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Buying American is about more than the price tag
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Rocky Mountain Voice, Commentary, National, Top Stories

Buying American is about more than the price tag

By Karen Post | Guest Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice This year, our country turns 250. Anniversaries are not just markers of time — they are moments of reflection. What kind of America do we want to be for the next 250 years? My answer is simple: one that invests in its own prosperity. I am a 65-year-old serial entrepreneur who recently secured a license with America250 and Freedom250, to produce a line of American Prosperity Keepsakes. The prosperity pillow is our hero product. The concept of prosperity pillows isn’t new. They’ve existed in cultures for thousands of years, often tied to symbols of luck and fortune. My version is different — distinctly American.  This pillow is not about luck. It is about grit, creativity, and the relentless pursuit of the American D...
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Colorado protected school funding without touching TABOR refunds. Now it wants those too.
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Rocky Mountain Voice, State, Top Stories

Colorado protected school funding without touching TABOR refunds. Now it wants those too.

By Shaina Cole | Contributing Writer, Rocky Mountain Voice Last session, the Colorado General Assembly passed a bill asking voters to waive their TABOR refunds to fund education.  The ballot title calls it "without raising taxes." No rates change.  But it asks Coloradans to let the state keep money the constitution currently requires it to give back, and it comes one year after the legislature moved more than $200 million into a protected school account without touching anyone's refund at all. The two moves address the same problem. They work very differently. What the legislature did first In 2025, tucked inside HB25-1320, the School Finance Act, a Senate Appropriations Committee amendment drafted by Sen. Kolker (D) and Sen. Kirkmeyer (R), created something...
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Colorado became a national model for mail voting. Election Integrity Network says it should go back.
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Colorado became a national model for mail voting. Election Integrity Network says it should go back.

By Jen Schumann | Rocky Mountain Voice The ballot simply shows up weeks before Election Day. Some ballots are filled out the day they arrive. Others sit untouched until the weekend. Too many, most will argue, end up ignored. Eventually, a lot are mailed, taken to a drop box or walked into a polling center.  It’s the only system younger voters have ever known. The Election Integrity Network would prefer something closer to the system Colorado left behind. In May, they released a 116-page handbook outlining what it believes election laws should look like across the country. Before ballots filled the mailbox EIN founder Cleta Mitchell sees Colorado's pre-2013 election system as a blueprint rather than a relic. "Before 2013–14, Colorado used a precinct-based, i...
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The marijuana money for Colorado schools shrank. A 2025 law decided where the rest goes.
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Rocky Mountain Voice, State, Top Stories

The marijuana money for Colorado schools shrank. A 2025 law decided where the rest goes.

By Shaina Cole | Contributing Writer, Rocky Mountain Voice For years the story about Colorado's marijuana taxes and its schools ran in one direction. Sales climbed, revenue climbed, and a share of it went to a fund that helps districts repair aging buildings. When sales started falling, the natural assumption followed. Less marijuana money, less for schools. That assumption is incomplete, and the reason is buried in how the money is structured. The marijuana excise tax that flows to school construction has dropped to about the level the state constitution singles out for protection.  The first $40 million collected each year is reserved for construction before anything else can touch it. Marijuana collections are now close to that line, which means the protected piece ...
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Prose that just happens to rhyme: Larry Gatlin on books, faith and the America worth passing on
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Prose that just happens to rhyme: Larry Gatlin on books, faith and the America worth passing on

By Jen Schumann | Rocky Mountain Voice Soccer wasn't really happening for Royal Gatlin. The three-year-old was on the field as a player, technically. But he was picking little purple clovers for his mother and bringing them to her. When the game break came, Royal found a package of Goldfish crackers in his baby brother Walker’s stroller and grabbed it. "Papa, I can't open it." Larry Gatlin did. After eating a few, Royal got a question from his grandfather. Could Papa have one? "No." What followed wasn't a lecture. It was a lesson. "What would the world look like if everybody acted and thought like you did? What if nobody would share stuff?" Gatlin recalled asking. "It's called the categorical imperative." Papa was teaching German philosophy written in 1785...
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When government defrauds the citizen, it forfeits its moral claim to tax him
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Rocky Mountain Voice, Commentary, National, Top Stories

When government defrauds the citizen, it forfeits its moral claim to tax him

By C. J. Garbo | Guest Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice There comes a point at which taxation ceases to be civic contribution and becomes state extraction. That point is reached when citizen taxpayers are defrauded by their own government, when public money is lost, stolen, concealed, misdirected, or protected through official corruption, and when the same government that demands payment from the citizen refuses justice to the citizen. A government that takes from the people under color of law, then shields the corrupt from consequence, has not merely mismanaged funds. It has broken a covenant with the governed. The issue is deeper than waste. Waste is incompetence. Fraud is betrayal. Waste says the government failed. Fraud says the government used the public trust as a pri...
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The generosity weapon: This little light goes to war
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Rocky Mountain Voice, Commentary, Devotional, Top Stories

The generosity weapon: This little light goes to war

By Drake Hunter | Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice “This little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine…” The many weapons in the Kingdom of God seem weak; some include humility, meekness, joy, and now, generosity. None of these sounds like weapons capable of winning a war, yet Jesus teaches that life's battles are won differently than the world imagines. While the world fights with power, pushing, positioning, and preferences, Christ fights with goodwill and character. His weapons transform hearts, heal relationships, and illuminate the goodness within all reality. Generosity is one of the greatest weapons in Jesus’ arsenal, not the generosity the world offers, which is merely giving something away, but Jesus style, where everyone benefits.  Generosity, when properl...
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Colorado’s prison problem is underfunding. The legislature’s answer was early release.
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Colorado’s prison problem is underfunding. The legislature’s answer was early release.

By Shaina Cole | Contributing Writer, Rocky Mountain Voice On May 19, Gov. Jared Polis signed two bills that will accelerate the release of inmates from Colorado's prisons. No ceremony. No bill-specific statement. The governor's office issued an administrative notice listing six pieces of legislation and went about its day. The two prison bills, SB26-159 and SB26-158, arrived at his desk with the claim that Colorado's prisons are overcrowded.  The population pressure is real. The projected increase in the male inmate population this fiscal year is the largest in 14 years, with the exception of the post-pandemic rebound in FY 2021-22. But the legislature's own budget documents tell a different story about why. Colorado does not have a prison space problem. It has a fund...
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One Colorado built the GSA network. Now it’s backing the campaign against Initiatives 109 and 110.
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One Colorado built the GSA network. Now it’s backing the campaign against Initiatives 109 and 110.

By Shaina Cole | Contributing Writer, Rocky Mountain Voice A political committee called Families Not Politics registered with the state of Colorado on February 10, 2026. It said it existed to protect families. Within three months it had raised nearly $320,000. None of it came from Colorado parents' organizations while calling itself a “grassroots group”.  What it did raise came largely from an abortion rights group, a Planned Parenthood affiliate, a Portland-based PAC that had just abandoned its own ballot campaign in Oregon and the organization behind the Colorado Gender and Sexuality Alliance Network. Together those four sources account for nearly 90% of everything Families Not Politics has taken in. The committee exists to defeat ballot initiatives heading to Colorado ...
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Drake Middle School removed “America, Reloading.” Then another poem fight started.
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Rocky Mountain Voice, Local, Top Stories

Drake Middle School removed “America, Reloading.” Then another poem fight started.

By Jen Schumann | Rocky Mountain Voice Drake Middle School parents were told last year that students could write spoken-word poems about politics or divisive issues if they personally chose those topics. This spring, one DMS student wrote a pro-life poem about abortion. School officials told the student she could turn the poem in for credit, but could not read it aloud in class. Parents had already spent more than a year warning DMS and Jeffco leaders about the school’s SLAM poetry unit before the story spread nationally. Parents objected to SLAM poetry unit in 2025 Parents began emailing DMS leadership in 2025 after students watched “America, Reloading” and “The Star Spanglish Banner” in class. One email sent to teacher Tanisha Lee and DMS principal Jill Kline des...
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