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While it is highly doubtful that Weld County will ultimately leave Colorado and become a part of Wyoming as recently proposed by a citizens group called Weld County Wyoming, the motivation behind the proposal is understandable.

One of its members succinctly told an AP reporter that Colorados political leadership is at war with three major economic drivers for Weld County: small businesses, agriculture, and oil and gas.

Indeed, it seems like all of rural Colorado is under assault by urban liberals from Denver and Boulder Counties who dominate the ruling Democratic Party leadership.

Gov. Jared Polis is from Boulder. U.S. Senators Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper are both from Denver. Speaker of the House Alec Garnett is from Denver. Attorney General Phil Weiser is from Denver. Secretary of State Jena Griswold is from Boulder. Senate Majority Leader Steve Fenberg is from Boulder. The only exception is Senate President Leroy Garcia from Pueblo.

This is not a new dynamic. Going as far back as 30 years ago, previous Democratic senators were Tim Wirth (1987-1993) and Mark Udall (2009-2015) of Boulder while previous governors were Roy Romer (1987-1999), Bill Ritter (2007-2011) and John Hickenlooper (2011-2019) of Denver. Ritter and Romer had rural roots but their political careers were built in the city of Denver.

Meanwhile, Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell (1993-2005) of Ignacio was first elected as a Democrat in 1992 but found the national Democratic Party so hostile to his brand of moderation he switched parties in 1995 and was re-elected as a Republican in 1998. Other previous Republican senators were Hank Brown (1991-1997) of Greeley, Wayne Allard (1997-2009) of Loveland and Cory Gardner (2015-2021) of Yuma.

The only Republican to be elected governor in the past fifty years, Bill Owens (1999-2007), was from Aurora.

But this reality goes way beyond residency. The Denver-Boulder axis doggedly pursues its social and environmental agendas while showing contempt for the people and communities of rural Colorado.

Colorado Democratic leaders have confirmed they are once again going to seek to ban private prisons which would be disastrous for the two small counties where those prisons exist today. This comes on the heels of President Joseph R. Biden declaring he would abolish private prisons in the federal system.

Crowley and Bent counties in rural southeastern Colorado are two of the poorest counties in the state and their two private prisons are the counties largest employers. Because these prisons are privately owned they provide a huge tax base that funds local schools, fire and ambulance, and other community services.

This isnt the first time Bent County has been in the crosshairs of a Democratic governor. One of the first actions by the then newly-elected governor, Hickenlooper, in 2011 was to abruptly close the state prison at Fort Lyon that housed geriatric and other special needs prisoners.

Fort Lyon had been a Veterans Administration hospital for decades before the federal government offered the expansive facility to the state of Colorado. Gov. Bill Owens accepted Fort Lyon for the prison in 2001 thereby preserving the employment base for the county until Hickenlooper closed it.

Colorado voters overwhelmingly rejected Proposition 112 in 2018 that would have dramatically and adversely impacted the oil and gas industry across Colorado, especially in Weld County, by creating strict setback limits from buildings, houses, rivers and streams. But the will of the voters was of no concern to majority Democrats in the state legislature in 2019 as they passed and Gov. Polis signed into law Senate Bill 181 that essentially had the same impact as the defeated Proposition 112. Democratic legislators vehemently denied that SB 181 would increase setbacks, but that is exactly what is happening just a year later. Meanwhile, oil and gas companies are struggling and jobs are being lost across rural Colorado.

Piling on the state assault on oil and gas, President Joe Biden has imposed a moratorium on new leases on federal land and drilling permits impacting Western Slope jobs and communities. State Sen. Bob Rankin says I believe the gas industry in Western Colorado may collapse affecting thousands of people.

Democrats are hell-bent to not only destroy the oil and gas industry, they are rabid about killing coal mining in northwest Colorado. There is no doubt our economy is making a transition to more renewables, but these hard-working coal miners, power plant workers and the communities they live in such as Craig, still supply 45% of Colorados net energy generation.

Whether it comes from some level of remorse or just a way to provide political cover, Democrats created the Office of Just Transition which ostensibly is supposed to help former oil and gas workers and coal miners make a just transition to new jobs which so far remain very elusive and undefined.

At least Bidens new climate czar, former Massachusetts U.S. Senator and Secretary of State John Kerry, had an answer, however flippant as it was, to a question about what oil and gas workers could do to replace their high paying jobs. They can assemble solar panels, the wealthy and elitist Kerry sneered, as he was clearly irritated such a question was posed to him.

Meanwhile, Polis had to quickly backtrack from promoting plant-based fake meat products at the expense of livestock producers who account for 70% of Colorados $7 billion agricultural economy.

But Polis is not backtracking from his recent appointment of a self-proclaimed anti-meat activist, Ellen Kessler, to the Colorado Board of Veterinary Medicine. Kessler was removed from a Costco store in October 2020 during a protest by Direct Action Everywhere, a militant animal rights group.

According to state Sen. Jerry Sonnenberg of Logan County, Kessler also attacked the venerable 4-H program because it teaches children that animal lives dont matter. I would dare to say Kessler is no friend to farmers and ranchers across the state struggling to make a living.

Colorado is much more than Denver and Boulder, but you would never know it from the urban liberal assault on rural Colorado led by the Denver-Boulder Democratic axis.

Dick Wadhams is a Republican political consultant and a former Colorado Republican state chairman who is a native of rural southeastern Colorado.

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Wadhams: Weld County secession to Wyoming may be unlikely, but the urban-liberal assault on rural Colorado is real - The Denver Post

Todays Budget does not outline a clear vision for our future, Canberra Liberals leader Elizabeth Lee believes; instead, she argued, the Labor-Greens Government has delivered more broken promises, more rates and tax increases, and more health and education failures.

This Budget again ensures Canberrans pay some of the highest rates and taxes in the country, while delivering a continuing decline in key health, education and transport services not just today, but well into the future, Ms Lee said.

This Budget has ambitious growth projections, while delivering four years of deficits that could see Canberra not returning to surplus for more than a decade.

While Canberra has performed well during the COVID-19 pandemic, compared to other states and territories, many families and small businesses are still struggling. Slugging them with tax increases in four months time will make matters worse.

Chief Minister Andrew Barr announced a temporary residential rate freeze and a rebate of $150 to all residential properties in the ACT from 1 July last year.

Despite promising a rates reprieve, 60,000 Canberrans were hit with rates rises last year, and now they want to increase rates again, Ms Lee said. Commercial rates will likely continue growing with double-digit increases in 2021-22.

Rates are expected to rise 3.75% from 1 July, Mr Barr said, as part of the ACT Governments 20-year plan to modernise the Territorys taxation system, abolishing inefficient and unfair taxes; the rates increase has replaced insurance taxes and stamp duty.

Mr Barr said the Government would continue its hardship concession program, and that it may apply a further rebate for the coming fiscal year 202122. We will make an assessment based on the state of the economy at the decision-making point, which would be the middle of the year.

Ms Lee continued: Despite promising to fixwaiting times within nine months, this Budget embeds the current problems and sees more delays to our hospital infrastructure continue, with the Canberra Hospital Expansion running years behind schedule.

Approximately 70schools plagued with hazardous materials continue to be neglected by Labor and the Greens, once again failing to take immediate action to ensure the safety of children and staff in our schools. Instead, there is $17 million for more demountables.

Despite Labor and the Greens commitments to deliver more affordable housing, the Budget does not provide any new funding for the 400 affordable houses promised. Further, due to a shortage of land for new homes in the coming years, the Government land supply dividend will go from $289 million this year to just $14 million in 202223. As a result of this, we will see housing and rental affordability further slip away.

The Canberra Liberals offered their solutions to the housing crisis earlier this week.

Canberrans deserve much better than what they are getting from this Government, and it is clear from the Budget handed down today they will continue to get below par government services, broken promises, and delays, Ms Lee concluded.

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Canberra Liberals: Budget will lead to higher rates, failing services - Canberra Weekly

Throughout centuries and across continents, thepolitical meaning of liberalism has evolved to represent a very different set of principles than it once did.

Researchersdetermined the first time theterm "liberal" wasused in a political manner was around 1769 by Scottish economist Adam Smith, who applied the word to discussions about trade as well as policy.To believe in liberal principles, for Smith, was to strive for natural libertyor the right for any person to pursue their own interests as long as they stayed in the lines of the law.Today in America some are proud to call themselves liberal while others attach negative connotations to the word. Supporters of modern liberalism believe it representsthe want for government to assist in political and social change, but critics of liberalism often feel it is a threat to their own way of life.

Stacker ranked each state first by the percentage of residents who identify as liberals and then by the percentage of the state's voters who voted for Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election, using data from Gallup, 270toWin, and the Cook Political Report's 2020 National Popular Vote Tracker.

While the war between conservatives and liberals has long been active in the U.S., it was glaringly apparent throughout the Trump administration. Misinformation, a common theme that began during former President Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign and persisted through his four years in office, painted a particularly negativepicture of liberalsfor Trump supporters.Fromasserting the COVID-19 crisis was all a rouse to get Trump out of office to declaring protests in Philadelphia after the police killing of Walter Wallace Jr. werethe most recent consequence of the Liberal Democrats war against the police,liberals were essentially declared public enemy #1 by the Trump administration. Trump did not create the divide between political parties but he did help to inflame the longstandingcontentious relationship.

Continue reading to find out how many liberals there are in every state post-Trump, beginning with the state with the least liberals in the U.S.

You may also like: States with the most conservatives

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States with the most liberals | National and World | dailylocal.com - Daily Local News

It was mostly unforeseen, the sudden sense of exultation and exhalation mingleda surging heart matched by a good, deep breaththat the Inauguration produced in so many. Even Bernie Sanders felt it, telling Seth Meyers that he wept with pleasure, in his now famous full-granddad getup, at the installation of the new President. Everyone suddenly burst out singing, the British Great War poet Siegfried Sassoon wrote about another memorable day of transition, Armistice Day, in 1918, and people burst out singing on this occasion, too, from Lady Gaga and J. Lo during the ceremony, masks cautiously off and spirits high, to Bruce Springsteen being so entirely, gravelly Bruce at night. That feeling of release made some a little reluctant to go back into evaluating the immediate past; having awoken from a bad dream, youre disinclined to want to spend too much time remembering all its elements. The sense of a new beginning is, of course, being exploited by the Trumpite rightlets move on, shall we, and just pretend that that violent insurrection thing didnt happenbut, even among those purer of heart and purpose, there is a properly sensed virtue in forgetting.

But it still seems worth making an inventory of our own anticipations and predictionsto open an inquiry into what those on the liberal side of the argument got right and what they got wrong about the fate of democracy over the course of the past four years. Like a lot of others, I got loud about what liberalism was and ought to be. I even wrote a book, intended as a kind of letter to my daughter, about what seemed to me its enduring values; not those of neo-liberalism, as its sometimes called, meaning the ideology of fanatic free-marketers, or of classic liberalism, which also often means the ideology of fanatic free-marketers, but a defense of the liberal humanist traditionwhich, to be sure, scoffers think is another name for the ideology of fanatic free-marketers, but isnt. That tradition descends as much from Montaigne as from Montesquieu, rooted in a view of human fallibility as much as in any faith in bicameral legislatures and checks and balances. Since the mid-nineteenth century, it has been a movement that, uniquely, sees a desire for egalitarian reform and a push for personal liberty as two faces of the same force; a movement for an ever-broadening sphere of personal freedom to love whom we like and to say what we think, and for an ever-larger insistence on erasing the differences between people and giving the same rights to all sexes and colors and kinds.

The first lesson, and vindication, for those of that liberal turn of mind is the continuing demonstration of the superiority, both moral and pragmatic, of pluralism to purism. That truth has been demonstrated twice by that improbable liberal hero Joe Biden, first in the Democratic primaries and then in the general election. There was an extended moment, in 2018 and 2019, when a dominant belief on the left was that the only way to counter the extreme narrowness of Trumpism was with an equally pointed alternative. Bernie Sanders, whose values and programsMedicare for All, breaking up the banks, a Green New Dealhave long appeared admirable to many, still seemed to rest his campaign on a belief that one could win the Democratic nomination without a majority, as long as the minority was sufficiently motivated and committed, and as long as the rest of the field remained fragmented.

But the inflamed flamed out. Biden, despite his uninspiring social-media presence and his generally antediluvian vibe, shifted, like his party, to the left, yet managed to pull together a broad coalition to win the nomination, and then did it again against Donald Trump. The pluralism of that coalition stretched from its base, among African-American women, to those suburban white women who turned on Trump, to disaffected McCain Republicans, in Arizona, to Latinoswho, warningly, in some areas voted less Democratic than in the past, but still voted Democratic. (And not to forget those neocon Never Trumpers who seem to have played a small but significant role in turning key votes in key places.) It was a classic liberal coalition: many different kinds with a single shared goal. Sanders, by the way, is, in a manner, still insufficiently celebrated as a hero of that coalition: with Biden, he co-led unity task forces, to keep his followers in the fold; never flinched in his support; and refused to play the diva-ish part that many in his train might have wanted, even whenas when Biden occasionally scorned the socialists he had beatenhe must have had to bite his arm to stay silent. This solidarity, to use the old-fashioned lefty phrase, was rooted both in his obvious affection for Biden and in his ability to grasp a set of priorities: winning the nomination for his own causes would have been terrific; defeating Trump for the countrys cause was essential.

The second, complementary idea vindicated by Bidens election is that whats often deprecated as centrism is simply a radicalism of the real. Biden arrives as a conciliator and a healer, a family man of faith unafraid to speak of faith. But, after four years of chaos and the catastrophe of the pandemic, he also has presented the most progressive platform of any President in American history since F.D.R. He can be both at once, because he lives, like most people, a life replenished by a plurality of identities. His victory was made possible by monthsyears, reallyof unglamorous work by activists in registering voters and overcoming disincentives and building a base capable of action. Anyone who was on the phone with those who were on the phone with people in Georgia and Michigan and the other key states knows how hard they worked, not at the macro level of ideological certainty but at the micro level of pragmatic persuasion. It was, as liberal triumphs always are, achieved by thinking of the world in terms of many individual parts, not a single ideological whole.

The election was a vindication of the view that the strength of liberal democracy lies only in the strength of liberal institutions, those intermediate repositories of social trust without which mere elections mean nothing. One saw their strength most movingly, perhaps, with the resistance of those Georgia Republican electoral officials to Trumps outrageous interference. Their integrity was not manifest in a set of melodramatic gestures of the kind that J.F.K. wrote about in his once famous (and partly ghostwritten) book Profiles in Courage. It manifested itself in a set of commitments to established, democratic, bureaucratic procedures: stick to these rules, because these rules are fair, even if your side is losingthats as much the sound of freedom as any clarion call.

What did liberals miss and get wrong? Above all, perhaps, the single most important thing: that no matter how hard you try to properly gauge the power of the irrational in human affairs, you can never estimate it adequately. What stirred the insurrectionist mob to storm the Capitol was primarily Trumps lies, but also, in some cases, theories and beliefs that were not only difficult to credit but difficult even to narrate. The QAnon theory of the world isnt just alarmingly incoherent but completely implausible, and yet it motivates some to be willing to kill and be killed. It is always hard for the liberal imagination to imagine fanaticism adequately, and that is one of its failures. Liberalism persists in the insistence that extreme irrationalities of nationalism and ethnic tribalism can be placated by this economic policy or that new bill. They cant. Such grievances are an independent and self-regenerating force in human affairs as powerful as any other that can be combatted but never entirely cured.

Yet, perhaps most important, what liberals got very right very early was to see how wrong Trump was. Many saw in 2016 what culminated in January of 2021: that Trump was an implacable enemy of democracy itself; that if Trump came to power America would never fully recover. And, indeed, the damage done may be even more grievous than we can yet understand, much less accept. The moral accountancy of the Trump years has hardly begun, and a failure of the new Administration to do its work could lead to the revival of Trumpism, if not of Trump himself, in a form more ferocious than the form just passed. But, for the moment, we breathe, and sing, and hope.

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What Liberalism Can Learn from What It Took to Defeat Donald Trump - The New Yorker

OTTAWA The federal Conservative party raised substantially more money than the governing Liberals last year, as new Elections Canada figures show the Official Opposition has been filling its coffers ahead of a potential election this year.

The Conservatives ended 2020 with a major surge in donations in the final quarter, while the Liberals also drummed up more contributions in the last three months of the year.

The Conservatives raised $7.7 million from about 46,000 donors between October and December, according to Elections Canada, while the Liberal party says it drew in $6.5 million from some 48,000 donors.

The contributions roughly doubled the Liberal party's third-quarter sum, marking its best-ever quarter outside of an election year and its most lucrative fourth quarter on record but not enough to make up for a year of lower figures.

The Liberals raised about $15.1 million in 2020 compared to the Conservatives' $20.7 million, according to totals submitted to Elections Canada.

The Conservatives held a leadership race last year, but parties of all stripes have also been ramping up their fundraising efforts amid growing speculation about a federal election before the year is out.

"While other parties have pushed for an election, the Liberal party's focus is to do everything it takes to keep Canadians safe and supported through this global crisis and that will continue to be the case," Liberal spokesman Braeden Caley said in an email.

The comments come as all parties start to lay the ground work in ridings across the country, including with candidate recruitment and green-light committees for vetting would-be nominees.

Conservative Leader Erin O'Toole said last week the party's healthy cash haul during his first six months at the helm were proof his focus on the economy and job creation is resonating.

"The Liberals can focus on keeping their own jobs, Conservatives are focused on securing yours," he said last week in a statement.

Meanwhile the NDP says it raised $2.5 million in the final three months of 2020, allowing it to pay off the last of its campaign debt.

The windfall last quarter makes up more than 40 per cent of the $6.1 million raised by New Democrats throughout 2020.

The party says it still has more than $1 million in its coffers after slaying the hefty $10-million debt from its 2019 election campaign.

The Bloc Qubcois registered more than $961,000 in contributions from less than 1,000 donors between October and December, and $1.6 million throughout 2020.

The Green party says it raised $1.4 million in the fourth quarter, and $3.5 million for the whole year.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 1, 2021.

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Conservatives beat Liberals in 2020 fundraising race as both parties ramp up efforts - Kamloops This Week