If you want to see how a party will govern if given power by the voters, look no further than their party platform. This year, the Colorado Democratic Party was kind enough to give us a look at their priorities and what they would do if elected. It’s not a “bold vision” or a “path forward”. It’s a recipe for disaster.

In the “Our Values” preamble, they state: “American love of freedom is an empty concept without our civil liberties. We acknowledge that our civil liberties are under attack, and we are committed to the protection of these sacred rights.”

I agree. Our civil liberties are certainly under attack…by Democrats. From President Obama cracking down on “leakers”, to legislators calling for First Amendment restrictions, and the well-known war that the Left is waging on our right to keep and bear arms (protected, not granted, by the Second Amendment) it is clear that the Democrats in their pursuit of all-powerful government are willing to trample on our civil liberties.

And let’s not forget the principle of presumption of innocence. With their disgusting tactics to try to derail the confirmation of Justice Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, the Left has proven not only that they will do ANYTHING to achieve their goals, they have proven that they will destroy anyone who gets in their way.

“We honor and defend the basic human rights of everyone in Colorado, regardless of citizenship.” Translation: we will not enforce federal immigration laws or cooperate with federal immigration authorities, making Colorado into a sanctuary state. We don’t care about increased crime, strain on public resources or the rule of law.

In Part I: Human and Civil Rights, the VERY FIRST plank is: “We support the provision by the government for the respect and protection of all non-violent citizen protestors, including those participating in civil disobedience; protestors should be protected from any and all use of excessive force by officers of the law”. Basically, they want to enshrine the “right” to protest against the very government they want to control, and to hobble law enforcement while doing so. Because the police are ALREADY prohibited from using “excessive force”.

Under “Corporations are not people”: Fine. Neither are trade and labor unions. You want to restrict corporations, you must also restrict labor unions equally.

Under Slavery and Human Trafficking, they say “efforts should be taken to protect people from slavery and forced servitude”. Which means: efforts should be taken to protect people from the tax increases, “premiums” and fees the Democrats want to impose on us. At what point, on a percentage basis, does a “free” person become a “slave”? How much of a person’s income must be taxed away before they are no longer free? 51%? 75%? 100%? This is a question no Leftist ever answers. People living under socialism ARE slaves, they may not be owned by another person, but if the fruits of their labor are owned by or must be paid to the state they are, in fact, slaves.

Under Part II: Criminal Justice, their first two goals are mutually exclusive: “interrupting” the “school-to-prison pipeline” and elimination of zero tolerance policies in schools, while at the same time supporting effective violence and bullying prevention programs in schools. Sorry, Dems: you can’t have it both ways.

The most important part of this section of the platform is the section on “Firearms and Gun Safety”, which I will reprint in full below. Note how they pay lip service to the concept of individual ownership of firearms for “hunting and personal safety”, then negate that concept with the next word “but”.

Firearms and Gun Safety

We agree with individual ownership of firearms for hunting and personal safety, but also believe that firearms should be regulated as follows:

1. Ban assault weapons, bump stocks, and high capacity magazines.
2. Enact universal background checks federally.
3. Enact restrictions: Must be 21 and must demonstrate competency with firearms to purchase a firearm.
4. Prohibit the possession and purchase of firearms by people with violent criminal offenses or on terrorist watch list.
5. Except for security personnel, ban firearms on K-12 schools, college campuses and allow cultural institutions to ban firearms on their premises.
6. Enact Extreme Risk Protection Order law, which would allow families and law enforcement to seek a court order to temporarily disarm a person who is dangerous to themselves or others.
7. Enact criminal penalties when adults fail to properly store firearms and minors gain access and harm themselves or others.
8. Restrict firearms use in National Forest to designated areas, except during hunting season.
9. Allow the CDC and other government agencies to conduct gun violence research, and properly fund.

My responses:

1. There is no such thing as an “assault weapon”. This is a call to ban commonly used modern sporting rifles (i.e. the AR-15, which is the most popular semi-automatic rifle in the United States). It is a violation of the United States and Colorado Constitutions to ban weapons in “common use”, and this will be the first thing on their agenda. We can’t rely on their non-existent respect for the Constitution to keep them from enacting this law. We must be proactive and not let them have the power to enact it in the first place. With regard to bump stocks, I don’t know of any serious shooter who uses them and many gun ranges prohibit them. But as an infringement on the right to keep and bear arms, this is not acceptable. They’ve already banned standard capacity magazines. What more do they want? Magazines limited to 10 rounds? 7? 3? None?
2. Federally licensed firearms dealers are already required to do background checks. So-called “universal” require background checks for all gun sales, including private sales and transfers. Whatever the merits or failures of universal background checks, state level legislators have no ability to enact laws on a federal level.
3. Under current state law, an individual can purchase a long gun at age 18 but must be 21 to purchase a handgun, and you must be 21 to get a concealed carry permit as well. Democrats want to raise that age to 21 for everything. I can see the merits in that argument, but I will only support it if they support changing the voting age to 21 as well (which they cannot).
4. This one is tricky. Convicted felons are already prohibited from owning firearms. If Democrats are calling for persons accused of (but not convicted of) violent offenses to be prohibited from owning firearms, that would be depriving someone of their rights without due process of law. As we saw with Justice Kavanaugh, they don’t care about due process or the presumption of innocence. And with the “terrorist watch lists”, simply being on a government list is not a valid basis for depriving someone of their rights.
5. They want to enact further restrictions on where law-abiding citizens can carry guns to protect themselves, and possibly disallow qualified teachers who are authorized by their school boards to carry concealed on school grounds. Because Democrats believe that simply designating a place to be a “Gun Free Zone” will prevent gun violence. Sadly and tragically, that has proven to be untrue many times.
6. A version of the Extreme Risk Protection Order law was dropped late last session. The bill as proposed was seriously flawed and insufficiently protective of 2^nd, 4^th, and 14^th Amendment rights. Despite some Republican support, it failed, and should never be introduced again. While the concept may have merit, the bill as proposed was not acceptable.
7. I suggest we enforce the laws on the books, rather than add criminal penalties to how people manage their property.
8. They don’t want people shooting in National Forests. Just come out and say it.
9. They want government to “properly fund” “gun violence” research. Nobody’s stopping private individuals and lefty think tanks from researching gun violence. Go for it.

This section alone should be enough to give any gun owner pause. For Democrat voters who are also gun owners, I urge you to choose wisely. While they give lip service to the right protected by the Second Amendment, their ultimate goal is to deprive you of your ability to defend yourself with modern firearms.

The next section is titled with words that don’t belong together in the same sentence: “The Economy and Social Justice”. The very first item? “Repealing the Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TABOR) and the Gallagher Amendment (regarding property taxes).” Yes, Democrats (and some Republicans) hate TABOR because it limits the growth of government and forces government to ask us, the taxpayers, to vote to increase taxes or to let them keep excess tax revenues. Of course, if Democrats can impose a tax on working Coloradans by simply calling it a “premium”, then TABOR is already dead anyway.

They want to “expand” economic opportunities by “investing” in public lands, buildings and infrastructure. Anyone with even a rudimentary knowledge of economics knows this is not how it works.

In accordance with their desire to tax you even more, they want to tax “all capital gains, qualified dividends and carried interest as ordinary income”. They also want to enact a “progressive estate tax” and implement a “progressive” income tax, instead of keeping the flat tax fair-minded Coloradans prefer, and which is the subject of Amendment 73. They want to “restore” tax rates on “top incomes”.

Regarding Corporate Responsibility, they want corporations to “pay their full share of taxes”, not knowing or caring that businesses don’t pay taxes. Businesses collect taxes from customers in the form of higher prices and remit that money to the government in the form of taxes.

There’s too much economic lunacy in this section to review in detail, so I will summarize:

• Democrats hate business and the profit motive.
• They will increase regulations and the cost of doing business in Colorado.
• The don’t believe in protecting intellectual property.
• They want to tax businesses that earn money in Colorado.
• Increase minimum wages (again).
• National 15% interest rate cap (again, they can’t enact national legislation) and price controls always fail.
• Increase your gasoline tax by $0.01 (per gallon?). Yet ANOTHER tax increase.
• Increase public transit funding and use. (“Get drivers out of their cars”).
• Indexing fuel taxes to inflation. (Another tax increase).
• And others. Read Part III for yourself.

Under LABOR, they state as a governing principle that wealth inequality is greater than at any time in our country’s history – as if that’s a bad thing, and that growing wealth at the top doesn’t translate to better living standards for the rest of us. It also ignores that fact that many prominent Democrat donors, candidates and activists are billionaires themselves.

They have several calls to action:

• Fair Day’s Pay. Whatever that means. What’s “fair”?
• Minimum Wage. They want an increase in the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2020 (again, they cannot change national laws). We’ll leave aside the adverse effects of minimum wages, which are well known.
• Paycheck Fairness – perpetuating the myth that women are paid unfairly.
• Paid Time Off – their treasured family medical leave and insurance plan, championed these last few years by Representative Faith Winter and the reason why she’s running to unseat Beth Martinez-Humenik in the state senate.
• And others. The usual Democratic talking points.

Calling themselves the party of “public education” (which is fitting when demand for private education and charter schools is soaring), Democrats want to double down on the failed policies and increased taxation and funding that their public education cash cow demands. In fact their very first “demand”, is really a “demand”: “We demand full funding of a thorough and uniform education with public monies to public schools”. “We also demand increased funding for Preschool and K-12 education”. They want to do this by repealing TABOR and the Gallagher Amendment.

Under “Preschool and K-12”, they have 14 points. Eight of them talk about “funding” or “capital”. They also “oppose guns in school”, apparently not realizing that except for authorized personnel, it’s already illegal to carry guns in school, and with disregard for the fact that Gun Free Zones don’t protect life.

Don’t want unions involved in your child’s education? Then don’t vote Democrat, because they “support rights of teachers to form and join unions, including teachers of charter schools.”

And of course, free stuff. They call for “free public higher education for all students”.

The section on Alternative and Renewable Energy, Conservation and Efficiency has the usual leftist goals, dreams and desires: more “renewable” energy, higher energy costs for the poor, rejoining the Paris Climate Accords (even though nothing we do in Colorado could possibly affect the global climate in any measurable sense), and killing coal. While their platform does not mention the disastrous Proposition 112, many Democrats running for elected office endorse it, including KC Becker, the current majority leader and likely future speaker.

In fact, every voter should read this section in detail and think about what it would mean for them: higher energy costs, less reliable energy, and higher taxes.

And finally, they talk about Health Care. Yes, Health Care. The industry that Democrats have worked so hard to destroy. They believe “health-care [sic] to be a Human Right enshrined by the oldest and most revered principles of our founders as a significant part of ‘Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness’”. Ummm, no. Something that has to be provided through the labor or property of others (health care services) is not and never has been a “right”. The Founders would have laughed these Democrats out of the room for making this statement.

They support universal health care, including Medicare/Medicaid for all. If the federal government does not enact such a thing, they want the state to do it, repeating the goals of Amendment 69 which was voted down just two years ago by 79% to 21%. Their “minimum goals” are unrealistic and unachievable in the real world.

After laughing through the “Healthy Democracy” section, one arrives at the Immigration and National Security sections. I believe that the Democrats have unrealistic, even childish, goals and objectives in these areas. Their support for illegal immigration is apparent, as is their call to “normalize” the status of illegal immigrants (i.e. make them not “illegal”).

With regard to National Security, they want to give up United States sovereignty with regard to several things, including “full participation in the “International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court”.

I had to laugh at #2 under “Middle East”: “Develop an improved strategy to defeat ISIS in conjunction with our allies”. That was former President Obama’s strategy, which failed. Under President Trump, ISIS has been defeated.

My overall impression of this platform is this: while I agreed with a few of their points, it is clear that Colorado Democrats live in a fantasy world. Several of the drafters of this document are running for elected office. Choose carefully and vote wisely. If you give these people power over you, it won’t be to your, your family’s, your business’ or your states’ benefit.

Read the platform in full. Think about it. Think about how it would impact your life and your finances if even partially enacted. Then, #WalkAway. #DontVoteDemocrat. Choose Freedom. Choose America.

By Richard D. Turnquist

October 7, 2018

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