November 06, 2015 10:51 AM UTC

Get More Smarter on Friday (Nov. 6)

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• by: Colorado Pols

It’s getting more colder, so you might as well 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).

TOP OF MIND TODAY…

► Fox Business Network announced the lineup for the next Republican Presidential debate, which takes place on Tuesday, Nov. 10 in Milwaukee. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee are being demoted the the “Less-Than-One Percenters” debate, where they will be forced to try to make conversation with Rick Santorum and that talking muppet from Louisiana, Gov. Bobby Jindal. Fox has decided that George Pataki and Lindsey Graham don’t meet the requirements to gain a seat at the kid’s table anymore, so they’re off the stage completely. Yay, Democracy!

► Congressional Republicans voted for a defense spending bill that would bar President Obama from moving Guantanamo Bay prisoners to anywhere in the United States. As the Associated Press reports:

The House overwhelmingly backed a $607 billion defense bill that would bar President Barack Obama from moving Guantanamo Bay detainees to U.S. prisons, setting up a showdown with Congress over his 2008 campaign pledge to close the Cuban facility.

The long-running dispute heated up on Capitol Hill on Thursday just hours after the House passed the bill, 370-58. Three Republican senators from Kansas, Colorado and South Carolina — states where the administration has explored housing Guantanamo terror suspects — held a news conference to make it clear they will fight to prevent moving them to U.S. soil.

Closing the prison was a priority of Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign, and he promised during his first days in office that he would eventually shutter the facility, which he argues is costly and gives extremists a recruiting tool.

Colorado Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Yuma) was among the grandstanding Senators who held a press conference yesterday to do some serious fist shaking at Obama. Gardner talked at length about his own plan for…just kidding, he doesn’t have a policy solution of his own. Wouldn’t it be nice if more politicians showed some backbone and actually tried to solve this issue instead of telling scary stories?

Get even more smarter after the jump…

IN CASE YOU ARE STANDING NEAR A WATER COOLER…

► Chris Christie may be having a genuine “moment” in his campaign for President. Unfortunately for Christie, he needed that “moment” about a week ago if he was going to remain at the big-kids’ debate table.

► John Aguilar of the Denver Post reports on the final school board meeting for the recently recalled trio Ken Witt, Julie Williams, and John Newkirk. If you thought Witt, Williams, and Newkirk would take the high road on their way out of the Jeffco Administrative Building…well, let’s be honest, nobody thought that would happen:

Sharp policy disputes that have marked the past two years carried right on into the board’s final meeting. By a familiar 3-2 split, the board approved a charter application for  Doral Academy.

Opponents express concern that Doral, which would be in northern Jefferson County, would be run by Academica Inc., a for-profit charter management company in Florida.

The board also wrangled over suggested performance bonuses — totaling $9,500 — for Superintendent Dan McMinimee.

One of the final acts of a board majority thrown out by their ears by angry constituents was to ram through a bonus for their hand-picked Superintendent Dan McMinimee. Talk about making your opponent’s argument for them; the right-wing trio went out with the same single-minded indifference that they started with in 2013.

► Somebody, please, put a stop to all the stupid! Republicans are having a difficult time trying to make coherent sense out of their support for Attorney General Cynthia Coffman dragging Colorado into a lawsuit about the Clean Power Plan.

► Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, among the frontrunners for the Republican Presidential nomination, has a tax plan that he says will really benefit the wealthiest 0.0003 percent of Americans. We don’t even know how to say “.0003” percent.,

► Senator Michael Bennet (D-Denver) is teaming up with his colleagues from New Mexico to push for reforms to the General Mining Act of 1872. From the Durango Herald:

The proposed legislation – the Hardrock Mining and Reclamation Act of 2015 – will make mining companies pay royalties for extracting resources from public lands. The money would be used to help clean up abandoned mines that are continuing to leak waste into waterways, and ensure that future spills like the Gold King Mine disaster are not rectified at the expense of taxpayers.

► Congress has approved a short-term funding bill for highway and transportation needs (no thanks to Colorado Republicans who voted against the measure, including Rep. Mike Coffman). From the Summit Daily News:

Following several short-term extensions, the U.S. House of Representative passed a bill on Thursday that would extend transportation funding for six years. Summit County will benefit from the bill, as an amendment proposed by Rep. Jared Polis, D-Colorado, would designate Interstate 70 between Denver and Salt Lake City as a high-priority corridor.

With transportation funding set to expire Nov. 20, the U.S. Senate passed a similar six-year funding bill in July before the House passed the Surface Transportation Reauthorization and Reform (STRR) Act this week.

While the House bill allots about $340 billion for federal transportation funding, it is only intended to rely on three years of guaranteed funding.

“Roads and bridges are frequently multi-year capital projects. You need a reliable source of revenue,” Polis said. “Part of the flaw in the bill is that it only has funding for about two years … What we really need to do is have a robust funding mechanism to make sure we can invest in infrastructure — not contribute to the deficit — but do it in a sustainable way.”

► The editorial board of the Denver Post is finally coming around to understanding that Republican Presidential candidate Ben Carson is crazier than a bag full of cats.

► Don’t look now, but Carson might be imploding.

► Draft ballot language has been revealed by Colorado grocery stores seeking to change the law to allow them to sell full strength beer and wine inside their big box chains.

OTHER LINKS YOU SHOULD CLICK

► The Keystone Pipeline is dead. Like, really dead. As in, “we can stop talking about this now” dead.

► What happens to all of those special interests when Congress won’t actually do anything? Their lobbyists go local, putting more pressure on state legislatures and municipal governments.

ICYMI

► Some good news for your weekend: The national unemployment rate is down to 5%. Some 271,000 non-farm jobs were added to the U.S. economy in October.

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