The Allied Jewish Federation sent Gov. Bill Ritter to Israel. It was a free trip. Amendment 41 prohibits $50 gifts, let alone free overseas trips, to politicians. However, if a non-profit provides the gift, Amendment 41 says thats OK. The federation tried hard to dot the Is and cross the Ts, meeting the amendments stipulations. Some say the government itself did not inform the federation of all the necessary requirements.
Pitting the federation or other non-profits vs. Ritter and other politicians is a very nice way to obscure the real issue here: the genuine stupidity of Amendment 41. It is the most unjustified, unworkable, unthought out piece of legislation we have ever seen. In an attempt to stop unethical influence over politicians, the amendment illustrates what the word draconian was invented for.
Remember, the amendment as written excludes not only gifts directly to politicians, but even to their families. It excludes, for example, scholarships to politicians children. In an exercise in dishonest exegesis, a state commission got rid of that part of the amendment, sanctimoniously assuring us that the amendment didnt really mean what it said. But that, in fact, is what the amendment says. We say, let the voters live with their absurdly draconian decision, let the voters see what they did, and we shall then have a much better chance of seeing this crippling amendment repealed.
Colorado wants foreign trade, but also, with Amendment 41, wants to prohibit politicians from making foreign trips. This is an exercise in contradiction and cynicism. In fact, it is extreme cynicism that highlights the reductio-ad-absurdum language of Amendment 41; for, you know, no politician can be trusted to do the business of Colorado on a foreign trip.
Politicians, according to the letter and the spirit of the amendment, are to put monks to shame. Ritter is criticized because, besides signing a number of trade and other business agreements in Israel, all beneficial to Colorado, Ritter had the audacity, the gall, actually to sightsee for a bit.
Needless to say, people who put up the money for foreign trips by politicians might have ulterior motives. They might be trying to buy influence. That, we would say, is an occupational hazard of government doing its job. Besides, in the case of Ritter, he is in office only a few more months. He is a lameduck governor. What influence was there to buy?
The sooner the voters overturn Amendment 41, the better. This amendment is another reflection of the anti-federalist sentiment by activists who would eviscerate our form of government by removing from the legislature the authority to do things like raise taxes (see TABOR) or to impose ethical standards (see Amendment 41). The United States was not designed to be a pure democracy and a complex society cannot function as a pure democracy. Yet, that is just what TABOR and Amendment 41 (and many other amendments that, thankfully, failed) try to transform Colorado into.
Wed be a lot happier if Ritter and his like kept their 50 bucks and had the freedom to function freely to save the citizenry hundreds of millions of bucks by making productive foreign business trips, by raising and lowering taxes as needed, by, in a word, governing. Sooner or later, the crooks will be weeded out in any case.
So, please, save the sanctimony about either the federations or the states violation of Amendment 41. Nowhere is this insufferable self-righteousness higher than on the state commission that regulates this amendment, but coming in a close second are the various and sundry do-gooders who think that a nice, $50 bouquet of flowers given to Mrs. Ritter is worse than a state government so hamstrung that public funding of higher education is on its way to oblivion and public college tuition is soon to be beyond the means of most parents and students.
Copyright © 2010 by the Intermountain Jewish News
