Koch Brothers To Finance Creation of North Colorado

GREELEY, Col. — Koch Industries’ President and CFO David Robertson announced today his company’s support for a proposal that would see eight counties secede from Colorado to form the 51^st State of North Colorado. The proposal, a brainchild of Weld County commissioners Sean Conway, Mike Freeman, and Doug Rademacher, would see Weld County secede from the state of Colorado along with Morgan, Logan, Sedgwick, Phillips, Washington, Yuma, and Kit Carson counties.

“For too long the good people of Duke Energy, Encana Oil & Gas, Ensign Well Service, Petroleum Development Corporation and various other oil and gas-related companies of Weld County have been forced to turn over their hard-earned tax dollars to a Democratically-controlled state government,” said Robertson after the meeting. “We at Koch Industries believe that the corporations of these eight counties would be better served if they were allowed to keep their money in the hands of their shareholders and board members, some of whom even live there. Therefore we fully support the creation of North Colorado, though we would have preferred the name North Kochistan.”

“We’re very excited to have the support and guidance of Koch Industries in the creation of the future state of North Colorado,” said Commissioner Conway. “Seceding from Colorado, or Left Colorado as we prefer to call it, was not an easy choice, but Governor Hickenlooper’s efforts to curb gun violence and promote renewable energy have been the torrential rain that rusted the camel’s oil drill.

“Also, Colorado voted for the black guy twice in a row,” he added. “What’s up with that?”

Representative Cory Gardner, (R-CO), whose district as currently drawn would exist in both Colorado and North Colorado, sympathized with the would-be secessionists, saying: “The people of rural Colorado are mad, and they have every right to be. The governor and his Democrat colleagues in the statehouse have assaulted our way of life.

“Frankly,” he added, “the idea of a governing body passing progressive policies just because a majority of the state’s population voted for candidates who supported those policies strikes me as undemocratic.”

Five states have been created as a result of seceding from their parent state in the history of the United States, but none have done so in 150 years. These include Vermont (bailed on New York in 1791), Kentucky (broke from Virginia in 1792), Tennessee (left North Carolina in 1796), Maine (seceded from Massachusetts in 1820), and West Virginia (chewed its arm off to get away from Virginia in 1863).

The task of seceding from Colorado to form a state with less than two-thirds the population of Wyoming, the least-populated state in the U.S., will be daunting, but County Commissioner Rademacher was optimistic. “According to the copy of the Pocket Constitution: Abridged that the Koch Industries guy handed out, all we have to do to secede is get a representative from each county together in a room and have them vote to go for it,” he said. “I’m pretty sure we can get someone from all eight counties to show up if we offer donuts.”

“Uhm.. no,” said former University of Northern Colorado political science professor and Weld County resident Steve Mazurana. “In order to secede, the counties involved would need to hold a formal vote, then the Colorado State Legislature would need to approve the secession, as would the U.S. Congress. Not gonna happen.”