Author Archives: ColoradoPeakPolitics

Advocates for legal drug injection sites in Denver have renewed hope to revive their efforts after a federal court in Philadelphia last week ruled in favor of opening the nation’s first opium den such center there.

Ed Rendell, a former chairman of the national Democratic Party and former Pennsylvania governor, came all the way to Denver Thursday to celebrate their legal success and host a fundraiser to open an injection site here.

Even though the Third Circuit Court of Appeals has no jurisdiction this far west, advocates think the court ruling renews their chance to open an injection site across the street from the State Capitol, Denverite reports.

Democrat state Sen. Brittany Pettersen of Lakewood says she’s not willing to revive her bill to make injection sites legal, an action the Denver City Council has already completed.

But she and others seems to think the Pennsylvania court ruling sets a precedent bolstering their chances if state lawmakers were bypassed and the issue went straight to the federal court in Denver’s jurisdiction.

We remain committed in our opposition to public drug injection sites for heroin, meth and cocaine, and even Rendell admitted it’s not a solution to the opioid crisis.

Enabling drug addicts will do more harm than good, to the addicts, and society as a whole.

Thankfully, Colorado U.S. Attorney Jason Dunn, a Trump appointee, told Denverite the Pennsylvania decision is not binding here, and the Justice Department plans to appeal the decision. 

 “This office maintains that any premises intended to be used as a so-called injection site for illegal drugs violates federal law, and we will continue to act accordingly.”

U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette is on a congressional junket to Monrovia, Liberia this week with other House members including U.S. Rep. Barbara Lee of California.

The official agenda has them promoting lots of important-sounding ideas like transparency and accountability as they visit with the legislature of the West African State.

But it’s DeGette’s planned visit with embattled President George Weah and members of his Cabinet that piqued our interest.

We are most curious as to how DeGette plans to instruct Weah, a once-popular football icon who quickly lost the faith of his people, on strengthening their country and eliminating corruption.

Maybe she could advise him to stop newly printed money from disappearing, how to keep track of that other $25 million Weah ordered infused into the economy, charges of corruption, and a declining economy.

Maybe DeGette has expertise in dealing with angry hordes of protestors who take to the streets in protest.

Or perhaps DeGette merely jumped at the first excuse to avoid coming home to Denver to campaign for reelection against her primary challenger, former Colorado House Speaker Crisanta Duran.

All of that time spent in a windowless basement, smiling and dialing to shake down Democrats for campaign donations has paid off for John Hickenlooper, who reported with great fanfare Tuesday he’s raised $2.1 million.

Unfortunately for Hick, he’s only got $1.7 million cash on hand.

Hick may be ahead of the other Democratic contenders still in the race after candidates who raised even more than that caved to Washington’s demands and dropped out.

However, Hick is still waaaaaaay behind U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner, who does not have a slew of primary challengers and didn’t waste his time this year on an ego-driven, fruitless campaign for the presidency.

Gardner out raised Hick this quarter with $2.45 million reported, and Gardner has $6.7 million in the bank.

We reported yesterday that Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer has ordered all of his favored candidates, which includes Hick, to employ the “windowless-basement strategy” in order to win Democratic primaries.

The strategy is simple. Sit in a windowless basement with no distractions, smile and dial for campaign contributions, and for pete’s sake, stop engaging with the grassroots.

If Hick wants to catch up with Gardner, his aides might consider replacing Hick’s cell phone with a landline, so he spends more time fundraising and less time playing Candy Crush.

The clumsy attempt by Governor Polis’s office to censor a conservative news service resulted in a much-deserved spanking from the state and national press. 

Now we’re seeing some in the Denver media taking a closer look at the underlying issues in the contentious stories the governor’s office tried to squelch and some interesting reporting.

The Office of Future Work, it turns out, may be doing more harm than good as it looks to meddle in the gig industry, Denver7 reports.

Those newly minted bureaucrats are giddy with the prospect of regulating side gigs such as Uber, Lyft, Task Rabbit and others based on the app economy.

Polis thinks we need more laws to make sure those gigs have pensions and other full-time benefits.

Other states are also looking at the gig economy, notably California, which recently passed a law that makes it harder for companies to classify workers as independent contractors instead of employees, who would be entitled to certain benefits, including health care and overtime pay.

Just what we don’t need, more California laws.

Interestingly, Denver7 reports the gig workers don’t want a bunch of regulations and like the freedom these jobs give them. Read their report, linked here.

Meanwhile, it turns out Polis simply copied an existing organization when he created yet another Orwellian office called the Office of Saving People Money.

The Center for Improving Value in Health Care (CIVHC) was established by Gov. Bill Ritter in 2008 with the same goals and actually has numerous accomplishments, KUNC reports. 

It was part of the state government until 2011, when Gov. John Hickenlooper declared it was ready to stand on its own as a private non-profit.

Polis’s creation was neither innovative, nor has it directly saved people money. 

It’s redundant government paying the lieutenant governor $75,000 a year so that when reelection rolls around the agency can kick out talking points for Polis.

John Hickenlooper was a no show at the Planet in Peril forum Sunday in Colorado Springs for U.S. Senate candidates, and the Democrats noticed.

Chants of “Where is @Hickenlooper” at the Senate Climate Forum. Hick isn’t here, but Chickenlooper sure is! pic.twitter.com/vuuqRYW8p4

— where’s john hickenlooper? (@WhereIsHick) October 6, 2019

How exactly did each of the candidates say they would save the planet and human race from the always-changing deadline for extinction?

Who knows?

What little media coverage the event garnered focused mostly on Hickenlooper’s absence. 

The most talked about story at the Colorado U.S. Senate Climate Debate is where’s @Hickenlooper . There’s a #ClimateEmergency & kids asked him to show up but he’s a no show. @BoulderSunrise @sunrisemvmt @350 @ColoradoRising @Romanoff2020 @AliceforCO #copolitics @350Colorado pic.twitter.com/V7b8kyGHVN

— Arn Menconi (@ArnMenconi) October 6, 2019

Of course Cory Gardner didn’t attend.

 The event was totally staged for leftists to preach their “End is Near” sermons, while the audience waved green and red signs that read “agree” or “disagree.”

By the way, those signs were made out of paper from the remains of slaughtered trees that could have saved us from climate change, you selfish hypocrites. 

But we digress.

Hickenlooper refused to explain his absence, but we’ve since learned it’s part of the “windowless-basement strategy” laid out by Senate Democrat Leader Chuck Schumer, who has chosen Hick to win the primary.

Schumer’s marching orders for his handpicked minions are to shun grassroots events and outreach and instead focus on smile-and-dial fundraising, the National Review reports. 

“In order to secure the DSCC endorsement, John Hickenlooper had to agree to spend the majority of his campaign hiding from voters in Chuck Schumer’s windowless basement,” said NRSC spokesperson Joanna Rodriguez. “The truth is out now, and it’s going to take a lot more than hiding in the DSCC basement for Hickenlooper to avoid his party’s toxic socialist agenda and angry base.”

Democrats are falling all over themselves to link U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner to President Trump, which is probably why they keep tripping over their own strategy.

One week they’re jumping for joy over news that Gardner and Trump are divided on an issue, hoping it will damage the Coloradan with his Republican base.

Then they attack Gardner for voting with Trump’s agenda once the dust settles in policy disputes.

Not surprisingly, the media are falling for the latest Democratic talking points, note how Colorado Politics leads their story:

There’s a number Colorado voters will be hearing a lot between now and the 2020 election: 98.

That’s the percentage of times U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner, a Republican seeking his second term, has voted with the Trump administration, according to one measure.

Ouch, that’s really going to NOT hurt Gardner with the base, at all.

The reason Dems are excited about the number, is because Gardner wielded Obama’s agenda over the head of his opponent in the last election, former U.S. Sen. Mark Udall, pointing out that Udall voted with Obama 99% of the time.

There’s one huge problem with the rationale this flies both ways.

Voters were furious with the Obama agenda, namely Obamacare, which stripped away low-cost health insurance from Coloradans that’s actually worth a damn.

Voters were also done with Udall’s arrogance and presumption that he was entitled to the Senate seat because he was a Udall.

Sort of like the same arrogance John Hickenlooper has displayed of late, presuming he’s entitled to the Democratic nomination for the Senate seat.

Fast forward to Gardner, and we see he’s supporting an administration that turned our economy around, took a hammer to the unemployment rate, and got rid of the tax on everyone who couldn’t buy into the Obamacare system.

Democrats should remember, especially as they begin impeachment proceedings against Trump, that Americans might not personally like the man, but they love what Trump is doing for our economy and our country.

Ironically, Democrats are forgetting their own Golden Rule.

It’s the economy, stupid.

There’s no stronger endorsement than when the Denver Post’s editorial board advises voters not to waste taxpayer money on a government proposal.

But the liberals in their ivory tower saw straight through the Democratic General Assembly’s attempt to keep our TABOR refunds, which will total $843 million by fiscal year 2021, and then spend it irresponsibly.

When ballots arrive in the mail this week, voters should check no on Proposition CC, because the education funding system is rigged, and the money won’t go to schools that need it the most, the Denver Post said.

Instead, funding will go to the larger districts with the most students, leaving rural schools behind. 

As the Denver Post observed: 

Creating an ever-growing fund of money that is outside the formula will only increase existing disparities.

So who are the organizations spending huge sums of money to pass Prop CC? 

The teachers’ union, obviously, they don’t care who gets what so long as it’s funded in the name of education.

Ironically, another group dedicated to “resource equity” that preaches every child should receive an equitable allocation of resources no matter their race, socioeconomic status, or zip code has already spent $100,000 promoting Prop CC.

If Education Reform Now was a truly legitimate group dedicated to its own principles, they would have spent all that money instead to defeat the measure.

Updated: Reporter Sharyl Attkisson tweeted the clip asking if it was a plant, and the Lyndon LaRouche PAC responded “it was us,” and that “only satire works.”

The woman has not resurfaced, yet for the first time ever, the media are taking the LaRouche crazies at their word they were behind it.

The New York Times when on to defend AOC’s response to the woman’s rant that humans can’t have any more children because it’s killing the climate, and her proposed campaign slogan for AOC, “Eat the babies.”

AOC was so measured in her response, so kind and earnest, the NYT glowed. Meanwhile, AOC questioned in another tweet whether the woman was mentally ill.

From our earlier post:

Here in Colorado, Democrat members of Congress hold teletown hall meetings over the phone to control who gets to ask them questions.

Then, Democrats blast Republicans for not holding enough town hall meetings in public, and for using security measures.

Thanks to C-SPAN, we now have a very real, and frightening look at the state of the town hall meeting format.

In this clip from U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Wednesday town hall meeting in Coronea, New York, her constituent says we must get rid of the babies to prevent climate change, by eating them.

Michael Bennet’s presidential campaign is sending a lot of mixed signals this week, most of which are white flags indicating the Colorado senator is preparing to make his exodus. 

CNN tells us he’s in it to win it. 

The campaign’s not dead — at least until Iowa, or maybe the New Hampshire primary, and then all bets are off.

It’s the most bizarre set of contradictory statements we’ve ever read in the same story, all prompted by the fact Bennet is now the lowest fundraiser in the race with a measly $1.8 million in the bank and his polling average has stalled at 0.8%

From the same story:

“… The Colorado Democrat plans to stay in the race until at least the New Hampshire primary on Feb. 11.”

“I’m in this race to win the nomination and defeat Trump”

“The campaign will be in the race until New Hampshire because they are running a “lean, strong campaign” that has the “resources to compete and win.”

Or, he might not even last that long on a million dollars in fumes. 

The campaign’s expiration date reads “good by” the Feb. 3 Iowa contest, according to a campaign advisor.

“For him … the do or die moment is Iowa”

It’s sad when a campaign is in such disarray, they can’t even agree on a date to surrender. 

In other news, Bennet failed to qualify for the Oct. 15 debate.

Gov. Polis is now making national news headlines for trying to censure rural news outlets in Colorado.

Not because of factual errors, as we reported here, but because the governor doesn’t like who’s writing about him.

It’s good that other news organizations outside our state boundaries are taking notice.

Folks need to realize when President Trump complains about media coverage and blasts them on Twitter, that’s called fighting back, and it’s not actual censorship.

But when the governor’s spokesman Conor Cahill starts calling newspapers and telling them to take down factually correct stories in an effort to blackball an entire online news service, that reeks of censorship.

Reason Magazine correctly explains Cahill’s action, and why Coloradans should be worried.

What’s alarming here is that, again, he provides no evidence that anything written in the very brief news story is inaccurate, just written by a group that gets funding from people with an agenda might not match that of the governor’s office. 

Cahill is also implying that an organization with a political bent cannot also produce fact-based journalism. This would come as news to publications like Rolling Stone, Mother Jones, and, well, Reason.

And without question, it’s most certainly not the place of the governor’s press office—whose role is to push forward Polis’ agenda to the media—to be weighing in on what “objective” journalism is.

In addition to widespread attention given the matter from Colorado media outlets, the news and criticism of Polis’s office spread to Washington media outlets and regional news sources from Jackson Hole to Hartford, Connecticut.

The dispute arose from an article about Polis’s creation of yet another new Orwellian-named government agency, the Office of the Future of Work.