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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. 22h ago

    The gangster-style government under Colorado’s gold dome

    The issues on your ballot aren’t just questions about trains, taxes and spending. They are exhibits in a larger case: dishonesty, intimidation and political bullying have become standard operating procedure at the Colorado Capitol. The message from lawmakers is increasingly simple: Vote however you like — we’ll make sure it turns out the way we like. When voters might say no, they rewrite the question. When elected officials won’t cooperate, they replace them. When citizens organize an initiative, they sabotage it. And when the law becomes inconvenient, they exempt themselves from it. The kings of ColoradoConsider the legislature’s devotion to “democracy.” Lawmakers exempted themselves from Colorado’s open-meetings law. Why? Because transparency is vital — right up until we want to see what they’re doing. They warn President Donald Trump threatens democracy, then strip authority from democratically elected officials. They removed two-thirds of the elected Regional Transportation District board so their own appointees could take over. Nothing protects democracy quite like replacing the people voters chose. Then there was Initiative 175, citizens petitioning to vote on road funding. So, lawmakers passed a bill to neutralize the initiative before ballots were even cast. Its supporters finally had to pull their now impotent citizens’ initiative. The legislature didn’t defeat the measure. It kneecapped voters’ ability to even vote on it. That same attitude is stamped all over this year’s ballot. Take Issue 7A, the latest choo-choo tax. Never mind taxpayers are still waiting, and paying, for rail promised in 1971. Never mind we’re still waiting, and paying, for the train to Longmont promised in 2004. Never mind public money is being used to promote the cuckoo CoCo choo-choo tax. The truly impressive part is the “rail” voting district. Areas considered friendly to the tax — such as Boulder and Denver — were gerrymandered into the district. Less enthusiastic communities gerrymandered out. Apparently, when you can’t win the vote, you choose the voters. Call it “curated democracy.” Gunning for TABORThen there’s Proposition NN, which asks us to surrender our Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights (TABOR) tax refunds, naturally, “for education.” But after 10 years, the earmarks disappear and the money goes, well, we don’t know. Unlike previous tax-refund grabs, Prop NN tinkers with the TABOR spending formula. This is a first in anti-taxpayer arrogance. If excess revenue ever threatens to produce refunds again, NN gives lawmakers the power to change the spending formula, so those refunds disappear. Your refund isn’t being stolen. It is being legislatively relocated. The graduated income-tax proposal offers another clever trick: Its brackets aren’t indexed for inflation. As wages rise with inflation, taxpayers drift into higher brackets even when their real purchasing power hasn’t increased. Their plan? Over time we will all be paying the top 8.4% income tax rate. Why the relentless attack on TABOR? Because TABOR is inconvenient for people accustomed to taking. Legislative leaders blame TABOR and Trump for Colorado’s budget squeeze. Yet their own analysts have identified the real problem: Legislators themselves treated temporary federal COVID money like permanent income and built continuing obligations around it (like Medicaid expansion to illegals). Other states used one-time money for one-time expenses. Colorado behaved like someone who won a scratch ticket, leased a yacht and then blamed the bank when the bills arrived. As voter-hating Sen. Jeff Bridges runs around leading literal cheerleading sessions against TABOR (really, check out the videos), he refuses to let people know his own Joint Budget Committee’s staff reported the budget problem was the legislature’s doing. In January, legislative staff told them if temporary revenue had been spent on temporary needs, the state budget should have returned to balance. That earned lawmakers what one news report called “a slice of humble pie.” But why man up and take the blame when you can blame your spending orgy on TABOR. Read the fine printSo when you examine this year’s ballot, look beyond the soothing language about education, transportation and fairness. Look at the fine print and what lawmakers have worked so hard not to tell you. These measures reflect a Capitol culture that treats voters less like citizens to be persuaded and more like obstacles to be outmaneuvered. Our democracy is being worked over in broad daylight by the people claiming to protect it. Nice vote you’ve got there, Colorado. Be a shame if something happened to it.

  2. 1d ago

    The Crimefighting Case for Flock License Plate Readers

    One of the most popular formats on network television and streaming services like Netflix and Prime Video has been police and federal-agent crimefighting dramas like Law & Order, Blue Bloods and NCIS. Within that category are formats like Chicago PD and FBI that routinely include high-speed car chases (and foot chases on FBI) that especially feature forensic investigative, pursuit and capture technology. Showrunners aren’t making this stuff up. Their production staffs obviously retain experienced expert consultants with state-of-the-art technical knowledge. If I were a fugitive on the lam from a serious felony, I’d now be well aware to instantly get off and staying off the grid. That means no credit card use. No cell phone calls, lest I’m “pinged” at a tower. Staying away from my LKA (last known address). Abandoning my own car on which there’s a BOLO (be on the lookout for) alert. Better, I should steal a car, although that info will be put out over the police network soon enough. Then there are the omni-present surveillance security cameras in airports, stores, businesses, hospitals, homes, and government buildings that Chicago PD and the FBI access to track where I’ve been and where I’m at. Anti-Flock paranoiaTo make matters even worse, criminals have to contend with the dreaded Flock cameras, an invention of the Atlanta-based Flock Safety Company whose crimefighting systems are highly-valued by law-enforcement agencies nationwide as force multipliers for solving homicides, kidnappings, assaults, vehicle thefts, jewelry store robberies, missing persons, human trafficking, and more. It was a Flock camera in Boulder that quickly located the car and aided police in the arrest and conviction for murder of the Islamist antisemitic terrorist who firebombed a crowd on the Pearl Street Mall. Flock’s automated license plate readers, installed at intersections all over town with the consent of local governments across the country, photograph the plate and record details, including GPS locations, of every passing vehicle and compares the data to a “hot list” stored in the Flock system of all wanted plates nationwide. Local police can be notified of the hot plate vehicle in as little as 16-seconds. Despite the claims of anti-Flock paranoids, their cameras don’t record your Social Security number or what takes place in the privacy of your bedroom. One critic equated Flock’s cameras with Big Brother’s mass surveillance of the entire populace in George Orwell’s classic dystopian novel, “1984.” But BB’s cameras were hidden in two-way TV screens in everyone’s homes! Flock’s cameras are only in public venues. As a law-abiding citizen who roots for the cops and FBI agents, I’m grateful for this modern technology. I have nothing to hide in public places. This technology makes me safer by helping to capture the robbers and other bad guys. As for personal privacy, don’t be naïve. We live in a technological era that already compromises much of our privacy through our own behavior in internet interactions with countless servicers, retailers, unknown scammers, and on social media. We’re easy prey for sophisticated computer and email hackers. Your only sanctuary is to become a recluse. Invoking the fourthAnother silly ploy of the anti-Flockers is to falsely invoke the Fourth Amendment’s protection from unreasonable search and seizure, and the requirement of a warrant supported by a probable cause. This is beyond Flock’s capabilities. And the Fourth Amendment isn’t absolute; gray areas have forced many exceptions. Like allowing mass searching of travelers by TSA agents at airports without “probable cause.” This is a rational tradeoff to protect travelers from getting blown up in flight by terrorists or crashing into the World Trade Center and Pentagon again. Will the next contrivance to handcuff crimefighters be outlawing fingerprinting and DNA evidence? A large element of those who oppose Flock cameras are sanctuary-city activists who want open borders, and who coddle and defend illegal immigrants. They don’t want data from those cameras to be shared with federal authorities like ICE because they don’t want these people or any illegal immigrants (including the criminals among them) to be deported, even if Flock technology will assist crimefighters in apprehending criminals of all kinds. The organizations and lawyers that support those here illegally describe themselves as defenders of the rights of “undocumented immigrants.” More accurately, they’re defenders of “illegal immigrant aliens.” If you drive a car without a license, that’s illegal; you’re not an “undocumented driver.” This is another example of the mentality of Denver’s progressive prosecutors, judges, and juries who pander to criminals at the expense of their victims. Like rewarding, with multimillion dollar settlements and awards, violent leftist protestors who intentionally attack and provoke police attempting to keep the peace. Longtime KOA radio talk host and columnist for the Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News Mike Rosen now writes for Complete Colorado.

  3. 5d ago

    Mike Rosen’s 2026 Colorado election ballot measure picks

    Amendment 81 – Law Enforcement Reporting Requirements to Federal Authorities Recommendation: YES In essence, the purpose of this is to assist the Dept. of Homeland Security and ICE in doing their jobs. It would allow Colorado law enforcement agencies to cooperate with DHS and ICE when a person charged with a violent crime or with a prior felony conviction has an unverified immigration status. Currently, Colorado’s “sanctuary” policies handcuff police and sheriffs from doing so. If this passes it could result in outlawing sanctuary policies that protect illegal aliens and obstruct ICE. Amendment 82 – Right to Natural Gas Recommendation: YES Common sense to curb anti-fossil fuel radicals. Amendment 83 – Constitutional Right to Hunt & Fish Recommendation: YES Of course. Amendment 84 – Mail Ballot Voter Identification Recommendation: YES Requires mail voters to provide a signature and identification number. Discriminates against illegal voters, so progressives will call it racist. Amendment 85 – Plain-Language Ballot Questions Recommendation: YES Requires all ballot questions to be written in understandable language (not lawyer jargon) at no more than an 8th grade reading level. Good idea, even if most Denver Public Schools grads still wouldn’t understand it. Amendment 86 – Congressional Redistricting Recommendation: YES Would prohibit congressional redistricting unless approved by the Congressional Redistricting Commission and the Supreme Court. Amendment 87 – Graduated Income Tax Recommendation: NO Would replace Colorado’s flat income tax, in place since 1987, with progressive income tax rates. Ever since Democrats gained one-party rule in Colorado, government spending has been spiraling out of control. Facing huge budget deficits, this is yet another tax increase, and a mammoth one at that, driving an additional 2.7 billion dollars a-year flowing into government coffers and none of it subject to TABOR refunds. With this measure, Democrats are buying the votes of taxpayers in lower brackets with a slight tax decrease, while lowering the boom on individuals and corporations with incomes over $500,000, almost doubling their tax rates to as much as 8.4%. (Since the tax brackets won’t be adjusted for inflation, as federal tax rates are, “bracket creep” would automatically raise taxes on everyone each year.) As has happened in other Democrat-controlled states and cities, this will drive even more successful, taxpaying individuals and businesses out of Colorado, depriving us of any of their tax revenue, innovations, talent, and charitable contributions. Proposition NN – State Public K-12 Education Funding Recommendation: NO NO Another scheme to drive up government spending and reduce TABOR refunds. Some of it’s earmarked for public schools, so “it’s for the kids.” (Code for: it’s for the teacher unions.) Proposition 132 – Penalties for Fentanyl Crimes Recommendation: YES Discourages fentanyl sales, use, and related felonies; stiffens sentences. Proposition 133 – Penalties for Human Trafficking of a Minor Recommendation: YES Would further deter this heinous crime by expanding the definition of trafficking and increasing the penalty to life imprisonment. Proposition 134 – Male and Female Participation in School Sports Recommendation: YES Restricts participation on sports teams to members of the same biological sex, except for teams specifically designated as co-ed. This will protect girls from physical injury and loss of opportunity by bigger and stronger boys. Proposition 135 – Prohibit Certain Surgeries for Minors Recommendation: YES Prohibits sex reassignment surgeries on minors and bans government funding. Troubled kids lack the maturity to make this irreversible choice and should be protected from irresponsible parents who would allow it. At least, they can wait till they’re 18. Proposition 136 – Income Tax Rate Cap Recommendation: YES This is the antidote for Amendment 87 (“Graduated Income Tax,” above). Prop 136 would cap the individual and corporate income tax rate at the current level of 4.4% for all. With both measures on the ballot, if they both pass and Prop 136 gets more YES votes than Amendment 87, the top tax rate stays capped at 4.4%, but Amendment 87’s slightly lower tax rates under $100,000 of income would nonetheless take effect. If Amendment 87 gets more YES votes than Prop 136, then nothing in Prop 136 takes effect and all of Amendment 87’s measures take effect, especially its top rate of 8.4%. All the more reason to vote for Prop 136. Proposition 137 – Designate Sporting Goods Sales Tax Revenue for Conservation Recommendation: NO Another nitpicking sales tax. We have too many of those already. Ballot Measures for the People’s Democrat Socialist Republic of Denver. Recommendation: NO on all Denver voters are about to elect a communist to the U.S. House of Representatives. Anything sensible on the ballot will lose anyway. Longtime KOA radio talk host and columnist for the Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News Mike Rosen now writes for Complete Colorado.

  4. 6d ago

    Colorado Already Has a Progressive Tax?

    On TABOR Talk we discuss how Colorado Legislators are trying to get you to give up your TABOR refunds forever. Will you let them have it?

  5. Oct 2

    Colorado ticket splitters say yes to Dems, but no to their policies

    My prediction for this election: Voters will vote against … themselves. Voters will elect Democrats to run virtually everything — and then approve ballot measures telling those Democrats to stop doing virtually everything. Democrats for office. Limited government for policy. Colorado has reinvented ticket splitting without the inconvenience of electing Republicans. The new ticket splittingWe used to split tickets the old-fashioned way. The same Coloradan might vote for a Democratic governor such as Dick Lamm or Roy Romer and a Republican senator such as Bill Armstrong or Hank Brown. Voters often made sure at least one legislative chamber belonged to the party opposing the guy in the governor’s mansion. The experts called it inconsistency. Voters called it adult supervision. But that was then. Today, Coloradans just vote for Democrats. Years of one-party control have made the state less affordable, more bureaucratic and less tolerant — and voters are feeling it. That will change how they vote this fall, just not in the way Republicans hope. Coloradans will continue electing Democrats to every statewide office. They could easily hand the party veto-proof supermajorities in both the state House and Senate. And these won’t merely be more Democrats. They will include more socialists disguised as Democrats: woke, economy-crippling, power-hungry leftists eager to engineer our lives for our own good — and charge us for the privilege. So you might reasonably conclude Colorado voters want more taxes, more regulation and more restrictions. I don’t think they do. What they want is “not Republican.” More specifically: not Trump and not religious conservatives. They are repelled by the Republican brand. That’s not to be confused with swooning for Democrats. Their votes on ballot issues will tell the real story. With a baker’s dozen of citizen initiatives before them, Coloradans will say no to Republican candidates but might say yes to freedom, free markets and other suspiciously Republican-ish ideas. Dissonance in the voting boothConsider transgender policy: Voters will elect more progressive lawmakers like those who have outlawed “misgendering,” required schools to conceal a child’s transition from parents and mandated trans indoctrination in classrooms. Those same voters will approve Proposition 134, preventing biological boys from competing on girls’ sports teams. Elect crazed Democrats and then reverse what they do. Because, especially for suburban voters, this is more acceptable than electing Republicans. Proposition 135 could also sneak through, preventing doctors from amputating healthy body parts from children in the name of transitioning. What a middle finger to the candidates they will be putting into office. The message: “We dislike your policies. Please return immediately to the Capitol and make more of them.” Taxes could produce the same routine. Ever since the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights passed, the legislature has regularly returned like a child who has already been told there will be no more ice cream: Can we keep your tax refund now? How about now? Now!? If history is any guide and Prop NN joins the ash heap of anti-TABOR measures, it will again demonstrate Coloradans trust Democrats with a desk at the Capitol considerably more than they trust them with the contents of a wallet. Amendment 87, the graduated income tax, could also fail as voters learn it isn’t indexed to inflation. If it passes, eventually everyone will pay close to double the current income-tax rate. If it fails, voters will have delivered another “kiss my ass” to the left while voting, um, for the left. Energy offers another opportunity as our Democrats have garroted fossil fuels. Yet voters may put a “right to natural gas” into the state constitution while reelecting the team trying to annihilate natural gas. That’s like hiring an arsonist but passing a house rule against matches. The legislature, the current administration and his husband have pursued a radical animal-rights agenda that antagonizes ranchers and hunters. Meanwhile, voters are likely to approve the right to hunt and fish. And then there’s voter ID. Every poll shows voters want it, including nearly 80% of Democrats. So of course, the Democratic legislature will never enact it. Voters will do the job that the people they keep putting into office won’t. Amendment 84, requiring identification for mail-in ballots, should pass easily. Coloradans no longer split their tickets between Democrats and Republicans. They have devised something stranger: elect Democrats, then use citizen initiatives to protect themselves from Democratic policies. So, Democrats for office and Republicans for policy?

  6. Sep 29

    The bodily integrity case for yes on Colorado’s Prop 135

    Proposition 135 on this fall’s ballot would prohibit sex-change surgery on minors. Call it “gender-affirming surgery” if that makes the amputation sound more compassionate. I’ll admit, I struggled with how to vote. Not because I think children should undergo these surgeries, but because I’m suspicious whenever government barges into a family’s decisions. The question is whether stopping these surgeries is a legitimate function of government. The sovereign individualOn emotional issues, like this one, it’s worth asking whether your vote grows out of principle or emotion. If you haven’t figured out your guiding principles, you’re just emoting with a ballot. My overriding principle is every human being is sovereign unto himself — his own nation, his own kingdom. As sovereign, an adult has the right to speak, worship, own property, defend himself, associate with other sovereigns or tell them to get off his lawn. He also owns his own body. That includes the right to tattoo it, pierce it, poison it with gas-station sushi or surgically alter it. Other people may consider those choices foolish or grotesque, but it isn’t their body and not their business. Government’s proper job, with very limited exceptions, is to protect individual liberty, not coerce people for their own good. Which, naturally, brings us to seat belts (yeah, I know, but stay with me). I despise mandatory seat belt laws for adults. There is something inconsistent about screaming “my body, my choice” on one issue and then demanding other people’s bodies be strapped down against their will. If an adult wishes to meet his windshield at 80 mph, that is between him and the laws of physics. Further, as a supporter of Darwinism, I don’t want to keep stupid people in the gene pool longer than need be. Seat belt laws do that (note that the Kardashians were not a thing before seat belt laws. Coincidence?). Kids are differentBut I strongly support seat belt laws for children. Infants cannot buckle themselves in. Nor do children naturally yearn to be strapped into place. Why be strapped down when you can run around the car hitting your little sister, playing the “I’m not touching you” game while dodging your mother’s hand as she tries to slap you? Parents should decide what risks their children may take. But no one should put children in danger, even if it’s the parents. Leaving a toddler in the trunk of a speeding car is not an unconventional parenting philosophy. It is child endangerment. Our Declaration of Independence asserts government must protect life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. In other words, protect a child’s life until he’s old enough to have the liberty to pursue his happiness, which may include removing healthy body parts. The case for yesThat brings us back to Proposition 135. It does not prohibit puberty blockers or hormone treatments. It draws its line at the permanent removal of body tissue. That distinction matters. I run Independence Institute. We’ve spent 40 years fighting for parental rights in education. Parents, not bureaucrats, should decide how their children are taught. Shouldn’t parents also have the final say over their children’s medical care? Almost always, yes. Parents may choose a lousy school. They may feed a child an appalling diet. They may inflict violin lessons, youth soccer and matching family Christmas sweaters. Those decisions can shape a child’s life, but they do not permanently remove healthy body parts. A terrible education can be overcome through work and discipline. A disastrous haircut eventually grows out. Piercings close. Even tattoos can be removed. Amputated tissue does not grow back. Children are not miniature adults. We do not let them sign contracts, buy whiskey, smoke cigarettes or get a tattoo merely because they insist they have given the matter considerable thought. We recognize that adolescence is temporary, judgment is developing and some decisions cannot be recalled once made. An adult possesses bodily autonomy. A child possesses bodily integrity. That difference is the heart of Proposition 135. Parents must have broad authority to raise their children according to their own values. Government is a miserable substitute for a mother or father. But parents don’t have the right to place a child in needless physical danger, be it by not belting them in the car or cutting away organs because a young person may be struggling to understand his or her identity. I’m voting yes on Proposition 135. Jon Caldara is president of Independence Institute, a free market think tank in Denver

  7. Sep 18

    Colorado Tax Bracket Creep

    On TABOR Talk we discuss how Colorado Legislators are trying to get you to give up your TABOR refunds forever. Will you let them have it?

  8. Sep 16

    Amendment 87: How the Broncos play into Colorado’s tax fight

    Do you want the Broncos to win the Super Bowl? Then you’d better hope Amendment 87, which brings back Colorado’s economy-strangling “graduated” income tax, loses at the ballot box this fall. Seriously. Forget Republicans and Democrats. Forget tax policy. This is about Xs and Os, and whether Denver can afford the players who execute them and win a Super Bowl. The Manning effectEvery successful business has star employees: rare talents without whom the enterprise simply doesn’t work. Same goes for an NFL franchise. Every business has star employees the whole operation is built around. Sometimes that star is the chief executive. No Henry Ford, no assembly line, no affordable car. No Steve Jobs, no iPhone, foldable or otherwise. No Elon, and Teslas are just golf carts with better marketing. But more often, the star isn’t the person running the place, it’s the person the CEO had the sense to hire. A smart CEO understands paying extraordinary people extraordinary salaries is sometimes the price of success. Competent employees may be plentiful. Franchise-changing talent is not. The chemist in the lab who sees the molecule nobody else does. The closer on the sales team. The reporter whose byline wins the Pulitzer. The performer who actually fills the arena. Any company can hire a receptionist. Few can hire star employees. A smart CEO knows you pay that person absurdly well, because the alternative is watching him walk across the street or across the state border to your competitor. Football works exactly the same way. A head coach’s most consequential decisions aren’t play calls, they’re personnel calls. In 2012, the Broncos handed Peyton Manning roughly $20 million a year to be their star employee (adjusted for inflation, that’s pushing $40 million today). Did it work out? Ask the Lombardi Trophy sitting in the team’s front office. Manning was worth every nickel. The Amendment 87 pay cutBut like any CEO, a head coach doesn’t have infinite money. He’s stuck with a salary cap, competing against 31 other teams for the same shrinking pool of ridiculously overpaid talent. Enter Amendment 87, which offers most of us a token tax cut while nearly doubling the rate on those evil, hated rich people we call Denver Broncos. If it passes this fall, every Bronco currently taxed at Colorado’s flat 4.4% starts paying 8.4%. Football players take a lot of hits to the head, but their accountants don’t, and unlike our legislators, accountants (and even concussed football players) can do arithmetic. All else equal, a player has to earn 8.4% more to play in Denver than to play somewhere with no state income tax at all. Any player who plays for the Miami Dolphins, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Jacksonville Jaguars, Las Vegas Raiders, Tennessee Titans, Dallas Cowboys, Houston Texans or the Seattle Seahawks gets an instant 8.4% raise compared to playing for Denver under Amendment 87. Run Peyton Manning’s numbers again: at $20 million a year, that 8.4% is $1.68 million a year , $8.4 million over a five-year deal. Double those figures to adjust for inflation, and you’re talking real money even by NFL standards. Sure, plenty of things factor into where a star chemist, programmer, performer or quarterback decides to live and work. But an 8.4% pay cut isn’t a rounding error. It’s the kind of number that ends up circled on a napkin in some agent’s office come free agency. Not that it matters, but it’s not just football teams competing for star talent. Every Colorado business is as well. The relocation incentiveIf Colorado wants to be a tech magnet for the upcoming quantum revolution, companies will be competing for quantum specialists. I don’t know how many of those you know, I don’t know any. What goes for the quantum tech field and the football field goes for every industry. A company can give those superstar employees an immediate 8.5% pay increase by relocating to a no-income-tax state. That’s why so many companies are relocating out of California, Illinois, New York and now Colorado for places like Florida and Texas. Just ask the well-paid people who used to work at Palantir in Denver. Amendment 87 makes the Denver Broncos’ problem every business’s problem. But let’s keep it to football. The ballot language for Amendment 87 should actually read: “Shall the Denver Broncos have 8.4% less money to spend on player talent than other teams in the NFL?” Jon Caldara is president of Independence Institute, a free market think tank in Denver.

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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
    214
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Copyright 2026 Independence Institute
  • Show Website
    Freedom Unaffiliated