Month: June 2022

(Colorado Peak Politics)

Why is Mr. Brittany Pettersen still working for the Denver Post writing radical political columns on what’s left of the paper’s editorial page praising his wife’s political contributions while she campaigns for Congress in the 7th District?

That seems like a mammoth conflict of interest for a newspaper that has long pretended to be an unbiased source of news.

The Denver Post has allowed Mr. Brittany Pettersen, who writes under his maiden name, Ian Silverii, to continue writing his column long after she announced her campaign in early January, without any mention at all that his mere presence in the Ivory Tower constitutes a thorny ethical issue.

They decided sometime in March he just needed to add a disclaimer at the very bottom of the column, presuming anyone actually reads that far, then it was okay for him to wax partisan on the greatness of his wife’s legislative efforts. 

Like this column, where he blinded readers with the illusion the legislature had done great things to get opioids off the streets to stop overdose deaths, in what readers will later learn through campaign literature was a bill sponsored by Pettersen. 

Wild to see @pettersen4co’s name in a @Redistrict tweet next to “Likely D.” Swoooooooon #copolitics https://t.co/oOVwEtpM4j

— ian silverii (@iansilverii) June 29, 2022

It’s all such a wild conflict of interest.

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(Complete Colorado Page Two)

“America is experiencing an affordable housing crisis!” We’ve seen the headlines. Housing prices are going up faster than inflation, measured by the Consumer Price Index (CPI). As is the norm, any perceived crisis is a call for government to intervene. One intervention is the advent of income-restricted housing, often called affordable housing or workforce housing.

Income-restricted housing comes in two varieties: rentals and owner-occupied homes. The properties have deed-restrictions that specify maximum income limits for the renters or purchasers. Tenants lose their leases if they earn too much. Purchasers don’t lose their homes, but government establishes a maximum resale price based on Consumer Price Index (CPI) increases and a few other adjustments.

The intent is to help low-income workers. But let’s take a deeper dive, and understand the severity of this crisis, who benefits, who gets hurt, how it makes economic sense to voluntarily restrict properties, and what might happen if we didn’t have these programs.

How bad is the problem?

Currently, Metropolitan Denver and surrounding areas are seeing housing prices increase 15 – 30% per year. Meanwhile, payscale.com says that the median wage in the Denver Metro Area increased only 3.5% year over year. Yes, housing price increases are outpacing wage increases. But how important is that?

People are considered cost-burdened by rent if they have to spend more than 30% of their income on housing. For a city, if the median cost of housing is more than 30% of median income,

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(Colorado Peak Politics)

Election denial was a losing narrative for the Colorado media, which continues to deceive its readers by pretending this was all that Republican candidates and voters cared about in the GOP primary election.

It’s like the headline writers from the Denver Post, Colorado Sun, and CPR all attended the same theme party on how to make Republicans appear shallow and stupid.

Not a single one of those campaigns in the headlines ran on a message of election denial.

The only candidates who should, or did run on voter integrity, were the Colorado Secretary of State candidates. One, a little more enthusiastic than others in that race, in her belief that our elections are not safeguarded. And then Tina Peters went overboard.

Try as they might, the progressive media puppets could not make Peters the poster child of the Republican Party. She’s just a tragic victim of her own circumstances who will soon be judged by a jury of her peers.

Conspiracies by supporters and refusals by some candidates to accept election outcomes is not unique to the 2020 presidential election or the Republican Party. Just ask Democrat Al Gore and his hanging chads.

Or Hillary Clinton, who still insists she was robbed by Donald Trump in the 2016 election.

Republican candidates were pretty much united in this primary election on issues that mattered most to Coloradans — runaway inflation,

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(Colorado Peak Politics)

Congratulations to all of Colorado’s Republican nominees who rose to the top in Tuesday’s primary election.

Also, our condolences and best wishes to everyone else who fought a hard campaign to represent the party in the November General Election, and best of luck in your future endeavors. 

And now, to recap Tuesday’s key races, we go to the magic cheat sheet:

The Republican Party has spoken, and these are the candidates whom they believe can bring an end to Colorado’s one-party progressive rule that has made a real mess of our beloved state.

Now the real work begins for GOP candidates to bring voters back to reality about the state of our state and nation, and the solutions they propose will get us out of this mess.

The Gazette editorial board has their talking points for how one-party, Democrat rule has governed us so far:

Inspired by Colorado Springs Republican Rep. Shane Sandridge, the left chose to decriminalize hard street narcotics. That insane policy tracks with a spike in the rate of fentanyl deaths second only to Alaska’s — where a tiny population base artificially skews the rate.

Under one-party leadership, excessive regulations have reduced our state’s potential to produce oil and gas at a time when scarcity of these essential energies undermines state, national and global economies.

It is no exaggeration to conclude one-party leadership has taken our state from great to mediocre and on a downward trajectory.

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(Complete Colorado Page Two)

If you’ve filled up your gas tank lately, you know how much gas prices have skyrocketed over the last year. With the average price per gallon in Colorado at almost $4.80, and with inflation costing the average family $5,200 more per year, families across the state are struggling to make ends meet.

Fortunately, Colorado has the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights (TABOR), which is supposed to ensure that elected officials can’t drive up the cost of living even more by raising taxes without voter approval. Unsurprisingly, TABOR is popular with Colorado voters, but not so popular with many elected officials.

For years, the legislature has been trying to chip away or go around TABOR. They realized that if they call something a “fee” instead of a “tax” (and put the money into a separate account called an enterprise), they can evade TABOR and raise revenue without ever having to ask voters.

So last year, that’s exactly what the legislature and Governor Polis did when they passed Senate Bill 260. This massive $5.4 billion transportation-related bill created new “fees” on gasoline, deliveries, ride sharing and more. At the time, the sponsors of the bill were concerned that voters would never support such a big “fee” increase. But they also thought they knew better and wanted to do it anyway. Instead of using existing funds — or putting in the work to convince voters that this was the right plan — they rammed it through and thought nobody would notice their messy work.

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(Complete Colorado Page Two)

Does a bigot ever consider himself a bigot? I very much doubt it.

He might be ignorant, but in his core a bigot just wants his community to be safe. And being ignorant is quite different from being stupid.

The bigot senses that those “other” people present a threat. Accepting the dangerous practices of “those” people, our society will become perilous.

It’s why throughout history, we don’t want Catholics, blacks, queers, Chinese, people choosing hijabs (fill in the blank) in our neighborhood.

That makes it acceptable, even fashionable, to legally discriminate against them.

It wasn’t long ago that gay people had to live in secret for fear of imprisonment or chemical castration for practicing their lifestyle. That’s hard to imagine today.

Alan Turing, the English hero mathematician who helped break the Nazi enigma codes, had to stay closeted, even faking a hetero engagement. When arrested for “indecent” acts he choose chemical “treatments” rather than prison. He later killed himself.

The man who found and managed The Beatles, Brian Epstein, had to hide his illegal activities. After close calls with the law, he died depressed of a drug overdose that some question whether it was suicide or accidental.

The gay lifestyle, kept in darkness back then, is celebrated openly today.

But I remember the “we love the sinner but hate the sin” arguments from the religious right when they battled to keep anti-sodomy and anti-gay marriage laws on the books.

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(Mile High Evening News)

Candidates endorsed by former President Donald Trump stayed red-hot Tuesday night in Colorado, Illinois, Oklahoma, and Utah, taking home sweeping wins in all states. The perfect night for Trump-backed Republicans puts the 45th President’s endorsement record at 144-10.

In Colorado, Trump-endorsed Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) handily secured her renomination in the Third Congressional District, beating out her primary challenger, Don Coram. With 90 percent of the vote reporting, she took home 64.2 percent of the electorate, per the Associated Press’s (AP) election results published by the New York Times.

Boebert secured Trump’s endorsement back in December.

“Congresswoman Lauren Boebert has done a fantastic job in her first term representing Colorado’s Third District. She is a fearless leader, a defender of the America First Agenda, and a fighter against the Loser RINOs and Radical Democrats,” Trump said in a statement.

All four candidates who earned Trump’s nod in Illinois took home their nominations, with State Sen. Darren Bailey (R) securing the GOP nomination for Governor in the Prarie State. Rep. Mike Bost (R-IL) took home his renomination in the Twelfth Congressional District, while Rep. Mary Miller (R-IL) beat out fellow Congressman Rodney Davis (R-IL) in the race for the 15th Congressional District. In the contest for the 16th Congressional District, Rep. Darin LaHood (R-IL), who currently represents the 18th Congressional District, enjoyed an emphatic victory over his opponents.

It was a similar story for Trump-endorsed candidates in Oklah

This article was published at Breitbart News.

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