House Bill 1277: Environmental virtue signaling by state force

Renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America” is obnoxious, needless and, well, just kinda stupid. And I love it. It’s just freakin’ awesome!

After a decades-long leftist renaming orgy, like changing our beloved Mount Evans into Mount Blue Sky, Gulf of America gives them a taste of their own medicine. Every time you say “Gulf of America,” it’s followed by the implied, “Yep, back at ya, ’cause that’s what that feels like, you jerks.”

Gulf of America shows we can play tit-for-tat with their word-fluid virtue signaling. Colorado’s social-engineering left should remember they’re not always going to be in power, as President Donald Trump proves. And the next regime will use the semantic warfare tactics they invented, as Trump, again, proves.

Remember when then Minority Leader Mitch McConnell warned Senate Democrats not to remove the filibuster for judicial nominations? If they did, he said, his team would do the same and they’d regret it. And regretted it they did.

Coerced virtue signaling

The socialists running the Colorado legislature refuse to remember this as they use their power of coercion to compel our speech to mandate their ideological virtue signaling.

House Bill 1277 is the perfect example — virtue signaling by gunpoint.

This bill will force retailers to slap a “warning sign” by any product that uses fossil fuels. You know, those fossil fuels that move our people and goods, and give us two-thirds of our electrical power which keeps our children warm, our lights on and our beer cold.

Every gas pump, every retailer that sells propane canisters, gas stoves, lawn mowers, etc., would have to have labels in large red font that read, “Combustion of this product releases greenhouse gases known by the state of Colorado to be linked to global heating and significant health impacts.”

Easier proved would be a label that says, “Combustion of this product creates jobs, wealth and mobility thus is known by the state of Colorado to be linked to greater health.”

Electric vehicles will go down in history as the biggest corporate welfare scam ever needed to sell a product people don’t want at a true market price. To make the market even exist, it requires never-before-seen political cronyism and extreme tax perversions.

Fossil fuel-powered EV bumper sticker. (Click to enlarge)

Take my brand-new, extra-macho Nissan Leaf. Just like I take every allowable tax deduction on my income taxes, I decided to take advantage of the ridiculous Colorado corporate welfare to buy an electric car. Like 99% of electric vehicle owners, it is my second vehicle. In other words, an unneeded toy.

The list price of my Leaf was $27,685, but the tax incentives and subsidies were $16,600. So, I got this car for only $11,085 before sales tax, or 60% off retail.

Colorado cronyism paid for 60% of my car!

Turnabout is fair play

Now I can be part of the smug class claiming I’m saving the planet by driving a corporate-welfare mobile. But wait — two-thirds of the electricity that charges it comes from fossil fuels, making it a fossil fuel car. And I want people to know that. So, I purchased vanity plates that say, “GAS CAR.”

To make it even more clear for the person behind me, I added a bumper sticker: “EV’S ARE POWERED BY FOSSIL FUEL AND YOUR TAXES.”

I want Coloradans to know EVs run on coal and natural gas and only exist because of their misspent taxes.

Now, my statement is demonstrably true and much easier to prove than the holier-than-thou “Combustion of this product releases greenhouse gases and kills you, government saves you, blah, blah, blah.”

So, if this bill passes and machines that release greenhouse gases must carry that warning label, then all EVs must also carry the warning. They run off combustible fossil fuels! (Doesn’t logic just suck?)

And when the other team controls Colorado government — and yes, someday they will — they will require my sticker be slapped on the back of every electric car. And Mount Blue Sky will be renamed Mount Trump. And you can’t complain.

We didn’t start this semantic war, but someday the Colorado version of “Gulf of America” will come and no one will listen to the left’s cries of “coerced speech” oppression.

I hope this bill passes. Forced speech pushing ideologies, like being forced to say men can have babies, created national regime change.

Silliness like Mount Blue Sky and this bill will help do the same in Colorado.

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

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