Build, Baby, Build! That is the title of economist Bryan Caplan’s new graphic novel, subtitled “The Science and Ethics of Housing Regulation.” If you are a policy maker or influencer in Colorado, you need to read this book. If you are a resident concerned about sky-high housing costs, you should consider buying copies for your representatives in local and state government. You also can watch Caplan’s recent presentation at the Cato Institute, which published the book. “Housing prices stay high in desirable areas because most governments strictly regulate new construction. In a free market, dev ..read more

The outbreak of disruptive protests by anti-Israel students on college campuses and the predictably feeble response of many school administrators and faculty leftists brought to mind the turmoil of an earlier era. During the Vietnam War, America was sharply divided with many millions opposed to it.  Anti-war protestors acted out on campus, staged massive, sometimes violent demonstrations, maligned U.S. troops — and spat on some who came home.  The protestors got sympathetic coverage in the liberal media.  The true test of public opinion, however, was the 1972 election. President ..read more

DENVER — Colorado is one of just 21 states that allow citizens’ ballot initiatives to change state statute or amend the state Constitution, and one of just 14 states allow that allow for direct initiatives, meaning the state’s legislature does not have to confirm the statute. Nearly every election year there are a handful of measures for voters to decide, while other efforts never make it to the ballot. This year is no exception, with a huge number of initiatives at various stages of the process, including many being challenged to the Colorado Supreme Court. There are measures to guarantee abo ..read more

Pretend that your employer accidentally overpaid you, say $20 extra a month for a couple years.  Neither of you notice until one day you get an email telling you about the mistake.  The mistake has been fixed and your pay will be $20 less going forward.  Also, you now owe your employer $240.  Not a pleasant thing to consider. Fresh on the heels of Governor Polis signing the state budget, we got similar bad news.  Due to an accounting error there’s a $67 million “oops” in the budget. The mistake stretches all the way back to the hurried 2020 legislative session and a bi ..read more

Following the Colorado Rockies STEM day, we watched the team win in a dramatic comeback, scoring six runs in the eighth. Going into the gate, I noticed the sign, “Warning: Under Colorado law, a spectator of professional baseball assumes the risk of any injury to person or property resulting from any of the inherent dangers and risks” of the game, including “being struck by a baseball or a baseball bat.” Most people welcome the opportunity to catch a foul ball. But this doesn’t always turn out well. A few years ago a stray ball busted open a woman’s forehead, giving her a concussion. She couldn ..read more

Xcel Energy customers’ bills will increase thanks to State Senate President Steve Fenberg (D-Boulder) and his recently introduced grid infrastructure bill, SB24-218, that allows Xcel to recover costs without going through the usual Public Utilities Commission (PUC) rate case process. SB24-218 requires an investor-owned electric utility that serves 500,000 customers or more (Xcel is the utility that meets the definition) to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to upgrade its power distribution system to support Colorado lawmakers’ net zero and state electrification goals. Xcel will recover the ..read more

The last thing Front Range residents need in these inflationary times is a hefty new sales tax for a costly and impractical intercity passenger rail system. Veteran transit analysts Jon Caldara and Randal O’Toole have both laid out the ugly truth, while the Front Range Passenger Rail (FRPR) District board continues its misguided optimism of public support. It’s almost guaranteed that voters in my city of Longmont won’t support any new sales tax for trains.  No other locale in the Regional Transportation District (RTD) taxing jurisdiction has agonized more from the unfulfilled promise ..read more

As the legislative session nears an end for another year, with Colorado lawmakers scrambling to finish up bills, citizen-initiated measures hoping to make the ballot in 2024 are also piling up to enact new laws. One such initiative includes language that appears in practice to outright ban the hunting of mountain lions in Colorado— despite laws on the books that already tightly regulate and protect the species. If it makes the ballot and passes, Initiative #91 would bar what the measure refers to as the “trophy hunting” of mountain lions—along with bobcats or lynx–in Colorado. The measure has ..read more

The digital news site Denverite (owned by Colorado Public Radio), as well as other leftward-tilting Colorado news outlets, recently referred to the inhabitants of a pro-Hamas tent encampment on the Auraria Campus in Denver as “anti-war.” Editorial note: They’re not anti-war, they’re just anti-Jew. As the campus protests grow more violent they are also exposed as being more radical than one might suppose from coverage by standard left-0f-center news outlets.  It is not uncommon for them to openly support Hamas’s October 7 indiscriminate massacre and rapes as “legitimate acts of resistance ..read more

(You can listen to this column, read by the author, here.) Among all protections throughout human existence for political minorities, none greater was ever created before the First Amendment. For the better part of my life, it was classic liberals and the political left who fought for the right of dissent, guaranteeing government shall not abridge speech. It was the cultural warriors of my childhood through school, media and Hollywood who drilled into us themes like: “innocent until proven guilty”; “the ends don’t justify the means”; “I disagree with what you say, but defend your right to say ..read more