Grappling with declining state revenues makes for some very unpleasant budget choices, as Governor Ritter and the Democrat majorities in the state legislature learned over the past 12 months.

It’s fair to criticize those choices, including the governor last year denying for several months that a problem existed.  Yet anyone who has shouldered the responsibility of balancing a budget during a recession understands that learning from your own mistakes is inevitable.

Learning, however, is essential — both to sound fiscal policy and to political credibility.  That’s why it was astonishing to hear Governor Ritter and leading Democrats dismiss the need for a special session of the legislature on the very day they acknowledged that the state will start the new fiscal year nearly $400 million in the hole. [Read more →]

America’s health care system certainly has its share of problems — of which most emanate from politicians’ tinkering, tempting frustrated consumers with promises of better benefits at someone else’s expense.

So the prospect of President Obama and Congress remaking American health care in their own image should scare the pants off anyone who looks not merely at the existing problems but at government’s abysmal record as a problem-solver. [Read more →]

President Obama claims to “have no interest” in running General Motors.  He does so with a straight face — and the same monotonous cadence that he employs whether condemning North Korea for nuclear explosions or joking with Jay Leno.  But his actions, as well as his words, betray him.

The significance of the bankruptcy and restructuring of General Motors isn’t that it happened but the way it happened.

His protestations notwithstanding, this is Barack Obama’s General Motors.  Just read from his statement earlier this month: [Read more →]

President Obama says he seeks “empathy” in a Supreme Court justice.  His first nominee, Judge Sonia Sotomayor, says a “wise Latina woman” would generally make better decisions because of “the richness of her experiences” than a white man.

Those views reveal the extent to which political and personal agendas have supplanted the rule of law in selecting nominees.

If “rule of law” sounds cold and callous, remember that the alternative isn’t “rule of empathy” but “rule of men” — the hierarchy most prevalent throughout human history. [Read more →]

If Democrats in the 2007 General Assembly were devious for passing Gov. Ritter’s infamous property tax hike without voter approval, the current crop plunges to new depths.

In an act of sheer arrogance, this year’s Democrat majority poked taxpayers in the eye just for spite. [Read more →]

I know most of you come to MH.com for politics, but it’s Kentucky Derby Day, so I couldn’t resist showing you our newest arrival, a little filly born 30 April 2009.

With apologies to Tennessee Ernie Ford.

We allow government to tax and spend, recognizing that forcibly taking the fruits of someone else’s labor would constitute theft if anyone else did it.

In turn, we expect our elected officials to remember that their responsibility is to represent taxpaying families and businesses — not to protect government at all costs.

Well, after three years of spending every available tax dollar, dismissing every opportunity to save for the next downturn, and surreptitiously raising taxes without voter approval, Colorado’s Democrat lawmakers are now planning to steal — a term I don’t use loosely — $500 million to balance this year’s state budget. [Read more →]

Seventeen years ago, Colorado voters frustrated by the excesses of an unresponsive government passed the Taxpayers Bill of Rights (TABOR), a constitutional amendment designed to limit government spending and give voters to final word on tax hikes.

Initially, government officials largely adhered to TABOR’s strictures, ever mindful that the voters had spoken and expected those they elected to play by the rules.

Last month’s Orwellian decision by the Colorado Supreme Court signaled that no longer will the executive, legislative nor judicial branches of state government — all dominated by liberals — abide by a constitutional amendment that crimps their big-spender style. [Read more →]