“In response to Schwab’s allegations, Thomasson said to hear that he is out of control is hurtful, but he refuses to fling mud at them.”

“This is absolute character assassination,” he said.  “They just don’t care.”  ElbertCounty News, 10/2/08 Page 1.

Mr. Thomasson refuses to fling mud?

Indeed.  Since the inception of his website Abe21.net, a day has not gone by that Thomasson ever stopped flinging mud.  Talk about unclean hands.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Port Huron Statement is the manifesto of the American student activist movement Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), written primarily by Tom Hayden, then the Field Secretary of SDS, and completed on June 15, 1962 at an SDS convention in Port Huron, Michigan. It begins:

The main concerns of the statement included racial bigotry, nuclear weapons, and the gulf between ideals such as “all men are created equal” and the “facts of Negro life in the South and the big cities of the North.” Overall, poverty and the civil rights of African Americans were the main concern, while Cold War and peace issues were secondary. Opposition to the war in Vietnam became a central concern of SDS only a few years later. In 1962 it was generally viewed as a US advisory effort. It is mentioned just once.The statement popularized the idea of participatory democracy: a democracy rooted in the principles of decision-making being carried on by public groupings, politics being defined as the art of collectively creating an acceptable pattern of social relations as well as having the function of bringing people out of isolation and into security, and the political order being focused on providing outlets for expression of grievances. It was to provide channels relating men to knowledge and power so that private problems are formulated as general issues. This idea later was translated into “community control” and led to school decentralization in New York, Detroit,San Diego, Parma and other places, with mixed results.

I feel for you Mr. Thomasson. I admire your efforts to bring accountability and transparency to Elbert County.

Please understand, your party’s derivative Marxist philosophical basis is deeply flawed. The left’s economic system is doomed to failure, and the left’s theory of historical progress through dialectic confrontation is complete baloney. That doesn’t take away, however, from the honesty of your attempt to improve the political process around here. [Read more…]

2008 Colorado Statewide Ballot Initiatives

YES on Amendment 46, Nondiscrimination by the State. It’s time to end the mistake of affirmative action.

YES on Amendment 47, Colorado Right to Work Amendment. Unions should not be able to monopolize labor available to employers.

YES on Amendment 48, Life Begins at Fertilization.  Obviously it does, and our laws should reflect this fact.

NO on Amendment 49, Limits on Payroll Deductions for Public Employees.  This is an unnecessary limit on public employees contract rights.

YES on Amendment 50, Increased Gambling Limits in Central City, Black Hawk and Cripple Creek.  If you’re going to allow gambling at all, the degree to which a person chooses to engage in it should be a matter of personal choice, and not kept artificially low.

NO on Amendment 51, Increase Sales Tax to fund state services for developmentally disabled people.  This looks like a bad law that contains many escape clauses for funding to be directed away from the intended beneficiaries of the law.

NO on Amendment 52, Reallocate Fuel and Mineral tax revenues to I-70 highway construction.  In effect, this law appears to create new subsidies for the highway construction and ski industries.

NO on Amendment 53, Change Business Executive Liability rules.  This law creates a loophole to excuse an executive from liability if the executive discloses an offense to the attorney general prior to the onset of criminal charges.

YES on Amendment 54, Political Campaign contribution limits by government contractors.  After observing how special interests bought themselves a sales tax in Elbert County last year, this measure seems like a very good idea.

NO on Amendment 55, Cause for Employee discharge.  Colorado should remain an “at-will” employment state.

NO on Amendment 56, Employers Required to provide health insurance.  With the volatility in the insurance and health care markets, these benefits should be freely negotiable between employers and employees, and not mandatory.

NO on Amendment 57, Additional workman’s compensation requirements.  Existing workman’s comp rules are sufficient.

NO on Amendment 58, Increase state oil and gas severance taxes.  No new taxes.  Tax revenues will continue to rise without the addition of new taxes.

NO on Amendment 59, Give Tabor refunds to an education fund.  Colorado should keep Tabor in effect.

NO on Referendum L, Lower the age for serving in the Co. legislature to 21.  The current age requirement is 25 and that is already too young.

NO on Referendum M, Land improvements no longer exempt from property tax.  Tax exemptions should be increased.

YES on Referendum N, Liquor purity laws in Colorado constitution.  No point in keeping this law in the constitution.

NO on Referendum O, Revise Citizen Initiative process.  Citizen Initiatives should not be further encumbered.

2008 Colorado Statewide Ballot Initiatives

The Stench

“The right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances” in Elbert County has become a license to infer magisterial malfeasance in every official set of circumstances, and to wantonly publish an unending stream of innuendo.  Much as the left suffers from OBS (Obsessive Bush Syndrome) at the national level, the Elbert County local left also suffer from a deviant strain of that national illness, OCS (Obsessive Commissioner Syndrome).

Those so afflicted know no political season.  For them, elections have the weight of a comma, not a period.  Elections are merely momentary pauses to take the pulse of the electorate, after which, campaigning and the relentless pursuit of agenda immediately recommence.

The left have taken a noble constitutional protection out of the 1st Amendment, one intended to be used responsibly for the benefit of the entire republic, and turned it into an excuse for non-stop politicking.  They prejudge with reckless abandon as they search for any detail to parse into the constructions of their prejudgments.  Never mind the tedium of observing and developing conclusions as facts are presented, their conclusions are too important and long foregone to be seriously questioned.  Facts that don’t fit their bias are held de-minimus, are ignored, or are attacked.  And those who dare to propose inconvenient facts are openly reviled.

This naked lust for power and control gets prettified with concepts like “transparency” and “smart growth” but I think people see through these petticoats to their totalitarian heart.  Just as the courts have become venues for non-representative leftist obsessive compulsive political aspirations, so have our local executive chambers gone.

With every right comes the responsibility to use that right judiciously.  Rights are not licenses to be abused for personal gain or personal agendas.  Habitual disrespect and abuse of our rights will lead to the loss of them for all.    The left seem genetically incapable of understanding this.

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For us, the event lasted over 5 hours.  At the end, my family and I had a chance to each shake hands and exchange words of thanks and encouragement with Senator McCain, Mrs. McCain and Governor Palin.  Law enforcement and secret service agents were professional and extremely courteous.

President Bush

Fred Thompson

Joe Lieberman

Carly Fiorina

Mitt Romney

Mike Huckabee

Rudi Giuliani

Sarah Palin

Lindsey Graham

Cindy McCain

John McCain

Elbert County Sun reported 8/28/2008:

“Where requests for mill levy overrides have been turned down for being too broad and non-specific in the past, the school board has this time specified its needs and is committing to spend 86 percent of the mill levy override on raising salaries to a competitive level; 10 percent to provide students with additional curriculum and instruction…and 4 percent to upgrade technology and computer applications[.]”

Ballot text:

• “86% will be used for retaining and attracting high quality teachers, counselors and support staff.”(not a word about “salaries” or “raising” them)
• “10% will be used for providing students with the curriculum and instruction necessary for success in college and the workplace; and” (not a word about “additional” curriculum and instruction)
• “4% will be used for upgrading technology and computer applications to promote student success in the 21st century[.]”

The Ballot text will control the C-1 Board’s future spending discretion.  Expressions of intent do not control.  While binding terms were used to describe how the board would direct future spending of the mil levy funds, those key binding terms were omitted from the ballot language.  96% of the future spending discretion of the mil levy funds will be controlled by ballot language that is vague, arguable, and easily corrupted.

Time after time, the directors of Elbert County taxpayer-funded public agencies thumb their noses at the governed.  Until this pattern changes, they should not be rewarded for their hubris.

Abe reported this across-the-board 10% budget cut meeting with the following graphic of alarm using blinking letters.

The thought of a government budget cut truly horrifies the left. This must be a real black eye for them down at the Pepsi Center this week.

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Apparently I have so befuddled our local Democrats that they went straight to the ad hominem card. Normally they pretend to argue for a bit before they start name calling.

While I am not worthy of this honor, I am thankful for my enemies since they allow me to distinguish myself as not a pro-tax and spend, pro-planning and control, pro-grow government, pro-Dunn, anti-boy scout, not-in-my-backyard, elitist, country-in-county, condescending, leftist, and as one who respects private enterprise more than government because private enterprise must produce a real benefit to society in order to survive while government need only rely upon force and imposition.

The left think that their mere ability to propose a departure from the status quo should be enough to warrant a change. While they are quick to produce theories about how government can make things better for us, they never seem to point to any examples where that has actually happened. In our second century of progressivism you’d think that somewhere, someone might have got it to work. Even though no one has, the faith in progressivism that our local Democrats carry in their hearts remains strong.

It must be terribly difficult for them to slog on, year in and year out, without a single positive outcome to show for all their effort. Imagine how the world might look if all that progressive energy was spent on philosophies that actually work. “And if frogs had wings they wouldn’t bump their asses a’ hoppin’ on the ground.”

Political speech, above all other sorts of speech, is what the 1st Amendment was enacted to protect.

This morning I took a call from Mr. Thomasson, Democratic commissioner candidate for District 3 in Elbert County. Mr. Thomasson is a principal content provider on the website Abe21.net. The content on Abe21.net is mostly about local political issues. I read Abe21.net and when I take issue with something printed there, I make an image record of the writing, show it here on this website in full context so people can read what has motivated me to comment, and then make my comment. Moreover, I have published, verbatim, all comments received about items on this blog.

In the early days of this blog I tried referencing the content on Abe21.net with hotlinks, but the content would invariably be moved and the links would become useless. Now I include the political content on this website that I respond to in picture image format because I want there to be no confusion about the source of the content being Abe21.net, I want there to be no claim that something was taken out of context, and I want the writings preserved for historical reference. Full context and explicit attribution remain available on this blog after they have been deleted from Abe21.net. Since many of the political issues on Abe21.net and here have long life spans of their own, I believe this is an important service to the community.

A couple weeks ago, Mr. Thomasson informed me that it was his policy to not respond to issues raised on this blog because he did not want to legitimize the debates raised here. Well ideas, whether or not Mr. Thomasson chooses to debate them, have consequences — a fact of which Mr. Thomasson is evidently aware since today he threatened me with a copyright action.

Now, if Abe21.net was not political speech, or if Abe21.net was not freely available, or if Abe21.net had a requirement for some sort of consideration to be read, or if Abe21.net preserved its political speech to enable reasonable rebuttal, or if my inclusion of Abe21.net content was in any way plagiarism, then I would gladly return to using hotlinks to reference the debatable political content there.

More interesting however is that while Mr. Thomasson does not consider issues raised on this blog to be worth discussion, he evidently thinks they are worth trying to chill.

elbertcounty.net/blog – speaking for the ideas, holding political candidates accountable.

Facilitating speech, not chilling it.

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Historical perspectives to consider in this election. File under, “dooming ourselves to repeat history,” or “the more things change, the more they remain the same.”

2004 Commissioner election 1

2004 Commissioner election 2

2004 Commissioner election 3

2004 Commissioner election 4

2004 Commissioner election 5

2004 Property tax debate

2004 Property tax debate

As if history weren’t challenging enough, there’s also outright misrepresentation:

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“When John Dunn left office twelve days into the year 2001, there was a $1.6 million surplus.”

False. Dunn’s parting act was to take $1M of that surplus and allocate it to county employee salary increases. It was Dunn who gutted the county’s reserves. The citizens were right to vote him out after 1 term, and Dunn’s budgetary dead-hand carried forth by Mr. Thomasson should be kept off county finances.