No recovery in Elbert County
Official unemployment in Elbert County is 6.7% of a 12,991 person labor force, or about 870 people. By extending the historical [before the age of Obama] relationship between labor force and total population (yellow lines), we see an additional underemployed number of approximately 2,000 people. So if we add those 2,000 back to the official labor force of 12,991, this yields 2,870 unemployed over a labor force of 14,991 for a real unemployment rate in Elbert County of 19% – about 3 times the official rate.
Coincidentally, statewide Colorado, last year the number of TANF families went up 19% from 37,607 to 44,639. Meanwhile Wyoming saw a decrease and North Dakota saw a substantial decrease.
apply precautionary principle to planners first
The precautionary principle–an underlying justification often espoused by planners in Elbert County to excuse repressive zoning–has a number of systemic problems, according to Goklany.
Can the Precautionary Principle Manage Risks Effectively? by Indur M. Goklany
- “[T]he precautionary principle . . . based on concentrating on its environmental costs while downplaying its public health benefits, fuels suspicions that the principle can be used (or abused) to cherry pick which risks one may focus on during regulatory inquiry and regulation.”
- “[C]ompanies. . .protect themselves from liability and lawsuits by seeking some level of governmental approval, bolstered by the desire to avoid unfavorable publicity. . . “
- “[L]arger companies, in particular, actively court regulation since that would lead to higher barriers to entry into the market for smaller, possibly more innovative upstarts.”
- “[L]egislative bodies, government agencies and their officers often seek to expand their power, and future employment possibilities, by filling regulatory vacuums.”
- “[N]on-specialists rely on error-prone “mental shortcuts” such as assigning higher probabilities to types of hazards they can readily recall, . . . an emotionally-driven tendency toward adopting the more alarming of competing narratives regarding a hazard (“alarmist bias” ). Moreover, today’s technology frequently detects chemicals to levels at which health impacts cannot be reliably replicated, . . . but since absence of future harm is unprovable, they resort to their mental shortcuts to interpret the significance of such low. . .levels.”
- “[A]n examination of all relevant risks and options might itself lead to “paralysis by analysis.”
- “[A]ny policy, regulation or action (or “policy”, for brevity) predicated on the [precautionary] principle should not increase overall environmental and public health risks. In fact, the principle should favor those policies that would reduce overall risks the most.”
All of the above systemic problems with the precautionary principle must be actively mitigated to prevent unsound public policy and unjustified regulation. But in Elbert County — ignoring public health benefits from development and improved standards of living, regulators advancing their careers, the use of regulations for anti-competitive outcomes, amateur citizen planners reacting to alarmist political positions — the only safeguard we have to inhibit planners from practicing some or all of the above corruptions is the Board of County Commissioners itself.
“I am most concerned about demonstrating how a wrongly conceived precautionary principle applied to the dangers arising from the use of coal or nuclear fuel–that is, without a consistent, detailed, and thorough cost-benefit analysis–leads to solutions that are utterly ineffective and will put a disproportionate burden on our future. In real life, there is always a trade-off–even for caution. That trade-off tends to be most expensive. To argue the contrary would be irresponsible populism.” Vaclav Klaus
environmysticism
“Nothing like a predefined optimal state of the world exists that we should, for some reason, preserve and protect. The state of the world is the result of spontaneous interactions of a great number of cosmic, geological, climatic, and other factors, as well as of the effect of living organisms, which always look for the best conditions for their reproduction. The equilibrium that exists in nature is a dynamic one.
The environmentalists’ attitude toward nature is analogous to the Marxist approach to economics. The aim in both cases is to replace the free, spontaneous evolution of the world (and humankind) by the would-be optimal, central, or–using today’s fashionable adjective–global planning of world development. Much as in the case of Communism, this approach is utopian and would lead to results completely different from the intended ones. Like other utopias, this one can never materialize, and efforts to make it materialize can only be carried out through restrictions of freedom, through the dictates of a small, elitist minority over the overwhelming majority.”
Vaclav Klaus, Blue Planet in Green Shackles, 2007.
the progressive’s debt to slavery
Treatise on Sociology, Theoretical and Practical. by Henry Hughes, 1854
(Conclusion)
CHAPTER XII.
In the economic system of the Free-labor form of societary organization, order is not ordained and established. Association, adaptation, and regulation are free. They are not essential; they are accidental. They are not fundamental. They are not publicly instituted. The relation of capitalist and laborer, or of master and servant, is private. Their interests are not syntagonistic.
Systematic quantitative adaptation of laborers and capital, is not actualized. Laborers are not appreciated. They have not the value produced by circulation; the value of local production from where they are not in demand to where they are. To the capitalists, superficiency or excess of laborers, is desirable ; because more than a sufficiency, is more orderly.
Distribution is not by the function of justice or the State. It is accidental. The distributor may be either the capitalist or the laborer. Their interests are antagonistic. Their antagonisms are not equipollent. Injustice is actualized. Wages may vary below the standard of comfortable sufficiency. Inefficients are not warranted subsistence. None are warranted. Want is not eliminated. Wages are variable to unhealthy, criminal, and mortal want. The young, the old, and other inefficients are supported not by the capital of capitalists, but by the wages of the laborers. The amount of these wages, is not adapted to the amount of the consumers; there is no discrimination. Pauperism is not eliminated.
The consumption of laborers is not the least possible. The capitalist has no preservation-interest in the laborer. Loss of a laborer is not the capitalist’s loss.
Subsistence is not warranted to the laborers; neither is work or the means of subsistence.
In the Free-labor hygienic system, hygienic necessaries are not an element of laborers’ wages. Capital is not supplied for the production of his health. The capitalist is not hygienically syntagonistic. Medicine, medical attendance, nursing, and therapeutical necessaries, are not warranted to laborers. They are not treasured. Their sickness or death, is not a direct economic injury to the capitalist.
In the Free-labor political system, the interests of classes are not syntagonistic. Taxes are not an element of wages paid by the capitalist. Crime from economic causes, is not eliminated. There are no economic methods, for the prevention of offences. There are no economic general and special securities. The magistracy are expensive and political only. The rich and poor, conflict. Agrarianism is not eliminated. The fundamental laws for the public health, public peace, public industry and public subsistence, are not executed. The interest is deficient, and the order. Strikes and riots are not eliminated. The expediencies of the political system, are political only; the economic system is not civilly ordained and established. It is not a civil implement.
Both Free-labor and Warrantee forms of society, are progressive. Free-labor progress is a progress by antagonisms. Warrantee progress is a progress by syntagonisms. The Free-labor form of society, must be abolished; it must progress to the form of mutual-insurance or warranteeism. It must progress from immunity to community. It must necessitate association. It must warrant the existence and progress of all. Men must not be free-laborers; they must be Liberty-laborers. Liberty-labor Must Be The Substitute Of Free-labor. That must be abolished. But the abolition must not be sudden, or disorderly. It must not be that kind of abolition, which is mere destruction. It must be canonical. It must be humane, just, truthful, pure, and orderly; the envelopment of the evil, by the development of the good. The economic system in the United States South, is not slavery. It Is Warranteeism With The Ethnical Qualification. It is just. It is expedient. It is progressive. It does not progress by antagonisms. It progresses by syntagonisms. It is in no way slavery. Religiously, it is Ebedism; economically, Warranteeism. The consummation of its progress, is the perfection of society.
And when in other generations, this progress, which is now a conception and a hope of all, shall be a memory and a fact; when what is now in the future, shall be in the present or the past; when the budding poetry of the allhoping sociologist, shall ripen to a fruitful history; that history will be thrice felicitous; for it shall unroll the trophied poem, the rhapsody of a progress epic in its grandeur; pastoral in its peace; and lyric in its harmony. Such shall be its fulfilment. And then on leagued plantations over the sun-sceptred zone’s crop-jeweled length, myriad eyes, both night-faced and morning-cheeked, shall brighten still the patriot’s student glance and fondly pore upon the fullgrown and fate-favored wonder, of a Federal banner in whose woven sky of ensign orbs, shall be good stars only, in such happy constellations that their bonds and beams, will be sweeter than the sweet influences of the Pleiades, and stronger than the bands of Orion ; unbroken constellations—a symbol sky—a heaven which also, shall declare the glory of God, and a firmament which shall show His handiwork. Then, in the plump flush of full-feeding health, the happy warrantees shall banquet in Plantation-refectories; worship in Plantation-chapels ; learn in Plantation-schools ; or, in Plantation-saloons, at the cool of evening, or in the green and bloomy gloom of cold catalpas and magnolias, chant old songs, tell tales; or, to the metred rattle of chattering castanets, or flutes, or rumbling tamborines, dance down the moon and evening star; and after slumbers in Plantation-dormitories, over whose gates Health and Rest sit smiling at the feet of Wealth and Labor, rise at the music-crowing of the morning-conchs, to begin again welcome days of jocund toil, in reeling fields, where, weak with laughter and her load, Plenty yearly falls, gives up, and splits her o’erstuffed horn, and where behind twin Interest’s double throne, Justice stands at reckoning dusk, and rules supreme. When these and more than these, shall be the fulfilment of Warranteeism; then shall this Federation and the World, praise the power, wisdom, and goodness of a system, which may well be deemed divine; then shall Experience aid Philosophy, and Vindicate The Ways Of God, To Man.
The End.
UNL Varsity Men’s Chorus 4-28-2014
Groupthink
What is Groupthink?
Groupthink, a term coined by social psychologist Irving Janis (1972), occurs when a group makes faulty decisions because group pressures lead to a deterioration of “mental efficiency, reality testing, and moral judgment” (p. 9). Groups affected by groupthink ignore alternatives and tend to take irrational actions that dehumanize other groups. A group is especially vulnerable to groupthink when its members are similar in background, when the group is insulated from outside opinions, and when there are no clear rules for decision making.
References
Janis, Irving L. (1972). Victims of Groupthink. New York: Houghton Mifflin.
Janis, Irving L. (1982). Groupthink: Psychological Studies of Policy Decisions and Fiascoes. Second Edition. New York: Houghton Mifflin.
Symptoms of Groupthink
Janis has documented eight symptoms of groupthink:
- Illusion of invulnerability –Creates excessive optimism that encourages taking extreme risks.
- Collective rationalization – Members discount warnings and do not reconsider their assumptions.
- Belief in inherent morality – Members believe in the rightness of their cause and therefore ignore the ethical or moral consequences of their decisions.
- Stereotyped views of out-groups – Negative views of “enemy” make effective responses to conflict seem unnecessary.
- Direct pressure on dissenters – Members are under pressure not to express arguments against any of the group’s views.
- Self-censorship – Doubts and deviations from the perceived group consensus are not expressed.
- Illusion of unanimity – The majority view and judgments are assumed to be unanimous.
- Self-appointed ‘mindguards’ – Members protect the group and the leader from information that is problematic or contradictory to the group’s cohesiveness, view, and/or decisions.
When the above symptoms exist in a group that is trying to make a decision, there is a reasonable chance that groupthink will happen, although it is not necessarily so. Groupthink occurs when groups are highly cohesive and when they are under considerable pressure to make a quality decision. When pressures for unanimity seem overwhelming, members are less motivated to realistically appraise the alternative courses of action available to them. These group pressures lead to carelessness and irrational thinking since groups experiencing groupthink fail to consider all alternatives and seek to maintain unanimity. Decisions shaped by groupthink have low probability of achieving successful outcomes.
Remedies for Groupthink
Decision experts have determined that groupthink may be prevented by adopting some of the following measures:
a) The leader should assign the role of critical evaluator to each member
b) The leader should avoid stating preferences and expectations at the outset
c) Each member of the group should routinely discuss the groups’ deliberations with a trusted associate and report back to the group on the associate’s reactions
d) One or more experts should be invited to each meeting on a staggered basis. The outside experts should be encouraged to challenge views of the members.
e) At least one articulate and knowledgeable member should be given the role of devil’s advocate (to question assumptions and plans)
f) The leader should make sure that a sizeable block of time is set aside to survey warning signals from rivals; leader and group construct alternative scenarios of rivals’ intentions.
Source: http://www.psysr.org/about/pubs_resources/groupthink%20overview.htm
carts before horses
In his book The Deliberate Corruption of Climate Science, Tim Ball, Phd, reported that on July 5th, 2005, Phil Jones, Directer of the CRU [Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia], wrote in an email to a colleague;
“If anything, I would like to see the climate change happen, so the science could be proved right, regardless of the consequences. This isn’t being political it is being selfish.”
Therefore, climate change is an unproven hypothesis – an experiment waiting for corroborating data. Mr. Jones is too generous in calling this science. This is a belief system.
Let your mind imagine an estimate of the opportunity costs incurred the world over from all of the unproven hypotheticals that have been translated into public policy without any corroborating evidence. Imagine what could have been done with all those resources, all those man-hours, and all that energy, had the work been available to accomplish necessary objectives, rather than hyped-up political fantasies. Imagine all of the real problem solutions foregone while men chased rainbows.
A man can only do so much in a lifetime. We should cull out the unproven hypotheticals from our public policies, no matter how sexy they sound. Translation – government has no business getting involved with 90% of what it attempts to do.
2014 ECRW Essay Contest
Legacy Academy student Reilly Blakeslee and her brother Logan Blakeslee, an Elizabeth High School student, need to plant a flag pole in their yard.
Thursday night, April 10th the Elbert County Republican Women awarded Reilly Blakeslee first place in their annual Patriotic Essay Middle School contest for her essay “The Freedom to Succeed”. Her brother Logan Blakeslee placed first in the High School Contest with his essay “The American Dream: Opportunity, Freedom, Optimism”.
Both received a United States flag from the Elbert Count Sheriff’s office and a Colorado state flag (that has flown over the Capitol in Denver) from State Representative Tim Dore. Representative Dore also presented certificates from the Capitol to the First, Second and Third place winners of both contests and letters of commendation to the remaining top ten essayists in both contests.
The High School First Place essayist also received the $1,000 Mary Rathbun Memorial Scholarship, donated in Mary’s memory by her husband Larry Durner and her sister Karen Marant.
Other winners of the Middle School Contest were: second place, McKenzie Smith (Big Sandy Middle School, Simla) and third place Peyton Baldwin (Legacy Academy). In the High School Contest, second place went to Ashley Baller (Ponderosa High School, Parker) and third place to Caleb Dotten (home school, Elizabeth).
For both Middle and High School Contests, the Elbert County Republican Women awarded $100 for First place, $50 for Second Place and $25 for Third Place.
The remaining Top 10 High School essayists were: Kimberly Peterson (Elizabeth High School), Connor Wills and Ryan Wills (Kiowa High School), Colten Trent and Menzi Spiller (Elbert High School), Hailey Edwards (Simla High School) and Julianna Dotten (home school).
The remaining Top Ten 10 Middle School essayists were: Delaney Kretsinger, Megan Frahm and Erin Shiely (Legacy), Sedona Levy, Allison Schieffer and Juan Gomez (Elbert Middle School), and Morris Richardson (Big Sandy Middle School).
The Elbert County Republican Women thanked the 21 Middle School students and 25 High School students who entered the contest by presenting each student with a “Your Are the American Dream” pin.
This non-political, nonpartisan essay contest is designed to encourage students to think and write about the privileges and responsibilities of American Citizenship. It is divided into two divisions: one for Middle School Students (6th through 8th grades) and another for High School students (9th through 12th grades). The 2014 essay contest’s topic was “The American Dream and How It Relates to You.”
The Republican Women will announce the topic for their 2015 Patriotic Essay contest in the fall of 2014.
Karen Shipper
“a closed loop of the left”
Daniel Greenfield’s world view
govt thinks man is not creative
smoking guns and global warming scams
Live by the sword, and die by it too.
Last I checked, politics is not an EEOC protected category.
Democrats might begin to find it harder to get a job. After all, why should an employer hire people who believe in socialist non-merit based rewards? Employers are in business to compete in the market, make a profit, and thereby stay in business. It’s only reasonable for employers to seek employees who won’t undermine their businesses and the market system.
It’s time for conservatives to start impacting the Left where they can feel it – in their paychecks.
I know you are but what am I?
Charles Koch’s Free Society
the trap of revisionism
Fracking Bans Carry Grave Employment And Economic Consequences
Tools
The enviro-Left allow themselves to be led around by the nose by legal-minded activists attempting to impose their policies through clever language.
Those who’ve gone to law school know the mechanics of persuasive writing and how the English language with its vast arsenal of hyperbolic and descriptive devices, can be applied to any position about any subject whatsoever. There are no limits and few rules. The Constitution guarantees defendants receive a zealous defense, even going so far as to appoint public defenders free of charge. So lawyers train to defend the impossible in order to convince juries and get their clients off.
Environmental activists use those same techniques out of the courtroom to sway public opinion to side with the environmental belief system. Like defense lawyers, they don’t have to coordinate their arguments with objective truth. All they have to do is win because there’s huge money on the table and they aim to take a share of it.
Even if they get a policy wrong, disruptive matters will simply fall to numerous venues populated by self-anointed planning and regulatory bureaucrats to sort out – people who write book-loads of rules to tell us exactly how the great unwashed population was specifically meant to be controlled – for our health, safety and welfare of course.
Carving through these thickets of commands to open a path back to constitutional governmental limitations and our civil rights can be a daunting task, often requiring advanced educations that most voters don’t possess, just to get a word in edgewise.
I wouldn’t propose any speech limitations to change this system, for such powers would only lead to worse corruptions. But at the same time, one has to wonder whether the great majority of environmental activists, untrained to tell the difference between slick propaganda and founded language, have any clue how they get used.
No to Knowcialism
The Progressive Roots of Zoning
MARCH 28, 2012 by SAMUEL R. STALEY
Before the twentieth century land-use and housing disputes were largely dealt with through courts using the common-law principle of nuisance. In essence if your neighbor put a building, factory, or house on his property in a way that created a measurable and tangible harm, courts could intervene on behalf of a complainant to force compensation or stop the action. This pro-property rights approach maximized liberty and minimized the ability of citizens and elected officials to politicize the development process.
This changed with the Progressive movement. Beginning in the late nineteenth century, Progressives argued that government should become more professional. Rather than being limited, government should use its resources to pursue the “public interest,” loosely defined as whatever the general public decided through democratic processes was the proper scope of government. Legislatures and, by extension, city commissions made up of elected citizens would set policy and goals while a cadre of trained professionals would use the techniques of scientific management to implement policies. One of the leading Progressives of the day, Woodrow Wilson, was skeptical of the value of elected bodies such as Congress because they interfered with scientific management of government.
While many in the twenty-first century might be tempted to dismiss this public-interest view of government—indeed an entire academic subdiscipline, Public Choice, has emerged to demonstrate the foibles of governments and explore “government failure”—Progressive ideas held a lot of appeal at the turn of the twentieth century. In addition to national concerns over industries such as oil, steel, and railroads, local governments were rife with corruption, waste, and inefficiency. Reforms, such as the city-manager form of government, civil-service exams, and in some cases even municipal ownership of utilities, were thought to provide more transparency and accountability than the patronage-laden times of political bosses. (Today municipal ownership is associated with higher costs, less transparency, and little accountability.)
The Progressive movement, however, had another, darker side that would end up being much more important to understanding the widespread acceptance and persistence of government land-use regulation: social control. [Read more…]
Zoned Out
Why and how we should seek to restore a free market in land
MARCH 18, 2014 by NATHAN SMITH
I once knew a man who was finishing his basement so that his daughter and son-in-law could live there. I spent a lot of hours down there with a nail gun before the city planners nixed the project. My in-laws in Modesto, California, had to move out of their house into a mobile home on their own farm, because their kids needed a place to live. The law, for some reason, allowed them to put a mobile home there if seniors would be living in it, but not to accommodate a young family.
In run-ins with zoning laws, ordinary people encounter the perversity of government firsthand in ways that should make them receptive to the message of freedom and property.
You see, modern American society does not have a free market in land. Government interference with land use causes many of society’s problems. [Read more…]
Epic House on Elbert Road
Jim built this house with his own two hands. He did everything, including design and engineering. Anyone who travels the Elbert Road knows this castle built on a commanding bedrock promontory that reflects the majestic peaks of the front range. More than a house, it’s an inspiring testament to the creative potential that a man can achieve.
And he has great pricing on propane.
intensity X intelligence = a constant
Kiowa sunset
Eugenics and the Left
Eugenics – From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Today, eugenics is regarded by some as a brutal movement which inflicted human rights violations on millions.[29] Some practices engaged in the name of eugenics, such as attacks on reputation and violations of privacy, reproductive rights, the right to life, the right to found a family, and the right to freedom from discrimination, are today classified as violations of human rights.
The practice of negative racial aspects of eugenics, after World War II, fell within the definition of the new international crime of genocide, set out in the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.[30]
The Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union also proclaims “the prohibition of eugenic practices, in particular those aiming at selection of persons”.[31]
The Genocidal Duck Whisperers of the Post-Human Left
Pick up a copy of Obama’s $3.9 trillion budget and there among the TSA fee hikes, Medicare payment cuts and the $400 million for the Department of Homeland Security to fight Global Warming is a curious little item.
On Page 930 of the budget that never ends is $575 million for “family planning/reproductive health” worldwide especially in “areas where population growth threatens biodiversity or endangered species.”
The idea that the way to protect insects, fish and animals is by preventing human beings from having children is part of an approach known as Population, Health and Environment (PHE) which integrates population control into environmentalist initiatives.
PHE dates back to the 1980s and is practiced by mainstream organizations such as the World Wildlife Fund. The Smithsonian’s Woodrow Wilson Center, which is funded partly by the US government, aggressively champions PHE eugenics and USAID funds PHE programs and distributes PHE training manuals derived in part from Wilson Center materials.
PHE had been baked into Congressional bills such as the Global Sexual and Reproductive Health Act of 2013 co-sponsored by Debbie Wasserman-Shultz and Sheila Jackson-Lee which urged meeting United Nations Millennium Development Goals by using birth control as, among other things, a means of “ensuring environmental sustainability”.
Obama’s budget is more open about its PHE eugenics agenda. While PHE backers usually claim that they want to reduce population to prevent famine and promote gender equality, the PHE budget request explicitly states that its goal is to reduce human population growth for the sake of the animals, without any of the usual misleading language about feminism and clean water.
The budget is a blunt assertion of post-Human values by an administration that has become notorious for its fanatical environmentalism, sacrificing people on the altar of Green ideology.
A Chicken Endangers Boom In Oil And Gas
Lawsuit Challenges Use Of Endangered Species To Stop Energy Boom
Cloward and Piven takes on CO private property
Since 1876, the Colorado Constitution protected Colorado citizens from uncompensated property takings by the State of Colorado.
CONSTITUTION OF THE STATE OF COLORADO, ARTICLE II BILL OF RIGHTS – Colo. Const. Art. II, Section 15 (2013)
Section 15. TAKING PROPERTY FOR PUBLIC USE – COMPENSATION, HOW ASCERTAINED
Private property shall not be taken or damaged, for public or private use, without just compensation. Such compensation shall be ascertained by a board of commissioners, of not less than three freeholders, or by a jury, when required by the owner of the property, in such manner as may be prescribed by law, and until the same shall be paid to the owner, or into court for the owner, the property shall not be needlessly disturbed, or the proprietary rights of the owner therein divested; and whenever an attempt is made to take private property for a use alleged to be public, the question whether the contemplated use be really public shall be a judicial question, and determined as such without regard to any legislative assertion that the use is public.
HISTORY: SOURCE: Entire article added, effective August 1, 1876, see L. 1877, p. 30.
As a judicial question, this right has been extensively litigated over the years. A few of the more interesting findings –
- SECTION AFFORDS GREATER PROTECTION THAN FEDERAL CONSTITUTION. This section affords an aggrieved property owner a greater measure of protection than does the constitution of the United States. The fifth amendment of the United States Constitution requires compensation only where there has been an actual taking. The Colorado Constitution, however, provides for compensation where private property has been taken or damaged. Mosher v. City of Boulder, 225 F. Supp. 32 (D. Colo. 1964).
- PURPOSE OF THIS SECTION of the constitution is to provide a remedy in damages for injury to property, not common to the public, inflicted by the state or one of its political subdivisions; and this section is not limited in application to condemnation proceedings. Srb v. Bd. of County Comm’rs, 43 Colo. App. 14, 601 P.2d 1082 (1979).
- IT MARKS BOUNDARY BEYOND WHICH PEOPLE HAVE FORBIDDEN LAWMAKERS TO PASS and have commanded their courts to hold any such passage illegal. How inviolable that constitutional inhibition is, is demonstrated by the fact that the supreme court once inadvertently permitted its protection to be threatened (North Sterling Irrigation Dist. v. Dickman, 59 Colo. 169, 149 P. 97 (1915)), but at the first opportunity overruled the dangerous precedent and returned to the solid ground of strict construction. Bd. of Comm’rs v. Adler, 69 Colo. 290, 194 P. 621 (1920); San Luis Valley Irrigation Dist. v. Noffsinger, 85 Colo. 202, 274 P. 827 (1929).
These findings and many more may be read at the free reference site Colorado Legal Resources.
The Colorado Constitution was 20 years ahead of the U.S. Supreme Court’s incorporation of the 5th Am. Takings Clause under the 14th Am., which extended this limitation on Federal power to also limit all States’ powers.
In 2005 the Kelo decision expanded the range of acceptable reasoning a government could use to take private property under the 5th Am.
An eminent domain action requires that the government’s taking of property be for a “public use”. A public use is generally one which confers some benefit or advantage to the public. The term does not necessarily imply — and is not confined to — actual “use” by the public. Moreover, the purported benefit to be derived from the taking of property need not be available to the entire public; it may benefit a smaller sector of members of the public in a particular locality, i.e. a subdivision of the general public. In other words, it is not necessary that the intended users be all members of the public; rather, it is the purpose for the taking that must be for the public, and not for the benefit of any particular individuals.
The use (purpose) must be a needed one, which cannot be surrendered without obvious general loss or inconvenience. However, the parameters of such needed public use move along a spectrum, and defy absolute definition because of factors such as changing needs of society, increases in population, and developing modes of transportation and communications.
In Kelo v. City of New Landen (2005), the U.S. Supreme Court was called upon to determine whether that changing parameter was broad enough to include for-profit development of real estate which would ostensibly result in needed economic growth for the community. In a decision that surprised many, the Court agreed.
http://realestate.findlaw.com/land-use-laws/eminent-domain-public-use-requirement.html
Now come the Left to Colorado, nationally funded [see Wolves Among Us and Fractivist Laid Bare], promoting amendments to the Colorado Constitution to radically change the definition and scope of our private property. Radical change has apparently called for a radical strategy.
A Cloward and Piven strategy –
- “[W]ould produce bureaucratic disruption. . .and fiscal disruption in local and state governments” that would “deepen existing divisions among. . . [everyone]. . .to advance a federal solution. . .that would override local. . .failures, local class and. . .conflicts and local revenue dilemmas.”
- “[P]roposed to create a crisis in the current. . .system – by exploiting the gap between. . .law and practice – that would ultimately bring about its collapse and replace it with a system of guaranteed [outcomes]. They hoped to accomplish this end by informing [citizens] of their rights. . ., encouraging them to. . .overload. . .an already overburdened bureaucracy.”
- The authors pinned their hopes on creating disruption[.] “Group conflict, spelling political crisis for the local party apparatus, would thus become acute. . .and the strains on local budgets became more severe.”
Consider some of the amendments proposed –
Summary of proposed Initiative 103, filed by Phillip T. Doe & Barbara Mills-Bria (Current as of 3/13/14):
Initiative 103 would amend the Colorado Constitution by adding a new section to Article XVI, the provisions of the constitution that govern mining and water rights. This amendment would:
Establish an “inalienable right” of the people of Colorado to clean air, clean water (including groundwater), and the preservation of the environment and natural resources (called “Public Trust Resources”), as common property of all people including future generations;
Require the state, as trustee of these resources, to conserve and maintain them for the benefit of all the people;
Require state government and its agents, as trustees, to protect Public Trust Resources from substantial impairment including pollution, applying a “precautionary principle” that any action or policy with a suspected risk, absent a scientific consensus of harm, places the burden of proving no harm on the proponents;
Obligate the state to seek natural resource damages from entities causing substantial impairment to Public Trust Resources, and to use such funds to remediate the harm;
Authorize all Colorado citizens (as beneficiaries) to sue to preserve Public Trust Resources against substantial impairment and to enforce the State’s obligations as trustee, to obtain legal and equitable remedies, and to recover attorney fees and costs when a court finds the state has not met its duties as trustee;
Require the state as trustee to use best available science in any process or proceeding that may affect Public Trust Resources, and to refer for criminal prosecution anyone manipulating data or scientific information for private profit; and
Apply to all public actions or commercial transactions that would violate these provisions, “regardless of the date of any applicable local, state or federal permits.”
Summary of proposed Initiative 89, filed by Caitlin Leahy and Gregory Diamond (Current as of 3/5/14)
Initiative 89 would amend the Colorado Constitution by adding a new Article, declaring and providing as follows:
Declares that Colorado’s environment is “the common property of all Coloradans”;
Declares that conservation of Colorado’s environment (including clean air, pure water, natural, and scenic values) is “fundamental”;
Declares that Colorado’s environment should be “protected and preserved” for all Coloradans, including future generations;
States that the people of Colorado, including future generations, have a “right to Colorado’s environment” (including clean air, pure water, natural, and scenic values);
Designates the state and local governments as trustees of “this resource” (referring to Colorado’s environment), requiring them to conserve Colorado’s environment (including clean air, pure water, natural, and scenic values) “for the benefit of all the people”;
Applies these provisions to the state, as well as to every city, town, county, and city and county, notwithstanding the provisions of the constitution that provide for Home Rule cities and towns and for Home Rule counties;
Provides that these provisions are self-executing and severable;
Provides that local governments shall have the power to enact laws, regulations, ordinances, and charter provisions that are “more restrictive and protective” of the environment than those enacted or adopted by state government; and
Provides that if a locally-enacted law or regulation adopted pursuant to the new Article conflicts with a state-enacted law or regulation, the “more restrictive and protective law or regulation shall govern.”
Summary of The Right To Local Self-Government from the Colorado Community Rights Network.
As all political power is vested in and derived from the people, and as all government of right originates from the people, the people have an inherent and inalienable right to local self-government, in each county, city, town, and other municipality.
That right shall include, without limitation:
The power to enact local laws. . .by establishing the fundamental rights of individuals, their communities, and nature. . .
. . .[to] define, alter or eliminate the rights, powers, and duties of corporations and other business entities. . .
The first two proposals above invent new public property rights that necessarily imply the abrogation of currently held private property rights.
The third proposal above invents classes of rights held by communities and nature [who speaks for nature?] and explicitly abrogates rights, powers and duties of corporations and other business entities – and it does so on the premise of our individual rights!
To say the least, these propositions are tough sells in the Land of the Free. Each one contemplates a revolutionary overthrow of property, contractual, and ownership rights in Colorado. Without any obfuscation or subterfuge, these questions demand a sober and detailed analysis.
Enter Cloward and Piven, and consider the Facebook page Yes We Can Ban Fracking, subtitled Jared Polis and Dark Money Democrats detailed below –
About
JARED POLIS and his friends at RBI Strategies, which is affiliated with Hilltop Public Solutions – a Democratic PR and campaign management firm known for running dark money campaigns and funding faux grassroots groups (links below) – and which recently opened an office in CO, has LAUNCHED A FALSE CITIZENS INITIATIVE CAMPAIGN called COLORADANS FOR LOCAL CONTROL, with the intent to CONFUSE and DIFFUSE public backlash to fracking in Colorado. THIS INITIATIVE DOES NOT OPPOSE FRACKING!
Craig Hughes recently left RBI to open Hilltop’s Denver office. Hilltop employs former Polis campaign staffers, including Lisa Kaufman, Polis’s campaign manager of six years, who is an affiliate in the firm’s newly opened Denver office. Hilltop is running campaigns for candidates who support oil and gas extraction.
Polis and friends have co-opted language used in a ballot initiative know as the COLORADO COMMUNITY RIGHTS AMENDMENT, BALLOT MEASURE 75, which will be on the 2014 ballot and which is supported 100% by ACTUAL COLORADO CITIZENS.
Polis and friends, in attempting to drown out the voices of Colorado citizens, have introduced not one but NINE, yes NINE initiatives, all the same with slightly different language. They are attempting to confuse voters and drown out the public backlash against fracking in Colorado.
Who’s behind this masquerade to confuse the public and diffuse the public backlash against fracking in Colorado?
Well…aside from Polis and RBI Solutions, the NINE initiatives, including the Orwellian named Coloradans for Local Control, were submitted by Caitlin Leahey of Lafayette, longtime Fundraising and Events Coordinator for, you guessed it, Jared Polis. The other name on the ballot initiatives is Gregory Diamond, longtime Democratic Party political operative whose wife, Faye Diamond, is a partner at RBI Solutions. The tangled webs we weave! Gregory Diamond IS NOT EVEN A RESIDENT OF COLORADO. He owns a home in Colorado, but resides in Orange County, CA, where he is currently running for office.
Confused? Well, that is the objective!
Follow Colorado Frack Attack on FB (Facebook.com/COFrackAttack) and Twitter (@COFrackAttack) – use these links so you don’t wind up on a false site – as we unravel this tangled web. If you’re itching to know more right now, here are some links to get you started:
IN THE BEGINNING…PRESS RELEASE FROM RBI STRATEGIES
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 3, 2014
Contact: Rick Ridder
rick@rbistrategies.com
303-832-2444
Coloradans for Local Control Introduce Ballot Language to Protect Coloradans from Impacts of Fracking
9 Potential Initiatives Explore Different Solutions to Coloradan’s Concerns with balancing Oil and Gas Development with residents’ quality of life and property values.
(Denver, CO) – Today, several Colorado citizens took a stand for better balancing oil and gas drilling, including fracking with residents’ quality of life and property values. Coloradans for Local Control introduced language for potential ballot initiatives that, if passed, would help citizens ensure that fracking and oil and gas drilling is done in a way that minimizes the negative impact on property values, health, safety and environment.
These initiatives aim to allow the oil and gas industry to operate safely while protecting homeowners from health risks and losses in property values that result from fracking taking place too close to where we work, live and play.
Introducing multiple initiatives recognizes that there are several ways to address this issue. Coloradans for Local Control acknowledges the importance of starting a conversation with the citizens of Colorado on the best way to make sure communities and citizens have the right to determine where and how oil and gas drilling and fracking is done – the same rights that exist for nearly all other industrial usages of land and water.
From schoolyards to backyards, these initiatives will give greater protection to Colorado families and neighborhoods.
Rick Ridder
Rick@rbistrategies.com
ARTICLE: Polis Backing Coloradan’s for Local Control (don’t be fooled, it’s PRO fracking)
http://kdvr.com/2014/03/05/polis-he…
FORMER RBI PARTNER OPENS COLORADO OFFICE FOR DARK MONEY FIRM HILLTOP PUBLIC SOLUTIONS
http://www.campaignsandelections.com/…
RBI AND HILLTOP COLLABORATIVE RELATIONSHIP
http://blogs.denverpost.com/thespot…
ARTICLES ABOUT HILLTOP PUBLIC SOLUTION’S DARK MONEY OPERATIONS
http://www.propublica.org/article/i…
http://www.publicintegrity.org/2012…
http://www.northernbroadcasting.com/…
The above Facebook event boldly misrepresents the initiatives as being for fracking, when in fact they’re all constructs designed to shut down fracking. Every link and reference points to a pro-Leftist issue, organization, individual, or opinion. Moreover, while perpetrating a grand confusion, the author blames others for sowing that confusion.
This intelligent propaganda overwhelms logical reasoning. It seeds the internet with the false assumption that the majority of Colorado is against fracking. It motivates activists to militate against fracking. It feeds them a set of can’t lose “alternative” propositions that all fundamentally accomplish their objectives, and it motivates activists to go out and argue about them.
This smells of a Cloward and Piven strategy to produce an outcome by confusing and overwhelming the electoral system in Colorado.
But it would be odd to expect the people who intend to dispossess Colorodans of much of their property to play fair. That’s just not something that truly fair minded people do, despite how they represent their motives.
It’s what con men do.
homo progressivus
A society of cowards, with A spoonfull of sugar