The Declaration of Independence wasn’t merely an announcement of war against a tyrant. It was the most revolutionary political document ever written.

The Declaration was a landmark in human development, perhaps the landmark of all human history.

For the first time government was no longer affirmed sovereign. The individual was.

That simple idea changed the world.

You rule yourself. Your life belongs to you. Your liberty belongs to you. Your happiness is yours to pursue as you define it. Your property belongs to you.

Government exists not to rule over you, but to secure your rights, to protect you from, well, government.

The grievances

The part of the Declaration rarely quoted during patriotic speeches isn’t the soaring language about liberty. It’s Jefferson’s long list of grievances against King George, the “causes which impel them to the separation.”

Those grievances are worth study. Because they’re back.

Reading them today, I can’t help wondering what our Founders would think of our government today, Colorado’s in particular.

Would they find today’s overlords less oppressive? I doubt it.

Jefferson wrote of the king, “He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.”

Colorado lawmakers and governor just dissolved two-thirds of the elected RTD Board of Directors, replacing them with hand-picked lackeys.

They dissolved a Representative House. The representatives of the people can be troublesome, might be an obstacle to their plans of statewide trolleys. Best to install yes-men.

Swarms of officers

Jefferson complained the king had “erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.”

New offices since Polis became guv alone include the Energy and Carbon Management Commission — created just after voters shot down restriction on oil and gas and on a mission to end drilling (as you might notice in your energy bills). There’s also the Behavioral Health Administration, the Department of Early Childhood, the Prescription Drug Affordability Board, the Office of Gun Violence Prevention and the Just Transition Office.

I could fill the page with new offices.

In the last decade alone, the state has added more than 11,500 more employees, growing 21%.

Swarms of Officers? Indeed.

To “eat out our substance” in the same period the state needed to hire 28% more tax collectors at the Department of Revenue and 25% more form-checkers at the Department of Regulations. You will comply.

Consent of the governed

Jefferson also listed the top grievance: “For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent.”

Really? Do I need to spell this one out?

In Colorado, consent is spelled T-A-B-O-R.

Today, lawmakers simply rename taxes as “fees” so they can avoid consent.

To collect those “fees,” they’ve created bureaucracies with names that sound like they were generated by George Orwell’s artificial intelligence:

Clean Screen Authority. Capitol Parking Authority. Statewide Tolling Authority. Statewide Transportation Enterprise, Statewide Bridge and Tunnel Enterprise.

Then there’s the Healthcare Affordability and Sustainability Enterprise to collect hospital bed taxes “fees.” How about the Clean Transit Enterprise? Or the Community Access Enterprise? Lest we forget the Nonattainment Area Pollution Mitigation Enterprise, to tax every delivery you get and raise your gas tax.

If it sounds confusing enough, maybe you won’t notice it’s taking your money without permission.

By 2023, these fees extract $23 billion a year from Coloradans without voter approval.

Since TABOR became law, state government has collected well more than a quarter-trillion dollars outside its voter-approved tax structure.

Think about that.

Without your consent, government has taken nearly $42,000 for every man, woman and child in Colorado.

For a family of four, that’s almost $170,000. Two-hundred-fifty years ago, taxation without consent like this prompted Americans to dump tea into Boston Harbor and take to arms.

Government fatigue

Jefferson wrote of the king, “He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.”

Colorado has well more than 5,000 governments and special districts.

There is physically no way a citizen could keep up with the legislature, school boards, city councils, county commissions, water districts, transit districts, and the like. Each have their own taxing and regulatory powers to which you must comply.

Hell, the wait at the DMV has fatigued us enough.

What would Jefferson write for a modern Colorado Declaration of Independence?

Jon Caldara is president of Independence Institute, a free market think tank in Denver.

Texas is a Republican red state that isn’t soft on these kinds of criminals. A court in Minnesota, California, Seattle, Oregon, Illinois, New York or other Democrat-controlled blue states might have let them off with community service or even found them not guilty. Don’t be surprised if some left-wing legal organization pays for legal fees to appeal the verdict and the sentencing all the way to SCOTUS. Several other protestors were scheduled to be sentenced on July 1.

Prosecutors said the protestors vandalized vehicles, launched fireworks at the ICE facility, wounded an Alvarado police officer with a firearm and shot at unarmed corrections officers. The thugs were identified as a cell of radical ANTIFA left-wing anarchists who claim to be anti-fascist although they resort to standard fascist tactics in their violent protests.

A preposterous defense

The defense presented by lawyers who represented this bunch was preposterous. As was expected, none of the defendants took to the stand to testify at the trial. Meagan Morris’s attorney, D. Miles Brisette, claimed Meagan went to Alvarado that night expecting a peaceful demonstration and “felt deceived by what unfolded.” Likewise, Zachary Evetts was portrayed by his attorney, Patrick McLain, as a pacifist who also expected a peaceful protest claiming the fireworks were only intended to gain the attention of the (illegal alien) detainees so that they could hear the protestors’ (screamed) words of support. Apparently, this was the collective script of the group’s defense who should be treated like misguided juvies deserving nothing harsher than being grounded for a week or, at worst, sent to a reform school. This innocent-lambs defense is especially incredulous when the perps are ANTIFA thugs who proudly love to bust heads. A department of Homeland Security spokeswoman applauded the stiff sentences as “a win for the rule of law.”

Given its customary liberal bias, the spin in an Associated Press story was sympathetic to the protestors, including quotes from Phillip Hayes, the attorney representing the aforementioned Benjamin Song who was found guilty of attempted murder. Hayes described the protestors as just “a bunch of kids and young adults who really have a big heart and really wanted their voice to be heard. It was never intended that anybody get hurt. It was never intended that any shots would be fired.”

Following the Marxist playbook

Really? So, why did they bring guns? Their real intent was clearly to obstruct the DHS and ICE from doing their jobs which is also the intent of violent mobs that interfere with ICE officers all over the country, especially in Minnesota, under the pretense of social justice and compassion for their wonderful neighbors who just happen to be illegally present in the United States. Baloney! The leaders of this movement and its paid-provocateurs by financiers like George Soros is to “resist” the governance of the Trump administration and advance the open borders and progressive Democrat socialist agenda.

Civil violence is right out of the Marxist handbook of permanent revolution.

The DFW (for Dallas-Fort Worth) Support Committee, providing financial support for the legal defense of the protestors, said the defendants were wrongly being “thrown away for the rest of their lives.” It added, “The egregious sentencing is to send a message to anyone with the same beliefs.” No. These sentences weren’t punishment for the “beliefs” of these criminals. It was for their unlawful “behavior.” And I certainly hope this sends a message discouraging violent criminal action by radical activists and the useful idiots who are duped into following them. The message: “If you commit a crime, you’ll do the time.”

I greatly doubt that any of these criminals will spend the rest of their lives in prison. It’s more than likely that their stiff sentences will be reduced during the appeals process, especially if they come in front of liberal judges. Failing that, the next Democrat in the White House, maybe President AOC, will commute their terms or, even worse, pardon them and throw in the Presidential Medal of Freedom as a bonus.

Longtime KOA radio talk host and columnist for the Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News Mike Rosen now writes for Complete Colorado.

Anyway, I basically can’t read (and, still, I graduated from CU Boulder, so another endorsement of public higher education).

So, for me to recommend a book is like a nun recommending sexy lingerie. How can you take it seriously? But how can it not get you thinking?

As we celebrate Colorado’s 150th birthday, may I strongly suggest you read, or re-read, James Michener’s classic novel “Centennial,” which arguably presents one of the most accurate portraits of the Colorado character.

A Colorado story

I understand this is a sizable ask. The book is massive. Now that phonebooks are extinct, parents put “Centennial” on chairs for their little kids to reach the table.

I listen to books on tape. So, when I saw this book took 50 hours, I almost went back to my comic book (which we now call “graphic novels,” like that is somehow going to impress women).

It’s not that “Centennial” gives an accurate accounting of Colorado’s history, it doesn’t. It’s that it colors a painting of the true Colorado spirit and the bravery of those who built this beautiful, once rugged state.

Michener masterfully shows our dry high-plains as a stage for life and death struggles. He describes the personalities that would say goodbye to all they knew to chance a survival in an untamed, savage and mysterious territory.

If there was one word that encapsulated his story, it’s the same word that encapsulates what made Colorado the destination state for hundreds of years: risk.

To modern generations “risk” is seen as “danger” or synonymous with gambling, a roll of the dice. But that’s not risk.

“Risk” is the quest to manifest a goal over calculated odds. Risk is to employ one’s talents and resources to obtain a potentially unreachable outcome.

Every entrepreneur understands risk, knowing even when you do everything right, failure is still an easy outcome.

Michener’s book captures a Colorado now lost. It’s a Colorado where courageous people risk writing their own biography. To build. To create. To do it their way, or not do it at all.

Mitchner’s book became a sensation about the time the nation was celebrating it’s bicentennial. It’s story, the Colorado story, was a proxy for the American story.

As we look at 150 years of Colorado statehood, we also get to examine how Colorado has changed since “Centennial” was first published in 1974. Growing up in the 1970s in Colorado, I saw that spirit of risk and self-direction.

The state was still drawing oil-and-gas wildcatters, artists of all stripes and even a new tech entrepreneur that dealt in one and zeros, not rocks and cattle.

Mountains remain, culture changes

Now 50 years later, it’s hard to recognize many of the Colorado qualities Michener celebrated.

Colorado no longer beckons people to be left alone. It beckons people who want someone else to manage things. The frontier mentality has given way to the HOA mentality.

Risk has become something government promises to protect us from instead of something free people willingly embrace.

Every new regulation is sold as safety. Every permit is justified as protection. Every entrepreneurial gamble is treated with suspicion until a bureaucrat approves it.

We still have mountains, rivers and those impossible sunsets that make even lifelong Coloradans stop for a moment. The scenery survived.

But scenery alone isn’t the magic.

The magic was always the people willing to bet everything on themselves — men and women who crossed plains, climbed passes, dug mines, started businesses, built ranches and towns, and accepted failure was the price of having the freedom to try.

Michener understood Colorado wasn’t merely a place. It was a state of mind.

Reading “Centennial” today feels less like reading historical fiction and more like opening a time capsule from a state that’s slipping away. It reminds us this state wasn’t made extraordinary by government. It was made extraordinary by people.

It was made extraordinary by people who demanded to be free enough to fail spectacularly or succeed beyond imagination.

As Colorado turns 150, I hope we remember the spirit that created it. Because mountains are forever. A culture isn’t.

And once that spirit is gone, no amount of preservation can bring back the Colorado that Michener knew.

Jon Caldara is president of Independence Institute, a free market think tank in Denver.

It’s an alleged truism that the NBA and NHL playoffs require a different kind of play than in the regular season. I think that’s a falseism. The leagues don’t change the rules for the playoffs, they change the way refs officiate. Openly changing the rules invites public controversy and requires negotiation with the players’ union on the CBA. I’m biased because the Avs and Nuggets are skill teams more than overly physical and dirty ones. The Avs won the Presidents’ Trophy having the best regular season record in the NHL over 82 games. It’s senseless to make teams play under one set of rules in the first six months of the season and different unwritten ones in the last two.

Blowing the whistle

The NBA has the bigger problem. Officiating is more difficult than in other sports. Play is so fast and congested in the paint and under the rim that officials routinely make an educated guess as whether a foul was committed and by whom. That’s unavoidable but hedging the rules isn’t. The playoffs should be the highest-quality version of the sport, not one over emphasizing defense creating inconsistent calls by different refs with subjective judgment on “marginal contact.” There used to be the “one arm, bent elbow” rule allowing a defensive player to place one hand with a bent elbow on an offensive player’s back or place one forearm on his back, maintaining contact only as long as the defender isn’t pushing or dislodging the player. Today, you see a defender bear-hugging an offensive player or wrapping himself around Nikola Jokic in a pretzel hold. That’s wrestling not basketball. In the NHL, the unofficial playoff rules overly tolerate interference penalties, cross-checking, and holding.

In both leagues, management wants more physicality, fewer whistles and more drama. Teams short on superstars exploit that with brute force, putting a target on the superstars’ backs. Serious injuries contributed to both the Avs and Nuggets eliminations in the playoffs. The skating-wounded included Avs superstars Makar and McKinnon. Their 4-0 loss to Vegas in the third round wasn’t the same team that beat the Kings 4-0 and the Wild 4-1.

I’m no pacifist when it comes to rough physical play in the NHL. The fans thrive on that. Fighting is condoned in the rules. For anything short of homicide, you just get two or five minutes in the penalty box. (In other sports you get ejected.) Hit a guy in the head with your stick and you get 2 minutes in the box or a few more if it draws blood. Hockey and football are true contact sports. Basketball isn’t and ought not to be. Compared to the padding and helmets worn by players in the NHL and NFL, NBA players suit up in their underwear.

What’s with the spooning?

It really annoys me to watch the OKC Thunder Alex Caruso’s defensive malpractice spooning Jamal Murray. He’s virtually in Murray’s shorts. It’s a foul as well as obscene. Or the low-skill Isaia Hartenstein blatantly pulling on Jokic’s jersey while holding his arm in a hammer lock. On offense, SGA habitually initiates contact going to the basket then sharply veering sideways into a defender who’s gets unjustly called for blocking. (SGA learned that move form James Harden.) This is a travesty and everyone knows it. Why does the NBA let them and others get away with this stuff? Most fans don’t like it.

The NBA has a flopping penalty but won’t enforce it, leery of the nightly controversy. The NHL, likewise, has an “embellishment” penalty but rarely calls it because its players’ culture disapproves of flopping.

One final note. During the playoffs, networks like ESPN and TNT displaced Altitude’s cable coverage of Avs and Nuggets games. I much prefer Altitude’s local broadcasters. The network guys often prattle on ignoring what’s going on in the game. The courtside interviews with players, conducted by a token female commentator, are worthless with stock questions like, ”How are you going to close the gap in the second half.” With stock answers like, “We need to be more aggressive, play better defense, and hit more 3’s.” Then the networks distractingly run the recorded interview on split screen while play has already started at the beginning of a quarter. Ugh!

Longtime KOA radio talk host and columnist for the Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News Mike Rosen now writes for Complete Colorado.

The Sundance Film Festival is invading my hometown of Boulder early next year. Sundance drew 85,000 attendees last year in Park City, Utah. Boulder’s hotel room inventory is about 2,900.

If you’ve ever wondered what happens when Hollywood’s anti-capitalist elite collide with basic supply and demand, we’re about to find out.

When things don’t go as planned, the planner-class doubles down on its religion: more planning. When restrictions, rules, permits and fees don’t produce the desired outcome, more restrictions, rules, permits and fees are needed.

Sundance is an event for and by well-heeled, artsy, socialist elites. So, Boulder is perfect. Colorado progressives can role-play a modern-day Gertrude Stein offering finger sandwiches at a salon of the country’s professional virtue signalers.

But where will the elite stay?

No room at the inn

I’m guessing Robert DeNiro’s concern for the downtrodden won’t tempt him to bunk at the homeless shelter. Jane Fonda won’t crash with the Women Studies majors in some CU dorm room.

Looking online, I see rooms at the Hotel Boulderado during the film festival list for $10,357 a night, then drop to $279 a night after Sundance.

Fortunately, Hollywood’s A-list can always retreat to Boulder’s luxury accommodations: the Comfort Inn at the very edge of town, with a few beds at over $800 a night. Better hurry. George Clooney and entourage are rumored to be eyeing them.

This is not a problem if attendees who preach the forced sharing of wealth are willing to share a hotel room with 28 other people (yes, that math is correct).

Keep in mind, many hotel rooms have two beds, so that’s fewer than 15 people per bed. You could get that number down even more if lesser celebrities sleep on the floor.

The most enjoyable line from a recent Gazette story: “Boulder’s hotels, meanwhile, have committed to making 70% of their room inventory available during the festival at affordable rates, according to Visit Boulder…. The organization is promoting a ‘host with heart’ approach and has published a guide with suggested prices for property owners.”

Is there anything more precious than the NPR gentry ignoring reality and arbitrarily “suggesting” prices between private parties?

There is something delightfully progressive about believing supply and demand can be defeated with positive thinking and a price guide.

‘Hosts with hearts’

Anyway, the most they suggest the owner of a four-bedroom house rent it for is $15,000 for 11 nights. Making all the homes I found on Airbnb renting for up to $175,000 for 11 nights, well, not exactly “hosts with hearts.”

Might surprise you, but you just can’t rent out your home or even a room on sites like Airbnb in leftist cities without government paperwork. You need a stranger’s permission to have people you choose stay in your own damn house.

Invite your friend to stay for the week? Perfectly legal.

Let him hand you $100 to help cover groceries and utilities? Government paperwork.

Have him buy you dinner every night or give you a Picasso? Back to no problem.

It’s said the city has issued about 600 short-term rental licenses. Not nearly enough for the Sundance rush.

What’s the solution? A new and different permitting scheme, of course.

Enter the fresh-and-improved Festival Lodging Rental License for your place, but only when the city authorizes a “Special Festival Event.” To be a “host with a heart,” the city’s privileged must officially sanction the party your guest might attend.

In the endless meetings of planners poring over spreadsheets and debating how to accommodate Hollywood, did anyone raise a hand and ask, “Maybe we should just end the rental-license requirements and let people do what they want with their homes?”

Mugged by reality

The poetry of all this is when Tinseltown’s “capitalism is evil” crowd comes together to fawn all over each other, it will be in a town that’s overflowing in black-market housing.

When 85,000 festivalgoers arrive looking for 2,900 hotel rooms and some 1,000 legal home rentals, the market will do what markets always do: find a way.

The irony is delicious. A festival filled with people who spend their lives warning us about the evils of capitalism may only function because of an underground economy.

Nothing says “capitalism is evil” quite like desperately searching Craigslist for a place to sleep.

Jon Caldara is president of Independence Institute, a free market think tank in Denver.

On the day I turned 18, even before I bought my first legal 3.2 beer (remember 3.2 beer?), I went to the courthouse and registered to vote (remember registering to vote?). I joined the Republican Party.

Even at 18, I knew not affiliating with a party diluted the power of my vote.

Sure, everyone gets to vote in November. But one vote among millions isn’t nearly as powerful as a vote in a primary.

Back then, unaffiliated voters were locked out of primaries. Republicans voted in Republican primaries, Democrats in Democratic primaries.

The smaller the electorate, the more your vote mattered.

As a Republican primary voter, my ballot was one of only a couple hundred thousand. As a delegate to the Republican state assembly, my vote was one of only a few thousand. At the county assembly it was one of hundreds. At my neighborhood caucus, I was one of fewer than 10.

At one point, my vote represented more than 10% of all votes cast. That’s leverage.

Rise of the unaffiliateds

Then came Proposition 108 in 2016, which I voted against.

Now those smug, sanctimonious “independents” get both a Republican and Democratic primary ballot and can choose which one to return.

Yet my desire to leverage my vote never changed. So I became unaffiliated.

And like most Colorado voters, I never looked back.

We unaffiliateds get to vote in either primary. This year I’ve decided to return a Democratic ballot.

To my fellow independents, isn’t it nice having choices? Those poor schmucks still clinging to the romance of party affiliation, shackled to organizations that long ago wandered past the hey-guys-let’s-not-get-crazy zone, don’t have the freedom we do.

The still-affiliated can enjoy the purity of party membership while checking voicemail on their flip-phone, insulting Democrats by fax and waiting for next week’s TV Guide to arrive.

To those still registered with a party, investing in Beanie Babies while wondering where the local Radio Shack moved, let me explain why I left.

First, I live in the People’s Republic of Boulder.

If I were still a Republican, I’d have almost no choices in the primary election. Only three of the 15 races on my Republican ballot are contested. Eight races have no candidate at all.

No Republicans in Boulder has finally trickled down to no Republicans running for office.

And unless you’re in complete denial, which has become a permanent condition among many Colorado Republicans, you know absolutely none of the Republican candidates on my Boulder ballot are going to win in November.

That includes, sadly, Barbara Kirkmeyer, the only sane Republican running for governor.

Now, if you live in a conservative part of the state where there are meaningful local races and candidates who can actually win, maybe returning a Republican ballot makes sense.

But here’s the point: you don’t have to be a Republican to do that anymore.

The only temptation I have to return a Republican ballot is to help Kirkmeyer win the nomination.

Yes, she’ll lose to the Democratic nominee in November. Those in denial don’t need to flood my inbox explaining how me saying so will somehow cause that loss — message already received.

But Barbara won’t embarrass the party. She won’t frighten suburban voters. And marginally speaking, she’d help Gabe Evans and a handful of legislative candidates who actually have a shot.

Primaries decide elections

I’ve weighed that consideration against another reality.

The winners of the Democratic primaries for governor and attorney general will almost certainly be the winners in November.

The primary is the election.

Democrats should probably leave their party, too. Why voluntarily surrender half your primary choices?

Why chain yourself to a party label when Colorado law now lets you shop both aisles?

The only remaining reason to stay registered with a party is if you actively participate in caucuses and assemblies and want to help place candidates on the primary ballot without petitioning on.

If you’re registered with a party but never attend caucuses, you’re simply limiting your options under the current rules.

Me, I’m returning a Democratic ballot. Not because I’m a Democrat. But because that’s where my vote has the most influence.

And the prospect of a Colorado run by Democratic Socialists Phil Weiser and Jena Griswold is terrifying enough to make me spend it there.

Jon Caldara is president of Independence Institute, a free market think tank in Denver.

Colorado legislators already get automatic inflation raises. You know, just like your job (I’m assuming the sarcasm bled through that one).

No private-sector worker has that kind of protection forever. Even union jobs eventually meet reality. Ask Spirit Airlines employees.

And that’s the problem.

What happens when lawmakers no longer depend on the private sector for most of their livelihood? They stop understanding the people they supposedly represent. They get disconnected.

And has Colorado ever had more of a disconnected team of politicians?

Part-timers

It wasn’t that long ago legislators made around $17,000 for their 120 days of meddling under the Gold Dome. The idea was simple: take a few months away from your regular job to represent your community.

Back then, lawmakers lived in the same economy as the rest of us because they worked in it.

Today legislators make more than $50,000 for their 120-day session, plus a hefty per diem ranging from $99 to $193 a day. That means many are pulling in at least $500 a day to pass laws making Colorado steadily less affordable.

But can you really put a price on outlawing ketchup packets after giving illegal immigrants Medicaid during a budget crisis?

And when legislators say they work year-round, understand the translation. They call it citizen “engagement.” The rest of us call it campaigning. Paying them our tax dollars to do so is the ultimate pro-incumbent scam.

Naturally, all people want more money. Politicians are no different. They just have more power than you do.

Now, they couldn’t just openly vote themselves a raise. That looks bad. Elections, optics — all that nonsense. Also, that would be direct, transparent and honest. They wouldn’t know how to do it.

The commission

So they did what politicians always do when they want a predetermined outcome without their fingerprints. They created a commission.

I know. I served on it. The then House minority leader is a friend and pressured me to be on it. Then she quit the legislature to save her own sanity (I’ll get even with you, Rose Pugliese! Payback is a b****, lady).

The Independent State Elected Official Compensation Commission — how Soviet sounding can you get? Along with the Senate minority appointee, we were basically the only two members who thought maybe performance should factor into compensation.

Tiny detail: the commission was supposedly making “recommendations.” Except they really weren’t recommendations at all.

Recommendations are given to people who later decide how to act on something. But the law creating our little salary-washing operation was designed so if the legislature did absolutely nothing, our “recommendations” automatically became law.

That’s the game — no “action” required.

Create a commission. Fill it with people who will give you what you want; in this case to recommend raises. Structure the law so lawmakers don’t have to vote for the raises. Then let “taking no action” become the action.

If you’re getting flashbacks to “The Sting,” that’s understandable.

My idea was we recommend the legislature cut their legislative session from 120 days to 90 days, but keep their salary the same. That would be a huge raise per day worked and free up another month a year to make money in the real, like their constituents.

Lots of states have 90-day sessions or less, and some, like Texas, have 90-day every other year.

The commission dismissed my idea.

Another member proposed tying some portion of compensation to state performance. Not exactly commission sales, but at least some accountability for affordability, economic growth, or fiscal stability. Not quite working on commission, but definitely a bonus structure.

That idea didn’t fly either.

Back-door pay raise

Instead, the commission embraced government’s oldest salary justification: “Other governments are doing it.”

So beyond their automatic inflation increases, legislators now get another 6% raise they never had to publicly approve.

The next governor gets an 11% bump.

The state treasurer gets 28% more.

And the attorney general gets a staggering 45% increase.

While we sit in a budget shortfall of their own “hey let’s put everyone including illegals on Medicaid” making, they get rewarded for it. So if you were giving them your annual employee review based on performance, would they get this raise?

Jon Caldara is president of Independence Institute, a free market think tank in Denver.

As reported by Complete Colorado, the prior week saw Polis take his veto pen to a half-dozen other bills, including a highly contentious effort by his fellow Democrats to unwind Colorado’s longstanding two-vote process for private sector unionization.

The latest batch of vetoed bills ranged from limiting what small businesses pay in “swipe fees,” to whether your Pad Thai comes with an unsolicited plastic fork, to suing federal immigration agents in state court, among other issues.

Latest vetoes

Start with Senate Bill 134, which among other things barred credit card companies from charging transaction fees on the amount of sales taxes charged. House Majority Leader Monica Duran called it a fight against Wall Street banks lining their pockets at the expense of Colorado’s small businesses. Polis called it legally risky, potentially unimplementable, and probably a job better left to the federal government. The Electronic Payments Coalition, representing the banks and credit card networks, unsurprisingly called the veto a prudent and responsible decision.

Then there was Senate Bill 184, which would have expanded the types of cancer covered under workers’ compensation for firefighters. Fire chiefs and local governments asked Polis to kill it, arguing it would strain the Colorado Firefighter Trust. the bill also excluded several hundred state-employed firefighters, which bill sponsors essentially admitted was intended to avoid a fiscal note in a belt-tightening budget year.

On the surveillance pricing front, House Bill 1210 would have stopped companies from using personal data gleaned from online activity to set individualized prices and wages. Polis said he agreed with the concept, but found the bill too broad, adding that an Artificial Intelligence disclosure bill he recently signed already handles the problem.

House Bill 1236, an arbitration reform bill, would have given consumers more recourse when the fine print of a terms-of-service agreement signs away their right to go to court over disputes, but which Polis determined was too vague and potentially expensive. “Making it harder to use arbitration will push more cases into litigation, raising costs, adding delays, and increasing uncertainty for Colorado consumers, workers, and businesses alike,” Polis wrote in his veto letter. He encouraged the sponsors to try again next year, which would push the issue off into the hands of Colorado’s next governor.

Senate Bill 146 would have required restaurants to stop automatically handing out plastic utensils and condiment packets unless a customer asks. Denver and Breckenridge already have similar rules, which Polis noted is exactly the point — local governments can handle it, and the state shouldn’t be in the business of mandating what goes in your takeout bag.

And finally, Senate Bill 005, which would have let Coloradans sue Immigration and Customs Adminsitration (ICE) agents in state court for civil rights violations. Polis said he liked the idea in theory but found the bill too narrow, as it only covered civil immigration enforcement. “This bill doesn’t apply to any other context besides civil immigration enforcement – including rights violations in protests, elections, prisons, or the workplace,” said Polis. “For example, even in the narrow context of immigration, the bill doesn’t cover violations of constitutional rights during criminal investigations in immigration.”

A broader version, Senate Bill 176, was floated in the legislature but died when several Democrats joined Republicans to kill it before it ever reached the governor’s desk.

The deadline for Gov. Polis to sign or veto legislation from the 2026 session passed on June 2.

President John F. Kennedy was a moderate Democrat in 1961 when southern Democrats were conservative. Even Bill Clinton was a moderate Democrat president compared to the party’s liberals in Congress during his presidency. The few truly moderate Democrats that still survive in Congress these days are overwhelmed and cancelled by the legion of radical left-wingers that have taken over the party.

One measure of that is the size and influence of the Democrats’ Progressive Caucus in the House that numbers 100 left-wing zealots like Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, AOC, Pramila Jayapal, Maxine Waters and even Bernie Sanders (the lone Senator). It’s total membership accounts for 47% of the 212 Democrat members of the House. By contrast, the Republican Freedom Caucus has only 40 members that account for just 18% of the 219 Republican members in the House. They can stir the pot and block some measures but don’t dominate the party. True, the Freedom Caucus has a handful of strident right wingers like former members Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz, but most are mainstream conservatives like Jim Jordan and former member Ron De Sanitis.

In Colorado, radical Progressive Democrats dominate the Denver city council and the state legislature. Although unaffiliated voters outnumber registered Democrats and Republicans combined, most are not really ”independents” or moderates. If a close election turns on swing voters, most of Colorado’s unaffiliated don’t vote for Republicans; about two-thirds of them routinely vote for Democrats.

Precisely where the political center resides is subjective. But using the JFK and Bill Clinton examples cited above, Democrats have obviously moved much farther to a radical leftist extreme than Republicans have on the right since the JFK and Clinton presidencies. Socialism, now the Democrats’ preferred economic model for our country, wasn’t even respectable for the American mainstream back then. And it still isn’t to anyone who understands political economics, Marxism, and world history.

The word “moderate” is a multifaceted one, a term that modifies degrees of something tangible. As an adjective, you can be a moderate conservative rather than a staunch one. As an adverb, you can eat moderately rather than gorging yourself. As a noun, a moderator is a neutral party standing between two advocates in a debate. That’s fine in a debate but as a human being with the gift of reason, as C.S. Lewis observed, “You can’t be a good egg all your life. Sooner or later, you have to hatch or rot.” When a politician calls himself a moderate, it has no meaning in the realm of ideas. Moderation isn’t a personal philosophy or ideology. It’s not a belief, it’s a style. Moderates don’t innovate. They’re political brokers, attaching themselves to other people’s ideas.

It’s good to know a politician’s stance on particular issues but I care more about his values and basic beliefs. Circumstances, details, and issues change. When they do, he’ll make decisions on the basis of his convictions. If he has none, he’ll act on other factors like opinion polls, getting reelected, or loyalty to special interests. How would a simply moderate politician resolve Iran’s goal of “death to America?” Split the difference and settle for the death of just half of America?”

Edmond Burke told his constituents in Bristol, England, that on matters of great importance he’d act on his beliefs, not on their dictates. If they disapprove of his beliefs, they should vote him out. As a member of Parliament, he stood as their representative not their delegate, who’s a puppet on a string. It’s a vital distinction and the difference between a statesman and a politician.

Donald Trump certainly isn’t moderate and defies any simple analysis of right or left. He’s a unicorn. I doubt he has a consistent ideology. He’s committed, instinctive, transactional, impulsive, and meteoric. But he has an agenda that I largely agree with and it’s far better than that of the Democrats.

Members of our armed forces are forbidden to unionize, collectively bargain, or strike for obvious national security reasons. In 1981, President Reagan declared a strike of unionized air traffic controllers illegal, gave them 48 hours to return to work, fired 11,000 who didn’t, and decertified the union. In 1937, President Roosevelt informed the president of the National Federation of Federal Employees that strikes by government workers are unacceptable because their employer is “the whole people” and “a strike of public employees manifests nothing less than an intent to prevent or obstruct the operations of government until their demands are met.”

The Sheridan teachers did have a legal right to strike, but not a morally justifiable one seriously disrupting the lives of innocent schoolchildren and their parents, holding them hostage to the union’s demands. When a grocery union strikes, customers can do business elsewhere. However, teachers are government employees within a school district that has a monopoly on publicly-funded education. And unlike private sector employers, Colorado school boards can refuse to allow a union. In 2012, a new Republican majority on the Douglas County School Board decertified its teacher union when the collective-bargaining agreement expired. (A new Democrat majority on the DougCo school board will likely welcome the union back with open arms.)

That’s too bad. The general quality of public education in the U.S., frankly, stinks. The proficiency of K-12 students in reading, writing, math, and basic academics is at disgracefully low levels. Instruction in history and social studies is overwhelmed by leftist indoctrination. Grade inflation deceives parents into imagining their underperforming kids are doing fine. The biggest obstacles to education reform are the National Education Association, the nation’s largest and most powerful labor union, and its lesser cousin, the American Federation of Teachers both joined at the hip with the Democrat party. The unions shower Democrats with campaign contributions and deliver the votes of their members to elect school boards and Democrat politicians at every level of government, all of whom return the favor by doing the bidding of the unions. This politically corrupt partnership assures us “it’s all for the kids.” Sure, it is.

By their official names, the NEA masquerades as an “association” and the AFT as a “federation.” That’s semantical BS. They’re both ruthless labor unions with militant leadership, and their local affiliates, the CEA and AFT Colorado, are just as bad. Their overriding interest is the welfare of their members; students, parents, and taxpayers, be damned. Unions hate competition, especially within their membership. Which is why union collective bargaining agreements insist that all teachers be paid the same based on their years of service rather than individual merit. Consequently, the best teachers are underpaid and the worst ones overpaid. This treats teachers like unskilled workers on an assembly line, rather than professionals.

Teacher unions abhor competition from private schools. That’s why they adamantly oppose school choice that lets parents transfer the funds allocated for their kids in public schools to the private school of their choice. The school choice movement is spreading like wildfire across the country. In the face of teacher union opposition, here, it’s going nowhere in Colorado’s Democrat-controlled legislature.

Claims that teachers are impoverished are exaggerated and misleading. Aspiring teachers know this field isn’t the highest paying, but many have a calling for the profession, nonetheless. 75% of teachers are women, most get married and will likely live well on two incomes along with a bunch of non-monetary benefits: The school work-year is only 186 days compared to the typical private-sector work-year of 260 days with only two weeks of vacation and 10 days off for holidays. Teachers get the summer off plus spring break, winer break, fall break, mental health days, planning days, and more. Leisure has great value, as does job security; firing a teacher for poor performance is almost impossible.

Starting salary in Denver Public Schools is $57,666; the maximum salary is $102,340 (with a master’s degree bonus), and these levels rise with each new union contract. Individual pay increases automatically on a 20-step schedule over one’s career and is supplemented with an annual cost-of-living adjustment (COLA). Instead of Social Security, teachers are on the government-worker PERA retirement system which is far better. A teacher retiring after 40 years gets about a $100,000 annual pension, also supplemented with a yearly COLA. Not too bad, huh?

I swear, I want to write about literally anything else — aliens, sports, lab-grown meat, Bigfoot opening a vape shop in Pueblo.

But Colorado’s legislature has never been more abusive to the citizenry, or hypocritical.

The kings of Colorado

To save time, I won’t rehash the endless “No Kings,” “Trump is destroying democracy,” “our sacred duty is protecting democracy, so be happy you have us” self-promotion constantly ejaculated by Colorado’s ruling class.

But, for the sake of argument, let’s pretend every word of it is true. Let’s assume President Donald Trump wakes every morning and convenes a joint special-forces meeting to steal democracy in Colorado.

If democracy is truly hanging by a thread, then surely Colorado’s Democrat majority is heroically defending it. I mean, they say that’s their job one, next to banning ketchup packets (Senate Bill 146, seriously).

Which leaves me confused.

Because from my tiny little “just-a-citizen” brain perspective, they seem to spend an awful lot of time removing voters’ power, hiding meetings, dodging taxpayer consent and nullifying ballot initiatives.

Maybe I’m missing the advanced theory of democracy taught only in elite government seminars and overpriced Aspen retreats.

Take Senate Bill 150. It strips away two-thirds of RTD’s publicly elected board seats and replaces them with appointees.

Silly me. I thought democracy involved electing people.

But apparently true democracy is when insiders choose insiders to protect the public from the dangerous unpredictability of… the public.

Then there’s House Bill 1326, which exempts the all-powerful Public Utilities Commission from open meetings laws.

Again, I’m sure there’s a sophisticated democracy-enhancing explanation for this.

Perhaps democracy works best when the public cannot actually watch government decisions being made. Sort of a “trust us you peasants” model of self-government.

House Bill 1418 puts a “fee” on games young people play online.

Now, if it walks like a tax, quacks like a tax and drains your wallet like a tax, a normal person might call it a tax. But by labeling it a “fee,” lawmakers can dodge asking voters for permission.

Which is convenient. Because asking permission from citizens can really slow down democracy.

Even more amazing, this fee appears large enough that under existing law it should require voter approval anyway. Yet lawmakers are still trying to skip the vote.

Apparently democracy is strongest when elections are treated as optional.

Truth is optional

Then there’s Senate Bill 135, which takes your TABOR refunds. At least this one goes to the ballot. But the ballot language will say the money goes to education.

In reality, only a small fraction actually does.

Maybe I’m old fashioned, but using misleading ballot language to convince voters to surrender their money feels less like defending democracy and more like a used car salesman turning back the odometer on a lemon.

Now comes the cherry on top, House Bill 1430, filed in the final chaotic moments of the session. Its purpose is beautifully simple: invalidate a citizen initiative that might appear on the ballot this fall. Kill what voters might vote for before they vote on it.

I always believed democracy meant if voters approve something at the ballot box, government respects the outcome. Isn’t that what the anger against Trump and Tina Peters is all about?

Here’s the backstory: Colorado used to dedicate sales tax revenue from automobile parts and accessories to roads. Which honestly seems reasonable, given roads are where cars generally go (Man, if I could still get away with a drunk driving joke, this would be a perfect spot).

But the legislature ended that sensible funding stream. We don’t really do road funding anymore. I don’t need to convince you of that. Instead, we currently do incentives for front-end alignment shops.

Now there’s a potential citizen initiative that might restore that road-funding mechanism. Maybe it makes the ballot. Maybe voters approve it. Maybe they don’t.

That’s how democracy is supposed to work.

But HB-1430 essentially says, “That’s cute. Your vote still won’t matter.”

If voters approve returning the road funding, with 1430 lawmakers will reduce road funding by the exact same amount.

Thankfully, Colorado is governed by people who understand democracy far better than voters do.

Thank God Colorado’s one-party rulers are here to save democracy from the voters.

Jon Caldara is president of Independence Institute, a free market think tank in Denver.

Tytler further observed, “The average of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 hundred years. These nations have progressed through this sequence: From bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to great courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to complacency; from complacency to apathy; from apathy to dependence; from dependence back again to bondage.”

Voting in largesse

In this, America’s 250th year, we’ve beaten the average, but this sequence has a spooky resemblance to our trajectory and offers a dire warning. Our founders had the wisdom and foresight to craft a constitution designed to protect individual liberty and limit government. Government is necessary, but government isn’t society. It’s a subset of society and subservient to the people, it’s not their master or their mother.

The American Dream isn’t winning the Powerball lottery. That’s just a lucky windfall. It’s about the opportunity individuals have in this country to achieve success and even greatness through ingenuity, hard work, and personal responsibility. As government at all levels has expanded, the American dream has decayed into the American entitlement, with government assuming the role of supreme benefactor — “sharing the wealth,” as President Obama put it — with punitive income taxes on productive taxpayers redistributed to net tax receivers. When the number of net tax receivers exceeds that of taxpayers, we’re on the road to Tytler’s prophesy. Government policies should encourage the expansion of societal wealth, not discourage it in the name of compassion and “social justice” that rewards dependency and punishes effort and achievement.

Total government spending at all levels in our welfare state is now 46% of GDP, the measure of our economy. Government compassion and charity are fine up to a point. It becomes counterproductive if there’s no limiting principle. The needs of net tax receivers are inevitably surpassed by their wants.

What the federal government calls “payments for individuals” — Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and a cornucopia of so-called welfare “entitlement” programs — now consumes more than 70% of all federal spending compared to 26% in 1960, leading to endless budget deficits and the current national debt of $39 trillion. The top one percent of taxpayers already pays 40% of total federal individual income taxes while the bottom 50% pays just 3%, which is greatly exceeded by the cost of government handouts they receive. Soaking the rich can’t balance the budget, even drowning them won’t do it.

Yes, Americans have earned their Social Security benefits, but the system is on the brink of insolvency. It’s been an intergenerational transfer of income with taxes paid by current workers shifted to current recipients. But benefits have been expanded and increasing life expectancy and lower birth rates have dropped the ratio of workers per beneficiary from 16:1 in 1950 to barely 2:1 today.

Democrats threaten democracy

Republicans in Congress are concerned about all this, but the public isn’t. Attempts to reform these programs are politically hazardous. Former Speaker of the House Paul Ryan’s (R-Wisconsin) courageous but futile efforts at entitlement reform prematurely ended his political career in 2019, at the age of 48. Democrats aren’t concerned and have no limiting principle on government spending and taxation on the way to creating their socialist paradise.

During the Covid pandemic the feds ran massive budget deficits to flood state governments with money. This is standard Keynesian economics to head off a recession by creating artificial monetary demand unattached to productivity that invariably leads to a future inflationary spike, as we saw.

In Colorado, especially Denver, where progressive Democrats have total government control, they became addicted to that temporary binge and made it their new permanent spending level causing huge budget deficits they intend to fill by gutting TABOR and raising taxes. Of course, “soaking the rich” is a key ingredient. Common sense and economic reality dictate an obvious alternative remedy. Duh: prioritize spending and cut it back to a manageable level. Instead, Colorado Democrats are foolishly repeating the mistakes of California, New York, and Illinois, which have driven businesses and upper-income taxpayers to red states like Florida and Texas.

Destructive progressive ideology reinforces Professor Tytler’s explanation of the death of democracies. Ironically, the true danger to democracy isn’t Donald Trump, it’s Democrats.

Longtime KOA radio talk host and columnist for the Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News Mike Rosen now writes for Complete Colorado.

In Colorado, a government for, by, and of the people is a fib.

We lowly citizens no longer have much of a say in altering our own state constitution. Even though that seems to violate the whole meaning of our constitution in the first place.

We the people

Like the US Constitution, Colorado’s constitution contains a Bill of Rights making clear we are the ones who empower the state government, not the other way around.

Check out the first two of these rights:

First — All political power is vested in and derived from the people; all government, of right, originates from the people…

Second — The people of this state have the sole and exclusive right of governing themselves, as a free, sovereign and independent state; and to alter and abolish their constitution…

Did you catch that? We the people have the sole and exclusive right to alter our constitution. It used to be true, too.

We used to alter our constitution through the initiative and referendum process.

Without that process, we would not have limits on governmental power. Laws reining in the legislature could never pass a vote by those same politicians. They’d never vote for open meetings laws, term limits, the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, ethics laws, and so much more.

Recently, when the legislature arrogantly exempted themselves from open meetings laws, it started a chain reaction I’ve never witnessed in all my decades in politics.

Independence Institute, which I run, helped bring together nearly 50 highly diverse organizations that are usually at each other’s throats. We all shared a common concern: government in Colorado is turning opaque.

Open records are getting harder to access, open meetings are closing. The “people’s” work is being hidden from the people.

And when I say organizations from all over the political spectrum worked together, I’m not exaggerating: Independence Institute, the ACLU, Heidi Ganahl’s conservative Rocky Mountain Voice, the progressive Colorado Times Recorder, Colorado Public Radio, League of Women Voters, Colorado Press Association, Colorado Broadcasters Association, Common Cause, Colorado Black Women for Action, and many, many more.

‘Right to Know’ denied

Over a year-and-a-half of work we crafted a constitutional reform based on what many other states already have, called “Right to Know.” It’s simple: a fundamental right for the people to access public records and government deliberations, with reasonable exceptions.

But you won’t see this proposed amendment on your fall ballot.

The normally sober state Title Board voted 2–1 to block it. The appointees of Secretary of State Jena Griswold and Attorney General Phil Weiser voted against you being able to vote on governmental transparency.

Were they ordered to do so? I’ll let others speculate.

Their argument was that your “right to know” the affairs of government isn’t a single subject, and only “single subjects” may go to the ballot.

Legislators’ bills must also have a single subject. The difference is they get to decide for themselveswhether a bill qualifies. By contrast, we “the people” must get permission from an unelected board. A set of rules for them; a different set for us.

The powerful Title Board said our amendment was too broad.

I countered that the state constitution is supposed to contain broad amendments. That didn’t matter.

Our team pointed to existing rights guaranteed by Colorado’s constitution, like freedom of speech, religion and the right to keep and bear arms. I asked if we were bringing one of those rights as a citizen initiative today, would it pass “single subject” muster as they now interpret it?

They essentially said no.

By their interpretation, such basic rights as freedom of speech or religion might be too broad and vague to be considered a single subject.

We considered appealing the Title Board’s bizarre decision to the Colorado Supreme Court, but on the advice of lawyers from across the political spectrum, we decided not to.

The high court has shown little interest in expanding the public’s right to know what’s going on in their judicial branch.

So now, hiding behind the “single subject” rule, altering our constitution to include fundamental rights — like speech, religion, or even a right to know the affairs of government — can be denied to the very people who are supposed to be the government.

Some things you can’t make up.

Jon Caldara is president of Independence Institute, a free market think tank in Denver.

As previously reported by Complete Colorado, the Front Range Passenger Rail, recently named CoCo, short for Colorado Connector, has been in the works since 2021. The plan is to have an up and running passenger rail system operating from Fort Collins to Pueblo by 2029.

The current special taxing district is the largest in the state, comprised of 13 counties along the I-25 corridor. All of which are highly likely to be asked for 0.5% sales tax hike this November to fund the project.

Senate Bill 26-172 dramatically changes these boundaries, dropping about 40% of the existing special district population. Rather than incorporating every county along I-25 between Wyoming and New Mexico, the proposed legislation includes taxing sweet spots along the rail line.

“Of the scenarios that we explored, [this] has some of the highest, but not the highest, tax base, to be able to pay for what we’re proposing to pay for while keeping the tax rate relatively low,” Sal Pace, general manager of the taxing district, said to lawmakers.

The new district would include 30 municipalities and would allow others to opt in upon voter approval. The bill also allows incorporated areas to create subdistricts to ask residents to further increase taxes as they see fit.

Conservative communities excluded

While sponsors claim the redrawing was centered around areas in which 20% or more of the population live within a five-mile radius of the planned stations, the bill notably cuts out more conservative communities including Greeley, Lonetree, Monument, and Castle Rock.

“The railroad only has so many options as to where it can go south of the city, if that’s the case, why are you including Sterling Ranch and tiny places and not including large areas that’ll be served like Castle Rock and Lone Tree,” Joshua Sharf, senior fellow in fiscal policy with Independence Institute* told Complete Colorado. “If you’re going through the trouble of naming specific municipalities why are you leaving out large population centers?”

SB-172 was approved by the Senate Transportation and Energy Committee on April 27. Three amendments were made to the bill, including the removal of Northglenn from the taxing district after Democrat Sen. Kyle Mullica requested the removal on behalf of the Northglenn city government.

Randal O’Toole, director of transportation policy at Independence Institute, predicts this rail line, like many others, will end up needing yet more money while pushing its completion date.

“Front Range Rail is not going to relieve traffic congestion. It is not going to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It is going to be a huge money sink, costing a lot more than projected, and it probably won’t operate until long after projected,” O’Toole told Complete Colorado, “Almost no rail passenger project in the last 60 years was done on time or under the originally projected cost; cost overruns of 50 to 100 percent are typical.”

The bill was approved 8-1 with GOP Sen. Mark Baisley being the sole no vote. It will now go to the Senate Appropriations Committee in the coming weeks.

* Independence Institute is publisher of Complete Colorado

By state law, the CPW commission contains 13 members, 11 of which are appointed by the governor and approved by the Senate. The remaining two members include the executive director of the Department of Natural Resources, and the Colorado Agriculture Commissioner.

Frances Blayney, co-owner of a fly-fishing business in Colorado Springs, was approved by the committee unanimously to represent outfitters on the commission, but two others were denied.

Thumbs down

Chris Sichko, a Boulder resident and research economist who has worked with the Department of Agriculture, was shot down by the committee on a 3-4 vote.

Tapped to represent sportsman on the commission, Sichko claims he actively participates in small game bow hunting and fishing, but had no support from any Colorado sportsman groups, and has no experience with big game hunting,

“I just don’t think we should have somebody filling the sportsman’s seat that has not garnered any support from the sportsman community and doesn’t have the experience to recognize CPW’s funding source from the sportsman community,” Committee Chair Sen. Dylan Roberts said at the meeting.

Hunting and fishing licenses make up 58% of CPW funding, and with 12 other applicants with big game hunting experience, the commission turned Sichko away.

John Emerick received the most criticism from the committee, voted down 2-5. A retired environmental biology professor, Emerick has a background in environmental and anti-hunting activism and was appointed to the at-large seat in July 2025.

Emerick was the Treasurer for Colorado Wild a wolf advocacy group who heavily supported the forced reintroduction measure. He also voted for Proposition 127, the mountain lion hunting ban, that ultimately failed at the ballot box.

Emerick defended his positions, saying he was appointed to this seat based on his experience and passion. “I’m not an agriculturalist, I’m not a hunter, but I certainly use our parks. ”

Colorado Wildlife Conservation Project wrote a letter the committee, which included 15 sportsman organizations and former CPW staff, urging the senators to “advance appointments that fully meet statutory requirements, avoid conflicts of interest, and rebuild trust with the diverse constituencies that depend on CPW.”

“You have a history of very specific activism, which is absolutely your right, and you seem to have done a good job in that space,” Sen Roberts added. “But given the responsibility that the commission has, I do not think you are qualified or prepared or suited to serve in the at-large position.”

Former commissioner weighs in

Rick Enstrom, a former CPW commissioner, says the wildlife agency has become more politicized as of late, due to outside influences.

“Much like lobbyists in the legislature, there are NGOs that are feeding direct lines to these commissioners, and it’s muddied up the system.”

Enstrom also notes the influence of First Gentleman Marlon Reis, an outspoken animal rights activist, over the decisions of his husband, Governor Polis.

“The sportsmen were outraged, nobody could believe it, but once again this isn’t the Governor, these are Marlon Ries’ picks,” Enstrom told Complete Colorado. “Government agencies are not there to be politicized.”

Acton was building on the teachings of his mentor, Homer Simpson, who put it more plainly: “The more power you have, the more you can mess things up. Woo-hoo!”

And many in Colorado’s political elite have studied under the original oracle of power, Eric Cartman: “Respect my authoritah!”

If there were a motto for the progressive machine that now rules Colorado, it would be simple: “Because we f***ing can, that’s why.”

Ethics don’t matter. Consistency doesn’t matter. Respecting the will of the people, or even the institution of democracy itself, doesn’t matter.

It started, as these things do, by avoiding consent. TABOR refunds? They stopped even pretending to ask. They know their “fees” wouldn’t survive a vote of the people. Not one of them. So why bother with democracy?

The elite know what’s best.

And when the rabble express themselves at the ballot box, their will can be… corrected.

Voters rejected mandatory setbacks for oil-and-gas drilling. The response from the machine? “That’s adorable,” we’ll pass Senate Bill 181 to do it anyway.

Twice I put flat-rate income tax cuts on the ballot. Twice they passed overwhelmingly. So, the legislature moved to make sure voters could never do that again.

They added “poison-pill” language to future tax cut initiatives. The ballot must now read: “Voting for this tax cut will cripple small children, steal old ladies’ wheelchairs, and cause cancer in laboratory animals.”

When President Donald Trump helped ignite the modern gerrymandering wars, Colorado’s progressive choir howled in outrage.

Now Colorado’s progressive machine is using the same trick.

The Front Range Rail Authority wants a choo-choo tax. But first, it conveniently trims conservative-leaning counties out of the voting pool.

Even Chicago would slow-clap that move.

We’re told Trump is a threat to democracy. Maybe. But as far as I know, he hasn’t stripped elected offices away from voters.

But our legislature is.

The Regional Transportation District is Colorado’s fourth-largest government, run by a 15-member elected board because…the people voted for it to be that way. Senate Bill 150 would gut two-thirds of those elected seats to replace them with insider appointees.

When Trump does something heavy-handed, it’s “no kings.” When Colorado’s ruling class does it, it barely earns a shrug. I mean not even a lame fake excuse why it’s not hypocritical.

And then there’s the lying.

When Trump lies, it’s a five-alarm fire for democracy. But when our elite lie to get what they want, it’s just Tuesday.

Senate Bill 135 sends a measure to the ballot to take your TABOR refunds permanently, handing the legislature a blank check. Yet the ballot language conveniently says it’s for “teacher pay” and “smaller class sizes” and, of course, “without raising taxes.”

As the state Title Board proved last week, there is no guarantee the money will be spent that way, and 85% of the cash goes straight to lawmakers. Translation: We’re taking your money, but we’re not telling you where it’s going.

Lying isn’t an exception anymore. It’s standard operating procedure.

And if you want to see Acton proven in real time, look no further than the legislature voting to exempt itself from Colorado’s open meetings law.

Read that again slowly, raw power grabbing more power.

They’ve decided the transparency rules apply to you, not them.

Their confidence has grown so unchecked they now believe they can legislate physics.

The governor is expected to drop a last-minute bill, with no time for debate, to move Colorado to 100% renewable energy by 2035.

With a stroke of a pen, a state that gets two-thirds of its energy from fossil fuels will do what no state has ever done and do it in nine years.

I’ve seen drug-fueled homeless in Denver violently arguing with imaginary people who felt more grounded in reality.

And because lording over us is such a burden, Senate Bill 87 would require private employers, at their own expense, to hold jobs open for legislators while they’re off playing Nobles.

Raw political power to impose their will — that’s all that matters.

Maybe if Republicans had this kind of unchecked power for this long, they’d be just as thuggish. Maybe. We’ll never know.

In other words, someone else should cover my job while I’m busy playing Lord Acton.

Jon Caldara is president of the Independence Institute in Denver and hosts “The Devil’s Advocate with Jon Caldara” on Colorado Public Television Channel 12. His column appears Sundays in Colorado Politics.

From the very start of the war the stock market plunged, crude oil prices and gasoline at the pump spiked, and an uptick in the CPI signaled price inflation. This was to be expected. The market hates shocks and uncertainty and is very short-sighted. But this war is for long-term security. Stock prices have already recovered, and gas is up less than a buck-a-gallon, that’s still lower than it was during Bidenflation. This isn’t a large-scale war and not likely to last very long. Sacrifices to consumers will be trivial compared to WW II when rationing stamps were issued to all Americans for four long years limiting meat, butter, dairy, coffee, gasoline, coal, tires, cars, shoes, nylon, paper, metal products, and much more.

Public opinion polls casting this as an “unpopular war,” are foolishly simplistic and the disapproval percentage is misleadingly skewed by the mass of knee-jerk Democrats who oppose anything associated with Trump. Wars, by their nature, are unpleasant. The small number of U.S. military casualties has been, thankfully, astonishing. (Compare it to the hundreds of thousands of deaths on both sides in the Russian war against Ukraine.) To be sure, this war is far less popular with the ayatollahs on the receiving end. The essential justification for the war is the necessity of it if you can imagine the horrors of nuclear weapons in the hands of the fanatical ayatollahs were they to be launched at their hated “infidels” (that’s all the rest of us).

In 1960 during the Cold War, Nikita Krushchev, Chairman of the Communist Party and head of the Soviet Union, spoke at an international conference at the United Nations building in New York. At one point, in a fit of rage (or performance) he took off a shoe and pounded it repeatedly on the desk in front of him, shouting, “We will bury you!” Most people misunderstood his meaning. He was just spewing Marxist ideological dogma that communism would replace capitalism when the workers of the world inevitably rise up in revolution.

The Soviets had nukes, but Khrushchev understood that a first strike would be suicidal, triggering an instant nuclear retaliation by the West. Unlike Iran’s ayatollahs, Soviet communists weren’t religious fanatics (they weren’t religious at all; they were atheists). The Cold War nuclear standoff was a stalemate known as “mutual assured destruction” that not only deterred a nuclear war but also a conventional war between the Soviets and NATO in Europe.

It’s true that, strategically, Iran’s ayatollahs want nukes as a similar deterrent to protect their regime, just as they used the Strait of Hormuz shutdown to force a ceasefire in this war. But the ayatollahs, as religious fanatics, can be suicidal. If they had nukes, when the inevitable overthrow of their theocracy was imminent, they could joyously launch their nuclear missiles at the infidels to reap their reward in Islamic Heaven.

Trump’s recent announcement that Iran accepted his “deal” and met his demands, including opening the Strait and surrendering their enriched uranium, appears to have been premature. The ayatollahs are not known for keeping their promises. If they ultimately do, that’ll be a win for us and the world. If regime change follows, that will be a crowning achievement, especially for most of the Iranians who detest the ruling ayatollahs’ government. Trump-hating congressional Democrats and their media echo chamber, blinded by TDS, scoffed at Trump’s proclaimed good news absurdly stating that, even if true, this expensive war accomplished nothing. To back that argument up, one media wag exclaimed, “The Strait was open before the war; now it’s open again, nothing’s changed.” So much for partisanship ending at the waters’ edge.

Mike Rosen is a Denver-based American radio personality and political commentator.

Maybe not in the conspiracy-theory, tinfoil-hat way. In the simple, obvious, right-in-front-of-your-face way: politicians get to play by rules you don’t.

And every now and then they get so brazen about it, you have to stop and admire the hustle.

We Coloradans have been painfully clear for decades: We want our Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights (TABOR). We want government spending limits. And, yes, we want our refunds when government takes too much.

How many times do we have to say no?

1998, Referendum B. No.

2011, Proposition 103. No.

2013, Amendment 66. No.

2019, Proposition CC. No.

2023, Proposition HH. No.

And none of these elections were even close.

At this point, voters aren’t whispering. We’re screaming: live within your means.

Wearing voters down

But like shrill children demanding mommy buy them something, politicians don’t stop asking. Like the kid, they know they can wear you down. Because if they get a “yes” just once, it’s game over. TABOR refunds disappear forever.

And I mean forever.

TABOR originally said they could keep excess revenue for four years and only if we voters approved it. Then the Colorado Supreme Court later clarified “four years” actually means… forever. I guess because “four” and “forever” sound kinda the same.

Good to know words still have meaning and our political elite keep fighting to “protect democracy”

Now comes Senate Bill 135. And you’ll never guess what it does. It ends your TABOR refunds, forever.

But don’t worry. This time it’s “for the kids.” Cue the violins. Quite literally what you’ll read on the ballot says the money will go to education. There is no mention of a penny going anywhere else.

The ballot language the legislators who want your money wrote practically tucks you in at night:

“Shall state investment in K-12 public education increase… increase teacher pay… improve retention… lower class sizes… increase access to career and technical courses, without raising taxes.”

It’s beautiful. Inspiring. Almost makes you want to cry.

It’s also nonsense. Because buried in the fine print of the bill is the part they hope you never notice.

The legislature’s own analysis says this lets the state keep about $1.3 billion extra starting in year one alone.

Want to guess how much goes to education? About $200 million. That’s a mere 15%!

The other 85%? That’s a blank check for the legislature to spend however it wants. You’d never know that from the ballot language they wrote for themselves.

Ballot language double-standard

And here’s where it gets fun.

When politicians refer something to the ballot, they get to write the ballot language you read on Election Day. That is, they get to lie through their teeth.

When we lowly citizens propose something, a group of three unelected people called the Title Board writes what voters read at the voting booth. Again, one set of rules for them, a different set for us.

So I tried an experiment. I took SB-135 and submitted it, word for word, as a citizen’s initiative.

Here’s how the Title Board translated it:

“Shall there be a change… allowing the state to keep and spend… and requiring the state to use a portion… for education… and allowing the state to use the rest of the money for any purpose determined by the legislature?”

Same policy. Totally different honesty level.

So if you vote yes and kiss away your TABOR refunds, education will get a “portion” of it (15%) and the legislature will get “the rest of the money for any purpose.” Their words, not mine.

One version sounds like a gift to schoolchildren. The other sounds like what it actually is — a cash grab.

And then the legislature had the nerve to call this cash grab “without raising taxes.” There’s no such wording in the Title Board’s language.

Which is impressive. If I take more of your money but claim I didn’t, jail time is in my future. When our political elite does it, they’re only encouraged to lie even more next time.

So, go ahead. Vote yes this fall if you like the idea of kissing your TABOR refunds goodbye, forever.

Just know full well it’s not for the kids. It’s for our lawmakers to cover their rear ends after increasing Medicaid enrollment 200% and over-spending the state into a fiscal hole.

Jon Caldara is president of Independence Institute, a free market think in Denver.

Now relegated to minority party status, progressive Democrats are powerless to deliver their socialist paradise on Earth. So, they’re frustrated, angry, stricken with Trump Derangement Syndrome, and have gone stark raving mad. Lacking a realistic or rational public policy agenda of their own, Democrats have descended into a simplistic “We Hate Trump” resistance-movement flooding the courts with anti-Trump lawsuits, grid-locking government, and attempting to block any and every Republican initiative in Congress.

War on ICE

A case in point is the Democrats’ relentless war on Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), an essential instrument of Trump’s plan to find, arrest and deport illegal immigrants (especially criminals) who were ushered into our country under the Biden administration’s open-border policies. Having paved the way for those immigrants to illegally enter the U.S. and remain here, Democrats value them as a key political constituency and hope to harvest their votes forever when they become citizens.

Radical mobs around the country in Democrat controlled states and cities have provoked and obstructed ICE officers from doing their duty while Senate Democrats, led by Chuck Schumer, hatched a plot to shut down the entire Department of Homeland Security, of which ICE is an agency. Schumer, of course, was well aware that ICE had already been separately funded by Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBB), signed into law by the president on July 4, 2025. So, the Democrat Senate filibuster shutting down DHS on February 14th was just a ploy and a bargaining chip to hold DHS hostage to Democrat demands to handcuff ICE. Another consequence of this piece of Democrat extortion was cutting off the paychecks of TSA workers (another DHS agency) at airports across the country, causing many of those workers to stay home.

DHS is a collection of numerous agencies including ICE, TSA, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, U.S. Secret Service, U.S. Coast Guard, Federal Protective Service, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security, and others that were combined under the DHS umbrella after the 9/11 attack on America to coordinate their missions more effectively. Stubbornly turning the screws ever tighter, just before the Easter recess Democrats demanded that Republicans accept a phony “compromise” that still hobbled ICE and also undermined the Border Patrol, knowing this bill would never be approved by House Republicans. Under pressure from Trump to make a deal, Senate Republicans took the bait and passed that bill, which was promptly rejected by House Republicans, to the delight of the conniving Chuck Schumer, who predictably blamed Republicans for the impasse. Trump later intervened with an emergency workaround instructing DHS to pay TSA workers retroactively with leftover funds from the OBBB.

It’s despicable that Democrats would stoop to these tactics causing millions of airport passengers to languish in lines for hours, disrupting air travel throughout the country, and shutting down DHS when our nation is especially vulnerable to Islamist terrorist attacks. Some have already occurred here in the midst of the war with Iran.

TDS symptoms on display

For now, Democrats are powerless to advance their agenda or “demand” much of anything from the elected Republican majority. How ironic it is that radical progressive Democrats claim Trump and Republicans are “a threat to democracy,” when this is precisely how democracy works when electoral shoes are on the other feet.

Rampant TDS symptoms are glaringly on display in Democrat behavior like the incoherent series of national “No Kings” anti-Trump demonstrations, with three so far. Masses have turned out costumed as everything from chickens to bunnies to outer-space aliens. Elderly women hippies from the 1960s abound joyously dancing and singing silly lyrics amidst a sea of signs praising Antifa, foreign terrorists, democratic socialism, communism, and the universe of woke progressive identity-politics LGBTQ tribes.

Others expressed hatred of Trump, America, Isreal, capitalism, imperialism, colonialism, baseball, hot dogs, apple pie, and Chevrolet. If this is a serious political protest, the mixture of rage and partying seems schizophrenic. It’s more like a group psychotherapy session reminiscent of the movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

Longtime KOA radio talk host and columnist for the Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News Mike Rosen now writes for Complete Colorado.

Sure, the truth is interesting. But truth doesn’t sell. It takes time to uncover, assuming people care enough to go digging for it.

Narratives are easier. They’re simple, comforting and come pre-approved by the crowd.

Groupthink isn’t just easy. It’s safe. The truth, on the other hand, requires work and enough bravery to risk being out of step with people who judge you.

And we’re busy. So, we outsource our thinking to the media, entertainment and schools, and go with whatever story they hand us.

When the narrative frays

Take this one: “Teachers are underpaid.”

It’s airtight. Say it at a cocktail party and everyone nods like they’ve just solved poverty.

But start factoring in full compensation packages, insurance, pensions with guaranteed lifetime payouts, a work calendar with summers off, fall and spring breaks, and two weeks for whatever they call Christmas these days, and suddenly the narrative gets…well, frayed.

Sidenote — studies confirm for an employee to afford a pre-paid retirement plan with the same guaranteed payout of a teacher’s pension, one’s salary would have to be increased about 27%.

Here’s another: “Fossil fuels are destroying the planet.”

That one has moved beyond narrative into religion. Question it and you’re not debating policy, you’re committing heresy. You will be canceled.

But here’s the part that never makes the sermon.

Roughly 2.3 billion people still cook over wood or dung. If we move them to portable propane stoves it would remove as much greenhouse gas as if we ended all air, rail and boat traffic combined.

Oh, not that it matters, but it would save women in impoverished nations about four hours a day toiling to collect fuel for the fire.

So, fossil fuels could save our climate. But the power of narrative will keep it “in the ground” choking our economy, potentially keeping the globe warming. But at least third-world chicks will never advance. So, we got that.

Political lying season

Narratives aren’t designed to inform you. They’re designed to manipulate you.

Which brings us to political lying season. Again.

The stories being planted right now as the legislature argues “budget cuts” will be set to bloom just in time for the fall election. And the anti-taxpayer choir is already warming up for its heart-rendering performance of “The State Needs More of Your Money.”

The script never changes.

There’s a crisis. It’s urgent. It’s not their fault. And fixing it requires reaching deeper into your pocket.

A couple years ago, Kyle Clark from 9News was one of the first to poke a hole in that script during the Proposition HH debate.

“Governor,” he said, “We know you’re smart. I hope you don’t think we’re stupid.”

That moment mattered. It cracked the narrative just enough for others to question it. HH went down by 20 points.

Turns out, when the story collapses, so does the manipulation.

Which is why this year’s push will be all about getting the story right.

Ending TABOR refunds won’t be sold as a tax hike. It’ll be “for the kids,” even though school enrollment is dropping fast.

A graduated income tax won’t be about chasing Colorado’s most innovative to a low- or no-income tax state. It’ll be about “fairness.”

And don’t forget the transit undead. We need a round of statewide trolley taxes to get us a train named after a drag queen. “And on stage 3, give it up for CoCo!” Forget about two decades of neglecting our roadways. It’ll be about “the future of transportation,” somehow with technology from the 1800s.

Seeing through the spin

The details don’t matter nearly as much as the storyline.

Their schemes stand no chance unless they can develop an unchallenged storyline: The budget cuts will hurt the most fragile, and the budget crisis wasn’t their fault.

They will make sure the budget cuts really do hurt the most fragile. And they’ll never take responsibility for bloating the Medicaid roles 200% with people who are not disabled.

Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is a spot when and how they and their allies develop and test their narratives over the truth.

Watch which programs get highlighted. Watch which words get repeated. Watch how quickly blame is redirected.

Because if the narrative holds, the tax increases follow.

But if it cracks, even a room full of politicians can suddenly discover fiscal restraint.

Jon Caldara is president of Independence Institute, a free market think tank in Denver.

My son, Chance, has Down syndrome and a few years ago would have been labeled “retarded.” Then “developmentally delayed.” Now the hypersensitive prefer “intellectually disabled.”

Whatever the term is this week, the reality hasn’t changed.

This 21-year-old man cannot consistently count to five, can’t read and can’t write his own name. He needs constant supervision for choking risks. He still needs help toileting. And that’s just the start.

Medicaid was designed for people like him, our most vulnerable. And I am grateful for it.

In between passing laws barring misgendering and expanding tax credits to buy electric bicycles, the state legislature plans to cut in half the Medicaid support Chance, and people like him, receive.

This is the funding he requires to live. So yeah, this one’s personal.

Blowing up Medicaid

Not many years ago, the following sentence would be unimaginable. Medicaid spending is now a larger percentage of our state budget than education spending.

So, if Medicaid is the top priority, why are they cutting Chance’s life support by 50%?

Because, since 2009 Colorado’s population grew about 20%. Medicaid enrollment grew 200%. That’s not a demographic shift. That’s a policy choice.

Either that or every single person who has moved to Colorado is severely handicapped.

What else could explain the explosion of Medicaid enrollment?

Or maybe, just maybe, the state has been encouraging people who are not handicapped to enroll into Medicaid. Maybe they’ve been encouraging able-people to swell the ranks, which (and who could have predicted this) means less for the truly needy.

During COVID the federal government put our great-grandchildren-to-be into debt and printed money out of nowhere to shower it on to the states. Colorado had an orgy of free money.

Now, it was clear from the get-go this temporary emergency money from D.C. wasn’t permanent; it was, how to put it, temporary. Responsible states used it for short-term purposes like emergency services, unemployment payments, etc.

Other less responsible states (I’m looking at you, Colorado) used the windfall to get healthy people addicted to wealth-transfer entitlement programs, guaranteeing a painful hangover when the Feds stopped the benevolence.

A more cynical person (obviously not me) might think they knew exactly what would happen if they grew Medicaid enrollment to obscene levels. When the temporary gusher of free money stopped, it would cause massive budget shortfalls.

Exploiting the handicapped

What gets people to say yes to new taxes? Seeing our most vulnerable hurt because the rich don’t pay their share, TABOR is mean, or Trump sucks (I wonder if they’re planning any tax elections this year? Nah.).

In other words, use people like my son as a political prop to raise taxes. These legislators exploit the severely handicapped as human shields to hide their inability to set budget priorities.

Their “Cover All Coloradans” program to give illegal immigrants Medicaid benefits wasn’t supposed to cost much. Just $14.7 million taken from folks like Chance. It’s now pushing $105 million. That’s a 611% miss.

Funny thing happens when you give away other people’s money. They come over borders to take it.

Blame Joe Biden for opening the floodgates to tens of millions of illegal immigrants. Blame our legislators for tempting them to relocate here for the free goodies. But just don’t be surprised by the oldest political ploy on the books — “the most vulnerable will hurt if we don’t raise taxes!”

In other words, our leaders’ decisions are hateful, not accidental. They knew this would happen. They planned on it.

I’ll find ways to keep Chance living with me, fed and clothed after these easily avoidable cuts are made. But other families will not have the means to keep their loved one at home.

With half the money needed to hire caretakers, therapies, food, transportation, rent and supplies, families will be forced to forfeit their own children to an institution or group home.

Basically, these cuts will force parents to give their vulnerable adult children to the state.

My son will lose half the help he needs to live.

But don’t worry. The state will still find plenty of money for people who never needed it in the first place.

Jon Caldara is president of Independence Institute, a free market think tank in Denver.

According to its recent press release, the BLM on March 31 leased 68 parcels of federal land for drilling in Colorado, generating $8.1 million. Over 42,000 acres were leased across Weld, Jackson, Routt, Arapahoe, Delta, Mesa, Rio Blanco, Gunnison, and Garfield counties.

This sale was conducted with lower royalties embedded in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act(OBBB), which reduced the royalty rate of onshore oil and gas production on federal lands to a minimum of 12.5%. Previously, the royalty rate sat at 16.67% under former President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act.

“The One Big Beautiful Bill Act reduces the cost of doing business on public lands, making oil and gas development more economically attractive to industry,” the press release reads, predicting that the sale will spur on additional leasing and drilling.

The BLM sale is also congruent with Trump’s day-one Executive Order 14154 ‘Unleashing American Energy,’aiming for energy dominance and increased domestic drilling.

Amy Cooke, Director of the Energy and Environmental Policy Center at Independence Institute, a free market think tank in Denver (as well as publisher of Complete Colorado) says that the surge in Colorado leases is a sign that energy markets are responding well to energy friendly policy.

“The size and scope of the lease sale are a clear signal that markets are responding to both stronger price conditions and the shift in federal policy toward energy abundance under President Trump, Energy Secretary Chris Wright, and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum,” Cooke told Complete Colorado. “For the first year of the Trump administration, an abundant supply kept oil prices low for consumers. As prices have risen, producers are doing what markets are designed to do: invest in new production.”

Cooke predicts the new drilling will help Colorado’s energy sector back on its feet, as production has declined over the last several years due to significant new restrictions on energy development put in place by a Democrat-controlled legislature and Gov. Jared Polis.

“What’s important to note in Colorado is that all these leases are on federal land. It’s where investors are comfortable putting their money,” said Cooke. “That’s because state regulation has made it increasingly difficult to permit new wells on private or state property, effectively stifling new production.”

DENVER–A series of gun rights restrictions are at various stages in the Colorado’s legislative process, with some bills awaiting action by Gov. Polis, others still in the committee process, and a heavily negotiated gun barrel regulation bill held up in its final reading in the House.

Red flag expansion

Senate Bill 26-004 ‘Expand List of Petitioners for Protection Orders’ passed third reading in the House on March 20 with a 39-24 vote and is awaiting action by Gov. Polis.

The Democrat sponsored bill dramatically expands those eligible to file for an Extreme Risk Protection Order (ERPO) under Colorado’s so-called ‘red flag’ law, to include teachers, health care providers and “institutional petitioners.’

If signed into law, health care facilities, behavioral health treatment facilities, K-12 schools, and higher education institutions will all be eligible to petition courts to seize the guns of those believed to own firearms and who might possible be a danger to themselves and others.

A University of Colorado School of Medicine study found a high rate of rejection for ERPOS filed by non-law enforcement petitioners under the existing law, with a majority of applications filed by family members or romantic partners eventually being rejected after court scrutiny. In total, the data shows about 20% of Colorado petitions result in wrongful confiscation.

New burdens heaped on dealers

Under existing Colorado law, Federal Firearms Licensees (FFLs) must also have a state permit to sell firearms. House Bill 26-1126 requires dealers to obtain a separate permit to transfer forearms. The bill also extends dealer training requirements and prior license violation laws to ‘responsible persons’ of the dealer. This includes anyone who handles, sells, or has access to a firearm as part of their business duties.

Dealers would be required to keep record of all transactions involving a firearm and requires gun stores to implement new security mandates including extended surveillance and a new comprehensive security plan.

Under this legislation the Department of Revenue can heap a $75,000 fine on dealers upon a second or subsequent offense if any section is violated.

The bill passed the House with 27 amendments on March 20 on a 34-28 vote and is scheduled for it’s first hearing in the Senate on April 7.

CBI background checks

House Bill 26-1302 would allow the Colorado Bureau of investigations (CBI) to determine their own hours of operation, rather than functioning every calendar day for 12 hours. Gun rights advocates worry this could lead to a slowdown in transmitting background checks for firearm purchases.

The State, Civic, Military, and Veterans Affairs Committee passed an amendment on March 23 requiring the CBI to process firearm background checks immediately upon obtaining them, despite any waiting periods.

The bill was introduced in late February and passed its third House reading on April 2. The bill now heads to the Senate.

3D printing prohibition

House Bill 26-1144 prohibits the 3D printing of firearms and firearm components. The final bill was watered down to appease Gov. Polis, with a provision to criminalize the selling or distributing of the digital instructions to 3D print a firearm removed.

The bill passed its final reading in the Senate on March 30, with amendments reviewed and approved by the House on April 2.

HB-1144 is awaiting Polis’s signature.

Firearm barrel regulation held up

Democrat sponsored Senate Bill 26-043 ‘Record Keeping and Regulation of Sale of Firearm Barrels,’ requires all firearm barrel sales or transfers to be conducted in person, only by a federally licensed (FFL) dealer. The bill criminalizes private or online firearm barrel transactions, or any non-FFL with the ‘intent to offer or sell’ a barrel.

The bill creates a new age restriction and requires all FFLs to keep and maintain record of all barrel transactions for five years.

SB-43 successfully passed the Senate on March 2, and is currently awaiting its third and final reading in the House. However, the final vote has been continuously pushed back since March 20. With 34 amendments thus far, the legislation has been the source of ongoing negotiations under the Gold Dome in an apparent effort to make the bill presentable to Gov. Polis.

Polis’ office did not respond to Complete Colorado’s request for comment on the barrel bill.

Attendees bravely fought oppression by blocking traffic for people with jobs. Rally-goers demanded freedom from tyranny, many right after voting to ban all but beige house paint at their HOA meetings.

After pausing briefly to DoorDash something gluten-free, they returned to the barricades to secure democracy in Colorado for one more day.

They risked everything, except mild discomfort, to call the guy who won both the popular vote and the electoral vote a tyrant.

Yes, I’m having fun at their expense. And yes, they have a point. When you build a country on principles instead of a person, it’s fair to get twitchy when the “person” starts talking like a “regime.”

But all the screaming about President Donald Trump being a “threat to democracy” leaves me with a question:

While we’re obsessing over Trump stealing our democracy, are we distracted from noticing Colorado’s power elite doing the same?

Colorado’s own kings

What’s the old magician’s skill? Distract them with one hand, lift the wallet with the other. Does Colorado’s elite fight Trump’s desire to be king with one hand, while working to become king with the other?

Take speech.

Many at these rallies are convinced Trump is shredding free speech. Yet just after the protests, the Supreme Court slapped down Colorado’s law banning certain conversations between therapists and their clients. It was an 8–1 decision. Even the Court’s liberals weren’t buying it.

Our own state also passed a law against “misgendering.” Strip away the buzzwords and you get the same thing: government deciding what you’re allowed to say. That’s not edgy. That’s old-school authoritarian.

Then there’s transparency.

Colorado’s lawmakers exempted themselves from our open meetings law to rule from smokey back rooms — I mean, likely pot smoke, since Denver recently banned Swisher Sweet Cigars.

Tyranny doesn’t kick down the front door. It quietly pulls the blinds.

Still not enough?

Let’s talk about dismantling elections.

Colorado lawmakers just introduced Senate Bill 150, which guts the elected board of the Regional Transportation District, Denver-metro’s transit government. RTD controls $2 billion of your money and serves more than 3 million people. Right now, it’s governed by 15 elected members.

SB-150 cuts that to five, a cut of two-thirds.

Then it adds four appointed seats. Not elected. Appointed.

Let’s review: shrink representation, destroy elected government, install loyalists to tax billions from millions of citizens and spend it as only loyalists can.

This is a ploy only Donald Trump could love.

Colorado legislators can practice his voice: “You’re too stupid to vote for the RTD Board. Really, you’re a very stupid person. Fortunately, I am very, very smart. Some say the smartest official ever. I’ve heard many people say that. So, of course I know who should be on the whatever board.”

Somewhere in a history book there’s a line about taxation without representation. It didn’t end well for the people doing the taxing.

Rise of the independents

If Donald Trump proposed SB-150, every one of those “No Kings” protesters would be chaining themselves to the Capitol doors.

This isn’t left versus right. It’s about whether voters get to choose who governs them.

Because once you accept you’re too stupid to elect a transit board, it’s a short trip to being too stupid to elect anything else.

Like most unaffiliated voters, I believe the state is spinning out of control. You can hate Donald Trump and still think Colorado is over-taxed and over-regulated. You can support a woman’s right to choose and still believe Colorado government is going too far.

That’s why my friend Erin Brantley and I are launching Independent Majority Colorado, our attempt to create a home for those of us who are politically homeless.

Most Coloradans aren’t Tina-Peters Republicans or government-knows-best socialists. We’re just regular folk who want to be left alone.

We want government out of our businesses and out of our bedrooms. And we’d like it to stop quietly rigging the system while everyone’s busy yelling about Washington.

Our first fight is stopping this very un–“No Kings” Senate Bill 150. Go to IndependentMajority.CO if you want to join your voice with ours.

Because if you’re going to chant about kings, you might want to notice the ones being crowned right here at home.

Jon Caldara is president of Independence Institute, a free market think tank in Denver.

In 1979, a revolution deposed an oppressive unpopular monarch, the Shah of Iran who, at least, was a pro-western modernist. It brought Ayatollah Khomeini to absolute power as Iran’s Supreme Leader. Protected by his loyal religious army, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Khomeini declared Iran to be an Islamic Republic and abolished the Family Protection Act, enacted under the shah, which extended basic rights to women. Khomeini’ s mosque-based bands, the komitehs, were unleashed to patrol the streets enforcing strict Islamic codes of dress and behavior. They beat women and other “enemies of the revolution,” with brutality and killings vastly exceeding any oppression by the shah. Most Iranians who supported the revolution hadn’t planned on trading one despot for far worst ones.

Throughout their reign, the ayatollahs have proclaimed death to the Little Satan and the Great Satan (Israel and America). Their first attack on America came abruptly in 1979 with the seizure of the US Embassy in Tehran taking 66 hostages and holding them for 444 days, despite President Carter’s botched rescue attempt. It was no coincidence that the Ayatollah finally released the hostages literally minutes after President Reagan’s inauguration on January 20, 1981, no doubt fearing his wrath. The ayatollahs have waged one-sided terrorist warfare against the “two Satans” and other nations through proxies like Hamas, Hezbollah, and Houthis killing thousands of civilians and soldiers. Presidents Clinton, Bush, Obama, and Biden appeased the ayatollahs sweetening the pot with the gift of billions of dollars, and doing little or nothing to fight back imagining the ayatollahs would honor their promises and be peaceful. That was delusional.

The ayatollahs aren’t simply Muslims, they’re the most radical “Islamist” faction (only a fifth of all Muslims) who devoutly believe that all “infidels” must be converted, subjugated, or exterminated. So-called infidels are most of the world’s eight billion people, only two billion of whom are Muslims, along with 2.5 billion Christians, one billion Hindus, 500 million Buddhists, 16 million Jews, and of 4,000 other religions.

Isarel has defended itself and counterattacked for decades. Trump is the first president with the fortitude to fight back using overwhelming force starting with the June 2025 US-Israel joint attack on Iran’s nuclear weapons complex and now taking the war to Tehran directly, wisely capitalizing on the opportunity to attack a much-weakened Iran before it could rearm itself. This war has been inevitable ever since the ayatollahs came to power.

By a military victory, I mean the destruction of Iran’s defenses, military forces, missiles, launchers, drones, and the elimination of the IRGC and the Basij, the ayatollahs’ militia for domestic control, moral policing, and protest suppression.

By regime change, I mean the end of Iran’s theocratic form of government in which the head of state is an all-powerful Ayatollah, the Supreme Leader (selected by other ayatollahs), divinely guided and answerable to no mortal, with complete control of the military, the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government, and the media. In its place, and to the desire of most of its people, Iran could become a secular democracy with free and fair elections. Leaving the ayatollahs in charge would make the war almost pointless, with the only long-run option being bombing Iran every few years to keep it defanged.

Some critics on the left and right who oppose yet another “forever war” are like the cat that steps on a hot stove and will never step on a hot stove again. But it will never step on a cold stove either. This war is nothing like the quagmire of Afghanistan. This is a long overdue big-time counterattack that will end an ongoing war. True, regime change isn’t always successful, except for when it is, like in Germany and Japan after allied victories in WW II and the greatest ever regime change: the American Revolutionary War.

It’s a sad commentary on the state of our nation that patriotic Americans, Republicans, Israel, and at least some of our allies are wishing for a decisive victory while many Democrat politicians, progressives, the liberal media, leftist academics, their indoctrinated students, and America-haters like Reps. Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib are hoping we lose to ensure a Democrat wave in the midterm elections.

When their “free” health care turned into “free to wait until you die,” he’d save his clients by routing them to doctors in the U.S. who’d accept cash and rescue their lives.

I asked him what advice he had for Americans. His answer terrified me.

“I hope the U.S. won’t do what we’ve done with health care,” he said. I thought his reasoning was that he didn’t want to see Americans suffer and die because of medical socialism. But that wasn’t it.

He said, “Because if you do, we’ll have nowhere to escape to.”

That stuck with me. We are Canada’s health care lifeboat.

Every bad system needs an escape hatch. Otherwise, you’re trapped.

God Bless Wyoming

Which brings me to the un-Colorado. Thank God for Wyoming.

From energy to fiscal policy, civil liberties to tech laws, Wyoming is becoming Colorado’s lifeboat. And it is so much more than sneaking north to buy fireworks and gun magazines.

Wyoming is becoming the gold standard, quite literally.

In December the state purchased some 2,312 ounces of physical gold. Understanding printing money out of nowhere and constant debt spending eventually ends badly, they’re planning ahead.

A new law requires 10% of their cash reserves be kept in physical gold. While the rest of the country debates modern monetary theory, Wyoming is quietly saying, “Maybe we should own something real.”

For those of us who see Bitcoin as digital gold (like gold, Bitcoin has a limited supply), Wyoming again has the advantage.

The Cowboy State was early in building a legal home for cryptocurrency companies. While Colorado chases away tech heavy-hitters like Palantir, Wyoming wants them.

They passed laws to clarify crypto is private property, legalized both crypto banking and even Decentralized Autonomous Organizations — companies run by code instead of shareholders. The state even considered their own stable coin.

Wyoming doesn’t want to repeat its biggest mistake. It invented the LLC, Limited Liability Corporations, in 1977 — and then watched Delaware steal the idea and become the business capital of America. They won’t let that happen with crypto.

Colorado’s political class has been on a decade’s-long crusade to make energy more expensive, less reliable, and — if we’re really lucky — occasionally available.

We’re shutting down always-available power to bet everything we have (and everything our kids have) on weather-dependent energy.

We’re regulating oil and gas out of existence like they’re chemical weapons. And doing it all with the moral certainty of a vegan Boulderite lecturing a lion.

Keeping the lights on

Meanwhile, just north they’re doing something radical — keeping the lights on.

Wyoming is actively developing next-generation nuclear power, including advanced modular reactors, backed by serious investment. They’re continuing to drill for oil and gas like a state that understands staying alive requires energy. Not slogans. Energy.

And here’s the punchline: as Colorado makes it harder to produce power, we’re going to need more of Wyoming’s.

They become the battery. We become the extension cord. We’ll virtue signal. They’ll power it.

Take data centers — the physical backbone of everything from AI to your email to the movies you stream — they require massive, reliable, always-on electricity. Not “when the wind feels like cooperating” electricity.

So where are they going?

Not Colorado. Denver Mayor Mike Johnson even bragged he would not allow data centers to be built in his city. What a man!

That’s like me saying I refuse to date leggy supermodels. None were going to date me anyway, so why not turn it into bravado.

They’re heading to places like Wyoming (data centers, not supermodels), where policymakers haven’t declared war on electrons.

But data centers will still be used by Coloradans. So, it doesn’t reduce energy use. It just exports the jobs, tax revenue and opportunity north.

And oh, they’re not chasing gun owners or entrepreneurs out of their state via laws that treat them like Nazi used-car salesmen with leprosy.

Now, don’t get me wrong. Colorado still has incredible advantages — talent, beauty, lifestyle and a long history of innovation.

But advantages can be squandered. Canada already proved that.

Because if we didn’t have Wyoming, we might have nowhere to escape to.

Jon Caldara is president of Independence Institute, a free market think tank in Denver.

I moved to Boulder in 1984 and have been there ever since. And you know what Boulder has had all that time? A freakin’ lot of high winds.

I remember as a college kid walking around the CU campus after windstorms, stepping around uprooted trees and massive broken branches that made the sidewalks impassable.

I’ve seen rooftop shingles go flying off Boulder buildings, signs ripped down, and semi-trucks overturned.

All of which is to say that for the last 55 years I have personally witnessed a crap-ton of high winds in our mountain state.

But only in the last few months have I witnessed our power utilities preemptively turning off electricity during high winds to “prevent fires.”

Behavior modification

Apparently the windstorms of the last few months must be the worst in Colorado history. Because this is the first time anyone has decided the solution is to turn off grandma’s lights.

Is Colorado suddenly windier than it has been during my entire life? Unless our eyes have been lying to us, the answer is comfortably: no.

Yet, I type this under an official warning that my power might be turned off because of another rather normal day of high winds.

Is it too tinfoil-hat to wonder if this is really about preventing fires?

Is it too “QAnon” to think they might be conditioning us for Colorado’s future of intermittent electricity?

Are these power shutoffs more about behavior modification than fire prevention?

I mean, why now?

For half a century windstorms were something you complained about while chasing your patio furniture down the street. Now they apparently require turning off the state.

Bureaucracy understands that behavior modification must be incremental.

Some 20 years ago, the City of Boulder changed its ordinances to remove the term “pet owner” and replace it with “pet guardian.” A silly, laughable change meant to modify our speech — and therefore our thinking — about property rights and animals.

And today there is proposed legislation to outlaw the sale of dogs and cats in pet stores statewide, those modern-day slave auction houses. Incremental.

The Transportation Security Administration is the grandmaster of incremental behavior modification.

They make airport security lines so long and inefficient that you’re willing to pay them — your airport captors — to get into the shorter “PreCheck” line.

Of course it’s not the cash that costs the most. It’s your autonomy and privacy.

Join TSA PreCheck and you essentially grant the government a detailed record of every flight you’ve ever taken or plan it take. No troublesome judge-approved warrant or subpoena needed.

They’ve trained you to trade sacred privacy for 10 minutes of convenience before getting groped by a stranger in blue gloves. (Which some of us just call “Saturday night.”) That’s behavior modification.

Energy math not adding up

Colorado’s energy elite understands the math.

They know sizable power disruptions are in our future — because they ordered them. So, they’d better start getting YOU used to it.

Currently about two-thirds of Colorado’s electricity comes from fossil fuels. And already our power is becoming less reliable and more intermittent.

Thanks to state mandates, by 2050 — and the legislature is already flirting with moving that deadline up to 2040 — none of our power can come from fossil fuels.

This isn’t optimism. It’s fantasy.

Now add the fact that electricity demand will likely triple by then thanks to data centers and the forced conversion of appliances from natural gas to electricity. So: fantasy squared.

Remember how Denver Mayor Hickenlooper promised we would permanently end homelessness in 10 years? How Barack Obama promised if you liked your health care plan, you could keep it?

“All renewable energy in 15 years” belongs in the same museum of political fairy tales.

But the power outages as we stumble toward their fantasy — those are a lock.

Backup generators and home battery systems aren’t new. But have you noticed the explosion of interest in buying them? Have you noticed the flood of advertisements?

That’s not a coincidence. It’s a growth market.

Our leaders — and the corporate energy leeches who feed off them — know they need to prepare you for wildly intermittent, Third World energy.

So they normalize the outages. Welcome to the future.

Please keep a flashlight handy.

Jon Caldara is president of Independence Institute, a free market think tan in Denver.

Their favorite ploys have included misrepresenting taxes as “fees” and funding spending programs through tax credits. Because those credits reduce government revenues, they’re the equivalent of government spending but isn’t accounted for as such.

Four Big Ugly Bills

Now, the Democrats’ legislative super majority has presented a package of four bills championed by its Communist Coalition, the likes of Emily Sirota, Lorena Garcia, Mike Weissman, Julie Gonzales, and others. The bills “decouple” Colorado’s tax code from the federal government’s to “rebalance” Colorado’s tax code. Translating that into forthright language, “decouple” means denying tax deductions to businesses that the federal government allows. “Rebalance” means sharply inflating taxes and government spending.

This wording is too clever by half to have come from the progressive nitwits that run the legislature. The fingerprints of the Colorado Fiscal Institute (CFI), who “helped” write the bills are all over it. CFI spokeswoman and policy manager Caroline Nutter is stumping for these bills. CFI is the local affiliate of the State Priorities Partnership, a nationwide network of radical progressive policy groups that call for large-scale redistribution of income and social justice legislation. Nutter’s endorsement is not a plus; it’s a red flag warning. CFI has partnered with the left-wing Bell Policy Center, another local brain-trust for socialist Democrats, working to pass these bills as well as a ballot initiative to replace Colorado’s flat income tax with a soak-the rich graduated income tax.

The bills target Colorado businesses and President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB) which averted huge tax increases for individuals and businesses, replacing that with tax relief. Instead, Colorado will get Four Big Ugly Bills (FBUB).

End-run around TABOR

To make income-tax filing simpler for individuals, Colorado transfers your federal adjusted gross income onto your Colorado tax return, thereby passing federal tax deductions directly onto your Colorado tax return, lowering your tax bill. One of the FBUBs would ditch this principle and brazenly disallow businesses numerous federal tax deductions, thus raising their taxes. This scheme circumvents TABOR’s ban on tax-rate increases and enables the Democrats to disallow deductions, giving them a back-door tax increase.

Such as this one: A FBUB end-run around TABOR is baring businesses from treating the salaries of high-paid executives as an operating expense, thereby raising a company’s tax bill. Government mandates minimum wages but has no power over salary maximums. That is up to stockholders, directors, and managers.

One more: Another FBUB disallows the deduction for interest expenses on debt for large corporations. That’s nuts, this is a legitimate expense. Yet others would limit the full deduction of carried-forward operating losses for established businesses and deny early-stage start-up enterprises tax deductions for losses that could help them survive. This kind of stuff is so idiotic only a socialist could dream it up. There’s no logic behind it; it’s just a desperate tax grab to enable tax-crazy Democrats to continue their budget busting, out-of-control spending spree.

Palantir Technologies, an artificial intelligence (AI) giant and Colorado’s biggest corporation by market capitalization came here in 2020 to escape California’s culture, anti-business taxes, and regulations. CEO Alex Karp has announced Palantir is relocating to Florida to escape the same problems in Colorado, which include the over-regulating of AI.

In response, the local president of the militant Service Employees International Union, declared, “Good riddance!” This mentality is self-destructive insanity. Colorado’s reputation as a business-friendly state is down the toilet. Many more companies will follow Palantir’s lead, costing Colorado jobs and tax revenue. Progressive Democrat policy like FBUB is economically suicidal, as the flight of businesses and upper income taxpayers from New York, California, and Illinois has demonstrated.

Driving out producers and coddling criminals, illegal aliens, and freeloaders is a bad formula for Colorado’s future.

The uninterrupted string of Democrat governors over the past 20 years has stacked the state Supreme Court with progressive justices who’ve blessed the Democrats’ deceitful tactics that violate TABOR’s limitations on taxation and spending without the consent of voters. This latest FBUB overreach is so blatantly unconstitutional under TABOR, it might be too much even for the Colorado Supremes. We can hope.

Longtime KOA radio talk host and columnist for the Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News Mike Rosen now writes for Complete Colorado.

And look, I get it. Businesses relocate for all sorts of reasons: taxes, regulations, labor costs, office space, crime, commute times, the haunting feeling your chief executive is one city council meeting away from being declared a single-use plastic.

But Colorado’s political class has been turning “headquarters” into an endangered species.

Take TIAA, the financial services giant whose name has for decades been glowing atop a downtown Denver skyscraper like a Bat-Signal for retirement funds. They’re relocating to Frisco, Texas.

Texas? Of course, Texas. If Colorado is the place where we hold hearings on the carbon footprint of breathing, Texas is the place where they say, “Stop talking and go build something.”

We’re constantly assured Texas is a lawless, dystopian wasteland of deregulation and brisket. Apparently, dystopia pencils out better than Colorado.

Then there’s Palantir, our most high-profile (and secretive) tech company, which just moved its headquarters from Denver to Miami.

Miami! The city best known for hurricanes, cocaine kingpins yelling “Say hello to my little friend,” and the kind of consumer lifestyle that makes Boulder’s city councilors vomit into their reusable tote bags.

Adios, Colorado

Why are they leaving? It must be the two medieval-poetry grad students who keep protesting outside Palantir’s Denver office.

Yes, congratulations. I’m sure it was your cardboard signs that chased them out — not the state becoming the first in the nation to roll out sweeping, pre-emptive AI regulations that require companies to document, audit, report, explain, disclose and apologize for their algorithms before they’ve even finished coding them.

Nor could it be Colorado’s energy policy that traded the reliability of “baseload power” for the whimsy of intermittent renewables. Businesses need predictable, stable electricity to make long-term investment decisions. That’s not ideological. That’s arithmetic.

Add to that the constant drumbeat of new mandates, fees and compliance requirements, and Colorado starts to look less like a tech hub and more like a regulatory obstacle course.

So, what’s the pattern here? It’s not just “companies move sometimes.” We’re building a list. A tracker. A scoreboard. The Colorado Chamber literally maintains a “Lost Opportunities” compilation of companies leaving, downsizing, or choosing to expand somewhere else. Nearly 12,000 jobs have moved away.

When you need a tracker for corporate departures, you’re no longer “a state with some challenges.” You’re a gate agent announcing final boarding for Flight 970 to Anywhere Else.

It’s not just big, finance-and-tech firms. It’s small slices of Colorado history too.

Yes, even cowboys are looking at Colorado Springs and saying, “This place is getting a little… weird.”

The Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association has been based in Colorado Springs since 1979, and now it’s moving its headquarters — and with it the Pro Rodeo Hall of Fame — to Cheyenne, Wyoming.

Wyoming — a state with more cattle than people. A place where regulations come in two categories: “Don’t set yourself on fire” and “Try not to get kicked.”

When cowboys rustle themselves out of Colorado, are we still Colorado?

It’s no coincidence

At some point, we stopped being a place where entrepreneurs risk their time, treasure and talent to build things and became a place where entrepreneurs must apologize for themselves.

And it’s not just the cost — although yes, costs matter. It’s the vibe. The political posture. The governing style that says, “We want your jobs and tax revenue… but we’d also like you to feel lightly ashamed for existing.”

Since we keep treating businesses like the thief in a crime novel, maybe we should stop acting shocked when they quietly leave in the middle of the night.

Because that’s what’s happening. Not “moving.” Evacuating.

Like:

“Grab the servers!”

“Did you get the customer list?”

“Forget the Keurig, we don’t have time!”

“Is the legislature still in session?”

“Then GO, GO, GO!”

And the saddest part is Colorado still has everything going for it — talent, beauty, lifestyle, innovation. We should be an easy sell. Instead, creators leave because the policy climate feels like a never-ending HR seminar conducted by people who have never met a payroll.

Look, companies move for lots of reasons. But when the pattern keeps pointing toward states with lower taxes, lighter regulatory burdens, and more predictable policy environments, maybe — just maybe — it’s not coincidence.

Maybe it’s policy.

No, no. It was definitely the protesters with tambourines.

Jon Caldara is president of Independence Institute, a free market think tank in Denver.

Relax. Put the pitchforks down. I am not relitigating the 2020 election or mail ballots or even Tina Peters.

But I am saying people don’t trust elections like they used to. And here in Colorado we can do a rather simple thing to reverse that. And progressives should want it most.

Saving democracy is all the rage now, and as far as political slogans go, it’s a pretty damn good one.

But saving democracy isn’t just about protecting Colorado from President Donald Trump, whatever that vagary means. It’s about fortifying our democratic institutions so the voters’ true will is clearly and verifiably stated.

This is where I’d usually rant about how the legislature going around our Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights is more of a clear and present threat to democracy than anything Trump is doing in Colorado, but why state the obvious? Those hell-bent on taking your money will do anything to make sure you can’t vote on it.

Again: Save Democracy, Protect TABOR!

Confidence in elections isn’t determined by how often some official says the system works. It’s determined by whether the public believes the system is beyond suspicion. Our republic depends on that.

And the Colorado Secretary of State’s office just insisting our elections are fair and honest? That’s not enough. Saying “trust us” isn’t proof. They need to prove it. And they don’t. Not really.

When you buy stock in a publicly traded company you have confidence the financial information is accurate because an outside, independent auditing firm checks the books and certifies them. Been the law since 1933. Apparently, elections didn’t get the memo.

Colorado’s voting system operates in a way publicly traded companies could never: it audits itself. That doesn’t engender confidence.

Now before the Tina Peters acolytes start pointing fingers, I am in no way saying any Colorado elections were rigged or tampered with. I am saying if you want people to believe the results the Secretary of State declares, her office shouldn’t be the one doing the auditing.

Or put differently, if Trump-hating progressives want to shut up election-denying MAGA die-hards, simply having outside election audits would go a long way.

Counties do the hands-on work, but the critical decisions are made at the top. Right now, the Secretary of State determines which races get audited, what statistical method is used, and what “risk limit” applies. That determines how many ballots get checked.

And here’s the kicker: the current system incentivizes auditing the “blowout” races.

If a candidate wins by 9,000 votes, you only must sample a handful of ballots to confirm the result. Easy peasy.

If a candidate wins by 30 votes? Now you must check a lot more ballots. That’s expensive, time-consuming, and annoying. Bureaucrats hate work.

So what does the SOS audit most? The landslides.

The current setup rewards picking races easiest to validate rather than races that most need validating. That’s not corruption. That’s human nature. And a little bureaucratic laziness.

And human nature is exactly why we use independent auditors everywhere else. An outside firm or office, with its reputation on the line, would likely choose differently.

Besides, it’s just terrible practice for the Secretary of State to audit the Secretary of State. Even Enron’s accountants would call that sketchy.

The beauty of an outside audit is you remove the political suspicion.

An independent commission, or maybe the State Auditor’s office, would decide which races are audited, the statistical methods, whether best practices are followed.

Nothing about ballots, machines, or voter IDs so the left can’t gasp “suppression.”

What changes is who verifies the work. And that matters.

If Democrats truly believe Colorado elections are secure, and they say they do, then an independent audit only strengthens that claim.

In fact, it’s politically brilliant. Imagine a Democratic Secretary of State saying, “Our elections are secure, and we’ve removed all doubt by putting audits in the hands of independent experts.”

That’s not voter suppression. That’s voter reassurance. And it beats the current line: “Trust the system. It audits itself.”

We don’t save democracy by telling skeptical voters to shut up but by making the system more trustworthy.

An independent auditor is not an accusation. It’s insurance.

Even for progressives. Especially for progressives.

If the legislature won’t make this change, it’s our responsibility to ask every Secretary of State candidate whether they will.

Jon Caldara is president of Independence Institute, a free market think tank in Denver.

Don’t panic, 240 billion of them are still in circulation. Actually, this is long overdue. “Seigniorage” is the revenue a government derives from the difference between the face value of a coin and the cost of its mintage. (Ignore paper currency.) The U.S. Mint stopped making quarters, half dollars, and dollars out of silver when inflation made the metal content more valuable than the face value of the coins. Minting a penny now costs 3.7 cents each. The penny is the only current U.S coin with negative seigniorage.

When I was a kid, a penny had some intrinsic value. You could actually buy something with it. Place one in a bubble-gum machine, turn the crank and a candy-covered gum ball would drop out. You could even put a 1-cent stamp on a penny post card. In 1857, the U.S. stopped minting half-cent coins, and the nation survived even though a half penny actually had some purchasing power; you could buy a half-dozen cigars for that.

The cumulative inflation rate of 370% over the last 270 years since then has rendered the penny virtually worthless. Today, it isn’t worth the trouble of picking up off the sidewalk (especially if it’s face down; that’s bad luck). Dimes or quarters have replaced pennies in kids’ piggy banks. And credit cards, debit cards, PayPal, internet electronic transactions, crypto currency, automatic ACH billing, and mobile sports-betting, to name just a few alternatives, are increasingly displacing purchases with cash in general (with the exception of stacks of hundred-dollar bills in duffle bags for big illicit drug deals). Most people don’t even bother to carry coins in their pockets anymore. If you try to give the kid at the checkout counter a $5 dollar bill and three pennies for a $4.83 purchase, hoping for two dimes back, his eyes cross as he struggles to do the math in his head.

The sentimental case for keeping the penny is fading away as penny-laden references in our language such as “a penny for your thoughts,” “penny wise and pound foolish,” “penny-ante,” “penny pincher,” “pennies from heaven,” and “penny stocks,” are disappearing with generational change. Even penny loafers are out of style. Abraham Lincoln won’t be forgotten; his face will still grace the $5 bill. Canada has already eliminated its penny in 2012 (mostly to stop unruly hockey fans from throwing them onto the ice).

In your shopping cart at the supermarket, each individual item will still be priced in 1-cent increments. If you’re paying with plastic or a check you’ll pay the exact price, with no rounding necessary. Making a mountain out of a mole hill, some people are afraid retailers will cheat consumers by always rounding prices UP (which would be the to the nearest nickel, not the nearest dollar). This is ridiculous. Rounding will only apply if you’re paying with cash, and it will be on the total bill (not each item) rounded to that nearest nickel. So, a total purchase of, say, $89.01 or $89.02 could be rounded down to $89.00, saving you one or two cents. And a purchase of $89.03 or $89.04 could be rounded up to $89.05, costing you one or two cents more. This is small change and in the long run, it’ll all even out anyway.

Anti-business progressives are also stricken with UP-rounding paranoia that greedy capitalists will oppress consumers. Coming to the rescue, the (NCSLSLTTF) National Conference of State Legislatures’ State and Local Taxation Task Force (whew!) is proposing a government mandate requiring that purchases ending in 1, 2, 6 or 7 cents be rounded down to the nearest nickel, and purchases ending in 3, 4, 8 or 9 cents be rounded up. Please. This is a solution for a non-problem.

I doubt Safeway will make it corporate policy to always round up. That would be terrible public relations giving Wal-Mart the competitive opportunity to advertise they always round down (perhaps raising prices a few cents to make up for it).

Longtime KOA radio talk host and columnist for the Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News Mike Rosen now writes for Complete Colorado.

People are leaving Colorado.

After years of being one of the fastest-growing states in the nation, net in-migration has stopped and may be reversing.

According to Federal Reserve Bank data, the last time Colorado’s population took a dip was 1945. Congrats to our policy makers, who finally achieved something historic no one asked for. The Broncos haven’t won a championship in a decade, but what you’re achieving hasn’t happened in 80 years.

For the first time in 16 years, rents in metro Denver are actually going down. Not “slowing their increase.” Not “rising less quickly.” Going down.

Metro-wide rents are down nearly 5% over the last year. This should set off alarm bells under the Gold Dome. But it won’t.

Californicating Colorado

Colorado is the most beautiful and desirable state in the nation. If people are no longer stampeding here, something has gone seriously wrong — and it’s not the lack of good snow this year. More likely it’s unaffordability, litter, crime and an anti-employer climate that treats job creators like parolees.

When new state law required posting of salaries, national want-ads for teleworkers stated, “not accepting applications from Colorado.” And thanks to the first-in-the-nation, and worst-in-the-free-world, regulation on AI, that same phrase is now appearing in tech company want-ads — which is quite an achievement for a state that claims to “lead innovation.”

People are still fleeing the high-tax, government-failure states of California, New York and Illinois. Those refugees used to pour into Colorado. No more. They’re finding sanctuary in low-tax, low-regulation states like Florida and Texas instead.

So give our leaders one victory. They’ve stopped the mass migration of Californians to Colorado — albeit by Californicating our laws. What perverse irony.

Graduated-income-tax states of New York and California top the list of exodus states, losing 1.7 million and 1.6 million people in a decade. The top states gaining population are the no-income-tax states of Florida and Texas (plus-1.6 million and plus-1.3 million).

When people leave a state, they don’t just take their dog. They take their money, their assets and their businesses.

Between 2012 and 2022 California lost more than 350,000 people and $21 billion in income to Texas alone. New York lost 380,000 people and $36 billion to Florida. That’s $57 billion of income those states can no longer tax.

Legislature misses the memo

There was a time when doctors practiced bloodletting to heal patients. It just hastened their deaths. If the first round of this year’s legislation is any indicator, our lawmakers are keeping the tradition alive.

They’re considering moving up the unreachable goal of 100% renewable energy by a decade. There’s also a bill to end eight decades of peace between unions and business by repealing the Labor Peace Act.

And the granddaddy of policy bloodletting is the effort to destroy Colorado’s Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights and emulate the progressive-income-tax models of California and New York — the same states people are fleeing.

Now rents are falling — not because Colorado suddenly learned how to build housing efficiently — but because people stopped coming. Demand softened. That’s not a victory. That’s a warning sign — the economic equivalent of chest pain.

Why is homeownership so expensive here? Because governments at every level treat new housing like a public nuisance. Zoning restrictions, growth boundaries, density caps, “affordability” set-asides, green mandates, impact fees, neighborhood vetoes and endless reviews all conspire to make housing scarce.

Young people aren’t asking for luxury penthouse condos. They’re asking for a starter home that doesn’t require four roommates and a GoFundMe.

Then there’s energy, where Colorado has chosen ideology over reliability. We’re banning and regulating affordable energy while mandating expensive electrification — even as our grid proves fragile during windstorms and cold snaps.

The young are told they must save the planet, while their utility bills rise and their power goes out. When you’re 25 and trying to build a life, “sacrifice more” is not a winning sales pitch.

People can read a paycheck. They see rent, utilities, gas, groceries and deductions. They also see litter, drug-addled vagrancy, neglected roads and bumper-to-bumper traffic next to empty bike lanes.

When the cost of living rises faster than wages, the view of the Rockies starts to look less romantic.

So when rents fall for the first time in 16 years and population growth stalls, it’s not a mystery. It’s the market delivering feedback.

Jon Caldara is president of Independence Institute, a free market think tank in Denver.

Weiss, a self-proclaimed centrist, was hired for that job in October 2025 by Paramount Skydance (CBS’s parent company) presumably to expand its audience by creating more balanced reporting than the typical leftist and anti-Trump content on CBS, NBC, ABC, PBS, and CNN. Weiss’s role is to ultimately oversee and edit CBS News content, which is why I describe this conflict as “inevitable.” Weiss had earlier been hired by the NY Times in 2017 as a token moderate within its overwhelmingly left-wing opinion staff. Predictably, that didn’t work out. She publicly resigned in 2020 citing the narrow-minded, left-wing culture at the Times, open hostility and bullying from colleagues who called her “a Nazi and a racist,” intolerance of different viewpoints, and no interest in open debate. Facing a similar culture at CBS News, Weiss’s mission will be challenging.

Sharyn Alfonsi, the “60 Minutes” correspondent who produced the CECOT prison piece, publicly criticized Weiss claiming, “the story was factually correct and had been cleared by CBS lawyers and its standards division.” Alfonsi argued that, “pulling it now after every rigorous internal check has been met is not an editorial decision, it is a political one.” Weiss explained the story was one-sided, but that she’d air Alfonsi’s piece in a future broadcast when it was better balanced and ready. (Balance on “60 Minutes? Perish the thought.)

While Alfonsi’s story may contain some correct facts it can still be loaded with progressive, pro-Democrat, anti-Trump political spin, as is commonplace at “60 Minutes.” Alfonsi’s lame proof of fairness was the approval of CBS lawyers, its standards division, and rigorous internal checks, which is like having the fox guard the hen house.

Weiss stated that “the only newsroom I’m interested in running is one in which we are able to have contentious disagreements about the thorniest editorial matters with respect and, crucially, where we assume the best intent of our colleagues.”

Wading into this dispute was the Associated Press, an omnipresent international wire service even farther left than “60 minutes,” that notoriously puts out biased opinion pieces masquerading as news stories. Predictably defending “60 Minutes,” the AP described the program as, “one of journalism’s most respected brands.” Of course, it’s respected and revered by lefties and naïve viewers, but certainly not by conservatives and savvy objective followers of public policy. In its so-called news story, the AP noted that “60 Minutes” was “a frequent target of Trump,” which is true. But it failed to note that’s because Trump was a frequent target of “60 Minutes,” from which he defends himself. Furthermore, the AP feared Weiss’s appointment might be a signal that CBS News, “was headed in a more Trump-friendly direction.” Good Heaven’s, no! God forbid that CBS could be headed in a less unfriendly direction and treat Trump fairly.

Regarding CBS’s journalistic credibility, in October 2025, “60 Minutes” recorded an extensive interview with Vice President Kamala Harris, then the Democrat candidate for president. On October 6, CBS’s “Face the Nation” aired a clip from that recording in which “60 Minutes” correspondent Bill Whitaker asked a question about Israel and the behavior of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In her answer, Kamala rambled through one of her typical incoherent word salads. The very next day a prime time-special edition of “60 Minutes” aired a long version of the interview in which the word salad in Kamala’s answer had been edited out to spare her the embarrassment. After this trickery was publicly exposed on YouTube, CBS claimed it was edited to save time. Come on.

Trump subsequently sued CBS News and “60 Minutes” for $20 million over this scam, arguing it was deceptive editing. CBS and its parent, Paramount, settled out-of-court for $16 million, with the funds going to Trump’s future presidential library and his legal fees, but denied any wrongdoing saying the editing followed its standard journalist practice. It’s beautifully ironic that CBS’s defense is a virtual admission that its “standard journalist practice” was intentionally deceptive!

Longtime KOA radio talk host and columnist for the Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News Mike Rosen now writes for Complete Colorado.

Worse than useless and ridiculously underused, they obstruct traffic and pose a safety hazard for bicyclists and pedestrians. The lanes on Broadway north of Speer Blvd. are positively laughable, repositioning cars that were parked at the curb now out into a former traffic lane and inserting the bicycle lane in its place. Vehicles making a left turn crossing that bicycle lane do so at the peril of cyclists, which can also be said of any bicycle rider in downtown Denver traffic.

The addition of bicycle lanes on four-lane thoroughfares throughout Denver has reduced them to only one lane in each direction squeezing vehicle traffic and making it worse. This is idiotic. On 16th Avenue, the bicycle lanes are accompanied by a barrier of white plastic bollards that won’t offer much protection from a weaving 5,000-pound Ford-150 pickup.

Anti-mobility

This isn’t Copenhagen where bicycles are fashionable and economical for young students. Nor is this a less-developed country where the masses who can’t afford cars clog city streets with bicycles, scooters and rickshaws. Bicycling is not desirable or practical for all but a tiny minority of commuters, especially during our cold, icy winters. In other seasons, heat and rain will make for an arduous trip to the office and a malodorous day for nearby co-workers.

On East Colfax Avenue, two of the four existing car lanes are being eliminated, leaving only one in each direction to make room for two center-running Bus-Rapid-Transit (BRT) lanes. This is a project to create a “high‑capacity transit corridor connecting downtown Denver to the Anschutz Medical Campus.” Again, fewer auto lanes and mass rapid transit will be Denver’s salvation!

Bicycle lanes, you see, are just a tiny part of a bigger picture. For years, progressives on Denver’s city council have publicly proclaimed their hatred of cars and their intent to make driving so unpleasant that motorists will avoid our fair city. And they’ve joined the progressive, enviro, elitist “New Urbanism” movement, even adopting the name: Denver Urbanism.

The movement describes its vision as “an alternative to post-WW II low-density suburban sprawl.” Instead, cities will be converted to walkable, mixed‑use, human‑scaled neighborhoods featuring compact development, transit access, diverse housing, and vibrant public spaces. Streets and buildings will be shaped around people, not cars and parking lots, thus lowering auto emissions and saving the environment.

This isn’t New York

Sure, some people will like that lifestyle. Fine for them. But this isn’t New York City. A great many people live in Colorado, including the front range, for its wide-open spaces, not the cramped confines of an inner city and the view from your apartment house window of the building next door. These enviro “visionaries” need a seeing-eye dog. Their disdain for the suburbs is at odds with the joy of people who choose to live there in a single-family-home with elbow room, a backyard for the kids and the dog, an attached garage, in a secure community, and maybe a nearby HOA swimming pool.

The NYC subway system crams millions of people together, elbow-to-elbow, in underground trains spanning the city who have no practical alternative to get work each day. Most Coloradans love their cars, pickups, and SUVs. And they avoid mass public transit by design. This is evidenced by the sparse use of RTD and the often-empty trains. We use our cars for the convenience of shopping for groceries or at the mall, for long trips to the mountains or Arizona for the winter, to visit friends and relatives, to drive to DIA (have you noticed how many cars fill its parking lots), for mom to take the kids to their soccer games, to lug your golf clubs to the course, and, ironically, lug your bicycle to a mountain trail.

Denver needs to repair its roads, not divert that money for unwanted “multi-model” transportation illusions. What with its crime, traffic, relentless leftist protestors, street people, beggars, drug addicts, soaring restaurant prices (pushed by excessive minimum wage laws), and all the negative side effects of being a sanctuary city, the last thing Denver needs to do is piss off more motorists. Automobiles aren’t going away. Most of all we love the freedom they give us. (Have you ever tried to take away Grandpa’s car keys away when he hits 80 ― or even 90!)

Longtime KOA radio talk host and columnist for the Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News Mike Rosen now writes for Complete Colorado.

The election for Colorado’s next governor does not take place in November. It’s in fewer than five months, on June 30. That’s the state’s primary election. Whoever wins the Democratic primary is the next governor (with all apologies to the seeming 328 Republicans running for the seat). So, out of a state of 6 million people, we must choose between an affable socialist and a tired Washington, DC liberal. Aren’t we the lucky ones.

Yes, yes, Michael Bennet has all the name recognition and an independent expenditure cash tsunami (it’s good to be the senator). That’s not enough.

There are a bunch of small factors tilting toward Attorney General Phil Weiser, but one big hairy monster that will sink Bennet’s ship if he doesn’t change course: he refuses to say who he’ll appoint to replace him in the U.S. Senate.

This is a do-not-pass-go, do-not-collect-$200 kind of obstruction. And the obstacle is only going to grow like Joe Biden’s prostate the closer we get to the primary.

Bennet’s blunder

Bennet has pledged not to resign his Senate seat until after he’s sworn in as governor — months after winning the primary, months after winning the general. In Colorado, the sitting governor appoints the replacement. So should he win, in this brave moment of “democracy is in danger,” He’s going to handpick his own successor, Castro-style. But who? He won’t tell us.

In fact, Bennet’s wife informed his campaign team he won’t talk about it while he’s campaigning. So don’t bring it up. And if someone asks, she ordered this response, “There will be some really great, young Democrat who is there to vote exactly the same way that Michael votes.”

If Bennet is going to replace himself with his clone, only younger, to vote EXACTLY the same way he does, you’d think he’d have just the tiniest idea who this doppelgänger might be. Or at least a short list. Or a dartboard.

As the primary gets closer, Michael is going to be thrashed at every town hall, debate, and media interview with this obvious question. It’s gonna stick to him like lint on a black sweater. As it should.

Nobody, and I mean NOBODY believes he doesn’t know who his replacement will be. Voters will smell the oldest political cliché: the “another lying politician” truism.

Give the man an Academy Award, he’s gonna look into the cameras and say, “I haven’t thought about it yet, so I can’t even give you a list of names I’d consider.” That doesn’t pass the pants-on-fire test.

I’ll answer for him. It’s Jared Polis, Jason Crow, Joe Neguse, or maybe Brittany Petterson. See, not that hard.

Throwing the race to Weiser

And if he did announce his choice before the primary? That wouldn’t save him either. Every campaign stop would suddenly include a second race: not just “why should you be governor,” but “why should this person be senator?” No matter who he chose, it would anger some factions of his own coalition, and they’d meander over to Weiser.

We little people kind of like knowing who we’re voting for. But one guy who knows but won’t tell us gives off a distinctly Trumpy vibe — which is ironic, given the number of Democrats who can smell Trumpism from three counties away.

And let’s remember the backdrop to this sham — “democracy is under assault!”

Colorado voters who see anti-democratic evil lurking everywhere are not going to vote for a guy who is pulling a Trump-styled power play.

Coloradans like voting. It’s one of the reasons an attack on our Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights(the ultimate in democratic institutions) at the ballot box will face headwinds. We like knowing what we’re voting on. Mystery packages don’t pass.

These same headwinds, even if voters don’t articulate them out loud, will blow in the primary. It will blow voters toward Weiser

For voters who like Bennet as senator, the problem is even worse. Why throw away 17 years of hard-to-get seniority — real power in Washington — for a mystery senator? That’s not bold leadership. We’re being asked to marry a blind date.

Bennet will lose unless he resigns his Senate seat before the primary — or at least promises to resign immediately after the general election so Gov. Polis can choose his replacement.

Jon Caldara is president of Independence Institute, a free market think tank in Denver.

Like so many issues where people quickly polarize to one extreme or the other, this issue is nuanced. “Nuanced” in today’s vocabulary means “background noise” — something not worth listening to. Like anyone listens to me anyway.

To state the ridiculously obvious, Denver’s policy makers can put restrictions against masking on their own law enforcement (although since they forced masks on those of us who didn’t want it during COVID, there is offensive poetry here), but they have absolutely no authority to instruct the federal government how to operate. Still, virtue signaling is the political sport of our time.

ICE damaging its own brand

Masking is an issue thanks to the ICE immigration crackdowns, where nuanced conversations are not just ignored, they are violently throttled. So, let’s address that first.

I don’t think anything in recent history has damaged the bond between civilians and law enforcement more than the actions of ICE in Minneapolis. And that bond is critical not just for our safety, but our republic.

Even to those of us who support deportation, these heavy-handed raids come across as a thuggish police-state maneuver. (Though it’s been enjoyable to watch inner-city progressives start reconsidering the Second Amendment after one of their own gun-owning protesters was killed. Maybe a world where only government has the guns isn’t the Utopia they dreamt of. Odd how reality interrupts theory.)

I support ICE doing their jobs, but the optics of unidentifiable masked strangers pulling people off the streets and breaking down doors is politically counterproductive to ICE’s own stated ends. And that sucks because I support deporting people here illegally.

You want — scratch that — NEED civilians to support sending illegal immigrants back over the border. Otherwise, the political will disintegrates.

The question is not if the feds have the right to go into cities and grab illegals this way. They do.

The question is, can they do their job if most of America, including many Trump voters, hate how they’re doing it? Trump is bleeding political support on the main issue that got him elected — reversing the open-border debacle.

Sanctuary state sycophants

And though sanctuary-state sycophants are making more Hitler comparisons during their pastime of “democracy is under threat” tantrums (it isn’t, by the way), they too need to be held accountable for their half of this poop-show.

If local law enforcement cooperated fully with federal agents, none of this would be happening. Those sanctuary-state sycophants are equally responsible for the deaths in Minneapolis.

American law enforcement is truly unique in the history of mankind. Throughout world history police answered to the thug in charge — a cartel kingpin, tyrant, or monarch. How comfortable are you with Mexican cops?

American police are the first line of defense for rule of law, which is why they take an oath to the Constitution, not a king or thug. Before America, that simply wasn’t the case.

That uniqueness rests on the relationship between police and the people they serve. Trust works only because the police are us — the neighbor down the street, the guy next to you in church, whose kid goes to school with your kid.

When police become “the other,” it all breaks down. Masking is a big step toward that. Cops wear masks for the same reason bank robbers do: they don’t want you to know who they are. Not exactly a winning branding strategy.

Try enforcing the law

Yes, I concede when police are identifiable it can present risks to them and their loved ones. We feel that risk all the time because we civilians are identifiable (ask a health insurance chief executive). The answer to that risk is the same for cop and civilian alike — enforce the law.

Cops are scared dangerous people will target them. Well hello, same for the rest of us. So, let’s do what Denver and the Colorado legislature refuses — keep bad guys in jail. Radical huh?

There was a time the neighborhood cop was known to all the shop owners he walked by. The community trusted and welcomed him and his mission.

Apart from the Lone Ranger, we don’t connect with or trust people wearing masks — be it Klan members, Islamic terrorists, kidnappers, or cops. They’re not “us.”

A policy that alienates the public doesn’t strengthen enforcement — it eventually kills it.

Jon Caldara is president of Independence Institute, a free market think tank in Denver.

If it does, Colorado news media might actually have to interrupt their regularly scheduled Republican-bashing to report on it.

Airing dirty laundry

Inner-party squabbles are the price of admission into politics; they’re unavoidable. However, a well-disciplined party keeps its dirty laundry from being aired publicly.

Take the open secret among Washington Democrats and insiders about President Joe Biden’s mental decline. Thanks to party discipline and an all-too-complicit media, it took a nationally televised debate and the political equivalent of elder abuse for them to come clean.

In Colorado, the secret isn’t mental decline (I’m resisting about a dozen jokes here) so much as the growing hatred under the Gold Dome between Democrats and the socialists in their own party.

So far, the state’s Democratic Party has been very disciplined in keeping the ugliness behind closed doors. And thanks to the legislature voting to exempt themselves from the state’s open meetings law, they can pull hair and go all “Real Housewives” in private.

Then there’s Colorado’s media. They are enthralled by the Three-Stooges-like antics of the state’s Republican Party. Be it the gubernatorial clown-car team racing to be beaten by either Bennet or Weiser, or the plans to tunnel Tina Peters out of jail, our crack squad of TV news “truth-tellers” just can’t get enough of Republican dysfunction.

The problem is Republicans have absolutely, positively no power in Colorado politics. Broadcasting their squabbles is meaningless. It’s beating up toddlers just for the sport of it and calling it journalism.

Blue on blue violence

The fights among Democrats over construction defects, AI regulation, crazed woke policies and attempts to remove fellow Dems from office in primaries are bringing them close to fisticuffs.

No wonder leadership didn’t want video streaming of their committee hearing rooms. Democrats are about to start slapping each other, Korean-parliament style.

Reports are flying some Democratic socialists will not co-sponsor a bill if the “wrong” person in their own party is already a sponsor.

If some Democrats have sinned by joining the Opportunity Caucus — a group of Dems who don’t hate all businesses all the time — they might find themselves primaried by their good friends, the Democratic socialists. Basically, it’s socialist-on-progressive violence.

Business-friendly progressives helped defeat unhinged leftists like Reps. Elisabeth Epps and Tim Hernandez. And the communists are about to return the favor this year.

You might remember when Republicans went through this insanity. Crazed people like charlatan Dudley Brown of Rocky Mountain Gun Owners would run smear primary campaigns against decent incumbent Republicans who wouldn’t tow their extremist line. Fanatical Republican challengers might win a primary only to lose to comparatively sane Democrats in the general election. (This was a big reason Republicans lost the legislature.)

We could be seeing that happen again — only with the other party. So, grab your popcorn.

How did the communists — sorry, democratic socialists — get such immense power in the legislature in the first place? A lot of it came from vacancy committees appointing them to fill the seats of legislators who have had enough and left. More than 20% of our legislators got there by appointment, not election.

Ungrateful socialists

Remember when Colorado Democrats were not communists? I mean, Colorado has been under Democratic control before — Dem governors, Dem legislatures. But that was back when Democrats understood you can’t redistribute wealth until wealth is first created by industry.

Our current governor has been a venture capitalist — and a damn good one — but not a day-to-day business owner.

Previous Democratic governors who had run businesses, be they restaurants or John Deere dealerships, had a better instinctive sense of how corrosive government controls can eviscerate our state economically.

Though a capitalist — thus the term “venture capitalist” — Jared Polis has ushered in an unworkable, unsustainable worker’s paradise regulatory state.

You’d think the socialists in the legislature would be throwing roses at him. Instead, the socialists are in open contempt of the governor who’s given them 95% of everything they’ve wanted.

There are still Democrats in the state legislature who see the world like Roy Romer, John Hickenlooper, and even Jared Polis. But will they survive the systematic Soviet purge their socialist party colleagues are planning?

Jon Caldara is president of Independence Institute, a free market think tank in Denver.

You can spot its sufferers easily. They break into hives at the mere mention of the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights. In fact, they can’t even utter its full name, Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, only “TABOR,” as if it’s a slur.

They blame it for everything from potholes to pimples. And they insist — with religious certainty — TABOR is shrinking government in Colorado, and thus people are suffering.

That’s not just wrong. It is so demonstrably wrong it’s deranged.

TABOR passed in 1992. If it really were the government-killing death ray its critics describe, Colorado should look like a ghost town by now. Abandoned government buildings. Empty parking lots at the Capitol. Bureaucrats reduced to bartering staplers for food.

State government keeps growing

Instead, we have (drumroll…) more government than ever.

According to recent analysis from Independence Institute’s Nash Herman, the state didn’t shrink. It swelled like Oprah in a Krispy Kreme shop.

Let’s start with the budget. Since the early 1990s, the state’s General Fund has grown by 44%. That’s where all our tax money is supposed to go. We elect representatives to approximate our values and debate how to spend it.

And thanks to TABOR they can’t spend more of that fund than what they spent last year plus population growth and inflation.

Except that while the General Fund has grown 44%, the new taxes they don’t call taxes (fees) has grown by 588%. It now makes the General Fund look like a tiny slice of the pie by comparison.

To modify a quote from Ghostbusters’ Dr. Egon Spangler, “Let’s say this Twinkie represents the normal amount of taxation in Colorado. According to this morning’s sample, when you add the taxes we’re not allowed to vote on, it would be a Twinkie 35 feet long weighing approximately 600 pounds.”

That’s a big Twinkie.

Yep, those “Cash Funds” exploded by 588%. And federal funds (still our tax money) spent by our state ballooned by 278%. That’s the cash we temporarily get from the feds our legislators get addicted to spending, so they can scream “budget crisis” when it turns out temporary means temporary.

The real threat to democracy

Those who believe democracy is in danger need to focus on this next part, because they’re right:

Back in 1993, the General Fund made up 56% of the state budget. Today, it’s only 35%.

Do you see the threat to democracy? Might require a second look.

Our democratic republic was based on a battle cry, “no taxation without representation.” When TABOR passed the large majority of our taxation had our direct representation. Today only a third of what is taken from us is controlled by those we elected.

Thanks to the engorged orgy of taxes we can’t call taxes (like “fees”), two-thirds of our government is now operating outside of our democratic control.

Despite what the TABOR-deranged say, state spending has been growing faster than the economy itself. Colorado’s GDP has averaged about 5% growth since the late 1990s. State spending? About 6%.

Well, let’s look at it just a little differently. Since 1993, private employment in Colorado is up 61%. Solid. But state government employment? Up 189%.

Apparently, TABOR is so “crippling” the bureaucracy tripled.

Which explains why lobbyists are doing so well. Since 1995, professional lobbyist incomes have risen 374%. When government grows, so does the industry dedicated to feeding on it.

Then there’s Medicaid. Since 2009, Colorado’s population has grown about 20%. Medicaid enrollment? Up more than 200%.

And if you think taxpayers have been protected, think again. Since 2001, the average effective state tax rate has increased by almost 14%.

So dear TABOR-deranged folks, PLEASE tell me again how TABOR is “starving” government.

Consent of the governed

Those with TDS believe unchecked government spending is moral virtue and the simple consent before increasing their spending and our taxes is cruelty.

You see, TABOR is democracy. The gob-smacking growth of state government could only happen when they work around TABOR.

Which is why their sky-is-falling, democracy-destroying obsession never ends. Every year there’s a new attempt to “fix” TABOR, “modernize” TABOR, “adjust” TABOR, or “temporarily suspend” TABOR.

Funny how all those fixes move in exactly one direction.

TABOR’s real crime is not shrinking government, because it doesn’t. It’s reminding government who it works for.

Jon Caldara is president of Independence Institute, a free market think in Denver.

Operation Absolute Resolve, a masterful, tactically precise strike swiftly and flawlessly executed by Delta Force commandoes coordinating intelligence, land, sea, and air elements to arrest and extract Venezuela dictator Nicolas Maduro was a prime example of the superior capabilities of our U.S. military forces.

That’s the good news. However, this singular exercise is overshadowed by a far more serious, even existential, problem. The US is not prepared for the potential of WW III, a growing threat in recent years given China’s massive military buildup and international expansion, with Taiwan the next designated target. (In this context, alarmism and paranoia about climate change in the next century is a mere distraction.)

Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus was a 4th century Roman military strategist renowned for the Latin maxim: “Let he who desires peace prepare for war.” Ronald Reagan called this “peace through strength” and his buildup of our military deterrence ultimately led to the West’s victory in the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, avoiding the alternative of a “Hot War.”

With WWII already in progress overseas, the US – woefully short on military personnel and weaponry – got caught with its pants down on Dec 7, 1941 when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Fortunately, as an island nation far from Europe and Asia, we had time to recover and convert our industrial infrastructure to wartime production, which ultimately played the major role in the Allies’ victory as both sides devastated each other’s industries overseas. President Franklin Roosevelt dubbed this the “arsenal of democracy.”

Today, ICBMs, hypersonic missiles, drones, and satellite warfare make our “island” vulnerable at a moment’s notice. An active-duty military of 12 million in WWII and 3.5 million during Vietnam is now down to 1.3 million. Reagan’s buildup to a 600-ship Navy (597 in fact) is down to 296 warships today, while China has 370. (True, advanced offensive and defensive technology make these ships far more capable but they still can’t be in two places at the same time.) The US Navy has just 4 shipyards, which only perform maintenance. Just 5 of our private shipyards are capable of building warships. We need many more. Weapons and material recently expended to support our allies have yet to be replenished. You can’t flick a switch to convert industry to wartime production. This long overdue renovation will take years to complete.

Our government’s budget priorities are out of whack. In 1960, when John F. Kennedy was elected – after the Korean War and before Vietnam – defense spending was 52% of all federal spending and 9% of the nation’s GDP. In the 1980s, Reagan’s defense buildup averaged 26% of the budget and 6% of GDP. Today, defense spending is just 12% of the budget and 3% of GDP.

The federal budget categorizes Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and a cornucopia of welfare programs as “payments to individuals.” In 1960, that accounted for one-quarter of federal spending. Last year, it was three-quarters of the budget, most of which is treated as “mandatory spending,” meaning it’s on auto pilot and requires no new congressional appropriations each year. The remaining one-quarter is for “discretionary spending,” about half of which for national defense at $900 billion. Oh, I almost forgot. Interest on the national debt of $1 trillion soaks up another 12% of the budget and is a hundred million more than we spend on national defense. Interest payments are the carrying charge on borrowed money the feds have already spent and are nonsensically not included in “mandatory spending.” Defaulting on domestic and worldwide holders of US Treasury Bonds isn’t an option.

The US gross national debt is now $39 trillion, $8 trillion greater than our GDP, the total output of our economy. During WWII, when defense spending took 85% of the federal budget our national debt peaked at 119% of GDP. Today, with the nation at relative peace, our debt burden is even higher at 128% of GDP. (In 1981 it was 32%.)

This is worsening and unsustainable. Creeping socialism is driving us to fiscal insolvency. Taxes are already too high. National defense is our government’s paramount duty, the prerequisite for security, freedom, and prosperity.

The military needs a raise and the fraud-plagued welfare state needs a haircut.

Longtime KOA radio talk host and columnist for the Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News Mike Rosen now writes for Complete Colorado.

This will be the last regular session of his limited two terms, and he has managed to become disliked by just about everyone.

Of course, no matter how often he claims to be libertarian or business friendly, those on his right are just plain pissed at what he’s done to the state during his seven years. The sad fact is Colorado has never seen a more business-wrecking governor in her history.

The Polis era

A postmortem on the Polis years will reveal the eruption of Colorado’s regulatory Leviathan. Unworkable energy mandates, spiraling minimum wage laws, skyrocketing insurance premiums, taxes and “fees,” an avalanche of new unelected committees, commissions, and boards all with one goal – impede business.

No one from the private sector would say Colorado is better off than it was seven years ago.

Civil libertarians were betrayed over anti-gun laws which leapfrogs those of California and Massachusetts, speech codes like the new crime of misgendering, and the first-in-the-nation regulatory noose around artificial intelligence development. So much for our “computer code is free speech” high-tech guv.

And now this governor is reviled by many of his own party for, on rare occasion, siding with sanity.

There is chatter of big labor backing another bill this session to repeal Colorado’s Labor Peace Act, destroying a near century of business-labor détente. Polis wisely vetoed it last year. (Side note: We must pressure Michael Bennet and Phil Weiser for a clear “yes or no” on whether they will sign it. It will land on one of their desks in 2027.)

The all-powerful teacher’s unions are angry Polis has agreed to include Colorado in the federal Educational Choice for Children Act, created by Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill, allowing taxpayers a tax credit for donating to private scholarship organizations.

Polis, like every governor, holds aspirations of becoming U.S. senator or president. A successful run for the White House seems very unlikely at this point. There is no way he could make it through a Democratic primary.

First, he is not a rabid socialist, spitting at anyone who has a dollar more than he does.

Polis has stated his support of a low, flat income tax, and even no income tax at all. That’s commendable but absolutely detested in a party now defined by Bernie, AOC and Zohran Mamdani.

Polis’ progressive bullies

Good God Almighty, the “democratic” socialists are ripping him apart for his simple social media post: “Today is a moment to celebrate the ouster of the brutal socialist dictator of Venezuela, who has cruelly impoverished this once-prosperous country that sits on greater oil wealth than Saudi Arabia.”

Then there’s a challenge of how God made him. No, it doesn’t matter he’s gay. In fact, that’s a box to check when running as a Democrat. The problem is he was born Jewish.

The Israel-hating, “from the river to the sea” style of antisemitism now rampant in Democratic ranks would never allow a Jew to be their presidential nominee.

Polis for VP? Again, no. Colorado’s ultra-blue electoral votes will go to whomever the Dems nominate. The VP slot will go to someone who brings the ticket a swing constituency; Colorado is a “sure thing.”

So basically, Jared Polis is now Colorado’s Rodney Dangerfield. The question is, will he lean into it?

There can be a great deal of power when you know no matter what you do, they’re going to dislike you. That power is multiplied being term-limited — free from fretting about reelection.

Maybe he’s had enough of being pushed around from his left?

Polis is not anti-gun, but his signature unleashed the most restrictive gun laws in the nation. He’s not anti-tech, but he unleashed the most dangerous anti-AI law in the nation (even the Europeans couldn’t dream up something this anti-innovation). He wants a lower flat income tax rate yet signed the bill to make tax cuts unwinnable at the ballot box (it forces the ballot language to say a “yes” vote will destroy education and health care and starve old ladies).

If there was ever a time for our governor to stand up to the crazed progressives who’ve bullied him for his entire tenure, now is it.

Jared, show us the real you! We might like it.

Jon Caldara is president of Independence Institute, a free market think tank in Denver.

They’re also the folks who insist a 12-year-old is far too young to get a tattoo, but perfectly mature enough to make irreversible “gender-affirming” medical decisions.

The technical term for this is cognitive dissonance. In Colorado, we just call it public policy.

Fighting tyranny be ending elections

Now, as the new year dawns and another legislative session lurches to life, prepare yourself for the mother of all contradictions: “I will fight Trump’s assault on democracy,” followed immediately by, “and on an entirely unrelated note, here’s my bill to destroy democracy.”

Watch as our governor and his legislative allies solemnly virtue signal us about the grave dangers of authoritarianism — while quietly consolidating power into unelected boards, commissions and hand-picked appointees who never have to face voters or awkward town halls.

The Regional Transportation District, RTD, is a good place to start. After all it is arguably the largest stand-alone government in Colorado after the state government itself. So of course, Governor Polis wants to jettison most of its elected board and install his own appointed stooges. This trumps Trump. Because nothing says “democracy” quite like removing elections.

This, apparently, is what fighting tyranny looks like now.

Let me spell this out slowly, since subtlety has never been Colorado politics’ strong suit. Our elected officials lose all moral authority to lecture us about President Donald Trump’s threats to democracy when they’re busy dismantling it themselves — right here, in plain sight.

They howl about Trump wanting to fire bureaucrats and install loyalists, then turn around and do the same thing, only with better press releases and more use of the word “stakeholder.”

Put it on steroids and you get Gov. Jared Polis pushing legislation to gut the elected RTD board and replace it with appointed insiders — all in the name of “efficiency,” “equity,” and other words that usually mean “you don’t get a say anymore.” Forget democracy. He wants to install his cronies and build a rail line up to Longmont and the next steel-wheeled pipe dream of a choo-choo from Pueblo to Fort Collins.

RTD’s board exists because the people of Colorado directly voted for a 15-member elected board. That part matters. Or at least, it used to. Now it’s apparently just an inconvenient obstacle to progress.

The irony here is truly epic.

The Polis era of power

To fight the kind of Polis-like things Trump might do as president, Polis launched “Governors Safeguarding Democracy” (GSD) after Trump was reelected. Polis commanded, “In this moment, protecting democracy has never been more relevant or important, and doing so demands strong leadership at the state level.”

He was right: the Polis era has been one long transfer of power away from voters and into the hands of unelected boards, commissions and regulatory bodies that never appear on a ballot. Colorado is now governed by appointment not election, by regulation not legislation, by committee meetings not public debate.

In 2019, with Senate Bill 181, the legislature upended the longtime goal of fostering responsible oil-and-gas development in favor of an appointed panel to execute the industry. The new Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission then did his dirty work of regulating oil and gas to a torturous death.

House Bill 19-1032 “updated” Colorado’s human sexuality education requirements by taking the authority away from elected school boards and the publicly elected state Board of Education. Even grant-giving authority was assigned to an unelected, trans-indoctrinating board.

Recommendations on clean air was once provided by the Air Quality Control Council. That wasn’t enough. An unelected group of automobile-hating environmentalists needed to be endowed with unchecked regulatory authority. Thus, the unelected Air Quality Control Commission was recently created with power on par with the Public Utilities Commission.

And let’s not even start on how the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights is the ultimate form of democracy. Yet the legislature chooses to label tax increases as “fees” to avoid our direct consent.

The question isn’t whether Colorado leaders believe in democracy for America

It’s whether they believe in it for Colorado.

Jon Caldara is president of Independence Institute, a free-market think tank in Denver.

An alternative narrative could read, “Unruly protests in Minnesota by open-border activists attempting to impede federal officers in Minnesota from doing their duty arresting illegal immigrants led to the death of a woman who had blocked an ICE vehicle, disobeyed an officer’s command to get out of her car, then attempted to flee striking the officer who fired his weapon in self-defense.”

They key words here are “led to.” What’s the starting point? If Renee Good had stayed home that day, she’d be alive now. It’s her actions that led to her death. (Just as the Japanese attack on Peral Harbor is what ultimately led to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.) The ICE officers were there lawfully doing their duty. Good intentionally blocked a street with her SUV to impede ICE vehicles. That’s illegal. ICE officers ordered her out of the car. She disobeyed and attempted to flee. That’s illegal. Her car struck an ICE officer. That’s illegal. The angle on the first shot the officer fired through the front windshield as he was jumping out of the car’s path made the shot defensive and justified. But none of this would have happened if Good had obeyed the lawful order or hadn’t joined Minnesota ICE Watch, a radical left-wing group that teaches its members how to obstruct law enforcement officers from doing their duty.

It doesn’t matter how nice a person she used to be, that she has three children (two of whom live with her first ex-husband), that she had roots in Colorado, or if she’s just a naïve radicalized pawn. It’s her illegal acts that led to her death which is being called a “tragedy.” Surely by her family, friends, and fellow radicals. But all tragedies aren’t equal; there’s a relative scale from 1-10, with 1 being the least tragic. The assassination of Charlie Kirk, a wholly innocent victim, was an unmitigated 10. Jack Ruby’s shooting of JFK’s assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, was a 1. Renee Good falls somewhere in between.

The Kent State lesson

In 1970, during the Vietnam War, four days of escalating mass demonstrations by anti-war students at Kent State University in Ohio was accompanied by violent and criminal actions by a faction of protestors that included setting fire to the ROTC building. It culminated in a confrontation between 3,000 protestors and Ohio National Guard soldiers who were deployed by the governor to protect school property and restore order. Tensions mounted on the school Commons as the guardsmen were surrounded by protestors. Tear gas cannisters were launched by the troops and thrown back at them by the protestors along with rocks. Some of the troops defensively fired their rifles. Four students were killed, nine wounded. In the aftermath, a common question was, “What’s the lesson of Kent State.” The answers were varied based on one’s ideology.

Radical protestors of any political stripe who resort to violence and disobey lawful orders from armed law enforcement officers seem to imagine they’re somehow invulnerable or bulletproof because of the self-perceived “justice” of their cause. Applying this to the radical Minnesota anti-ICE activists, in the interest of their own health and safety, at least one lesson of Kent State is “Don’t throw a rock at a man with a gun.”

Of course, anyone has the option to risk one’s life for a cause. Soldiers, police, firefighters, and ICE agents do this every day. But for what cause were Renee Good and other Minnesota protestors risking their lives? Since legal immigrants have nothing to fear, is their cause unlimited illegal immigration and the right of illegal aliens to permanently remain unlawfully in our country, even those who have committed more serious crimes. They claim it’s to protect their neighbors. That’s a pretense. This is just another battlefield of the anti-Trump “Resistance.” Are these protestors truly so welcoming and forgiving of all their Minnesota neighbors ― immigrants or not ― even gangsters, drug dealers, rapists, or those Somali immigrants who have bilked Minnesota taxpayers out of billions of dollars in Medicaid and welfare fraud?

But there are some lessons buried in this story of ski bums going all Norma Ray on big skis backside. Forget big pharma, big ski runs mountains. And that's real power. I mean, how much power do you wield when you can run a friggin mountain?

Colorado has arguably the finest skiing on the planet. I say arguably because I haven't skied in years. Not since my children robbed me of my money, my free time, and my functional knees. Back then you didn't have to sell plasma to buy a lift ticket.

You could sneak up to Eldora for 1/2 day for about 20 bucks and still have money for gas today. A one day lift ticket at Telluride will set you back a casual $286. Holidays. Try 326.

A beer cost 10 bucks. Overnight parking runs $40 to $50, which is a bargain assuming you sleep in your car. A hotel or condo will be about $500 a night, assuming you demand basic indoor plumbing. The point is, Telluride isn't just wildly expensive for the people who work there, it's wildly expensive for the people who pay to keep the place afloat.

Customers. The town needs them too. Now, I sympathize with ski patrollers wanting more money in an overpriced town. Who doesn't want more money?

That part's a human. But there's a disconnect if you want the patrollers to get a huge 30% raise while you also complain about the cost of skiing. Labor is the biggest cost in any service industry, including skiing. You can't have your moguls and eat them too.

What employees get paid is only a fraction of what employees cost. Employers also cover payroll taxes, workers comp, unemployment insurance, and, in Colorado, now paid family leave. Considering the ski patrollers spend their days flying downhill between trees at 40 miles an hour, I'd wager their workers comp premiums rival those of coal miners. Then there's the lifestyle factor.

Let's talk about some lifestyle choices. Dead heads would live on grilled cheese sandwiches to follow around the Grateful Dead, get stoned and dance like an epileptic octopus. It's a lifestyle choice with great meaning for them. Harley riders have their odd lifestyle.

I know surfers who must live within running distance of the beach and will leave their wife in labor if the waves are good, but nothing compares to the monastic life of a ski bum. Nature or nurture, I don't know. You can force ski bums into conversion therapy but they'll just scream they were Born This Way. I I think they have their own pride flag.

I celebrate them. Hell, I even support ski bum marriage, despite what the moral majority says. If you were raised in Colorado, you know these people personally. Ski bums are wonderful.

They're part of the magic of ski towns. The old Warren Miller films were basically anthropological documentaries about their subculture. But ski bum on strike is an oxymoron. They're already on strike.

They opted out of a normal life. That's the point. Most eventually grow up, sadly. Get real jobs and tell stories about the seasons they live.

Lived on ramen and chairlift coffee. They wouldn't trade it for anything big. Ski should value them and I think they do. They are the best ambassadors for the industry.

Thus the generous 13% raise offer. But the patrollers turned it down demanding 20 to 30%. That's crazy given another crop of ski bums will be ready to fill their ski boots. Damn that free market.

It applies to ski bums too, but why shut the whole town down over a strike from a small handful of people? Well, if Big Ski was ever to send a message that they will stand up to union intimidation, now's the time to do it. Our ridiculously dry winter has left almost no snow on their mountain and that man made stuff doesn't cover much. People weren't going skiing anyway.

The perfect time to stare down the union. If you enjoy skiing without raiding your kids college fund. Hope Big Ski holds firm.

By Jon Caldara

If you’re a fan of limited government, personal liberty, or educational choice, Tuesday night’s election results were a downer, just another one in a long line of depressing elections that has made Colorado more California than California.

However, if you prefer a controlling elite deciding your fate, debt, class envy and teacher unions, it was just another victory in a decade’s long win streak.

I’m curious how multi-billionaire nannyist Michael Bloomberg felt about his out-of-state investment. He put $5 million toward convincing Denver voters adults must stop buying Swisher Sweets cigars (which contains flavored tobacco, the new fentanyl).

As adults drive by marijuana shops selling flavored edibles, liquor stores selling peach-infused vodka, and legal psychedelic mushroom operations, it’s adults buying smoking cessation products like Zyn in Denver that Michael Bloomberg knows is the scourge of our nation.

It didn’t matter it is already illegal for anyone under 21 years old to buy any tobacco or nicotine products, flavored or not. Bloomberg’s millions convinced voters this was a ban on children buying the stuff. He won handedly as he spent nearly $52 per “yes” vote to make it happen.

Fifty-two bucks a person was enough to convince Denverites who scream “my body, my choice!” when it comes to abortion that government needs to stay out of your uterus but shove itself down your adult lungs. He can’t run New York anymore, so he regulates Denver.

His $5 million was the most spent on any ballot issue or candidate in Colorado this year. For perspective, the class-baiting tax increase on rich people to buy free lunches for just slightly less rich people’s kids raised only $800,000. And that was a statewide question not a tiny one like Denver’s cigar ban.

Passing Propositions LL and MM, the double-down on free lunches in Colorado, was certainly no shock. But it gives us some things to speculate.

It did not surprise me MM passed. What did surprise me was it passed by a larger majority than the original tax proposal, Prop FF, just a couple years ago.

By contrast voters seem to have learned their lesson on the wolf reintroduction fiasco. If put on the ballot today, “wolves” would certainly lose. I think witnessing the debacle of flinging apex predators throughout Colorado is what drove Denver voters to recently reject the slaughterhouse ban and a ban on selling furs. They realized that maybe in some areas, government doesn’t know what it’s doing.

In the same way, the farce that is the free lunch program should’ve caused more of us to reconsider the blatant socialism of stealing from those who have more than you.

It took no time for the current free lunch program to run into the red. I mean, go figure, you offer people free stuff, and they line up to take it. The program also failed to source food locally as promised in the original Prop FF. In other words, the state really FFed the whole socialistic experiment.

Yet even after witnessing this failure, a larger percentage of people voted for MM than the original FF. More of us want to penalize successful people to empower government elite to decide what their own kids should eat.

Could this be a leading indicator the socialist value structure of “take from thy neighbor” has taken root here? Props FF and this year’s LL and MM might be the gateway drug for the cocaine of “democratic socialism.” The first one is always free. “Yo, here’s a sandwich for your kid, you know, on the house.” Before you know it, we’re replacing our successful flat income tax rate with a punitive, progressive income tax.

New York’s socialist mayor-elect spelled it out in his victory speech. “We will prove that there is no problem too large for government to solve, and no concern too small for it to care about.”

Translation: Here in Colorado we will destroy our economy to save the Earth from climate change (while China builds a dirty coal plant every day), punish the productive, risk-taking class and chase them out of the state (see New York in California) as we micromanage every aspect of your life (like outlawing Swisher Sweet cigars, and feeding your children the meals of our choosing).

Is this the Colorado we’ll buy when some out-of-state billionaire sells it to us?

By Mike Rosen

Although people that fall within the age boundaries of a generation may have many characteristics and beliefs in common, a sweeping generalization that stereotypes all of them is presumptuous, ignoring the individuality of many others. Since I was born during World War II, I’m two years short of being technically a Baby Boomer. However, I’m close enough to fit some of the stereotypes of that generation like a strong work ethic, personal responsibility, loyalty, and patriotism.

Gen Z-ers were born between 1997 and 2012, which makes them 13-28 years old now. Their unflattering stereotypes include being self-absorbed, requiring constant praise, narcissistic, job-hopping, feeling entitled, woke, hypersensitive, preferring socialism to capitalism, social justice activists, glued to their cell phones and social media, financially irresponsible, and preferring to have pets rather than wives and children. They’re proud of the participation trophies they were handed after finishing last in grade-school sporting contests. Ambition and competition are sources of anxiety for them. In fairness, I have to say I’ve met some conservative Gen Z-ers who don’t match this stereotype but the great majority of this generation, especially the young women, are indoctrinated progressives who vote for Democrats; the kind of people who’ve flocked to the mayoral campaign of socialist Zohran Mamdani in New York City.

The unemployables

A recent op-ed column in the Wall Street Journal by Suzy Welch, was headlined “Is Gen Z Unemployable?” Welch is a professor at NYU’s Stern School of Business who conducted a study of the values and virtues business-hiring-managers look for in prospective employees versus those of typical Gen Z-ers. Welch concludes that most Gen Z-ers are going to have a hard time finding a good job in many fields if they don’t change their attitude.

A few days after the Journal published Welch’s column, it ran a letter-to-the editor from a Logan Bradford of Lidon, Utah, apparently a proud Generation Z-er, who strongly disagreed. He doesn’t believe that Gen Z-ers should “pay their dues” and conform to a company’s culture in order to get hired or advance. It’s just the opposite, he argues. Businesses should design their workplaces to match the values of young Gen Z-ers so that they’ll be happy and flourish.

Bradford analogizes this to marketing. “You don’t tell customers to adjust their values until they like your product. You tailor your product to meet them where they are,” further insisting that, “a company’s most important customers are its employees.” (Which are two distinctly different things.) Then he claims, “Gen Z’s values aren’t liabilities to manage; they’re assets to mobilize,” leading to this grandiose conclusion: “Self-care drives sustainability, authenticity fuels trust, and altruism builds team cohesion.” Finally, he concludes, “Paying dues won’t make them stronger, it’ll make them leave.” (Good riddance, I say.)

The disconnect

Welch’s survey of 2,100 experienced hiring managers in knowledge-industries that rely heavily on human capital were asked to identify the number-one value they desire in their new employees. “Achievement” came in first, defined as the value of wanting accomplishments and success other people can see; that was ranked eleventh by Gen Z-ers; 61% of whom wished they had less of it in their lives. “Scope,” the desire for learning, action and stimulation, was ranked second by businesses and tenth by Gen Z-ers. And “Workcentrism,” the desire to work for work’s sake came in third for employers but ninth for Gen Z-ers.

Of the 45,000 people who took Welch’s values test, 7,563 were Gen Z respondents of which only 154, just 2.04 percent, placed achievement, scope and workcentrism in their top five values. That disconnect between what employers want and what Gen Z-ers demand doesn’t help their job prospects ― except for the two percent who match up. Despite their inflated self-importance in a tight, competitive employment market, Gen Z-ers are likely to be beggars not choosers.

As for careers they’d be better-suited for, I doubt it would include the discipline, hierarchy and rigidity of the military where they might find a drill sergeant insensitive and the weaponry off-putting. But working in a bodega could be fun and even catapult them to a seat in Congress as it did AOC, their political idol, with whom they could collaborate to get their unpaid student loans cancelled (a master’s degree in Ethnic Studies isn’t cheap). They’d also fit in well as a liberal journalist, NPR reporter, MSNBC commentator, Bernie Sanders intern, social worker, Ivy League college professor, labor union organizer, public defender, shoplifter, or paid anti-Trump protestor if they love to obstruct the police and scream hysterically.

By Jon Caldara

Outside of Colorado, Democrats are still panicked about President Donald Trump’s victory, trying to figure out how Americans can be so stupid as to reject their elitist-driven, woke socialism.

But inside Colorado, Democrats see no need to worry. Unchecked power tends to do that.

A new report from a centrist Democrat group called Welcome confirms what most Coloradans already know but won’t say out loud for fear of getting canceled: the Democratic Party has drifted into a progressive fog, unmoored from the realities of regular people.

The Welcome report, blandly titled “Deciding to Win.” took six months, hundreds of thousands of voter interviews, and several gallons of kombucha to reach one earth-shattering conclusion — voters think Democrats are “out of touch.”

Seventy percent of voters said so, to be exact. That’s not a typo. It’s practically consensus in our fractured age. If the question had been, “Do Colorado roads suck?” the number wouldn’t be much higher.

Detached from reality

Here’s what voters told them: the Democrat Party is too consumed by climate change, identity politics and “saving democracy,” and not nearly enough about the stuff that decides whether you can pay your mortgage or afford meatloaf (of course, meatloaf is murder. How many meat-out days do you need to get that?).

Specifically, their deep dive found voters want the Democratic Party to prioritize (in this order): protecting Social Security and Medicare, lowering everyday costs, making health care more affordable, creating jobs and economic growth, cutting taxes on the middle class, lowering the rate of crime, and securing the border.

Guess what voters want the Democratic Party to stop promoting? Protecting the rights of undocumented workers, raising taxes to increase spending on social programs, protecting the rights of LGBTQ+ Americans, fighting climate change, promoting unions and union jobs, promoting diversity, equity and inclusion, and reducing police brutality.

Holy crap — voters want Democrats to turn into Republicans, sans the social stuff like abortion.

The values of elite urban progressives who run the party don’t jibe with the working voters they claim to represent.

Now, translate that to Colorado. Our legislature treats every session like a grad-school seminar in progressive performance art. They churn out bills on pronoun policies and green-energy mandates faster than their fans can spray-paint “No Kings” on a highway viaduct. Meanwhile, working Coloradans are stuck choosing between paying their Xcel bill and making rent.

The report analyzed how far left Democrats in Congress have moved in the last decade alone: Support for a ban on so-called “assault weapons” grew from 41% to 88%; support for giving full voting rights to federal prisoners grew from 4% to 44%; banning all state abortion limits from 66% to 98%; and support “studying” reparations for descendants of slaves from 1% to 57%.

Colorado a progressive safe haven

And sadly, the Democrats in Congress all seem like William F Buckley Jr. next to the Democrats in Colorado’s legislature.

The report lists electric-vehicle subsidies as one of the least popular Democratic policies tested nationwide. It turns out most folks don’t love the idea of their tax dollars funding someone else’s luxury car purchase. Who knew?

But in Colorado, the EV gravy train just keeps rolling, you know, to save democracy.

The Welcome poll also found at the federal level Democrats suffer “particularly large trust deficits” on crime and border security. You don’t say. Here in Colorado, they’ve decriminalized nearly everything short of armed bank robbery

One of my favorite tidbits from the report: mentions of “environmental justice” in Democratic platforms are up 333%, while mentions of “fathers” are down 100%. That’s not satire, just a stat.

The Welcome data also found highly educated and affluent Democrats — sound familiar, Boulder/Denver? — care about climate change 23% more than average voters and care about border security 27% less.

The Welcome report’s prescription is simple: stop trying to impress the faculty lounge, start listening to the break room. That goes double for Colorado Democrats.

If they spent half as much time worrying about grocery prices as they do about greenhouse gases, they might notice working families are suffocating — not from CO2, but from the cost of living under their web of regulations and mandates.

The Welcome report might be aimed at national Democrats, but our overlords at Colfax and Broadway should take note.

Colorado Democrats might not always have Republican Party dysfunction to guarantee their perpetual victories.

By Mike Rosen

On the Colorado ballot are two statewide measures that are interwoven: Propositions LL and MM. Both are legacies of Proposition FF, referred to voters by the Democrat-controlled state legislature and passed in 2022, creating the Healthy School Meals for All Program (HSMA). Prior to HSMA, the state covered the cost of school lunches only for “at-need” (a euphemism for “poor”) students. HSMA expanded that coverage to include all students regardless of household income, including the children of rich parents. This was just one of countless supposedly “temporary” programs during and after the COVID epidemic.

But Prop FF went way beyond HSMA. It was the camel’s nose under the tent for the first stage of the Democrats’ latest scheme to undermine the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights (TABOR), a constitutional protection that bars the legislature from increasing taxes or imposing new ones without the consent of voters. TABOR also limits state spending to the growth in population and inflation, refunding any revenue surplus to taxpayers. Democrats have tried to kill TABOR for years and resort to devious tactics to get around it like misrepresenting tax increases as “fees.”

LL and MM is the second stage. Prop LL allows HSMA to retain overcollected revenues that would otherwise refund to taxpayers. Before FF, Colorado used your federal taxable income, including the federal standard deduction, to calculate your state income tax. Prop FF raised income taxes on earnings over $300,000 by denying the full federal standard deduction, exposing more earnings to taxation. Prop MM goes much farther. For example, the federal standard deduction for joint filers in 2025 is $33,200. Had MM been in effect this year, its standard deduction would have been limited to a mere $2,000, exposing another $31,200 of one’s earnings to taxation. Moreover, that $300,000 marker isn’t indexed to inflation, so bracket creep would drag in many more with real income lower than that each year.

The next step, a really big one, is a ballot measure primed for 2026 by the Bell Policy Center, an activist, Democrat-aligned left-wing think tank. the scheme would replace Colorado’s flat tax rate with a progressive income tax to soak all those earning more than $500,000. Similar policies have eroded the tax revenues of blue states like California, New York, and Illinois as upper-income residents flee to red states like Florida and Texas with no income tax. Colorado would be foolish to follow this example.

More debt for Denver

Moving on to the Denver ballot, the worst measures are Issues 2A, 2B, 2C, 2D, and 2E. This is Denver’s so-called “Vibrant Denver Bond.” Five separate bond issues with a cornucopia of projects that will make Denver great again (unlike President Trump, Mayor Johnston and the City Council aren’t wearing red ball caps). Whatever the merits or demerits of this package, the obvious disqualifier is that Denver government is fiscally irresponsible and has no business getting even deeper in debt.

The cumulative new debt of these bonds is about $1 billion. Interest on the bonds will further burden each year’s city budget, totaling another billion dollars over the bonds’ term. Adding in the repayment of principal at maturity, that’s $2 billion overall. If the city rolls over the debt with future bond issues, the cycle of indebtedness worsens. By law, the cost of these general obligation bonds is passed on to Denver property taxpayers in a mill levy that will no doubt be raised, adding to that problem.

Denver’s government and bureaucracy is a model of inefficiency. The one-mile 16th Street Mall refurbishment project has taken three-and-a-half years and is way over budget. (By comparison, the Pentagon was built in 16 months during WW II.) A rational Denver government would reappraise its priorities. Instead of using each election as a springboard for yet more government spending to solve every imaginable social justice wish, subsidize thousands of illegal aliens, make Denver great for car thieves, and coddle other criminals, Denver government should open its eyes to reality and curb its spending. (And get rid of those stupid bike lanes.)

Given the Denver electorate, which chooses to be governed by a super majority of left-wing Democrat progressives, this won’t happen. The same can be said of Colorado’s overall electorate. The fiscal hole we’re in is the consequence of government addiction to the flood of temporary federal money during the COVID epidemic. That bonanza is over and government spending needs to return to pre-COVID levels. Instead, the politicians that Colorado’s progressive voters elect will continue to spend beyond our means in a self-destructive attempt to tax the state rich.

By Jon Caldara

For decades, Colorado has served as the nation’s favorite guinea pig — a testing ground for policies so bold, so idealistic and so occasionally boneheaded other states quietly thanked us for jumping in the pool first.

What Silicon Valley is for apps, Colorado is for policy experiments. Sadly, when our “beta test” crashes, there’s no “uninstall” button — just another special session.

Colorado was one of the first states to repeal the counterproductive progressive income tax and replace it with a fair, flat tax. This resulted in the current competition between states to get the lowest flat tax. Thus, the population and business exodus from California and New York to Texas and Florida.

We were the first to constitutionally cap government growth with our Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, or TABOR.

This double-barreled blast of flat tax and expenditure limitation lit Colorado’s economic engine into overdrive for three decades now. So, like trying to bring back polio, there are now efforts to bring back a progressive tax code and repeal TABOR. Of course, bringing back polio would be less damaging.

We were a forerunner of the charter school revolution with one of the first laws in the nation. Today more than 15% of all Colorado students attend a charter. If they all were in one school district, it would be the largest district in the state. All but a couple states now have charters.

We were the first to mandate a portion of transit’s bus service–the Regional Transportation District in this case–be contracted out to private companies. Same buses on same route and schedule but competitively bid brought in a 40% savings. That savings was later bonded to bring in much needed cash for the failed “Fastracks” rail nightmare.

Colorado was on the vanguard of term limits, second only to Oklahoma in a citizen’s initiative limiting a politician’s time in office. Turns out we should have limited politicians to a 3-day term. Live and learn. Some 16 states now have term limits.

Proud to say my organization, Independence Institute, was the driving force behind all these reforms. I personally take credit for all those victories even though I wasn’t even working for Independence at the time. I learned that trick from politicians.

More interesting is the flat income tax rate, charter schools and competitively contracting transit service were all signed into law by a Democratic governor, Roy Romer. This proves there was a time when Colorado Democrats did not hate taxpayers, business owners, or children.

Via a public referendum Colorado was the first to give women the right to vote. Sadly, this reform gained popularity nationally (complaints about that joke should be mailed to “Jon’s editors” at CompleteColorado).

Colorado was the first to legalize recreational marijuana. Following that example we now have some 24 states with legal recreational pot and 40 with medical marijuana. If other states follow us like that again with our new program of releasing apex predators, the nation will turn into a “Jurassic Park” sequel.

Call it courage. Call it foolishness. Either way, America can’t stop taking note of our lead, which over time has gone from reforms to empower people and limit government, to reforms to limit people’s freedoms and empower the state.

Worst is our romance with climate policy, leap-frogging California to chase the unattainable. We didn’t just embrace renewable energy — we married it, bought it a Tesla, and moved into a cabin with a compostable toilet. Colorado’s leaders have turned environmental virtue signaling into a full-time industry, complete with mandates, tax credits, consultants, and “climate equity” coordinators who couldn’t fix a thermostat if they wanted.

Try as they might our legislature can’t legislate physics. The energy crisis coming to Colorado will injure the poor the most. Business will just leave.

If our latest insane policy experiment, regulating artificial intelligence, breaks out of our laboratory the contagion could spell economic doom for the nation. Sure, it’s groovy to be the first state to strangle this tech infant in its crib. But just as Colorado made sure the oil-and-gas industry ran to less abusive states, tech companies will do the same.

Only China is laughing.

It used to be other states would say Colorado broke the mold, let’s follow them to economic success. But that was then.

Now other states can only say “thank you, Colorado, you tried it, so we don’t have to.”

By Mike Rosen

Jimmy Kimmel’s recent “firing” (actually, a mere one-week suspension) as host of ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live” for his false, tasteless, and asinine remarks about Charlie Kirk’s assassination kicked off a firestorm of political controversy between the left and right about freedom of speech. Let’s set the record straight.

The Declaration of Independence and our Constitution were profoundly inspired by our founders’ experience living under the tyranny of the British Empire and King George III over the American colonies. In creating our system of government and its institutions, the founders’ principal concern was to limit government and preserve individual liberty. This is particularly specified in the first ten amendments to the Constitution known as the Bill of Rights, throughout which there are multiple prohibitions of government control over the fundamental rights of the people and the states. Repeated phrases abound such as “Congress shall make no law, the right of the people shall not be infringed, no person shall be held to answer, and no warrants shall issue.”

The First Amendment’s protections were intended by the founders to apply to political statements, among other forms of speech. And, like other fundamental rights, they are not absolute. They’re subject to four vital words: “up to a point.” For example, freedom of religion doesn’t allow human sacrifice. Freedom to bear arms doesn’t include nuclear weapons. The right to assemble says, “peaceably” assemble. And freedom of speech doesn’t include incitement to riot. It’s unlawful, as are words found to be slanderous or libelous in court.

As much as I was disgusted by Kimmel’s remarks following Charlie Kirk’s assassination, they and the biased, ugly opinions he routinely expresses on air are nonetheless protected by the First Amendment which only prohibits government from abridging Kimmel’s freedom of speech. That’s why FCC Chairman Brendan Carr’s threats to silence Kimmel were out of order.

On the other hand, Kimmel’s private sector employers have no such restraint. If ABC or its parent company, Disney, decide to fire him they have the legal right to do so, as well as a financial justification. His audience has been dropping since 2015 and had already plunged from 2.4 million viewers at the beginning of 2025 to 1.1 million in August with ad revenues following suit.

Two peas in a pod

Over at CBS, Kimell’s buddy and fellow leftist Stephen Colbert is being fired for cause. Although his “Late Show” audience is twice the size of Kimmel’s, it has dropped 32% in the last five years, advertising revenues are way down, and CBS is losing more than $30 million on his show this year owing to Colbert’s $20 million salary and the exorbitant cost of his huge staff.

Kimmel’s and Colbert’s sycophantic left-wing audiences may revel in the one-sided diatribes and nasty ridicule of Trump, Republicans, and conservatives prepared by the show’s writers and dished out by these two smug comics, but it drives away half of the American public. TV network owners and executives would be incompetent to stand for that. It’s very bad for business.

As for Kimmel himself, his resume is pretty thin. He dropped out of two different colleges after a year in each and then kicked around in talk radio for a time, being fired from a station in Seattle and then another in Tampa. He later spent five years as “Jimmy the Sports Guy,” a minor figure for hosts of a morning show in L.A. Realizing his true passion was comedy, he later landed at the Comedy Central cable TV channel, then the home of “The Daily Show,” with Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, and a stable of progressive comedians who coddled the left and trashed the right. Kimmel is a quick-witted clown with a history of shooting off his mouth with inflammatory remarks that get him in trouble with his bosses. But, to borrow a classic H.L Mencken witticism, “deep down he’s shallow.”

The king of the TV late-night comedy-variety format with guests was undoubtedly Johnny Carson. At its peak in the 1970s and 80s his viewership was 10 million people (when the US population was 225 million compared to 340 million today) who watched him nightly on their bedroom TVs. Introduced each evening by Ed McMahon with the greeting “Here’s Johnny,” Carson’s opening monologue included jokes and political barbs that were bipartisan and funny but light-hearted. The show was meant to entertain not infuriate or push an ideology. His final show in 1992 drew an audience of 50 million. Jay Leno and Bob Hope had a similar style when it came to politics. Those were the days.

By Jon Caldara

Colorado’s governor just made this statement “The market has made it clear, EVs (electric vehicles) are here to stay.”

I agree with him. Electric cars, unlike 8-track tapes and rotary-dial phones, will continue to be available to consumers for a long, long time. Cool. But why he made the statement puzzles me. He did so while touting his decision that the state will increase one of its subsidies to buy a new EV from $6,000 to $9,000.

Wait a second. Which one is it? Has the market made clear electric vehicles are “here to stay”? Or do we need to increase the EV subsidy by a third to keep its market alive?

And it begs another question: If the state is in a budget crisis, why spend our very scarce money buying people cars instead of providing core governmental services? Oddly, it’s the governor’s decision alone.

During the recent special session, instead of doing their constitutional job of setting budget priorities, the state legislature booted that power to the governor. This hard-left legislature, that screams President Donald Trump has too much executive authority, just gifted their highest authority to Colorado’s chief executive.

In case you’re blissfully unaware, the left is finally noticing our three equal branches of federal government have become very unequal. The executive branch has gained more and more power because during the last century Congress kept ceding its authority to the president’s office. Colorado has been following that example.

Electric car welfare

But let’s talk electric cars. It’s been nearly a year since I let the taxpayers buy me one. I purchased a brand-new, completely sissy, Nissan Leaf. Although it retails for about $30,000, I got it for less than $14,000.

Can you really declare a product is “here to stay” when people will only buy it if someone else pays for most of it?

Although it’s as masculine as a bejeweled golf cart with a baby seat, I’ve enjoyed driving this little electric car more than I’d like to admit. It drives smoothly, is responsive, and has some get-up-and-go (which rarely matters thanks to traffic because we’ve stop building or even maintaining roads).

The downside? In snow it drives like a garbage dumpster sliding down a hill. It has little space to carry much of anything. Though I’m buying less gas, my electric bill went nuts. But what’s known as “range anxiety,” that’s the worst.

I’ve limped this car home with only 2% battery power left, making it more anxiety-powered than electric-powered. It’s no good for trips that might go long. So, like every other electric car owner, I also have a gas-powered car for, you know, life.

The statistics prove it. Subsidies to buy an EV go to people who already can afford a car.

Any member of the Green Industrial Complex reading this is now yelling, “Hey jerk, this new Colorado EV giveaway is income-dependent!” Indeed, it is. Your income must be 80% or less of your “area median income.”

So, according to the Colorado Energy Office, in my poverty-stricken county of Boulder a household of four can make $120,480 a year and still receive the $9,000 gift. Nice.

Beyond that, the state still gives anyone who buys an EV $3,500 (that will reduce next year) plus and extra $2,500 if the EV has a retail price of under $35,000 (that won’t reduce).

Money to burn

The state predicts this new giveaway of $9,000 will cost more than $28 million through the next three years. That’s not what you’d call a budget-driver, but it does represent more than 11% of the $250 million budget shortfall that’s mostly taken out on Medicaid receivers.

And don’t give me the “oh, this EV money comes from a special fee for clean transportation” crap. Money. Is. Fungible.

Jared Polis, who decided to rescind a 1.6% bump to Medicaid recipients to offset a fraction of the inflation (which is worse in Colorado than most other states), has put middle-class people who want a new plaything ahead of the handicapped dependent on Medicaid.

Of course this is by design. The false narrative is Trump cut Medicaid, thus Colorado will need to raise taxes (or “fees”) next year instead of the truth.

Our leaders want to spend our money on social engineering, not the core functions of state government.

By Jon Caldara

Everyone knows there’s no such thing as a free lunch. All the same Colorado voters will again be tested this November to see if they know that.

Expectations are that modern, middle-class Coloradans will deny the “no such thing as a free lunch” truism. They will likely double-down on buying their kids “free school lunch,” with other people’s money, without acknowledging what depraved values they are modeling for their children in the process.

Statewide referred measures LL and MM allow the state to keep excess tax revenue from our sputtering, over-budget new “free school lunch” program and increase taxes on families who make more than $300,000.

Class envy on the ballot

Yes, this issue has tax and fiscal repercussions, but really this election is a morality play: who are we and what do we value. The election tests our willingness to act on our class envy.

Do we support taking even more money from people we’re jealous of and giving it to, not the neediest, but ourselves — the middle-class families more than able to buy Johnny his own lunchroom sandwich.

This election is a precise proxy vote, a barometer on our tolerance of class resentment, nannyism and central planning.

There was a time when proud middle-class families wouldn’t dream of taking a handout to buy their kids a meal, or really much of anything. And the thought of that money coming only from your neighbor in the nicer house would have been even more repugnant. “What, do they think we are incapable of paying for our kids’ lunch?! Do they think we can’t make good decisions on what to feed our kid? Are we wards of the state now?!”

Of course, those were our values before we turned our state into a progressive paradise. That was then. Today our learned resentment of the “wealthy” who oppress us tempts us to find some way to get even.

Forcing them to buy our kids a “free” meal is the collectivist version of keying their car. It won’t break them, but it’ll cost them. And oh, they’ll know somebody hates them, but they won’t exactly know who.

Full tummies are needed for learning. We all agree providing subsidized lunch for kids of poorer families is an important part of our social safety net. It’s what we used to do, and we all chipped in.

There might even be an argument to increase the number of families eligible for “free” or reduced lunch. Fine. Let’s all share the cost proportionately and increase the number of families who can participate.

A moral hazard

But that’s not what we did. We passed Prop FF in 2022 to celebrate class warfare and force rich families to buy meals for just slightly less rich families. Economists, since they can’t converse with actual humans, call it a “moral hazard.” We can just call it perverse.

This election is an opportunity to observe our greater societal beliefs in a petri dish.

Put aside the big concerns that will eventually cripple and destroy our republic: endless debt spending, printing fiat money, unfunded entitlements like Social Security and Medicare. Propositions LL and MM place Alexander Fraser Tytler’s argument that democracy is bound to fail under a microscope: “A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury.”

There are more pedestrian reasons to vote against these festering measures. It rewards the incompetence of those who design and run the system. They couldn’t even run it for a year without it going bankrupt and needing to be bailed out. The original ballot question promised to locally source food for schools. Hah! Never happened.

What kind of idiots are we if we think they won’t be coming back for more and more money?

And what of the creeping way it takes from family autonomy? Government elites and not parents decide what our children should and shouldn’t eat. Who’s really being re-educated, kids or parents?

And pardon me for being conspiratorial, but I see our educational system subtly indoctrinating against individualism and open markets.

What was your first experience with property rights and free markets? Maybe when you tried to trade your orange for another kid’s Oreo cookie. Not a problem when the lunchroom looks like a Soviet grocery. Everyone gets the same bland crap.

By Jon Caldara

Of all places to find a growing citizens’ rebellion against the nanny state, who’d guess it’s happening in woke Denver?

Take note — if Denverites can claw back a little freedom from their elite, it can happen in your city too.

In this city of 70 breweries, 2,000 liquor establishments, some 300 cannabis dispensaries and now mushroom clinics, it was pure poetry when the city council and Mayor Mike Johnston passed a ban on adults buying flavored tobacco and nicotine products, you know, for the kids.

A hint of cherry in your beer — sure. Peach-infused vodka — bring it on! Any bit of flavor in the product you’re using to help you quit smoking — a perversion that must be stamped out.

I imagine the city council members who voted to disempower people from their own bodily autonomy also spout “my body, my choice.”

The cognitive dissonance required for this type of selective maternalistic fascism is monumental. After all, those elite took away the personal decisions of 730,000 Denverites because, well, they know what’s right for others.

What they don’t say aloud, but we hear perfectly, is, “your body, our choice.” And constituents are finding that offensive.

Pushing back at the ballot

Fortunately, some feisty business owners who didn’t appreciate potentially watching their shop be put out of business as pot shops spring up around them decided to do something. They delivered more than 17,000 signatures to repeal this bit of intolerance. And they’re starting to get some interesting allies.

Referendum 310 on the Denver ballot this fall repeals the ban on new smoking cessation products like Zyn and old favorites like Swisher Sweets cigars, which back in my day had to be smoked by every grandfather under penalty of law. Kids today just can’t get enough of them (if not obvious, that’s sarcasm).

Some progressives are understanding woke nannyism is driving people away from the Democratic Party.

Progressive leader Deep Singh Badhesha announced on X, “After a fight, the Denver Democrats will officially take no position on the flavored tobacco ban. Let’s stop nanny state politics that alienate working class voters and protect much needed revenue. This kind of government overreach is exactly what turns voters off.”

Democratic state Sen. Nick Hinrichsen piled on, “Democrats need to take a page out of the libertarian playbook. Adult choices that have no non-consenting third-party impact are never the government’s damn business. Ever.”

Have progressives decided they no longer care about children, realizing pre-teens just look cool with lit cigarettes dandling from their little mouths?

Or have they recognized many of their African-American constituents like menthols, which are now contraband? Or maybe they’ve noticed the large number of black and Hispanic voters who are growing tired of woke policies and voted for President Donald Trump.

In any event, it’s refreshing to see progressives stand up for personal liberty — just like it’s disappointing when conservatives join the nanny left and “for the children” prohibit adults from buying Swisher Sweets cigars.

Team nanny falling short

Also encouraging is the pro-freedom team is outraising “team nanny” in campaign contributions. Tobacco and vape-shop owners losing their businesses to these bans are putting in the most money, followed by the companies that make the products.

The committee fighting to keep the ban is “Yes for Denver Kids,” which as far as I can tell has no kids in it, only aspiring babysitters. They hide behind kids, but — like tobacco, booze, cannabis and mushrooms — it’s already illegal to sell nicotine products to kids.

They say the reason to ban nicotine products to everyone at every age is sometimes these products have found their way into young people’s hands. Fortunately booze, tobacco, pot and mushrooms never find their respective ways into young people’s hands. We know that hasn’t happened because if it did city council would quickly ban those products too. They are that consistent and care that much about kids.

Most of the money for team nanny comes from Tobacco-Free Kids Action Fund (even though kids can’t buy tobacco), Kaiser Permanente and nanny ultra-funder Michael Bloomberg, who also outlawed large sodas when he was mayor of New York.

So, just what is the difference between Michael Bloomberg and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.? Both have strongly held and controversial beliefs on public health policy. But though RFK Jr. says you shouldn’t take Tylenol, he hasn’t banned it.

Election night we’ll see if Colorado’s deepest-blue voters tell their elite they can make their own decisions.

By Jon Caldara

Only about a month and a half ago I predicted the Denver Broncos will use the subtle threat of leaving Colorado to get taxpayers to build them a new stadium.

In other words, I predicted history will repeat itself. Football stadiums are on a rotating 25-year life cycle with taxpayers buying these playpens so the ultra-wealthy can let their boys concuss one another.

Apparently, Denver Broncos ownership wishes to make me look foolish, (not a high bar; watch me dance).

So, after my poorly timed column ran, The Denver Broncos announced their plans to privately finance a new stadium in the heart of the city.

If they are good to their word, it will be a refreshing and rare example of an ownership group respecting both taxpayers and fans. Their announcement caught me off-guard. Even I had to be impressed.

But until the entire deal is signed in permanent ink, I will take my lead from Ronald Reagan to “trust but verify.” In other words, let’s see the details

The joint statement from the Broncos’ owners, the governor and the mayor of Denver was, after all, a well word-smithed work of craftsmanship: “In the spirit of a true civic partnership, the Walton-Penner Family Ownership Group will privately fund this investment and work with the community, city and state to reconnect historic neighborhoods — with no new taxes.”

The magic words of course being, “with no new taxes.” These words have been used before to lull voters into whopping tax increases. In fact, the Denver Broncos under its previous ownership used that very phrase to get us to pay for their current stadium.

After Coors Field was basically paid for, meaning the 0.1% sales tax was set to expire, voters were asked to continue that tax to pay for Sports Authority-Invesco-Empower-Acme-Explosives-and-Road-Runner-Traps Field at Mile High.

If you keep a current tax from sunsetting, can you with a straight face say that it’s not a new tax? Bond dealers can. But of course, it’s a new tax.

We can only hope the Broncos’ owners aren’t eyeing some expiring tax to continue. Remember what happened after George H.W. Bush broke his “no new taxes” promise. History was rightfully unkind.

Also, new tax is different from new debt. It’s one thing for the Walton-Penner family to take out a mortgage for their stadium, it’s another thing if we somehow pick it up.

Since money is fungible, we should be careful of the shell game where taxpayers don’t pay for a new stadium but instead pay for all the improvements and new development around it.

With all that as a warning, we all should show our gratitude to the owner’s group for their rejection of corporate welfare by at least forgiving their loss to the Colts. (Really, the Colts?)

Now let’s get down to the shameful, depraved and totally un-American issue with the new proposed stadium.

Football is a war. Maybe a battle performed for our amusement, but a war all the same. It’s war played out on the gridiron. There are aerial assaults, long bombs, crushing ground offensives fighting for every inch. It’s war baby. (For the uninitiated I recommend George Carlin’s classic take of football versus baseball.)

And war is not fought indoors; chess tournaments and ping-pong matches are.

Football. Isn’t. Played. Inside.

At least real football isn’t. Although now that breathing too hard on the quarterback is “roughing the passer” and kickoffs look like a pee-wee T-Ball game, we might need to prevent a little snow giving a linebacker the sniffles

I get it. The Walton-Penner family wants a stadium with a retractable roof to allow events like concerts to happen year-round. They’d like to land a Super Bowl here. All very understandable. And all an insult to everything that makes America, well, America.

The Buffalo Bills are building a new stadium without a roof. For a quick reminder, Buffalo NY makes Denver look like Pasadena. Colorado is home to dueling cowboys, towering, rugged mountain peaks where the battle of the fittest plays its life-and-death game and men don’t lift their little pinky when they drink coffee.

Are we going to be out macho-ed by, by, well, New Yorkers?

Maybe a tax subsidy to make the stadium open-air could fit into my libertarian mindset somehow. I’ll ask our “libertarian” governor for advice.

By Mike Rosen

In a recent Colorado Politics column, Eric Sonderman described the chronically underperforming American public education system as “nothing short of a national scandal,’’ deserving of the disparaging moniker “Edugate.” Quite an indictment coming from an erstwhile Democrat. As a conservative Republican, I heartily agree with that appraisal.

I agree with many of Eric’s reforms like variable pay for teachers based on their individual skill and their students’ performance rather than seniority and college credits; paying exceptional teachers the most, rewarding above average ones, and clearing out the “deadweight.” I also support ending grade inflation and the false boosting of self-esteem, and raising the bar of expectations to close the performance gap between American students and those of other countries in “preparing children to meet the test of an interconnected, global world.”

Eric also supports more school choice for parents and students but he stopped short of defining “school choice.” There’s already limited choice in Colorado, like public charter schools run largely by parents. However, comprehensive choice would allow the public funding earmarked for their kids’ education to follow students to the private school of their parents’ choice. Such programs are surging across the country in Republican led states.

The elephant in the classroom

Eric noted that “there are a plentiful number of superb, highly dedicated teachers across America,” and I agree. But the elephant in the classroom not mentioned in his column are the teacher unions, the insurmountable obstacle to any substantive public-school improvement. The unions are flatly opposed to competition from private schools to their monopoly on government funding of public education. And so are governors, legislators and school boards in Democrat-controlled states where teacher unions lavishly fund political campaigns and get out the vote exclusively for Democrats.

Individual merit pay and accountability for teachers that Eric and I both support are inalterably opposed by the unions who prefer that teachers are paid collectively like assembly-line workers. The last thing they want is competition among their members.

The poster boy for militant teacher unions was Albert Shanker (who chaired the Socialist Study Club in his college). Shanker was president of the United Federation of Teachers in NYC from 1964-1985, serving jail time for leading illegal strikes in 1967 and again in 1968, when nearly all city schools were shut down for two months. Shanker infamously proclaimed, “When schoolchildren start paying union dues, that’s when I’ll start representing the interests of schoolchildren.” Shanker died in 1997. The Albert Shanker Institute, founded in his honor and beliefs in 1998, has predictably claimed that there’s “no proof” Shanker ever said “exactly” those words. Maybe not, maybe yes, but there’s no doubt that’s how he behaved, as does the current president of the Shanker Institute, Randi Weingarten, who’s also the ultra-militant president of the American Federation of Teachers, the second largest teacher union. This is the mentality typical of unions, serving the interests of its members first and foremost.

Putting kids last

The largest teacher union is the National Education Association (NEA), with over 3 million members, the largest labor union of any kind in America. Glaring proof of the teacher unions’ priority for their members over schoolchildren was their insistence on keeping public schools closed way too long during the COVID epidemic, when school-aged children were proven to have a very low risk of serious illness or death.

In 2023, the Colorado Education Association (CEA) passed a resolution at its annual convention declaring that capitalism inherently exploits children, public schools, land, labor, and resources; and that it’s incompatible with addressing systemic issues like racism, climate change, and inequality. If it cared less about politics, socialist indoctrination and the self-interest of its members and more about students, the CEA’s highest priority would be rigorous instruction in basic academics like reading, writing and arithmetic.

The much ballyhooed federal “No Child Left Behind Act” of 2002, pushed by the NEA, only added to the decline in public education. Even the Act’s title was misguided. One size doesn’t fit all, and students aren’t equal in brain power, dedication or discipline. Leaving no child behind in classrooms lowers the pace of learning to that of the slowest child, leaving the rest of the kids idle. Certainly, slow and remedial learners deserve attention and would benefit from an educational approach tailored to their needs. Hence, the more appropriate title would have been the “No Child Left Out Act,” and should also have devoted more emphasis on cultivating the gifted and talented: our future Edisons, Lincolns, Einsteins, and (Milton) Friedmans.

By Jon Caldara

Enough. Damn it, enough!

Enough virtue signaling instead of preventing school shootings. Enough of elected school boards denying reality.

It is time for all of Colorado’s 178 school districts to join the 50 that currently have volunteer, trained, concealed armed staff to stop a shooter the moment he begins — because when seconds count, the police are only minutes away

The difference is wanting to feel safe versus wanting to be safe.

By constantly making it harder and more expensive for law-abiding people (i.e. the good guys) to purchase, practice and legally carry firearms, our lawmakers think we will feel safer. Maybe some will even fall for it and feel safer. But none of it makes us any safer.

Reality check

Actually being safe, making our schools safe, requires us to accept realities many simply cannot stomach:

The reality is unicorns are not invading the United States to confiscate the more than 400 million firearms here — more than one gun per person. Guns are and will be omni-present in America. The more gun-phobes restrict them, the more people buy them. It’s why former President Barack Obama is considered the greatest gun salesman in history.

The reality is there is no way to afford having 20 armed police officers wandering the halls of every school, all day, every day, just waiting for the moment a shooter starts firing.

The reality is the safeguards most schools implement are for us, not the shooter, to show they are doing “something.” They need enough to prove in court, after our children are massacred, that they did what they reasonably could.

Lockdown drills and fortified front doors do not, have not and will not deter school shootings or stop a shooter once he started.

The reality is nearly 30% of Colorado’s 178 school districts have trained arms staff who volunteered to take on the extra responsibility to protect our children.

The reality is Jefferson County schools do not allow their school staff that option.

The reality is “gun-free zones” kill children.

Let me be blunt: School boards that do not allow willing, qualified staff members to protect our kids have the blood of the dead on their hands. They did not do all they reasonably could protect our children. They should legally be held responsible.

Arming school staff

There has not been a hijacking of an American airliner plane since Sept. 11, 2001. One major factor — pilots who volunteer to carry concealed guns. Just like how schools can’t afford to put a cop in every hallway, the TSA can’t afford to put an undercover air marshal on every flight. About one in 10 flights has an armed pilot, trained by the air marshals for only one situation — a hijacking.

If our lives are worth protecting this way, why aren’t our children’s lives worth it at school?

Nine years ago, the organization I run, Independence Institute, created a similar training program not for pilots, but for teachers. Under the leadership of the indefatigable Laura Carno, the idea was to work with law enforcement to train willing, capable and qualified school staff to conceal a gun just in case the worst happens.

Our FASTER program, which is now its own separate 501(c)(3) organization, has trained more than 500 school staff members from some 50 school districts across the state. Many of these schools have signs on the door, “Our students are protected by armed staff.”

We now have written proof of what we’ve been saying for decades. The written manifestos of the Minneapolis and Nashville shooters made clear they chose their targets because they knew there’d be no armed resistance.

Unless you can afford a private school or homeschooling, you are required by law to surrender your children to a government schools for six hours a day. The state says their first priority is their safety. Do you believe it?

We need to get over our phobia of guns and realize 15% of all Colorado adults have concealed carry permits and have used them to stop mass shooting including in Colorado Springs and Arvada.

When a school shooter is pointing a gun at your child, do you prefer both child and teacher cowering under their desks, praying for the police to come in time. Or would you feel safer with an armed, police-trained adult next to your child ready to end the threat

Be loud. Demand your school board vote on trained, armed staff.

By Mike Rosen

Zohran Mamdani, the 33-year-old who won the Democrat primary (endorsed by fellow socialists Bernie Sanders and AOC) is now the party’s wholly unqualified candidate for mayor of New York City. He’s a Muslim antisemite and Israel hater. In college, he co-founded the school’s chapter of the pro-Hamas “Students for Justice in Palestine,” and graduated with a degree in Africana Studies. His thin resume includes a job as a foreclosure-prevention housing counselor, hip-hop musician, political campaign worker, and all of four years as a New York state assemblyman. With those meager credentials he presumes to govern the Big Apple.

The centerpiece of his campaign is to transform NYC – ironically, the financial capital of the world – to a model of “democratic socialism.” Zohran is a charismatic preacher to a young, gullible progressive demographic. (Aptly named, he’s a generation Z-er.) I’ve forgotten more about economics than he knows – and I haven’t forgotten much. The Z-man is a glib pretender, and a proud member of the anti-capitalist Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), whose membership features such economic geniuses as Congresswomen AOC, Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar. Here’s an example of the ignorance of this ideology from DSA’s web page:

“We believe that working people should run both the economy and society democratically to meet human needs, not to make profits for a few.”

The DSA con

“Make profits for a few?” DSA is idiotic! In a capitalist economy businesses can’t exist and employ workers without profits. “Workers” don’t start businesses, they join them and abandon those that are unprofitable. Entrepreneurs provide creativity and their personal wealth to start a business. They, their stockholders, and lenders require a return on their investment derived from profits. “To meet human needs” and fund our ever-expanding welfare state, federal, state, and city governments impose payroll taxes (that fund Social Security and Medicare for all), income taxes, property taxes, and sales taxes on businesses. And tax their investors on interest income, dividends and capital gains. Without profits those businesses disappear along with the products and services that satisfy multitudes of consumers.

Socialists claim capitalism is “unrestrained.” That’s also absurd. In practice, our mixed-economy is a balance of limited government, capitalism, and individual freedom tempered with extensive regulations on businesses, redistribution of income, and a cornucopia of government welfare programs. To the nation’s detriment, creeping socialism has upset this balance, poisoning the mixture, eroding freedom and propelling government spending beyond the nation’s tax capacity while driving up the national debt to the brink of fiscal insolvency.

Democratic socialism is a con game. It’s final goal is communism. The father of socialism, Karl Marx, was an idealistic philosopher not an economist, whose vision was that capitalism would inevitably be overturned in a worldwide revolution of the proletariat (workers) and replaced with communism (“the dictatorship of the proletariat”), which, itself, would ultimately “wither away” as human nature would be perfected and government no longer needed in his imagined utopian, classless, harmonious society.

Instead, the world got the USSR, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (with the accent on “socialist”). In reality, it was a totalitarian dictatorship and police state in which the Communist Party was the government, controlling everything from the economy to the culture, to religion, to the media. With no private enterprise, no property rights, no free press, no free speech, and no other political parties allowed.

North Korea and Cuba fit that model today. Communist China was all of that before it became a hybrid of sorts, reviving its morbid economy by tolerating a slice of government-controlled capitalism – while that lasts. Today, it’s crushing freedom in Hong Kong and planning to take over the free and prosperous nation of Taiwan.

Lacking a limiting principle

Zohran Mamdani has said he intends to “seize the means of production ” in NYC. But democratic socialists of his ilk won’t stop there. Like the Democrat party, they have no limiting principle when it comes to the expansion of government to run people’s lives. As an economic system, democratic socialism is ultimately doomed to failure because it flies in the face of human nature. Humans aren’t collectivist worker ants in a colony or bees in a hive. They won’t involuntarily work as hard and creatively for the benefit of others as they will for themselves and their family.

When socialists demand “equity” they don’t mean equality of opportunity. They mean equality of outcome regardless of effort, ambition and ability. Socialism rewards failure, mediocrity, and laziness. Consequently, it gets more of that. By penalizing individual excellence, it gets much less of that. That outcome is equality in poverty.

By Jon Caldara

The 23-year-old shooter of Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis was born male. He identified as a woman and legally changed his name before he killed two and injured 18.

The shooter of the Nashville Covenant School in March 2023 was born female. She identified as a man and killed six. So was the shooter at a Rite Aid in Maryland, female identifying as male. She killed three and injured three.

And in our backyard, the 22-year-old who killed five and injured 19 at Club Q in Colorado Springs was born male but declared himself nonbinary.

The 16-year-old shooter at STEM School in Highlands Ranch was female identifying as a boy. She murdered Kendrick Castillo, the hero who died saving his classmates.

Is there a connection between gender dysphoria and mass violence? Maybe, but correlation is not causation.

Tolerance a two-way street

If you’re a regular reader, you know I have no patience for the intolerance of the Shiite transgender movement. Their caliphate demands we publicly deny biological reality, science and chromosomes. We are coerced to use incorrect language on threat of cancellation and, thanks to new legislation, it’s now all punishable by Colorado law. No First Amendment, free speech-loving person should tolerate this.

I am told since I won’t call an obvious man a “woman,” I am anti-trans. I’m not. I’m pro-reality and pro-liberty. I don’t care if you think you’re a different gender, or both genders, or a kumquat. I defend your right to do so.

In exchange, I expect you to defend my right to identify as I will. I identify as someone who likes proper grammar. I will not say “They is over there.”

You do you. I do me. We call it tolerance and free speech.

The conservative news site DailyWire.com recently published this headline, “BREAKING: Trump DOJ (Dept. of Justice) Deliberates Over Gun Ban For Transgenders.” Giving voice to what many are thinking, they report, “Individuals within the DOJ are reviewing ways to ensure mentally ill individuals suffering from gender dysphoria are unable to obtain firearms while they are unstable and unwell.”

After the Club Q and STEM school shootings would Colorado welcome disarming transgender people? As the argument goes from every gun control advocate, if they couldn’t have guns, those lives might have been saved …

But let’s remember, while trans people have been behind the gun in some shootings, tragically they have been in front of the guns much, much more often. Think of LBGT nightclubs like Club Q and Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Fla., where 49 people were killed and 53 injured.

It’s not just nightclubs. Cameron Thompson, an 18-year-old trans girl, was fatally shot in Tuscaloosa, Ala., in December. Keshia Chanel Getter, a trans woman shot and killed in Augusta. LBGT activist, Lauri Carleton, was murdered over a Pride flag she displayed in Cedar Glen, Calif. You get the point.

Like all people, trans people have a constitutional right to protect themselves and those they love. In fact, like minority groups past and present, they might have a greater need to protect themselves.

Gun rights matter

Disarming minorities is nothing new. The nation’s first gun control laws were created in Southern states to disarm black citizens after the Civil War. All too often, a black man’s gun was all that stood between him and lynching.

Colorado’s new swell of anti-gun legislation disproportionately hurts people of color, who are poorer and cannot afford the new gun and ammunition taxes. And the new law requiring you pay your sheriff to perhaps give you a permission slip to then pay for a 2-day class (meaning you’ll miss two days of work) just to buy an ordinary gun disproportionately affects who exactly?

Political and racial minorities have always been in greatest need of the Second Amendment. The LBGT community might need it now more than ever even though gay marriage is a long-ago settled issue, and celebrating the gay lifestyle is mandatory.

As the L, B and G part of the LGBT coalition refuses to condemn the T’s radical coerced speech mandates and grade-school indoctrination efforts, they all get threatened in the angry backlash.

Gun restrictions targeting any minority group is discrimination plain and simple. Those of us who have been most critical of the trans agenda should be the first to shout our outrage of the singling out of, and the possible disarming of, trans people.

By Jon Caldara

Fashion sense? Oh, I got it. After all, 98% of my wardrobe was proudly purchased at Costco. And the ladies dig a man who’s dripping in Kirkland-labeled couture. They sense the money, the power.

Another man who knows fashion is former state Rep. Ryan Armagost. On a private Signal chat, this Republican fashionista took a picture of Democratic state Rep. Yara Zokaie and sophomorically commented on her clothing choice. Other Republicans joined in.

Classy? Obviously not. But it makes a delightful case study of media bias, the power of the professional victim class and the hypocrisy of Colorado’s one-party ruling class.

Media overlords keep us safe

A picture is worth a thousand words; thus, they give awards for photojournalism. And at the center of this little storm is a photograph — a picture the media refused to show us. They won’t allow us to form our own opinions.

This photo and its accompanying written comments are the key pieces of evidence to the whole mini drama. The media knowingly and deliberately withheld it so we can be at the mercy of their interpretations.

Kyle Clark at 9News interpreted for us Armagost was a “creep,” and he took a picture of Rep. Yara Zokaie and “shared this photo” with other House Republicans.

When he said “shared this photo” the 9News TV screen showed her official photo from the state legislative website, implying that was the photo he shared. But it wasn’t.

At best that was some seriously sloppy reporting. At worst, fake news fitting their “mean conservatives” narrative. Insult a woman about how she looks in her chosen photo is just so … Republican. So … Trump.

Armagost did share a photo of her at the well of the House of Representatives wearing knee-high, spiked-heeled leather boots. Those party boots were offset by her bare thighs popping out just below her black sport coat.

Clark then interpreted Armagost’s colleagues “likened her to a stripper and a prostitute.” Maybe. The actual words in the text thread were, “That’s awful. I didn’t know it was dress like a stripper day,” and “Wellllll, we ARE on Colfax.”

I guess “on Colfax” only means “prostitute” to 9News.

I haven’t seen any mainstream outlets publish the photo in question. Very few even reprinted the text exchange. Content matters. And the media failed by hiding not some, but all the content.

Hypocrisy exposed

Again, I’m not defending the boorish humor. It wasn’t professional. But maybe it also wasn’t professional to dress like you’re going on a hot date at the legislature.

The event reminded me of two other mini scandals. In 1994, Ohio Congressman Martin Hoke had a “hot mic” moment. Unaware the tape was rolling, he whispered to another congressman before a TV interview about the looks of the reporter, “She’s got big breasts.”

Yep. He shouldn’t have said it. But if it matters, she did have big breasts. Proof politicians can tell the truth.

TV stations hire hotties to tantalize us. Notice only the opinions of leggy bombshells seem worthy of broadcast. So, when the same media pounces on a guy for crudely taking their bait, does it have a whiff of entrapment?

When the United States Senate loosened its dress code, Pennsylvania U.S. Sen. John Fetterman infamously came to work in shorts and a sweatshirt. Many found it inappropriate.

Some might have found Zokaie’s cocktail attire inappropriate too, but the moralistic media protected our virgin eyes from it, presumably for our own good.

The legislature voted to denounce Armagost. They could not censure him — the legislature’s most severe form of reprimand — since he’d already resigned. But according to news reports, a censure was in the works.

So, they denounced a guy who wasn’t even there. Our one-party rulers will have their pound of flesh to virtue-signal their victimhood. No “sticks and stones will never hurt me” types in this crowd of oppressed overachievers.

But odd, isn’t it, that these folks who are so dialed into sensing hurtful behavior can’t bring themselves to censure their own?

I don’t recall a censure vote by the legislature on Zokaie for comparing parental rights groups to hate groups like the KKK, or even when former Denver Rep. Elisabeth Epps heckled a Jewish lawmaker speaking about the Holocaust.

Sen. Faith Winter can show up to work sloppy drunk; former Rep. Matt Gray can drive drunk in a school zone; Sen. Sonya Jaquez Lewis and Rep. Regina English can abuse their staff. All did so without having to face a censure.

The truth of this hypocrisy should be made as bare as Rep. Zokaie’s thighs.

By Mike Rosen

A criminal repeat-offender steals a car in Englewood, which is later identified by police at the Castle Rock Outlets using drone technology. Three police officers drive through the parking lot and blockade the perpetrator as he gets into the driver’s seat of the stolen car. The perp then rams through the three police vehicles and at least one parked car “treating the shopping center like a racetrack,” according to a 23rd Judicial District deputy prosecutor.

The high-speed chase lasts for a few more minutes and ends with one officer crashing his police vehicle head-on into the stolen car. Then the perp flees on foot but is shortly captured. This all happened in January 2022. Just a few weeks ago that criminal, Roy Allen Elliot-Casaus, pleaded guilty to aggravated vehicle theft, assault on a police officer, and vehicular eluding. He was sentenced to 13 years in prison to be served consecutively with a six-year sentence for an unrelated crime in another county.

Personally, I like cops and don’t like robbers. And I’m a long-time TV viewer of “Chicago PD,” where Sgt. Hank Voight and his squad use surveillance cameras and all kinds of modern technology to catch criminals. Justice being served and the conclusion of the above story owes its success to the Flock cameras that first identified that stolen vehicle.

The Atlanta- based Flock Safety company’s crime-fighting systems are highly-valued by law-enforcement agencies nationwide for solving vehicle thefts, jewelry store robberies, missing persons, kidnappings, human trafficking, etc. There are more than a hundred Flock automated license plate readers (ALPRs) at intersections across the Denver metro area that photograph and record details, including GPS location, of every passing vehicle. A “hot list” of all “wanted” license plates in Colorado and nationwide is stored in the Flock system. When a vehicle with a “hot list” plate enters an intersection, officers may receive an alert notification within 16-seconds.

Commander Jacob Herrera, head of DPD’s auto theft program, credits Denver’s 12-month pilot program with Flock for dropping auto thefts from more than 12,000 in 2023 to 8,550, with 289 arrests made, 170 vehicles recovered, along with 29 firearms. They’ve even helped in Denver homicide cases. Douglas County Sheriff Darren Weekly says, “Tools like Flock are force multipliers that allow us to fight crime proactively and effectively.” The Thornton Police Department also praised the system and Arapahoe County approved a Flock extension and the addition of 17 new cameras.

Guess what? Feckless Denver Mayor Michael Johnston and the usual left-wing Democrat radicals on the Denver City Council are dumping Flock, rejecting a two-year contract extension. Why? Because of paranoid concerns about mass surveillance, invasion of privacy, and potential targeting of illegal immigrants. About the latter, I think illegal immigrants ought to be targeted just like anyone else who’s breaking the law.

Anti-police activist Kristen Seidel of the so-called Denver Task Force to Reimagine Policing and Public Safety delivered a petition with 1,336 signatures to Johnston’s office insisting that all of the city’s Flock camera’s be immediately turned off. Wow, 1,336 ignorant people, what a landslide!!

The left-wing and woke American Civil Liberties Union – whose political agenda excludes property rights – doesn’t want Flock cameras to be used “disproportionally” in low-income areas or communities of color. But the great majority of law-abiding folks in these areas are the ones disproportionally victimized by criminals. On balance, low-income areas and communities of color will benefit from the Flock systems.

A libertarian critic of Flock’s cameras concerned about invasion of privacy, equated Flock’s cameras with Big Brother’s mass surveillance of the populace in Geroge Orwell’s classic, dystopian novel “1984.” But the secret cameras in that totalitarian government’s TV screens were in everyone’s homes! Flock’s cameras are only in public venues where law-abiding citizens have nothing to hide.

The Fourth Amendment’s protection of privacy is not absolute. Yes, crime-fighting surveillance tools have pros, cons, and tradeoffs that need to be weighed. For example, the mass search of travelers at airports without “probable cause” is permitted to make it more difficult in the future for terrorists to hijack planes and crash them into places like the Pentagon and World Trade Center or blowing them up in mid-air. I think that’s a reasonable trade off.

There is a danger that mass public surveillance by government can be carried too far. So, let’s be vigilant about not letting that happen. The anti-Flock paranoia of Denver’s progressive politicians and activists goes way beyond vigilance.

By Jon Caldara

Colorado conservatives have dreamt of the day they could kick 9News anchor, and the Imelda Marcos of sport coats, Kyle Clark to the curb. Their day may be coming.

And I must admit, there’s a certain satisfaction imagining Kyle selling his wardrobe at a garage sale. But conservatives will find a national conglomerate owning half the local TV news outlets is worse. We should remember what happened to radio.

Colorado’s channel 9 and their affiliate Channel 20 are being sold, along with some other 62 news stations around the country, to an even larger media giant that already owns Colorado’s channels 2 and 31.

So, four major over-the-airwaves TV news stations here will combine their operations into one to be run by an out-of-state company. And this will help hold politicians accountable?

Consolidation of radio

We’ve seen this type of conglomeration here before, in radio, and it’s served no one well, including, ironically, the companies that did it.

Before 1996, the Federal Communication Commission’s rules usually allowed only two radio stations to be owned by one entity in any one media market, an AM and FM station. It made for the “WKRP in Cincinnati” period of radio — local, often independently owned, stations with a variety of styles and personalities. In other words, lots of choice for listeners.

It also gave birth to the heyday of local talk radio, arguably the most potent force for limited government news and views we’ve ever had. It’s what drew me to work in talk radio for nearly 27 years now.

In Colorado, we had local giants like Mike Rosen and Peter Boyles who would dive into local politics and bring out stories and opinions the newspapers and TV stations wouldn’t touch. They kept the mainstream media honest

Talk radio was a political force. Those days are gone.

The FCC changed their rules so one company could own up to eight radio stations in any market. It started a buying spree. Companies went into debt to buy as many stations as they could as fast as they could.

The plan was to centralize the operations of the radio stations; thus, saving a lot of money by taking meat cleavers to the local stations.

Why have a newsroom crew serving only one station when you could have that one newsroom serve eight radio stations? Lay off all the other newsrooms’ employees, and there’s your profit.

If you’ve ever heard the same voice on different radio stations report the same news item, it’s because they record the story once and send it out to eight “sister” stations. No option of hearing how up to seven other stations might have covered that story differently.

If you’ve ever heard a radio traffic reporter mispronounce a common Colorado street or city name, it’s because they’re not in Colorado. They’re in another studio in a different state reading off some computer screen; then the guy does the same for the next city.

Fallout for local news

But the biggest damage done was the death of local news coverage and talk shows. Oh, yes, they’re still around, but they are not nearly the influencers and power brokers they once were.

Why would a conglomerate pay for local talk-show hosts when broadcasting one of their nationally syndicated shows is basically free. Local coverage and conversation makes way for yet more national twaddle.

Oh, and to pay off the massive debt they still owe, they increased the commercial spot load tremendously. That’s why talk radio has more ads for erectile dysfunction treatments than actual talk radio. Should old guys lose their sex drive, all talk radio goes out of business.

As local conservative radio stations lost impact, where did many listeners go for news? Government-funded, liberal Colorado Public Radio.

Yes, 9News along with the other local stations have a left-leaning bias. But, when Kyle Clark and crew do occasionally question the state’s progressive overlords, as they did shine a light on the Prop HH tax increase, called Polis out over his TABOR rebate games and questioned tax money for an ugly vanity pedestrian bridge, it changes the whole debate.

When the new owners of channel 9 start shedding costs at all four of their Front Range news stations, it likely won’t result in more coverage of conservative stories, just less coverage of all stories.

By Jon Caldara

Disclosure: Gov. Jared Polis wrote much of this column.

The epitaph on Jared Polis’ gubernatorial gravestone will simply read, “He knew better, but would not stand up to his own party.”

For seven years, our hyperprogressive legislature has sent him one industry-killing bill after another. And he kept signing them, even when he knows they are bad policy, economically devastating, and even if they go against his strongest-held convictions.

One such strongly held conviction is his faith in technology.

In the tech world, the man’s no slouch. As much as I’d like to tease Polis for just being a rich kid who got richer putting his momma’s greeting-card company online, the fact is he made fortunes many times over in varied tech ventures. And most importantly, he understands what the coming artificial intelligence revolution can bring for humanity in general, but also the endless opportunities it could bring Colorado in particular.

So then why did he agree to make Colorado the first state in the nation to effectively stamp out AI development by signing Senate Bill 24-205? This law will repel AI companies from providing us their services or locating here. The AI revolution could skip Colorado.

SB-205 was designed by the “we see oppression even before it exists” crowd. They are going to stamp out discrimination from — get this — software code. Starting next year, the law outlaws “algorithmic discrimination” in AI with ridiculously costly compliance regulations.

Polis clearly laid out why 205 is terrible law in what read like a veto statement. But, since he can’t veto much of anything, he crapped all over the bill in — get this — his bill-signing statement.

So, let’s let his own words explain why he shouldn’t have signed it.

Polis noted laws against discrimination focus on intentional efforts, writing, “This bill deviates from that practice by regulating the results of AI systems use, regardless of intent.”

He’s right. A baseball bat can be used in a hate crime, but the bat manufacturer didn’t intend it for that. There are already myriad laws, regulations and codes against discrimination. If AI is used to discriminate, shouldn’t we employ all that existing legal enforcement first?

The law doesn’t target outcomes — it regulates computer code that doesn’t even exist yet. Liberals used to say code is speech and therefore protected. Those liberals are extinct.

Polis goes on to say the new law will, “create a complex compliance regime for all developers and deployers of AI” through “significant, affirmative reporting requirements.”

Again, he is right. One reason the internet turned into the economic super engine it is was early on the feds had a “hands off the internet” policy to let the industry first develop. Now Colorado is the first state with a “hands all over AI” policy while it is in its infancy. Those hands will strangle this baby.

Small, innovative AI developers will be the first driven out of Colorado. It’s confusing how the left hates big business yet builds regulatory regimes that only big businesses can afford to navigate. Add it to the list of how progressives hate the little guy.

Polis knew this law is an economy killer: “I am concerned about the impact this law may have on an industry that is fueling critical technological advancements across our state for consumers and enterprises alike.”

“Government regulation that is applied at the state level in a patchwork across the country can have the effect to tamper innovation and deter competition in an open market. To that end, the important work of protecting customers from discrimination and other unintended consequences of nascent AI technologies is better considered and applied by the federal government.”

Again, he’s right. Ironically, Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill had a 10-year “hands off AI” moratorium — a smart move Polis supported. But leave it to Republicans to strip it out.

Polis understands why what he signed is horrid. That’s why he included a call for fixing, delaying or repealing SB24-205 in the upcoming special session.

For the sake of Colorado, free speech and a better future where America isn’t at the mercy of China’s AI, I hope Polis spends the political capital needed to fix his obvious regret.

He built his fortune online, but now he’s logging off Colorado’s AI future.

By Jon Caldara

You know when Wile E. Coyote runs off that cliff and he hangs in the air, magically suspended for a while until he realizes what’s about to occur? Only then does he plummet. Well, Colorado energy regulators are the coyote just before he sees there’s nothing below him.

When Colorado’s energy system falters, and your bills skyrocket even higher than your already ridiculously high rates, you need to remember this: Our lawmakers and regulators made it happen. They knew of the cost and carnage their decisions were going to cause, and instead of changing course, they redoubled their effort to make Colorado an energy desert, and all to make no real difference in global emissions.

Energy ratepayers on their own

Government has a few core functions: public safety and utility oversight are among them. Certainly, bad decisions can be made — we call that negligence. But knowingly making our energy unaffordable, scarce and unreliable for future lawmakers and regulators to deal with is maleficence.

Except for some municipal-run energy providers, like in Colorado Springs, most of us are “served” by privately owned energy monopolies like Xcel. A grand bargain was struck decades ago with these monopolies: We’d let them have guaranteed profits (a lot of them) in exchange for charging us the “least cost” possible for energy within environmental standards.

The state’s Public Utility Commission (PUC), solely appointed by the governor, was tasked to enforce the “least cost” principle; it was its stated primary mission. That is, their “job one” was to protect our wallets.

Then, this unelected PUC changed its mission from working for consumers to decarbonizing Colorado no matter the cost, making crony power companies rich in the process.

In other words, no one in the system is protecting you, the consumer, from power failures and unaffordable bills. And it’s getting so bad even the energy monopolies who make more money when they’re “forced” to build windmills and solar farms are saying the mandates are unachievable.

When the companies making obscene profits from green mandates are saying it can’t be done, it might be a sign our lawmakers have overdone it.

Insane energy math

Some particulars of the latest insanity: In 2021, the legislature required the energy companies to cut their greenhouse emissions by 22% before 2030, and, in exchange, they could charge us customers up to 2.5% more. Easy-peazy, right?

Utilities had to submit “Clean Heat Plans” to show how they’ll do it.

Here’s what Xcel just said in its plan: “In order to achieve the ambitious 2030 emission reduction target, annual program costs are expected to exceed the 2.5% retail cost cap by approximately six to 17 times … approximately 15% to 30% of all residential single-family homes will need to be at least partially electrified by 2030.”

Translation: To cut emissions by 22% before ‘30, it’ll have to blow past the legal rate increase limit and charge us up to 17 times more and up to 30% of us will have to ditch our gas furnaces and water heaters and pay for electric ones.

And that’s optimistic. Here’s what another energy utility, Black Hills Energy, says in its plan: “This scenario has high-cost impacts to customers, with an annual spend of $397 million, exceeding the annual 2.5% cost cap by 67 times.”

Quick math: To reach this goal by 2030, your energy bill goes up not 2.5%, but 167%.

Black Hills said if it can only increase their prices 2.5%, the maximum the legislature set, it would be only able to reach about one-tenth of the emissions reduction the legislature mandates. Reality sucks. But in the real world we can’t have two opposing things at once.

Fortunately, the PUC has the authority to stand up for us customers and enforce the 2.5% cost cap (meaning the utilities won’t meet its reduction goals).

So, of course, they didn’t.

This is how divorced from reality our lawmakers are. Instead of retooling their emission mandates, Governor Polis’ energy office is now trying to double this unreachable 2030 emissions reduction goal by only 2035.

These people are completely unhinged.

Oh, and if it matters, even if we were to reach the state’s unreachable emission reduction it wouldn’t make a difference to global emissions. You’re going to have to talk to China and India to make that happen. But it will economically flatten Colorado and your family.

By Jon Caldara

There are three ways you get taxed. The first way seems transparent — direct taxation and fees. Money’s taken out of your paycheck, you see that. You write a check for property taxes, pay sales tax on a cup of coffee.

These “transparent” taxes can still be opaque. Renters don’t realize they’re paying property tax in their rent check. Instead, they just hate their evil landlord. King Soopers’ property taxes and employer taxes are baked into every loaf of bread you buy.

Colorado’s good at hiding taxes and fees. Like when you are laid up in the hospital, you’re charged a bed tax. By law that “fee” cannot appear on your hospital bill. Thus, you get angry at the hospital, not your benevolent politicians.

The second form of taxation is inflation, caused by the feds uncontrollably printing money. We’ve been conditioned to think inflation is natural and unavoidable, and government works to keep it in check. The truth is just the opposite.

Deflation is the norm when money supply growth is attached to something that can’t be easily increased. When the United States was on the gold standard, the buying power of cash would increase, not shrink.

Warning: boring but important illustration with numbers ahead.

If you saved a $20 paper note from 1925 it would be worth $20 today, duh. And due to inflation, it could only buy a tiny fraction of what it did 100 years ago. But a 1925 $20 gold coin (1 ounce) is worth more than $3,300 today, because dollar bills are printed willy-nilly without limit. But you can’t print gold. It’s limited.

Imagine if we never went off the gold standard (a process then-President Franklin Delano Roosevelt started in 1933, and Nixon finished in 1971). The cost of an average new home in 1925 was $11,600, or 580 ounces of gold (or $20 paper bills, they were interchangeable then). The average cost of a new home today is roughly $500,000, or only 151 ounces of gold at the current price.

If we stayed on the gold standard, a house today would cost almost a fourth of what it did a century ago — deflation.

The more powerful example is with Bitcoin, which acts like gold because of its limited supply. The average price of a new home 10 years ago was $290,000. If you paid for it in Bitcoin, it would have cost you 1,160 Bitcoin. Today’s new $500,000 home costs a little more than four Bitcoin, which is trading now at about $120,000 — colossal deflation.

The third truly insidious form of taxation is regulation. Appointed, not elected, bureaucrats create regulations for, they claim, our health and safety. But most of it is to protect special interests or engineer behavior.

Regulation is how government gets what it wants without paying for it. They want homes to have electric-vehicle charging stations. They mandate it. You pay for it. It’s a tax.

Is a mandated brick home exterior or all-electric heating system needed for our health and safety? Regulatory compliance now makes up about 25% of the cost of a new home.

The untold story of the Jared Polis years is the explosion of Colorado’s regulatory state. The Mercatus Center released a report on regulations throughout the states. And congratulations, Colorado, we have skyrocketed to No. 12 in the number of regulations.

As of 2023, we have 165,994 regulatory restrictions. By contrast neighboring Kansas and Nebraska have around 75,000. Idaho clocks in at only 31,497 — five times less than us.

Colorado has 53,550 environmental restrictions, while the national average is close to half that. How much of your health care costs are from regulations? We have 13,719 restrictions on health care services, while the national average is only 4,673.

It’s not just that there are so many more regulations here. It’s that authorities to create even more regulations is growing like a cancer.

Take the Air Quality Control Commission. Just a few years ago, it was called the Regional Air Quality Council and had no real authority other than making recommendations. The legislature mutated it into a “commission” on par with the likes of the omnipotent Public Utilities Commission.

It now has near-unlimited authority to regulate the state out of business. From banning gas-powered tools to forcing companies to require their employees to carpool, this unelected star chamber is working to make Colorado unaffordable.

Remember all three types of taxes as the legislature cries poverty.

By Jon Caldara

Really? We’re talking about a new Denver Broncos stadium already? Well, before saying yes, let’s make it contingent on fixing the city first.

Voters approved the current Broncos stadium in 1998. The structure was ugly to begin with and built to be scraped to the ground as soon as bond dealers could con us to buy another stadium.

The arena was designed as a giant Dixie cup to be crushed and tossed away, a monument to modern American commercial architecture — built to be bulldozed.

It’s the opposite of Coors Field, designed to be a timeless baseball park that will be even more cool in 50 years than it is today.

You remember the threat back in 1998. We were bullied. If we didn’t pay the ransom of a new publicly financed stadium for the privately owned Broncos, our “predominantly orange” team would move to a city who loved them more.

We crumbled and bought them Invesco-Sports-Authority-Empower Field. It’s not even 25 years old, so of course it’s time to buy a new one.

Expect the same blackmail tactic again. If we don’t buy them a new stadium, they might leave. Mayor Mike Johnston has claimed the city’s top priority is to keep the team in Denver. (The top priority?! Not ending stabbings?)

They are setting the narrative early — “The Broncos might leave.”

The people of Colorado have been faithfully loyal to the Denver Broncos, win or lose, for 65 long years. We should get a fraction of that loyalty back. If your girlfriend demands you buy her a new car or she’s leaving, you might be dating the wrong girl.

Look, we all know how this game is going to play out. Once the Broncos have a decent season or two, they’ll announce their plan for a new stadium. The “economic development” bros will pimp study after study showing how this colossal redevelopment will pay for itself many times over within 15 minutes of the first kickoff. (Really, every city should build 10 stadiums to be rich). And there will be rumors of cities wanting to lure the Broncos to their town.

Bottom line: sports-crazed voters will pass the tax and debt package, and a new Dixie cup stadium will go up.

So, why don’t we taxpaying Broncos fans get out in front of it? Before the Broncos owners make a deal with the city, let’s demand a deal from the Broncos. Instead of waiting for them to threaten to leave, let’s hold a new stadium over their heads until we get something first.

Taxpayers are diffused, rarely organized to flex political muscles or negotiate for real results, so we get little for what we pay for. Perfect example: tax increases for schools.

Colorado’s educational system is a failure. Reading and math scores are in the toilet. So, inevitably, school districts ask for more money to fix the problem, promising with more cash our kids will finally read and write at grade level. But we never demand any accountability in exchange.

You wouldn’t build your house like that. You wouldn’t pay a contractor the full price before he even put a shovel in the ground. You’d give him enough money to get started. Then, when he finishes the foundation, you’d give him another check, when the framing is done, another check, and so on.

We should only agree to school tax increases if the deal is structured with guaranteed outcomes before money is paid. The school district gets a first tranche of money to get started and then, in two years, if reading and math scores reach a mutually agreed level, they get the next tranche.

The accountability must be verifiable and agreed to before we say yes.

We taxpayers and Bronco fanatics should make a deal with the Broncos, not the city. Government doesn’t care about us; we just pay taxes. But government cares about their crown jewel of the Rockies, the Broncos.

We need to let the Broncos know we will not vote for a new stadium until they pressure Denver to fix the city.

If quantifiable measurements of litter, graffiti, street people, open drug use and crime rates are met, then and only then will we support a new stadium.

Call it the grand Broncos Bargain — safe and clean, then the football team!

By Mike Rosen

The leadership of the Democratic party has changed. It once included rational people who worked alongside Republicans to try to improve people’s lives. Despite having different views on specific topics, they were tails to the Republicans’ heads on an all-American coin. Today’s Democratic leaders are not just frustrating or annoying, they are dangerous. The result has been policies that, collectively, threaten to destroy our country physically, financially, and spiritually.

Sadly, many Democratic voters don’t understand how dangerous their leadership has become, getting their news exclusively from left-leaning sources – The New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, NPR, MSNBC, social media, etc. – and interacting only with liberal friends and co-workers, they live in a self-affirming information bubble that distorts reality to enforce a narrative that Democrats are good and Republicans are evil.

The free market is a beautiful, vital, self-correcting system the helps ensure that our limited resources are used efficiently and effectively. It’s the major driver of prosperity and health for a large portion of the world. The principles of free markets were first laid out by Adam Smith in “The Wealth of Nations,” published in 1776. The most quoted phrase from his book is that every individual, acting in his own self-interest, is “led by an invisible hand” to promote the public interest. But Democrats see it as an evil, exploiting force that only benefits the rich. They see greed instead of self-interest.

The U.S. Constitution is a brilliant political document designed to limit government, safeguard individual liberty, and protect the rights of the minority. Despite being written more than 200 years ago, it gives a clear, sound direction while providing enough flexibility to adapt to today’s world. However, Democrats don’t understand or agree with the thinking behind it and often try to subvert it to their own ends.

Propaganda is an intentional and systemic effort to use language to achieve a defined set of goals. It is dogmatic, the opposite of an open exchange of ideas. It promotes lies and distorts the truth through omission and distortion. Democrats are experts at this. They are deceptive about their proposed policies, the reasons for their proposed policies, the results of their past policies, and the ideas and character of their opponents.

A major initiative of the Democratic party was stacking universities with left-leaning professors. In the 1960s, many bright and affluent students in elite universities avoided the Vietnam era draft by staying in school to earn post-graduate degrees. They tended to be anti-war Democrats. Many chose university teaching careers to influence the next generation of students and ultimately controlled which faculty members were hired and who would receive tenure. Today, university professors are overwhelmingly Democrats who advocate for extreme liberal philosophies and policies and actively disparage and suppress conservative ideas.

Once established at the university level, Democrats were positioned to influence ensuing generations of K-12 public-school teachers who then passionately advocated for liberal ideas and social policies. Today, class curriculums are peppered with liberal propaganda, our public schools are controlled by Democrats and will be for decades. With control of public schools, they influence and indoctrinate children. Given the political leanings of its members who overwhelmingly vote for Democrats, the major teacher unions are megaphones for the Democratic party. The Democrats they elect return the favor with lucrative salaries, benefits, and pensions for their members…

DISCLOSURE: While I agree with everything you’ve just read, these aren’t my words. They’re a sampling condensed from a new book by Drew Baker, “Why Democrats are Dangerous.” Drew earned a bachelor’s degree in economics at Dartmouth and an MBA from the University of Chicago. After a successful banking career, he moved to North Carolina where he taught economics and business in college.

I knew Drew when he was growing up and I became his brother-in-law. In 1970, when he was 15, I bought him a subscription to National Review magazine, William F. Buckley’s conservative flagship, and introduced him to the works of Milton Friedman and Ayn Rand. I, too, changed course from my business career to join the war of ideas as a rare conservative in the liberal media. A great source of gratification is to have mentored young people to join that cause. I couldn’t be prouder of Drew.

In about 100 concise pages, his book packs loads of wisdom and factual examples of Democrat duplicity in plain talk that makes it a great primer for young people and a reaffirmation for all who want to restore America. You can get it at AuthorHouse.com or at your favorite online bookstore.

By Jon Caldara

My son is severely disabled with Down syndrome. Since just turning 21, he is no longer eligible for K-12 educational services from our school district. Like many Colorado graduates today, he cannot read, write or consistently count to five. But on the bright side, I will continue to pay taxes to the school district that no longer helps him.

Other states provide education services for the disabled until age 22. Michigan provides it up to 26. The ugly catch there is you must live in Michigan. And I just don’t hate my son that much.

The fear for people in my situation is that the disabled people we love are cut out of an integrated society of people their age, just to be warehoused until they die.

This is the time in my son’s life I’ve dreaded the most. How do I keep him learning and growing without school?

And now add to that the scaling back of Medicaid spending in Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill.

The “perma-crisis” media and paid panic class are scaring people like me that up to 12 million people, including the poor, elderly and handicapped, will be cruelly purged from Medicaid on which their lives depend. Those who avoid the ax will suffer heartless and severe cuts and endless red tape.

We’re told that society should be judged by how we treat the most vulnerable. So logically, the new law proves Americans are heartless, greedy and cruel.

Let me first say how grateful I am to the generous people of America and Colorado for the resources they provide for people like my son. (I’m looking at you, dear taxpayers.) There was a time when only churches and fraternal organizations helped the disabled, and that depended fully on charity.

Most Americans believe there is a government role for a safety net to care for those who are incapable of caring for themselves. But being incapable of caring of oneself is quite different than just preferring not to.

A reality check

So, before we believe the spin and completely freak out over people like my son being dumped on the side of the road to die, it might be worth looking at what the new law does.

Overwhelmingly, the savings from this change in Medicaid come from a simple work requirement. If you want near-free health care, you need to be a productive part of society. Does this mean the Republican pipe dream comes true? Developmentally delayed children in wheelchairs working in coal mines? Sadly, no.

The work requirement is only for those who are able to work, and even then, one only needs a half-time job, or a volunteer job. And those caring for children are exempt.

Before Obamacare, my son’s mom and I had to fight for three years to get him accepted by Medicaid. Three years! The kid with Down syndrome who needed open heart surgery to survive, among another dozen operations and procedures, could not get Medicaid.

It took three years for the federal government to believe he was disabled.

After Obamacare, any able-bodied fraternity bro could go online and be enrolled in Medicaid in five minutes, without expectation of paying into the system. Rewarding not working surprisingly results in fewer people working (and less tax money to give to people who don’t work).

Medicaid’s no longer a safety net for the nation’s most vulnerable. It is a La-Z-Boy recliner for able people to receive health care for near nothing.

As we found under welfare reform during the Clinton years, demanding able people work before they get freebies dramatically reduces the amount of those asking for handouts. The fearmongering over welfare reform turned out to be like the Y2K panic of 1999. The horror never materialized. The same is likely true here.

The new bill will require states to pick up a bit more of their own Medicaid costs. This is not a bad thing. It means that states like Colorado that promote Medicare benefits to people here illegally will have to rethink their free-for-all. Even California’s Gov. Gavin Newsom is saying they should stop enrolling immigrants here illegally in Medicaid.

Could the paid-to-panic crowd be more upset that the new law bars Medicaid money for “gender affirming care”? Heaven forbid a man be denied a boob-job — so there’s money instead for a kid to get a wheelchair.

By Jon Caldara

I remember asking a Denver cop how the morale was among his peers. His answer, “Well, let me put it this way. Yesterday, I arrested a guy for stealing four cars. Two hours later, I arrested the very same guy for stealing a car again.” Criminals who are issued the equivalent of a parking ticket and kicked out of jail in mere minutes after their major felonies must be a greater demotivator for cops than a doughnut ban.

How can you keep doing your job when your work is rigged so, no matter how hard you endeavor, it doesn’t really make any difference? Imagine being in charge of recruiting police officers in large metro cities today.

The same sense of making no real difference, of complete irrelevance, is infecting the ranks of Colorado Republican legislators. It’s so bad, two of the best have decided to quit their jobs, pull up stakes, and get the hell out of Dodge.

Senate Majority Leader Paul Lundeen was perhaps the most sane, articulate, politically savvy and principled Republican under the Gold Dome. In any other state he’d be looking to run for governor. But this isn’t any other state, so, instead, he’s looking to run away.

This is the hyper-progressive state of Colorado. Being in the micro-minority year after year after year and watching freedom-limiting, economy-killing, social engineering bills becoming law, well, it has got to be like the cop watching everyone he arrests back out on the street moments after being caught 

Honestly, how do you get up in the morning?

Lundeen is fleeing to take a job with the American Excellence Foundation to spread the word of limited government to states that might listen.

So that Paul doesn’t feel alone in his escape from the asylum — I’m sorry, the “unsupervised mental health facility” — the equally sane House Minority Whip Ryan Armagost is bolting out of the state for an undisclosed “fantastic professional opportunity” in Arizona 

Rumor has it he landed a more enjoyable and respected job there like telemarketer, pig slaughterer, crack whore or even assistant crack whore.

Is there a more lonely and frankly useless job in Colorado, outside of Rockies general manager, than being a Republican state legislator, shooting rubber bands at bad ideas?

Frankly, those who stay and fight, I’m looking at you, Rose Pugliese, are amazingly optimistic and resilient people who deserve at least a commercial by Sarah McLachlan. “Hi, I’m Sarah McLachlan. Will you be an angel for a helpless legislator? Everyday, innocent Republican legislators are abused, beaten and neglected. And they’re crying out for help. For just $5 million a month, you can rescue these legislators from their abusers.”

But it’s not just abused Republicans who can no longer take it. The growing civil war between Democrats is beginning to take its toll.

Remember that scene from “Gone with the Wind” with the acres of wounded laying around the train station? In Colorado, the merely-progressive Democrats of the North are attacked by the socialist Democrats of the South with similar results.

Recall, Democrats have near veto-proof majorities in both houses, all statewide offices, including governor and attorney general, and judges almost completely appointed by progressive Democrat governors. Like your sibling whom your parents love more than you, Democrats get whatever they want.

Your wallet is their oyster. Resigning in 2023, Democratic Rep. Ruby Dickson said the “sensationalistic and vitriolic nature of the current political environment is not healthy for me or my family.”

Democratic Rep. Said Sharbini left, citing “the polarized and contentious climate in the state House.” Sen. Sonya Jaquez Lewis said the job was emotionally and physically tough when she recently split.

But these spoiled kids can have anything they want. They’re not squabbling with Republicans. Republicans aren’t even in the equation. Republicans are hiding in the janitor’s closet hoping not to be found and slapped around. These Democrats are backbiting fellow Democrats.

The “sensationalistic and vitriolic” unhealthy environment is amongst themselves. The polarization and emotional toll isn’t coming from the feckless Republicans.

Team Left is beginning to eat their own.

More than 20% of our legislators were never voted into office in the first place. They were appointed to fill vacancies of those who wanted to get out.

Though this calls for reform of how vacancies are filled, the bigger question is, what are the Democrats doing to make the place so unlivable?

By Jon Caldara

When a city’s major league sports team wins a world championship, celebrations get out of hand. Fans get intoxicated, they vomit and urinate on sidewalks, throw trash everywhere, light stuff on fire, break windows, get into brawls with police and more.

In other words, they turn their city into what Denver already looks like.

I was with an out-of-towner the other day when he looked around and said, “Whoa, I didn’t know the Nuggets won the championship.”

Denver has no world champions right now. But we might by the end of this baseball season. There’s a very good chance the Colorado Rockies will end the year in very last place. That is, they could be this year’s champions of really sucking at baseball.

The city already looks like we’ve won the World Series. So, if we become world champions of losing, logically we should have the opposite reaction. I expect people to uncontrollably pick up litter, hose down sidewalks, scrub graffiti off walls and forcibly bathe transients.

It could be the prize for being first of the worst. Maybe the embarrassment will focus the collective mind of Denver to clean itself up. When things go bad, people change. I’ve seen newly divorced women get in shape, buy attractive outfits and try out a new version of themselves. That could be Denver after being divorced from winning.

Of course, newly divorced men usually put on 20 pounds from binging Doritos and Netflix, so let’s move on from this bad analogy.

Biggest losers

But there is even bigger title. The worst season for any professional baseball team was 1918. The Philadelphia Athletics won an infinitesimal 36 games all season, with a win-ratio of .235. Halfway through this season, the Rockies have won only 18 games, a ratio of .225 (due to today’s longer seasons). We’re on track!

I’m telling you, we can do this! With a little team discipline, no changes in pitching, and a bit of luck, the Rox have a shot at the all-time greatest loser title!

The Harlem Globetrotters, who always win, constantly play the Washington Generals, who always lose. The Generals make their money by losing. I’ve learned that the hard way, by always betting on them (I mean, come on, they’re due).

The Rockies are the Washington Generals of baseball. People don’t pay to see them win. People come to see the other team. Thus, games against popular teams, like the Dodgers and Yankees, are packed.

The Rox have a disincentive to hire better players and coaches. It would cut into their profits. Oddly, they make more money when other teams’ owners hire better, expensive talent. That sells more home Rockies tickets.

Colorado is sports crazy. We love sports more than teenage girls love Taylor Swift. Coloradans keep shelling out crazy prices to see teams lose. And damn those designers of Coors Field. It’s the most beautiful, serene and timeless ballpark in the country. Who doesn’t want to go there?

We show up for ball games no matter how lousy the team is. Heck, I just took my son to see the L.A. Dodgers humiliate us. Bought my kid a hamburger and a Coke for $25, while envisaging the hotdog and soda at Costco I get for $1.50.

What’s the plan, what’s the celebration if we hit that century-old, all-time crappiest record for a city which has turned, literally, rather crappy? The Rockies’ owners need to answer that and take leadership. They’re the real winners in the Rox losing seasons.

Since the Rockies can’t, or won’t, invest in winning talent, I think the least they can do is promise a big gift to the people of Colorado should they break the all-time losing record. After all, this community bought them a taxpayer-built stadium, fills it regularly and chokes down bus-station food at airport-food prices.

Should they break the all-time record, I say the Rockies should commit $10 million to clean up Denver. A one-time litter pickup and washdown won’t do. The money should be spent on lobbying city government to enforce the laws against living on the streets, litter, car theft and assault.

Give us something to root for, Rox! Commit you’ll clean up our trashed-out city, be the voice City Hall can’t ignore. Demand the city be saved block by block.

Let us root for Blocktober!

By Mike Rosen

On June 14, a trio of events intersected. It was the birthday of the United States Army, but far more than a typical birthday it was the 250th. It was also Flag Day, commemorating the adoption of the flag of the United States by resolution of the Second Continental Congress in 1775. And, coincidentally, it was also the 79th birthday of President Donald Trump. I say “coincidentally,” because the first two of these events were obviously of greater significance than Trump’s birthday as, with his characteristic modesty, he’d certainly concede.

Not coincidentally, it was the day picked by a virulently anti-Trump, radically leftist group that goes by the childishly idiotic name of “No Kings.” (At first glance I thought they hated Elvis Presley.) It recruited 175 like-minded outfits to join in a mass protest in “2,100 cities and towns” labeled the “No Kings Nationwide Day of Defiance.” The roster included the ACLU, Democratic Socialists of America, the American Federation of Government Employees, the American Federation of Teachers, and even some communist groups. “No Kings” bragged it’s goal was to “upstage Trump’s self-coronation event by grabbing more of the attention.” Hardly a self-coronation, plans for the celebration of the Army’s 250th birthday, started two years ago, well before Trump’s election.

Army’s birthday parade shines through

Attending or even watching the parade on TV with 7,000 troops marching in combat fatigues and other uniforms amidst Abrams tanks, Bradley Fighting Vehicles, motorized cannons, and warplanes flying overhead is the last thing that crowd would want to do. For most of them, patriotism is a dirty word. No Kings claimed 5 million people joined their protests. I’d rank their credibility on this estimate about low as Hamas’ daily count of civilian casualties in Gaza.

But even if there were 5 million protestors, that would be a mere 1.4% of America’s 344 million population. That leaves quite a few who didn’t participate. On the other hand, here’s my ballpark guesstimate of how many Americans on June 14 much preferred the celebration in Washington, the military parade, patriotic music and fireworks: Counting active-duty military personnel, reservists, the national guard, military veterans of all the services, their families and friends, 77 million people who voted for Trump in 2024, the many millions of Americans who are thankful for our military, our police, our ICE and border patrol officers, patriots who still love our country, and even some Democrats, I’d put that number at more than 200 million.

As an Army vet myself, I had a lump in my throat watching all that. Despite the petty whining of leftists, the US Army deserved nothing less than a parade like this on its 250th birthday.

Not-so-peaceful protests

As for the recognition of Trump’s birthday being a “self-coronation” overshadowing the event, the gift of an American flag to him by a member of the Army’s Golden Knights paratroop team and some soldiers in front of the podium singing “Happy Birthday” took just 10 minutes. (A thinly-clad Marilyn Monroe singing a sultry version of “Happy Birthday” to JFK on his 45th birthday in 1962 at a Democrat fund-raiser in NYC’s Madison Square Garden had a different flavor. I doubt Melania would approve.)

Crowds in the Denver protest ironically waved Mexican, Palestinian and LGBTQ+ flags, which was not quite the intent of Flag Day. There were some American flags but I suspect that was more for show than love of country for many of the anti-American protestors. It’s an irrational contradiction when illegal immigrants who deserted Mexico to come here wave Mexican flags and burn American ones while they fight deportation back to Mexico.

Predictably, this “mostly peaceful” protest ultimately turned unlawful and violent when some assaulted police, started fires, obstructed roadways and attempted to block I-25, with some 35 arrests made. The First Amendment protects your right to “peaceably” assemble and to “petition the government for a redress of grievances.” These are not peaceful acts or petitions. No one has a right to break the law because they disagree with it.

As their protest moved theatrically to the Governor’s mansion (where Jared Polis and his spouse don’t actually reside) one leftist fool proclaimed that Polis is a just another of the “corrupt politicians who run this country.” As if the Democrat politicians who run Colorado aren’t leftist enough for him. Another speaker was cheered for advocating revolution, shouting “This is what democracy looks like.” No. Angry mobs, in general, that disturb the peace, assault the police, set fire to vehicles, obstruct immigration officers from doing their job, and incite revolution isn’t democracy, it’s mobocracy. Trump’s election was democracy.

By Jon Caldara

Colorado’s Secretary of State Jena Griswold is responsible for running the state’s TRACER system. This is the public database where campaigns must file their contribution and expenditure disclosures. If you wanna see who’s funding a candidate, that’s where you go.

But if you went there last week, you would have seen it was “down for maintenance.”

That was a lie. There was no “maintenance.”

You can’t handle the truth

Griswold took it down to have the home addresses of elected officials redacted from the site. In the wake of the shootings of state legislators in Minnesota, many of Colorado’s elected officials asked her to do it.

So why not just tell us that? We would have more than understood the truth.

This database is required by law. Scrubbing it might or might not be a good policy. She might or might not have the authority to do it. But to fib and say it was “down for maintenance” just adds to the reasons trust in government is at an all-time low. They can’t even tell us the truth on this reasonable feat.

In fact, we might not have known any of this falsehood had it not been for a scoop by Axios Denver’s John Frank. Only when confronted did the Jena’s office cop to shutting it down to redact information. Yes, a tiny lie. But that’s the gateway drug to big lies.

A couple of years back, the Colorado Department of Transportation didn’t want folks driving on a high mountain pass during a snowstorm, so they lied and said it was closed. A fabrication, it was open and fine.

There is a pretension and arrogance with those it’s-for-your-own-good lies. And it conditions citizens to let government play parent to them.

It takes a certain amount of arrogance to use the machinery of government to promote inaccuracies and lies (insert Trump joke here). Government should be the record holder and storehouse of truth.

The secretary of state, county clerks, law enforcement, auditors and researchers must be wholly committed to recording only the full truth, no matter what.

Where does my property line end and yours begin? Who owns that car? When was someone born? When did he die? We must trust government records or pretty much everything — everything — falls apart.

But now records can be redacted and altered.

Changing one’s gender on a Colorado birth certificate is as easy as changing your mailing address. Was a person born a boy on a certain date? Who knows? Those records can now be legally falsified.

If changing birth certificates is legal, I need to change the birth date on mine. I identify as 67 despite the government record saying I’m 60. I want my Social Security checks now.

A double-standard for donors

We’re told redacting TRACER records was a matter of safety for those in politics. But lots of us are in politics. Why only protect the elected?

These records still show the home addresses of everyone of us who donated to a campaign. Aren’t we worth the same level of safety and protection?

If an elected official is targeted for an act of violence, wouldn’t those who paid for him to get into office also be possible targets? Why does Griswold protect the privacy of her elected colleagues but not their supporters?

There’s a reason why people want to give their money anonymously — to save their lives and livelihoods.

During the bloody civil rights battles, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, NAACP, had to go to court to protect their donor’s privacy. Why? If doxed, those who financed their mission would have been lynched.

A few years back, there was a mass shooting at a Planned Parenthood office in Colorado Springs. Fortunately, Planned Parenthood also keeps their donors private. If that shooter could look up their funders’ addresses, they might have been targeted, too.

Every year the legislature tries to pass bills to end donor privacy, labeling such donations as “soft money.” “Soft money” is the pejorative term for “political speech I want to support, but don’t want to be killed over.”

How fun it will be to watch those very legislators who pressured Jena Griswold to redact their home addresses to turn around and demand others involved in politics be treated differently and stay easy targets.

Privacy and security for me. Exposure for thee.

By Jon Caldara

I got to know Jeff Hunt in his many years running the socially conservative Centennial Institute at Colorado Christian University. He now co-hosts the morning talk radio show on 710 KNUS.

He is a social conservative Christian; I’m a libertarian conservative. In other words, he’s wrong about a lot of stuff, but you know, in that oh-so-righteous way. And that’s what makes teasing him so fun.

We get into friendly brawls over moral questions like doctor-assisted suicide and end-of-life issues, where he explains God’s greatest gift to man was free will, and somehow it’s social conservatives’ job to take it away. (OK, he never said that, I did.)

Anyway, sometimes I just wanna kick him. And, oh, my lord, I’m not the only one.

Not only did he get aggressively kicked in the back a few days ago, but it was so satisfying some 9 million people needed to watch the video of it on social media.

To be clear, there is no reliable proof I put any “kick me” sign on his back.

A little context: Jeff has always had a keen sense of social media self-promotion, handy when you’re an aspiring talk-show host. He’s made it a habit of going to angry leftist rallies with a video camera and asking people straightforward questions while recording the inane answers.

Remember Jay Leno’s “Jaywalking” routine? It’s like that, but instead of the people being just idiots, they’re angry and unhinged, as well. Good stuff.

At last week’s anti-ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) rally at the state Capitol, he was meandering through the crowd videotaping the mostly peaceful protest when, out of nowhere, a man viciously kicks him in the lower back. Worse than a sucker punch, there’s absolutely no way to see it coming. And yes, there was a real injury.

Being the stand-up person it takes to kick someone in the back, this young, white man runs off as the crowd is chanting, “No hate, no fear, immigrants are welcome here!”

Immigrants are welcome here. Others with different viewpoint, however, will be assaulted.

Will the real fascists please stand up

It’s worth making the small observation these protestors call Trump a fascist and carry placards of him cartooned as Adolf Hitler. Remember, it was Hitler’s followers who beat up those with opposing views. Physical assault is a fascist tactic. So, exactly who are the fascists here?

We could go on that theme all day. It was Hitler’s fascists who attacked Jews. Today, it’s pro-Palestine progressive college kids and illegal immigrants throwing Molotov cocktails attacking Jews. So again, exactly who are the fascists here?

Jeff followed and confronted his assailant on camera, who calmly responded to Jeff, “Hey pal, what are you here for?” Well, to be physically assaulted at your peaceful protest, of course. Duh.

Two interesting things followed. First, a fellow protester intervenes and advises the assailant to stop talking, obviously a criminal lawyer in the making. “Don’t talk to him, you’re going to ruin the image.”

The guy didn’t say, “Hey, we don’t do violence,” or “apologize to the man for kicking him,” but “you’re going to ruin the image.” That speaks volumes. It shows what’s important to the protestors. Imagery.

And secondly, the assailant says to this budding lawyer and public relations expert, “He pissed me off, okay.” That’s important because it shows intent. This guy was angered by Jeff, so he attacked him. That makes this a premeditated assault.

Jeff has gone to the police. The assailant is very easy to identify. So, we’ll see if this mostly peaceful protest results in criminal charges.

Jeff has covered about a dozen such protests and tells me they are growing in intensity and anger. The Bernie Sanders/Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez rally drew a crowd of mellow, old Boulderites making it resemble an audience at a John Tesh concert. The latest rallies have more people covering their faces with masks and itching to brawl with police.

And unlike the earlier rallies, Jeff is now followed by his own personal entourage of antifa censors. Whenever he starts filming a conversation with a protester, these people swoop in to tell the person not to interact with Jeff, ending the interview.

Another telltale sign of fascism is clamping down on free speech.

Look for the violence and vandalism to ratchet up. These people just can’t help themselves.

By Mike Rosen

President Trump’s recent executive order to cut off the federal subsidy for NPR and PBS generated a storm of outrage from the left. Predictably, the usual suspects staged demonstrations and NPR, PBS and Democrats have counterattacked with lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of Trump’s order.

NPR and PBS aren’t identical twins. So, let’s call them fraternal twins in their common political and cultural mentality and the leftist bias they spread on a daily basis on their political and cultural broadcast platforms.

Tax-funded propaganda

They falsely claim this is a First Amendment issue about free speech. To borrow a Joe Bidenism, “that’s malarky.” If the twins are denied taxpayer dollars, they’d still be free to broadcast their progressive and woke propaganda over the airwaves, just without taxpayer dollars. For Democrats and the left, defending the twins isn’t a matter of principle or the law, it’s strictly a matter of political self-interest protecting their propaganda megaphones. And the government connection allows the twins to claim they are duty bound to be ideologically and politically balanced. Given their glaring liberal bias, they’re both guilty of dereliction of that duty.

NPR’s news, analysis and opinion programs are mostly unlistenable for conservatives, Republicans and open-minded independents on shows like “Morning Editon” and especially “All (leftist) Things Considered,” which NPR boasts is “the most listened to afternoon radio program in the country,” which Democrats savor. Uri Berliner a former business editor for NPR resigned last year after publicly criticizing the network’s news coverage as reflecting a “rigid progressive ideology,” with editorial positions in the D.C. area filled by 87 registered Democrats and 0 Republicans.

PBS’s programming is less political than NPR’s although still left-leaning. But most of its drama and entertainment offerings are excellent and enjoyed by conservatives and liberals alike, such as “Masterpiece Theater, ” with series like “Downton Abbey,” “Wolf Hall,” and “All Creatures Great and Small.”

The doomsday predictions about the death of NPR and PBS and the end of classical music broadcasting are laughable. Even if their federal subsidies ― which constitute a relatively small share of their revenues ― were eliminated, the twins would still exist. Contributions and membership fees from their faithful listeners would continue and likely increase. Any void would easily be filled by leftist foundations, corporations, activist groups, labor unions, Democrats, or George Soros who value this broadcast platform far too much to let it die.

Times have changed

In 1961, FCC Chairman Newton Minow famously declared that TV programming was a “vast wasteland” of senseless violence, mindless comedy and offensive advertising. That ultimately provided an excuse for government to subsidize programming that people ought to watch through the Public Broadcasting Act passed by Congress in 1967 creating the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) which remains the banker of PBS and NPR, founded in 1970.

But 1970 was more than half a century ago. Back then your TV set had maybe ten channels, and Cable TV was just getting started. People didn’t have personal computers or smart phones, no iPads, no Internet, no podcasts, and no social media. (We did have libraries.) Today, with satellites and streaming, there are limitless outlets to hear or watch quality content; virtually anything from news, to opinion, to entertainment, classical music, etc. along with an even “vaster wasteland” of crap. There’s no need or justification for government to subsidize any of this or NPR, PBS and CPB.

Among Trump’s barrage of executive orders, those that pertain strictly to the executive branch have generally withstood challenges in court. This one, while objectively warranted as a public policy issue, may well be struck down by the courts since NPR, PBS and CPB were created by an act of Congress. In that event, Congress could defund all of those through legislation. Unfortunately, that’s unlikely. With a slim Republican majority in both houses, Democrats would likely kill the bill with a Senate filibuster, and Republicans lack the 60 votes required to overcome that. But as I’ve explained, even if Congress were to pass such legislation, NPR and PBS would still be on the air.

Based on the outcome of the last election, arguably a great part of the public recognizes and objects to the leftist bias of the news and opinion elements of NPR and PBS. On principle, a quote from Thomas Jefferson applies to this issue: “To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical.” That justifies removing NPR, PBS and CPB from the taxpayers’ teat.

By Mike Rosen

The multiculturalism movement is a cancer disguised as a cure. It claims that learning more about minorities would elevate them and improve national harmony, and opening our borders to people from other countries will enrich us as they combine their cultures with ours. Our public schools enthusiastically embraced this, deemphasizing reading, writing, and arithmetic to fill the vacuum with “social justice.” Colleges created new departments for ethnic studies, black studies, Latino studies, etc.

Multiculturalism isn’t innocent or apolitical. It was a planned early stage ― DEI was the next stage ― in the “fundamental transformation of America” (the goal proclaimed by President Obama) into a globalist socialist utopia. Radical left-wing academics who relentlessly denigrate our history by obsessing on our sins while ignoring our many more virtues also championed multiculturalism as a means to that end. (What nation’s history is without sin?) This strategy has been effective in the left’s indoctrination and recruitment of callow idealistic students.

Melting pot or salad bowl?

In practice, multiculturalism doesn’t lead to national harmony, just the opposite. It spawned identity politics, tribalism, divisiveness and has undermined national unity. Americans don’t need a hyphen to describe themselves. Nobody whose ancestors came from England 400 years ago calls himself an English-American today. Why would a black man whose Swedish grandfather became a U.S citizen in the 20th century be called African-American?

Our nation has traditionally been a “melting pot” where newcomers and their descendants assimilate into our culture. Fifth-generation Americans with Italian roots, for example, might call themselves Italian-Americans on some occasions but they speak English, are proud to be American, and may have ancestors who fought for the U.S. against Italy in World War II. The Left weaponizes multiculturalism to reject assimilation in order to divide our people. The Marxists among them deploy multiculturalism in the Leninist strategy of permanent revolution to overthrow capitalism.

Multiculturalists would replace our melting pot with a “salad bowl” of identity politics. But salads can become disharmonious. I prefer iceberg lettuce and discriminate against arugula which is better suited for grazing cows. Barbecue sauce is unwelcome in a Ceasar salad.

Diversity makes sense in an investment portfolio but can go way too far in a country. Europe has been devastated by a tsunami of immigrants, many of whom refuse to assimilate, especially Muslims. In France, Parisian suburbs like Seine-Saint Denis have effectively become separate Islamic societies where Sharia law has displaced French civil law and police are afraid to go. Denmark banned Muslim face coverings to crack down on the crime wave, has “No Ghetto” policies to prevent the growth of immigrant enclaves, and now aims at “zero migration.” Britain’s socialist Prime Minister Keir Starmer ― once an avowed multiculturalist ― recently declared that its experiment with open borders is turning the nation into an “island of strangers” with “forces that are slowly pulling our country apart.”

Borders matter

Countries have borders to protect their sovereignty, for national defense, and to block unwanted individuals. Historically, the U.S. has imposed limits to immigration allowances among countries to balance it out. Now, that’s diversity. Instead of America’s great advantage of a common language, multiculturalism taken to its ultimate destination would substitute a virtual Tower of Babel.

Former Colorado Governor Dick Lamm, a Democrat before they turned radically left, was leery of multiculturalism warning that “diverse peoples worldwide are mostly engaged in hating each other, that is when they’re not killing each other. A diverse, peaceful, or stable society is against most historical precedent.”

I’ve been to about 70 countries. I’m intrigued by their sights, people, governments, histories, cuisines, and cultures. I like some better than others, and some not at all. But I prefer our culture, system of government and economy, and I don’t want our culture to be overwhelmed by mass immigration. I favor assimilation. I’m not opposed to immigration. I am opposed to unlimited and illegal immigration, regardless of nationality or race. That’s a vital distinction Mexican-American columnist Rubin Navarette routinely ignores when he falsely labels as racists those who oppose illegal immigration ― especially if the illegals are Latinos.

All of the world is not wonderful. World citizenship is a delusion and a path to open borders. It would require a world government and a world military. The United Nations is a farce. Imagine the compromises America’s representative to a World Constitutional Convention would have to make to satisfy China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran. Our Constitution would be trashed.

And why do multiculturalists cheer when they’re told that whites will soon no longer be a majority in the U.S? Isn’t that racist?

By Jon Caldara

This column is targeted to one reader: the iconoclast businessman and politico Kent Thiry.

Many believe Colorado’s best days are behind her, and understandably so as Colorado turns into a dictatorial progressive experiment of exponentially escalating regulation, spiraling property taxes and fees, and forced social engineering.

We don’t feel safe on our own city streets. Young people can’t buy their own homes. Affordable and reliable energy is no more. Small businesses are dwindling under the new minimum wages and the epidemic costs of regulatory compliance. Road funding is stolen for unused transit, making our roadways third-world, strangling commutes and commerce. And the woke agenda is codified not only in school curriculum but now with “misgendering” speech control laws.

Our state balances on a knife’s edge, tipping toward economic collapse, a la California, New York and Illinois. No wonder more and more of our productive class is pulling up stakes and moving to Florida or Texas where their talents will be encouraged to thrive.

But I think Colorado can be saved. The first step is changing election law.

The case for open primaries

You’d think Colorado’s decline is plainly obvious and, therefore, average Coloradans would stop voting for socialist-leaning Democrats and start voting for Republicans. You’d be wrong.

Colorado’s rural districts will remain Republican, as urban districts remain progressive Democrat. The fight for Colorado’s future is, as it always has been, in the swing suburban districts. I’m talking Adams, Arapahoe, Jefferson, and now Douglas and El Paso counties.

For the next several election cycles, these swing district voters will still largely be repulsed by Republican candidates. Chock-full of single moms, these suburban voters equate “Republican” with “Trump.” And they hate President Donald Trump, sometimes becoming unhinged. Their hatred of his personality turns to hatred of his political party. To them, “Republican” is anti-gay, anti-abortion, anti-cannabis and anti-environment. They are pro-gay, pro-abortion, pro-weed and, until the blackouts hit, believe climate change is Colorado-, not China-caused.

Next year’s election, President Trump’s midterm, should be a bloodbath for Colorado Republicans. Any candidate running with an “R” behind his name in swing districts might as well have a swastika there instead.

But here’s the interesting part: These swing voters, though pro-gay, pro-abortion, pro-weed and pro-environmentalist, are not pro-crime, pro-tax, pro-regulation or pro-woke. They still won’t vote Republican, but they know, and often admit, Colorado’s leftist one-party tyrannical state is going too far.

These swing voters feel uncomfortable with both parties. That’s why now an unheard of 50% of all Colorado registered voters are independent, unaffiliated with any party. It’s why Colorado’s second-largest city has an unaffiliated mayor. They crave something that’s not R or D. Colorado could well become the nation’s first independent or unaffiliated state.

Rise of the ‘Freedom Unaffiliateds’

They hate the moralism of the Republicans and the fiscal carelessness and wokeness of the left. I label them as “Freedom Unaffiliateds,” which shortens to “FU.” And these people want to say FU to both parties.

But, unless Thiry changes how primaries are done, these Freedom Unaffiliateds will keep begrudgingly voting socialist Democrat over moralist Republican.

Thiry designed and funded the popular 2016 citizen’s initiative letting unaffiliated voters vote in either Republican or Democratic primaries. But he bit off more than Colorado voters were willing to chew with his initiative last year. It would have created a jungle primary system and then ranked-choice voting for the top four candidates in the general election.

Coloradans are suspicious of ranked-choice voting. But jungle primaries, where candidates from all parties, or no party, battle it out in a primary with the top two advancing to the November ballot is ripe for the whole state. Denver’s mayoral election is done this way.

In progressive urban areas it would likely mean two Democrats would be on the general ballot, one farther left than the other. In rural areas, two Republicans.

But it’s the swing districts where this changes everything. Unaffiliated, fiscally conservative, yet morally centrist candidates could finally make it to the fall ballot. And in a two-way race, they could win.

Sane, anti-crime, pro-business independents could caucus with Republicans to make Colorado viable again, and caucus with Democrats to protect social issues.

These could be (cover your ears, Republicans) the electable candidates who could win in swing districts.

But only if Thiry retools his initiative and opens our primaries.

By Mike Rosen

Civil disobedience is a constant of history. Like the Boston Tea Party, a violent symbolic demonstration against British tyranny in 1773 that preceded the American Revolutionary War. An unelected English king appointed English governors who ruled with an iron hand in the colonies. There was taxation without representation and American colonists had no peaceful political recourse.

On the night after Donald Trump’ s first presidential election in November 2016 there were acts of civil disobedience in downtown Denver, with angry, disturbed, Trump-hating Democrats blocking traffic on city streets and near the Broncos stadium on I-25 (where I was personally trapped in my car for most of an hour before the police politely ushered them away.)

Trump’s crime was winning a free and fair election thanks to voters in states other than Colorado. The obvious difference between these two acts of civil disobedience is that unlike the tea partiers, the post-election disruptors of 2016 did have political recourse. Their candidate, Hillary Clinton, simply lost. It was needless to disturb the peace other than for these sore losers to indulge their hurt feelings. Trump’s second coming has been met with a far greater level and degree of outright hatred and violence ― like fire-bombing Elon Musk’s Tesla dealerships for the crime of trying to make government more efficient. Profane postings and threats by many Trump haters on social media and public statements by elected Democrats have encouraged anti-Musk arson and even the outright assassination of the president.

In his essay “On the Duty of Civil Disobedience,” philosopher Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), argued that one should not support a government if it sanctions policies with which one disagrees. His primary cause was the abolition of slavery and his preferred action was civil disobedience. But he also called for those who took that action to willingly accept the consequences, like going to jail.

We got a harrowing taste of civil disobedience during the 2020 BLM Summer of Violence in what its sympathizers dismissed as “mostly peaceful” protests that ransacked stores, besieged police stations, set fire to patrol cars, and ravaged neighborhoods; running up $2 billion in damages. While thousands of arrests were made, only a tiny fraction went to jail or stayed there very long, dodging the consequences part of Thoreau’s tradeoff with woke or progressive prosecutors filing mostly minor charges or none at all.

Serious revolutionary Marxists and this generation’s idealistic college kids indoctrinated in leftist ideology in K-12, higher-ed, liberal media, and social culture are reveling in disruptive protests. And they do want to go to jail. But only for show with a brief visit so they can get the arrest on their record to wear as a protestor badge of honor, the leftist equivalent of an honorable combat campaign ribbon for a soldier. When this fad ends, the kids can get back to protesting against student loans they had promised to repay.

As for the clueless anti-Israel, pro-Hamas demonstrators performing in their trendy keffiyeh scarfs on college campuses who violate the rights of fellow students with their barriers, encampments, and occupation of buildings, it’s strange that many if not most are liberated young women. Perhaps they’ll marry a murderous, Hamas Islamist fundamentalist, intent on exterminating Jews, who’d enclose them in a burqa and physically beat them in keeping with Sharia law.

I’ll concede that Trump has overreached in some of his chaotic multi-front counterattacks on the Democrats’ entrenched bureaucracy and the administrative state (employing tactics he learned from Obama and Biden). Trump will win some battles in congress and legal disputes in the courts all the way up to SCOTUS, and he’ll lose some others. As expected, Democrats have risen in “resistance.” Some are singing idiotic songs in street protests. This is ineffective and embarrassing, but it’s what they do for fun, and it’s a form of psychotherapy. A more effective tool is lawfare, and Democrats are very good at that. But they don’t always win, as Trump has amply shown.

Claims that Trump is “a threat to our democracy” are just silly. Anyone with a basic knowledge of political science and civics knows our system of government isn’t a pure democracy, although it does have some democratic institutions. We’re a constitutional republic with representative government and the rule of law. Trump is no threat to that. The ultimate outcome of his presidency will be decided not by Trump as a dictator, nor by political protests but through our system of checks and balances, the separation of powers, and voters in the mid-term elections.

By Jon Caldara

There are only three jobs worth having in Colorado. The first is fortunately mine.

Any person who can make a living by indulging his passion is beyond blessed. I somehow have provided for my family by fighting for personal and economic freedom in Colorado. Running Independence Institute, Colorado’s machine to promote liberty principles over party, politicians and special interests, is a dream come true.

The next coolest job in Colorado is quarterback for the Denver Broncos, which, by the way, I would be totally awesome at.

The only other job I’d want here would be governor, the most influential and powerful gig for changing policy and shaping the state’s future.

And to be Jared Polis, a near billionaire to boot, would be a rip. I mean, if you can self-fund your elections, you’re not beholden to moneyed special interests owning you. He’s also term limited. He can do what he pleases without regard to it harming any reelection.

So why do I feel sorry for him?

Hostage to the loony left

Though he can’t run for governor again, he’s eyeing the U.S. Senate or even the presidency. So, still a politician. And the curse of every politician is the same as that of every middle-school girl. All you care about is what other people think of you.

For nearly seven years now, Jared has been held hostage to the growing socialist-loony fringe of his party. He wants to be the pro-business libertarian he claims to be, but everyone inside Colorado knows he governs anti-liberty progressive.

And now people around the country are learning his spin was just that. Even Reason magazine, who fell for the con years ago, calling him the “libertarian governor,” is retracting the title (a la Steve Harvey announcing the wrong winner of Miss America).

Coming out of another stranger-than-strange, more-left-than-left, liberty-hating, economy-strangling legislative session, our poor governor is faced with political no-win decisions. Should he sign even more economy-killing, liberty-squeezing bills, or veto them?

To his credit, he bravely just vetoed bills to limit governmental transparency and to create a social media nanny state, angering many. Will more vetoes come?

Veto-worthy bills

Senate Bill 5 will force non-union workers to pay union dues (which almost all goes into political campaigning) and will drive private businesses to leave for friendlier territory. We’ll join California, New York and Illinois, watching the moving trucks roll to low-tax, worker-protected states like Texas, Tennessee and Florida.

If he signs it, he strangles the state economy and finishes what’s left of being “pro-business.” And the unions will work against him in his next primary.

Handicapped people, the elderly, those without cars and every one of us who have had a few too many rely on Uber and Lyft. If he signs the bill forcing them to outfit cars with recording systems and overly bureaucratic personnel requirements, they said they’d leave the state.

This would delight the taxi cartel and government transit, in other words, the left’s core team. So, it’s mobility, technology and free enterprise versus his beloved planner-state. He must choose.

I really feel sorry for Polis over House Bill 1312, one of the most anti-liberty, anti-child and anti-free speech acts of petulance we’ve ever seen. Veto this bill that punishes “misgendering or deadnaming” and erodes parental rights, and he angers the most-vicious and retribution-crazed wing of his cancel-culture left.

No more Polis Process

The Polis Process has been to take bills that destroy liberty and economic prosperity and get the legislature to water them down before they get to his desk. For example, he’s never wanted to sign a so-called assault weapons bill. No “libertarian” could. So, he gets those civil-rights haters to morph their bills into other god-awful anti-gun bills.

Thus, we have tiptoed our way to a gun-hating Colorado: local control to ban guns, waiting periods, weakening concealed carry rights, increased age limits, more red flag laws and, this year, the nation’s most onerous permitting scheme.

But look, Mom — no assault weapons ban!

This year signaled the last time this “Polis Process” will really be effective. The legislature just doesn’t care what he thinks anymore. He’ll be gone soon. They no longer mind putting him in no-win positions.

Frankly, I’m glad. The Polis Process has resulted in a death by a thousand cuts for our freedoms and our economy while Jared tries to please all the middle school girls.

Sorry, Jared. Time to see what’s more important to you, Colorado or your socialist friends.

By Jon Caldara

Yes, yes — the threat to democracy is President Donald Trump. I’ve read the bumper stickers.

But while we’re all hyperventilating about fascism from the White House, we might want to save some furor for the frontal assault on democracy from the Colorado state legislature. I’m talking attacking actual direct democracy.

To my knowledge, no legislature in the country has passed term limits on themselves. Would you vote yourself out of a job?

But Coloradans overwhelmingly voted for term limits several times at the ballot box. How did the question make it to the ballot? Lawmakers certainly wouldn’t refer it there. We citizens used our constitutional right of direct democracy to petition it there.

Colorado has the nation’s strictest ethics law limiting what elected officials can accept in gifts and travel junkets. Legislators didn’t restrict gifts to themselves. The citizen initiative did.

No lawmaker of either party truly loves the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights (TABOR), forcing them to make difficult spending priority decisions. They certainly abhor our campaign finance limits, unless they’re personally fabulously wealthy (I’m not looking at any sitting governor in particular). We have open meeting laws, allowing us to watch what they are doing.

Lawmakers would never restrict their own power by passing these reforms. These checks on power are made possible only by the initiative, by direct democracy.

It’s little wonder legislators hate, loathe and despise the citizen initiative. So, they continually make the initiative process more cumbersome and expense. Their nonstop war on the process demonstrates not only their elitism but their hatred of democracy. They disenfranchise voters.

Direct democracy is the people changing laws despite those in power. The Colorado Constitution clearly guarantees We the People are every bit part of the legislature, on par with any legislator, via the initiative and referendum.

Attacking citizen initiative

I have been intimately involved with the initiative process for three decades, placing several successful and a few unsuccessful proposals on the ballot. The cost, hassle and brain damage have never been worse.

Normal, working Coloradans now can’t afford to petition their government anymore. Only moneyed special interests and the wealthy can.

Years ago, the legislature outlawed paying petition gatherers per signature, making the cost to get signatures prohibitive. The federal courts had to strike down the law as a violation of the First Amendment.

The legislature then mandated both proponents of an initiative attend more required meetings in person. Legislators can attend meeting and vote by Zoom, but we citizens can’t. If just one citizen proponent gets stuck in a traffic jam or gets sick, the entire group’s proposal is tossed.

Basically, it means if you live outside of the Denver metro area, your right to petition your government doesn’t really exist. Thomas Jefferson enumerated it as a reason to break from King George in our Declaration of Independence, “He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable and distant … for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.”

The requirements on signature gatherers and tedious reporting hurdles continue to spiral out of control.

Recently, the legislature voted to make cutting taxes via the initiative basically impossible. The ballot language is mandated to now contain inaccurate, scare language to frighten voters into voting “no.”

And now this year’s affront to democracy, House Bill 1327, is a smorgasbord of needless ankle-biting mandates made solely to smother our access to democracy.

Among its insults:

• It requires those who submit several proposals go through extra paperwork.
• It requires legislative staff, when they estimate how much money a new tax might bring in, to use their highest possible estimate and that number must be used on the ballot and the blue book. This makes voters think a tax hike will buy more goodies than it likely will (so, they’ve forced scary language on tax cut proposals and happy language on tax increases — convenient).
• It changes the calendar of the initiative process to give proponents less time.
• It requires petition gatherers to do more gratuitous paperwork, which if done improperly costs up to $1,500 to the person who didn’t comply properly. Think of that. Personal $1,500 fines for doing some vague paperwork in a way a bureaucrat didn’t like. That is the definition of disenfranchisement.

It’s fine to fret about President Trump’s threat to democracy. But what does it say when we are complicit in the elitist menace to democracy in our own backyard?

By Mike Rosen

President Trump’s most significant first-term accomplishment was the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA). It reduced tax rates across all income levels and doubled the standard deduction to $12,000 for single filers ($24,000 for married filing jointly). Consequently millions of lower- and middle-income Americans no longer pay federal income taxes. According to the latest IRS figures, Americans with adjusted gross incomes below $50,000, accounting for 50% of the 161 million tax returns filed pay only a combined 3% of total individual income taxes collected. Most of them pay nothing and some, who qualify for the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), actually get a “refund” check from the IRS (of taxes they didn’t pay).

Democrats feign outrage that “the rich “ benefited from the tax rate cuts, too. Duh? That’s because upper income Americans pay the bulk of all individual income tax revenue. The top 5% pay 61% of that total, while the top 1% pay 40% of income taxes collected. These are the geese that lay the golden eggs. In return, Democrats would ring their necks.

In their endless pursuit of class warfare and the politics of envy, a constant Democrat tactic is to muddy the waters between reductions in tax rates and tax revenues. Reductions in tax rates do not automatically produce a reduction in tax revenues. It’s often quite the opposite. The TCJA tax rate cuts for all boosted the economy with the prospect of higher after-tax incomes on work and investments, leading to increased federal tax revenues. These same incentives inspired Ronald Reagan’s economic boom driven by fiscal policies that cut tax rates for all and produced an increase in tax revenues. Similarly, JFK cut the top marginal tax rate of 90% down to 70% in the 1960s. Increased tax revenues followed that too.

When the TCJA was passed in 2017, some of its provisions were scheduled to expire after 2025. Fortunately, one provision that was made permanent was the reduction in the top corporate income tax rate from 37% to 21%, matching the European average. That stemmed the tide of corporations moving their headquarters overseas to avoid crippling U.S. taxes and brought many businesses back home, resulting in the doubling of business tax revenues.

The centerpiece of Trump’s proposed “One Big Beautiful Tax Bill,” which congressional Republicans seek to pass, would likewise make permanent the existing TCJA tax rates for individuals. Opposition Democrats are trying to block that, calling them “tax cuts” that will reduce tax revenues (omitting the operative word “rate,” of course). And they’re not tax cuts, they’re just an extension of the same tax rates we’ve had for the last eight years. Democrats would replace this with a tax rate increase, especially on “the rich” and corporations, in line with their inbred socialist obsession.

But the tax rate increase Democrats propose won’t automatically increase tax revenues. It will more likely discourage productive incentives and lead to an economic downturn. It’s the nature of progressive Democrats to prefer incentives that encourage people not to work but rather to become dependent on government handouts instead. This ignores the economic maxim that “what you tax you get less of and what you subsidize you get more of.”

Analogously, when a department store seeks to increase its profits it doesn’t raise prices, rather it holds a big sale and cuts them. The same concept applies to income taxes. Businesses, investors, and individuals care about their after-tax income. Higher tax rates are a disincentive and a price increase on productive work and investments.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) serves Congress in preparing and analyzing the federal budget. Its staff is officially described as “non-partisan” but it tends to lean left, especially when the Democrats are in power. When the CBO scores (or prices) a presidential budget request it prefers a “static” econometric model that assumes reductions in tax rates automatically reduce tax revenues. This is a mathematical assumption, not an economic one.

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB), serves the president and his budget policies. Under a Republican president, OMB prefers a “dynamic” econometric model that assumes lower tax rates may raise incentives, stimulate economic growth, and produce greater tax revenues. When you hear Democrats and the liberal media mock “trickle-down” economics and falsely claim Trump and Republican policies will reduce tax revenues and widen the deficit, keep that in mind.

By Jon Caldara

TABOR simply means voter consent. TABOR is democracy. Weakening TABOR is weakening democracy.

Every couple of years the spending lobby orchestrates an assault on our Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights. They are testing another onslaught likely for next year.

I was around for the fights to pass TABOR in the early 1990s. Then- Gov.Roy Romer famously declared if it passed, it will put a “going out of business” sign on the entrance to Colorado.

Oddly, our population has nearly doubled since then, and state spending has ballooned from just more than $6 billion to roughly $44 billion.

Read that headline again. Since TABOR, our population grew one-fold, state spending grew 7-fold. Predictable tax and spending policy helped create a boom.

The opposite of Romer’s scare is true. If we mess with our Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, then we might as well put a “going out of business” sign on the entrance to Colorado.

Like telling tales of the boogeyman around the campfire to frighten children, those who feed on unconstrained spending want to scare the kids, too. The young in this case are those who weren’t in Colorado before we demanded simple voter consent over our own money.

Get ready for a new batch of stories on how this Chupacabra of fiscal restraint is somehow making our lives worse, and the only way to slay the monster is to attack democracy and take away our right of consent.

Look no further than U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet’s announcement of gubernatorial aspiration. The first thing he said was he needs to be governor of Colorado to protect us from the current, unprecedented threat to democracy, being President Donald Trump. The second thing he said was we need to attack democracy to get rid of TABOR. I’m sorry, “reform” TABOR.

He will save our democratic right to vote by taking away our democratic right to vote.

He and the rest of the taking coalition find it nauseating to ask voters for consent to commandeer and spend even more of their livelihoods. They never mention with TABOR they can still grow the size of government as large as they like! All they have to do is — wait for it, because it is so very terrifying — ask us first. 

They can raise the taxes to 100% of what we earn. All they must do is ask us first. Increase debt so much our great-great-great grandchildren will still be paying it off. Just ask our consent.

They refuse to accept that no means no. So, they need to find a way where they no longer must ask at all.

Our Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights is the very expression of direct democracy. We need to be absolutely clear on what this coming assault against our right to say no is. This is an attack on democracy itself.

They will cleverly find a way to use democracy to kill democracy. To find a way for us to vote against TABOR just once to take away our right to vote forevermore.

Throughout history that is how democracies step aside for tyranny. Tyrants from Hitler to Putin were legitimately voted into power, only to pervert democracy so they were never threatened by voter consent again.

When power is concentrated, democracy constricts.

The history of TABOR proves it as well. Seven black-shirts have weakened TABOR, not voters. The Colorado Supreme Court have ripped holes through this protection for direct democracy.

TABOR says we get to vote on taxes. The black-shirts ruled calling a “tax” by a different name, “fee,” means we lose our vote. Without a single public vote now nearly three-fourths of what the state spends is “fees.”

TABOR says we get to vote on debt. The black-shirts ruled calling “debt” by a different name, “Certificates of Participation (COPS),” means we don’t get to vote.

TABOR says government can ask us to keep excess tax revenue, but only for four years. The black-shirts ruled “four years” will be interpreted as “forever,” meaning if they can con voters out of their refunds only once, they never need ask again.

And that’s why every couple of years they put something on the statewide ballot to end TABOR refunds forever.

Like a child nagging for a treat, they want to wear us down.

But unlike a child, if we give into this tantrum once, they get all the candy they want, forever.

By Jon Caldara

Hollywood is coming to my hometown. By now you’ve heard the Sundance Film Festival is moving to Boulder.

What a relief! Finally, some common folk are coming to town. As you know, Boulder is home to the state’s most smug elite, those who know how the rest of us should live, what we should value.

And they are thrilled to use government to mandate it upon us.

But starting in 2027, for one glorious week a year, Hollywood types, with their humble, live-and-let-live, limited government views will descend on my little hamlet of progressive hate. People with more common sense and basic American values will finally be walking the streets of my neighborhood. Boulder’s level of arrogance should be cut in half.

It will be so refreshing to hang with thousands of Harvey Weinstein types, who have so much more respect for people.

For one week my hometown won’t be all about virtue signaling. My little metropolis will be visited by normal folks like George Clooney who, next to the average Boulderite, doesn’t need to constantly emote his beliefs and political desires.

Sundance said they moved to Boulder because of its “welcoming environment.” 

Don’t need to be a codebreaker to read between the lines. They wanted to move out of a red state to a pronoun-policed, righteousness infatuated city nestled in a Trump Derangement Syndrome state.

And I don’t mind my wacky town getting wackier for a week. Tens of thousands of mega-wealthy, moralistic, image-obsessed progressives will descend upon the town of mega-wealthy, moralistic, image-obsessed progressives. Maybe I’ll Airbnb my house and make a few bucks. After all the governor’s office says this party will bring in $2 billion of revenue over 10 years. That’s a lot of cheddar.

In fact, that’s why he just signed a bill to give Sundance $35 million out of our massively underfunded state budget.

Wow! Only $35 million to bring in $2 billion! We should make that deal all day long. That’s a 57-fold return on investment. How many of your investments are paying 5700%? I’m guessing less than half?

A 5700% return is known as “economic development math,” which also goes by the street name “complete fiction.”

Before special interests can extract that kind of payoff, they need to give elected officials some political coverage. Economists come up with “multiplier effects” to show us taxpayers we’re not just giving our money to the politically connected, especially during a state budget shortfall.

But wait a second. If the economic benefit is going to bring in $2 billion, why would taxpayers have to put in a penny? Boulder hotels, restaurants, and movie houses would be more than happy to scrape together the kickback for that kind of payout. For $2 billion it’s a no-brainer.

So, either they don’t want to pay it because they can use other people’s money, or they know the return on investment might not actually be 5700%. (It’s both.)

Diffused taxpayers getting their money confiscated and bundled then given to concentrated politically tied special interests is how cronyism works. Thus, the code name “economic development.”

And might there be some conflicts of interest here?

Jared Polis owns property in downtown Boulder, and purportedly income property as well. Instead of tapping taxpayers across the state, our near-billionaire governor could pay a good share of the ransom if he’s getting some of the benefit.

Among all the economic development scams, subsidies to film makers are notoriously the worst. Analysis from New Mexico’s own government discovered their “films subsidies have a negative return on investment.” Now, I’m not a mathematician, but a “negative return on investment” sounds like less than a 5700% return.

New Jersey found that of the $430 million in taxpayer subsidies looked like more than the $300 million earned by all film and video production employees. But then again, Jersey isn’t known for math. Well, maybe the mob accountants.

On behalf of the governor and all the economic winners in Boulder, I like to thank the taxpayers from all the far-flung corners of Colorado who will get almost nothing out of this corporate welfare except some pictures of celebrities in the news. Taxpayers in Colorado Springs, Pueblo, Grand Junction, and every little town in between are paying Robert Redford’s organization to make the state’s richest city just a little more wealthy.

Sounds fair.

By Jon Caldara

With apologies to Pete Seeger, and the 5,000 acts who covered his song.

Where have all the liberals gone?

Long time passing.

Where have all the liberals gone?

Long time ago.

Where have all the liberals gone?

Young progressives canceled them, every one.

When will they ever learn, when will they ever learn?

Longing for liberals

Do you remember liberals, those principled freaks of yesteryear, out of step with mainstream society by demanding free speech for all, including those they didn’t like?

Usually all Democrats, they fought for and won the right to burn the American flag, even though it offended most citizens.

They were so principled in defending a liberal culture they fought for neo-Nazis’ right to parade in places like Skokie Illinois, because even despicable people have a right to say what they want, the way they want to say it.

These liberals angered both social conservatives and feminists by protecting pornographers like Larry Flint of the skin rag “Hustler,” even though they were greatly offended by the misogyny and vulgarity in its pages.

These liberals laughed at jokes by censored comics like Lenny Bruce. They fought for school libraries to have copies of Huckleberry Finn, even if it was replete with the N-word. They populated organizations like the ACLU and People for the American Way.

But these Democrats passed “long time ago.”

Are you old enough to remember them? Here’s a good test. Have you ever heard or said the phrase, “I disagree with what you say but defend to death your right to say it”? If the answer is yes, good chance you’re in a retirement home.

Or maybe this one. Fill in the blank: “The ends don’t justify the ________.” (The answer we were looking for was “means.” The ends don’t justify the … means.)

Modern progressives have rewritten that sacred pledge to read, “The ends justify everything and anything.”

Are there still liberal Democrats in Colorado? Like UFO sightings, there are rumors of their existence but no verifiable proof. If they exist, they are afraid to speak up for fear of being canceled by their socialist, coerced-speech overlords now in power.

And what a shame it is, too. Free speech has never been under attack like it is now. Don’t believe me? Go refuse to bake a cake celebrating something against your religion. By the way, ever notice progressives only sue Christian cake bakers? You’d think Muslim cake bakers are much more likely to refuse to create a cake celebrating a gay marriage. Hmmmmm.

Pronoun policing

If principled Democrats weren’t hiding themselves like Anne Frank’s family, hoping not to be found and eliminated, they might take after their ancestors and fight coerced speech, like Colorado’s House Bill 1312.

Beyond disempowering parents’ right to raise their own kids and outlawing gender-based uniforms in schools, this bill not only prohibits misgendering or “deadnaming” a person in public, but it also makes it a “discriminatory act” under the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act.

The pronoun police are becoming the pronoun police, judge and executioner.

Deadnaming is calling someone who has “transitioned” gender by his old name, and with this bill, even if he hasn’t officially changed his name.

Misgendering means referring to a man with gender dysphoria and who identifies as a woman, as, well, a man. In other words, this law would criminalize telling the truth.

That’s worth repeating: The coercion-crazed progressive left is so maniacally out of control they’re making speaking the provable truth a crime. Calling a biological male, by the word “man” would be an unlawful “discriminatory act.” The truth-teller would be open to unknown costs, legal hassles and punishments.

But let’s go down the rabbit hole with Alice for a moment and imagine that when a man identifies as a woman his chromosomes magically change from XY to XX. Calling him a man would then be a hurtful lie. Wait, didn’t the neo-Nazis in Skokie do basically the same, say hurtfully lie saying certain races were genetically inferior?

Back then Democrats fought for free speech so Nazis could lie. Today they coerce speech and make truth a hate crime.

Though calling a trans woman a “biological man” will become a crime, it will still be encouraged to call those of us who use pronouns accurately “ignorant, hater, and fascist.”

Democrat liberals of yore used to call that double-standard “chilling free speech.” And a candy bar cost a dime.

By Jon Caldara

You can file this under “and this is the kind of crap that got Donald Trump elected.”

The job of government is to serve the citizens, not to indoctrinate them into victim identity ideology.

We have choices of where to worship, to read politically persuasive literature or hear debates if we wish to weigh dogmas. Sadly, we have no choice but to interface with the government we have.

Should you be forced through ideological re-education sessions to merely access your government?

Say you want to learn about the Denver mayor’s plan for yet another debt proposal. You go to the city’s official presentation on it. But, before you can hear anything about it, you’re force-fed a heaping spoonful of identity politics and white guilt.

Pandering through ‘acknowledgements’

Baseball games begin with the national anthem. Denver presentations on policy begin with dubious, race-pandering propaganda.

At the mayor’s recent presentation, his staff first put up their “Land Acknowledgement” on a PowerPoint slide and recited it aloud:

“The City and County of Denver honors and acknowledges that the land on which we reside is the traditional territory of the Ute Cheyenne and Arapahoe Peoples … We also recognize that government, academic and cultural institutions were founded upon and continue to enact exclusions and erasures of Indigenous Peoples. May this acknowledgement demonstrate a commitment to working to dismantle ongoing legacies of oppression and inequities …”

Interesting there’s no mention of the oppression among Colorado-area indigenous tribes, the human trafficking and slavery because of tribal wars, and what, by any measure, would be labeled war crimes by the Comanches to their enemies.

To learn about a proposal to put you further in debt, you must hear without rebuttal that we continue to exclude and oppress indigenous people. It might be a wonderful point for academics and activists to debate. There is no place for brainwashing prerequisites to simply interface with your government.

This steaming pile of white guilt is common in progressive governments. Friends of mine brought their daughter to a student orientation at Colorado State University only to get a similar preamble. Sensing what kind of education CSU values, they left. Their daughter goes to an out-of-state school. Way to keep ’em here Colorado.

Denver doubles down on ideological indoctrination with a second acknowledgement recited to their political prisoners, a “Labor Acknowledgement”:

“We acknowledge that our country’s economy, infrastructure, and resulting generational wealth would not exist as they do today without the stolen and forced labor of enslaved Africans who suffered transatlantic human trafficking, chattel slavery, and Jim Crow. We acknowledge how these dehumanizing practices have social legal and economic legacies that continue to haunt to this day.”

It might make for a good PhD dissertation for a student to argue slavery, not industrialization and innovation was the economic engine that resulted in generational wealth, or even that wealth today is easily traced to pre-Civil War policy. To present it as fact at a governmental forum is North Korean-like forced propaganda.

And you’d think there might be even a casual mention that, since its founding, slavery has been illegal in Colorado, or how Coloradans gave their lives fighting with the Union to end slavery.

Playing by progressive rules

Since the progressive left is weaponizing virtue signaling at taxpayer expense, may I reasonably suggest the right now do the same thing. What’s good for the goose and all.

Maybe more sensible cities, I’m looking at you Centennial and Aurora (maybe Colorado Springs, if there’s any sanity left), to start your meetings with a Capitalism Acknowledgement:

“We acknowledge that Colorado’s wealth, abundance and unending individual opportunities would not exist without the brave people who risked their fortunes and their very lives to bring industry and opportunity to our state.”

Or, perhaps, a Taxpayer Acknowledgement:

“We government workers and elected officials acknowledge that the services we provide, and our very jobs, are made possible only by the confiscation of citizens’ hard-earned treasure, and, therefore, we will only use these resources for enumerated, core governmental services.”

Someday, Colorado voters, as the nation did electing President Trump, we’ll get sick of this in-your-face virtue-signaling on our dime, and will elect a new regime. And, when they start putting up “Acknowledgements” to a Christian God, our white Founders, or capitalism, you on the left will have no right to complain.

But you will be able to proudly say, “We taught them how to do that.”

By Jon Caldara

Renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America” is obnoxious, needless and, well, just kinda stupid. And I love it. It’s just freakin’ awesome!

After a decadeslong leftist renaming orgy, like changing our beloved Mount Evans into Mount Blue Sky, Gulf of America gives them a taste of their own medicine. Every time you say “Gulf of America,” it’s followed by the implied, “Yep, back at ya, ’cause that’s what that feels like, you jerks.”

Gulf of America shows we can play tit-for-tat with their word-fluid virtue signaling. Colorado’s social-engineering left should remember they’re not always going to be in power, as President Donald Trump proves. And the next regime will use the semantic warfare tactics they invented, as Trump, again, proves.  

Remember when then Minority Leader Mitch McConnell warned Senate Democrats not to remove the filibuster for judicial nominations? If they did, he said, his team would do the same and they’d regret it. And regretted it they did.

The socialists running the Colorado legislature refuse to remember this as they use their power of coercion to compel our speech to mandate their ideological virtue signaling.

House Bill 1277 is the perfect example — virtue signaling by gunpoint.

This bill will force retailers to slap a “warning sign” by any product that uses fossil fuels. You know, those fossil fuels that move our people and goods, and give us two-thirds of our electrical power which keeps our children warm, our lights on and our beer cold.

Every gas pump, every retailer that sells propane canisters, gas stoves, lawn mowers, etc., would have to have labels in large red font that read, “Combustion of this product releases greenhouse gases known by the state of Colorado to be linked to global heating and significant health impacts.”

Easier proved would be a label that says, “Combustion of this product creates jobs, wealth and mobility thus is known by the state of Colorado to be linked to greater health.”

Electric vehicles will go down in history as the biggest corporate welfare scam ever needed to sell a product people don’t want at a true market price. To make the market even exist, it requires never-before-seen political cronyism and extreme tax perversions.

Take my brand-new, extra-macho Nissan Leaf. Just like I take every allowable tax deduction on my income taxes, I decided to take advantage of the ridiculous Colorado corporate welfare to buy an electric car. Like 99% of electric vehicle owners, it is my second vehicle. In other words, an unneeded toy.

The list price of my Leaf was $27,685, but the tax incentives and subsidies were $16,600. So, I got this car for only $11,085 before sales tax, or 60% off retail.

Colorado cronyism paid for 60% of my car!

Now I can be part of the smug class claiming I’m saving the planet by driving a corporate-welfare mobile.

But wait — two-thirds of the electricity that charges it comes from fossil fuels, making it a fossil fuel car. And I want people to know that. So, I purchased vanity plates that say, “GAS CAR.”

To make it even more clear for the person behind me, I added a bumper sticker: “EV’S ARE POWERED BY FOSSIL FUEL AND YOUR TAXES.”

I want Coloradans to know EVs run on coal and natural gas and only exist because of their misspent taxes.

Now, my statement is demonstrably true and much easier to prove than the holier-than-thou “Combustion of this product releases greenhouse gases and kills you, government saves you, blah, blah, blah.” 

So, if this bill passes and machines that release greenhouse gases must carry that warning label, then all EVs must also carry the warning. They run off combustible fossil fuels! (Doesn’t logic just suck?)

And when the other team controls Colorado government — and yes, someday they will — they will require my sticker be slapped on the back of every electric car. And Mount Blue Sky will be renamed Mount Trump. And you can’t complain.

We didn’t start this semantic war, but someday the Colorado version of “Gulf of America” will come and no one will listen to the left’s cries of “coerced speech” oppression.

I hope this bill passes. Forced speech pushing ideologies, like being forced to say men can have babies, created national regime change.

Silliness like Mount Blue Sky and this bill will help do the same in Colorado.

By Jon Caldara

Last year, majority Democrats in the legislature voted to exempt themselves from large portions of our beloved Open Meetings Law because, as Mel Brooks famously said, “It’s good to be the king.”

It took them no time to exploit this new power to operate in the dark. For the first time in half-century, starting at the special session on property taxes, reporters were not allowed in Democrat caucus meetings. The negotiating was done behind closed doors and rubber stamped when they met in public view.

Fast-forward to last week, while voting down a bill to let the sun shine again in the state capitol, freshman state Rep. Chad Clifford indignantly proclaimed his legislature is, “as open as it can be.”

“As open as it can be”? That’s right up there with, “If you like your health care plan you can keep it…” “I did not have sexual relations with that woman…” and “I am not a crook.”

Exempting themselves from open meetings and putting caucusing and negotiating bills behind closed doors seems the opposite of “open.” But simpletons like me are easily confused.

Could it get worse? How about effectively taking governmental records that are lawfully open to public inspection and putting them out of reach of reporters and citizens?

Sparking a transparency movement

This is a tale of two conflicting bills on transparency. Spoiler alert: The bill that makes it worse is on its way to becoming a law. The bill that would hold our government more accountable was slaughtered in its first committee.

None of this is a surprise. All of this is an insult.

I’ve mentioned previously, the legislature’s hubris in exempting itself from transparency sparked a countermovement unlike anything I’ve seen in 35 years of political work. Independence Institute, which I run, has become the meeting ground for a wickedly diverse coalition of about 50 groups, “team transparency”, coming together to force governments to let the sunshine back in.

This is the most unusual ideological gathering of forces since America, Europe and Russia joined together in World War II. When a coalition that includes Independence Institute, the League of Women Voters, Common Cause, the press and broadcasters’ associations and Jason Salzman of the progressive Colorado Times Recorder come together, is it a sign of the apocalypse? As said in “Ghostbusters,” “Real-wrath-of- God kind of stuff … dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria!”

Or does it mean those in power have gone so far in hiding what they’re doing, they’ve unknowingly done the impossible. In the most polarized and divisive period any living American has seen, they’ve brought sworn political enemies, left and right, together for a shared goal. This is Nobel Prize stuff. Send them to Gaza.

Adding insult to injury

House Bill 1242, by state Sen. Byron Pelton and Rep. Lori Garcia Sander, was a product of this coalition. The bill would have repealed last year’s act of legislative arrogance, capped and standardized the costs of open record requests and set hard deadlines for Colorado governments to make requested material available.

On March 10, Rep. Garcia Sander passionately presented our bill to the House Committee on State Affairs, affectionately known as “the kill committee.”

And on a party-line vote, kill it they did. And the executioners stuck to their talking points: Pillaging the Open Meetings Law was needed so accidental meetings in the Capitol stairwells weren’t violations (which was never an issue).

To add insult to injury, this same committee of courageous heroes dutifully passed Senate Bill 77, which allows districts to stall open records requests potentially indefinitely. Not only does it greatly increase costs to get public records, but it also lets districts legally say, “oh, the person who could get that record is on maternity leave, come back in a year, and then, well, maybe.”

In a brazen attempt to suck up to the legacy press, the bill treats requests from “mass media” to faster and better access than we poor schlubs, like citizens, activists and bloggers. Who might they be trying to butter up?

When Gov. Jared Polis unfortunately signed the bill exempting lawmakers from open meetings, he said it was just the legislature making its own rules. But if he signs Senate Bill 77, he will be putting more than 5,000 governments out of reach from the people who hold them accountable.

Maybe he wants a Nixon-like legacy.

By Jon Caldara

Yes, social media sucks. Government tracking won’t make it better.

As regular readers can attest, I am barely literate.

If you find my work hard to read, be comforted by the fact I find, well, everything hard to read. It wasn’t until well into adulthood that I understood dyslexia. Giving me a book is like throwing tennis shoes at a paraplegic. It’s just mean.

Books on tape opened a new world for me. To check out digital audio books from the Denver Public Library I recently needed to show up in person to get a new library card.

They forced me to show them an official photo ID! The horror! The intimidation I experienced! We accept as fact requiring a photo ID to vote is voter suppression, plain and simple. Thus, we outlawed such oppression.

By the same logic, requiring a photo ID for a library card is literacy suppression. Showing a photo ID to TSA is mobility oppression, and so on.

We’ll get a good sense of our lawmakers’ true priorities on IDs if, instead of mandating voter ID, they mandate photo ID to use your own computer.

Enter Senate Bill 86, a well-intentioned attempt to have government play cybernanny to our children.

The hope is to protect innocent young people from the abuses, pressures and temptations of social media platforms. Understandable goal, but a job for parents, not faceless governmental bureaucrats.

There is something oddly compelling watching elected officials pretend they have dominion over technologies. These slide-rule-aged lawmakers don’t get that tech changes faster than their silly laws. And, no matter how spry lawmakers think they are, they just can’t outrun technology and the young people who know how to use it.

Remember when U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette made herself a national embarrassment when trying to outlaw firearm magazines, saying they were thrown away after they were used. (Um. They’re not.) It’s comical when people who don’t understand something try to regulate it.

Note to lawmakers stuff you don’t use. History will be kinder to you.

Senate Bill 86 requires companies such as X, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok to ascertain the age and gender of their users. And that really means seeing users’ photo IDs, unless you think kids won’t fib.

The bill forces tech companies to report how many users are minors, segmented into different age groups, report how much time these users are on the platform. It gets so nannyistic it requires them to report how many kiddies are using the platform after their bedtimes.

Who knew it’s a core governmental function to require big tech to not only mass surveil our children but to make sure they go to bed on time. (As crazy as it sounds, concerned parents could take away smartphones at nighttime, but it’s easier to let government play the heavy. No one wants to stand up to their kids.)

With Senate Bill 86, we have the same bunch of legislators who not only still have VCRs at home but have to ask their grandkids to get it to stop flashing “12:00,” crafting legislation to keep those same grandkids off social media. Yeah, that’ll work.

They are making the indulgent conceit that good decisions can be mandated by the government limiting the supply of something they don’t like. In this case, social media. But people, especially tech-savvy youngsters, will find a way.

Schools use internet blockers to keep students off certain sites and social platforms. In middle school my daughter said the kids found that laughable. They’d just use VPNs to get around the blocks. When teachers found out about VPNs they couldn’t understand what Visible Panty Lines had to do with the internet.

This bill leads X, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok to become the TSA agents of the internet, checking the IDs of everyone who signs on to their platform.

To our leftist lawmakers I ask, do you really want Elon Musk, the owner of X, to spy on our children? I think you’d want laws preventing him from collecting this kind of mass surveillance. To our conservative lawmakers, if there are any left, I’d suggest it’s better to find ways to empower parents than to regulate businesses if we care about our children.

And for God’s sake, if you’re pushing identification, start at the voting booth. And leave my kids to me.

By Mike Rosen

Early in the 2024 Republican presidential nominating process I wasn’t enthused about Donald Trump. While I approved of his accomplishments as president and his public policy agenda, I thought his brash style and the clumsy way he ended his presidency would be a drawback, and that someone like Ron DeSantis or Nikki Haley was a more electable and capable choice. As it turned out, I was wrong.

Not since FDR’s election in 1932, has any American president come out of the starting gate with such a barrage of action as has Trump (which he began as president-elect even before his inauguration). This Trump bullrush was essential and I doubt anyone else would have had the balls to do it.

Restoring America

Trump anticipated the all-out opposition of congressional Democrats, deep-state bureaucrats, and the liberal media. He apparently learned a lot about governing from his first term, and now he needn’t worry about reelection. A quick start in the first year of a presidency is a must. By the second year the opposition digs in for the midterm election. That’s already happened with nitwit Democrat “leaders” like Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Adam Schiff, Maxine Waters, and AOC making fools of themselves hyper-ventilating at confirmation hearings and protest rallies in the streets.

Our founders creatively reengineered democracy, limiting government and fashioning a constitutional Republic driven by the energy of capitalism that became the freest, most stable, and productive system of political economy the world has ever known. In the process it delivered an unheard-of standard of living to its populace.

By 2024, that vision was unrecognizable. The Biden presidency (in name only) cemented Barrack Obama’s fundamental transformation of America into a big-government, intrusive, bureaucratic, welfare-state that can’t educate its kids or balance its books. Identity politics has replaced individuality and divided the people, defining everyone by race, ethnicity, class, gender, or disability. The Democrat progressive cartel that dominates public schools, higher education, the media, and entertainment has turned many Americans against our history, religion, values, and principles.

The mission of Trump and the Republican congress is to roll all that back and fundamentally restore America to its best self. The agenda also includes cooling global warming paranoia, repealing the Green New Deal, unleashing America’s oil and gas resources, and expanding nuclear energy, which will bring down consumer price inflation. The newfound electoral coalition that swept Republicans into power in 2024 will be parlayed into an even bigger win in the 2026 mid-terms.

Democrats flailing

Why are Democrats outraged at Elon Musk for trying to make the government more efficient? Because they don’t care about efficiency. Government is their all-powerful deity that must always be enlarged to solve all our problems. No, Musk wasn’t elected, he was appointed by Trump just like thousands of other non-civil service federal officials every president is empowered to appoint without Senate confirmation. Musk’s DOGE investigators caught the public’s attention by exposing the U.S. Agency for International Development’s wasteful spending on politicized progressive projects worldwide. But Democrats have asked the court to block DOGE’s access to this kind of information. On the contrary, it’s essential to restore accountability.

USAID was created during JFK’s presidency to win the affection of underdeveloped nations. Obviously, it hasn’t. Most of those nations habitually vote against U.S. interests in the U.N General Assembly. Our generous humanitarian aid worldwide goes largely unappreciated, although perhaps half the world’s population would love to come here even as illegal immigrants.

It’s preposterous that Democrats attacking Trump pretend to represent “the public” when it was most of the voting public that turned the Democrats out, rejecting their progressive policies, choosing Trump over Kamala, and giving Republicans control of both houses of Congress. Trump is just delivering on his campaign promises as was to be expected. No, Trump isn’t “a threat to democracy” as Democrats absurdly contend. But he is a threat to their control of the country and thank heavens for that.

Colorado and Denver are microcosms of all this. The Democrats’ iron-grip on government has Californiacated our once-conservative state. The state legislature and Denver city council continue to pile on yet more intrusive, Big Brother, nannyist, progressive laws and regulations to mold our behavior, reduce our freedoms and raise our taxes. Next, they’ll put a bicycle encircled by bollard protecters on our state flag. As we watch California self-destruct, it’s hardly a model to follow.

By Jon Caldara

I was born in the wrong time.

For instance, I completely missed the sexual revolution of the 1970s when people were having casual sex like it was shaking hands. As an eager young man with hopeful bad judgment and a rupturing libido, I couldn’t wait till I was old enough to join the party.

Finally, when old enough I bounded through the front door of the free-love fest just as the last viable woman was boogeying out the back door. I was left standing alone in an empty room littered with Zima bottles and “Afternoon Delight” by the Starland Vocal Band still rotating on the turntable.

Yep, I was coming of age just as herpes and AIDS were also coming of age, crushing the certainty of me becoming a young Hugh Hefner. They say the secret to humor is timing. God, the comedian, has remarkable timing.

President Ronald Reagan and wife Nancy were preaching “just say no.” I heard “no” so often I thought it was my first name. I swear if Jimmy Carter had just won a second term I could have had the sexual prowess of Mick Jagger. (OK, maybe not Mick, but at least the bass player from the Pretenders or something.)

In high school, there were rumors of a lecherous male teacher getting it on with an underage girl. And sure enough, when the girl turned 18, she married the teacher. Stories like that were not uncommon, causing outrage in fathers planetwide.

My school had some attractive young lady teachers, yet none of them were messing with the boy students, despite what Van Halen’s “Hot For Teacher” guaranteed us. And why would they? Have you seen high school boys?

As an adult, well after high school, came the flurry of news stories uncovering hot female teachers having trysts with schoolboys. I remember a story of one smoke-show of a teacher going to jail for sleeping with an underage boy student. When she got out, he turned 18, so love conquers all.

Stories like these made mothers irate, worried their innocent boys could be the next hurt by an older woman in a position of trust. Though, really, the only injury the boy would suffer would be from excessive high-fives. And I’m sure his father could conjure an angry face when needed while hiding his injured hand from the high-fives he got at bowling night.

Thus is the nature of the sexual double-standard. And, as a man, I say: “What? What double standard?”

But what do we do with this one? Shaun Boyd of Denver’s Channel 4 broke the story of a female Columbine High School teacher successfully grooming a female student.

The story here isn’t just a modern lesbian twist to the old story of forbidden love between teacher and student. ( Yep, I’m hearing “Don’t Stand So Close To Me” by The Police, too). The story is about the perversion of the educational system to encourage the sexual targeting of students.

Instead of immediately firing the teacher, Leann Kearney, and informing the student’s parents of the situation, administrators kept the truth from the parents. They even helped the student lie on a federal form stating she was homeless so she could live with the teacher.

When the mom discovered the form and a letter describing Kearney and her daughter kissing, along with thousands of inappropriate emails and texts, she foolishly contacted the school principal. He, of course, dismissed her concern explaining, “Ms. Kearney takes interest in helping kids navigate their sexuality.”

Finally, the teacher was fired. The student turned 18. The two now live together out of state.

Sexual grooming in public schools has become so commonplace, so virtued by the educational class, parents are labeled the enemy by official policy. Let’s remember the new Colorado law that students may choose their gender and rename themselves without the parents’ approval or knowledge.

Beginning with first graders indoctrinated with “The Genderbread Person,” which teaches kids changing your gender is as easy as changing a gingerbread man to a woman, to being forced to proclaim your pronouns in class, modern government education is pushing itself into the sexual coaching of your kids without your knowledge or consent.

Only the modern public education system could make lecherous male teachers of yesteryear hitting on high school girls look wholesome by comparison.

By Jon Caldara

Slowly, very slowly, Colorado environmentalists are learning basic math.

Simple math is a wickedly dangerous thing. I strongly recommend you never learn it.

Those fool enough to play around with basic math realize our lawmakers have painted us into an energy-starved corner that will, quite literally, kill people in the not-so-distant future.

Oh, and for God’s sake, if you were abused as a child and forced math against your will, never, ever look at the national debt. Hopefully, someday we will have commonsense math control with a 3-day “cooling off” period before people can add up the costs of unfunded mandates like Social Security and Medicare.

And, if you witness the violent abuse of a child being taught fractions or ratios, call Child Protective Services, or else that kid might never become a successful politician.

Colorado’s energy math problem

The lawmakers who pushed to shutter all coal-powered plants in Colorado in just five years are beginning to see some obvious realities. Coal provides a third of our state’s energy. (Note to any legislator reading this, a third is a fraction. Please stop reading).

So, unless we replace that third of our energy production right away, in five years we’re going to have rolling blackouts. Many people who need electricity to stay alive, such as the elderly and disabled, will die.

But wait — there’s more. Our governor demands the state completely use “all-renewable energy” by 2040. But another third of our power today comes from natural gas. So, soon enough, two-thirds of our power supply will be turned off.

And just for giggles, these same people are passing laws and regulations to mandate everything currently powered by oil and gas be turned electric. Goodbye gas stoves, water heaters, furnaces and cars; hello all-electric, all-expensive everything. And the coming AI revolution, with its power-hungry data centers, will eat more electricity than ever.

Utility companies like Xcel are saying all this could cause electricity demand to quadruple by 2050. Quadruple is math talk for we’re going to need four times more electricity than we’re using today (that’s before we turn most of it off).

Remember how you hated math word problems: How do we get four times more energy we can afford after destroying two-thirds of our current reliable, affordable energy production? Solve for X.

And I know what you’re thinking. But sorry, even Gov. Jared Polis’ energy experts agree green energy like wind and solar won’t come close to filling the gap because … math sucks.

The answer is obviously nuclear

There is only one answer to this coming power apocalypse, and lawmakers might finally be realizing it.

My friend and colleague at Independence Institute, Amy Cooke, has been leading the fight to bring nuclear energy to Colorado for well more than a decade. Many called it a fool’s errand as she, with our Energy and Environment Policy Center, brought together an unlikely coalition of climate-crazed environmentalists and energy-thirsty businessmen to make 2025 the year nuclear could become possible in Colorado.

She explains it perfectly by showing the political challenge as a Venn diagram. One circle contains the enviros for whom climate change is paramount. The other circle represents the cruel people like me for whom cost and reliability, so people don’t die, is paramount.

Where those two circles meet is nuclear energy, the cleanest form of energy and, over time, the least costly.

More and more environmentalists, the ones afflicted with basic math skills, are realizing our current energy path is stampeding off a cliff. If the climate is the goal, then nuclear energy is the only answer.

Likewise, businessmen can see the math even as Coloradans vote for fossil fuel-hating lawmakers. If cost and reliability is the goal, then nuclear energy is the only answer.

Enter House Bill 1040. This simple bill does one thing. It states the obvious: Nuclear energy is clean energy. Given that it doesn’t emit any gases, that’s hard to argue.

By officially labeling it as “clean energy,” nuclear could get Colorado to zero-emission power.

Variations of this bill have been tried, only to be killed in committee. What’s different this year is it has bipartisan sponsors from both rural and urban areas.

Not only is it a marvel some enviro legislators are learning math, but it’s also a miracle this legislature might take a positive step toward reliable, affordable and clean power.

But still, really, math sucks. Just say no.

By Jon Caldara

I assume you felt the magic in the air a couple Tuesdays ago. We all did. There’s only one day of the year children get more excited than Christmas morning. And that, of course, is Transit Equity Day!

As in most American homes, we hung up Transit Equity decorations as the kids helped with baking equity cookies. I had a Dickens of a time getting the little ones settled into bed on Transit Equity Eve.

In the morning, we all ran to the nearest bus stop, singing songs of civil disobedience. The children wiggled in anticipation, waiting for the local bus to lumber near. And, oh, the joy on their little faces when they hopped on that belching, bumbling bus. They squealed with delight, for that morning the bus ride was free, 100% paid for from your tax money.

Transit Equity Day is an invention of the Biden administration for yet more virtue signaling to the identity politics crowd. But it can serve a bigger purpose — highlighting that public transit is truly and viciously racist.

There’s no ‘free’ ride

Transit Equity Day is Feb. 4, Rosa Parks’ birthday, the brave civil rights icon who wouldn’t give up her bus seat. To signal their virtue, the Regional Transportation District (but not those cheap bigots at the Colorado Springs’ transit agency) now gives everyone free fares on Feb. 4.

But, but Rosa Parks didn’t ride for free.

In fact, that was the whole point. She paid full price and, therefore, had a legal right to the same level of service as anyone else.

You can tell how successful all RTD’s “free” bus days and months (yes, months) are because of the eerily empty roads throughout the Denver metro area on those days. Masses of commuters abandon their cars to huddle on some crime-filled, dawdling, rolling homeless shelter of a bus or trolley.

The Montgomery bus boycott Rosa sparked was successful because it took away a massive amount of revenue from the bus company. That couldn’t happen today. RTD riders only pay 5% of what it costs to provide their ride.

“Free” rides don’t improve ridership because RTD is already nearly free, 95% government subsidized. Said differently, a $5.50 “all day” ticket actually costs $110 in expenses, with taxpayers picking up the difference.

Imagine if, instead of charging $5.50, RTD offered its riders $103.50 (one less dollar than the real cost) not to ride the bus. Who wouldn’t take that deal? And RTD would save money in the process!

Instead of “free” fares on Transit Equity Day, RTD should charge full fare without subsidies, the full $110, and educate the transit dependent how little service they get for the money spent in their name.

Racism on display

Like most transit agencies formed and funded under the “war on poverty,” RTD’s mission was to serve those who couldn’t afford a car. The mission was never to disproportionately tax the poor, via sales tax, to subsidize white suburbanites who have cars but wish to avoid paying for parking at Nuggets games.

If there is such a thing as systemic racism, governments like Colorado’s Regional Transportation District are the greatest oppressors. They build systems designed to guarantee people with money are free to go places where the least among us can’t follow.

Without mobility to bring you where you need to be, when you need be there, you will forever be a second-class citizen. You won’t have the opportunities for employment, housing and education someone with the most run-down car will have. You’ll be forced to live and work on a bus route, and you better have your family, friends, medical care and churches on that route, too.

Don’t believe me? Go a month without a car.

If RTD’s elected board of directors weren’t the racists they are, if they weren’t beholden to crony business interests, if they cared more for the transit dependent they were entrusted to serve than their own empire-building, they would immediately take their 95% tax subsidy and give it directly to the transit-dependent poor in the form of mobility vouchers.

Let them ride taxis, Ubers, have a friend drive them or, heaven forbid, buy their own used car.

But they don’t wish to give the poor real transit equity. They wish to force the poor to live as they dictate. They will never give up their power over people of color.

What would Rosa Parks do?

By Mike Rosen

As expected, President Trump’s executive order limiting birthright citizenship was immediately challenged by attorneys from four Democrat-controlled states, and a Seattle judge promptly blocked it with a temporary restraining order. This isn’t a setback for Trump, it’s an opportunity to set in motion an appeals process that will ultimately be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.

What constitutes birthright citizenship has been contested for a century-and-a-half and wasn’t to be resolved by an executive order.

Original versus living

It’s a classic dispute between conservatives who believe in the original intent of the Constitution versus progressives who don’t want to be constrained by that. To circumvent original intent, they’ve contrived the notion of a so-called “living Constitution” empowering progressive judges to reinterpret the Constitution to conform with they believe the Constitution ought to say based on their ideology. The old-fashioned democratic process of amending the Constitution is too cumbersome an obstacle to the achievement of the Left’s political agenda. They justify open borders on humanitarian and “social justice” grounds while privately relishing the prospect that a tidal wave of migrants will return the favor by becoming lifelong Democrat voters.

When the showdown arrives at SCOTUS, the court’s composition ― six originalist justices and three progressive, living-constitutionalists ― favors the chances of a decision rolling back the unconstitutional expansion of birthright citizenship under current law, which considers children born here to illegal aliens to be U.S. citizens.

The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution was ratified following the Civil War in 1868. It was all about ending slavery and punishing the southern rebellion. Section 1 granted citizenship and all constitutional protections to former slaves “born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” As it now applies to foreigners, that key phrase doesn’t just mean being subject to our laws. The framers of the Amendment intended that allegiance to the U.S. be exclusive and to no other country. Foreign tourists legally or illegally in the U.S. are subject to our laws but not our political jurisdiction. They owe no allegiance to the U.S. Hence, if a child is born to them while they’re visiting here, that child should have no automatic right to American citizenship. In an 1884 case, Elk v. Wilkins, SCOTUS ruled that even Indians weren’t granted citizenship by the 14th as they were subject to tribal jurisdiction, not U.S.

Arguing ‘jurisdiction’

Consistent with that precise intent, the same Congress that passed the 14th also passed a civil rights law in 1868 restricting American citizenship to those born here “and not subject to any foreign power.” The author of the 14th, Rep. John Bingham of Ohio, invoked that same principle when he confirmed “that every human being born within the jurisdiction of the United States of parents not owing allegiance to any foreign sovereignty is, in the language of your Constitution itself, a natural born citizen,” denying automatic citizenship to children born to foreigners in our country who are subject to another foreign power.

This foundational principle prevailed for another century until it was upended in 1984 by a liberal 5-4 SCOTUS majority led by Justice William Brennan. In Plyer v. Doe, the majority ruled the equal protection clause of the 14th immunized children of illegal aliens from a Texas law that withheld funding to school districts for their education. But it did not grant them citizenship. Brennan, however, went a bridge too far by further slipping a footnote into his opinion asserting there was no “plausible distinction” between lawful and unlawful entry by resident aliens with respect to 14th Amendment “jurisdiction.” But the case’s ruling had no bearing on jurisdiction in the sense of citizenship. Nonetheless, Plyer v. Doe somehow became the “precedent” upon which the Left has built its house of cards on illegal immigration, anchor babies, “dreamers,” asylum, parole, and a path to accelerated citizenship. They pawn this off as “comprehensive immigration reform” that never seems to enforce border security, much less building a wall.

Ultimately, SCOTUS can make its ruling unequivocal with the majority opinion declaring: “It was the intent of the Fourteenth Amendment that only those persons born to citizens of the United States or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the exclusive jurisdiction thereof, are the citizens of the United States.”

By Mike Rosen

The final month of the Biden presidency was the political left’s last gasp, punctuated with an unprecedented and shameful avalanche of pardons, commutations of brutal murderers from federal death row, spiteful executive orders, and public statements overflowing with bald-faced lies. Right after Trump’s inauguration, Joe and Dr. Jill skipped town from the White House lawn on Helicopter One, flying off into the wild blue yonder, likely never to be heard from again.

Biden’s legacy will forever be stained by the pardon of his son Hunter (purposefully delayed until after the election) when he had repeatedly promised not to do that. His last-minute unconditional pardons of other family members granted clemency for any unspecified criminal acts dating back to 2014, along with preemption from future prosecutions. This immunizes them from criminal findings of a current House investigation alleging Biden’s family members received money from foreign sources through shadow accounts. How’s that for a get-out-of-jail-free card?

During Ronald Reagan’s final months as president in 1988 it was known that his mental acuity was fading but not nearly as dramatically as Biden’s, who could hardly speak much less walk. Without a teleprompter he was lost. His scripted and fumbled farewell address on January 15 won’t be ranked with George Washington’s or Abraham Lincoln’s, sounding more like a delusional campaign speech. Fortunately for the country, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is no longer Biden’s presidential address.

Obama’s fingerprints

The obstacles and landmines Biden planted in his successor’s policy path will be easily cleared by President Trump, as he amply demonstrated just hours after the inauguration with a tsunami of executive orders overriding all of Biden’s, on which the ink had barely dried. Clearly, Biden’s deteriorating state of mind could not have crafted the intricate obstructions pouring out of the oval office in the final days of his presidency.

Instead, the fingerprints of White House staff were all over them. USA Today calculated that three quarters of Biden’s top 100 advisors had worked for Obama. The open secret in Democrat DC circles was that Biden didn’t matter. He may have had the title of president, but Obama-era young radical aides were really running the country. (And those whiz kids must have had a hearty laugh inserting America-hating left-wing billionaire George Soros among Biden’s picks for the Presidential Medal of Freedom.)

Biden was the figurehead for the equivalent of Obama’s third term, who had promised to “fundamentally transform America.” NPR reported that 12 of Biden’s first 16 senior appointments were Obama alumni. Biden was a puppet whose ego was flattered by handlers portraying him as the new FDR who would create his own “social justice” New Deal (including a Green New Deal), expanding the administrative state, driving up social spending, opening the border, and codifying the Left’s cultural agenda. Rather than bringing spending sharply down from the hyper-elevated COVID levels, they pretended endless deficits don’t matter and don’t ignite inflation. Turns out, they do.

Weird finishing act

As a finishing act, Biden’s staff authored a weird speech he dutifully recited on January 17, perhaps a sop to aging feminists of the 1970s, an idiotic resurrection of the long-dead Equal Rights Amendment. Biden proclaimed that “three-fourths of the states have ratified the 28th Amendment as the law of the land” and that “it has become part of our Constitution.” He defended that claim by saying, “I agree with the ABA and with leading constitutional scholars.” (Later, he absurdly told reporters, “To get all the facts, I contacted every constitutional scholar in the world.”) As if he actually wrote the speech himself.

Well, I checked the Constitution. There is no 28th Amendment. There are still only 27. In 1972, Congress did approve the proposed ERA and sent it to the states, needing at least 38 to ratify it by 1979 (later extended by Congress to 1982.) When that never happened, the ERA expired like the date on a milk carton. In 2020, 38 years after the ratification deadline, a symbolic attempt by Virginia to be the 38th state to ratify was rejected. Relying on a 2020 ruling by the Dept. of Justice affirming the validity of the congressional deadline, the National Archivist declared the ERA DOA.

So much for the credibility of the partisan-Democrat, liberal American Bar Association and Biden’s left-wing scholars. Case closed!

By Jon Caldara

Racial discrimination is repugnant. Period.

Our nation has made great strides during our nearly 250 years. And for that we should be proud, not ashamed. Too bad we’ve gone backward with government-sanctioned racial discrimination.

I was born the same year of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, raised with our shared goal of a colorblind society. Martin Luther King Jr. laid out that vision as clearly as John Kennedy set a goal of a man on the moon: to be judged on the content of our character, not the color of our skin.

Today’s identity politics is the most dangerous, hateful and ugly movement since slavery itself. To teach a child she is what the color of her skin is, not who she works to be, pollutes her and condemns her.

The Wall Street Journal recently shed light on this systematic racism at my alma mater, the University of Colorado, Boulder. With a simple open records request researchers found (to no one’s surprise) CU recruits and hires based on race. Those who check the BIPOC box (black, indigenous and people of color) get the benefit of CU’s institutional racism.

Not only is this a blatant violation of the Civil Rights Act, which CU turned a blind eye to, it teaches tens of thousands of students that, to get ahead professionally, they must embrace their victim identity.

I did find one department at CU turned its back to racial parity — athletics.

The Buffaloes head football coach Deion Sanders has brought a new excitement for the first time in a generation. This is likely because winning is more important to him than racial equity. To test this, I perused the team’s website to see how ethnically representative his department is compared to the state. After all, it is Colorado’s flagship university. Shouldn’t it “look” like Colorado?

I mean, in the other departments CU is using the same philosophy of the Los Angeles Fire Department’s Deputy Chief, and race-over-merit enthusiast, Kristine Larson. Defending her race-based hiring, she said, “You want to see someone that responds to your house, to your emergency — whether it’s a medical call or a fire call — that looks like you.”

I know when I had my heart attack my first concern was the racial and gender identity of the medical workers racing to save my life. That’s, that’s just normal.

Likewise, football fans also want to see players who look like them. That’s much more important to fans than anything merit-based, like winning games.

Addressing concerns female firefighters may not be strong enough to carry a man out of a burning building, Ms. Larson responded, “He got himself in the wrong place if I have to carry him out of a fire.”

If physical strength doesn’t matter in life-or-death situations like being trapped in a burning building, then why would it matter on something as trivial as a football game? The University of Colorado’s overpaid elite overlords obviously agree.

And that’s why I expected racial equity on Folsom Field.

Remember, according to the U.S. census, Colorado’s population is roughly 62% white, 12% black, 19% Hispanic and 6% Asian.

Odd, then, that at a cursory glance of the 46 pictured who make up Coach Prime’s staff only 16 appeared to be white. For those who received a Liberal Arts degree from CU, I’ll do the math for you. Only 21% of his staff is white. And only three, around 6%, are female.

The players he recruited also show no racial equity. Of the 99 players on the roster, it looks to me only 28 of them are white. Not to mention the institutionalized sexism CU obviously promotes — not a single chick on the team.

Here’s CU’s separate-but-equal race policy: On the field — use merit. Off the field — use Jim Crow (hire by skin color).

Sensing the political winds of change, CU just renamed its Office of Diversity to the Office of Collaboration. I’m sure those who made the change are equally supportive of President Donald Trump’s renaming of the Gulf of America. CU’s known for intellectual consistency.

There is no “reverse racism,” there is only racism. It’s foul and only made worse when perpetuated by your tax dollars. Oh, and if anyone in the victim-pimping industries care, it’s illegal.

Unless you want CU to force three times more white guys on its football team?

By Jon Caldara

I quit smoking decades ago. I committed to smoking only after sex.

The Food and Drug Administration has officially declared the Denver City Council is working to kill people. This counters the council’s stated fib they want to help people stop smoking.

I know we’ve been over this before. But the timing of the FDA’s action is just too delicious, like a fine cigar, not to spend a moment celebrating it.

If you recall it was mere weeks ago when Denver’s City Council put aside such trifling issues as crime, homeless squalor and tens of thousands of immigrants sucking up city resources to ban the sale of flavored nicotine products.

Instead of focusing on how to keep mentally ill violent criminals behind bars and not running around town stabbing folks, the council banned the sale of products like Zyn, the popular tobacco-free nicotine pouch. We were told this was going to save lives by keeping people away from the evil gateway product that leads to deadly cigarettes.

How very embarrassing, then, that after years of rigorous study, the nation’s Food and Drug Administration has cleared the makers of Zyn to market their product, finding it leads to reducing tobacco use, not increasing it. Oopsie!

Repeat: The national agency whose full-time mission is not fixing potholes, fighting crime or housing homeless fentanyl addicts, but is instead only to study what’s healthy and what’s not, has found flavored nicotine pouches help people get off lethal tobacco, not lead them to it.

Let’s take a moment to remember most all progressives chant the mantra “my body, my choice” when it comes to abortion. This very blue state even voted in the most permissive constitutional abortion amendment in the nation, creating a right to abortion nanoseconds before birth at taxpayer expense.

I’m a pretty simple guy. So, when I hear chants of “my body, my choice,” I’m foolish enough to think those people mean it. Thus, it makes my tiny brain hurt when I see the very same people demanding others get jabbed with COVID vaccines they don’t want. How does that jibe with, “my body, my choice”?

I don’t understand how those who now claim democracy is on the line and fascism is enveloping our nation were the very people who demanded “your papers please” to prove you’ve been vaccinated to enjoy your constitutional right to assemble or travel.

Hell, this is how stupid I am: I don’t know how those who claim “my body, my choice” can ban trans fats, sugary drinks, large drinks like Big Gulps, put sin taxes on consumable products they don’t like and even censor restaurant menus from listing soda products.

It’s almost like their mantra is, “your body, our choice.”

Since the people, like Denver City Council, who are now standing up to fascism are dictatorially controlling what we can put into our own bodies, we can only hope they make the right decisions.

So, what will city council do with the FDA’s findings like, “… due to substantially lower amounts of harmful constituents than cigarettes and most smokeless tobacco products, such as moist snuff and snus, the authorized products (Zyn) pose lower risk of cancer and other serious health conditions than such products”? Again, oopsie!

Or what about, “… that a substantial proportion of adults who use cigarette and/or smokeless tobacco products completely switched to the newly authorized nicotine pouch products.” Again, there’s no tobacco in Zyn. It gets people off tobacco.

But (and I say this with all the same faux passion freedom-hating progressives have), WHAT ABOUT THE CHILDREN!? Well, keep reading from the FDA:

“… the applicant showed these nicotine pouch products have the potential to provide a benefit to adults who smoke cigarettes and/or use other smokeless tobacco products that is sufficient to outweigh the risks of the products, including to youth.”

So now not only does the Denver City Council want adults to keep consuming tobacco products like cigarettes, but they are also actively working to help young people build a cigarette habit.

Isn’t this the definition of child abuse? Seriously, call Child Protective Services and stop city council from shoving lit cigarettes at kid.

And, in other news, to stop the spread of venereal infections, the Denver City Council is banning the sale of condoms which, again, will sadly not affect me.

By Jon Caldara

A warning to the left: obnoxious virtue signaling can be a two-way street.

Denver Mayor Mike Johnston has a nice warm office. So why instead hold a press conference out in the cold on the violence-ridden 16th Street Mall? Well, for image management, of course.

What better way to show how safe and non-stabby the streets of Denver are than a picture of Mayor Johnston calmly standing on those blood-soaked streets, worry free for his own safety.

I could almost see the mayor’s taxpaid, cocky communications expert saying, “I’ve got it mayor! Do a press conference out on the 16th Street Mall and when people see you’re not getting stabbed or accosted it’ll prove how safe you’ve made the city! They’ll love you even more!”

Brilliant! That is, until the mayor himself got accosted during his own press conference.

The image the mayor hoped he gave: “Denver is oh-so-very-safe.” And wouldn’t you feel safe on the 16th Street Mall if you too were virtually glued to a cop as Johnston was with Denver’s chief of police. So, the image the mayor actually gave: “Denver is oh-so-very-safe if you hire a guy to openly carry a gun to protect you.”

While we’re talking about the manipulating use of imagery, can we take a moment to celebrate politicians obnoxiously displaying their deep care for the hard-of-hearing? When giving a speech politicians enjoy hiring, at taxpayer expense, some goofy looking guy performing silent modern dance as sign language.

Please stop bringing mimes playacting epileptic seizures to your press conferences.

Note for the virtue signalers: it’s 2025 and we all have speech-to-text translators in our pockets called smartphones, and we watch closed captioning on all our TV sets. Mayor, do you really think deaf people need to see a Cirque du Soleil performance while you’re talking rather than just reading the instant translation?

We all get it. You’re not doing this for the hard of hearing. You’re doing it so we all think you care about the hard of hearing. But what we really think is, instead of hiring pantomimists to signal how inclusive you are, you could use that money to fix some potholes or hire a cop.

Back to our picture-is-worth-1000-words, Denver-streets-are-safe, crazy-people-won’t-yell-obscenities-at-you, stab-free mayoral press event.

It turns out even next to a cop the mayor wasn’t safe on his own streets as a passerby participated in his own unscripted virtue signaling. The mayor was accosted by a crazed man screaming obscenities at him for making Denver such a dangerous place.

If you haven’t seen the unedited video, you really must. While the mayor and police chief are talking about the butcher knife Elijah Caudill employed on his killing spree, a man looking like he was walking to work (unlike the derelict homeless Denver taxpayers support), and without breaking stride, virtue signaled back to our virtue signaling mayor these polite words: “I saw you at the parade, you fucking coward mayor! Fucking, this is your fault! Crime-loving Democrats are burning this city down! Fucking asshole! You should do your job. The city is burning! People are being butchered! Crime-loving Democrats are terrorists!”

Okay. Maybe he went heavy on some vulgarities (but many people are desensitized to the word “Democrat”), but the man spoke for multitudes. Or should I say, virtue signaled for the rest of us.

Denver has rolled out the welcome mat to attract masses of chemically dependent, mentally unstable homeless people, including Elijah Caudill.

Violent criminal immigrants the mayor and his militia of assault-weapon-toting Highlands mommies will protect from deportation are nestled in the loving arms of sanctuary laws.

And the progressive-controlled state government, concerned more for criminals than the law abiding, have made it nearly impossible to keep dangerous criminals, including Elijah Caudill, behind bars.

The mayor can spout off as many statistics as he likes. But those of us who don’t have bodyguards and cannot legally carry a concealed gun in more and more places, don’t feel safe in Denver. Because we’re not.

Mayor, welcome to what the rest of us deal with all the time — having some stranger violently scream a symphony of F-bombs at you.

But unlike you, since we don’t have bodyguards, we don’t know if they’re going to stab us to death.

By Mike Rosen

In late December, Congress passed stopgap legislation to avert a government shutdown. Of course this is hyperbole, the government doesn’t really shut down. The vast majority of government spending continues to flow, including Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, interest on the national debt, additional spending for disasters and farmers, along with the armed forces, FBI, CIA, and Secret Service still on the job. True, “non-essential government employees” are sent home for a deferred-pay vacation and the Washington Monument is closed to tourists.

A prior pork-loaded stopgap measure was opposed by Republicans, forcing a compromise with spendthrift Democrats that dropped the number of pages from 1,547 to 118. But Democrats refused to budge on a measure supported by Republicans and Trump to suspend the debt ceiling for two years. So, we’ll go through this same charade again when the stopgap agreement expires in March.

Ending the farce

If it feels like we’ve seen this show before, you’re right. It dates back to 1917 when Congress passed a law raising the national debt ceiling in order to issue Liberty Bonds to fund World War I. It made sense then. Since then, Congress has raised the ceiling 78 more times, most recently in 2023, for a total winning streak of 79-0.

Following the showmanship of grandstanders from both parties’ extremes, demanding provisions that can’t possibly be passed, a compromise will be made and the debt ceiling will be raised, and the winning streak will surely be extended to 80-0.

It’s time to end this farce and eliminate the statutory debt ceiling altogether. Not because I support limitless spending and a spiraling national debt, but because it doesn’t work. It’s become nothing more than a ceremonial formality, preceded by political theater. The time to reign in runaway spending is at the beginning of the annual budget and appropriations process, not after the money has already been spent or committed. That’s like gorging yourself at a high-priced steak house and refusing to pay the check.

The debt ceiling must always be raised because our government is on a perpetual trajectory of deficit spending, with less money coming into the Treasury than going out. Failure to raise the debt ceiling would cause the U.S. to default on the payment of principal and interest on Treasury bonds as they come due. This would undermine the “full faith and credit” of the United States and bring on an international financial crisis that could lead to a worldwide depression. That’s not a realistic option.

It’s the spending

The root of this problem is that federal spending is totally out of control. We’ve had budget deficits in 47 of the last 51 years and they’re now baked in forever. Hiking tax rates would not produce the hoped for revenues and would more likely tank the economy. Besides which, federal spending has exceeded the economy’s tax capacity for decades. Progressive socialists who would “soak the rich” along with corporations and investors would destroy our free market economy, the stated goal of those who proclaim they hate capitalism. In the process, it would drive down our standard of living. But Democrats have no limiting principle when it comes to spending. The rise in government redistribution of income and our cornucopia of social welfare programs have caused the number of net tax receivers to now exceed the number of net taxpayers, and the tidal wave of illegal immigrants has made that imbalance even worse.

Our nation’s 36 trillion-dollar national debt is the cumulative total of historical federal spending in excess of revenues. In 1980, our gross national debt was 31% of GDP. Today, it’s 120% of GDP. That’s higher than it was in World War II when defense spending was 90% of the budget. Today, only 12% goes for defense, while what the government calls “payments for individuals” (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and countless other “entitlement” programs) consumes 70% of the budget. It’s politically impossible to “slash” those programs but somehow, they must be at least restrained and the budget brought into balance. If not, we are on a trajectory to fiscal insolvency.

When Greece went into bankruptcy a decade ago the EU and IMF bailed her out. but no one has the means to bail out the United States.

By Jon Caldara

Why won’t leadership in the Capitol livestream the entire legislature?

In a previous life I was on the Regional Transportation District (RTD) board of directors. This elected position paid a whopping $250 a month, but it did include a free bus pass. And let me tell you, the ladies dig a man with a bus pass.

In 1997 RTD (actually, the bond dealers and contractors who run RTD) were trying to con the voters into a massive tax increase to buy a trolley system so the bond dealers and contractors would make a killing from the boondoggle. The board was split on this idea, with a slight majority bending a knee to their crony overlords.

Denver’s municipal Channel 8 brought forward an interesting proposal: at no cost to RTD they’d televise our board meetings. Awesome.

Given that smaller governments, from town councils to school boards, broadcast their public meetings, this was a no-brainer for RTD, the fourth largest government in the state. Let the people see the people’s business.

The RTD board rejected the proposal. The very same directors who voted “yes” for the tax increase voted “no” to broadcasting their behavior at public meetings.

They knew full well if voters saw the dysfunction and ineptitude of the board, they’d never vote to give these clowns more of their money.

More than a quarter-century later, the very same dynamic plays out with the clown show that is our state legislature.

Colorado is only one of two states that don’t livestream committee meetings.

Colorado is a big freaking state, bigger in land mass than the United Kingdom. If citizens in Durango wish to witness their representatives in action, they must drive 350 miles to do so. This is so far that their soon-to-be-mandated electric vehicles will need to charge overnight somewhere along the route.

When the House or Senate meet in full, in the big chambers, well, that’s streamed live on ColoradoChannel.net. And that’s fine, but that’s not where the real deal-making of governing happens. That happens in committee meetings.

Both chambers have 10 committees each that decide the fate of legislation before it goes to either floor for a vote. Beyond that there are 15 year-round committees and another 14 interim committees. What goes on in these 49 committees constitutes the overwhelming majority of decision making at the Capitol. And you must be in-person if you want to see it.

Let me amend that: Every committee room in the Capitol is equipped with video cameras and large TV monitors. If you wish to testify in one of those committees, assuming they allow testimony, you can sign up to do so online.

Post COVID, we all understand how Zoom works, even our legislators. So, the only way to remotely witness government in action is to give testimony online. Only then can you see the whole thing remotely. But you must testify, and not all meetings have testimony.

This Zoom participation proves live streaming these meetings is just a matter of flipping a switch to make public what only that handful of people online can see now.

Bart Miller, the chairman of the Colorado Channel Authority, the entity created by state government to broadcast video of the House and Senate (but only the big chambers), says they lobbied in vain to let them flip that switch on for years and years and years.

And get this, it doesn’t take a vote of the full House and Senate, they just need the okay from one of those committees they’re not allowed to broadcast on Zoom. The Executive Committee of the Legislative Council is made of legislative leadership — Senate President James Coleman, Speaker of the House Julie McCluskie and the minority and majority leaders of both houses.

If you’re keeping score at home that’s four Democrats and two Republicans (who have no problem flipping the Zoom switch to “public”).

And here’s the cherry on top: since the late 1960s legislative staff must keep an audio recording of all these committee meetings.

Miller tells me his governmental authority would be happy to disband all together and go away if legislative staff flipped the video switches on along with the audio switch they already run.

When was the last time a governmental authority suggested its own demise to throw some sunlight into some of the government’s darkest rooms?

What are they hiding?

By Jon Caldara

Hubris? Arrogance? Disdain? Contempt? What word describes the attitude of the Colorado legislature towards to those who elected them. What explains their actions?

Long time political strategist Eric Sonderman described it to me in three simple words. “Because we can.”

How can senator Chris Hansen run for reelection knowing that as soon as he wins, he’ll resign to take a half-million dollar a year crony job at a power utility? Well, because he can.

How can the governor who campaigned promising to massively cut special interest tax breaks instead create an avalanche of new ones, enough to drain the budget of all TABOR surplus money? Again, because he can.

How can they pass environmental mandates they know full well are unachievable and will economically destroy the state in the name of their virtue signaling? Because they can.

And for God’s sake how can they exempt themselves, and only themselves, from large portions of Colorado’s Open Meetings law? Because they can!

There are over 5,000 governments and special districts throughout Colorado. And none of them, sans one, can have secret meetings to discuss legal changes. None of them, sans one, can pass secret, disappearing electronic messages about public business. Only the legislature has this new, secret-police power of privacy thanks to their recently passed Senate Bill 157, sheepishly signed into law by Jared Polis.

And within weeks after passage lawmakers put their newfound powers of darkness to work. During the summer special session on property taxes, their closed meetings and secret communications made their negotiations opaque. In old school C

hicago political style, we found out what happened after all the deals were cut.

Not insulting enough for you? The new law calls for the executive committee of the legislature to hold a performative meeting to chat about their new dark powers and to take public comment. So, when do they choose to have this meeting? Well of course on one of the darkest days, the one before New Year’s Eve, arguably the most inconvenient time for citizens to involve themselves.

As the perfect way to say goodbye to 2024, I just had to go watch this middle finger to their constituents. Over 30 folks representing a wildly diverse groups shared their anger and disgust of the legislature’s hubris. Not even one of them had a pleasant thing to say about SB-157 and being shut out of watching policy being made.

To put an exclamation point behind their disdain for open government, the prime sponsor of SB-157, House Speaker Julie McCluskie, had the audacity to say she “remains committed to values around transparency and openness,” and that legislature is “doing all we can to facilitate good communication and healthy debate.”

She actually said this crap with a straight face.

“Committed to transparency” when it was her law that ripped it away? “Facilitating good communications and healthy debate” by scheduling the meeting to review her law for the last day of the year? She was like a kid who swears to his parents he didn’t get into the cookie jar yet has crumbs all around his mouth.

Something positive has come out of this insult to open government. It spurred the Independence Institute, which I run, to bring together the most interesting coalition I’ve ever seen, “Team Transparency” if you will.

Our offices serve as the meeting place for a growing lineup of odd bedfellows to design a change to Colorado’s Constitution to not only reverse this law but to empower all Coloradans to witness their government in action.

When I say odd bedfellows, I’m not kidding. The Colorado league of Women Voters has almost religiously taken the opposite side of Independence Institute on issues. But they are active in this effort.

The Colorado Press Association is at the same table hosted by one of their biggest critics, me. The Colorado Broadcaster Association, the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition, alternative news outlets, citizen activists, civil rights attorneys and industry groups are making one of the most diverse and powerful coalitions for open government perhaps in the state’s history.

Our collectively decided mission is difficult but simple. To pass a constitutional amendment guaranteeing that Colorado governments conduct their business in full sunshine.

So, thank you Colorado lawmakers for your offensive overreach to hide public business from the public. Your arrogance was the spark that ignited this effort.

By Mike Rosen

Amendment 80, which would have enshrined school choice as a right in the Colorado Constitution, was defeated on the Colorado ballot in November, although it got 49% of the vote. Had it passed it might have paved the way for private school vouchers throughout Colorado, a movement that’s being adopted by a growing number of other states. That’s precisely why the teachers unions spent lavishly to defeat it here. When it comes up again in Colorado, here are some rebuttals to anti-choice misinformation.

“This will drain money from public schools.” A voucher system doesn’t “defund” public education, like leftists would defund the police, it just redirects the money. Taxpayer dollars earmarked for the education of children would follow the children to a school of their parents’ choice through a voucher equivalent to the current per capita cost per student. Why should government schools have a monopoly on the delivery of publicly funded education? Competition breeds excellence in a market economy and would force public schools to offer a better product to keep parents from joining the exodus. When parents select private or charter schools over poorly performing public schools, the remaining public schools will require fewer teachers, fewer buildings, fewer buses and fewer taxpayer dollars.

“Money would be diverted to religious schools.” So what? Taxpayer dollars can already be used for college tuition at religious schools. You can use military benefits for college to go to Notre Dame or Yeshiva University. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the Establishment Clause of the Constitution is offended only if government favors or discriminates against a particular religion. In a voucher program, the parents are making that choice, not the government.

“This is a subsidy for wealthy parents whose children already attend private schools.” Wealthy parents can already afford to send their kids to private schools. A voucher system can be means-tested on a sliding scale to allow many lower- and middle-income families who can’t afford private schools to elect that option. There are plenty of non-wealthy parents who sacrifice to send their kids to private schools who will benefit from vouchers. Those parents and “wealthy” ones alike have been subsidizing public school districts for years with their taxes while relieving those districts of the cost of educating their kids.

“Some private and charter schools fail.” As well they should. And some companies go out of business. That’s what happens when consumers have choice and an enterprise doesn’t perform to their satisfaction. Successful private and charter schools have long waiting lists. The public school monopoly treats parents as captives, not customers. That’s why too many failing and poor performing public schools that should go out of business continue to squander public resources and underserve students, parents and taxpayers.

“Studies show that private schools and charter schools don’t produce any better academic results than public schools, and parents might make bad choices.” If you like your current public school, stay there but why deny that choice to others? Do you suppose wealthy parents are so foolish as to send their kids to poor performing private schools? There are dueling studies about private/charter school vs. public school performance. The public school establishment, teachers unions and teachers colleges – all in bed together protecting their rice bowl — solicit biased studies to demean the competition. Voucher advocates have their own studies with opposite conclusions. Let’s leave that judgment to individual parents.

In addition to academic rigor and performance, parents with school choice can make their selections on the basis of a school’s values, discipline, pedagogical philosophy, curricula, textbooks, or whether phonics is used to teach reading rather than “look-say.” Parents who prefer basic academics to progressive indoctrination, social engineering, DEI, and wokeness can seek out a school in line with what they want for their kids. Outrageously, two-thirds of public school students now fall short of grade proficiency in reading, and it’s even worse in math.

Many teachers who love students don’t like teachers unions. The unions aren’t welcome in private and charter schools, and the unions hate charters and vouchers for the competition they invite. Remember how unions catered to their members and kept schools closed way too long at the expense of school kids during the pandemic? Teachers unions dominate the public school establishment in Democrat-run cities and states, and the politicians return the favor by resisting charters and flatly blocking private school vouchers. Unions, politics, bureaucracy, and a one-size-fits-all mentality are the cause of our public school quagmire. School choice and vouchers offer a market alternative, the key to rescuing public education.

By Jon Caldara

I am told over and over that the greatest quality reporters can have is curiosity.

Then why aren’t journalists even slightly curious about why they lost their credibility from their customers?

In 1976, 72% of Americans had a “great deal of trust and confidence in the mass media” to report the news “fully, accurately and fairly” according to that year’s Gallup survey. By 2024 that number plummeted to 31%.

Congrats honored members of the press. You’re trusted less than Congress.

Likewise in 1976 a scant 4% of Americans’ trust in the media was “none at all.” Today that number has ballooned to 36%, a nine-fold increase. And those who’s trust and confidence in the media is “none at all” or “not very much,” make up 69% of all Americans.

Hey media, nearly 70% of us don’t trust you! How do you have no curiosity about that?! It seems most journalists have a violent avoidance of the issue altogether.

Do journalists even see they stoke the treacherous polarization that’s exploded like an epidemic? In 1976, 63% of Republicans trusted the media. Today that number is 12%. Come on people, 12%?

Even Independents are on the same trajectory, in 1976 74% trusted the media, today only 27% do. Half of all Colorado voters are now unaffiliated. If reporters are curious about all their industry layoffs, those people used to be customers.

I don’t trust the media because it oozes disdain for me. The message they send me is clear – the way you see the world 

is simply so perverse, we make no effort to even hire people like you.

Like most conservatives and libertarians, I am unwelcome from mainstream media. I used to listen to Colorado Public Radio daily, but their pure scorn for those like me is palpable. What comes out of my cars speakers screams, “your values don’t exist here.” I stopped listening.

The message of their tax-supported broadcasts is not as much “we hate you” as it is “we don’t recognize you exist.”

Oh, it’s not personal. I know a lot of CPR folks and they are good, well-meaning people. But I see the world on a spectrum of liberty-versus-coercion. It’s pretty clear that folks there see the world on a spectrum of oppressed-versus-oppressor. There is a governmental answer to every challenge.

This world view is ubiquitous in mass media. It shows in story selection. Journalists love to claim their professionalism scrubs bias out of a story. Even if true, the stories they choose demonstrate their lack of ideological diversity.

As I have for decades, I continue to suggest a simple exercise to get an indication of newsroom culture. No one’s taken me up.

Coloradans voted about 54% for Biden and 43% for Trump. If newsroom staff was representative of the population they serve, they would vote roughly in the same proportion. So, have a secret ballot in the newsroom to see where news reporters land in comparison to their customers.

I suggested this to the head of CPR news after Trump won the first time. He was aghast and looked at me like I just suggested videotaping his employees making babies.

I was told from three different CPR reporters separately that no one in the newsroom voted for Trump. That’s a bit different than the 46% of Coloradans who did in 2016 and still pay taxes to support public radio.

It’s more telling that when I wrote about CPR’s voting habits, instead of starting a conversation of how to bring some ideological balance to the newsroom, reporters were told to stop talking about who they voted for.

I sat down with Kyle Clark of 9News recently for my show Devil’s Advocate. Love him or hate him he is smart, articulate, takes pride in his work, and is the most influential commentator in the state.

When I asked him how many people in his shop voted for Trump, he too seemed aghast. We don’t talk about such things, he informed me. Why the hell not?

They can proudly tell us the racial and gender ratios of their employees. Might they suspect what their ideological ratio is and simply don’t want to see it proven?

Just as nationally the Democratic party is introspective about their failure, newsrooms should get curious about themselves, and for the same reason.

By Jon Caldara

Let the meaningless battle over mass deportation in Colorado begin.

Watching our cities virtue-signal on immigration is the best free entertainment your tax dollars can buy. The war of words and chest beating is worthy of a reality show.

On one side, you have Denver’s Mayor Mike Johnston playing a modern-day Paul Revere. With those hideous Redcoats marching on Denver, his cry of “ICE is coming” will rally the Highland moms (who apparently cannot be messed with) and his own police force to take up arms to protect the immigrants who are bankrupting his city.

On the other side, you have cities like Castle Rock, those dirty British sympathizers, who have made it clear they welcome the motherland’s ICE agents and will help them scoop up the trespassers.

I hate to burst both bubbles, but there won’t be mass deportations.

My old man used to tell me things are “easy to get into, hard to get out of.” He meant as a warning of going into debt, contracts, business deals and, perhaps most of all, marriage to the wrong person.

There are many political mistakes that are easy to get into and hard to get out of. The welfare and entitlement state, which will bankrupt the country is the perfect example. Throw in Vietnam, Afghanistan and the drug war if you like. President Joe Biden’s dereliction of duty in welcoming more than 10 million migrants as they flood across our border ranks right up there.

Easy to let them in, nearly impossible to get them out.

I assume violent Venezuelan gang members are the exception and most of these immigrants want to be good hardworking additions to our society. Even so, there is something very different compared to the immigrants of the late 1800s and early 1900s. Those immigrants of old, legal or not, came to a land of opportunity that had no governmental safety nets. It was sink or swim. Those who couldn’t swim went back.

The Biden invaders by contrast are given food, shelter, health care, education and, perhaps, voter registration at great costs to every level of government. They, unlike in most other nations, are also given due process. That is not only expensive but painfully, painfully slow.

History questions issues, like whether bottling up the whole naval fleet in Pearl Harbor was a bad strategy. History will have no questions about the buffoonery and absenteeism which let this invasion happen.

There will be deportations. But there won’t be many relative to the millions let in. Enough, though, that the press and progressives will weave a narrative of bulldozers scooping up humans off the street to dump them into overflowing cattle cars.

Likewise, deporters will soon learn large-scale expulsion is an aspiration. The reality will be disappointing. It’s taken nine decades (starting with FDR) to grow this leviathan of bureaucracy. Even Superman Trump can’t reverse it in four years. Courts, activists, intransigent municipalities and endless red tape will grind the process to a snail’s pace.

If all the saber rattling could stop for a moment and if Mayor Johnston’s Highland moms put down their AR-15s, we might see there is a middle ground we all can get behind: deporting violent criminals.

I pity any politician who opposes the deportation of foreigners who have committed violent crimes. They won’t be a politician for long.

That doesn’t mean arresting every jaywalker who happens to have dark skin as the identity politics industrial complex will surely assert. But it does mean no longer releasing violent criminals into the public, but to ICE, instead.

I think this point was well articulated by my friend, snazzy dresser and first elected district attorney for the newly created 23rd Judicial District, George Brauchler. He clearly said there is nothing in his job description about serving as an immigration enforcement official and, therefore, he won’t be doing it. But he went on to say anyone, citizen or not, who commits a crime in his town will be dealt with harshly and expediently.

Translation: I’m not going to catch illegal migrants for the Trump administration or Castle Rock. But when one’s done a crime in my territory, I’ll happily hold him until the Feds come pick him up.

And that strategy is not mass deportation. It’s selective deportation. And that’s the first tiny step of getting us out of a situation that was too easy to get into.

When The Little Mermaid swims around half naked, singing to her underwater friends, she is “sweet” and “beautiful.” But when I do it, people say I’m “drunk” and “no longer welcome at the aquarium.”

Modern society often makes knowing when you’re acting hypocritically difficult. I mean, burn a body at a crematorium, you’re “doing a good job.” Do it at home you’re “destroying evidence.” It’s just hard to know when people are going to get upset and throw the double-standard flag at you.

So, of course, I’ve got a great deal of sympathy for the Denver City Council and its bizarre inconsistent hypocrisy between cannabis and tobacco.

Denver has more marijuana dispensaries than Starbucks locations. The amount of money they make off cannabis taxes is greater than substantial. And those cannabis products are flavored in the form of gummies, candies, and cookies. These products are proudly peddled in their town. 

But, like mandating motorcycle riders wear helmets while outlawing seat belts, the very same council is embarrassed tobacco products, like flavored nicotine products, are legally sold in their fentanyl-fueled, psychedelic mushroom-hazed, Cheech and Chong-themed city.

So, it’s only logical they are banning flavored, smokeless tobacco products but not flavored cannabis products. Duh, it just makes sense.

Flavored nicotine products are far less harmful than smoking and deliver the nicotine smokers want without the damaging carcinogens of setting stuff on fire and inhaling the smoke. Thus, these products are crucial for folks trying to stop smoking.

The best way to keep people smoking is to ban these products, which is what Denver is going to do.

Their reasoning? Flavored smokeless nicotine will become children’s gateway to smoking tobacco. But somehow flavored cannabis products like gummies isn’t a gateway to smoking marijuana.

If you don’t understand that simple, flawless logic then you are obviously not smart enough to be a policymaker for an entire city.

According to testimony from last week’s Denver City Council meeting, the tax loss from this ban could be more than $13 million per year.

Good thing Denver is running out of money at the right time.

The economic value is so important to the region the state of Colorado bent over backward to tempt the makers of Zyn, a popular smokeless nicotine product, to locate their massive production factory near Denver. So, why wouldn’t Denver return the favor by outlawing the same product?

I think we can agree there is no more burning issue than smokeless nicotine products. We’ve seen protests and violent rallies around the city and county building of people demanding Denver make it harder to quit smoking. It made the BLM riots look boring; Jan. 6, 2021, look like a quilting party. 

Just how much do the people of Denver want to outlaw flavored nicotine? At my organization, Independence Institute, we were curious and commissioned a poll of Denver voters. The polling firm surveyed 459 people to find which of a dozen issues facing the city were most important.

Banning nicotine products didn’t make it into the top three. Heck, it didn’t make it into the top 11. In fact, not a single person said it was an issue. Not one. 

The most important issues to Denver voters are affordable housing (33.5%), public safety (15.6%), taxes and city spending (14.2%) and illegal immigration (12.9%).

Again, out of the 12 issues offered, flavored nicotine products came in last with a whopping 0.0%. No wonder it’s a council priority.

Let’s see if we have a grasp of the full picture here: flavored nicotine products help people stop smoking by giving them a much, much healthier way to consume nicotine.

We gave sizable tax incentives for Zyn to be manufactured here, beating out other cities and states who were wooing the company.

Sales of this product bring in multiple millions of dollars in tax revenue at a time of budget shortfalls. No one thinks this is an issue — no one

So, the City Council of Denver is going to ban these flavored products that do help people stop smoking tobacco while not banning flavored marijuana products that don’t help people stop using cannabis.

Denverites, you elected the smartest people in the world. Next, instead of fixing potholes they are going to outlaw exercise equipment.

ByJon Caldara

I get tired of all the double standards.

When The Little Mermaid swims around half naked, singing to her underwater friends, she is “sweet” and “beautiful.” But when I do it, people say I’m “drunk” and “no longer welcome at the aquarium.”

Modern society often makes knowing when you’re acting hypocritically difficult. I mean, burn a body at a crematorium, you’re “doing a good job.” Do it at home you’re “destroying evidence.” It’s just hard to know when people are going to get upset and throw the double-standard flag at you.

So, of course, I’ve got a great deal of sympathy for the Denver City Council and its bizarre inconsistent hypocrisy between cannabis and tobacco.

Denver has more marijuana dispensaries than Starbucks locations. The amount of money they make off cannabis taxes is substantial. And those cannabis products are flavored in the form of gummies, candies, and cookies. These products are proudly peddled in their town.

But, like mandating motorcycle riders wear helmets while outlawing seat belts, the very same council is embarrassed tobacco products, like flavored nicotine products, are legally sold in their fentanyl-fueled, psychedelic mushroom-hazed, Cheech and Chong-themed city.

So, it’s only logical they recently banned flavored, smokeless tobacco products but not flavored cannabis products. Duh, it just makes sense.

Flavored nicotine products are far less harmful than smoking and deliver the nicotine smokers want without the damaging carcinogens of setting stuff on fire and inhaling the smoke. Thus, these products are crucial for folks trying to stop smoking.

The best way to keep people smoking is to ban these products, which is what Denver just did.

Their reasoning? Flavored smokeless nicotine will become children’s gateway to smoking tobacco. But somehow flavored cannabis products like gummies isn’t a gateway to smoking marijuana.

If you don’t understand that simple, flawless logic then you are obviously not smart enough to be a policymaker for an entire city.

According to testimony from last week’s Denver City Council meeting, the tax loss from this ban could be more than $13 million per year.

Good thing Denver is running out of money at the right time.

The economic value is so important to the region the state of Colorado bent over backward to tempt the makers of Zyn, a popular smokeless nicotine product, to locate their massive production factory near Denver. So, why wouldn’t Denver return the favor by outlawing the same product?

I think we can agree there is no more burning issue than smokeless nicotine products. We’ve seen protests and violent rallies around the city and county building of people demanding Denver make it harder to quit smoking. It made the BLM riots look boring; Jan. 6, 2021, look like a quilting party.

Just how much do the people of Denver want flavored nicotine outlawed? At my organization, Independence Institute, we were curious and commissioned a poll of Denver voters. The polling firm surveyed 459 people to find which of a dozen issues facing the city were most important.

Banning nicotine products didn’t make it into the top three. Heck, it didn’t make it into the top 11. In fact, not a single person said it was an issue. Not one.

The most important issues to Denver voters are affordable housing (33.5%), public safety (15.6%), taxes and city spending (14.2%) and illegal immigration (12.9%).

Again, out of the 12 issues offered, flavored nicotine products came in last with a whopping 0.0%. No wonder it’s a council priority.

Let’s see if we have a grasp of the full picture here: flavored nicotine products help people stop smoking by giving them a much, much healthier way to consume nicotine.

We gave sizable tax incentives for Zyn to be manufactured here, beating out other cities and states who were wooing the company.

Sales of this product bring in multiple millions of dollars in tax revenue at a time of budget shortfalls.

No one thinks this is an issue — no one.

So, the Denver City Council banned these flavored products that do help people stop smoking tobacco while not banning flavored marijuana products that don’t help people stop using cannabis.

Denver voters, you elected the smartest people in the world. Next, instead of fixing potholes they are going to outlaw exercise equipment.

By Mike Rosen

It seems the great public divide has no bounds. Several years ago a poll by the Public Religion Research Institute found that 66% of Democrats said stores and businesses should say “Happy Holidays” to avoid offending non-Christians while 67% of Republicans said they should stick with the traditional “Merry Christmas.” Caught in the middle, many big retailers succumbed to political correctness and switched to “Happy Holidays.” This season, quite a few of them (likely inspired by the profit motive) have gone back to “Merry Christmas,” perhaps emboldened by the resurgence of public conservatism as demonstrated by the “silent majority’s” vote for Trump and Republicans in the national election.

As I’ve seen it, Christmas has two dimensions, one religious and one secular, that have overlapped and peacefully coexisted for centuries. Some people celebrate Santa Claus Christmas and some celebrate Jesus Christ Christmas, with most people in this country celebrating both — including most Christians. Devout Christians treat Christmas solemnly, focusing on the birth of Jesus, his teachings, sacrifice, resurrection and legacy.

Retailers merchandise the Santa Claus part of the holiday season in their department stores with Santa surrogates hosting little kids on their laps, replete with elves and Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. You generally don’t see images of Jesus or the Virgin Mary on display in their stores or in the ads that herald their big Christmas sales. It’s unlikely that Jesus ever said “Merry Christmas” around his birthday or that there were Christmas trees on sale at street corners. And it certainly wasn’t an official government holiday in his time.

Today, Christmas is indisputably a joint event. It’s such a special part of our culture that it’s the only federal holiday with a religious connection that gives people a legal day off from work. (The ACLU hasn’t succeeded in having the holiday banned as unconstitutional — yet.) We have 

federal holidays throughout the year, but the exchange of gifts is unique to Christmas. Excited children high on anticipation don’t have trouble falling asleep on the night before Labor Day or George Washington’s Birthday eve. The birthdays of Buddha, Mohammad, Confucius, or L. Ron Hubbard (note to millennials: he was the inventor of Scientology) are not honored with a holiday. Hanukkah does feature an exchange of gifts but it’s also not a federal holiday. If it were, with Jews only two percent of the population, that would open the floodgates for every religion demanding a federal holiday.

As a precursor to today’s woke Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) movement, in 1996 a guy by the name of Ron Karenga —a violent ex-con and Marxist Black separatist —introduced a distinct Christmas season holiday for African-Americans, “Kwanzaa,” because he thought Christmas was too white. (Perhaps he was unaware that Bing Crosby’s classic seasonal favorite, “White Christmas,” was about snow, not race.) It turned out they’ve never heard of Kwanzaa in Africa or anywhere else. He just made it up and it’s been long since forgotten. The vast majority of American blacks are Christians and celebrate Christmas like everyone else. The same can be said of Latinos. In the spirit of the season, I can even forgive Jose Feliciano for his maddeningly repetitive lyrics in “Feliz Navidad.”

I’m not a Christian but I’ve always loved the Christmas season for its spirit, the secular and religious music, the sights, the aromas, the fellowship, the parties, the gift giving, and its traditional movies like “It’s a Wonderful Life” and Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol.” I’m not offended by the commercialization. I like commerce and a market economy caters to the desires of its consumers. Besides, Santa Claus Christmas is mostly for kids (plus employees who get Christmas bonuses).

We’re a nation of 335 million people (not including illegal immigrants who also celebrate Christmas) and most folks are fine with “Merry Christmas.” It’s a free country, so those who prefer “Happy Holidays” can say that. But even Ebenezer Scrooge exclaimed “Merry Christmas” when he woke up from his nightmare on Christmas Day with a new enlightened vision. Wouldn’t it have sounded ridiculous had he meekly said, “Seasons Greetings?” I’m glad “Merry Christmas,” my preference, is back in style. Shout it out! You won’t be arrested — at least for now.

By Jon Caldara

I want to thank the taxpayers of Colorado for my brand-new car. Really, thanks to each and every one of you dupes.

You see, I have never in my 60 years had a brand new, off-the-lot automobile. Instead, I buy used, and I mean really used, cars and drive them until they drop. Out of college I bought a sexy $500 Datsun 210 and sold it eight years later for $950.

My current beater is a 2010 Nissan Altima. I bought it with 95,000 miles for $6,000. It now has over 200,000 miles and still going strong. I drive ugly, old used cars.

Why do I drive these cars? Simply, because I know what women like. While they’ll rarely admit it out loud, when a woman sees a bald man tooling around town in a 15-year-old rusted-out Japanese car she can’t help but think, “Mommy wants me some of that.”

So why buy a new car? It’s more than just my boredom with hot women leaving their phone numbers under my windshield wiper blade. I figure at my age I should stop spending big bucks on chick-magnet hot rods and start living more frugally. And there’s nothing more frugal than getting other people to buy you crap.

And that’s where you came in. Thanks to obscene tax credits, mandates, and regulations from the people you voted into office, I didn’t pay for most of this car.

Well, “car” might be a strong word. It’s more of a golf cart with Bluetooth. It’s a Nissan Leaf.

“Leaf.” They friggin’ named it, “Leaf.” I remember having my man card ripped up to confetti-sized pieces and blown into my face to buy a mini-van when my kids were small. But that made me feel like a lumberjack in contrast to signing the papers on a “Leaf.”

My daughter likes to name our cars, Mary the Mazda, Nancy the Nissan, etc. After seeing me drive in with the testosterone-pumping Leaf her reaction was simply, “Dad, let’s just name it, Summer’s Eve.”

Okay. Agreed it might not have the raw machismo of a ratted-out old Camry, but why look a gift horse in the mouth. The list price on my new, all-electric 2025 Leaf is nearly $32,000. Yet, I paid only $15,000 for it.

I got this new car for 53% off thanks to environmental cronyism. There are not that many decent used cars for that price.

This $17K in welfare went to me, another upper-middle class White guy to put a second car in his two-car garage. I now have a back-up car for short trips. Most all electric cars are second or third cars for White people who could afford another car without the welfare.

And it’s the left that yaps on about systematic racism?

The feds threw $7,500 at my new toy and the state of Colorado chipped in another $2,500. Yes, that would be the same Colorado that hasn’t the money to fix our roads, the very same state whose governor announced plans to cut road funding by $100 million.

Well, that explains $10k of the $17k given to me. Where does the rest come from? Regulations of course.

Car manufacturers’ yearly output can only have so much in tailpipe emissions averaged out over their fleet. Meaning that when they go over, which is always, they only have two options. Either they must build all electric vehicles and give them away at way below cost, thus my car, or they buy the tailpipe emissions credits not used from their competitors.

So, the last $7,000 in welfare you gave me is paid for higher prices you must pay for cars people actually want. You know, cars that can be quickly filled up at a gas pump instead of waiting hours to charge.

Tesla’s biggest profit center is not really sales. It’s selling its pollution credits to its competitors since none of their fleet has any tailpipes. The company is wholly built on tax credits and tailpipe regulations. No electric car could compete in the market without them.

Period.

Of course, my new manly Leaf saves the environment since it has no emissions except, um, it does. Most of Colorado’s electricity is produced by coal and natural gas.

Or as the coal industry should advertise, “Coal, it’s what Teslas eat for dinner.”

Anyway, thanks for my unneeded, coal-powered toy.

By Mike Rosen

Two years ago, I predicted that Joe Biden wouldn’t be on the presidential ballot by November 2024. After Kamala Harris secured the nomination, my rosy scenario was a Trump victory riding a red wave. (It’s true I picked Dewey over Truman in 1948, but I was only three-years-old then.)

Now, all the usual Democrat suspects, the liberal media, and other assorted sore losers are up in arms over President-elect Trump’s announced selections for cabinet posts and other leadership positions in his incoming administration. Really, Rachel Maddow and the crew of lefty wackos at MSNBC are outraged? Isn’t that too bad? Trump’s appropriate response should echo the eloquent words of President Barack Obama when he met with deflated Republican congressional leaders after he took office in 2009: “Elections have consequences, I won.” In Trumpspeak that might include, “go pound sand” or stronger words to that effect. In baseball jargon: “It’s the bottom of the inning, now it’s our turn at bat.”

I like most of his picks so far and love several. His questionable choice for Attorney General of Matt Gaetz (who has since withdrawn), the acrimonious, extremist firebrand who can’t get along with others, might just have been The Donald’s idea of a spiteful “in your face” taunt to anti-Trumpers. There was little chance Gaetz would have been confirmed in the Senate where every Democrat and a good many Republicans were likely to vote against him. This may have been a shrewd Trump strategy to distract the angry mob with a Gaetz lightning rod and throw an easy blackball to the opposition.

When the American electorate delivered the presidency and control of the executive branch to Trump along with a Republican majority in both houses of Congress, it was a mandate for dramatic change to restore the Republic and traditional American values. The mission will be aided by a majority of originalist justices on the Supreme Court who regard the Constitution as a restraint on unlimited government and a protection of individual liberty, rather than the Democrat notion that it’s a “living Constitution” that empowers progressive justices to reinterpret the Constitution to mean what they think it should be according to their leftist ideology.

During the campaign Harris promised “to serve all the people.” That’s an unserious cliché often recited by political candidates. Since we only have one president, obviously he or she is the president of all the people. But no president (or any elected public official) can satisfy the conflic

ting desires of “all the people,” simply because all the people don’t agree about everything. In this divisive era I’d rearrange the words of Prussian General Carl von Clausewitz’s famous maxim, “war is a continuation of politics by other means,” to “politics is a continuation of war by other means.”

Dramatic changes in public policy by Trump and Republicans won’t come easily. They’ll face staunch opposition from the liberal media, Democrat politicians, their army of activists, and their radical left-wing core in Congress that’s no longer just a “fringe.” In fact, those 99 members of the so-called House Progressive Caucus (100, including socialist Senator Bernie Sanders) constitute almost half of all House Democrats. Biden and congressional Democrats weaponized the progressive socialist agenda and cultural revolution to its inevitable collapse and have finally been held to account by a majority of voters in this election.

Liz Cheney and other politically impractical “Never Trumpers” who endorsed or voted for Kamala have been shown up for their foolishness and how out of touch they are with the American mainstream. Their preference for another four years of progressive destruction of our country led by a pair of Democrat pretenders in the White House was crazy.

Trump was elected president, not king. But there’s a new sheriff in town who can do a lot on his own authority, like overriding all of Biden’s executive orders — some of which were brazenly unconstitutional — replacing them with his own (just as Biden did when he took office following Trump). The tidal wave of illegal immigrants will recede as Trump frees the Border Patrol do its job. And he’ll free ICE do its job across the country’s interior to deal with illegal aliens. Striking other Biden orders will reverse programs and overspending that circumvented Congress. Trump will fill thousands of non-Civil Service positions that serve at the pleasure of the president throughout the federal bureaucracy and on boards and commissions. Revoking unnecessary, cumbersome regulations will energize the economy. He’ll appoint U.S. Attorneys and federal judges. He’ll shake up the Pentagon at the highest levels including the Joint Chiefs of Staff, appointing senior civilians and promoting generals and admirals who will roll back Biden’s politicization of the military that imposed a DEI culture undermining morale and causing serious shortfalls in retention and recruitment in the ranks.

Nevertheless, much of the dramatic change the public has demanded must come through Congress where the power of the purse resides. In 2025, the Senate will have 53 Republicans and 47 Democrats. If Democrat opposition remains unified they’ll dig in their heels and create gridlock to thwart change by blocking vital legislation with filibusters requiring 60 votes to override. But the filibuster isn’t in the Constitution. It’s only a Senate rule that can be eliminated with just a majority vote.

During the campaign, assuming a Democrat electoral sweep, Harris inadvertently gave Republicans a foot in the door when she promised to eliminate the Senate filibuster. Now, Republicans should do just that. I’ve been reluctant to support that in the past but Democrats have made this a political war and I have no doubt they were poised to kill the filibuster had they won the election. Republicans need to beat them to the punch.

By Jon Caldara

Minimum wage laws are tools of systematic hate.

Recently the voters of Colorado removed a constitutional ban on gay marriage by 64% to 36%. Overwhelmingly, the people believe government shouldn’t prohibit consensual relationships.

Years ago, states around the country removed laws prohibiting homosexual activity for the same reason.

Consensual relationships are the cornerstone of a free society. Example, if two women are neighbors, one an accountant and the other a stay-at home mother whose kids are now school-going age, they might wish to have a relationship.

The accountant needs help but can’t afford much. The mother wants to learn accounting and prefers the convenience of not commuting away from her children. Both benefit from working together.

If these two women wish to have sex, get married, buy a home — the government protects their rights.

But if they want to have an employer/ employee relationship that pays less than the minimum wage — the government steps in and proudly prevents such a sick, perverse consensual relationship.

So, in other words, we only really care about protecting people’s consensual relationships when they’re naked.

Colorado’s hateful minimum wage laws are now preventing my son, who has Down syndrome, from having a meaningful and fulfilling life.

By law he cannot have a job unless he’s paid minimum wage. I live in Boulder where there is talk of raising the minimum wage to an unaffordable $25 an hour.

My son, Chance, needs work not to put food on his table. He needs work to continue developing as a human. To build relationships, interact with typical people, work on his struggling communication abilities.

And, as if it matters to anyone in government, he needs to work to bring him purpose and joy.

Preventing him from working is hate. I understand why people hate me. I just don’t understand how anyone could hate this precious soul or people like him.

Chance will be kicked out of the K-12 education system soon and thrown into the abyss of Medicaid, where he could spend his remaining days warehoused or stuck in front of a television.

The law used to be that employers could pay the disabled up to 15% less than minimum wage in Colorado. Recently, lawmakers who wish to halt consensual relationships have made it illegal to pay people with disabilities any less than minimum wage.

I’m sure their intentions were in the right place. But in their constant quest for equity, do they ever think about human happiness and that we are all different and want different things for different reasons? Why do they only give lip service to diversity?

The evil is the minimum wage law to begin with. You cannot make evil equitable.

My son is in an employment training program to “teach” him how to work. He loves it. But — and how can I put this kindly? — like his old man, Chance is not the most productive worker. I joked that if he works for an hour someone must work for two hours to clean up the mess. (Again, a chip off the old block.)

This doesn’t mean he doesn’t add value. He brings joy, magic and happiness wherever he works. It does mean that a cash-strapped business might prefer someone who is more productive if they’re going to be forced to pay $25 an hour.

But for $5 an hour (or, hell, 25 cents an hour), Chance and the happiness he brings fellow workers and customers is a bargain, and the greatest value-add that business has ever seen.

Oh, and if it matters, it’s the best for Chance.

Chance innately understands the dignity that comes with work. His first job training was at McGuckin’s Hardware in Boulder. When he came home, I asked him how work was. I could see him grow two inches taller while he answered.

I asked what his favorite part was about working at “Guckins.” He pointed to his chest and said “vest.” He got to wear the green vest uniform and be part of the team. I asked what he liked most about the vest and he said, “name tag.” I asked what the name tag said, and with pride I’ve never seen he said “Chance!”

I’m indebted to all the businesses that work with Boulder Valley School District’s “Transitions” program to help train kids like Chance. Too bad they’re economically barred from hiring these remarkable people.

By Jon Caldara

Welcome to the Great Un-friending.

One of the telltale signs of a progressive is the constant self-celebration of their tolerance. Progressive communities, like my hometown of Boulder, slap the word “diversity” on every school wall, rec center poster and library. “All are welcome,” don’t ya know.

The woke mob has mandated Diversity, Equity and Inclusion trainings that feeds the DEI Industrial Complex. The trans movement created the pronoun police state, where gender dysphoria is not merely tolerated, it will be celebrated. Free speech and proper grammar are relics of a long-gone racist era.

The modern left prides itself on diversity at gunpoint with an obsession about skin color, genitals and what people think their genitals should be but aren’t.

So, what happens when the tyrants of diversity have an opportunity to hold themselves up to their own standards? How do they welcome, oh, say a Donald Trump voter? What an opportunity to prove what they’ve preached and show us how it is done.

My 22-year-old daughter has had about 10% of her Instagram friends unfollow her after she came out of the closet as a Trump voter.

One of my dearest friends, yes, a progressive, has requested anyone who voted for “hate” this election to unfriend him, “You are not my friend.”

Another friend told me when Trump won in 2016 her sister refused to speak to her for months on end. As the scenario repeats itself, my friend is finding it a reprieve.

Am I crazy, or does this wholesale canceling of friends, family and acquaintances based upon who you voted for seem like the complete opposite of what the left preaches? ( You don’t really have to answer that one.)

Where is celebration of our differences and how our diversity makes for a better, stronger and more understanding community?

My favorite meme during the campaign season was a video taken from someone’s Ring doorbell camera. An angry, unhinged woman attacked this person’s Trump yard sign — kicking it, yelling at it, knocking it out of the ground and dropping to her knees to repeatedly stab it with a stick. The caption of the video merely read, “Party of joy.”

Entertainers and artists have led the collective narrative that Trump is a threat to democracy. “Democracy itself is on the ballot,” was the rallying cry. In past generations Hollywood came out to support American democracy. Bob Hope entertained the troops. Directors made stirring movies. Even cartoonists and animators donated their services for the cause.

In this existential fight for democracy, Hollywood righteously came out again.

Oprah charged $1 million for the pattycake interview she gave to Kamala Harris. Beyonce’s endorsement cost a cool $10 million, and she didn’t even have to sing.

What a stark contrast from Frank Sinatra who in 1960 did sing. He worked the campaign trail for John F. Kennedy and put new lyrics to his hit song, “High hopes.” “Jack is on the right track, Cause he’s got high hopes, He’s got high hopes, 1960 is the year for his high hopes.”

I’ve found no evidence that Sinatra got paid for his endorsement.

Saving America from tyranny is now a profit center for Hollywood. If they actually believed our way of life, our very democracy was truly at stake you’d think these national treasures would be campaigning for free. Makes me wonder if a world war to save America did break out if they’d get royalty payments off it.

Could it be that these entertainment elites know our republic is stronger than any one candidate? Could it be that instead of believing what they say, they are playing to their audience out of self-interest?

It is hard to run around screaming, democracy is at stake, when the guy who won the popular vote by millions upon millions is put into office.

As in 2016, I doubt there’ll be serious self-introspection of their role in electing the man they consider to be Hitler. Will Trump haters understand the intolerant world they created is why we elected this man? Will any of them look into the mirror and ask, “did I do this?”

And will they go back to our Facebook posts when Obama and Biden were elected to notice we did not unfriend them.

By Jon Caldara

Yet again the voters of Colorado pummeled Donald Trump at the ballot box. He lost here by an audacious 12%.

I have a question for the majority of Coloradans who didn’t want him as president: How do you feel about Colorado’s 10 Electoral College votes going to President-elect Trump instead of Vice President Kamala Harris?

Voters of our hardcore blue state despise Trump and came out in very large numbers to voice their hatred of the man. And yet, our 10 electoral votes from Colorado will go to…Trump.

So, you with Trump Derangement Syndrome, is this what you wanted?

California might hate him even more than us, but their 54 electoral votes will also be going to elect Trump.

So will the Trump-phobic states of New York (28 electoral votes), Illinois (19), Delaware (3), Hawaii (4), Maine (4), Rhode Island (4), Vermont (3), Connecticut (7), Maryland (10), Massachusetts (11), New Jersey (14), New Mexico (5), Oregon (8), Washington (12) and the District of Columbia (3).

Relax never-Trumpers, what I’ve described above is a Twilight Zone version of America. But be very certain, it is the version of America our Democrat-controlled legislature and Gov. Jared Polis have signed us up for.

They committed Colorado to the multi-state National Popular Vote (NPV) Compact which will force our presidential electors to vote not as Coloradans demand, but as voters in other states dictate. Under NPV, Colorado has little power.

Beyond the Electoral College, Trump also is winning, as of writing this, the “national popular vote” by about 5 million votes.

Those who supported the idea of the national popular vote must now imagine their self-made dystopian future where their own presidential electors are forced to vote for the maniacal, misogynistic, fascist, democracy-destroying, tyrant-loving Donald Trump.

It’s worth keeping in mind there is actually no such thing as the “national popular vote.” There is no federal Secretary or Clerk who officially controls, tallies and audits all the state elections.

We have an itch to know the popular vote in the same way we like to know how many yards Broncos quarterback Bo Nix threw for in the last game, even though it has squat-all to do with which team won the game. It’s academic at best, but mostly it’s a curiosity.

This National Popular Vote Compact will to go into effect when enough states have signed on that collectively they have 270 electoral votes. Right now, they have 18 states with 209 votes and are working to dupe other states to join in.

The backers of NPV are almost exclusively urban progressives. Makes sense — it gives power mostly to high-density cities which, I’m sure purely coincidentally, are very progressive.

NPV activists are part of the win-at-all-costs coalition and have conveniently forgotten their high school civics lesson that we are not a country run by a federal government. Rather, we are 50 semi-sovereign states who send representatives to the federal government to work for us.

The only state in the 18-state compact that didn’t vote for Harris was Wisconsin. Conclusion — basically only progressive states, like blue Colorado, like the NPV idea.

Popular vote supporters might not have realized, until now, their invention could be a godsend for dangerous populists. After this presidential election and the accompanying panic — tears, trips to therapists and life coaches, belly-button staring contests and scapegoating — Donald Trump’s popular vote victory is the turd in their national popular vote punch bowl.

NPV fanatics, who almost uniformly hate Trump, may begin to realize their scheme would empower the very monsters they despise.

If their compact was in effect this year, the Trump-loathing states that have signed on would be forced to give their collective 197 electoral votes to Trump. Kamala would be left with only 30 sad, lonely votes. Sweet Poetry.

Remember, the people of Colorado never voted for the national popular vote. Our progressive legislature passed it. Our progressive governor signed it into law. A scattered and under-funded citizens referendum did fail to repeal it. But voters were never asked to pass it in the first place.

I wonder if an election to put Colorado in the NPV Compact were held today if most Coloradans would vote to have their electoral votes go to Trump. They wouldn’t.

Maybe our progressive Colorado legislature should think about pulling our very blue state out of the now very-red National Popular Vote Compact.

By Mike Rosen

For all the attention it gets, you’d think ending “homelessness” was the primary purpose of Denver government. The term is an all-inclusive generalization. It includes those who’ve had a sudden setback, are recently out of work, are down on their luck, temporarily having a tough time making ends meet, or even a college grad who’s out of work and has moved back in with her parents. Only a small fraction of the homeless are street people (the “unsheltered” in politically correct lingo) but they’re a major part of the problem. As a compassionate society we do what we can for them. Unfortunately, most reject treatment and rehabilitation. They say they just want their freedom.

But we can’t ignore the damage they cause for the 700,000 other residents of Denver and the 3 million who live in the metro area, especially downtown. To put it bluntly, bums, vagrants, beggars, squatters and drug addicts camping out in public and private property, parks, and sidewalks infringe on the welfare of the people who make this city thrive, and they make Denver a less desirable place for tourists and folks who live in the metro suburbs to visit, dine out, recreate, and work.

In other words it’s bad for business. A recent study by Colorado’s Common Sense Institute finds that the combination of crime, homelessness, and high office vacancy rates in downtown Denver has caused it to lag behind other downtowns around the country in economic recovery after the pandemic. Locally, the DTC, Boulder, Colorado Springs and Fort Collins are doing much better.

To borrow a title from Charles Dickens, the comparison of Aurora’s handling of street people and Denver’s provides an instructive “Tale of Two Cities.” The approach of Denver’s government —with its radical leftist dominated city council and rookie liberal Democrat Mayor Mike Johnston —is steeped in its philosophy of “social justice.” They call it “housing first” without conditions or mandatory substance abuse rehab programs.

Aurora’s Republican Mayor Mike Coffman and his conservative city council majority have taken a more practical approach to homelessness. They call it “work first,” designed to elevate people to self-reliance with conditions for treatment, rehab and job training to qualify for free housing.

Denver is spending hundreds of millions on “affordable housing” and actually becoming a landlord, taking ownership of apartment houses. This can lead to even more homeless people flocking to Colorado to cash in on the goodies. Similar programs in Chicago and NYC led to the dreaded ”projects,” low-income ghettos with dilapidated buildings, crime and drugs. To finance its benevolence, Denver is on a tax-increasing binge.

A progressive activist group that advocates for street people, the Housekeys Action Network, has protested police enforcement of the camping ban and of trespassing laws. But their demands are entirely self-interested and they don’t give a damn about the overall welfare of Denver residents.

There’s an economic truism: what you tax you get less of and what you subsidize and encourage you get more of. In this case, Denver will get fewer business enterprises, fewer jobs, fewer ambitious taxpayers, fewer outsiders paying sales taxes, and even fewer self-reliant residents than it has now. Instead, it’ll get many more people dependent on government handouts. Overtaxed and over regulated people vote with their feet, as seen by the exodus of productive citizens from California, New York and Illinois en route to limited-government states like Texas and Florida. Denver’s priorities are self-destructive. A city in economic decline is even less able to serve those in need.

Denver city council members afflicted with climate change paranoia and hell bent on “urban density” have bragged about making driving an aggravating ordeal for motorists. They succeeded. Big mistake. Those stupid bike lanes that steal auto lanes —especially on Broadway and 15th Street — clog traffic, are a mortal danger to cyclists, are under-utilized, and will never be a significant mode of public transportation. Let’s get rid of them. Also, return speed limits to what they used to be. Twenty mph on city streets and 30 mph on four-lane divided roads are too slow.

As for Democrats who control state government, their delusional goals and timetables for carbon reduction and electrification are unattainable, unaffordable, and undesirable. Oil, gas, and coal will be essential for the foreseeable future. Wind and solar will always be minor players. And nothing Colorado does will have a significant impact on the planet’s climate.

By Jon Caldara

Many conservatives in Colorado have a visceral distaste for Kyle Clark, the 9News anchor who effortlessly slides between reporter and editorialist. And I can understand their frustration.

Like most in the news media, Clark sees the world along the oppressed-versus-oppressor spectrum, which naturally lends itself to progressive story selections and opinions. As an aside, I dream of the day when news stations have a sizable minority of reporters who see the world along the liberty-versus-coercion spectrum. Trust in media could be restored (I’m glad the Gazette is a leader in this restoration).

But it is not Kyle Clark’s world view that really angers conservatives, after all, Clark’s viewpoint is shared nearly unanimously among those in his industry. Conservatives are pissed Clark has a massive audience who trust him and follows his lead. He is, arguably, the most effective political opinion leader in the state. And that’s a maddening thing if you’re a conservative or libertarian.

But Kyle Clark’s megaphone on occasion blasts out something limited-government advocates, me included, can’t help but be impressed with. Case in point was when he threw the BS flag on Gov. Jared Polis regarding lying about Proposition HH. When Clark said, “Governor, you’re smart, but that doesn’t mean we’re dumb,” it opened the floodgates for an open public examining of HH, which then failed by 20 points.

This week, Kyle Clark might have ended Secretary of State Jena Griswold’s quest to become Colorado’s next governor before it could even officially start by asking her one lethal question: “Given your office’s repeated errors that have damaged confidence in our elections, which you say is paramount, will you resign?”

In case you hadn’t heard, Secretary of State Griswold’s incompetence was on display yet again when her office mistakenly released secret voting system passwords for nearly every county across Colorado. Not only was this information available for months right on the SOS’s official website, but it was also reported she planned to hide this from the public.

Clark mercilessly held Griswold to her own standards, reminding her of her statement condemning the Mesa County Clerk for her leaked voting passcodes, of her notifying voters who had already voted to get out to vote, and of her mailing voter registration material to 30,000 non-citizens.

But it was the question about resigning that changed Jena’s political trajectory.

The reaction on Griswold’s face when he asked it was priceless. Her eyes expressed befuddlement and the sadness only betrayal can bring, as if she was saying “Kyle! How could you do this to me. I, I thought you were one of us.”

For conservatives who have been skewered by Kyle Clark, it was sweet satisfaction. I could hear them all collectively think, “Yeah Jena, that’s what it feels like. 

This was Kyle Clark’s Sister Souljah moment (If you don’t know what that means, go ask your parents).

This was also a wrapped gift to AG Phil Weiser. In fact, it might be the largest contribution to his almost certain gubernatorial campaign, because it puts an anvil around Jena’s neck. She is his most likely primary opponent.

By the way, AG stands for Aspiring Governor.

Just like saying of Polis about Prop HH, “We’re not dumb,” opened the door to real scrutiny of the sly tax hike, Kyle’s “will you resign?” now makes it a fair question for any opponent, reporter, or citizen to ask. And they will ask until Griswold drops out of the race for governor or loses.

Like the recent report exposing Denver’s fire chief and his top deputies abusing comp-pay time to pocket tens of thousands of dollars in extra pay and benefits, this Griswold hot potato has the aroma of an inside whistleblower.

And, as a sign of encouragement, this whole episode could signal the news media is ready to report on the biggest story not told in Colorado politics: the growing civil war inside the Democratic party ranks.

Given their proclivities, Colorado’s reporters have instead focused on the delightful dysfunction of the state GOP. One could hardly blame them, it’s such an easy target. But it is reporting on the completely irrelevant. The super minority and shrinking GOP is a non-factor in government.

Kyle Clark may have signaled it’s OK to investigate and report on those in power in Colorado — even if they are progressives.

By Jon Caldara

Tired of all the traffic? Tough. The central planners in charge command it only get worse at an exponential rate.

The reason our roads suck is money that could fix and expand them goes to transit which relatively no one uses. U.S. Census data shows only 4% of Denver’s commuting population uses transit.

Remember that number — 4%.

Yet, in the Denver metro area, almost all “transportation” dollars go to transit. The Regional Transportation District’s (RTD) failed FasTracks scam spent more than $7 billion at a time when all the highway needs statewide were around $9 billion. We could have fulfilled nearly all of the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) wish list for the entire state with what we spent on one choo-choo train boondoggle.

Next time you’re stuck in traffic, don’t get angry at the car in front of you. Get angry at the rarely used railroad tracks next to you. That’s where your road money went.

Central planners are wed to the three-century-old technology of trains for one simple reason: empire building. No one can compete with them on tracks no one else can use. Monopoly never goes out of style.

RTD just released a study on its stillborn train line from Longmont to Denver, promised since 2004. Their conclusion? It cannot be done unless voters are conned into more taxes, likely in the form of the “Front Range Train” system.

This means taxpayers would have to pay three times to fulfill RTD’s single promise of train tracks.

Most of us still remember RTD’s 2004 pledge of FasTracks being completed by 2017, and at half the current price. They don’t want us to remember that. This traumatic memory of theft will be the major obstacle in their quest to soak us for a Front Range rail system from Fort Collins to Pueblo.

So, expect a flurry of lip service about making the Longmont-Denver line a reality soon. How soon? Real soon, trust us, just approve this tax for a statewide system.

And what will Longmont get? Nothing close to what they were promised. According to RTD’s recent report, the best they can do would be to send three little one-way trains down to Denver in the morning and the same three back to Longmont in the evening carrying a mere one-tenth of what they promised in 2004.

You notice I said this would be the third promise to build out a system. Like Holocaust deniers, RTD and their cronies pretend the 1971 tax increase that committed to build 128 miles of rail by 1980 never existed. And bless the media for keeping it hidden.

Yes, you are still paying for that 1971 promise, a half-cent-a-dollar sales tax (which was to be cut in half in 1980 but wasn’t) and later increased to six-tenths of a cent. Add to that the 2004 Fastracks increase to a full penny per dollar, and you get one of the well-funded transit agencies in the nation.

But it’s even worse. Much worse. To “cut greenhouse gas emissions,” Colorado’s Department of Transportation is planning to suck even more money out of your roads to shower on transit people mostly don’t ride.

In an August 2021 rulemaking memo, CDOT says, “it is estimated that between a quarter and a third of resources will need to be shifted towards transportation projects that have air quality mitigation benefits — as well as other societal co-benefits — in order to achieve the targets set in the rule.”

CDOT plans to siphon 28% of the state’s road funding to multi-modal transport (read choo-choo trains and bike paths) by 2031.

So, the goal is to have a third of our road money stolen for transit that carries, at most, 4% of commuters. This isn’t bad policy. This is mobility malfeasance.

Of course, if we really cared about air quality, we would work on getting cars moving since stop-and-go traffic produces the most air pollution.

May I suggest a different guiding principle altogether. Every marginal transportation dollar must go to the project that reduces auto traffic the most. That’s it. Judge every dollar spent on how much it cuts car traffic.

If using 200-year-old train technology or a bike path reduces traffic more than new toll lanes or general-purpose lanes, then go for it. If not, stop robbing us for unicorn projects and stop robbing our time in traffic jams.

By Mike Rosen

In my last column, I debunked the claim that the rich don’t pay their fair share of the taxes. A reader’s online comment grudgingly conceded my point but sidestepped it with a counter argument about unfair income distribution. Had I more space I’d have dealt with that then, so let’s do it here.

The commenter said: “These numbers were telling but how? The top 1% have 2 ½ times the share of income of the bottom 50%. The top half have more than 8 times the share of the bottom half. No wonder half the country wants the federal government to facilitate wealth transfer and better opportunities. Of course, poor schools and big government will not fix this problem, but the income statistics are more troubling than the taxpaying numbers.”

While accurately stating my statistics he was apparently unaware of how income distribution data has been misrepresented by others. When Democrats, Leftists, and media liberals intentionally exaggerate income distribution, they torture the data with misrepresentations of effective income from the top to the bottom. In the report I cited, the IRS uses “adjusted gross income” (AGI), or income before taxes, which is significantly higher than the after-tax income of those in the upper categories. This widens the stated income gap.

Those in the bottom 50% pay very little or nothing in income taxes. (Many who qualify for the Earned Income Tax Credit have no tax bill, but actually get money from the IRS. Strangely, this is called a “refundable tax credit,” even though they had no tax bill to credit.) Most importantly, the AGI of lower-income filers does not include the greatest source of their direct and indirect income. That’s the trillions of dollars of aggregate federal, state and local government spending that flows to them through the cornucopia of “means-tested entitlements” (what used to be called “welfare”). It’s as if none of these programs existed to supplement their income and improve their lives.

One of the biggest programs is Supplemental Security Income (SSI), at almost $70 billion this year, for poor, older adults or people with disabilities who haven’t worked enough to qualify for Social Security. The long list of others includes housing and other subsidies, the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program, or SNAP (formerly called food stamps), student financial assistance, child nutrition and special milk programs, Medicaid and grants to states for Medicaid, children’s health insurance programs, payments to states for child support enforcement and family support, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), low income home energy assistance, payments to states for day care assistance, substance abuse and mental health services, refugee assistance, and many more.

Another misleading nuance in income distribution data is the income life cycle. Young people, including those who live at home with well-to-do parents, file tax returns reporting very low AGI from summer jobs or part-time jobs after school. Also, there are millions of older retirees living in mortgage-free luxury homes with lots of savings and a comfortable lifestyle whose tax returns now misleadingly place them in middle or lower AGI categories.

As for income “disparity” as an offense to social justice ideology, this is the obsession of socialists and Marxists who oppose capitalism, private enterprise, meritocracy, and individual liberty; the very ingredients of America’s historical national wealth and standard of living. Their socialist model is a proven formula for worldwide totalitarianism and poverty. “Parity” means sameness or uniformity. Disparity in incomes is proper and justified if it means that ambitious people who work smarter, harder and responsibly deserve greater economic rewards than slackers and those who demand a “national minimum income” even for no work at all.

Extraordinary inventiveness also merits premium economic rewards. As does exceptional talent. One socialist cliché is that pro athletes are paid much more than teachers whom they believe do a far more important job. Duh, that’s because there are many millions of Americans who have the ability to be a teacher but only a handful with the talent to be an elite quarterback in the NFL. This is economic justice driven by the law of supply and demand. Our government spends most of its budget on social programs with commendable intent but—as measured by its perpetual deficits and soaring national debt—more than we can afford. “Soaking” the rich and successful is a path to economic ruin.

By Jon Caldara

Out of the 14 statewide ballot questions, which by the way ties the record, it’s Proposition 131 that would bring the most political change and disruption with its jungle primaries and ranked-choice voting general elections.

Assuming voter fatigue doesn’t keep voters from reaching this down-ballot issue, it’s the last of the statewide questions, it should pass. This is a prediction not an endorsement.

It will pass because of its more than $15 million in funding, and because there is no effective or funded campaign against it, and generally voters are frustrated with both major parties.

The only area of agreement between the Colorado GOP and the Colorado Democratic Party is that they hate this proposal. That also bodes very well for 131’s passage.

Prop 131 does not create a pure ranked-choice voting system. Instead, it makes a hybrid system where the top four candidates from an open primary move to the general election which is decided by ranked-choice voting.

Democrats hate the proposal because it could challenge their one-party dominance of all three branches of Colorado’s government. Republicans fear that should two Republicans make it to the general election they will cancel each other out, allowing the Democrat to win.

This is arguably what happened in Alaska, as the Republican-heavy state elected a Democrat to represent it in the U.S. Congress. On Nov. 5, voters in Alaska may rescind the very system Colorado is likely to pass.

So, what will Colorado look like under a system where anyone can petition on to a shared primary ballot? Honestly, no one knows. But the thought of it is causing conniptions among Ds and Rs.

Though nowhere near guaranteed, there is a hopeful outcome after 131 passes. It could bring some lucidity back to our state’s progressive government. It all depends on how this system is implemented and utilized.

First, it requires we accept some realities about Colorado many social conservatives refuse to accept. And I’ll keep repeating these realities, even though it’s like trying to convince your drunk uncle he’s an alcoholic. Some Republicans will violently never accept it, to the point of indignantly accusing you of being the alcoholic.

For the next decade or so, Colorado is not going to become an anti-abortion state. It is not going to become an anti-cannabis state. It’s not going to become an anti-gay state. And it will continue to be a very environmentally activist state.

In other words, the Dave Williams type of gay flag-burning, Trump-worshiping, pro-life conservative will continue to turn off swing voters. And despite what that crowd believes, you can’t win by turning off swing voters. Winning elections is about addition, not subtraction.

And should Trump retake the presidency, swing Colorado voters, particularly independent suburban women, will be loath to vote for any Republicans until he is out of office.

But being anti-Trump and pro-choice doesn’t make an unaffiliated voter pro-tax, pro-crime, pro-regulation or woke. And this is where Prop 131 might, might bring some sanity back to Colorado.

Nearly 50% of all Colorado voters are now unaffiliated. And that number is only growing (yet another reason Prop 131 will very likely win). To these independents, the current Democratic party’s version of socialism is distasteful, and the social conservativism of the Republican party is unwelcoming.

So, half of the state’s voters are now politically displaced. Or, to put it in terms NPR listeners can comprehend, half of Colorado is currently experiencing political homelessness.

After 131 becomes law, rural legislative districts should continue to elect Republicans. Urban districts should continue to elect Democrats. It is the swing suburban districts that could see something very different — unaffiliated candidates running and winning.

The system to elect the mayor of Colorado Springs is comparable to what Prop 131 brings with its open jungle primary. For better or worse, as the Springs lost its well-known conservatism, it elected an unaffiliated mayor, Yemi Mololade. It is a sign of what is to come.

Colorado is poised to become the first state where unaffiliated candidates could swing the balance in the legislature. They could work with rural Republicans to lower taxes and regulations and increase penalties for crime, while joining urban Democrats to defend social issues.

At least that’s my hope. Either way, unaffiliated candidates will run and will win.

By Pam Benigno

Beginning this fall, Colorado’s first and second graders might learn about the story behind Harvey Milk’s gay pride flag, while down the hallway, third graders learn about California’s failed 1978 ban on lesbian and gay teachers, Milk’s death, and his murderer’s controversial sentencing.

Teachers now have access to new state-provided sexually based educational resources to teach students about the history, culture, and social contributions of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals to meet the state’s revised social studies academic standards. Using the state’s teaching materials is optional; the subject matter and developing a resource bank was required by House Bill 19-1192.

Colorado law does not allow comprehensive human sexuality education to be taught until fourth grade. Yet, majorities in the state legislature and the Colorado State Board of Education determined that teachers must introduce sexual orientation and gender identity to children as young as first grade during social studies classes.

School districts don’t have to offer comprehensive human sexuality education, but if they do, they must provide parents with the course content and written notification of their right to excuse their children from the lessons. Even so, there is no required parental notification of sexually based topics or the opportunity to opt children out of social studies. Parents are best suited to decide when their children are mature enough to discuss such topics. They should be alerted as social studies units may expose young children to weighty and complex topics.

Examining some LGBTQ resources for first grade makes one wonder what questions curious six-year-olds will ask their trusted teachers as they try to grasp the meaning of a photo of a man clad in a rainbow costume during a Gay Pride Parade, an article about Governor Polis being the country’s first openly gay elected governor, a video of a teacher telling the children that sometimes boys love boys and girls love girls before reading a storybook about Harvey Milk’s Gay Pride Flag, and a book about Pete Buttigieg, the first openly gay Democratic presidential candidate. More concerning is how teachers will answer the questions during the discussions.

According to Colorado’s academic standards, first-grade students are expected to explain how diverse perspectives and traditions of families from many cultures have shaped the United States. In addition, they are to identify and explain how the significance of notable people and places, holidays, and civic symbols reflect the origins and values of the government and its citizens. Students demonstrate their knowledge through several outcomes, including:

• Discuss common and unique characteristics of different cultures, including African American, Latino, Asian American, Hawaiian/Pacific Islanders, Indigenous Peoples, LGBTQ, and religious minorities, using multiple sources of information.
• Identify and explain the relevance of notable civic leaders from different community groups, including African American, Latino, Asian American, Hawaiian/Pacific Islander, Indigenous Peoples, LGBTQ, and religious minorities.
• Identify and explain the meaning of various civic symbols important to diverse community groups. For example: The American flag, the National Anthem, Statue of Liberty, Mount Rushmore, Crazy Horse Memorial, Liberty Bell, Emancipation Proclamation, a yellow sash (i.e., for women’s rights), tribal flags of Native Nations whose ancestral homelands include present-day Colorado, LGBTQ Pride Flag, and the Colorado Flag.

Parents generally don’t have time to read the state academic standards, but educators might suggest they read the “Community and Family Guides,” which summarize the standards. Nonetheless, guides for the first and second grades don’t disclose to parents that their children will learn about the history and contributions of LGBTQ individuals.  This omission is disingenuous and leaves parents of first- and second-grade children in the dark. The third-grade guide is more forthcoming.

The state’s third-grade resources are another example of age inappropriateness. Eight-year-olds learn about Harvey Milk’s successful effort to defeat California’s 1978 Proposition 6, an initiative to require the firing of lesbian and gay teachers. Milk was murdered soon after the election. The third-grade resources include an audio recording of interviews from people who were attending Milk’s memorial service, as well as audio from discussions about his murderer’s jury trial and the controversial verdict.

Before the Colorado State Board of Education could adopt the new proposed standards, they underwent the typical public feedback process. Never had the Colorado Department of Education dealt with thousands of statements from the public about proposed academic standards. Emotions ran high from both those in support and against the recommendations.

In the state board’s final action, the Democrat majority voted to disregard parents’ pleas to at least hold off until fourth grade to introduce their children to sexual topics, a logical request based on existing health education law.

Informed parents who disagree with the state’s overreach are now burdened with uncomfortable conversations with their children’s teachers about what will be taught in social studies class. Unfortunately, most elementary school parents don’t know what’s included in academic standards, let alone the state’s new contentious LGBTQ social studies resources.

In today’s culture, there is significant disagreement about what is an age-appropriate topic for elementary children. Be that as it may, cultural shifts should not nullify parents’ instinctive discernment of their children’s cognitive and emotional maturity and should be respected by policymakers.

By Jon Caldara

I urge people to vote against retaining judges in Colorado. Yes, all of them.

We do not directly elect judges as other states do, where Republican and Democrat candidates face off. Instead, the governor appoints the state’s judges after a nominating committee brings him two or three to choose from. The only check and balance we meaningless citizens have is to vote thumbs up or down on their retention every so often. Every so often can be as long as a decade.

The problem is seemingly 99.9% of the time the judges are all retained, usually with around a two-third vote in favor. It’s a rubber stamp, not accountability.

I vote no on all judges in the hopes at some point these retention elections might become competitive, and judges must defend their rulings to we simpletons, the voting public.

If you’re like me and believe Colorado courts are too progressive and judges prefer to rewrite law rather than interpret it, there is a fair opposite argument to instead vote yes on retaining all judges. The logic goes like this: If you are somehow successful in kicking a judge out, it means Gov. Jared Polis will just choose a more progressive replacement.

I find this argument unconvincing for the simple reason judges almost never, ever lose their retention votes. Furthermore, if a couple judges did lose their seats, it could shock complacent judges into better rulings.

In my Blue Book this year I found the various commissions on judicial performance again said that every judge I get to vote on “meets performance standards.” Like children in the mythical Lake Wobegon, all Colorado judges are above average.

Convenient then that many of the members of this commissions on judicial performance are appointed — in a glaring conflict of interest — by the Colorado Supreme Court.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could appoint the person who reviews your work performance?!

Additionally, they only review the superficial aspects of a judge’s job. Does he run a nice courtroom? Does he move his cases along well? Is he polite to those who come in front of him? Is he nice to kittens?

None of this says anything about his judicial philosophy, how he reads our laws and constitution. Jimmy Carter was an exceedingly nice and polite president. But his policy decisions were why people voted against his reelection.

But this year, voting “no” is more than trying to make a point, especially with the Colorado Supreme Court justices.

Our Colorado Supreme Court has been self-serving in its lack of transparency and lack of discipline. Gazette reporter David Migoya did the work the Supreme Court justices failed to do when he broke the story of the high court’s pay-for-silence scandal. That is, he made it public and transparent. But that was the court’s job!

Migoya broke the scandal in early 2021. The allegation is the court offered a $2.5 million contract to Mindy Masias, from the State Court Administrator’s Office, to prevent her from disclosing financial irregularities, sexual harassment and other inappropriate behaviors within the judiciary.

The court knew about the allegations in 2019 but didn’t openly acknowledge it until two years later, when the story broke. And who appoints many of the people to the Colorado Commission on Judicial Discipline, which was created to investigate such allegations? You got it, the Colorado Supreme Court.

Though not nearly as serious it certainly has echoes of the Catholic Church scandals of sexual abuse. This is what happens when an untouchable organization polices themselves. And, though the church is a private organization, and we don’t vote on bishops, some of us still believe the government is of the people.

If you don’t vote against all judges, you should at least vote against the Supreme Court justices up for retention. And like some, I said “some,” in the Catholic Church, Justices Brian Boatright, Monica Marquez and Maria Berkenkotter were aware of the scandal and failed in their responsibility to report the judicial misconduct as required.

Isn’t it nifty then that, as per the Blue Book, everyone, every single freakin’ person who voted on the State Judicial Performance Commission agreed all three justices “meet performance standards”? No dissent.

Our system of evaluating, retaining, investigating and disciplining Colorado judges is an incestuous, unethical ugly mess.

By Dennis Maes

In October, Colorado voters will be receiving their blue book, the guide to the 2024 statewide ballot issues. Included in the book will be a report on the justices and judges standing for retention. The reports are generated by commissions designed to provide information to the electorate about the judicial officer standing for retention. But voters will find that much is missing.

Judicial officers are evaluated on the following criteria: Integrity, legal knowledge, communication skills, judicial temperament, administrative performance, and service to the legal profession and the public designed to educate and improve the legal system

What will be missing from the report is any semblance of impartiality, displaying the commissions’ desire to protect the secrets judges keep as opposed to providing balanced and accurate reporting from which voters can make an informed decision. For example, Colorado voters will not receive any information on the 120 judges who failed to comply with the financial disclosure laws or the numerous scandals engaged in by the Colorado Supreme Court, and specifically by ex-Chief Justice Brian Boatright concerning the $2.5 million pay for silence scandal that rocked the judicial system at its core and its murky aftermath.

Supreme Court justices Brian Boatright, Monica Marquez and Maria Berkenkotter are asking the voters to permit them to continue to deceive the public for the next ten years. The unequivocal response should be NO for the reasons discussed below. Because the supreme court insists on protecting its own and is unwilling to fully and transparently address judicial misconduct it is necessary for the voters to assume that responsibility by removing these three justices.

The case against retention

The performance commission gave the three justices glowing recommendations with nary a hint of wrongdoing during their tenure. Because the state commission was derelict in providing a balanced report upon which the electorate could make an informed decision, certain behavior, particularly by Boatright must be addressed.

A bombshell report by David Migoya of the Denver Gazette in early 2021 disclosed the Colorado Supreme Court engaged, as early as 2019, in a “pay for silence” scandal that initially had then Chief Justice Ben Coats offering a $2.5 million contract to a high-ranking administrator in the State Court Administrator Office to keep her silent about various judicial officer complaints that were swept under the rug. The administrator at the time was also facing dismissal over alleged financial irregularities. The contract was withdrawn once the story broke.

The reporting originated from a memo alleging judicial misconduct that was was known by the justices 2 years before it became public in December 2022, although the Supreme Court previously told the public they first saw it on or about February 2021.

A subsequent investigation led to disciplinary action taken against Chief Justice Coats for his failure to properly administer the department and poor judgment. The first and only time a justice has been disciplined in the history of the Colorado Supreme Court.

So why is it suggested Boatright, Marquez and Berkenkotter should not be returned to the Supreme Court? Because they were aware of the scandal and failed in their responsibility to report judicial misconduct to the Colorado Commission on Judicial Discipline (CJD) as required. Subsequent reporting provided additional evidence of cover-ups by them in the aftermath of the Masias pay for silence debacle. Recall that the initial criterion in evaluating a judge is integrity, which includes avoiding impropriety or the appearance of impropriety. Failing to address and acknowledge judicial misconduct particularly when it concerns allegations of sexual harassment, emotional harassment and intemperance is unacceptable under any circumstances, but rises to the highest level when condoned by the leaders of the institution.

The report compliments Chief Justice Boatright on his contributions to the judicial system but failed to provide any information on the unprecedented turmoil which occurred during his time as Chief Justice.

In Boatright’s State of the Judiciary speech on February 18, 2021, addressing the scandal, he said, “Where there is wrongdoing, we will address it. Where there was an abuse of power, we will stop it. Where our policies are deficient, we will change them. We want to know the truth. We recognize the branch faces a crisis of confidence in the leadership.”

Here’s what occurred subsequent to Boatright’s promises.

A failure of leadership

Contrary to the requirement that judicial misconduct be reported to the CJD, Boatright promised to have misconduct reported directly to him. Yet, further investigation revealed that there were several other instances of judicial misconduct involving sexual harassment, employee harassment, harassing whistleblowers and alcohol concerns that were known by the leadership but were not acted upon until made public through newspaper reporting.

Not included in the narrative was that a bi-partisan committee of the Colorado legislature (Legislative Interim Committee on Judicial Discipline) was convened to further investigate the troubling reports which were exposing the extent of the scandal. It was the investigation that propelled Boatright to make changes. The committee recommended changes to the judicial discipline system which will be on the 2024 ballot.

Additionally, Boatright commissioned two “independent” investigations to look into judicial misconduct and workplace concerns at a cost of $350,000, paid for by the taxpayers. Upon inspection the reports could hardly be defined as “independent.” Several key witnesses were unable to provide critical testimony because financial settlements they entered with the judicial department required them to sign non-disclosure agreements prohibiting them from commenting.

Boatright was also instrumental in blocking two investigations. First, he withheld relevant files from the Denver District Attorney who was investigating potentially criminal behavior. The delay prohibited the DA from a full investigation in a timely manner, resulting in the termination of the investigation because the relevant statutes of limitation had expired. Second, he ignored requests from the judicial commission for information which was needed to get to the truth of the matter. Mind you, the two “independent” investigators had virtually unfettered access to information needed from the Supreme Court. The behavior violated the requirement that judicial officers have a duty to fulfill their administrative responsibilities by being attentive to, and exercising control, over judicial proceedings. It should have been obvious that the numerous allegations could potentially lead to criminal, civil, and/or disciplinary litigation.

Boatright also chose to comment on the veracity and character of certain individuals who chose to provide damaging information to the public surrounding the scandal. Additionally, Boatright professed the absence of wrong-doing by certain judicial employees including then Chief Justice Coats before a complete investigation had been conducted. Integrity includes an examination of the judicial officer’s ability to be fair and impartial. It appears Boatright’s evaluation should have at least minimally commented on that point.

In the interest of transparency, I filed a complaint with the CJD against Boatright alleging, among other violations, that he violated Canon Rule 2.10(A) which provides a judge “shall not make any public statement that might reasonably be expected to affect the outcome or impair the fairness of a matter pending or impending in any court, or make any nonpublic statement that might interfere with a fair trial or proceeding.”

The CJD responded to my complaint, which they had initially ruled worthy of investigation. A letter to me dated June 11, 2024, reads as follows “Your allegation that Chief Justice Boatright violated Canon Rule 2.10(A) (regarding alleged inappropriate public comments) has also been dismissed, but with an expression of concern, per Colo. RJD 35(a). In short, the Commission has determined that the allegations in the complaint did not warrant discipline.”

There was no further explanation of the meaning of “with an expression of concern.” Like the discipline commission, the Judicial Performance Commission skirted its responsibility to fully report on matters that were widely known concerning Boatright’s involvement in the scandal and ignored even a hint of addressing the misconduct in a thorough and professional manner.

Retaliation

Boatright and Jessica Yates, Executive Director of the Office of Attorney Regulation Counsel (OARC), an arm of the Supreme Court, actively engaged in retaliatory actions against those who were most critical and vocal of the Supreme Court’s obstruction of the investigation into the scandal.

Judge David Prince was Vice-Chair and a vocal critic of the Boatright court’s obstruction of the judicial commission in the search for the truth concerning the scandal and other instances of judicial misconduct which were also ignored by Boatright. Prince served on the CJD at the pleasure of Chief Justice Boatright. Boatright refused to re-appoint Prince to the CJD on June 30, 2023. A clear act of retaliation and one unbecoming a justice who is charged with being fair and impartial.

Christopher Gregory, the previous Executive Director of the CJD was relieved of his duties in early March 2023. His ouster occurred within days of informing legislators that the CJD was investigating more than 70 judges for allegedly violating laws requiring them to file financial...]]>Don’t reward judicial misconduct in November

By Dennis Maes

In October, Colorado voters will be receiving their blue book, the guide to the 2024 statewide ballot issues. Included in the book will be a report on the justices and judges standing for retention. The reports are generated by commissions designed to provide information to the electorate about the judicial officer standing for retention. But voters will find that much is missing.

Judicial officers are evaluated on the following criteria: Integrity, legal knowledge, communication skills, judicial temperament, administrative performance, and service to the legal profession and the public designed to educate and improve the legal system

What will be missing from the report is any semblance of impartiality, displaying the commissions’ desire to protect the secrets judges keep as opposed to providing balanced and accurate reporting from which voters can make an informed decision. For example, Colorado voters will not receive any information on the 120 judges who failed to comply with the financial disclosure laws or the numerous scandals engaged in by the Colorado Supreme Court, and specifically by ex-Chief Justice Brian Boatright concerning the $2.5 million pay for silence scandal that rocked the judicial system at its core and its murky aftermath.

Supreme Court justices Brian Boatright, Monica Marquez and Maria Berkenkotter are asking the voters to permit them to continue to deceive the public for the next ten years. The unequivocal response should be NO for the reasons discussed below. Because the supreme court insists on protecting its own and is unwilling to fully and transparently address judicial misconduct it is necessary for the voters to assume that responsibility by removing these three justices.

The case against retention

The performance commission gave the three justices glowing recommendations with nary a hint of wrongdoing during their tenure. Because the state commission was derelict in providing a balanced report upon which the electorate could make an informed decision, certain behavior, particularly by Boatright must be addressed.

A bombshell report by David Migoya of the Denver Gazette in early 2021 disclosed the Colorado Supreme Court engaged, as early as 2019, in a “pay for silence” scandal that initially had then Chief Justice Ben Coats offering a $2.5 million contract to a high-ranking administrator in the State Court Administrator Office to keep her silent about various judicial officer complaints that were swept under the rug. The administrator at the time was also facing dismissal over alleged financial irregularities. The contract was withdrawn once the story broke.

The reporting originated from a memo alleging judicial misconduct that was was known by the justices 2 years before it became public in December 2022, although the Supreme Court previously told the public they first saw it on or about February 2021.

A subsequent investigation led to disciplinary action taken against Chief Justice Coats for his failure to properly administer the department and poor judgment. The first and only time a justice has been disciplined in the history of the Colorado Supreme Court.

So why is it suggested Boatright, Marquez and Berkenkotter should not be returned to the Supreme Court? Because they were aware of the scandal and failed in their responsibility to report judicial misconduct to the Colorado Commission on Judicial Discipline (CJD) as required. Subsequent reporting provided additional evidence of cover-ups by them in the aftermath of the Masias pay for silence debacle. Recall that the initial criterion in evaluating a judge is integrity, which includes avoiding impropriety or the appearance of impropriety. Failing to address and acknowledge judicial misconduct particularly when it concerns allegations of sexual harassment, emotional harassment and intemperance is unacceptable under any circumstances, but rises to the highest level when condoned by the leaders of the institution.

The report compliments Chief Justice Boatright on his contributions to the judicial system but failed to provide any information on the unprecedented turmoil which occurred during his time as Chief Justice.

In Boatright’s State of the Judiciary speech on February 18, 2021, addressing the scandal, he said, “Where there is wrongdoing, we will address it. Where there was an abuse of power, we will stop it. Where our policies are deficient, we will change them. We want to know the truth. We recognize the branch faces a crisis of confidence in the leadership.”

Here’s what occurred subsequent to Boatright’s promises.

A failure of leadership

Contrary to the requirement that judicial misconduct be reported to the CJD, Boatright promised to have misconduct reported directly to him. Yet, further investigation revealed that there were several other instances of judicial misconduct involving sexual harassment, employee harassment, harassing whistleblowers and alcohol concerns that were known by the leadership but were not acted upon until made public through newspaper reporting.

Not included in the narrative was that a bi-partisan committee of the Colorado legislature (Legislative Interim Committee on Judicial Discipline) was convened to further investigate the troubling reports which were exposing the extent of the scandal. It was the investigation that propelled Boatright to make changes. The committee recommended changes to the judicial discipline system which will be on the 2024 ballot.

Additionally, Boatright commissioned two “independent” investigations to look into judicial misconduct and workplace concerns at a cost of $350,000, paid for by the taxpayers. Upon inspection the reports could hardly be defined as “independent.” Several key witnesses were unable to provide critical testimony because financial settlements they entered with the judicial department required them to sign non-disclosure agreements prohibiting them from commenting.

Boatright was also instrumental in blocking two investigations. First, he withheld relevant files from the Denver District Attorney who was investigating potentially criminal behavior. The delay prohibited the DA from a full investigation in a timely manner, resulting in the termination of the investigation because the relevant statutes of limitation had expired. Second, he ignored requests from the judicial commission for information which was needed to get to the truth of the matter. Mind you, the two “independent” investigators had virtually unfettered access to information needed from the Supreme Court. The behavior violated the requirement that judicial officers have a duty to fulfill their administrative responsibilities by being attentive to, and exercising control, over judicial proceedings. It should have been obvious that the numerous allegations could potentially lead to criminal, civil, and/or disciplinary litigation.

Boatright also chose to comment on the veracity and character of certain individuals who chose to provide damaging information to the public surrounding the scandal. Additionally, Boatright professed the absence of wrong-doing by certain judicial employees including then Chief Justice Coats before a complete investigation had been conducted. Integrity includes an examination of the judicial officer’s ability to be fair and impartial. It appears Boatright’s evaluation should have at least minimally commented on that point.

In the interest of transparency, I filed a complaint with the CJD against Boatright alleging, among other violations, that he violated Canon Rule 2.10(A) which provides a judge “shall not make any public statement that might reasonably be expected to affect the outcome or impair the fairness of a matter pending or impending in any court, or make any nonpublic statement that might interfere with a fair trial or proceeding.”

The CJD responded to my complaint, which they had initially ruled worthy of investigation. A letter to me dated June 11, 2024, reads as follows “Your allegation that Chief Justice Boatright violated Canon Rule 2.10(A) (regarding alleged inappropriate public comments) has also been dismissed, but with an expression of concern, per Colo. RJD 35(a). In short, the Commission has determined that the allegations in the complaint did not warrant discipline.”

There was no further explanation of the meaning of “with an expression of concern.” Like the discipline commission, the Judicial Performance Commission skirted its responsibility to fully report on matters that were widely known concerning Boatright’s involvement in the scandal and ignored even a hint of addressing the misconduct in a thorough and professional manner.

Retaliation

Boatright and Jessica Yates, Executive Director of the Office of Attorney Regulation Counsel (OARC), an arm of the Supreme Court, actively engaged in retaliatory actions against those who were most critical and vocal of the Supreme Court’s obstruction of the investigation into the scandal.

Judge David Prince was Vice-Chair and a vocal critic of the Boatright court’s obstruction of the judicial commission in the search for the truth concerning the scandal and other instances of judicial misconduct which were also ignored by Boatright. Prince served on the CJD at the pleasure of Chief Justice Boatright. Boatright refused to re-appoint Prince to the CJD on June 30, 2023. A clear act of retaliation and one unbecoming a justice who is charged with being fair and impartial.

Christopher Gregory, the previous Executive Director of the CJD was relieved of his duties in early March 2023. His ouster occurred within days of informing legislators that the CJD was investigating more than 70 judges for allegedly violating laws requiring them to file financial disclosure statements with the secretary of state.

Senator Pete Lee, Chair of the Legislative Interim Committee on Judicial Discipline resigned as Chair because of unfounded allegations of voting fraud. Criminal charges were filed against Lee. The felony charges were dismissed shortly after Lee left the committee on the basis that the charges were filed as a result of false information provided to the prosecutor by OARC.

Jessica Yates, Executive Director of OARC, an arm of the supreme court, and whose office was responsible for providing the misleading information on Senator Lee, also penned a letter to the lawyers on the CJD and Judge Prince criticizing certain statements made to the interim committee. David Kaplan, attorney for the CJD, denied the allegations and characterized Yates’ statement as a threat to the CJD having a chilling effect on anyone asked to testify before the legislature. To date it is unknown if the people from OARC who leaked the false information were ever disciplined for the egregious action taken against a person with a history of public service to the State.

The OARC through Yates, a faithful ally to the supreme court, obstructed the CJD investigation by threatening to withhold funds, resources, personnel and even evicting the commission from its quarters. The legislature subsequently removed the OARC from any management over the CJD in direct response to its interference in the investigation.

A rubber stamp

Further evidence that the commissions essentially rubber stamp their approval of judges is the fact that many judges up for retention did not comply with the law requiring them to file financial disclosures every January. Not a single commission commented on the failures of judges to file the disclosure statements, which is important for litigants to determine if a judge has a conflict of interest. In fact, one of the judges who has repeatedly failed to file the disclosure is a member of the CJD who would be responsible for investigating such a violation. While a judge might or should not necessarily be rejected only on the basis of non-filing, the commission should provide the information to the voters to allow them to make their own decision rather than hiding it from them.

It is arguable that the entities charged with ensuring that our judiciary adhere to and robustly support a sincere respect for the rule of law and equal treatment under the law can no longer be trusted. It is up to the electorate to demand that no one, including judges, are above the law. The first step is ridding the courts of judges like Boatright, Marquez and Berkenkotter who do not believe the law applies to them.

For further information concerning judicial misconduct and discipline see ColoradoJudges.org

By Mike Rosen

It’s an election year and Democrats are, as usual, outbidding Republicans with unlimited giveaways to the masses. How will they finance this when the national debt already tops $35 trillion and federal spending is projected to exceed revenues by $2 trillion this fiscal year? By “soaking the rich,” of course. On the campaign trail Kamala Harris and Tim Waltz repeatedly recite the Democrat mantra, “the rich don’t pay their fair share of the taxes,” but never say what that fair share is.

The Statistics on Income Division of the Internal Revenue Service issues a report, Publication 1304, each year on who makes what and who pays what in federal income taxes. Its most recent report was issued in April 2024 based on individual income tax returns for 2021. The results are displayed in Figure 1.

Of total individual income taxes on 153 million tax returns filed in 2021, the top 1% numbered 1.5 million filers whose adjusted gross income (AGI) exceeded $662,577. That group earned 26.3% of all national income and paid fully 45.8% of all income taxes. The top 5%, 7.6 million filers with AGI above $252,840, earned 42% of all national income and paid 65.6% of all income taxes. Those in the bottom 50%, 76 million filers whose AGI is below $46,637, paid only 2.3% of all national income taxes. (Incidentally, those in the bottom 47% paid 0%.) When you view all the groupings displayed, make your own judgment about “fairness.”

Figure 1: 2021 income versus tax share. Click to enlarge

The top 1%, of course, includes Elon Musk and other captains of industry, but the entry level of only $662,000 leaves ample room for mere millionaires like entertainers, actors, pro athletes, media personalities, lawyers, politicians, etc.

This IRS report appropriately isolates income taxes. Democrats like to confuse the issue by lumping income taxes together with Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes. But payroll taxpayers specifically derive the benefits of those programs. Income taxes are directed at everyone and everything else in general. And income tax rates directly affect incentives and disincentives for work and investment. The reason Social Security taxes are capped above a certain income level is not as a favor to the rich, but because their benefits are similarly capped. (Moreover, Social Security is a lousy mandatory investment for upper-income taxpayers given their alternatives.)

Tax rate cuts don’t necessarily lead to reductions in tax revenues. In 1981, when the top marginal tax rate was 70%, the top one percent’s share of the national income tax burden was 17%. Ronald Reagan’s tax rate cuts for all stimulated an economic boom that increased total tax revenues. When the top marginal rate was lowered to 28%, it led the rich to abandon less profitable tax-sheltered investments and expose more of their income to taxation of more profitable ventures, with a consequent increase in their share of the national income tax burden. In the 1990s, Bill Clinton’s capital gains tax rate cut also produced higher revenues. George W. Bush’s and Donald Trump’s tax rate cuts for every one had the same effect. Thanks to a marginal tax rate (which is now 37%), much lower than to 70% rate in 1981, the top one percent’s share of the national income tax burden has continued to grow from 17% in 1981 to 45.8% in 2021 (see Figure 2).

Figure 2: Income tax burden 1981-21. Click to enlarge

The same dynamic explains why retail stores lower their prices as an incentive to shoppers in big holiday sales. The increased volume leads to higher profits. In a market economy incentives matter, a concept progressive Democrats just don’t get.

Kamala Harris has proposed a tax on “unrealized capital gains,” the latest socialist brainstorm. For example, if you invest $50,000 to buy 1,000 shares of a stock at $50 a share and it goes to $100, your holdings are now worth $100,000 including the capital gain of $50,000. At year-end, you’d be taxed on that $50,000 capital gain even though you haven’t sold the stock nor received any proceeds. If the price drops back to $50 the next year, you’d be poorer than you started.

This tax can be expanded to “unrealized increases” in the value of your home, gold, unimproved land, artwork on your walls, and your Mickey Mantle rookie baseball card. Socialism has no limits. This is absurd.

Kamala and her fellow socialist Democrats are itching for a wealth tax. On your annual income tax forms you’d also be required to detail your wealth and net worth. IRS will add another 50,000 agents to audit everyone. Then they’d take a percentage of your life savings each year until it’s gone or you’re dead. It’s fairer that way, isn’t it?

By Jon Caldara

“350 Colorado” is an anti-fossil fuels organization which lobbies to end the state’s oil and gas industry. They organize anti-energy zealots to march, protest and pressure lawmakers. Proud of their role in civil disobedience during Colorado Oil and Gas Commission hearings, they take credit for helping pass the “strictest anti-fracking regulations in the state.” Blah, blah, blah.

One tiny little thing here: you are coerced through your taxes to fund their lobbying to make your energy bills skyrocket.

In gambling there is a term, “playing with the house’s money.” In politics it’s “playing with your opponents’ money.” Your tax money is used to influence policy that hurts your own interests.

In case you hadn’t noticed, the push to all renewable energy is making your utility bills explode. New environmental building regulations are increasing home costs. And you’re paying more at the gas pump.

350 Colorado gets about $900,000 in tax-deductible donations, and their tax forms show a sizable percentage then goes to direct lobbying. Good to know they got $173,700 from the Environmental Justice Grant Program administered by your state Office of Environmental Justice.

In other news, Colorado has an Office of Environmental Justice, and they give away your money.

Their mission? To work with alt-left groups to lobby government to terminate energy choice and affordable energy in Colorado.

Now if you sympathize with the anti-energy crowd, then funding outside lobbying groups with tax money might sound dandy. For consistency’s sake I assume you are supportive of government giving lobbying money to fossil fuel groups when a different team is in charge.

Remember when we demanded ethics in government? Remember when the media would work to uncover behavior like this?

The Office of Environmental Justice also gave a $143,100 grant to Green House Connection Center, which pairs “the arts and activism with healing, connection, education and transformation” as they “develop climate solutions with lasting environmental and social benefits.”

Their founder also works for the alt-left extremist group Colorado Rising, which calls itself “Oil and gas’s chief adversary.”

Another grant of $217,193 went to Urban Symbiosis. They “are focused on building a fair ecosystem and food system.” Their latest tax filing showed they brought in only $118,000 of revenue, meaning your recent gift to them tripled the size of their budget. I’m sure you got a thank-you card.

You can be comforted knowing all your coerced funding of lobbying and community organizing is under the banner of “environmental justice,” if only that was definable. But like pornography, you’re supposed to know it when you see it.

The state goes to great lengths to describe this very sloppy term. Cutting through all the bureaucratic fluff and choruses of woke-speak, you’ll find “environmental justice” sits atop the pinnacle of identity politics. The goal? To split our communities into smaller and smaller boxes and organize them to work for socialistic causes.

Think of it as the Victim- Olympics. The more political identity boxes you can check, the more you’ve been oppressed, the more government you’re told you need.

You pay the Office of Environmental Justice to give aid to “disproportionately impacted communities,” which then requires even more definitions.

The office goes on to explain “disproportionately impacted communities” include (I can’t make up this wokespeak): low-income communities, communities of color, housing-burdened communities, linguistically isolated communities (love that one), historically marginalized communities, communities with environmental and socioeconomic impacts, tribal lands and mobile home communities.

Wouldn’t “poor people who have a hard time paying their energy bills,” be an easier definition without the blatant racism?

And if the crazy part isn’t obvious, under the disguise of trying to help the poor, via environmental justice, your government elitists are working to make energy prices explode, which disproportionately hurts (check notes)… the poor.

They exploit the financially vulnerable to lobby for unworkable renewable energy policies that will in turn devastate the financially vulnerable … all with your money.

Of course, using taxpayer money to promote one constituency’s political goal over others is unethical. But this is so much more.

This is beyond evil. Encouraging people to see themselves as victims and then use those newly identified victims to lobby for laws that will hurt those very same people, well, that is sick. Something so ugly only government could do it.

By Jon Caldara

Being gay but not holding a liberal opinion makes you a hate group.

It’s fine to be part of the LGBTQIA+ crowd in Colorado. In fact, you’ll be celebrated, and, if you wish, officially honored with a flag that has flown over the Capitol.

However, if you’re part of the LGBTQIA+ community but don’t believe small children should be indoctrinated into thinking they were born to the wrong gender, well then, you’re a hater and must be canceled. So says our state government.

According to the state of Colorado, only straights can be against indoctrinating little children to want to mutilate their bodies.

So, being gay but not holding the progressive opinion on one particular issue makes you a hate group. And government may deny you a service everyone else can get, like buying a flag that flew over our Capitol, the people’s building, owned by all (except those gays who are so perverted they don’t like convincing kids they’re in the wrong bodies).