Colorado Gives 2016 Update

I already explained my misgivings about Colorado Gives and the inefficiency of philanthropy.

I found the Colorado Department of Revenue's Annual Report for 2015.

The dismal results of Colorado Gives 2015 proves my hunch is correct. A very, very small number of people (less than 63,690 Coloradans) gave a measly $28.5 Million (much of that in recurring gifts that would have occurred anyway.)

Census.gov estimates that Colorado has 4.2 million adults 18 and over.  This means about 1.5% of Coloradan adults gave something.

Colorado taxes are a regressive disgrace.  They manage to be even more regressive than the sad nationwide average.  See how your state stacks up.

 To file part-year taxes for Colorado and California, I first calculate my taxes as if I solely resided in CA or CO.  I would pay about 3% more of my gross income to live in CA over CO. But Californians enjoy more legal, environmental and economic protections as well as higher levels of service from government.  If Colorado just followed California's example, we wouldn't have to resort to begging.

During the presidential campaign, one candidate bragged that not paying taxes makes him smart, normalizes tax avoidance.  Furthermore, he also gave virtually nothing to charities.  This normalizes selfishness.  He didn't just normalize it, he celebrated selfishness.

Giving to charity is for chumps under the current system.  Charities (thousand points of light) fills holes in the societal needs dike while states enable wholesale avoidance of responsibility to society with regressive tax codes and low tax rates.

I'm sitting out Colorado Gives.  It's a band-aid as long as Colorado has TABOR (the so-called tax payor bill of rights.)

If you feel like giving, please donate to High Country News.  I like to buy an e-subscription and donate a hard copy to a classroom.

Big Data, Big Planet

I wrote Big Data, Big Planet for UCARConnect explaining what I do to K-12 teachers and high school students.

Climate reconstruction with atmospheric rivers, including the one that flooded one third of Los Angeles in 1938.

The November 2016 issue of UCARConnect is all about Data: The Currency of Science.

Animation from The atmospheric river that caused the Los Angeles flood of 1938.

The unique pain of living in a swing district

If Leo Tolstoy lived in the South Bay, I wonder what he would make of this election?

We've received most of these flyers.

Due to gerrymandering, very few races are really in play. The California 66th Assembly seat in south coastal Los Angeles county is an exception.  This may be the most important Assembly race in California.

Al Muratsuchi (D) won in 2012, helping CA Democrats win the 2/3 super-majority in Sacramento necessary to pass laws in the aftermath of Proposition 13. David Hadley (R) narrowly won in 2014, which ended the super-majority and brought back gridlock. Now they are battling it out in a rematch.

The burden of living in a swing state pretty much sums up our experience living in a swing district within blue California.

We are being stalked at home by phone calls.  We get postcards from Independent Expenditure (IE) groups accusing Hadley for being a Trump surrogate (which he denies) and Al Muratsuchi of protecting pedophile teachers and of voting to repeal Proposition 13 for residential properties (both lies.)

At first, I wondered why we were receiving so many postcards from the Hadley camp (both from the official campaign and also by IEs funded by out of state right-wing billionaires.)  This election season has been a crash course in election tactics.

The postcards with bold fabrications against a Democratic candidate, sent to a home with registered Democrats, is all about suppressing Democratic votes.  If they can sow enough confusion, they hope to dishearten us enough to not bother to vote.

It worked in 2014, when Hadley won by 700 votes by using the exact same lies and tactics.

In 2014, only 40 percent of the 66th Assembly District’s registered voters showed up to the polls, versus 70 percent in 2012. That led to a loss of about 78,000 total votes.

I think that the total disregard for truth--lying about your opponent early and often--is Trump-like. So I do understand the logic of comparing Hadley to Trump.  The two candidates are not equally bad.

#nastywomen and #badhombres, get out and vote!