Colorado Progressive

Herbert Fenster

I’m a little concerned that John Andrews isn’t employing mere rhetoric when he says “Mobilize the militia. Fire up the Humvee. Get the musket down off the mantelpiece. Boulder is preparing to invade Colorado.”

Of course, Boulder is not preparing to invade Colorado. Andrews might admit to hyperbole there. As for the rest, I’m not so sure.

What’s got John Andrews so fired up? A lawyer named Herbert Fenster. A Republican, no less, though you’d never know it from Andrews’s scathing denunciation of the lawsuit Fenster plans to bring against Colroado’s TABOR, or Taxpayer Bill of Rights.

Here’s Andrews’ complaint:

Yes, a lawyer from up in the progressive paradise says that your right to vote on taxes violates his constitutional entitlement to ever-increasing teacher salaries and NEA indoctrination of our kids. The invasion is no joke, because Herbert Fenster is a legal heavyweight and his intended enforcer is a robed priesthood answerable to no one. TABOR could be in trouble.

Strike what I said about hyperbole, I guess.

To unpack this, it’s important to get to the core of this “entitlement to ever-increasing teacher salaries and NEA indoctrination of our kids” bit. Because TABOR has nothing to do with all that. What TABOR does do is make it impossible for the state to generate money via responsible governance and careful budgeting–and, yes, taxation–and use that money as the state sees fit (to fund education, for example). But don’t take my word for it. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities sums it up pretty darn well:

TABOR, a state constitutional amendment adopted in 1992, limits the growth of state and local revenues to a highly restrictive formula: inflation plus the annual change in population. This formula is insufficient to fund the ongoing cost of government. By creating a permanent revenue shortage, TABOR pits state programs and services against each other for survival each year and virtually rules out any new initiatives to address unmet or emerging needs.

[snip]

Under TABOR, Colorado declined from 35^th to 49^th in the nation in K-12 spending as a percentage of personal income.

Colorado’s average per-pupil funding fell by more than $400 relative to the national average.

Colorado’s average teacher salary compared to average pay in other occupations declined from 30^th to 50^th in the nation.

Emphasis mine. And it’s not just Colorado’s K-12 education that languishes under TABOR, but public health, medical insurance, higher education, and state corrections. Here’s the whole CBPP report (pdf). John Andrews overlooks the mechanics of TABOR in favor of misleading readers in the direction of right wing agitating. And that serves Andrews’ main purpose, which is really to stoke the Tea Party/Oath Keepers/Mount Vernon Statement conservative frenzy of the moment. TABOR just happens to be a convenient way to get that point.

See, it’s about our very freedoms, Andrews posits.

The issue is whether we’re fit to be free — we the self-assertive and self-reliant Westerners, we the people. Fenster and his liberal posse, decent Americans as best I know, don’t think so. They want the unelected judiciary to take our votes away from us because we’re uncaring toward children. What’s scary is that they may succeed, unless we raise the kind of hell that free men raise when liberty is threatened.

Fenster is the sort of Republican that conservative idealogues love to hate: he thinks about policy, not just about politics. He’s called a RINO (Republican in Name Only) and labelled part of a “liberal posse.” That’s rich sauce to ladle over a lifelong Republican. And rich sauce is the key ingredient to fomenting anger and, dare I say, revolution. What, revolution is too strong? But what other cake do you bake when rallying readers to “raise the kind of hell that free men raise when liberty is threatened”? I mean, we’ve all seen Braveheart, right? I figure a righteous uprising is what Andrews has in mind.

But along with all that, we need the Tea Party spirit. Absent an aroused and determined citizenry, neither law nor logic nor the majesty of the Supreme Court nor even the powers of Congress are now enough to safeguard limited government, so far gone is the old American republic with its “Don’t tread on me” ethos.

Make no mistake: Andrews is calling for a return to the long gone old American republic with it’s “Don’t tread on me” ethos. TABOR is his issue, Fenster his target, and a full-throated and testosterone-driven resurgence of aggressive American patriotism his goal. So get the musket off the mantelpiece (and he means it!), because Boulder is invading Colorado.