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My personal musings about anything that gets on my radar screen--heavily dominated by politics.

2005-10-23

Hello, Kettle? Yeah, This Is The Pot . . .

Remember all the stink the supporters of C and D are making over some $240,000 that was donated to the Independence Institute to combat C and D? Over $240K? Mostly because the source of the donations remains undisclosed?

Perhaps supporters of C and D should have hoped that their own donor list would have remained undisclosed. From the front page of the Denver Post:

C, D donors have much to gain
Is it "pay to play"?

Businesses and organizations that could benefit financially from November's ballot measures to suspend the state's revenue limits contributed $3.5 million - or more than three- fourths of the total $4.4 million given to the proponents' campaign - between early July and mid-October.

Those groups include road builders, health care providers, engineering firms, bankers and lawyers that could benefit directly through state contracts or more government funding.

Uh, WHOOPS! That's not exactly the sort of PR a ballot measure needs in the last week before an election. Some of those undecideds, the ones who were identified in last week's poll as primarily Republicans, aren't likely to sign on to something that appears so incestuous. But wait. . . it gets worse.

Here's the list of donors published by the Post:

Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce: $496k
Colorado Health and Hospital Association: $300k
Colorado Education Association: $200k
Centura Health: $195k
American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees: $100k
American Federation of Teachers: $100k
Colorado Bar Association: $100k
MDC Holdings: $100k
Lafarge West: $75k
Aggregate Industries:$75k

This list, in and of itself, should be plenty to make up the minds of those "undecided, suburban Republican" voters, if for no other reason than that two teachers' unions have donated more by themselves than the amount disputed for the anti-C people.

Just think about that for a moment: two teachers unions, whose purpose is ostensibly to protect teachers in their disputes with school districts--though they claim almost sole proprietorship over all things educational, including student improvement--have donated almost as much by themselves to the campaigns to approve C and D as the entire defeat C and D campaigns have raised. For them to do that, the unions must be of the belief that TEACHERS--not students--would benefit from C and D. And I wonder how they think that would happen? Hmmm? Perhaps a simple expectation that increased state funding would translate almost directly into higher teacher salaries? Hmmm? Which , if it has any positive effect on student learning, only does so in an indirect way, if at all.

But more than that, isn't it more than a little distasteful that the union of public employees is in a position to put up $100k, surely for little more reason than to protect their jobs? And perhaps that would be justifiable in terms of an investment strategy.

But it is rather unseemly as an instrument of public policy making.
Posted by: Michael / 10/23/2005 10:25:00 PM

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