Number One With a Budget

Colorado is the finest state in the Union.

You know all the touristy reasons already. Purple mountains majesty, every imaginable outdoor activity shy of having an ocean, truly fine dining (at last!) to show off the results of our world-class ranching, really cool military installations, some of the most impressive highway engineering in the world (I-70 between the Eisenhower Tunnel and Grand Junction makes me wish I’d been a civil engineer), fine public and private universities, low crime rates. . .it’s an almost-endless list. Really, unless you simply can’t live without an ocean, there’s no place better than Colorado.

That’s not to say we don’t have our problems. City planning around here, especially in my town of Colorado Springs, might just be the world’s most unfunny joke. Our traffic works on Chaos Theory, only without the structure. Too many transplanted Left Coasties and Flatlanders (I’m guilty of being a bit of both) have caused all sorts of problems. We’ve been in a drought now for four years, and our booming population makes the long-term water situation look even worse.

But at least we’re adept at governing ourselves.

I should modify that a wee bit. We’re as good at self-governance as any democratic republic, and better than most. Democracy is a messy, uneven process that’s bound to take too long, please no one, and leave lots of stuff undone. In that way, we here in Colorado are no better or worse than anyone else. Sure, a Mussolini here might make the Denver Metro run on time, and a Hitler might be able to unsnarl our highways