Polis's Price Controls: News Miner 14

Notes on price controls, prosecuting police officers, Ganahl and transgender issues, Russian propaganda, and more.

Polis’s Wage, Price, and Rent Controls

Can you believe that the “most libertarian governor in America” pushed for some wage, price, and rent controls not once, not twice, but five times during his first term? In my piece for Complete Colorado, I have the ghost of Richard Nixon, whose large-scale wage and price controls helped inspire the creation of the Libertarian Party in Colorado, pay Polis a visit. Check it out!

Who Watches the Police Officers?

Recently Denver police officers opened fire in a busy part of town in response to a suspect pulling a gun. You can watch body-cam video.

I Tweeted, “My read: I'd be surprised if officers were convicted of a crime. Civil cases likely will succeed. This happens very fast. The guy pulls a gun out and then waives his arm. He's throwing the gun but if you're the cop that's hard to know in that split-second.”

Of course, the bar for holding a job as a police officer is different than the bar for being convicted of a crime.

I added, Denver Police “would have better-served the department by clearly explaining at the outset that the suspect pulled out a gun and tossed it away practically at the same moment that officers fired.”

Anyway, “Denver District Attorney Beth McCann has called on a grand jury to review whether an officer shooting at a suspect was justified” (Axios).

Soon-to-be Representative Elisabeth Epps doesn’t like the idea of grand juries.

I replied, “We cannot rely on DAs to charge police officers for crimes they commit because of the very-close working relationship between prosecutors and cops. Grand Juries are the only available alternative. We trust regular juries; why not Grand Juries? But, as I've argued [see my 2021 article], I think even better would be to create a permanent agency, perhaps in the AG's office, to handle criminal prosecutions of police officers.”

Someone replied, “I think I'd suggest attorneys on periodic appointment by judicial or legislative branches instead of executive in the hopes that a separate branch would feel less pressure to overlook misconduct in execution of the law.”

I answered, “That's actually not a bad idea. Maybe: A three-person team appointed for a couple/few years (offset?), one each by the AG, the head of the Supreme Court, and the head of the state Senate. Then they could hire more lawyers if they got a big case.”

Ganahl on Transgender Issues

The alt-left Colorado Times Recorder’s Heidi Beedle has out an astonishing story about Republican candidate for governor Heidi Ganahl. Here is what Ganahl said at a recent event:

Today I got a call from a parent at CU who said, “Oh my gosh, my daughter got a dorm assignment, and it’s with a biological male who considers himself a female, and Heidi, they won’t let her back out. They said she has to live there for two weeks before they’ll give her another option.” So I made some phone calls and got it reversed, but that’s the policy. This is happening everywhere.

As Beedle quotes, Ganahl backed off of her comment that she got the room assignment “reversed.” She said, “I helped accommodate a conversation.”

It is plausible that a female student did get a transgender roommate. Beedle quotes Candace Smith, CU’s associate vice chancellor of strategic communications:

University Housing assigns students a space based on the student’s self-identified gender that they select on their housing application, rather than birth gender. Additionally, students have the option to participate in the roommate request process if they are interested in living with a specific person if they are assigned to the same building. CU Boulder has numerous resources to assist students through this process, including gender-inclusive housing. Students have the opportunity to request room changes both before and after move-in.

So, if there was a problem, it seems Ganahl’s intervention was not needed. It certainly does not seem appropriate for a sitting member of the University of Colorado Board of Regents.

Regardless, was this really a problem? I find it hard to believe that a transgender student posed any special threat or irritation to the other student in question. Is seems more likely that the “cisgender” student was being prejudicial. I doubt many female students or their parents would be comfortable with a male roommate. Transgender women are women in an important sense, even if they have male anatomy. Apparently most transgender women are attracted to other women. For comparison, I doubt many “cisgender” male students would have a problem with a transgender male roommate. There’s probably a reasonable concern about “someone with a penis who is sexually attracted to women,” whether a cisgender man or a transgender woman, being roommates with a female student. Still, what’s a transgender student supposed to do?

Of course, we could avoid all this simply by giving each student a personal sleeping area as part of a broader suite. It seems like that would be generally better and would resolve all sorts of issues with roommates. My roommate hated that I snored, for example.

Russian Propaganda

This is quite the introduction to a news article, also by Beedle:

A Black separatist group with ties to Colorado has been implicated in part of a Russian influence scheme, according to a federal indictment filed last month.

The Black Hammer Party, listed as “Political Group 2,” along with the African People’s Socialist Party, “Political Group 1,” and Yes California, “Political Group 3,” allegedly received funds, starting in 2015, to spread Russian propaganda through social media, protests and speaking tours as part of influence operation run by Aleksandr Ionov, a Russian citizen and president of the Anti-Globalization Movement of Russia (AGMR). . . .

The organization’s time in Colorado . . . ended shortly after their failed attempts at establishing “Hammer City,” a proposed separatist utopia near Norwood, Colorado.

Quick Takes

Guns: Boulder County wants to restrict licensed concealed carry of handguns.

Guns II: “With only one dissenting vote, the city of Edgewater has officially banned the open carry of firearms, with at least one city council member attempting to tie the carrying of guns to white supremacy” (Complete Colorado).

Speech: “Taxpayers fund Denver political campaigns through the Fair Elections Fund” (9News). There is nothing "fair" about forcing people to finance political speech they disagree with or find repugnant.

Drug War: Corey Hutchins does a great job picking apart hysterical claims by some in law enforcement (and by their gullible media sycophants) about the alleged harms of casual exposure to fentanyl.

Rothbard: “Shana Black, Colorado Republican running for the state Legislature,” studied with Murray Rothbard, reports Erik Maulbetsch. Rothbard, Maulbetsch is quick to point out, is a “Cato Institute founder” and “an overt racist.” This is true, but the rest of the truth is that Rothbard was one of three Cato founders, he later frequently fought with Cato, and Cato squarely rejects his racism.