CO DEMS show anti-business bias

Democrats Gone Wild: Speaker Carroll follows Dem spokesman Jack Pommer down the anti-business rabbit hole. As reported in the Denver Business Journal, House Speaker Terrance Carroll, D-Denver, "Because life under the Dome is sometimes divorced from reality, the business community has always said that no matter what we do, we’re going to lose jobs. I’m just not going to engage in those debates with them because it’s like the boy who cried wolf."

Carroll is divorced from reality. "Accusing the business community of 'crying wolf' over job losses is a huge insult to the hundreds of Amazon affiliates laid off because of the new Internet tax or the thousands of steel workers whose jobs have been put in jeopardy because of the new energy tax," said Sen. Ken Kester, R-Las Animas.

Business owners repeatedly testified before members of the legislature saying that a series of Democrat proposed tax increases would kill jobs. Pepsi officials, for example, told lawmakers a new soda tax will put at risk as many as 800 jobs. A new tax hike on candy will target 150 workers at Grand Junction confectioner Enstrom’s, and the more than $3.3 million the company spends each year with more than 300 Colorado vendors. Democrats ignored the warnings and passed over $300 million of tax increases.

During floor debate about the tax increases, Rep. Jack Pommer, D-Boulder, accused business of not caring about Colorado. Neil Westergaard, editor of the Denver Business Journal, responded by calling Pommer the "most clueless lawmaker" and accused him of being the "torchbearer in a series of attacks on business this year and last." ColoradoSenateNews.com

DEMS add mandates and increase hlth care ins costs

HB1021 by Sen. Joyce Foster D-Denver and Sen. Betty Boyd D-Lakewood
Status: awaiting final Senate vote before signing by Governor

By mandating insurance companies to cover reproductive services and contraception in all small group and individual plans, Democrats are effectively making coverage more expensive for everyone.

Mandates require insurers to pay for reproductive care consumers previously funded out of their own pocket.

Another consequence of increasing price is that healthy individuals, often young people with low salaries, drop coverage. Ironically, those are the exact people the system needs to offset the cost of covering people who are not healthy. This creates a downward spiral in which costs increase further and fewer individuals are covered.

Limiting Growth - Initiation Ties Construction to Prior Water use

Stop Growth In CO by Limiting New Residential Housing Along the Front Range

The initiative assumes that water is a finite resource. We've seen how well artificial restrictions on growth work; witness the high cost of housing inside the Boulder "green belt" and the sprawl, traffic and congestion outside the arbitrary no-growth zone.

A proposed Colorado ballot initiative in the works would limit the amount of water made available for "newly constructed, privately owned residential housing units" along the Front Range and would prohibit cities and counties from issuing building permits that would cause those caps to be exceeded.

The cap provides:
Beginning in 2011, the amount of water available annually for newly constructed, privately owned residential housing units for the cities and counties or counties of Adams, Arapahoe, Boulder, Broomfield, Denver, Douglas, El Paso, Jefferson, Larimer and Weld shall not exceed one percent of the total water used for privately owned residential purposes annually averaged over the previous ten years in such cities and counties or counties.

Each local government and any part of such, whether statutory or home rule, shall allot building permits so that housing growth does not exceed the limitation on water use cumulatively for such city or county in a calendar year.