This column first appeared on The Denver Post’s Politics West site on March 31, 2009

Marijuana legalization no laughing matter

By Jessica Peck Corry

While members of the legislature’s Joint Budget Committee joked about marijuana legalization Monday as a way to raise desperately sought state revenue, they should stop laughing in the face of Colorado’s serious economic woes.

According to Tim Hoover’s Denver Post report, Sen. Al White, a Hayden Republican, “jokingly suggested that Coloradans’ stashes are where the cash is,” and that the JBC should sponsor legislation to legalize marijuana and impose a 50 percent tax on it.

According to Hoover, the room burst out in laugher at the idea, with Sen. Moe Keller, a Wheat Ridge Democrat, deadpanning, “Don’t laugh. Don’t laugh. That bill might pass.”

While Keller was kidding, give it a few years and her premonition might actually come true. Already, Colorado voters - as well as voters across the nation - have shown an increasing interest in marijuana legalization.

As I noted on the Post’s editorial page in 2007, “41 percent of all [Colorado] voters supported legalizing marijuana, a number greater than the 40 percent who voted for GOP gubernatorial candidate Bob Beauprez [in 2006]. In all, 636,938 voters wanted marijuana legalized, 11,000 greater than the number who backed Beauprez.” If legalization advocates can swing one more voter out of every ten, they can win.

But perhaps the JBC was just taking a page of the script of President Barack Obama, who has backed off a 2004 U.S. Senate campaign commitment to decriminalization of marijuana, as well as a similar commitment made during his presidential bid last year.

At an online town hall meeting last week, Obama noted, “There was one question that was voted on that ranked fairly high [among participants who submitted questions online] and that was whether legalizing marijuana would improve the economy and job creation. And I don’t know what this says about the online audience,” he quipped.
The audience erupted in laughter, to which Obama responded, “The answer is, no, I don’t think that is a good strategy to grow our economy.”

But in this era of cramped prisons, shrinking state budgets, and a growing troop surge in Afghanistan, others, including California legislators, are realizing the seriousness of the issue and are talking seriously about outright legalization. They are doing so with solid evidence on their side.

According to a 2005 research project conducted by Jeffery Miron, a Harvard economist, and funded by the pro-legalization Marijuana Policy Project, Colorado taxpayers spent $64 million that year in costs associated with marijuana prosecution. In California, the federal Drug Enforcement Agency is estimated to have spent $10 million on raids there alone between 2005 and 2007.

For those legislators who still aren’t convinced of the merits of legalization, perhaps they should actually step outside the Capitol and into the adjacent Civic Center Park, where under prohibition, arrests surrounding marijuana trades are frequent. Walk a few feet further and step into the Denver City & County Building, where courts hear a multitude of cases every week concerning marijuana.

For the substantial investment, taxpayers get no return. Marijuana doesn’t make people violent. It doesn’t make men beat their wives. It may kill a brain cells and make people lazy. But under this logic, let’s ban fast food.

Over the years, I have been a frequent crusader for legalization. My only dog in the fight is my two kids and my checkbook. I live a pretty conservative lifestyle as a pro-life Republican trying to run a household and a small business. I don’t need the government to parent for me, and especially if it means more tax increases to fund incarceration and court costs.

Across the political aisle, marijuana legalization supporters remain split over whether the drug should be legalized outright, or should instead be legalized for the purposes of taxing it and generating more state revenue. Still, one thing remains clear. The time is long overdue for Colorado and the nation to take legalization seriously. The last two decades have proven that the war against marijuana is unwinnable; it’s a distraction from the critical issues we should be focusing on, especially today, when we have real international conflicts that we cannot afford to lose.

Now if only our elected officials could stop their giggling.

Jessica Peck Corry (www.JessicaCorry.com) is a policy analyst at the Independence Institute in Golden, Colo., where she specializes in civil rights, higher education, and property rights.

I couldn’t be prouder of all of the people and ideas that have made Face The State the awesome venue it is today. Keep it up!

Here is what Westword had to say:

Best Political Blog
Face the State
Not so long ago, the conservative Face the State site regularly battled such well-funded liberal blogs as Colorado Media Matters and the Colorado Independent. But whereas CMM recently shut down and the Independent has been hampered by a significant downsizing, Face the State is scrappier than ever.” Brad Jones’s creation churns out fresh, original content at a rapid clip, with some items displaying an actual sense of humor — a rarity in political blogging. No wonder lefties have found it difficult to put many marks on this Face.

INDEPENDENCE INSTITUTE CALLS FOR VOLUNTARY CU PAY CUTS
Golden, Colo.—In a letter sent to University of Colorado President Bruce Benson today, the Independence Institute is calling on the university to implement voluntary pay cuts for its top officials. The request comes as CU faces the need to cut $14 million in spending.

“While CU students have faced back-to-back tuition increases, too many CU administrators are still raking in six-figure salaries and bonuses,” writes Jessica Peck Corry, director of the Independence Institute’s Campus Accountability Project.

According to a public university database (available at https://www.cusys.edu/budget/cusalaries/), 2,077 of the university’s 14,000 system-wide employees are each paid more than $100,000 annually.

A recent investigation by Face The State (www.FaceTheState.com) revealed that CU Denver Chancellor M. Roy Wilson earns a base salary of $468,115, incentive payments of up to $175,000 annually, and an additional $75,000 per year in supplemental pay, meaning he has the potential to make up to $718,115 per year, nearly twice what the university’s other two chancellors salaries.

In the Boulder Chancellor’s office, five employees earn over $100,000, with an average salary of $235,221. “We simply cannot justify this type of compensation when so many Colorado families are hurting,” Corry wrote.

For the 2008-2009 school year, tuition rates for residents undergraduate students went up 9.3 percent at CU-Boulder, 8.5 percent at UC Denver and 7.5 percent at UCCS. At the same time, faculty and staff were awarded salary raises that averaged 4.8 percent.

The Independence Institute’s request follows a Wednesday meeting of Colorado State University administrators, where several individuals, including Assistant Vice President Mark Minor, expressed a willingness to personally take pay cuts as a way to prevent further layoffs.

–www.i2i.org–

This column originally appeared on HumanEvents.com on March 11, 2009

By Jessica Peck Corry

For out-of-work former Wall Street executives looking to rake in seven figure salaries or six figure bonuses, a trip to that leafy college campus just down the way might prove well worth it.

Despite’s the nation’s current economic woes, presidents, chancellors, and other administrators at public higher education institutions are still raking in big bucks. According to a recent investigation by FaceTheState.com, a political news site, University of Colorado-Denver Chancellor Roy Wilson will make up to $718,115 in 2009.

While Wilson’s base salary is a plush $468,115, he can also benefit from annual incentive payments of up to $175,000 and additional supplemental pay of $75,000 to help cover his housing, life insurance, and travel expenses. Wilson is just one of more than 2,000 CU employees making more than $100,000 annually and one of 105 earning more than $300,000.

Wilson’s defenders maintain that his compensation is competitive with others holding similar credentials, including a medical degree, and say that without such a high salary, CU would not be able to attract a top candidate to run the campus, which includes the university’s top-rated medical school.

University spokesman Ken McConnellogue points to a recent survey on medical school chancellor salaries showing that the mean salary is $727,441. “For us to cut a salary by 20 percent would limit the pool of people who we can attract to that job,” he told Face The State.

But in an era when students, their families, and taxpayers are going into six-figure debt largely to fund these six-figure salaries, we should be thinking twice about huge salaries paid to state employees. Over the last decade, the American economy has been fueled by artificially easy access to credit, and higher education has been no exception. Almost all students can tap into federally guaranteed Perkins and Stafford loans long before they ever need to turn to private banks for aid. The consequences are now weighing heavily on both students and taxpayers.

College costs have risen by more than 50 percent for the average student since 1990. The average student graduates with nearly $22,000 in debt, and for parents participating in the federal PLUS loan program, another $16,000 is tacked on. According to a 2007 report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, the cost of obtaining a college degree is more expensive in the U.S. than in any other country in the world, with the exception of Australia.

For students attending CU’s medical school, in-state tuition now runs $25,009 and out-of-state students pay $82,059. That’s per year and before housing and living expenses are even added to the tab. The average graduating medical school student is now more than $100,000 in debt.

The disconnect between university leaders and their students is appalling. Despite the fact that Colorado faces a projected state budget shortfall of nearly $1 billion, forcing CU to cut $8 million this year and another $6 million next, Wilson and his fellow administrators have shown no willingness to cut back on administrative compensation. And Colorado isn’t alone.

According to Business Week, the president of the University of Florida got a nearly $300,000 bonus in 2008, as did the head of Florida State. Similar to Colorado, Florida’s college students are also being forced to foot the bill after Gov. Charlie Crist authorized double-digit tuition increases at all of the state’s public institutions.

A recent Chronicle of Higher Education survey on executive compensation found that the average public university president can plan to bank more than $425,000 a year, with presidents at private universities raking in $100,000 more. The figures don’t include retirement perks, expense accounts, fancy cars or houses. After leaving his role as CU president years ago, E. Gordon Gee now serves as president of Ohio State, where he took home $1,346,225 last year.

In a time when Americans are cutting back in every way possible to make ends meet, America’s public colleges and universities should take the cue and start cutting back on over-compensation of college executives. Anything less is a slap in the face to the nation’s debt-saddled students and the taxpayers who share the bill.

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Jessica Peck Corry (Jessica@i2i.org) is a policy analyst with the Independence Institute in Golden, Colo., where she specializes in land use, higher education, and civil rights policy.”

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From 5280.com:

Count M. Roy Wilson, the chancellor of the University of Colorado at Denver, among those who appear to be weathering the nation’s economic crisis in style. While some university administrators in Colorado face pay cuts and layoffs, Wilson, according to documents obtained by Face the State, is the statewide university system’s highest-paid administrator.

Wilson earns a base salary of $468,115 in a contract that has a variety of other cash perks, giving him the potential to earn up to $718,115 per year. That’s almost twice what the university’s other chancellors make, the website notes.

While CU officials say the pay for Wilson, as well as other administrators, is justified, Jessica Peck Corry, director of the conservative Independence Institute’s Campus Accountability Project, has expressed “outrage” because students increasingly bear the burden of paying for their educations with loans.

In contrast, Colorado State University, facing a $13.1 million shortfall this year, is making cuts, including non-faculty layoffs, according to Fort Collins Now.

By Jessica Peck Corry

This column originally appeared in Human Events on March 3, 2009

On the same day that one of America’s most storied newspapers ran its printing presses for the last time, conservatives took to the steps of Colorado’s state Capitol in Denver Friday to call for an online conservative revolution. They weren’t alone.

The rally, part of a national “Tea Party” day of protest, drew around 300 people. It was the second of three Denver rallies scheduled over a two week period to protest excessive government spending by the Obama administration.

Jon Caldara, a Denver talk show host and president of the Independence Institute, called on attendees to adopt many of the techniques utilized by the left in 2008 to successfully elect Obama.

“We are not good at this,” he told the crowd. “How many of you feel awkward waving signs, thinking ‘I’m not that guy’? But I guarantee you that those guys who dressed up like Indians and threw tea in the Boston Harbor all those years ago felt pretty awkward, too. Today is the beginning of a movement and we’re going to get better at this.”

The protest was organized after CNBC market commentator Rick Santelli went on air to call for a Chicago Tea Party — as a nod to the Boston Tea Party of 1773 which helped jumpstart the Revolutionary War — to condemn the Obama administration’s proposal to subsidize homeowners who purchased risky mortgages. Santelli proclaimed that now is the time to “reward people who could carry the water instead of drink the water. You can’t buy your way into prosperity.”

Across the country, thousands took up Santelli’s call to action. At an Atlanta rally, hundreds came out in driving rain to distribute One Trillion dollar bills with the faces of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. In Tampa, the crowd was smaller but still passionate. About 30 people gathered to dump tea into a river there. And according to news reports, more than 1,000 protested in St. Louis.

In an interview with The Christian Science Monitor, Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, said Friday signified the largest turnout of conservatives since the anti-gun control rallies of the early 1990s.

In Denver, the day was especially poignant. Missing from the event was any reporter from the Rocky Mountain News. Just months shy of celebrating its 150th anniversary, the paper buckled under considerable debt and was forced to publish its last paper Friday. The Rocky’s editorial page, seen as a balancing force to the more liberal Denver Post, will be missed. And while the Post declined to cover the event in its Saturday edition, conservative bloggers peppered the crowd, furiously taking notes and conducting interviews.

Caldara applauded the devotion, noting that organizers had successfully utilized the Internet over just a few days to draw the strong attendance. Referencing the Rocky’s closing, Caldara called on participants to take responsibility for getting a free market message out to the public. More than a dozen popular blogs took up the call, featuring the event on their sites.

“We’ve got to do this because our voice certainly isn’t going to be heard from inside there,” he said, pointing to the Capitol, where Democrats now control both chambers.

With the Obama administration wagering billions on its socialist proposals, Santelli and his allies find themselves in a tough spot where a political victory may mean devastating consequences for future generations already charged with paying today’s debt.

“I want the new administration to win this one,” Santelli told the Chicago Tribune. “We are all Americans. We want to win this one. It’s a question whether spending our children’s money is going to make us win or not, or is it going to take its own time to heal, like a cold going away. And all this money we’re spending isn’t going to get a very good return and when it’s over, we’re going to be in the hole deep.”

But as conventional media, including the Tribune, continues its decline, will the blogosphere be enough to ensure that the free market forces are heard? If Friday is any indication, conservatives are taking a step in the right direction.

Let the revolution begin.

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Jessica Peck Corry (Jessica@i2i.org) is a policy analyst with the Independence Institute in Golden, Colo., where she specializes in land use, higher education, and civil rights policy.”

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