We’ve interviewed Governors, US Senators, Members of Congress, lots of state lawmakers, candidates for President of the United States…even two other guys named Jason Bane. Our first episode, which we called Finding Cory (remember him?) was released on July 24th 2019. It was recorded in the basement of the Alliance Center in beautiful downtown Denver, Colorado, before Democrats turned the entire city into a smoldering crater in the ground, and the one and only Mr. Ethan Black recorded and produced the thing.
Since then, we’ve had the privilege of bringing you a new episode EVERY SINGLE WEEK (except when Ian was at the North Pole or when we couldn’t get our shit together or other reasons) and it’s been so, so much fun. Thanks to everyone for listening, and for helping us get to 50,000 downloads right before we released this one, no, we can’t believe that either.
All that being said…this week on the Get More Smarter Podcast, Sine Die is upon us, and for those of us who don’t speak Latin, that means the 2023 Legislative Session is mercifully coming to an end. As of this writing, the House and Senate are in session and the first regular session of the 74th General Assembly is set to adjourn tomorrow, Monday, May 8th 2023.
There is a brand spankin’ new TABOR refund equalization deal brought by friend of the pod State Rep. Chris deGruy Kennedy, a property tax relief bill that hangs in the balance, a zombified version of Gov. Polis’s landmark housing bill (known by dorks as “the land use bill) and dozens and dozens of other bills left to process. Any bill that doesn’t get sent to the Governor or killed by midnight tomorrow automatically dies. While the Governor hasn’t said this himself, the halls of the capitol are electric with whispers of the two words that make lobbyists drink even more and the blood of state government staffers run cold, “special session.” I think that if the land use/housing bill somehow gets mangled or dies, that does become a real possibility, but otherwise, they will hopefully (mercifully) wrap up for 2023 tomorrow. Every single year in the last week virtually every single reporter in the state asks the same question, and most likely has since 1876, “how will they get it all done?” But this time, it feels like a pretty legit question.
The Supreme Court of the United States is an ethical disaster, but really only the Justices appointed by Republican Presidents. “Justice” Clarence Thomas has a billionaire GOP donor sending his grand-nephew to private school for a cool $6,000 a month! Chief Justice John Roberts’s wife is a legal recruiter who we now know has made $10 million in eight fucking years – earnings that John Roberts never disclosed. And Colorado’s own Justice Neil Gorsuch (for whom we are very sorry) miraculously sold a plot of land near Granby right after being confirmed to the Supreme Court. The land had been on the market for two years, but nine days after his confirmation, he had a buyer, who just so happened to be the goddamn CEO of the mega-lawfirm Greenberg Traurig who, you guessed it, has plenty of fucking business before the Supreme Court. Congress is considering using some of those lil’ checks and balances to clean up that corruption-fest that but, you know, mostly/only Democrats in Congress because at the moment, the GOP has a pretty good deal going on over there.
The real question is, if Congress does their job, passes a law to enact term limits or have some actual consequences for this kind of blatant corruption and violation of transparency laws, won’t the Supreme Court just, you know, declare it unconstitutional? Neither Marbury nor Madison ever saw this shit coming.
The other-other-other Colorado Politics podcast, which has the absolutely wildly unfortunate name “Heidi Ganahl’s Unleashed,” which we will absolutely under no circumstances link to here, is back on the…air? Whatever. After Gahanl went from the very last statewide elected Republican in all of Colorado to the very-worst-performing statewide candidate in the 2022 election, she’s now telling her follower (1) that she’s revealing her next steps coming up soon. We’ll try really, really hard not to forget she announced this and keep you updated.
With one month to go in the Denver Mayoral Election, Jason and I, two dudes from Lakewood discuss how the hell it got like this. Kelly Brough, former CEO of the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce and Former State Senator Mike Johnston are facing off in the runoff on June 6th. I don’t watch TV, I don’t look at Twitter or any social media at all anymore, so this entire conversation is based on vibes, but, when Brough was the CEO of the Denver Chamber, they opposed paid family leave, opposed increasing the minimum wage, and opposed basically every single other progressive economic policy in the legislature the entire time she was there. Which is why it’s even more baffling that Democrats, especially top-notch women Democrats, seem to be ignoring, forgetting, or never knowing these facts, and are lining up behind her. Johnston is a lot harder to attack than that, and he’s got quite a warchest and quite an arsenal of independent money behind him. If we had to bet, we’d give the edge to Johnston today, but with one month to go in the race, it’s still really anybody’s game.
Our 8th favorite congressperson from Colorado is extremely pro-food-poisoning, and has been since at least 2017, which is an extremely rare display of consistency in politics! I go on a pretty annoying rant about food safety in this section, but the fact that Boebert is bringing something called the PRIME act (we cannot figure out what that stands for, either) that all of the major American food producers oppose…sure is something. We also treat you, our beloved listeners, to a very very cringe speech from Boebert in full Evangelical Preacher Mode that is greeted with what we can most charitably describe as a “smattering” of applause. Oh, and this all happened in Texas, of course, because despite winning an R+11 district by 546 votes she’s clearly not yet learned that the people of Texas to not elect her, the people of Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District do.
And finally, Tucker Carlson may be off the airwaves, but his inexcusably racist influence on the GOP will remain for a long, long time. Apparently Tucker, a (former) fucking cable TV host, was interested in brokering the election of weaker Speaker Kevin McCarthy, and McCarthy almost took him up on it. The lines of communication between the GOP and their propaganda network are wide open, and we are all well and truly doomed.
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