LAST DAY FROM MY NEW SOUTHERN COMMAND Guys, I have LOVED being in Puerto Rico this week. If you want a getaway check here or here to find accommodations that are clean and comfy and in the case of Numero Uno RIGHT on the beach. I've felt very clean here and have a lot of sympathy for the Puerto Rican people who say that corruption is the numero uno problemo here. It's a great island with a lot of opportunity.
ASK ME ANYTHING A LOT has happened this week with the new Trump administration and I've not talked about it all so get your questions ready!
HOW IS TOURISM IN PUERTO RICO? I've got Terestella Denton on at 12:30 to talk about it. She used to be the Director of the Puerto Rican Tourism company and is now on the Board of Discover Puerto Rico. She's got a LOT to talk about.
DAMIAN MALDONADO IS LIVING THE AMERICAN DREAM From coming to the US from Puerto Rico when he was a child where he and his mom and brothers lived in a homeless shelter to building one of the most successful mortgage companies in the US to living his dream of teaching everyone to kite surf, he's a super interesting dude and he's just getting started. He joins me to today for a little chat about that.
WHAT KIND OF BUDGET ARE WE LOOKING AT? I've got Mark Hillman (follow him on X here) on today to talk about the continuing resolution nonsense in DC. Hopefully he'll give me some sort of hope. Find out more about the Committee for A Responsible Federal Budget here.
WE'VE GOT A GOOD START ON DRUG TREATMENT COMING In the form of a massive settlement from Purdue Pharma over their role in getting Coloradans addicted to opioids. This is on top of another $787 million in settlements Attorney General Phil Weiser says we've already secured. So where has that money gone? Where will we spend it? I suggest every dime of it go to supporting programs that have PROVEN to be effective in helping people overcome addiction, and to build facilities to house the mentally ill who have been self medicating on our streets. But where has it gone so far? I'll find out.
THE BIRTHRIGHT ORDER BY TRUMP HAS BEEN STOPPED but only temporarily until the courts can decide the issue. Read it here, but this was 100% expected by me and pretty much everyone else.
LOOK WHAT HAPPENS WHEN SUPPLY MEETS DEMAND Rents in the mile high city DROPPED this year about $70 on average, which is a massive drop, the largest on record according to the Apartment association. That's because more than 20,000 units have come online. Now imagine if we were building condos at that rate. We'd see a huge stabilization of entry level home prices. I sure hope SOMEONE in the legislature pays attention to what happens to prices when you just BUILD MORE OF THE THING. Of course they won't.
DEMOCRATS BLAME OTHERS FOR THE THINGS THEY DID this story is SO FRUSTRATING to me. Democrats believe that things are so expensive in Denver because of corporate profits. They are ignoring ALL THE THINGS THEY HAVE DONE to make living here so stupid expensive and trying to make you forget about bag fees and delivery fees and the higher minimum wage and construction defects laws that have made us a very expensive place to live. Read this here but we're talking about this today for sure.
WHEN YOU RUN OUT OF STUFF TO REGULATE Just grab some stuff out of thin air. That's what our Air Quality Board was told to do by the Legislature ad they've done just that, completely devoid of any science to back it up.
DENVER PUBLIC SCHOOLS HATES TRANSPARENCY And Jimmy Sengenberger isn't one to let them get away with it. Read here about the latest bit of idiocy from a board with more than one idiot to choose from.
OUR NEW SECRETARY OF STATE HAS A SENSE OF HUMOR this is funny.
THERE IS AN ICE SNITCH LINE But not one you can call if you want to report an illegal criminal, one to report if ICE shows up in your neighborhood. Lot's of people are calling it to say ICE is around but it doesn't seem to be anything more than the normal activities of ICE in the community so far.
TWO MORE TEACHERS BUSTED FOR SEX CRIMES one with a student and one without any evidence of actual abuse of a student. The first is in the Poudre Valley District and involved an inappropriate relationship with a student, while the other took place in Douglas County and does not seem to involve any students. If you have kids at these schools make sure they didn't have any issues with these teachers!
COULD TRUMP'S RETURN TO OFFICE ORDER SAVE DOWNTOWN? Don't get me wrong, I don't think JUST having thousands of government workers return to their offices downtown will do it, but I do think many other private companies will use this to push for Return to Office policies too. Tech is already leaning that way and this could be the final push that forces people back into the office. This gives smaller firms the ability to compete for talent if they DON'T push return to office because a LOT of people don't want to leave home for the office. Read more here. DC doesn't love it, but politicians do because they need bodies back in these buildings.
Petty federal workers are being urged to "punish" the Trump admin by...*checks notes*...not patronizing locally owned businesses near their buildings. That'll show him.
THE CBI IS UNDER FIRE And they should be because they didn't send notices to defendants that their forensic scientist wasn't doing her job properly. Read it here but I don't see how leadership survives this.
THE LEGISLATURE IS TRYING TO KEEP VIOLENT CRIMINALS BEHIND BARS And it's about time. In this story there is some bellyaching about making sure defendants can afford bail but I'm not super concerned about someone accused of a violent crime sitting behind bars for a while awaiting trial. The good news is this has bipartisan support.
COLORADO SCHOOLS MAY HAVE TO HAVE A CELL PHONE POLICY SOON And I am on record as saying kids need to NOT have their phones for the school day. I am increasingly convinced that phones are a scourge for teenagers. Read here about the policies being considered at the state level that will have an impact at the local level. This as a new study shows how detrimental phone use is for teen brains.
THIS NEW ONLYFANS CRAZE IS GENUINELY DISGUSTING And I do not understand any woman who wants to make money by sleeping with a 100 or a 1000 guys in one day or an hour or whatever. GROSS. That being said, being arrested for suggesting it does seem a bridge to far.
NO, PEOPLE ARE NOT TURNING AWAY FROM SEX this article is about a survey that showed increasingly young people are not having sex with other people. I added the emphasis because of COURSE they are engaged in sexual activity, but now they are alone with their phones or computers getting all the sexual content from the internet. This is a very dangerous course we're on.
THINGS TO DO IN DENVER THIS WEEKEND It's gonna be snowy but you can do all these things anyway.
WE'RE TURNING GIRLS TRANS And I'm not kidding. Girls are more likely to be caught up in trans social contagion. That partly explains why kids identifying as "trans" have increased 50 TIMES in the last ten years. More than half of those were girls and more than half of them had some sort of depression or other mental health issue. Why would they do this? Read this from a school age kid.
We must stop medicalizing these kids and affirming their delusions. They need compassionate care to overcome their ongoing struggles, not to have their bodies destroyed.
YES, ANOTHER JEWISH HOLOCAUST COULD HAPPEN And new polling data shows most of us think so. I think it's fairly obvious that there are a LOT of Iran backed aholes who would most certainly kill every Jew they could.
THE DEMS AREN'T SAD TO SEE DEI GO I noticed yesterday that there has been ZERO outcry from congressional Democrats about Trump's orders to root out DEI in the government. I'm not the only one. Check this out from Public.news:
There have been no large-scale protests against Trump’s order directing federal agencies to cease all DEI activities, requiring private contractors to certify that they do not have DEI programs, and putting all US government diversity staff on paid leave. And not only Pelosi and Schumer but also Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Michelle Obama have been remarkably quiet about what Trump did, not even tweeting their condemnation of his orders.
...
Most Americans agree that there are good reasons to support reasonable measures that prevent discrimination in government and other societal institutions. They believe that racism and racial inequality remain issues of concern, and some understandably fear that eliminating DEI programs could result in more racial disparities in the government and among government contractors.
But part of the problem is that DEI programs grew out of control. Much of the public has lost confidence that civilization-critical institutions will choose the most qualified candidates. As we saw with the LA fires, DEI severely hindered fire departments’ preparedness, putting the public and firefighters in danger. The preventable destruction of the fires highlighted the absurd priorities of progressives, who devoted money, energy, and mental space to DEI over human survival.
The rest of the column is paywalled, but you can try it here.
PLANNING A CRUISE? I love this guy's YouTube channel. He says stay far away from these cruise lines.
SOMEONE TRIED TO HACK MIKE ROWE'S DAD And of course it ended up being wildly entertaining.
A BIT ON ADHD AND ANXIETY and this is fascinating.