In a 20-15  party-line vote last Friday, Democratic State Senators defeated a measure that would have given symbolic support to the so-called “Blunt” amendment, which would allow employers to opt out of offering health-insurance coverage for health services, including contraception, that employers find objectionable on religious or moral grounds.

Media coverage of the measure should have folded in more views from outside the state Capitol, given the potential political ramifications of the issue, so I’m reporting a wider range of views to fill in the media gap.

Addressing the issue after the vote Friday, Colorado Republican Party Chair Ryan Call told Jon Caldara that in the national debate about whether the Obama Administration should have allowed employers to opt out of offering certain types of health care, like contraception, Republicans should have focused on “making it, rather than about big issues, making it about small issues.”

“The big issue there,” Call told Caldara, “was the question of religious liberty, about the government telling, not only religious organizations but private employers and persons what kind of health-care insurance they have to pay for, even if it violates questions of moral conscience.”

Democrats, he said, “were able to, at least attempt, try to make it about those smaller issues, are we trying to ban contraceptives, which is not the issue.”

“Horsepucky,” was progressive political consultant Laura Chapin’s response to Call in a  in a US News opinion piece:

“Approximately 99 percent of reproductive age American women have used birth control—and something used by almost every woman in America isn’t a small issue, it’s huge,” she wrote, adding that “it’s obviously a big issue to Republicans.”

“It’s big enough that they threatened to shut down the entire U.S. government over it last spring,” Chapin continued. “It’s big enough that Republican governors like Mitch Daniels have made defunding Planned Parenthood a top priority, as has their presidential candidate Mitt Romney. Romney even wants to eliminate federal funding for Title X, which provides family planning funding for five million low-income Americans.”

Senate Democrats in contested elections voted for the measure, including Colorado Senators Evie Hudak, Mary Hodge, and Linda Newell.

Fox 31 reported Newell’s view that the measure, called Senate Memorial 3, would be hard for business to comply with. Fox 31 reported:

“The problem for the businesses is this just opens up all kinds of liability disclosure issues,” Newell said, noting that one of her two daughters was listening to Friday’s debate inside the Senate chamber. “She wants to know what we’re doing in the state of Colorado to protect her freedoms.

“Right to privacy goes out the window with this bill because now you have to disclose. And it puts my daughter’s future boss right in the middle of her private life. They’ll have to ask, Do you use birth control? Are you having sex?

“I want my daughters to have access to proven methods of preventing pregnancy. I want my daughters to have the ability to be healthy and free.”

Larry Crowder, a Republican who’s running to represent contested Senate District 35, told me he hadn’t followed the debate at the state Capitol, but he said: “In my opinion it should be up to that employer. I’m not really in favor of mandates.”

“Health care provided by the employer is a great thing,” Crowder said. “And it’s an added tool to attract employees.  If you’re going to start putting a mandate on employers, what would be in the health care, that would be between the employee and the employer.  As far as a mandate, I would not be comfortable with that.”

As far as the symbolic resolution goes, Crowder said, “We’ve got more important issues to talk about and decide in the state than a nonbinding resolution. We should not get into the hype right now about nonbinding resolutions for political purposes.”

He also said the question about employer mandates is “premature,” with the U.S. Supreme Court reviewing Obamacare.

Republican Senate District 19 candidate Lang Sias had a similar view, saying jobs should be the focus. His likely opponent is Sen. Hudak.

Senate District 28 Candidate John Lyons had been at work and hadn’t had time to follow events at the State Capitol when I talked to him Friday, but he said, as a general matter, that this is “all about free market and government interference.”

“It’s up to the insurance companies to decide what they want to do and what they want to cover,” he said. “If people had more choice and competition among insurance companies, this problem would be solved.”

“Being a Republican, I don’t believe it’s the government’s job to dictate what the insurance companies should offer and what they shouldn’t,” he said.

Lyons’ Republican primary opponent, Art Carlson, agreed, saying: “I believe it’s up to the companies. I just don’t think it’s up to the government to force companies to do something like that.”

Even in their heyday, the big urban news outlets almost never covered state legislative races very well, much less school board, city council, and other local elections. Small-time election campaigns were seen, for the most part, as boring to the mass audience, especially on local TV news.

New media offer great ways to get to know local candidates in depth, if you have the tiniest bit of inclination dig it up with few clicks of a mouse.

One such new-media platform is internet-only radio, where even the lowliest candidate for the lowliest race can shine.

“Art’s Place,” which aired on BlogTalkRadio Saturdays from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. (and is available 24/7 via podcast) is one such example.

The host of “Art’s Place” is Art Carlson, who’s running in the Republican primary for Senate District 28.

Last Saturday, April 21, for example, Carlson had Art “Skip” Carlson on his show. (Yes, they have the same name, but Art Skip Carlson is running for House District 50.)

The interview, covering a wide range of topics, compliments and expands on information on his campaign website and elsewhere.

I won’t present the entire interview here, because you should just listen to it if you’re interested.  But I’ll pull out a few highlights:

ART CARLSON: Let’s find out a little bit more about you.  Why are you running for State House, Skip?

ART “SKIP” CARLSON:  Well, Art, I’m a fourth generation Coloradan.  In fact, I’m a fourth generation Weld County person. We’ve been active in politics, we’ve been active in the community for my whole life.  My parents were. My great uncle was governor of the state of Colorado.  We’ve had representatives from my family – my ancestry in the statehouse ever since Colorado became a state.  And you know, we had to vote on our constitution four times before it was ever actually accepted as a state.  We would not, had we been successful in our first run at the state, would not have been the Centennial State but would have indeed been in two years before.  So, with all of that background, I just thought  I needed to give something back to the community and the country that has been so great to me, full of opportunity.  I didn’t succeed at all things.  But I’ve had an opportunity to do things, and it’s been a great place to live and a great place to raise a family, and I just want to protect that.

ART CARLSON: All right. And what are your main issues that you’re going to tackle down at the capitol?

ART “SKIP” CARLSON: [chuckles] Well, you know, Art, that’s one thing that so many people ask me!  [inaudible] says, “Well, what are you going  to go down there and …”  I said, “you know, I don’t know that I’m going to go down there and do anything other than get rid of a bunch of things that don’t belong there.  I think, all of these people going down and saying, “I’m going to pass this law for this and, I’m going to pass this for that…” without thinking of the ramifications and looking into the past and seeing, well, if we got rid of something, maybe, your goal would be accomplished by getting rid of some of the encumbrances that we have in the Statehouse now.  But, what I’m going to have is opportunity.  My by-word is ‘Opportunity to succeed for all.’  Forget about some of these government regulations … some of this stuff.  I’m tired of governments – state, local, and so forth, giving these significant tax credits to huge corporations to come in and build their buildings, and go to work, and put our small businesses out of work, and we can’t work with our small businesses which is the backbone of Colorado, and the backbone of this country, to help them be successful and to flourish, because that is so much better.  So, that’s basically what I’m after, is getting back to local – as local as you can on anything and making sure that everybody has an opportunity to succeed….

ART “SKIP” CARLSON: …the past four years when the democrats controlled both houses and we had a really liberal governor, and they decided to put in these taxes.  And they figured out a way to get around TABOR.  But they don’t call them taxes. They call them fees.

ART CARLSON: [laughs]

ART “SKIP” CARLSON: … The FASTER thing that came in, where people just to go register their cars had to pay additional funds, is nothing but a huge, terrible tax on those who could least afford it, and that’s the low income, and those people who are on Social Security — on fixed income.  It hurt them significantly and it didn’t raise that much money.

ART CARLSON: That’s right!  I had two cars and I had to get rid of one because I just couldn’t afford the insurance and the taxes on it.

ART “SKIP” CARLSON: … We certainly need some money for road and bridge and so forth.  But we ought to think about working some deals, having a consumptive tax, perhaps raise the tax on the gas, on a exchange for getting rid of some of the things that the oil and gas people have to do, and to get rid of FASTER, would be far, far more fair, raise significantly more money, and be much, much better off for the entire community.

ART CARLSON: That’s right.  If we just grow the economy, that will bring in more revenue too.

ART “SKIP” CARLSON: Oh, absolutely!….

ART CARLSON: What are your thoughts on vouchers and charter schools?

ART “SKIP” CARLSON: “I love charter schools. My grandson is in a charter school.  And as I’m going down to the  Statehouse, I don’t think that I should have that responsibility, although I will have because that’s who it has deferred to. I think the local community should handle that stuff the best they possibly can. We put some new charter schools in here in Greeley, and they are doing extremely well. The public school is having a little bit of a tough time, but as it ends up, all and all, we’re doing a little bit better and I think if we do more of those things.

And I’m for vouchers. Vouchers are nothing more than competition, competition based on who’s doing the best job. If my grandson, who is one that we sent to a private school, and we sent him there only because he needed that, and that was the best place we could find for his education. We didn’t wake up one day and say, we got a bunch of money we want to waste. Let’s see, where can we waste money today. No, because we didn’t have the money to waste, but we invested it in my grandson’s education as well as a number of other people did here in Greeley. And that education he has gotten from that school has been just tremendous. And now it’s part of the Greeley system as a charter school, and they are doing very well…

ART CARLSON: …I really love living here in Colorado….

ART “SKIP” CARLSON: …Colorado is a wonderful place. We’ve got to keep working at it. I’ve  got another meeting that I have to run off to here, Art.

ART CARLSON: Well, it’s been great having you, Skip. It was an honor having you on the show. It’s so much fun talking to you. You have such knowledge of the state, and I really like to pick at your brain more. Unfortunately, next week is the last episode of Art’s Place since I have to devote more time to the campaign… I think it would be amazing at roll call when they have to announce two Art Carlsons.

ART “SKIP” CARLSON: …That would be a good thing.

ART CARLSON: Yes it would.

If you look around the web, you don’t find as many radio blogs in Colorado, like Art Carlson’s, as you might expect. And, as he said, he’s suspending his show. Carlson seems like the kind of guy who will help you get one going, if you want to pick up the slack.

A tea-party radio crowd is mad at Fox 31 reporter Eli Stokols for failing to report what they see as the real story behind Rep. Chris Holbert’s lone no vote against the state budget bill April 12.

Citing unnamed sources, Stokols reported Friday:

“Republicans privately groused that Holbert’s vote amounted to ‘sour grapes’ after the House GOP caucus refused to allow him to run an amendment dealing with abortion on Wednesday, when the House spent hours debating a few dozen ‘message amendments’ to the budget that aimed to make political points.”

Stokols’ story came after Holbert issued a news release stating he voted against the budget bill because it didn’t set aside any money for a so-called “rainy day fund,” to be used for unanticipated state needs.

Stokols reported Holbert’s explanation, as well the view that allegedly “swirled around the Capitol” that Holbert was essentially lying about his real reason for the “no” vote.

“If I’m Eli Stokols and I’m a crack reporter, it’s not that hard to get a hold of the people,” Grassroots Radio Colorado’s Jason Worley told listeners Monday. “It took me ten seconds to figure out everything [Stokols] says here [in Stokols’ piece], which is complete supposition and rumor, is false, completely wrong.”

On the radio, Worley claimed that it wasn’t Holbert who wanted to run an amendment banning public funding of abortion in Colorado. Instead, it was Marsha Looper, who’s in a primary battle with House Majority Leader Amy Stephens.

But leading House Republicans didn’t want Looper to be able to say that she was fighting for an anti-abortion bill, because championing such a bill would help her in her primary campaign against “I-am-the-Christian-Coalition Amy Stephens” in “one of the most conservative districts in the state,” according to Worley.

So, Worley said, Republicans made it look like the anti-abortion amentment was Holbert’s, so that Looper couldn’t take credit for it.

Looper told me that, in fact, it was she who took the lead on the abortion amendment, not Holbert.

“Chris and I talked to each other about a month ago,” Looper told me. “And that was it. I was prepared to run the amendment to remind everybody that public funding for abortion is prohibited in Colorado.”

“I had conversations with individuals, and they weren’t happy with my running the bill, and [later] lo and behold, it was already in the bill,” she told me adding that she didn’t run the amendment when she found that it had been inserted in the “long bill on page 363.”  (Indeed, you can find it in a footnote in the state budget bill on page 363, as well as, and this is the funny part, in the Colorado Constitution.)

“I’m sure Mr. Stokols isn’t going to reveal his sources, but whoever his sources were, they pinned it on the wrong guy, ” Worley said on the radio.

Asked if he still stood behind his sources for this story, Stokols told me via email:

I stand by my sources.

Rep. Holbert made the conscious choice to send out his own press release and statement the day after the vote. Obviously, he felt the need to explain his vote for some reason. I wrote the story because he sent the press release, which ran counter to the other things I’d been hearing.

I don’t blame Stokols for using anonymous sources. He’d almost certainly never have gotten anone to comment on the record, and given the importance of abortion issues in politics these days, airing the views is clearly in the public interest.

So Worley shouldn’t be directing his anger at Stokols, who just reported what he was told.

Worley should focus on finding out who spread the Holbert story and give reporters specific names.

That’s what Worley did Monday, saying on the radio: “And, you know, Reps like B.J. Nikkel who spread these rumors should know better.”

I called Nikkel yesterday for comment, but have not heard back yet.

Unlike Worley, Holbert won’t say who he thinks talked to Stokols.

All he’d tell KVOR talk-radio host Jimmy Lakey Sunday was, “Somebody planted that story.”

Last year, someone came to Holbert with a bill to defund Planned Parenthood, and he was going to run it, but it was too late, Holbert told Lakey.  This year, Holbert continued, he decided to look into it, but the language was too complicated. And when he heard that Rep. Marsha Looper was working on a similar bill, he figured he didn’t have to run it.

LAKEY: …But this sour grapes, and so do you know who the sour grapes are up there [at the Capitol]?

CHRIS HOLBERT:  I…

LAKEY: You want to name names here?

CHRIS HOLBERT:  No…

LAKEY: No, I know you don’t.  You’re a nice guy.  I’ll name na…!  No, I don’t know who they are either… Well, we’ll come back, I want to wrap it up with Representative Chris Holbert.  He stood firm and he voted ‘no’ on budget that spends every penny, every year, where it continues to kick some problems down the way.  But Chris Holbert says he wasn’t pouting.  So there you have it.  We’ll continue to talk about this, wrap it up with Chris Holbert, and uh, I’ll be glad to, in just a moment, tell you how you can contact Chris Holbert, or maybe help him out.  He’s the lone vote!  Voting against some crazy stuff up there, and you ought to support a guy like that.  So stick around!  More to come!  I’m Jimmy Lakey.

If you think tea-party radio shows are done with this strange story by now, a week after Stokols reported it, you’d be wrong.  Worley was still talking about it Wednesday on KLZ. And he’s still angry at Stokols.

My advice for Worley is, don’t get mad at Eli Stokols. You should be thanking him for reporting what was said to him. You just need to find people with the guts to name names, and present other evidence of below-the-belt politics, if it’s true, on the record.

UPDATE: Luddick responds below saying he obtained his incorrect figure from a Denver Post story that originally contained the figure he used but was subsequently corrected by The Post.

————

In a Summit Daily column last week, Morgan Liddick argues that the Democrats are cheaters.

Liddick sounds like a grade-school kid in a fight during recess.

“They are going to cheat,” he whines, echoing Secretary of State Scott Gessler who’s said Democrats want to “game the system,” by passing legislation requiring county clerks to send mail ballots to registered voters who otherwise would not receive them because they didn’t vote in the last election.

The whining is bad enough, but then he gets his facts wrong in the column when presenting his “evidence” of Democratic cheating.

He writes that Dems want “push forward their plan to mail more than 400,000 ballots to inactive voters.”

The actual number is 135,000.

I’m okay with someone getting their numbers mixed up. I’ve done it. But the funny part is that Liddick goes on to say Democrats can’t do math! Whoops, it seems he can’t do it himself.

Later in the column, in a discussion of Medicare, Liddick levels another school-yard taunt: “Which is worse, the inability to do simple sums, or the inability to tell the truth?”

Liddick needs to answer his own question.

And he says it’s President Obama who hurls “vicious, inaccurate” attacks. Trouble is, he could again be describing himself.

Honestly, I forgive Liddick for the error, but I hope he’s more careful next  time.

In response to an email this morning, Liddick wrote, “My figures were taken from The Denver Post, repeated on several occasions.  I suggest you contact them regarding any such error.”

I wrote Luddick back, thanked him for responding, and pointed out that The Post used the 135,000 figure.

He responded:

No thanks necessary.  But I fear you will not like the discovery;  it’s a curious excursion into what George Orwell referred to as the “memory hole.”

At  [this Post web page] one may see the story, originally published on April 5, 2010, which gave the figure of 439,560.

The electronic version has subsequently been corrected without comment, to give the lower figure as shown by the quote at the end of the article, given below:

(begin quote)

This article has been corrected in this online archive. The bill would require counties to send mail ballots to about 135,000 inactive voters who would not receive them under current law, instead of 439,560.

(end quote)

As a comment, it matters little to the thrust of the argument if the figure is 439,560 or 135,000 or 439.  “Landslide Lyndon” Johnson was elected to the US House by 87 votes in 1948 – the slightest margin ever in Texas history, and well within the number of dead and other nonvoters  who “voted” in the district that time around.

Soliciting the votes of those whom one cannot prove are even alive introduces considerable latitude for error, unintentional or otherwise.  Both are troubling, the latter more so.  And it is instructive that one side of the table strives continually to enlarge this area of possibility.

When Art Carlson started his internet radio program, “Art’s Place,” he wanted to create a “soap box” to voice his “opinions from a different perspective.”

Now, two years later, former Colorado Senate President John Andrews cites Art’s Place as one reason he’s endorsed Carlson in his GOP primary race against John Lyons to face off against Democrat Nancy Todd to represent Senate District 28.

“His radio show has networked him to leading conservatives across the state,” Andrews told me, adding that he has “a lot of regard for Carlson’s grit and gumption” and that Carlson is “a well-anchored conservative.”

“He’ll never quit on promises he’s made,” said Andrews.

When I guy like Andrews is impressed with Carlson for never quitting, it means a lot. Andrews is a guy who “positively” hates lunch, he says, because it’s a distraction form his “Niagara productivity.”  (I thought he said Viagra productivity, but he confirmed that he said Niagara, as in Niagara Falls.)

Carlson, who lost in the GOP primary for a House seat in 2010, told me he’s “always been interested in politics, but I didn’t get involved until about four years ago.”

“I got tired of yelling at the TV and decided to try to do something,” he said.

He says Colorado Sen. Shawn Mitchell and Rep. Chris Holbert “rally helped me out and encouraged me and got me pointed in the right direction.”

In terms of specific issues, Carlson is a serious conservative, as you’d expect with guys like Andrews, Mitchell and Holbert behind him.

He says, for example, he signed the Colorado Union of Taxpayers tax-cut pledge over two years ago.

Carlson’s  opponent, Lyons, promised to do so during a March 20 interview on KLZ’s Grassroots Radio Colorado:

Host Jason Worley:  Have you signed the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights Pledge?

Lyons:  Not yet.

Worley:  Are you planning to?

Lyons:  Yes.

Lyons is not yet listed as a pledge signer on the CUT website, but Carlson prefers to discuss his own plans and positions.

He tells me during our phone conversation that he’s a Little Person and he has disability called Arthrogryposis, a non-progressive muscle and bone disorder.

I asked him why he told me this. “I don’t think it matters,” he said. “But when I go out to meet people, they go hmm, but once they get to know me, that goes away.”

Also, he says, “it gives people an idea that I know something about the health care system too.”

Does that mean he supports Obamacare?

“No,” he replies.

Carlson currently works at Rocky Mountain Orthodontics, but he’s also made a living as a stand-up comedian.

“I went into it after college 20 years ago,” he says, explaining that he performed regularly in local clubs.  “I got to travel around the world and entertain our troops in Japan and South Korea. That was the high point in my stand-up career.”

His entertainment background adds a sort of dry poise to his Art’s Place interviews, where guests have included U.S. Rep. Mike Coffman, Colorado Rep. Robert Ramirez, and others.

He’s not sure he can continue the radio show during his campaign.

“I’m going to see how it goes,” he said. “Campaigning takes a lot of time. Right now I’m evaluating whether I should do another month or two of Art’s Place in addition to full-time campaigning.”

There’s a personal quality to talk radio that lends itself to emotion.

Take for example this segment on KVOR’s Jeff Crank Show March 10 about the Senate District 10 primary between Republicans Owen Hill and Rep. Larry Liston.

You can snooze through a lot of talk radio, but not this type of discussion. Crank gets upset, and so do his callers, and you can feel the anger.

When El Paso Country Republicans get mad at each other, Ref C often makes an appearance, as it does here with Crank saying that Hill is falsely acusing Liston of having voted for Ref C. Liston, who was a guest on the show, says he voted against it in the state legislature.

Crank said on air that he was ready to host an on-air debate between Liston and Hill.

 But when Crank gave Hill four possible dates for an on air-debate, Hill rejected all of them, Crank told his listeners.  Hill would only debate after the county assembly, he said.

Then this from Crank:

“Last I checked, this is not the Owen Hill show,” said Crank on air. ” This is the Jeff Crank Show, and I decide when you come on and when you don’t come on.  And you don’t call me and demand that, ‘Well, I’ll come on your show but only after this.’  That means you’re forfeiting your right to come on the show.  You come on when I ask.  I decide the topics, not you.

“And what kind of an elected official would that be, by the way, if he’s telling you, ‘Oh, I’m going to call in on this day but not this day.  I’m going to decide when I do this, as opposed to something else.  I’m sorry, that’s just not the way it works here on this show.   When I decide that we’re going to have a debate, that’s when we’re going to have it.  And you either show up, or you don’t show up. Okay?  So, let’s be real clear about that.”

“Second… I gotta tell you, I think there’s an honesty problem here.  Because I have been repeatedly told, and people in our community who I respect, people like Steve Schuck, and many others have asked whether a certain person named John Hoteling was working for Owen Hill, and he tells them, ‘no’.  Because he has a checkered past, you see. He was Doug Lamborn’s campaign manager, ran the slime against me; he and his brother Mark Hoteling, ran the slime against me.  So he doesn’t want everyone to know.”

On the radio, Crank said that Sen. Ted Harvey supports Hill and that Harvey wrote on Facebook that Hoteling is Hill’s camaign guru.

“I was around when Ref C was going,” Crank said on air. “And I was falsely accused of supporting Ref C. So I know what’s it’s like.”

I love politicians who have guts to talk about their “messaging” in public. Everyone knows it chews up huge amounts of behind-the-scenes time (and money), but the insider debate about messages doesn’t spill out much.

When it does, reporters should be all over it, not to play “gotcha,” but to help real people (none of whom read this blog) understand how different communications “frames” illuminate competing worldviews about government and values.

For example, on KLZ’s Grassroots Radio Colorado Feb. 17, the hosts and Colorado Rep. Robert Ramirez got into an honest discussion about how the GOP should talk about poor people and budget cuts.

Ramirez started off by saying, “The Democrats have a benefit. Everything they say makes somebody feel good about something in their life. When we say, ‘we got to quit spending so much, we can’t take any more money to pay for those poor kids,’ it doesn’t sound as good.”

He has a point. This makes the GOP sound like they aren’t very concerned about the poor.

Ramirez went on: “We have to say something more like, we need to spend the money responsibly to be able to help people the most, and not just waste dollars in places they aren’t helping anyone.”

So the frame here is that government is the bad guy. It’s wasting money in useless dark places, some of which may sound like they’re helping kids, but they’re really not.

Ramirez continued:  

But when somebody says, you’re trying to kill children, you have to say, that’s an interesting comment. Honestly, we have to spend the money the best way to help the most people. So it doesn’t matter what they say, we have to, one, stay on message, and we have to keep the message in a positive arena, not negative against the other side. And that’s the key, positive towards our message versus negative against them. Negative doesn’t work.

Here, Ramirez presents a progressive counter “frame” that the GOP is “trying to kill children” by cutting government, whose programs (like generous children’s health insurance) save lives and should not be axed if you care about giving impoverished kids in the world’s richest nation the basic opportunity to succeed in life.  (Okay, that’s a dramatic rendition of this frame, but I’m just making a point.)

Actually, I don’t know any progressives who think Ramirez or other conservatives want to kill our children. But progressives point to studies showing that if conservatives succeed at, for example, charging more for state-run health insurance, more kids could certainly get sick, and, yes, possibly die. (Colorado Sen. Greg Brophy, among others, acknowledges the risk to kids.)

So you see how the two frames of “good government” versus “bad government” play out in Ramirez’s statements on the radio.

Underlying these competing frames about government is, of course, the debate about taxes.

And so it was fitting that, at the end of his Grassroots Radio Colorado interview, Ramirez turned the topic to taxes.

Ramirez, who’s indicated his opposition to the extension of unemployment benefits and who’s supported Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 plan in the past, argued that everyone should pay the same percentage of their income in taxes:

 “You know what,” Ramirez said on the air, “it doesn’t matter if it’s 1o percent, 50 percent, 30 percent, 60, the moral part is, everyone should pay the same percent. If you are making $100 per week, you should pay 10 percent. If you are making a million dollars a week, you should pay 10 percent.

I don’t know how this translates in the real world into anything but a massive tax cut, and as such, major slashes in government spending for the poor.

If he stayed on message, and didn’t talk about taking money away from poor children, Ramirez would probably say he’s cutting waste, creating a responsible, smaller government, and helping people most through tax cuts.

And a progressive might say Ramirez is undermining what we all want, to work together through government to give poor children and families basic opportunity and a fair shot at success, and we can raise taxes a little bit to do it, on people who can afford it.

Reporters should look for chances, like Ramirez’s radio appearance, to illustrate these competing worldviews underlying political “messaging.”

Partial Transcript of Feb. 17 Interview with Rep. Robert Ramirez on Grassroots Radio Colorado on KLZ 560 AM, weekdays, 5 – 7 p.m.

Ramirez: Romney, much like many Republicans, allows someone else to dictate what his message will be, kind of like a senatorial candidate we had last year….

Host: Republicans don’t know how to message. They’re messaging sucks. In your mind, what can we do to change that?

Ramirez: You know, it’s not just message. The Democrats have a benefit. Everything they say makes somebody feel good about something in their life.

Host: Yeah. I suppose that’s true.

Ramirez: When we say, we got to quit spending so much, we can’t take any more money to pay for those poor kids, it doesn’t sound as good. So we have our message–

Host: Like Rollie Heath’s message–

Ramirez: Yeah. We have to say something more like, we need to spend the money responsibly to be able to help people the most, and not just waste dollars in places they aren’t helping anyone. But when somebody says, you’re trying to kill children, you have to say, that’s an interestingt comment. Honestly, we have to spend the money the best way to help the most people. So it doesn’t matter what they say, we have to, one, stay on message, and we have to keep the message in a positive arena, not negative against the other side. And that’s the key, positive towards our message versus negative against them. Negative doesn’t work.

Host: …Morally, how much should someone pay in taxes?…If you are a successful contributing member of the economic class, a business owner, something like that, you’re at 30, 40, 50 percent. At what point is it immoral?

Ramirez: You know what, it doesn’t matter if it’s 1o percent, 50 percent, 30 percent, 60, the moral part is, everyone should pay the same percent. If you are making $100 per week, you should pay 10 percent. If you are making a million dollars a week, you should pay 10 percent.

Host: I agree. I could not agree more, actually.

Ramirez: I don’t know an actual percentage, but you understand what I’m saying. It should be a percentage based on everyone. That encourages people to make more money and create more jobs.

A Worldnet Daily article Tues. reported that there’s a “movement in Colorado petitioning Secretary of State Scott Gessler to remove Obama’s name from the ballot in November.”

Did this mean that activists here are trying to pass a law, like the one in Georgia and other states, requiring all political candidates to prove eligibility for office or get booted from the ballot?

In a case that’s given gasps of air to the dying “birther movement,” an administrative law judge ruled Friday that Obama is a natural-born citizen, meeting the citizenship specifications for president and also meeting Georgia’s ballot eligibility requirements under a new state law pushed by birthers.

A handful of other states have similar laws. Was it true that Colorado could be added to the list?

I called Rep. Tom Tancredo, who has his finger on the birther pulse in Colorado, to find out.

“I have not heard about [a formal petition drive],” he told me. “When you say attempt to do so, I’m assuming that the Secretary of State has gotten messages, emails and calls from people saying do the same thing.”

I also spoke with John Sampson, a Colorado resident who was subpoenaed to testify in the Georgia trial. His testimony, as well as that of other experts, was thrown out because, according to the Georgia judge, the plaintiff’s attorney failed to establish Sampson and others as experts. Read his decision here.

Asked about the Worldnet story reporting that a “movement” was brewing here to pass a law similar to Georgia’s, Sampson, who’s running for Colorado Senate District 25, told me. “I’m vaguely familiar with it, but I’m not involved with it.” He had not further information.

I’ll continue to try to locate the folks, if any, who are pushing Secretary of State Scott Gessler to declare Obama ineligible for the Colorado ballot. Please send them my way, if you know who they are. 

Meanwhile the Georgia decision in favor of Obama sent birthers in Colorado howling about (how did you guess?) conspiracy, with KHOW’s Peter Boyles and author (Where’s the Birth Certificate?) Jerome Corsi speculating this morning on Boyles’ show that the Democrats’ deep and wide influence in conservative Georgia got to the judge.

Even people like Colorado Sen. Greg Brophy, who’s told me he’s willing to put the health, and even lives, of poverty-stricken kids at risk by charging more for state health insurance,  says it’s hard to decide what to do about Medicaid, given the complexities involved and the struggles of the poor, especially kids.

That’s the tenor of the debate about cutting Medicaid in Colorado. It’s not like the Republicans want to do it, we read in the media, because they know that cutting money for poor people can cause hardship, sickness, and even death.

But there’s a budget problem (assuming we don’t want to raise taxes on the vulnerable 1 percent) and, besides, skin should be inserted in the game.

When Mitt Romney changes the tone of the conversation about poverty, and says brazenly, “I’m not concerned about the very poor,” that’s news.

And rightly so, because in America, we’re supposed to care about each other, and our country is supposed to provide basic opportunity for everyone, right? And, as the debate about Medicaid shows, no one’s saying, let the poor get sick and die.

But what about proposals to expand Medicaid? These proposals save lives, yet politicians go around trashing the Medicaid-expansion aspects of Obamacare day in and day out, with near media immunity, as if saving poverty-stricken Americans from sickness and death is so outrageous.

You don’t have to search very hard to find examples, but I’ll use one from Rep. Mike Coffman, who, as I’ve written, deserves more media scrutiny now that he’s in a competitive district.

Coffman told Mike Rosen during the debate on health care that “there are some very radical elements to [Obamacare] such as the expansion of Medicaid, a government run healthcare program.”

Very radical elements? Sounds like communists are hiding in the bill, but Rosen treated the statement like normal air.

It turns out that, from perspective of anyone who is concerned about the very poor, Republicans and Democrats alike, the Medicaid expansion in Obamacare isn’t so radical.

It sets a national standard for Medicaid eligibility at 133 percent of the poverty level, which amounts to about $30,000 for a family of four, according to Elisabeth Arenales, Health Program Director at Colorado Center for Law and Policy.

“Across the country, most people who are poor, if they are childless adults, unless they are disabled, don’t have access to Medicaid,” Arenales told me. “It’s setting a uniform framework.”

Very radical.

Arenales says the Medicaid expansion under Obmacare would also benefit early retirees, under age 65, who run into health problems.

As you can imagine, health insurance is expensive for people around 65, who have health problems. Under Obmacare, these retirees with very low incomes will be covered by Medicaid, Arenales said.

She points to another example of an early retiree whose kids are grown, gets cancer, exhausts COBRA, and spends all their money on treatment. Under Obamacare, these people get treated under Medicaid. It gives them an option.

“You see those stories,” Arenales said.

I’m not saying there shouldn’t be a debate about whether to cut or expand Medicaid, but my point is, why do we give the silent treatment to the Coffmans of the world who say Medicaid expansion is so radical, while a guy like Mitt Romney is slammed for making a similarly extreme statement that he’s “not concerned about the very poor.”

Conservative talk radio is all aflutter about a trial underway in Georgia to determine whether President Obama is eligible to appear on the election ballot there.

A Georgia law requires all candidates to prove they’re eligible for office, and this means presidential candidates must prove they’re U.S. citizens.

Such laws, now on the books in a handful of states, are the cutting edge tactic of the dregs of the birther movement, which will not accept that Obama is a U.S. citizen.

The case has a local connection in the name of John Sampson, a former immigration officer who retired in 2008 and also a candidate for Colorado Senate District 25, facing Sen. Mary Hodge.

Sampson told his story to an adoring audience on KLZ’s Grassroots Radio Colorado on Friday.

Sampson said on the radio that he was retained by a leader of the birther movement, Orly Taitz, whom he met in Lake Charles Illinois in November 2009, to investigate President Obama’s Social Security number, and he determined that Obama’s Social Security number was issued to a Connecticut resident in March of 1977.

Sampson tried hard but can’t find evidence that Obama was a citizen of Connecticut, ever.

“Why is [Obama] utilizing a Social Security number that was issued to somebody who was apparently living in Connecticut at the time it was issued?” Sampson asked on KLZ Friday.

Sampson flew to Georgia to present his evidence at the administrative court hearing, compelled, he says, by a subpoena to do so. He testified in court that there is “credible evidence to warrant further investigation” into Obama’s Social Security number and birth certificate. He also testified that he’d investigate Obama’s passport history.

Sampson was in court when another person who was subpoenaed failed to appear. That would be Obama, whose lawyers contend the President is under no legal obligation to testify. 

As a souvenir for his trip to Georgia, Sampson got his photo in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, a step up from the publicity he’s used to getting in the birther underground. He makes an appearance in Jerome Corsi’s Where’s the Birth Certificate, for example, he said on the radio. (See a video of Sampson testifying in Georgia here.)

Asked on Grassroots Radio Colorado why the birth certificate released last year by Obama did not put the matter to rest, Sampson responded by saying another expert at the hearing said the birth certificate was fake.

Sampson also said his own research raised “concerns” about the legitimacy of Obama’s birth certificate, as well as Obama’s Social Security number.

“I’m not prepared to tell you whether he was born in the United States, not born in the United States,” Sampson stated on KLZ. “I’m not what you would consider a birther, per se. This is an issue of constitutionality. This is an issue of whether or not the provisions of the Constitution requiring a natural-born citizen to be President of the United States have been violated or not.”

Hmmmm. I wondered what he meant when he said, “I’m not a birther, per se.” But the radio hosts weren’t thinking along the same lines, and KHOW’s Peter Boyles, who’s sharp as a knife on this issue, and proud of it, wasn’t there to clarify things.

In any case, Sampson explained on the radio that the Georgia hearing continued without Obama. The administrative law judge is scheduled to rule Feb. 5 on whether the sitting President meets Georgia’s citizenship requirements, and at that point, the Georgia Secretary of State will determine if he’s eligible to appear on the ballot–again.

Asked by a caller, who turned out to be yet another conservative talk show host, Jimmy Sengenberger, whether the birth-certificate issue was worth raising, with unemployment and other issues plaguing the country, Sampson pointed out he was hired to investigate the Social Security number and subpoenaed.

Sampson also said: “I am a very firm believer in the Constitution. In June of 1981, I raised my right hand for the first time of many and swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. And to paraphrase what Lt. Col. Allen West has said, that oath did not come with a statute of limitations or with an expiration date. And that’s the only reason I’m involved in this. I have not and do not have sufficient evidence that would warrant me to make a statement as to whether or not he is eligible or not eligible.”

This satisfied Sengenberger and the Grassroots Radio guys, who told Sampson he was 100 percent behind him.

But would you be satisfied? I thought a birther was someone who doesn’t believe Obama is a citizen. That’s what Sampson is saying when he testifies that he doesn’t know if the President is a citizen. Same thing. A birther.

I mean, the entire birther movement is about not being satisfied with the citizenship documentation provided by Obama. Where’s the birth certificate?

That’s exactly what our own John Sampson is saying.

And when the birth certificate is produced, you have to guess, though we don’t know for sure, that Sampson, like his fellow birthers, will find some other reason not to know for sure if Obama is one of us.