DEBBIE ORTEGA WANTS TO BE DENVER MAYOR And she joins the show today at 12:35. Find out more about Debbie and her views or support her if you'd like by clicking here.
MORE SHENANIGANS IN DOUGLAS COUNTY And I realize many of you don't live in DougCo, but this story is part soap opera, part baby dictators so I'm hoping you find it interesting. The two baby dictators have locked out another County Commissioner, effectively disenfranchising everyone in her district. I'm speaking to Douglas County resident Mike Campbell about this nonsense today at 1. If you're in DougCo, you REALLY need to know what's going on.
I'M OUT OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY This morning I changed my party affiliation to Unaffiliated. Why? Because this weekend the Colorado GOP elected a guy who wanted to have his name on a ballot at Dave "Let's Go Brandon" Williams and says he is going to close the primaries to Unaffiliated voters and be a flamethrower fighter against the Democrats. He believes Biden is not our real President and will likely push the Republican party even faster into irrelevancy in this state. I don't see big money donors giving to this party in the next two years, but I won't be associated with this clown show anymore. I'm out.
WHEN A BAILOUT ISN'T A BAILOUT On Sunday we began the day with Janet Yellen saying that Treasury would NOT bail out Silicon Valley Bank, which was seized on Friday, but we ended the day with Janet Yellen saying that all depositers would be made whole. When is a bailout not a bailout? When bond and stock holders of the bank are NOT bailed out, which seems to be the situation here. I'm oddly okay with this, because the regulatory system put in place by the government is specifically supposed to prevent stuff like this from happening, but they raised the asset limits recently (at the urging of the CEO of Silicon Valley Bank I might add) and that allowed this bank to run below the regs. This will mean greater regulation for mid size banks and I'm fine with this. If there is one industry that needs a tight rein, it's this one. We're talking about people's lives here. You can read about it here and here and here. The long and short is that the Fed is going to offer loans to regional banks with their assets like bonds and treasuries as collateral. The only gift to them is they will be able to borrow from the full amount of the bonds instead of what they are currently worth. This should be enough to keep the regional banking system from collapsing. From the Reuters article and this seems very important:
Authorities have shown that they failed to tackle the problem of banks being too big to fail. Legislation after the 2008 crisis was designed so that big firms could in theory go under without taking the whole system with them. The biggest banks are forced to write so-called living wills; examiners pore over their every trade; even their WhatsApp messages aren’t safe from prying eyes. Smaller banks – including SVB and Signature, whose combined assets were just one-tenth the size of JPMorgan (JPM.N) – received a much lighter regulatory burden, for reasons that are both pragmatic and political. With hindsight, that may have been a mistake.
Expect a lot more regulation on smaller banks going forward. Apparently they can't be trusted either. This is a great explainer of what happened, though it may be paywalled. You should be subscribing to the Wall Street Journal anyway, just saying. TLDR: classic banking mismanagement by a bank very concerned about diversity and perhaps not enough about competence.
XCEL IS GETTING RICH WHILE COLORADANS SUFFER I am a capitalist at heart. Purely. But there are circumstances where capitalism, which relies on a business taking care of it's customer properly to stay in business, is corrupted by government action and that relationship becomes distorted. Allowing a publicly traded company to have a government created monopoly is a GREAT example of this. This is what we get with Xcel, who just reported RECORD profits while jacking up rates to ridiculous levels here in Colorado. They can't serve their customers, the ratepayers, while also securing the greatest returns for their shareholders. If there were ANY competition allowed here this would be much, much different. Read more here about their record profits.
WHEN FREE STUFF DOESN'T DO WHAT IT'S SUPPOSED TO DO Remember when the City of Denver touted its Ebike voucher program as a way to stop polluting cars? Or when RTD gave free rides so people would get out of their polluting cars? So how did those programs do toward that stated end? They both failed miserably and you can read about it here.
THE FAIR ELECTION FUND IS INVITING DARK MONEY INTO THE MAYOR'S RACE I find it funny that when Republicans use Super PACS in a campaign it is ALWAYS referred to a "dark money" because no one knows who is donating and where the money comes from, but in this article about the outsized role of Super PACS in the Denver Mayor's race the words "dark money" don't appear ONCE. So weird. From the Colorado Sun:
Critics of the Fair Election Fund say it’s pushing big spending in the mayoral race to outside groups. Those groups, known as independent expenditure committees or super PACs, can accept and spend unlimited amounts of money but can’t coordinate with candidates.
Outside groups had spent nearly $1.8 million in the mayoral contest, compared with only $253,000 on City Council races, based on reports filed through Sunday.
“There’s a vacuum, and that vacuum is being filled by independent expenditure groups,” said Scott Martinez, a Denver election lawyer who is the registered agent for one of the super PACs that supports state Rep. Leslie Herod for mayor.
This is a perfect example of why anything designed to "get the money out of politics" is a fool's errand. Money will ALWAYS follow and be involved in politics and you have to be a complete pollyana to not realize this.
WHO WON THE OSCAR LAST NIGHT? It was the year of the Asian movie and performers, as we suspected. Read who won and who didn't here. Congrats to Brendan Fraser on his win, he's had a great comeback this year.
A COLORADAN WON AN OSCAR LAST NIGHT For the documentary Navalny, which I must see. Read more here.
TIME'S UP FOR YOU SCOFFLAWS WITH EXPIRED PLATES This has become an EPIDEMIC in Colorado. On my drive to work, I usually see at least one if not more cars with expired tags or no tags at all. I saw one the other day with tags that expired in 2020. Now the state says they are going to crack down on you people so get ready to pay up like the rest of us suckers do.
SAME TRENDS, NEW NAMES This is so accurate and funny. And why I hate fashion.
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THE REAL WORLD OF BEING A STRIPPER I've spend way more time in strip clubs than a respectable woman should and these comments by strippers are entirely consistent with conversations I've had with strippers. Read them here.
AROD IS LOOKING FOR A BAND! And he's put together a little demo for the internet. If you have a band, or know of a band looking for a singer, send them this!
YES, YOU CAN MAKE A LIFE JACKET OUT OF YOUR PANTS I learned this like 100 years ago in lifeguard training and it works. Not sure why we were going to be wearing pants as lifeguards, but it's a thing I know. Watch below or click here.
PLAYBOY IS TAKING ON ONLY FANS And good for them, as the internet rendered their magazine totally useless. Read more here about their new platform.
TUCKER'S JANUARY 6TH FOOTAGE IS COMING INTO PLAY FOR OTHER DEFENDANTS And one of them is demanding footage for his case too. The DoJ says NONE of the video footage was withheld (I love the "in any material sense" in the pleading) and that the video on Tucker's show was "taken out of context" which is weird because that's what the lawyers are saying the DoJ did. From the QAnon Shaman's lawyer:
"In the weeks prior to the plea repeated requests were made to make sure we had all the video footage," Watkins wrote in an email. "In response, (Assistant US Attorney Kimberly Paschall) produced a number of videos, some of which were produced just prior to the plea, necessitating an in-person visit with Jake where he was confined to show him the footage prior to finalizing his decision to enter into the plea deal."
He added that the court was "not aware of this footage" and wanted to note that Chansley was diagnosed with "a mental health issue of significance fifteen years" before the day of the riot.
HOW BEST ACTRESSES DO ON OSCAR NIGHT Watch below or click here.
WASTE NOT, WANT NOT including in your bbq sauce bottle. Watch below or click here.
HENRY IS A GOOD BOY WHO GIVES GOOD PAW BUMPS This is adorable. Watch below or click here.
WAY TO GO, SHORT ROUND! I love this story so much. Watch below or click here.
WHEN SALARY TRANSPARENCY IS A GOOD THING A NYC worker found a job listing for HER job only the salary was MUCH larger than what she made so she applied for the job.