April 17, 2024 11:20 AM UTC

Off The Deep End With Rep. Ken "Skin" DeGraaf

• 4 Comments
• by: Colorado Pols

Yesterday, the Colorado House passed House Bill 24-1304 on its initial voice vote, legislation aimed at promoting affordable housing by preventing local governments from imposing minimum requirements for parking on new residential developments. While this bill hasn’t received as much attention as other legislation this year easing regulations on accessory dwelling units (ADUs) and encouraging development centered on public transportation networks, it’s one of a number of tools being considered to address the state’s severe shortage of affordable housing.

But if you’re freshman GOP Rep. Ken “Skin” DeGraaf of Colorado Springs, who our readers know as one of the more extremely imaginative–not to mention regularly offensive–members of the House GOP micro-minority, there’s a lot going on between the lines of this bill. And by that, we mean a lot:

hb24-1304: a confluence of marxist ideology and science illiteracy delivered to the general assembly by Jared’s glitter-powered unicorn via the rainbow of “good intentions.”

when Jared said he’d solve traffic congestion, he left out that was going to happen by getting rid of personal vehicles and cramming his tax-paying widgets into calcutta-style housing to make public transportation viable since it is currently subsidized at over $2 per passenger mile. (yes, that slow-rolling traffic jam lumbering in the wrong direction is subsidized at over $2 per passenger mile).

the socialists have admitted that they have NETZERO scientific basis for the “climate goals” they won’t specifiy, nor do any of the climate warriors have any idea how CO2 reductions would achieve them…if they did exist. The sponsors consider the idea that “ghg reduction goals” might actually achieve anything to be “esoteric.”

1304 is a confluence of marxist ideology and science-illiteracy delivered from the governor by glitter-powered unicorn via the rainbow of “good intentions.”

Please note first of all that we were quite torn about posting this screed without correcting the many grammatical mistakes. We ultimately chose to post it exactly as Rep. DeGraaf himself did to Twitter yesterday so readers can enjoy Rep. DeGraaf in his full unfiltered fury.

Because apparently, the end of parking limits means “Calcutta-style housing,” which although we’ve never been to Calcutta (and we believe is now properly spelled Kolkata) seems like a fairly outlandish exaggeration of the bill’s effects. It’s no surprise for DeGraaf to proceed from there into sweeping denial of human-caused climate change, a subject he revisits on the House floor regularly. And then DeGraaf delivers what appears to be both the opening and closing punchline, “[HB24-1304] is a confluence of marxist ideology and science-illiteracy delivered from the governor by glitter-powered unicorn via the rainbow of ‘good intentions.'”

Folks, it’s a bill about parking.

For all of the ongoing complaints from the 19-seat GOP micro-minority in the Colorado House of being “silenced” when Democrats impose reasonable limits on debate, analysis of the speaking time allotted to each side shows that the 1/3 minority accounted for almost 60% of the time spent debating legislation last year. And of that time, a disproportionate amount is taken up by Rep. DeGraaf derailing debate on legislation, to the point that the chamber was forced to recess–which occurred again just yesterday, debating a bill to curb teen access to vape products:

DEGRAAF: Thank you Madame Chair. I will be a no on this bill. Uh, I do think we need to protect our kids but I’m a little confused as to why we’re worried about vapes and tobacco and kids, who the General Assembly has deemed sufficiently mature to self-select for self-sterilization and genital mutilation. And that is to the bill.

JOSEPH: Uh…

DEGRAAF: That is to the bill. We are talking about the maturity of kids to choose what goes into their body. So don’t say it’s not to the bill…

JOSEPH: No, Rep. DeGraaf, please get back to the bill. Thank you so much. Please get back to the bill.

DEGRAAF: Madame Chair, aren’t we talking about what a minor can put into their body?

JOSEPH: Rep. DeGraaf, we’ll go into a quick recess. Thank you…

Folks, it’s a bill about teen vaping.

It has been a regular feature for years that minority Republicans in both chambers of the Colorado General Assembly complain bitterly they are being “silenced” by the majority when, when in fact the minority is consistently afforded a majority of the debate time–a fact recently acknowledged by another far-right House GOP blowhard, Rep. Brandi Bradley. But even that doesn’t tell the whole story.

Republicans are wasting the people’s time this legislative session with absolute blathering nonsense to a greater extent than the historical mean, and that the voting public is not aware of. Driven by unserious caricatures like Ken DeGraaf with no intervention whatsoever from Minority Leader Rose Pugliese, Republicans are making a mockery of the legislative process to leap from one irrational grandstand to the next–all while falsely claiming to be “silenced” by the majority. In truth, Democrats are under no procedural obligation to give Republicans the generous amount of debate time they receive, and the press gives Democratic leadership little credit for exercising considerable behind-the-scenes patience.

The voters need to know that Republicans in the General Assembly are not just speaking freely, but freely abusing the extensive leeway given them by a majority showing more patience than anyone outside the building realizes.