler, as SOS, will be an incompetent nincompoop and see his role as an entirely partisan one.
Stapleton, as Treasurer, will be an incompetent nincompoop who might get into some ineresting scrapes and scandals.
Redistricting will be pretty boring.
John Salazar will decide not to run for congress again.