MADmoms : MyBlogHer Profile

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.