BREAKING: Former State Senator Tom Wiens has formally filed papers as a candidate for the US Senate race here in Colorado.

Quickly noted: Wiens appears to have great confidence in his ability to fundraise competitively with Jane Norton, and he has deep ties to the party activists who have been frequent caucus-goers and state Assembly delegates.  He has strength in El Paso and Douglas Counties, both Republican strongholds.  All of this helps him in the primary.

Whether or not the Dems can successfully portray him as "too conservative" is open to question, but I'm sure that will be their line of attack.

While lacking the national cache of N-23 or a govenor's race in a bellwether state (that comes next year), Colorado does have some election activity of its own this year.  With the usual caveats about off-year turnout, here are some of the more interesting races to keep an eye on.

• In Douglas County, the non-partisan school board race has turned partisan, as the teachers' unions try to seize control of that body in a heavily Republican county.  The local Republican party has responded by endorsing a slate of four candidates of its own.  Good luck to Dan Gerken,  Doug Benevento, Meghann Silverthorn and incumbent John Carson
• In Denver, voters will elect some of the new school board as well.  I'm personally supporting Mary Seawell, who's a big booster of Charter Schools.  She'll probably cruise to victory fairly easily.
• Denver will also decide whether or not to require police officers to impound the vehicle of someone found driving without a license.  Widely seen as targeting illegal immigrants, the law does provide an out for someone whom the officer can determine has a license and insurance, but that hasn't kept the so-called progressives from emailing energetically about the unfairness of it all.  The state auditor finally got around to reporting on this issue yesterday, as voting ends.  Look for this to fail.
• And last but not least, my friend Katie Witt is running for City Council up in Longmont, the more Republican area of Boulder County, and we're all looking forward to a win up there for her.

So while the Tea Party Express rolls into town, CCU has its Governor Canddiates' Forum, and the Mayor of Jerusalem speaks over at DU, we'll be watching New Jersey, Virginia, New York, Maine, and Washington State.

And a little action closer to home, too.

There are times when one wonders whether or not the writers for the Denver Post actually read the Denver Post. Then, there are times when one wonders whether is would make any difference if the did.

On October 14, the Post carried an AP story noting that the new German government, a coalition between the Christian Democrats - Mark Steyn's right of left of right of center party - and the Free Democrats, who actually permit themselves the luxury of promoting free markets now and again, would be cutting Germany's legendary solar subsidies, which the country had maintained for about two decades. Apprently, subsidizing expensive energy doesn't look so good during a recession, and Germany is willing to forego the expensive green jobs that such industry creates:

Investors expected Germany to cut back on solar subsidies this year as the recession sapped demand and tightened government budgets, said Benedict Pang, an analyst with Caris and Company in San Francisco.

"During the downturn, the wheels started to come off" in Germany, Pang said. "A lot of solar companies have weaned themselves off of that market."

...

Germany has guaranteed renewable energy generators fixed payments for the power they produce to encourage the production of solar panels and several of the world's leading producers of the technology are based here.

A week and a half later, Bloomberg reported that the Germans had done just that:

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s new junior partner in government, the pro-business Free Democrats, approved a four-year coalition program that points Germany toward tax cuts and a reprieve for nuclear energy....

Separately, the government will seek talks with solar-energy industry on possible "adjustments" to avoid "excessive subsidies," according to the coalition draft.

So naturally, it was a source of much rejoicing when the German company, SMA, no longer able to make money on its home turf, shifted production to Colorado, bringing with it its prize of 300 jobs, at a cost of a mere $12,000/job to the Colorado taxpayer.

Now, that's not as much as the colossal $240,000 per job - plus the added cost of the actual electricity - that Germany's worked itself up to. And the so-called "green jobs" trap has been largely responsible for the depth and intractability of Spain's contractiion during the global recession. Of course, they're paying about $600,000 a job, so we've still got a ways to go to match that.

These jobs are incredibly expensive, as Colorado is about to find out, and apparently don't survive the end of subsidies.

Let's just hope that those interim committees take note of why Colorado beat out other US states:

[Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade's Pete] Roskop said other states were throwing more money for incentives at the company, but Colorado had lower costs for items such as corporate taxes and worker's compensation insurance.

Then, there are the times when one wonders whether some people ever read the business pages at all.

I've always been a sucker for the Byzantine Empire.  I'll write a more extensive review of the new book, Lost to the West, soon, but for the moment, I want to focus on one particular emperor, the last of the Macedonian Dynasty, and the last truly great emperor Byzantium produced, Basil II.  Basil took power by overthrowing a regent who wanted the crown for himself, and by putting down rebellion by a couple of successful generals who had similar ideas.  After the second rebellion, Basil met with its leader.  The meeting is recorded by Michael Psellus, in his Chronographia:

After this Basil proceeded to question him, as a man accustomed to command, about his Empire, how it could be preserved free from dissension. Sclerus had an answer to this, although it was not the sort of advice one would expect from a general; in fact, it sounded more like a diabolical plot. 'Cut down,' he said, 'the governors who become overproud. Let no generals on campaign have too many resources. Exhaust them [the aristocracy - ed.] with unjust exactions, to keep them busied with their own affairs. Admit no woman to the imperial councils. Be accessible to no one. Share with few your most intimate plans.'

First, let's make the obligatory noises about how Obama's no Byzantine Emperor.  True enough.  Imperial legitimacy came not from the people, but from the blade of a sword.  And women's relationship to society has - thankfully - changed somewhat since the 10th Century.  But to power politics is power politics, and Sclerus's advice boils down to this: suppress the institutions that might cause you trouble, and don't let anyone figure out what you're up to.

Unfortunately, I can't remember the posting where I read it, but the author proposed that Obama runs his foreign policy through personal advisers and special envoys - often to the exclusion of the traditional military and foreign policy apparatus - to avoid sharing his overall vision with anyone else.  That this doesn't require a conspiracy, merely a clever plan by a good politician to avoid opposition to what would be unpopular ideas.

Hey, it's happened before.

I'm working on a post about Barack Obama's governing style, and I need to find a blog posting I saw recently.

It winds up with a discussion of Obama's foreign policy, positing that the reason he uses so many special envoys and special advisors is that he's trying to avoid confiding in anyone the big picture, his overall vision for America's place in the world.

It was well-written, and in a reasonably prominent blog, and I can't for the life of me find it anywhere?  In-post credit to anyone who can point me in the right direction.

Thank you in advance.

Ben DeGrow follows up on a John Fund piece in the Wall Street Journal last week, discussing a couple of ballot initiatives in Maine and Washington State.  The closely mirror our own Taxpayer Bill of Rights, which limits budget growth to inflation + population growth.  Ben sees these as almost more of a bellwether than the NY-23, and New Jersey & Virginia governor's races.  The referenda, I-1033 in Washington and Ballot Question #4 in Maine, however, both appear to be going down to defeat, in large part because of massive spending by the opposition.

In Washington, opponents have dumped $3 million into the race in the last month, moving I-1033 from 13 points up to 12 points down in SurveyUSA polls.  This despite significant differences between Colorado's Taxpayer Bill of Rights and I-1033, detailed by sponsor Tim Eyman:

Colorado's TABOR is a constitutional amendment -- it couldn't be amended by the Legislature; I-1033, like I-601, is a law, providing the Legislature with flexibility to change it. TABOR encompassed every government - school districts, library districts, fire districts, ports, public utility districts, etc. I-1033 focuses only on the state, counties and cities. TABOR put a limit on every governmental account and every tax dollar received, including transportation funds, pension funds, capital budgets, workman's compensation, unemployment insurance funds, federal funds, etc. I-1033, like I-601, only addresses the general fund, the account that state, counties, and cities have the most trouble showing fiscal discipline with. TABOR didn't allow rainy day funds. I-1033, like I-601, gives 'first bite' of excess tax revenues to the rainy day fund. TABOR didn't exclude federal funds; I-1033 explicitly does. TABOR prohibited governments from borrowing money except with voter approval; I-1033, like I-601, has nothing like that. TABOR required voter approval for any tax and fee increase by any government; I-1033, like I-601, doesn't.

Despite all these difference, the SEIU, the education establishment, and other big-government groups still can't swallow limits on government growth, and asking the people first before taking more of their money.  Has Washington passed the tipping point where the patronage groups have enough money to defeat any efforts to limit them?  According to the resident lefties, and the Seattle P-I, Eyman's initiatives have tended to poll worse than they perform on election day.  Probably the Bradley effect.  So there's still some hope the thing will pass.

Maine is another story.  There, as Ben points out, a similar prop failed a couple of years ago, and now they're back again with another try.  Polling also has this one down, and for much the same reason.  The opponents have outspent supporters 10-1.

These two point out a reason that ballot initiatives are different from elections.  Ballot initiatives tend to be narrow, elections are about broad coalitions.  For that reason alone, ballot initiatives tend to attract more one-sided money.  So there's a dual effect here.  More money on a narrower issue almost certainly means more volatility.

As a test of Obama's staying power, I still like elections better than referendums.