What I saw at the big protest

Many folks in Denver are mad and appear not ready to accept our government as it currently stands. More than 5000 people made it a point to congregate at the state capitol under a sunny, warm sky at noon on Wednesday, TAX DAY. The most accurate statement that can be made about the rally is that: Once again, the people “get it,” but the politicians and the media, still do not get it. Let me make my point:

The people really do get it: There were signs all over the place decrying the rise of socialism, higher taxes ahead, government bailouts, the loss of economic freedom, etc. There was even a sign saying, “I left a socialist country for this?”

Most notably there were constant calls for Tax Ritter to show up. A mom likened herself to a rattlesnake that warns its prey before its deadly attack. Politicians take warning was her final statement. Another man told the crowd how “pissed off” he was. To make his point, he repeated his chant as he listed all the ills of our current government policies. He did this to repeated cheers from the crowd. Another speaker called for a third party, as he reminded us that both the Dems and the Repubs got us into this mess. I loved the guy that opined: Kick all the bastard out!!!

Now we get to the media. I’ve got to call out the Denver Daily News. The headline read: Tea-d off over illegals” by Peter Marcus. Wednesday April 15, 2009.

I called Mr. Marcus who told me he had no agenda by highlighting the Illegal issue. When I challenged him, he told me he mentioned the tax issues in the second paragraph and that showed he didn’t have an agenda. Folks, this is the problem with the media today. For someone to take that stand; shows either complete disregard for reality or an agenda. That agenda being, let’s highlight the Illegal Immigrant issue rather than the real tax issues.

It has also come to my attention that many of the major media outlets treated the Tea Party rallies with the same approach. That being: This is just another right wing attempt to rally the Republicans for the next election cycle.

The media's approach just makes my point: The media thinks it makes the news and they hate the fact that they are losing power over the people.

Multiple taxes support grasping government

"In political arithmetic, two and two do not always make four.'' Alexander Hamilton quoted this old maxim in the Federalist Papers in his discussion of the need for taxes to support the government being proposed by the Federal Convention of 1787. Hamilton contended that a tax on consumption was adequate for all practical purposes which also had the virtue of being almost self regulating in that citizens reduce their spending, and therefore government revenues, if the tax is too high. Of course, Hamilton never heard of what in recent years has been called "supply-side economics," which is based on the idea that high income tax rates are also self defeating. But his reasoning and President Ronald Reagan’s were exactly the same.

Unfortunately, this political wisdom is disregarded in Sacramento and Washington, D.C., as rapacious governments there not only are raising tax rates in pursuit of ever-elusive revenues but are addicted to taxes on almost every conceivable object. I submit that both these tendencies are evidence of incompetence or knavery or both.

Liberal Democrat politicians (and their Republican enablers like Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger), when they propose tax increases and new taxes to make up the government’s revenue shortage, are acting on the assumption that these measures will actually produce more revenue. But they ignore the depressing effect which their high tax and spending policies have already had on domestic consumption and especially business enterprise.

The best evidence of this effect is the startling discovery, only a month after legislative leaders and the governor agreed to a hodge podge of spending cuts, tax increases and borrowing to cover the $40 billion shortfall, that they were short an additional $8 billion. Now the voters are being offered a six-part package May 17 that includes a two-year extension of the sales and income tax rate increases.

Until control of the government changes to a new, more fiscally conservative political party, we are not likely to see anything but a series of stopgap measures featuring a lot of posturing by political leaders but no permanent solution to the "revenue problem."

In truth, revenue is not the problem; unrestrained spending is. As long as that is the bad habit of those who make our laws and administer the government, there will never—repeat, never–be enough money to support the government. Not only does raising taxes not work but the existence of so many taxes on so many items is evidence that the government’s appetite for revenue is insatiable.

From time to time friends email me lists of the number and variety of taxes which our governments impose these days. They include taxes on income (individuals and corporations), sales, property, fuel, estates and inheritances, liquor, cigarettes, luxuries, telephones, highway usage and much, much more.

Our governments have gone far beyond constitutional limitations. The federal government was authorized to provide for the common defense and to promote the general welfare, which consisted in maintaining armed forces, regulating trade, collecting taxes and enforcing its own laws. State governments had broader powers, but even those originally did not include providing cradle-to-grave security or even public schools.

California government spends upwards of $100 billion each year, and the federal government spends $3 trillion–with no end in sight in either case. No taxes will ever be enough when there is, in principle, no limit to the number and variety of objects on which that money can be spent.

When Americans trade their labor or supply a product in return for money, they are enterprising. When governments increase taxes, they are greedy. Are you as tired as I am of hearing government spokesmen say that people who make lots of money in the marketplace are greedy but that those who tax us heavily are compassionate?

It is not surprising that improvident or unsuccessful individuals and corporations are encouraged to seek bailouts, for that is what our governments do whenever they commandeer more and more of our money. Too often taxes are not intended to defray the costs of legitimate functions but to bail out governments that can’t control their fiscal appetites.

On Wednesday, all across America, citizens are holding TEA (Taxed Enough Already) parties to protest out-of-control taxing and spending by our state and federal governments. You will probably not learn about this in our major media, but then the apologists for the king of England were not interested in the colonists’ complaints either

Public outrage is building, as it ought to, and we will be fortunate if it overturns the modern Leviathan and restores constitutional government to our country.

Don't miss Tea Parties 4/15

Tax, spend, borrow and regulate are the four horsemen of American socialism under Obama and Ritter. Intrusive government now tramples our liberties with a brazenness that would amaze those old Boston patriots who dumped the tea in '73. Tea Party protests will happen in many cities on Tax Day, Wed. April 15. I'll be taking part and so should you. Here's the information you need. Denver Metro Area City: Denver When: April 15, 12:00pm - 1:30pm Where: West steps of the Capitol, 200 East Colfax

El Paso County City: Colorado Springs When: April 15, 12:00pm - 1:30pm Where: Acacia Park at 225 N Nevada

Routt County City: Steamboat Springs When: April 15, 12 noon Where: County Courthouse Lawn

Mesa County City: Grand Junction When: April 15, 12:00pm - 1:30pm Where: Soccer stadium at 12th Street and North Avenue, corner across from Mesa State College

Larimer County City: Fort Collins When: April 15, 12:00 pm - 2:00 pm Where: Fort Collins City Hall, 300 Laporte Avenue

City: Loveland When: April 15, 4:00pm - 7:00pm Where: 205 E Eisenhower Blvd, Loveland, CO 80537

Weld County City: Greeley When: April 18, 11am – 2pm Where: Bittersweet Park at 35th Ave. and 11th St.

Pueblo County City: Pueblo When: April 15, 4:00 pm Where: Pueblo County Courthouse, 215 W. 10th St.

Fremont County City: Cañon City When: April 11, 12:00 pm Where: Veterans Park

Contact names for these and other Colorado cities, along with Tea Party details for many other states and cities, are at this link. To sort by state, scroll to the bottom of that page. Site also lists numerous organizers and contacts for the three events mentioned above.

The Tea Party phenomenon of 2009 is one of the most powerful grassroots movements our country has seen in a long time. People are rising up to defend individual freedom, personal responsibility, limited government, and free markets.

Be part of it on April 15! I'll see you there.

TABOR on life support

Seventeen years ago, Colorado voters frustrated by the excesses of an unresponsive government passed the Taxpayers Bill of Rights (TABOR), a constitutional amendment designed to limit government spending and give voters to final word on tax hikes. Initially, government officials largely adhered to TABOR's strictures, ever mindful that the voters had spoken and expected those they elected to play by the rules.

Last month's Orwellian decision by the Colorado Supreme Court signaled that no longer will the executive, legislative nor judicial branches of state government - all dominated by liberals - abide by a constitutional amendment that crimps their big-spender style.

Governing powers wager than most voters have forgotten why TABOR passed, much less what it was intended to do. That's a dangerous gamble because TABOR's primary tenets - subjecting tax increases to a public vote and limiting government spending - still elicit strong public support.

Last year, a constitutional amendment that would have rolled back the requirement that surplus tax revenues be refunded to taxpayers lost 55% to 45%, despite a $2.5 million campaign and only token opposition.

Instead of living within TABOR's easily-defined guardrails, Democrats have adopted a strategy of making it irrelevant through subversive interpretations and raising unprecedented revenue through "fees" - indistinguishable from taxes to anyone but a lawyer.

Last year, Gov. Bill Ritter first proposed a $100 increase in the annual vehicle registration fee - distinguished from the registration tax only by the quarter-inch that separates the two on your car's registration papers.

When KOA radio's Mike Rosen suggested that Ritter was merely side-stepping TABOR because it didn't apply to fees, the governor explained that this $500 million measure was legitimately a fee because "there really is a direct relationship between highway usage and infrastructure."

He didn't bother to explain how that was different from the fuel tax, since there is obviously a "direct relationship" between gasoline and transportation.

This year, Democrat legislators gave Ritter a $250 million vehicle fee increase. Can a fuel "fee" increase be far behind?

Ritter and his Democrat spending machine have also devised a new fee on hospitals, calculated to raise $600 million a year, while claiming to do so without raising costs on consumers. Magically, hospitals and state government rake in more money, but conveniently nobody pays more. Right.

Which brings us to the courts, unelected because the justices are expected to apply the law regardless of whether doing so is convenient or popular.

When the courts ruled that no "tax policy change" occurred even though Ritter and the legislature amended state law - what is law if not "policy"? - to force school districts to raise more property tax revenues, liberals were emboldened to short-circuit another TABOR provision that puts voters in charge.

The "weakening" clause reserves to voters the ability to ease existing limits on revenue, spending or debt. But Democrats, taking another page from Orwell, declared that the state's general fund spending limit - that's what state law calls it - is not a limit but "an allocation strategy."

"TABOR is silent on allocation strategies," declares Democrat Sen. John Morse, endorsing yet another slap in the face to taxpayers.

It's difficult to imagine why Democrats lawmakers would present voters with an outright tax increase ever again, so long as they can find legal lapdogs who will apply weasel words to change tax increases and spending limits into something else.

What tax issues, then, will voters be asked to consider? Mostly local government taxes or state matters in which the legislature or a special interest thinks it can fund a warm-fuzzy government program by taxing an unpopular target.

TABOR's most significant remaining limit, a cap on total state spending, was modified and temporarily suspended by Referendum C. Under those terms it returns in 2011, whereupon the cult of big government will undoubtedly devise a scheme to render it meaningless, too.

Won't it be ironic if, by inventing so many loopholes through which taxpayers can be soaked, overreaching Democrats sew the seeds of the next taxpayer revolt?

Justices blow off vote on taxes

Colorado's constitution plainly says that state and local governments can't raise taxes without voters' permission. If only the Colorado Supreme Court could read plain language. Instead, the court's liberal majority ignores terms that should obviously protect taxpayers and instead emphasizes extraneous arguments that accommodate government.

This latest legal chicanery comes from the same playbook that turned the First Amendment's guarantee of religious freedom into a tool to suppress religious speech.

Now voters who allowed their local school to keep, rather than refund, excess property tax collections are being hit with a backdoor property tax increase imposed by Gov. Bill Ritter and Democrat legislators.

Three factors determine property taxes: property value, the assessment rate, and mill levy.

If your home is worth $200,000, the assessment rate is 8%, and the mill levy is set at 50, the tax calculation looks like this: $200,000 x .08 (assessment rate) = $16,000 taxable value x .050 (mill levy) = $800 property tax.

When Colorado voters added the Taxpayers Bill or Rights (TABOR) to the state constitution, they prohibited state and local governments from enacting "a tax policy change directly causing a net tax revenue gain" without voter permission.

TABOR also limited total tax revenue increases to the combined rates of inflation plus population growth. If population plus inflation increase by 5% but total property valuation increases by 10%, the excess must be refunded to taxpayers and future mill levies reduced to avoid collecting the excess again.

Lawmakers from both parties have understood that neither the mill levy nor the assessment rate can be increased without a public vote. (The last attempted vote failed by a 3-to-1 margin.)

In 174 of Colorado's 178 school districts, voters have authorized their schools to keep the excess with the understanding - based on explicit promises from school and state officials - that taxes would remain subject to the population-plus-inflation limit.

Enter Colorado's newly empowered Democrats, who pay lip service to taxpayers but pledge allegiance to government. Ritter and his minions decided - without voter approval - that reducing mill levies was no longer necessary if voters had given their local school permission to keep excess revenues.

As a result, taxpayers coughed up an extra $117 million in the first year - an amount estimated to double every three years. This obvious "tax policy change" resulted in a "net revenue increase" which, to anyone without a law degree, clearly means voter permission is required.

But not according to Chief Justice Mary Mullarkey who ruled that Ritter and his fellow tax-hikers were merely implementing the wishes of the voters in those 174 districts - albeit years later.

Assurances to voters by school officials that taxes would remain capped don't matter, the court said, because those voters approved ballot questions that permitted schools to retain "all revenues" - even revenues that didn't exist at the time of the vote.

Worse, those tax dollars won't increase funds for local schools. As local taxpayers dig deeper, the state will reduce its contribution - instead paying more for welfare entitlement programs or to colleges and universities.

The consequences for voters and for schools are unfortunate. Voters can no longer take the word of school officials that "no one wants to raise your taxes." Even if local officials don't; state officials might and, thanks to Mullarkey, they can do so without the consent of voters or local schools.

Colorado Association of School Boards also backed the tax hike, leaving many local officials with egg on their faces. School leaders who conscientiously recognize the potential backlash from voters who feel betrayed should present taxpayers with the opportunity to re-instate the TABOR limit on property tax revenue and ask voters if their school can keep the change under that limit.

For voters and taxpayers, the recurring lesson is that constitutional limits on government are worthless if lawmakers won't abide by them and judges won't enforce them.

Mark Hillman served as Colorado senate majority leader and state treasurer. To read more or comment, go to www.MarkHillman.com