Colorado Politics

It’s good to be king of Colorado — just ask the Dems | CALDARA







032623-cp-web-oped-caldara-1

Jon Caldara



Have you ever played, “If I were king”?

If I were king … I would outlaw the designated hitter rule in Major League Baseball.

If I were king … I would require all oatmeal-raisin cookies be made with hunter-safety orange food dye. How many times have you walked across the room for what seemed a mouthwatering chocolate chip cookie only to find after a bite it’s a dirty, disgusting, evil oatmeal-raisin?

If I were king … I would make driving slowly in the passing lane punishable by death.

If I were king … I would require all news reporters to list who they voted for president on their byline.

Stay up to speed: Sign up for daily opinion in your inbox Monday-Friday

If I were king … every home would be required to have a firearm and 1,000 rounds of ammunition. PBS would air nothing but reruns of the original “Star Trek.” All neckties would be burned, and on Tuesdays everyone would wear their underwear on the outside of their clothes.

You can play this game ad nauseam. But the sad reality is you’re not king.

Well, you’re not king unless you’re part of the progressive jihad at the state Capitol. They’re mastering this game of making Coloradans bend to their virtue-signaling idiosyncrasies. I mean, do you miss your plastic shopping bags yet?

Forget registering guns. If state Rep. Regina English were king, all hamsters would be registered with the state.

You cannot make this crap up.

House Bill 1163 creates a statewide pet registry requiring the licensing of all livestock and pets, right down to a kid’s goldfish. The cost to register the pet would be $8.50. But if your dog or cat is not sterilized, it jumps up to $16.

So, a boy who buys two male mice, for far less than the tax to register them, finds out one is female as it just had a litter of 10 little mice babies. He’ll have to break his piggy bank for 85 bucks to keep them. At this point, Dad feeds the baby mice to the cat, bringing the rural practice of “shoot, shovel and shut up” into urban apartments.

This type of “if I were king” legislation has all the fingerprints of our first gentleman, Jared Polis’ animal-crazed hubby Marlon Reis. After the disaster that was Prop HH, the legislature is creating a property tax on your guinea pig.

The end goal of this is not to get your hamster to wear a dog collar. But it’s yet another attack on Colorado’s livestock industry and a way to create a sin tax for buying pets.

If state Sen. Chris Hansen were king, he’d indoctrinate children into his climate alarmism by giving those who can parrot back his dogma of environmental extremism an extra special gold-star on their diploma.

Under Senate Bill 14, when kids are taught to believe what he believes, they get a “Seal of Environmental Literacy” endorsement on their diploma.

Mind you, he is pushing this in the state where reading scores have plummeted so far you can’t call the diploma itself a “Seal of Reading Literacy.”

When I’m king, I’ll add the “Seal of Economic Literacy.” Those poor little kids’ heads will explode as one side of their brain is taught to save the earth all energy must come from bunny flatulence, while the other side of their brain will do the simple math showing we will go bankrupt without making a dent in climate change as China continues to belch out coal-fire power plants daily.

If state Sen. Sonja Jaquez was king, she’d mercifully still allow Coloradans to keep their concealed weapons permits, but just not allow them to carry guns where they need them.

Her bill expands the definition of “sensitive area” to include the places where mass shootings occur, like schools, churches, synagogues and mosques, even when such establishments are private.

Forty-one Colorado school districts have trained conceal-carrying armed staff to protect our children. Mass shootings in churches like the New Life Church in Colorado Springs were stopped by concealed carry holders.

In her kingdom, these children and worshippers are not worth protecting.

There was a saying about gay marriage. If you’re a man and don’t like gay marriage, don’t marry a dude.

If you don’t like concealed carry, don’t carry a gun.

Mel Brooks said it all: “it’s good to be the king.”

Jon Caldara is president of the Independence Institute in Denver and hosts “The Devil’s Advocate with Jon Caldara” on Colorado Public Television Channel 12. His column appears Sundays in Colorado Politics.

Tags

PREV

PREVIOUS

E-buses waste our money | Denver Gazette

Colorado Springs, Denver and cities across the country have promised full-fleet transitions to transit buses powered by batteries. A Springs news release promised new electric buses that would arrive in time for Earth Day of 2022. Activists and politicians, whether they believe it, tell us this transition to electric busing will deliver “zero-emissions” public transportation. […]

NEXT

NEXT UP

Credit card bill hurts immigrant-owned small biz, workers | OPINION

Samuel G. Michael Colorado’s economy has thrived due to the work of small business owners, many of whom are immigrants — including myself and the community I represent. Immigrant entrepreneurs in Colorado generated a billion dollars in business revenue for the state in 2020 alone. And the state has benefited from hard-working first-generation immigrants who are […]


Welcome Back.

Streak: 9 days i

Stories you've missed since your last login:

Stories you've saved for later:

Recommended stories based on your interests:

Edit my interests