Freedom Unaffiliated

By Mike Rosen

Well, the Grand Old Party certainly threw a grand old party in Milwaukee. The delegates and spectators were revved up and joyous from start to finish. What could have been a tragic and somber mood — with who knows what outcome — had Trump not miraculously dodged an assassin’s bullet, turned out to be a glorious and thankful celebration for all (if not CNN and MSNBC). Talk about turning a problem into an opportunity.

There was no suspense, with Trump clearing the field in the primaries. The voting was a mere formality. So, this was a coronation. Our quadrennial presidential conventions, in addition to being a gala gathering and reward for the Party faithful, is four-days of televised campaign speeches to win over the voting public. In that regard, this convention’s brilliant strategy was executed and choreographed to near perfection. The message was on-point hitting major failures of Biden and the Democrats, like enabling a massive invasion of illegal immigrants, runaway inflation, endless budget deficits, the decline in real wages for blue collar workers, crime with no punishment, pervasive wars, the radical progressive agenda to fundamentally transform America, and unethical lawfare against Trump.

Yes, this medley was hammered incessantly, but as Willam F. Buckley, Jr. explained, “repetition is the price of mastery,” recognizing that the TV audience includes different viewers over the course of the week. The convention averaged 17 million daily viewers, led by conservative Fox News, home to Trump’s loyal core, drawing 7.9 million on cable and surpassing the combined audience of the liberal networks NBC, ABC, and CBS. Well behind Fox on cable, CNN’s Trump-hating panel drew 1.5 million and MSNBC’s zoo of radical lefties and Marxists averaged 1.1 million. However, 300 million Americans didn’t watch.

Another key strategy was the humanizing of Donald J. Trump who was lavishly praised and portrayed as a warm, fuzzy puppy at heart by a seemingly endless stream of sons, daughters, grandkids, and in-laws that dwarfed Donny and the Osmond family (millennials: look that up), as well as bosom buddies like Hulk Hogan, Kid Rock, and Lee Greenwood singing “God Bless the U.S.A” live on stage.

The path to election victory and much of the tone of the convention was designed to attract the rising tide of unaffiliated voters. Most of whom have not been all that “independent,” favoring Democrats considerably over Republicans. Perhaps one-third of them are really swing voters but that group may be growing. The background, style, and substance of J.D. Vance as Vice President will no doubt increase the number of patriotic blue-collar workers Trump has attracted to the Republican coalition. This resembles the crossover of “Reagan Democrats,” including union members, that produced his two landslide victories.

That explains the speaking invitation to Teamsters President Sean O’Brien, the first time a labor union leader has addressed the RNC. But O’Brien abused the opportunity, delivering a personal reelection speech to his members in a way-too-long socialist tirade against Wall Street and “greedy corporations.” As if the largest market economy on the planet could exist without financial intermediaries and profitable, big corporations. Applause from some in the hall was curiously out of place.

On the final night, TV viewership averaged 25 million, peaking at 28 million at the start of Trump’s acceptance speech. 11.7 million watched on NBC, ABC, CBS combined, while FOX drew 10.7 million on its own. Trump started by poignantly recalling his thoughts from the first bullet fired by the would-be assassin. It was compelling and effective with the audience hanging on every word. He went on to echo the convention theme of calming uncivil discourse and unifying the country (around him and Republicans). Basking in the adoration and chants of “Trump, Trump, Trump,” he couldn’t resist ad-libbing and shifted into his characteristic rally-mode at great length. (The support of his core is set in stone; this was time better spent to enlist swing voters.) He did return to the prepared script in the final minutes and ended with a stirring crescendo, by which time much of the TV audience had trailed off as midnight passed, Eastern Time, extending a concisely crafted 30-minute speech into a 1 hour and 32 minute marathon, an all-time convention record.

Yeah, he should have stuck with the original script, but Trump will be Trump. Given what he’d been through, it’s forgivable. And on the whole, the convention was, in Trumpspeak, “Tremendous!”

By Jon Caldara

Maybe you disagree, but I think competition and innovation are good things because, though they cause disruptions, consumers win.

The Colorado legislature strongly disagrees. If there were an award for sabotaging financial innovation and harming consumers, they’d be giving an acceptance speech right now.

Please don’t let the coming bureaucratic jargon scare you off. It starts with the Depository Institutions Deregulation and Monetary Control Act (DIDMCA). Enacted in 1980, this federal law allows state-chartered banks to offer interest rates to folks in other states based on the laws in their home state. It’s a neat way to keep the financial market competitive and prevent states from turning into financial backwaters

But Colorado, in its infinite wisdom, is trying to opt out of this federal, pro-competition law with House Bill 23-1229.

For people living in Colorado, it basically means no marketplace for loans that cross state lines.

HB 1229 built a Great Wall of China around Colorado’s financial services sector to keep Mongol out-of-state banks away. That’s peachy protectionism for the banks that now don’t have to worry about competitors. Not so great for, well, humans. We humans like choices, even humans who are poor.

Like so many restrictions from our state’s leftist leaders, the concept of “pro-choice” is only meant for your body, not your wallet.

HB 1229 aims to cap interest rates charged by out-of-state banks, effectively kicking them out of Colorado while labeling it as a consumer protection.

Unsurprisingly, three trade organizations challenged this bill in federal court. They argue it conflicts with the federal DIDMCA, but also violates the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution.

A judge recently issued a preliminary injunction to block the bill, highlighting what state a loan is “made in” depends on where the bank is, not where the borrower is. Unlike our legislators, it’s almost like the judge read the DIDMCA.

The judge’s ruling is a temporary win for consumers, but the real tragedy is Colorado’s elected officials didn’t foresee the chaos they were unleashing. They say they want Colorado to be a tech hub, but apparently not a financial tech hub.

By opting out of the DIDMCA, Colorado is essentially creating a credit desert, like Iowa, which also has restrictive laws around banking. Purportedly in Iowa only 0.16% of residents obtained short-term credit.

Driving out-of-state banks away means fewer options for auto loans, mortgages, credit cards, and small loans. And when competition dries up, prices go up.

What of the folks who are hit hardest, like those without any bank account (or, as I’m sure NPR would refer to them, “People currently experiencing unbankness”) and those with poor credit? Depending on how you count it, that’s up to 1.7 million Coloradans. These are people who struggle to access credit, and this bill makes it even harder.

The working poor, like everyone, have financial emergencies that pop up from a broken car to surprise medical bills. Without choices for short-term loans, these people end up running to the pawn shop.

A study by the Financial Health Network in 2023 found personal loans were less available in Colorado compared to states with more competition. Doubling down on making credit even less accessible is not only cruel, it’s insulting. The legal message to the poor is, you’re not smart enough to shop around for banks.

But wait, there’s more! The bill includes exemptions for national banks and certain credit card products.

This means big banks can still charge higher rates, while smaller, state-chartered banks are stuck with the caps. Goliath can keep his sword while David is forced to fight with a toothpick. This creates a financial landscape where the big banks win, and (beating this to death) consumers pay the price.

So, here we are, in the middle of a regulatory and legal quagmire. The litigation adds another layer of uncertainty, making it even harder for consumers to navigate the financial landscape.

And what do Colorado lawmakers have to say? At best, something along the lines of “Oops.”

As the legal battles rage on, let’s hope our lawmakers learn from this fiasco. It’s time to stop the knee-jerk reactions and start crafting policies that genuinely protect consumers without strangling the financial services market. Until then, Coloradans will continue to pay the price for their legislature’s hostility toward financial technology.

By Jon Caldara

A friend just told me of his relatively recent suicide attempt. Like me he’s around 60 years old. Unlike me he survived a great deal of war trauma in the military. And trauma will come for you sooner or later no matter how far down and how long you bury it.

The suicide rate for men my age is staggering. Don’t call the suicide hotline on me for what I’m about to say. Trust me, I’m not suicidal. But I completely understand why men my age cash in their chips, and I can respect their desire and even their right to do it. I just hope they choose not to.

Modern society has done spectacular work on appreciating women’s issues and encouraging women. The number of young women going into the STEM field is a result of a lot of societal attention on that goal. By the numbers, in a few years it’ll be hard to find a male doctor or attorney.

But in this great societal advancement we’ve lost an empathy for the challenges men go through, because to focus any special attention on men is seen as just another example of the male dominated, good-old-boys, boys-will-be-boys, society that we’re trying to escape.

I’d speculate nearly all men my age have seriously contemplated suicide for a variety of reasons. I’ll tell you mine.

I was very scared to become a father. I put it off like avoiding the draft. And then this little baby girl came and blew up everything. We named her Parker, and she filled me with purpose and joy unlike anything I thought unattainable.

When Parker was approaching her first birthday, she became sick and wouldn’t stop vomiting. As per the doctor, we took her to the hospital to get an I.V. so she wouldn’t be dehydrated. But she continued to vomit. They became worried and did a CAT scan to find a large brain tumor.

Off to Children’s Hospital we went. The next day an MRI found the cancer had metastasized down her spinal cord. It was one of two types of cancer. One treatable, one not. The next day the biopsy found the incurable type.

Within days she was dead.

I had never experienced terror until I held the lifeless body of my only child. Thoughts of suicide came fast, but not for the reason one would expect. Yes, I was in excruciating pain, but that wasn’t in the calculations at all.

My job as Parker’s daddy was to nurture her, keep her safe, guard over her and care for her. Maybe there is an afterlife. If so, her daddy wasn’t there with her, wasn’t doing his job.

All I knew was that even if there was the tiniest possibility that part of her still existed, I should be with her. It was my sacred obligation.

You know you’re having suicidal thoughts when you start thinking about how best to get it done. Spoiler alert, I didn’t kill myself.

You see, in the ultimate expression of optimism, my wife became pregnant, and I then had a responsibility to that little person coming my way. My daughter Piper coming along was a big reason to stick around, and I’m very glad I did. Life is too delicious not to enjoy every moment.

My friend was saved because a group of family and friends intervened, they knew something was wrong. The lesson is relationships save people from suicide. You don’t have to jump into burning buildings to be heroic. You just have to be tuned in to other people’s lives.

Most men won’t mention they’re considering suicide to anyone because they don’t want to be thrown into a 72-hour psych hold, don’t want to be diagnosed as mentally ill, don’t want to become disempowered, and don’t want to be shamed.

And oh, men just don’t talk about intimate things because when they do, they’re usually not rewarded for it. Best to stay silent. Ladies, we love you. But you just don’t get it.

There was a time it was unsafe to come out as gay. We made it safe. We now need to make it safe for men to come out as suicidal.

Gentlemen, next time you’re with a good buddy, ask him, “so tell me if you’ve ever been suicidal?” Chances are you’ll hear a story.

Sharing those stories would help a lot of people.

By Mike Rosen

In the last hours of the 2024 Colorado legislative session, a group of county clerks crafted an amendment to Senate Bill 24-210 to temper the rush-to-judgment of a November ballot initiative that would impose statewide ranked-choice voting. They were concerned about public confusion over RCV, added costs, errors, and long delays in tabulating results. When the amendment passed, a coalition of leftist groups supporting the initiative threw a fit, claiming: ”The bill’s transparent attempt to frustrate and invalidate the will of the people as expressed through the citizens’ initiative process is an afront to the people of Colorado and the system of checks and balances that govern it.”

Whew, what hyperbole! All the amendment did was delay statewide implementation of RCV pending a series of 12 municipal pilot trials. Why the desperate haste of RCV activists?

This initiative is an RCV hybrid, a so-called “final-four plurality” with two phases. Party primaries for governor, other statewide executive offices, state legislature, and congress would be eliminated. Instead, candidates for those posts would run in a single open primary, regardless of party affiliation, with the four that get the most votes for each post advancing to the general election, the second phase, that would employ ranked-choice voting. On a grid-style ballot, rather than voting for just one candidate you’d vote for one or more candidates ranked in order of your preference (1, 2, 3, 4). A candidate that gets a majority of that vote for any position wins election immediately. If no candidate gets a majority, a second-round tabulation eliminates the candidate that got the fewest votes in the first round. The votes of the people who voted for that losing candidate as their first choice are then redistributed to the candidate they had selected as their second choice. If that doesn’t produce a majority winner the process continues in the same manner for as many rounds as necessary to produce a majority winner.

Are your eyes glazing over yet? I’ll be voting against it.

RCV formats differ from state to state, and some are even worse. Like another where you’re forced to rank all the candidates in numerical order. If you fail to do so — either by accident or design, perhaps because you despise a candidate or a particular political party — your ballot can be trashed. For instance, on a ballot that included candidates from the Green Party, Socialist Worker’s Party, or Communist Party U.S.A., I wouldn’t rank any of those given the possibility that the system would actually cast my vote for one of them in a later round. If, on principle, I vote solely for my preferred Republican candidate who then gets eliminated, my ballot is deemed “exhausted” and trashed as if I had never voted at all.

Under RCV, winning candidates are often elected with considerably less than a majority of all the votes originally cast. For example, in the first round of Alaska’s special congressional election in 2022, Republican candidates got 60% of the total vote. However, after 15,000 ballots were trashed in a succeeding round (including 11,000 from those who voted for one Republican and no one else) a Democrat won by only 5,000 votes.

RCV activists claim their convoluted voting schemes will hamper radical candidates and produce more moderate elected officials. Their definition of “radical” or “moderate” is dubious given the dominance of liberals and Democrats in the national RCV movement. Like FairVote, a left-wing Maryland think tank financed by the likes of America-hating socialist George Soros and the Tides Foundation, a clearing house that notoriously launders money to far-left causes from donors that don’t want to be publicly linked to them.

Leading the RCV initiative in Colorado and nationally is Unite America, a group that feigns bipartisanship but is dominated and funded by deep-pocket Democrats like Charles Wheelen and Kathryn Mordoch. Three former members of Congress on its board include two Democrats and one Republican, Carlos Curbelo, who was ranked as the most liberal Republican in Congress by the American Conservative Union.

RCV is vulnerable to organized electoral manipulation, gaming the system. Something Democrats excel at as demonstrated by their deceitful harvesting of votes at retirement homes and their unethical campaign ads subversively supporting the most unelectable candidates in Republican Party primaries. In a few cases, RCV might aid a Colorado Republican candidate but it’s no coincidence that its support here is overwhelmingly from those on the left who would love to make our now Democrat one-party state even more so. At least 10 Republican states have already revoked or banned it.

By Jon Caldara

How many people might green energy kill this summer?

If you are reading this column in a comfortably air-conditioned room on a stifling hot day, thank fossil fuels.

I’ll spell it out: Green energy is weather-dependent. And, though Colorado recently baked with triple digit temperatures, there was little wind blowing to spin windmills that would normally provide 28% of our energy.

True, the wind might be blowing in some other area of the country, and some of that electricity might make it to Colorado, but during a nationwide hot spell most of that wind power is gobbled up where it’s made.

About 63% of electricity generated in Colorado comes from fossil fuels, mostly coal or natural gas. That’s right, your tax-subsidized, virtue-signaling Tesla, the one you just had to buy the “electric vehicle” vanity license plates for to make sure we all know your Telsa is electric, runs mostly off fossil fuels — you know like a freakin’ car.

And those ugly fuels were the only thing keeping your lights on and your beer cold during the heat wave.

For many Coloradans it’s not just a glass of Chablis that fossil fuels cool. Hundreds of thousands of vulnerable people, including the handicapped and elderly who need air conditioning, refrigeration to keep their medications and food safe, their medical devices such as respirators and oxygen-concentrator machines operating — well, for these people, power outages aren’t an inconvenience. They are a threat to existence.

That’s why Colorado’s Department of Health Care Policy & Finance is now giving away “free” battery backup systems to Medicaid recipients — so they don’t die.

That’s worth pondering. Because of the growing likelihood of power failure from Colorado’s ridiculous green-energy policies, we must take money that could have been spent on health care for the poor to instead buy them bulky battery backup systems. This is just another one of the thousand ways green energy hides its real cost.

As Colorado’s 100% mandate for renewable energy grows, the coming years will only become more deadly.

Let’s be clear: Lawmakers are responsible for the death that is approaching. This recent heatwave and its run on power should serve as a harbinger of what is to come.

Xcel Energy has already warned they might be asking customers to turn off power because they simply cannot provide what is needed. And now with “Smart Meters” on every home, they won’t need to ask. They could just cut you off when they want your power elsewhere (thus, the back-up batteries for Medicaid).

When energy is needed the most, weather-reliant power generation fails the most — heat spells with no wind, cold spells with no sunshine to power solar panels, and, as has happened recently, hailstorms destroying acres of solar panels.

And that’s with only a third of Colorado’s power coming from unreliable, finicky, persnickety, weather-dependent energy generation. What happens when the lawmakers’ mandate of 100% renewables becomes more real?

People. Will. Die.

Coal plants are required to have, on average, 90 days’ worth of fuel on site. It would take a weather event of three months of coal trains not working to run out of fuel. Whereas it only takes the sun not shining or the wind not blowing for minutes to put us into crisis.

Even the chief executive of the Colorado Springs utility, Travas Deal, can’t hide the cost saying, “Meeting state requirements for clean energy is costly and ratepayers will continue seeing the impacts on their monthly bills.”

On the green mandates they’ve so far survived, he said, “We thought 80% was a good start toward being a cleaner utility and a cleaner state … this next level, though … we don’t have the technology for that yet, and the financial impacts are going to be extreme.”

But the price isn’t just financial. The price will be in human life when the rolling blackouts come. And come they will.

Forget keeping energy somehow reliable and affordable, if we want to save human life in Colorado, we have a hard choice coming.

Either we scale back the mandates for green, weather-dependent power or we build nuclear power facilities which are zero emission and not weather dependent.

We can deny reality for a surprisingly long amount of time, but sooner or later reality hits.

We will be forced into reducing green mandates or building nuclear power.

The sooner we choose the more lives saved, if that matters to you.

By Jon Caldara

I am writing this from my hospital bed in the intensive care unit at Denver Health.

I’m recovering from my very first heart attack. You can only imagine my pride of reaching my goal of a heart attack before 60.

While driving to my job at Independence Institute my chest started feeling, well, really weird — like someone was sitting on it, and not someone I liked. My jaw felt sore. I rarely make good decisions, but just blocks away from my office I turned right instead of left and somehow got myself to the emergency room.

It may well have saved my life. I imagine I’m like most guys my age — I will do just about anything to avoid going to the doctor. It has as much appeal as watching a stranger shop for purses.

Medical care comes down to two factors. One, “wait.” Waiting to get an appointment. Waiting in the waiting room. Waiting in the exam room for the doctor to finally come and talk to a computer screen instead of you.

And the second factor is “more.” No matter what, they send you off to another doctor, or specialist, or for more testing, all of which requires exponentially more waiting. The cycle never stops. It cascades.

All of which leads to the reasonable decision to avoid health care altogether until one has a heart attack.

Just for those keeping record at home, my cholesterol has always been in the normal range as I do get it checked at least yearly. I am a little overweight but not completely inactive. Nothing stood out as a warning for a heart attack other than being male and getting older.

I shouldn’t have had a heart attack, but here I am.

Health care has changed since I was younger. Most notably everyone in the industry is now tattooed. At the ER, the tattooed nurse took my blood pressure and said “Oh, I don’t like that.” Just what you want to hear.

So, they quickly got me into an examination room where the tattooed male nurse, obviously taking time off of his day job as a Hells Angel, gave me an EKG. Then he said, “Oh, I don’t like that.”

It wasn’t much longer that I found myself in the “cath lab.” They hoisted me on a table as what seemed like 15 tattooed people ran around like a well-oiled race car pit crew. One pit crew member immediately took to shaving off my pubic hair. I told him I was not interested in a Brazilian and if what was left looked like Hitler’s mustache I would come after him.

Then I asked what should have been the first question. “My heart isn’t down there, my brains are, so why are you shaving me?” Turns out they were going to catheterize me to run a cable up to my heart. If the artery in my arm wasn’t big enough, they were gonna go through my crotch. Lovely.

By the time I woke up, I was told I had a blockage in what’s called (by everyone but the doctors) the “widowmaker” artery to my heart. They cleared it and put in a stint. I got in early enough the damage to the heart itself was minimal.

Since then, I’ve been staying in a room in the ICU where they come in every few hours to draw blood and explain the 300 different medications I’ll be taking for the rest of my life. The hospital saved money by painting their hospital rooms with surplus green paint from former Soviet prisons

The most important thing I have learned since being here is there is a TV station that does nothing but show re-runs of “Seinfeld.” After two days of exhausted research, I’m proud to report Seinfeld still holds up 30 years later.

I am a lucky son-of-a-bitch. Lucky to get treatment in time. Lucky people care about me. Lucky to live in America. We take the miracles of our times for granted. The wealth our nation has created has made it possible to reach into a stranger’s heart, fix it and have him watching “Seinfeld” a few hours later.

My thanks to my tattooed heroes. And, may you never take your health or the wonders of the free market for granted.

Now go get a physical.

By Jon Caldara

Politics has the best euphemisms.

“Undocumented residents” are illegal aliens. “Investing in children” is a tax increase. “Celebrating diversity” is racial quotas. “Currently experiencing homelessness” is, well you know.

It’s “I want to spend more time with my family,” not “What hooker?”

And “racist” is someone who agrees with Martin Luther King Jr.’s vision of a colorblind society.

But the best euphemisms come from the anti-Second Amendment crowd.

They use “reduce gun violence,” not the truthful “disarm the law-abiding.” And why reduce just gun violence, not all violence? Don’t go down that road, you’ll find yourself asking the Black Lives Matter/all lives matter question and you’ll be a racist. See above.

I never heard their most recent term, “ghost gun,” until Biden was told to use it.

Ghost gun is almost as scary as “assault weapon,” the greatest marketing term created to frighten people who know little about guns. Ask the average person to define an “assault weapon” and you find its like defining pornography. They only know it when they see it.

And the euphemism “the gun lobby” means the NRA, made of about 5 million people, like me, giving bits of money. Whereas the “disarming the law-abiding” lobby is largely one uberbillionaire, Michael Bloomberg, who funds an intersectionality of gunphobic organizations (Yes! Used the woke word “intersectionality”!).

Bloomberg bought himself a wildly successful Colorado legislative session, passing eight bills to hassle legal gun owners and nothing to punish gun criminals. In fact, they refused to pass the only gun bill directed at criminals.

House Bill 1162 would have made the theft of a gun a Class 6 felony, and subsequent thefts a Class 5 felony. This was aimed squarely at criminals, otherwise known as the non-law-abiding, aka, the guys who bring guns into the black market. It died in committee on a party-line vote

These following Democrat state reps who proudly advertise they are working to “reduce gun violence,” including limiting ghost guns and “assault weapons,” by “taking on the gun lobby” didn’t want to punish gun criminals: Reps. Garcia, Herod, Mabrey, Woodrow, Bacon, and Weissman.

Pardon the redundancy coming up.

The legislature passed and the governor signed a bill making it harder for law-abiding people to transport their guns in their cars, leaving them vulnerable if they need access to their firearms. But they voted down a bill to make stealing guns a felony.

The legislature passed and the governor signed a bill to make it harder and more expensive for law-abiding people to get a concealed weapons permit, even though those with such permits have been exemplary citizens, committing no crimes with guns. But they voted down a bill to make stealing guns a felony.

They passed and signed a bill to limit the places where people who have a concealed weapons permit can carry a gun to protect themselves from, oh, I don’t know, maybe a criminal who stole a gun, while they voted down a bill to make stealing guns a felony.

They passed a bill to require federally licensed firearm dealers to spend gobs money and paperwork to get a redundant license from the state of Colorado. The cost will be passed on to customers. And poorer customers, mostly people of color, might be priced out of self-defense. Criminals who steal guns do little paperwork, so they voted down a bill to make stealing guns a felony.

They passed a bill to authorize and fund the Colorado Bureau of Investigation to hassle legal gun dealers, like the federal ATF does, instead of spending that money keeping criminals, maybe gun thieves, behind bars. Good thing they voted down a bill to make stealing a gun a felony.

They passed a bill to force credit card companies to gather information on who legally buys guns and ammunition, ripping away privacy to create a backdoor registration scheme. And they voted down a bill to make stealing a gun a felony.

And they passed a bill seeking a 6.5% sales tax on guns and ammunition (above the already hefty 11% national sales tax), again making self-defense harder to purchase for poorer citizens, people of color, the euphemism for “Black and Brown people.”

Does anyone else find it curious that the gun-taking lobby “reduces gun violence” only by punishing the law-abiding?

Why we’re not spending money to bring ballot initiatives this year

By Jon Caldara

In the fight for limited government, resources are remarkably scarce. Many of Colorado’s right-leaning donors are understandably fatigued of putting money into losing efforts.

By contrast, the left’s deep pockets have seen incredible political returns on their investments. There are two reasons for this. First, they just spend a lot more than their conservative counterparts. And they have reason to. Special interests, like the teachers union and the environmental industrial complex, get financial windfalls when their team wins.

But also, the left’s individual patrons, motivated by social causes, just personally give more. Tim Gill, Patricia Stryker, Rutte Bridges and Jared Polis have collectively given hundreds of millions.

And second, the deep pockets on the left use their money much differently, with a much more long-term perspective. They give less to consultants and more to tedious infrastructure that works between election cycles.

While conservative donors get excited about shiny things, like candidates or ballot measures, the left spent 15 years investing in the really boring but important stuff like voter outreach, community organizing, ballot-harvesting operations, think tanks, news reporting, recruitment, etc.

As a generalization, conservative funders don’t want to eat their vegetables.

All of which is to say those of us working to free Colorado from the socialism devouring us must never waste a dime. There are simply not that many dimes left. Wasting resources on efforts likely to lose is malfeasance against good and generous donors.

This is why I’m not going to put citizen initiatives on the ballot this year (and I hate that).

One of the great strengths of Independence Institute, the scrappy organization I run, is we know how to win at the ballot box with citizens initiatives. We have passed open meetings and transparency laws; we’ve cut the state income tax permanently two times in the last two elections.

This year we brought forward a slate of good government initiatives and got them through the process up to the point of collecting signatures, which can cost up to $1 million per ballot question.

I’ve learned the hard way never to put something on the ballot without carefully polling voters on the exact language that’s going to appear on their ballot.

I have polled eight potential reform initiatives we were working on. If you hear anything, hear this: The left’s long-term investments in nonshiny things have worked. The political culture here has changed.

Let me give one example: We have an initiative to cut the state’s legislative session from 120 days to 90 days. Many states have much shorter legislative sessions than Colorado, and many have it every other year. I had no doubt this would have huge popularity.

I was wrong. Coloradans seem happy to keep their crazed Legislature in session. Polling showed my “slam-dunk” measure only had 20% support. Think of that for a moment. Needless to say, I’m not moving forward with the idea.

I also brought forward another income tax rate reduction. The last two I ran won with about 66% voting “yes.” The Legislature did not like that, so they passed a law requiring future tax cut questions have “poison-pill” language on the ballot.

Instead of asking a voter if they wanted to “reduce the income tax rate from X to Y,” the new law requires a blatant falsehood be put in the ballot question saying this tax cut “will,” not “may,” reduce funding for heart-string issues like education, health care, public safety, etc.

The poison-pill language is doing what it was intended. Our polling shows a tax cut, which usually comes in with 66% support has only 47% support after this legislative tampering.

The one initiative that polled well forces the state legislators back into the open-meetings law, which they recently exempted themselves. If passed, it would only get us back to where we were before, stopping legislators from having smoke-filled, closed-door meetings.

I’ve decided not to spend limited resources on it this year just to reverse one bad law. Instead, we’ll be spearheading a better initiative to greatly expand transparency and open meetings next year.

Reality sucks. And political reality sucks even more.

We practitioners of politics should never close our eyes to reality just to spend other people’s money. And the funders of political causes should always be asking this: in the long term what are we getting for our money?

By Jon Caldara

God hates the Colorado GOP. But oddly not Republican legislators.

The Colorado GOP again became a national laughingstock by suggesting we should burn gay pride flags.

Their blast email, video and slogan “God hates flags,” was of course meant to parrot the Westboro Baptist Church slogan of “God hates fags.”

Admittedly, I don’t know God as well as I should, but I’m guessing he’s downright agnostic on flags. But having a direct channel to the Big Man, GOP Chairman Dave Williams would know better than I.

At this point, one must seriously wonder if the members of the Colorado GOP are being secretly paid by George Soros. What? You got a better theory?

They damaged the ability to have a constructive talk about the real overreach of LGBTQIA+ activism (and I’m pretty sure I got that alphabet soup right, so there, try to cancel me now).

About a year ago during Pride Month, I wrote a column about the head of the Colorado Log Cabin Republicans, the organization of gay Republicans. Their head, Valdamar Archuleta, is an amazing guy who calls himself just a “plain straight gay man.”

He was throwing the BS flag on all the rainbow flags being used to pander to voters and business customers. He beautifully labeled it “rainbow fatigue,” and most of us know what he means.

Pride month has become four weeks of businesses trying to out virtue-signal each other. It would be great to have a conversation on how the gay movement, now that marriage equality has been won and is the rear-view mirror, has been weaponized to push for socialism. And guys like Valdamar are the right people to make the point.

Good thing we have the Colorado GOP to poop in their punch bowl and make any such persuasion from conservatives tainted.

Again, they must be getting paid by the socialist left. If not, they should be. But let’s change venues from the place where Republicans are using subtraction to lose to where they’re using addition to win. Surprisingly, under the Gold Dome.

Republicans were able to extract huge concessions on a property tax remedy with Senate Bill 233.

The punchline of this story is the Republicans in the legislature are not just in the minority, they are in the superminority, with no voice at all. Democrats don’t need the slightest bit of bipartisan support to pass their wildest socialist pipe dreams. And overwhelmingly, that’s just what they usually do.

Thanks to the devastating defeat of Proposition HH and the specter of property tax reform from citizen initiatives this fall, Democrats were willing to listen to Republicans. And the result is not a great bill on property tax reform, but a surprisingly decent one.

The heavy lifting came from Barb Kirkmeyer in the Senate and Lisa Frizell in the House. As a former county commissioner and a former county clerk, they have a handle on the truly bizarre intersections of about 4,000 property taxing districts. If they were not successful and no bill were passed our property taxes would spiral upward next year because the temporary “fix” from last year expires.

Those who were angry at the Gallagher Amendment and worked to repeal it had cause. They’re called commercial property owners. Under the amendment while the tax assessment rate for residential property would drop as property values rose, their assessment rate stayed at an obscenely high 29%.

But after the chaos caused by Gallagher’s repeal, maybe we’ve learned the painful lesson — don’t repeal a core property state amendment without knowing what we’re replacing it with!

Under SB 233 commercial property rates will be reduced over a couple of years to 25%. That’s remarkably good. A citizen’s initiative being circulated now, Initiative 108, would drop it to 24%, so the legislature got remarkably close to what they want.

Residential property assessments will phase down to 6.4%. Considering it is set to return to 7.15%, that’s an amazing concession (better still might be Initiative 108 which brings it to 5.7%. But should that not win at the ballot, we still have this).

All of which to say, the Republicans shooting rubber bands at gay flags and into the eyes of swing voters could learn something from Republicans who are effective, even in a superminority.

By Mike Rosen

Joe Biden’s speechwriters are grasping at straws to give him something positive to say about the economy, hoping he doesn’t go off script and fumble it too badly. When the April Consumer Price Index (CPI) came out in May, he bragged that year-to-year inflation had increased a mere 3.4%.

But prices are still increasing, they’re not coming down. Since he took office in January 2021, the CPI has increased 7% in 2021, 6.5% in 2022, 3.3% in 2023; and will likely be up around 3.5% in 2024. But CPI growth is like compound interest. Each year’s increase is piled on that of prior years. From 2021 to 2024, a moderate monthly grocery budget of $1200 for a family of four will have increased to $1450.

Public officials, politicians, the media, and even some economists refer to the CPI as the measure of inflation. That’s only partially true. The CPI is more like a measure of the “cost of living,” reporting price changes in a market basket of goods and services. As the eminent economist Milton Friedman taught us, inflation is a strictly monetary phenomenon. It’s a decline in the purchasing power of the dollar caused by an increase in the supply of money and credit that exceeds the growth in goods and services. In simpler terms, it’s said to be too many dollars chasing too few goods, the result of federal government spending that exceeds receipts producing habitual budget deficits which the federal reserve monetizes.

Inflation, defined as decline in what a dollar buys, is baked-in for every item in the CPI market basket. But that accounts for only part of the CPI. The price of some items go up a lot, some a little, some even go down. And that’s based on supply and demand, the cost of fuel (which affects virtually everything), productivity, technology, the cost of raw materials, commodities, ever-expanding government regulation, taxes, etc.

A sampling of CPI price increases in the Biden era from January 2021 to April 2024, includes airline fares up 38%; motor vehicle maintenance and repair, 30%; and rent, 21%. Food in general, 16%. Food away from home, 22%, compounded by government mandated increases 

in the minimum wage for restaurant workers. (Supermarkets have replaced human checkers with automated checkout to avoid those minimum wage increases.)

Motor vehicle insurance is up 52% driven by the surge in auto thefts as progressive district attorneys in Democrat strongholds refuse to prosecute auto thieves or release them without bail so they can keep stealing cars.

The price of gasoline has increased 55%. World crude oil prices are a big factor but, domestically, Biden’s and congressional Democrats’ fingerprints are all over this, too. Rather than expanding development and production in the U.S. to increase supply and bring down prices, Biden singlehandedly killed the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada and curtailed drilling on federal lands including Alaska. Progressive Colorado Democrats with an iron grip on state government are restricting oil and natural gas production and some are trying to kill the industry entirely — a mainstay of our state’s economy — in the name of more costly and impractical green energy.

The root of the inflation surge was the COVID pandemic which hit during Trump’s presidency. With much of the population sequestered due to government-mandated lockdowns and the economy retracting, annual federal spending increased by almost 50% to $6.5 trillion with a deficit of more than $3 trillion in 2020. Much of this was unavoidable.

Very much avoidable, however, was the federal spending binge that followed when Biden took office in 2021 with Democrats in control of Congress. They radically expanded government and showered states with unspent COVID money that no longer had to be spent. In blatant defiance of the Supreme Court, Biden’s canceling of student debt was nothing short of bribery. Consequently, more deficit spending spiked the already simmering inflation.

In Biden’s latest budget submission, covering FY 2025-2034, uninterrupted annual deficits average $1.6 trillion. Federal spending that averaged 20% of GDP over the previous 60 years, is now fixed at 24% of GDP. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, a cornucopia of welfare programs, and interest on the national debt now consumes three-quarters of all federal spending and is rising. National Defense, the most essential government responsibility, gets only 12%.

Biden falsely claims to have created millions of jobs. Nonsense. That had nothing to do with his policies, people just returned to work after COVID. But you can blame Biden for the increase in government jobs.