Posted by
NOTLEGALROADKILLYET on Tuesday, January 30, 2007 12:15:16 PM
It is usually easy to be critical of Rocky Mountain News editorials because they are often not well thought out. My very favorite was their first (there were two) endorsement of then candidate Bill Ritter. They admitted that they didn't know much about what kind of governor Ritter would make, or what his policies would be, but they were endorsing him anyway. Wasn't that special?
Today, Vincent Carroll provides a well reasoned editorial against Ritter's decision to sign the so called Labor Peace Act because it, by itself, won't send the state into an economic tailspin. He goes on to say:
So that's the standard, is it? We should worry about legislation only if it threatens to send the state into an economic tailspin.
If so, why worry about legislation at all? A single bill is almost never so dangerous that it threatens prosperity by itself. Economies stagnate from a hundred blows, delivered over time and with a hundred different excuses. This bill - which makes it easier to create "all union" agreements - is just one of those smacks.
The governor could just as easily say he doesn't believe the economic prospects of this state rest on any single proposal affecting workers comp, liability, taxes, the cost of energy, or any other area influencing private-sector investment and risk-taking. But each is still important in its own right, and the cumulative effect of such changes can be crippling.
This conversion, if it is a conversion, comes about six months too late.