Freedom Unaffiliated

By Jon Caldara

Racial discrimination is repugnant. Period.

Our nation has made great strides during our nearly 250 years. And for that we should be proud, not ashamed. Too bad we’ve gone backward with government-sanctioned racial discrimination.

I was born the same year of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, raised with our shared goal of a colorblind society. Martin Luther King Jr. laid out that vision as clearly as John Kennedy set a goal of a man on the moon: to be judged on the content of our character, not the color of our skin.

Today’s identity politics is the most dangerous, hateful and ugly movement since slavery itself. To teach a child she is what the color of her skin is, not who she works to be, pollutes her and condemns her.

The Wall Street Journal recently shed light on this systematic racism at my alma mater, the University of Colorado, Boulder. With a simple open records request researchers found (to no one’s surprise) CU recruits and hires based on race. Those who check the BIPOC box (black, indigenous and people of color) get the benefit of CU’s institutional racism.

Not only is this a blatant violation of the Civil Rights Act, which CU turned a blind eye to, it teaches tens of thousands of students that, to get ahead professionally, they must embrace their victim identity.

I did find one department at CU turned its back to racial parity — athletics.

The Buffaloes head football coach Deion Sanders has brought a new excitement for the first time in a generation. This is likely because winning is more important to him than racial equity. To test this, I perused the team’s website to see how ethnically representative his department is compared to the state. After all, it is Colorado’s flagship university. Shouldn’t it “look” like Colorado?

I mean, in the other departments CU is using the same philosophy of the Los Angeles Fire Department’s Deputy Chief, and race-over-merit enthusiast, Kristine Larson. Defending her race-based hiring, she said, “You want to see someone that responds to your house, to your emergency — whether it’s a medical call or a fire call — that looks like you.”

I know when I had my heart attack my first concern was the racial and gender identity of the medical workers racing to save my life. That’s, that’s just normal.

Likewise, football fans also want to see players who look like them. That’s much more important to fans than anything merit-based, like winning games.

Addressing concerns female firefighters may not be strong enough to carry a man out of a burning building, Ms. Larson responded, “He got himself in the wrong place if I have to carry him out of a fire.”

If physical strength doesn’t matter in life-or-death situations like being trapped in a burning building, then why would it matter on something as trivial as a football game? The University of Colorado’s overpaid elite overlords obviously agree.

And that’s why I expected racial equity on Folsom Field.

Remember, according to the U.S. census, Colorado’s population is roughly 62% white, 12% black, 19% Hispanic and 6% Asian.

Odd, then, that at a cursory glance of the 46 pictured who make up Coach Prime’s staff only 16 appeared to be white. For those who received a Liberal Arts degree from CU, I’ll do the math for you. Only 21% of his staff is white. And only three, around 6%, are female.

The players he recruited also show no racial equity. Of the 99 players on the roster, it looks to me only 28 of them are white. Not to mention the institutionalized sexism CU obviously promotes — not a single chick on the team.

Here’s CU’s separate-but-equal race policy: On the field — use merit. Off the field — use Jim Crow (hire by skin color).

Sensing the political winds of change, CU just renamed its Office of Diversity to the Office of Collaboration. I’m sure those who made the change are equally supportive of President Donald Trump’s renaming of the Gulf of America. CU’s known for intellectual consistency.

There is no “reverse racism,” there is only racism. It’s foul and only made worse when perpetuated by your tax dollars. Oh, and if anyone in the victim-pimping industries care, it’s illegal.

Unless you want CU to force three times more white guys on its football team?

By Jon Caldara

I quit smoking decades ago. I committed to smoking only after sex.

The Food and Drug Administration has officially declared the Denver City Council is working to kill people. This counters the council’s stated fib they want to help people stop smoking.

I know we’ve been over this before. But the timing of the FDA’s action is just too delicious, like a fine cigar, not to spend a moment celebrating it.

If you recall it was mere weeks ago when Denver’s City Council put aside such trifling issues as crime, homeless squalor and tens of thousands of immigrants sucking up city resources to ban the sale of flavored nicotine products.

Instead of focusing on how to keep mentally ill violent criminals behind bars and not running around town stabbing folks, the council banned the sale of products like Zyn, the popular tobacco-free nicotine pouch. We were told this was going to save lives by keeping people away from the evil gateway product that leads to deadly cigarettes.

How very embarrassing, then, that after years of rigorous study, the nation’s Food and Drug Administration has cleared the makers of Zyn to market their product, finding it leads to reducing tobacco use, not increasing it. Oopsie!

Repeat: The national agency whose full-time mission is not fixing potholes, fighting crime or housing homeless fentanyl addicts, but is instead only to study what’s healthy and what’s not, has found flavored nicotine pouches help people get off lethal tobacco, not lead them to it.

Let’s take a moment to remember most all progressives chant the mantra “my body, my choice” when it comes to abortion. This very blue state even voted in the most permissive constitutional abortion amendment in the nation, creating a right to abortion nanoseconds before birth at taxpayer expense.

I’m a pretty simple guy. So, when I hear chants of “my body, my choice,” I’m foolish enough to think those people mean it. Thus, it makes my tiny brain hurt when I see the very same people demanding others get jabbed with COVID vaccines they don’t want. How does that jibe with, “my body, my choice”?

I don’t understand how those who now claim democracy is on the line and fascism is enveloping our nation were the very people who demanded “your papers please” to prove you’ve been vaccinated to enjoy your constitutional right to assemble or travel.

Hell, this is how stupid I am: I don’t know how those who claim “my body, my choice” can ban trans fats, sugary drinks, large drinks like Big Gulps, put sin taxes on consumable products they don’t like and even censor restaurant menus from listing soda products.

It’s almost like their mantra is, “your body, our choice.”

Since the people, like Denver City Council, who are now standing up to fascism are dictatorially controlling what we can put into our own bodies, we can only hope they make the right decisions.

So, what will city council do with the FDA’s findings like, “… due to substantially lower amounts of harmful constituents than cigarettes and most smokeless tobacco products, such as moist snuff and snus, the authorized products (Zyn) pose lower risk of cancer and other serious health conditions than such products”? Again, oopsie!

Or what about, “… that a substantial proportion of adults who use cigarette and/or smokeless tobacco products completely switched to the newly authorized nicotine pouch products.” Again, there’s no tobacco in Zyn. It gets people off tobacco.

But (and I say this with all the same faux passion freedom-hating progressives have), WHAT ABOUT THE CHILDREN!? Well, keep reading from the FDA:

“… the applicant showed these nicotine pouch products have the potential to provide a benefit to adults who smoke cigarettes and/or use other smokeless tobacco products that is sufficient to outweigh the risks of the products, including to youth.”

So now not only does the Denver City Council want adults to keep consuming tobacco products like cigarettes, but they are also actively working to help young people build a cigarette habit.

Isn’t this the definition of child abuse? Seriously, call Child Protective Services and stop city council from shoving lit cigarettes at kid.

And, in other news, to stop the spread of venereal infections, the Denver City Council is banning the sale of condoms which, again, will sadly not affect me.

By Jon Caldara

A warning to the left: obnoxious virtue signaling can be a two-way street.

Denver Mayor Mike Johnston has a nice warm office. So why instead hold a press conference out in the cold on the violence-ridden 16th Street Mall? Well, for image management, of course.

What better way to show how safe and non-stabby the streets of Denver are than a picture of Mayor Johnston calmly standing on those blood-soaked streets, worry free for his own safety.

I could almost see the mayor’s taxpaid, cocky communications expert saying, “I’ve got it mayor! Do a press conference out on the 16th Street Mall and when people see you’re not getting stabbed or accosted it’ll prove how safe you’ve made the city! They’ll love you even more!”

Brilliant! That is, until the mayor himself got accosted during his own press conference.

The image the mayor hoped he gave: “Denver is oh-so-very-safe.” And wouldn’t you feel safe on the 16th Street Mall if you too were virtually glued to a cop as Johnston was with Denver’s chief of police. So, the image the mayor actually gave: “Denver is oh-so-very-safe if you hire a guy to openly carry a gun to protect you.”

While we’re talking about the manipulating use of imagery, can we take a moment to celebrate politicians obnoxiously displaying their deep care for the hard-of-hearing? When giving a speech politicians enjoy hiring, at taxpayer expense, some goofy looking guy performing silent modern dance as sign language.

Please stop bringing mimes playacting epileptic seizures to your press conferences.

Note for the virtue signalers: it’s 2025 and we all have speech-to-text translators in our pockets called smartphones, and we watch closed captioning on all our TV sets. Mayor, do you really think deaf people need to see a Cirque du Soleil performance while you’re talking rather than just reading the instant translation?

We all get it. You’re not doing this for the hard of hearing. You’re doing it so we all think you care about the hard of hearing. But what we really think is, instead of hiring pantomimists to signal how inclusive you are, you could use that money to fix some potholes or hire a cop.

Back to our picture-is-worth-1000-words, Denver-streets-are-safe, crazy-people-won’t-yell-obscenities-at-you, stab-free mayoral press event.

It turns out even next to a cop the mayor wasn’t safe on his own streets as a passerby participated in his own unscripted virtue signaling. The mayor was accosted by a crazed man screaming obscenities at him for making Denver such a dangerous place.

If you haven’t seen the unedited video, you really must. While the mayor and police chief are talking about the butcher knife Elijah Caudill employed on his killing spree, a man looking like he was walking to work (unlike the derelict homeless Denver taxpayers support), and without breaking stride, virtue signaled back to our virtue signaling mayor these polite words: “I saw you at the parade, you fucking coward mayor! Fucking, this is your fault! Crime-loving Democrats are burning this city down! Fucking asshole! You should do your job. The city is burning! People are being butchered! Crime-loving Democrats are terrorists!”

Okay. Maybe he went heavy on some vulgarities (but many people are desensitized to the word “Democrat”), but the man spoke for multitudes. Or should I say, virtue signaled for the rest of us.

Denver has rolled out the welcome mat to attract masses of chemically dependent, mentally unstable homeless people, including Elijah Caudill.

Violent criminal immigrants the mayor and his militia of assault-weapon-toting Highlands mommies will protect from deportation are nestled in the loving arms of sanctuary laws.

And the progressive-controlled state government, concerned more for criminals than the law abiding, have made it nearly impossible to keep dangerous criminals, including Elijah Caudill, behind bars.

The mayor can spout off as many statistics as he likes. But those of us who don’t have bodyguards and cannot legally carry a concealed gun in more and more places, don’t feel safe in Denver. Because we’re not.

Mayor, welcome to what the rest of us deal with all the time — having some stranger violently scream a symphony of F-bombs at you.

But unlike you, since we don’t have bodyguards, we don’t know if they’re going to stab us to death.

By Mike Rosen

In late December, Congress passed stopgap legislation to avert a government shutdown. Of course this is hyperbole, the government doesn’t really shut down. The vast majority of government spending continues to flow, including Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, interest on the national debt, additional spending for disasters and farmers, along with the armed forces, FBI, CIA, and Secret Service still on the job. True, “non-essential government employees” are sent home for a deferred-pay vacation and the Washington Monument is closed to tourists.

A prior pork-loaded stopgap measure was opposed by Republicans, forcing a compromise with spendthrift Democrats that dropped the number of pages from 1,547 to 118. But Democrats refused to budge on a measure supported by Republicans and Trump to suspend the debt ceiling for two years. So, we’ll go through this same charade again when the stopgap agreement expires in March.

If it feels like we’ve seen this show before, you’re right. It dates back to 1917 when Congress passed a law raising the national debt ceiling in order to issue Liberty Bonds to fund World War I. It made sense then. Since then, Congress has raised the ceiling 78 more times, most recently in 2023, for a total winning streak of 79-0.

Following the showmanship of grandstanders from both parties’ extremes, demanding provisions that can’t possibly be passed, a compromise will be made and the debt ceiling will be raised, and the winning streak will surely be extended to 80-0.

It’s time to end this farce and eliminate the statutory debt ceiling altogether. Not because I support limitless spending and a spiraling national debt, but because it doesn’t work. It’s become nothing more than a ceremonial formality, preceded by political theater. The time to reign in runaway spending is at the beginning of the annual budget and appropriations process, not after the money has already been spent or committed. That’s like gorging yourself at a high-priced steak house and refusing to pay the check.

The debt ceiling must always be raised because our government is on a perpetual trajectory of deficit spending, with less money coming into the Treasury than going out. Failure to raise the debt ceiling would cause the U.S. to default on the payment of principal and interest on Treasury bonds as they come due. This would undermine the “full faith and credit” of the United States and bring on an international financial crisis that could lead to a worldwide depression. That’s not a realistic option.

The root of this problem is that federal spending is totally out of control. We’ve had budget deficits in 47 of the last 51 years and they’re now baked in forever. Hiking tax rates would not produce the hoped for revenues and would more likely tank the economy. Besides which, federal spending has exceeded the economy’s tax capacity for decades. Progressive socialists who would “soak the rich” along with corporations and investors would destroy our free market economy, the stated goal of those who proclaim they hate capitalism. In the process, it would drive down our standard of living. But Democrats have no limiting principle when it comes to spending. The rise in government redistribution of income and our cornucopia of social welfare programs have caused the number of net tax receivers to now exceed the number of net taxpayers, and the tidal wave of illegal immigrants has made that imbalance even worse.

Our nation’s 36 trillion-dollar national debt is the cumulative total of historical federal spending in excess of revenues. In 1980, our gross national debt was 31% of GDP. Today, it’s 120% of GDP. That’s higher than it was in World War II when defense spending was 90% of the budget. Today, only 12% goes for defense, while what the government calls “payments for individuals” (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and countless other “entitlement” programs) consumes 70% of the budget. It’s politically impossible to “slash” those programs but somehow, they must be at least restrained and the budget brought into balance. If not, we are on a trajectory to fiscal insolvency.

When Greece went into bankruptcy a decade ago the EU and IMF bailed her out. but no one has the means to bail out the United States.

By Jon Caldara

Why won’t leadership in the Capitol livestream the entire legislature?

In a previous life I was on the Regional Transportation District (RTD) board of directors. This elected position paid a whopping $250 a month, but it did include a free bus pass. And let me tell you, the ladies dig a man with a bus pass.

In 1997 RTD (actually, the bond dealers and contractors who run RTD) were trying to con the voters into a massive tax increase to buy a trolley system so the bond dealers and contractors would make a killing from the boondoggle. The board was split on this idea, with a slight majority bending a knee to their crony overlords.

Denver’s municipal Channel 8 brought forward an interesting proposal: at no cost to RTD they’d televise our board meetings. Awesome.

Given that smaller governments, from town councils to school boards, broadcast their public meetings, this was a no-brainer for RTD, the fourth largest government in the state. Let the people see the people’s business.

The RTD board rejected the proposal. The very same directors who voted “yes” for the tax increase voted “no” to broadcasting their behavior at public meetings.

They knew full well if voters saw the dysfunction and ineptitude of the board, they’d never vote to give these clowns more of their money.

More than a quarter-century later, the very same dynamic plays out with the clown show that is our state legislature.

Colorado is only one of two states that don’t livestream committee meetings.

Colorado is a big freaking state, bigger in land mass than the United Kingdom. If citizens in Durango wish to witness their representatives in action, they must drive 350 miles to do so. This is so far that their soon-to-be-mandated electric vehicles will need to charge overnight somewhere along the route.

When the House or Senate meet in full, in the big chambers, well, that’s streamed live on ColoradoChannel.net. And that’s fine, but that’s not where the real deal-making of governing happens. That happens in committee meetings.

Both chambers have 10 committees each that decide the fate of legislation before it goes to either floor for a vote. Beyond that there are 15 year-round committees and another 14 interim committees. What goes on in these 49 committees constitutes the overwhelming majority of decision making at the Capitol. And you must be in-person if you want to see it.

Let me amend that: Every committee room in the Capitol is equipped with video cameras and large TV monitors. If you wish to testify in one of those committees, assuming they allow testimony, you can sign up to do so online.

Post COVID, we all understand how Zoom works, even our legislators. So, the only way to remotely witness government in action is to give testimony online. Only then can you see the whole thing remotely. But you must testify, and not all meetings have testimony.

This Zoom participation proves live streaming these meetings is just a matter of flipping a switch to make public what only that handful of people online can see now.

Bart Miller, the chairman of the Colorado Channel Authority, the entity created by state government to broadcast video of the House and Senate (but only the big chambers), says they lobbied in vain to let them flip that switch on for years and years and years.

And get this, it doesn’t take a vote of the full House and Senate, they just need the okay from one of those committees they’re not allowed to broadcast on Zoom. The Executive Committee of the Legislative Council is made of legislative leadership — Senate President James Coleman, Speaker of the House Julie McCluskie and the minority and majority leaders of both houses.

If you’re keeping score at home that’s four Democrats and two Republicans (who have no problem flipping the Zoom switch to “public”).

And here’s the cherry on top: since the late 1960s legislative staff must keep an audio recording of all these committee meetings.

Miller tells me his governmental authority would be happy to disband all together and go away if legislative staff flipped the video switches on along with the audio switch they already run.

When was the last time a governmental authority suggested its own demise to throw some sunlight into some of the government’s darkest rooms?

What are they hiding?

By Jon Caldara

Hubris? Arrogance? Disdain? Contempt? What word describes the attitude of the Colorado legislature towards to those who elected them. What explains their actions?

Long time political strategist Eric Sonderman described it to me in three simple words. “Because we can.”

How can senator Chris Hansen run for reelection knowing that as soon as he wins, he’ll resign to take a half-million dollar a year crony job at a power utility? Well, because he can.

How can the governor who campaigned promising to massively cut special interest tax breaks instead create an avalanche of new ones, enough to drain the budget of all TABOR surplus money? Again, because he can.

How can they pass environmental mandates they know full well are unachievable and will economically destroy the state in the name of their virtue signaling? Because they can.

And for God’s sake how can they exempt themselves, and only themselves, from large portions of Colorado’s Open Meetings law? Because they can!

There are over 5,000 governments and special districts throughout Colorado. And none of them, sans one, can have secret meetings to discuss legal changes. None of them, sans one, can pass secret, disappearing electronic messages about public business. Only the legislature has this new, secret-police power of privacy thanks to their recently passed Senate Bill 157, sheepishly signed into law by Jared Polis.

And within weeks after passage lawmakers put their newfound powers of darkness to work. During the summer special session on property taxes, their closed meetings and secret communications made their negotiations opaque. In old school C

hicago political style, we found out what happened after all the deals were cut.

Not insulting enough for you? The new law calls for the executive committee of the legislature to hold a performative meeting to chat about their new dark powers and to take public comment. So, when do they choose to have this meeting? Well of course on one of the darkest days, the one before New Year’s Eve, arguably the most inconvenient time for citizens to involve themselves.

As the perfect way to say goodbye to 2024, I just had to go watch this middle finger to their constituents. Over 30 folks representing a wildly diverse groups shared their anger and disgust of the legislature’s hubris. Not even one of them had a pleasant thing to say about SB-157 and being shut out of watching policy being made.

To put an exclamation point behind their disdain for open government, the prime sponsor of SB-157, House Speaker Julie McCluskie, had the audacity to say she “remains committed to values around transparency and openness,” and that legislature is “doing all we can to facilitate good communication and healthy debate.”

She actually said this crap with a straight face.

“Committed to transparency” when it was her law that ripped it away? “Facilitating good communications and healthy debate” by scheduling the meeting to review her law for the last day of the year? She was like a kid who swears to his parents he didn’t get into the cookie jar yet has crumbs all around his mouth.

Something positive has come out of this insult to open government. It spurred the Independence Institute, which I run, to bring together the most interesting coalition I’ve ever seen, “Team Transparency” if you will.

Our offices serve as the meeting place for a growing lineup of odd bedfellows to design a change to Colorado’s Constitution to not only reverse this law but to empower all Coloradans to witness their government in action.

When I say odd bedfellows, I’m not kidding. The Colorado league of Women Voters has almost religiously taken the opposite side of Independence Institute on issues. But they are active in this effort.

The Colorado Press Association is at the same table hosted by one of their biggest critics, me. The Colorado Broadcaster Association, the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition, alternative news outlets, citizen activists, civil rights attorneys and industry groups are making one of the most diverse and powerful coalitions for open government perhaps in the state’s history.

Our collectively decided mission is difficult but simple. To pass a constitutional amendment guaranteeing that Colorado governments conduct their business in full sunshine.

So, thank you Colorado lawmakers for your offensive overreach to hide public business from the public. Your arrogance was the spark that ignited this effort.

By Mike Rosen

Amendment 80, which would have enshrined school choice as a right in the Colorado Constitution, was defeated on the Colorado ballot in November, although it got 49% of the vote. Had it passed it might have paved the way for private school vouchers throughout Colorado, a movement that’s being adopted by a growing number of other states. That’s precisely why the teachers unions spent lavishly to defeat it here. When it comes up again in Colorado, here are some rebuttals to anti-choice misinformation.

“This will drain money from public schools.” A voucher system doesn’t “defund” public education, like leftists would defund the police, it just redirects the money. Taxpayer dollars earmarked for the education of children would follow the children to a school of their parents’ choice through a voucher equivalent to the current per capita cost per student. Why should government schools have a monopoly on the delivery of publicly funded education? Competition breeds excellence in a market economy and would force public schools to offer a better product to keep parents from joining the exodus. When parents select private or charter schools over poorly performing public schools, the remaining public schools will require fewer teachers, fewer buildings, fewer buses and fewer taxpayer dollars.

“Money would be diverted to religious schools.” So what? Taxpayer dollars can already be used for college tuition at religious schools. You can use military benefits for college to go to Notre Dame or Yeshiva University. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the Establishment Clause of the Constitution is offended only if government favors or discriminates against a particular religion. In a voucher program, the parents are making that choice, not the government.

“This is a subsidy for wealthy parents whose children already attend private schools.” Wealthy parents can already afford to send their kids to private schools. A voucher system can be means-tested on a sliding scale to allow many lower- and middle-income families who can’t afford private schools to elect that option. There are plenty of non-wealthy parents who sacrifice to send their kids to private schools who will benefit from vouchers. Those parents and “wealthy” ones alike have been subsidizing public school districts for years with their taxes while relieving those districts of the cost of educating their kids.

“Some private and charter schools fail.” As well they should. And some companies go out of business. That’s what happens when consumers have choice and an enterprise doesn’t perform to their satisfaction. Successful private and charter schools have long waiting lists. The public school monopoly treats parents as captives, not customers. That’s why too many failing and poor performing public schools that should go out of business continue to squander public resources and underserve students, parents and taxpayers.

“Studies show that private schools and charter schools don’t produce any better academic results than public schools, and parents might make bad choices.” If you like your current public school, stay there but why deny that choice to others? Do you suppose wealthy parents are so foolish as to send their kids to poor performing private schools? There are dueling studies about private/charter school vs. public school performance. The public school establishment, teachers unions and teachers colleges – all in bed together protecting their rice bowl — solicit biased studies to demean the competition. Voucher advocates have their own studies with opposite conclusions. Let’s leave that judgment to individual parents.

In addition to academic rigor and performance, parents with school choice can make their selections on the basis of a school’s values, discipline, pedagogical philosophy, curricula, textbooks, or whether phonics is used to teach reading rather than “look-say.” Parents who prefer basic academics to progressive indoctrination, social engineering, DEI, and wokeness can seek out a school in line with what they want for their kids. Outrageously, two-thirds of public school students now fall short of grade proficiency in reading, and it’s even worse in math.

Many teachers who love students don’t like teachers unions. The unions aren’t welcome in private and charter schools, and the unions hate charters and vouchers for the competition they invite. Remember how unions catered to their members and kept schools closed way too long at the expense of school kids during the pandemic? Teachers unions dominate the public school establishment in Democrat-run cities and states, and the politicians return the favor by resisting charters and flatly blocking private school vouchers. Unions, politics, bureaucracy, and a one-size-fits-all mentality are the cause of our public school quagmire. School choice and vouchers offer a market alternative, the key to rescuing public education.

By Jon Caldara

I am told over and over that the greatest quality reporters can have is curiosity.

Then why aren’t journalists even slightly curious about why they lost their credibility from their customers?

In 1976, 72% of Americans had a “great deal of trust and confidence in the mass media” to report the news “fully, accurately and fairly” according to that year’s Gallup survey. By 2024 that number plummeted to 31%.

Congrats honored members of the press. You’re trusted less than Congress.

Likewise in 1976 a scant 4% of Americans’ trust in the media was “none at all.” Today that number has ballooned to 36%, a nine-fold increase. And those who’s trust and confidence in the media is “none at all” or “not very much,” make up 69% of all Americans.

Hey media, nearly 70% of us don’t trust you! How do you have no curiosity about that?! It seems most journalists have a violent avoidance of the issue altogether.

Do journalists even see they stoke the treacherous polarization that’s exploded like an epidemic? In 1976, 63% of Republicans trusted the media. Today that number is 12%. Come on people, 12%?

Even Independents are on the same trajectory, in 1976 74% trusted the media, today only 27% do. Half of all Colorado voters are now unaffiliated. If reporters are curious about all their industry layoffs, those people used to be customers.

I don’t trust the media because it oozes disdain for me. The message they send me is clear – the way you see the world 

is simply so perverse, we make no effort to even hire people like you.

Like most conservatives and libertarians, I am unwelcome from mainstream media. I used to listen to Colorado Public Radio daily, but their pure scorn for those like me is palpable. What comes out of my cars speakers screams, “your values don’t exist here.” I stopped listening.

The message of their tax-supported broadcasts is not as much “we hate you” as it is “we don’t recognize you exist.”

Oh, it’s not personal. I know a lot of CPR folks and they are good, well-meaning people. But I see the world on a spectrum of liberty-versus-coercion. It’s pretty clear that folks there see the world on a spectrum of oppressed-versus-oppressor. There is a governmental answer to every challenge.

This world view is ubiquitous in mass media. It shows in story selection. Journalists love to claim their professionalism scrubs bias out of a story. Even if true, the stories they choose demonstrate their lack of ideological diversity.

As I have for decades, I continue to suggest a simple exercise to get an indication of newsroom culture. No one’s taken me up.

Coloradans voted about 54% for Biden and 43% for Trump. If newsroom staff was representative of the population they serve, they would vote roughly in the same proportion. So, have a secret ballot in the newsroom to see where news reporters land in comparison to their customers.

I suggested this to the head of CPR news after Trump won the first time. He was aghast and looked at me like I just suggested videotaping his employees making babies.

I was told from three different CPR reporters separately that no one in the newsroom voted for Trump. That’s a bit different than the 46% of Coloradans who did in 2016 and still pay taxes to support public radio.

It’s more telling that when I wrote about CPR’s voting habits, instead of starting a conversation of how to bring some ideological balance to the newsroom, reporters were told to stop talking about who they voted for.

I sat down with Kyle Clark of 9News recently for my show Devil’s Advocate. Love him or hate him he is smart, articulate, takes pride in his work, and is the most influential commentator in the state.

When I asked him how many people in his shop voted for Trump, he too seemed aghast. We don’t talk about such things, he informed me. Why the hell not?

They can proudly tell us the racial and gender ratios of their employees. Might they suspect what their ideological ratio is and simply don’t want to see it proven?

Just as nationally the Democratic party is introspective about their failure, newsrooms should get curious about themselves, and for the same reason.

By Jon Caldara

Let the meaningless battle over mass deportation in Colorado begin.

Watching our cities virtue-signal on immigration is the best free entertainment your tax dollars can buy. The war of words and chest beating is worthy of a reality show.

On one side, you have Denver’s Mayor Mike Johnston playing a modern-day Paul Revere. With those hideous Redcoats marching on Denver, his cry of “ICE is coming” will rally the Highland moms (who apparently cannot be messed with) and his own police force to take up arms to protect the immigrants who are bankrupting his city.

On the other side, you have cities like Castle Rock, those dirty British sympathizers, who have made it clear they welcome the motherland’s ICE agents and will help them scoop up the trespassers.

I hate to burst both bubbles, but there won’t be mass deportations.

My old man used to tell me things are “easy to get into, hard to get out of.” He meant as a warning of going into debt, contracts, business deals and, perhaps most of all, marriage to the wrong person.

There are many political mistakes that are easy to get into and hard to get out of. The welfare and entitlement state, which will bankrupt the country is the perfect example. Throw in Vietnam, Afghanistan and the drug war if you like. President Joe Biden’s dereliction of duty in welcoming more than 10 million migrants as they flood across our border ranks right up there.

Easy to let them in, nearly impossible to get them out.

I assume violent Venezuelan gang members are the exception and most of these immigrants want to be good hardworking additions to our society. Even so, there is something very different compared to the immigrants of the late 1800s and early 1900s. Those immigrants of old, legal or not, came to a land of opportunity that had no governmental safety nets. It was sink or swim. Those who couldn’t swim went back.

The Biden invaders by contrast are given food, shelter, health care, education and, perhaps, voter registration at great costs to every level of government. They, unlike in most other nations, are also given due process. That is not only expensive but painfully, painfully slow.

History questions issues, like whether bottling up the whole naval fleet in Pearl Harbor was a bad strategy. History will have no questions about the buffoonery and absenteeism which let this invasion happen.

There will be deportations. But there won’t be many relative to the millions let in. Enough, though, that the press and progressives will weave a narrative of bulldozers scooping up humans off the street to dump them into overflowing cattle cars.

Likewise, deporters will soon learn large-scale expulsion is an aspiration. The reality will be disappointing. It’s taken nine decades (starting with FDR) to grow this leviathan of bureaucracy. Even Superman Trump can’t reverse it in four years. Courts, activists, intransigent municipalities and endless red tape will grind the process to a snail’s pace.

If all the saber rattling could stop for a moment and if Mayor Johnston’s Highland moms put down their AR-15s, we might see there is a middle ground we all can get behind: deporting violent criminals.

I pity any politician who opposes the deportation of foreigners who have committed violent crimes. They won’t be a politician for long.

That doesn’t mean arresting every jaywalker who happens to have dark skin as the identity politics industrial complex will surely assert. But it does mean no longer releasing violent criminals into the public, but to ICE, instead.

I think this point was well articulated by my friend, snazzy dresser and first elected district attorney for the newly created 23rd Judicial District, George Brauchler. He clearly said there is nothing in his job description about serving as an immigration enforcement official and, therefore, he won’t be doing it. But he went on to say anyone, citizen or not, who commits a crime in his town will be dealt with harshly and expediently.

Translation: I’m not going to catch illegal migrants for the Trump administration or Castle Rock. But when one’s done a crime in my territory, I’ll happily hold him until the Feds come pick him up.

And that strategy is not mass deportation. It’s selective deportation. And that’s the first tiny step of getting us out of a situation that was too easy to get into.

I get tired of all the double standards.

When The Little Mermaid swims around half naked, singing to her underwater friends, she is “sweet” and “beautiful.” But when I do it, people say I’m “drunk” and “no longer welcome at the aquarium.”

Modern society often makes knowing when you’re acting hypocritically difficult. I mean, burn a body at a crematorium, you’re “doing a good job.” Do it at home you’re “destroying evidence.” It’s just hard to know when people are going to get upset and throw the double-standard flag at you.

So, of course, I’ve got a great deal of sympathy for the Denver City Council and its bizarre inconsistent hypocrisy between cannabis and tobacco.

Denver has more marijuana dispensaries than Starbucks locations. The amount of money they make off cannabis taxes is greater than substantial. And those cannabis products are flavored in the form of gummies, candies, and cookies. These products are proudly peddled in their town. 

But, like mandating motorcycle riders wear helmets while outlawing seat belts, the very same council is embarrassed tobacco products, like flavored nicotine products, are legally sold in their fentanyl-fueled, psychedelic mushroom-hazed, Cheech and Chong-themed city.

So, it’s only logical they are banning flavored, smokeless tobacco products but not flavored cannabis products. Duh, it just makes sense.

Flavored nicotine products are far less harmful than smoking and deliver the nicotine smokers want without the damaging carcinogens of setting stuff on fire and inhaling the smoke. Thus, these products are crucial for folks trying to stop smoking.

The best way to keep people smoking is to ban these products, which is what Denver is going to do.

Their reasoning? Flavored smokeless nicotine will become children’s gateway to smoking tobacco. But somehow flavored cannabis products like gummies isn’t a gateway to smoking marijuana.

If you don’t understand that simple, flawless logic then you are obviously not smart enough to be a policymaker for an entire city.

According to testimony from last week’s Denver City Council meeting, the tax loss from this ban could be more than $13 million per year.

Good thing Denver is running out of money at the right time.

The economic value is so important to the region the state of Colorado bent over backward to tempt the makers of Zyn, a popular smokeless nicotine product, to locate their massive production factory near Denver. So, why wouldn’t Denver return the favor by outlawing the same product?

I think we can agree there is no more burning issue than smokeless nicotine products. We’ve seen protests and violent rallies around the city and county building of people demanding Denver make it harder to quit smoking. It made the BLM riots look boring; Jan. 6, 2021, look like a quilting party. 

Just how much do the people of Denver want to outlaw flavored nicotine? At my organization, Independence Institute, we were curious and commissioned a poll of Denver voters. The polling firm surveyed 459 people to find which of a dozen issues facing the city were most important.

Banning nicotine products didn’t make it into the top three. Heck, it didn’t make it into the top 11. In fact, not a single person said it was an issue. Not one. 

The most important issues to Denver voters are affordable housing (33.5%), public safety (15.6%), taxes and city spending (14.2%) and illegal immigration (12.9%).

Again, out of the 12 issues offered, flavored nicotine products came in last with a whopping 0.0%. No wonder it’s a council priority.

Let’s see if we have a grasp of the full picture here: flavored nicotine products help people stop smoking by giving them a much, much healthier way to consume nicotine.

We gave sizable tax incentives for Zyn to be manufactured here, beating out other cities and states who were wooing the company.

Sales of this product bring in multiple millions of dollars in tax revenue at a time of budget shortfalls. No one thinks this is an issue — no one

So, the City Council of Denver is going to ban these flavored products that do help people stop smoking tobacco while not banning flavored marijuana products that don’t help people stop using cannabis.

Denverites, you elected the smartest people in the world. Next, instead of fixing potholes they are going to outlaw exercise equipment.