Ken DeGraaf
How does your experience make you qualified to represent the people as State Representative for District 22?
As a 30-year multi-mission AF veteran with a master’s degree in engineering and a foundation in manual labor in addition to having been a USAFA instructor and Environmental Manager and school board member, I am able to understand and engage in the diverse economy of Colorado. My wife & I moved many times to numerous States in raising our 3 children and have a broad understanding of the country and have experience internationally. I recognize that people want less intrusive and more transparent government, but have become accustomed to looking to legislators who are keen on campaign promises, but who deliver incrementally but continually increasing transfer of individual liberty and wealth to a bloated but insatiable State.
Voters may be surprised to learn that 100 representatives in about 100 days will consider over 700 pieces of legislation, and shocked to learn that $ 40 billion will be spent by the State next year. That’s about $25,000 per year for an average family, up from about $15,000 just 5 years ago—a 66% increase. That’s in addition to all of the unfunded mandates pushed down to the municipalities. The majority of such legislation is contrived to garner the support of various special interests and promote ideological agendas completely at odds with the values of Coloradans but presented with a deceptive bill title to elicit emotional support. “Legislation 101: what it says it is, it ain’t.”
What are your top policy priorities as State Representative for District 22?
Per my oath to the Constitutions of Colorado and the United States of America, it is my intent “to secure these Rights,” “among (which) are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” for ALL Coloradans. This means ensuring all Coloradans are able to live their lives fully, limiting the prosperity-draining growth of government taxation & spending, and striving to return our Liberties usurped by ideologues eager to legislate away our actions and speech to prop up their personal agendas. Colorado statutes have become increasingly at odds with these values.
Election integrity (HB24-1279, -1145) is the heart of good governance, so making the ballot process secure & transparent while cleaning up the voting rolls to reduce the millions spent on wasted ballots. Colorado’s Civil Asset Forfeiture laws (HB24-1023) unfairly target the poor by allowing asset transfer to the State without an actual criminal conviction, violating our 6th & 14th Amendments. Parents are not “an accident of birth,” nor are children a group project for the State; parents are best suited and best inclined to raise their children (HCR24-1005) who should be free of grooming agendas and materials (ratedbooks.org) centered around pornographic ideations of billionaire investors and in support of a billion-dollar pharma franchise (https://cass.independent-review.uk/home/publications/final-report/). Reliable energy (HB24-1246) is required to sustain our economy and should not be at the whim of superstitions regarding the foundational molecule of all life (https://youtu.be/PpcISHuSCpo).
What will your approach and thoughts on how we will address immigration issues facing our country and Colorado?
Migrants need to be 100% treated with the dignity commensurate with their “Imago Dei” status, which begins with not continuing a system that encourages exploitation of the vulnerable while welcoming those willing to wantonly violate our legal system. Migrants unprotected by documentation become a permanently exploitable and expendable slave-caste, which robs their dignity while undermining our economy and social structures and drains our tax dollars into billions of dollars of money transfers to their country of origin which ends up propping up the authoritarian dictatorships from which they are presumably fleeing. Sadly, thousands of women and children have been trafficked into the unknown by this collusion between border cartels and our government.
The United States population is less than 4% of the global population, so even accepting migrants at a 1:1 ratio, well beyond societal collapse, would have a negligible impact on the billions who would emigrate if able (https://youtu.be/KCcFNL7EmwY?si=9Isnsl3W4FyehSVd). Immigration needs to return to a humane & orderly process without government-funded/controlled (ref “absolute control”, CO Constitution, Article V, section 34) sponsors. The US should be extolling and exporting the values resultant in prosperity as delineated in our founding documents, not using those fleeing authoritarianism to create a more authoritarian government in our own country.
Coloradans are feeling the pinch for the cost of living because of skyrocketing inflation. What do you think needs to be done to help families?
Inflation is driven by government spending, yet the annual onslaught of 500-700 bills for Colorado alone, along with the endless and essentially unaccountable rule-making they mandate, continually grows regulatory expenses on businesses and property ownership, driving jobs overseas and property into the hands of corporations. Renewed calls for a living wage give proof that wages are not keeping up with government devaluation of spending power. Unfortunately, a government-imposed wage increase always leads to reduced income as jobs are pushed elsewhere or eliminated altogether. The solution is to create a strong economy by reducing spending and regulation so businesses must compete to attract workers.
Energy drives life & the economy whether that’s housing, transportation, food, or entertainment. Harnessing the stored solar energy of hydrocarbons has resulted in unprecedented human thriving with the waste products of water vapor and carbon dioxide, both of which are life-essential. The estimated cost of even approaching NetZero approaches $12,000 per person per year for to pay for the millions of acres of solar panels, hundreds of thousands of miles of power lines & pipelines, and untold numbers of bird-obliterating windmills, yet the climate impact from any Coloradan’s “carbon footprint” the equivalent of less than ½ of one drop* in 20 Olympic-sized swimming pools full of drops (https://youtu.be/PpcISHuSCpo) while the “carbon footprint” of those countries taking our jobs (and paying off our politicians) is growing exponentially, negating our austerity tenfold. Proverbially, “it is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.” “NetZero” is the equivalent of screaming into the night for illumination—it’s both futile and exhausting.
What role do you believe the state government has in addressing gun violence? What are your ideas on implementing gun policies?
If Colorado democrats were serious about reducing gun violence, they would implement constitutional carry instead of imposing ever-increasing laws on law-abiding citizens and running our jails as a bed and breakfast for those who ignore them. Our crime rates have ratcheted us up the rankings (from #21 to #3 in 5 years) of most dangerous states. As crime increases, efforts to disarm law-abiding citizens make them more likely to be a victim. This is compounded by cities like Denver diverting millions of dollars from protecting our own citizens from crime into pampering illegal migrants. To allow Denver Democrats to continue in their delusion, the burden of these actively attracted “newcomers” is being foisted on municipalities around the State.
Ultimately the Second Amendment is to protect us against the government. As Black Panther founder Huey Newton observed: “Any unarmed people are slaves, or are subject to slavery at any given moment. If the guns are taken out of the hands of the people and only the pigs have guns, then it's off to the concentration camps, the gas chambers, or whatever the fascists in America come up with. One of the democratic rights of the United States, the Second Amendment to the Constitution, gives the people the right to bear arms. However, there is a greater right; the right of human dignity that gives all men the right to defend themselves.” History is replete with examples of the subjugation and genocide that soon follows disarming a population, or subset thereof. George Mason would agree: “To disarm the people [is] the best and most effective way to enslave them.” History is ignored or erased by those looking to repeat it.
Do you have any ideas on what can be done on the state level to increase affordable housing?
Cut spending, regulatory mandates, and energy costs. The burgeoning of government-imposed energy & regulatory cost increases and an insatiable lust for forcibly extracted tax dollars, combined with inflationary spending decreasing the value of the dollar has dramatically driven up housing costs. Increasing costs of construction and crime have increased the costs of insurance to the point where insurers cannot keep up and are terminating policies. The simultaneous elimination of the Gallagher amendment caused homeowner taxes to in skyrocket, and the promised relief of Prop-HH was a scam to raise taxes further. Allowing educational autonomy (eg, HB23-1079) would allow educational solutions closer to work even if that is in a zone of a failing school district, which would keep housing areas from falling into an “undesirable” category. Increasing housing availability lowers costs and would decrease the traffic which would be otherwise necessary to reach a desirable school district.
The proposed “solutions” of democrats are illusions to snatch property from citizens and put it into those of corporate donors invested in controlling the housing market. No-limit occupancy and eliminating any meaning to the word “family” will mean multiple incomes can bunk up under one roof, driving up rent and sales prices while pushing out single families wanting a place to call their own (Reps Rutinel and Mabrey assured us the upside is that no one will ever be lonely (seriously)). Eliminating no-rent parking requirements means that every parking lot can be turned into another high-rise without parking and the driveway of your single-family rental could now be rented to a higher bidder because cars parked on the street far from home are more vulnerable in a state that has risen from #21 to #3 for crime in just 5 years. Since mass-transit is subsidized at over $2 per passenger mile before being boosted over $35million tax dollars per year for the 2% who use it, democrats want to bump up zoning for no-limit/no-parking housing density from about 6 units per acre to a minimum of 40 for upwards of 80% of every municipality with bus routes to appease the climate gods by making personal vehicles unsustainable (democrats at least promise your job will materialize within a 15minute walk).
