Struggling to meet your bills? You now get to pay for prisoners' phone calls. A sleeper law that give the AG lots more power. I shaded out my flowers!
Starting this year (and reaching 100% funding by 2025) you will pay for prisoner’s phone calls.
While you struggle to meet your bills, I'd like to remind you that you'll be soon enough be paying for inmates to make phone calls.
While the state is making life more expensive and harder for business, it's making it easier for inmates (at your expense).
Starting on Sept 1, the state is now on the hook to pay for prisoner phone calls. HB23-1133, signed into law by Governor Polis in June, gradually shifts the cost of inmate phone calls to the CO Dept of Corrections (ratcheting up to 100% free by July 2025).
Since you and I fund the DOC here, this means we'll be paying for inmate phone calls. And it ain't going to be cheap. Take a look at the screenshot I attached from the bill's fiscal note. Up to $1.1 million per year by the time it's in full swing.
Don't know about you, but I harbor no particular animus to prisoners in the sense I want to add to their punishment. I don't want to isolate them.
I just don't want to pay more, at a time when I already feel pressure enough from the cost of living in this state, so they can talk to people.
Have your family put money on your books, do collect calls, just don't ask me to pay. I didn't put you in prison.
This is the worst kind of law that can be written. I fail to see any redeeming benefit to society and, as such, this law simply functions to take money out of your hands, out of your children's mouths, to give to someone else.
Quick note on sponsors: if you follow politics closely you'll note on of bill's sponsors is Senator Robert Rodriguez, the newly-minted majority leader in the senate. Rewarded by the party for his moderate stance on policy obviously.
https://www.coloradopolitics.com/legislature/free-prison-phone-calls/article_c33848d8-4814-11ee-9db6-aff25c45763a.html#:~:text=Beginning%20on%20Friday%2C%2025%25%20of,with%20Minnesota%20following%20after%20Colorado
https://leg.colorado.gov/sites/default/files/documents/2023A/bills/fn/2023a_hb1133_r3.pdf
A law that flew under the radar, and, incidentally, gave the Attorney General quite a bit more power.
I like reading widely because, when you do, you see things that are easy to miss.
For example, with all the culture wars issues to fuss over, it would be easy to miss a boring old bill that updates Colorado's antitrust laws.
The problem with missing those updates, however, is that legislators can sneak in some troubling details to those bills. In this regard the updates to the antitrust law don't disappoint.
I say this especially since a lot of the updates are with regard to so-called price gouging and also expanding the role of the AG further and further.
Take a look at screenshots 1 and 2.
In screenshot 1 you'll see that the law preventing what the drafters refer to as price gouging is now extended beyond its original 180 day limit until the declared emergency expires, representing one more case in our law where the government can insert itself into the economy when it wants and keep that power for as long as it wants.
Now look at screenshot 2. I underlined all the new goodies the AG gets in red and then an interesting highlight in blue.
What sticks out to me especially is the bit at the end in red where the AG can get involved in matters or policy involving workers. Put that alongside the upper bit in blue and I see a real chance for a labor activist and uber progressive like Phil Weiser to start using this new law to help his union backers and paymasters.
Look, I'm not a complete laissez-faire capitalist. Nor am I one who supports giant corporations whose size alone threatens free trade.
At the same time, this feels and looks like a gimme to an office currently held by a man who has values that are on the far side of the left end in the spectrum and who hasn't been shy about stepping in on things to support his values (regardless of its effect on citizens who might disagree with his opinions).
This also feels like a move in the wrong direction where we are making emergency powers have fewer and fewer checks on them.
https://www.lawweekcolorado.com/article/colorado-quietly-updates-strengthens-states-antitrust-law/
Squash mountain shaded out my flowers.
Well, damn.
I turned some lawn into garden space this last year (you probably don't recall but it was the bit that didn't get good sprinkler coverage and thus was almost always brown from mid summer on--I wrote about it).
It became "squash mountain" this year (with the ollas): acorn and sugar pumpkins.
Well, I don't think I tended to things very well because the flowers that sit behind it (a salvia, an aztec lilly, and my mum) got shaded out by the squash and didn't fare so well. See the attached picture showing all 3. Looking pretty poorly.
A goof on my part: going to have to watch that more carefully in the future. I do like the squash, and I feel good about the production from the new land, but I am disappointed about my mum.
I look forward to its blooms every year because it's one of the last ones to do so and it's a good cap on summer. I'd be willing to sacrifice a few pumpkins for that.
If you look at the close up of the mum in the other picture, you'll see some buds but, depending on the weather and the first frost, I am not so sure it'll get over the line bloom-wise.
Ah well. Back at it next year. This will be "melon mountain" next Spring because, per my other post, I intend to make that more of a priority next year.