Bill Owens was Colorado’s governor from 1999 to 2007, and he is still the last Republican to hold the office. He grew up in Texas, one of five kids of a door-to-door salesman who reminded them that every morning, he was responsible for 21 meals. Bill came to Colorado by choice in his mid-twenties and never left.
Dan opens with a disclaimer: he’s an independent, and this year he finds himself agreeing with Republicans more often than not. Then they go straight to Amendment 87, which would replace Colorado’s flat income tax with graduated rates. Bill’s case is that in a country with 50 states, you can’t double the tax on successful people and businesses and expect them to stay. They agree Colorado’s tech community got complacent, and the Colorado AI Act was the wake-up call. Bill’s fix is participation, and a second party in the battle of ideas.
Plus, why both think Governor Polis was right to commute Tina Peters’s sentence, Bill’s four decades of work in Russia and Ukraine, why he calls Putin “aggressive but not crazy,” and the case for striking Iran’s nuclear program.
Learn more about Governor Owens: https://www.nga.org/governor/bill-owens/
Order Dan's book — Bandwidth: The Untold Story of Ambition, Deception, and Innovation that Shaped the Internet Age and Dot-Com Boom: dan-caruso.com/book
Listen to Dan’s song Stretch: https://distrokid.com/hyperfollow/dancaruso/stretch
Check out music by Jason Mendelson (Jace Allen): https://www.youtube.com/@jaceallen
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