Somebody needs to keep John Hickenlooper on message, because he keeps forgetting whether he’s courting capitalists or the Democratic socialism vote.

As PeakNation will recall, Hick was all iffy about the free market on MSNBC in March when he declined to endorse our economic system.

Then Hick made the bizarre choice of the fanatically liberal California Democratic Party convention in San Francisco earlier this month to stomp on their dreams and declare “socialism is not the answer.”

Hick was practically booed off the stage, but doubled down last week with his newly discovered capitalist street cred and proclaimed:

“I think massive expansions of government, as kind of a fix-all solution to the challenges facing the country, whether you’re talking about trying to get to universal health care or address climate change, they’re not what American people want, and I don’t think they’re what Democratic primary voters are gonna want.”

But now Hick’s back on the “massive expansion of government” bandwagon, promising free college tuition if elected.

We’re guessing the recent polling numbers came back, and Hick found out his millennial-fueled party will only be satisfied when all their stuff is free.

Cathy Kentner, a teacher and an anti-growth activist from Lakewood, appeared on the Ross Kaminsky radio show this week, and in a great act of charity by the host, was not completely slaughtered on the studio floor, metaphorically, of course.  Not only did Kentner show up with her “D game,” but her twisted logic supporting bad policy probably could have not been defended successfully by anyone against Kaminsky.

Kentner is a co-author of the controversial Question 200, which will be voted on in Lakewood on July 2.  Among other things, the confusing ballot measure limits the growth of residential real estate in Lakewood to one percent per year, and pushes permitting decisions for 40+ unit buildings to the city council.

Completely clueless about the concept of supply and demand, Kentner complains that housing is too expensive, but at the same time pushes a measure to limit new supply of housing stock in Lakewood.  Hmmm…what could go wrong? Anyone with a vague idea of economics have an answer…Bueller…Bueller…Bueller…?

Kentner also completely misappropriates the term “checks and balances” throughout the interview.  When faced with the cold reality of the unfairness of government telling a property owner how many homes to build and what to charge in rent, she deflects the argument by dismissively saying “it’s checks and balances.”

Finally, near the end of the interview Kaminsky called his guest on this nonsensical use of the phrase, explaining to her that checks and balances are leveled between different branches of government – not by government against citizens.

Please remember these ideas sprung from the mind of a woman who teaches in the Jefferson County government schools. Your tax dollars hard at work. Let’s hope she teaches art.

A gracious host and gentleman, Kaminsky took a compassionate approach to dealing with his guest’s cognitive dissidence and lack of understanding basic government and economics.

We, like many others, agree with Kentner’s basic premise that Denver housing is expensive compared to average wages.  It’s just the role of the market to work these things out among its participants, not the job of government to dictate discrete business decisions to those putting their capital at risk.

Democrat critics of the Aurora ICE facility are noticeably quiet about the escape this week of three detainees, including one man who is a rape suspect.

U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette kicked up a fuss recently after a facility inspection revealed unlabeled food and a lack of outdoor activity for the detainees.

We shouldn’t have private prisons housing migrants. Obama tried to shut these down. Trump reversed it. We need to shut these private prisons down once and for all. #AMJoy pic.twitter.com/u11bxyOWy4

— Rep. Diana DeGette (@RepDianaDeGette) June 9, 2019

Then there’s U.S. Rep. Jason Crow, who got his drawers in a bunch when he wasn’t allowed to waltz in uninvited with a news crew in tow to determine if detainees quarantined for contagious diseases like chickenpox were getting proper medical care.

Crow’s not actually a doctor, but he did stay at a Holiday Inn while drafting a bill authorizing his entry to the facility whenever he wanted.

Curiously, we don’t see any sign of Crow banging on the front door demanding a dragnet to find the escapees.

We also don’t see DeGette insisting federal law enforcement put boots on the ground to make sure the facility is escape proof, or to assist in the search.

She’s too busy with other priorities.

Big thanks to the @SierraClub for hosting such a great event on Friday. It’s always great to meet a room full of people who are as enthusiastic about protecting our environment as I am! pic.twitter.com/dpWkjW6dRh

— Rep. Diana DeGette (@RepDianaDeGette) June 16, 2019

Meanwhile, police are on their own searching for the escapees; Amilcar Aguilar-Hernandez, 23, from El Salvador, and Fort Carson rape case suspect; Douglas Amaya-Arriaga, 18; and, Carlos Perez-Rodriguez, 18, both from Honduras.

Democrats are throwing an undisclosed amount of money away on lame Facebook ads targeting U.S. Rep. Scott Tipton.

The party is either flush with cash, or just drunk.

The ads are aimed at English and Spanish-speaking voters with the weak claim that Tipton hasn’t held a single public event since March 2017, the Daily Sentinel reports.

Besides the fact it’s blatantly not true, who cares?

Are English and Spanish voters seriously scratching their heads over their ballots, trying to remember the last time they shouted at their congressman in public?

Western Slope residents have real issues like keeping their jobs, paying the bills, raising their kids right.
Attending meetings ranks pretty far down the list.

What will they reveal next? That Tipton leaves his garbage can on the curb days after pickup?

Most voters probably don’t even know yet that Tipton’s only challengers are perennial candidates Diane Mitsch Bush, a former state representative, and Durango resident Root Rutledge.

If this is the best Democrats have to offer, they would be faster served by flushing their money down the toilet.

We tip our hat to the Colorado Supreme Court for doing us a solid. Just as Democrats were trying to split hairs over a TABOR repeal, starting with something that sounded innocuous (Proposition CC) that would eventually lead to a full repeal, the Colorado Supreme Court today cleared the path for TABOR haters to overreach and makes plausible the possibility that Democrats could repeal TABOR in its entirety.

And maybe even this year.

That’s where this court case comes in. The same people who are bringing forward Proposition CC, which asks Coloradans to forfeit their refunds forever, brought forward this lawsuit. Earlier this year, these folks wanted to fully repeal TABOR in its entirety, but were told that they could not because it violates Colorado’s “single subject rule.” That meant that Carol Hedges and her liberal loons would have to dismantle TABOR piece by piece, starting with Prop CC. Today’s ruling reverses that and says that TABOR can be dismantled in one vote of the people.

On one hand, it’s a big win for liberals, but on the other hand, it means that Democrats have to sh!t or get off the pot on this issue. There’s no more hiding behind taking it down piece by piece. The real win is to take it down entirely. Democrats think that Colorado voters shouldn’t have a say, voters think voters should have say.

This is an argument that every taxpayer should want to have. According to polling, over 70% of Coloradans support TABOR, but there are some elected officials (ok, they’re pretty much all Democrats) who think that you shouldn’t have a say in tax increases. They’d prefer to spend like drunken sailors without having to ask your permission.

Activist Laura Carno laid it out pretty well:

“Today’s decision is not reflective of the majority, but rather a well-funded, fringe group of anti-TABOR activists who want government to spend our money without asking us. That’s just wrong.”

It is wrong. And we can’t wait to get Democrats on the record on this issue.

Earlier today, we reported that Colorado Democrats former Governor John Hickenlooper and current U.S. Senator Michael Bennet, who each struggled to qualify for the Democratic primary debates which required polling at a measly 1% or 65,000 donors, have won the jackpot. The two Coloradans will share a debate stage with the top-polling presidential candidates – former Vice President Joe Biden, U.S. Senators Bernie Sanders and Kamala Harris, and South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg.

Lucky bastards. They could have been relegated to the night with the candidates nobody has ever heard of like Swalwell. Oh wait. They are the candidates that nobody has ever heard of. They are the Swalwell of their debate. Either way, Bennet and Hick will certainly benefit from the eyeballs that their fellow candidates bring.

Or maybe not.

We would never accuse either Hick or Bennet of having a commanding debate performance. In fact, neither of these two candidates have ever had a great debate that we can recall. So, was placing Hick and Bennet with some of the most accomplished debaters a way to narrow the field by the Democratic Party and NBC (but we repeat ourselves)? NBC said it was a random drawing, but whether it’s fortuitous depends on how well these two do against the top contenders.

Good luck, gentlemen.You’ll need it.

Not a day goes by when we aren’t reminded of the hypocrisy rampant in the Democratic Party and far-left wing in Colorado – especially around women. The most recent example comes to us in the form of Leo McKinney, the former Mayor of Glenwood Springs and current president of the environmental organization, Glenwood Springs Citizens Alliance, which claims to educate the public about the benefits of securing permanent protection of the area within and surrounding the city of Glenwood Springs from mineral extraction and development. In other words, they want to keep it in the ground.

We won’t even add the tweet here but you can see for yourself  in a post from the Colorado Transparency Project, McKinney was recently busted for sinking as low as possible and dropping the See You Next Tuesday (are you really going to make us spell it out?) slander on Education Secretary Betsy Devos. Woah. That escalated quickly.

That’s right folks, McKinney doesn’t always call women the c-word , but when he does he likes to do it as publicly as possible on social media. Besides the admission that he likes to use this offensive word, it’s another yet reminder that Democrats aren’t the party of women.

We haven’t seen any apology from McKinney yet, or heard if the Glenwood Springs Citizens Alliance will ask him to resign, but both actions would seem to be appropriate in this situation. It’s not a good look to have a misogynist as the president of your organization.

A state transportation department audit reveals the agency hid, then spent hundreds of millions in taxpayer dollars that bureaucrats failed to report to the state legislature, according to the Colorado Springs Gazette.

The hide-and-seek game occurred during the administration of former Gov. John Hickenlooper during the 2017 fiscal year.

The audit, which determined no fraud was committed, was completed during the Polis administration.

The whole matter will be set aside as a mere lack of transparency, and ignorance.

Transportation officials claim they weren’t aware they had to report that extra $1 billion they had left over from the previous year, of which more than $587 million was spent.

That’s in addition to the agency’s $1.563 billion budget approved by the legislature.

The agency also forgot to mention a federal windfall of $43.7 million.

This is some serious money they were hiding.

Truly scandalous, especially when voters were asked the following year to raise taxes for needed road projects.

The new transportation chief under Polis issued a gobbledygook excuse, plus a half-hearted pledge to hide the money better present a budget next year that will “look different.”

If this is what a mere performance audit uncovered, then clearly the agency needs a full-scale review of their books.

While crime and homelessness in Denver spirals out of control, newly-elected District Attorney Beth McCann has decided to throw her law enforcement resources against…AirBnB landlords.  Two Denver real estate investors, a husband and wife team, were each charged with “attempting to influence a public servant,” a felony, for their dangerous AirBnB rental units.

It was a real Perry Mason moment for the McCann team.  Excise and licensing investigators bravely interviewed neighbors of the couple – both near their home in Stapleton and their AirBnBs in other parts of town.  Photographs in hand, some of Denver’s finest approached neighbors asking, “do you know who these people are?” (For the record, we wouldn’t be able to identify our neighbors in a lineup.)

Amazingly, people in the Stapleton neighborhood recognized them as neighbors, but people living near the rentals were not able to ID them.  McCann had them right where she wanted them.

But there was more.  The arresting document explained how “technicians” searched the internet and found a YouTube video of the couple proclaiming their love for their Stapleton neighborhood.

These heroes even looked through windows and into the yards for evidence of children living there (the perps had young kids). Amazingly, the Stapleton house had kids toys visible, but none of that was visible at the short-term rentals.

Sensing something was amiss, the AirBnB cops requested the couple fill out a notarized form, part of which attested that the rentals were their primary residences.  Once they signed that – McCann had the process crime to go after.

A spokesperson from McCann’s office said that other AirBnB criminals will be frogmarched soon.  Meanwhile, this couple has a date with a Denver judge on June 21. For the crime of doing what they wanted with property they owned. Good God.

It’s official.

John Hickenlooper and Michael Bennet’s fairy godmothers pooled their magic for some extra bibbidi-bobbidi-boo so that both Coloradans would qualify for the presidential debate in Miami.

We don’t know who made the first night cut for June 26 or who got left behind for the 27th. Democrats say they’re just going to pull names out of a hat or something.

And we don’t know in which order they qualified.

Because everyone is a winner in the Democrat Party, all the names were released in alphabetical order.

We’ll save you the trouble for digging to see who didn’t make the cut, it was Montana Gov. Steve Bullock, U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton of Massachusetts and Mayor Wayne Messam of Miramar, Florida.

The 20 candidates who qualified are: Bennet; former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.; Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey; Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Ind.; former housing secretary Julián Castro; Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York; former Representative John Delaney of Maryland; Representative Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii; Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York; Senator Kamala Harris of California; Hickenlooper; Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington; Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota; former Representative Beto O’Rourke of Texas; Representative Tim Ryan of Ohio; Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont; Representative Eric Swalwell of California; Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts; author Marianne Williamson; and Andrew Yang.

To qualify, candidates had to average 1% in at least three of a billion major polls conducted this cycle, or collect 65,000 individual contributions.

We’re guessing Hick and Bennet slide in with the 1% requirement.

However, their overall polling average is still lagging: Bennet has .08% and Hick is in second to last place with .04%.

Our dream team is for both men to debate on the same night, alongside Sanders, Biden, Warren, Klobuchar, Buttigieg, Yang, Harris, and O’Rourke.

Not because we think it would be interesting, just to spare us from having to watch both nights.