Joe Coors, a Republican who announced his run for Colorado’s 7th Congressional District on Tuesday, cited his motivation to stop the ever-expanding reach of government that’s harming the opportunity society.

“I’m running for Congress because the American Dream is rapidly vanishing as government expands its intrusion in our daily lives,” he said. “And I look at my four children [and] eight grandchildren and I wonder, are they going to have the same opportunity that I had when I started my family and career?”

Coors cited unemployment, the economy and the budget deficit as some of the biggest issues facing our country.

“The federal government has a staggering budget deficit well over a trillion dollars. And for the last three years, it’s projected to be that amount going forward for the next decade. A trillion dollars, that’s a thousand billion. If you spend a dollar every second of the year for the next 30,000 years, you still wouldn’t get to a trillion. It’s a staggering number.”

Coors will face three-term Democratic U.S. Rep. Ed Perlmutter in November. The observations by Coors at Red Rocks Community College are a stark contrast with Perlmutter, who has consistently voted with Pres. Obama for more government and bigger deficits.

Since taking office in 2007, Perlmutter has earned the grade of “F” every year from the National Taxpayers Union and is a proponent of the death tax, which WhoSaidYouSaid documented in 2010.

After his State of the Union address on Tuesday, Pres. Obama started a muti-state tour (targeting key election states such as Colorado – no coincidence) to plead his case. Before the president’s stop at Buckley Air Force Base on Thursday, some Republican leaders held a press conference at the state Capitol, questioning his flawed economic policies and endless campaigning.

Here’s what state Rep. Robert Ramirez, R-Westminster, told us afterward…

“He’s spending our money to campaign,” said Ramirez. “When is this man going to become president? Three years now, not one time has he been president. Even Bill Clinton, a man that I don’t really respect in a lot of ways, took the time to stop campaigning and be president of the United States. George Bush also made mistakes, but he was president of the United States. And gosh sakes, we had Ronald Reagan, for sure.

“But President Obama has not stopped. Every State of the Union has been a campaign speech. The speech the other night about, “Oh, let’s just work and put America back on track”…it’s not about America being on track to him. Mr. President, it’s time to get the engine started, it’s time to stop planning, and it’s time to start doing. Now. You have made nothing but mistakes. You have done nothing but spend taxpayer money and put us farther in debt. And I, for one, as an American, as an Hispanic American, am not proud to say you are my president.”

President Barack Obama delivered his third (and hopefully, last) State of the Union address this week. Although he failed to mention that it’s been 1,000 days since the U.S. Senate passed his last budget, he managed to make two seemingly conflicting statements in the same speech. First, he praised his management of one of the big auto industry bailout (though he didn’t use that term)…

“On the day I took office, our auto industry was on the verge of collapse. Some even said we should let it die. With a million jobs at stake, I refused to let that happen. In exchange for help, we demanded responsibility. We got workers and automakers to settle their differences. We got the industry to retool and restructure. Today, General Motors is back on top as the world’s number one automaker. Chrysler has grown faster in the U.S. than any major car company. Ford is investing billions in U.S. plants and factories. And together, the entire industry added nearly 160,000 jobs.”

Note that “Ford, which didn’t accept TARP funds, has seen its sales increase 11 percent — without Obama’s help to ‘retool and restructure,’” according to PolitiFact.

And Obama’s great bailout brought us the Chevy Volt, fantastic.

Later in the speech, Obama then said we all need to “play by the rules,” which means “no bailouts”…

“Let’s never forget: Millions of Americans who work hard and play by the rules every day deserve a government and a financial system that do the same. It’s time to apply the same rules from top to bottom: No bailouts, no handouts, and no copouts. An America built to last insists on responsibility from everybody.”

Can you say cognitive dissonance?

Tonight marks a big political night where geeks like me will pop some popcorn, open up the TweetDeck, tune in President Obama’s State of the Union address and let the snark fly.

But in the midst of the pageantry and inevitable mix of platitudes and attempts to blame Republicans that is sure to dominate this evening, I’ll take a few minutes to remember that it’s been 1,000 days since Majority Leader Harry Reid’s Democratic-controlled U.S. Senate has managed to pass a budget.

Check out this video by the Heritage Foundation about what others have managed to accomplish in fewer than 1,000 days.

At a Jan. 5 community meeting in Grand Junction, Colo., 3rd District Congressional candidate and state Rep. Sal Pace, D-Pueblo, relied on the same tired talking points that have been pounded by Democrats and Occupiers alike. When in discussion with Mesa State Board of Trustees member Daniel Robinson, Pace said [at 2:08 of the video above]:

“I think the big issues that is underlying our political discourse is this concept that people are just frustrated with a government that just can’t seem to work together,” Pace said. “The gridlock and the hyper-partisanship and the 10-second sound bites. And you look at all these debacles over the last year, from the payroll tax, to the supercommittee, the debt ceiling, one after another. And while people are really suffering and hurting, we have an ineffectual Congress who seems more focused on beating each other up than actually trying to fix these problems.”

Ah, another reformer who’s going to change the culture of Washington. And how exactly did Pace (before he announced for Congress in May) express himself in the purple state legislature of Colorado?

As we noted a year ago, he was “setting the Pace for partisanship,” thanking newly-installed Speaker Frank McNulty, R-Highlands Ranch, for “keeping the podium warm for the next two years” and later went on a rant about about alleged slash-and-burn budget cuts.

That same month, Pace said at a union rally, “I’m willing to put my fist where I need to put it. I’m willing to fight. I’m willing to get in and rumble to make sure that we’re fighting for good jobs.”

So no, we don’t think Sal Pace would do much to bring consensus solutions to Washington.

He, however, claims bipartisanship in state governance, as in this recent Durango Herald editorial board meeting.

Also in the recent video from Grand Junction, Pace said…

“There’s 400 people who have more net worth than 150 million Americans combined,” he said. “There’s more income disparity than there’s ever been.”

Funny how the other angles of that pyramid are rarely noted by the class warriors of the left: that “the top 10 percent of earners paid 70 percent of Federal Income Taxes” in 2008, according to a Heritage Foundation analysis of IRS and Tax Foundations data. Or that “Forty-nine percent of U.S. households paid no federal income tax at all” that year.

And here’s trend data from 2009 back to 1999, according to the National Taxpayers Union.

Don’t get us wrong, we’d like to everyone to pay lower taxes. But when Pace and others play the 1 percent against the 99 percent (or the 10 percent against the 90 percent), they ignore economic reality. And why would Colorado send someone like that to Congress?

Villifying those who have been successful (and pay the bulk of the taxes) is no way to win an election. See this Reason analysis for more on “The facts about Income Inquality.”

Pace may sound like he’s going to transcend partisanship and liberal ideology, but repeating the mantra of the Occupiers reveals he can’t stay away from the hard left.

[Updated 1/24/12]

The video blowing up today on Google Trends is Pres. Obama signing Al Green. But if you take a closer look at WhoSaidYouSaid’s version (courtesy of Two Dumb Kids), you may hear a different tune…

Colorado House Minority Leader Mark Ferrandino, D-Denver, and state Rep. Sal Pace, D-Pueblo, (who is also running for Congress), are using terms such as “laser-like focus” and “laser-focused” this legislative session. It makes me wonder if the nemesis of Austin Powers has something to do with the Democratic talking points this year…

The Lobato decision from the Colorado Court of Appeals mandates a much larger percentage of the state budget be allocated to education, likely to the detriment of almost every other part of the state budget in future years.

The decision won’t have an impact on budgeting in the upcoming legislative session, as it has been appealed to the Colorado State Supreme Court. But at stake in future years, potentially, are billions of dollars more in school spending.

At a townhall meeting last month, where Gov. John Hickenlooper told attendees he was disappointed in the reapportionment maps, he also discussed education funding and the Lobato case, and what we actually need in education in Colorado.

“We made the arguments in court, right? I got somewhat criticized by a lot of Democrats because we supported [Colorado Attorney General] John Suthers when he was opposing this [the Lobato appeal] and we were saying, ‘There’s an awful lot of evidence that putting more money into education doesn’t necessarily get you better outcomes, right?’ What we really need to figure out is how to use technology, how to . . . we need some disruptive innovations of how we get kids to learn.”

What is most marked about Hickenlooper’s remarks is his observation that money doesn’t necessarily translate into better outcomes in education. It’s a drum that education reformers have been beating for years. How much of Hickenlooper’s sizable political capital would he be willing to spend to pursue some “disruptive innovations” ?

We attended the Occupy teach-in at the University of Colorado at Boulder on December 9th and posted a report for The Daily Caller. The Occupiers opened the event with Barry Clark, a professor of economics, who talked about the “unapologetic policy” of the U.S. government to promote wealth. See the video for my commentary on that…

Watching the GOP presidential debates – as well as President Obama’s campaign ads start to roll – makes one thing clear: ObamaCare is going to be a central issue in the 2012 elections.

U.S. Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., he of the so-called “Cornhusker Kickback” during the ObamaCare fiasco, today said he would not defend his seat in 2012, which Politico described as a “serious setback” to Democrats maintaining control of the Senate.

The Supreme Court said this month it will set aside nearly six hours for oral arguments in March to hear arguments on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

David B. Rivkin, Jr., who has led legal efforts by states (including Colorado) to challenge ObamaCare, has described the “stunningly unprecedented” lack of constitutional review that so-called health care reform received in 2009 and 2010.

Rivkin, an attorney well-versed in constitutional law and who served in the Reagan and Bush 41 Administrations, said this at an October meeting of the Colorado Chapter of the Federalist Society…

“In fact, to be candid, ladies and gentlemen, nobody on Capitol Hill and in the Obama Administration seemed particularly interested in the constitutional issues,” said Rivkin. “No hearings were held, for example, in either the House or the Senate side, in the Judiciary committees, as the bill was making its way towards enactment. And, the administration never bothered to have the Office of Legal Counsel, which is the premier office of the Justice Department, actually look into the constitutional issues…

Rivkin said that from his experience, including in the White House Counsel’s office, that “this is stunningly unprecedented. It’s unprecedented any time a major piece of legislation is moving towards enactment. Certainly, it’s unprecedented in the case of legislation of this importance.”

As the battle over Obama’s first-term policy cornerstone continues to be waged, the question must be asked: if something as behemoth as a fundamental change in heath care wasn’t adequately vetted by the Administration – or even by Congress – is Pres. Obama is worthy of a second term in office? Americans are going to have to deal with the constitutional and practical ramifications of ObamaCare for years, depending on how the Supreme Court rules and what follows..

Can we really trust someone who doesn’t have the foresight to send something so important for proper constitutional consideration? The manic pace at which Obama and Democrats in Congress passed this bill speaks to their recklessness. When Americans are hurting economically, the last thing they want from government is massive and fundamental shifts in government power without so much as a hearing to consider if it’s even constitutional.