Taking your TABOR refund by shunting it to others. CDOT's big oopsie in Poncha Springs. The SS Sansinena and inert gas systems.
They take your TABOR refund, not by removing it from your hand, but by taking away the possibility there will be one in the first place.
When I've written in the past about gas stoves or internal combustion cars, one thing I've noted is that the government doesn't necessarily outright ban those things, they merely take away your ability to find them and/or buy them.
Something similar happened this last legislative session. The state (depending on the estimates) either took your TABOR refunds for the future or it took a huge chunk of them.
And like with what I said about the stoves, they didn't take them by direct action, that is, but taking the check out of your hand. No, they took them by taking away your ability to have them in the first place.
A recent brief by the Independence Institute (see the first link below) illustrates this. I'll leave it to you to study up on the details/dynamics, but the process is pretty simple.
In order for you to get a TABOR refund, our state must collect more money than allowed under TABOR.** But no refund is due if our state doesn't go above this limit. So, why not just NOT go over the limit and have no money to refund?
No silly, that doesn't mean the government becomes fiscally responsible. It means that they set up the rules of the game so that some people pay their full share of taxes while some (those that the party in power favor and feel are more deserving) pay less.
This means that the government doesn't collect as much from some people, meaning the government takes in less revenue, meaning that they don't go above the TABOR limit (and all without sacrificing their progressive values and having to give back to each according to what he paid).
In case you wanted some detail of how this happens specifically, I took the three heavy hitter bills from this last legislative session and put links to their fiscal notes below the issue brief link.
As you can see in the attached screenshot from the brief, it's these three bills that account for the lion's share of lost government revenue from neutral. Again, another reminder that when I say "lost revenue" what I mean is a loss of revenue coming from some, not all, Coloradans.
Something to remember when Polis et. al. brag about how they (for one year) lowered the income tax rate this last legislative session.
Oh, and one more. About that tax cut. I'll end with a quote from the issue brief:
"However, that level of income tax cutis only triggered when the TABOR surplus is greaterthan $1.5 billion, and tax cuts will not happen at all ifthe surplus is under $300 million after tax credits andstate reimbursement programs. Therefore, the TABORsurplus revenue diverted to fund new 2024 tax creditswill likely nullify potential future broad-based incometax cuts proposed by SB24-228 in subsequent years."
So there's that.
**The language of TABOR itself details a formula that determines the upper bound on revenue that the state is allowed to collect and keep. This amount grows with inflation and population as outlined in the amendment. Any money over the limit has to come back to us.
https://i2i.org/wp-content/uploads/IB_B_2024_b.pdf
https://leg.colorado.gov/sites/default/files/documents/2024A/bills/fn/2024a_hb1311_f1.pdf
https://leg.colorado.gov/sites/default/files/documents/2024A/bills/fn/2024a_hb1134_f1.pdf
https://leg.colorado.gov/sites/default/files/documents/2024A/bills/fn/2024a_hb1434_f1.pdf
CDOT's big oopsie
So while Gov Polis touts finally "fixing our damn roads", an effort which has taken tons of money from you and thus far built ... wait for it ... mostly just bureaucratic infrastructure (see my earlier post linked first below), CDOT has just announced a big oopsie down near Poncha Springs.
The KKTV story linked second below details how CDOT's major overhaul an intersection of HWY 50 and HWY 285 near Poncha Springs (see the attached CDOT graphic from the story) will now have to be torn out and rebuilt.
Quoting the story:
"A major overhaul of one of Colorado’s heavily traveled intersections will now take a lot longer and cost a lot more due to a design flaw -- which wasn’t discovered until the original project was almost finished. Now, CDOT is having to tear out what they just built and essentially start all over."
The design flaw is covered in the story and/or CDOT's own project update (linked below the story). I'll leave it to you to read up on the details, instead focusing here on another cheery quote from the article:
"A spokesperson for CDOT told 11 News that it doesn’t know how far back this will set the project -- or how much it will cost. ... 'We do not have a new completion date to announce yet. We are talking with the contractor to ensure the new plan is something the contractor is able to work into their schedule and willing to construct,' said regional communications manager Lisa Ann Schwantes. 'We do not yet know the additional cost for the added work. We are talking with the contractor to understand costs and time impacts. CDOT and the contractor are keeping the timeframe and the cost of the solution at the forefront of all our conversations.'”
CDOT is terrible at building roads. If you want it done expensively (and without any sort of accountability or transparency for their "results"), they're the folks you want to be doing your work. I don't just mean this project either. This is only the latest in a string.
And thanks to the Democrats running the state, we've rewarded CDOT's success with more of your money.
https://open.substack.com/pub/coloradoaccountabilityproject/p/are-your-damn-roads-fixed-yet-a-look?r=15ij6n&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
https://www.kktv.com/2024/08/06/whoops-cdot-says-it-has-start-major-road-project-over-after-discovering-design-flaw/
https://us16.campaign-archive.com/?e=__test_email__&u=b4d4ab81cda1d77ccd692af2f&id=c0e61f0437
The SS Sansinena and inert gas systems.
Well, it's that time of the week again. Last post til Sunday and you know what that means. It means something interesting and not related to politics.
I was watching a show about engineering disasters recently and the case of the SS Sansinena came up.
It was an oil tanker and had a massive explosion and fire in the mid 70's while tied up to the LA docks. When I say massive, I mean it: massive like the ship broke into pieces and one of those big pieces was thrown up onto the docks.
The ship had just unloaded its cargo of oil and was taking on seawater as ballast prior to untying and sailing off.** An investigation showed that the seawater being pumped into the cargo tanks displaced hydrocarbon vapors (which are mostly heavier than air) up onto the deck where poorly designed and maintained vents allowed it to accumulate.
It doesn't take much imagination to go from there to an explosion capable of ripping a giant steel ship to pieces. A brief summary (and further links for the interested reader) can be found on the Wikipedia page linked first below.
One of the other developments that came out of this explosion was a design and requirement to have an inert gas system on board tanker ships which purges any oxygen-carrying air from the tanks and replaces it with a gas that wouldn't support combustion.
This reminded me of something I saw while back in trade school a thousand years ago. There were stern warnings about not welding or cutting on tanks, especially tanks that might have held something flammable. Then they said, if you have to do it, do this, do that, do the other, and then purge the tank with nitrogen. And then don't weld or cut on it.
As such, the first thing that popped into my mind about the inert gas system was exactly that: it would be some sort of accumulator or bottled nitrogen source to purge the cargo tanks. I looked it up online a couple days later and saw it was actually mostly the by products from the exhaust of the ship's engine!
Makes sense I suppose. I should have realized filling giant tanks would be hugely expensive and thus they would find a cheaper way.
So, oil cargo ships now pipe a bit of engine exhaust into the tanks so that any air in there won't support combustion and thus make everyone safer. If you want more technical detail on the system I found an interesting link and put it second below.
That's it til Sunday! Enjoy the rest of the day and Saturday too.
**The practice at the time was to pump seawater into the oil tanks as ballast. This practice, in part due to this explosion has since changed and more modern tankers have special, purpose-built tanks for seawater ballast which are completely separate from the cargo tanks.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Sansinena
https://www.marineinsight.com/marine-safety/protection-against-explosion-the-i-g-system/