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GAWD, I hate the rich. The top hats. The monocles. The dinner jackets. The way they twirl their mustaches while evicting orphans. Before we drag them into the public square, though, we should probably define “rich.” Amendment 87, the temporary “graduated” income tax, defines rich as earning $500,000 a year. And yes, it is temporary. Unlike the federal income tax brackets, 87’s brackets aren’t indexed for inflation, meaning over time all of us will creep into the new top 8.4% tax rate. Clever scam. Con Coloradans who aren’t good at math that they’re getting a tax cut and then let inflation do the mugging. Sell a tax increase on working families as a tax cut. You can almost hear the maniacal laughter. Rich bastardsBut back to punishing the rich — those trophy-wife-collecting, umbrella-drink-swilling bastards. Why should they drive Maseratis while I putter around in my 2010 Nissan Altima? Sure, we use the same roads, sit in the same traffic and can reach the same destinations. But that’s hardly the point. His cup holder has Italian stitching. Henry Ford democratized the automobile. Before mass production, cars belonged only to the wealthy. Now ordinary people can live where they can afford a home and work where they can earn a living. Unfortunately, Ford became rich in the process. Would we have been happier if he hadn’t? Of course we would have! We’d still be stuck in tenements, but he would have been poorer. Totally worth it. The rich get private jets. Why? I mean, I fly private too. We all do. I simply have to share my private plane with 130 strangers. While trapped in middle seat 34B, I use high-speed internet delivered by satellites launched on private rockets. Elon Musk uses the same service on his plane too, the showoff. Fine, he puts satellites into orbit. Fine, his rockets have rescued astronauts stranded at the International Space Station. Fine, his satellite internet has connected every remote community around the world, empowering the poorest of the poor and least powerful. But should he be rewarded for any of that — with money? The iPhone in Elon’s pocket is the same as the iPhone in mine. Steve Jobs helped put a supercomputer, camera, map, library, newspaper, television studio and argument factory into billions of pockets. But he became rich, so presumably the whole project was morally suspect. Sam Walton drove down the price of countless things working families buy. Jeff Bezos built a system that can bring those things to our doors, sometimes in 30 minutes. But Bezos is easy to dislike because his wife is mostly plastic, or rendered by Pixar or something. Fine, he’s easy to hate. But does his wealth matter more than the value created for us? Class envy on the ballotAmendment 87 has generated plenty of talk about forcing rich people to “pay their fair share.” It has generated considerably less discussion about class envy, which is doing the political heavy lifting. “Fair share” sounds principled. “I resent that guy’s boat and trophy wife” sounds childish. Yet the boat is doing more campaigning than the tax tables. We rarely stop to consider how much of modern life exists because somebody took an absurd risk. That somebody might be a famous billionaire. It might also be the developer who built your home, the employer who created your job so you can afford it or the real estate agent who found your house. Their success is part of your higher standard of living. I am not claiming rich people aren’t douchebags. For efficiency’s sake, let’s stipulate that every last one of them is unbearable. The question is whether our lives are nevertheless better because of what they created. And do we want to chase them out of Colorado as progressive income taxes have chased them out of California, New York, Massachusetts and elsewhere? Massachusetts is now dead last in the nation for new business creation. That’s our future. What have we sacrificed in exchange for the greatest improvement in quality of life throughout all of human history? Mostly, we have had to endure the sight of successful people having more than us. That seems like a remarkably small price to pay. Amendment 87 asks you to treat envy as policy and punish people we dislike, while inflation quietly expands the definition of whom we’re punishing. The sales pitch is “soak the rich.” The fine print is “eventually, that means you.” Jon Caldara is president of Independence Institute, a free market think tank in Denver.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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?

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

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?

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.

Ayn Rand recommended a technique for understanding, if not resolving, irreconcilable differences of opinion: “First, check your premises.” It’s pointless to argue with someone when your basic assumptions and goals are unalterably different. In politics these aren’t discussions, they’re unproductive exercises in rhetoric, gamesmanship and grandstanding ,at least on one side. Imagine an argument on economics between Milton Friedman and Bernie Sanders. A profound illustration of this concept was provided by James Burnham in his classic book, “Suicide of the West,” published in 1964. It addressed the fundamental conflict in world view and the order of values between those on the ideological left and right. It’s just as insightful today. Burnham defined four key values: Liberty – National independence, self-government, and sovereignty. Freedom – In the sense of individual liberty. Justice – In the sense of a “social justice” welfare state with where egalitarianism means equality of outcome rather than equality of opportunity. Peace – The absence of large-scale warfare among major powers. He observed that most people believe in all of these values to one extent or another but are often forced to make choices when one value conflicts with another and when prioritizing these values in order of relative importance. For example, would you jeopardize peace to defend liberty? Or override individual freedom to achieve social justice? This is an approximation of Burnham’s forced-ranking as applied to today’s political divide. Right (conservatives) Left (progressives) Liberty Peace Freedom Justice Peace Freedom Justice Liberty Conservatives and progressivesOur founders crafted the Constitution and its Bill of Rights with particular attention to limiting government and safeguarding the natural rights of individuals. The conservative order of values reflects a traditional view of human nature and society. It recognizes that the world is often a harsh and competitive place populated by imperfect — and imperfectible — beings and that there are limits to what public or private institutions can do to mitigate this condition. Conservatives believe our constitutional republic and private enterprise economy have produced the greatest measure of political freedom and economic achievement the world has ever known and that it is perpetually threatened by serious adversaries both foreign and domestic. War is a constant of human history and always will be, and peace through military strength is the best deterrent. Today’s progressives have elevated pacifism to a principal value. Their economic vision is a socialist welfare state enroute to a communist utopia, and they share the Marxian delusion that human nature can be changed and perfected. They believe our Constitution is fatally flawed. They’d open our borders and join a world government body (imagine a largely anti-American UN with muscle). They believe disarmament is achievable, and that war can be eliminated. (Woody Allen once humorously prophesied, “The lion and the calf shall lie down together, but the calf won’t get much sleep.) In the 1960s, Burnham noted that leftists are infected with the promise of communism simply because they share so many of its ideals such as peace, egalitarianism, secularism, collectivism, full employment, and free social services. To wishful thinkers, useful idiots, and fellow travelers, the constitution of the Soviet Union sounded better than our own. But it was all a pack of lies and its promises were never delivered. (Correction: They did impose full employment for political dissidents in their forced-labor concentration camps like its Siberian Gulag Archipelago.) The soviets needed border guards to keep their people in. That’s why communist East Berlin built a wall to keep its subjects from escaping to West Berlin. Similar conditions prevail in today’s communist paradises of Cuba, North Korea and China. Socialism and its inevitable destination, communism, have been notorious failures. America and other nations in the free world have mixed-economies based on private enterprise, free-market forces, and personal property rights paired with a cornucopia of welfare-state entitlements that resemble socialism. Progressives defensively claim that Scandinavian societies are models of successful socialism. Not quite. Leaders of Sweden, Norway, and Denmark assert they’re economies are not strictly socialist. True, all have expansive welfare states with high taxes and some state-owned businesses, but they still have mostly private-enterprise economies and personal property rights. That may work for them as nations of relatively small land mass, low populations of only 5 to 10 million people, and a homogenous culture. But it’s not a suitable model for the USA with 350 million people of diverse cultures spread across a vast continent, and geopolitical interests and treaty obligations around the globe as the leader and principal defender of the free world. Compared to America; Sweden, Norway, and Denmark are more like neighborhoods. Longtime KOA radio talk host and columnist for the Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News Mike Rosen now writes for Complete Colorado.

“Youth is wasted on all the wrong people.” That’s one of my favorite lines from “It’s a Wonderful Life.” The older I get, the less it sounds like a joke. Every generation inherits victories it did not win. Young Americans never experienced the Cold War, the draft or stagflation. Double-digit inflation is something grandpa now mentions in one of his rambling monologues about how good we have it. The young don’t remember bracket creep because why would they? They never, ever experienced it. A previous generation defeated it for them. The yearly tax hikeThough it sounds like a medical condition, bracket creep was one of government’s most sinister ways of raising taxes without voting to raise taxes. Inflation pushed wages upward — even when purchasing power went down. Because federal tax brackets remained fixed, workers were steadily pushed into higher tax rates without actually becoming any richer. Your paycheck got bigger but so did your grocery, utility, insurance and every other bill. Your standard of living stayed put at best. Washington congratulated you on becoming “richer” and sent a larger tax bill. It was a yearly tax increase. Was. In the early 1980s, Colorado U.S. Sen. Bill Armstrong, then on the Senate Finance Committee, led the fight to end it. Federal income tax brackets became indexed to inflation. Now when your income rises with the cost of living, you’re not pushed into a higher tax bracket. Government no longer profits by confusing more dollars with more wealth. Colorado attacked it another way. In 1987, Democratic Gov. Roy Romer signed legislation replacing the state’s graduated income tax with a flat rate and put the state into economic overdrive. This year’s Amendment 87 would put the transmission in reverse. The measure would replace Colorado’s flat income tax with six progressive tax brackets. Its sales pitch is politically irresistible: You get a modest tax cut, and somebody richer pays for it. Under the proposal, if you make less than $100,000 a year you get a tiny tax cut (for now). From $100,000 to $500,000 nothing really changes. But when you make more than that your tax rate skyrockets to almost double. Higher tax brackets awaitThe most dangerous defect is what Amendment 87 leaves out: Its tax brackets are not indexed to inflation. It truly takes you back in time, back when inflation pushed you into higher brackets while your buying power went down. What proponents are counting on is you won’t understand at some point you will be in the “tax them more” brackets. Not that you’ll actually be richer. It’s just what inflation does. Making $25,000 in 1980 is the same as making $100,000 today. Put differently (drumroll, please), SOONER OR LATER EVERYONE IN COLORADO WILL BE PAYING AN 8.4% INCOME TAX. It’s only a matter of when. In the Marvel movies Thanos was “inevitable.” This proposal is Thanos. It is inevitable everyone will be paying the top rate as inflation pushes people’s salaries higher. Fewer and fewer people every year will be in the lower, “tax cut” brackets. Because it’s not indexed to inflation, eventually we will all creep into the higher tax brackets. No legislator must introduce a bill. No governor must sign one. No campaign committee must explain it. Inflation does the dirty work while politicians pose for pictures with schoolchildren. That is bracket creep. We got rid of it federally because Americans learned the lesson the expensive way when inflation ravaged the 1970s. Amendment 87 asks you to forget it. Tax escalatorLet me spell it out as clearly as I can: Amendment 87 only temporarily replaces a flat income tax rate with a graduated one. Ultimately, we all creep into the 8.4% tax bracket. And we’ll effectively have a flat tax again. Like Thanos, it is inevitable. Supporters say taxing the wealthy is only fair. Take a moment to consider how not indexing it for inflation makes that argument a lie. If proponents believe their brackets are fair today, in 2026, why are they unwilling to keep those brackets fair tomorrow by indexing those brackets to inflation? They know damn well that over time every Coloradan will be in higher and higher tax brackets. What they claim is fair today must, by their own reasoning, become unfair tomorrow. Colorado once understood that tax systems should not punish people for inflation. Now Amendment 87 invites us to trade that hard-fought inheritance for a tiny check today and an automatic tax escalator tomorrow. Jon Caldara is president of Independence Institute, a free market think tank in Denver.

Who’d have believed that Bernie Sanders, a ranting disheveled old man could rise to become the modern-day reincarnation of Vladimir Lenin, with a Brooklyn accent, evangelizing for socialism in the USA and building a legion of useful idiots? (Clue: Bernie and his wife honeymooned in the Soviet Union.) He’s certainly not charismatic. So, he shrewdly recruited AOC as his partner, a weird May-December relationship, for a road show last winter called the “Fighting Oligarchy Tour.” Bernie’s schtick is throwing around a barrage of angry, demagogic, simplistic, exaggerated, inflammatory slogans to rile up gullible malcontents. The slogan for this tour was that America has become an “oligarchy.” Let’s start with the definition of that term. Oligarchy: noun, a form of government in which the ruling power belongs to a small wealthy group that controls the economy and makes laws and political decisions to preserve its own power. Myth of the oligarchyReally? Who are the members of this oligarchy of wizards that possess the superpower to run our government, our military, our foreign policy, and our intricate economy with literally millions of businesses large and small? No such thing exists. This is a contrived fantasy to fuel Bernie’s socialist crusade. Ironically, such an oligarchy is more likely to be found in totalitarian socialist states where opposition political parties are banned and the only names on ballots in their mock elections are members of the official Communist party. Such states control every facet of your life with an iron grip like the former Union of Soviet “Socialist” Republics, Cuba, North Korea, China — or Iran’s theocracy of ayatollahs. The American republic’s system of government with its separation of powers, checks and balances, and its highly competitive free market economy is too complex and independent to be ruled by a small cabal of evil billionaires. If this imaginary oligarchy controls the federal government, why did it bounce back and forth through a procession of presidents with wildly different political agendas from 2000 – 2024: Bush, Obama, Trump, Biden, and Trump (again)? Or did the “oligarchy” only emerge in 2024 with Trump’s reelection? And what secret power does it have over him, the Republican majority in Congress, and conservative justices on the Supreme Court? How do the oligarchs manipulate state governments with big cities nominally run by Democrats? And what power does it have over rural America that favors Republicans? Bernie used to attack millionaires. Now that he’s one himself, he’s shifted his wrath to billionaires (adjusting for inflation, they were called millionaires in the 19th century). But today’s billionaires can’t be an all-powerful oligarchy because they’re not monolithic and have differing beliefs and political agendas. Elon Musk is a conservative who sides with Donald Trump (they’ve hugged and made up). George Soros funds countless causes on the radical left (so he’s immune to criticism form Bernie and AOC). The Koch brothers are libertarian. A host of billionaires that favor Democrats and lean left includes Tom Steyer, Michael Bloomberg, Warren Buffet, and Laurene Powell Jobs (yeah, the widow of Steve, the guy who created Apple). All these folks can’t be on the same team. By definition, oligarchs are unified. Capitalism benefits allBillionaires have a lot of influence but they don’t have a monopoly on that. So do people with low or no income that are the Democrats’ core voting constituency. Other powerful influencers include labor unions (especially the teacher unions), academia, public education, the press and TV broadcast media (mostly leftist), social media and podcasters. Bernie claims “capitalism in the U.S. benefits only a few.” A “few?” Like what, 3 or four people out of 340 million? Be serious. Americans enjoy the highest standard of living in the world directly derived from our capitalist economy. Those who excel, like successful entrepreneurs and CEOs, professional athletes, inventors, actors and Taylor Swift make a fortune, generously donate to causes and foundations, and pay a lot in taxes. Most Americans are somewhere in the middle, and those on the bottom are supported by countless social welfare programs at the federal, state and local level. Capitalism has certainly benefited Bernie, a man with little marketable talent who somehow became a millionaire. But wait; he’s never had a real job in the capitalist private sector. It’s all been in politics and government office at taxpayer expense derived from our capitalist economy. Bernie claims, “A handful of billionaires have more wealth than they could spend in a thousand years.” If he had any understanding of economics, which he doesn’t, he’d know that most of it is invested. Capital formation is the lifeblood of any economic system. What they spend is none of his business, they earned it.

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?

Mayor Mike Johnston proclaimed, “It is past time Big Tobacco cleaned up the big mess it’s created.” Yep. Denver is suing tobacco companies for the cigarette butts littering the city. Because Denver’s Big Mess couldn’t possibly be the fault of the mayor, the city council or the people actually dropping garbage on the ground. It must be the fault of — let me check the Progressive Wheel of Blame here — Big Tobacco. Ignore the graffitiWhen you drive through Denver, the first thing you notice is obviously the cigarette-butt epidemic. Not the graffiti. Not the passed-out junkies. Not the ridiculous plastic bollards guarding bike lanes emptier than a city council meeting on fiscal restraint. Not even the shirtless guy wandering down the middle of a four-lane street, screaming obscenities at himself. Nope. Cigarette butts. That’s what has Denverites lying awake at night. Come on, Michael. You know full well Big Tobacco didn’t create any mess at all. Philip Morris executives are not prowling Capitol Hill after midnight, flicking Marlboro filters onto the sidewalk and cackling. Inconsiderate smokers littered. That’s right, Denverites, your constituents did it. Is the progressive mind constitutionally incapable of comprehending personal responsibility? Drunk driver? Sue the automaker and the distillery. Someone stabbed to death? Clearly Big Knife has been buying off politicians. Hateful letter? Institute a three-day cooling-off period before purchasing a pen. Or the current plan, don’t teach kids how to write. Your colorblind co-worker shows up dressed like a 1977 game-show host? Blame JCPenney for enabling his fashion decisions. Denver’s real big messI deal daily with the litter created by Denverites — particularly Denver’s army of drug-fueled vagrants. Excuse me: “The drug-fueled vagrants currently experiencing un-housed-ness.” I have only one logical response: “No mayor, it is past time Big Government cleaned up the big mess it has created by refusing to enforce our laws.” Every day I pick up the debris left by Denver’s finest fentanyl fans around the headquarters of Independence Institute near the State Capitol. Fast-food wrappers. Liquor bottles in every size from “bad decision” to “lost weekend.” Potato chip bags. Syringes. Condoms. And far too often, human feces. (Usually not mine, if you’re wondering.) Dogs relieve themselves on our grass, but their owners almost always clean it up with plastic bags. Denver’s homeless population also has an endless supply of plastic bags. I know because I pick those up too. But why use one when the sidewalk is calling your name? What I rarely —hardly ever — pick up is a cigarette butt. The other day, beneath our office windows, we cleaned up another pile of abandoned belongings, including a backpack. Inside were a crowbar, a club, pliers, screwdrivers and a tire iron. It was less a backpack than a burglar’s Swiss Army knife. I now eagerly await Denver’s lawsuits against Black+Decker and REI for causing this particular outbreak of litter. Suing cigarette companies for their customers’ bad behavior is a sad, pathetic money grab not worthy of the shoddiest ambulance-chasing lawyer. When virtue signaling rulesBut it underscores the hypocrisy that is the new leftist evangelical way of virtue signaling — salvation through litigation, endless public displays of anti-capitalist moral purity at taxpayer expense. Where is the lawsuit against McDonald’s for all the wrappers? Or Starbucks for abandoned cups? Or Fireball for those tiny bottles scattered across the city like alcoholic Easter eggs? Well, those companies are not currently fashionable to hate … yet. It’s the lack of simple consistency that blows my mind. We ban shopping bags but not the bags we put our produce in, not to mention the plastic that everything inside the supermarket is wrapped in. Because somehow some plastic is more evil than other plastic. And only our elite can divine. How do their little brains not implode by the roaring contradictions? We outlaw plastic straws to protect sea life, even though a straw discarded in Colorado would have to pull off a prison break from multiple water-treatment systems, navigate half the continent and hitchhike to the Pacific before it could menace a sea turtle. Meanwhile, plastic tampon applicators escape scrutiny, even though cardboard versions exist. We all know why. Tampon applicators are used by women, a protected political constituency. Cigarette smokers are a small, unfashionable minority. So raising the cost of cigarettes by shaking down manufacturers isn’t intolerance. It isn’t bigotry. It’s, um, public health. And now, “public health” means making the law-abiding pay for the behavior of people government won’t hold responsible. Jon Caldara is president of Independence Institute, a free market think tank in Denver.

Hey, Colorado Democrats! All the fun you’ve had watching Republican dysfunction in Colorado for the last 20 years was just a preview of what is about to happen to you. The Colorado Republican Party no longer exists as a competitive institution. Republicans did it to themselves. They built a culture around purity tests, with no curiosity about winning elections. Anyone suggesting an appeal to unaffiliated voters was identified as a Republican in Name Only and bounced from the building. Deep-pocketed conservatives kept funding candidates while neglecting the boring, unsatisfying work of winning future elections: community organizing, door knocking, recruitment and ballot chasing. They wanted crops without planting seeds. The result? Colorado’s political press will document every embarrassment of Victor Marx’s doomed campaign, following his clown car while letting the left’s armored truck drive off with the state. A 29-year-old socialist defeated Rep. Diana DeGette. She defended calls for eliminating Israel and declined to call the Boulder firebombing of pro-Israel demonstrators antisemitic. That deserves more scrutiny than whatever Marx said to his dog between breakfast and Kyle Clark’s deadline. So does the growing socialist faction in our legislature. So does Phil Weiser, a progressive law professor and activist. Nobody makes government simpler than law professors. When Republicans tried putting the Ten Commandments in classrooms, Colorado’s media understood people wielding government power deserved scrutiny. Now Democrats have elevated misgendering to legal discrimination. School employees must use a student’s chosen name regardless of parental approval, while some policies permit social transition without informing parents. Moses entering a classroom is a constitutional crisis, but keeping parents in the dark is mandatory compassion. The coming Democratic Party meltdown? Quite simply, too many factions inside the party are at odds with their own stated goals. Consider the gay-rights community. It became a juggernaut winning marriage equality. But, like the French Revolution, its victory produced a movement out of control. The LGB part of the LGBT team is at odds with the T part because they want fundamentally different things. The LGB part wants to make it easier for gay kids to come out as — now get this — gay. The T faction has built an apparatus to tell gay kids they’re the wrong gender — eerily similar to what anti-gay bigots once told homosexuals. So kids need social transition, puberty blockers, hormones and lopping off healthy body parts. A growing number of gays and lesbians privately fear this system can take children who might become comfortable gay adults and place them on a path of lifelong medicalization. Privately is the operative word. Nothing says “pride” quite like being terrified to say what you believe. The old Christian-right message was that a gay child should become straight. The new Democrat message is a gay child should change bodies. Different pitch. Same refusal to let a gay child simply be gay. Today’s Democrat party is anti-gay. Hey, Colorado Democrats! All the fun you’ve had watching Republican dysfunction in Colorado for the last 20 years was just a preview of what is about to happen to you. The Colorado Republican Party no longer exists as a competitive institution. Republicans did it to themselves. They built a culture around purity tests, with no curiosity about winning elections. Anyone suggesting an appeal to unaffiliated voters was identified as a Republican in Name Only and bounced from the building. Deep-pocketed conservatives kept funding candidates while neglecting the boring, unsatisfying work of winning future elections: community organizing, door knocking, recruitment and ballot chasing. They wanted crops without planting seeds. The result? Colorado’s political press will document every embarrassment of Victor Marx’s doomed campaign, following his clown car while letting the left’s armored truck drive off with the state. A 29-year-old socialist defeated Rep. Diana DeGette. She defended calls for eliminating Israel and declined to call the Boulder firebombing of pro-Israel demonstrators antisemitic. That deserves more scrutiny than whatever Marx said to his dog between breakfast and Kyle Clark’s deadline. So does the growing socialist faction in our legislature. So does Phil Weiser, a progressive law professor and activist. Nobody makes government simpler than law professors. When Republicans tried putting the Ten Commandments in classrooms, Colorado’s media understood people wielding government power deserved scrutiny. Democratic congressional candidate Melat Kiros speaks after winning the Democratic nomination during a primary election night watch party at The Broadway on Tuesday, June 30, 2026, in Denver. (AP Photo/Rebecca Slezak) Now Democrats have elevated misgendering to legal discrimination. School employees must use a student’s chosen name regardless of parental approval, while some policies permit social transition without informing parents. Moses entering a classroom is a constitutional crisis, but keeping parents in the dark is mandatory compassion. The coming Democratic Party meltdown? Quite simply, too many factions inside the party are at odds with their own stated goals. Consider the gay-rights community. It became a juggernaut winning marriage equality. But, like the French Revolution, its victory produced a movement out of control. The LGB part of the LGBT team is at odds with the T part because they want fundamentally different things. The LGB part wants to make it easier for gay kids to come out as — now get this — gay. The T faction has built an apparatus to tell gay kids they’re the wrong gender — eerily similar to what anti-gay bigots once told homosexuals. So kids need social transition, puberty blockers, hormones and lopping off healthy body parts. A growing number of gays and lesbians privately fear this system can take children who might become comfortable gay adults and place them on a path of lifelong medicalization. Privately is the operative word. Nothing says “pride” quite like being terrified to say what you believe. The old Christian-right message was that a gay child should become straight. The new Democrat message is a gay child should change bodies. Different pitch. Same refusal to let a gay child simply be gay. Today’s Democrat party is anti-gay. The same contradiction is consuming women’s equality, one of the strongest pillars of the old left. It is why the left fought so hard for Title IX, so girls would have an opportunity to play sports. Now that same left must welcome boys onto the girls’ court and into their locker room. Again, it is working against its own stated goals. Today’s Democrat party is anti-female. Environmentalists face a similar split. Colorado is increasing electrical demand through electric vehicles, data centers and forced building electrification while eliminating reliable fossil-fuel generation. Colorado’s war on natural gas is equally backward. More than 2.3 billion people still cook with wood, charcoal, crop waste or dung — you know, the stuff that is the most greenhouse-gas emitting. If Democrats really cared about reducing emissions, they would use American natural gas to help poorer countries replace smoky fires with clean burning stoves. “Transition Colorado to nuclear! Send our natural gas to Africa!” is a bumper sticker you’ll never see on a Boulder Subaru. Today’s Democrat party is anti-clean energy. Fights between Colorado Democrats over these issues along with fights over their anti-business agenda will begin to break out in a way the press cannot ignore. None of this means Colorado Republicans will return to power anytime soon. It means Democrats will experience the ravenous and public factionalism Republicans enjoyed for 20 years. Just watch. Jon Caldara is president of the Independence Institute in Denver and hosts “The Devil’s Advocate with Jon Caldara” on Colorado Public Television Channel 12. His column appears Sundays in Colorado Politics. If the goal is reliable, carbon-free electricity, nuclear power is the obvious answer — no emissions and it works when the wind stops and the sun sets.