U.S. Senate
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(D) J. Hickenlooper*
(R) Somebody
80%
20%
Governor
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(D) Phil Weiser
(D) Joe Neguse
(D) Jena Griswold
60%
60%
40%↓
Att. General
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(D) M. Dougherty
(D) Alexis King
(D) Brian Mason
40%
40%
30%
Sec. of State
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(D) A. Gonzalez
(D) George Stern
(R) Sheri Davis
50%↑
40%
30%
State Treasurer
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(D) Brianna Titone
(R) Kevin Grantham
(D) Jerry DiTullio
60%
30%
20%
CO-01 (Denver)
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(D) Diana DeGette*
(R) Somebody
90%
2%
CO-02 (Boulder-ish)
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(D) Joe Neguse*
(R) Somebody
90%
2%
CO-03 (West & Southern CO)
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(R) Jeff Hurd*
(D) Somebody
80%
40%
CO-04 (Northeast-ish Colorado)
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(R) Lauren Boebert*
(D) Somebody
90%
10%
CO-05 (Colorado Springs)
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(R) Jeff Crank*
(D) Somebody
80%
20%
CO-06 (Aurora)
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(D) Jason Crow*
(R) Somebody
90%
10%
CO-07 (Jefferson County)
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(D) B. Pettersen*
(R) Somebody
90%
10%
CO-08 (Northern Colo.)
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(R) Gabe Evans*
(D) Yadira Caraveo
(D) Joe Salazar
50%
40%
40%
State Senate Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
80%
20%
State House Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
95%
5%
February 13, 2014 06:34 AM UTC
34 Comments
Good morning Polsters:
Pointless.
Once upon a time, long ago when President Reagan was battling his own deficit, (I can't post pictures) he had an advisor named Arthur Laffer. Without actually doing the hard maths, Laffer theorized that when tax rates were lowered, the revenue generated to the government by the new, lower rate would be the same or higher. The theory was that lower tax rates would motivate economic new activity, investment and work and such, and this new activity, while taxed at a lower rate that before, would result in higher government revenue. At the same it would also result new wealth at the tip and new jobs and opportunities would trickle down to the rest.
Wow! If this would only be true, President Reagan would never have to increase taxes to show how pragmatic and serious he was about the deficit. If only. Instead, President Reagan raised tax rates a dozen times.
And ever since, the wishful thinkers and dreamers have argued for tax cuts to promote economic growth and more jobs. So 30 years of tax cuts (and deregulation, and no bid contracts to debt finance two wars, and taxpayer bailouts for Wall st in the 80's and again in the 00's, and the dotcom bubble, the housing bubble and you know the rest) should have resulted in all kinds of jobs. Why didn't it work?
Meanwhile, other, more mathematically inclined economists have published hundreds of articles about the Laffer curve. The overwhelming majority of these articles about real world economies demonstrate that, once again, what sounds too good to be true, is.
The hard truth is the President does not ave a magic button to increase jobs. If he did, from the mid-terms on there would be jobs aplenty.
You want deficit reduction – it's been coming down rapidly, so stay the course.
You want no deficits going forward – stop debt financing wars and pay as we go.
Cartoons like this are pointless. And you are part of the problem. You say obnoxious and fact free things about your political opposition to rally your base and bait your opponents. Real solutions (think Graham-Rudman) are not interesting. Accounting fictions, like the Laffer curve and the "debt ceiling" (which is not Constitutional – Congress "authorizes and appropriates" when Congress decised to spend less, it can authorize and appropriate less. But when it is already spent, that pesky Constitution requires that the USA not default.)
I get it. Politics is hardball and it hurts and elections have consequences and blah blah blah. But rabid partisanship based on indeological blindness is never the solution, is always the problem and is stupid. It would be boring to the point of indifference but government poorly run results in real harm. When you motivate the uninformed to vote, you can't complain about the uninformed candidates that result. Just ask governor Maes.
JBJK, Thoughtful post, most of which I agree with. Cartoons make a point. Real solutions, such as the deficit reduction committee appointed by the President, deal with problems and politicians often find it more expedient to ignore them.
Are you telling me ColoradoPols is not rabidly partisan? People without cancelled healthcare plans that were cancelled? Salzman's investigative pieces shining light on the obvious?
You can respond to over the top leftist tripe with a scappel. I don't plan on using a knife in a gun fight.
So you come shooting blanks instead? Great strategy there Jr.
Obama and Congress have been pretty useless when it comes to improving the economy (lots of great speechs though). But Obamacare is not a job killer aside from the jobs eliminated in the medical profession as it makes our healthcare system more efficient.
David, The Chicago economist whose work moved the CBO to change its projections focuses on decisions made at the margins. Much of the additional jobs added to the economy in the 80's and 90's were caused by the increase in two job households. The amount of full time workers in the US now is at the 70's level. In the 70's and 80's a spouse might take a lower level job and add 10K-20K to the household income. In those households where that added revenue would take away the subsidies for health insurance, and most of the people signing up are being subsidized, they will not be taking that job. Those are the 2.5 million lost jobs referred to in the CBO changes.
The CBO report does not refer to 2.5 M lost jobs. That's the right-wing BULLSHIT machine doing it.
The end of health insurance related job-lock is a great thing for individual liberty and the freedom to make choices…which, I realize, is something conservatives don't care about…no, wait…maybe I have that backward.
Not to mention great for the entrepreneurship the right is supposed to be all for. If people can now leave jobs they aren't crazy about to start businesses of their own instead of feeling chained to those jobs for fear of leaving themselves and their families uninsured, some of those businesses will be successful and add jobs to the market, besides the jobs they've left available for others who need them. All in all, more jobs for more job seekers, not fewer. More consumers for businesses of all kinds.
It's not just about the margins and if some take early retirement or choose to stay home with kids thereby shrinking the labor pool a bit, that's hardly a harmful effect when our problem is unemployment, not too many jobs and not enough workers. These will be people who an afford those options and still be consumers so the economy won't be losing consumers but gaining them as those who need the income take those vacated jobs.
The righties can't have it both ways, arguing one day that ACA is a job killer, which would mean causing loss of available jobs, and the next day complaining that it's going to shrink the labor pool, which would only be a problem if we had more jobs available than people to fill them. That's hardly the case when unemployment is the problem.
The right's shifting excuses have nothing to do with practical reality and everything to do with ideology. No ideology, adhered to slavishly, will ever lead to anything but dysfunction in the absence of practical adjustments. Contemporary conservative ideology is one that has been so thoroughly discredited by decades worth of empirical evidence it doesn't just need adjustments. It needs to be discarded.
Duke, You are a friggin' genius.
Udall and Obama are the great liberators, no make that the great emmancipators, of those slaves forced to work.
Tell that to the 35% black youth who are unemployed in the economy which Udall and Obama so ably sheppard who are sheepishly looking for work.
They have been set free. Free at last, free at last, thanks to Udall and Obama they are free at last.
And you are not.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2014/02/05/cbo-director-obamacare-will-reduce-unemployment/
Just like they are currently reducing unemployment. Getting a job is so difficult, people give up trying to find work and are not part of the statistic. That is why people use the labor particpation rate instead as an indicator.
That's not what the CBO report says, but you–I must conclude–are simply too stupid to understand the most basic things. OBAMAPHONE OBAMAPHONE the poor people got OBAMAPHONES
I see. So that's why ACA enabling people who don't want or don't need jobs to give them up to those who do is a bad thing. Even worse if the people giving up those jobs go out and start businesses and create more jobs, in which case, their leaving a job creates multiple available jobs. Got it. It makes as much sense as everything else that comes out of your as…. I mean mouth.
Christ on a crutch, carnagie, I'm out for 24 hours and come back to you getting your ass kicked repeatedly, you coming back with more inane crap, senseless blathering, and defiant nonsense.
See using "people" instead of saying who uses what doesn't get it.
Get organized. Find an issue you can advocate for, do the work, come to the forum with facts you can substantiate.
Oh………….get me gardner's source on the 335,000.
You're burnin' daylight.
Ah, yes, the Classic Repuglican stance; Pretending to care about "black youth", while making fun of MLK's famous speech at the same time. Whatever gives them a giggle, I guess. Not like they'd repeat it outside of their lil "sheet-wearin'" parties.
And these shitbags wonder why the just can't snag that minority vote.
"jobs eliminated in the medical profession"
Whoops- you mean in the insurance industry and other medical support industries. ACA* is clearly a job maker for medical services providers.
*My aversion to forever linking the Presdent's name to the ACA is that a) it's not the JFK Peace Corps or the FDR Oald Age Insurance (SS) and b) when voters understand what it really does and fight to keep the parts they (we) like, we have to atgue the realtive quality of this President over and over and over.
Fewer jobs in the ER if people get regular checkups. Fewer jobs in radiology if they reduce the unnecessart CAT scans. The list goes on, there will be reductions in medical jobs too.
And that's a good thing. Reducing medical costs means reducing then number of people working in the industry.
Actually, the most recent study, I believe from Oregon, indicates that utilization in fact goes up in the ER with increased insurance. It is not what was expected but what seems to occur.
What you "believe" is the problem. It's what you can prove that's important.
I was not commenting about Pols contributors from the left who are ideologically blinded, though they are just as pointless. Your "cancellation-gate" resonates with low information voters, tea partiers and the R base. (Not sure anymore those three groups aren't mostly the same.) Salzman covers the media. You say he only points out the obvious, I say while media covering media is often boring and even annoying, he sometimes points glaring gaps in media performance that I would not have otherwise noticed.
I could never understand why ElRushbo had a $50million dollar contract. Or Beck. Or the other political media celebrities. Stewart and Kimmel and Fallon are funny – I get that. And why Rush but not Hewitt? Ratings. News as entertainment. Which must create drama and a dramatic narrative even where none truthfully exists.
Back in the early days of CNN I watched Crossfire. I could not hav eexplained it then, but I was hoping for clear articulation of political positions. I missed the point- it was about ratings. I miss Tim Russert – that guy was the best. I always assumed he was a left leaning, old school, club tie north east liberal. But I could never tell. ANd no one could ever accuse him of ideological blinders when it came to his MTP interviews. He asked the questions that even if I wouldnt ave thought of them, as soon as I heard them, it was exactly what I wanted to know.
But the kind of politcal puffery and partisan hackery you demonstrate here is offensive. Not because you make partisan political points that are threatening or accurate – but because they are pointless. I had hopes, in part because you chose a great American as namesake. If that is your real name, whoops. But so far it apears that I was just mistaken that you admired him for who he was and accmplished, instead of who you wish he was and what you wish he accomplished. Carnegie would find you eually as pointless as I, and even more offensive.
well said, JB.
More lies by the troll. OBAMAPHONE OBAMAPHONE the poor people got OBAMAPHONES!
What JB said. There I did it.
Yep.
http://fciruli.blogspot.com/2014/02/voters-under-30-years-old-support-armed.html
Dave, more wisdom from Ciruli. Those recently in school and those with young children in school support arming teachers. Those who grew up in a different reality, don't.
Also a lot of teens and 20 somethings who have no kids and probably haven't thought it through. Here's one problem with you armed teacher scenario. Teachers have to want to be armed. Most don't. That's not the only drawback, of course.
I cannot get the vision of a 23 year old kindergarten teacher teaching "the Itsy Bitsy Spider" with a gun in her bra out of my mind. How dystopian. And really sad.
The more guns, the more deaths by guns. The (un)expected consequences could be tragically fatal. But, I'm sure you will find some ridiculous rationale for why it is not the gun's fault. A bad guy with a gun can only be stopped by a good guy with a gun is probably one of the lamest of excuses and sounds more like a bad Hollywood script. And don't forget, teachers are just people, and some of them are more than a quarter bubble off.
We have had enough examples of guys carrying guns who may have been considered up right "good guys" who shot and killed innocent people. They felt entitled to go after another person because they were irritated and they had a gun. And your response is to arm everybody who wants to be armed. Think of the shoot outs we could have at the theater and the 7-11.
And children in class would *never* be so mischievous as to sneak the gun away from the teacher and play with it, right?
Like the 10 year old girl yesterday that decided it was a great time to joy ride in Mom's SUV, driving it right through the DMV window.
Or an 8th grader getting the gun, shooting the teacher and holding the class hostage. The possibilites are endless.
I took a knife away from a 6th grader once, I guess it would have been more interesting experience if it had been a gun. He came from an abusive home, sad story. His dad was a police officer.
Exactly. The idea that more weapons are better than none is insane.
I recall when I was a 10th grader confronted by a bully itching for a fight. Fortunately, I was able to talk my way out of it when his gang started fighting amongst themselves.
But I recall fantasizing a few days later "what if I had a knife?", and how I could have handled it differently. In today's world, I'd have been tried as an adult, and sent to prison as a felon.
Quite a difference that would have made, huh?
More weapons are better is the dream of the NRA's benifactors, the firearms industry. And ALEC
Everything from stand your ground to arming teachers to CCW over use means one thing.
Selling more guns.
Winner, winner, chicken dinner. And, it keeps the base's knickers all in a twist.