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| Douglas Bruce - It's HIS Party, and Don't Anyone Forget! |
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| kicking photographers and getting rid of the word "citizen" |
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This is Dark Cloud on Wednesday, January 16, 2008. Just so you’re clear on my prejudices here, TABOR, the so-called taxpayer’s bill of rights, needs to go away. TABOR is only one of many disgusting admissions of incompetence by our representative state assembly, as are nearly ALL the infinite signature drives for changes to the state constitution. Under the guise of restricting tax increases without a specific vote on each, in reality it serves to protect inherited wealth, keep the public schools lousy, and edge power to the religious and social Right Wing of the Republican party. It gives a representative government all the efficiency of street Democracy without any upside. All under the cover of keeping taxes low. Its passage years back was not without reason. Governments, unrestrained, can become just as money and power hungry as any other institution or individual. But TABOR is based, at root, upon a myth of Puritan prudence, and presented as merely a brake on over-enthused Representatives, mainly Democrats. The current Bush administration has sunk that ship at the dock, but people are still trying to export TABOR around the nation. And where it goes, financing for education, higher and puddleduck, vanishes. The man who created this conservative fantasy, this Baby Dough TABOR egg layer, is one Douglas Bruce, from – wait for it – Colorado Springs, that home to restrained, moderate political sanity. Bruce’s countenance is in the paper again because he kicked – or nudged, in his description – a Rocky Mountain News photographer for taking his picture while praying in the State capital during morning prayer. The photographer had every right to do so. But, let’s look at this. Bruce, a former state legislator, had been appointed to fill a vacated seat. Bruce has said he delayed his swearing-in on the recommendation of a judge during a previous court challenge to term limits.Representatives of both parties had urged him to show up for the beginning of the legislative session last week, but Bruce said he wanted to delay his start so that he would be eligible to serve up to six additional years after his current term is over. Apparently, term limits isn’t a Republican goal, anymore. While Bruce had been appointed, he had not yet been sworn in. That would seem to indicate he was merely a private citizen standing in the Capital, in public, and having chosen to pray in public with legislators, demanded it be treated as if it were a personal moment with the deity, and as if he were a Legislator. Bruce’s incident will be investigated by a bipartisan House panel. The issue is whether they have any authority in the matter, since Bruce was not a legislator. He was just there, with little more authority than any other citizen till he took the oath. House leaders say they will look into the specific authority they could give the panel, including subpoena power, realizing they need to decide what authority the House might have to punish a proto-lawmaker for something he did before being sworn in. Speakers of the House have vast authority, though. It would require a majority vote to reprimand him or Bruce could be expelled on a two-thirds vote.Bruce remains pugnacious. "I was trying to stop him from doing something that was tasteless and disruptful, blocking the aisle, making noises. I mean that's just - his conduct was deplorable." This response of Bruce is theocracy in utero. Religious folks apparently have a higher status than atheists, and Christians higher than other religions. If this had been a Muslim legislator to be who had kicked over the photographer, he’d have been hand carried to the street and arrested, followed by a civil suit. If he’d been merely Jewish, he might get away with it but the bigots would be out in their newspaper columns. (Pushy, those people, aren’t they?) But Douglas Bruce, who intimidated a shamefully gelded state government and prompted an ignorant citizenry into a process that demeans all involved against everyone’s interest, gets to primp and pose as, eventually, standing up for Christian values against the liberal media. That makes no sense, especially given the conservative Rocky Mountain News, but just wait. Bruce is a petty thug, his motivations selfish, devoid of interest in a commonweal. I remind again that Christ was pretty informative about how to pray. In a closet, silently, and address God directly. Those who pray in public and attract attention to themselves, already have their reward. Time to give Bruce his. And, eventually, repeal that moronic and self destructive cop out called TABOR. It may be that, as Mencken said, democracy is the theory that the people know what they want and deserve to get it, good and hard. But, do we really want a government prevented from making the difficult and necessary decisions - like taxes at the state level and war at the national - and framed as if were our idea so we cannot blame them? |
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