Rocky Mountain Voice

Commentary

Ballot Measure 95 Gives Colorado Voters A Say on Sanctuary State Policies
The Denver Gazette, Approved, Commentary, State

Ballot Measure 95 Gives Colorado Voters A Say on Sanctuary State Policies

By The Gazette Editorial Board | Commentary, The Denver Gazette Shooting deaths in Minneapolis involving Immigration & Customs Enforcement’s operations have stirred strong opinions about what to do with illegal immigration in our state and across the country. Many Coloradans are against ICE’s operations in Minneapolis and elsewhere, including here in Colorado, under President Donald Trump and find them to be unwarranted and dangerous.  Many other Coloradans are in full support of Trump and ICE, believing it’s more than reasonable for the federal government to apprehend and deport people here illegally. Especially when they have committed crimes over and above entering the country illegally in the first place. In the midst of that heated debate, advocacy...
Joe Oltmann, Eric Coomer, and the War Over Reality
Rocky Mountain Voice, Commentary, State, Top Stories

Joe Oltmann, Eric Coomer, and the War Over Reality

By C. J. Garbo | Guest Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice Joe Oltmann is one of the most polarizing political figures to come out of Colorado in the post-2020 era, but the real story isn’t whether you like him, dislike him, or agree with every word he has said. The story is what happens to a person who steps into the most dangerous topic in modern American life, election integrity, and refuses to retreat when the pressure escalates.  This is not a piece about campaign optics or personality. This is about dissent, institutional backlash, and the reality that when you collide with powerful systems, the “argument” often becomes legal, financial, and personal warfare. After the 2020 election, Dominion Voting Systems became a national flashpoint. Distrust spread fast, an...
Obama Implicated in Newly Released Russiagate Documents as Tulsi Gabbard Refers Evidence to DOJ
The Gateway Pundit, Approved, Commentary, National

Obama Implicated in Newly Released Russiagate Documents as Tulsi Gabbard Refers Evidence to DOJ

By Jim Hoft | Commentary, The Gateway Pundit Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, released a bombshell report with new and damning information on Wednesday. On Wednesday afternoon she shared with White House reporters at the daily briefing. The documents reveal it was Barack Obama and the FBI and CIA leadership at the time to sabotage President Trump before he even stepped into office. Obama did this knowing the entire story was manufactured and not a word of it was true. Gabbard released one House Intelligence Report that had been locked up in a CIA vault for almost a decade! It now is clear that Obama doctored the information to make it look like Putin and his buddy Donald Trump stole the election. There were four key elements in the reports about the fa...
How Medicaid growth is crowding Colorado’s budget priorities
Colorado Accountability Project, Commentary, State, Top Stories

How Medicaid growth is crowding Colorado’s budget priorities

By Cory Gaines | Commentary, Colorado Accountability Project Medicaid and Colorado’s Spending on Same I wanted to share Nash Herman’s op ed from Complete Colorado with you. I will leave it to you to read it in full, but there are a couple of pertinent things to share. The op ed does a good job of providing an overview of what will likely be a big issue this legislative session: Colorado’s Medicaid spending, a largely self-caused injury. In typical government fashion, the relevant state department, the Department of Healthcare Policy and Financing, engaged a third party and paid them $600K to study the issue. The contractor came back and recommended that, quoting the op ed, “... the state should prioritize reductions in behavioral health, long-term...
Who is Rob Andrews? Questions grow around leadership, accountability and public trust
Rocky Mountain Voice, Commentary, Local, Top Stories

Who is Rob Andrews? Questions grow around leadership, accountability and public trust

By Michael Hancock | Commentary, Undercurrent Substack Every election season, voters are introduced to a carefully curated version of the candidates seeking their trust. Titles are polished. Résumés are condensed. Claims are simplified into slogans. And too often, no one pauses to ask whether the story being told actually matches the public record. Think George Santos, the former New York Republican who was expelled from Congress for fabricating his background and misusing funds. Rob Andrews’ campaign narrative is a case in point. At a recent town hall, Andrews positioned himself as a metrics-driven CEO—a leader who builds organizations, measures outcomes, and delivers results. He emphasized his experience creating “several successful businesses,” presenti...
How PSPS coverage steers public blame
Colorado Accountability Project, Approved, Commentary, State

How PSPS coverage steers public blame

By Cory Gaines | Commentary, Colorado Accountability Project How the media will drive coverage of PSPS I wrote a bit back about how the media polarize coverage of ICE and efforts to enforce immigration law. As part of that I pointed to being aware of media narratives, of the paradigms they have which guide their coverage and, in a feedback loop, how their readers see their reality. That newsletter is linked first below if you're wanting the context.I thought of that dynamic when I read a recent CPR article on businesses impacted by Xcel's Public Safety Power Shutoffs (PSPS). That article is second below, but the pertinent bit for me is the following quote (copied here with links intact):"Xcel’s “Public Safety Power Shutoffs” may become more common, as Colorado co...
Greenland Defense Ties Put Colorado at the Center of Arctic Security
Colorado Politics, Approved, Commentary, Local

Greenland Defense Ties Put Colorado at the Center of Arctic Security

By Vince Bzdek | Commentary, Colorado Politics The conclusion to the dizzying odyssey over Greenland this week reminded me a little of the ending of the “Wizard of Oz.” If you recall, Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the Lion and the Tin Man finish a great and frightful quest only to discover they already had what they sought on the quest all along: brains, courage, heart, and the means to get back to Kansas. Similarly, President Trump has concluded that he can get what he wants out of Greenland through the security arrangements that already exist rather than buying or taking over the country. That’s because the United States and the Kingdom of Denmark (which includes Greenland as an autonomous territory) already share joint responsibility for the defense of the area. Th...
“Look at me, not the facts”: How outrage culture drowns out truth
Rocky Mountain Voice, Commentary, National, Top Stories

“Look at me, not the facts”: How outrage culture drowns out truth

By Mike Hancock | Guest Commentary, Undercurrent Chants are designed to sound simple, righteous, and urgent. They compress emotion into rhythm and repetition. They feel communal. They feel moral. They feel inevitable. When shouted in unison, they create the illusion of truth through volume alone. But chants are rarely the message. They are the cover. Beneath them—almost always—lies something far more dangerous. Today’s chants may vary in wording, but they all orbit the same gravitational center: Look at me. Listen to me. Ignore the facts. That is the lie beneath the chants. And it is not accidental. On the surface, chanting projects moral urgency. It insists that something is so unjust, so unbearable, that ordinary rules must be suspended. Proces...
A closet, a camera and a setup: Tina Peters assaulted in prison then thrown into solitary
Rocky Mountain Voice, Commentary, State, Top Stories

A closet, a camera and a setup: Tina Peters assaulted in prison then thrown into solitary

By A.L. Goodwin | Guest Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice On the evening of January 18, just after 9:00 p.m., Tina Peters was assaulted inside the La Vista Correctional Facility in Pueblo, Colorado—not in a yard or a common area, but in a narrow janitor’s closet, out of view of surveillance cameras. Peters had been filling a portable swamp cooler, a task other inmates routinely refuse to do, even as the prison overheats in the dead of winter due to a failing HVAC system. To access the water tank, she pulled the unit into the cramped closet, positioning her head and upper body between the door and the cooler—leaving her physically pinned in a space barely wider than the machine itself. As Peters maneuvered the unit, another inmate approached in an agitated state. The wom...
The Age of Gaslighting Is Ending
Rocky Mountain Voice, Commentary, National, Top Stories

The Age of Gaslighting Is Ending

By C. J. Garbo | Guest Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice You don’t get to do this again. You don’t get another George Floyd. You don’t get another COVID. You don’t get another “mostly peaceful” summer of chaos. You don’t get another shutdown. You don’t get another censorship campaign. You don’t get another government-media narrative that collapses the moment questions start getting answered. You don’t get another election season soaked in fear, confusion, and rule changes. You don’t get to burn trust to the ground and demand we clap for it. You don’t get to excuse violence when it benefits you, then act righteous when it doesn’t. We’ve watched fraud scandals, institutional coverups, and politically convenient “trut...