It is really sad how many long term businesses in this town have closed. If you ask around, you wil find the town that was becoming internationally famous as Silicon Mountain has now reduced those high tech gurus to running hand to mouth small businesses. And those small businesses are not surviving.

I have a business and I have cut staff by 50%. With 70-80 hour weeks, and hourly contractors at lower wages, we have managed to stay open.

What we can’t afford is the schools coming around again looking for another tax hike to pay teachers more that are already well compensated with money and benefits or more gas taxes to build better freeways in Denver, or a continuation of the PPRA which is way too high as it is. Local governments need to bite the bullet and cut back to the essentials like the rest of the population has had to. Our citizens are not buying goods and services because they are paying for too many well paid, well benefited government workers. Just remember, government produces nothing and has no multiplying effects in the economy. The disastrous Federal Stimulus Programs proved that because after the billions upon billions spent, the economy and job situation is worse then ever.

The government does us a real disservice and does major CYA in only reporting those drawing unemployment checks and not the real numbers of unemployed that are beyond unemployment and underemployed like engineers running sign shops. Instead 8+%, that number is between 20-30% by multiple estimates.

In three words, the answer is, “NO MORE TAXES”, until we get America running again as a market economy.