wadenorris

Colorado has a decision to make this year for the State Treasurer’s race.
Do we stay with the current Treasurer, Cary Kennedy,
OR
do we elect political newcomer Walker Stapleton?

Let’s take a look at the two candidates.
Cary Kennedy has a track record of helping the State of Colorado navigate Colorado through the difficult budget crises and working with across the aisle to solve problems with our budget.
She helped author parts of Referendum C in 2005 – which was supported by Republican Governor Bill Owens as a way to keep the state budget solvent.
Since becoming Treasurer in 2007, she has made the sound investments that have kept Colorado’s Budget growing at a moderate 3% annually, at a time when other states are defaulting on their loans.
What kind of leadership does Walker Stapleton have to offer?

There are many reasons for supporting or not supporting a candidate in a primary race. I could cite many reasons to support either Andrew Romanoff or Michael Bennet -but for Democrats there is really only one thing that they should know about this primary.
It’s that Michael Bennet can’t win against the Republicans.
From the Hill:

Sen. Bennet faces uphill battle if he wins the primary
The troubling news for Bennet — and other Democratic incumbents — is that only 42 percent of the Colorado voters polled approve of him, and 44 percent disapprove. Moreover, asked whether they wanted to elect a new person or reelect their incumbent, just 34 percent would vote for their incumbent, while 55 percent prefer a new person.

The bank swap investigation story just took an interesting turn for Michael Bennet and his protege Tom Boasberg. School Board members have repeatedly asked for an audit of the Bank Swap between Denver Public Schools and JP Morgan.
Tom Boasberg and the Bennet campaign have attack these board members as asking for an audit due to political motivations caused by the Primary.
Thanks to an email record provided by a School Board member,
this can be proven to be factually wrong.
The evidence points to a concerted effort to cover up details about the swap that was reported in last Friday’s New York Times investigation .
The New York Times discovered that
Denver Public Schools has lost 25 million dollars from Michael Bennet’s investment swap and will have to pay 81 million in termination fees to get out of the swap.

This Friday’s New York Times investigation:
“Payback Time: Exotic Deals Put Denver Schools Deeper in Debt”
casts a laser focus on Michael Bennet’s investment into a ‘risky’ derivative swap by as Superintendent of Denver Public Schools.
Pasts attempts by the Bennet campaign to deflect questions about this investigation are now laid bare and there are guilty parties involved.
Now, Colorado Democratic Representative Mark Ferrandino, Chair of the State Budget committee is calling for a bi-partisan audit by both the Colorado State House and Senate of this investment that has already cost Denver Public Schools 25 million dollars and counting.
Listen here on local Progressive Talk show host Mario Solis-Marich’s Friday show at about 1/3rd through the podcast.

In case you hadn’t noticed, there is a Senate primary in Colorado – pitting a Conservadem – Michael Bennet vs a people powered candidate, Andrew Romanoff – who has taken the Obama pledge to take no PAC money.
(Conservadem is not my label, Rachel Maddow gave Senator Bennet that name for joining Evan Bayh’s coalition of conservative democrats)
Despite millions of corporate dollars being spent by Michael Bennet, Andrew Romanoff has taken the lead in polls with the Primary on August 10th.
Pundits have written that Romanoff’s win will send a message throughout politics, that we the grassroots voters, can reverse the Corporate Stranglehold on Congress .

Volunteers for Andrew Romanoff are busting their behinds day in and day out and Mr.Romanoff himself is crisscrossing the state connecting with voters and making his case for their vote.

What’s Bennet up to? From the latest edition of the New Yorker

Michael Bennet, a freshman Democrat from Colorado, said, “Sit and watch us for seven days—just watch the floor. You know what you’ll see happening? Nothing. When I’m in the chair, I sit there thinking, I wonder what they’re doing in China right now?”

uh, what? You have a primary – Guess your day dreaming is happening on the campaign trail too and Andrew Romanoff is taking advantage of it – and is surging in the polls.

(crossposted at Huffington Post, Square State, Firedoglake and Ultimate Politics )

Recently in the Colorado Democratic Primary, Senator Michael Bennet accused former House Speaker Andrew Romanoff of voting to “privatize Social Security.”

Upon further review of the record, it seems that Senator Bennet is taking a page from the Karl Rove playbook. Rove was infamous for attacking a rival’s strength and where his own candidate was vulnerable.

Case in point – let’s take a trip back to the fall of 2009, when I first wrote about the letter Senator Bennet signed that would have gone a lot farther towards privatizing Social Security:

Lately in Colorado, the Republicans have pretty much gone crazy – with
Tom “bomb Mecca” Tancredo launching an independent bid in the Governor’s race and Republican Senate candidates Ken Buck and Jane Norton having a standoff about wearing high heel shoes.
I was hoping that we were going to stay civil on the Democratic side of the aisle, but in the Senate primary, Michael Bennet’s campaign and his supporters are trying their level best at matching the Republicans’ insanity with their tactics against Andrew Romanoff.

The 2010 Colorado Democratic Senate Primary signifies two different directions in Education in our Country – between a business person’s view of education vs an educator’s view of education.
Our choices include Michael Bennet and challenger Andrew Romanoff.
Michael Bennet is the incumbent appointed Senator who was also appointed to be Superintendent of Denver Public Schools. Bennet was appointed to Superintendent because of his financial experience in business as a corporate manager for billionaire Phillip Anschutz.
Andrew Romanoff is the former Speaker of the House. He also worked as an educator in the State of Colorado as well as teaching in rural schools in Costa Rica and Nicaragua.

Speaker Romanoff’s website mentions that he formed a coalition to pass the Building Excellent Schools Today or BEST Act, which provided the largest investment in Schools in Colorado history, while Michael Bennet states he gave Denver teachers the largest pay raise in Colorado history.
Let’s have a closer look at each candidate’s claims and philosophy on education.

Blackwater has been THE mercenary outfit of choice by the Bush – Cheney Whitehouse to conduct operations in the Global War on Terror.
Recently the Justice department and FBI discovered Blackwater had committed unjustified homicides or perhaps outright assassinations in conjunction with the CIA under Dick Cheney’s orders.

Furthermore, Blackwater paid millions in bribes to local officials to remain silent after a bloody massacre of civilians in Iraq.
Now, Erik Prince is moving to United Arab Emirates, a country with no extradition policy with the U.S. coming on the heels of further investigations.
You’d think this company would never get another dime from the State Department.
You’d be wrong.