Freedom Unaffiliated

Independence Institute
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Did you know 46% of the voters in Colorado are unaffiliated? Have you ever wondered why? Hear from the experts at Independence Institute talk about the issues important to Colorado and how to bring some sanity to this increasingly leftist state.

  1. 3D AGO

    Thank God for Wyoming , the Un-Colorado

    Years ago, I interviewed a Canadian health-care broker whose job was helping his countrymen escape their own failing system. When their “free” health care turned into “free to wait until you die,” he’d save his clients by routing them to doctors in the U.S. who’d accept cash and rescue their lives. I asked him what advice he had for Americans. His answer terrified me. “I hope the U.S. won’t do what we’ve done with health care,” he said. I thought his reasoning was that he didn’t want to see Americans suffer and die because of medical socialism. But that wasn’t it. He said, “Because if you do, we’ll have nowhere to escape to.” That stuck with me. We are Canada’s health care lifeboat. Every bad system needs an escape hatch. Otherwise, you’re trapped. God Bless WyomingWhich brings me to the un-Colorado. Thank God for Wyoming. From energy to fiscal policy, civil liberties to tech laws, Wyoming is becoming Colorado’s lifeboat. And it is so much more than sneaking north to buy fireworks and gun magazines. Wyoming is becoming the gold standard, quite literally. In December the state purchased some 2,312 ounces of physical gold. Understanding printing money out of nowhere and constant debt spending eventually ends badly, they’re planning ahead. A new law requires 10% of their cash reserves be kept in physical gold. While the rest of the country debates modern monetary theory, Wyoming is quietly saying, “Maybe we should own something real.” For those of us who see Bitcoin as digital gold (like gold, Bitcoin has a limited supply), Wyoming again has the advantage. The Cowboy State was early in building a legal home for cryptocurrency companies. While Colorado chases away tech heavy-hitters like Palantir, Wyoming wants them. They passed laws to clarify crypto is private property, legalized both crypto banking and even Decentralized Autonomous Organizations — companies run by code instead of shareholders. The state even considered their own stable coin. Wyoming doesn’t want to repeat its biggest mistake. It invented the LLC, Limited Liability Corporations, in 1977 — and then watched Delaware steal the idea and become the business capital of America. They won’t let that happen with crypto. Colorado’s political class has been on a decade’s-long crusade to make energy more expensive, less reliable, and — if we’re really lucky — occasionally available. We’re shutting down always-available power to bet everything we have (and everything our kids have) on weather-dependent energy. We’re regulating oil and gas out of existence like they’re chemical weapons. And doing it all with the moral certainty of a vegan Boulderite lecturing a lion. Keeping the lights onMeanwhile, just north they’re doing something radical — keeping the lights on. Wyoming is actively developing next-generation nuclear power, including advanced modular reactors, backed by serious investment. They’re continuing to drill for oil and gas like a state that understands staying alive requires energy. Not slogans. Energy. And here’s the punchline: as Colorado makes it harder to produce power, we’re going to need more of Wyoming’s. They become the battery. We become the extension cord. We’ll virtue signal. They’ll power it. Take data centers — the physical backbone of everything from AI to your email to the movies you stream — they require massive, reliable, always-on electricity. Not “when the wind feels like cooperating” electricity. So where are they going? Not Colorado. Denver Mayor Mike Johnson even bragged he would not allow data centers to be built in his city. What a man! That’s like me saying I refuse to date leggy supermodels. None were going to date me anyway, so why not turn it into bravado. They’re heading to places like Wyoming (data centers, not supermodels), where policymakers haven’t declared war on electrons. But data centers will still be used by Coloradans. So, it doesn’t reduce energy use. It just exports the jobs, tax revenue and opportunity north. And oh, they’re not chasing gun owners or entrepreneurs out of their state via laws that treat them like Nazi used-car salesmen with leprosy. Now, don’t get me wrong. Colorado still has incredible advantages — talent, beauty, lifestyle and a long history of innovation. But advantages can be squandered. Canada already proved that. Because if we didn’t have Wyoming, we might have nowhere to escape to. Jon Caldara is president of Independence Institute, a free market think tank in Denver.

    6 min

  2. MAR 19

    Are our overlords normalizing power outages?

    I’ve lived in Colorado since 1970. And you know what Colorado had back in 1970? High winds blowing down the Front Range. I moved to Boulder in 1984 and have been there ever since. And you know what Boulder has had all that time? A freakin’ lot of high winds. I remember as a college kid walking around the CU campus after windstorms, stepping around uprooted trees and massive broken branches that made the sidewalks impassable. I’ve seen rooftop shingles go flying off Boulder buildings, signs ripped down, and semi-trucks overturned. All of which is to say that for the last 55 years I have personally witnessed a crap-ton of high winds in our mountain state. But only in the last few months have I witnessed our power utilities preemptively turning off electricity during high winds to “prevent fires.” Behavior modificationApparently the windstorms of the last few months must be the worst in Colorado history. Because this is the first time anyone has decided the solution is to turn off grandma’s lights. Is Colorado suddenly windier than it has been during my entire life? Unless our eyes have been lying to us, the answer is comfortably: no. Yet, I type this under an official warning that my power might be turned off because of another rather normal day of high winds. Is it too tinfoil-hat to wonder if this is really about preventing fires? Is it too “QAnon” to think they might be conditioning us for Colorado’s future of intermittent electricity? Are these power shutoffs more about behavior modification than fire prevention? I mean, why now? For half a century windstorms were something you complained about while chasing your patio furniture down the street. Now they apparently require turning off the state. Bureaucracy understands that behavior modification must be incremental. Some 20 years ago, the City of Boulder changed its ordinances to remove the term “pet owner” and replace it with “pet guardian.” A silly, laughable change meant to modify our speech — and therefore our thinking — about property rights and animals. And today there is proposed legislation to outlaw the sale of dogs and cats in pet stores statewide, those modern-day slave auction houses. Incremental. The Transportation Security Administration is the grandmaster of incremental behavior modification. They make airport security lines so long and inefficient that you’re willing to pay them — your airport captors — to get into the shorter “PreCheck” line. Of course it’s not the cash that costs the most. It’s your autonomy and privacy. Join TSA PreCheck and you essentially grant the government a detailed record of every flight you’ve ever taken or plan it take. No troublesome judge-approved warrant or subpoena needed. They’ve trained you to trade sacred privacy for 10 minutes of convenience before getting groped by a stranger in blue gloves. (Which some of us just call “Saturday night.”) That’s behavior modification. Energy math not adding upColorado’s energy elite understands the math. They know sizable power disruptions are in our future — because they ordered them. So, they’d better start getting YOU used to it. Currently about two-thirds of Colorado’s electricity comes from fossil fuels. And already our power is becoming less reliable and more intermittent. Thanks to state mandates, by 2050 — and the legislature is already flirting with moving that deadline up to 2040 — none of our power can come from fossil fuels. This isn’t optimism. It’s fantasy. Now add the fact that electricity demand will likely triple by then thanks to data centers and the forced conversion of appliances from natural gas to electricity. So: fantasy squared. Remember how Denver Mayor Hickenlooper promised we would permanently end homelessness in 10 years? How Barack Obama promised if you liked your health care plan, you could keep it? “All renewable energy in 15 years” belongs in the same museum of political fairy tales. But the power outages as we stumble toward their fantasy — those are a lock. Backup generators and home battery systems aren’t new. But have you noticed the explosion of interest in buying them? Have you noticed the flood of advertisements? That’s not a coincidence. It’s a growth market. Our leaders — and the corporate energy leeches who feed off them — know they need to prepare you for wildly intermittent, Third World energy. So they normalize the outages. Welcome to the future. Please keep a flashlight handy. Jon Caldara is president of Independence Institute, a free market think tan in Denver.

    6 min

  3. MAR 18

    Democrat scheme violates TABOR and Constitution | Mike Rosen

    The governor and progressive Democrats that dominate the state legislature and every statewide office in Colorado have been masterful ― if not ethical and honest ― in devising devious schemes to circumvent the TABOR amendment in the Colorado Constitution. That’s the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, passed by a 1992 voter-initiated ballot measure that bypassed the legislature. It limited government spending and barred the legislature from increasing taxes or imposing new ones without the consent of the voters. Democrats have always despised TABOR. Their favorite ploys have included misrepresenting taxes as “fees” and funding spending programs through tax credits. Because those credits reduce government revenues, they’re the equivalent of government spending but isn’t accounted for as such. Four Big Ugly BillsNow, the Democrats’ legislative super majority has presented a package of four bills championed by its Communist Coalition, the likes of Emily Sirota, Lorena Garcia, Mike Weissman, Julie Gonzales, and others. The bills “decouple” Colorado’s tax code from the federal government’s to “rebalance” Colorado’s tax code. Translating that into forthright language, “decouple” means denying tax deductions to businesses that the federal government allows. “Rebalance” means sharply inflating taxes and government spending. This wording is too clever by half to have come from the progressive nitwits that run the legislature. The fingerprints of the Colorado Fiscal Institute (CFI), who “helped” write the bills are all over it. CFI spokeswoman and policy manager Caroline Nutter is stumping for these bills. CFI is the local affiliate of the State Priorities Partnership, a nationwide network of radical progressive policy groups that call for large-scale redistribution of income and social justice legislation. Nutter’s endorsement is not a plus; it’s a red flag warning. CFI has partnered with the left-wing Bell Policy Center, another local brain-trust for socialist Democrats, working to pass these bills as well as a ballot initiative to replace Colorado’s flat income tax with a soak-the rich graduated income tax. The bills target Colorado businesses and President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB) which averted huge tax increases for individuals and businesses, replacing that with tax relief. Instead, Colorado will get Four Big Ugly Bills (FBUB). End-run around TABORTo make income-tax filing simpler for individuals, Colorado transfers your federal adjusted gross income onto your Colorado tax return, thereby passing federal tax deductions directly onto your Colorado tax return, lowering your tax bill. One of the FBUBs would ditch this principle and brazenly disallow businesses numerous federal tax deductions, thus raising their taxes. This scheme circumvents TABOR’s ban on tax-rate increases and enables the Democrats to disallow deductions, giving them a back-door tax increase. Such as this one: A FBUB end-run around TABOR is baring businesses from treating the salaries of high-paid executives as an operating expense, thereby raising a company’s tax bill. Government mandates minimum wages but has no power over salary maximums. That is up to stockholders, directors, and managers. One more: Another FBUB disallows the deduction for interest expenses on debt for large corporations. That’s nuts, this is a legitimate expense. Yet others would limit the full deduction of carried-forward operating losses for established businesses and deny early-stage start-up enterprises tax deductions for losses that could help them survive. This kind of stuff is so idiotic only a socialist could dream it up. There’s no logic behind it; it’s just a desperate tax grab to enable tax-crazy Democrats to continue their budget busting, out-of-control spending spree. Palantir Technologies, an artificial intelligence (AI) giant and Colorado’s biggest corporation by market capitalization came here in 2020 to escape California’s culture, anti-business taxes, and regulations. CEO Alex Karp has announced Palantir is relocating to Florida to escape the same problems in Colorado, which include the over-regulating of AI. In response, the local president of the militant Service Employees International Union, declared, “Good riddance!” This mentality is self-destructive insanity. Colorado’s reputation as a business-friendly state is down the toilet. Many more companies will follow Palantir’s lead, costing Colorado jobs and tax revenue. Progressive Democrat policy like FBUB is economically suicidal, as the flight of businesses and upper income taxpayers from New York, California, and Illinois has demonstrated. Driving out producers and coddling criminals, illegal aliens, and freeloaders is a bad formula for Colorado’s future. The uninterrupted string of Democrat governors over the past 20 years has stacked the state Supreme Court with progressive justices who’ve blessed the Democrats’ deceitful tactics that violate TABOR’s limitations on taxation and spending without the consent of voters. This latest FBUB overreach is so blatantly unconstitutional under TABOR, it might be too much even for the Colorado Supremes. We can hope. Longtime KOA radio talk host and columnist for the Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News Mike Rosen now writes for Complete Colorado.

    6 min

  4. MAR 11

    Colorado companies aren’t just leaving, they’re fleeing

    At this point, if you hear beeping downtown, it’s not a construction crew. It’s a company backing out. And look, I get it. Businesses relocate for all sorts of reasons: taxes, regulations, labor costs, office space, crime, commute times, the haunting feeling your chief executive is one city council meeting away from being declared a single-use plastic. But Colorado’s political class has been turning “headquarters” into an endangered species. Take TIAA, the financial services giant whose name has for decades been glowing atop a downtown Denver skyscraper like a Bat-Signal for retirement funds. They’re relocating to Frisco, Texas. Texas? Of course, Texas. If Colorado is the place where we hold hearings on the carbon footprint of breathing, Texas is the place where they say, “Stop talking and go build something.” We’re constantly assured Texas is a lawless, dystopian wasteland of deregulation and brisket. Apparently, dystopia pencils out better than Colorado. Then there’s Palantir, our most high-profile (and secretive) tech company, which just moved its headquarters from Denver to Miami. Miami! The city best known for hurricanes, cocaine kingpins yelling “Say hello to my little friend,” and the kind of consumer lifestyle that makes Boulder’s city councilors vomit into their reusable tote bags. Adios, ColoradoWhy are they leaving? It must be the two medieval-poetry grad students who keep protesting outside Palantir’s Denver office. Yes, congratulations. I’m sure it was your cardboard signs that chased them out — not the state becoming the first in the nation to roll out sweeping, pre-emptive AI regulations that require companies to document, audit, report, explain, disclose and apologize for their algorithms before they’ve even finished coding them. Nor could it be Colorado’s energy policy that traded the reliability of “baseload power” for the whimsy of intermittent renewables. Businesses need predictable, stable electricity to make long-term investment decisions. That’s not ideological. That’s arithmetic. Add to that the constant drumbeat of new mandates, fees and compliance requirements, and Colorado starts to look less like a tech hub and more like a regulatory obstacle course. So, what’s the pattern here? It’s not just “companies move sometimes.” We’re building a list. A tracker. A scoreboard. The Colorado Chamber literally maintains a “Lost Opportunities” compilation of companies leaving, downsizing, or choosing to expand somewhere else. Nearly 12,000 jobs have moved away. When you need a tracker for corporate departures, you’re no longer “a state with some challenges.” You’re a gate agent announcing final boarding for Flight 970 to Anywhere Else. It’s not just big, finance-and-tech firms. It’s small slices of Colorado history too. Yes, even cowboys are looking at Colorado Springs and saying, “This place is getting a little… weird.” The Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association has been based in Colorado Springs since 1979, and now it’s moving its headquarters — and with it the Pro Rodeo Hall of Fame — to Cheyenne, Wyoming. Wyoming — a state with more cattle than people. A place where regulations come in two categories: “Don’t set yourself on fire” and “Try not to get kicked.” When cowboys rustle themselves out of Colorado, are we still Colorado? It’s no coincidenceAt some point, we stopped being a place where entrepreneurs risk their time, treasure and talent to build things and became a place where entrepreneurs must apologize for themselves. And it’s not just the cost — although yes, costs matter. It’s the vibe. The political posture. The governing style that says, “We want your jobs and tax revenue… but we’d also like you to feel lightly ashamed for existing.” Since we keep treating businesses like the thief in a crime novel, maybe we should stop acting shocked when they quietly leave in the middle of the night. Because that’s what’s happening. Not “moving.” Evacuating. Like: “Grab the servers!” “Did you get the customer list?” “Forget the Keurig, we don’t have time!” “Is the legislature still in session?” “Then GO, GO, GO!” And the saddest part is Colorado still has everything going for it — talent, beauty, lifestyle, innovation. We should be an easy sell. Instead, creators leave because the policy climate feels like a never-ending HR seminar conducted by people who have never met a payroll. Look, companies move for lots of reasons. But when the pattern keeps pointing toward states with lower taxes, lighter regulatory burdens, and more predictable policy environments, maybe — just maybe — it’s not coincidence. Maybe it’s policy. No, no. It was definitely the protesters with tambourines. Jon Caldara is president of Independence Institute, a free market think tank in Denver.

    6 min

  5. MAR 10

    Ask Secretary of State candidates if they favor election audits.

    This part will disappoint angry people on Twitter: Relax. Put the pitchforks down. I am not relitigating the 2020 election or mail ballots or even Tina Peters. But I am saying people don’t trust elections like they used to. And here in Colorado we can do a rather simple thing to reverse that. And progressives should want it most. Saving democracy is all the rage now, and as far as political slogans go, it’s a pretty damn good one. But saving democracy isn’t just about protecting Colorado from President Donald Trump, whatever that vagary means. It’s about fortifying our democratic institutions so the voters’ true will is clearly and verifiably stated. This is where I’d usually rant about how the legislature going around our Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights is more of a clear and present threat to democracy than anything Trump is doing in Colorado, but why state the obvious? Those hell-bent on taking your money will do anything to make sure you can’t vote on it. Again: Save Democracy, Protect TABOR! Confidence in elections isn’t determined by how often some official says the system works. It’s determined by whether the public believes the system is beyond suspicion. Our republic depends on that. And the Colorado Secretary of State’s office just insisting our elections are fair and honest? That’s not enough. Saying “trust us” isn’t proof. They need to prove it. And they don’t. Not really. When you buy stock in a publicly traded company you have confidence the financial information is accurate because an outside, independent auditing firm checks the books and certifies them. Been the law since 1933. Apparently, elections didn’t get the memo. Colorado’s voting system operates in a way publicly traded companies could never: it audits itself. That doesn’t engender confidence. Now before the Tina Peters acolytes start pointing fingers, I am in no way saying any Colorado elections were rigged or tampered with. I am saying if you want people to believe the results the Secretary of State declares, her office shouldn’t be the one doing the auditing. Or put differently, if Trump-hating progressives want to shut up election-denying MAGA die-hards, simply having outside election audits would go a long way. Counties do the hands-on work, but the critical decisions are made at the top. Right now, the Secretary of State determines which races get audited, what statistical method is used, and what “risk limit” applies. That determines how many ballots get checked. And here’s the kicker: the current system incentivizes auditing the “blowout” races. If a candidate wins by 9,000 votes, you only must sample a handful of ballots to confirm the result. Easy peasy. If a candidate wins by 30 votes? Now you must check a lot more ballots. That’s expensive, time-consuming, and annoying. Bureaucrats hate work. So what does the SOS audit most? The landslides. The current setup rewards picking races easiest to validate rather than races that most need validating. That’s not corruption. That’s human nature. And a little bureaucratic laziness. And human nature is exactly why we use independent auditors everywhere else. An outside firm or office, with its reputation on the line, would likely choose differently. Besides, it’s just terrible practice for the Secretary of State to audit the Secretary of State. Even Enron’s accountants would call that sketchy. The beauty of an outside audit is you remove the political suspicion. An independent commission, or maybe the State Auditor’s office, would decide which races are audited, the statistical methods, whether best practices are followed. Nothing about ballots, machines, or voter IDs so the left can’t gasp “suppression.” What changes is who verifies the work. And that matters. If Democrats truly believe Colorado elections are secure, and they say they do, then an independent audit only strengthens that claim. In fact, it’s politically brilliant. Imagine a Democratic Secretary of State saying, “Our elections are secure, and we’ve removed all doubt by putting audits in the hands of independent experts.” That’s not voter suppression. That’s voter reassurance. And it beats the current line: “Trust the system. It audits itself.” We don’t save democracy by telling skeptical voters to shut up but by making the system more trustworthy. An independent auditor is not an accusation. It’s insurance. Even for progressives. Especially for progressives. If the legislature won’t make this change, it’s our responsibility to ask every Secretary of State candidate whether they will. Jon Caldara is president of Independence Institute, a free market think tank in Denver.

    6 min

  6. MAR 2

    We'd Be Better Off Penniless

    It’s worrisome enough that we have to live with the ever-present threat of nuclear war hanging over our head, the fiery extermination of humanity from global warming, a worldwide depression triggered by the U.S. defaulting on its $39 trillion national debt on its way to $50 trillion, to say nothing of an uptick in falls from Denver rent-a-scooters. On top of all that, yet another crisis has descended upon the American public: Donald Trump has ended the minting of our one-cent coin, affectionately known as the penny. Good grief! Don’t panic, 240 billion of them are still in circulation. Actually, this is long overdue. “Seigniorage” is the revenue a government derives from the difference between the face value of a coin and the cost of its mintage. (Ignore paper currency.) The U.S. Mint stopped making quarters, half dollars, and dollars out of silver when inflation made the metal content more valuable than the face value of the coins. Minting a penny now costs 3.7 cents each. The penny is the only current U.S coin with negative seigniorage. When I was a kid, a penny had some intrinsic value. You could actually buy something with it. Place one in a bubble-gum machine, turn the crank and a candy-covered gum ball would drop out. You could even put a 1-cent stamp on a penny post card. In 1857, the U.S. stopped minting half-cent coins, and the nation survived even though a half penny actually had some purchasing power; you could buy a half-dozen cigars for that. The cumulative inflation rate of 370% over the last 270 years since then has rendered the penny virtually worthless. Today, it isn’t worth the trouble of picking up off the sidewalk (especially if it’s face down; that’s bad luck). Dimes or quarters have replaced pennies in kids’ piggy banks. And credit cards, debit cards, PayPal, internet electronic transactions, crypto currency, automatic ACH billing, and mobile sports-betting, to name just a few alternatives, are increasingly displacing purchases with cash in general (with the exception of stacks of hundred-dollar bills in duffle bags for big illicit drug deals). Most people don’t even bother to carry coins in their pockets anymore. If you try to give the kid at the checkout counter a $5 dollar bill and three pennies for a $4.83 purchase, hoping for two dimes back, his eyes cross as he struggles to do the math in his head. The sentimental case for keeping the penny is fading away as penny-laden references in our language such as “a penny for your thoughts,” “penny wise and pound foolish,” “penny-ante,” “penny pincher,” “pennies from heaven,” and “penny stocks,” are disappearing with generational change. Even penny loafers are out of style. Abraham Lincoln won’t be forgotten; his face will still grace the $5 bill. Canada has already eliminated its penny in 2012 (mostly to stop unruly hockey fans from throwing them onto the ice). In your shopping cart at the supermarket, each individual item will still be priced in 1-cent increments. If you’re paying with plastic or a check you’ll pay the exact price, with no rounding necessary. Making a mountain out of a mole hill, some people are afraid retailers will cheat consumers by always rounding prices UP (which would be the to the nearest nickel, not the nearest dollar). This is ridiculous. Rounding will only apply if you’re paying with cash, and it will be on the total bill (not each item) rounded to that nearest nickel. So, a total purchase of, say, $89.01 or $89.02 could be rounded down to $89.00, saving you one or two cents. And a purchase of $89.03 or $89.04 could be rounded up to $89.05, costing you one or two cents more. This is small change and in the long run, it’ll all even out anyway. Anti-business progressives are also stricken with UP-rounding paranoia that greedy capitalists will oppress consumers. Coming to the rescue, the (NCSLSLTTF) National Conference of State Legislatures’ State and Local Taxation Task Force (whew!) is proposing a government mandate requiring that purchases ending in 1, 2, 6 or 7 cents be rounded down to the nearest nickel, and purchases ending in 3, 4, 8 or 9 cents be rounded up. Please. This is a solution for a non-problem. I doubt Safeway will make it corporate policy to always round up. That would be terrible public relations giving Wal-Mart the competitive opportunity to advertise they always round down (perhaps raising prices a few cents to make up for it). Longtime KOA radio talk host and columnist for the Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News Mike Rosen now writes for Complete Colorado.

    6 min

  7. FEB 20

    Stalled population growth a sign of Colorado in decline

    Something strange is happening in Colorado — strange enough that the political class should notice. People are leaving Colorado. After years of being one of the fastest-growing states in the nation, net in-migration has stopped and may be reversing. According to Federal Reserve Bank data, the last time Colorado’s population took a dip was 1945. Congrats to our policy makers, who finally achieved something historic no one asked for. The Broncos haven’t won a championship in a decade, but what you’re achieving hasn’t happened in 80 years. For the first time in 16 years, rents in metro Denver are actually going down. Not “slowing their increase.” Not “rising less quickly.” Going down. Metro-wide rents are down nearly 5% over the last year. This should set off alarm bells under the Gold Dome. But it won’t. Californicating ColoradoColorado is the most beautiful and desirable state in the nation. If people are no longer stampeding here, something has gone seriously wrong — and it’s not the lack of good snow this year. More likely it’s unaffordability, litter, crime and an anti-employer climate that treats job creators like parolees. When new state law required posting of salaries, national want-ads for teleworkers stated, “not accepting applications from Colorado.” And thanks to the first-in-the-nation, and worst-in-the-free-world, regulation on AI, that same phrase is now appearing in tech company want-ads — which is quite an achievement for a state that claims to “lead innovation.” People are still fleeing the high-tax, government-failure states of California, New York and Illinois. Those refugees used to pour into Colorado. No more. They’re finding sanctuary in low-tax, low-regulation states like Florida and Texas instead. So give our leaders one victory. They’ve stopped the mass migration of Californians to Colorado — albeit by Californicating our laws. What perverse irony. Graduated-income-tax states of New York and California top the list of exodus states, losing 1.7 million and 1.6 million people in a decade. The top states gaining population are the no-income-tax states of Florida and Texas (plus-1.6 million and plus-1.3 million). When people leave a state, they don’t just take their dog. They take their money, their assets and their businesses. Between 2012 and 2022 California lost more than 350,000 people and $21 billion in income to Texas alone. New York lost 380,000 people and $36 billion to Florida. That’s $57 billion of income those states can no longer tax. Legislature misses the memoThere was a time when doctors practiced bloodletting to heal patients. It just hastened their deaths. If the first round of this year’s legislation is any indicator, our lawmakers are keeping the tradition alive. They’re considering moving up the unreachable goal of 100% renewable energy by a decade. There’s also a bill to end eight decades of peace between unions and business by repealing the Labor Peace Act. And the granddaddy of policy bloodletting is the effort to destroy Colorado’s Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights and emulate the progressive-income-tax models of California and New York — the same states people are fleeing. Now rents are falling — not because Colorado suddenly learned how to build housing efficiently — but because people stopped coming. Demand softened. That’s not a victory. That’s a warning sign — the economic equivalent of chest pain. Why is homeownership so expensive here? Because governments at every level treat new housing like a public nuisance. Zoning restrictions, growth boundaries, density caps, “affordability” set-asides, green mandates, impact fees, neighborhood vetoes and endless reviews all conspire to make housing scarce. Young people aren’t asking for luxury penthouse condos. They’re asking for a starter home that doesn’t require four roommates and a GoFundMe. Then there’s energy, where Colorado has chosen ideology over reliability. We’re banning and regulating affordable energy while mandating expensive electrification — even as our grid proves fragile during windstorms and cold snaps. The young are told they must save the planet, while their utility bills rise and their power goes out. When you’re 25 and trying to build a life, “sacrifice more” is not a winning sales pitch. People can read a paycheck. They see rent, utilities, gas, groceries and deductions. They also see litter, drug-addled vagrancy, neglected roads and bumper-to-bumper traffic next to empty bike lanes. When the cost of living rises faster than wages, the view of the Rockies starts to look less romantic. So when rents fall for the first time in 16 years and population growth stalls, it’s not a mystery. It’s the market delivering feedback. Jon Caldara is president of Independence Institute, a free market think tank in Denver.

    6 min

  8. FEB 20

    Latest ’60 Minutes’ controversy spotlights biased journalism

    A tautology is a needless repetition of an idea using different wording. For example: “Sooner or later the inevitable is bound to happen.” In this case, Bari Weiss is under fire from the stable of leftist, so-called journalists at CBS’s “60 Minutes” program. The rebellion is over a story (in fact, a hit piece), recently scheduled to run, about the Trump administration’s deportation of illegal immigrants to El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement CECOT prison. The story was “spiked” (in journalist lingo: killed or withheld) by Weiss in her capacity as their boss, the new editor-in-chief of CBS News. Weiss, a self-proclaimed centrist, was hired for that job in October 2025 by Paramount Skydance (CBS’s parent company) presumably to expand its audience by creating more balanced reporting than the typical leftist and anti-Trump content on CBS, NBC, ABC, PBS, and CNN. Weiss’s role is to ultimately oversee and edit CBS News content, which is why I describe this conflict as “inevitable.” Weiss had earlier been hired by the NY Times in 2017 as a token moderate within its overwhelmingly left-wing opinion staff. Predictably, that didn’t work out. She publicly resigned in 2020 citing the narrow-minded, left-wing culture at the Times, open hostility and bullying from colleagues who called her “a Nazi and a racist,” intolerance of different viewpoints, and no interest in open debate. Facing a similar culture at CBS News, Weiss’s mission will be challenging. Sharyn Alfonsi, the “60 Minutes” correspondent who produced the CECOT prison piece, publicly criticized Weiss claiming, “the story was factually correct and had been cleared by CBS lawyers and its standards division.” Alfonsi argued that, “pulling it now after every rigorous internal check has been met is not an editorial decision, it is a political one.” Weiss explained the story was one-sided, but that she’d air Alfonsi’s piece in a future broadcast when it was better balanced and ready. (Balance on “60 Minutes? Perish the thought.) While Alfonsi’s story may contain some correct facts it can still be loaded with progressive, pro-Democrat, anti-Trump political spin, as is commonplace at “60 Minutes.” Alfonsi’s lame proof of fairness was the approval of CBS lawyers, its standards division, and rigorous internal checks, which is like having the fox guard the hen house. Weiss stated that “the only newsroom I’m interested in running is one in which we are able to have contentious disagreements about the thorniest editorial matters with respect and, crucially, where we assume the best intent of our colleagues.” Wading into this dispute was the Associated Press, an omnipresent international wire service even farther left than “60 minutes,” that notoriously puts out biased opinion pieces masquerading as news stories. Predictably defending “60 Minutes,” the AP described the program as, “one of journalism’s most respected brands.” Of course, it’s respected and revered by lefties and naïve viewers, but certainly not by conservatives and savvy objective followers of public policy. In its so-called news story, the AP noted that “60 Minutes” was “a frequent target of Trump,” which is true. But it failed to note that’s because Trump was a frequent target of “60 Minutes,” from which he defends himself. Furthermore, the AP feared Weiss’s appointment might be a signal that CBS News, “was headed in a more Trump-friendly direction.” Good Heaven’s, no! God forbid that CBS could be headed in a less unfriendly direction and treat Trump fairly. Regarding CBS’s journalistic credibility, in October 2025, “60 Minutes” recorded an extensive interview with Vice President Kamala Harris, then the Democrat candidate for president. On October 6, CBS’s “Face the Nation” aired a clip from that recording in which “60 Minutes” correspondent Bill Whitaker asked a question about Israel and the behavior of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In her answer, Kamala rambled through one of her typical incoherent word salads. The very next day a prime time-special edition of “60 Minutes” aired a long version of the interview in which the word salad in Kamala’s answer had been edited out to spare her the embarrassment. After this trickery was publicly exposed on YouTube, CBS claimed it was edited to save time. Come on. Trump subsequently sued CBS News and “60 Minutes” for $20 million over this scam, arguing it was deceptive editing. CBS and its parent, Paramount, settled out-of-court for $16 million, with the funds going to Trump’s future presidential library and his legal fees, but denied any wrongdoing saying the editing followed its standard journalist practice. It’s beautifully ironic that CBS’s defense is a virtual admission that its “standard journalist practice” was intentionally deceptive! Longtime KOA radio talk host and columnist for the Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News Mike Rosen now writes for Complete Colorado.

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Did you know 46% of the voters in Colorado are unaffiliated? Have you ever wondered why? Hear from the experts at Independence Institute talk about the issues important to Colorado and how to bring some sanity to this increasingly leftist state.

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  • Creator
    Independence Institute
  • Years Active
    2023 - 2026
  • Episodes
    168
  • Rating
    Clean
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    © Copyright 2026 Independence Institute
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    Freedom Unaffiliated

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