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time for Brown to be excused

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According to the BOCC, the Oil & Gas MOU on the table is the draft from 11-27-13.

Mr. Rick Brown of the Planning Commission expressed dissatisfaction with this MOU in the Prairie Times this week, and said that the BOCC is “rushing to judgment on an inadequately vetted MOU” and that Commissioners Rowland and Schlegal [sic] have “contempt for transparency and citizen involvement.”

I’d have to say it’s Mr. Brown showing contempt for Elbert County citizens – in particular the Elbert County citizens who have waited 3 years now while the Planning Commission played cat-and-mouse delaying games with the Oil & Gas industry.

The problems I see with the above MOU are as follows; [Read more…]

on a mission from God

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P.S.  After meeting update.

The Left played nice last night as they ratcheted regulations for minor oil & gas facilities into place.  Groundwork is laid for future battles on MOU contents and language designed to precipitate operational conflicts.  CDS’s Fenner, EC’s LGD, knows that an “official” MOU walks a zoning line that can be construed as regulatory, and by its expected content, will operationally conflict with state regs.  The Left would love nothing better than a good long lawsuit on the question.  And of course there is a commissioner on the ballot to be peppered with mudballs.  While the playground was orderly last night, I expect their diplomacy won’t last long. [Read more…]

A conflict of models

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Planners attempt to imitate reality through regulatory law.  You could call it modelling reality.

Private sector businesses make all sorts of models for controlling their businesses.  These models accept data, they associate data elements through defined relationships, they produce performance metrics for their businesses, and they attempt to predict, at least for the near term, future business requirements for the firms.

Public sector modelling in regulatory law aspires to reach the standards of modelling success seen in the private sector.  But regulators aren’t private sector operators.  They don’t run the businesses that their regulatory models attempt to control.  They don’t have a survival motivation to make a correct model. [Read more…]

Greens spending the gold

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Big Money And Radical Activists Lurk Behind Fracking Bans Across Front Range

October 16, 2013

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Cliff Willmeng cropped

Cliff Willmeng, seen here on Facebook expressing his views to oil and gas executives, is a key leader in a network of hyper-confrontational activists who guide the anti-fracking movement in Colorado

The debate over the fracking bans in Broomfield, Fort Collins and Lafayette on the November ballot has been a heated one in recent months, with plenty of media coverage of claims by opponents of fracking.

But missing from any media coverage of the ideological crusade against fracking is the checkered history of the most influential voices in the anti-fracking movement, and the underground money machine that sustains it. [Read more…]

green crisis mongering

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The shameless use of Colorado’s floods to attack drilling

By Vincent Carroll
Denver Post editorial page editor

Posted:   10/08/2013 05:43:04 PM MDT 

 Workers replace dirt displaced by recent flooding at a natural gas extraction well head run by Encana Oil & Gas in Erie on Sept. 25.

Workers replace dirt displaced by recent flooding at a natural gas extraction well head run by Encana Oil & Gas in Erie on Sept. 25. (Brennan Linsley, The Associated Press)

“A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.” — Winston Churchill [Read more…]

delay, confuse, obfuscate

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Several of the below issues have already been effectively adjudicated negatively in the first round of failed regs that conflicted with COGCC rules.  Persistence in their inclusion reveals a purpose to delay oil & gas development by any means until leases run out on operators.

Enough with the oil & gas zoning edit committee sideshow.

RE:

Ecogig

4 hours ago

Elbert County Oil and Gas Regulations/MOUs Update
September 14, 2013
The county commissioners continue to undermine public input. The commissioners and the Director of Community and Development Services have held meetings to rewrite the regulations in secret venues; public participation was denied. There is supposed to be an ‘editing committee’ meeting at the administrative building this Tuesday, the 17th, at 6:30 pm. The CDC director is going to present her rewritten regulations and ask to send them to the Planning Commission (their meeting will be held on the 26th).
If you can attend, stress the importance of:
1. No open pits should be used for fluid storage in the county. Only closed loop systems can be used in the county.
2. No flow back or produced water should be spread on open land or roads.
3. All residents, and other resources, should be used to determine if there are abandoned wells in the vicinity of new exploration.
4. Vapor recovery systems, to minimize escaping gas, must be required.
5. Increased setbacks from homes and public places must be required.
6. Extensive baseline water well testing (and continued testing) is imperative.
7. Elbert County should allow green frack fluid only. (This may be a ‘sore point’ and ultimately against State regulations (but will certainly help protect our water, for which the County does have a right to ask.))
Commissioner Schlegel has told us that he does not have to rule by ‘committee’; he wants to run us over for his own personal gain. Commissioner Rowland follows suit

disconnected reasoning

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From an 8/8/2013 letter in the Elbert County Sun:
Rick Brown in Elbert County Sun 8/8/2013

Note that Mr. Brown does not dispute that operational conflicts with COGCC rules exist in the proposed Elbert County Oil & Gas regulations that he helped write.  Apparently he’s accepted the reality of the COGCC warnings from the May 14th study session.

But look at his first construction above – the county should pass the oil and gas regulations, thereby cause an economic grievance to a developer, and then discover through litigation whether the state has subject matter jurisdiction on the question of COGCC regulatory occupation of the field.  Doesn’t this sound like the much ridiculed Pelosi construct of having to pass the bill in order to find out what’s in it?  Do all Democrats think this way?

But let’s move on.  Brown next admits an answer to the above conundrum – “let’s assume the state has the legal capacity to file such a lawsuit,” thereby begging a question of what he hoped to achieve in his setup.  But let’s not get lost in the weeds as Brown pivots to his next construct – that if the county and Commissioner Rowland consider a given regulatory issue to be a surface matter, while the state considers that same regulatory issue to be an operational matter within its regulatory domain, then the state has “no basis for a lawsuit.”  What?

According to Brown, all a county need do is decide that something is within their jurisdiction, and that decision somehow binds the COGCC to go along – unless the COGCC decides not to, and instead puts an operator into a process of asking the BOCC for a waiver.

Let’s see, is that a waiver from the county regulation, or is that a waiver from the COGCC regulation.  Mr. Brown doesn’t say, but surely a county that has the power to redefine operational conflicts into surface matters, and thereby remove the basis for a COGCC lawsuit, must also have the power to excuse compliance with COGCC regulations when it sees fit to do so.

Where do counties get such power over the state?  In the imagination of Mr. Brown is where.  I don’t think Mr. Rowland is the one confused here.  But I do worry that Mr. Brown’s “logic” will appear persuasive to people not prepared for such deceptive reasoning.

After weaving his magical brew, Mr. Brown closes with an appeal to Mr. Rowland’s ministerial vanity.  Good grief.  Is there no panderingly offensive depth to which Brown won’t sink?

B_Imperial

Take my commissioner, please.

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The Elbert County Planning Commission rubber-stamped an oil & gas zoning regulation that would have put the county in conflict with state COGCC regulations, making grounds for litigation in the grey area of Colorado county vs. state authority to legally occupy a regulatory field. Had those regulations passed, it wouldn’t have taken long for an aggrieved party, no doubt with supporting briefs from Jerry Dahl, to come along and tie the county up in an expensive lawsuit with the state.

After listening to interminable hours of environmentalists on the oil and gas edit committee and their audiences haggle through various entrapment schemes to stymie oil and gas development, I believe that litigation was always their unspoken objective. They never intended to facilitate oil and gas development, regardless of how safe, how environmentally benign, how well planned it could be, or, and this one really chaps my butt, how much good faith they professed.

Before Larry Ross became Commissioner Ross, he and his wife were part of that clamor for oil and gas regulation. As the letter below demonstrates, the big picture from the elected office window has done little to objectify his views.

As head of the planning commission, Grant Thayer should have had the fortitude to stand against the liberal majority who proceeded without regard to the expressed COGCC warnings about operational conflicts. In doing the only honorable thing, however, he neglected to mention his own culpability, and instead dumped on the BOCC. Maybe he’ll man up on that issue someday.

If all this wasn’t bad enough, the planning commission can only be expected to issue findings even further removed from objective reality under the leadership of staunch leftists Crisan and Brown, champions of the envious, redistributors of all things appurtenant to land, holders of the door handles to Elbert County, closed tightly behind the last ones to successfully make it out here.

The movie Pleasantville comes to mind — the black and white part.

B_Imperial

RE: Thayer Resignation

Dear Editor [West Elbert County Sun, 7-18-2013],

It is with deep regret that I have accepted the letter of resignation of long time Elbert County Planning Commission Chairman Mr. Grant Thayer.

Mr. Thayer has faithfully served the people of Elbert County for over a decade accomplishing a great deal to provide a land use planning and zoning framework and leadership for our nine member Planning Commission. Grant has my most sincere gratitude.

Grant Thayer is a highly accomplished petroleum geologist. Mr.. Thayer has been the CEO of two oil companies and the COO of another. Grant is also a tremendous steward of the land having placed thousands of his acres into conservation and wildlife trusts and utilizing best practices in ranching and farming.

Mr. Grant Thayer brought all this ability and selfless dedication to the process of developing for Elbert County an oil and gas regulation that is practical and workable for our citizens, the state and the industry.

Mr. Thayer stated in his letter the following: “It appears that the motion by Commissioner Schlagel and its subsequent passing that it is the intent of the BOCC to bypass the Planning Commission in drafting and recommendations of future county regulations.”

Our citizens should be concerned and alarmed when the Board of County Commissioners ignores and bypasses our Planning Commission on zoning issues of any kind.

An effective Planning Commission can protect us from land use decisions being made by a mere two County Commissioners and placing special interests above yours.

Best Regards,

Larry D. Ross, Elbert County Commissioner, District 3

Regulators ignored COGCC

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On May 14th, representatives from COGCC and COGA met with the BOCC, members of the CDS department, and Grant Thayer representing the proposed oil & gas zoning regulations and MOU, in a study session. The entire video is here:

COGCC and COGA raised a number of objections about the proposed zoning regulations as follows:

(Each of the links in this list starts the video at the relevant point.  You might want to open them in a separate tab.)

The proposed oil & gas zoning regulations and MOU, both dated May 10, 2013, were subsequently sent to the BOCC for approval without any of the above cited operational conflicts and other problems addressed.

As of this writing on 7-13-2013 they are still on-line at the county website at:

Oil & Gas Regulations – Draft

Memorandum of Understanding OG – Draft

Note: Copies saved here and here.

It would appear that Rowland and Schlegel paid attention this day, and Ross did not.  Knowing that none of these concerns had been addressed in the draft documents, Rowland and Schlegel subsequently ruled on them in the only reasonable way they could have.

Why did the oil & gas edit committee and the CDS department not respond to the COGCC warnings?

Why did the planning commission accept documents they knew had been made obsolete by COGCC criticisms?

Why did the edit committee, the planning commission, and the CDS department, try to convince the BOCC to put Elbert County on a litigation collision course with the state?

Should there be wholesale changes in personnel in all of these groups?

How can the citizens of Elbert County trust future advice from the people currently operating these groups?

B_Imperial

Left has myths about Weld

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Assessed valuation is a gusher in Weld County
Property values hit $7.1 billion, among richest in state


Weld County’s assessed value soars – Assessed value from 2001 to 2013 (in $billion). *This figure from Weld Assessor Christopher Woodruff is preliminary. Source: Weld County Assessor’s Office

Steve Lynn
Assessed property values in Weld County, long known for its affordable, rural lifestyle, have reached $7.1 billion this year, putting it on par with the wealthiest counties in metro Denver.

The increase in value is largely attributable to oil and natural-gas production, which makes up 55 percent of the county’s total assessed value, Weld Assessor Christopher Woodruff said.

“In terms of what’s driving the dollars, it’s oil and gas,” Woodruff said. “The other classes of property are not big enough or don’t change enough to make enough difference into the actual tax dollars that are paid.”

The largest increase came from the Wattenberg field, the area extending from north of Denver well into Weld County, which marks the sweet spot of Weld’s oil and gas drilling boom.

Assessed value for 2013 determines the amount of tax revenue the county’s more than 300 tax districts collect next year. The assessed-value figures are preliminary, but could increase in coming months. The county will certify this year’s values for the first time in August, with a final certification coming in December.

Last year’s assessed value in Weld reached $6.5 billion, netting $454 million in revenue for tax districts, including the county itself, junior colleges, schools, fire and water districts and others. Property tax revenue increased $71 million from the $383 million collected the prior year.

In 2012, oil and gas accounted for 52 percent of assessed value. Noble Energy Inc. and Anadarko Petroleum Corp., two of the largest oil and natural-gas companies in the region, paid the county $148 million in 2012 property taxes, nearly one third of all the county’s tax revenue.

This year, agricultural assessed value rose 18 percent, but it only makes up 2 percent of total assessed value, Woodruff said.

In April, Weld was ranked No. 4 in total estimated assessed value at $6.8 billion, behind Denver, Arapahoe and Jefferson counties, according to a study from the state Department of Local Affairs’ Division of Property Taxation. Denver County ranked No. 1 with $11.3 billion in assessed value, well ahead of the others.

Of the top-ranked counties, however, Weld saw the largest percentage increase in assessed value of 4.9 percent.

Based on the new $7.1 billion figure, Weld’s assessed value growth rises to 9.2 percent.

“Some counties, such as Weld County, are growing dramatically,” said JoAnn Groff, the state property tax administrator, who also attributed the increase to oil and gas activity.

By contrast, Larimer County’s 2013 assessed value was estimated at $4.19 billion, up slightly from $4.13 billion in 2012.

The influx of tax revenue has helped keep Weld’s mill levy low. In 2001, Weld’s mill levy was 20.599; by 2006 it was down to 16.804, where it has remained.

Bill Jerke, a farmer and oil and gas consultant as well as a former state representative and Weld County commissioner, said the low tax rates have promoted economic prosperity.

“The overall wealth keeps going up, and as a result, the tax rate goes down,” he said. “It winds up making us more attractive. … You can live in a home or have a business in Weld County and have the property taxes be quite a bit cheaper than they would be across the county line.

“It’s a continuation of the wonders oil and gas have been bringing us.”

Foreclosure filings drop 54 percent in Weld County

Foreclosure filings were down 50.5 percent in Colorado metro counties during May 2013, falling year over year to the lowest level recorded during May in any year since the Colorado Division of Housing began collecting monthly totals in 2007. In Weld County, foreclosure filings dropped 54.7 percent from 139 to 63. Foreclosure auction sales in Colorado’s metropolitan counties were down 25.4 percent in May this year compared to May of last year, falling from 965 to 720, according to a report released Wednesday by the Colorado Division of Housing. Over the same period, foreclosure filings dropped from 2,249 to 1,113.

Unemployment Rate in Weld County, CO

Monthly, Not Seasonally Adjusted, Updated: 2013-07-02 12:53 PM CDT

leadership vs. litigiousness

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Other polarities here:

  • Republican vs. Democrat
  • Rule of Law vs. Manipulation of Law
  • Conclusive Decisionmaking vs. Adversarial Provocation
  • Elected Representation vs. Aparatchik Subversion

The BOCC majority, in this case, prevented bad zoning laws from overtaking Elbert County.  Let’s hope they continue to do so.

Rick Brown (4/2/2013) “Frankly at this point I don’t care what the state says.”

overreachers

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C.R.S.  30-28-116. Regulations may be amended

From time to time the board of county commissioners may amend . . . any . . . provision . . . of the zoning . . . Any such amendment shall not be made or become effective unless the same has been proposed by or is first submitted for the approval, disapproval, or suggestions of the county planning commission. If disapproved by such commission . . . such amendment, to become effective, shall receive the favorable vote of not less than a majority of the entire membership of the board of county commissioners.

Over the past 2+ years, the Oil & Gas regulation edit committee, and its contributory audiences, were both heavily weighted with Democrats and environmentalists.

Last Spring, the Elbert County Planning Commission took the wholesale work product from this partisan group and passed it without objection.

In June, the BOCC offered to strike a middle ground with these forces by saving the zoning regulation component with minor language changes, and revamping the MOU into a more fair negotiation tool, one not repugnant to industry and COGCC regulations.

Democrat forces would have nothing to do with that compromise and spoke vehemently against it.

Democrat forces never intended to produce a workable process.  They intended to create, and did create, a document to legalize a zoning process of interminable discretionary procedural delays — pretty much the same approach they used for the new zoning for Special Districts.

Apparently, the BOCC learned something from the Special District zoning fiasco.

At yesterdays’ oil & gas regulatory denouement, Mr. Blotter threw up a Hail Mary with another call for a moratorium — essentially the legal effect he and compatriots had intended to achieve with the zoning process they’d constructed over the past 2+ years.

The majority of the BOCC correctly realized that another turn on the planning commission merry-go-around, with zero assurances that the unelected planning commissioners would produce any kind of workable outcome, would just end up extending the debacle.

The majority of the BOCC realized that a substantial change in governing law must be arguably better than the status quo, and that on the working documents presented to them, and likely to be presented to them from the same people in the future, they could not make that case.  Judging by the weak objections from Commissioner Ross, there indeed was no case to be made.   And the majority knew that Elbert County already had plenty of regulatory protection in place under the COGCC’s legal occupation of the field, and Elbert County’s land use zoning under special use review.

The ones who came away from yesterday licking their wounds are the over-reaching planners who have now marginalized themselves — and that includes CDS employees, lawyerly code writers, the rubber-stamping planning commission poobahs, and the acolyte zombie enablers of this circus — into a boring predictable bunch of partisan hacks.

B_Imperial

MOU takes center stage

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My favorite parts about the BOCC meeting yesterday were the many bias revelations by members of the planning commission, the oil & gas regulation edit committee, and the planning department [not mutually exclusive sets of people].

In contrast, all three members of the BOCC appeared to coalesce around the notion that MOU contract language should not be adversarial as a matter of policy, and that MOU subject matter should be determined between the negotiating parties at the time an MOU is memorialized.   Frankly, people I know were encouraged to see the BOCC take an objectively reasonable approach on the MOU.

But hold on, Thayer, Crisan, Dorman, Brown, Corrado, Thomasson, Fenner, and Parkinson, all but two involved with drafting the regulations, had real trouble letting go of the county enacting an official baseline MOU.

All of them seem heavily vested in the notion of a self-fulfilling prophecy.  Even though they went to great lengths to explain just how negotiable each MOU will be, for them an MOU is not so negotiable that the process to write one can begin without the county’s green policy terms already incorporated into the document.

What the county would forego by adopting a pro-forma MOU without such terms built in, according to this gang of 8, is protection of water and protection of property values.  The BOCC didn’t agree with that argument, preferring to see, instead, a non-adversarial MOU format.

Moreover, It looks like COGCC enforcement of MOU terms is an unsettled practice.  The gang of 8 are pushing to include MOU language into the well owners’ COGCC regulatory paperwork on the belief that inclusion will bring COGCC support in enforcement of the county’s MOU terms, perhaps over time elevating the effect of MOU terms to a regulatory status, or perhaps bringing help from the state on policing and discovery of MOU compliance.

But none of that is certain.  The COGCC told the county in several previous meetings that MOU compliance is the county’s responsibility to enforce in civil court.  How much help COGCC would provide to the county on enforcement of MOU terms that exceed COGCC’s statewide regulatory standards, which would basically be all of the MOU terms, appears to be a grey area at this time.

A larger question is what value operators would put on a 6 month zoning approval delay, and what increased costs they might consider accepting in an MOU to avoid spending that value.  There is no general answer to this question since no two sets of operational circumstances will be identical — further reason for there not to be an MOU template that includes a set of one-size-fits-all terms.

The MOU is part of an unsavory proposition that Elbert County is planning to present to all potential operators — “To do business here instead of somewhere else where COGCC rules control without exception, you can lose X or you can lose Y.  Choose your poison.  And here’s the bill for our fees.”

The BOCC is right to insist on removing the adversarial components of the pro-forma MOU.  Our zoning will have already told operators they are unwelcome in Elbert County.  No need to rub it in with the MOU.  It’s much better to use the MOU as an opportunity to mitigate what will have already started out to be a bad deal.

B_Imperial

the buggy ride

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Thank you, Elbert County planners, for the buggy ride.

I read the proposed Oil & Gas regulations and the proposed Memorandum of Understanding to accompany the regulations.

To discover why Elbert County needs this new body of local zoning law, I went to the Colorado Oil & Gas Conservation Commission website to compare existing state regulations with the Elbert County proposals.

I read the topical cross reference index that correlates subjects to COGCC rules.

I read the table of contents for all COGCC rules.

I skimmed through the 180 pages of COGCC rules and regulations.

I skimmed through the 26 pages of Title 34, Article 60 of the Colorado Revised Statute enabling legislation for the COGCC.

I didn’t find anything in the Elbert County proposals that wasn’t already thoroughly dealt with in a much better written, unambiguous, and effective manner at the state level.

So, I’m left with the conclusion that the Elbert County Oil & Gas regulatory effort isn’t about regulating Oil & Gas at all.  That leaves money.

A device to bring money into the county is the only reason left to explain this effort.  Someone apparently decided that under existing zoning, Elbert County didn’t have sufficient legal hooks into this budding industry to scrape off some cash for itself.

So that’s why the big government types who control the county commissions and the county planning process have spent so much effort to get this done.  Oil & Gas is just the latest funding source to grow their beloved government.   And bonus points, the industry comes with a built-in clamoring segment of the public who dependably create the spectacle of a sense of urgency to push regulations through.

And you don’t even have to pay them.  They just show up.  Every time.

To those Elbert County citizens still capable of independent thought, which unfortunately rules out most of the folks planning to attend the BOCC meeting this Wednesday, I say take the Buggy Ride.  Reach a different conclusion than I have if you can.

If Elbert County really needs more money and Oil & Gas is to be its cash cow, it would be much more honest and simple to embrace TABOR, make the tax argument to the people at large, and let the people decide the matter.

This regulatory sideshow will cause a nightmare of unintended consequences.  Not only is it an extremely poor cousin to the state’s rules, but it’s a fundamentally undemocratic exercise in fascism without voter consent.

B_Imperial

oil well accounting

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Oil wells have costs and, if all goes well, revenues.  Ownership of an oil well is divided into two classes – working interest owners and royalty interest owners.  Working interests are the people who drill and operate the well.  Royalty interests are the mineral owners who grant the working interest owners the limited rights to mine minerals from their property.

All owners share in revenues from proceeds from the well according to a percentage called a division of interest [DOI].  All revenue interest divisions add up to 100% across both working interests and royalty interests.

Working interest owners also have a separate cost division of interest that adds to 100% for cost allocations.  The working interest class of ownership pays all the costs incurred by the well from the cost of mineral rights acquisition through well construction, drilling, completion, and ongoing operations.

The working interest portion of the revenue DOI comprises the lions share of the total revenue division because the working interests take all the risks and incur all the costs.  Income from well operations must first satisfy well costs — the oil or gas well must break even — before revenue begins to be available for revenue distribution across the entire revenue DOI.

Only when earnings from the well exceed costs does money become available for distribution across the revenue DOI ownership.

Adding costs to the oil well raises the breakeven point for the well, and reduces money available for return to revenue interest owners.

Regulation that unnecessarily increases the cost of well development, acts like a hidden tax levied against all of the well owners.  It is a very selective tax, not born by the citizenship at large, and especially not born by the parties who promote it.

Elbert County is about to enter into a regulatory regime that duplicates much of the regulatory realm already covered by the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, or COGCC.  County regulations will unnecessarily add millions of dollars of cost to oil and gas well development.  They will create pressure to add county jobs to administer all of the waivers from county regulations.  They will turn potential revenues to DOI owners into well costs.  A whole scheme of fees will divert potential revenue money into the county bureaucracy to cover new Elbert County administrative costs.

Worse still, it is not the citizenship at large who clamor for this regulatory regime.  Clamoring comes from a minute percentage of environmental activists who not only don’t represent the citizenship at large, but they have no significant percentage in the stakeholding ownership of this industry in Elbert County.

Even worse still, is that they sell a regulatory regime on the myth of improving the health, safety and welfare to Elbert County citizens, when the regulations do nothing beyond what the COGCC already successfully does to guide environmentally sound oil and gas development, and in fact will probably create new devices masking problems in to-be-discovered bureaucratic imponderables.

The only citizens whose health, safety and welfare will be improved work for Elbert County government.  This is a make-work jobs program for the Elbert County Community and Development Services Department, and the assorted consultants and counselors they will have to hire to provide industry knowledge.

These oil and gas regulations also create a deep well of Green v. Humanity subject matter to grease planning commission and BOCC meetings for the foreseeable future.

Who are the winners?  Bureaucrats, politicians, environmental activists.

Who are the losers?  Everyone else.

B_Imperial

Thomas Jefferson

"It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself."

Aristotle

"Only an armed people can be truly free. Only an unarmed people can ever be enslaved."

Karl Popper

“A theory which is not refutable by any conceivable event is nonscientific. Irrefutability is not a virtue of a theory (as people often think) but a vice.”