Colorado does not have a money problem.
It has an accountability allergy.
Time for a break from the Epstein files for something closer to home.
If I’m two cents short on a tax payment, the federal government knows instantly.
Not eventually.
Not after an audit. Instantly.
Letters appear.
Deadlines harden.
Interest accumulates.
The system is precise, relentless, and fully operational when the subject is an individual.
Yet when millions of dollars vanish inside Colorado’s public projects, the system suddenly develops amnesia.
Look at the roads.
Every project takes years.
Every project runs over budget.
Every project comes with the same recycled explanation about unforeseen challenges, as if winter, traffic, and concrete degradation are brand-new phenomena.
Cones multiply.
Lanes disappear.
Timelines dissolve.
Nobody can say, with confidence, where the extra money went.
Then there’s homelessness funding.
Under Mayor Mike Johnston, Denver cannot clearly track millions allocated to address the crisis.
Not minor discrepancies.
Not delayed invoices.
Large sums of public money that cannot be cleanly followed from allocation to outcome. Taxpayers are told to trust the intent, applaud the effort, and not ask impolite questions about results.
Now widen the lens.
Why would a Trump administration deny or slow federal disaster funds to Colorado?
Not because disasters didn’t happen.
Not because people don’t deserve help.
But because Colorado has spent years demonstrating that it cannot convincingly account for the money it already receives.
This is where being fair matters.
From Trump’s point of view and whether you like him or despise him is irrelevant, Colorado is an easy mark.
A blue state with a reputation for cost overruns, vague audits, lost funds, and endless task forces that produce reports instead of consequences.
A state that demands federal assistance while struggling to explain where the last round of money went.
Trump didn’t invent that narrative. Colorado made it plausible.
A president who governs through grievance, loyalty tests, and leverage is not going to rush disaster aid to a state that hands him an excuse to say no. Especially when denying it plays well to a base that already believes liberal governments waste money and avoid accountability.
That denial is cruel.
It’s cynical.
And it’s entirely predictable.
The real failure isn’t Trump’s behavior.
That part is consistent.
The failure is that Colorado’s institutions made his cynicism defensible.
If I told the state my payment was delayed due to administrative complexity, penalties would still apply.
If I said my records were under review, interest would still accrue. Individuals do not get grace periods. Institutions do.
Precision is mandatory for taxpayers and optional for governments.
Scrutiny is brutal for citizens and ceremonial for officials.
When individuals make mistakes, the system enforces.
When the system makes mistakes, it explains.
Here is the truth nobody wants to say out loud. Colorado’s biggest infrastructure failure isn’t roads or housing or homelessness. It’s credibility. When a state cannot track its own money, it forfeits moral authority to demand more and it hands bad actors in Washington the perfect excuse to punish innocent people. The government that can find you for two missing cents but can’t find millions of public dollars doesn’t get betrayed by politics. It gets exposed by it.
For Christmas another book to bore you all with.
PRAGMATIC ISSUES 
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