De-constructing My Opponent’s Plan for Job Growth

My opponent has a five-point plan for job growth. With the exception of her fifth point, they all require more government. All five points have serious flaws.

1. The HIRE Colorado Plan

This is a bill that was defeated last year in the Colorado Assembly. It would give in-state contractors a 5% preference on State contracts. And while it sounds good, it would raise the price of State contracts by 5%. That would directly cut into funding that would otherwise be available for education, transportation, the criminal justice system, and other priorities.

Colorado law already requires 80% Colorado residents on State and local projects. The HIRE act adds costs with negligible benefits. In fact, it may cost jobs.

Colorado’s contractors don’t just depend on in-state contracts – many also work out of state. If Colorado enacts protectionist schemes, other states are likely to retaliate. Our contractors that work with other states will lose out. Business groups have spoken out against this plan, including Associated General Contractors, Colorado Concern, and National Federation of Independent Businesses.

2. Innovation Investment Tax Credit

Although my opponent has offered few details, this is apparently a scheme whereby your tax dollars are funneled through inefficient government to companies that unelected bureaucrats deem to be sufficiently “innovative” as to require additional funding. We should always keep in mind that if a company needs a subsidy, it probably doesn’t deserve it. And if it doesn’t need it, why should we provide it? This is exactly the sort of scheme that resulted in the Solyndra debacle, which cost taxpayers over a half billion dollars and ended 1200 jobs. In our free market system, customers (not governments) reward innovators.

After a search of her voting record, this is the first example I could find of her supporting any kind of a tax reduction. This is nothing more than corporate welfare and an awful attempt to buy votes with taxpayer dollars.

3.  Government operated micro-loan fund

This is another scheme whereby government will take over, in the form of lending, the functions of private enterprise and free markets.  Government is not qualified to determine what is a good investment, and what is not. If they choose poorly, taxpayers (you and I) lose.

There is no doubt that small business start-ups are having a difficult time accessing loans. Private lenders are rightfully nervous about lending money in these economic conditions. More importantly, they are nervous about lending money to a business that will see ever increasing compliance costs because of ever increasing laws, regulations, and taxes on businesses.

The solution is to reduce government burdens on businesses and create a stable regulation and tax environment, one that will excite private investment in a truly free market.

4. STEM Education

My opponent wants to “invest in our classrooms to create a stronger focus on science, technology, engineering and math (STEM),” ostensibly to create more jobs. While that is a noble goal, it is not a jobs program. It is a top–down, government-oriented wish-list item that takes control away from parents, teachers, and school boards. Parents should find her desire to control their classrooms particularly troubling.

Government mandates on education reduce parental involvement because choices are eliminated. The solution for better education is to offer parents more voice and choice, and to provide an equal opportunity for an excellent education for all Colorado children. My opponent offers neither.

My opponent has sat on the House Education Committee for six years. She has been ineffective at making meaningful reforms in all that time. In fact, she has fought important reforms. To complicate matters, she has never demonstrated any sense of responsibility with our tax dollars. Instead of restraining spending to better fund our priorities and make investments in education possible, she promotes tax and spending increases.

Her plan to create jobs by improving education is too little, too late.

5. Common Sense Solutions

This bit of populism can only lead one to ask, “Where was common sense in her first six years at the legislature?” Common sense is not a plan, but it is an attribute that my opponent has been sorely lacking in the last six years.

The Wrong Choice

My opponent, in her six years as a state representative, has voted consistently against small businesses, workers, parents, students, and teachers. Her plan for the next two years will cause more harm than good.

Unemployment - increasing and personal

Bureaucrats hire economists to do studies and produce numbers. Politicians use those numbers to buy votes. With enough votes, politicians use your taxpayer dollars to hire more bureaucrats to hire more economists to produce more statistics.

Meanwhile, your neighbor's home was foreclosed.

The house is falling apart. The lawn is brown, except for the weeds. Another neighbor has lost her job. Many are concerned that the businesses they work for may not be able to employ them much longer.

You don't need a bureaucrat to know that things are bad.

But they told us anyway. The Colorado Department of Labor and Employment recently told us that 8,400 Coloradans lost their jobs last month and another 11,300 became so discouraged that they quit looking for work.

Over 20 years ago, I opened Paradise Rock Gym, my first business. Adams County government welcomed my business, eliminating red tape, allowing me to focus on building my business, gaining customers, and selling something that people willingly bought. I willingly provided benefits for my employees, so they would willingly continue working for me. It was a solid middle class business, helping middle class people earn a living while pursuing their dreams.

These days, our government, with its insatiable desire to control our lives, regulate our businesses, and confiscate our money prevents businesses from doing what I did.

The bureaucrats tell us what we already know - our government is hurting us, the very people it claims to help.

Innovation Investment Tax Credits Hurt Free Markets

According to Dictionary.com, innovation is “something new or different introduced”.  The caveman that turned a round rock into a wheel and used it to move things was an innovator. Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple was an innovator. Even the neighbor kid who convinces you to let him mow your lawn is an innovator, because he tapped a new market. And the single mother who gets her kids to band practice, finds the time to help her kids with homework, and goes to work to provide for her family – that’s innovation.

So innovation is good, right? It expands our economy, helps businesses thrive and improves lives. Businesses, in turn, hire more people, buy more equipment, invest in more innovation.

However, not all innovations are equal.

In free markets, entrepreneurs are rewarded when they bring valuable innovations to their customers. And only the free market can determine whether those innovations are valuable. But when government decides to reward “innovators” it becomes a political decision - not a free market decision. Politicians have a notoriously bad track record when it comes to making good investment decisions.

My opponent in my campaign for State Representative believes her “Innovation Investment Tax Credit” idea will create jobs. However, that has just never proven to be the case.

An innovation tax credit requires that all taxpayers pay more taxes so that the few politically favored businesses (those that the government defines as “innovative”) can receive gifts from the government. If your neighbor kid somehow innovates the best, most innovative lawn mowing service in the world, he will likely not be popular enough with the State Legislature to get payouts.  

This is not government by consent of the governed - - it is government by elitists who believe they know what’s best for you and your family.

It’s what caused the debacle with Solyndra, the solar panel manufacturer that received $535 billion in federally guaranteed loans and then went bankrupt, eliminating 1200 jobs, and leaving you and me to pay the bill.

It is what nearly forced Colorado taxpayers to spend $300 million on the Gaylord Hotels project, a project which Gaylord itself decided is no longer financially viable. We dodged the bullet on that one.

My opponent’s “Innovation Investment Tax Credit” scheme is just another example of her flawed understanding of how economies and businesses work. In her vision for Colorado, entrepreneurs who have more concern for politicians and bureaucrats than customers will benefit – regular people like you and me will be left to struggle on our own against her redistributionist policies.

Many politicians seem to believe that government’s main purpose is to help them buy votes. I believe that my fellow citizens are smarter than that. They can run their own lives, they can build their own businesses, they can find employment in a thriving economy - if only government will get out of the way.

Rush was wrong,but the market will correct him

Rush Limbaugh went too far when he called activist Sandra Fluke a slut and a prostitute. No woman deserves to be called those disgusting words and Republicans do not support or tolerate that, at all. That kind of cheap tactic does more damage to Republicans and conservatives than to Ms. Fluke.

Rush established his career by “using absurdity to illustrate absurdity”. But this was far beyond absurd. It was cruel and stupid. As a result, well over 100 advertisers are leaving his show. Rush will most likely survive the firestorm and live to insult again. But he will have learned an important lesson – the market punished his bad behavior, and we’re not likely to hear a repeat performance. If he does repeat it and more advertisers walk out, it may be the end of his show. 

That's both the power and beauty of a free market – behavior gets rewarded or punished based on people who are free to pursue their own values. It doesn’t require a government intervention to bring about important change. It only requires people acting on their own free will.

Perhaps this disgusting incident can help teach us a lesson that people who are free to make their own choices, not Government, can better solve our problems.