Don't like the outcome? Do like Phil Weiser and Pres Biden advocate: change the rules. Get involved by helping share information on your local ballot issues. Vote Menten For JeffCo Commissioner.
When you don't like the outcomes you have, do like Phil Weiser and Pres Biden advocate: change the rules until you get the outcome you want.
After all, if you know better than everyone else, and your way of doing things is frustrated, how else are you supposed to impose your will?
Recently our AG Phil Weiser sat down for a phone interview with Colorado News Line, the progressive "news' outlet to discuss Biden's plan for the Supreme Court.
I linked to that interview first below.
Before digging in there, in case you need it, I linked to President Biden's own op ed on US Supreme Court Reforms second below. Read the whole thing if you'd like, but I excerpted his policy prescription as screenshots 1 - 3.
I also excerpted Weiser's thoughts (in brief -- note that there are some subtleties here around Biden's proposals that Weiser expands upon in his interview so this attached screenshot should be considered a rough summary) from the Newsline article and attached those as screenshot 4.
Agree indeed. Power vs. principle indeed.
Is it just me or was none of this a problem until the court got a conservative majority which is currently bringing some balance back to the court's mandates?
It was the Democrats who first changed the senate rules to ramrod a nominee through. It was liberal justices who invented things into the constitution and legislated from the bench, but now it's a radical court?
If you are curious at my fuller response to some of AG Weiser's other attacks on the US Supreme Court, I linked to an earlier newsletter third below where I have a response to an earlier address he gave on the subject.
In the meantime, more than anything I wanted you to be aware of his support of Biden's plan and his reasoning for it.
Oh, and one other thing. A final screenshot from Weiser's Newsline interview. That's screenshot 5.
I'm just going to slide that out into the center of the table and leave it there for discussion. Paging Dr. Lack-of-Awareness ...
https://coloradonewsline.com/2024/07/29/biden-term-limits-supreme-court-justices/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/07/29/joe-biden-reform-supreme-court-presidential-immunity-plan-announcement/
https://open.substack.com/pub/coloradoaccountabilityproject/p/no-ag-weiser-scotus-is-not-aggressive?r=15ij6n&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Get involved by helping share information on your local ballot issues.
Natalie Menten, a friend and activist for TABOR (among other things), sent me an email recently. She is starting up a speadsheet to collect information on local ballot issues and deTABORing measures.
I copied over the instructions below so you could see what you'd be signing up for. In brief, you'd be doing so research behind the scenes to find out about what kind of ballot measures are going on for your local ballot.
If you've wanted to make a contribution but didn't want to do much public-facing activity (such as speaking at hearings, etc.) this is a great opportunity for you.
Two ways to find out how to contribute: you can message me and I'll forward your email along, or you could email the Colorado Engaged address below to inquire.
Instructions follow (along with an article linked in the message you can use as a reference).
Colorado Engaged (coloradoengaged@gmail.com) has invited you to edit the following spreadsheet:
Natalie Menten here. You're invited to contribute to this collection of known or possible tax hikes within Colorado for the 2024 ballot. The goal is to have volunteers *like you* contribute data to the collection and sign up to submit the con statement for any local tax hike or debt measure. Each con or against statement can include up to 500 words. Read more details at end but note this year's deadline is 12 PM noon, Friday, September 20.
Coordinated submissions are really important, please see if someone is listed in column H before just submitting one on your own!! Multiple received comments can be shuffled or filtered by the DEO and we want to avoid that.
I added a few counties to start and signed up to take lead on the Jeffco 1A and the Lakewood deTABOR measures. Anyone can submit a CORA to start the process to research a county but the volunteer noted in Column H that will actually submit the TABOR notice statement must be an eligible voter in that district.
See tab on bottom of spreadsheet labeled "Sample CORA" to get the wording you can submit to your county election department. Then, please populate the CORA results on the master spreadsheet.
In 2022 and 2023, I wrote an article about this local TABOR notice process if you've never done it before.
https://pagetwo.completecolorado.com/2023/08/17/menten-how-to-weigh-in-on-local-tabor-measures-for-the-2023-ballot/
Hopefully, we can get as many "against" statements included as possible across all 64 counties.
Vote Menten For JeffCo Commissioner.
If you live in JeffCo, or know someone who does, I urge you to vote for Natalie Menten for county commissioner.
I posted earlier with an endorsement for Natalie Menten for JeffCo commissioner (along with Kathleen Chandler for RTD commissioner).
A link to that endorsement is below.
In that post I said that when Ms. Menten's website was live that I would followup.
That site is now live and is linked second below. If you want to see about Ms. Menten, a biographical note, a look at her policies and philosophy, go give it a look.
If you know someone living in JeffCo, send the link along to them as well.
We get the kind of government we voters choose, so please choose thoughtfully, and choose someone that values your money and your rights under TABOR.
Choose Menten.
https://open.substack.com/pub/coloradoaccountabilityproject/p/local-race-endorsements-chandler?r=15ij6n&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
https://nataliementen.com/