The voters of Colorado have spoken

Posted by: linswritings on: November 2, 2011

• In: Current Events | Politics
• 2 Comments

Yesterday in Colorado the voters overwhelmingly rejected the several tax increases on the November ballot. One was a proposal to raise income and sales taxes that would go to schools in Colorado for five years. The measure would have sent an estimated $2.9 billion to K-12 schools and public colleges and universities.  This vote was defeated overwhelmingly by a margin of 65% to 35%. This vote indicates that Coloradoans may not be willing to consider higher taxes in this down economy, despite deep budget cuts to schools.

Because Colorado’s state constitution forbids lawmakers to raise taxes, the higher tax rates were petitioned onto ballots by Democratic Sen. Rollie Heath. Other Democrats, including Gov. John Hickenlooper, declined to get behind the idea. While the Democrats tried to scare the voters by using Hickenlooper’s budget proposal for next year that calls for $89 million in cuts for public schools and public colleges and universities by $60 million less, the voters of Colorado said enough was enough.

In my county, Chaffee County, the voters sent a loud and clear message to our government officials by soundly defeating their proposed tax hikes. There were three ballot questions that would have raised used taxes, sales taxes and property taxes. By a margin of 3,500 to over 4,000 votes against raising taxes these ballot proposals were crushed.

The main stream media seemed to be saddened by this outcome because their spin of the outcome seemed to be one of disgust. How dare the voters defeat an increase in their taxes! Then the gloom and doom of disaster to our services started up. Just another typical liberal spin on not getting more money to spend for whatever they want to.

When Obama came into office his mantra of “Hope and Change” seemed to change the state of Colorado from a red state to a blue state. As one local news reporter said, our state was “blue” by voting for Obama, but now it seems that our state is turning “purple.”

But I say it is turning red. Red with anger over what this government – state, local and nationwide – is doing to us – trying to convince us that higher taxes will solve the problem. Now I know what “Hope and Change” really meant – hope that no one would see what our government was doing to destroy our economy and demanding all of our money, including our “change”, to advance their agenda.

People of Colorado are waking up now and seeing that this country as well as our state is going in the wrong direction. Next November color Colorado “red” again because this is where good conservatives live and work. We are done with the progressive agenda and demand to return to solid conservative fiscal ideas that made this country great.