Rocky Mountain Voice reports that a Democratic-backed ballot measure is headed for Colorado voters asking them to steer TABOR refund money into K-12 schools. Translation: the Capitol class has found another way to grab your wallet, hold it in front of a classroom, and dare you to object without sounding like a monster.
And this is not pocket change. The source article says the measure could ask voters to forfeit up to $7,000 per taxpayer in TABOR refunds. Seven grand. That is not a “rounding error.” That is a used car, months of groceries, a property tax panic cushion, or the difference between a family staying afloat and getting financially waterboarded by Colorado’s cost of living.
The setup is familiar because Colorado’s political machine has been running this same con for years: government collects too much, TABOR says give the excess back, and then the spending addicts in Denver act personally violated by the existence of your refund.
This proposal would direct those taxpayer refunds toward K-12 education. That is the sales pitch. Schools. Kids. Classrooms. The sacred trilogy of political wallet extraction.
But the real question is not whether schools matter. Of course they matter. The question is why Colorado’s answer to every problem is always the same exhausted scam: hand over more money, ask fewer questions, and clap like a trained seal while the same system promises this time it will totally work.
TABOR refunds are not a state slush fund. They are not loose change under the Capitol couch cushions. They are taxpayer money that the government collected above the legal limit and is supposed to return unless voters agree otherwise.
That last part is what drives the ruling class absolutely insane. TABOR gives voters one damn lever. One. In a state where fees multiply like prairie dogs, housing costs punch families in the throat, and every “temporary” government appetite somehow becomes a permanent feeding schedule, TABOR is one of the few things still standing between taxpayers and Denver’s open-mouthed budget furnace.
So naturally, they want it.
And because they are not stupid enough to say, “Please let us keep your money because we hate fiscal restraint,” they wrap the whole thing in school-kid camouflage. If you want your refund, you are selfish. If politicians want your refund, they are visionaries. If you ask where all the previous education money went, congratulations, you have committed a thought crime against the children.
That is the ugliest part of this racket. Teachers and students get used as the human shield while the political class avoids the question normal Coloradans keep asking: what guarantees are taxpayers getting that another flood of money actually improves classrooms instead of feeding the same bureaucracy, consultants, administrative blob, and political machine that always shows up at the trough wearing a compassion bib?
Colorado families are already getting squeezed from every direction. Property taxes. Rent. Groceries. Utility bills. Insurance. Fees disguised as policy virtue. The Front Range is expensive enough to make a paycheck vanish like a Subaru in a Boulder bike lane.
And now voters are supposed to consider giving up potentially serious TABOR refunds because the same people who never have enough money pinky-swear that this time the mugging is noble.
No. Funding classrooms is a serious debate. Raiding refunds with a “for the children” sticker slapped on the crowbar is not compassion. It is Colorado’s favorite con with crayons on the invoice.
Source: Rocky Mountain Voice
Just Stop It
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