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There is actually a Democratic governor who cares about economic freedom!
He’s Colorado Gov. Jared Polis. He’s the subject of my new video.
Before Polis got into the ugly field of government, he did useful work. He was an entrepreneur. He started an online flower company, modernized his parents’ greeting card company, and founded charter schools, an internet access company, Spanish-speaking movie theaters and an aquaculture venture fund. He sold the flower and greeting card companies for more than $1 billion.
Polis says being an entrepreneur “really helped prepare me for public service in ways that people don’t expect.”
Wait. I don’t like the way he used the term “public service.”
“I think you did public service when you ran a business. Why is only government called public service?” I ask.
“I do like to think … any company that adds value, does something in a more efficient way, a better way, is certainly a form of service as well,” Polis responds.
Good. He’s right. Certainly Amazon, Starlink, Apple, Google, etc., provide more service to the public than most governments do.
Heck, government often gets in the way.
In Denver, officials shut down a kids’ lemonade stand because the kids “didn’t have a permit.” That’s typical.
I once tried to get such a permit and open a lemonade stand in New York City. The government website promised to make the process easy. It didn’t. There were mysterious acronyms like “EIN” (employee identification number). Some instructions were unintelligible. Others were just ridiculous, like making me buy a “government-approved” fire extinguisher for my lemonade stand.
“Government in general does a lot of things that aren’t necessary,” Polis admits. He signed a bill to make it legal in Colorado for anyone under 18 to run a small or occasional business without a permit.
Polis pushes other ideas meant to make it easier for people to succeed. He wants to get rid of Colorado’s income tax.
“It penalizes success,” he says. “Income is something that’s good. We’ve reduced the income tax twice in Colorado since I’ve been there.”
Not by much. It only dropped from 4.63% to 4.4%, but still, those are unusual words, especially from a Democrat.
Polis also has a different take on fighting inflation: fight it “with immigration” and “getting rid of tariffs.”
That’s something I rarely hear from politicians from either party.
“Tariffs in particular penalize trade,” says Polis. “Trade’s a good thing. If two people, willing partners, both have something and both want what the other has, they make an exchange. They’re both better off. We should not penalize trade.”
Regarding immigration, he says, “We have … an artificial labor shortage because we have people who are here today who are perfectly willing to work. They just don’t have the right federal permit to work.”
During COVID, Polis ordered statewide closures, but he lifted faster than other Democrat-run states.
“Our businesses reopened really early,” says Polis.
Not as early as Florida, Texas or South Dakota, but sooner than blue states.
Polis also supports legalization of drugs, including, most recently, magic mushrooms.
“Your state led the country in drug legalization, marijuana and now psychedelics. This is a good thing?” I ask.
“Very good,” Polis responds. “We put a lot of the corner drug dealers out of business. It’s created jobs, tax revenue, and it’s led to a safer product.”
Polis isn’t threatened by the negative effects of drug use. “I think it’s ultimately a matter of personal responsibility. If you want to use marijuana, to drink, to smoke, that’s your prerogative. The government shouldn’t be deciding that for you.”
It’s rare and refreshing to hear a Democrat talk about individual freedom.
Unfortunately he becomes squishy on freedom when it comes to Colorado’s forcing bakers and website designers to work for events they oppose. He also expanded government-run schools; now taxpayers must pay for state preschools. I bet that doesn’t end well.
I’ll cover that and other issues where we disagree in a future column.
Hopefully more Democratics come to realize that businesses aren’t the enemy. There’s a moral battle that is being won here even if Democrats still haven’t completely given up on government. Let’s hope this spreads. Broad acceptance is a good sign.
I am in the process of relocating, to a southern front range high mountain valley as I rread this. Lucky I guess there is partial sanity here in the governorship; it certainly is non-existent in my ‘ex’ Oregon & Washington.
Don’t be fooled. If Polis was truly as “individual responsibility” minded as he sounds, why has he not stepped in regarding the persecution of Jack Phillips by those who share the same proclivities? Prior to buying his way into the governor’s office, he completely mismanaged his office in the Western Slope area of Colorado and was basically run out of town. Ever since, it would seem that anything that could hurt Western Colorado‘s Grand Valley from across the mountains has been initiated or continued under his watch as Governor, all the while eyeing higher office. Jack Phillips is only one of many persecutions Polis allows to occur or continue. Denver is being destroyed as he sits. While he does the typical political two-step verbal reassurances, he has little substance in defending any personal rights in this state. What good is fiscal conservancy while personal freedoms are steadily eroded. He talks about businesses opening up while he sits idly by as conservative or religious businesses are hounded and persecuted by laws he signed. How do I know? I live here. I see the results daily.
Anna, you are exactly correct!
I too have watched, and suffered under the yoke of this charlatan sodomite.
No mention of the unbelievable perversion he has wrought upon our children, nor the unforgivable corruption of what was once the most secure/honest election system in the country.
The establishment obviously has big plans for this well-documented America hating, Christian despising, tyrannical misogynist.
To dgjesquire:
We just elected a self-confessed Marxist as Mayor of Colorado Springs. Within a few years this once conservative, beautiful, and safe city will look like every other leftist shithole, i.e. Oregon & Washington.
Sad to say you got here about twenty years too late 🙁
Oh, I forgot to mention the absolute disaster of Polis’s drug legalization efforts. Talk to any of the first responders, clinicians, psychologists, or ER staff about the unbelievable destruction this policy is causing to our society and especially our kids and you hear a very different story.
When I grew up decades ago NOBODY was going to the ER having psychotic episodes from using pot. Now the numbers of people experiencing life altering psychotic breaks are off the charts!
The claim of legal drugs being successful policy is one of the most evil lies ever told, achievable only because the establishment media promotes this lie by simply refusing to speak the truth. And now Polis wants to legalize even more powerful and destructive drugs.
Tyrants and dictators have always used chaos as a mechanism for usurping power, it has been thus for thousands of years. And these policies will certainly create more chaos, along with untold misery and suffering.
And the effects on our state from the massive influx of drug addled, irresponsible people is unimaginable. It is also exactly how the left took over this state in just a matter of years!
Sure hope the author brings up the topic of Colorado’s rigged elections in his next interview.
Well let’s pray for those tasked in government. That’s biblical
Polis lies about many things especially the effort to abolish TABOR using Proposition HH which he falsely claims will lower real estate taxes. It does not. It is only his end around attempt to end TABOR in Colorado which Democrats hate.
Don’t fall for Polis’s “freedom” schtick. He is a leftest and obediently signs bills i to law passed by the radical wing of his party’s legislators. He is packing state boards with radical animal rights and anti-energy members. He is stealthily raising taxes, most recently raising property taxes as much as 50% in a single year. He has has been imposing exhorbitant “fees” in lieue of taxes.. under hsi administration CO has become number one in auto theft in the U.S. drug crime and vagrancy are skyrocketing. The petroleum industry and agriculture are under attack. The legislature has a wish list of extreme leftist policies it wishes to impose on an unsuspecting electorate. There is even more. Don’t buy this pose.
Alas for Ayn Rand’s paradise, Colorado. That state was relatively early in its adoption of extreme leftism.
“Tariffs in particular penalize trade,” says Polis. “Trade’s a good thing. If two people, willing partners, both have something and both want what the other has, they make an exchange. They’re both better off. We should not penalize trade.”
This is what we call capitalism. A win/win as Mr Limbaugh used to say.
The key operational difference between the collectivists of the Leftest persuasion and free marketers of traditional Americans is that the latter understands that wealth is created by self-serving individuals and the former base their “solutions” on the belief that wealth is static and a zero-sum game to be directed and plundered for the benefit of non-producers at will with no consequence on the generation of it.
Polis is a homosexual pervert, pushing the agenda, and supports the criminal invasion of America. Believe me, he is ruining Colorado. A typical Californian that is corrupting once conservative states. Never trust a word John Stossel utters. Polis is working to get Lauren Boebert out of congress too.