Thirty Years Ago This Week: Rep. Charles Duke, R-Colorado Springs, wrote a scathing editorial attacking the “liberal publication” The Colorado Statesman. Duke’s fury was directed at an Aug. 5 news story subtitled “Bigotry Beneath flag-draped Constitutionalists Crusade” which referred to the Constitutionalists Networking Center’s June conference.

Duke took most umbrage with The Statesman’s coverage of his comment on affirmative action programs.

“Discrimination in a person’s favor is in fact worse than discrimination against that person because of the deception in which it is cloaked,” Duke argued. “Programs such as affirmative action do nothing to create jobs except for government bureaucrats.”

Duke cited the work of Black journalists Walter Williams and Thomas Sowell in his condemnation of welfare and affirmative action programs as only serving to grow and strengthen bureaucracy.

“The person at issue is little more than a commodity to be traded, bought, sold and managed,” Duke wrote. “Any feeling the person may have had of self-worth is absorbed and destroyed by bureaucratic fat.”

Reporter Leslie Jorgensen then wrote a rebuttal in which she said that the term bigotry was not aimed directly at Duke but at the underlying motives of patriots groups.

“Accompanied by his campaign manager Joyce Campbell, he participated in the CNC’s Objective Pursuit Teams — crafting a plan to overthrow the federal government if it fails to meet ultimatums that include exceeding a $6 trillion debt, not abiding by the Constitution and failing to balance the budget within 90 days notice,” Jorgensen wrote.

To clarify, Jorgensen assured readers that every single quote and comment were taken from taped accounts of the CNC convention, a patriots meeting sponsored by the Guardians of American Liberties and from a phone interview with Duke himself.

Jorgensen wrote that several inflammatory remarks from the CNC conference were omitted, including a suggestion by CNC Communications Director Jim Thomas that, “We may want to start another division of our company — and that is building a scaffold and rope to hang our politicians.”

Another highly inflammatory comment that Jorgensen claimed was left out of The Statesman’s coverage was Duke’s chilling warning to U.S. Sen. Hank Brown, “I think that Brown should be careful when he comes back to the state. Most of Colorado is armed … We are trying to convince sheriffs whose side they ought to be on. If push comes to shove, people are ready. People in Colorado would universally reject the presence of U.N. troops.”

Twenty Years Ago: Colorado State Treasurer Mike Coffman told reporters that if a new bi-partisan constitutional measure is signed, cash and trust funds would be off-limits to raids by the state legislature.

“Balancing the budget on the backs of the Colorado families and businesses that pay into state cash funds was wrong two years ago, and it will be wrong in the future. The practice has got to stop, and it has to stop now,” Coffman said.

The previous week a lawsuit had been filed by Denver attorney John Head on behalf of five Colorado taxpayers. The lawsuit alleged that the state legislature had violated Article X, Section 20 of the Colorado Constitution, otherwise known as the Taxpayers Bill of Rights. TABOR’s prohibition of a net tax increase without a statewide vote had been ignored when the state transferred monies over a period of three years from cash funds into the general fund, Head argued for the plaintiffs.

The lawsuit named over 30 funds, which are repositories into which Coloradans and business pay fees for a variety of government services, and the transfers from these funds over three years had totaled more than $442 million.

“Bad fiscal policy isn’t a violation of the constitution, but it’s a still bad fiscal policy,” Coffman argued. “When taxpayers or businesses pay a fee to the state, they should be confident that their dollars are going to providing the service they are paying for.”

Rachael Wright is the author of the Captain Savva Mystery series, with degrees in Political Science and History from Colorado Mesa University, and is a contributing writer to Colorado Politics and The Colorado Springs Gazette.