Whether they like it or not.
The first scrap can be traced back to June 2, 2022, one year ago today, when Bruce broke his shoulder in a fall at the Western Conservative Summit, an annual right-wing confab staged by the Centennial Institute, an affiliate of Colorado Christian University. Twelve months later, he's still feeling the ill effects of the injury; his breathing is labored, forcing him to speak in "fragments rather than in full paragraphs," he notes. For this reason and more, he's filed a lawsuit against the Gaylord Rockies Resort in Aurora, where the event took place after being moved from its traditional Colorado Convention Center location amid much hyped Denver-in-decay concerns. (This year's summit, scheduled for June 9-10, is returning to the convention center.) Marriott Hotel Services, parent company of the Gaylord Rockies Resort, hasn't responded to Westword's inquiry about the complaint.
As for the second battle, it pertains to Proposition HH, a measure earmarked for the November ballot that proposes to reduce future TABOR refunds in order to lower current property taxes. But the proposal also allows the State of Colorado to collect and spend up to $10 billion more than TABOR allows over the next decade, resulting in what Bruce sees as a blatant bait-and-switch — and he's going to do his damnedest to bring it down.
"The issue for the next six months is to get everybody to understand that the government is trying once again to rip them off," he says. "They need to vote against Proposition HH and tell 5,000 of their closest friends that they need to do the same. They need to not only vote against it themselves, but they need to take people to the polls and make sure their neighbors are alert to the fact that this is a multi-billion-dollar scam."
Bruce sees Proposition HH as the latest effort by cash-addicted politicos to undermine TABOR, a 1992 state constitution amendment approved by Coloradans that "generally limits the amount of revenue governments in the state can retain and spend," according to the Colorado Department of Revenue's online primer. "Absent voter approval, it requires excess revenue to be refunded to taxpayers. TABOR also requires voter approval for certain tax increases. The state TABOR revenue limit is generally equal to the prior fiscal year's limit plus the rate of inflation and population growth in Colorado, subject to a voter-approved floor."
Such attacks are nothing new, Bruce points out. "Remember that old fool Roy Romer?" he asks, referencing Colorado's governor at the time TABOR passed. "He said Colorado would be closed for business and the state would be ruined. We'd have no money for police or fire. They ran TV commercials with flashing red lights. They were acting as if there was a crisis because people would be allowed to vote — and they were wrong."
Bruce still touts the amendment as a commonsense way to prevent property taxes from rising out of control. "We took the profit out of reassessment," he stresses. "We didn't want property owners to be punished because of prosperity — so we lowered the tax rate, called the mill levy, when values went up. That way, the combination of the mill levy times the higher value basically equals the CPI" — the Consumer Price Index, which tracks the prices paid by individuals for common goods and services. As a result, Bruce continues, "the government gets more money to increase its purchasing power, but only to adjust for inflation."
A screen capture from "Douglas Bruce Ruined Colorado," a segment from the TBS program Full Frontal With Samantha Bee.
TBS via YouTube
He certainly doesn't see any reason to apologize. "I know what I did was inspired and correct and courageous," Bruce says, "and I can accept the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, to quote Shakespeare."
There's also a potential price for Bruce regarding his lawsuit against the Gaylord.
At last year's Western Conservative Summit, "I went to an elevated stage, about five feet above ground level, and it was pitch black," he recalls. "There was no lighting on the floor, and I had to look up to hand the incoming president of the Heritage Foundation a document — and when I turned around to walk away, I tripped over some wires on the black floor and fell on my left shoulder. I had to have surgery; they had to piece the bones back together. And it's really screwed up my life."
The Gaylord is to blame for what happened, Bruce believes, but "because I was required by attorney advice to list all the potential people who might be liable," a May 26 ruling in the case, which is being moved from federal jurisdiction to El Paso County District Court, lists Colorado Christian University as a potential defendant. As a result, he fears that he won't get his usual complimentary passes to attend this year's event. He's reached out to the Centennial Institute's Jeff Hunt, but has yet to receive a response — and Hunt has not yet replied to Westword's requests for comment on the subject, either.
Granted, an invitation to the Summit is much lower on Bruce's priority list than defeating Proposition HH, which to him represents political trickery of the sort that marked the recent negotiations to raise the nation's debt ceiling.
"People tried to re-characterize that issue," he maintains. "It isn't a debt ceiling. It's deficit spending — spending money you don't have, which is blasphemy and a burden on future generations. People are borrowing money and spending it and printing it just because it's easy. They're appealing to the current voters, not to posterity, and we need to get them to understand that we can't keep stealing from our children and grandchildren and those who aren't even born yet. It's a morally bankrupt thing to do to steal money from a baby."
In the U.S. as a whole or Colorado in particular, "the price of liberty is eternal vigilance," Bruce concludes. "You have to be vigilant to knock down the regular attempts to vote us into slavery, and the broad will of the people is the only thing that's preventing us from sliding into servitude."
Clearly, Douglas Bruce is still alive and kicking.
Click to read the latest ruling in the Douglas Bruce lawsuit against the Gaylord Rockies Resort.
