About the MAD Founder
My name is Amy Oliver Cooke. I am first and foremost a wife and mother. My husband and I have a wonderful blended family that includes my three kids and his two. Their ages range from 13 to 29. Confession: I love teenagers! While I am a mom (and a step mom), I am no Mother Teresa. I’m a bit more sarcastic and snarky.
In my professional life I proudly work for the Independence Institute, Colorado’s state-based, free market think tank that has been promoting the principles of liberty, freedom, lower taxes and limited government for more than 25 years. As Director of the Colorado Transparency Project, I get to work with some of the best and brightest people I have ever known. I’ve been at II since 2004.
In 2005, I landed one of the most fun jobs on the planet — a two hour talk radio show on Colorado’s original radio station News Talk 1310. The Amy Oliver Show airs Monday through Friday from 9 to 11 a.m.
As for my education, I graduated with a journalism degree from the University of Missouri-Columbia in 1985. (MIZ-ZOU). I received my graduate degree in American History from the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley in December 2003. Don’t ask me names and dates. I am much better with historiographical theory.
Mothers Against Debt came from a speech I made at the 2009 Colorado 9.12 rally. My goal was to talk as a mom, as a parent and to tell the crowd that massive government spending doesn’t just threaten our liberty, it threatens our children’s. It is the ultimate form of taxation without representation. We spend the money and our kids pay for it. It is time for a paradigm shift. When government and its enablers say, “its for the children,” you better hold on to your kids and your pocketbook. They are looking for both.
I am not an economist and I don’t claim even to play one on radio, but I do know that living beyond our means, whether it’s a family or the federal government, cannot be sustained. Someone has to pay the bill. I understand that some debt is acceptable but certainly not the level we have now, which continues to grow every minute of every day. It’s fiscal child abuse. It has to stop.
Feel free to contact me at amy@i2i.org or send me a message on MAD’s Facebook page.
First I totally agree about the debt getting way out of had. I have one way to help but sure none fo you would want that even though it would help you’re kids. Goverment needs to stop all the tax credits for kids. As a married coulpe with no kids in the lower middle income it burns me up all the people who tell me how much money they got back on taxes and didn’t have to pay. Come on why is it fair for me to pay about $3,500 in taxes a year and people in the same income pay little to nothing. You don’t want you’re kids burdoned with debt and I would like to pay a little less tax and not be burdoned with helping to support you’re kids. The goverment didn’t force you to have kids so why should you pay less tax than I do? Or why should I have to pay for school systems I don’t need my parents paid school taxes when I attended school no reason for me to. The burdon affects more than people than just you’re kids. Lets stop giving tax credits for kids and that will lower the debt for you’re kids. Flame away
May 30th, 2010 at 12:14 amAmy, thanks for creating this site!
RonB said “why should I have to pay for school systems I don’t need my parents paid school taxes when I attended school no reason for me to.” There’s one small, er, major flaw in your logic, Ron. It wasn’t just your parents supporting the school with their tax dollars; it was *all* members of your community, even the childless ones.
If we were facing an overpopulation problem, I might agree that eliminating tax deductions for children would be a good idea. However, the birth rate among U.S. citizens is lower than the replacement rate. (The only reason the U.S. population is growing is immigration — most of it illegal.) The birth rate is this low in *spite* of the fact that government subsidizes breeding (by providing child tax deductions and free K-12 education).
Now to say something *really* politically incorrect. Bright, educated, productive members of society tend to raise children who turn out like themselves. The same is true of felons, dolts, and ne’er-do-wells. If the government is going to do any social engineering through tax policy, it should increase the breeding subsidy for the former, and eliminate it for the latter. (That, of course, will never happen, because it’s the antithesis of the redistribution of wealth for which so many politicians mindlessly strive.)
June 19th, 2010 at 4:05 am[...] About the MAD Founder [...]
July 12th, 2010 at 7:14 pmWhat are you doing and what can I do?
I’m been a vocal non-debt person since the betrayal of the 1986 Gingrich congress failed to reform SS and Medicare system.
Living less and passing on a fiscally sound USA has been my work at home and in business since college.
Heard you mentioned on Mike Rosen.
December 9th, 2010 at 9:35 pm