Thanks as always to Pirate’s Cove, The Other McCain and Bacon Time for the Rule Five links!

Colorado’s roads are in notoriously bad shape.  Now one might blame that on a lack of revenues, which is horseshit; one might blame it on climate change which is laughable; one might also blame it on incompetent leadership put in place due to corruption, in which case you’d be right in the ten ring.  Excerpt:

In December 2018, Governor Jared Polis appointed 35-year-old Shoshana Lew as his new Executive Director, a history major at Harvard University with an M.A. in American History from Northwestern. She replaced Governor Hickenlooper’s appointment of 56-year-old Michael Lewis, an engineer with extensive public construction management experience. Lew’s appointment was a shock to CDOT employees.

Lew’s primary qualification, according to insiders, was her close relationship to Michelle Obama who called the newly elected governor for a favor — find a job for Shoshana Lew. Lew is the daughter of President Obama’s Chief of Staff and later Secretary of the Treasury, Jack Lew. Ms. Lew is considered by some as an example of how the rich and well connected can use their positions to secure favored treatment in and outside of government.

While originally intending to get a doctorate in history and become a history professor, she instead joined the Washington based liberal Brookings Institute as a policy analyst. Almost magically, although in her 20s with no experience, she entered the Obama administration and soon became a senior adviser at the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and policy adviser at the White House Domestic Policy Council. With no financial background whatsoever, she next was appointed Chief Financial Officer of U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) as well as garnering other impressive titles.

As the Obama administration began winding down, she parlayed her position as CFO of USDOT to become the Chief Operating Officer (COO) of Rhode Island Department of Transportation (RIDOT) in the spring of 2017. After a controversial reign as COO for RIDOT of just over one year she was appointed Executive Director of CDOT in December 2018 by Governor Polis — a job, according to CDOT employees, she was wholly ill prepared for. CDOT employs over 3,300 people and has an annual budget in excess of $4.5 billion.

So, in other words, Governor Polis has appointed an inexperienced, unqualified political crony of Michelle Obama to oversee Colorado’s collapsing road network.

No wonder potholes are going unrepaired.

For some years now, Colorado – a place where I have lived for thirty years, a state I love for many reasons – has been following in California’s footsteps.  This bit of abject cronyism, Governor Polis appointing a wholly unqualified, incompetent political crony of a national figure who has never held elected or appointed office herself, is just a recent, egregious example.

So what recourse do sensible Colorado voters have?  That’s unclear.  There’s a “Recall Polis” petition going around, but honestly, it probably won’t amount to anything.  Sensible voters in the outer suburbs, the Eastern Plains, the Western Slope and other places will not now be able to overcome the Californicated Denver-Boulder Axis that now runs that state.

It’s sad, but Colorado is no longer a free state.  And we should note that the appointment of incompetent political cronies is a symptom, not a cause.