If there’s one thing personal injury lawyers are especially good at, it’s exploiting the misfortunes of their clients while devising new ways to line their own pockets.

Colorado House Bill 1168 is this year’s prime example. While claiming to help injured parties receive full compensation for damages caused by the fault of someone else, what it really does is guarantee that the injured person, in order to be fully compensated, must hire a lawyer.

Since most personal injury cases are handled on a contingent fee basis, that means that just when the injured party is about to be paid, the trial lawyer will extract his fee of 33 or 40 percent of the award. (more…)

Rescuing the Public Employees Retirement Association (PERA) is nothing new for state lawmakers.  Twice in the last decade, legislators have thrown PERA a lifeline, forcing the state, school districts, local governments and finally even workers to chip in hundreds of millions of dollars to keep the plan afloat.

As recently as four years ago, PERA and many employee groups refused to acknowledge the plan’s peril, despite assets falling from 105 percent of the amount needed to pay benefits to just 70 percent from 2000 to 2004.

In 2008, PERA’s funding ratio tumbled to below 52 cents for every dollar of promised benefits — a $30 billion deficit.  After almost a year of cautioning lawmakers against acting hastily, even PERA’s directors finally asked for help — a third rescue plan in just seven years. (more…)

When politicians pick winners and losers, the stench of sleazy backroom deals is inescapable.

Colorado’s appointed U.S. Senator, Michael Bennet, has inveighed against special deals, like the ones that purchased the health care votes of Nebraska’s Ben Nelson and Louisiana’s Mary Landrieu.  He also talks often about the need for more competition to control costs.

Yet Bennet — as well as Sen. Mark Udall — seems fully committed to voting for a bill that transfers more control to politicians and bureaucrats.  Moreover, Bennet seems oblivious to a provision that cuts a special deal for certain health insurance companies right here in Colorado and undermines competition. (more…)

After all the Hickenhoopla dies down, Colorado voters may experience a sick feeling of déjà vu as the Denver mayor and Democrat candidate for governor claims that he’s “business friendly.”

We’ve been down this campaign trail before, just four years ago, when nice guy Bill Ritter bent over backward to ingratiate himself to every gullible business organization in the state.  Only the most ardent Republicans refused to fall for the fallacy of a business-friendly Democrat, and business leaders and editorial boards across the state have been (deservedly) kicking themselves ever since.

So, here we go again. (more…)

Barack Obama may be a far better orator than George W. Bush, but when Bush delivered a message, despite his sometimes mangled syntax, everyone knew what he stood for.  Because Obama’s elocution is superior, only later do people realize they have no idea what he really meant.

If overhauling the nation’s health care system is so urgent that lawmakers can’t be afforded time to read the bills before they vote, why does so much of the legislation not take effect until after the 2012 election? (more…)

Conservatives and libertarians fight about social issues so routinely that we assume the differences are insurmountable. Most everyone on the center-right is dubious of big government, but when it comes to protecting the unborn or preserving the traditional definition of marriage, we are divided as to government’s proper role.

Yet when the threat of big government grows so ominous that it overshadows all else, a “freedom coalition” emerges, as is now happening in response to the reign of Obama, Reid and Pelosi. Inevitably, however, infighting resumes once the threat subsides.

If freedom truly is our unifying principle, then it alone is the non-negotiable standard that can build lasting bonds on the Right without asking anyone to forsake principle. (more…)

It’s natural to sympathize with the parents of Brandon Patch, the 18-year-old baseball pitcher who died after he was hit by a batted ball in 2003.

Sooner or later, sympathy must yield to logic and reason, so when Brandon’s parents sued the bat’s manufacturer, Louisville Slugger, and a jury awarded them $850,000, they contributed to the terribly misguided notion that behind every tragedy lies a lawsuit. (more…)

In an audacious power grab, the Colorado Supreme Court recently embraced, by a 4-3 decision, a judicial doctrine that would relegate the other two branches of government — and the voters — to a perfunctory role.

The high court’s activist majority used Lobato vs. State not only to intrude on the legislature’s constitutional authority to determine funding for public schools; it also self-servingly suggested that no policy decision is off-limits to judicial review. (more…)

Talk about personal responsibility is cheap. Legislating personal responsibility isn’t.  Take the movement to require everyone to purchase government-approved health insurance.

If at first this seems like a reasonable requirement necessary to reduce cost shifting by those who do not pay their own fare, then step back and think again.  The damage caused by such a mandate is far greater than the problem it purports to solve. (more…)

Say what you will about Bill Clinton’s foreign policy shortcomings, but for the most part he had the good sense not to squander Ronald Reagan’s legacy of peace through strength.

By contrast, Barack Obama’s foreign policy seems to be predicated on a boundless faith in his own persuasive powers and the naïve notion that our international antagonists are merely misunderstood. Not since Jimmy Carter has American foreign policy been so obsequious or short-sighted. (more…)