We’re in for a bit of a shorter (and, yes, I know, late) newsletter for this week’s episode, partially because I had to help Brittany move to a new part-time place in DC while we were in Our Nation’s Capitol visiting her this week, partly because it’s the end of September of an election year and the non-Get-More-Smarter part of my life specifically is getting a little nuts.
Don’t worry, we still plan on publishing weekly-ish episodes from now until the Election (which is, somehow only 38 days away!!!), and we’re even working on a NEW series of evergreen content for your listening pleasure. Think of this series as a way to “Stay More Smarter” (working title, suggestions very welcome) about Colorado’s ongoing political structural realities. We'll be covering all of the big, confusing Colorado issues like TABOR, ballot initiatives, ranked choice voting, the state budget, water policy, school finance, and any other topics that you, our wonderful listeners, are interested in, separate from the weekly news cycle, and designed to be deeper dives and interviews with leading experts on the most complex issues we face as a state!
If you’ve got thoughts on topics you’d like us to cover in this series, pop over to Nice Twitter aka Threads and join the discussion with some of our other listeners. If you haven’t yet joined that kinder, gentler thought-sharing website, just drop a comment below or shoot an email over to ian@getmoresmarter.com and jason@getmoresmarter.com. Or even tap this cute little button, come on, you know you wanna!
Now that that’s out of the way, this week on the Get More Smarter Podcast, the federal government somehow avoided another trip to the brink of a shutdown, at least until December 20th, when a (hopefully) ousted lame duck GOP Congressional Majority will…probably try to do it again! Jason wrote a great piece on ColoradoPols about it which is worth your time to check out as well. While House Speaker Mike Johnson tried to set up Senate Democrats to take the blame (even though that was 99.99% guaranteed to not work), our 8th Favorite Member of Congress from Colorado gave up the game before clearly misunderstanding her frenemy MTG’s point about not shutting down the government.
Oy.
I also went on a little rant about how the bad-faith right-wing hostage taking on the state budget with the now deceased Initiatives 50 and 108 led the legislature and the governor to cut about a billion dollars in property taxes over the past few years, and now the state budget has about a billion dollar hole in it. Are these things directly related? Kind of, but also not really! Take a listen to this episode, and also take a gander at this excellent story from the Colorado Sun’s Brian Eason if you want to get real wonky with it, but the graph below tells quite a lot of the story:
In other news Donald Trump has threatened to visit Aurora on the heels of the “scandal” that ranges from totally made up to absolutely and wildly embellished, in large part because of the absolute political weakness of Mayor Mike Coffman and the cynical opportunism of right-wing cranks from the very local to the very national level. The legendary Susan Greene has written an incredibly comprehensive piece for the Aurora Sentinel on this issue to try to get to the bottom of what’s really going on, but there’s one thing we cna all hopefully agree on: Donald Trump is not coming to Aurora.
And our friends over at the Colorado Times Recorder have a barnburner of a story that you won’t want to miss. Gabe-Ish Evans, the Republican nominee for the 8th congressional district is running a pretty lackluster campaign, by all available metrics, but the unforced error they committed over the past few weeks might just make this difference in this razor-thin must-win election for both sides this November. Gabe-ish was forced to fire his political director after CTR’s incredible expose on her history of insane, antisemitic social media posts. Listen, our friends at CTR are excellent researchers and journalists, but all of this stuff was right out there in the open, and before Gabe-ish hired this person for a paid position on his campaign, he could have, you know, scrolled her social media to find indefensible antisemitic bullshit like this:
And finally, in case you missed it, Dave Williams will continue to run the Colorado GOP straight into the ground while jamming as much of their donor’s money as he can into his pockets on the way out because this week a judge declared him the still and rightful chairman of the Colorado Republican party. For this, there is only one possible reaction:
That’s it for this week’s episode! If you loved listening to it as much as we loved recording it, you can thank us by subscribing to the pod wherever you listen, following us over on Nice Twitter aka Threads, and forwarding this email or sharing this post with your friends, your enemies, and the Weld RE-8 School District! THANK YOU so much for listening, and we’ll see you next time!
Episode 208: Venezuelan Gangs have not (yet) Taken Over this Podcast