“Pass me another beer, I got a state to run into the ground.”

Gov. John Hickenlooper and his administration are quick to trumpet any list that has Colorado at or near the top in job growth.  Yet, one list of job growth Hickenlooper has never talked about is the unprecedented expansion of state government that has taken place under his failed leadership.  For all his empty rhetoric about being a centrist, Hickenlooper at one point had the Colorado state government expanding at a rate greater than 10% for nine straight months (January 2013- September 2013).  Not even failed liberal states like California or Illinois could come close to this feat.  Is there any doubt left that Hickenlooper is anything other than a tax-big, spend-big, big government liberal?

Even now, with the most recent job numbers from May, looking back over the past 12-month average, Colorado is number one in the country for state government growth at an astounding 6.81%.  The next closest state government doesn’t even come close, being an almost two full percentage points less at 4.92%.  Meanwhile, Colorado nearly doubles Iowa (3.70%) who sits at number three.  Remember PeakNation™, this unprecedented growth of state government for Colorado is taking place at the same time nearly 20 other states are still shrinking their state governments to be more efficient.

In 2013 alone, the Colorado state government expanded at an absurd rate of 10.45% for the entire year.  No one else in the country was remotely close to this, as the next closest state came in at merely 4.15%.

Hickenlooper likes to claim him and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg don’t talk about guns (Hick lies, they do), but maybe among one of their many conversations Bloomberg tutored Hick on how to expand nanny-state government.  With over 25,000 pages of new codes and regulations since he has come into office, it only makes sense Hickenlooper would have to bloat out the state bureaucracy to write and enforce all that new red tape.

Hickenlooper has no problem grabbing and trying to own any positive economic number for Colorado; yet, the one area of growth he is directly responsible for, the growth of the state government bureaucracy, he has never once cited.  Is he ashamed of what he has done, or, does he just realize Coloradans will not tolerate a man who has gone so far to destroy our mountain-west, independent spirit?