In an October 1 editorial in the GJ Sentinel, Rick Wagner has warned people not to vote 3rd party. He says Ross Perot is the cause of the election of Bill Clinton, but he "forgets" to mention that by his reasoning, Ralph Nader is the cause of the election of big spending, TARP creating, bailout boy George W Bush. Presumably this oversight is because Mr. Wagner, as he has said, is a "fan" of Bush.

Mr. Wagner also compares the difficult hurdles placed for third parties to ballot access by the major parties (Democrats and Republicans) to a Monty Python comedy. Apparently, the "bi-partisan" efforts of the Redemopublicraticans to block anyone else from ballot access is comedic to Mr. Wagner. Ha-ha, pretty funny.

While Mr. Wagner acknowledges the widespread dissatisfaction of citizens with state and national politics, he also continues to play the "lesser of 2 evils" game, and encourages the rest of us to do the same. He calls "the other team" (in Rick Wagner’s world, this would be the Democrats, the only other competition he wants to allow) "the least desired alternative" and "the less favored candidates". One of the big bonuses Mr. Wagner offers as a reward for not voting 3rd party is that you get to vote in primaries! Now isn't that special? What is particularly silly in this editorial is right after Mr. Wagner acknowledges the widespread dissatisfaction with state and national politicians, he says that if you vote 3rd party, you will be denying that vote to the major party candidate who is closest to your political philosophy. WOW. Uh, that's the whole point, Mr. Wagner. Because the major parties no longer have any connection to our political philosophies! Within the ranks of Libertarians, the one theme I hear over and over from people who have left the 2 major parties is "I didn't leave my party—they left me". Mr. Wagner apparently doesn't care much for political philosophy, though—just team politics. And he wants us all to follow suit, and follow the major parties down whatever convoluted, corrupted path they want to take us. Here is a case in point: former district 2 county commissioner, Wayne Wolf, who ran for congress last year, is running for state senate next year. In a recent DCI article, Mr. Wolf is quoted as saying he is a fiscal and social conservative. Anyone in Delta County has paid even a small amount of attention will note that Mr. Wolf is indeed a social conservative (because we need a huge government to regulate our morality), but a fiscal conservative? Give me a break! Mr. Wolf also now claims he is a supporter of TABOR. This must be a very recent conversion, because I certainly remember commissioner Wolf supporting Referendums C and D—HUGE anti-TABOR bills!

Mr. Wolf defines the main theme of the state senate race as "the state budget". That's a pretty good one coming from Wayne "roundabout" Wolf (do you Delta County residents remember Wolf's $5 million roundabout idea for the bottom of Cedar Mesa grade?), under whose watch the county budget tripled in 2 years, from $19 million to $29 million. This is the same Mr. Wolf who is now criticizing Governor Ritter for putting the state in a bind for funding too much new hiring. Before Mr. Wolf decided to run for congress last year, he was going to run for US senate. At that time, he publicly said that we shouldn't dismiss Hillary Clinton's health care plan just because she's a Democrat; that it's actually a very good plan.

For you Democrats out there smirking, we could bring up your Blagoyavich, your Louisiana congressman with $90,000 in bribes in his freezer, your "yes we can" president who made such a smooth transition from Bush's corporate welfare bonanza to his own corporate welfare spend-o-rama, and on and on.

Do these people really represent us? Is this what is closest to our political philosophies? Or is Rick Wagner simply asking us to drink the kool-aid--ignore reality and hum along to the rhetoric? If you keep wasting your votes on "the lesser of 2 evils", guess what you are going to get? That’s right—more evil.

Thank you and congratulations on a well deserved victory to contain the growth of government in Aurora. With the help of many groups and individuals we were successful in turning back yet another attempt to extract more money from Aurora taxpayers.

The proponents of this measure outspent us 20 to 1, but we were able to reach out and convince the majority of voters that this was an ill-conceived measure.

The unofficial tally at this time is:
Yes on 4A – 15,362 -- 45.7%
  No on 4A - 18,283 -- 54.3%


You can read more about the results at:
http://www.aurorasentinel.com/articles/2009/11/04/news/doc4af11c4ba8928454029897.txt
http://www.denverpost.com/ci_13707663

We will regroup in a couple of weeks to begin to tackle other issues that need to be addressed by this city government.

Thanks again for all your individual efforts that made the difference.

State Sen. Chris Romer plans to introduce a medical-marijuana bill because he is “alarmed” at the growing number of medical marijuana patients and dispensaries.

Sen. Romer, before adding more government bureaucracy and regulations to hinder willing producers from providing a product to willing consumers, please tell us what the problems are. Are medical marijuana users more likely to commit crimes? Have they been involved in a rash of traffic accidents? Are the dispensaries somehow causing trouble?

I suspect not. I'll bet legal marijuana users are less likely to commit crimes than illegal ones (at least one, by definition). I’m certain that legal growers and sellers present far fewer problems than the black market. I suggest Sen. Romer consider legislation to give us more liberty, rather than less.

The Post’s editorial board is completely right that a “simple solution” to the confusion surrounding medical marijuana policies in Colorado and other states is to simply legalize and tax marijuana for all adults who want it.

As a veteran Denver police officer who served for more than 36 years, I saw firsthand how our decades long “war on drugs” isn’t doing anything to keep marijuana (or other drugs, for that matter) away from people.

The only results of the prohibition policy are millions of arrests, billions of dollars in spending, and rich profits going directly into the pockets of the violent gangs and cartels that control the illegal market.

It's time for a broader conversation about the failure of prohibition as a drug control strategy.