Free Republic

An “ambitious” climate bill that would speed up Colorado’s decarbonization efforts, incentivize the purchase of electric lawn equipment and streamline the regulation of carbon-sequestration wells passed the state Senate on a Democratic-led party-line vote Friday. Senate Bill 16, sponsored by Democratic Sen. Chris Hansen of Denver, is one of several bills trying to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that is moving through the Legislature this year, but it stands out for the breadth of sectors and activities that it could affect. An amendment made Thursday to the bill, for example, would fine utilities as much as $20,000 per day for failing...

Crony Bidding And Gross Incompetence Reign.. At a time when Coloradans are desperately pleading for improved and new roadways the agency in charge of the same, the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT), is mired in the greatest crisis of its long-storied existence . ... In December 2018, Governor Jared Polis appointed 35-year-old Shoshana Lew as his new Executive Director, a history major .. She replaced Governor Hickenlooper's appointment of 56-year-old Michael Lewis, an engineer with extensive public construction management experience. ... Lew's primary qualification .. was her close relationship to Michelle Obama who called the newly elected governor for a...

What do the three pictured flags have in common? The first is the flag of the USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics). Estimates are that 40,000,000 to 60,000,000 people lost their lives under the rule of Stalin's iron fist. The third is the Chinese flag. Everyday hard-working people did not fare well in Mao's China either. Anywhere from 49,000,000 to 78,000,000 died under Mao's communist society. In the middle is the flyer that teachers' unions distributed to Colorado teachers with their Walk-Ins tool-kit encouraging Englewood's teachers to protest and walk out of class recently. Additionally, the teachers' unions are organizing...

In Fiscal Year (FY) 2016, Colorado collected $25.4 billion in state and local taxes—or $4,590 for every man, woman, and child. While this is an impressive sum of money, it tells us little about whether or not the average Colorado taxpayer can afford this level of taxation. ... Colorado’s state and local tax burden (tax collections divided by private sector personal income) was the sixth lowest in the nation for FY 2016 at 11.8 percent—or -17 percent below the national average of 14.3 percent. ... Colorado’s tax burden has increased over time by only 3 percent to 11.8 percent in...

The leaders of Colorado’s Public Employee Retirement Association (PERA) assure us that if we have patience, long-term investment returns of 7.5 percent will fully fund the program’s promises to retirees over the next 40 years or so. But what if those returns fail to materialize? Moving PERA from the current defined benefit plan to a defined contribution or cash balance-style plan would remove much of the burden of returns falling short from taxpayers, while helping along the long-term financial health of PERA. Coloradans got a taste of that this past year, when PERA achieved a paltry 1.5 percent return on...

State Treasurer Walker Stapleton and PERA Executive Director Greg Smith disagree about how serious the disappointing 1.5 percent return on retirement investments the Public Employees’ Retirement Association fund for 2015 will be in meeting future pension obligations. ... State Treasurer Walker Stapleton said Tuesday’s announcement from the Public Employees’ Retirement Association is evidence of a mishandling by the board, in line with concerns he has raised for several years. ... Stapleton is outraged. For several years, the Republican has shouted for more conservative assumptions. He worries about long-term stability under a high projected rate of return. “PERA has assumed the...

Colorado’s schools and governments have about $10 billion in hidden pension and health-care benefit liability, a “sinkhole” that could cost many individual taxpayers $10,000 or more to fill, a report from the Chicago-based nonprofit Truth in Accounting found. Sheila A. Weinberg, TIA founder and CEO, said the Colorado Public Employees Retirement Association hasn’t collected enough from school districts and local governments to cover retirement costs for all the local employees. “It is pushed off year after year until these plans don’t have enough money to pay for retirees,” she said. “They’re either going to have to raise taxes or cut...

Don Omodt made a good living as Hennepin County sheriff in the 1990s. He's making a better one as a retiree, with an annual government pension just under $150,000 a year, or $12,419 a month. So is Dale Ackmann, who left as Hennepin County administrator in 1992 and now collects $14,039 a month. Likewise, former state Transportation Commissioner Richard Braun gets $11,365 a month from the state and the University of Minnesota, where he taught. --------------------------Snip--------------- After 20 years as a state Supreme Court justice, Lawrence Yetka stepped down in 1993. He gets $10,001 a month, a pension he considers...

A pension fund covering 413,000 Colorado public employees and retirees has lost $10 billion in market value through mid-October. The drop in the assets of the Public Employee's Retirement Association raises the prospect of higher contribution rates or lower benefits if the market doesn't improve quickly. Colorado PERA had been hoping ...

All three candidates supported by a powerful public employee union have lost their bids for positions on the board that governs the Public Employee Retirement Association pension fund. And a key union leader is none too happy about it. Carter Bundy, AFSCME political and legislative director for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees in New Mexico, on Friday blasted a PERA board lobbyist who was publicly critical of the union's high-dollar involvement before the election. "I think what Fabian Chavez did was unethical and inappropriate," Bundy said. Since 2004, when AFSCME spent a total of $52,000 on...

ACLU Sued for Invasion of Privacy John L. Perry, NewsMax.com Saturday, Sept. 8, 2001 Man bites dog is news. Now someone's suing the American Civil Liberties Union, possibly the nation's most-litigious liberal group, for – gasp! – invasion of privacy. The number of times the ACLU has dragged others into court for every conceivable abrogation of political correctness would be hard to assess. This time it's the ACLU that's on the other end of the litigation stick. It has to do with a suit filed in a county court in Nashville, Tenn., by a university sophomore who says the ACLU ...

House passes Public Expression of Religion Act The House of Representatives yesterday passed the Public Expression of Religion Act of 2006 (PERA, HR 2679) by a vote of 244 to 173. Here is the text of the Act as passed. Here is the statement issued today by the Boy Scouts of America: Boy Scouts of America appreciates Congress’ interest in the litigation facing Boy Scouts and the solution Congress is pursuing in the “Veterans’ Memorials, Boy Scouts, Public Seals, and Other Public Expressions of Religion Protection Act of 2006.” For the past decade, Boy Scouts as well as federal, state,...

September 11, 2006 House Judiciary Committee Passes Public Expression of Religion ActWashington D.C. - On Friday the United States House of Representatives Judiciary Committee passed the Public Expression of Religion Act (PERA), also known as HR 2679. This bill will go to the full House for a vote. The bill's intent is to eliminate the chilling effect on the constitutionally protected expression of religion by state and local officials that results from the threat that a plaintiff may seek damages and attorney's fees. If the bill passes, advocacy groups like the ACLU would no longer be able to use...

Proposed Legislation Would Halt Lucrative Legal Attacks on Religious Freedom Some U.S. senators this week have heard testimony from both sides on a piece of legislation that would strip legal fees from church-state lawsuits. Such legal victories, often described as "Establishment Clause" cases, have provided the American Civil Liberties Union with millions of dollars in profits as it pursues numerous cases challenging public displays of religious belief in America. Senator Sam Brownback (Rep.-KS) says public officials who fear costly litigation often cave in to the mere threat of lawsuits alleging violation of the separation of church and state. That is...

Public Expression of Religion Act moves forwardhttp://www.recordgazette.net/articles/2006/07/28/news/05news.txt http://tinyurl.com/hp9ga Rees Lloyd, Banning-based attorney and Commander of American Legion District 21 (Riverside County), has been selected to testify on behalf of The American Legion before the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on the Constitution in support of passage of Senate Bill 3696, Veterans Memorials, Boy Scouts, Public Seals and Other Public Expressions of Religion Act of 2006 (“PERA). S 3696 (PERA), sponsored by Sen. Brownback (R-Kan), a companion bill to H.R. 2979 (PERA), sponsored by Rep. Hostetter (R-Ind.), would amend all relevant federal laws to eliminate the authority of judges to award taxpayer-paid attorney...

WASHINGTON (BP)--Indiana’s John Hostettler is trying for the fifth consecutive Congress to prevent the American Civil Liberties Union from receiving government funds when it succeeds at legal challenges to public expressions of religion. This year, the Republican representative has more hope than before thanks to the American Legion. The country’s largest veterans organization, with about three million members, has aggressively thrown its influence behind Hostettler’s bill, and the persistent congressman is encouraged at his proposal’s prospects. Hostettler’s measure, the Public Expression of Religion Act (PERA), H.R. 2679, is designed to close what he considers a loophole in federal law that...

WASHINGTON (BP)--Indiana’s John Hostettler is trying for the fifth consecutive Congress to prevent the American Civil Liberties Union from receiving government funds when it succeeds at legal challenges to public expressions of religion. This year, the Republican representative has more hope than before thanks to the American Legion. The country’s largest veterans organization, with about three million members, has aggressively thrown its influence behind Hostettler’s bill, and the persistent congressman is encouraged at his proposal’s prospects. Hostettler’s measure, the Public Expression of Religion Act (PERA), H.R. 2679, is designed to close what he considers a loophole in federal law that...

  GPO's PDF Display Congressional Record References Bill Summary & Status Printer Friendly Display - 2,455 bytes.[Help] XML Display[Help]     Public Expression of Religion Act of 2005 (Introduced in House)  HR 2679 IH   109th CONGRESS   1st Session H. R. 2679 To amend the Revised Statutes of the United States to eliminate the chilling effect on the constitutionally protected expression of religion by State and local officials that results from the threat that potential litigants may seek damages and attorney's fees. IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES    May 26, 2005   Mr. HOSTETTLER (for himself, Mr. WAMP,...

Sixty years after the world learned that bored Germans flung Jewish babies into the air for target practice at the Auschwitz death camp, our oily pals at the United Nations have officially acknowledged the Holocaust. Enjoy it quickly, because if yesterday was any indication, the anti-American, anti-Semitic rats infesting the banks of the East River — a species alternately known as the "French," "Germans" and "Libyans," among others — will forget the lessons of Auschwitz, or just insist the camp didn't exist. Only one man spoke the truth about anti-Semitism. But that man was not Israeli or American, but Italian....