Colorado has only been my home since since the end of August, 2013.? But it is obvious that Colorado is a very diverse state with wildly divergent happenings as was evident on yesterday, election day, 2013.
Eleven Northeastern Colorado counties asked voters if they have had enough of the far left liberal policies that proliferate down the state along the most populated corridor from Boulder through the Metro Denver area.? Voters in these counties decided if they wanted to secede, breaking away from Colorado to form the fifty-first State. ?Forget about the fact that failed candidate for the U.S. Senate seat in 2008, Ken Buck, a Teabully favorite and the present Weld County District Attorney, announced that he was voting against the measure.? This is not the first attempt by some counties in a State to secede from their own state.? Northern California has recently breathed life back into an effort that was attempted in 1941, while Upper Michigan, parts of Maryland, and Pima County tried it in Arizona because the rest of the state was just not right wing enough.
But Ken Buck might have studied up on the U.S. Constitution, which does have rules on allowing parts of a state to leave a state then join the Union. Article IV, Section 3?of the U.S. Constitution says that:
No new states shall be formed or erected within the jurisdiction of any other state; nor any state be formed by the junction of two or more states, or parts of states, without the consent of the legislatures?of the states concerned as well as of the Congress.
So, even if all eleven of a total of sixty-three Colorado counties did manage to approve votes to secede today, the effect of the vote will be to have wasted taxpayer money to put on the ballot something that the voters cannot do.? A bill to allow some Colorado counties to secede would never be put up for a vote in the Democratic controlled State Legislature, and would be vetoed by Democratic Governor John Hickenlooper if it ever came to his desk for signature.? And then there would be the effort to have the new State approved by Congress, then signed by the President, any President.? Good luck with that one.
The results from upstate show that six of the?eleven Northeastern Colorado counties have rejected the plan to secede.? Nice going.?Perhaps the five counties that did vote to secede might be considered an average gerrymandered Republican Congressional District rather than a small State with haphazard non contiguous borders.
The Teabullly fakers at work again – always there to squander taxpayer dollars while falsely proclaiming their love for smaller Government and the rule of law, while stamping their feet and trying to change the rules when democracy just happens to work against them.? There would be no Government smaller than that which would be their own personal State? Would the new State come with a really big bath tub within which to drown the new Government?
Then there are two tax bills that are designed to repair the damage done by the Republicans in defunding Colorado’s Public Schools, while also dedicating funding for real programs for real school kids.? Amendment 66 would raise the tax bill for an average Colorado family about $133 a year.? The money would have to go to programs for children and not to administration, and would allow the Public schools to bring back music, art, and sports programs that have been eliminated by previous republican policies. ? Amendment 66 appears to have been defeated by a wide margin.
Proposition AA is also intended to dedicate funds for Colorado Public Schools asking voters to approve a tax increase?that would add a 10% tax onto the existing 15%? tax on the sale of? Marijuana products. The existing 15% tax is dedicated to the construction of new Public School facilities.? The additional 10% tax would then be used to fund the regulation and oversight of legalized recreational use of marijuana.? It looks as if the voters have approved this tax increase by a wide margin.? A similar Denver Municipal tax also looks like it has been approved by a wide margin.
Wow, Coloradans voting to increase their taxes.
Also down State, in the Mile High City, there were two very interesting developments.? The Denver City Council is now considering a measure to allow recreational use of Marijuana by persons over 21 in yes, your own backyard, or on a balcony or a porch that does not face a public street.?The measure would also allow such use in public parks and in certain other public areas.? And, while growing a limited amount of medical marijuana is already legal in the City of Denver, the Amendment to the Zoning Law would extend that to growing marijuana for recreational?use.? City Council is expected to vote on the measure on November 6, 2013.
The other development in the Mile High City was a lawsuit thrown out?by a Denver District Judge on Monday, November 4, 2013, the day before election day.? The case, filed by the Libertarian Party of Colorado and two Republicans, claimed that a State Law allowing local election boards to have different residency deadlines was resulting in some voters not being allowed to vote in certain local elections.? The suit also alleged that other voters who should be barred by the State residency requirements, were being permitted to vote in other local elections.? Unfortunately, the one instance that the Libertarian Party Chairman knew of was a person he had heard about and that person was not called as a witness at the trial.? Sounds a lot like the failure by Republicans to prove their claims of voter fraud in the cases that have come to trial in States that have passed Voter ID laws.
So it was ?a fairly good day here in Colorado for reason, for the education of our kids, for freedom, and for the embarrassment of the Teabully political strategists who are marching the right wing off the cliff towards complete oblivion in 2014 and beyond. And we have many cliffs of great height here in Colorado.? And if they do manage someday to secede from Colorado, we can all look forward to the naming contest perhaps sponsored by Koch Industries and the NRA.
Edited/Published by: SB
