Hotel California: Colorado’s 5 Star State Certification Program

You can check in, but you can’t check out!  Colorado’s 5 Star State Certification Program, ostensibly to get our restaurants, bars, taverns and gyms open, is terrible.  It has no sunset, creates a powerful new government bureaucracy that will need to be funded and is based on flawed COVID modeling instead of real data.

Colorado’s 5 Star State Certification Program requires a lot of things from small to mid-size businesses (not the big box stores) to receive “approval” to open back up at restrictive capacity levels.  Just to lowlight a few: requires the business to screen for customer symptoms; requires the business to record customer names and contact info to support contact tracing; and requires the business to publicly display instructions for a customer to lodge a compliance complaint to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE).

My heart breaks as I see more and more small to mid-size businesses close.  Our restaurants, bars, taverns, gym owners and their employees cannot work from home.  Many of these business owners have mortgaged their homes and depleted their savings to try to get thru the “15 Day Flatten the Curve” Reaction/ Disruption which is now coming in on its’ year anniversary.  These owners are desperate to open their businesses and Politicians, Bureaucrats and Interested Parties (PBI’s) have leveraged this desperation to create a huge government expansion.  Remember big government, small individual. Big government and big business like each other.  A lot!

If Colorado PBI’s keep up these destructive policy decisions, the “Welcome to Colorado” sign on I-70 at the Colorado/Kansas border should be changed to “For Sale, For Lease and Space Available.”  I recently talked with a small business owner who said, with tears in his eyes, “I’m running out of options.  I’m smart.  I’ve successfully run my business for eighteen years and I don’t know what I’m going to do.”  It is cruel to steal other’s opportunity and livelihood whether with the old-fashioned method of thievery: a weapon, or the new more subtle method of thievery: taxes, fees, restrictions, orders, compliance and enforcement.

Colorado’s new COVID-19 5 Star State Certification Program is inherently flawed for many reasons.  The top three are:

1. There is no sunset for this program. It’s reminiscent of the Hotel California, “You can check in but you can never leave.”
2. There is no requirement that the Governor and CDPHE use real, trustworthy, scientific data instead of faulty modeling and dishonest data when issuing orders and edicts.
3. It creates another unelected, unaccountable administrative committee that has the power to pick winners and losers. This is not the proper role of government.

Here are just a few of the ways that the 5 Star State Certification Program stomps all over our American Bill of Rights:

1. The First Amendment of the United States Constitution says that government cannot abridge the right of the people to peaceably assemble. The 5 Star State Certification Program limits how individuals can assemble and how many individuals can assemble.  It says that individuals can only assemble if they wear a mask.  Totally unconstitutional.
2. The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution states that it is the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures. The 5 Star State Certification Program requires businesses to screen customers for symptoms (business owners are not doctors), record customer names and record contact info for contact tracing. The Chinese Communist Party keeps records on every individual too.  It is not the proper role of government to spy on our people.  The Fourth Amendment also states that a warrant shall be issued with probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, describing the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized.  The 5 Star State Certification Program puts in place an administrative committee that creates a program that allows businesses to be searched without a warrant.
3. The Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution states that the accused has the right to be confronted by the witnesses against him; however, the 5 Star State Certification Program says that businesses must have publicly displayed instructions for a customer to lodge compliance complaints to CDPHE. The customer does not have to face the business owner whom they are reporting.  This is totally unconstitutional and is reminiscent of Germany during WWII when people reported neighbors, friends and family to “authorities.”

What to do?

1. Contact your County Commissioners, Mayors, City Council members and local health departments to demand an immediate sunset on this draconian new program.
2. Contact your County Commissioners, Mayors, City Council members and local health departments to demand they immediately use real scientific trustworthy data when making COVID-19/Wuhan Virus Reaction/Disruption decisions.
3. Demand that Colorado Businesses immediately fully open without government coercion and empower business owners to make decisions on how to run their businesses and serve their clientele.

We are in a very dangerous time for our Constitutional Republic.  Our choice.  Will we continue to be a beacon of light and freedom for the “huddling masses yearning to breathe free” or will we descend into the abyss of despair, dependency and destruction of bureaucratic government/control?

Pastor Martin Niemoller was a German theologian and opposition leader to the Nazi regime in the late 1930’s.  Here is my 2021 version of Martin Niemoller’s famous words:

First, they silenced voices with whom they disagreed and I did not stand because I disagreed with those voices.

Then they came for industries that provided goods and services that make my life better and I did not stand because I took these industries for granted.

Then they came for churches and I did not stand because I didn’t go to church.

Then they came for the small to mid-size businesses and I did not stand because I was able to work from home or still receive my retirement checks.

Then they came for me and there was no one left to stand with me.

It is our time to stand for our Constitutional Republic.  It is our duty to Stand for Colorado and the rugged, individualistic spirit that built our state.  It is our responsibility to stand to preserve, protect and pass on freedom to our next generation.  You are not alone.  We are Americans.  Let’s act like it.