By Brooks
Obama veritas
freedom forestalled
Our betters at the Planning Commission were supposed to consider the following last Thursday evening, 8/26/12.
The Site Development Plan process ensures compliance with:
- Conditions of approval (unlimited)
- Planned Unit Development requirements
- Platting restrictions
- Elbert County Zoning Regulations
- Elbert County Subdivision Regulations
- Elbert County 1041 Regulations
- Elbert County Master Plan
- Elbert County Design Standards for Non-Residential and Multifamily Developments
- Elbert County Construction and Specifications Manual
- Circulation and traffic
- Landscaping
- Parking
- Signage
- Lighting
- Sidewalks
- Storm water drainage and detention
- Water and sanitation facilities
This plan, consisting of a myriad of subordinate plans, must be submitted before a permit to construct will be considered for issuance for any use or change in use of a platted or un-platted parcel for:
- Any business
- Any commercial facility
- Any industrial facility
- Any multi-family dwelling
- Any recreational facility
- Any institutional facility
- Any government building
- Any library
- Any fire department facility
- Any law enforcement facility
- Any church
- Any school
- Any major utility facility
- Any cell site
- Any utility service facility larger than 500 square feet
- And facilities contemplated under Planned Unit Development regulations
Plans must be provided by Colorado certified engineers and must include a guarantee bond payable to the County should the plan fail in some way.
Look around you. See all those cows? They’re nice enough, to be sure. But to raise them you have to be either a multi-millionaire looking for a hobby, or a descendent from a pioneer family with inherited land, because there’s not enough profit in the animals to pay for the land on which they feed. That’s a pretty exclusive club, and it’s not growing.
Elbert County’s Community and Development Services Department makes sure this situation stays exactly the same. Of course they’re just a well intentioned bunch of bureaucrats doing their bit to bring about a perfect world, which they’ve apparently decided looks exactly like the world we already have.
They’re giving services all right. Bend over, touch your toes, and make your checks payable to Elbert County.
As for the common people who moved here to build a family and a life? Don’t worry about them. There’s federal TANF welfare funding, Food Stamp credit cards from the Feds, and all sorts of Social Services to deal with their wrecked circumstances after their economic hopes come crashing down. They don’t need jobs. They can look at the pretty cows.
Svetlana Kunin summed it up recently in Perspectives of a Russian Immigrant No. 24
- When more workers joined the federal government’s disability program in June than the number of jobs created by the economy — were we rising or falling?
- When enrollment in the food-stamp program increased by 44% from 2009 to 2011, were we rising or falling.?
- When in a very dangerous world the U.S. military is weakened and the borders are not protected — are we rising or falling?
- When a growing web of government agencies and tsars are taxing, penalizing, mandating, forbidding and limiting citizens’ liberties, and when entrepreneurship is demonized — are we rising or falling?
- For those who study world history, the difference between government planners vs. private entrepreneurs is dramatically apparent.
“You are free to argue that certain government interventions are justified. You just need to acknowledge this truth: Every intervention that erects barriers to starting a business, makes it expensive to hire or fire employees, restricts entry into vocations, prescribes work conditions and facilities, or confiscates profits interferes with economic liberty and usually makes it more difficult for both employers and employees to earn success. You also don’t need to be a libertarian to demand that any new intervention meet this burden of proof: It will accomplish something that tort law and enforcement of basic laws against force, fraud and collusion do not accomplish.” Charles Murray – Why Capitalism Has an Image Problem
B_Imperial
Psalm 140
I’ve known Keith casually for more than a few years now. We’re actually related on some not-too-long shirt tail. I kid around with the Abbey’s because they seem to enjoy it so much. If you aren’t smiling they’ll figure out a way to change that. Maybe they’re just generous to an old kidder. Anyway, Keith became a pastor at Graceway Church in Kiowa. I don’t know if he was speaking to me in an official capacity, but assuming he was, Pastor Keith pointed a biblical passage out to me yesterday while we were visiting with each other at a commissioners meeting:
I think he’s on to something.
B_Imperial
Anita Moncrief at C-PAC
Ministry of Truth
by Joseph Farah
There was a rather low-key confession made in the New York Times last week that deserves to be blared throughout this country so that every American understands what they are reading in the establishment’s ultra-controlled, government-managed “press” – and I use that last word loosely indeed.
The admission came in the form of a story by Jeremy Peters on the politics page of the Times July 16. I’ve been waiting for others to point it out, discuss it, debate it, express shock and exasperation over it. But I’ve waited for naught.
What this shocking story reveals is that even I – one of the kingpins of the new media and a refugee from the state-controlled spin machine – underestimated the utter and total corruption of the euphemistically called “mainstream press.”
It shows that most – not some – members of the print media establishment with access to the White House submit their copy to government officials for review, “correction” and approval before it reaches the American people!
Even “progressive” WND columnist Ellen Ratner agrees – media under a spell!
Here are some key excerpts from the piece, if you think I’m exaggerating:
- “The quotations come back redacted, stripped of colorful metaphors, colloquial language and anything even mildly provocative.”
- “They are sent by e-mail from the Obama headquarters in Chicago to reporters who have interviewed campaign officials under one major condition: the press office has veto power over what statements can be quoted and attributed by name.”
- “Most reporters, desperate to pick the brains of the president’s top strategists, grudgingly agree. After the interviews, they review their notes, check their tape recorders and send in the juiciest sound bites for review. The verdict from the campaign – an operation that prides itself on staying consistently on script – is often no, Barack Obama does not approve this message.”
- “Now, with a millisecond Twitter news cycle and an unforgiving, gaffe-obsessed media culture, politicians and their advisers are routinely demanding that reporters allow them final editing power over any published quotations.”
- “Quote approval is standard practice for the Obama campaign, used by many top strategists and almost all mid-level aides in Chicago and at the White House – almost anyone other than spokesmen who are paid to be quoted. (And sometimes it applies even to them.) It is also commonplace throughout Washington and on the campaign trail.”
- “Many journalists spoke about the editing only if granted anonymity, an irony that did not escape them.”
- “From Capitol Hill to the Treasury Department, interviews granted only with quote approval have become the default position. Those officials who dare to speak out of school, but fearful of making the slightest off-message remark, shroud even the most innocuous and anodyne quotations in anonymity by insisting they be referred to as a ‘top Democrat’ or a ‘Republican strategist.’”
- “Those [reporters] who did speak on the record said the restrictions seem only to be growing. ‘It’s not something I’m particularly proud of because there’s a part of me that says, Don’t do it, don’t agree to their terms,’ said Major Garrett, a correspondent for The National Journal.”
- “It was difficult to find a news outlet that had not agreed to quote approval, albeit reluctantly. Organizations like Bloomberg, The Washington Post, Vanity Fair, Reuters and The New York Times have all consented to interviews under such terms.”
I could go on and on. I urge you to read the entire story. This may be the most important story broken by the New York Times in years.
What it means is this: When Americans read these reports – whether in newspapers, wire services or on the Internet – they are not really reading news stories at all. They are reading approved, pre-packaged press releases from the government and politicians. But, even worse, they are not labeled as such. They are labeled as actual news.
That’s how low the national press establishment has descended. And, when you read the story in its full context, you will understand that the concerns expressed about this practice by those submitting themselves to it are not ethical concerns. They are not concerns for the truth. They are concerns about their own convenience and for the loss of “color” in their stories.
Let me state what I hope is obvious to all reading this column: This sort of willing capitulation to government censorship was not the norm five years ago, 10 years ago, 20 years ago or 30 years ago. This is a new phenomenon – chilling and alarming to an old-timer like me who would never agree to submit his copy for approval to politicians.
These so-called journalists are selling their ethical and moral souls for access to politicians. And this practice raises expectations by politicians that they can routinely manipulate the press to their advantage. That makes the job of real journalists – independent reporters faithful to their craft – even more difficult, because they will be shut out from access.
It reminds me of the fact that, just last week, WND was denied credentials to cover the Democratic National Convention. Why do you suppose what has become one of the largest and most influential news agencies in the country would be denied access to the convention floor? Simply because the Democrats know we won’t play by their rules of control like the members of the establishment press club.
All I can say about these people I once considered “colleagues” is that I am so ashamed of them. I am mortified. They are humiliating themselves and a vital institution for any free society.
It seems the biggest threat to the American tradition of a free and independent press is not government coercion. It’s the willing submission of the press to being handled and managed by government and politicians.
Ayatollah you what?
Paul Kengor IBD Viewpoint
Media Cover Up Obama’s Ties To Communist Davis
By PAUL KENGOR
Posted 07/16/2012 06:34 PM ET
He blasted Wall Street, big business, big banks, big oil, “excess profits,” “corporate profits” and “fat contracts,” “millionaires” and the “wealthy.”
He called out the “corporation executive” for not paying his “fair” share.
He attacked “GOP” tax cuts that “spare the rich” and “benefit millionaires.”
He trumpeted the public sector over the private sector.
He advocated wealth redistribution from greedy “corporations” to “health insurance” and “public works projects.”
He favored taxpayer-funding of universal health care. He supported government stimulus to rescue America from (allegedly) another Great Depression.
He wanted to rid America of “huge funds” finding their way into the “pockets” of “Wall Street.” “Instead,” he declared, “money should be spent for the benefit of the people instead of the corporations.”
He supported nationalization and singled out General Motors for government action.
He favored the Russians at the expense of countries like Poland and Czechoslovakia.
He rejected Winston Churchill, and wanted the heralded prime minister nowhere within the White House.
He insisted that American foreign policy was about “big profits” for big oil.
He cited the American Founders and the U.S. Constitution, and described himself and his policies as “progressive,” while his detractors accused him of being a communist.
He adopted slogans like “Forward” and “Change.” He wanted to transform America through what he called “fundamental change.”
Who is this man?
If you answered “Barack Obama,” you’re only half right. The answer is Frank Marshall Davis, Hawaii mentor to Barack Obama, and Communist Party USA (CPUSA) member No. 47544.
And only now, four years into Obama’s presidency, are we finally learning about this mystery man ignored or downplayed by sympathetic Obama biographers and journalists.
Frank Marshall Davis (1905-87) was a pro-Soviet, pro-Red China, literal card-carrying member of the Communist Party.
He edited and wrote for Party-line publications such as the Honolulu Record and the Chicago Star, which included contributors who actually served as agents to Stalin’s Soviet Union.
Soviet Support
Davis did outrageous Soviet propaganda work in his columns, at every juncture agitating and opposing U.S. attempts to slow Joseph Stalin and Mao Tse-tung.
He favored Yalta and Red Army takeovers of Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and Central and Eastern Europe as a whole.
In China, he urged America to dump the “fascist” Chiang in support of Mao’s Red forces. He wanted communist takeovers in Korea and Vietnam. He was adamantly, angrily anti-NATO, anti-Marshall Plan, anti-Truman Doctrine.
He argued that U.S. officials under President Harry Truman and under secretaries of state George Marshall and Dean Acheson were handing West Germany back to the Nazis, while Stalin was pursuing “democracy” in East Germany and the Communist Bloc.
He portrayed America’s leaders as “aching for an excuse to launch a nuclear nightmare of mass murder and extermination” against the Soviets and the Chinese.
Moreover, in what ought to be an eye-opener to President Obama’s Democratic base, Frank Marshall Davis’ targets were chiefly Democrats, especially President Truman.
Why target Truman? Because Davis’ peak period of pro-Soviet propaganda work was the latter 1940s, when Stalin’s Red Army was rampaging through Eastern Europe. Standing in Stalin’s way was Harry Truman.
And so, Davis’ Chicago Star trashed Truman with headlines like “White House to white hoods: KKK hails Truman’s policy as its own” and “TRUMAN KNIFES HOPE FOR PEACE.”
Davis excoriated the Democratic president as trigger-happy Truman, pursuing “a new world war,” a “program for World War III,” in a bloodthirsty bid to “rule Russia.”
He framed Truman’s Marshall Plan as a new form of “colonial slavery,” intended “to re-enslave the yellow and brown and black peoples of the world.”
Truman was not Davis’ only target. Davis harbored a special hatred for Winston Churchill. He warned of Churchill teaming up with Truman in a two-nation U.K./U.S. alliance seeking “Anglo-American world domination” and “super-imperialism.”
When Churchill came to Fulton, Mo., in March 1946 to warn the world that an “Iron Curtain” was closing across Europe, Frank Marshall Davis was livid.
He and his CPUSA comrades mocked Churchill; they maintained that the only “Iron Curtains” were those being erected by Davis’ worst demons: anti-communists in the American press and General Motors.
The problem was not Stalin’s Iron Curtain, scoffed Davis, but “G.M.’s iron curtain,” being raised by “General Motors’ Hitlers.”
In short, Frank Marshall Davis’ work and writings were irresponsible and outrageous.
Congress certainly noticed. In December 1956, the Democrats who headed the Senate Judiciary Committee summoned Frank Marshall Davis to Washington to testify on his pro-Soviet activities. He pled the Fifth Amendment.
The next year, the Democratic Senate, in an official report titled “Scope of Soviet Activity in the United States,” publicly listed Davis as “an identified member of the Communist Party.”
Davis’ political antics were so radical that the FBI placed him on the federal government’s Security Index, which meant he could be immediately detained in the event of a national emergency, such as a war breaking out between the United States and U.S.S.R.
Influence On Obama
All of that is troubling enough, but how does it relate to Barack Obama?
Frank Marshall Davis influenced Obama throughout Obama’s adolescence in the 1970s. It was Obama’s grandfather, Stanley Dunham, who introduced Davis to Obama for the purpose of mentoring.
In my research on Davis, I quote over a dozen biographers and associates of Obama and Davis describing Davis as a vital, lasting influence. One Davis biographer and close friend, a University of Hawaii professor, says that Davis instilled in Obama a belief that “change can happen.”
In fact, we know about Davis because of Obama’s own lengthy acknowledgment. In “Dreams from My Father,” Obama notes that Davis offered him advice at several significant levels: on race, college, women, his mind, his attitudes, on life.
“I was intrigued by old Frank,” writes Obama, “with his books and whiskey breath and the hint of hard-earned knowledge behind the hooded eyes.”
Obama directly mentioned “Frank” 22 times over the course of thousands of words and every section of his bestselling memoir, from Hawaii — the site of visits and late evenings together — to Los Angeles to Chicago to Germany to Africa, from adolescence to college to community organizing.
Frank is always one of the few (and first) names mentioned by Obama in each mile-marker upon his historic path to Washington.
When Frank is not physically there with Obama, Obama literally imagines him there. Obama felt a connection to Frank that he painfully concedes he was unable to find in anyone else.
Tellingly, though Frank Marshall Davis’ influence on Obama is acknowledged in “Dreams from My Father,” Obama never once disclosed the CPUSA member’s full name. No doubt this was because Obama knew about Davis’ extreme past.
I believe that Davis is reflective, and helps explain, how and why America’s current president is further to the left than any president of our generation.
He sheds light on how our president developed into a man of the left, ultimately ranked the most left-leaning member of the Senate by National Journal in the final year before he ran for president.
And yet, this radical influence on our president has been thoroughly ignored by the media. No Republican president with a mentor this extreme to the right would escape such scrutiny.
Not many presidents can count a card-carrying CPUSA member among their mentors.
The man now in charge of history’s mightiest economic engine was influenced, to some notable degree, by a pro-Soviet communist.
That is unprecedented; a relationship that at long last merits our attention.
• Kengor is professor of political science at Grove City College and author of the new book, “The Communist: Frank Marshall Davis, The Untold Story of Barack Obama’s Mentor.”
Dreams From My Real Father
This film documents the socialist conquest of America. Whether Obama is the son of Frank Marshall Davis or not, the history of the totalitarian movement they both dedicated their lives to is an on-going American tragedy that must be seen, must become known, by all Americans.
I’m ashamed to be called ‘newsman’
by Joseph Farah
After watching the press reaction and “questions” following Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s breathtaking news conference yesterday, I have to tell you I’m embarrassed to call myself a newsman.
If someone asks me what I do for a living, maybe I’ll identify myself as an Internet entrepreneur.
Or maybe I’ll say I’m a “writer.”
Or maybe a publisher or businessman.
I never thought it would come to this. Being a newsman was all I ever wanted to be as far back as I can remember. It’s really all I’ve ever done through adulthood. It’s all I really know and love.
But I don’t ever want to be associated with that pack of jackals from Phoenix who jumped all over Arpaio and his investigator, Mike Zullo, for courageously presenting overwhelming evidence – I would even use the term “proof” – that Barack Obama’s birth certificate is fraudulent and that the state of Hawaii is not only a willing accomplice in this scandal but perpetrating an even bigger one as a virtual factory for phony documents giving noncitizens instant citizenship with a stroke of the pen.
Some 50,000 people across the globe watched the live presentation on WND TV. If you didn’t get a chance to see it unfold, I urge you to take the time to review on demand, at your convenience.
In another era, with another occupant of the White House – someone like Nixon or Reagan or Bush – such an event would have been carried live by ABC, NBC and CBS. The New York Times would have had a half-dozen reporters on the scene. CNN, FOX and CSPAN would have carried coverage and offer instant analysis and debate over the issues raised.
But that’s no longer the America in which we live.
Today, without the Internet, we live in a 100 percent controlled media environment. There are more sacred cows than edible ones. The watchdogs are now lapdogs. The “reporters” are propagandists for the political establishment and the status quo.
I watch in horror as my chosen profession collectively disgraces itself.
Can our nation even survive without a free and independent and inquisitive, watchdog press?
Thomas Jefferson said, “Where the press is free and every man able to read, all is safe.”
Are we “safe” in America today?
On the other hand, Vladimir Lenin said, “When one makes a Revolution, one cannot mark time; one must always go forward – or go back. He who now talks about the ‘freedom of the press’ goes backward, and halts our headlong course towards Socialism.”
Is that where we’re headed in America today – forward to socialism and tyranny?
I feel sympathy for Arpaio and Zullo for the abuse they have endured. I understand it well, because I’ve experienced it firsthand for the last four years in my own commitment to the pursuit of truth regarding Obama’s life story.
The easiest choice to make is to go along with the conventional wisdom, not ask the hard questions, not relentlessly pursue truth. Kudos to Arpaio and Zullo, who didn’t take the easy way out like those clowns in the local Phoenix media and all those in the national media who just ignored what the only law-enforcement investigation of Obama’s birth certificate found.
I may not want to associate myself with the media anymore out of sheer humiliation. But I promise you one thing: I’m not going to stop being a real journalist. I’m not going to stop doing what I’ve been doing for 35 years. I’m not going to stop supporting intrepid, independent renegades like the WND team who make me believe there’s still hope for redeeming the media.
we’re all racists now
As more people learn the embarrassing truth about Obama’s lack of credentials, the traditional liberal media keeps doubling and redoubling down on their last refuge—the claim that it’s all racism. Every voice counter to their prevailing politically correct gestalt is racist. Every criticism of multicultural thought, racism. If politics is the last refuge of a scoundrel, racism is surely the last refuge of a politician.
What an insult. Racism, racism, racism. Everywhere you look, racism. We’re all racists. We can’t think, we can’t see facts, we can’t reason, we can’t form conclusions. Half the country, basically all the non-leftists in the country, are now classed by the liberal media as mindless racists.
So this is the new big lie. Obama, the narcissistic most important person in America forever, has the Left totally invested in him. In this game, they’re “all in.” But Obama not only deflated the American dollar, he deflated whatever real reasons the Left may have once held to legitimately support him. The chips they had in this game became worthless, and they have no hole cards. So it’s pound the table and scream racism, pay no attention to that man behind the curtain, cover your ears with your hands and mouth “na na na na na….” Were this an old west barroom they’d have their six guns out and blazing.
Peter Boyles is correct. We’re witnessing the self-destruction of the American media. They’re de-legitimizing themselves, there doesn’t appear to be any way of slowing them down, and they’re not going quietly into that good night. Looks like it’s going to get a lot messier before it’s over.
In the long run, the destruction of the American traditional media will become the bigger story. The most important narcissist of all time will be seen as only one catalyst in that fundamental change — which is certainly not the change he had hoped for.
frack you
I ran across this paper: Using Market Incentives to Protect Water Quality in America from the Environmental Defense Fund. Not surprisingly, it contains a number of concepts I consider quite unworkable.
For example, fee schedule government price controls. This device, which presumes a governing market price intelligence can exist that is superior to supply and demand in fitting a market to consumers, has done a great deal of damage to American healthcare — made it far more expensive that it would be without government price controls. As a market device I think it fails miserably and I wouldn’t recommend government price controls for any market.
Similarly, this notion that a water pollution credit market of trading fiat rights, much like the failed carbon credit concept, can accomplish anything beneficial to society, is another fail point in my assessment.
But the last section of the paper, “Require Assurance Bonding and Damage Liability,” looks like it might hold some promise.
The Elbert County Left [ECL] march around the county, in and out of various meeting halls, issuing the words “frack” and “fracker” as if they were f-bombs — ultimate mudballs. To be so labelled means you’re a neanderthal environmental idiot worthy of public scorn. In their lexicon, the words are so defamatory that quite often the ECL use fake names on the internet and in local papers when issuing them.
Unfortunately this is about as far their economic analysis usually gets. Issue the ad hominem and then leave the room. I always consider the source before assessing the content of their remarks because nothing they do is off tangent from their (using a whispered reverential tone here as if speaking in church) agenda.
Back on point though, markets find real value, voluntary transaction price points where two people agree that what they each hold is of an equivalent value and worth trading with each other. The system requires property ownership and freedom to function. The rest of it occurs quite naturally, until you inject government into the transaction. A government price control interferes with valuation and voluntary decisions of the traders. It spoils a market at the onset and creates an endless downstream of negative market dislocations for every subordinate transaction to follow.
The ECL is correct that clean water has a value to us all. But the ECL don’t understand how markets work. Anything that has a value also has a price and can be traded.
I’d like to see a discussion of using surety bonds between parties for water quality protection proximate to drilling operations. Such devices would;
- flesh out the measurable triggering mechanisms,
- they would provide for remedies,
- they would evaluate and price real risk to the operations,
- they would be voluntarily executed between concerned parties,
- they would resolve a political issue with a concrete market device,
- they would not require unworkable government intervention, and
- they would demonstrably step back from socialist thinking in vogue today.
And let’s not forget the bonus point of leaving ECL zealots with one less unresolvable issue to bay about at public meetings.
B_Imperial
the poverty of socialism
To those who complain about the free market’s inability to overcome the systemic failures of socialism, the free market works very well without socialism. Discovering and producing a profitable market transaction is enough of a challenge without also handicapping businesses by forcing them to carry the dead weight of socialism on their backs.
Imagine how much extra we pay for goods and services in America from the unnecessary overhead costs of bureaucratic compliance, arbitrary process regulation, arbitrary labor regulation, arbitrary environmental regulation, arbitrary esthetic regulation, arbitrary design regulation, anticipatory legal maneuvering to ward off predatory lawsuits over regulatory compliance, and the elimination of market alternatives through the exclusion of marginal participants unable to compete when loaded up with all the socialist transaction costs of participating in a socialist-controlled market.
No one sees the opportunity costs of socialism – all the wealth and transaction activity that gets systemically preempted by it. Socialism gets a free pass in this leftist dominated time. It is judged solely by its intentions, never by the inadequate beneficial outcomes it actually leads to, and absolutely never by the injustice of it.
The socialist myth attempts to make people what nature did not: of equal capacity. Since people do not have equal capacities, the socialist system attempting to impose equal outcomes on everyone is fundamentally unnatural, essentially unjust, and continually disruptive to human relations.
Who would choose such a system?
- Sheltered academics who don’t have to live with the real-world consequences of their pretty social theories, and
- Politicians who need a disruptive problem set that can never be fixed to provide constant demand for their intervening political tinkering, and
- Bureaucrats, planners and statists because that’s all they know, and
- Lawyers who live off the carnage.
Now, imagine if all the manpower and brainpower currently engaged in the non-productive control of the rest of society, were instead engaged in self-sustaining productive endeavors. Imagine a least-cost framework where everyone made a real economic contribution — where the half of society currently sucking the life out of the other half produced real goods and services without coerced funding from the other half.
Socialists aren’t helping us. They never did. They never will.
Americans are buried in a tomb of city, county, state, federal, zoning, and regulatory law built by non-representative bureaucrats without the consent of the governed. Our only hope is to remove all of it, wipe it off the books, and re-engage freedom. Those vested in these systems will scream bloody murder. We owe it to ourselves to turn a deaf ear to their fear mongering.
B_Imperial
re: ELCO Primary Election
As a member of a family whose roots in Elbert County date back nearly 140 years, it saddens me to witness the transformation of the county from its rich rural ranching history to an increasingly urbanized populace with corresponding philosophies more attuned to the Denver-Boulder demographic axis. Perhaps the changes were inevitable considering the influx of people from urban centers from other states relocating to our wonderful corner of the world. Over the long haul however, I believe this has led to a creeping, corrosive effect upon Elbert County’s traditional agriculture-oriented culture.
With the election of the two new county commissioners, what can we now expect? If we can use as a guide, the friction-interface between the outgoing commissioners and the newly elected individuals over the last several years, I believe that we can expect the emergence of more stringent and restrictive policies geared more toward satisfying the urban lifestyle. This may appear as new policies discouraging the development of the county’s oil and gas resources, ever more restrictive use of water for agricultural purposes (read greener lawns in the northwest part and drier pastures in the rest of the county). Certainly not the least of the policies may be the imposition of higher taxes.
Through the late 1950’s and 1960’s, I had the privilege of serving as the only resident veterinarian in Elbert County. And as a result of that experience even today, nearly sixty years later, I value my relationships with my clientele at that time with their basic decency and honesty, as being my most treasured memories. While some of the children and grandchildren of my clients from that era are still ranching in the county, I fear that the remnants of that shining phase of the county’s history may be gone forever.
Sincerely,
Marvin O. Maul, DVM
8320 Ashford Court
Colorado Springs, CO 80920
(719) 593-1290
hee hee
“a conflict of visions”
election complaint
From: Cherie Radeker
Sent: Wednesday, July 11, 2012 2:10 PM
To: Brooks Imperial
Cc: Karen Shipper; Bill Harris, Del Schwab, John Shipper
Subject: FW: 2012 Primary Official Results
Attachments: 2012 Official Primary Results.pdf
Hello Mr. Imperial:
I have attached the Primary Election Results for your review. I have reviewed these with a few folks and my concern is….there was an error with respect to counting of the ballots. I was hoping you can review them and give me your opinion.
On or about June 27th a plethora of phone calls received from Citizens of Elbert County voicing their issues and concerns of which were brought to the attention to the Secretary of State, Elections Division, Wayne Munster. Pursuant to a phone conversation with Wayne Munster, the Secretary of the State’s office received many calls (25) as well and were planning to perform an audit. On that date, Mr. Munster stated he would contact Del Schwab, Nancy Harris and myself so that we may be present during the audit. Mr. Munster stated, the SOS believes in transparency and would make sure to contact this office prior to making arrangements for the audit.
On or about July 10th, during a meeting with the Secretary of the State at their office, with Mr. Munster, the Secretary of the State himself, Scott Gessler and a few other SOS employees’, it was reiterated on or about July 5th, Mr. Munster and another SOS employee came to the Clerk and Recorders Office, Elections Dept., to perform the aforementioned audit. To my surprise, none of the above parties were contacted. During the meeting on July 10th, Mr. Munster stated he had never said he would contact anyone! Mr. Munster’s statement is not true, he did. After listening to the concerns, Mr. Gessler stated he will “look into” certain matters reiterated.
There have been reports of alleged mis-conduct during the course of the election process to include but not limited to, training, seals, etc. If indeed there was a mistake or error made, the citizens of Elbert County have a right to be informed. On behalf of the many citizens who have called, I am asking for everyone’s assistance to make sure their Constitutional Rights were not misrepresented.
Everyone I speak to is saying, their “gut” tells them something is wrong if something is wrong!
Thank you for your valued time.
keeping score
RE: (click box to see cartoon)
My statement, “And now they [the left] control the Elbert County Republican Party,” has apparently unhinged the Elbert County Leftist [ECL] McShay.
Next time, before an ECL member launches into a potentially libelous rant, he should read more carefully. I said, “And now they control ….” I didn’t say, “And then they controlled….” McShay has confused causation of alleged incidents in the past, with present and future causation. The two simply cannot connect.
My reasoning for saying, “And now they control the Elbert County Republican Party,” is based on the assumption that the Elbert County Republican Party has a goal of electing Republicans to local offices. I believe this is actually in their bylaws.
As has been substantiated in multiple writings, and as was again substantiated in the Denver Post excerpt within the blog item carrying the above quoted statement, the winners of the Republican primary in Elbert County associate with Democrats. They’re liked by Democrats, they share policies with Democrats, they’re published on a Democrat web site, and they even smoke cigars with Democrats and hang out socially.
So, reasonably, evidently, observably, I call them leftists. Democrats are leftists, so they must be too. It’s no stretch to connect those dots.
Now, and this is where McShay should pay close attention, if the Republican Party exists to elect Republicans, but they’ve instead elected known leftists, a reasonable person could conclude that leftists now control the Republican Party.
This is an important fact to keep in mind as the ECL takes over majority control of the BOCC for the next 4 years. What the ECL plan to do to Elbert County, the oppressive zoning, the takings of private property rights, increasing taxes, the suppression of commerce, the preservation of horse pastures, etc., these things are going to fall squarely at the feet of the ECL.
They wanted the power, they went out and got it, now they own the consequences. No more blaming Republicans. Sorry, that card has been removed from the deck.
Official BOCC decisions in the past in Elbert County cannot be directly ascribed to the ECL, however, the list of ECL talking points McShay detailed in his above referenced cartoon, points that also comprised the substance of Rowland’s and Ross’s campaign rhetoric, have all been factually rebutted or shown to be of no consequence. So those talking points at least can’t be ascribed to Republicans either. Maybe it’s because they don’t really exist?
Anyway, whatever I say will be formed into an unsavory mudball by the ECL and hurled at me with invective, ad hominem, innuendo, unsavory name calling and various misrepresentations. It’s what they do, and it’s what one gets who has the temerity to criticize our leftist overlords.
I try to remain philosophical about these personal attacks from the ECL. If they want to keep pulling their pants down to show their literary junk to the world, I figure the least I can do is comment about it, even though that apparently makes them keep doing it. They intend to silence those who dissent from their orthodoxy. That isn’t going to happen here.
B_Imperial
water thought police
“Jerry Koch, Water Task Force leader, is professing to provide, “Practical, objective educational water related information to the authorities, volunteers and citizens of Elbert County”
Maybe… but this sure looks like someone predisposed to the joys of fracking and not conservation of Elbert County’s water.”
RE:
12CW118 W. JERRY AND PAULA M. KOCH, PO Box 970, Elizabeth, CO 80107. Telephone: 303-646-4201. APPLICATION FOR CHANGE OF WATER RIGHT IN ELBERT COUNTY. Date of original decree: case 94CW045, 12-8-94; case 04CW277, 05-24-05. Koch Pumping Station located NW1/4, SW1/4, S20, T8S, R64W of the 6th PM. Diversion at various pts along Running Creek from 550 ft E of SW corner of NW1/4, SW1/4 to 100 ft E of NW1/4,SW1/4 S20, T8S, R64W of the 6th PM. Date of appropriation: 12-12-89. Amount: 2cfs Conditional. Decreed Use: Irrigation. Change of Use to (potential): Fish pond or water storage; oil drilling; fracing; sale of water; Augmentation; and water bottling.
Note well, this concerns OWNED surface water ALREADY PUT TO ANOTHER BENEFICIAL USE. It doesn’t concern ground water. It concerns a water property right owned by the Koch’s — a property right available to anyone in Colorado.
Now come the new-strange folks who imply that to even think about using a drop of Colorado water from any source whatsoever, and regardless of property right, in a fracking process, is an ignominious thought crime to be publicly reviled.
You elected these people to govern Elbert County. And they haven’t even started yet.
B_Imperial
lying down with dogs…
…waking up with flees.
In Elbert County the left controls the tea party, such as it is. They control the Democrat Party. And now they control the Elbert County Republican Party.
B_Imperial
