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Watch closely: The PUC sunset hearing could reshape Colorado energy policy
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Colorado Accountability Project, Approved, Commentary, State

Watch closely: The PUC sunset hearing could reshape Colorado energy policy

By Cory Gaines | Commentary, Colorado Accountability Project Watch for the PUC sunset hearing. Not only will it be a chance to weaken local control, DORA wants less transparency for them.I will be watching and posting (from what my state senator B Pelton said, it should be late February or early March), but I wanted to put a bug in your ear to watch for the Public Utilities Commission's sunset hearing in front of the Senate Transportation and Energy Committee.As I wrote [last week], there are rumblings about changing the mission of the PUC to perhaps grease the skids for state-level siting of renewables.The PUC sunset hearing will be the time that they do this, but there are other things I've heard. I wrote back last year about a CFOIC article showing the Department o...
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From Obstruction to Oppression: How the Media Rewrites ICE Enforcement
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The Federalist, Approved, Commentary, National

From Obstruction to Oppression: How the Media Rewrites ICE Enforcement

By: M.D. Kittle | Commentary, The Federalist Corporate media outlets have covered the Minneapolis ICE story like they’ve covered much of Homeland Security’s efforts to secure the homeland: dishonestly. Aliya Rahman says she feels “lucky to be alive,” that the days since federal law enforcement officials dragged her out of her car have been “traumatizing and overwhelming.”  Corporate media outlets will tell you that, too. All of them. The same story, the same narrative. The “disabled woman” was just trying to get to her doctor’s appointment, they report, pushing the left’s message that Rahman is another victim of President Donald Trump’s Immigration & Customs Enforcement agents and their roundup of poor “undocumented” immigrants. What they wo...
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Runaway Medicaid Spending Forces Colorado Toward Hard Choices
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Complete Colorado, Approved, Commentary, State

Runaway Medicaid Spending Forces Colorado Toward Hard Choices

By: Nash Herman | Commentary, Complete Colorado The legislature’s Joint Budget Committee (JBC) recently held a hearing with the Department of Healthcare Policy and Financing (HCPF), the Governor’s office, and Manatt, a healthcare consulting firm, to address the unsustainable growth of Colorado’s Medicaid spending. Here’s a look at some of the highlights from the hearing. Runaway spending According to HCPF and the Governor’s office, General Fund spending on Medicaid increased at an average rate of 6 percent from fiscal year 2015-16 to fiscal year 2018-19. However, after the federal government windfall from COVID, General Fund spending blew up, growing at an average rate of 19 percent from fiscal year 2021-22 to fiscal year 2024-25. Health c...
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When Rhetoric Escalates: How Polarizing Language Shapes Public Conflict
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Rocky Mountain Voice, Commentary, National, Top Stories

When Rhetoric Escalates: How Polarizing Language Shapes Public Conflict

By Shaina Cole | Commentary, Contributing Writer, Rocky Mountain Voice Political speech extends well beyond the moment it’s expressed. Words travel. They settle into public discourse and shape how authority, disagreement, and risk are understood over time.  Research shows that rhetoric does more than mirror tension. In certain conditions, it redirects it—especially when government leaders frame conflict in threatening or moral terms. That context helps explain why the White House published an article titled “57 Times Sick, Unhinged Democrats Declared War on Law Enforcement.” The article quotes Democrat state governors, congressmen, and other public figures whose statements the administration has characterized as contributing to a hostile environment for federal la...
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State signals renewed push to override local control on renewable energy siting
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Rocky Mountain Voice, Approved, Commentary, State

State signals renewed push to override local control on renewable energy siting

By Cory Gaines | Commentary, Colorado Accountability Project Both the Colorado Sun article linked first below, and the video which they likely drew from for the article which is linked second, have our governor saying essentially the same thing. Quoting form the article: “Democrats also plan to make energy and the environment priorities at the Capitol this year, though the details of their plans remain in flux. ‘You’re going to hear a lot about energy this session,’ Polis said, ‘including making it easier to permit energy projects and get them done. One of the reasons we can’t have nice things is we don’t let them be built.’ Some of those changes may be tied to a rewrite of the laws governing Colorado’s Public Utilities Commission, which oversees how much some consumer...
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The numbers Polis didn’t tweet about Colorado’s workforce decline
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Rocky Mountain Voice, Commentary, State, Top Stories

The numbers Polis didn’t tweet about Colorado’s workforce decline

By Mike O’Donnell | Guest Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice I found it curious that Governor Polis felt a need to post to his half a dozen, die-hard, mentally-ill supporters on ‘X’ this week, a tweet to the effect that contrary to President Trump’s assertion that people are leaving Colorado “in droves,” Colorado’s population has continued to GROW under his august leadership since 2019. To support this assertion, he pasted a screenshot from factcheck.org stating that “since Polis took office in 2019, the moderate upward trend in the state’s population over the last decade has continued, although the data is only through 2022.” https://twitter.com/GovofCO/status/2010759061692641539 This fact checker also stated that similar supporting data was available from the ...
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Poll Shows Coloradans Want the Center, But Democrats Focused on Progressive Agenda
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Complete Colorado, Approved, Commentary, State, Uncategorized

Poll Shows Coloradans Want the Center, But Democrats Focused on Progressive Agenda

By Mark Hillman | Complete Colorado The Colorado General Assembly returns for its annual 120-day session on Jan. 14, evoking a four-month visceral cringe from Coloradans who dread the next round of legislative fiats certain to be imposed upon us. Coloradans are in a restless mood lately.  It’s no secret a majority of Colorado voters has little affection for President Trump, but they’re not exactly cheerleaders for Democrats either. A December poll by Keating Research, which often works with Democrat clients, found disapproval of the Colorado Democratic Party at 55% – only slightly better than the 58% disapproval of Colorado Republicans. A majority said Colorado is headed in the wrong direction and expressed little confidence in the state legislature, w...
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What CPR left out of Colorado’s BLM oil and gas lease auction coverage
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Colorado Accountability Project, Approved, Commentary, State

What CPR left out of Colorado’s BLM oil and gas lease auction coverage

By Cory Gaines | Commentary, Colorado Accountability Project Bureau of Land Management recently held an auction for oil and gas leases in Colorado and, per the CPR story linked below, no one bid. Quoting with link intact: “On Thursday, the Bureau of Land Management auctioned off leases on more than 20,000 acres of public land in Colorado for oil and gas drilling. The land, divided into 23 parcels, was offered at the minimum starting price, just $10 an acre, and could be leased indefinitely once oil and gas starts flowing. But during the sale: crickets. Not a single parcel received a bid, and only two companies had even registered for the sale.” If you read the article, you’ll note a lot of space given over to environmentalists who crowing about the lack o...
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NGOs And The Rise Of An Unelected Shadow Government
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Defender of the Republic., Approved, Commentary, National

NGOs And The Rise Of An Unelected Shadow Government

By: Defender of the Republic | Defender of the Republic How Nonprofits Can Exacerbate Fraud, Launder Public Money and How Citizens Can Stop It. For years, Americans have been told that NGOs (Non-Governmental Organizations) are benevolent, independent charities doing work the government “can’t.” The truth is more complicated and more dangerous. Many NGOs today function as unelected extensions of government power, funded by taxpayer money, shielded from transparency, and largely immune from voter accountability. When abused, this structure can exacerbate fraud, enable money laundering, and distort public policy all while appearing charitable on paper. Now before you start questioning my reporting…isn’t about attacking char...
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This is the real insurrection
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Rocky Mountain Voice, Commentary, National, Top Stories

This is the real insurrection

By Mark Salley | Guest Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice What has happened to people in America? We have a contingent of people supporting and praising the law breakers.  Let’s call it what it is: insurrection. Just five years ago this month, the left branded patriotic protestors at the nation’s capital as “insurrectionists.”   None of the protestors there that day were obstructing justice. None of them were standing in the way of enforcing the nation’s laws. No one on that day was attacking law enforcement officers, pummeling them with bricks or frozen water bottles, or for that matter, ramming them with cars. And not a single one was charged with insurrection. Today officers of Immigration and Customs Enforcement are attacked and harassed rele...
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