Bill Ritter: Doing The Right Thing, Maybe

We're often critical of Bill Ritter because there is much to be critical of. When he does something right, we need to recognize and applaud his action.

The Coloradoan reports that he is seeking to see if Tim Masters can be compensated if he is fully exonerated. It is the right thing to do.

If he forced Masters to sue for compensation, a large verdict would discourage prosecutors from ensuring justice was done when new evidence was uncovered. They would attempt to keep the innocent in jail to save their jurisdictions from paying damages.

The Fort Collins police department is very likely liable for its actions in the Masters case, which means the taxpayers are liable. That is very likely one of the reasons that the prosecutor has refused to clear him, probably unjustly.

For a lawyer, Bill Ritter is pretty messed up. Not this one time.

Bill Ritter - For Gun Control or Against?

We like to tell the story of two Republicans who live about ten miles apart. We met them while we were knocking on doors and making phone calls for Bob Beauprez.

One voted for Bill Ritter because he thought Ritter would protect hunter's rights better than Bob Beauprez. The other voted for Bill Ritter because he was certain that Ritter would work for gun control.

This last guy was a gun control nut. When informed that this author had purchased a shotgun after finding a burglar in the house one night, he said "he didn't kill you, did he?" That's the gold standard among gun control nuts. Of course, they have no compassion for those who do die or are raped when their gun is beyond their reach, or they have no gun.

Today, the GJ Sentinel reports that our two Republicans will find out which was the greater fool:

A panel of state lawmakers gave initial approval Monday afternoon to a bill that could criminalize the careless storage of firearms.

Sen. Sue Windels, D-Arvada, said the ready availability of firearms in some households has fueled teen suicides and school violence, and lawmakers should discourage the negligent storage of weapons.

Senate Bill 49 would make it a misdemeanor offense for an adult to fail to safely and securely store a firearm, which a 16-year-old or 17-year-old child could then use to harm someone or take the gun to school.

Harassing Union Tactics Unleashed by Ritter's Executive Order

From the University of Colorado newspaper comes a story about union organizers accused of harassing state employees:

Last week, human resource directors from many state agencies met with leaders from several unions to voice their concerns about union organizers' tactics, which some called over-aggressive. One union organizer, employed by Colorado WINS, was arrested in downtown Denver in November for allegedly trespassing on Regional Transportation District property after attempting to distribute leaflets in an adjacent private building where a state agency is located. In a more recent incident, a union organizer who visited a Department of Corrections (DOC) employee at home, found himself on the business end of a gun. (The DOC could not confirm the incident, but S&GR learned about the incident from two union leaders, both of whom volunteered the information.)

The response from union leaders at the Jan. 25 meeting was that if unions are denied access to state employees in the workplace, home visits and home phone calls may be their chief way to get petitions signed for employee partnerships....

Heather Perdue, DOC human resources manager, told S&GR that her employees view the home visits as an invasion of privacy. Other HR directors said some employees have complained about multiple phone calls at home in the evenings. Hudson replied that there are at least three organizations trying to recruit and it's possible that employees are getting calls from three organizations in one night.

Remember, it was Gov. Bill Ritter's November 2 executive order that set these events rapidly in motion. In the past three months, we've been told these are harmless and constructive "partnerships" designed to make state government more "efficient."

And now what do we read about: Trespassing? Visits and repeated phone calls (maybe they should organize a telemarketers' union) to employee homes? The unions seem really eager to get employees on board to take part in these "partnerships." Except what they're telling their targeted future members is something different than what the governor has said to try to reassure citizens of the state:

[Colorado Association of Public Employees spokesman Miller] Hudson also addressed the issue of what messages are being communicated to state employees. He said his organization is talking about negotiating for better wages and benefits in recruiting messages, in spite of the Ritter administration's statements that those issues are non-negotiable due to existing statutory and budget limitations.

The question remains: Is Ritter being manipulated by the unions, or is he a willing collaborator? Whichever is the case, he shares some accountability for opening his employees' doors to coercive union tactics and the government's doors to inevitable rising costs.

At least one official is trying to do something about the problem on both fronts:

Sen. Shawn Mitchell (R-Broomfield) said he also had heard stories, including ones from friends who are state employees and say they are being harassed. He said he suspects that a master list of state employees' home phone numbers and addresses may have been illegally provided to the unions, and that he is looking into the matter. The union tactics are "outrageous," Mitchell said, "but not surprising." He said the Ritter executive order is more about "throwing open the door to coercive recruiting tactics, not about creating a collegial partnership with state employees." Mitchell is a sponsor of SB 86, which would overturn the Ritter order. It is scheduled for a hearing in the Senate State, Veterans and Military Affairs Committee on Feb. 6.

Hudson and [Communications Workers of America organizer Al] Kogler told the human resource managers that those lists were purchased from information brokers who are "tracking down" state employees.

Purchasing lists for the privilege of "tracking down" state employees in their homes? That's a lot of time, effort, and brain damage to spend just to make government more "efficient." Either Gov. Ritter has been insulting our intelligence, or letting his own intelligence be insulted. Neither is a flattering compliment for this great state of Colorado.

Cross posted at Mount Virtus

Where is Bill Ritter on Nuclear Power?

One of the more interesting aspects of this election cycle has been the willingness of major Colorado politicians to undercut each other.

They may all be reading from the same environmentalist extremist playbook, but some seem to have started from the back of the book, some in the middle, and some at the beginning.

Take Roan drilling, for example. Neither Ken Salazar nor Mark Udall could seem to anticipate that the lure of billions of tax dollars would cause Bill Ritter to cave on the issue. Once Ritter caved, the position folded up like a house of cards. Now, Salazar and Udall favor drilling on the top of the Roan plateau.

It never was a defensable position because the Roan is not pristine back country. Any one who questioned that need only call up Google Earth to discover that is is scrub land.

Now comes the issue of nuclear power. Mark Udall pulled his finger out of the anti nuclear dam when he told the Denver Post after the State of the Union address:

"I believe we've got to take another look at nuclear power because of the carbon footprint it doesn't have," said [ Mark ] Udall. "But we do it taking into account the challenges that nuclear power presents, cost-wise and environmentally."

So, now it is time to find out which part of the environmentalist extremist playbook Bill Ritter is playing on nuclear power. Where do you stand Governor? Your campaign contributors want to know.

Picking My Pocket

Some years ago, I voted for TABOR. I was a late convert. I wasn't eleigible to vote in Colorado until 1990, and that year, I voted against it along with a majority of Colorado citizens.

The legislature responded by immediately raising taxes, as they had done immediately after the first TABOR loss in 1988. They couldn't seem to realize that they were rubbing the voter's faces in the TABOR losses and that eventually, voters would get angry.

In 1992, I was ready to vote for TABOR, and did so, again with a majority of Colorado citizens.

Now comes Bill Ritter who wants to get rid of TABOR. If he can't get rid of TABOR, he wants to emasculate it. Meanwhile, he can't seem to follow the constitution. He wants to raise taxes, so he calls them fees.

He has put out the word that he will be putting a bill before the legislature to raise $500,000,000. That is a lot of zeroes. He doesn't seem to have learned anything. If this legislature and governor were turned loose from TABOR the level of taxation imposed on Colorado citizens would make Californians and Taxachuttes citizens blush.

Fool me once...

The Denver Post article we linked to now has 227 comments. Usually, they are lucky to get five. Bill Ritter will be a one term governor, but he can do a lot of damage in that one term.

Revelations in Voorhis Case Suggest Possible Double Standard at Work

While immigration agent Cory Voorhis awaits trial for accessing a federal criminal database for campaign-related purposes, the Denver Post reports that Gov. Bill Ritter's 2006 campaign may have encouraged the exact same activity:

Denver DA officials have previously acknowledged that they too accessed the National Crime Information Computer to check on [Denver heroin dealer Carlos] Estrada-Medina, saying it was done in response to media calls after a Beauprez campaign ad featuring Estrada-Medina began running on Oct. 10, 2006. But the records of cellphone calls and call logs released by the DA's office in response to a request from The Denver Post show no such media deluge. Instead, they indicate that the DA office's work on Estrada-Medina also had its roots in a campaign.

A call log maintained by DA spokeswoman Lynn Kimbrough shows that on Oct. 10, "Steph" called and asked about "Carlos Estrada-Medina." Dick Reeve, a lawyer for the DA's office, confirmed that Steph was Stephanie Villafuerte, former chief deputy DA who was working for the Ritter campaign..

Reeve, the attorney for [Chuck] Lepley, [Lynn] Kimbrough and other DA employees, said that they were never asked by Villafuerte or anyone else at the Ritter campaign to access the NCIC, but when asked if information that the DA's office retrieved from the NCIC was provided to Villafuerte or others from the Ritter campaign, Reeve declined comment.

"That's a specific question that is best left to the testimony on Friday," Reeve said.

Villafuerte did not respond to a phone message left on her cellphone Wednesday. Ritter's spokesman, Evan Dreyer, said the campaign never asked anyone at the DA's office to access the NCIC and that everyone there would have been unaware that the DA's office had accessed the NCIC.

Until the investigation digs deeper, there will be no convincing answer to explain away what appears to be a clear double standard:

"The DA's office ran an NCIC check and called a campaign, and they say that doesn't break the law. So, why did Cory break the law for doing the same thing?" said Mike Riebau, a former immigration special agent who heads up a legal defense fund for Voorhis.

Ritter has to be wishing for this story to disappear. Just as long as it doesn't mean putting Voorhis away while letting his friends off the hook.

More Pandering to Corn Farmers, No Solutions

This is a water starved state. Our governor, Bill Ritter, has no business promoting a crop that uses a lot of water for a product that uses even more water. But that is what he is doing.

"This is a really important part of our agricultural economy, and the whole idea of growing the corn/ethanol economy is something that helps with respect to our entire sort of economic situation," [ Bill ] Ritter said. "So we're very focused on agriculture and making sure we keep that a stable part of our economy."

Even the farmers understand that the elephant in the corn ethanol room is water:

Yet, while some were grateful for his work on [corn ethanol ] thus far, Glen Murray, a corn farmer from Brighton, was slightly miffed that the governor [ Bill Ritter ] had nothing new to say about the issues concerning water use in the state.

"He didn't really give us a lot of direction," Murray said. "I mean conservation is not new -- we've been talking about that for a long time. Storage is not new -- we've been talking about that for a long time."

The most curious quote of the evening came after the speech:

"Really, we can help ourselves a great deal with conservation, with re-use, with shared use between municipalities and agricultural land," said Ritter after his speech. "And then we have to decide at what level we embark upon greater water storage."

Ritter may not be aware that the Mark Udall bloggers appear to be trying to gin up an attack on Bob Schaffer based on his past support of water storage. We'd guess that issue just disappeared.

We ask Bill Ritter to explain his pandering position on corn ethanol when there will be a water crisis in this state.