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. (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. (more…)

Colorado’s constitution plainly says that state and local governments can’t raise taxes without permission from voters.  If only the Colorado Supreme Court could read plain language.

Instead, the court’s liberal majority ignores terms that should obviously protect taxpayers and instead emphasizes extraneous arguments that accommodate government.

This latest legal chicanery comes from the same playbook that turned the First Amendment’s guarantee of religious freedom into a tool to suppress religious speech. (more…)

“The country looks to the President on occasions like this to be reassuring to the nation. Some Presidents do it well, some Presidents don’t.”

That’s how ABC’s Peter Jennings assessed President George W. Bush’s performance on Sept. 11, 2001.  The criticism was superficial, shortsighted and unfair, given that President Bush’s finest moments came in rallying the country after 9/11 — not scapegoating the previous administration.

Bush didn’t spend the next few months claiming that he “inherited” a national security mess – nor did he complain about the economy which faltered in two of the final three quarters under President Clinton before contracting again in Bush’s first year. (more…)

Beginning July 1, Colorado drivers will pay higher taxes — we’re told to call them “fees” — on every vehicle every year when we renew our license plates.

The increase of $29 to $51 per vehicle is projected to generate $250 million annually to repair unsafe roads and bridges, Gov. Bill Ritter said when he signed the “fee” hike into law.

All this occurs under the guise of economic stimulus as Colorado Democrats learn from their Washington counterparts to strike quickly while the economy is on the ropes and the public is too worried about their own finances to pay attention to statehouse shenanigans. (more…)

Emboldened that the state supreme court still hasn’t ruled on Gov. Bill Ritter’s plainly unconstitutional property tax hike, tax-and-spenders at the State Capitol are drawing up their game plan for another end-run around voters.

If they can get away with hiking property taxes by claiming it’s not a tax increase, then Democrats are increasingly confident they can again bypass voters and the state constitution by claiming that a spending limit is something else. (more…)

The era of big government is back — with a vengeance.

President Obama returned to Denver to sign into law his American Reinvestment and Recovery Act — the biggest spending bill in history, conservatively priced at $787 billion.

In reality, this “stimulus” encourages nothing but government dependency and the belief that you really can get something for nothing.  It should be known as the American Dependency and Redistribution Act because that’s what it stimulates most. (more…)

When President Bush and Congress first proposed a financial bail out for Wall Street investors last September, a grassroots chorus — from the Left and the Right — decried using public taxpayer funds to pay off the debts of private investors.

In Colorado, the state’s largest pension fund has lost 25 percent of its investment assets — $11 billion — in the past year, jeopardizing its long-term ability to pay retirement benefits promised to some 413,000 current and former government employees. (more…)

Here they go again.

Faced with a budget that’s hemorrhaging dollars, it was only a matter of time before one of our spendthrift legislators made headlines by erroneously pointing the finger of blame at Colorado’s Taxpayers Bill of Rights (TABOR).

Never mind that last spring Governor Ritter and the Democrat-controlled legislature ignored numerous warning signals of a looming recession.

Never mind that they ignored the consensus lesson of the last “budget crisis” — when times are good, save a little money for when times aren’t so good. (more…)