WE'RE TALKING TURKEY TODAY AT KING SOOPERS! And I'd love for you to stop by the corner of Colorado and Yale where I'll be freezing my tuckus off broadcasting live to take donations for the Food Bank of the Rockies. If you're in the area it would be sooper cool if you stopped by. See what I did there?
MY FRIEND HAZEL IS BACK WITH MORE LIFE WISDOM And you may have heard Hazel when she joined me last time when she was 91 to talk about her book 88 Keys to Success, which you can buy by clicking here. I think she's 93 now,but we'll find out when she stops by for a chat.
WANT TO KNOW WHY UKRAINE ISN'T AS CUT AND DRY AS WE THINK? This is a GREAT column on the backstory of Ukraine and Russia and Russia and the US from the lastest Imprimis (thanks, Bill for bringing it to my attention) and it does a great job explaining why some of our moves in Ukraine have made the situation much worse. It will give you pause before you support another truckload of money to Ukraine and it doesn't have anything to do with Putin necessarily. Read it here.
TRUMP HAS A SPEECH TONIGHT And many believe he's announcing another run at the White House. If he does, this sucks the oxygen out of the Georgia Senate race, which still matters since all of his other close Senate races with candidates he helped prop up lost. This story on TheHill.com implies the same thing. If he does announce tonight and Hershel Walker loses, can we all agree this man DOESN'T care about anything but himself? We will be airing the speech live at 7pm on KOA whatever it is.
CLUB FOR GROWTH HAS ALREADY DUMPED THE TRUMP TRAIN And they are circulating a poll that shows DeSantis with a double digit lead in early primary states Iowa and New Hampshire, along with a lead in Florida, which is a big deal. Read more here. From the article:
According to the polling memo, which is based on survey data conducted Nov. 11-13, DeSantis leads Trump by 11 percentage points in Iowa and by 15 points in New Hampshire. Those numbers represent an improvement for DeSantis since August, when previous Club for Growth’s polling found Trump with a 15-point lead in Iowa, while the two were tied in New Hampshire.
The memo also says that DeSantis leads Trump by 26 points in Florida and 20 points in Georgia. In August, DeSantis led Trump by 7 percent in Florida and 6 percent in Georgia. The polls, conducted by Republican firm WPA Intelligence, surveyed likely GOP voters.
THE STATE OF COLORADO IS SILENCING EMPLOYEES WITH NDAS A Non Disclosure Agreement (NDA) is often used in the settlement of a lawsuit to prevent one party from disclosing the agreements made in the suit when it is settled. They are designed to protect an organization from anything that makes them look bad or from inspiring someone else to sue as well. Thanks to an in depth investigation by the Denver Gazette, we know now that the State of Colorado ROUTINELY uses them to force employees who have been paid off to quit for one reason or another. Sometimes the employee is the bad actor, sometimes someone else is, but hiding these from the public prevents the public from demanding changes or even knowing what's going on with our tax dollars. There is some discrepancy about just who is asking for them. From the article:
“The Department of Law represents state agencies in state employee/employer disputes. In settlement negotiations, the department attorneys discourage the use of non-disclosure or non-disparagement clauses,” AG spokesman Lawrence Pacheco told The Denver Gazette. “Some agencies opt to use them anyway depending on the extenuating circumstances.”
Attorneys who represent state workers, however, say that’s not accurate.
“In cases where I have represented state employees, the Attorney General’s office routinely not only encourages but requires the employee to agree to a non-disclosure provision in exchange for a settlement,” Denver attorney Casey Leier said. “We used to have some ability to negotiate the exact scope of the non-disclosure, but this year, the state has changed its position and appears to be requiring a complete and total ban on any speech by the employee about their case and what they went through.”
This needs to be addressed in this legislative session, but I'm guessing it won't be. Dems don't do anything that could tie governments hands.
AURORA IS GOING BIG AND BOLD ON HOMELESSNESS SOLUTIONS Last night at the Aurora City Council meeting a proposal passed that will create a large campus to deal with the issue of homelessness. I LOVE this idea and am very excited to see how it all comes to fruition. I will also be urging Douglas County to reach out and find out if they can collaborate on this rather than trying to solve the problem themselves. This could be the beginning of real progress on our homeless problem and I hope it works, because it will really help those who need it most when it comes to getting off the streets permanently by getting real help in the ways it is needed instead of just making homelessness easier. I've reached out to Danielle Jurinsky to see if I can get her on the show today.
COLORADO GOVERNMENT AGENCIES ARE AWASH IN OUR MONEY And nine different agencies have been found to have TOO MUCH MONEY in their reserve funds. This means they are taking in way more than they need and should be lowering our fees to get back into compliance. The Department of Regulatory Agencies, which business owners must pay for idiotic licenses that mean nothing, has over 3.9 million bucks just sitting around in reserves which they are not allowed to have. Why does government need to raise our taxes when there is clearly money just collecting dust in nine agencies??? This must stop.
LOOK AT ALL THE WAYS COLORADO DEMS MADE YOUR POWER BILL HIGHER THIS YEAR Of course they will blame Xcel for the rising bills and they will blame the rising cost of natural gas, but you need to see the myriad of ways our elected officials, mostly Democrats, tacked on lots of new costs onto your bill to fund their Green New Deal. From the Denver Gazette:
Levis said the fees that utilities added to customers' bills as a result of legislation passed by the Colorado General Assembly and signed by Polis amounted to a rate hike for ratepayers of more than 6%, plus a $0.50 charge.
The fees include:
• A fee of 1% is added to fund the renewable energy program requiring utilities to purchase or generate increasing percentages of their electricity from wind, solar or biomass sources by Senate Bill 19-77.
• Xcel is adding a 1% fee to bills to fund the early retirement of Xcel’s troubled Comanche coal powerplant under the Colorado Energy Plan Adjustment.
• Another 0.5% can be imposed for the development of electric vehicle charging stations, the cost of which can be added into base rates.
• A clean energy plan rider instituted by the General Assembly through Senate Bill 19-236 added another 1.5% charge on customer’s annual bill. That fee will be rolled into the utility’s base rate in 2030.
• Investor-owned utilities like Xcel have been collecting a $0.50 charge for energy assistance for the economically disadvantaged since last year that increased to $0.75 in October and will continue to increase based on the consumer price index in October of 2023, based on House Bill 21-1105. Low-income customers can request an exemption from this charge.
• Investor-owned gas utility demand side management programs can be paid for by billing customers without having to file a rate case with the utilities commission — thanks to House Bill 21-1238.
• Natural gas distribution utilities can add a cost recovery up to 2% for all customers to reduce greenhouse gases under Senate Bill 21-264.
• Public utilities can now charge more than the previously-capped 0.25% fee collected from their gross in-state revenues to fund the PUC and Office of Utility Consumer Advocate as a result of Senate Bill 21-272.
It would have been nice if the media had covered this when Democrats were running on a platform of lowering costs for Coloradans but they were too busy trying to amplify anything that can make a Republican look bad.
AUDIENCES LOVE THE HOLLY And it was awarded Best Documentary based on audience votes at the Denver Film Festival. Good for filmmaker Julian Rubinstein and the documentaries subject Terrance Roberts.
THIS LITTLE CUTIE HAS IT ALL FIGURED OUT And you need to see her today.
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I WONDER IF THEY ALL VOTED DEMOCRAT I don't mean to seem unconcerned, but when I see a story like this one about businesses being broken into in the sleepy neighborhoods near Clear Creek I have to think, "but who did they vote for?" I bet they voted for Dems, whose policies have unleashed a crime wave in Colorado. If I'm wrong, I'm sorry, but I bet I'm right.
NO GOOD DEED GOES UNPUNISHED As one woman found out when she got an eviction notice for trying to help two boys who later set her apartment complex on fire, killing two other residents of the complex. If this story is accurate, I think the apartment complex is wrong for evicting the woman because of the boy's actions, but there is often more to the story.
YOU CAN BUY THE HOUSE FROM THE CHRISTMAS STORY But you would have to live in Cleveland, although it seems as if the current owner has done a ton to make the house it's own little tourist spot. He selling the house, the Bumpus house next door and a gift shop. No word on the price tag, but it does come with the famous leg lamp in the window.
FIND OUT IF A LUNG CANCER SCREENING IS SOMETHING YOU SHOULD DO And after reading this, as a former smoker, I'm wondering why this has never been brought up by my docs. It seems like a no brainer if you've got a history of smoking.
ANOTHER SIGN INFLATION IS SLOWING A BIT This time with the Producer Price Index, which was only up .2% rather than the expected .4%. We're still not out of the woods, but we're finally trending in the right direction.
IT'S TIME TO MAKE A BETTER BATTERY This is where the real action is on renewables and electric vehicles right now. Multiple companies are trying to figure out how to make batteries with cheaper, more readily available materials than the rare earth minerals in current use. Read more about the potential for sodium and sulphur to be a part of the solution here.
OUR SCHOOL LUNCH EXPANSION JUST GROWS A LOUSY PRODUCT When I was a kid, we had real lunch ladies who actually cooked real food in the cafeteria kitchens. From square pizza (YUM) to super good chili and more, we had school lunches that were actual lunch. Now cafeterias seem to mostly just reheat subpar frozen food that many kids throw away, and yet, we here in Colorado made that product "free" thanks to giving high earners the shaft. This article dismantles our decision here.
NO CHARGES FOR RUDI GIULIANI After the FBI raided his offices last year and confiscated many electronic devices, prosecutors in New York just announced, "Nevermind". No charges will be filed against Giuliani for anything. So how does he get his reputation back?
THE DOWNSIDE OF PUBERTY BLOCKERS IS JUST BEGINNING TO BE KNOWN As we continue to experiment on children who decide they are born the wrong gender, we are beginning to see the downsides of experimental medical intervention. There is a strong connection between puberty blockers and low bone density in trans kids, and we won't know the entire impact for decades. Just another thing to consider when trying to help children with gender dysphoria.
WHY YOUR DOG GETS THE ZOOMIES AND MORE Click here if it doesn't load.
MEN SPILL THE RED FLAGS WOMEN SHOULD PAY ATTENTION TOO Some of these are GOOD too. Read them all here.
AND NOW A FIRST TIME VISIT TO THE MIDWEST With a mashup between the Holderness Family and Charlie Berens!