Author: Hal Bidlack

Hal Bidlack Way back in 2010, which seems like yesterday but was 15 years ago, I was asked by the then-leadership of the Colorado State Democratic Party to head up the committee to create the state party platform to be submitted to the state party convention and would then, if it passed a simple voice…

Hal Bidlack Way back in 2008, when I ran my quixotic congressional campaign as a Democrat in the deep-red Colorado U.S. Congressional District 5, I didn’t actually start my campaign until April, only a few months out from the November election. I then spent hours on the phone every day, doing what is wistfully called…

Hal Bidlack Back on Jan. 6, 2021, then-President Donald Trump tried to stay in office with a rather crude coup attempt. This one involved actual violence, to include beating cops and killing a few. The attempt failed, and Trump pondered, perhaps between shots on one of his golf courses, how to do a better job…

Hal Bidlack We in Congressional District 5 have a new congressional representative, and that’s not a statement made too often. Though Americans regularly spout off about how much they hate congress, they seem to love their own representative, reelecting those already in office at an astonishing rate of near 90%. Heck, it’s rare for any…

Hal Bidlack Having spent the morning watching a certain felon take the oath of office, and then deliver a speech only slightly connected to reality (e.g., border crossings are actually at record lows, crime in big cities is way down and presidents don’t get to decide on what to name various geographic features — what,…

Hal Bidlack As my regular reader (Hi, Jeff — good luck with the ankle surgery!) will recall, I find great enjoyment and education in reading the regular Colorado Politics feature, the Out West Roundup, wherein we learn about what is going on in the other states that make up the great western United States. And…

Hal Bidlack It takes a lot of stamina to closely watch what is going on in Washington D.C. these days, regardless of your personal partisanship. If you are a glum Democrat, like your grumpy author, it is quite frustrating to see a new administration gearing up, not so much for governance, but rather to wage…

Hal Bidlack As I sit at my computer on the day after Christmas, I am confronted with my usual problem in writing my columns: too much good stuff on ColoradoPolitics.com to cover in the space my kindly editor allots to me for my missives. I’d like to wallow a bit in a recent CoPo story…

Hal Bidlack One of the problems we, as energy consumers, face is the fact that with the partial exceptions of solar and wind, the thing that creates the energy we need is usually quite a distance from where we want to use the energy. Oil is a great example, in that oil is pumped out…