Buck: News Miner 90
Ken Buck tells the truth, Deborah Flora, Scott Bottoms, migrants, energy, drug use sites, tax-funded religious preschools, lawn police, and more.
Ken Buck: Complete Colorado published my column, “Ken Buck tells some uncomfortable truths.” I write, “In today’s political climate, a Republican leader simply telling the truth is a shocking act—and apparently a disqualification to serve in public office in the eyes of many Republican voters. . . . Buck deserves praise from actual Republicans and from genuine conservatives for standing up for election realism and for the peaceful transfer of power. . . . [V]oters in Buck’s district have the chance to replace Buck with Boebert-lite. Alternately, they could get serious about Republican values and about fidelity to reality.” Read the entire piece.
Buck II: He’s leaving Congress. In his announcement, Buck says, “Our nation is on a collision course with reality. And a steadfast commitment to truth, even uncomfortable truths, is the only way forward. Too many Republican leaders are lying to America, claiming that the 2020 election was stolen, describing January 6 as an ‘unguided tour’ of the Capitol, and asserting that the ensuing prosecutions are a weaponization of our justice system. These insidious narratives breed widespread cynicism and erode Americans’ confidence in the rule of law. It is impossible for the Republican Party to confront our problems, and offer a course correction for the future, while being obsessively fixated on retribution and vengeance for contrived injustices of the past. This trend among Republicans is a significant departure from the enduring principles of conservatism. We belong to the party of Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan. Our movement has always been fueled by immutable truths about human nature, individual liberty, and economic freedoms. The Republican Party of today, however, is ignoring self-evident truths about the rule of law and limited government in exchange for self-serving lies.”
Buck III: Yeah, but . . . Buck has still said plenty of disturbing things, as James O’Rourke reviews. In court, Buck also cast the January 6 Congressional committee as a partisan affair, as Chase Woodruff reports.
Deborah Flora: She’s running for Buck’s seat. She was involved in making the culture-war film Whose Children Are They?, panned by Heidi Beedle (I haven’t seen it). Recently Flora did a short interview with Mandy Connell, who is a fan. Flora leads with “out of control spending” as what she cares about, followed by border security and international security, which she indicates is undermined by anti-fossil-fuel policies. She throws in “parental rights,” by which, I suspect, she largely means the “rights” of some parents to dictate conservative policies for other parents (see her Parents United America). Flora absurdly claimed that the U.S. has an “open boarder.” She foolishly ends the interview by saying her “focus is on Communists and terrorists.” Hello, the Cold War is over. I like that she talks about “individual value and individual rights.” I think Flora has a good chance to win as she’s energetic and articulate.
Bottoms: Following Rep. Scott Bottoms’s outrageous comments saying Israeli Jews attacked by Hamas should find Jesus, he proved he’s an equal-opportunity offender. As 9News reports, he also said, in church!, “Did you know that there is no such thing as the Palestinian people? That’s not a thing. That’s a made-up thing. . . . It was a terrorist organization that has just been sitting there for so long now that they have squatter’s rights, and now the whole world, under the influence of Satan, the whole world is calling this the Palestinian people.” Why anyone listens to this bigoted, ignorant, delusional jerk in church or votes to put him in the state legislature is beyond me.
Migrants Want to Work: The headline for Jennifer Brown’s article summarizes the problem and indicates the solution: “Thousands of Venezuelan migrants in Denver want to work but can’t afford the $545 federal application fee; Rose Community Foundation is raising funds to help migrants with the $545 application fee and Gov. Polis asked the feds to waive it.”
Energy: Michael Booth writes, “Colorado’s electric power sector can cut greenhouse gas emissions by 98.5% by 2040 without major policy changes or major new costs to consumers, according to an optimistic state analysis that came as a happy shock to energy officials and environmentalists.” Strangely, Booth waits until the 17th paragraph to mention that the report in question was conducted by the consulting firm Ascend Analytics. That report apparently is not available for review by Regular People, so I cannot comment further on its details. It sounds unrealistically optimistic. At the same time, especially solar and battery technologies really have been coming down dramatically in price, so maybe these ambitious goals are feasible.
Corporon: Quentin Young checks in with Randy Corporon, who relentlessly conspiracy mongers about the presidential election.
Drug Use Sites: I too am nervous about the downstream effects of authorized drug-use sites, but the evidence strongly suggests that these sites work overall and don’t generate a lot of extra harms. Here’s a Jesse Paul headline: “Jared Polis vows to veto bill authorizing sites where people could use illicit drugs and be revived if they overdose.” My sense is that Polis’s move is more about the political “optics” than about the relevant evidence.
Rights Violations in Education: Krista Kafer wants religious preschools that discriminate against LGBTQ staff and students to be able to get state funds. Yet she undercuts her own case. She writes, “The First Amendment protects the right to associate for educational and religious ends and to thus not associate with those who do not share the same convictions.” What precisely the state funding does is force taxpayers who do not agree with the discriminatory policies to subsidize them. That is just the sort of forced association that the First Amendment, consistently interpreted, prohibits. Kafer also writes, “The Constitution not only prevents the government from restricting free speech; it also prevents it from compelling speech.” But the state funding compels people to fund the religious schools in question, a blindingly obvious violation of their rights to freedom of conscience. Here is how Kafer attempts to rationalize these rights violations: “Critics complain that they must subsidize faith-based schools with their tax dollars. They [some!] are all too happy to make religious taxpayers subsidize schools that are anything but neutral on controversial topics. That’s not fair.” So apparently one rights violation deserves another? I wrote an article about this.
Lawn Police: Some in the legislature want to restrict the planting of high-water grasses. Shannon Mullane writes, “The proposal focuses on state and local governments, and homeowners associations. After Jan. 1, 2025, these entities would not be able to plant or install new nonfunctional turf, artificial turf or an invasive plant species on any commercial, institutional or industrial property.” I’m not sure why the state government needs to limit the actions of local governments in these matters; don’t local governments operate the water supply? HOAs are private organizations and should be free to set their own policies. As I’ve written, local governments should be friendly to low-water yards.