May 29, 2020

Happy 250th Birthday, America! You look fabulous. As all the cool countries are saying, “250 is the new 230.”

The Declaration of Independence wasn’t merely an announcement of war against a tyrant. It was the most revolutionary political document ever written.

The Declaration was a landmark in human development, perhaps the landmark of all human history.

For the first time government was no longer affirmed sovereign. The individual was.

That simple idea changed the world.

You rule yourself. Your life belongs to you. Your liberty belongs to you. Your happiness is yours to pursue as you define it. Your property belongs to you.

Government exists not to rule over you, but to secure your rights, to protect you from, well, government.

The grievances

The part of the Declaration rarely quoted during patriotic speeches isn’t the soaring language about liberty. It’s Jefferson’s long list of grievances against King George, the “causes which impel them to the separation.”

Those grievances are worth study. Because they’re back.

Reading them today, I can’t help wondering what our Founders would think of our government today, Colorado’s in particular.

Would they find today’s overlords less oppressive? I doubt it.

Jefferson wrote of the king, “He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.”

Colorado lawmakers and governor just dissolved two-thirds of the elected RTD Board of Directors, replacing them with hand-picked lackeys.

They dissolved a Representative House. The representatives of the people can be troublesome, might be an obstacle to their plans of statewide trolleys. Best to install yes-men.

Swarms of officers

Jefferson complained the king had “erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.”

New offices since Polis became guv alone include the Energy and Carbon Management Commission — created just after voters shot down restriction on oil and gas and on a mission to end drilling (as you might notice in your energy bills). There’s also the Behavioral Health Administration, the Department of Early Childhood, the Prescription Drug Affordability Board, the Office of Gun Violence Prevention and the Just Transition Office.

I could fill the page with new offices.

In the last decade alone, the state has added more than 11,500 more employees, growing 21%.

Swarms of Officers? Indeed.

To “eat out our substance” in the same period the state needed to hire 28% more tax collectors at the Department of Revenue and 25% more form-checkers at the Department of Regulations. You will comply.

Consent of the governed

Jefferson also listed the top grievance: “For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent.”

Really? Do I need to spell this one out?

In Colorado, consent is spelled T-A-B-O-R.

Today, lawmakers simply rename taxes as “fees” so they can avoid consent.

To collect those “fees,” they’ve created bureaucracies with names that sound like they were generated by George Orwell’s artificial intelligence:

Clean Screen Authority. Capitol Parking Authority. Statewide Tolling Authority. Statewide Transportation Enterprise, Statewide Bridge and Tunnel Enterprise.

Then there’s the Healthcare Affordability and Sustainability Enterprise to collect hospital bed taxes “fees.” How about the Clean Transit Enterprise? Or the Community Access Enterprise? Lest we forget the Nonattainment Area Pollution Mitigation Enterprise, to tax every delivery you get and raise your gas tax.

If it sounds confusing enough, maybe you won’t notice it’s taking your money without permission.

By 2023, these fees extract $23 billion a year from Coloradans without voter approval.

Since TABOR became law, state government has collected well more than a quarter-trillion dollars outside its voter-approved tax structure.

Think about that.

Without your consent, government has taken nearly $42,000 for every man, woman and child in Colorado.

For a family of four, that’s almost $170,000. Two-hundred-fifty years ago, taxation without consent like this prompted Americans to dump tea into Boston Harbor and take to arms.

Government fatigue

Jefferson wrote of the king, “He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.”

Colorado has well more than 5,000 governments and special districts.

There is physically no way a citizen could keep up with the legislature, school boards, city councils, county commissions, water districts, transit districts, and the like. Each have their own taxing and regulatory powers to which you must comply.

Hell, the wait at the DMV has fatigued us enough.

What would Jefferson write for a modern Colorado Declaration of Independence?

Jon Caldara is president of Independence Institute, a free market think tank in Denver.