Oh Diana. We know economics isn’t one of your strong suits, but at least think a little harder before you parrot irrational talking points. Like the good Keynesian she is, Congresswoman Diana DeGette continues to push the popular and fallacious narrative of debt ceiling default. Here is what she had to say in the North Denver Tribune,

To avoid defaulting on our obligations and sending the world economy into a tailspin, we must raise the debt limit by August 2nd.

I talked about this last week and made the point that although this false narrative is winning the popularity contest, it is still magnificently illogical. The strategy of, let’s call them “defaulters,” is to scare the daylights out of the American public with talks of an impending economic doom if we don’t raise the debt ceiling. It’s quite likely you’ve heard a dozen catastrophic doomsday scenarios from various political pundits and politicians. Diana DeGette takes the typical doom and gloom talking points, but adds her own unique twist: asserting “defaulters” as mature adults looking for compromise, and the opposition as immature little children holding onto to principles with deadly consequences.

For example, are you “serious” and “mature” like Diana?

If they resisted the extreme urgings of some in their party to hold out for unpalatable concessions on budget cuts, serious policymakers in the center could hammer out bi-partisan solutions and mature policy decisions.

Apparently, I’m neither serious nor mature. In fact, I think it’s very unserious of Diana to suggest that we balance the budget without touching the 2 biggest items in the budget: Social Security and Medicare. I bet the immature folks over at Reason Magazine would agree. They’ve been hammering back against this silly narrative for awhile now and just released a short and completely unserious video, “3 Reasons Why the Debt Ceiling Debate is Full of Malarkry.” Gosh, if only they knew about the mature adults taking a serious position on this issue.

This episode of my show aired last Friday the 27th, but for some reason got lost in the shuffle and was never announced here on my blog. I wonder who didn’t do their job… (I’m looking at YOU Minion). So here it is, in all its glory – a look back at this year’s legislative session with Eli Stokols and Lynn Bartels:

I want to alert my readers with an update to yesterday’s post on Xcel’s friendly relationship with our state legislature. Amy just posted on our Environmental Policy blog new evidence of an even further deepening love affair between Xcel and our lawmakers. As if we needed anymore proof, now we’ve got it.

Attention future mayor of Denver. Take this story from Miami as a wake up call. We voters, tax payers, citizens will not take kindly to tax increases, spending increases, regulatory increases, special interest favors, and broken promises. Remember Gray Davis? Now you can add Carlos Alvarez’s name to that recall list.

You’ve been warned. Don’t mess with our wallets.

Tune in to Devil’s Advocate this Friday night as I am joined by Denver Post reporter Lynn Bartels and Colorado News Agency reporter Debi Brazzale for an update on the 2011 Colorado General Assembly from the reporters who cover the state legislature. That’s Friday, February 25th at 8:30 PM on Colorado Public Television 12. Re-broadcast the following Monday at 1:30 PM.

Hide the women and children. The zombie son of Referendum O is back and eager to haunt the citizens of Colorado. Like any piece of zombie legislation, this new version of Ref O feeds on brains bipartisan support. If you can remember back to 2008, Referendum O was defeated by voters. It would have made it much more difficult for citizens to petition their government. In other words, it would have changed nothing for rich special interests, only the little guy who wants to restrain government. (Like us).

Since Ref O went down, the legislature has been itching to bring back a similar amendment. Fast forward to today and we’ve got the zombie son of Ref O getting cooked up and ready to be delivered to a ballot near you. It is officially called, “Senate Concurrent Resolution 11-001,” or “SCR-001″ if you prefer. If passed “we the people” would never again be able to vote in a change to the state constitution.

SCR-001 would, among other traps against the petition process, require a super-majority of 60% to pass a citizen’s initiative to amend the constitution. If such a requirement were in place before, we would never have had passed Term Limits, which elected officials hate. Not to mention the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights (TABOR), which amazingly enough, politicians also hate. Catching a theme here? Just for fun, check the initiative history and try to find some Amendments that passed with a 60% vote. SCR-001 kills the citizen amendment.

How, in this Tea-Party-ish year, our elected officials can strip away the people’s ability to keep their out-of control government in check simply befuddles me.

Prediction – this bill, SCR-001, which will take away the safety valve “we the people” have over run-away government, will shoot through the Colorado legislature like a ham sandwich through Oprah.

Further prediction – it will fail at the ballot box and politicians who have benefited from the Tea Party movement but voted to put it on the ballot might have some interesting townhall meetings in their future. Get ready for what politicians always say whenever they put a tax increase or power grab on the ballot – “Oh, I’m not necessarily for it, I’m just for asking the people how they feel about the issue.”

Last thought – ever notice that the General Assembly has NEVER put a tax decrease, or term limits, or spending cuts, or an amendment to stop Obamacare on the ballot, just to see how “we the people” feel about it? Only “we the people” have done so, at our own expense.

This legislative session there will be yet another attempt to make it harder for citizens to change the Colorado State Constitution by raising the signature requirements to get something on the ballot. Why bother? The petition process in Colorado is already DEAD.

I mean it. Dead. Only a fool with a financial death-wish would try to get ANY initiative on a statewide ballot.

You see, the petition process frightens many in government because it gives us little people the ability to have a meaningful say in restricting government. When the legislature fails to address our needs, we can bypass them and bring an issue directly to our fellow Coloradans. Over the years we’ve been able to do this on a number of occasions. Take for example the Taxpayers Bill of Rights (TABOR) or Term Limits. Without the petition process, we would not have TABOR in place now saving us from an even larger budget deficit. And legislators certainly would never have limited their own terms in office.

To be sure, the enemies of the petition process have come from both the left and the right. In 2009, the legislature passed the 24-page HB 1326, which placed several restrictions and regulations on the petition process that did not exist before – restrictions that would hamper ordinary citizens from petitioning their government by greatly raising the cost of petitioning. Of course this does not effect the rich, union backed forces nearly as much as the little guy (us).

Additionally, the law for the first time opened up the individual proponents of petitions to be liable for a much more loosely defined “fraud” or wrongdoing by nearly anyone working or volunteering on behalf of the amendment. And here is where the story really begins. With the proponent of a petition forced to personally pay the legal costs if someone else commits “fraud” – even when their amendment does not pass – who in their right mind would take on that risk? Answer: me.

Right now I am the target of a legal complaint and may be personally liable for so-called “fraud” committed by other people during the signature gathering process for Amendment 63, our Right to Health Care Choice initiative. As this MUST READ Citizens in Charge article outlines, I could be forced into personal bankruptcy because of this legal complaint. All because I wanted my fellow Coloradans to have a say in how our government was run.

Despite the initiative process still officially on the books, it has effectively been nullified by this 2009 legislation. I join Vince Carroll at the Denver Post in calling for cleaning up these rules.

My current situation now serves as a warning to those who might be considering running an initiative in the future. Now read this Citizens in Charge article.

It’s tough being the establishment. Sometimes you have to trash your principles for political purposes. Privacy and choice, ideals once championed by liberals and their progressive allies, have been reduced to quaint notions applicable on politically acceptable occasions now that Democrats are the ruling class.

Take health care in Colorado.  Last year, State Rep John Kefalas sponsored legislation that would have laid “the groundwork” for government-controlled health care, a.k.a. single-payer, to all Coloradans by 2011. It failed even in the Democrat-controlled state legislature.

This year, Kefalas and other Democratic legislators tried a different approach. HB 1330, the All-Payer Health Care Cost Database was signed into law by Governor Ritter on May 26. The bill grants unlimited power to the Executive Director of Health Care Policy and Financing to mandate the collection of any and all health care data, to conduct audits, to give the data to third parties without seeking permission, and to impose unlimited fines for refusing to provide data to the database.

The legislation is a frightening invasion of privacy because patients and providers have no say over whether the state may have, according to the bill, “access to individual information on physical functioning, medical treatment, supposed mental stability, marital problems, family structure, sexual habits, addictions, adherence to government health recommendations, and individual financial arrangements.”

Kefalas bragged about the massive privacy invasion in a press release, “You can’t manage what you can’t measure.” In other words the state must know the intimate details of your private medical records in order to “manage” your health care for you.

Sponsors of the legislation say your information will be secure and private…wink, wink. Colorado state government has a history of losing supposedly secure data. In this era of Big Data, there is no way to guarantee privacy or security. In the words of CU Associate Law Professor Paul Ohm, who specializes in privacy issues, “data can either be useful or perfectly anonymous but never both.”

Furthermore, the database will be funded by “unknown” sources with “unknown” agendas. Whoever is willing to pay to establish the database will have access to your private medical information.

In a paper released last fall, Ohm refers to “databases of ruin” where an individual’s most personal information is stored. Nate Anderson, senior editor of ARS Technica, summarized Ohm’s paper, “Scrubbing data just isn’t enough to keep our individual ‘databases of ruin’ out of the hands of the police, political enemies, nosy neighbors, friends, and spies.”

So where are all the privacy advocates from the Left?  Where are the champions of “choice”?  You’d think they would have marched en masse to the Capitol to protest such a massive intrusion into medical privacy.

But an online search turned up a grand total of two dissenting voices against such a significant government intrusion into individual rights and privacy: Amy Oliver-Cooke and Linda Gorman, both from the Independence Institute.

If I missed a single progressive voice against HB 1330, I’d love to know about it.

The problem with governing is that it sometimes makes a mockery of principles once championed. And obedient allies remain silent as politics replaces concern over those pesky principles of privacy and choice.

A version of this was originally published in The Huffington Post

Did you hear the one about the three millionaires who flipped Colorado from a red state to a blue state? Check out Independent Thinking this week as co-authors Adam Schrager and Rob Whitwer sit down with me to talk about their new book, The Blueprint: How the Democrats Won Colorado (and Why Republicans Everywhere Should Care). That’s this Friday, April 30 at 8:30 P.M. on KBDI Channel 12. Rebroadcast the following Monday at 1:00pm.