Passau

Veste Oberhaus

“The fortress was attacked five times between 1250 and 1482. Twice, 1298 and 1367, the citizens of Passau themselves rebelled against the Bishop.”

After a couple hundred years of open government in America and the advent of domestic terrorism, many of our government buildings have been converted to secure fortresses.  Public union demonstrators recently took over the Wisconsin state capital.  There’s no doubt that given access, today’s “occupants” would be camping in, and shouting down all visitors to, government buildings in cities across the country.  Fortress America must now protect itself from its own people.  The Founders would conclude that our republic has been forfeited.  Reasonable political debate does not occur under the threat of force, at the point of a leftist spear.

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September 21, 2011

Republicans to Obama: The Whole Country Can be Rich

By Karin McQuillan

The good news is that America has wealth beyond dreams that can be realized in the next decade, producing a million new jobs.  According to a recent Congressional report, the United States’ combined recoverable natural gas, oil and coal endowment is the largest on Earth.  Our resources are larger than Saudi Arabia, China and Canada, combined. Our known resources can meet the country’s need for oil and gas for the rest of the century.  That’s not including shale oil, the true energy future.  If we used our own oil, we could replace imported oil from the Persian Gulf for the next fifty years. By then cars will probably be running on something else.

Now turn your eyes to where real jobs are being created. (more…)

I love the broadcast of Elbert County Commissioner meetings on the internet!  See here for today’s broadcast.  It’s most interesting to see the local parade of interested parties pulling the levers of public decision making.

WikiLeaks and a fragile community - David Brooks NYT Opinion

Consider the effect computers have had on the insurance industry, and consequentially, on all of the risks (health, life, fire, accident, loss) funded by the insurance industry.  Prior to computers, the historical price for an insurance provider to cover a beneficiary was the product of static market conditions.  Insurance is a financial service product based on knowledge of risk, and the knowledge of various risks to beneficiaries had been stable for many years.  With the advent of computerization, beneficiaries and risk could be correlated in the machine so that insurers could now choose which beneficiaries were least likely to cost them benefits.  Computer correlation of beneficiary data fundamentally shifted the bargaining power between insurers and beneficiaries, and as we can see with health insurance, the consequences to this radical shift are still playing out in a myriad of market and government reactions. (more…)

Dan Maes thinks he saved the Republican Party in Colorado from minor party status and future obscurity and that he is a hero.  He probably also thinks that his heroism was aided by divine intervention.

Colorado Tea Party people who supported Dan Maes think they saved the Republican Party too.  They bought the myth fed to them during last Spring’s precinct caucuses that they represented the people of Colorado, and all the higher ideals of our constitutional representative system of government were invested in them.  Trouble is, the people of Colorado never give their consent to be represented by the caucus system or those individuals who just show up one night in April to take charge of the caucus system.  So, armed with a myth, Maes-supporting Tea Partyers soldiered on and now feel like heroes too.

Republican Party leaders appeared to sit the whole thing out.  They watched from the sidelines while Maes and Buck worked the idealistic Tea Party types to their own advantage.  All they could muster was a hope that the Tea Party wouldn’t fragment the Republican party.  So, obsessed with their own political survival, they neglected to defend Jane Norton, or Josh Penry, and they left Tom Tancredo adrift–the only ones who really did embody Tea Party ideals.

They kept the Tea Party under the Republican umbrella all right, but threw out any candidate who actually walked the Tea Party walk.  That left them with remainders who could be manipulated–the 11% who bought them a narrow dodge of minor party status in Colorado in an historic Republican wave that washed over the entire country.  How they managed to avoid queering the Colorado statehouse turnover is kind of a mystery.

On the issues we had key government-limiting tax and debt measures to win, the death cult of abortion to defeat, immunity from Obamacare to enact, and the Republicans stood by and watched it all go down.

They really earned minor party status in my book.   There are no heroes in this election in Colorado.

Maes speaks

Maes speaks again

Maes speaks more

Looking at this political year in toto, lots of things stand out.   Maes stands out for pure bitterness and vituperation.  With each new day that Republicans allow themselves to be represented by this jerk, they do more lasting damage to their political brand.

Hickenlooper: Colorado’s ‘Backwards Thinking in Rural, Western Areas’

Maes: ‘This is about me….’

Magellan Poll: “If trends continue it would not be surprising to find the final vote totals showing Dan Maes at 5% or less, and Tom Tancredo surging past John Hickenlooper.” Oct 22, 2010.

In the wake of NPR’s PC-spasm firing of Juan Williams, consider The Travails of Modern Islam by Daniel Pipes:

QUESTION: In relation to the two questions of what went wrong and how do we fix it, do you see a difference between hardcore Islamists and those that are less committed?

DR DANIEL PIPES: They are roughly the same. Various versions of Islamism exist. For example, in Saudi Arabia women can’t drive, can’t do this, can’t do that. In Iran, they can. The Iranian idea is that they’ve created an Islamic republic where women are safe. In the Saudi vision, danger lurks in every corner and females need to be protected. There are many such differences in both style and substance. But in the end, all Islamists aspire to the same thing which is the application of Islamic law. Islamic law differs slightly in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iran and India. They have different schools, but these are again details and in general the aspiration to apply Islamic law is common to all Muslims.

The generalizations abhorred by the politically correct need the most scrutiny.

People who still support Dan Maes have effectively withdrawn from meaningful participation in this election for governor.  Whether Maes goes or stays, you can make a plausible case that voters currently dedicated to Dan Maes are irrelevant to the outcome of the race.

Let’s assume he stays, which seems the most likely case.  If all those pledged to him remain loyal and vote for him, they won’t effect the outcome of the race for governor.  That race will be decided completely by people who vote for Tancredo and Hickenlooper.

On the other hand, let’s assume Maes withdraws–the unlikely case.  Some of his pledged voters will still vote for him, and won’t effect the outcome of the race.  Some will choose not to vote at all, and won’t effect the outcome of the race.  Some will vote for Tancredo on the principle of conservatism, while others will vote for Hickenlooper purely out of spite.  Let’s face it, after all that’s gone wrong with Dan Maes, of the people remaining in his camp today who don’t end up in one of the nullifying outcomes, they’re as likely to go one way or the other (conservatism or spite), and those two camps will cancel each other out.

The bottom line is, whether Maes stays or goes, his voters have become irrelevant.  The race is between those who relevantly declare for Tancredo and Hickenlooper, and Tancredo has about pulled even in that contest.

…did not found the Elbert County Tea Party and did not elect its self-appointed Chairman.  When will the Elbert County Tea Party embrace the consent of the citizens that it claims to uphold and elect its own party leaders?  When will the Elbert County Tea Party hold its own leadership accountable for supporting Dan Maes and for siding with the left on Proposition 1A?

Tea Party self-appointed leader Robert Rowland sides with Democrat Whistler on Elbert County Proposition 1A.

ELBERT COUNTY FINANCIAL WOES
by Robert Rowland on Thursday, October 14, 2010 at 1:30pm
WE NEED EVERYONE IN ELBERT COUNTY TO SEE AND READ THIS, PLEASE PASS ALONG.  ELBERT COUNTY - BALLOT INITIATIVE 1A (more…)

“Anyone who accuses the legislative council staff
[who wrote the Blue Book] of bias,
will be ejected from this hearing.”
-Chairman Terrance Carroll opening the only public hearing

With Colorado’s Blue Book Alternative you can avoid our government’s conflict of interest and bureaucratic bias, and get information about ballot initiatives straight from the proponents.

Proposition 101 (Cut car, income, phone taxes)

Amendment 60 (Limit Property Tax)

Amendment 61 (Limit Colorado Debt)