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Betsy Markey in Loveland

“If Sarah Palin is targeting me, I must be doing something right!”

So said Betsy Markey this afternoon at a fundraiser in Loveland. The congresswoman arrived in high spirits and was happy to disabuse supporters of the notion that her vote in favor of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was politically challenging, despite reports to the contrary.  ”It made sense to me,” she said.

Markey spoke for about 15 minutes and took questions for another 20 or so. She echoed her statements from Saturday, recorded in the Denver Post, that it was time to get out and tell people what’s in the health care bill.

On the topic of paying for it, Markey pointed out that the Senate bill she voted for pays for itself in part with taxes on medical devices and top-tier insurance plans, and not on the backs of small business owners, a big reason for her switch from a no vote on the House bill to her yes vote last week.

When asked about abortion concessions made to get the Stupak bloc on board, Markey acknowledged that the current bill is messy. “It’s not good,” she said. “It goes too far. If you want health insurance and you want abortion coverage, you have to write two checks.” Markey expressed optimism, however, that the concessions were fixable through future resolutions. She went on to point out that the bill funnels money to Planned Parenthood and community clinics for health services–and pro-choice Democrats love to point out that greater health services access for women reduces abortions–and it forces insurance companies to quit treating womanhood as a preexisting condition.

Markey was similarly optimistic that future resolutions will allow for an evolving public option, whether through the public insurance exchanges established in the bill or through a Medicare buy-in act along the lines of the bill introduced by Florida Democrat Alan Grayson.

The talk was not all health care, however. Looking ahead, Markey pointed to major legislation pending on financial regulation and energy, and she also mentioned her reelection campaign. Here she trumpeted the party meme that if Republicans want to run on repealing health care, let ‘em. She thinks that by November, voters will be more interested in jobs and the economy, and they’ll have had a chance to see some good from the health care bill. In the end, she believes, those factors will determine the outcome of congressional races, not health care alone.

Welcome, Ari, to the Colorado Progressive community!

Democrats, similarly, will likely retain Bennet on the ballot this November, and nothing that happens to today will probably affect that outcome too much. But that should not yet be taken for granted. Clearly, Bennet is the leading fundraiser against a stagnating Andrew Romanoff and enjoys the advantages that accompany incumbency. At the same time, Romanoff is positioning himself as the outsider looking in–a strange twist for the former House Speaker and erstwhile golden boy of Colorado Democratic politics–during a year that poses significant challenges for incumbents, namely the messy health care reform issue that has paralyzed Washington and polarized the nation.

Here’s Giroux on the Romanoff-Bennet caucus stakes:

Political analysts said Romanoff, who badly trails Bennet in fundraising, needs to perform very well at the caucuses to gain traction for the difficult undertaking of unseating a senator in a primary.

“My current assumption is that Romanoff needs to win [the caucuses] … to credibly make the argument that ‘I’m the grass-roots guy,’ ” said independent Colorado pollster Floyd Ciruli.

Eric Sondermann, an independent political analyst in Denver, described the caucuses as “a home game for Andrew Romanoff” because he’s concentrated heavily on securing the support of the sliver of Democrats who will participate in them. He expects Romanoff to do well.

“If he does not fare well [Tuesday] in the caucuses, it’s hard to understand what the ongoing rationale for his candidacy is,” Sondermann said.

Katy Atkinson, a Denver-based political consultant, said that the caucuses are far less important for Bennet than for Romanoff because “Bennet has the money to be able to run a primary campaign, and Romanoff needs the momentum that a convention win would give him to help him raise more money.”

Bennet’s campaign is targeting the caucuses to build the full-fledged statewide political organization he lacked after coming to the Senate as an unelected member with no experience in elective office.

So Romanoff is in must-do mode, and Bennet is simply looking to build the momentum and recognition he never needed to win his seat in the first place.  That makes tonight’s outing particularly tough on Romanoff, who, to be honest, has done little to kick up awareness of his candidacy outside a few inside politics circles.

For the sake of argument and variety, and without tendering an endorsement, I urge Democratic caucus goers to step up tonight for Andrew Romanoff, if only to force Michael Bennet to define himself yet more clearly. Bennet is responding well under threat of a primary challenge, with strong support of a public option for health insurance reform and with a slate of new rules introduced to reduce filibuster abuse, and that’s only good news for Colorado.

Additionally, Andrew Romanoff is an effective legislator and a likable politician. If he makes it through these early rounds of primary wrangling, I’m confident that he will bring to the discourse a number of key points and policy ideas that matter to the quality of state and national politics. It’s especially important now for Democrats to energize their politics once more on the validity of clear and constructive policy discussion. Let’s learn as much as we can and then vote on the best candidate.

February 24, 2010: Governor Bill Ritter signs a raft of new tax bills into law, including the controversial HB 1193, which forces online retailers to inform consumers of the state taxes owed on purchases made or shipped from Colorado.

March 1: New tax laws take effect.

March 8: Amazon dumps Colorado associates.

March 8: Rasmussen reports McInnis 6 points ahead of HIckenlooper in CO gubernatorial race.

March 8-10: Howls of protest, on all sides of the Amazon sales tax issue. One. Two. Three. Four. More.

There are a couple crucial factors to consider in all this. First, the notion of collecting state taxes on purchases made online is not in itself novel. New York, North Carolina, and Rhode Island have adopted similar legislation. Virginia appears poised to do the same.

Two very salient political dynamics motivate the statehouses to challenge the online status quo: State budgets are busting, and brick-and-mortar businesses are crying foul that online businesses don’t have to play by the same taxation rules as everyone else.

Where the argument could have been made that the Colorado legislature was a) improving state services by collecting taxes that are already due and b) leveling the playing field for all Colorado businesses, Amazon’s response Monday undermines both those points. By dumping Colorado affiliates, the state won’t see its taxes and the state business sector as a whole loses out, because consumers will still buy goods online, but those goods will come from vendors in other states.

Enter the governors race, and issues like this one get even thornier. Hickenlooper will campaign on jobs creation, but he’s stuck in the unfortunate position of losing (potentially) Frontier Airlines under his watch and making no comment on the Ritter tax laws, which hurt his position as a member of the (current) majority party. McInnis and Co. are wise to stomp on these issues.

Unfortunately, the state is losing face, state businesses are losing revenues, and John Hickenlooper is losing ground (for now). Not a happy situation in Colorado.

]]> http://coloradoprogressive.com/2010/03/10/amazon-in-colorado-a-lose-lose-lose-situation/feed/ 0 http://coloradoprogressive.com/2010/03/02/solving-colorados-pine-beetle-problem-with-chitosan/ http://coloradoprogressive.com/2010/03/02/solving-colorados-pine-beetle-problem-with-chitosan/#comments Wed, 03 Mar 2010 01:44:36 +0000 Matt Plavnick http://coloradoprogressive.com/?p=424 UPDATE: Rick Stoner writes in, and he offers a clarification and a different view of the Forest Service approach:

The Denver Post reporter took my words out of context. I was describing to him what people who have purchased ODC from AgriHouse have said about the forest service. However, I personally believe the USDA Forest Service and the Colorado State Forest Service has been very proactive in working to help bring this eco-friendly biopesticide forward. The USDA Forest Service sponsorship of ODC chitosan research in Pineville, Louisiana in 2008 has been paramount to making ODC a new tool in the integrated pest management toolkit to address the pine beetle epidemic.

See here and here for more on AgriHouse, ODC, and mountain pine beetles.

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There’s a good article in today’s Denver Post highlighting the work of AgriHouse president Rick Stoner and CSU microbiologist Jim Linden to put an end to the pine beetle devastation in Colorado. (I should disclose here that Rick Stoner is a friend of mine.) While the article really only glances at ODC (Organic Disease Control, AgriHouse’s answer to pine beetles and other pests, which is comprised of chitosan derived from the shells of crushed crustaceans), the Post does a good job of publicizing what’s not happening.

Despite positive results using ODC against pine beetles in USFS field tests, state and federal officials aren’t talking about using Stoner and Linden’s tree dope anytime soon in Colorado.

But nobody has moved toward wide application of chitosan for beetle control, Stoner said.

“What has the Forest Service done for us? They’ve just let the trees die,” Stoner said. “I’ve offered it up to government agencies to address the pine beetle epidemic. I just want somebody to start using it. We’ve got a huge problem.”

Federal decision-makers in Colorado could not be reached for comment.

“We’re not testing it here,” said agency spokesman Steve Segin. “We have our own researchers and scientists who need to vet this kind of stuff.”

Emphasis mine. The cold shoulder is a shame, really, because ODC works without toxins. That’s right. Stoner calls it a biopesticide and points out that it’s completely organic. In fact, I’ve seen him drink the stuff. What’s more, it’s highly concentrated and thus fairly cheap to apply at $1 or less per tree.

The beauty of ODC is that it works not by attacking the beetle, but by boosting the tree’s beetle response. Chitosan increases sap production in treated trees, and sap in turn encapsulates the beetle and prevents the insect from spreading the deadly blue fungus that actually snuffs life out of the tree.

Stoner and Linden have been getting a bit of positive press here in Denver recently, and that’s a good thing, because it seems Colorado is in line for $30 million in federal funding to fight the pine beetle. Here’s hoping some of that goes toward chitosan in the form of ODC.

That said, my complaint against the Post stands.

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The Denver Post Editorial Board got it right yesterday when they called to cut many of the state’s tax exemptions in an effort to get the budget back on track. Not only is this good sense, but the editorial did a good job enumerating the cuts to make and explaining why. But an about-face on House Bill 1190 leaves me wanting more.

[T]ax exemptions shouldn’t be off limits, as some have suggested. In balancing the budget, legislators have stripped hundreds of millions from higher education, K-12 education, Medicaid funding, and programs for the mentally ill and developmentally disabled.

Senior citizens have lost their property tax break, and state employees are getting unpaid furlough days.

Some are calling the proposed bills “job killers,” and unfortunately some jobs may be lost as a result. We do not relish the thought. Job losses in this economy translate into hardship, and the private sector already has shouldered its share of the burden. But cuts to the public sector result in job losses as well.

The argument should not be about the relative value of a public school cafeteria worker’s job versus that of, say, a cashier at a privately owned restaurant. It’s a matter of fairness, and we think it is appropriate that business interests share in the state’s budget woes.

Emphasis mine. It’s nice to see the Post call for fairness in sharing the burden of belt tightening during troubled times.

That said, it’s galling to see the newspaper turn around in the same column and argue against repealing tax exemptions on “manufacturing inputs” until mid-2012, as proposed in House Bill 1190.

The Post acknowledges that this will affect their printing industry. The paper goes on to cite the Colorado Association of Commerce & Industry (just a little lobbying team also known as The State Chamber of Commerce):

Representatives of the Colorado Association of Commerce & Industry contend it’s improper to tax a manufacturing input, which is used to create a retail product that is taxed again. They call it double taxation, and we find that argument persuasive.

Well, shoot. There goes any argument the Denver Post hoped to make about fairness. I’m sure there is some long and cherished history–engineered by big business–of businesses of a certain size in the state being exempted from paying the same sales tax on a product that any small business owner must pay to manufacture her product. Ostensibly, the newspaper gets a break on electricity used in the printing process. Perhaps, given the line espoused by CACI, this break also extends to raw materials such as the massive quantities of paper and ink required to produce a large-scale daily.

Does the independent baker enjoy such a tax exemption on her electric bill? Is it possible that she doesn’t pay sales tax on the immense quantities of flour, sugar, and eggs that comprise her retail products?

The Post should recognize as well as anybody–especially given the tone of the editorial–that if fairness is at issue in bearing down under tough times, then big businesses as well as small must be open to accepting responsible measures to restore equilibrium in Colorado’s accounts.

To be sure, the high school teacher charged with smoking dope on school grounds likely demonstrated poor judgment. I’d expect any teacher taking any pain medication to use extreme discretion where students are concerned. But it’s not clear from the article what the circumstances of the event were, and, more urgently, it’s increasingly clear from the story that medical marijuana patients face jeopardy in disclosing how they manage pain–legally–during off hours.

So when Colorado’s legislature takes up regulation efforts this week, I urge lawmakers to stake out clear protections for patients who earnestly deserve a little relief.

The Colorado Independent reviews some tough questions about a proposed uranium mill in southwestern Colorado. While nuclear energy enjoys a mixed resurgence in the United States, alarm about logistical challenges presented by the Piñon Ridge Mill highlights Coloradans’ fears.

To be clear, the Piñon Ridge Mill is a uranium processing site, not a nuclear power plant. Uranium ore comes into the mill, and refined yellowcake, essential to the production of nuclear fuel rods, goes out. Yeah, that yellowcake. State officials remind us that, while there’s a mystique of danger around the essential ingredient to produce nuclear fuel–and nuclear weapons–really it’s not that big a deal.

“When you’re dealing with yellowcake shipments, they get carried in pretty much a dump truck,” said Capt. Allan Turner of the Colorado State Patrol’s Hazardous Materials Transport Safety and Response (HMTSR) team.

“We actually had one of those turn over in the city of Colorado Springs, turn over in the median, and people were going to the hospitals with facemasks on, thinking they were contaminated with radiation, when in actual fact it doesn’t really present that much of a hazard.”

I feel better already. Yellowcake, at a glance, is as benign as asphalt. Of course, we’re still waiting to measure the environmental impact of two recent asphalt spills in the Poudre River. And the article points out that before the ore becomes yellowcake, a whole lot of sulfuric acid is involved. Few are casual about the potential risk there. That means more hazardous materials on Colorado roadways. (For more about how uranium ore becomes yellowcake, and what yellowcake still must go through before becoming “hot,” read here.)

Assuming the public health factor is not an issue, does trucking yellowcake in and around the state present other risks? Is there a security factor to consider here? I mean, yellowcake uranium is apparently worth implicating when designing a justification to go to war. So how carefully is the substance handled along the way?

After processing, the mill would ship out about 200 pounds of yellowcake a day in sealed, steel 55-gallon drums.

Two facilities in North America can then turn processed yellowcake into fuel rods for nuclear plants: one in Metropolis, Ill., and the other in Port Hope, Ontario, near Toronto. Facilities in Great Britain and France can also convert yellowcake into fuel rods, meaning the yellowcake would have to first be trucked to ports in Texas. Europe, where nuclear power is much more prevalent, is one of the major potential markets for the Piñon Ridge yellowcake uranium.

“It’s a global commodity,” said Frank Filas, environmental manager for a U.S. subsidiary of Ontario-based Energy Fuels. “It could go just about anywhere, but it’s not going to North Korea and it’s not going to Iran.”

Emphasis mine. Let me just say that I’ve spent a little time in and around Naturita, and security is not that tight. If someone wants to take a barrel of yellowcake off a truck–or seize the whole truck–on Highways 90 or 141, he’ll be able to. So I have to wonder whether it’s true that Colorado-produced yellowcake won’t go to North Korea or Iran. I’m sure my concern is just the byproduct of believing the government back in 2003 watching 24. I can see the episode now. Terrorists steal yellowcake off a truck in western Colorado, and Jack Bauer and the team mobilize to foil the plot before American-hating jihaddists can reach the Gulf of Mexico to put the substance on a ship bound for Oman. Where the government once encouraged us to think in these terms, we’re now told it’s not a big deal.

I don’t know the answer to the question “Is this a bad idea.” I suspect after all it’s probably pretty benign–until something goes wrong. I’m all for increased jobs in Colorado, especially on the economically stunted Western Slope. I rather fancy the notion of the Colorado Proud logo on a barrel of yellowcake. Little, though, about the Independent’s article is exactly reassuring.

Former Lt. Gov. Jane Norton will announce her candidacy for the U.S. Senate today, much to the chagrin of retired U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo.

Tancredo said he would not have had a problem if Norton earlier this year had called fellow Republicans statewide to say she wanted to run for the office and outlined her reasons.

Instead, he charged that Norton in recent weeks got talked into running by Arizona Sen. John McCain, a Norton family friend and political ally.

“Does John McCain have a right to do that? Sure. Do I have a right to (complain) about it? You bet,” Tancredo said in an interview Monday night. “Jane Norton is a nice lady who I like. End of story. But I fear she is not ready for prime time.”

Tom Tancredo, finally, has given me something to laugh about. The former U.S. representative and 2008 presidential candidate is upset because Norton never called to ask his blessing. Apparently Jane Norton, John McCain, and just about everybody but Tom Tancredo recognizes the value of Tom Tancredo’s blessing.