Decision to keep cave closed because of Native American religious objections is unlawful

By Seth Richardson

The Mystery Cavern at the Garden of the Gods, sealed up in 1935, must be reopened for archeological examination and documentation. The actions of the Colorado Springs Parks and Recreation Advisory Board in denying access to credentialed archeologists based on objections by Ute tribal historian Alden Naranjo of the Southern Ute Indian Tribe is a violation of the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause, which prohibits government “establishment” of religion.

There may be legitimate reasons for keeping the cavern sealed, including preservation of archeological resources or safety, but the Board used as its excuse the one reason that it is legally forbidden to use: Religion.

According to the article in the Gazette by reporter Dave Phillips, Colorado Springs agreed in the 1990s that no archeological digs would take place in the Garden of the Gods without tribal approval because the Ute Tribe claims that the park has “spiritual significance.” While we all should respect the places of “spiritual significance” that any religious group cares about, such respect should not, and indeed cannot be established as a law or policy by any governmental unit without violating the First Amendment.

A similar controversy exists in Wyoming, at Devil’s Tower National Monument. Native American Indians object to climbers scaling the basalt volcano core because they feel the place has spiritual significance. They have attempted for years to persuade the National Park Service to ban climbing entirely, or at least ban it during “sacred” periods when Indians worship there, out of respect for Native American Indian tradition and religious practice.

The best the National Park Service has been able to do, on advice from the United States Attorney, is to post a “voluntary” climbing ban in June, a time of sacred significance, that asks, but does not require that climbers respect Indian traditions and religious observances. No mandatory ban can be enacted because this would, as the actions of the Board do in this case, violate the Constitutional ban on government either advancing or inhibiting religion.

The relevant United States Supreme Court case is  Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U.S. 602, decided in 1971. In this case, the Court lays out a tripartite test of government actions to determine if the action violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.

The first prong of the tests asks, “Does the government’s action have a secular legislative purpose?”

The second prong of the test asks, “Does the government’s action have the primary effect of either advancing or inhibiting religion?”

The third prong of the test asks, “Does the government’s action result in an ‘excessive entanglement’ of government in religion?”

In the case of the Garden of the Gods Mystery Cavern, the advisory board’s decision facially violates the first and second prongs of the Lemon test.

According to the article, the board stated that it would approve the request for archeological examination of the cave “if there were no objections from the Ute tribe.” But because the reason that the city made the agreement to ask permission from the Ute Tribe is based upon the Tribe’s claim that the park has “spiritual significance,” this causes the boards deference to the Tribe to be based upon prohibited religious criteria, which makes the board’s action an unlawful and unconstitutional decision that has no legitimate “secular purpose” and which has the primary effect of advancing the interests of Native American Indian religion over the legitimate, secular need for proper archeological examination and documentation of the site.

The fact is that the very agreement signed by the city with the Ute Tribe in the 1990s is itself very likely invalid because it has the practical and primary effect of advancing Ute tribal religious interests over the secular needs and rights of the owners of the site, the People of Colorado Springs.

However “spiritually significant” any publicly-owned property is to some group of religious people, such considerations cannot, by law, be part of the decision making process of a public board considering limiting access to the property by the public.

The board must reevaluate its decision and permit the archeological investigation, as it said it would, and it must, according to the Supreme Court and the Lemon Test, disregard any religious claims that would interfere with the right of the public to use and enjoy its public property. If the board does not reverse its decision, the city will likely face yet another expensive lawsuit, which it will certainly lose.

This does not mean, however, that qualified archeologists or historians from the Ute Tribe should be excluded from the excavation. They should absolutely be included, so that cultural artifacts associated with their Tribe can be properly analyzed and preserved, and so that their cultural history can be added to the knowledge gained by opening and examining the cavern.

And once the archeological dig has been completed and documented, the cavern should be sealed again in order to protect it from vandalism and theft, which is a legitimate secular government purpose.

But to deny the public the ability to document and know both its own and its Native American Indian cultural heritage based on allegations of “spiritual significance” is most definitely not a legitimate government action.

© 2009 Altnews

Here’s one way the city can fund parks and recreation without a new tax

By Seth Richardson

Brown grass, dead soccer field turf, closed swimming pools and recreation centers, defunded museums… all dire consequences of the ongoing mistrust of Colorado Springs city government on the part of the People.

The defeat of the property tax increase was a stunning blow to the egos of the Council and a clear repudiation for business as usual, and the chickens are now headed for the roost as the Council buckles down to the task of actually balancing the budget (as opposed to the election campaign scare-tactics they’ve been engaged in).

The biggest problem with municipal bureaucracies (other than being stuffed with featherbedding bureaucrats interested only in protecting their own turf and paychecks as outlined in a previous column) is the lack of innovative thinking on the part of both hired bureaucrats and elected officials. Government is notorious for adhering to the “Not Invented Here” syndrome that causes government bureaucrats to reject any sort of market-based solution to anything because the bureaucrats didn’t think of it. This propensity to reject perfectly useful ideas based on the NIH paradigm is as predictable as the City Manager’s protectionism and self-interested rejection of pay cuts for all city employees.

The anodyne to such bureaucratic bungling and obfuscation is, happily, the Internet. Not only does it provide a potential solution to the parks and recreation funding conundrum, it also provides the venue whereby the People can bypass the bureaucrats and clamor for a good idea to be implemented without regard to who thought it up.

So, here’s the plan: The problem with parks and recreation funding is that people don’t trust that the City will use the taxes they pay to actually serve their parks and recreation needs. The practice of putting tax money into the General Fund and having the Council dispense it only works if the Council acts in ethical ways in accordance with their duty as public servants and allocates tax money in ways that the People find beneficial. The Colorado Springs City Council has abused its discretion in that regard to the point the public doesn’t trust them any more, and that’s a shame.

One of the problems with parks and recreation facilities is that people tend to use the facilities they live close to, or that provide services and amenities that they prefer. So, they tend to object to funding “someone else’s” park or swimming pool.

So, the free-market solution is to provide a way for people to support “their” parks and swimming pools and be certain that the money they are putting into the amenity is actually spent on something they actually use and enjoy.

An easy way to fund parks and recreation and help restore confidence in the Council is to set up a system that allows individuals to easily donate to their favorite park or recreational venue and that both guarantees and actually shows them that their money is being spent only on that venue. Earmarking donations is a way to stimulate people to support the facilities they use, and the Internet provides an easy way to accomplish this.

The City of Colorado Springs should set up an e-commerce website for Parks and Recreation funding. Each park or recreational facility should have its own web page that shows the park, the anticipated maintenance and operations budget, the amount donated and other information to persuade users to voluntarily donate money to keep it open and maintained. A “Donate” button would allow patrons to donate anything from fifty cents to a million dollars directly to a fund for that individual venue. The amount in the fund would appear on the page, and the operating budget would be subtracted from that amount to show whether there is a deficit or surplus for that park or pool.

An ordinance would be passed making it a legal requirement that funds donated for a specific venue be spent only on that venue, and that excess donations above operating costs would have to be sequestered and used only for improvements to that particular venue, not diverted to other financial needs.

In addition, the web page for each venue would have schedules and requests for volunteer assistance for maintenance, trash pickup, grass mowing and other community-building participatory events that would not only help create a sense of community and participation for users, but would reduce the operating costs. People could use the same site to “donate” their services by signing up on a calendar to perform maintenance or provide supplies or equipment (like lawnmowers, trash trucks, or other maintenance equipment), and companies could be solicited to “adopt” a park or pool and provide either charitable donations or manpower/equipment on a scheduled basis in return for on-screen recognition and even perhaps on-site recognition much like the “adopt a highway” signs one sees. Signs should be posted at each park advertising the website and asking for donations, and kiosks for cash donations on-site should be strongly considered. The city should undertake an advertising campaign to persuade voters to donate to parks and recreation, rather than trying to cling to power and control as they are wont to do.

This plan not only provides a funding and support mechanism for parks and recreation, it also gives the city a very good read on which parks and recreational venues are used and valued by the community. If a particular park languishes, and no one evinces any interest in supporting or donating towards its maintenance, then the city should begin a process of reviewing the venue with an eye towards selling it to private interests for development.

This “use it or lose it” plan would divest the city of recreational resources that are of little value to the public, and the public itself dictates which resources it values through its donations and participation in maintaining it.

Now, some will inevitably argue that parks and pools in poor areas will languish because the people cannot afford to donate as much as those in wealthy neighborhoods. This is a legitimate concern, which is why the process of deciding which parks and recreational resources are unnecessary must not be based on income alone, but also on other criteria such as not how much is donated, but how many people donated to the venue. Thus, a park in a rich neighborhood that gets five one thousand dollar donations should not be viewed as any more inherently valuable than one that gets a thousand one dollar donations.

One caveat: The NIH syndrome will likely encourage the city to try to develop this system “in-house,” or request some sort of custom-designed e-commerce system from a vendor that will purport to achieve every possible need the city can anticipate. This urge should be strongly resisted.

There are hundreds of e-commerce packages already on the market that can be easily adapted to this proposal, and the city should not spend more than about $5,000 at most to develop the basic site that would allow people to donate to their favorite park. All the additional features should be secondary to creating a site that lists every park and recreational venue and provides a “Donate” button and payment acceptance system within the next three months.

Once that basic system, using off-the-shelf e-commerce software/hosting has been created, additional features can be added as necessary. But it’s imperative that the city think out of the box on this and not try to overengineer what can be a quick, simple and effective way to obtain funding for parks and recreation.

© 2009 Altnews

Keeping the bureaucrats who run the city directly accountable to the public is essential

By Seth Richardson

It’s an axiom that municipal government is always and forever bloated with featherbedding bureaucrats. There has never been a city, in the entire existence of mankind, that did not have legions of useless Peter Principle bureaucrats stuffed in every corner of City Hall enjoying fat salaries and doing little at the public’s expense. There has never been a city that could not usefully afford to fire at least half of the bureaucrats who burden the public purse. There has never been a city, including Colorado Springs, where the public would not benefit substantially from removing layers of bureaucratic waste and devolving the truly necessary duties (and commensurate pay) onto the people who actually do the work that the public needs to have done.

In case you don’t know what a “Peter Principle” bureaucrat is, it derives from the 1969 book “The Peter Principle”, written by Dr. Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull. The primary axiom of the book is “In a Hierarchy Every Employee Tends to Rise to His Level of Incompetence.” What this means, briefly, is that a person will rise to the level within the hierarchy where he does his job just well enough not to get fired or demoted, but not well enough to be advanced to the next level, which leaves the individual stuck in a position that he cannot excel at because of his own incompetence, doing only as much actual work as will keep him from being fired, and forces the actual work of the company to be performed by those below him, who have not yet risen to their level of incompetence. Take the master machinist, who is highly competent and qualified to machine any part you can imagine. Because he’s good at his job, in an ordinary hierarchy, he deserves advancement and will be promoted to Shop Steward. Problem is he may be a lousy people person and therefore an incompetent Shop Steward, but not incompetent enough to be fired or demoted, so he has risen to his level of incompetence, and will remain there forever, while other, younger, less skilled machinists take over his workload, to the detriment of the company.

Nowhere is this principle more thoroughly demonstrated than in city government, where shovel-leaning Peter Principle supervisors and bureaucrats are the stuff of legend.

Because the city need not compete in the marketplace, because it gets its income from taxation and produces absolutely nothing and only consumes resources, which frees it from any motivation to maximize fiscal responsibility and economy, it inevitably becomes stuffed with Peter Principle bureaucrats whose primary interest is in protecting their own sinecure and salary. At least in a private company, such waste eventually affects the bottom line, and redundant, incompetent employees can be fired. But in municipalities, bureaucratic bloat is always rampant and nearly impossible to prevent, and from time to time the taxpayers have to take direct control and cut away the fat. For Colorado Springs, now is a golden moment to do so.

The first sign of unnecessary bureaucratic bloat in any city is the hiring of a City Manager. City managers are professional bureaucrats purported to be “experts” at municipal administration who have, at the core, no greater interest than to justify their position by convincing elected officials and taxpayers that more and more money is needed in order to keep the city functioning properly. The hiring of a City Manager is the first step on the inevitable slide down the slippery slope of municipal waste, fraud and corruption because it insulates the elected officials from direct accountability for the day-to-day operations of the city, and therefore it isolates the citizens themselves from effective representative oversight of their municipal employees. So long as the Mayor and Council have the plausible deniability of saying “Well, the City Manager, who is an expert, says we have to do this…” the public has little choice but to accept whatever the City Manager foists off on them because they cannot themselves recall the City Manager, nor is the Council obligated to fire her, even when she is demonstrably fiscally irresponsible, at the public’s request.

In a “strong Mayor” system, the Mayor is the “city manager” and is elected (and paid) to be an experienced executive and manager who is responsible for the necessary executive decisions required to keep the city running properly and efficiently. This places the executive responsibility and liability where it belongs, upon the elected official who is directly responsible to the People, and who can be unelected if he or she fails to properly manage the city in accordance with the will of the citizens. This is what Colorado Springs needs, a well-paid, well-qualified Mayor who is the factual “the buck stops here” administrator of the city, and is directly subject to the will of the People if he or she fails to manage efficiently and properly.

But when a City Manager is injected into the equation, everything changes, and the person who actually runs the city is no longer directly responsible to the People, she is responsible only to the Council, and as long as she can convince the Council that she knows what’s best, her position is secure, which is all she’s really interested in achieving. And given the level of expertise of Colorado Spring’s part-time City Council and Mayor, it’s evidently not very difficult to persuade them that taxes need to be raised and the city payroll must not be cut. That’s evidence enough of the failure of the City Manager model to justify changing it.

The idea of a City Manager who cuts employees, finds economies, minimizes bureaucratic and wasteful supervision, and reduces the size of city government is an oxymoron to the entire concept of City Managers.

Think about it for a moment. If a City Manager was doing her job as the public interest demands, she’d be cutting jobs, salaries and budgets to the bone and would be slave-driving city employees to make them work harder for less money and she would be eliminating wasteful and redundant positions by the dozen, to eliminate every possible Peter Principle bureaucrat and shovel-leaning employee on payroll. She’d be telling the council that the “enterprise” systems are a wasteful, redundant and fraudulent system that costs the taxpayers more than minimally necessary. She’d be telling the council that her job is to come in, ruthlessly slash budgets and maximize efficiency and job performance, and then leave, cutting her own budget.

That’s what the public interest requires of its City Manager.

But no City Manager on the planet has any interest in doing what the public interest requires, because it is in the best economic interests of the City Manager to make both the public and the Council believe that she is indispensable, and that the city is so complex and difficult to manage that only a highly-paid, elite, professional bureaucrat like her can possibly do the job, and that without her the city will fall to ruin and riot. It’s in her interests to lie, mumble and obfuscate and persuade the credulous on the Council that city bureaucracy must grow ever larger and larger, and that more and more money and staff are required to deal with the complex and arcane “needs” of the city. To a City Manager, the public are a bunch of drooling idiots who have no idea what’s best for them or what it costs to care for them, who can and should be soaked for whatever she thinks will best justify her position and salary.

This motivation should be painfully obvious to anyone with half a brain. City Managers aren’t about managing the city, they are about managing their careers, which requires that they make themselves indispensable to the city bureaucracy by withholding information and expertise from the elected officials, who, by hiring a City Manager, abdicate the responsibility that THEY accepted to actually make the hard decisions and serve the public when they were elected. When the City Manager becomes the gatekeeper of information, and the acknowledged “expert” in managing the city, she has gained inestimable power and control, and will not relinquish it voluntarily, ever.

The entire concept of City Managers is a Progressive concept that holds that the administration and operations of government ought not be vested in elected officials or political appointees, who should be left to discussing politics and policy, but rather administration should be dealt with only by the intellectually elite professional bureaucrats of the world, who are “above” political issues and are all so very much smarter and wiser than we, the lumpen Proletariat. This has been the course of Progressivism since Woodrow Wilson, and the creeping cancer it comprises is now found everywhere, including the City Manager’s office.

I’ll have more to say about Woodrow Wilson and the Progressives in the future, but for now suffice it to say that the City Manager model of municipal organization and operation is highly detrimental to the taxpayer’s wallet, and should be dispensed with forthwith and permanently. Doing so, and placing the executive authority, and the executive liability for proper administration in the hands of the Mayor, who is himself subject to ratification or rejection by the People, is the best way to run Colorado Springs.

Or the United States.

© 2009 Altnews

Police should ticket nitwits who tie up 911 lines

By Seth Richardson

Back when I was a lowly police dispatcher, we were told that “there are no stupid 911 calls” and that we must, by policy, dispatch a police officer to every complaint or call for service we received, no matter how obviously idiotic the call was. This is the case in almost all police dispatch centers, and it’s just plain idiocy and a complete waste of valuable police resources in many cases. Dispatchers are (or should be) amply qualified to separate the sheep from the goats and determine not only how serious a call is, but what resources need to be allocated to that call. That’s their job, and they do it well almost all the time. I see no reason why they should not be authorized to weed out the idiots and read them the riot act when they call up with stupid, non-urgent complaints and idiotic, non-police-oriented time-wasting questions. Doing so would help to reduce call loads and make the best use of our dwindling police resources, and it’s already true that dispatchers rank calls by urgency and place such preposterous demands for service at the bottom of the queue. The problem is that they usually must dispatch them at some point, which just wastes a police officer’s time when he or she could be better employed actually fighting crime.

Dispatchers should be permitted to simply dispense with complaints that they know beyond any doubt are not police matters requiring an officer to respond, and in egregious circumstances, they should be allowed to dispatch an officer to issue a summons.

Now, I fully understand that police dispatchers in most departments are not police officers, but having been both a police officer and a dispatcher, I can tell you that while the training differs, the ability to make competent, rational decisions in a hurry are not very different at all, and dispatchers are not in any way intellectual inferiors to street officers. In fact, emergency services dispatchers have, sometimes, a much more difficult job because their only avenue of action is their voice, which can in some cases mean the difference between life and death for a caller.

I recall giving emergency medical instructions to the wife of a man who had severed an artery in his arm when he accidentally rammed it through a window. The wife was hysterical and her husband was bleeding out on the kitchen floor, but I was able to calm her down and direct her in the proper procedure to apply direct pressure to the wound, which stemmed the bleeding long enough for officers and medical personnel to arrive and save his life.

But if I’d been tied up on the phone with some ninny complaining about her neighbor parking in “her” parking space on a public street in front of the ninny’s house when that call came in, that man might well have died.

Don’t even get me started on the jackasses who call 911 to find out if the schools are open after a snowstorm. I’d like to personally slap every one of them upside the head, a couple of times. It’s astonishing how many thousands of such jackasses there are in any given community.

This is not to minimize the qualifications and skills of police officers, but dispatchers are frequently (indeed almost always) overlooked as an essential part of the team that provides timely, pertinent response to emergencies. Having been there and done that, on both sides of the badge, I’d like to put in a good word for all the dispatchers, without whom the system would grind to a halt very quickly. Kudos to you all!

While I generally don’t like advocating more laws, in this case perhaps there ought to be a new law called “wasting of emergency services resources” that can be applied to the ninnies and nitwits who dial 911 for frivolous, stupid reasons. When Mrs. Gripe calls to complain about her neighbor’s tree hanging over the fence, if the police respond it should be to give her a ticket for wasting what is becoming a more and more limited and valuable resource.

911 supervisors will no doubt claim that they don’t want to sanction nitwits because it might make someone fearful of calling 911 in a legitimate emergency, but this is a vacuous argument based in an irrational concern for the well-being of people who ought to be required to take responsibility for their actions and accept the consequences of being ignorant or stupid. If you can’t tell when a real emergency is taking place, then you probably deserve what happens to you, and the species will be better off in your absence, so get a clue or become a statistic.

Usually, it’s just misplaced concern for their own job that causes administrators and supervisors to give automatic credence to any moron who can punch seven keys on a telephone. They don’t want to take the chance that a call will be dismissed improperly, and they don’t want to deal with irate citizens who have been told off by dispatchers, so they set the system up so that there is too often a massive waste of resources, just to compensate for the very, very rare dispatch oversight or malfeasance, and to put the conflict off onto the police officer’s shoulders, making him the fall guy for having to tell someone, politely, that their complaint is frivolous. Too much concern for the tender sensibilities of nitwits and ninnies, however, is counterproductive and wasteful.

The fact is, however, that professional emergency services dispatchers are well qualified to determine whether or not a call is a frivolous and wasteful expenditure of emergency resources, and they should be given the authority and administrative support to better allocate those resources in the best interests of the taxpayers.

Budget cuts are going to affect police services, and it’s our duty as citizens to think twice about calling 911 for anything that’s not a real life-or-death emergency. And we, as citizens, should be held accountable when we make stupid decisions in calling 911, because our stupidity can cost other people their lives if we tie up police resources frivolously.

Be responsible, deal with your own neighborhood social issues. Be a good neighbor, work with others to resolve problems without government intervention, and only call the police if it’s a matter of life or death. This will not only free up law enforcement resources for real emergencies, it will significantly reduce the need for an oppressive police presence in our community in the first place.

Fewer nitwits making fewer stupid calls for service will go a long way towards mitigating the effects of cuts to police services that the City Manager and City Council have been threatening us with.

© 2009 Altnews

Colorado Springs narcotics officers disregard the law and waste our money.

By Seth Richardson

As if the debacle over bare breasts in bars weren’t enough proof that the Colorado Springs Police Department isn’t allocating public resources very well, now we have the example of Robert J. Corry, Jr. and his 8 ounces of medicinal marijuana.

Embarrassed and humiliated vice cops handed over Corry’s mason jars full of pot last Tuesday, after a judge ordered the return subsequent to the dropping of the narcotics case by the District Attorney.

Corry was arrested in December of 2008 after a traffic stop, and in spite of showing the cops his paperwork that makes it legal for him to possess pot under the 2000 state constitutional amendment permitting caregivers to possess small amounts of marijuana for legitimate medicinal purposes.

According to Corry, vice cops scoffed at his paperwork and at the law too, which resulted in Corry facing felony charges that hung over him until they were dismissed on October 5th.

The issue here is whether police had probable cause to arrest him in the first place. There seems to be some dispute over whether his paperwork was correct, but given the fact that the case was dismissed before trial, it’s pretty easy to conclude that Corry is the credible witness here, and that the vice cops are just covering their…dopey behavior.

It also appears that the seized marijuana was a little bit light upon return, some 40 grams. This “shrinkage” is attributed to sending some of the pot to a lab for testing. This should be pretty easy for the police to prove, since they are supposed to keep a detailed chain of custody. It’s probably a good idea to examine that chain to make sure there aren’t any missing links in it. And the police should pony up the per-gram value of the private property they seized in any event.

The blatant disregard for the law demonstrated by the Metro Vice, Narcotics and Intelligence Unit is just one more example of a police department that’s not allocating resources wisely, not to mention its inadequate supervision and negligent training.

Metro Vice needs some immediate classroom time and testing on the Constitution of the United States and the Colorado Constitution, with an emphasis on the requirements of police fidelity to both. If the Chief of Police isn’t willing to mandate such training and improve supervision, perhaps a federal court will do so pursuant to a federal civil rights violation complaint, which Mr. Corry really ought to consider.

For better or for worse, whether cops like it or not, the Colorado Constitution makes it legal for certified caregivers and patients to possess small amounts of medicinal marijuana. If the Colorado Springs Metro Vice, Narcotics and Intelligence Unit officers, or any other sworn officer in the department has a problem with being obedient to the will of the People, then they need to resign and take up another line of work.

For any police officer to deliberately and intentionally disobey the law and unlawfully arrest someone is utterly intolerable to a free society.

Here’s a bit of advice for the Metro Vice squad: A society will have precisely as much crime as it’s willing to tolerate, and it’s not your job to exceed your legal authority or violate your oath of office just because you think you know better than the People do what is best for them. Your duty is to protect and serve them within the express authority you have been granted by them, not try to rule them by abusing that authority.

In his October 3rd guest opinion in the Gazette, Colorado Springs City Councilman Scott Hente once again tries to obfuscate and pettifog his way to victory at the ballot box by dishonestly maligning Douglas Bruce and trying to hoodwink the voters.

In his letter, Hente says, “Issue 300 would eventually prohibit payments from any enterprise to the City. This includes legitimate payments for efficient shared services such as accounting, legal assistance, fleet maintenance, audits, and other necessary services. The biggest impact would be the Payment in Lieu of Taxes (PILT) made by Colorado Springs Utilities. One of the important underpinnings of why Colorado Springs Utilities has been able to deliver below average costs for utilities is its unique culture of running like a business. The PILT is an accounting entry that appropriately charges the Utilities and its rate payers for the services it receives and the taxes it would pay if it were a private business.”

So, let’s get this straight. According to the Colorado Springs Utility’s own website, “…in 1924 the residents of Colorado Springs voted to create a four-service utility of the people, by the people and for the people. Since then, as a municipal utility, our focus has been on the basics - providing exceptional customer service while keeping costs low.”

The taxpayers paid to create the public utility system to provide “the basics” at “low cost.” The whole point of creating the publicly-owned utilities system was precisely so that it would NOT be run “like a business,” because private businesses have costs associated with them that increase the price of the service and goods to the consumer, among which are profit and taxes. These two consumer costs alone are the major reason why taxpayers paid to create the utilities in the first place.

But City Council figured out that the utilities, if run “like a business” could provide a cash-cow of slush-fund revenue for the Council to play with without the impediment of actually obeying TABOR and asking the voters for a tax increase.

That’s what the PILT structure Hente talks about is all about. This is an “accounting entry,” as Hente describes it, that levies the equivalent of a sales tax on the services provided to the public by a publicly-owned utility. It’s actually an accounting fiction used by the Council to boost General Fund tax revenues without a vote because no vote is required to raise the utility rates to cover the cost of the “payments in lieu of taxes.”

This is just robbing Peter to pay Paul, and it’s an egregious example of the corruption and greed in City Hall, and amply demonstrates the ongoing attempts to deliberately defy the mandate of TABOR, which is quite simply that the City must ask the voters to approve all new taxes.

It utterly defies common sense that one hand of the city is charging the other hand a sales tax on providing city residents with services from the city-owned utilities that the citizens paid to build precisely in order to avoid having to pay sales taxes on their utility payments in the first place. The whole point of a city-owned utility system is to free the citizens from the profit-based market forces that raise the costs of essential infrastructure services like water, sewer and electricity and to keep costs low by eliminating both the profit and the tax burdens associated with private industry.

Which means that Hente has just illuminated precisely why Issue 300 should be passed by the voters. Removing the ability of the city to treat publicly-owned utilities like a “business” and forcing them to run it like publicly-owned infrastructure by not collecting excess fees through accounting chicanery is a very good idea.

Now on to the rest of Hente’s carping:

“To make matters worse,” Hente writes, “the ballot language in 300 is vague and can be interpreted many ways - the proponent of Issue 300 has already filed a lawsuit against the City because he did not like one word in the ballot heading language.”

Mr. Bruce disagrees, and so do I. The ballot language is painfully clear and precise, and his objection to the rewording of the ballot title language was perfectly appropriate and reasonable in light of the Council’s attempt to manipulate the language to its benefit. All the Council had to do was leave the ballot title alone and no lawsuit would have been filed by Mr. Bruce, so the blame lies with the Council.

Hente continues his scaremongering and pettifoggery, writing, “Just imagine the lawsuits he will file … concerning part of his own language in the initiative… Will that mean that the Airport or the Hospital will have to hire their own police force? That the utility employees will not be able to share an insurance pool with the City employees? How efficient is that?”

Well, I guess the City will just have to dissolve the “enterprise” system entirely, which it should do, and return those public assets and infrastructure to their proper place as city-owned (which means owned by the people of Colorado Springs, not the Council) utilities and services, which will bring all the employees back under the City’s general employment umbrella, thus resolving any such issues with a simple stroke of the pen.

“One thing for sure,” Hente whines, “Mr. Bruce will sue for his own interpretation no matter what!”

As well he should when the City constantly tries to weasel around the very simple dictates of TABOR: If you need money, then ask us for it.

Any difficulty that the Council has in obtaining permission to levy a tax has to do with the lack of trust in the Council on the part of taxpayers, who are sick and tired of the attempts at evasion of TABOR and the rampant corruption in City Hall. If council wants to repair that breach of trust, it merely needs to act as humble representatives of, by, and for the People, not as arrogant and tyrannical rulers who think that they know better than the People do what is best for them.

It’s really quite simple: Just figure out what money is really needed and for what projects, be specific in the ballot language as to exactly how the collected tax money will be used, and then expend that money honestly and wisely on the project it’s been promised to, and the voters will begin loosening the purse strings again.

Just take a look at the People’s Republic of Boulder for a great example of how this works: The City of Boulder’s Charter states that money collected for open space purposes may ONLY be used for open space purchases and acquisitions. It cannot even be used for maintenance or administration, just acquisitions. As a result, no open space bond issue has ever been turned down by the voters, because they both value the open space program, and they know that the money they pay cannot be misused or diverted to pet pork projects of corrupt councilpersons.

I am loathe to suggest that Colorado Springs take any advice from Boulder, but in this case, I must, because the principle is so simple that even an idiot can understand it.

Politicians, on the other hand, seem to have difficulty with the concepts of restraint, honesty, adherence to fiduciary duty and respect for their positions as public servants.

© Altnews 2009

A brief philosophical examination of Libertarianism and Collectivism

By Seth Richardson

It is the claim of Collectivists that Libertarians are greedy, heartless misers interested only in their own profits. Cast as the ultimate Scrooge, the Libertarian is attacked at every turn for having insufficient empathy and concern for the poor and downtrodden.

Let’s examine this claim.

The natural instinct of most people is to help the helpless and wish for the prosperity and success of all, and this is as true of the lumpen Collectivist proletarian as it is of the Libertarian, and indeed almost all Americans, regardless of their political ideology. If you place the philosophical goals of Collectivists like Socialists, Liberals and Progressives side by side on a list with those of Libertarians, they are practically identical, at least insofar as the idealistic goal of securing the health and happiness of the average citizen is concerned.  In this, we are not at all so far apart as it might seem sometimes. But there are some important fundamental differences.

Libertarians believe in almost all of the ultimate goals that Liberals, Socialists and Progressives do; they believe in justice and fair treatment and economic prosperity and a laundry list of other ideals that align with the propagandistic idealist arguments of the competing Collectivist political ideologies.

What differs is how the two sides attempt to achieve the goals.

The libertarian seeks to achieve the goals of universal prosperity, happiness and equality through a strong, free-market economy made up of competent, mutualistic adults engaging in altruistic and charitable acts as a function of their natural propensity to do so in a free, fair and voluntary association and contract with others.  In short, Libertarians trust their neighbors to act with rational self-interest just as they themselves do.

Libertarians feel that equality of opportunity along with the natural free-market’s potential for unlimited success unconstrained by excessive government interference is the best way to achieve fundamental fairness and prosperity for all. They believe that vibrant free-market economies are a tide that raises all ships, even the poorest of the poor, which principle is proven by the fact that even the poorest of the poor in the U.S. enjoy a much higher standard of living than the poor of other, third-world nations.

But unlike Collectivists, Libertarians also believe in the value of consequences and the virtue of personal responsibility, and they believe that the natural consequences of an individual’s failure to act mutualistically and with rational self-interest inevitably results in negative consequences generally sufficient to amend bad behavior. Therefore Libertarians do not seek to intervene in the lives of individuals who exercise bad judgment, bad faith, or who engage in force or fraud against others. Libertarians believe that people should suffer the consequences of their malfeasances, including the consequences of sloth, idleness and lack of personal industry and willingness to work. They view this as a natural progression that the person must suffer through if he is to learn, grow and become a better person. They believe that saving people from the consequences of their actions, particularly through government intervention, actually harms them in the long run and causes them to become dependent and damages their self-esteem and therefore their ability to improve themselves and find true prosperity and happiness.

But this is not to say, as some do, that Libertarians are heartless cads who would watch children starve in the gutter, it just means that they do not approve of mitigating the consequences of bad judgment or bad acts. For those who are helpless or damaged by circumstance or disaster, Libertarians are as compassionate and altruistic as anyone, if not more so, as is amply demonstrated by the existence of a healthy private charity system in the U.S.

Moreover, Libertarians act in rational self-interest when it comes to the poor because for the Libertarian, every person is a potential customer, and those living in poverty not only are poor consumers, they are a drain on the community, so it is in the rational self-interest of the Libertarian to help these people to rise from poverty and find gainful employment, so that they can become both productive members of the community, as well as consumers of the merchant’s products. Libertarians are no more anxious to see the gutters filled with the corpses of the starving than Collectivists are, and it’s preposterous to presume that they do.

Libertarians differ in their desire for peace, prosperity, justice, health, welfare and safety from collectivist ideologies not in their equal desire for the conditions of liberty and community, but in how those goals can be best achieved.

Collectivists believe that the tyranny of the majority and the forcible redistribution of wealth by the State is the only way to achieve fairness and equality in society. These collectivist ideologies take a jaundiced view of human nature and hold that individuals are selfish and cupidinous and cannot be trusted to act altruistically or mutualistically, and therefore must be controlled and guided and forced into service to others by the State. Therefore, socialists do not shrink from taking that which belongs to one by force and giving it to another whom the State deems more worthy of the benefit.
Libertarians believe that economic prosperity and equality are a function of individual industry, unlimited opportunity, and the lessons of consequence, and that it is the duty of the individual to put forth that industry which is required to create economic and social success on his own, without the interference or support of government, but not necessarily without the support of one’s fellow citizens, acting in voluntary, mutualistic rational self-interest.

Another distinction, and it’s a major one, is that socialists believe that social equality and prosperity are a zero-sum game; that the success of one person requires the oppression of another; that there is only so much “opportunity” to go around, and if one person has an “unfair” share of opportunity (by inheritance for example) that this is oppressive to those who do not enjoy an equal “opportunity” to be wealthy without working, but this is not equality of opportunity that they seek, it is equality of outcomes, something that is not and cannot be guaranteed by any Constitution or social system. Collectivists do not understand that there is no limit on the opportunity to succeed, and so they do not shrink from taking from the person who is deemed to have an “unfair” opportunity in order to provide a “fair” outcome for others.

But Libertarians know that opportunity is unlimited and economic prosperity is available to anyone who applies sufficient industry and has a will to succeed. Libertarians are always seeking out those with industry and good ideas in order to help them to achieve their dreams, because libertarians know that innovation and hard work are rewarded and by investing in the success of others, their own success is enhanced as the economy improves. Thus, Libertarians do not believe that success is a zero-sum game that requires oppressing anyone, rich or poor, in order to provide opportunity, which is there waiting to be plucked by those who care to reach out and grasp it.

It is this fundamental divide, the divide between collectivism, tyranny of the majority and collectivist redistribution and individualism, free-markets and unlimited opportunity for economic and social advancement that is the nut of the dispute between the two camps. And it’s one that will likely never be resolved, because the innate distrust of Collectivists in the better parts of human nature make it impossible for them to comprehend the fact that people can work together altruistically and mutually in enlightened and rational self-interest without the blunt force of government bludgeoning them into submission at every turn.

© 2009 Altnews

Glenn Beck primes the pan for retaking Congress

By Seth Richardson

Tearmonger Glenn Beck is at it again with his new book “Arguing with Idiots.” In stores now, Beck’s new book is chock-a-block with all the facts and data one needs to successfully and authoritatively rebut the Left’s preposterous proletarian propaganda.

One small problem is that Beck is advocating wrestling with pigs, and as the old saw goes, “When you wrestle with a pig, you both get dirty, and the pig likes it.”

The idea that facts are going to change the minds of the lunatics who are at the moment in charge of the asylum is a bit too credulous to be of much use in preventing what’s coming. Where was this book before Obama was elected, when we really needed it?

To be fair to Beck, Obama played a masterful game of demagoguery in his presidential campaign, promising “change” and never delivering a hint of exactly how much or what sort of change he had in mind, so Beck can perhaps be excused for not be as prescient as he usually is when it comes to clear thinking and common-sense about political intrigue.

Beck’s unfortunate failure of his future-reading para-psychic abilities and his only-slightly dilatory Revere-esque ride through the countryside must be forgiven in light of his sterling defense of liberty and Paine-like speaking of truth to authority that has tossed iron bar after pole into the tracks of the tank-like Obama juggernaut. It may not be enough to stop it, but it’s certainly slowed it down and caused it to veer off course.

Of many small victories, one of the most satisfying is the discomfiture of ACORN’s former Embezzlement-Concealer-in-Chief Wade Rathke, who has been sitting silently in the gloom, at the center of the web of false-front organizations he controls, quietly plucking the threads.

Now Rathke, like Tolkein’s giant spider-like monster Shelob from the Lord of the Rings, has been flushed from his lair and is recoiling from the brilliant light of truth, and has been fatally stung by the sword of Justice wielded by the small but doughty Samwise-analog of fortitude and courage, Glenn Beck.

Rathke, raging in frustration, told the Washington Post “It’s balderdash on top of popoycock. It is a tactic they are trying to aggressively use to attack Obama… to paint the president and anybody else they can as radical.”

Well, not exactly. It’s certainly an attack on Obama and the people around him, but if there is any painting going on, it’s coming from Rathke and his ilk as they attempt to paint the cadre of Leftist radicals and self-avowed Communists that Obama has surrounded himself with as “moderates.”

But enough about Rathke and his whinging, he’s just imitating a stuck pig.

“Arguing with Idiots,” subtitled “How to stop small minds and big government,” while perhaps a half-a-day late and fifty cents short in preventing the oncoming apocalypse, will certainly provide plenty of “I told you so” moments in the coming months and years. The hope of the Republic when Obama was elected was that he and the Democrats would go insane with power and would be unable to restrain themselves, which is clearly coming to pass. Beck’s position in the debacle in Washington has been, like a latter-day Thomas Paine, to put out the call for vigilance and waken the sleeping giant that is the American spirit.

Beck covers all the bases in the book, from defending Capitalism to the nanny state and universal health care. Twelve chapters cover the bulk of the disputes between liberal/progressive/socialists and libertarians and conservatives. This is no dull, academic recitation of facts either. Using his inimitable style, “the fusion of entertainment and enlightenment,” Beck infuses this book with humor, satire and cutting sarcasm that keeps the reader chuckling and giggling while simultaneously stimulating them into the occasional “Amen, brother” ejaculation.

Beck plays the Interlocutor and schizophrenically plays the “Ideeot” foil for his analysis and debunking of the common stupidities of the well-indoctrinated lumpen proletarian. “So not only do you not want to penalize oil companies, you actually want to help them make even more money by letting them slaughter innocent polar bears and arctic seals,” whines the Ideeot. Whereupon Beck proceeds to shred the vacuous argument in detail. This is the specious-claim/authoritative rebuttal format of the main text of the book, and it’s a very effective way of demonstrating the idiocy of the Left’s propaganda by using their verbatim nitwit arguments against them.

Filled with amusing asides labeled “A.D.D Moments,” and appearances by “Guest Ideeots” like Barney Frank, Howard Dean, Nancy Pelosi and a host of other quotables (if not notables), and flashy graphics, the book is a pleasure to read, if a bit, well, attention-disordered from time to time. One needs the discipline to finish a paragraph or section before being distracted by the many asides and boxes of amusing and enlightening information, so that one does not lose the thread of Beck’s cogent and typically hilarious butchering of the sacred cows of the Left. Barbecue anyone?

The meticulous analysis and documentation of sources found in the 25 pages of references and links to original source materials provides at least a year’s worth of reading for purchasers. By the way, if you intend to follow up on the source material, be sure to buy a magnifying glass at the bookstore when you buy the book. If you’re over 40, you’re going to need it because the citations are in micro-type, which is the only thing that allows the references to take up only 25 pages of the book’s 325 pages.

Beck’s new book may not be completely effective in changing the course of the insanity that’s overwhelming common sense and clear thinking at the moment, but everything he says needs to be said so that when it comes time to throw the bums out of Congress and retake control of our out-of-control government, the research has been done and the arguments marshaled.

That task Beck has been working at relentlessly, and “Arguing with Idiots” is a valuable resource for those who know that becoming informed and adept at debunking Obama’s idiocy will be of inestimable importance in the next Congressional election and into the future. Buy it today, study it and learn the lexicon of Truth, Justice and the American Way…you’re going to need it.

© 2009 Altnews

Supreme Court appears on the verge of rectifying an egregious wrong.

By Seth Richardson

The Supreme Court was startled to wakefulness after a hundred-year Rip Van Winkle slumber in it’s consideration of Citizens United v. FEC, in which a movie critical of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, set to be released during her run for the presidency, was challenged on the grounds that it violated the McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Act. “That’s pretty incredible,” said Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., in response to an assertion by a government lawyer that drew an audible gasp from the spectators, that the law prohibits publishing a book paid for by a corporation that advocates the election or defeat of a political candidate. Never before has the Court sanctioned prior restraint or censorship of a book that’s not obscene, and it appeared shocked that it might have inadvertently allowed such a legal argument to slip by them.

Congress has a long history of meddling with free speech when it comes to political campaigns. As early as 1905 Progressive President Teddy Roosevelt argued that contributions from large corporate interests were tainting the election process.

The Tillman Act of 1907 and the Corrupt Practices Act of 1910 prohibited banks and corporations from donating to federal election campaigns, and was the result of Roosevelt’s pressure. Named after Democrat Sen. Benjamin “Pitchfork Ben” Tillman of South Carolina, who, it happens, was censured by the Senate for physically attacking another senator on the Senate floor (as opposed to Joe Wilson’s minor verbal heckling), the Tillman Act was in part Democrat retribution for the 1896 election of William McKinley.

McKinley’s campaign was funded largely by Cleveland iron-and-coal industrialist Marcus Alonzo Hanna, who raised some $4 million in campaign funds for McKinley, which would be about $82 million in today’s dollars. Not a huge sum compared with the nearly one billion dollars spent by Obama, but at the time it was a staggering sum. McKinley, assassinated in 1901 by anarchist Leon Czolgosz, was followed by Teddy Roosevelt, who is acknowledged as the progenitor of the Progressive era of American government, which we’ve not yet been able to recover from.

Historically speaking however, the Supreme Court had usually held that the best arbiters of the truth or falsity of a campaign claim is the People. The rhetoric we hear today is nothing compared to the vitriol published in the early years of the Republic. The Court always felt that the People were intelligent enough to sort out the wheat from the chaff and the sheep from the goats, and generally declined to get involved in regulating political speech. But the Court went to sleep in 1907 and is only now waking up to the unintended consequences of trying to be paternalistic and patronizing towards the intellectual capacity of the People. A somnolent Court snoozed its way past the First Amendment in 2002, with its ratification of the McCain-Feingold Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, which drove a stake through the heart of free speech in political campaigns. Although subsequent cases have overturned some provisions of the Act, it’s still illegal for a corporation or entity using corporate money to broadcast “electioneering communications” within 60 days of a federal election. This includes express advocacy corporations like the NRA and the Sierra Club.

The practical effect of this law is that the free flow of information and opinion about candidates and issues has been severely inhibited by Congress, while the Court pillowed its weary head on the Constitution and snored away. But when it came to the Court’s attention the other day that the Federal Election Commission’s attorneys believe that the law allows them to ban books that contain “electioneering communications,” the Supremes snorted, jerked half-awake, sat up and began to take notice.

It may be that the Court has finally shaken the cobwebs from its collective conscience and is preparing to take hold of the tiller of the drifting ship “Justice” and chart a course back towards the founding principles of our Republic. It’s too early to be entirely confident, but let’s hope that the Court will come to the realization that there is a rational distinction to be drawn between for-profit commercial corporate meddling in elections and individuals banding together under a non-profit corporate banner formed expressly for the purpose of political advocacy, which is their sovereign right.

For-profit commercial corporations should have no rights whatsoever to say anything about any election, candidate or ballot issue. Such corporations are artifacts of the state, not human beings, and only human beings are allowed to vote. Therefore, only human beings should be permitted to speak about elections, although they should be allowed to speak collectively through organizations which represent them before the government. And when human being speak about politics and elections, they must be allowed completely unfettered political speech. Political speech is the most important category of speech we as citizens have a right to express, and nothing should be barred in the political arena, nothing at all, so long as it is spoken or written by an individual and not a commercial interest.

The Court needs to once again place its trust in the wisdom and intelligence of the People, and get government completely out of regulating campaign and political speech by individuals or the non-profit organizations that represent them. The idea that the government can censor or suppress a book, or a film, merely because it expresses political opinion or advocacy is utterly repugnant to the foundations of the Republic. We, the People are perfectly capable of discerning truth from fiction in campaign rhetoric, we neither need, nor want, nor will tolerate the government interfering in our political free speech.

ACORN employees thrown under bus by management in a desperate bid to avoid scandal

By Seth Richardson

If you are a prostitute hoping to open a brothel employing 13-year-old El Salvadoran sex-slaves, and you need help with the paperwork because when you present your business plan to bankers, they discriminate against you by tossing you physically out of the door and calling the police, never fear, ACORN is here to help you get a fraudulent government loan. Not only that, but ACORN will also provide you with a free tax advice professional who will show you how to commit perjury, violate RICO statutes, engage in income tax evasion and fraud, evade employment taxes, cheat your child-prostitute employees and otherwise manipulate the system to make your “business” appear legitimate.

In two cases now, in Baltimore and Washington D.C., ACORN employees were caught on hidden video and audio advising a pair of journalists posing as a prostitute and her pimp how to beat the system and violate federal and state laws. The videotapes, available at Glenn Beck’s website, are damning evidence of yet more corruption at ACORN (as if any more were needed to institute a RICO investigation). Already under investigation in 13 states for voter registration fraud, and having admitted to falsifying more than 400,000 voter registrations, at least 50 ACORN employees are under indictment for criminal offenses. ACORN officials predictably throw these low-level dupes under the nearest bus while trying to maintain plausible deniability, but the stench rising from the former funeral home in New Orleans that houses nearly 300 front organizations linked to masterminds Wade and Dale Rathke may finally be overwhelming the normally immune-to-the-stench-of-corruption bureaucrats and elected officials on Capitol hill.

The breaking news is that the Fox News Channel’s Major Garrett is reporting that the Census Bureau director Robert Groves has sent a letter to ACORN severing all ties with ACORN for the upcoming 2010 census. A small victory perhaps, but an important crack in the facade of the Obama-approved “community organization” that has every appearance of being nothing more than a giant organized crime ring run by Wade Rathke, one that has already obtained more than 53 million dollars in taxpayer money, and stands to gain access to more than 8 billion in stimulus money in the coming months. This is a start, but the Justice Department and Congress need to launch a full series of investigations of the Rathke brothers and ACORN, as well as the host of shell organizations that they evidently use to frustrate the ability to account for taxpayer money properly.

The cracks in the facade are important because the only hope for the future of the Republic is, as I predicted some time ago, that the liberal fascists in Congress, once in power, would be utterly unable to restrain their base motives and have gone insane with power. The good news is that we the People now see them, and their former employee and booster Barak Obama for what they really are, and the slumbering giant is aroused.

It’s going to be a difficult time, but on this day of all days, the eighth anniversary of the terrorist attacks that killed more than 3000 U.S. citizens and others, we must remember who we are as a nation, and how we responded on September 12, 2001 to a threat to the Republic. We responded with courage and compassion, with strength and self-sacrifice, with altruism and loyalty to our fellow citizens and the ideals expounded in the Constitution, with resolve and dignity, and with an undying determination to remain the beacon of hope and freedom that drives the huddled masses yearning to breath free to board leaky boats and build rafts from inner tubes and venture forth across hundreds of miles of open ocean in an attempt to reach this golden shore and the promise of liberty and justice.

Remember the victims of 9/11/2001, and then think of the despicable corruption of ACORN and the taint it leaves upon the presidency of the United States, and ask yourself, “Is this the sort of fundamental change that I want for my country?”

If it’s not, then it’s time to stand up and hold the President and Congress accountable to the will of the People.

© 2009 Altnews

More reasons to dump the storm water enterprise system and take away the city’s enterprise authority.

Taxpayer8675309 wrote:

“On the re-broadcast of the 8/24/09 informal council meeting on comcast cable channel 18, aired last night, there was the city manager Penelope Culbreth-Graft speaking to Jerry Heimlicher re: “item 2,”  recommending to council that street sweeping be added to the stormwater enterprise! This way, she suggested, street sweeping can be charged to citizens directly by fee also.  Then Heimlicher agreed. He said, effectively, “we can argue [sic] that keeping streets clean, helps the stormwater situation”.

The way she described it, by adding street sweeping to the stormwater enterprise, that portion of the current budget allocated to street sweeping can be eliminated, saving the city $1m dollars in the budget! Since no tax cut was discussed, I guess it never crossed the minds of Penelope and Jerry that this tactic, again, would illegally place increased burden on tax payers, to pay for things they are already being taxed for, without voter approval! A clear violation of TABOR. 
Is it unclear to anyone why these illegal enterprises, like stormwater, are so insidious!?!

After the re-broadcast of the 8/24/09 meeting ended. The tax-payer-funded Springs TV channel was used to try to convince viewers why it doesn’t have enough tax dollars to pay for all of the things it believes it provides for by asking “did you?” questions, like “did you enjoy the clean air?” “did you sit on a park bench?” etc. In other words, Springs TVs being paid for by you for the city to advertise to you why you should give the city more of your tax dollars, or rationalizes why it will just take more fees from you.”

Taxpayer8675309 is precisely correct. This sort of cooking of the books and slithering around the constraints of TABOR is what “enterprises” were created to facilitate, and why they should be made illegal. And the use of public television to propagandize voters should also be outlawed. It is a communication channel to permit citizens to keep watch on their public servants, not a tool for government propaganda or for pandering to City Council.

In our system, taxes are exactions imposed on all citizens in a fair and equitable, and equal manner, to pay for the necessary operations of government on a collective and compulsory basis. Fees are payments for specific services that an individual may either choose or not choose to take advantage of. We must all pay taxes for highways and water systems and salaries of public employees because we all, as a community, make use of these amenities. If the public pool charges a fee however, and you don’t want to pay the fee, you don’t swim at the pool.

When government characterizes the ordinary and necessary operations of government as optional services, but does not at the same time allow the citizenry to opt out of the resulting fees, the fee is in all legal and rational respects a tax, and should be subject to public approval as provided for by TABOR. Recently, jurisdictions all over Colorado have been jumping on the “user fee” bandwagon and have been grossly distorting the definition of a “fee” as a specific tactic to evade TABOR. Unfortunately, the Colorado Supreme Court has been complicit in this fraud on the public, so it is now necessary for the People to act directly to once again force government back into it’s lawful, appointed role of serving the public.

People usually know about their Miranda rights, which the police are supposed to read to you before they question you while you’re in custody, but most people don’t really understand why Miranda rights exist. The rule exists because police coercion and physical abuse were commonplace during interrogations of suspects. So, the Supreme Court reined in the authority of the police to interrogate people in a coercive manner.

And TABOR is to elected officials what Miranda is to the police: constraint upon the improper exercise of  authority delegated by the People. It was enacted because elected officials were engaged in a pervasive pattern of fiscal shenanigans and fraud on the public.

But politicians balk at the bit, and so they consistently seek, through pettifoggery, obfuscation, lies, deceit and outright fraud, to evade both the spirit and technical requirements of TABOR. So like Miranda and the origins of TABOR, the government has abused its authority and needs to be directly constrained by the People yet again.

What I propose is that the words “or fees” be added to TABOR, both at the city and state level. These two words would do to elected officials what Miranda did to the police: put them firmly back in their place. It’s a simple, elegant change that would rein in government abuse. If they need more money, regardless of how it’s characterized or collected, they just have to ask us first. That’s the essence of TABOR.

And while we’re at it, let’s forbid all public officials or employees from making any public comments whatsoever about any citizen initiative, either for or against, while in the performance of their public duties or under color of their official authority. Public servants do not enjoy constitutional protection of personal speech when they are on the public’s dime, nor should they be permitted to trade on their official position when making private personal political statements. They have no right to object to or support a citizen initiative as public officials, and their duty is to remain silent and do as the People direct.

Therefore, I propose a citizen initiative to ban public employees and elected representatives from speaking or publishing any form of support or opposition to any citizen-lead petition or initiative. Oh, wait…that’s ALREADY what the law says. To be specific, C.R.S. 1-45-117.  Never mind…

The duty of all public officials, elected or otherwise, is to be humble and obedient to the will of the People, not to arrogate to themselves unauthorized powers, assume positions of intellectual or political superiority, or exercise unsanctioned control over the liberty and direct decisions of the People in constituting their form of society and government as they choose, for better or for worse. It is their duty to obediently serve the public, not, as Woodrow Wilson and the liberal fascists of both his day and our own believe, to place bureaucrats in positions of power over the People on the premise that the bureaucrats know better what the People need than do the People themselves.

The People may make unwise decisions, but that is their right, and they will suffer the consequences of doing so. It is not within the authority of bureaucrats to suborn or evade the clearly enunciated will of the People in the performance of their assigned duties, and when they try to do so, they forfeit the lawful authority they have been granted and become instead merely petite tyrants.

© 2009 Altnews

Colorado Springs City Councilman Tom Gallagher is predictably piqued at Douglas Bruce.

Since when are personal attacks on the character of citizens of this community by elected public servants acceptable? Don’t they remember that they work for us, and that they need to keep their yaps shut when it comes to insulting voters or questioning their right to petition the government?

Colorado Springs City Councilman Tom Gallagher wrote a guest opinion for the Gazette on September 4th. In it, Gallagher complains that Mr. Bruce’s objections to last-minute ballot title language on the initiative to do away with city enterprises are “trivial at best.” Fair enough, but Gallagher goes far beyond “set[ting] the record straight,” and flows straight into an utterly unacceptable personal attack on Mr. Bruce that has nothing whatever to do with the ballot title issue. Such deliberate insult from a public official cannot be left unremarked upon, and ought not be tolerated in a public servant under any circumstances.

If, as Gallagher claims, the change was indeed “trivial at best,” this begs the question of why the City Council would seek to amend it at the last minute? It’s pretty obvious that the City Council is opposed to the initiative, so what motivation could the Council have to amend the ballot title unless that amendment is somehow detrimental to getting it passed?

According to Bruce, who is now seeking a court order to compel the city to use the language of the petition, “They want to ask a Yes/No question without Yes/No boxes, but For/Against the Initiated Ordinance answer boxes instead. You can’t ask Yes/No and then offer For/Against choices; the charter says the petition wording is the only lawful wording. Their goal is to CONFUSE voters, as they did last year. Dozens of people told me they voted the wrong way.”

Mr. Bruce had every right to object to tampering with the ballot title language, and his rationale in this case appears to be sound. The court will end up answering the question, and the taxpayers will pay more unnecessary legal fees incurred by the Council trying to play political gamesmanship rather than simply honestly inquiring of and being obedient to the will of the people. This sort of jiggery-pokey is a commonplace tactic by bureaucrats and politicians who despise the limitations of TABOR, and don’t like the petition process any better.

But that’s not really at all relevant to Councilman Gallagher’s diatribe in the Gazette. What is relevant is that his letter comprises little more than a petulant, childish personal attack on Mr. Bruce that uses the ballot title issue as an excuse to berate the Council’s favorite enemy and whipping-boy. It’s reprehensible smear tactics and nothing more.

Councilman Gallagher is free to complain about Mr. Bruce’s “cheap theatrics” if he likes, but the bulk of his letter is composed of red herrings, straw man arguments and the logical fallacy of Ad Hominem Tu Quoque. For those unfamiliar with this logical fallacy, let me explain: Ad Hominem Tu Quoque occurs when, as in this case, Mr. Gallagher says, “While Mr. Bruce was an El Paso County Commissioner and a member of the State House of Representatives he made no substantive effort to control county or state spending, reduce county or state taxation, or impose fiscal constraints on county or state government even though he was in a position to do so. Instead Mr. Bruce chose to engage in concerted and repeated efforts to reduce the revenue available to the city of Colorado Springs.”

The fallacy occurs when Gallagher concludes that Bruce’s actions as a County Commissioner and State Representative are inconsistent with his attempts to “reduce the revenue available to the City of Colorado Springs” as a private citizen, and that therefore his argument for forcing the city to abide by both the City and State TABOR laws by petitioning to repeal the City’s enterprise system is “hypocrisy.” But it’s not hypocrisy on Bruce’s part, it’s fallacious and manipulative illogic from Gallagher.

The fact that Bruce is or is not consistent as a private citizen with his past actions as an elected representative neither impeaches Bruce’s claims that the city has exceeded its authority by creating “enterprises” as a way to evade the restrictions of TABOR, nor does it make him a hypocrite for petitioning to eliminate the City enterprises now. For one thing, as Councilman Gallagher should know, one’s position as an elected representative imposes upon one a fiduciary and moral duty to represent the citizens of the district, not to pursue personal agendas. Therefore, it would have been improper for Mr. Bruce to focus solely on tax reduction efforts while in office because his duty to the taxpayers happens to include considering the financial needs of the district and how to obtain those funds necessary to serve the best interests of the People whom he represented. Evidently Representative Bruce recognized this duty and, being an honorable man, was obedient to it. That’s hardly cause for calumny from Gallagher.

But as a private citizen, Mr. Bruce is under no such moral or fiduciary constraint and is perfectly entitled to follow his heart and his reason in lawfully petitioning his government for redress of grievances, as is explicitly provided for and protected by the First Amendment and the City Charter. Public servants on the City Council may not like Mr. Bruce’s agenda of throttling government by closing the purse strings to government excess and requiring bureaucrats and elected public servants to ask the permission of the people before imposing new taxes and fees upon them, but that is of little interest and to be expected from bureaucrats. That’s why TABOR exists in the first place. Elected representatives have proven that they cannot be trusted to act in the best interests of the public when it comes to taxation, so the public has removed that authority from them and subjected them to public oversight and permission, as is the public’s right.

Councilman Gallagher continues his vicious personal attack in saying, “Mr. Bruce chooses to portray himself as the self proclaimed advocate for and defender of the people’s right to vote. Mr. Bruce’s actions, however, are all about obstructing the people’s right to vote on issues he finds personally objectionable (i.e. revising TABOR). Mr. Bruce has repeatedly demonstrated that his respect for the will of the people extends only to those decisions that agree with his position. (i.e. His latest petitioned initiated ordinance is simply a rewrite of his previous failed legislative efforts.)”

What’s important to remember, and what Councilman Gallagher has evidently forgotten in his anger at being subordinated to the will of the People is that this isn’t just Douglas Bruce’s initiative. In fact it’s not his at all, it’s an initiative undertaken in accordance with the City Charter in which at least 20 percent of the number of people who voted in the last mayoral election decided that Douglas Bruce has the right idea. The City Council, and particularly Councilman Gallagher commonly forget this salient fact whenever they choose to pillory Mr. Bruce for his activism. And in so doing, they grossly disrespect and arrogantly dismiss the rights and opinions of the tens of thousands of citizens who signed the petitions and exercised their right to petition the government as well. Let’s hope the voters don’t forget Gallagher’s or the Council’s arrogance come election time.

Gallagher goes on to falsely claim, “The Webster’s Dictionary defines this type of behavior as hypocrisy and the practitioner of such behavior as a hypocrite.” Actually, Councilman Gallagher, Webster’s does nothing of the kind. Your failure to acknowledge the different relative positions of an elected representative, who is a servant of the public, and a private citizen, who is the master of the elected representative, indicates a degree of hypocrisy, and more seriously, an unacceptable degree of arrogance in a public servant that should be taken into account at the next election by the People.

And this statement by Councilman Gallagher is the crowning hypocrisy: “I have always encouraged, advocated for, and defended the people’s right to petition their government and their right to vote. I have never deliberately obstructed the established public processes. I have respected and complied with the decisions made of the electors of the city.”

Except, it seems when Douglas Bruce is the author and defender of the petition, in which case personal attacks and disrespect for the tens of thousands of voting citizens of Colorado Springs and their rights are the order of the day.

Now THAT is the definition of “hypocrisy,” Councilman.

© 2009 Altnews

Colorado Division of Wildlife owns up to its own inadequacy.

By Seth Richardson

Last week the Colorado Division of Wildlife finally admitted that it doesn’t have the manpower to deal with the number of dangerous bears besieging Aspen. For several years now, foraging bears in Pitkin County and elsewhere have been wandering into urban areas in search of an easy meal. Drawn by their powerfully sensitive noses to homes, cabins and urban dumpsters, bears in the Aspen area in particular have become more than Yogi-like cuties waddling about for tourists, they have become a real and present danger to humans and pets both.

Although bears are less aggressive than mountain lions, they are still dangerous predators who can easily injure or kill humans. And they do. Several recent bear attacks, including the fatal mauling of 74-year-old Donna Munson on August 7th, 2009 in Ouray prove this. There have actually been more injuries from bear attacks than from mountain lion attacks, which makes bears far more statistically dangerous than lions.

In Aspen, more than 460 calls for assistance have been made to law enforcement since July of this year for bear break-ins and other encounters, including non-fatal attacks. Maureen Hirsch of Aspen, who was attacked by a bear looking for sweets in her home, displayed a remarkable and reprehensible degree of tolerance for bad bear behavior when she blamed humans rather than bears for the claw-marks on her back, even as she was being treated by paramedics. According to the Wall Street Journal she said, “This is a people problem. It’s not a bear problem.” In response to requests from the CDOW that citizens do what they can to frighten and haze intruding bears to adversely condition them to urban areas, Hirsch’s husband said, “Why would we haze bears?” What a pair of knuckleheads. If they get eaten by a bear next time it’ll be just desserts. Then we have to kill the bear.

Why haze bears? Because bears are dangerous predators and when people fail to make every attempt to recondition them to be afraid of humans when they have the opportunity, they exacerbate the problem and perpetuate the threat to others, including children. It’s only pure luck that some child standing at a bus stop or walking downstairs to curiously investigate unusual noises hasn’t been killed by a bear…yet.

If you love bears, then do them a favor and get a shotgun and some rubber-pellet rounds and give any bear that comes within range a spanking that will hopefully persuade them to stay in the woods, where they belong. If you don’t do so, then you bear some responsibility (no pun intended) for the eventual death of that bear at the hands of someone who cares more about human safety than bear rights. Like me.

I have a simple rule when it comes to dangerous predators: I carry a handgun, and if I encounter any dangerous predator, be it a vicious dog, or a mountain lion, or a bear, and it does not immediately flee from me, or it approaches me, I make the reasonable and lawful assumption that my life is in danger and I shoot to kill and keep on shooting till the dangerous predator is dead. This policy is completely legal and morally correct, and if pressed, the CDOW will admit it, but only if pressed. The aversion the CDOW has historically displayed to telling citizens that they have an unassailable right to defend themselves against dangerous predators using lethal force is completely irrational and is a grave disservice, indeed it’s malfeasance to the public whom they serve.

They are getting better at facing facts though. At least now they are admitting that they can’t solve the problem or protect everyone from predation, so they are asking local law enforcement in Pitkin County to assist them in simply killing dangerous bears without having to wait around for a CDOW employee to show up to do it. This is a step forward for the CDOW and I compliment them on their movement towards a rational response to incursions of dangerous predators into human habitat.

Yes, I said human habitat. Sorry bears and lions, but humans have carved out habitat that you are not allowed to venture into. You’ll just have to be satisfied with the millions upon millions of acres of National Forests and wild lands that remain. But if you venture into human habitat, which is defined as any place a human happens to be or live, your life is forfeit. That’s just the way it is. Humans, like any other animal, will defend their territory and their lives against invading predators and, like any other animal, need make no apology for doing so. We don’t need to, nor should we “adapt” to living with dangerous predators in our midst.

So long as bears and lions stay in the woods, where they belong, and don’t begin to view humans or their possessions as potential food sources, we’ll all get along fine. But there are plenty of bears out there, and the species isn’t going to suffer in the least if Joe Average Citizen shoots a dangerous bear from time to time, particularly the ones who have made themselves at home in human habitat. The same rationale applies to mountain lions. The fact with lions is that if you see a mountain lion, and it’s close enough for you to draw a handgun and shoot it, you were factually in grave danger of being eaten, and that’s all the justification that you need to defend yourself.

So, Joe, if a bear breaks into your home, you can spank him with rubber pellet or bean-bag rounds if you want (one rubber round backed up by two or three or more #4 or OO buckshot is my preferred loading), or you can just shoot him dead (and don’t forget to ask the DOW for the meat, which is incredibly tasty when prepared properly) and do your neighbors and their children and pets a big favor.

But if you fail to do anything, and indeed refuse to do anything, like the nitwit knuckleheads in Aspen, you are endangering others through your negligence and you are not doing the bears any favors either.

So, if you live in bear country, prepare yourself to take a course of action appropriate to the situation you might face, and then take action when the opportunity arises. Doing anything else, or nothing at all, is immoral and an abrogation of your duty to society.

© 2009 Altnews

Colorado Springs City Manager Penny Culbreth-Graft pettifogs her way through excuses for not cutting city employee salaries.

By Seth Richardson

In response to an inquiry from Gazette editorial page editor Wayne Laugesen about her rationale for calling pay cuts for city employees a “temporary” solution to city budget problems, City Manager Penny Culbreth-Graft bumbled, obfuscated and pettifogged her way through an explanation pretty much as badly as she’s bumbled her way through her own financial difficulties.

Culbreth-Graft, it was pointed out in the Gazette last week, owes more than $250,000 to the Huntington Beach City Employees Credit Union and some $8000 for unpaid property taxes in California. This is not what the public should expect or accept from the highly-overpaid City Manager of Colorado Springs. But it gets worse. It appears that she simply doesn’t understand the concept of “recession” or the need to make real cuts and sacrifices to make the city’s budget balance.

Culbreth-Graft’s excuse for refusing to cut city employee wages (including her own) is specious and a noxious display of the sort of arrogance that public officials often display about their position in society as public servants. Public Servants. Remember those words, because Culbreth-Graft doesn’t know what they mean, but she needs to be educated in their meaning, right before she’s sent back to California to face the music for her personal financial failings.

Culbreth-Graft uses the lame excuse of bureaucratic “that’s just how we do things” inertia to try to excuse her malfeasance in office. Here’s her explanation: “Council’s policy is to pay market wages.” That’s it. The rest of her letter is nothing more than trying to scare the public, and excuse her failure to advise Council that Colorado Springs can no longer afford to pay “market wages” to its employees. She refuses to advise that a permanent wage cut of at least five percent or more be instituted immediately, beginning, I would heartily suggest, with Culbreth-Graft’s own excessive $210,000 salary, which should be cut to no more than our County Commissioners make, which is $87,300. There is no reason for a public employee, any public employee, to make more than four times the median income in Colorado Springs, which is about $50,000. Tying public employee’s salaries to the prevailing median income would have the beneficial effect of making the economic condition of the people whom they serve very real and immediate. The public’s success would be their success, and the public’s distress would also be theirs.

She tries to excuse the excessive salaries by claiming that because “Police and Fire are both roughly 10 percent behind the market and given the aggressive hiring market for those skills sets in other cities, we have difficulty filling the positions and often lose employees to those higher-paying cities.” Well, it’s time for her to realize that Colorado Springs cannot afford champagne and caviar tastes on a hot-dogs and beans budget, so she’ll just have to start hiring hot-dog and beans employees. There are millions of people out of work, including fully-trained, experienced police officers from other jurisdictions nationwide who have lost their jobs, who would be happy to have a job at a reasonable wage. Small towns face this issue every day and manage to get by. They can’t afford to compete with Denver, Los Angeles or New York City, and neither can Colorado Springs, nor should it even try.

It’s also quite typical that instead of addressing the issue of an overall pay cut for all city employees, she focuses on police and firefighters, which is a typically bureaucratic passive-aggressive way of trying to scare the public into ponying up more tax money. Every government bureaucrat in history, when faced with trying to persuade the public to raise taxes, has resorted to the “we’ll have to cut essential public safety positions” canard as a method of fostering fear in the populace. Then she says “by using pay cuts we might balance the budget for the year but we never correct the imbalance — we simply perpetuate the problem of having more employees than we can afford.”

But remember, the “imbalance” she’s talking about is the imbalance between the salaries that Colorado Springs public employees get and those that define the arbitrary “market” she has used to determine what the market-based salaries ought to be. But her job is not to keep employee salary at the “market” rate, her job is to employ only those employees that the city needs, and to pay them a wage that the employee is willing to accept in return for the work required, and to hire competent employees while making every effort to economize and save the taxpayers money by paying the lowest acceptable wage based upon the economic conditions facing the City that will keep the absolute minimum necessary number of employees for the reasonable and proper functioning of the city, and only that number, employed.

If that means she needs to cut wages and allow those who do not wish to work for the salary offered to go their way with the citizen’s best wishes, then that’s what she needs to do, because right now there is an enormous pool of unemployed people all over the country who would be very happy to have a job that would keep food on the table and pay rent. That’s her duty, to provide city employees at the minimum possible expense, not to provide gold-plated sinecures and cushy, well-paying jobs to a bloated payroll of overpaid or unnecessary employees. She has a fiduciary duty to the taxpayers NOT to give in to the complaints of city employees who are bound to carp about a pay cut. She’s paid the big bucks (way too big) to make the tough decisions and be the nasty, mean, cold-hearted headhunter who will hire and fire based on what the City needs and can afford and nothing else.

Times are tough all over, including here in Colorado Springs, and public servants have no special dispensation or entitlement to be insulated or immune from the economic forces that are besieging everyone. That’s a shame, and it’s unfortunate that anyone has to be jobless, but of all people, public servants at all levels take the job with the realization that if the public decides it doesn’t need their services any longer, or cannot afford them, they have no claim on their position, because the taxpayers are the ultimate Boss of Everybody in public service.

It’s time to call the bluff and demand that she start at the top, with a 25 percent pay cut for all administrative and supervisory positions that make more than $100,000 per year, and a five percent pay cut for all other employees, across the board.

And I’d suggest that the employees be asked if they’d rather take a pay cut or be fired. I suspect they’ll opt for the pay cut.

Aesop’s got nothing on this tempest in a teapot.

By Seth Richardson

Once upon a time there were three knuckleheads and a pitcher of beer.

The knuckleheads had never met one another, and the pitcher of beer was still a philosophical concept when knucklehead number one, let’s call him the Professor, came home from a long and arduous journey to the other side of the world. Arriving at his house, he thought the end of a long, tiresome, frustrating day was at hand. Little did he know that his travails were about to multiply exponentially.

Realizing he’d forgotten his door key, he and his carriage driver worked to gain entry. Unbeknownst to him, an elderly neighbor saw him trying to jimmy the door, and not recognizing him, she called knucklehead number two, the Constable, to report a possible burglary in progress.

The Constable, being a dutiful and generally well-liked policeman, came to the house of the elderly neighbor and talked with her, then went to the residence of the Professor to find out what was going on.

Meanwhile, the Professor, now more angry and frustrated than he had been, and wanting only to ensconce himself in his easy chair, put his feet up and relax, has managed to gain entry to his home, only to find the Constable knocking on the door behind him. Annoyed, the Professor opens the door and abrasively addresses the Constable, who, suspicious at this initial hostile reaction asks the Professor to identify himself. After some conversation, to which we will never be privy, the Professor provides documents proving who he is, but the Constable, for some reason, is not convinced.

The confrontation escalates as the Professor’s and the Constable’s egos begin to inflate and clash with one another. The Professor is tired, frustrated and angry at being braced by the Constable in his own home, and the Constable is becoming angry at the seemingly irrational conduct of the Professor over a simple request for identification related to a possible burglary of the residence. Neither the Professor nor the Constable are in control of their emotions at this point and the rhetoric becomes heated, and they are both acting like knuckleheads.

Then the Constable makes a knuckleheaded move and abuses his authority by arresting the Professor in his own home for being loud and tumultuous. The Constable’s mistake is ego-driven and improper because the Professor has every right to be loud and tumultuous in his home, whether the Constable likes it or not.

The Professor, objecting loudly and tumultuously his arrest, is taken away in handcuffs to the police station, where he is later released.

Enters now the third knucklehead, the Most Powerful Man in the World, let’s call him the Chief Executive. By coincidence, the Chief Executive and the Professor are acquainted with one another, and being questioned on the events, the Chief Executive acknowledges that he doesn’t have all the facts, but opines that the Constable, and his fellow Constables acted “stupidly” in arresting the Professor in his own home.

All of this comes to the attention of the Press, which trumpets the events far and wide across the land, and the people are wroth with indignation. Some are indignant that the Chief Executive would opine on a matter of no public consequence, some are indignant that the Constable arrested a distinguished Professor in his home merely for being loud and tumultuous, and some are indignant that the Professor reacted so irrationally and emotionally to the Constable, who was just doing his job.

To calm the public, the Chief Executive invites the Professor and the Constable to his office for a pitcher of beer to try to resolve the issue, calm the public, and avoid further embarrassment by making much of the event to the Press.

Enters now the Pitcher of Beer, which says, “What a bunch of knuckleheads…” as it is being quaffed.

© 2009 Altnews

County Commissioners sanction theft of a golf course.

By Seth Richardson

Sometimes, a neighborhood deserves to lose. In this case, the selfish people living along the links of the Gleneagle Golf Course deserve to be chastised for their avarice and disregard for their neighbor’s property rights.

In his column in the Gazette Sunday, Bill Vogrin points out that the El Paso County Commissioners gave Miles Scully, the owner of the Gleneagle Golf Course, “about a year to submit a development agreement that essentially protects the remaining 93 acres of the golf course from development.” Vogrin didn’t mention if the Commissioners offered to buy the golf course and protect it as a park or as open space. However, I seriously doubt that acquiring the property is on the table. But it should be.

Scully owns the golf course, which has been losing money hand-over-fist for years. The residents who bought homes fronting on the greens are NIMBYing Scully into being an involuntary good Samaritan. They are greedy, avaricious people who think that they have a right to dictate what their neighbor does with his property merely because they live next door. Buying a house fronting on a golf course without a contract that ensures the golf course will always be there does not entitle a homeowner to interfere with the golf course owner’s right to redevelop his property.

Vogrin quotes Commissioner Wayne Williams as coercing Scully by demanding that Scully come up with a plan to preserve 93 acres of the golf course from further development. “This is a critical issue. If it’s not addressed, your zoning goes away,” said Williams.

Problem is that it’s doubtful that the Commissioners have the legal authority to extort Scully this way.

Conditioning the granting of a zoning change on the dedication of private property for public use is an unconstitutional taking of private property without just compensation as required by the Fourth Amendment. Several Supreme Court cases uphold this principle, including Nollan v. California Coastal Commission, 483 U.S. 825 (1987), where the court found unconstitutional a condition applied by the California Coastal Commission to Nollan’s application to demolish and rebuild a seashore bungalow that required Nollan to grant an easement for the public to cross his property to reach the beach.

Justice Scalia authored the ruling, saying, “Had California simply required the Nollans to make an easement across their beachfront available to the public on a permanent basis in order to increase public access to the beach, rather than conditioning their permit to rebuild their house on their agreeing to do so, we have no doubt there would have been a taking. To say that the appropriation of a public easement across a landowner’s premises does not constitute the taking of a property interest but rather (as JUSTICE BRENNAN contends) “a mere restriction on its use,” is to use words in a manner that deprives them of all their ordinary meaning. Indeed, one of the principal uses of the eminent domain power is to assure that the government be able to require conveyance of just such interests, so long as it pays for them.”

In another case, Dolan v. City of Tigard, 512 U.S. 374 (1994), the City Planning Commission conditioned its approval of Dolan’s application to pave her parking lot and expand her store on a requirement that Dolan to dedicate a public greenway for flood control purposes and to provide a pedestrian/bicycle pathway. The Court held that the dedication requirement was an uncompensated taking of private property for public use because “the government may not require a person to give up a constitutional right in exchange for a discretionary benefit conferred by the government where the property sought has little or no relationship to the benefit. In evaluating Dolan’s claim, it must be determined whether an “essential nexus” exists between a legitimate state interest and the permit condition.”

In Dolan, the Court found unconstitutional the requirement that Dolan leave 15 percent of her property as open space not because it might be required for flood control mitigation, but because the city mandated that the greenway be open to the public. In doing so, the City took one of the most essential of the “bundle of sticks” of private property rights, the right to exclude others, which the Court has repeatedly ruled is, without further judicial review, in and of itself an uncompensated and therefore unconstitutional taking. Dolan requires, in addition to protection of the right to exclude, a “rough proportionality” in any conditions imposed on a landowner, and that the conditions imposed have a “nexus” or “reasonable relationship” to the development proposed.

So the question here is what the Commissioners hope to achieve by conditioning Scully’s zoning application to build 47 patio homes on 10.5 acres on a requirement to dedicate 93 acres of unproductive, six-figure loss-making golf course to the use and enjoyment of the public?

It seems perfectly clear that the Commissioners seek to obtain 93 acres of public open space for free as a condition of allowing the building of 47 homes on 10.5 acres. I see no proportionality, nexus or reasonable relationship to Scully’s proposal that would authorize the Commissioners to engage in this unconstitutional extortion. I hope Scully sues the County.

Depending on what the zoning is for the rest of the golf course, the Commissioners should not attempt to extort a promise for the remaining acreage, it should simply judge each application on its merits at the time it’s presented. At the moment, all Scully wants to do is close the driving range and convert the economically underperforming land to a more profitable venture.

This in itself is a financial benefit to the county, which will realize more revenue from property taxes associated with high-end residences than it will from a non-performing driving range.

In many places, that factor alone is sufficient justification for the government to forcibly buy the property under Eminent Domain laws and sell it to a developer who will “better use” it and provide more revenue for the government involved. This particular bit of noxious court precedent comes from the Supreme Court case Kelo v. City of New London, Slip Opinion No. 04-108, (2005). Here, the Court held that “Promoting economic development is a traditional and long accepted governmental function, and there is no principled way of distinguishing it from the other public purposes the Court has recognized.”

The same reasoning applies here, and would apply to any future development of the remaining 93 acres of economically moribund golf course. If Scully wants to improve the economic yield of his property, the County ought to take that into consideration before kowtowing to the complaints of NIMBYs who now enjoy Scully’s property without paying for it.

If, on the other hand, open space and parkland is important to the NIMBY neighbors in the Eagle Villas neighborhood and to the Commissioners, then they should put together financing and buy the property from Scully at a fair market price and dedicate it to parks and open space purposes.

But to steal Scully’s land, and his right to economic gain from it by seizing the vast majority of his land as public open space as a condition of allowing him to use ten percent of it for development is as immoral as the Kelo decision, which spawned state legislation in 42 states, including Colorado, that significantly restricts the state’s ability to seize private property merely to enhance tax revenues.

Here we have exactly the opposite. The NIMBY neighbors like the view and want the Commissioners to act as their designated hit-men to preserve their view. But it’s not their view, it’s Scully’s, and if they want to preserve it then they need to pony up and buy it from Scully, not try to persuade the Commissioners to steal it from him.

© 2009 Altnews

NHTSA study further debunks the canard that our highways are overrun with dangerous drunks.

By Seth Richardson

As if it wasn’t bad enough that out of 2,787 drivers whose liberty was infringed by a 4th of July DUI checkpoint, only 17 were “cited for DUI,” a new study from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration demonstrates that the actual risks of encountering a drunk driver are quite small as well.

A 2007 NHTSA study just released, conducted at 300 locations nationwide and involving nearly 11,000 drivers who volunteered to be tested, concluded that only 2.2 percent of drivers tested had blood-alcohol content above the legal limit of 0.08 percent, half the previous number in 1996 and just over a quarter of the number of 7.8 percent in 1973.

Fewer people are driving while intoxicated, and that’s a good thing, but another conclusion of the study is more alarming, but not for the obvious reasons. The study found that 16 percent of drivers tested on weekend nights tested positive for marijuana, cocaine, prescription sedatives and other drugs. This may sound alarming, but it’s really not, and we should ignore the fear-mongering proclamations of people like Drug Czar Gil Kerlikowske, head of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, who said in an ONDCP blog entry on July 13th, “The troubling data shows us, for the first time, the scope of drugged driving in America, and reinforces the need to reduce drug abuse. Drugged driving, like drunk driving… puts us all at risk and must be prevented.”

The problem with Czar Kerlikowske’s hysterical pontification is that it has no basis in scientific fact, as carefully pointed out by the very researchers who conducted the NHTSA study, which explicitly points out that “The reader is cautioned that drug presence does not necessarily imply impairment. For many drug types, drug presence can be detected long after any impairment that might affect driving has passed. For example, traces of marijuana can be detected in blood samples several weeks after chronic users stop ingestion. Also, whereas the impairment effects for various concentration levels of alcohol is well understood, little evidence is available to link concentrations of other drug types to driver performance.” And this: “The result of these factors is that, at the current time, specific drug concentration levels cannot be reliably equated with effects on driver performance.”

The study, available in PDF form from a link on the page link above, points out that whether or not drug use, illegal or legal, impairs driving ability is a complex and poorly understood scientific matter and that a good deal of research is required before any valid conclusions can be drawn. “The full significance of these findings for highway safety will only become clear when ongoing and additional research conducted by NHTSA and others is completed,” the report concludes.

The study also points out that NHTSA has been pursuing an educational program for police officers to train them to recognize the “symptoms of driver impairment by drugs other than alcohol.” More than 1000 instructors and 6000 officers in 46 states have received this training.

In the NHTSA “Highway Safety Desk Book,” a federal reference guide for local law enforcement, the federal government pays at least lip service to the idea that the emphasis should be on detecting impaired drivers and getting them off the road. “While substances affect different individuals in differing degrees, laws should emphasize the impairment of the driver—not the type, legal or illegal, or even the amount of the substance ingested.”

What’s important about this training program is that it’s nothing new. Police officers are routinely trained to recognize bad driving behavior indicative of intoxication, regardless of the source of the impairment, as justification for stopping someone. For many years a handbook has been available to law enforcement officers that predicts the probability of a driver being impaired based on an officer’s observation of bad driving. For example, driving without headlights at night or slow response to changing traffic signals indicates a “statistically valid” probability of .45 to .65 that the driver is impaired to a level consistent with a 0.08 percent BAC. As a former certified DUI enforcement officer, I used this handbook way back in the 1980s. Indeed, even a layman can keep a copy of this handbook in their car and use it to detect drunk drivers themselves, whom they can then follow and report to the police, as I have done many times since retiring from law enforcement.

There are more than 100 such cues and associated probabilities available for officers to observe in the actual driving behavior of a suspect that can provide plenty of probable cause for the officer to stop and investigate further, and a combination of these cues can in and of themselves, without any chemical test, provide not only probable cause to arrest, but proof beyond a reasonable doubt of the suspect’s guilt in court. In fact, some estimates are that prosecutors actually present chemical test results less than 50 percent of the time, and that DUI defense lawyers have little difficulty in getting such results thrown out because of technical or procedural difficulties with the test, which is a big part of why prosecutors don’t present them in court. The majority of people are convicted of DUI based only on the testimony of the officer about his observations of the defendant’s physical behavior and driving ability.

In other words, police officers are already well trained to detect intoxicated drivers, and all they need is be in a position to observe and apprehend them. DUI checkpoints are notoriously ineffective at doing either. Typically the success ratio for such checkpoints is one percent or less, and in order to conduct a checkpoint, officers have to be taken away from other general law enforcement duties and they are stuck at a single location, dependent on the amount of traffic passing by for even the minimal success they enjoy. DUI checkpoints are an enormous waste of police resources, taxpayer money and they are almost completely ineffective at actually getting drunks off the highway.

The NHTSA insists, “the sobriety checkpoint is a highly visible enforcement mechanism. … Its purpose is to maximize deterrence, by increasing the risk perception of motorists who drive while impaired by alcohol or drugs.” What this statement proves is that DUI checkpoints are more about fear mongering, exercise of police authority and potential deterrence than they are about apprehending actual impaired drivers.

To successfully apprehend drivers who are actually impaired, police officers should not waste their time standing around waiting for a drunk driver to miss the “DUI Checkpoint Ahead” signs and wander into a checkpoint, they should be out driving around, observing driving behavior and comparing it to the cues provided by the NHTSA to achieve reasonable suspicion to stop and probable cause to arrest. In addition to having officers on the street and able to respond to emergencies, by doing so, they do not violate the civil rights of the 97.8 percent of sober drivers, and they greatly enhance their chances of coming across one of the 2.2 percent of drivers who are actually dangerous to the public.

Obama’s energy bill will create a massive federal bureaucracy to control how you use energy.

By Seth Richardson

Most of the focus on the “Cap and Trade” House energy bill now headed to the Senate has been on how carbon credits will be traded, bought and sold, but there is a more draconian component of the bill that has so far escaped public notice.

Deep within H.R. 2454 lies Title II –Energy Efficiency, Subtitle A –Building Energy Efficiency Programs.

This section, found at page 320 of the bill, sets out a plan for the federal government to dictate building codes and energy efficiency standards for both private residences and commercial properties that gives the Secretary of Energy and his underlings essentially plenary control over how you use energy in your home. Combined with the Smart Grid Advancement provisions in section 141 of the bill, these new rules federalize how homes are built and remodeled and will inevitably permit the government to both monitor your energy usage and control how much energy you are allowed to use through the mandatory use of “smart appliances.” And that’s ignoring the massive economic impact of energy-efficient building and having to have federally-certified inspectors certify that your home meets the standards, which could potentially add tens of thousands of dollars to the cost of a new home.

This sort of mandatory imposition of remotely monitored and controlled appliances like heating, air-conditioning and other electrical systems in the home was proposed in California in 2008. The New York Times reported in January, 2008 on a proposed regulation to require homeowners and businesses to install thermostats that could be remotely controlled by the utilities in order to help deal with brownouts and power shortages.

Public outrage was so immediate that by February, the mandatory plan had been abandoned. But expect it to come back on a national level if Obama’s energy bill passes the Senate unchanged, and expect it to be not just mandatory and not just for use in the event of power shortages. Expect it to be used to pry into your personal affairs by monitoring every watt of energy you use.

The bill requires a 70 percent reduction in residential energy use by 2029, with a mandate for a 30 percent reduction in energy use for all new homes beginning immediately. The Secretary of Energy is empowered to create not just rules, but a whole new bureaucracy and enforcement arm to track every new home built, and every renovation to an old home, in a federal database. Every new home will have to not just be built to federal standards, but it will have to be individually physically inspected and tested and certified to the federal government that it meets the applicable federal energy standards.

States are required by the bill to amend their building codes in compliance with the new federal mandates, and the typical carrot-and-stick approach of denying federal funding if a state does not comply within four years of the enactment of the law. And if a state simply refuses to comply and the economic sanctions are not enough, the bill states that the new federal energy code “shall become the applicable energy efficiency building code for such jurisdiction.”

This usurpation of state’s rights will be enforced by legions of federal building enforcement officials, one might call them “energy cops,” who will be empowered to enforce whatever rules the Secretary of Energy makes up to effectuate the law. These federal energy cops will have the power to invade your home or business and inspect it, and presumably shut your business down or throw you out of your home if your structure doesn’t meet the requisite standards.

And the federal government will be keeping track of your energy usage. The bill calls for a “Residential Energy Consumption Survey” and database that covers 90 percent of the residential market. This survey will require all new private homes to be assessed, rated and “labeled” as being in compliance with federal energy regulations, and this rating will have to be attached to the title paperwork for the home.

The Secretary of Energy is authorized to make whatever rules he deems necessary to achieve this objective, and the opportunities for intrusive, overreaching and tyrannical control are all but uncountable.

With Smart Grid technology in place, the simplest way for the government to keep track of your energy use is to mandate that your electric meter report to the federal government on a regular basis. Because the law will require a database of all new homes that will include their specific location and other details about the construction, the energy use can be appended to such data and, at the Secretary’s pleasure, you can be sanctioned for using too much energy automatically, by computer-generated notice.

Just imagine the federal energy cops coming around to your home with a tactical team in tow to check your home for illegal incandescent light bulbs. Don’t think it can happen? Well, just recently, machine-gun armed federal agents raided numerous homes in Utah, kicking down doors, pointing guns a people and placing them in fear of their lives. Were these violent drug offenders? Nope, they were pot-hunters, people who had been illegally collecting pottery and other archeological artifacts from federal lands.

There is no reason to believe that federal energy cops seeking to audit your home’s energy usage would be any more reticent to use massive paramilitary assaults to ensure that they adequately terrorize you into compliance.

Beyond cap-and-trade and all the chicanery going on at high levels with the energy companies and Congress, this massive intrusion into our personal privacy and the unconscionable intrusion into the state’s right to determine building codes within a state, not to mention the enormous costs of compliance that will result, is one of the issues of our generation, and it must be defeated in the Senate. Call your Senator today and demand that he vote against the bill.

High crimes and misdemeanors by the Obamastration justify impeachment of the President

By Seth Richardson

The rule of law and the future of the Republic hangs in the balance as this is written. The Supreme Court will today consider an emergency appeal by three Indiana state pension funds to stop the juggernaut of President Obama’s bailout train and restore the rule of law to the federal government.

The issue before the Court is how the Obama administration has unlawfully meddled with well-settled bankruptcy laws in its attempt to force the Chrysler bankruptcy through the system without either due process or equal justice, purely for political advantage for Obama, and to the piratical advantage of the United Auto Workers, who stand to become owners, nay, masters of Chrysler if this fraud is not stopped by the court of last resort.

What’s happening is that the Indiana State Police Pension Fund, the Indiana Teacher’s Retirement Fund and the states Major Moves Construction Fund have been divested of their legal status as secured bondholders in Chrysler and have been relegated to the position of unsecured creditors in the bankruptcy proceedings through unprecedented interference by the government with private contracts and private property in order to place the UAW and the federal government in an advantageous financial and control position. This is an unprecedented and utterly lawless violation of the Constitution.

Bankruptcy law are well settled in this country, and the hierarchy of protection provided to investors is fundamental and essential to the entire economy. People buy bonds because they are secured financial instruments, which means that in return for paying a premium fee to purchase them, they receive specific protection in the event of bankruptcy that places them ahead of the more-risky common stockholders.

Bonds are a private contract and an oath by the seller that the money invested must (not may) be repaid on schedule, and that the company has reserved sufficient assets to guarantee that bondholders will get their money back. It’s more a secured loan than an investment in company stock. Bonds allow individuals to invest their money at much lower risk, and companies, not to mention municipalities and even the United States itself issue bonds to finance their operations on the contractual promise they will pay the money back, no matter what. The rating assigned a bond is a reflection of the strength of the organization the money is lent to, which indicates the potential risk of losing one’s investment in a bankruptcy.

Bondholders can lose out, but the law is quite clear that they have preferred status at the very top of the list for repayment in the event of bankruptcy. This has been the case for hundreds of years.

But what is happening today is that the Obamastration is subverting the rule of law by placing others above the bondholders without any legal authority whatsoever to do so. The Chrysler bankruptcy has been driven by the greed of the UAW and the liberal-fascist pretensions of President Obama to rewrite the law of the land in order to achieve power and control over Chrysler, it’s employees, and it’s suppliers, not to mention aggregating more fascistic power and control over the People by establishing a precedent that would allow the Executive Branch to seize control of virtually any company or industry without even a pretense of legal authority, if it first forces federal bailout money upon it.

Moreover, the Treasury Department appears to be illegally using federal TARP funds to pay for Chrysler’s bankruptcy protection without congressional authority or legal precedent.

In short, the Obamastration is making up the rules as it goes, with a callous disregard for the law and the Constitution, which says that private property shall not be taken for public use without just compensation and the federal government shall not interfere with private contracts. What Obama’s lackys have take from the Chrysler bondholders is their secured investment and their right to be first in line at the bankruptcy table.

And the danger to the Republic is that if the rule of law no longer obtains regarding private contracts and bankruptcies, investors will no longer buy bonds and if investors do not buy U.S. Savings Bonds, or municipal bonds, or private bonds, bankruptcies will become epidemic and businesses, municipalities, states and even the federal government will quickly become insolvent when investors refuse to risk their money because it would be subject to the whims and caprices of the Executive Branch rather than the law.

Nothing can possibly justify the abrogation of the rule of law regarding bankruptcy, private property and the right of contracts. If such constitutional violations are necessary to save Chrysler, then it is better to let Chrysler fail and disappear, because the precedent set by this lawlessness is a tremendous leap down the slippery slope towards a liberal fascist dictatorship.

If President Obama and his administration cannot abide by the rule of law, he, and they, are nothing more than tyrants who must be turned out of the government as soon as possible, lest the Republic fall to lawless totalitarianism.

Impeach President Obama!

UPDATE: The Supreme Court has issued a one-line temporary stay on the proceedings while it considers the case.

©2009 Altnews

Police union attempts to control and censor the press

By Seth Richardson

The Los Angeles Times reports today that the Los Angeles Police Protective League is demanding that the owners of the San Diego Union-Tribune fire editorial writers who are critical of public employee labor unions. The newspaper was recently purchased by Platinum Equity, which is heavily invested in public employee pension funds in California. The Los Angeles police and firefighters pension fund has more than $30 million invested with Platinum Equity.

Police union President Paul M. Weber claims that the investment with Platinum makes the union “part owner in the flagging Union-Tribune.” Weber wrote a letter to Platinum CEO Tom Gores on March 26 saying, “Since the very public employees they continually criticize are now their owners, we strongly believe that those who currently run the editorial pages should be replace.” (sic)

If ever there was a cautionary tale for avoiding government bailouts of newspapers, this is it. Thomas Jefferson knew this.

“The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.” –Thomas Jefferson to Edward Carrington, 1787.”

Freedom of the press relies for its very existence and credibility upon the ability of the press to resist pressure from special interests, political candidates, public officials and the subjects of editorial criticism. Without the independence that is essential to a truly free press, news organizations rapidly become little more than shills for their benefactors.

Thomas Jefferson wrote, “The most effectual engines for [pacifying a nation] are the public papers… [A despotic] government always [keeps] a kind of standing army of newswriters who, without any regard to truth or to what should be like truth, [invent] and put into the papers whatever might serve the ministers. This suffices with the mass of the people who have no means of distinguishing the false from the true paragraphs of a newspaper.”

The insidiousness of this corruption of the free press is easily seen in the liberal bias of most newsrooms, be they newspapers or television stations. CNBC and NBC’s ownership by General Electric has resulted in the destruction not only of the network’s ratings, but of its reputation and credibility. Under the direction of Jeffery Immelt and Jeff Zucker, the networks have taken a hard left and have exited the domain of the free press and become slaves to the Obama administration and the Progressive movement. The New York Times has fallen into the same trap, and is now nothing but a shill for far-left causes. Let the government take them over and the truth will vanish entirely.

Now Congress is involved. Democrat Benjamin Cardin has introduced a bill to “help” newspaper companies restructure as nonprofits with lots of tax breaks. “We are losing our newspaper industry,” Cardin said. “The economy has caused an immediate problem, but the business model for newspapers, based on circulation and advertising revenue, is broken, and that is a real tragedy for communities across the nation and for our democracy.”

Yes, it is, but turning the free press into a “public press” by making it beholden and answerable to the government by virtue of public benefits and/or funding will enslave the press to Liberal Democrats and Socialists, who will not hesitate for a moment to pressure press agencies to report only that which is favorable to the agenda of whomever grants the boons or provides the funds. This is far worse than no press at all, for when there is an absence of a free press, that vacuum is inevitably filled as the community demands information. But where the press is subservient to and controlled by the government, the people cannot find the truth, and a free press cannot compete when government largesse favors the government mouthpiece.

Nowhere is this socialistic control of the free press more obvious than in the words of the boss of the Los Angeles police union. He wants nothing more than to make the actions of Los Angeles police officers immune from public criticism by the only ones who can criticize with impunity because they are free, independent and protected by the U.S. Constitution against censorship by the government.

It would be better for newspapers to die a dignified death and become extinct than that they become organs of the state, because the danger to the public posed by government control of the sources of information and news are incalculable.

“This formidable censor of the public functionaries, by arraigning them at the tribunal of public opinion, produces reform peaceably, which must otherwise be done by revolution.” –Thomas Jefferson to A. Coray, 1823.

But do we, the People, have the will to preserve the Fourth Estate? Jefferson was skeptical even in his own time, and said, “Our people, merely for want of intelligence which they may rely on, are become lethargic and insensible of the state they are in.”

It’s far more important that newspapers and other news organization, including the emerging on-line citizen-lead journalism, remain true to the principles of a Free Press, because without it, tyranny will inevitably be facilitated and protected. It is our duty to preserve the freedom of the press, and to resist, and revile attempts to manipulate it, such as that attempted by Los Angeles Police Protective League President Paul M. Weber.

“To preserve the freedom of the human mind… and freedom of the press, every spirit should be ready to devote itself to martyrdom; for as long as we may think as we will and speak as we think, the condition of man will proceed in improvement.” Thomas Jefferson to William Green Munford, 1799.

© 2009 Altnews

Budget cuts call for individual initiative and participation

By Seth Richardson

Gazette reporter Daniel Chacon wrote in his article “Brown fields, no busses: Effects of city budget cuts sinking in” on Friday, “Hermine Wise got a lesson in trickle-down economics last week. Walking around Prospect Lake at Memorial Park last week, she noticed a sign on one of the restroom doors. The bathrooms were locked, and the sign was there to let the public know why: that the city couldn’t afford to maintain the toilets because it didn’t have enough money. “What are people supposed to do?” asked Wise, 78. “Go behind a tree or pee in their pants?””

Yup. Hermine should petition the Council to repeal the “urinating in public” ordinance, or she should tell the Parks Department to unlock the doors and put up a sign asking users to maintain the facilities themselves. If you use public restrooms, bring your own toilet paper with you and either bring a spray bottle of disinfectant or be prepared to be grossed out. Your choice.

Government shouldn’t be allowed to shut us out of our public facilities and property merely because it cannot maintain or police it to its satisfaction. This “lock ‘em out” response is typical passive-aggressive retribution on the part of bureaucrats when they don’t get all the money they ask for, despite their insistence it’s not. The U.S. Forest Service is notorious for closing entire National Forests because they are denied money for administration or patrol. Cities are no less immune from such petty displays of power.

“I think it’s time to go back and ask for more resources,” Mayor Lionel Rivera said. “It’s self-evident that we can’t provide the level of service that the community desires with what we have.”

Well, Mr. Mayor, I’d say you’re wrong about the “community desires,” given how often the community rejects tax increases. You’re free to ask for more tax money, but you haven’t had much success with that, so how about focusing on efficiently using what you have and allowing citizens to learn to lower their expectations and do some of the work themselves?

Chacon wrote, “Some residents, however, suspect the city is cutting back on things like watering parks and bus service to punish voters for not approving tax increases. Such suspicions are unfounded, said Sue Skiffington-Blumberg, a city spokeswoman. “We will gladly show any citizen how their money is spent in detail,” she said in an e-mail.” “Lane miles have expanded, population has grown, costs for basic operational materials like asphalt, gasoline and cement has gone up substantially over the past few years, but our sales tax, which is over 50 percent of the general fund revenue, has shrunk,” she said. “People are feeling the impact,” Mayor Lionel Rivera said. “But the bottom line is we have limited resources.””

Good. That’s how we like it. Keeping bureaucrats and their budgets lean and mean enhances individual liberty, and we’ll learn to adapt to the changing conditions just fine, thank you very much. Times are tough all over, and what we expect you to do is to cut ALL discretionary, “entitlement” and luxury spending and focus on priorities, and here’s how you do it: Start by writing down every category of budget request you have and then prioritize them top to bottom. Then, start fully funding at the top of the list, and work your way down, and when you run out of money, stop.

Start with the essentials:

• Firefighting and emergency medical response
• Water
• Sewer
• Electricity
• Roads and bridges

That’s the first five in order of priority. See how easy it is?

Now, on to parks.

“Candidly, if we have a summer this year like we had last year, I am very, very concerned about the condition of the parks,” Paul Butcher, director of Parks, Recreation and Cultural Services, said Friday. “We are taking every measure possible to keep them at least alive,” he said. Butcher said his office is fielding about one or two complaints a day, from all the dandelions in the medians and parks to the grass turning brown. He said the blue grass in the parks needs about 24 inches of water over a season,” writes Chacon.

Every possible measure? Well, how stupid was it to plant a water-hogging wet-climate, delicate turf grass like Kentucky Bluegrass in the first place, instead of a tough, hardy native grass like Fescue or better yet, Buffalo Grass? D’oh! Let the bluegrass die and replace it with something that uses much less water.

Here’s an idea: Everybody who uses one of those neighborhood parks should go and buy two pounds of Buffalo Grass seed and scatter it in their favorite park. It’ll cost you about $35 and will cover about 1000 square feet. Expensive? Only at first. Once established, it’s hardy and drought-resistant, and it’s native. Eventually, it will overtake the bluegrass and over a few years of natural expansion and volunteer seeding by citizens, the water bill for parks will be cut considerably.

Dandelion greens make great eating, if they haven’t been soaked in poison, and the flowers are pretty, so just ignore them.  They make adequate ground cover to help prevent erosion and you don’t need to water them at all. As for the “one or two complaints a day,” give me a break! Ignore those whiners, don’t try to use it as an excuse to extract money from the rest of us. If the whiners don’t like dandelions, then let them get out in the medians and root them out themselves.

Does your park’s grass need mowing? Then hop on your lawnmower and go mow it. Does the public toilet need cleaning? Then clean it if you want to use it. Do the park benches need painting? Then go paint them. These parks belong to you, so either take care of them or quit carping to the City Council.

Or, vote them more tax money next time they ask, but make sure when they ask, they tell you exactly what they are going to use it for, and hold them to it. Force them to line-item all expenditures and make them pass an ordinance requiring them to abide by the budget once established. But whatever you do, learn to get by with what you have, and take care of it yourself if you care about it, because nobody else ought to be burdened with doing it for you if you don’t care enough to put forth some individual effort. Stop sucking at the public teat and expecting government to provide for you. Such attitudes are destroying our nation.

Update: Having been schooled in the finer points of growing grass, I am informed that Buffalo Grass doesn’t grow well at this altitude, and is not hardy under use, and that according to the experts, Bluegrass, as thirsty as it is, is the best alternative they have found. I must therefore concur with Wayne Laugesen’s editorial on the subject and advocate the installation of artificial grass on playing fields. What to do about other parks is still in question, but hopefully a less water-hungry grass can be found.

© 2009 Altnews

Obama’s plan to close Gitmo endangers U.S. citizens

By Seth Richardson

President Obama is determined to fulfill his campaign promise of closing the military detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and in a speech Thursday he claimed that U.S. prisons are tough enough to keep terrorists in. “Nobody has ever escaped from one of our federal, supermax prisons, which hold hundreds of convicted terrorists,” he said.

This is true, but it’s as disingenuous as it is irrelevant. Nobody’s ever escaped from Guantanamo Bay either. The question is not whether we can keep terrorists locked in, it’s whether we can keep their sympathizers and cohorts locked out. Prisons are designed to keep prisoners locked in. Military bases are designed to keep the enemy out. Supermax in Canon City is designed to keep Zacarias Moussaoui in, Guantanamo Bay is designed to keep the Cuban military out. And because it’s designed to keep Castro’s soldiers out, it’s also coincidentally designed to keep al Qaeda out.

The techniques of keeping the detainees inside Guantanamo are relatively simple and cost-effective. The climate is salubrious, which minimizes physical plant needs. The facility is inherently secure, which deters escape attempts, and as a result, simple chain-link fences topped with razor wire, combined with careful prisoner management is sufficient to prevent escapes. We didn’t need to spend hundreds of millions of dollars creating a secure facility with state-of-the-art, court-mandated prisoner amenities and facilities that are required of all new U.S. federal prisons. We adapted what already existed to the minimal needs of the situation in a way that provides maximum protection from escape from within and attack from without. The only reason to change things is pure ideological opinion, and Obama’s opinion ignores the safety of the public in favor of political posturing and appeasing international terrorists and quislings.

Obama admitted, “We know that al Qaeda is actively planning to attack us again.”  And there is no better motivation or target for an al Qaeda attack than on the prison holding its leaders. Freeing Ramzi Yousef or any of the other al Qaeda leaders would be a political coup for the terrorists. And as good as our prisons are, they are ill-equipped to fend off a determined, multi-pronged military assault employing truck bombs, suicide bombers and trained military fighters. The soldiers at Guantanamo Bay, however, are well equipped and trained to do exactly that.

This is not a speculative threat. Not only are the prisons vulnerable, the civilian population is likewise placed at risk when many high-value terrorist leaders are housed in their communities. Al-Qaeda threatened a wave of suicide bombings against Britain in early 2008 if Afghan and Islamist prisoners were not freed from the high-security Belmarsh prison in London. The attacks did not emerge, but the threats contributed to the “continuing high level of threat to the UK,” according to Britain’s security service, MI5.

Just under a year ago, on June 14, 2008, Taliban commandos and suicide bombers attacked Kandahar’s main provincial jail, freeing more than 390 Taliban militants. A truck bomb with 1,800 kilograms of explosives shattered the gate and killed all the guards. Heavily-armed Taliban fighters then attacked the jail and freed inmates from their cells, escaping before Afghan military forces could respond.

The principle benefit of Guantanamo Bay is that it’s located in Cuba, which puts any attempted attack far from our shores, and it’s a secure military installation, which makes it extremely difficult for anyone wishing to attack and free the detainees. Such a facility could be created here on U.S. soil, but why bother? We already have a facility that’s humane and far more comfortable than anything offered to our prisoners of war during WWII. No complaint has been sustained that the facilities are inadequate or that the conditions are abusive. In fact, the military has bent over backwards to ensure humane and comfortable conditions for the detainees. To duplicate it here in the U.S. merely to achieve an ideological political victory is at the very least a complete waste of money in a time when our economy doesn’t need any extra stress. More importantly doing so would create a high-value terrorist target that would endanger the residents of any community it’s located in.

But Obama is deliberately downplaying the risks and is accusing those who voice concerns about the dangers of bringing terrorist detainees to the U.S. of being alarmists. ”[W]e will be ill-served by some of the fear-mongering that emerges whenever we discuss this issue. Listening to the recent debate, I’ve heard words that, frankly, are calculated to scare people rather than educate them; words that have more to do with politics than protecting our country. … As Republican Lindsey Graham said, the idea that we cannot find a place to securely house 250-plus detainees within the United States is not rational.”

Of course, what he really means is that opposing HIS political views on our national moral rectitude in the eyes of terrorists and enemies who want to kill us is more important than the political views of people who prefer to put the safety of the people of this nation first. His speech is right out of leftist Saul Alinsky’s playbook, “Rules for Radicals: A Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals:” “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.”

Moreover, this is a rather egregious case of the pot calling the kettle black. Obama panders to fear himself when he says: “There is also no question that Guantanamo set back the moral authority that is America’s strongest currency in the world. … [I]nstead of serving as a tool to counter terrorism, Guantanamo became a symbol that helped al Qaeda recruit terrorists to its cause. Indeed, the existence of Guantanamo likely created more terrorists around the world than it ever detained. … Rather than keeping us safer, the prison at Guantanamo has weakened American national security. It is a rallying cry for our enemies.”

This is a preposterous and entirely unsupportable statement. It’s pure political rhetoric. Terrorists around the world don’t need a “symbol” to hate America, America IS the symbol, the Great Satan. They hated America long before we captured any of them on the battlefield while waging war against us. They hate us because we are prosperous and free, but mostly because the United States is not an Islamic Caliphate operating under Sharia Law. They hate us because we defend democracy and individual rights. They hate us for many reasons, and to suppose that Guantanamo Bay is of any real significance to the greater aims of radical Islamists and terrorists is ridiculous.

If we move the detainees here, the outcry will only be renewed and terrorist sympathizers will decry “Guantanamo, version 2.0” just as vociferously as they do now. Al-Qaeda and their supporters don’t care where its operatives are held, they care only that the ARE held, and they will continue to use the detentions of radical Islamic martyrs as a rallying cry no matter where they are held.

This is a conundrum that we simply cannot avoid if we are to fight the war on terror effectively. We must take prisoner those who wage war against us when we can, and we must have somewhere to put them until the war is over or they are no longer a threat to us. The only other alternative is not to take any prisoners, and to simply execute terrorists and spies on the spot, after a summary court-martial. That’s not likely to go over very well either.

But, there’s a ray of hope in this mess. Congress seems disinclined to write Obama a check for closing Guantanamo Bay and moving detainees somewhere else. Amazingly, Democrats are aligning with Republicans, not to mention their constituents, and are telling Obama that his vague plans are unacceptable. In presenting idealistic, abstract arguments for closing Gitmo, Obama has slipped up and departed from Alinsky’s instructions, who said, “The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative. You cannot risk being trapped by the enemy in his sudden agreement with your demand and saying “You’re right—we don’t know what to do about this issue. Now you tell us.”

And that’s exactly what Congress is telling the President.

© 2009 Altnews

Fight to protect your airspace rights, because your neighbors may covet what’s not theirs.

By Seth Richardson

Denver Post columnist Susan Greene doesn’t seem to understand either the concept of “private property” or “property boundary.” In her March 15th column, she bemoans the loss of her beloved “swatch of sky” seen through her kitchen window, rudely taken from her by the builder of a “McMansion” two lots away.

Here’s a clue for Ms. Greene: You don’t own the “swatch of sky” two doors down. As it happens, the owner of the lot on which the “McMansion” now stands owns the sky above his property.

The doctrine is the common law “heaven to hell” theory of property ownership which says that he who owns the surface owns everything below, to the center of the earth, and everything above, to the heights of heaven. Practically speaking however, the “heaven” part of property ownership has been limited by the Supreme Court to that airspace above the surface that the underlying owner can reasonably make use of, which absolutely includes all the airspace within the mandated building envelope.

One’s ownership of space, at least in Colorado, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, is not just a common law principle, it’s enshrined in Colorado statutes. The Condominium Act, C.R.S. Title 38, Article 32, Section 102 says,

“Estates, rights and interests in such areas….may be held, enjoyed, possessed….in the same manner, upon the same conditions, and for the same purposes as estates, rights, and interests in land and shall be in all other respects dealt with and treated as estates, rights, and interests in land.”

And Section 104 says,

“The provisions of articles 30 to 44 of this title and of any other law of this state shall be applicable to estates, rights, and interests created in areas above the surface of the ground and to instruments creating, disposing of, or otherwise affecting such estates, rights, and interests wherever such provisions would be applicable to estates, rights, and interests in land or to instruments creating, disposing of, or otherwise affecting estates, rights and interests in land.”

And if that’s not enough, the Aeronautics Act of 1937, C.R.S. 41-1-107, makes it absolutely clear:

“The ownership of space above the lands and waters of this state is declared to be vested in the several owners of the surface beneath, subject to the right of flight of aircraft.”

That makes it pretty clear that Ms. Greene’s “swatch of sky” didn’t belong to her in the first place, so her “view” was the result of “visual trespass” and was subject to revocation at the will of the landowner. And certainly if she valued that swatch so highly, she had every opportunity to offer the owners of the airspace through which she was viewing the sky compensation for granting her an easement to continue looking through their airspace. But she didn’t. Like every NIMBY, she’s decided that what’s her’s is her’s, and what’s her neighbor’s is her’s to control too.

But what’s a “monstrosity” for NIMBY neighbors is an exercise in property rights for the owner. There’s no indication that he violated any regulations or zoning codes, notwithstanding Greene’s carping about the builder utilizing “nearly every buildable inch of the city lot — a house with no sense of its own space” (evidently Greene also thinks that she’s qualified to determine what a house’s “sense of its own space” ought to be, and cities determine what’s “buildable” after giving due regard to the necessities of light and space for the neighbors), and “annoyed longtimers” (whom she evidently thinks gain power and control over others merely through the expedient of tenure), and historic preservation laws that prevent her from replacing windows without city approval. Wah. That’s what you get when you buy a “historic” home, or when you allow your city to infringe your rights of architectural expression by enacting “historic preservation” ordinances.

The fact that Greene, or her neighbors don’t like the new house shouldn’t be given the slightest consideration or degree of pity or sympathy. She and her neighbors all had the opportunity to buy the lot when the widow died, but they didn’t. You snooze, you lose. Instead, she’s pining for someone else (government) to come to her rescue and save her from her cupidity.

Greene complains, “It’s the nature of Denver’s market that certain houses will be scraped, bigger ones built and some owners forced to foreclose, many due to circumstances beyond their control. Such isn’t the case with Mr. Infill, who showed no regard for the differences between commodification and the concept of home.”

Well, Ms. Greene, even if the owner intended to “flip it,” as you claim, so what? It’ll eventually be someone’s home, and the developer, just like you, has every right to consider the place a “commodity” because that’s what every house is in the end. Even some of your neighbors agree and hope that the house will start a trend that will result in higher home values for them.

Good for them. They are forward-thinking individuals who recognize that stultifying decay caused by NIMBY insistence on unchanging “neighborhood character” suits only those who never plan to sell their homes, and harms those who might want to move up to better housing in the future, either by rebuilding or by selling and moving elsewhere, presumably where the NIMBYs don’t have as much power.

People come and go, but houses remain, and they become homes to those who occupy them, and the design of one’s home is the most expensive and fundamental expression of personal character that most people ever have, and their desire to build, or live in a home of a particular design and character far outweighs the petty aesthetic concerns of NIMBY neighbors who merely wish to exercise power and control over others.

Architecture is art, and has been for thousands of years, and art is expression, and free expression is protected by the First Amendment, so before anyone lobbies government to further infringe on our architectural freedom of expression, they had better come up with a compelling need to do so, and their regulation had better be the minimum necessary infringement required to achieve the legitimate governmental objective. Or, rather than complain and support more oppressive legislation, buy the lots adjacent to you that might affect your “swatch of sky,” raze the houses and do what you want with the lot.

Otherwise, leave your neighbors alone and mind your own business.

©2009 Altnews

The New York Times editorial board goes off the deep end into anti-gun paranoia…again.

By Seth Richardson

The New York Times, with a typically virulent foaming-at-the-mouth tone, opined on May 14th that the “gun lobby” has suborned the U.S. Senate and blood will be spattering the halls of Old Faithful Lodge because senators passed a rider to the Obama-mandated credit card reform bill allowing law-abiding and licensed citizens to carry defensive concealed firearms in national parks and wildlife refuges.

In December, 2008, the Bush administration approved a regulation allowing citizens to carry concealed firearms for self-defense, just before Obama took office, but on March 19, 2009, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly overturned the regulation because, according to the judge, the Department of the Interior didn’t perform a comprehensive environmental assessment as a part of the final rule. Although the DOI addressed National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA) requirements and decided that the final rule constituted a rule change that would have no significant NEPA impact, Judge Kollar-Kotelly disagreed, characterizing the DOI’s final rule as “tautology” and “arbitrary and capricious.”

As a result, Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., proposed an amendment to the credit card bill to reverse the judge’s injunction, which was approved by the senate in a 67-29 vote.

What’s particularly laughable about the Times’ hysterical response is their claim that the law has been “saddled with a dangerous and utterly nongermane amendment allowing visitors to openly carry loaded firearms into national parks and wildlife refuges.” Not really.

First, attaching “nongermane” riders to legislation is a hoary old political tactic that the Democrats have never hesitated to use when it suits their fancy. Second, the final rule enacted under Bush by the Department of the Interior specifically addressed the issue of open carry and of the possession of “AK-47s and other war weapons” and it specifically prohibits open carry unless one is lawfully hunting. (36 CFR Part 2, Section 2.4 and 50 CFR Part 27, Section 27.42).

The pertinent provisions of the amendment read:

(b) Protecting the Right of Individuals To Bear Arms in Units of the National Park System and the National Wildlife Refuge System.–The Secretary of the Interior shall not promulgate or enforce any regulation that prohibits an individual from possessing a firearm including an assembled or functional firearm in any unit of the National Park System or the National Wildlife Refuge System if–

(1) the individual is not otherwise prohibited by law from possessing the firearm; and

(2) the possession of the firearm is in compliance with the law of the State in which the unit of the National Park System or the National Wildlife Refuge System is located.

While the amendment itself does not explicitly forbid open carry or long guns, the Department of the Interior still has regulatory authority to prohibit hunting and target shooting, as well as “brandishing” of firearms, all of which were addressed in the 2008 final rule. Keep in mind that it’s still illegal to discharge a firearm in a national park, unless your life is in danger, so the  threat of bullets zinging hither and yon in Yellowstone won’t be any greater than it is today. The purpose and intent of this law is to respect the 2nd Amendment and to allow citizens who hold valid concealed carry permits to continue to peaceably carry their defensive firearms while in the wildernesses of our national parks and national wildlife refuges.

The dangers individuals face generally do not stop at a park border. In response to the Bush administration rule, the Department of the Interior, National Parks Service, in its December 5, 2008 final rule, said,

“The available data indicates that National Parks and Wildlife Refuges are less prone to criminal activity than other areas in the United States. However, we also recognize that current statistics show an alarming increas in criminal activity on certain federal lands managed by the Department of the Interior, especially in areas close to the border and in lands that are not readily accessible by lan enforcment authorities. In 2007, for instance, the NPS reported 8 murders, 43 forcible rapes, 57 robberies, and 274 instances of aggravated assault. The fact that these crime rates may be lower than the national average does not mean that parks are free from violence, nor do these figures suggest that people should be less cautions or propared when visiting a national park unit or national wildlife refuge.”

The final ruling also explicitly addressed the claim that citizens need not carry firearms because park rangers are adequate security for visitors:

“[T]he NPS and FWS together employ approximately 3000 full and part-time law enforcement officers who are responsible for patrolling and securing millions of acres of land, a substantial portion of which is remote wilderness. In these circumstances, NPS and FWS law enforement officers are in no position to guarantee a specific level of public safety on their lands, and cannot prevent all violent offenses and crimes against visitors. See, e.g., Bowers v. DeVito, 686 F.2d 616 (7th Cir. 1982) (no federal Constitutional requirement that police provide protection; Warren v. District of Columbia, 444 A.2d 1 (D.C. 1981) (”the government and its agents are under no general duty to provide public services, such as police protection, to any particular individual citizen”).”

In fact, the final ruling that was enjoined by the federal court reviewed approximately 125,000 comments on the proposed rule, and it addressed specifically all of the relevant concerns, including the hysterical rantings of the New York Times.

In short, the New York Times is obfuscating, pettifogging and outright lying about the impact of the amendment, which would do nothing more than restore the rule put in place by the Department of the Interior by superseding the federal court injunction that prevents the Bush-era rule from being applied.

The New York Times’ opinion piece is titled “Who’s Senate Is This?”  Well, it’s the Senate of we, the People, and it’s duly exercising it’s constitutional role; to make law.

©2009 Altnews

Having armed and trained teachers in public schools is the only way to protect our children

By Seth Richardson

Hoplophobe claim: “I work in a high school, and we have to protect the students, and some civilian yahoo with a gun trying to respond to an active shooter will do more harm than good. We’re trying to do our best to keep students out of harm’s way and a civilian with a gun just adds to our stress. ”

Teachers aren’t doing their “best.” If they were doing their best, they’d disobey the law, carry a gun anyway, and put their lives on the line to stop the shooters. It is the people who are in the building in the first critical seconds and minutes of the attack who are going to determine how many innocent children are murdered, and it’s utterly disgusting that our legislators and our educators fail to understand this simple fact.

Do you know how many terrorist attacks there have been on Jewish schools in the last few years? Go look it up. Then look up the reason. Here’s a clue: The reason that attacks on Jewish schools by Arab terrorists has dropped to zero is because armed citizens carrying machine guns guard schools in Israel, each and every day, on the alert for terrorist attacks. To suggest that armed citizens, teacher or administrators in schools would be ineffective only demonstrates an abysmal ignorance or an uncaring ideological agenda.

What teachers are doing is what they are trained to do because they are forbidden to do anything else, and what it amounts to is cowering in fear waiting for the gunman to get around to them and execute them. That’s no way to live, and it’s certainly no way to die. During the Columbine incident, we had courageous teachers trying to use fire extinguishers as weapons because they had nothing else. (How about a beaker of hydrochloric acid in the face, that’d be pretty distracting…)

But, you do have a choice, though it’s an unpleasant one to contemplate because it requires courage and a willingness to sacrifice your life to protect your students.

Courageous teachers, at the sound of gunfire, could band together and rush a gunman in a group and physically overwhelm him, even if it means some of them would get shot. How many teenage gunmen are going to be able to stand there like a trained Navy SEAL and mow down a dozen teachers rushing screaming at him from all directions while throwing anything hard at hand at him? Very few, I’d guess.

There are documented instances of school teachers and other students attacking and overwhelming armed students, thus preventing a larger massacre. This should be the universal response by students. Not cowering in fear, but full-fledged, outraged, rip-him-limb-from-limb attack by every person present. Kids, teachers and administrators should be taught to be courageous  and to respond to being attacked by someone with a gun with courage and ferocity, because it’s better to die facing your enemy than on your knees.

Where’s the beserker rage full-frontal attack training in our schools? Where’s the classes in courage and honor and self-sacrifice? Where’s the “war face” training? Do you know why the military teaches soldiers a “war face?” Because it’s terrifying to your opponent.

How do you think a depressed, deranged 15-year-old is going to react to a dozen teachers shrieking like harpies with a look of murderous rage on their face rushing him from all sides? Has he trained to react to such an event? No. Is he mentally prepared to stand his ground and shoot at enraged adults rushing him? No. He’s in a precarious mental  state already and it’s all he can do to concentrating on killing the students he perceives have abused him, and he’s enjoying their submissive cowering, and it’s highly likely that what he’ll do in response to being rushed by a shrieking horde is to freeze up completely, because he’s not been trained in resisting the natural fear of being attacked himself. And even if he remains as cool as a drill sergeant facing a horde of North Koreans, at least his attention will become focused on the teachers attacking him, which gives students more time and opportunity to escape.

Teachers need to step up and recommend a change in tactical planning at their schools, and they need to start group (and individual) attack training using improvised weapons and distraction devices, both for teachers and students. That way they’d be doing something that might actually be effective in preventing student deaths.

© 2009 Altnews