By Brooks
this evening
PC in EC
BOCC
Where is the lack of transparency? This BOCC broadcasts and publishes everything they do in an official capacity. Where is the financial mismanagement? This BOCC has not increased overall county indebtedness, has balanced the budget, and has met functional county obligations with less revenue while preserving proportionally more county jobs. Where are the closed doors? This BOCC allows for public input at each of their meetings.
Take off the pink colored glasses and you’ll see a set of able administrators doing a decent job in the midst of an attempted strong-arm takeover that has thoroughly corrupted the two-party system in Elbert County and abused every available county process to create disruption, foment division, and generate a false sense of urgency that things are mismanaged.
This coalition of freelance power seekers brings an overall agenda made up of many subordinate agendas. All of them fall into a leftist basket of tricks. Scratch the surface of any one of them and you’ll find environmentalism, smart growth, anti-industrialism, and dictatorial zoning power, all waiting for the green light to unleash their do-gooding upon the county.
It is most disturbing that they hold themselves out as representatives of the people at large, but they do not follow a process that empowers the people at large. From the start of this campaign season they’ve attempted to shanghai a single party – the Republicans – through subversive manipulation of Colorado’s flawed caucus system. When subversion failed them, they went public with their plan and called for open corruption of the Republican primary system in an attempt to dilute Republican interest in their party, and put it in service of their leftist agenda.
Liberal publishers in the county, and there are many both in print and on-line, excuse this attempted coupe with ameliorative language about why we should all just get along. This has been tried many times with the left, but appeasement has never worked. It’s led to wars, a shifting legal standard that has gutted much of the constitutional foundation of the country, the dismemberment of religious liberty, coarsening moral decline, gaming the public coffers, and a reduction of liberty.
Listen to the loudest voices in the public spectrum this primary season. The ones you hear the loudest all share the agendas. They intend to do big things to you and me. Lots of things. Waving their various and sundry banners, they want licenses to direct us. They all fundamentally misconstrue the proper limits of government in America.
Interestingly, they’re all so steeped in their leftist mythologies that they actually think they can direct you and me, and that it’s a good thing. As a result, they’ve become shameless. They no longer hide their fascist inclination. Now they wear it proudly. Like I said, wars have been fought against this sort of thing.
Good intentions are admirable, but when those good intentions lead to compunction, force, and the execution of government power, they’ve become a means not justified by the ends.
I say we shut down the left at the polls in Elbert County, whatever party they happen to call themselves at any given juncture. I say we focus on limiting government in all its capacities and intentions. He who governs least, governs best.
Look at the candidates. Judge them by this standard when you go to the polls. Elect men, not agendas.
If the left want to impose their agendas, let them take their agendas, issue by issue, to the ballot box for the voters to decide. Don’t award activists carrying baggage quasi judicial authority with a commissioner seat in Elbert County.
In America, consent of the governed is measured by a vote, not by lip service from a commissioner who listens while mouthing bromides about transparency. Vote for commissioners who enable the people to govern themselves by bringing important county issues to the ballot box.
B_Imperial
from Shanghai to Hangzhou
New-Propagandas
What Have They Done? Have They Earned Re-election? (1)
What Have They Done? Have They Earned Re-election? (2)
From the title, one’s mind opens to the implication that an objective analysis will ensue. This is just a device to get you to drop your guard. What follows, then, is a rehash of the rhetorical leftist myths about the current BOCC presented in quasi analytical tones, amply seasoned with conclusory innuendo, scare mongering, unfounded accusations, and fear.
Typically, the answers to the questions posed in the title were never in doubt.
The Democrat talking points got a much needed makeover in this journalistic facial. From the raw campaign effluvia the newly minted Democrat-light Republican challengers cobbled together to attack anything and everything they could tangentially associate to the current BOCC, now comes the polished product to set the stage for the big show.
Will Fogel and Duvall bite on these tempting tidbits Thomas chummed into the political waters this weekend? Will this grist also coalesce into a hard nut of Schlegel umbrage to fuel their recall, err, off year election continuation, efforts?
Since our loopy local left is incapable of reaching a conclusion that doesn’t lead to a little patch of utopian bliss under their lordship, the answers would appear to be foregone.
B_Imperial
almost solstice
China observations
China is huge and it has an ubiquitous density to it. You rarely find the end of a road or a point where the imprint of man ends and nature takes over. You almost never see an untended patch of ground that is not orderly planted and carefully tended. For example in Shanghai, the largest city in the world, the freeways have a flower box lining on both sides of each direction of the many elevated sections. These are small planter boxes mounted to the concrete sidewalls. They must be watered and pruned. Mile after mile, they all show blooms, no weeds, no dead plants, no brown patches, each one full of colorful blooms. There is no automatic watering system to maintain the miles of flower boxes on the elevated roadways. Alongside the street-level freeways are elaborate ornamental gardens in a buffer zone either side of the road, all maintained by hand labor to a standard you might see in a city park in America. These strips of gardens can be twenty miles long and are maintained because they look good, not because they are used for recreation.
While easy enough to describe, that doesn’t really capture the impression that so much order, so much attempted perfection, makes on you when you see miles of it. Radiating out from Shanghai on the trains, you see many more miles of small farm plots and clusters of homes. The homes are generally drab, the color of concrete or tile. They don’t appear to use much paint on the exteriors of homes, preferring instead to use non-wooden materials that don’t require painting. The surrounding rice fields in various stages of their planting, flooding, growing, harvesting, and burning cycles are meticulous. Shaped and tiered to fit the contours of the land, no square foot is ignored. You see a lot of the work done by hand, some of it done with older farm machinery, and an occasional ox.
Small to medium sized factories are everywhere and they usually have a dual track expansive chrome accordion gate that slowly rolls open and closed with a motorized module at the head, looking like one of those little square service robots in Star Wars, and mounted with a revolving yellow warning light. Crossing through the gate you’ll come to an administration building and then one or more factory buildings. These multi-story buildings usually have wide concrete stairways at one end of the building. You rarely find an elevator. People climb the stairs at work.
Many factories have dormitories, especially if their production involves hand labor. Chinese labor will often contract for a year or two and live on the premises where they work. Contracts usually expire at the Chinese new years and workers take that time to travel across the country to their various homes to reconnect with family. Jobs are competitive in China. Everyone wants one, and everyone wants a better one. The competition is fierce and people work hard.
A home in a city for a young working couple who are moving up from a rental usually begins with the purchase of a concrete space in a residential building. The couple must then finish the space with everything else. That means doors, even front doors, windows, railings, plumbing fixtures, cabinets, wiring, lighting, and of course furnishings and personal effects. Main entry doors are a major investment because most Chinese don’t believe in banks. As a result their front doors are often impenetrable ornate steel vaults.
Title for ownership of these home spaces is for a definite period, usually 50, 65 or 75 years. At the end of the title period, ownership reverts to the state. Homes in these residential buildings can be sold and bought on the market, but the duration of the total title period doesn’t change. So, for example, you could buy a place that might have 35 years remaining on it before it reverts to the state. Notwithstanding this diminishing time limitation, home prices continue to escalate because the force of demand is the stronger price influence. At some point, even demand will not overcome the price effects of imminent reversion and prices should begin to come down to reflect the shorter available terms. When that begins to occur on a large scale, I would expect these property owners in China to revolt in some way. Where property is owned, you see great care taken to maximize the utility of every available square foot, be it living space, garden, or some productive activity. Over 75 years and several generations, people will get attached to their places.
The newer streets outside of the old cities in China are all very wide and straight. Out in the countryside it’s usually a two lane road but in the newer sections of the cities they’re routinely 6 or 8 eight lanes across, often with merging frontage roads. These thoroughfares go for straight lines for untold miles. Think of Colfax eight lanes wide and saturated with human conveyances of all sorts – cars, large trucks, taxis, vans, bicycles, scooters, 3-wheeled construction carts (some pedaled, some motorized), tractors, two wheeled hand carts, wheelbarrows and lastly, walkers. You see all of it on virtually any Chinese street, whether in the city or the countryside. And quite often you’ll see loadings on these various conveyances that can only be described as preposterous. Things stacked and strapped high and wide, balanced on a comparatively tiny conveyance, moving collections of goods from one place to the next.
Public buildings in China, like most things, are massive. Airports, train stations, convention centers, administrative complexes for the communist governments, these are always huge affairs. Even, for example, the train stations in the small towns, places that might not see more than a handful of passengers in a day, are built to huge government standards. We stood on one train platform that could have held 5000 people, with perhaps 10 other travelers. And judging by the surroundings at this particular town, 10 was probably the norm.
That’s an observation worth expanding upon. The communist government’s layout of cities, streets, transportation infrastructure, and public buildings reflect a one-massive-size-fits-all philosophy that perhaps doesn’t really fit anyone. The Chinese people soldier on through this massive spatial consumption knowing no other way. They traverse vast distances to do the simplest of things because that’s the grid they’ve given themselves to live on. They all built it, much of it with hand methods, and they’re very proud of it. It is well maintained, if not well conceived, but they make it work, one way or another.
Economists talk about opportunity cost – what could have been realized had not something intervened to forestall a more economic outcome. In this case, for that image, Taiwan holds the key.
B_Imperial
muggle born
I’ve been writing this blog for a few years now. Before that I wrote a fair amount on Yahoo groups, various email lists, letters to fishwrap editors, etc. The 1st Am. has had its use-it-or-lose-it hooks into me since college. If we don’t write it, it won’t get written, and the country will be poorer for it. I figure it’s a duty of American citizenship. I’m sure the paper trail I’ve left will come back to haunt me in my dotage. Like the previous blog item — which haunted me for a while before posting, I expect I’ll take some heat just as I took heat over posting the Coffman comment.
But when it comes to these matters, what other reasonable choice is there? [Read more…]
Vet before you vote
Three and a half years into an unvetted presidency, Americans live the hard lesson that candidate history really matters. Still, inertia is powerful. After all the damage this president has done to the private sector, to the producers in our economy, to social relations between Americans, to non-Islamic religious Americans, to America’s allies, to the Constitution, to the rule of law, to American energy production, and to the elements of capitalism that form the fabric of our American success story, the main stream media still protects this president. The ad hominem, pornographic and ridiculous evasions witnessed a couple weeks ago over Congressman Coffman’s frank bit of truth-telling proved that the machineries vested in leftist control are dedicated as ever to the heady hopey changey transformation of the 2008 election. No matter that it was all a lie. No matter that none of it succeeded.
These machineries operate at scale in Elbert County.
The local vocal opposition to two sound leaders who’ve governed the county securely within the bounds of their statutory authority, have convinced the press and local bloggers to call for the active corruption of the two party system in Elbert County. Time was when these people were ashamed to do this sort of thing in public. No longer. Zealous to transform our society and government, having no clue about a better system, having no qualifications apart from a naked lust for power, they organize one subversive action to the next. Why?
Because they must have power. They are the anointed, the visionaries, the pure, the imposers of equity on all men, our rulers by destiny. They have an agenda to serve that is more important to them.
Posers. Perhaps posers always came with the territory in these matters. Perhaps the poser in chief is no anomaly. Sucks to be us, right?
Wrong! New media doesn’t have to accept the mores of the main stream media, national or local. We can do better than that.
Here are the CoCourts reports I found for candidates who had defendant actions in Elbert County.
- CoCourts Schwab Shiipper 2012CV5.pdf
- CoCourts Rowland 2006C412.pdf
- CoCourts Rowland 2005C264.pdf
- CoCourts Ross 2006T301.pdf
- CoCourts Ross 2006CR30.pdf
Vet your candidates.
B_Imperial
the beat goes on
Judging by their column inches of campaign text in the Prairie Times this week, Lark, Jill, Robert, and Larry want to be commissioner real bad. They all have an ability to interpret random public events in a light most favorable to their candidacy. They all appear to need power. They all appear greatly disturbed that democratic processes have allocated power to people other than themselves.
I’m still working on figuring out why those qualifications that spring from deep reservoirs of naked ambition would make them better commissioners than the ones we currently have. [Read more…]
On 1 block of Fujian Road
These 26 images were collected from both sides of the street in one block of Fujian Road in downtown Shanghai. Each one came from a different shop. They illustrate how the majority of shops in China are organized around a group of products based on function. A shop usually has a showcase or two in the entry way containing a representative sample of their products. All cities and towns in China look like this. Shanghai is the largest city in China and you see this type of commerce everywhere you drive there–mile after mile, wherever people live you’ll find these types of shops. If the way the Chinese shop is any indication of their general approach or mental state, you could say they tend to organize where they go and what they do when they get there by function. To contrast, Americans generally go to one place to find many types of things for various functions.
B_Imperial
(images below) [Read more…]
some China issues
We recently returned from a couple weeks in China. On our travels we read the English language papers to keep up on the news and the latest propaganda.
Here are some interesting Chinese perspectives on the value of life:
These articles illustrate the Chinese view of government revenue which they call “Capital.” The economic fallacies this view engenders have filled many volumes.
These four articles play up Chinese differences from the West. Western politicians do this in their own way too. To be sure, there’s nothing fundamentally different about Chinese and American people. The Chinese government really needs us to be different.
- Xenophobia row belies love affair with the West
- Less power and prejudice
- US Memorial Day marked by excessive patriotism
- Us Still Playing Currency Card
Here are a couple articles on Chinese censorship:
Here are a couple articles on Chinese revisionism:
This article gets a category all its own because it’s a yearly propaganda opus:
These articles offer glimpses into the pervasive role of the state in Chinese and American life:
~
B_Imperial
cards turned over
The Amateur
The Amateur (Klein, Edward)
– Your Highlight Location 2649-2677 | Added on Saturday, June 2, 2012 11:37:24 PM
“To win reelection in 2012, Barack Obama must divert the country’s attention from his record of incompetence and amateurism.
- He doesn’t want to remind people that America lost its triple-A credit rating on his watch—a downgrade that Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina called a firing offense. Republicans will have to remind them.
- Obama doesn’t want to remind people that he increased the national debt by nearly $5 trillion—the most rapid increase in debt under any president. Republicans will have to remind them.
- Obama doesn’t want to remind people that he pushed through a bill that includes more than a trillion dollars in new healthcare spending and contains a 4.5 percent tax increase. Republicans will have to remind them.
- Obama doesn’t want to remind people that Jon Corzine’s bankrupt financial company, MF Global, which is under investigation by a grand jury for misusing clients’ money, was one of the top sources of contributions to Obama’s reelection campaign. Republicans will have to remind them.
- Obama doesn’t want to remind people of his erratic stand on illegal immigration, which has swung wildly between fast-paced deportations—removing nearly 400,000 illegal foreigners in each of the last three years—to a policy of virtual amnesty. Republicans will have to remind them.
- Obama doesn’t want to remind people of his inconsistency on environmental regulation—first pushing through burdensome, anti-business rules to toughen air-quality standards, then suddenly scrapping those rules to win over campaign supporters in the business community. Republicans will have to remind them.
- Obama doesn’t want to remind people that he was for lower taxes before he was for higher taxes; that he was for forcing Catholic-affiliated institutions to provide contraceptive and abortion insurance before he was against forcing them to go against their religious principles; that he was for removing terrorists from Guantanamo before he was against it; that he was for bringing the country together before he was for dividing it; that he was for a grand bargain with the Republicans over the debt ceiling before he was against it; that he was for energy independence before he rejected the Keystone Pipeline; that he was in favor of extending an olive branch to the mullahs in Iran before he was against it….
Republicans will have to remind America that Barack Obama is The Amateur.”
Elbertcare
Community Health Survey – 2012
There’s way too much in this project geared to behavioral control and populist social science — solutions in search of a justifying problem.
B_Imperial
“the sum of good government”
“…[W]hat more is necessary to make us a happy and a prosperous people? Still one thing more, fellow citizens, a wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government; and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities.”
correcting bias
DEL SCHWAB
ELBERT COUNTY COMMISSIONER DISTRICT #1
May 26, 2012
Dear Home Owners:
It has come to my attention that an email was sent to Home Owners by a candidate that is running for the position of Elbert County Commissioner. This specifically addresses the Rubbish Ordinance. The information that was sent was biased, inaccurate and sent for political strategy and personal gain. It is my intention to present the facts and clear-up any misunderstandings. The main objective of this Ordinance is to protect Property Owners from the accumulation of junk and rubbish which could impact the value of your property. At no time was this Ordinance designed for revenue gain.
Below are the facts: [Read more…]
liberty vs. zoning
“Please reconcile the balance between county zoning laws/ordinances with the Republican Value of Liberty.”
Del Schwab
“County zoning laws/ordinances are for the entire county regardless of party affiliation. My values as an elected official always are conservative, protection of public rights, right for life and as a faithful public employee.”
John Shipper
“Zoning laws and ordinances provide a county and its citizens an organized method of best determining where commercial development should take place so that citizens are served in a convenient and safe manner.”
Robert Rowland
“Liberty is more than a Republican value, it is the foundation of Conservativisim and our nation. Our founders spelled out in great wisdom the role of government by limiting it to those enumerated powers. Government today has grossly exceeded those powers, at all levels. The power is in the people, and as a free people, living in a society structure the people have the right to establish guidelines, including such things as zoning laws. It is when elected officials, without a mandate of the people, take it upon themselves to establish such things as “Rubbish Laws” for reasons not consistent with societal needs, including seeking revenues, fines and taxes not approved by the people, that they too exceed their power and violate their oath.”
Larry Ross
“County zoning laws/ordinances should be respectful to and protect citizen’s private property rights. In a perfect world all people would extend this courtesy and respect to their neighbors. Minimizing government intrusion into individual property rights is the best approach. Health and public safety is where intervention may be appropriate.”
To summarize: [Read more…]
guest authors at elbertcounty.net
A friend asked to do some guest blogging here and that sounded like a good idea. She will sign any posts she creates with her user name. This is really a first for this blog as everything heretofore has been from me, and most people know who I am. This version of WordPress doesn’t appear to provide user name tags under blog posts so we’ll have to put that information in the body of each post going forward.
Non-anonymity of posters should keep things reasonable and presentable. [Read more…]
it ain’t over till it’s over
If we’re not going to stand by our leaders when they speak the plain truth, if we’re going to censor ourselves when the plain truth is on the table for all to see, then the professionally sensitive have won. With all that came out about Obama last week, with hindsight in that very same week proving Coffman 100% right on his Obama assessment, giving any credence to Coffman’s critics seems extremely unwise. The left continue to issue their self-incriminating reactions, and rather than capitalize on those revelations for all the really negative things they indicate about the left, Republicans want to talk about undercutting the conservative message, and undercutting conservative’s ability to get a message out! [Read more…]
rubbish
- 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…]
Coffman statement bears fruit
mass movements today
34
“A rising mass movement attracts and holds a following not by its doctrines and promises but by the refuge it offers from the anxieties, barrenness and meaninglessness of an individual existence. It cures the poignantly frustrated not by conferring on them an absolute truth or by remedying the difficulties and abuses which made their lives miserable, but by freeing them from their ineffectual selves—and it does this by enfolding and absorbing them into a closely knit and exultant corporate whole.
It is obvious, therefore, that, in order to succeed, a mass movement must develop at the earliest moment a compact corporate organization and a capacity to absorb and integrate all comers. It is futile to judge the viability of a new movement by the truth of its doctrine and the feasibility of its promises. What has to be judged is its corporate organization for quick and total absorption of the frustrated. Where new creeds vie with each other for the allegiance of the populace, the one which comes with the most perfected collective framework wins…..[T]he chief passion of the frustrated is “to belong,” and that there cannot be too much cementing and binding to satisfy this passion.”
Eric Hoffer, The True Believer, Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements
“the most perfected collective framework wins”
These words were published in 1951 and I think are as true now as they were 60 years ago.
Context, however, changed substantially in those years. [Read more…]
Volunteers Needed for Elizabeth Stampede
Parade & GOP Exhibit Booth: Volunteers are needed to serve at the Elbert County Republican Booth Friday, Saturday and Sunday (June 1st, 2nd & 3rd 2012) at the Elizabeth Stampede. Our booth is in Casey Jones Park, Elizabeth. We should be located along the main walkway near the entrance of the arena. We will be handing out Republican literature, water and candy for the kids. Families are very welcome, this is a great opportunity to reach our community with our conservative values. [Read more…]
commissioners answer questions
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…]
Meet the candidates
Commissioner candidates answer questions at an Elbert County Republican Breakfast on Saturday, 5/12/12.
We’re (Nearly) All Victims Now!
“Table 2
Members of victimhood groups as a percentage of total population,
% adjusted for multiple discrimination
Female gender 51
Ethnic minority 8
Disabled 22
Non-Christian 5
Elderly 18
Gay or lesbian 5
Grand Total 109
How was the estimate of 109 per cent reached? 51 per cent of the population are women and ethnic minorities make up another eight per cent, according to the 2001 Census, and some 22 per cent of the population of Great Britain are said to be disabled. Eighteen per cent of the population are pensioners. And at the time of the 2001 Census about five per cent belonged to non-Christian faiths. A similar proportion were gays and lesbians.”
We’re (Nearly) All Victims Now! by David G. Green [Read more…]
The Desire for Substitutes
“The Desire for Substitutes
There is a fundamental difference between the appeal of a mass movement and the appeal of a practical organization. The practical organization offers opportunities for self-advancement, and its appeal is mainly to self-interest. On the other hand, a mass movement, particularly in its active, revivalist phase, appeals not to those intent on bolstering and advancing a cherished self, but to those who crave to be rid of an unwanted self. A mass movement attracts and holds a following not because it can satisfy the desire for self-advancement, but because it can satisfy the passion for self-renunciation.
People who see their lives as irremediably spoiled cannot find a worth-while purpose in self-advancement. The prospect of an individual career cannot stir them to a mighty effort, nor can it evoke in them faith and a single minded dedication. They look on self-interest as on something tainted and evil; something unclean and unlucky. Anything undertaken under the auspices of the self seems to them foredoomed. Nothing that has it roots and reasons in the self can be good and noble. Their innermost craving is for a new life—a rebirth—or, failing this, a chance to acquire new elements of pride, confidence, hope, a sense of purpose and worth by an identification with a holy cause. An active mass movement offers them opportunities for both. If they join the movement as full converts they are reborn to a new life in its close-knit collective body, or if attracted as sympathizers they find elements of pride, confidence and purpose by identifying themselves with the efforts, achievements and prospects of the movement.
To the frustrated a mass movement offers substitutes either for the whole self or for the elements which make life bearable and which they cannot evoke out of their individual resources.”
Eric Hoffer, The True Believer
What irremediably spoiled past life is Obama substituting?
Obama and Ayers
“Despite having authored two autobiographies, Barack Obama has never written about his most important executive experience. From 1995 to 1999, he led an education foundation called the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC), and remained on the board until 2001. The group poured more than $100 million into the hands of community organizers and radical education activists.
The CAC was the brainchild of Bill Ayers, a founder of the Weather Underground in the 1960s. Among other feats, Mr. Ayers and his cohorts bombed the Pentagon, and he has never expressed regret for his actions. Barack Obama’s first run for the Illinois State Senate was launched at a 1995 gathering at Mr. Ayers’s home.
The Obama campaign has struggled to downplay that association.” Obama and Ayers Pushed Radicalism On Schools, Stanley Kurtz WSJ
(click to enlarge)
candidate positions
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.