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Is every government employee a cop now? Supreme Court case tests federal power
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GregWalcher.com, Approved, Commentary, National

Is every government employee a cop now? Supreme Court case tests federal power

By Greg Walcher | Commentary, GregWalcher.com I don’t know anyone else who tracks the number of federal cops, but the watchdog group Open the Books occasionally reports on the burgeoning number of federal agencies with law enforcement divisions. The latest report, “The Militarization of Federal Bureaucracy,” detailed the astonishing scope of federal police power. There are over 200,000 federal officers with guns, badges, and arresting authority, in a whopping 103 different federal agencies. The federal government has more law enforcement officers than America’s 25 largest cities combined. Those 103 federal agencies – half of which are not primarily law enforcement – spent $3.7 billion on guns, ammunition, and military-style equipment between 2006 and 2023. The FBI and ICE have always...
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Wolf Reintroduction Sparks Debate at Upcoming Colorado Town Hall
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State, Approved, The Gazette

Wolf Reintroduction Sparks Debate at Upcoming Colorado Town Hall

By The Gazette Staff | The Gazette Agriculture and outdoor recreation are considered two of Colorado’s most important industries. The outdoor recreation industry contributes over $65.8 billion and 511,000 jobs to Colorado’s economy, while the agriculture industry generates $47 billion and 195,000 jobs annually, according to the most recent data. Yet as Colorado Politics’ recent Rural Reckoning series indicated, these two powerhouses don’t always get the attention that industries do in the halls of the Capitol. A town hall on Tuesday, Sept. 9, sponsored by The Gazette and The Common Sense Institute, will dive more deeply into the importance of these industries to Colorado’s economic success, and the policies necessary to ensure they thrive. The Common Sense Institute is a non...
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Walcher: Paying for what ought to be free
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Approved, Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice

Walcher: Paying for what ought to be free

By Greg Walcher | Guest Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice If I offered you a thousand dollars not to steal my car, would you be any less likely to steal it? What if I offered you a million? If you’re like most people, you would answer that you weren’t planning to steal it anyway. You’re not a thief so the discussion is pointless. Although if I were serious, you might take the money anyway. That isn’t much different than some of the revelations of government grants we are learning about through recent DOGE discoveries, controversial though they are. I’m just looking at grants related to natural resources and the environment, but can’t help wondering why the government has been paying so much to so many organizations and companies – to do what they were doing anyway. For example, sho...
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Walcher: How many border guards do we need?
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Approved, Commentary, Greg Walcher, Rocky Mountain Voice

Walcher: How many border guards do we need?

By Greg Walcher | Guest Commentary, GregWalcher.com Police have an unflattering nickname, “Permit Patty,” for someone who calls police over frivolous complaints. It originated when a woman called the police on a little girl selling lemonade at a streetside stand – as generations of kids have done – without a permit. It illustrates a commonsense truth, namely that not everything in life should require a permit, and not every infraction is a matter for the police. Most of us instinctively understand that, but the federal government never has. Virtually all government agencies operate from a top-down, command-and-control model that emphasizes enforcement over incentives. And most of them have a law enforcement division to make sure everyone complies with their edicts and rules. The fede...
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Walcher: Let’s use what we already have
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Approved, Commentary, Greg Walcher

Walcher: Let’s use what we already have

By Greg Walcher | Guest Commentary, GregWalcher.com In planning the nation’s 1976 bicentennial celebration, Congress made one of its dumbest-ever boondoggle decisions. Recognizing the near death of railroad passenger service since the 1950’s, Congress decided to spend millions turning the aging and crumbling Union Station into the National Visitor Center. But they missed the obvious red flag – the millions of visitors to the nation’s capital during 1976 would not be coming by train. The ugly-carpeted National Visitor Center sat mostly empty that year, after which the old depot was boarded up, its roof caving in by 1981. Still ignoring reality, Congress spent millions more on several studies of what to do with the building. Each study concluded that the highest and best use would be a...
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Walcher: Throw off climate suffocation and ‘shovel, baby, shovel’
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Approved, Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice

Walcher: Throw off climate suffocation and ‘shovel, baby, shovel’

By Greg Walcher | Guest Columnist, Rocky Mountain Voice, via GregWalcher.com My friend Amos Eno, one of the country’s leading conservation experts, spent a decade running the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and more recently the Land Conservation Assistance Network. His writing appears in all the right publications, and he is a popular speaker at conferences everywhere.  Writing about the old/new President’s endorsement of the almost-cliché adage, “Drill, baby, drill,” he added another related, but separate, concept: “Shovel, baby, shovel.” It is an apt way to describe what he calls an urgent need “to resurrect our mining of strategic and critical minerals and coal, throwing off the wet blanket of climate suffocation policies.” There is considerable attention and deb...
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Walcher: Is government going to the DOGE?
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Approved, Commentary, Greg Walcher

Walcher: Is government going to the DOGE?

By Greg Walcher | Commentary, GregWalcher.com A lot of jokes about Elon Musk are making the rounds, in light of his new role in identifying government waste, fraud and abuse. One says after he puts a car into orbit, outer space will be full of germs and diseases, no longer auto-immune. Another asks what he has in common with Thomas Edison. Answer: they both got rich off Tesla. The mission of the new “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) that he will co-chair with Vivek Ramaswamy, is not a joke, though. In fact, the idea of reducing wasteful spending has already achieved some level of bipartisan support in Congress. Leaders on both sides are saying no one should oppose efficiency, which is easy to say before anyone has had to vote on any specific program cut. Every govern...
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Walcher: The unproud Western legacy of Jimmy Carter
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Approved, Commentary, Greg Walcher

Walcher: The unproud Western legacy of Jimmy Carter

By Greg Walcher | Guest Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice Alaska comprises nearly 20 percent of the entire U.S. at more than 665,000 square-miles, and is the richest state in natural resources. Yet it remains the most sparsely populated state, partly because of its isolation and weather, but largely because the federal government owns most of it: 406,000 square-miles. The U.S. purchased Alaska in 1867 specifically because of its vast resources, especially energy, which benefited the state and country for decades. But in the late 1970s, just after completion of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act was passed, with the goal of preventing further development of those resources. It set aside 245,312.5 square-miles (157 million acres) for specia...
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Walcher: Federal agencies should look in the mirror
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Approved, Commentary, Greg Walcher

Walcher: Federal agencies should look in the mirror

By Greg Walcher | Guest Commentary, GregWalcher.com In the 1950 movie version of Grimm’s Fairy Tale, the cruel stepmother scolds Cinderella, “You clumsy little fool – clean that up!” But, of course, it was the stepmother, not Cinderella, who made the mess. Sometimes it seems like the world is full of people who expect others to clean up their messes. It is a recurring theme among critics of federal agencies, which often regulate and even fine others for environmental damage, but rarely admit the role they themselves played in creating the problem. A lawsuit against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), filed by the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation and the Property and Environment Research Center (PERC), has again focused attention on an agency blaming everyone but itself. Th...
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Walcher: Time is on Colorado’s side – no need to rush
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Approved, Commentary, Greg Walcher

Walcher: Time is on Colorado’s side – no need to rush

By Greg Walcher | Guest Commentary, GregWalcher.com An early lesson I learned as a young staffer for the late Sen. Bill Armstrong was the importance of careful consideration. He disliked being rushed into hasty decisions and developed a standard response to any demand for immediate action. “If you need an answer right now,” he would say, “the answer is no.” If there was time for more thought, homework, reading and studying all the implications, the answer could be different. He understood that rushed judgments are rarely good judgments. Colorado River negotiators ought to keep that in mind as they are being prodded to make new interstate agreements that could supplant a century of western water law. CNN reported a few days ago that the Administration is “trying to throw a Ha...
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