Freedom Unaffiliated

By Jon Caldara

There is no substitute for a good and brave cop.

Shiny new police equipment matters very little compared to the swift and courageous action of individual police officers. In fact, in the case of the Boulder King Soopers shooting, we’re lucky that waiting for shiny equipment didn’t cost dozens more lives.

The massacre happened in the very store where I shop almost weekly. I knew some of the victims. My daughter would have been in the store but mixed up the time of a doctor’s appointment. One of my son’s caretakers was about to walk in as everyone else was running out.

This crime is close to home.

For years, I’ve wanted some answers. What were police doing for nearly 40 minutes before entering and arresting the killer? Thanks to the trial of the shooter, we’re finally getting some answers. Some.

As we go through this timetable, remember the adage — when seconds count, the police are only minutes away.

On March 22, 2021, the shooter drove his C-class, black Mercedes past several other King Soopers from his family home in Arvada to target this particular store.

At 2:29 p.m., he shoots his first of three victims in the parking lot before entering the store at 2:30 and 34 seconds.

In the next 6 seconds he kills five more people. That’s eight dead in 68 seconds. No amount of quick-to-the-scene police would have stopped that. And this is why the recent restrictions on concealed carry permits are so threatening.

A mere five-and-a-half minutes from his first shot, he kills his ninth victim.

The first police officer arrives by 2:33 p.m., just before that ninth victim is killed, and the second officer by 2:34 p.m. When Officer Eric Talley arrives 2:35:43, all three go into the store, and Talley is quickly killed in an ambush. The other two police officers then retreat. Other police enter and retreat, but not before Officer Richard Steidel shoots the killer in the leg. This is very likely why up to 51 more lives were spared.

Again, the heroic Eric Talley and his brave colleagues went in fast and early and wounded the killer, who didn’t shoot anyone else after that.

In all, the shooter was engaged for seven minutes (2:37 to 2:44). Yet he wasn’t arrested until officers went in at 3:21 p.m., 37 minutes later.

What was going on in those 37 minutes? Well, inside the store up to 51 customers and employees were hiding behind counters, in the pharmacy, and one woman crawled behind bags of potato chips to hide, all fearing for their lives. Some escaped out the back.

How long were those 37 minutes for them as a shooter meandered in the isles? And what were the police doing for nearly 40 minutes?

The police were outside the building, around the building and even on top of the building. They were getting frustrated trying to assemble a new shield to protect them. They were waiting for their armored vehicle to arrive.

Inside, the shooter still had three pistol magazines and another 30-round magazine for his rifle. We can reasonably assume that being shot in the leg stopped him from finding survivors.

In fact, he stripped off his tactical gear and clothing, presumably so law enforcement would see he was unarmed and not carrying explosives. He was heard by witnesses hiding in the pharmacy saying, “I’m naked. I surrender.” I doubt he would be saying that if he wasn’t shot.

The city of Boulder has had no transparency on this horrible event. A killer roaming the aisles of a store for nearly 40 minutes as citizens cower deserves an outside independent review at the very least.

But Boulder hasn’t even had an outside independent review of their bungled handling of JonBenet Ramsey’s murder about 27 years ago. I doubt they’ll rush to make answers transparent on this one. Boulder government protecting itself is not the point, that’s just business as usual.

The real story is brave cops quickly engaged in a situation with horrendously dangerous unknowns. By doing so, they ended this rampage, arguably saving 51 people.

Put differently, if not shot and wounded, the shooter could have killed up to 51 more people while police waited outside.

All the police equipment in the world, even if they know how to assemble it, won’t protect citizens like speedy law officers of valor.

By Jon Caldara

Former President Donald Trump’s action, or more specifically inaction, on Jan. 6, 2021, was unforgivable.

Stolen election or not, the nation’s Capitol was being attacked by his diehard supporters as he hid for hours.

No, he didn’t incite a riot or “insurrection,” but he did nothing to stop it. He, our chief law-enforcement officer, refused to take to a microphone until the event was basically over.

I decided there and then I couldn’t vote for him again.

And here I am today, likely to vote for him for a third time.

Those in Colorado who lean conservative or libertarian but don’t want to vote for him have an out. There is zero chance Trump will carry this state. His supporters can froth at the mouth about how he can win here, but they’re detached from reality. (And when he loses, they can froth about a stolen Colorado election, but he still won’t get our electoral votes.)

So, you can cast a protest vote guilt free — Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Libertarian, Green candidate, whatever. It won’t cost Trump Colorado. On election night the combined votes for Trump and all third-party candidates will likely be less than for Harris.

So why don’t I just vote for a third-party guy? That was my plan. But the thought of doing it is feeling more and more wrong.

Even though I know my vote won’t count in any technical way, it’s still a personal statement I’ll remember and share. And, in the silly side-pot the press is smitten with, it will make a minuscule difference in the “popular vote.”

My vote for Trump won’t be for Trump. It won’t even be against Kamala Harris per se. My vote for Trump is a middle finger to the elitist cabal of political manipulators, including the whole Obama machine (in and out of office), bureaucratic operators inside government, Hollywood and, perhaps mostly, the press.

They cannot be rewarded for the years of command-and-control abuse, collusion and fear-based manipulation. They misdirected, covered-up and economically crushed middle America and purposely frightened the masses to stay in power. They keep us in a state of perma-crisis.

This elitist oligopoly of power has:

• Forced masks on children and toddlers to stop a cold that had nothing to do with children or toddlers.
• Shut down schools for those children to later reopen them only with draconian, dystopian social distancing rules, causing massive mental harm to our kids.
• Forced vaccinations and shut people out of society for not getting vaccinated.
• Forced people to die alone, separated from loved ones.
• Took away our constitutional right to assemble, and closed churches.
• Abused the voting system in 2020 through untested mail-in voting in states like Pennsylvania.
• Supported criminals burning down cities while telling the rest of us to stay inside and be thoughtful of others.
• Used campaign funds to pay a foreign spy to create a fake dossier that implicated the president for treason.
• Censored the truth about Hunter Biden’s laptop, which was direct interference with a presidential election.
• Emptied the country’s strategic oil reserve.
• Created the largest corporate welfare scheme in history, calling it “green energy.”
• Supported and promoted the flood of millions of illegal aliens into the country.
• Purposefully confused our children about their own gender.
• Put men into women’s sports.
• Lied continuously about and covered up Joe Biden’s cognitive loss.
• When no longer able to cover-up Joe Biden’s cognitive loss, conducted a coup against him, yet did not remove him from office, and installed a replacement who, miraculously, avoided the nomination process altogether.
• Tried to convince us Vice President Kamala Harris is not a lifelong socialist hack, far worse than Bernie Sanders, who they pushed off the ballot in 2020 because he couldn’t win.
• Refused to engage Kamala Harris in any way that takes her off a teleprompter.
• Placed Tulsi Gabbard on the Quiet Skies program intended for suspected domestic terrorists because she criticized the administration
• Proposed price controls on food. Let me say that one again — proposed price controls on food.

And that’s just a partial list (thanks to my friend David Burns who helped).

Of course, Donald Trump lies. Yes, he is a narcissist. No, he isn’t a danger to democracy — more fearmongering from the perma-crisis crowd. But he is a disrupter. The disrupter.

And the elitist power oligopoly of the media, Hollywood, bureaucrats and win-at-all-costs Democrats desperately needs a disruption.

By Mike Rosen

I’ll confess I didn’t watch the speechifying at the Democratic National Convention (DNC), it was excruciating enough just to read about it and watch video clips the next day. One frequent target was the Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2025,” a 900-page guidebook prepared by conservative policy wonks offering a thousand administrative and legislative recommendations across broad areas for the incoming Trump administration. Founded a half-century ago, Heritage is the nation’s preeminent, respectable, conservative (not right-wing) think tank advocating free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values and a strong national defense. In Washington, it’s the counterpart to the respectable left-leaning Brookings Institution.

Project 2025 is actually the tenth edition of Heritage’s “Mandate for Leadership,” first prepared for the incoming Reagan administration in 1981 and reworked every four years for others. It’s like an Amazon catalog from which presidents pick and choose policies and personnel they like, rejecting those they don’t. There’s nothing sinister about it. Democrats follow a similar process through their think tanks. A Progressive Democrat may rely on Karl Marx’s “Communist Manifesto.”

Jared Polis exploited his turn in the spotlight of the DNC podium mostly to show his face and advance his presidential ambitions for 2028. But requiring a different reason to be there, he hopped on the anti-Project 2025 bandwagon, branding it a “dangerous” blueprint to take away Americans’ right to “family planning.” (That’s the clever euphemism Democrats’ substitute for “abortion.”) Jared demonstrated his considerable arm strength by impressively hoisting that hefty book to eye level and proceeded to cherry pick and distort what he thought were its worst suggestions on abortion. But this whole charade was irrelevant. None of those suggestions are in the GOP platform and Trump has ignored them. His clear, oft-stated position is that laws on this highly divisive issue should be decided through the democratic process in the representative governments of each individual state in accordance with their respective values.

Lacking a coherent response, Kamala, in her inimitable style, simply cackled, “They’re out of their minds,” which wasn’t a precise rebuttal. In overturning Roe, SCOTUS rightly ruled that the Constitution confers no right to abortion and returned the matter to the states where it had been before, as it should be in our constitutional republic. Kamala’s plan is to override the states and pass a federal law legalizing abortion right up to the moment of birth and even after it. We’ll see if Congress goes along.

Kamala has this embarrassing cackle which may be an uncontrollable nervous habit or is contrived for no good reason when something isn’t funny, or at inappropriate times, or when stumped for an answer to a pointed question. Democrat strategists have converted this problem into a shrewd campaign slogan, which Bill Clinton showcased in his DNC speech proclaiming, “We need the president of joy.” Other speakers echoed it. “Joy, joy, joy!” Sure, joy is vague and meaningless in the realm of public policy but it sounds good. Who would vote against joy? And cackling must be the highest form of joy.

Clinton also scored with a clever zinger that brought raucous cheers from the hall, “Let’s cut to the chase: I am too old to guild the lily. Two days ago, I turned 78, the oldest man in my family for generations, and the only point of vanity I want to assert is I’m still younger than Donald Trump.”

It makes a good point and it’s funny. But it reeks of irony and hypocrisy, lost on his audience. It would have been an even better zinger directed by Clinton at Joe Biden who’d have been there as the DNC’s nominee that evening had the Democrat high-command extraction team not dragged him off the ballot at the eleventh hour. But then, it wouldn’t have gotten any laughs.

In her acceptance speech Thursday night, Kamala called for “a new way forward.” That was a weird statement, inadvertently suggesting that she and Biden, as the incumbent administration, were failures. But I agree. The country surely needs a new way forward from the Biden-Harris incompetence, fiscal irresponsibility and progressive dogma.

Convention exuberance for both parties fades quickly. Trump’s pluses and minuses are well known but his tenure as president was mostly successful. Kamala is an empty pants suit who was controlled by her handlers in California throughout her career as a prosecutor, attorney general, and senator. She was worthless as vice president. Like Biden, she can only speak coherently from a prepared speech on a teleprompter. If she’s left to her own wits in challenging interviews or debates she falters. As the Democrat nominee, she’s promising wage and price controls and massive tax increases that would wreck the economy, along with an onslaught of budget-busting government giveaways that would add trillions to the already crushing national debt. This, to use her own words, is “losing your mind!”

Trump doesn’t need a teleprompter and can’t be handled by anyone. Yeah, he’s rash, he exaggerates, he’s resistant to wise advice, and vulnerable to self-destruction. But he’s shown he can lead, govern under pressure, and isn’t a progressive socialist.

Partisan and candidate core-voters are already committed. The election will turn on a relatively small number of swing voters in just a few states. They may not love Trump but let’s hope they have the good sense to reject Kamala Harris.

By Mike Rosen

Pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel, leftist, radical, activist college students at Columbia University have lost their collective minds (as have other groups of this ilk elsewhere.) There’s no other way to say that. Their organization calls itself Columbia University Apartheid Divest, self-described as “a coalition of student organizations that see Palestine as the vanguard for our collective liberation.” The coalition’s mission statement declares, “We are Westerners fighting for the total eradication of Western civilization.”

That’s quite an undertaking. What is this great evil? Well, as the Benson Center for the Study of Western Civilization at the University of Colorado-Boulder describes it, “Western civilization refers to the art, literature, culture, and enduring ideas that emerged from the eastern Mediterranean basin in the centuries before the common era, that developed in myriad forms through the Middle Ages, and that ultimately took modern shape after the Renaissance. From the intellectual speculation of the Greeks emerged the philosophic and scientific thought of Latin and Arabic culture, and eventually the ideals of the early modern Enlightenment. From the Hebrew Bible grew the faiths of Judaism, Islam and Christianity, and the ethical framework of modern society. From Greek art and literature emerged the masterpieces of the Renaissance and beyond.”

Do they prefer Communist China, North Korea, Russia, Cuba, Venezuela, or Somalia? How about Islamism and Hamas? The coalition is made up mostly of women. Would they like to be forced to wear a Burka and live under Sharia Law? They don’t understand what they’re against or what they’d replace it with. But don’t just write them off as a bunch of crackpots. I mean they are crackpots, but still capable of immense disruption and damage. They claim to be “a coalition of 116 different organizations” that represent “thousands of Columbia students across nine different schools.” The group includes Young Democratic Socialists of America, Columbia Queer and Asian, African Students Association, Columbia Social Workers for Palestine, Black Student Organization, Students for Justice in Palestine, Jewish Voice For Peace, Reproductive Justice Collective, Columbia Chicanx Caucus, Black and Latinx Student Organization, The Columbia Review, CU Amnesty International, Barnard Garden Club, Poetry Slam, WBAR Radio, “and many, many, more,” they claim.

If this 

crowd had any sense or practicality they’d spend a lot less time protesting and eradicating Western Civilization, and a lot more on their studies so they can get a job after graduation. Do their parents feel they’re getting a good return on the exorbitant cost of a college education — and grad school?

Their goal is taken right out of the playbook of the Muslim Brotherhood describing its “Civilization-Jihadist Process” for America: “The Ikhwan (Muslim Brotherhood opposition movement) must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western Civilization from within and sabotaging its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.”

Destroying Western Civilization is just the start. “Islamists” is the term used to describe a maniacally radical faction of Islam arch-fundamentalists whose interpretation of the Koran condemns all non-Muslims as infidels, non-believers, who must be either subjugated or exterminated through jihadist warfare. It’s not clear how many of the word’s 1.4 billion Muslims are Islamists but however large it is, they’re the self-proclaimed mortal enemies of the world’s 7 billion non-Muslims. (And even moderate Muslims who are insufficiently murderous.) Hamas in Gaza is the worst example of this mentality. And that’s who these student imbeciles are rooting for in their war to exterminate the Israeli infidels.

By contrast, here’s an eloquent, humanitarian benchmark in Western Civilization’s evolution toward religious coexistence. Marcus Aurelius Severus Alexander was one of a long line of Roman Emperors. He presided from A.D. 222-235. Although a very young man he was exceptionally intellectual, well-studied in Greek and Latin literature, history, and philosophy. He was polytheistic, honoring and respecting diverse religious faiths, and believed all religions prayed ultimately to one supreme power. In his private chapel, he had icons of numerous traditional Roman deities, along with Abraham and Christ. He endorsed Jewish and Christian morals to the Roman people and affirmed the Judeo-Christian ethic: “What you do not wish a man to do to you, do not do to him.”Israel is willing to coexist with Palestinians; Hamas wants only to exterminate Jews. There’s a lesson here for Columbia’s poorly educated, intolerant, fanatical revolutionaries.

Learning to live without a functional Colorado GOP

By Jon Caldara

’m trying to come up with the right analogy. I’m sure you can do much better.

I’m thinking of a bunch of little kids playing king of the hill. In their minds, they think the pile of dirt is Mount Everest, when, in fact, it’s the size of a pitching mound.

Or maybe one of those Japanese soldiers who was left on a small, isolated island for decades not knowing World War II had ended and his side lost. He’s still fighting.

Or, perhaps, corporate shareholders fighting for control of a company they think is the size of IBM when in fact it’s a broken hot dog cart.

Or, perhaps, medieval lords battling over territory the size of a postage stamp.

It’s like two lifeguards wrestling over who gets to save someone who has drowned.

Or, perhaps, just toddlers fighting over a toy.

I’m talking about the remarkably entertaining drama that is the battle to control the feckless Colorado GOP.

At this point, it is nothing but comical and you could be forgiven for finding the whole thing just plain entertaining with the plot of a Marx brothers’ movie.

Former state GOP Chairman Dave Williams refuses to accept the vote of the party’s Central Committee to remove him, along with the other officers, and replace him with Eli Bremer and his team.

Does this operation sound familiar to you? Let me see here. So, what we have is somebody who lost an election but doesn’t want to give up power. He’s putting out communications the election was illegitimate and, instead of working to get Republicans elected, is working to destroy the elections of fellow Republicans.

Could there be a better way to pay homage to former President Donald Trump?

My suspicion is Williams is angling for a job in the Trump administration. Maybe this behavior helps, but I can’t see how. In the meantime, Republicans continue to lose offices in Colorado without a functional party to help them.

There are real-world problems because Williams will not give up his throne. Quite literally, Bremer and gang can’t get the keys to the office, can’t check the bank balance, can’t get the passwords to the website or email system.

So, we’ll have to wait until a judge or the Republican National Committee weighs in and see if the warring parties accept the decision.

But for the purpose of the 2024 elections, it just doesn’t matter. The state GOP is basically worthless, no matter who wins this spitting contest. No matter who runs it, the party is broke, broken and discredited.

Even if the new administration was properly installed today, it wouldn’t have the time or money to make any impact as ballots are a month-and-a-half from being dropped.

The problem is bigger than one dysfunctional organization. The conservative moment in Colorado is largely ineffective.

Republicans are the minority party in Colorado. Unaffiliated voters are the majority, and they are growing. Colorado could become the first truly unaffiliated state.

Trump and abortion keep moderates out of the Republican Party, as wokeness and a war on business is chasing them out of the Democratic Party.

The future of Colorado belongs to those who can communicate policy ideas, not personalities, to the unaffiliated. Williams’ call to burn gay pride flags won’t do that. The Democrats indoctrination of pre-pubescent kids into the opposite gender won’t do that.

Conservatives in the state need to accept some harsh realities that go against their strongest held beliefs. And I know this can be hard, but here is reality:

For the foreseeable future, Colorado will not become an anti-abortion state. The reality is for the foreseeable future we will not become an anti-gay, anti-lesbian, anti-bisexual state.

For the foreseeable future, we will not be an anti-cannabis state. We will be a pro-environmental state.

But it doesn’t mean we are a pro-tax, pro-regulation, pro-crime, pro-woke state. There are clear paths to create large victories during the next decade in these policy areas.

But that will only happen if we invest in voter registration, voter outreach, community organizing, local government recruitment, investigative reporting and vote harvesting operations for a decade.

And none of that has anything to do with a political party. Until then, enjoy the show.

By Jon Caldara

What’s worse: people in political power shielding their activity from public oversight or the media celebrating them for doing so?

Fortunately, in Colorado, we don’t have to choose. We get both!

The Colorado Press Association has bestowed its “Defender of Free Press” award to the very legislators who passed a law to keep the press, and citizens, out of their meetings. Yes, these grand defenders of the Fourth Estate voted to exempt themselves from the Colorado Open Meetings Law so we can’t see what they’re doing — definitely award-worthy.

It’s like the Anti-Defamation League giving their big award to the KKK, or People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals having the Cattlemen’s Association cater their annual dinner.

For those of us who believe that, on balance, the Colorado press corps is a sycophantic fan club for the progressives currently running the state, this is the icing on the cake.

“Defenders of the free press” Senate President Steve Fenberg and Speaker of the House Julie McCluskie were the prime sponsors of Senate Bill 157 exempting themselves and the rest of the Legislature from the open meetings law.

There are well more than 5,000 governments and special districts in Colorado, all of whom are required to operate under this law. Now, there is only one government out of those 5,000 that doesn’t have to adhere to it: the Colorado state Legislature.

And legislators didn’t wait long to start excusing themselves from open meetings. In advance of the recent special session on property taxes, a small group of lawmakers did all the negotiating largely in the dark. The Legislature was just called in to rubber stamp it.

Legislating behind closed doors is now legal. Anyone who isn’t appalled by this doesn’t want transparency in government.

Imagine if the Legislature had to go to a vote of the people to approve Senate Bill 157. The “yes” campaign would have to come up with snappy slogans. Maybe, “Lawmaking, like lovemaking, is better in the dark.” Or maybe just a simple, “Nothing to see here, move along.”

There is no doubt the public would reject the idea if brought to them. Our direct representatives are fully aware of that and yet they passed it anyway.

The governor, in another profile in courage, washed his hands of the issue and signed the bill into law literally during Sunshine Week, the week to demand more transparency in government. He gets “best supporting actor” award for that.

Several years ago, I put a citizen’s initiative, Prop 104, on the Colorado ballot. It passed with more than 70% in favor. It required a school district’s negotiations with the teacher’s union be open to the public. Again, 70% approval. Unheard of.

Here’s the interesting part: Before that a bill to do the same as my initiative was introduced every few years in the Colorado Legislature and never made it out of its first committee.

It’s very similar to how the Legislature calls tax increases “fee increases” so they can pass them without a public vote as required by the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights. They are fully aware the people would reject it, so they do it anyway. The word you are looking for is “arrogance.”

The question remains how in the world did the Colorado Press Association honor the people that kicked them out of open meetings? The year before, they gave the Defenders of a Free Press award to two legislators brave (or crazy) enough to sue their own Democratic Party to open the illegal, closed-door meetings their party leadership was having to negotiate votes secretly.

How can the CPA celebrate sunshine one year and darkness the next?

The Gazette’s own veteran politics reporter, Marianne Goodland, took the lead in shining light on how the CPA was busy turning off lights. She spearheaded an open letter demanding that, before the CPA board of directors gives out more kissy-face awards to people who make their jobs harder, they ask a few beat reporters first.

Goodland’s letter was also crafted and signed by Shawn Boyd of Channel 4 News, Kyle Clark of 9News, Brandon Richard of Denver7, Megan Schrader of the Denver Post, Larry Ryckman of the Colorado Sun and Quentin Young of Colorado Newsline.

I hate it when reporters do something I should compliment. So, let’s just say I kinda implied these guys did the right thing.

By Jon Caldara

Cyril Northcote Parkinson was a famed British naval historian (I mean really, just try to make up a snootier British name) who died in 1993.

He is most noted for predicting, with complete accuracy, that in 2024 the Denver metro area would have more homeless than ever.

Well, he might have used slightly different words, but lo and behold, the latest data release proved him right.

In 1955, after a career of watching governmental inefficiency, he published a satirical essay in The Economist magazine and introduced the world to “Parkinson’s Law.” You instinctively know and understand it.

It’s simple: “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.”

Now “work” here means pretty much anything that can be limited by time or space. For instance, you’re going on a trip and pull out your small suitcase, you’ll pack it to the gills using every last bit of space.

But if you pulled out your large suitcase instead, you’d also pack it to the gills. Your stuff expands to fill the space available.

Look around your home right now and compare it to the first apartment you lived in. The larger your living space the more furniture, paintings, and house plants you filled it with. And when you downsize your home, you get rid of most of the stuff to fit the new space (So, did you need that stuff, or just want it?).

Parkinson’s law is most personally damaging when it comes to income. If you could go back and talk to your high school self and tell him how much money he’ll be earning at your age, he’d think he was going to be on easy street. But you’re not on easy street. Easy street isn’t even in your ZIP code. Every time you got a raise, your expenses magically increased to meet it.

A side note, the key to financial abundance is breaking Parkinson’s law. If every time you get a raise you only expand your spending by half of the raise amount and keep socking away the other half, you’ll be rich before you know it.

Living just a bit more modestly creates the millionaire next door. (I’m better at giving advice than taking it).

As every marginal columnist like me knows, if you have 10 hours to write a column, it takes 10 hours to write. If you have one hour, it takes one hour. Or, as Isaac Asimov once wrote, “In 10 hours a day you have time to fall twice as far behind your commitments as in five hours a day.”

Coloradans passed a tax increase on wealthier folks to buy school lunches for any kid who wanted one. Yet, bureaucrats seemed surprised more than a third more kids as they expected showed up for free food, bankrupting the scheme in its first year.

People wanting free stuff expanded to more than fill the space available. How could anyone not expect that?

In the same way we expanded shelters for the homeless to a record high number. And, presto, as Parkinson predicted — and just like school lunches — we have record high number of homeless people. The number expanded to fit the space available. Again, who didn’t expect that!?And just like trading your small suitcase for a large suitcase and then a steamer trunk still not large enough, we will always have more people to be housed than places to house them.

The corollary is if we reduce the amount of housing for the homeless, and stop subsidizing them to stay on the streets, we’ll have fewer homeless.

Looking at the homeless numbers broken out by the seven counties that make up the Denver metro area begs a few questions: Namely, why does the city and county of Denver have six times more homeless than any other county it borders? In fact, Denver has nearly double the homeless of all other six counties combined.

Could it possibly be the city and county of Denver spends more of their taxpayers’ money on services and shelter for the homeless than any other?

Also worth noting Jefferson and Arapahoe counties saw increases in the homeless population while all other counties witnessed a decrease.

Why do I have a funny feeling those two counties increased the number of places for the homeless to stay?

By Mike Rosen

In a July speech advocating for more stringent gun control, President Biden claimed that “More children are killed by a bullet than any other cause of death.” That’s surely an alarming and tragic statistic but a very misleading one.

The use of the word “children” is deceptive, emotionally bringing to mind infants, toddlers and kindergartners. Legally, a “child” can be as old as 17, or even 20 in some states, including those with felony convictions and gangbangers in inner cities, like Chicago. According to a study by the Centers for Disease Control, “In 2022, Black children and teens were 20 times as likely to die from firearm homicides compared to their white counterparts.” And the great majority of those deaths are black on black shootings by teenage gangsters, not little kids. And statistically, the kinds of diseases that fatally afflict the elderly in great numbers are rare among youngsters, skewing the causes of death toward guns.

Recently, Vivek Murthy, the Surgeon General of the United States, issued a public declaration that our country is experiencing a “gun violence crisis.”

Conversely, according to the FBI, nationwide homicides decreased by 13% in 2023 despite public perception to the contrary as reflected in a November 2023 Gallup poll that found 77% of Americans believed crime was increasing. That apparent discrepancy can be explained by terminology, definitions and spin, especially skewing the impact of suicide, which the Surgeon General conveniently includes in his definition of gun violence. Suicides with the use of a gun account for 56% of all gun deaths. But an act of violence is something you inflict on someone else, not on yourself. Let’s say you’re suffering from severe depression or unbearable pain from a terminal illness, and you rationally chose to end your life, this could be viewed as an act of self-compassion. It’s not gun violence. If you hanged yourself, instead, would that be “rope violence?”

The disconnect between the overwhelming public perception of rampant crime in the U.S. today and misleading statistics to the contrary are tied to the definition of crime. It’s true that the homicide rate per 100,000 population has gone down over the past 30 years. But suicide is not the same as homicide and the public perception of rampant crime goes way beyond “homicides.” It covers pervasive crimes like car thefts, vandalism, rioting, burglaries, muggings, squatting, or flash mobs looting retail stores with impunity. Even worse are the cybercrimes bilking the elderly of their life savings. To say nothing of the hordes of illegals criminally crossing our southern border — who then compound the felony by not showing up for their court dates with the forbearance of the President of the United States and his Secretary of Homeland Security.

When prosecutors in Democrat-controlled states refuse to charge trespassers, rioters, petty criminals, and radical insurrectionists who construct illegal encampments and occupy buildings on college campuses their crimes go unrecorded in the crime stats. The political activists who harassed and besieged the homes of conservative Supreme Court Justices whose rulings they disagreed with violated federal law, but they were allowed to persist by politically-motivated Democrat officials in Washington.

The Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to bear arms for whatever reason he or she desires. While the number of guns in this country has more than doubled in the past 30 years, the decrease in the homicide rate over that period indicates that law-abiding Americans intend those guns for justifiable personal defense or deterrence, as well as for hunting or sport shooting.

These days, you’re taking on undue risk by not owning one. Those intent on crime will legally or illegally obtain guns regardless of gun control laws that unreasonably burden the rest of us.

Although he wears a quasi-naval uniform and carries the three-star rank of Vice Admiral, the Surgeon General of the United States is not a sea-going admiral. As the “Nation’s Doctor,” he’s an administrator not a practitioner (and he doesn’t make house calls). He’s a bureaucrat who commands more than 6,000 public health officers of the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, and his purview is the physical and mental health of all Americans. His diagnosis of “gun violence,” which inflates the numbers by including suicide, and his prescription to ban legal so-called “assault weapons” are outside his expertise and authority. In the immortal words of a real Admiral, David Farragut, “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead.”

By Jon Caldara

Hunters are deviant perverts.

Men convinced they’re women are to be celebrated.

The left works hard to make the bizarre mainstream. The transgender movement is a shining example of just how good they are at it. Ya know, if only you’d learn about all 64 genders and the associated newspeak, you’d understand.

You’d learn transsexuals, cross-dressers and transgendered re-creating “The Last Supper” is loving artistic interpretation. Men punching the hell out of women, once called domestic abuse, is now an Olympic boxing event. Celebrate it or be canceled.

If you get anything from my ramblings over the years, I hope it’s that proper investments in cultural change ultimately create political change, not the other way around. Politics is the lagging indicator of culture.

The right in Colorado lost, and will continue to lose, because they spend almost no money on political culture and infrastructure (the boring stuff). Instead, they just spent a decade and a half funding political “Hail Mary” passes like candidates de jour and unwinnable initiatives.

We’ll continue to pay the price this fall as voters will likely pass a ban on so-called trophy hunting.

First, let’s recognize the public choice theory problem. There was a time when more than 40% of Americans smoked. They would have never passed tobacco taxes or smoking bans. But now about 11% of Americans smoke. The culture changed. So, the 89% who don’t smoke are happy to tax and ban tobacco.

Smokers of today are treated with the disregard of the LGBTQIA+ communities of the past.

Before the explosion of the urban and suburban elite, most families in Colorado were familiar with, if not participating in, the rural lifestyle. They never would have voted to import violent wolves to kill livestock and our food supply. But the new urbanites who buy their steaks wrapped in plastic are now happy to let farmers’ pets become wolf chow.

Likewise, most families in Colorado understood, if not participated in, hunting. But hunting has gone the way of tobacco use.

In a recent memo, Colorado Parks and Wildlife Director Jeff Davis wrote, “In 2023, total rifle license sales for elk have declined to about 126,000 or -80,000 fewer licenses than in the early 2000s. This decline in license sales is not indicative of a declining elk population.”

So, though Colorado’s population has grown by a third since the early 2000s, hunting has dropped by about 45%.

Consequently, while Coloradans want to protect the LGBTQIA+ lifestyle, they have no sympathy for tobacco smokers, hunters or gun owners — all constituency groups that have learned nothing from the success of the gay movement.

What was a diffused but large constituency of hunters is now a minority special interest. And like those in the fossil fuel industry, they never took the threat to their existence seriously.

If they invested in cultural change, selling and celebrating the hunting lifestyle to the millions who came to Colorado in the last two decades, no one would dream of trying to vote away their lifestyle.

When concentrated minority special interests work to change culture, they can. The gay movement did just that. Only 5% of the population is said to be gay, yet we have a Pride Month where businesses out-gay each other for customers. Double that, 11% of the population, are smokers, but there ain’t no Smokers’ Pride Month. Instead, everyday is “Treat Smokers Like Lepers Day.”

Mothers Against Drunk Driving is another concentrated minority interest that changed culture, which then changed the laws. There was a time when driving drunk was so accepted people joked about their own drunken driving. Thankfully that’s no longer the case.

I’ve rarely hunted pheasant and doves, nothing larger. But I have learned a lot about hunters. And, just as gays were falsely stereotyped as perverts, hunters are falsely stereotyped as cruel.

I’ve never known a group of people more committed to environmental stewardship than hunters. They provide an essential service making sure different herds stay in balance. Hunting licenses are issued by the experts in Colorado Parks and Wildlife only for game that needs to be thinned.

If you love Colorado’s wildlife, thank a hunter, even those who hunt the mountain lions the state says need to go. And if you think political minorities, like the LGBTQIA+, deserve protection, apply the same logic to political minorities you don’t like.

By Jon Caldara

When I was a kid, I’d collect old tin cans and the newfangled aluminum beer cans. My father would drive me down to the Coors distribution warehouse in Littleton. They’d weigh them and they gave me cash, real cash in my hand for recycling.

This was my first interaction with “Coors.”

Coors invented the completely recyclable aluminum beverage container. Now the marketplace standard, it saved more waste and pollution than an army of greenies banning shopping bags, and without any governmental mandates.

Later in life, my interactions with Coors included sneaking into my parents’ garage to sneak cans of Coors Light.

Family friends would come to visit from the East Coast, and they’d always drive away with a few cases of Coors in their trunk. This regional Western beer had such mystique that smuggling Coors out of state was the plot device for the hit movie “Smokey and the Bandit” (though the beer still holds up today, the movie doesn’t). When collecting cans and sneaking brew, I never could have imaged I’d grow up and get to know many of the Coors family including the team of elder statesmen brothers, Pete, Jeff and John.

Coors is Colorado. Colorado — where people would come to write their own biographies, free to work hard and take risk without waiting for permission. Coors and the Colorado character were linked. They shared the same brand: individualism. In 1975, the family created the Adolph Coors Foundation not just to “give back” but to build on that Colorado character. As their board pronounced, “People in need have the opportunity to restore and rehabilitate themselves in order to realize their full potential and lead prosperous lives. Democracy prevails, while government is limited to the protection of constitutional rights and national defense.”

Companies create grant-giving foundations all the time. The bigger the company, the more the foundation is used as a public relations or advertising arm for the product, not principles. Rich families also create grant-giving foundations all the time. The farther the generation that created the wealth recedes into the past and younger generations give away money they didn’t earn, the more the foundation drifts away from the founders’ intent and to the left (just ask the ghost of Henry Ford). The Adolph Coors Foundation has managed to avoid both those traps, making it a true Colorado treasure.

When Independence Institute, the organization I run, was founded in 1985, the Coors Foundation helped us, one of the first state-based think tanks in the country, get off the ground. And without Independence Institute working over the decades, seemingly crazy ideas wouldn’t have been turned into reality — charter schools, the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, the flat income tax, lowering that income tax to 4.4%, shall-issue concealed carry laws, privatization of governmental services like the Regional Transportation District, term limits, open-meeting and open-records laws, and much more.

When state-based think tanks popped up in other states, there was no real communication or sharing of best practices, even though they were all facing similar challenges. Jeff Coors took the lead in building what is now a powerful network of independent, locally run state think tanks called the State Policy Network.

The Coors family helped the homeless recovery organization Step 13, now called Step Denver, which takes no government money and therefore is able to place expectations on the clients they help. That means sobriety and a job. Those of us who remember the late great Bob Cote who created Step 13, a recovering “bum” himself (his words), I can’t help but wonder what he’d be saying about the current homelessness madness going on in our state.

Pete Coors still champions the values and institutions of the West. He leads the effort to rebuild the National Western Complex, keeping the stock show a part of the state.

All the Coors’ charitable work has a common thread of personal responsibility, hard work and self-improvement with the goal of human thriving.

At the risk of mimicking the tired “give a man a fish” line, the success of the Coors Foundation is the compounding effect of their investments. They take the long view. Their grantees–from the School of Mines to the Leadership Program of the Rockies–all build on themselves and pay real-world dividends, promoting the Colorado character.

Oh, and there’s also the beer. So let’s lift one to honor this 50-year-old Colorado institution.