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PAGE 6 Our Team SUMMER | 2021 A publication of The Fight for Freedom’s Newest Generation - PAGE 6 Our Team BOARD OF TRUSTEES Catherine Shopneck - Chairman Deborah Donner We are More Than Katherine Whitcomb - Vice-Chairman Joseph Smith Mike McCarty - Secretary/Treasurer Dick Wadhams a Think Tank Jon Caldara - President WE ARE AN ACTION TANK AND A PUBLIC RELATIONS FIRM FOR LIBERTY. LEADERSHIP Jon Caldara - President A central role of an effective think tank is to produce Eric Broughton - Chief Operating Officer quality research and analysis. Since 1985, we have Damon Sasso - Vice President of Operations provided research resulting in changes in law and Shayne Madsen - General Counsel; Political Law Center Director policy. But we have never been content with just research. We are more than a think tank. We are a POLICY public relations firm for Liberty. We put our ideas into David Kopel - Research Director; Second Amendment Project Director action through groundbreaking litigation, coalition Pam Benigno - Education Policy Center Director building, work on ballot initiatives, new media and Ben Murrey - Fiscal Policy Center Director investigative reporting. We don’t just fight on paper. Linda Gorman - Health Care Policy Center Director We fight for freedom on the streets, in the statehouse, Randal O’Toole - Transportation Policy Center Director in the media, on the ballot, and in the courts. Tyler Baker - Energy & Environmental Policy Legal Researcher The mission of the Independence Institute is to PROGRAMS empower individuals and to educate citizens, Laura Carno - Executive Director, FASTER Colorado legislators and opinion makers about public policies Kathleen Chandler - Coalitions and Future Leaders Program Manager that enhance personal and economic freedom. COMPLETECOLORADO.COM Mike Krause - Editor-in-Chief Sherrie Peif - Investigative Reporter CREATIVE LABS/COMMUNICATIONS Tyler Massey - Media Production Manager Tracy Kimball Smith - Creative Labs Carol Van Dyke - School Choice for Kids Website Manager DEVELOPMENT Michelle Knight - Development Director; Executive Assistant to Jon Caldara Hilleary Waters - Publications Coordinator SENIOR FELLOWS Rob Natelson - Constitutional Barry Fagin - Technology Policy Jurisprudence Ross Izard - Education Policy Joshua Sharf - Fiscal Policy Dennis Polhill - Public Infrastructure Paul Prentice - Fiscal Policy 2 Independent Inking | Summer 2021 The Racist, Systemic Oppression of Taxpayers By Jon Caldara, President I’ve been active in Colorado politics for three decades we citizens can only put a tax decrease initiative on and I can confidentially say there has never been a even-numbered years. more damaging, arrogant, and expensive legislative session than the one we just survived. They had a That’s a two-to-one advantage to the racists. Oh, and socialist field day, from banning plastic shopping we must collect some 125,000 valid signatures to bags and Native American names for school teams to lower taxes. To raise taxes, they don’t. expanding gun control and raising over $600 million As if that weren’t enough systemic prejudice, newly in new taxes without voter approval. passed HB-1321 requires a long, scary preamble be You read that right. Even though the intent of voters placed on the ballot in front of any tax cut measure to on taxes is very clear (last year we at Independence frighten citizens into a “no” vote. It falsely claims that led the campaign to reduce our state’s income tax rate voting for the tax reduction will cripple education and to 4.55%), they wiped out that tax cut this year by— health care and kill old ladies. Like the warning on a you guessed it—raising “fees” without voter consent. cigarette pack, it basically says “voting for this tax cut causes cancer and deformities in infants.” The progressive left in Colorado have created system- ic oppression of taxpayers. Given how everything is No such warning is required when they ask for a tax “racist” these days, I’ll call this racist, too. hike. In fact, the legislature gets to write their own flowery ballot language. We citizens must go to the I hope by now we all are aware of the Colorado government’s “title board” and they write our ballot Supreme Court’s imitation of the “Dred Scott” deci- language. sion institutionalizing the bigotry against taxpayers. They ruled that by labeling any tax increase a “fee,” Isn’t this systemic oppression of taxpayers racist? it can bypass voter approval as required by our Try this thought experiment. A slave is forced to give Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights. 100% of his labor and production to his master. If The bigoted court opened this legal gate for lawmak- a person is forced to give 50%, does that make him ers, and they charged through it. a half-slave? This is why TABOR, direct consent from taxpayers, is crucial. (By the way, the average The mill levy freeze (a property tax increase), the American pays 30% of their earnings in federal taxes “FASTER” fee, and the “hospital provider” fee were alone before the state and localities push it closer to quickly dispatched against taxpayers without a vote. 50%) Coloradans were so angered by this “fee” work-around To take back what the legislature just took from us in that with our help they passed Prop 117 last year. It this session alone we’d have to lower the state income requires any large tax disguised as a “fee” go to them tax by about 6%. And by the way, we at Independence for permission. So, the systemic racists in the legis- plan to do it! lature this year passed a gas tax by splitting it up into four different “fees” in order to keep it under the cap With your partnership, our taxpayer revolt will con- required for voter approval. tinue and take back what the government has taken from us. And even when we try to lower taxes, the systemic oppression against taxpayers rears its ugly head: The Think Freedom, legislature can go to the ballot any year they want to ask for a tax increase but they passed a law saying 3 Independent Inking | Summer 2021 Discouraged about Colorado politics? II’s record shows we can turn it around By Rob Natelson Jon Caldara, president of the Independence Institute, A group of us decided this had to change. We began likes to say we are in for the long haul. We create the with education. In 1991, we invited Tom Tancredo, infrastructure for change. Today’s investment in II can former II President and then a U.S. Department of yield wonderful results a few years down the road. Education executive, to Missoula to promote school choice. His speech helped trigger introduction of the By contrast, a donation to a politician rarely yields first-ever school choice bill in the Montana legislature. anything but marginal results. Moreover, as recent experience with the Trump-Biden transition shows, In 1993 I helped form a grassroots group to promote the benefits a politician gives you can be reversed free-market reforms. We sponsored and won several quickly by the next administration. II promotes more statewide ballot initiatives to reduce the rise in taxes permanent change. and spending. We stopped the recurrent tax hikes. We passed ethics legislation and promoted school choice. Here’s my personal example. It’s an inspirational story about how II’s long-term influence helped revolu- We needed new ideas to combat the incessant stat- tionize the political environment in Montana. It’s a ist propaganda, so in 1994 I wrote a paper on why pattern for saving Colorado. we should have tax and expenditure limitations in Montana. No local publisher would have touched After practicing law in Colorado, in 1985 I left to it, but Independence Institute published it. The become a law professor and in 1987 I was recruited Institute also released it to all Montana newspapers. by the University of Montana. I found Montana to be Furthermore, II named me as one of its senior fel- a surprisingly liberal state. The legislature and almost lows—although initially in “Western Studies” rather all state offices were controlled by an unholy coali- than “Constitutional Jurisprudence.” tion of big-spending Democrats and big-spending “Republicans.” For instance, the “Republican” gover- In 1998, II published another of my papers. This one nor who took office in 1993 opposed school choice, compared fiscally conservative and fiscally liberal pushed major tax hikes, and proposed a complete states in the Rocky Mountain region. It showed how state takeover of health care. the lower tax, lower spending states became more economically prosperous than their liberal counter- In every session it held, the Montana legislature hiked parts. taxes. Business regulation was harsh. The teachers’ unions largely controlled education policy. There was Inspired in part by Colorado’s Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, no school choice. The state’s political, media, and we persuaded Montana voters to add Constitutional academic establishments issued a constant—almost Initiative 75 to the state constitution. CI-75 required entirely unanswered—drumbeat for higher taxes and voter approval for most tax and fee hikes. Although bigger government. the hyper-activist, hyper-liberal state supreme court struck it down, the politicians got the voters’ message: As a result, Montana had one of the largest govern- No more tax increases. ment establishments of any state, as measured by share of population and share of personal income. The flimsy basis of the state supreme court’s ruling— High taxes and big government had helped turn to void CI-75 the justices had to overturn their own Montana from one of the nation’s richest regions precedents retroactively—also began to open the pub- into an economic basket case. lic’s eyes to the court’s political activism. Still sporting my II “senior fellow” title, in 1996 I ran for governor to promote free market issues.
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