I’ve been a bit at a loss to talk about all of the stuff that is swirling around Laura Bradford. I know Laura. I’ve had dinner in her home. She’s had dinner in my home. That isn’t recent, it goes back to the days when she had a business in the Incubator Center and I was the Revolving Loan Fund Manager.

I started a monthly dinner club that rotated among members, and Laura was one of the participants in that club.  The first dinner was held at my home and Laura showed up with some linen napkins that her company had made as a hostess gift. Laura, thanks for those napkins. I still use them.

I’m sure that Laura is embarrassed to be in this situation. She knows that it isn’t a good idea to drink and drive. She sponsored a bill that would make it murder of a child if a pregnant woman was killed in an accident after a pregnant woman and her unborn child were killed in an accident.

Laura said that when she votes in the legislature her first priority is her conscience, followed by her constituents, followed by her caucus. I recently met with her about the Cottage Food Act that I’d like to see passed as a board member of Western Colorado Congress. She is sponsoring a competing bill that is much narrower, but would approve making cakes and cookies in home kitchens and selling them to friends and neighbors. She proposed that bill because two of her constituents asked her to do so.

Today an ethics committee will decide if she should be punished in the House for her actions. I think it may be hypocritical of some House members if they vote to censure her. I’m sure many of them are guilty of driving home after more than a few drinks in Downtown Denver. The Denver Post ran an article about historic ethics reviews. I personally found it amusing that the picture chosen to illustrate the story was one of Steve King.

Laura may be in more trouble for having drinks while carrying a concealed weapon, but I’m not up on that part of the legal code—since I don’t have a conceal and carry license.  I feel badly about the trouble that Laura is experiencing, even though she did make some bad choices to get in this position. She’s not a bad person. Could we all just treat her with a little humanity?

For those of you wondering where I’ve been, the answer is Denver. When I visit Denver I usually stay with an artist friend who is not connected to the internet. I stay with him because he doesn’t mind me bringing Jackson, and is willing to babysit the dog while I do other things.

Laura Bradford

I wrote previously about testifying at a Senate hearing about the Cottage Foods Act. One of the companion bills in the House is a cake and cookies bill sponsored by Laura Bradford. There was a hearing on that bill at the same time as the Senate hearing. But Laura Bradford made the news for another reason—it seems that she had a few drinks with some lobbyists. Then while driving around Capitol Hill, she made a mistake with an illegal turn, which attracted the Denver police. She failed one of the roadside sobriety tests, but did not have a blood test or a breathalyzer test. During the traffic stop, it became apparent that she was a legislator, which prompted a conversation among the cops about immunity for legislators. Suddenly Laura was in even more hot water, with her ethics as well as judgment being questioned. If only she would have stuck with cakes and cookies.

Unions

On Saturday I attended a briefing at a Pipefitter’s Union hall in north Denver. It was an issues briefing by unions for the benefit of sitting legislators and/or candidates. I’ll write more about that later, but the big take away was that unions plan on playing a big role in elections this fall, but they are only going to support candidates who support their issues. They believe they represent workers, whether or not those workers are unionized, so they plan on reaching out to working households that they may not have reached before. They made a point of telling candidates that they might be working on their behalf, but that they weren’t going to coordinate any of that with the campaigns.

Foreign Cars

Finally, the best reason I can think of for buying American is the price of getting a foreign car fixed. I could’ve bought a new car for the amount I’ve spent on my VW bug over the past year. But it wouldn’t be as cute.

The most important thing on the minds of Colorado’s GOP is repealing the Affordable Care Act. That was their first order of business yesterday, according to a report by Charles Ashby.  The vote passed along party lines, evidently for the purpose of getting Sal Pace on record as supporting Obama Care. (Please note that Obama said he didn’t mind having his name associated with caring.)

Then in a bizarre statement Pace went on to say, “ We look a little bit too much like Washington, D.C., and I’m reconsidering my future plans if this is what it’s going to be like.” So what does that mean? Pace hasn’t even been elected in one of the most watched races in the nation, and already he’s having second thoughts? Geez that gives me a lot of confidence.

Just to make this story even juicer, Laura Bradford was the only Republican who voted against the bill. She later said that it was a mistake.  We have a Representative who doesn’t know the difference between yes and no on a resolution? Oh, she said she was “distracted.” That makes me feel better! Not good.

But get this: the resolution went even further than calling for the repeal of the Affordable Care Act. They want to hold a constitutional convention in order to repeal it. The last constitutional convention was in 1787 and we need another one now because a bill passed that was designed to stop abuses by the health insurance industry, and make health care more affordable for all? Or do we need a constitutional convention just in case Sal Pace figures out whether he wants to run against Scott Tipton?

We’ve got the picture. GOP politicians don’t like the Affordable Care Act. The constitutionality of the bill is already making its way through the courts, with Colorado signed on to the side that is claiming it is unconstitutional. We can’t wait for a court ruling, instead we want to throw out the U.S. Constitution and write a new one?

Homework

Grand Junction Sentinel Story About GOP & Health Care

Denver Post Story About GOP & Health Care

Constitutional Convention

Colorado’s legislative session begins on Wednesday; I’m in political junkie heaven.

Yes, I know that there is a GOP primary going on in New Hampshire, but there is little that I can say about that, since I have never understood how Republicans think. It is amusing to see Romney finally getting called on his claims of being a jobs creator, however. Corporate raiders don’t create jobs. Corporate raiders destroy jobs. Romney is a jobs destroyer, but that doesn’t keep corporate apologists from defending his record.

Meanwhile, back in Colorado, the legislative session hasn’t even begun and both sides are carping at each other. Let’s hope they can keep the fireworks from blowing the gold dome off of the capital building. Tensions are even higher than usual, with the GOP still smarting from losing the battle of the maps.

As usual, the GOP wants to reduce regulations and the DEMs want to create jobs in Colorado. The two shouldn’t be mutually exclusive, but both sides act as though they are. From the list of proposed bills, it seems that this legislature is all about recycling. Each side plans to introduce many of the bills that were killed by the other side in 2011. Who was it that said the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting a different result?

Charles Ashby reported in the Grand Junction Sentinel today that Bradford and King plan to introduce a bill that will change municipal regulations to allow pine beetle killed lumber to be used in framing of buildings. I don’t know enough about the structural integrity of lumber milled from trees that were killed by pine beetles to weigh in on the issue. If there is no degradation of structural integrity, this seems like a good idea. Maybe some of my engineering readers could post a comment and inform us all? I do find it amusing that the party of local control is trying to use the state to tell local governments what their building codes should look like, regardless of the answer to the integrity issue. Or is THAT the integrity issue?

There is a new strategy among Colorado’s Republican legislators in their war against workers.  Laura Bradford is leading the charge to eliminate accrued leave and sick time benefits. Courts have protected these benefits, but the GOP and ALEC have started the drum beat to get rid of them.

Here’s the deal: If part of your employer’s policy is to allow you to earn sick days or vacation days, they are considered part of your compensation package. Sick pay seems to be treated differently than vacation pay under the law. If you don’t take vacation days, but rather save them up to use at a future point in time, they still represent money that is owed to you. If you quit your job or are laid off, all money owed to you, including the vacation time that you earned while employed, needs to be included in your final paycheck.  For Colorado State workers, both accrued vacation and accrued sick time is included in the final paycheck. I spent my whole life working in the private sector, where I left quite a few jobs. I always was paid for accrued vacation time, but never was paid for accrued sick time.

The State of Colorado’s official website has this to say. “Colorado wage law provides that vacation pay, earned in accordance with the terms of any agreement, is classified as wages or compensation. If an employer provides paid vacation for an employee, the employer shall pay upon separation from employment all vacation pay earned and determinable in accordance with the terms of any agreement between the employer and the employee.”

Charles Ashby, who happens to be my favorite reporter at the Sentinel, first reported on the impact of this policy on state finances in a story published a week ago. Since the crash of 2008, Colorado has paid out almost $60 million in accrued benefits, and owes almost $400 million to current state employees. I have been unable to determine how much of the $60 million already paid was for accrued sick time vs accrued vacation pay.  According to Ashby, current policy is that employees can accrue no more than 360 hours of sick time, which represents nine weeks of pay if each week is 40 hours long. Currently when they leave employment, they are paid for 25% of any sick pay that has been “banked.” That amounts to a little less than two and a half weeks worth of pay.

Both the Sentinel, in an editorial, and Laura Bradford have stated that the policy of paying for accrued sick pay must be stopped. ColoradoWINS has vowed to fight any attempt to change the current policy. I’m not privy to their employment contracts, so I don’t know if this policy is included in a legally binding document. Given the economic strain that the state is under, and considering the way that employees are treated in the private sector, paying for accrued sick leave is hard to justify.

But we need to look at the bigger picture here.  This is just the latest salvo in the ALEC and GOP war against workers. In January reporters discovered that ALEC was advising state lawmakers about ways to decrease pension benefits for state workers. Think Progress reported on their efforts to eliminate sick pay: “PR Watch obtained documents from ALEC’s 2011 Annual Meeting showing that one of the group’s committees — the Labor and Business Regulation Subcommittee of the Commerce, Insurance and Economic Development Task Force — focused its entire meeting on the issue of paid sick leave. Task force members, who are legislators, were given copies of a bill …”

Laura Bradford is a member of ALEC. Laura Bradford plans to introduce legislation to stop the payment of accrued sick pay for workers leaving the employ of the state.  This is just one more battle in the war against workers. 

First they came for pension benefits, then they came for sick pay benefits, then they came for vacation pay benefits… Anybody who thinks that we are not engaged in class warfare is dreaming. I’m standing with the 99% of Americans at the bottom and the unions that work to preserve our benefits.

Homework

Colorado Rule on Accrued Vacation Pay

Sentinel Story Abut Bradford's intent to introduce legislation

Story About ALEC vs Pension Benefits

Story About ALEC Working to Eliminate Paid Sick Time Laws Nationally

The Headlines today in both the Sentinel and the Denver Post are all about Colorado’s Governor calling the Speaker of the House and the President of the Senate into his office and telling them to stop messing around with the must pass regulatory review bill or he would call them immediately into a special session. Clearly that got the attention of the Republicans because they immediately backed off their position, removed a bill amendment that helped predatory lenders, and voted unanimously to approve the bill, thus ending this legislative session.

Now that the session is over until January of next year, we will be seeing more of our legislators at events here in the Grand Valley. When we do, we need to ask them to spend less time bickering and staking out no-win positions. We need to tell them to start focusing on jobs for Coloradans. We need to ask Steve King, Laura Bradford, and Ray Scott how much time they spend listening to ALEC instead of listening to us. (Back in February Steve King responded to an E-mail that I sent him that he would be guided by ALEC. Laura Bradford noted at a meeting I attended that she got legislative ideas at an ALEC conference in Washington. When Ray Scott was a candidate he once said he was surprised and disgusted to learn that there were people willing to write his legislation for him. He may or may not have been referring to ALEC.)

Speaking of jobs, Hickenlooper is going to a high tech company today to celebrate their jobs creation record. They help companies gather and report data to the SEC, which we should all be celebrating. By standardizing the reporting, the companies can spend less time on these regulations and yet investors will be able to read company reports knowing that information is reported uniformly across industries and companies.

Homework

GOP Backs Off--Session Ends

Predatory Lending

ALEC Writes Legislation for State Lawmakers

Hickenlooper Celebrates Rivet Software

It has been a really busy week for anyone trying to stay on top of current events. The Middle East is still imploding. Democrats in Wisconsin actually demonstrated a backbone and stood up for unionized public workers by fleeing the state. And Republicans continued speaking with one voice everywhere but in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Last night Richard Engle, Chief Foreign Correspondent for NBC news was shown reporting from the studios of CNBC in Bahrain. His comment was that usually the stories coming out of that nation were about business. Today Manama, the capital of Bahrain, looks more like a war zone, with families mourning their dead and tanks patrolling the streets after violent skirmishes in the city.

Bahrain is a tiny island country, but it is important to the US because it hosts the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet. The 5th Fleet is there as a show of force to Iran’s military leaders. (It is also only 26 miles from Saudi Arabia, and a four hour drive from the Saudi capital.) In the wake of the violence in Manama, the British government has been trying to decide if they should continue to export arms to Bahrain. Hillary Clinton asked the government to exercise some restraint.

Bahrain is a tiny country with a religious problem. It has a Sunni monarch and Shiite citizens. Expect some Glenn Beck Paranoia about the developments there. Saudi Princes might share some of Beck’s paranoia, as they are not likely to be happy if a fellow Sunni monarchy falls. Saudi’s Shiite minority happens to live in the oil producing areas of that country. Oh my!

Meanwhile, back in the US, Boehner has lost control of his House. Those dang upstart Freshmen Republicans just aren’t voting the way they are told, and yesterday voted down one of his personal pork perks. No problem with Colorado Republicans still staying in line, however. I have it on good authority that Senator Steve King listens only to the American Legislative Exchange Council when he’s looking at issues. If you haven’t heard about ALEC, you should research it. They write model legislation that promotes “conservative solutions.” It figures that King would be guided by them—he’s not known for his original thinking. I’m pretty sure that Laura Bradford and Ray Scott drink from the same well. Ask Laura about her trip to Washington DC to learn all about Red Cards.

There is a theory that ALEC is behind the events in Wisconsin. Clearly a lot of Republican governors are working to demolish unions. It has been a Republican mantra ever since Ronald Reagan took on the Air Traffic Controllers. But it looks as though unions are finally fighting back, especially in Wisconsin. What do Republicans have against unions? They write checks to Democrats. What I can’t figure out is what American workers have against unions.

Finally, I found a story in the American Thinker, a right leaning publication, about how our economic world is about to come crashing down. This represents the thinking of the right pretty well. Anything that helps business is good. Anything that helps workers is bad. You can find this stuff all over the internet, but this one had an amusing coincidence. I’d never heard of the author, so I goggled him. You won’t believe what I found. I’m not sure it is the same guy, but if it is…

The blind are leading the blind in the Republican Party.

Homework

Protesters in Bahrain

US Navy's 5th Fleet

Glenn Beck on Bahrain

Bloomberg Talks About Saudi Arabia and Suni Shiite Sects ßPretty good analysis.

All Is Not Well in Boehner's House

American Legislative Exchange Council

Fighting Public Sector Unions

The Tipping Point is Near

Jeff Thomas Allen Barred by SEC

As I sip my coffee this morning, I’m shaking my head at the bone-headedness of the four people representing this district: Scott Tipton in Washington and Laura Bradford, Ray Scott, and Steve King in Denver. Not one of them has the common sense that God gave a goose.

In the Letter to the Editor section of the Daily Sentinel, there is a letter from David Cox offering Kudos to our people in Denver for sponsoring House Bill 11-1205. It would change Colorado’s laws to allow any “law-abiding” citizen to carry a concealed weapon without a permit. The letter is signed by David Cox as president of the Pro Second Amendment Committee of Grand Junction. If Bradford, Scott, and King are listening to David Cox, we are in real trouble. Remember him? He was one of three Republican candidates vying to represent the people of House District 54, until he was forced out of the race after being arrested for driving while seemingly impaired (he’d been drinking at a fundraiser) and with a non-permitted handgun in his pickup. When other brushes with the law were reported, even Republicans decided he was too toxic to elect. And now he is advising Bradford, Scott, and King? I don’t know who the bigger boneheads are, the elected officials or Cox, who is still playing with guns. To be fair, there are 27 House sponsors, and 12 Senate sponsors. My new favorite language in bills, including this one is “The general assembly hereby finds, determines, and declares that this act is necessary for the immediate preservation of the public peace, health, and safety.” Oh yeah, it makes me feel all warm and fuzzy to think that people with guns could be running around the campus at Mesa State College.

Scott Tipton’s bonehead award comes from his belief that the people of Congressional District 3 elected him because he promised to repeal “Obama Care.” Again, to be fair, he seems to understand that there are parts of the bill that have gained in popularity once people understood them—things like not being denied health insurance if one has a pre-existing condition. He claims that the bill does nothing to reduce the costs of insurance or increase the accessibility. Well, DUH. That is because the cost saving measures in the bill haven’t kicked in yet (Insurance Exchanges) and the most sensible cost saving measure (universal health care, with a single payer) was never on the table. Evidently Tipton has been asking people to raise their hands in meetings if they have seen their health insurance premiums go down. Again, DUH. Nobody has, because insurance companies are busy increasing rates in order to pay for the new benefits (no life-time limit, and insurance for people with pre-existing conditions) prior to the pool of insured being expanded by mandatory insurance purchases—the device in the existing bill to bring costs down. The way the bill was written, costs to insurance companies go up before revenue goes up, so in order to protect profits (and obscene salaries and bonuses for CEOs) insurance companies are raising rates.

Nobody has ever said that the bill, as passed, was perfect. Nothing ever is when it is a compromise between two diametrically opposed political ideologies. But Tipton is dreaming if he thinks that the repeal of this bill and defunding of this bill is going to get past the Senate and the President. It is a nice bone to throw to the extreme right wing, who wants this President to fail, but it has nothing to do with insurance accessibility and affordability.

Finally, where are the jobs? When are our representatives going to get serious about helping people get back to work? Didn’t everybody say that was their highest priority when they were asking for votes? So, where is the plan? Why do we still have high unemployment in Mesa County? And don’t give me the bullshit about regulations.

Homework:

Letters to the Editor February 13 2011

April 6 2010 Story About David Cox Trying to Explain his Arrest

Link to HB 11-1205

How to Get a Concealed Gun Permit in Colorado

Tipton Wants to Make Sure No Money Goes for "Obama Care"

Mesa County Unemployment Rate 10.2% December 2010