Denver's 2027 Budget Hearings 🧵for video and commentary on the Department of Finance's Overview of the 2027 Proposed Budget

Attention #Denver motorists and car commuters: don't look now but your pockets are about to be picked by a failing city desperate for revenue. @9NEWS reports that Denver’s 2027 budget plans to raise 51 percent more from traffic tickets and other court fines and forfeits: $6.2 million this year, $9.3 million next year. The city plans to see a $3.1 million jump in revenue generated by traffic stops, according to @9NEWS9NEWS: archive.li/viTVL. The city isn't adding officers. It will be pulling beat cops off patrol and siccing them on already besieged motorists and car commuters, in a campaign consciously aimed at replenishing depleted city coffers. The city's emphasis isn't on fighting street crime; it's on turning anyone who drives on city streets into a criminal (and cash cow). That is not a new thing. It's consistent with a prevailing pattern in the Mile High City, and another chapter in Denver’s war on cars. "Road diets" shrink the asphalt. Car lanes are subtracted, or become bike lanes. “Twenty is plenty” talk aims to slow the commute to a crawl. Each tactic makes the motorist and the car commuter more miserable, then treats the resulting conflicts (and collisions) as proof that driving is the problem. The roadway safety double standard fits the same pattern. Most cars have plates, licenses, and insurance, so they can be ticketed, filmed, and billed for a litany of potential infractions. The Lawless Swarm that has taken over the roads -- unplated minibikes, throttle “e-bikes,” ATVs, scooters, skateboards, rickshaws, tuk-tuks, you name it -- violates the rules with total impunity. Micromobility mob members need no licenses, no permits, no liability insurance, no nothing. The cops have given-up on reining them in or holding them accountable. When a crash comes, the insured driver pays, and is invariably cast as the villain. The uninsured machine and it's unlicensed and uninsured operator vanishes into thin air, or sues the skirt off the driver involved in the mishaps that predictably result from the complete chaos. "Vision Zero," in practice, means punish the motorist -- and free the micromobility mob to run wild, with zero costs or consequences. Now the mask is off. Budget shortfalls have turned drivers into cash cows. City leaders want to pick the pockets of the people who get licensed, register their vehicles, carry insurance, pay their taxes and try to play by the rules, while ignoring and enabling the scofflaws who have made Denver streets feel closer to Calcutta than anything else. Why is there a city plan to jack up motorist tickets and no plan to curb, or collect ticket revenue from, the lawless swarm? Because motorist misery and elevated risk is the policy; a revenue boost is the bonus. This isn't about improving public safety. It's about a city that cynically plans to milk and bilk the only road users it can invoice, all while incrementally raising the danger for everyone who uses a Denver street or sidewalk. #copolitics #coleg @MikeJohnstonCO @GovofCO #thewaroncars

It’s a very peculiar state of affairs here in Colorado. Our leftist friends in the Democrat Party of Colorado actually run their entire campaigns on raising your taxes and regulating everything you do and own to death and they win by fairly large margins. This is primarily due to their much smarter, kinder and more enlightened base of voters who are too cool for school to notice their surroundings turning to poo.

😳 “But those revenue generating doesn’t have to fall on Denver taxpayers, it can fall on corporations or other entities that maybe have the means to provide the additional funding.” —Councilwoman Gonzales-Gutierrez

Insanity!

If Denver police department spends $495,000 on drones to give me moving violations and speeding tickets while solving no real crime…..I am going to be pissed.

Your friendly reminder that Communists do not want to shut prisons down. They want to shut prisons that serve in a capitalist system down. They will replace them with Communist prisons, which they like very much. This is in line with Communist theory, practice, and history.

The problem isn't that Identity is primary, because it never is. The problem is that Politics is primary, and Identity is just the red dress it wears.

Has anyone been to the circus lately? Of course not. The reason why is because it isn’t the least bit fun or amazing. No one in their right mind would choose to go watch tiny dogs do sad tricks for two hours while safety clowns take care not to fake-hurt each other. First, they got rid of the elephants. Then it was the tigers. Then it was the acrobats on horses. Then it was the clowns doing anything that could be interpreted by a five year old as dangerous. Then it was anything with a remote tinge of cultural difference. From a 19th century style enactment of the thrills and dangers of the great wide world, the circus became a study in safety-ism, ie not fun. Very soon, there will be no more circuses. And why did they get rid of the elephants again? Well, because some third rate circuses abused these magnificent animals in the 1970s, and were duly shamed and shut down and prosecuted. Meanwhile, “elephants are being abused” became a meme. No matter what reputable circuses did, insane protesters targeted them. Now there are no more circuses, and no work for circus elephants — who are extremely intelligent animals who enjoy performing and working with people. Children don’t care about elephants anymore, because they’ve never seen them. Good luck to future conservationists. Did the world become a safer, kinder place? It did not. It became much more dangerous. To deal with that world, we raised a generation of children who are incapable of dealing with even the slightest implication of pain or discomfort and have no links to the past, or to the realities of other places and cultures, and who are therefore incapable of understanding the world or making it a better place. Having never seen elephants march up Broadway, they lack any sense that the world can be a source of wonder and amazement. Instead, they watch porn on their phones. No one benefitted from any of this, especially not children or elephants.

See the full presentation that will be presented 9/29 to the Health and Safety Committee. denver.legistar.com/Legislat…

This is Kim Kaufmann, CEO of @RecovExcel. She just shared that OD deaths are down in the province of Alberta by 36% but down only 9% in the rest of Canada. Alberta embraced a recovery system of care. The rest of Canada doubled down on harm reduction. Facts.

“Coco” would run (slowly) on existing freight lines and requires a massive sales tax increase to fund just to fund this small pilot route. Like most projects pushed by traintards, it’s a scam. ti.org/antiplanner/?p=24151

“Roads are bad because everyone wants to use them. Trains are good because no one wants to use them.” See what I’m dealing with here.

By far the most honest and sober assessment of the cuckoo CoCo train I’ve read. To be honest, I’m impressed with Jarvis’s restraint. Do read the whole thing. And Vote No. Is it just me, or does the CoCo logo look like a reclining dude with a fox head in his lap?

This Business Confidence Index applies to Colorado.