Bush dynasty weighs in on Colorado budget reform

The latest crusader against Colorado budget reform bill SB 228, which passed out of the Senate yesterday on a party-line vote, is none other than Walker Stapleton, who is reportedly angling to become state treasurer in 2010 and who is also George W. Bush’s first cousin (once removed) — although Stapleton makes no mention of that fact on Keep the Cap Colorado, the new anti-SB 228 Web site he launched Tuesday.

At the site, Stapleton admits only that he’s a Colorado “real estate businessman” and an “experienced real estate investor.” He doesn’t say that his other first cousin, Neil Bush, was also at one time a “Colorado real estate businessman,” the one who headed the famously corrupt Silverado Savings & Loan in the 1980s, which went belly up after serving as basically a front company for Neil and his moneybag “Colorado real estate investor” pals Bill Walters and Ken Good.

Nor does Walker, who was named after his famous cousin, mention that he was married (to a woman named Jenna Bertocchi, another Jenna in the family) in Kennebunkport, Maine, three years ago as hundreds of peace protesters marched outside the ceremony held at the Bush-family’s “Walker Point” compound.

If Stapleton’s anti-SB 228 site is any indication, the man is pure Bush. As the “author” of the site, he seems to know nothing personally of SB 228 except that knee-jerk Republicans are supposed to oppose it. He rehashes in bold strokes the exact talking points aired repeatedly and to little effect by the GOP senators who have stood against the bill the past month, and he used the Senate Republican email list to spread news of the launch of the site.

Here’s a taste of all he has to offer:

The endless crusade at the Capitol for ways to grow government and spend your tax dollars marches forward. On March 17, the State Senate approved SB228, a bill that has a singular purpose—unchecked growth of government spending.

Not a word of that paragraph is true, except that SB 228 was approved yesterday. Read it again aloud with a Dubbya-style Texas drawl, though. It sounds better that way.

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