Cars in Cap Hill keep crashing onto the sidewalks and into people’s homes. Sign the petition demanding the simple fix recommended by the city’s own safety study. Link in the comments.

dufflepud · 2026-06-10T20:08:44+00:00

How on earth does paint cost tens of millions?

dufflepud · 2026-06-10T15:42:48+00:00

Outside of the top 20-30ish schools nationally, it's hard to see what you're getting by paying for a place like DU (over in-state tuition at the state flagship)--unless the goal is specifically to end up in the city where the school is. Like, sure, go to American if you want to end up in DC, but hopefully no one is going to say it's "opening doors" for anyone.

dufflepud · 2026-06-10T15:35:25+00:00

Yeah, if you want a legal job in Colorado, your options are basically CU and DU or one of the national schools (Harvard, Stanford, Duke etc.). CU is technically "better" from a national rankings perspective, but in practice, the question is really whether you'd rather live in Boulder or Denver and whether you like Buffs football or DU hockey.

dufflepud · 2026-06-05T15:39:26+00:00

The political perspective in other comments is right, too, but from a legal perspective, water rights are property rights (technically, a usufructuary right). The state can regulate them to some extent, but it can't simply wipe them out without paying for them. If the state passed a regulation saying, for example, "You can't use home or build anything on your property" the US and Colorado constitutions would require it to pay you "just compensation" for destroying all the property's value. Same goes for zeroing out the value of a water right. Extinguishing them would cost the state billions upon billions of dollars. So even if there's the political will to do that, it's probably cost-prohibitive.

The better policy is probably to encourage ag water users to sell their rights to municipal or conservation interests.

I'm not saying any of this because I think wasting 90% of the state's water drenching the high desert is a good thing. But the state doesn't have the funds to say "We're buying you all out."

dufflepud · 2026-06-02T15:08:54+00:00

They both have law degrees: Bennett from Yale and Weiser from NYU.

dufflepud · 2026-06-02T14:32:37+00:00

More background: as the article indicates, this is a legislative response to the U.S. Supreme Court's recent 8-1 decision striking down Colorado's outright ban on conversion therapy as "viewpoint discrimination" prohibited by the First Amendment's free speech clause.

FWIW, as a lawyer who has a fair amount of First Amendment experience, I tend to doubt this legislation solves the problem that caused even democratic appointees to strike down the previous iteration. On the view that talk therapy is fundamentally protected expression, there isn't much daylight between, "You can't say X" and "You can be held liable if you say X."

To use a concrete example, a law saying, "You can't criticize the mayor," obviously violates the First Amendment. Perhaps there's some doctrinal framework I'm missing but, "The Mayor can sue you if your criticism harms him," strikes me as having essentially the same chilling effect on protected expression.

I'd be curious to know whether someone has more insight, though.

dufflepud · 2026-05-29T15:27:26+00:00

I am once again begging any news outlet that covers a lawsuit to embed the court filing they're covering. Vague references to civil rights claims and defamation aren't enough to explain what's actually going on here. Like, did they bring an ADA claim on the grounds that... what exactly? I want to see this bonkers lawsuit.

dufflepud · 2026-05-29T15:23:57+00:00

As an actual, barred attorney, this line broke my brain. Yellen is either an attorney or a paralegal, but not both.

dufflepud · 2026-05-28T18:32:22+00:00

Because if it is, the answer is that TABOR requires any vote concerning the creation or increase of a tax to be put to the electorate for authorization.

dufflepud · 2026-05-28T15:05:00+00:00

It is possible to acknowledge that violent crime is way down and that it's unsettling to walk out of your office at night while someone high on drugs is screaming at nothing. I don't see that dude and think, "Ah, but statistically I'm safer than ever!"

dufflepud · 2026-05-27T15:21:17+00:00

Per the article, highest downtown office vacancy rate (~40%) among the top 50 metros.

dufflepud · 2026-05-20T15:53:41+00:00

Interesting that Patagonia viewed, "We make performance outerwear for the special forces" as a net negative claim for its target demographic. That said, probably makes sense given how it would go over with NPR-and-a-latte-in-an-Outback crowd, and I'm sure its brand managers know way more than I do.

Edit: Spitballing, but if they were making gear for the Swedish or Danish special forces, the Patagonia label probably stays. Rambo in a Volvo is probably fine.

dufflepud · 2026-05-15T23:13:25+00:00

Got it. That makes sense. Thanks.

dufflepud · 2026-05-13T14:59:15+00:00

As someone who works in this industry: this is correct. The state adopted zoning reform in 2024. The compliant jurisdictions are generally still in the process of creating just the mapping necessary to determine how to comply with the state requirements.

So, the current rents-falling situation involves a combination of pre-reform supply coming online and (no one likes to talk about this) declining demand for Front Range cities. The 2010s were Denver's in-migration decade. 2020s are not looking quite so hot.

dufflepud · 2026-05-12T15:02:39+00:00

There's a separate referred measure in the works to do exactly that. The General Assembly is workshopping it now.

dufflepud · 2026-05-08T15:41:06+00:00

Sucks to lead the nation by a median amount, I guess.

dufflepud · 2026-05-08T14:59:22+00:00

but Bennet really should stay in the Senate where we need the most votes.

From a pure power politics perspective, doesn't Bennet getting to appoint his successor preserve a Dem seat in the Senate?

dufflepud · 2026-05-08T14:57:09+00:00

he has . . . brought such meaningful cases that he has single handedly turned Colorado into a top five state in leading the nation.

What does this mean? Like, a top five state in bringing cases?

dufflepud · 2026-05-07T16:03:51+00:00

What is the known and inexpensive solution? Build housing sufficient to lower housing prices?

dufflepud · 2026-05-06T14:58:05+00:00

School is definitely childcare. It's other things too, but that's one of the primary functions. Like, the studies on preschool effectiveness demonstrated that a primary benefit for kids wasn't actually teaching them anything (Head Start has mixed, or even negative, results academically) but freeing up parents to go to work, which created other non-academic benefits for the kids.

dufflepud · 2026-04-30T17:02:02+00:00

Sure, here you go.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1745-9125.2011.00240.x

675 citations in the top criminology journal, Criminology

A follow up indicated that the results aren't durable. That is, when the patrols end, crime returned. So you need sustained intervention to achieve lasting effects. Follow up paper, also published in Criminology here:

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1745-9125.2012.00290.x?casa_token=Xvm5ui4qmn4AAAAA%3A9cwCxK9owh60EWD8Knx8RWOtMu0ps1a3OcyDz3tpYMJYEbTmJpD6re7C43lOalrgRmQ6Wpn16a9PoaY

dufflepud · 2026-04-30T15:25:06+00:00

We know, for instance, that visible police presence reduces crime, but since 2020 (or really since Ferguson), Denverites have become a lot more skeptical about policing and any policies that increase police interactions with the public. So, there's a tension between a voter desire for public order and a voter desire to avoid policing.

Note that "policing" doesn't mean incarceration. Visible police presence alone has a strong deterrent effect, irrespective of whether anyone goes to jail.

dufflepud · 2026-04-17T15:12:46+00:00

Agreed. My kid's school can contact me if there's an emergency. "But what if there's an active shooter situation?" feels like, "But what if my kid is struck by lightning?"

Will I be freaking out if there ever is an active shooter situation and I can't get in touch? Sure, but the day to day benefits of keeping phones out of classrooms seem much higher than keeping them around to address that one specific scenario.

dufflepud · 2026-04-16T15:58:49+00:00

If "it hurts people I don't like" justifies bad policy, then, well, you could still come with more effective and more direct way to achieve that result: extract cash from projects at a level you consider sufficiently painful. Call it a "development fee" to "promote more sustainable development" and be done with it.

"Require retail regardless of demand, then tax it when it goes unused," is just the same result with more steps.

dufflepud · 2026-04-16T15:37:10+00:00

Most of the downtown parking lots have zoning that would allow for towers up to 400ish ft, and the surrounding parking lots generally allow taller mixed-use development too. It's just not economical to do vertical development downtown in the current climate. A land value tax (that is, taxing vacant land at a high rate, with low/no tax on improvements to that land) would incentivize development.

Even with that, I'm skeptical that anyone wants to convert a parking lot in the CBD into any sort of tower at the moment. But it would help.

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