Colorado Luis

Some People Never Learn

So let's see.  In 2003, after Republicans had retaken control of the state Senate to go with their control of the state House, they did things like introduce a bill to re-redistrict the federal congressional districts to their partisan advantage, without giving any notice to the Democrats, then ramming it through during the last days of the session with no debate on a straight party line vote.  Voters, disgusted with the GOP's failure to focus on the state's fiscal crisis, tossed them out in droves and gave the Democrats control of both houses.  Democrats flex their muscles once in control by . . . deciding to give Republicans some committee vice chairmanships in the Senate.  Or at least that's what incoming Senate majority leader Ken Gordon is said to be considering.

Now I don't think the voters want the Democrats to come in and exercise the same kind of extreme partisanship that the Republicans showed when they were in control.  But if you ask me, this is going too far.  Getting control of the House and Senate gives Democrats a chance to show how we would govern the state.  Giving some of that control back to the Republicans sends the message that we don't really think we're ready, or capable, of governing.  And I agree with Gordon's critics who point out Democratic activists did not pour out their hearts working for the party's state level candidates so they could install Republicans in important positions.  One has to wonder, is the soon-to-be-term limited Gordon thinking about what is best for the party he is supposed to be leading as it attempts to re-establish itself as a viable alternative to the GOP in this state, or is he thinking about positioning himself as a centrist for a possible run at statewide office?

Surely he can't imagine that the Republicans would ever consider reciprocating if and when they get back in power in one of the branches of the legislature.

Employees Don't Speak English Only

According to a complaint recently filed in federal court, the Family Dollar store hired several predominantly Spanish-speaking employees of Mexican and Salvadorean descent, disciplined them for speaking Spanish on the job, and then fired them and replaced them with English-speaking white employees.  Federal law prohibits discrmination based on language in the workplace, including English-only rules unless the employer can prove a business necessity or safety reason.  It's hard to see the necessity in the case of Family Dollar, a dollar store catering primarily to Latinos.

There's been a campaign to destroy the Spanish language since the first English speaking settlers reached the Southwest.  And make no mistake about it -- the point of the campaign is to send a message to all that Latinos are an unwanted minority group.  Hence all the fearmongering about a "Hispanic Quebec" -- a concept that ignores the reality that most Spanish speakers in this country want to speak fluent English as well.  Spanish has been spoken in this part of the country for centuries, and that's not going to change, so those who don't want to hear any language other than English have come to the wrong place.

Toadies

Josh Marshall says it a lot more nicely than I would be able to:

[W]ith the nomination today of White House Domestic Policy Adviser Margaret Spellings as Education Secretary (see her bio) the pattern is now unmistakably clear. As was the case with with Gonzales and Rice, President Bush is transposing his White House staff out to head their analogous federal departments and agencies.

Gonzales goes from White House Counsel to Attorney General; Rice goes from NSC to State; Spellings goes from Domestic Policy Advisor to Education Secretary.

Each of them defined mainly by their loyalty to President Bush.

I suppose it is progress that the White House is gaining diversity not by promoting people whose primary asset is their willingness to parade around as the token minority, but instead by promoting people who have unswerving loyalty to Bush.  But not by much -- latching on to a powerful white person and depending on their patronage to go up the ladder isn't exactly a model of advancement many people can emulate.

(Ritual troll repellent:  Yeah, I know Clinton had a crappy record on diversity in his cabinet too.)

Update:  Yeah, I admit it.  I just did this post because I could name it after a Minutemen song.

Republican Circular Firing Squad

Looks like there is a fine line between the Republicans' vaunted party discipline and having a "circular firing squad."  That's the term that's being used by State Rep. Ramey Johnson after the count of provisional ballots in Jefferson County resulted in a 41-vote victory by Democrat Gwyn Green, a member of the Golden City Council.  If the lead holds up through the automatic recount (which is apparently likely), Democrats will have a 35-30 advantage in the state House. (You can thank Common Cause for pressuring Donetta Davidson to finally back off of her unsupportable decision that provisional ballots would only be counted in the presidential election for this one.)

Johnson blames her loss on wealthy activists who targeted her with negative mailings.  But she wasn't talking about the folks at Forward Colorado.  She was referring to right wing activists who attacked her for failing to toe the party line on school vouchers.  Really, you could not come up with a better example of how the state GOP's increasing ideological rigidity cost them dearly in this year's election.

Still Counting Ballots in New Mexico

The very slow process of counting ballots in New Mexico continues, with Bush's lead over Kerry shrinking to 6,800 votes.  Democratic Secretary of State Rebecca Vigil-Giron says she won't announce a winner until November 23.  Nevertheless, the experts say there aren't enough votes out there for Kerry to make up the gap.

Whatever you think about the national election result, you have to admit there were serious problems in New Mexico, ranging from chronically spoiled ballots in the Dem stronghold of Rio Arriba County to the bizarre poll closure at the Santo Domingo Pueblo.  It's unclear whether Bush really improved his standing in New Mexico, which he narrowly lost in 2000, or whether some combination of incompetence, bad luck or malice negated enough Kerry votes to give Bush the lead there.

How the Other Half Lives

RMPN got hold of an e-mail from soon-to-be-ex-Colorado Senate President John Andrews (R-Centennial).  It's very revealing to see how Republicans deal with electoral disaster, so check it out.  Andrews does not engage in any handwringing whatsoever about getting trounced at the polls for promoting an out-of-touch right wing social agenda.  Instead, he's getting a radio show and he's going to promote that agenda tirelessly.  I think there is a lesson for progressives here.  It's ridiculous to think we should retreat from what we stand for in order to win an election.  What we need to do is get out there in the media and keep selling our own ideas.  The advantage is more people agree with our values to begin with.

Saturday Beer Blogging 11.13.04

Jim Parker of Zymurgy Magazine thinks that for a country as full of hoppy beer lovers as the United States, we sure don't have a very knowledgeable way of talking about hop characteristics:

When you say hoppy, do you mean bitter? Spicy? Citrusy? Floral? All of the above and many more adjectives could be used to describe a “hoppy” beer.

Describing a beer as “hoppy” is no more descriptive than calling a sunset “pretty.”

And how is a brewer supposed to know which hops will give his beer the exact character he seeks?

So the editors of Zymurgy are encouraging readers to brew a "Name That Hop Pale Ale," a beer to be brewed a number of times with different hops so that the hops can be compared and described, using a vocabulary with words like "grapefruit," "minty" or "grassy."  Participants will report their observations to Parker, who will present them at the National Homebrewers Conference next June in Baltimore.

I've never been great at naming hops based on a blind test of beer, although I know people who are.  I'm unlikely to brew Name That Hop Pale Ale myself (I'm more a lager brewer), but I'm looking forward to the report of the results.

The Case Against Alberto Gonzales

Although I believe Bush would want to reward a Texas crony with a plum position like Attorney General even if he weren't Latino, it would be extremely naive to think that there isn't racial politics going on with the selection of Alberto Gonzales to replace John Ashcroft as Attorney General.  Will Latinos fall for the staged hype about his appointment and allow ourselves to be Clarence Thomas-ed, or will we look at the real record?  It's even worse than I had thought.  Don't miss Sensory Overload's case against Gonzales.

By the way, I actually think this is setting up a snub -- making Gonzales AG will give Bush cover not to appoint a Latino to the Supreme Court.

Why are Colorado Chicanos so damned liberal?

If the exit polls are to be believed, George W. Bush's share of the Latino vote in Colorado was the lowest of all of the states with large Latino populations -- a mere 30%.  (The next lowest number would be 32% in California, according to the same polls.)  Now, there is good reason to suspect the exit polls are wrong, especially when it comes to the so-called Hispanic vote.  The best example is Texas, where Bush supposedly increased his share to 59% -- an improvement of 16% since 2000 -- while losing the most heavily Latino border counties to Kerry by wide margins.  (Link courtesy of LatinoPundit.)  And Texas is big enough that bad results there would significantly skew the national numbers.  The exit polls seem to have gotten lots of other stuff wrong too, and the margin of error increases when you are looking at smaller subsamples, so take with a grain of salt any conservative triumphalism about their supposed success with Latinos.  (Especially if the triumphalist is also one who argues exit polls are worthless in response to claims that the discrepancy between the polls and the final results is evidence of vote fraud.)

But all caveats aside, why the difference between the result in Colorado and those in New Mexico, Nevada and Arizona, where Bush polled in the 40s among Latino voters?  It's hard to come up with a demographic explanation.  It's not an urban/rural thing -- we have lots of both in Colorado.  It could be that our percentage of recent immigrants is lower than other states.  Recent immigrants are more likely to vote Republican than those of us whose families have been on this side of the border for a few generations.  But New Mexico also has a high number of multi-generation Latinos, and immigrant-heavy California also went heavily to Kerry.

To me the best explanation is the simplest one:  Ken Salazar had reverse coattails that helped Kerry with Latinos.  Salazar picked up 75% of the Latino vote to go along with Kerry's 70%.  (And what's up with the 5% of Kerry voters who supported Coors?  Single issue lower-the-drinking-age voters, or something else?) 

I think the lesson for Democrats is that there has to be a visible presence of respected Latinos in the upper leadership in the party in order to achieve the overwhelming majorities Dems used to get back when, frankly, only the most politically active Latinos went to the polls.  There has to be real visible integration, not just "reaching out" by non-Latinos or simplistic finger-pointing at Tancredo-style race baiting, which is on the decline on the GOP side anyway.  With Ken Salazar as the party leader, we've achieved that in Colorado, but I'm not seeing it elsewhere in the southwest.

Actual Policy Discussions!

The emerging conventional wisdom about the Democrats' stunning sweep of the state House and Senate last week is that Coloradans were tired of the previous Republican majority's focus on cultural issues and Congressional re-redistricting while the state's budget woes reached disaster levels.  If the voters hoped to force Democrats and Republican Governor Bill Owens to engage in a dialogue about how to fix the budget hole, they succeeded.

Yesterday Governor Owens said what he wouldn't say last year -- that he now embraces "de-Brucing," Capitol Hill speak for asking the voters to eliminate part of the so-called Taxpayers Bill of Rights ("TABOR"), the law that prevents state government from spending more than a small increment of increase over the previous year's revenue -- the rest must be distributed. This results in a "one way ratchet" -- very much intended by Doug Bruce, the Colorado Springs businessman who wrote the amendment back in 1992 -- that forcibly shrinks the budget when state revenues decrease due to an economic downturn such as the one we have been experiencing since 2001.  Owens says he is prepared to "de-Bruce" to the tune of $500 million or more as part of a plan that would also sell off the state's anticipated revenue from the nationwide tobacco settlement,  which he anticipates would generate another $800-900 million, and increase the state budget by 3.5%.

Does this mean Owens is rethinking his much-rumored plans to run for President in 2008?  I think so. In a contested Republican primary, anything that could be portrayed (fairly or not) as a half-billion dollar tax increase could be fatal to Owens' hopes.

Democrats have not rejected Owens' proposals, although many are cool to the tobacco settlement securitization idea.  Joint Budget Committee member Rep. Tom Plant of Nederland proposed yesterday that the $300 million college voucher plan passed last year be reclassified under TABOR as a return of excess funds to the taxpayers, which would allow the state to retain that much additional tax money for budget purposes without formal "de-Brucing."  The legality of this plan would certainly be challenged.  But the fact that both sides are rolling out new state budget ideas means Colorado voters who wanted the state government to solve its budget problems are likely to get what they wanted.  And for the Democrats this is certainly a refreshing change from the Republicans' steamroller approach to dialogue during the last session.