March 8, 2010 - 7:00am - by Rocky Mountain Right

Amazon.com sent out the following notice to small businesspeople using their online-affilliate program last night:

Dear Colorado-based Amazon Associate:

We are writing from the Amazon Associates Program to inform you that the Colorado government recently enacted a law to impose sales tax regulations on online retailers. The regulations are burdensome and no other state has similar rules. The new regulations do not require online retailers to collect sales tax. Instead, they are clearly intended to increase the compliance burden to a point where online retailers will be induced to “voluntarily” collect Colorado sales tax — a course we won’t take.

We and many others strongly opposed this legislation, known as HB 10-1193, but it was enacted anyway. Regrettably, as a result of the new law, we have decided to stop advertising through Associates based in Colorado. We plan to continue to sell to Colorado residents, however, and will advertise through other channels, including through Associates based in other states.

There is a right way for Colorado to pursue its revenue goals, but this new law is a wrong way. As we repeatedly communicated to Colorado legislators, including those who sponsored and supported the new law, we are not opposed to collecting sales tax within a constitutionally-permissible system applied even-handedly. The US Supreme Court has defined what would be constitutional, and if Colorado would repeal the current law or follow the constitutional approach to collection, we would welcome the opportunity to reinstate Colorado-based Associates.

You may express your views of Colorado’s new law to members of the General Assembly and to Governor Ritter, who signed the bill.

Your Associates account has been closed as of March 8, 2010, and we will no longer pay advertising fees for customers you refer to Amazon.com after that date. Please be assured that all qualifying advertising fees earned prior to March 8, 2010, will be processed and paid in accordance with our regular payment schedule. Based on your account closure date of March 8, any final payments will be paid by May 31, 2010.

We have enjoyed working with you and other Colorado-based participants in the Amazon Associates Program, and wish you all the best in your future.

Best Regards,

The Amazon Associates Team

High school came in like a lamb and quickly morphed into a lion.  The steady girlfriend was announced a couple of weeks into it and nothing has been the same since.  Grades have gone into the dumper.  Cell texting and computer chatting consumes all time and destroys most continuity of independent teenage thought.  We parents have become the other, the enemy, the loathed murderers of love.

Our peaceful life in the country is fraying under the stress of a tech savvy 14 year old female predator obsessed with marrying our 15 year old son and having his children.  I’ll admit, I’ve used hyperbole on occasion.  I wish this was hyperbole. And this. And this. The smiley emoticons are cute, but they lose some of their charm when it’s you they’re talking about burying.

The girl pursues him relentlessly every waking moment through texting, sexting, chatting, email, and as a last resort, actual voice phone calls.  The boy, raised as an innocent and to not be a victim, thinks this obsession feels wonderful.  He’s in love and the rest of life has become a distraction he would rid himself of if he could.

The girl uses her own cell phone, her mother’s cell phone, her father’s cell phone when she can get it, and of course her computer to text and email the boy roughly about once every minute or so of waking time–many hundreds of contacts each day.  Her parents don’t seem to exert any control over her electronic obsessions.  She uses various online chat clients like facebook and yahoo messenger in addition to email from a variety of sources–cell phone texts, cell phone email, regular isp email, facebook email, etc.

We’ve had to become quite sophisticated in parental controls at the cell phone provider interfaces, the email provider interfaces, and even a sophisticated network router at home, to shut her electronic harassment down while keeping the various electronic tools available to my son for other uses and users.  My wife handles the cell phone side of it, I do the rest.  It’s taken us months to figure out how to effectively block a determined cyber stalker.

It was our mistake to expect the kids would use all of these connectivity tools responsibly.  Perhaps some do, but I expect that’s the exception and that it’s more likely this kind of thing goes on without a lot of parental awareness.  Judging by how complicated the remedies are, I bet a lot of parents have no idea what they’re up against.

Dangers of Technology: Cyber-bullying, stalking can have damaging effects

Almost four out of ten teens are either the bully or the victim and girls are twice as likely to do it.

“The boys have a tendency to do more of the physical bullying; face to face. The girls tend to do this social sabotage thing on Facebook, MySpace,” says Stanton.

http://www.stopbullyingnow.hrsa.gov/adults/cyber-bullying.aspx

Sponsored by the Heartland Institute

Denver Public Library - Central Branch
10 W. Fourteenth Ave. Pkwy.
Denver, CO 80204

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

2:00 pm Opening Remarks and The Rise Of Consumer-Driven Health Care
Peter Fotos, Director of Government Relations, The Heartland Institute

2:30 pm Emerging Issues: Protecting the Doctor/Patient Relationship
Dr. Jill Vecchio, Radiology Oncologist and Colorado Organizer of Docs4PatientCare

3:00 pm The True Cost of Health Care Reform
Dr. Linda Gorman, Director of the Health Care Policy Center, The Independence Institute

3:30 pm An Update from the State of Colorado
State Senator Shawn Mitchell, District 23 of Colorado

4:00 pm A Perspective from the Insurance Industry
Speaker TBD

4:30 pm Free-Market Activities in Colorado
Jon Caldara, President, The Independence Institute

5:00 pm Closing Remarks

There is no registration fee for this event

Please feel free to pass this email along to friends and family, also Government Relations Staffers are encouraged to attend

Please RSVP to Mary,
at 303-279-6536 or rsvp@i2i.org.

In Texas on Tuesday a little known woman named Debra Medina ran as the Tea Party candidate and got nearly 19 percent of the vote in the GOP primary for Governor. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison got about 30 percent and Gov. Rick Perry got 51 percent meaning Medina was far closer to Hutchison than Hutchison was to Perry. In this era of euphoria for the GOP, this result could well portend a huge problem next November.

Here’s why. Medina got about a fifth of the vote in a GOP primary. She would probably have gotten a far smaller percentage in a general election, but that’s where I’m going with this. Primary elections and other nominating processes will be pretty much done by August. A few states go into September, but not many. So, Republican and Democrat nominees will be chosen and running against each other by, for the most part, late summer. In Congressional District after Congressional District Democrats are fearing for their political lives in the face of an Obama job approval which is stuck at slightly below 50 percent. Running head-to-head against the Republican nominee is going to be a steep hill to climb - Washington experience does not appear to be a big plus this year. Most states have a process for an independent candidate to get on the ballot. It usually involves getting some number of signatures from some segment of the population in each county or some similar formula. Someone is going to figure out that being the Tea Party candidate can get you a significant percentage of the vote, if you can get on the ballot.

Debra Medina got about the same percentage of the vote as Ross Perot got in the Presidential election of 1992. Perot didn’t win any electoral votes, but he got enough popular votes to draw support away from George H.W. Bush and allowed Bill Clinton to win the state. Another example. If Ralph Nader hadn’t been on the Florida ballot no recount would have been necessary. Al Gore would have won the state fairly handily and would have been the 43rd President of the United States. If Tea Party candidates can get on the ballot in close districts, they can easily do the same thing: Siphon votes away from the GOP candidate and throw the district to the Democrat. Why would they do this? To demand that Republican candidates toe the Tea Party Line - or else. In most states independents can gain ballot access well after the primary voting period, so they can make the threat stick: Come out against an ever-encroaching Federal government or the Tea Party candidate will get on the ballot and you can go back to your day job.

If I were advising the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, I would tell them to set aside a fund of money to teach Tea Party candidates how to gain ballot access in the 30 - 40 Districts which the Ds think are in most peril. Republican challengers in Democrat districts can preempt that plot by claiming the Tea Party mantle starting, oh, tomorrow would be just about right. Republican incumbents won’t lose to Tea Party candidates. They might if they were running in a GOP primary in the Northeast, but there aren’t very many Republican incumbents in that region so there is not much low hanging fruit. The power of the Tea Baggers can be best used in weak Democratic districts where they can threaten to get on the ballot and destroy Republican chances to take back control of the U.S. House. That is a dangerous storm bearing down on GOP hopes for November.

Breakfast Update!!
GOP Governor Candidate and front runner Scott McInnis has confirmed his attendance for the Saturday, March 13, Elbert County Republican Breakfast.

We recommit ourselves to the ideas of the American Founding.  Through the Constitution, the Founders created an enduring framework of limited government based on the rule of law. They sought to secure national independence, provide for economic opportunity, establish true religious liberty and maintain a flourishing society of republican self-government.

These principles define us as a country and inspire us as a people. They are responsible for a prosperous, just nation unlike any other in the world. They are our highest achievements, serving not only as powerful beacons to all who strive for freedom and seek self-government, but as warnings to tyrants and despots everywhere.

Each one of these founding ideas is presently under sustained attack. In recent decades, America’s principles have been undermined and redefined in our culture, our universities and our politics. The selfevident truths of 1776 have been supplanted by the notion that no such truths exist. The federal government today ignores the limits of the Constitution, which is increasingly dismissed as obsolete and irrelevant.

Some insist that America must change, cast off the old and put on the new. But where would this lead — forward or backward, up or down? Isn’t this idea of change an empty promise or even a dangerous deception?

The change we urgently need, a change consistent with the American ideal, is not movement away from but toward our founding principles. At this important time, we need a restatement of Constitutional conservatism grounded in the priceless principle of ordered liberty articulated in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

The conservatism of the Declaration asserts self-evident truths based on the laws of nature and nature’s God. It defends life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It traces authority to the consent of the governed. It recognizes man’s self-interest but also his capacity for virtue.

The conservatism of the Constitution limits government’s powers but ensures that government performs its proper job effectively. It refines popular will through the filter of representation. It provides checks and balances through the several branches of government and a federal republic.

A Constitutional conservatism unites all conservatives through the natural fusion provided by American principles. It reminds economic conservatives that morality is essential to limited government, social conservatives that unlimited government is a threat to moral self-government, and national security conservatives that energetic but responsible government is the key to America’s safety and leadership role in the world.

A Constitutional conservatism based on first principles provides the framework for a consistent and meaningful policy agenda.

• It applies the principle of limited government based on the rule of law to every proposal.
• It honors the central place of individual liberty in American politics and life.
• It encourages free enterprise, the individual entrepreneur, and economic reforms grounded in market solutions.
• It supports America’s national interest in advancing freedom and opposing tyranny in the world and prudently considers what we can and should do to that end.
• It informs conservatism’s firm defense of family, neighborhood, community, and faith.

If we are to succeed in the critical political and policy battles ahead, we must be certain of our purpose. We must begin by retaking and resolutely defending the high ground of America’s founding principles.

February 17, 2010

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Notice:
Elbert County Young Republicans will have an organizational meeting at their new office above the car wash in Kiowa, Monday, March 29th, 2010.  Contact Linda Wyer at lwyer95@yahoo.com

Mike Rosen had a caller the other morning who wouldn’t accept Rosen’s point that political party trumps person.  Pete Boyles would have agreed with the caller.  He too votes for the person over the party.  2009 went down as a disaster for one party leftist government–an abject proof of Rosen’s thesis.

The system involves a lot more than casting votes in November.  Our civic conscience and prescriptions for ethical society hinge on education, accurate perception, a true knowledge of the history of what has worked and what has not, and humility.  Too many use their vote as a mirror for preening their self image.  They’re the ones tuning up their self esteem with congratulatory back slapping and snippets of sound-bite love for the downtrodden. Notwithstanding civic duty, the system accepts all motivations including the most base and the most naive.

The left’s approach holds that the good is objectively obvious and that everyone should be required to contribute to it.  Their systemic safety net sounds charitable, but in practice leads to unchecked corruption, the denial of free will, the prevention of moral choice, and a worsening of the human condition.  While the good may be objectively obvious to many people, manifesting the good by force always makes things worse.

The right holds that what is good can only be individually and voluntarily created.  They know that coercion nullifies moral choice–that it is the act of choosing the good over the bad that makes something good.

The left avoid this topic like the plague because it reminds them of their pro-choice position where they insist on preserving the legal license to choose to kill babies–which they think is a good thing.  And so go the pitfalls of their relative morality.

Anyway, the right’s approach has in fact produced the greatest good for the greatest number of people whenever it has been the controlling philosophy.  The left continues to attack it for want of a systemic safety net, even though the left have repeatedly demonstrated that systemic safety nets don’t work.

At the end of the day, the system that most empowers individuals to create their own good has the endorsement of the weight of history.  George Will has observed in many columns that the brilliance of the American system lies in its’ ability to produce governmental gridlock.  And who wouldn’t want to have the 800 lb. gorilla in the living room securely shackled?

Individual empowerment by default through the frustration of systemic government coercion may not be pretty, but it’s the system that works best for us.  The Founders designed a self-limiting American government in order to protect our freedom to live and pursue happiness.  They knew that only free people so engaged could build a great nation.

Since the founding of America, however, huge national mistakes harming millions of people have been repeatedly committed in the name of social progress in our country, and in many nations throughout the world.  It’s time for the left to face the facts that it (a) has no monopoly on good intentions and that (b) good intentions do not justify forcing progressive programs on the country.

One definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing and expect a different result.  The only thing progressivism (and it’s close cousins socialism, fascism and communism) ever delivered is destruction to the fabric of their societies.  We can no longer afford to stand by while America consumes itself in the fire of progressive passion. The failed progressive experiment must end and we can use the system to do it.

Don’t wait for November to get into the system.  By then, 99% of the political season’s governmental product will be formed.  The American system is a continuum of free speech, critical analysis, study of history, and the endless task of trying to avoid repeating our mistakes.  I believe the system can be operated so that we quit making the big progressive national mistakes that harm millions of people.  We must end the experiments in the name of social progress.  We are human beings, not lab rats for entertaining progressive social scientists.

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YouTube videos:

Scott Wills reporting on candidates for county offices in 2010

Hope Goetz on the state of the county

 PJ Trostel breakfast sponsor and candidate

Rick Stone on Republican strategy

Jerry Bishop on getting back to the Constitution

Mike Holler:

The constitutional crisis caused by progressive Democrats and progressive Republicans

De Toqueville and the Code of Federal Regulations

Tyrants never rest

A more perfect union

The general welfare

Conclusion

PAGE 2A - WEST ELBERT COUNTY SUN - THURSDAY FEBRUARY 11.2010
“Early this morning on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” there was a discussion about our freedoms and who they are set aside for, particularly the 14th Amendment, which defines citizenship and keeps our civil and political rights from being abridged or denied.

The Nation’s Chris Hayes . was speaking on the rights of suspected terrorists, particularly the issues of indefinite detention and whether should they be “Mirandized” or not. He stressed the point that the U.S. Constitution’s protection of legal rights not only applies to legal citizens, but, unpopular as that is today, it also applies to terrorist suspects, much as it does to illegal immigrants who are arrested on American soils.

But in the Bush administration, in the name of public safety, those legal rights were curtailed for certain terrorist suspects. A Feb. 9 editorial in the Wall Street Journal titled “Cheney’s Revenge” asserts that despite efforts little has been done by the Obama administration to move away ` from that stance. The editorial cites the President’s desired closing of the Guantanamo Bay detention facilities and his administration’s backing down of trying 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other enemy combatants in civilian court.

In response, Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough said, “I know Bush did it, but that doesn’t make it right,” adding it is something we are still “muddling through.” Meanwhile,  Mort Zukerman of U.S. New & World Report counters, saying the Supreme Court allows for different rules to apply than what exist for U.S. citizens.
Forty years ago it was civil rights. Today it is the rights of terrorist suspects.

An ongoing  process, to be sure, on how to apply our legal protections. But it began more than 230 years ago with our first president and changed significantly with , the election of Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War.

Understanding the “muddling” and shifting public opinion that occurs over time, it is the basic concept of democracy and freedom that we celebrate with Presidents’ Day. Hope you all get a chance to sit back and reflect on it this weekend.”

Well , it won’t take a weekend to reflect on this. First, the 14th Amendment, “Citizenship Rights.”

“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

Was the Christmas day bomber born or naturalized in the U.S.?  Was KSM?  No.  They’re not citizens of the U.S.  Where do the Nation’s Chris Hayes and reporter Beth Shelly come up with the notion that 14th Am. protections were intended to apply to non-citizens?  Certainly not in the text of the Constitution so amended.

The government’s legal authority to deal with non-citizen terrorists comes in the body of the Constitution under Article 1, Section 8, “Powers of Congress.”

“The Congress shall have Power ….
To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offenses against the Law of Nations;
To declare War … and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;
To …. repel Invasions;
To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.”

Article 1, Section 9, “Limits on Congress” also applies.

“The privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.”

Fruit of Kaboom and KSM are invading members of a multi-state Islamic religious sect who have declared war on the United States.  The 14th Amendment body of law protects individual citizen rights against the government.  It doesn’t protect members of invading armies who are in a fight to destroy the government.  Yet the left would have us buy into this absurdity in order to create a public political forum for attacking conservative politicians.  They would subvert the Constitution–that protects them too–to score political points in the modern media-charged democratic process.    

Enjoy your weekend.

Winners of Elbert County Republican Women’s Essay Contest meet Commissioners.