Since our founding in the mid-1980s, Independence Institute has worked on turning great policy ideas into legal reality.

From TABOR to term limits, charter schools, and concealed carry, we bring ideas forward and move them from being ridiculed into law.

So, imagine our excitement to see Republican leaders in both the State House and Senate bring forward their “Commitment to Colorado,” a package of 44 bills that largely mirrors our policy recommendations.

These bills include:

• Making taxes (they call ‘em fees) transparent. I can’t wait to see how progressives argue that hospital patients must still be barred from seeing the hospital bed tax on their bill.
• Repealing the new gas tax (called a fee to avoid a public vote) for transit projects.
• A permanent reduction of the flat income tax rate (kind of like what we just put on the 2022 ballot).
• Exempting food from sales tax.
• Equitable funding for charter schools.
• Vouchers for students in failing schools to go to a school of their choice (public or private).
• Universal licensure to allow professionals licensed in another state to operate in Colorado.
• A study expanding nuclear energy.
• Requiring a 2/3 majority vote from the legislature to increase “fees.”
• Bringing back the Sunrise/Sunset committee to review outdated laws.

You can see the full list HERE.

Let’s not fool anybody here. Given the highly progressive nature of our legislature and governor, I doubt many (or potentially any) of these proposals will be signed into law. But having a public discussion on these ideas is always the first step towards real legal change.

And pardon me for saying, I just want to see liberals vote against such great, simple, and popular ideas. It will give voters some real contrast between candidates this fall.

From all of us at Independence to the GOP members sponsoring these bills, thanks for listening to us, working with us, and for having the courage to stand up and empower Coloradans to make their own decisions.

Your voice is needed! Members of the Colorado legislature, and it is not just the left, want Colorado’s public elementary and secondary children to be indoctrinated into identity politics during social studies class. They also want to criticize our country by ignoring the great opportunities the United States offers to people of any color, religion, sexual orientation, or gender and rather have children focus primarily on the ugliness in our past.

House Bill 19-1192, passed in 2019, gave power to a governor-appointed History, Culture, and Civil Government Commission to recommend revisions to Colorado’s Social Studies Standards, provide elementary and secondary schools with teaching materials, and be present during required social studies standards community forums at all public schools. What happened to local control? Your comments are needed on the proposed standards currently under public review. The Colorado State Board of Education has extended the deadline on public comment until February 1.

Pam Benigno, Director of our Education Policy Center, submitted our comments last week. You can read them HERE on Complete Colorado. Also, Pam and social studies teacher Kyle Walpole sat down with me to discuss the recommended standards on a recent Devil’s Advocate. You can watch the full episode HERE. Please consider submitting your own comments to the Colorado Department of Education HERE. 

At Complete Colorado, guest contributor Mark Hillman explains the real harm being done to at least two rural Colorado schools by the Democrats’ native mascot ban.

And I actually praise government. No, really, I do. When government does its core functions, lives are saved like those of my neighbors during the Boulder fires.

Ari Armstrong reviews the movie Don’t Look Up and concludes that environmental fearmongers ought to try following their own advice from time to time.

Reporter Sherrie Peif looks at the state Attorney General’s now seven-year-long, multi-million tax dollar lawsuit against a private college, and sees no end in sight.

Finally, Sherrie also covers a couple of campaign finance complaints against progressive “dark money” groups, whereby Secretary of State Jena Griswold ends up obligated to investigate her own team’s political spending. That has to make for uncomfortable cocktail party chatter.

Constitutional Law

Rob Natelson, our Senior Fellow in Constitutional Jurisprudence, created a statewide stir when he said on Montana radio on January 3 that leftists fixated on last year’s Capitol riot need to “get over it.” He said the riot was a bad thing, but that the Black Lives Matter/Antifa riots a few months earlier were far worse in the number of lives lost, the extent of damage, and continuing damage to the country, such as the crime spike and killing of police officers.

Rob was immediately invited to discuss the issue on statewide Montana radio on January 6, where he pointed out that the left wrote the playbook for January 6 with six decades of building takeovers, including the occupation of the Wisconsin State Capitol for several weeks in 2011, storming the Supreme Court in 2017, and seizure of the U.S. Senate Office Building in 2018.

If you’re a subscriber, Rob’s latest The Epoch Times column is about the left’s constant reference to “Our Democracy” and how it really resembles “Their Oligarchy.” He’s currently working on a series for about “How the Supreme Court Rewrote the Constitution.”

Think Freedom!

-Jon