Did you know 46% of the voters in Colorado are unaffiliated? Have you ever wondered why? Hear from the experts at Independence Institute talk about the issues important to Colorado and how to bring some sanity to this increasingly leftist state.
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Did you know 46% of the voters in Colorado are unaffiliated? Have you ever wondered why? Hear from the experts at Independence Institute talk about the issues important to Colorado and how to bring some sanity to this increasingly leftist state.
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Recent Episodes
July 9, 2026
A declaration of independence from Colorado’s ruling class
<p>Happy 250th Birthday, America! You look fabulous. As all the cool countries are saying, “250 is the new 230.”</p><p>The <a href="https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Declaration of Independence</a> wasn’t merely an announcement of war against a tyrant. It was the most revolutionary political document ever written.</p><p>The Declaration was a landmark in human development, perhaps the landmark of all human history.</p><p>For the first time government was no longer affirmed sovereign. The individual was.</p><p>That simple idea changed the world.</p><p>You rule yourself. Your life belongs to you. Your liberty belongs to you. Your happiness is yours to pursue as you define it. Your property belongs to you.</p><p>Government exists not to rule over you, but to secure your rights, to protect you from, well, government.</p><h3><strong>The grievances</strong></h3><p>The part of the Declaration rarely quoted during patriotic speeches isn’t the soaring language about liberty. It’s Jefferson’s long list of grievances against King George, the “causes which impel them to the separation.”</p><p>Those grievances are worth study. Because they’re back.</p><p>Reading them today, I can’t help wondering what our Founders would think of our government today, Colorado’s in particular.</p><p>Would they find today’s overlords less oppressive? I doubt it.</p><p>Jefferson wrote of the king, “He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.”</p><p>Colorado lawmakers and governor just dissolved two-thirds of the elected RTD Board of Directors, replacing them with hand-picked lackeys.</p><p>They dissolved a Representative House. The representatives of the people can be troublesome, might be an obstacle to their plans of statewide trolleys. Best to install yes-men.</p><h3><strong>Swarms of officers</strong></h3><p>Jefferson complained the king had “erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.”</p><p>New offices since Polis became guv alone include the Energy and Carbon Management Commission — created just after voters shot down restriction on oil and gas and on a mission to end drilling (as you might notice in your energy bills). There’s also the Behavioral Health Administration, the Department of Early Childhood, the Prescription Drug Affordability Board, the Office of Gun Violence Prevention and the Just Transition Office.</p><p>I could fill the page with new offices.</p><p>In the last decade alone, the state has added more than 11,500 more employees, growing 21%.</p><p>Swarms of Officers? Indeed.</p><p>To “eat out our substance” in the same period the state needed to hire 28% more tax collectors at the Department of Revenue and 25% more form-checkers at the Department of Regulations. You will comply.</p><h3><strong>Consent of the governed</strong></h3><p>Jefferson also listed the top grievance: “For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent.”</p><p>Really? Do I need to spell this one out?</p><p>In Colorado, consent is spelled <a href="http://taboryes.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">T-A-B-O-R</a>.</p><p>Today, lawmakers simply rename taxes as “fees” so they can avoid consent.</p><p>To collect those “fees,” they’ve created bureaucracies with names that sound like they were generated by George Orwell’s artificial intelligence:</p><p>Clean Screen Authority. Capitol Parking Authority. Statewide Tolling Authority. Statewide Transportation Enterprise, Statewide Bridge and Tunnel Enterprise.</p><p>Then there’s the Healthcare Affordability and Sustainability Enterprise to collect hospital bed taxes “fees.” How about the Clean Transit Enterprise? Or the Community Access Enterprise? Lest we forget the Nonattainment Area Pollution Mitigation Enterprise, to tax every delivery you get and raise your gas tax.</p><p>If it sounds confusing enough, maybe you won’t notice it’s taking your money without permission.</p><p>By 2023, these fees extract $23 billion a year from Coloradans without voter approval.</p><p>Since TABOR became law, state government has collected well more than a quarter-trillion dollars outside its voter-approved tax structure.</p><p>Think about that.</p><p>Without your consent, government has taken nearly $42,000 for every man, woman and child in Colorado.</p><p>For a family of four, that’s almost $170,000. Two-hundred-fifty years ago, taxation without consent like this prompted Americans to dump tea into Boston Harbor and take to arms.</p><h3><strong>Government fatigue</strong></h3><p>Jefferson wrote of the king, “He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.”</p><p>Colorado has well more than 5,000 governments and special districts.</p><p>There is physically no way a citizen could keep up with the legislature, school boards, city councils, county commissions, water districts, transit districts, and the like. Each have their own taxing and regulatory powers to which you must comply.</p><p>Hell, the wait at the DMV has fatigued us enough.</p><p>What would Jefferson write for a modern Colorado Declaration of Independence?</p><p>Jon Caldara is president of <a href="http://thinkfreedom.org/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Independence Institute</a>, a free market think tank in Denver.</p>
July 8, 2026
Violent anti-ICE protestors get a Texas-sized comeuppance
<p>On June 23, 2026, the federal U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas sentenced eight violent protestors convicted of assaulting the Prairieland Detention Center, an ICE facility in Alvarado, Texas, in an anti-Independence Day attack on July 4, 2025. Their <a href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/leader-antifa-cell-members-north-texas-sentenced-100-years-prison-terrorist-attack-ice" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">stiff punishments ranged</a>from 30 to 70 years in prison for rioting and providing material support to terrorists, among other charges. An exception was made for Benjamin Song, the group’s leader, who got a total of 100 years with an additional conviction piled on for attempted murder.</p><p>Texas is a Republican red state that isn’t soft on these kinds of criminals. A court in Minnesota, California, Seattle, Oregon, Illinois, New York or other Democrat-controlled blue states might have let them off with community service or even found them not guilty. Don’t be surprised if some left-wing legal organization pays for legal fees to appeal the verdict and the sentencing all the way to SCOTUS. Several other protestors were scheduled to be sentenced on July 1.</p><p>Prosecutors said the protestors vandalized vehicles, launched fireworks at the ICE facility, wounded an Alvarado police officer with a firearm and shot at unarmed corrections officers. The thugs were identified as a cell of radical ANTIFA left-wing anarchists who claim to be anti-fascist although they resort to standard fascist tactics in their violent protests.</p><h3><strong>A preposterous defense</strong></h3><p>The defense presented by lawyers who represented this bunch was preposterous. As was expected, none of the defendants took to the stand to testify at the trial. Meagan Morris’s attorney, D. Miles Brisette, claimed Meagan went to Alvarado that night expecting a peaceful demonstration and “felt deceived by what unfolded.” Likewise, Zachary Evetts was portrayed by his attorney, Patrick McLain, as a pacifist who also expected a peaceful protest claiming the fireworks were only intended to gain the attention of the (illegal alien) detainees so that they could hear the protestors’ (screamed) words of support. Apparently, this was the collective script of the group’s defense who should be treated like misguided juvies deserving nothing harsher than being grounded for a week or, at worst, sent to a reform school. This innocent-lambs defense is especially incredulous when the perps are ANTIFA thugs who proudly love to bust heads. A department of Homeland Security spokeswoman applauded the stiff sentences as “a win for the rule of law.”</p><p>Given its customary liberal bias, the spin in <a href="https://apnews.com/article/prairieland-detention-center-shooting-sentencing-1eb7a8ac32dbb637e027709ae010f374" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">an Associated Press story</a> was sympathetic to the protestors, including quotes from Phillip Hayes, the attorney representing the aforementioned Benjamin Song who was found guilty of attempted murder. Hayes described the protestors as just “a bunch of kids and young adults who really have a big heart and really wanted their voice to be heard. It was never intended that anybody get hurt. It was never intended that any shots would be fired.”</p><h3><strong>Following the Marxist playbook</strong></h3><p>Really? So, why did they bring guns? Their real intent was clearly to obstruct the DHS and ICE from doing their jobs which is also the intent of violent mobs that interfere with ICE officers all over the country, especially in Minnesota, under the pretense of social justice and compassion for their wonderful neighbors who just happen to be illegally present in the United States. Baloney! The leaders of this movement and its paid-provocateurs by financiers like George Soros is to “resist” the governance of the Trump administration and advance the open borders and progressive Democrat socialist agenda.</p><p>Civil violence is right out of the Marxist handbook of permanent revolution.</p><p>The DFW (for Dallas-Fort Worth) Support Committee, providing financial support for the legal defense of the protestors, said the defendants were wrongly being “thrown away for the rest of their lives.” It added, “The egregious sentencing is to send a message to anyone with the same beliefs.” No. These sentences weren’t punishment for the “beliefs” of these criminals. It was for their unlawful “behavior.” And I certainly hope this sends a message discouraging violent criminal action by radical activists and the useful idiots who are duped into following them. The message: “If you commit a crime, you’ll do the time.”</p><p>I greatly doubt that any of these criminals will spend the rest of their lives in prison. It’s more than likely that their stiff sentences will be reduced during the appeals process, especially if they come in front of liberal judges. Failing that, the next Democrat in the White House, maybe President AOC, will commute their terms or, even worse, pardon them and throw in the Presidential Medal of Freedom as a bonus.</p><p>Longtime KOA radio talk host and columnist for the Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News Mike Rosen now <a href="https://pagetwo.completecolorado.com/?s=MIke+Rosen" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">writes for</a> Complete Colorado.</p>
July 1, 2026
James Michener’s ‘Centennial’ a must-read Colorado story
<p>If you’ve been reading my columns, you’ve noticed I’m basically illiterate. I blame my dyslexia and public education, but my Olympic-level laziness could be the driving factor.</p><p>Anyway, I basically can’t read (and, still, I graduated from CU Boulder, so another endorsement of public higher education).</p><p>So, for me to recommend a book is like a nun recommending sexy lingerie. How can you take it seriously? But how can it not get you thinking?</p><p>As we celebrate Colorado’s 150th birthday, may I strongly suggest you read, or re-read, James Michener’s classic novel “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Centennial-Novel-James-Michener/dp/0812978420" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Centennial</a>,” which arguably presents one of the most accurate portraits of the Colorado character.</p><h3><strong>A Colorado story</strong></h3><p>I understand this is a sizable ask. The book is massive. Now that phonebooks are extinct, parents put “Centennial” on chairs for their little kids to reach the table.</p><p>I listen to books on tape. So, when I saw this book took 50 hours, I almost went back to my comic book (which we now call “graphic novels,” like that is somehow going to impress women).</p><p>It’s not that “Centennial” gives an accurate accounting of Colorado’s history, it doesn’t. It’s that it colors a painting of the true Colorado spirit and the bravery of those who built this beautiful, once rugged state.</p><p>Michener masterfully shows our dry high-plains as a stage for life and death struggles. He describes the personalities that would say goodbye to all they knew to chance a survival in an untamed, savage and mysterious territory.</p><p>If there was one word that encapsulated his story, it’s the same word that encapsulates what made Colorado the destination state for hundreds of years: risk.</p><p>To modern generations “risk” is seen as “danger” or synonymous with gambling, a roll of the dice. But that’s not risk.</p><p>“Risk” is the quest to manifest a goal over calculated odds. Risk is to employ one’s talents and resources to obtain a potentially unreachable outcome.</p><p>Every entrepreneur understands risk, knowing even when you do everything right, failure is still an easy outcome.</p><p>Michener’s book captures a Colorado now lost. It’s a Colorado where courageous people risk writing their own biography. To build. To create. To do it their way, or not do it at all.</p><p>Mitchner’s book became a sensation about the time the nation was celebrating it’s bicentennial. It’s story, the Colorado story, was a proxy for the American story.</p><p>As we look at 150 years of Colorado statehood, we also get to examine how Colorado has changed since “Centennial” was first published in 1974. Growing up in the 1970s in Colorado, I saw that spirit of risk and self-direction.</p><p>The state was still drawing oil-and-gas wildcatters, artists of all stripes and even a new tech entrepreneur that dealt in one and zeros, not rocks and cattle.</p><h3><strong>Mountains remain, culture changes</strong></h3><p>Now 50 years later, it’s hard to recognize many of the Colorado qualities Michener celebrated.</p><p>Colorado no longer beckons people to be left alone. It beckons people who want someone else to manage things. The frontier mentality has given way to the HOA mentality.</p><p>Risk has become something government promises to protect us from instead of something free people willingly embrace.</p><p>Every new regulation is sold as safety. Every permit is justified as protection. Every entrepreneurial gamble is treated with suspicion until a bureaucrat approves it.</p><p>We still have mountains, rivers and those impossible sunsets that make even lifelong Coloradans stop for a moment. The scenery survived.</p><p>But scenery alone isn’t the magic.</p><p>The magic was always the people willing to bet everything on themselves — men and women who crossed plains, climbed passes, dug mines, started businesses, built ranches and towns, and accepted failure was the price of having the freedom to try.</p><p>Michener understood Colorado wasn’t merely a place. It was a state of mind.</p><p>Reading “Centennial” today feels less like reading historical fiction and more like opening a time capsule from a state that’s slipping away. It reminds us this state wasn’t made extraordinary by government. It was made extraordinary by people.</p><p>It was made extraordinary by people who demanded to be free enough to fail spectacularly or succeed beyond imagination.</p><p>As Colorado turns 150, I hope we remember the spirit that created it. Because mountains are forever. A culture isn’t.</p><p>And once that spirit is gone, no amount of preservation can bring back the Colorado that Michener knew.</p><p>Jon Caldara is president of <a href="http://thinkfrreedom.org/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Independence Institute,</a> a free market think tank in Denver.</p>
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