Freedom Unaffiliated

The recent strike by unionized public school teachers in the Sheridan School District finally ended after 28 days, Colorado’s longest teacher strike in 45 years. Private sector unionized employees have a legal right to strike, but government employees have more restrictions.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

Another week, another column about Colorado’s ruling class treating democracy like a state trooper treats the speed limit. It’s for other people.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 ColoradoTo 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 permis

Alexander Fraser Tytler was a judge, historian and professor of history in Scotland, born in 1747, who observed that, “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, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by dictatorship.”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 largesseIn 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 bala

We the people of Colorado no longer control our own state constitution. I found this out the hard way.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 peopleLike 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’ deniedOver 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 d

DENVER–A Democrat-sponsored Senate bill changing the boundaries of the Front Range Passenger Rail special taxing district passed through its first committee hearing on Monday. The bill excludes certain conservative-leaning communities from the district as a tax hike looms for the November ballot.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 excludedWhile 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 bil

DENVER—The Colorado Senate Agriculture Committee on April 22 rejected two of the three appointments made by Governor Polis to the Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) Commission.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 downChris 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 add

The great 20th-century historian Lord Acton said it best: “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”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” an

Obviously, that hasn’t come to pass. There’s little doubt that congressional Democrats who’ve attacked Trump’s every move in this Iran war would be praising a Democrat president who had the foresight and courage to do so on his watch. None did, but if one had, most patriotic Republicans would have surely cheered him on. As for the dominant liberal media, the negative spin in their news stories and commentary about the war have been blatantly dishonest about this overwhelmingly successful campaign. 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

I know this will shock you, but the system is rigged.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 downBut 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-standardAnd h

In 2024, Donald Trump was elected president by 77 million Americans, two million more than voted for Kamala Harris. Republicans also won a majority in the U.S. House and Senate, giving the GOP a federal trifecta and a governing mandate. Democrats had a similar governing mandate during the first two years of both the Obama and Biden administrations.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 ICEA 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 Repub

Politics is a game of narrative. Whoever controls the narrative wins.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 fraysTake 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 seasonNarratives 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 other

This is a selfish column. The legislature is about to hurt my disabled son.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 MedicaidNot 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 handicap

DENVER–The Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) quarterly oil and gas lease sale in Colorado generated over $8 million, the most successful such sale the federal lands agency has enjoyed in recent years. The BLM, as well as energy policy experts credit the successful lease sale in large part to the Trump administration’s pro-energy production policies.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

Governor Jared Polis on April 6 signed Senate Bill 26-004, dramatically expanding those eligible to petition courts to confiscate guns under Colorado’s “red flag” law.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 expansionSenate 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 v

Though most of us celebrate “No Kings Day” on July 4, the Trump-deranged got a head start last weekend with rallies around the state.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 kingsWhat’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 el

Obviously, the outcome of the war with Iran remains to be seen. The best outcome is a US military victory followed by regime change freeing Iranians from the tyranny of their government. With that may come a more peaceful and stable Middle East removing the existential danger of nuclear weapons in the hands of religious fanatics who have plagued the region for the last 47 years. 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 ev

Years ago, I interviewed a Canadian health-care broker whose job was helping his countrymen escape their own failing system.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 WyomingWhich 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</strong

I’ve lived in Colorado since 1970. And you know what Colorado had back in 1970? High winds blowing down the Front Range.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 modificationApparently 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 subpo

The governor and progressive Democrats that dominate the state legislature and every statewide office in Colorado have been masterful ― if not ethical and honest ― in devising devious schemes to circumvent the TABOR amendment in the Colorado Constitution. That’s the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, passed by a 1992 voter-initiated ballot measure that bypassed the legislature. It limited government spending and barred the legislature from increasing taxes or imposing new ones without the consent of the voters. Democrats have always despised TABOR.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 BillsNow, 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 TABORTo 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 di

At this point, if you hear beeping downtown, it’s not a construction crew. It’s a company backing out.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, ColoradoWhy 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

This part will disappoint angry people on Twitter: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 setu

It’s worrisome enough that we have to live with the ever-present threat of nuclear war hanging over our head, the fiery extermination of humanity from global warming, a worldwide depression triggered by the U.S. defaulting on its $39 trillion national debt on its way to $50 trillion, to say nothing of an uptick in falls from Denver rent-a-scooters. On top of all that, yet another crisis has descended upon the American public: Donald Trump has ended the minting of our one-cent coin, affectionately known as the penny. Good grief!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

Something strange is happening in Colorado — strange enough that the political class should notice.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 ColoradoColorado 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 memoThere was a time when doctors practiced bloodletting to heal patients. It just hastened their deaths. If the f

A tautology is a needless repetition of an idea using different wording. For example: “Sooner or later the inevitable is bound to happen.” In this case, Bari Weiss is under fire from the stable of leftist, so-called journalists at CBS’s “60 Minutes” program. The rebellion is over a story (in fact, a hit piece), recently scheduled to run, about the Trump administration’s deportation of illegal immigrants to El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement CECOT prison. The story was “spiked” (in journalist lingo: killed or withheld) by Weiss in her capacity as their boss, the new editor-in-chief of CBS News.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 naï

Bicycle lanes in Denver are much more than just a nuisance for motorists, they’re a small but glaring symptom of the radical progressive mentality of Democrats that have grossly mismanaged Denver government in recent years. This is a sad reflection on Denver voters, who have brought this on themselves.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-mobilityThis 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 YorkSure, some people will like that lifestyle. Fine for them. But this isn’t New York City. A great man

I suggest we get used to saying the words, “Governor Weiser.”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 blunderBennet 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 WeiserAnd 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 mat

Should police wear masks? Denver’s city council thinks no — and is even trying to outlaw it for federal agents operating in the city (because if there’s one thing municipal governments do well, it’s bossing around Washington, DC).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 brandMasking 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 sycophantsAnd 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. Thos

The border skirmishes are increasing, and we could be looking at full-blown combat. The simmering civil unrest inside Colorado’s Democratic ranks is heating up, and during this legislative session it might boil over into all-out civil war.If it does, Colorado news media might actually have to interrupt their regularly scheduled Republican-bashing to report on it.Airing dirty laundryInner-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 violenceThe 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

In Colorado, TDS doesn’t stand for “Trump Derangement Syndrome.” It stands for “TABOR Derangement Syndrome.”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 growingInstead, 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 democracyThose 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 rep

Historian Will Durant observed that peace is an unstable equilibrium which can be preserved only by acknowledged supremacy or equal power. War is a constant of human history and human nature and always will be. That’s not cynicism or defeatism, it’s practicality. If you believe otherwise you needn’t read any further, we have an irreconcilable premise.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 Vi

Hang onto your wallet, it’s a Colorado legislative session. And the loneliest person under the Gold Dome is Jared Polis, a governor without a nation.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 eraA 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

Remember during COVID, when the people screaming the loudest for government-mandated jabs were the very same people chanting “my body, my choice” when it came to abortion — I mean, “women’s health care”?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 electionsNow, 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 powerTo 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

“Minnesota and its two largest cities sued the Trump administration on Monday to try to stop an immigration enforcement surge that has led to the fatal shooting of a Minnesota woman by a federal officer and evoked outrage and protests across the country.” That was the first paragraph in a recent Associated Press article which paved the way for yet another biased editorial masquerading as a balanced news story from the notoriously left-wing AP.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 lessonIn 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

Hopefully by the time you're listening to this, the strike of a Telluride ski resort is over, ski patrollers are again joyfully sliding down mountains and getting paid for it, and tourists are once again being overcharged for, well, everything.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.

If you’re a fan of limited government, Tuesday’s election results were a downer.By Jon CaldaraIf 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 m

The Generation Z guide to gainful employmentBy Mike RosenAlthough 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 unemployablesA 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, “Pay

New insider report shows Democrats detached from realityBy Jon CaldaraOutside 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 realityHere’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 f

The worst of the questions voters face on Colorado’s ballotBy Mike RosenOn 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 DenverMoving

Colorado’s policy laboratory now staffed by mad scientistsBy Jon CaldaraFor 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

Jimmy Kimmel can’t hide behind freedom of speechBy Mike RosenJimmy 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 podOver 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

Colorado’s increasing EV subsidies belie ‘budget crisis’ claimsBy Jon CaldaraColorado’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 welfareBut 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 goo

Class warfare on the Colorado ballot in NovemberBy Jon CaldaraEveryone 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 ballotYes, 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 hazardBut 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 ha

Rebellion brews against nanny state in deep blue DenverBy Jon CaldaraOf 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 ballotFortunately, 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 libertaria

‘Trust but verify’ on privately financed Broncos stadiumBy Jon CaldaraOnly 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 detailsThe 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

Teacher unions driving the bus on public school failureBy Mike RosenIn 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 classroomEric 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

The case for armed, trained staff in Colorado schoolsBy Jon CaldaraEnough. 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 awayThe 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 checkActually 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 staffThere 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 organiz

Zohran Mamdani and the ‘democratic socialist’ griftBy Mike RosenZohran 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,

Threats to transgender gun rights unjustly discriminateBy Jon CaldaraThe 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 streetIf 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. Came

Short skirt, high boots expose Dem hypocrisy under gold domeBy Jon CaldaraFashion 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 safeA 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 exposedAgain, 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 ma

Flock cameras help cops, Denver Dems prefer criminalsBy Mike RosenA 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,