Archives for May 2012

First, I want to thank Brooks for sharing his Elbert County Forum with me.  I am honored to post some facts — from my perspective —  about how some Elbert County Democrats are trying to “hijack” the local GOP with the intention of creating havoc.

Now I’ll introduce myself.  I am Karen Shipper, a member of the Elbert County Republican Central Committee  — specifically a Committeeperson for Precinct 5, which includes Simla.  As a student in the ’60’s, I was not “a flower child”. Instead, I was a Republican .

For insight as to what’s really going on politically in Elbert County, I’ll start with some facts about our 2012 County Commissioner Candidates. [Read more…]

• Tea Party Central Important Story Developing in Elbert
• Teaparty Update on the Commissioners Rubbish Program
• Jill Duvall’s Budget Meeting Turned Into a Rubbish Ordinance
• New Plains Anonymous’ Why You Should Be Vewy Vewy Afwaid
• William Thomas’s New Plains Editorial

Lots of garbage this week. [Read more…]

Leadership gets to the heart of the question.  3 syllables, easy enough to say, but elusive and even fleeting to find in practice.  Saturday morning, people came to find it, to see it in the flesh.  As one Republican put it to me later that day, in hearing the candidates dialog he was expecting to find a compelling reason to change commissioners.  He expected the challengers to make a passionate case that something with the current commission had gone horribly wrong.  He wanted to hear the compelling reason the commissioners should be ridden out of town on a rail, perhaps trailing tar and feathers.  You know, a reason akin to the situation facing us with Obama in the presidential race. [Read more…]

Commissioner candidates answer questions at an Elbert County Republican Breakfast on Saturday, 5/12/12.

Del Schwab
Larry Ross
Robert Rowland
John Shipper

A couple things in Candidate Ross’s recently published campaign statements raise concerns.  He said, “Elbert county government should not be in the business of facilitating the export of this precious water.”  Fair enough as a political sentiment, but Elbert County really only has a legitimate authority over water properties underneath land it holds in the name of Elbert County.  In Colorado, water is not the community’s property.  It doesn’t sound like a Commissioner Ross would limit the scope of his water reach to county owned properties.  This raises a concern of government overreach from aggressive water zoning and other county approvals and licensing that could become politicized.  That’s just not a conservative, rule of law orientation.

Candidate Ross goes on to say, “Decisions regarding any development project must make economic sense and be of true benefit to Elbert County.”  Hold on there.  Since when is it government’s role to decide winners and losers in the market?  In a free country private citizens take economic risks with their property and capital.  What’s the constitutional basis for county government deciding beforehand what the prospective economics of a private project will be – and predicating licensing on that decision?  Oh that’s right, there isn’t one.  So, this is another big problem.

Turning to Candidate Rowland’s recent statements – which requires the turn of a page in this weeks’ Prairie Times, thank you to the Bishops – more effluvia from the tea-drinking upholder of “conservative values and principles” rises to the surface.

Skimming off the top layer, Candidate Rowland’s position appears to be that commissioners Schwab and Shipper intended to bankrupt the county, sell vast amounts of Elbert County water, pollute the pristine water they didn’t sell with dirty Arkansas River water, deny citizens a place to dump their garbage locally, and wrongly direct business to a struggling local employer.  Then they succeeded in shutting out a clamoring mob from a non-policy making commissioner business meeting, and wrongly supported county employees in a harassment case.

I don’t see it that way at all.  The commissioners I know have no such malice, short sightedness, or incompetence in their direction of Elbert County government.

On the contrary, people who exacerbate circumstances in favor of their personal political ambitions are a big problem in this Elbert County political season.  These meeting occupants grab the limelight every other week to sling innuendo and mudballs at decent public servants doing a fine job for the county.

Someone asked me yesterday what I thought the biggest problem in the county was.  I said jobs, but a close second would be political self-aggrandizement because it clouds everything and makes reality based decision making much more difficult.

The circus sideshow of public sharing at BOCC meetings does nothing to elevate discussions or add information that could be used to solve a real problem — which was the commissioner’s intent in giving them a microphone.  Instead, they self-aggrandize with impunity and permit their lust for power to overcome all shame.  As difficult as it is to witness these occupant monkey shines, I’m glad the commissioners put them on the web so we can see what our government is up against.

Republican committeepeople are expected to find unaffiliated voters to sign up as Republicans.  Apparently it’s what we do.  Except, what we’ve been doing has brought a heavy contingent of RINOs into the Elbert County Republican Party.  And now we’ve got this hybrid party working that’s half liberal and half conservative.  And I don’t mean just a little bit liberal.  There are committed leftists calling themselves Republicans around here.  I’ve been writing about this for years.  Rather than potentially bring more RINO voters into the party before the primary election, I thought it would be best to focus on conservative people to try to bring into the party.  So I wrote the Are You A Republican? blog item yesterday.  The blog is an effective way to reach people since it gets about a thousand hits a day.

I really didn’t expect that the post would drive the New-Plains boys over the edge.  But it did.  Click on their editorial below.

Anyway, science, I love it!  Now we have evidence that Republicans don’t have to be progressive-light to effectively campaign against the left.  If Republicans just speak the basic messages and values they stand for, the left melts down.  This stuff is like droplets of water landing on the Wicked Witch of the West, or a puff of air on a hillside of quaking aspen leaves.  Simple truth has a mysterious power over them.

(click to enlarge)

• Do you think people should try to help themselves first before they ask for help from others?
• Do you think it’s wrong to game the public treasury for your own personal advantage?
• Do you think government entitlements discourage individual initiative?
• Do you think as taxes go up, charitable giving goes down?
• Do you think death should be tax exempt?
• Do you think business taxation is just another way to tax consumers through higher prices?
• Do you think everyone should pay the same tax rate?
• Do you think unfunded government mandates should be eliminated?
• Do you think private enterprise based on the opportunity for profit is the fairest way to allocate scarce resources?
• Do you think government force is a negative power that leads to corruption when used to control private enterprise?
• Do you think it’s wrong for government bureaucrats to use law to force private property owners to use their property in certain approved ways?
• Do you think zoning laws and regulatory laws should be proven with demonstrated outcomes before they are allowed to become law?
• Do you think that government codes, regulations, statutes, and zoning have choked off way too much creativity from the private sector in a vain attempt to achieve utopia?
• Do you think the earth is far more vast and resilient than environmentalists have shown?
• Do you think private property owners are the best stewards of the environment?
• Do you think there’s too much government in America?
• Do you think government is the least desirable place to look to find a real solution to a problem?
• Do you think the ends do not justify the means?

There are a million ways to ask these questions; this is no official list.  It’s just a few things that come to mind as I think about expressing some Republican values.  Republicans hold values like these because they lead to a robust, creative, evolving, sound, reality based, equitable, and peaceful society where everyone benefits.  Ironically, the beneficiary model the Left promotes benefits precious few beneficiaries and a whole bunch of bureaucrats.

If you answered yes to the above questions, then you believe in fairness, freedom, individual responsibility, non-socialist solutions for successful living, and you’d make a good Republican.  You can register as a Republican before May 29th to participate in the Republican primary election.  Do it online, just Google it.