David Kopel's latest Rocky Mountain News column included a note about film maker Michael Moore's DVD release of Bowling For Columbine:
A shorter piece in the Post (Aug. 22), while still recommending the movie, also warned viewers about fakery in the new release: the footage of director Michael Moore's Oscar acceptance speech is a re-enactment, not the real event. The Post also informed readers that Bowling "takes a few liberties with the truth."
Wow, I guess his reception at the Oscars did bother him. Why wouldn't he want to remind people of what happened there? You would think he'd be proud of that.
Kopel also informs us;
Neither the Post nor the News has ever reported on the audacious frauds in the "documentary," some of which involve Colorado.
For example, while showing a plane on display at the Air Force Academy, Moore announces that "The plaque underneath it proudly proclaims that this plane killed Vietnamese people on Christmas Eve 1972." This just isn't true, nor is much of the rest of the movie, as I detailed in an April 4 article for National Review Online.
(In-text link added by yours truly. The Rocky wouldn't do that kind of thing)
A few years ago a large chunk of unincorporated Denver suburb organized itself into a city and named itself Centennial. The motivation, in part, was to avoid depending on county services and try to keep its sales tax rates under local control. But now some residents are unhappy and are pushing the city council to provide more services and -you guessed it- raise taxes.
The Denver Post, in a house editorial, promotes the idea.
The city of Centennial has the lowest sales tax in the metro area, which sounds good if you're buying a TV or a toaster.
But city leaders have found it can be disastrous if you're trying to operate one of Colorado's largest cities.
Public works projects have been shelved because of lagging tax revenues. Fewer deputies patrol the city. IOUs to Arapahoe County are piling up. And weeds, junked cars and trash have settled comfortably in some neighborhoods because the city can't afford code-enforcement officers.
I don't spend a lot of time in Centennial, but driving through you'd never know it was such a disaster area.
Without a revenue boost, basic city services will continue to suffer and the quality of life for more than 100,000 residents could wane.
'Could wane', as in it hasn't already? So what's the problem?
Voters approved the original 1.5 percent sales tax in 2001 for the fledgling city on the projection it would pump $15.5 million into city coffers. A little more than half of that was collected.
A 1 percent sales tax hike would generate an extra $5.6 million a year. The 2.5 percent use tax on vehicles would raise an extra $1.6 million earmarked for public works.
Heaven help us! The government doesn't have as much money as they thought they would. Something bad might happen! Sound the alarm, man the tax coffers, grab your neighbor's wallet!
Before incorporation, Arapahoe County spent about $8 million a year within what would become Centennial on road maintenance and projects, including everything from storm water drain projects to road widenings to installing new turn lanes.
Centennial has dedicated just $4 million. When sales tax figures dropped, city officials shelved all capital improvement projects and also reduced spending on basic maintenance, such as pothole patching and resurfacing roads. Each year, the deferred maintenance mounts.
So, is it safe to say taxpayers, saved $4 million? Why won't anyone say exactly that?
Notice how no one at the Post questions whether the projects are really necessary, or if Centennial might find another solution. As a matter of course it's assumed that cuts in service are bad.
The council approved sending the tax hikes to voters on first reading earlier this month with a 5-4 vote. Those casting the four dissenting votes think the increase should be higher than 1 percent.
That means every council member thinks the current sales tax is unworkable. We agree.
Ugh. Not one dissenting voice, on the city council or the editorial pages of the Post. No where in this editorial will you find the words 'privatize,' or 'savings.' This is a good illustration of how far libertarians have to go in changing the public mind. Doing the right thing isn't even an option in these peoples' thought processes.
No one wants to mention how a higher sales tax rate will have long term negative impact on commerce, either.
Jim Henley discusses a Matthew Yglesias post regarding libertarians voting for Democrats. Like many others, I think Dems are missing the boat by not courting libertarian voters. I don't think they don't want the lib votes, it's that they have a tin ear when it comes to advocating individual freedom. Some Democrat, somewhere, must understand the concept of liberty. If that person ever emerges (s)he will have a good chance at a successful political career.
I don't know how long this joke will stay fresh, but right now I'm laughing very hard.
(link via , umm, everyone)
If you don't follow golf you might not appreciate the magnitude of the effect of the tournament cancellation. The Vail Daily had a good story about it.
Much of the 156-player field is from Colorado, Utah and Arizona, but they come from all over the country. One player came from Virginia, another from Seattle. The winner of this year's Maine Open is here, from Maine, of course.
"We were on the 12th fairway and someone from the course just let us know," said Joel Skarbo, 27. "He just told us, "Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but it's canceled.' And we just couldn't believe it, of course. At first, we thought he was joking, but then we realized it."
The 2001 champion, Brett Wayment, drove eight hours from Logan, Utah, to play. He has three or four days of expenses tied up in this already, not including the $295 entry fee. His wife took six days off work to be with him for the event.
"It's a big deal. My family is coming out Wednesday," said Wayment. "It's their favorite trip. For most of us it's a big loss."
Golf is Wayment's job and he works hard at it. He just got pink-slipped.
"If we'd known about this, we could have made arrangements to play somewhere else," he said. "Scott Peterson also decided to skip the Nationwide event in Calgary to support the state open. This is a big hit. It's sad for Colorado. It's sad for the golf world. It hurts a lot of people."
A real shocker in the news this morning - no, I'm not being sarcastic.
For the first time in 39 years, the Colorado Open golf championship will not be played.
Jack Doak, executive director of the Open Championships of Colorado, canceled the event Tuesday afternoon when he could not find sponsorship to cover the planned $125,000 purse.
The 72-hole event was scheduled to begin Thursday at Sonnenalp Golf Club in the Vail Valley town of Edwards. Doak already had conducted three rounds of qualifying at Legacy Ridge Golf Course in Westminster, and most players were in Edwards or en route. A pro-am with a full field of 26 five-player teams scheduled for today was canceled.
I heard it on the radio this morning, couldn't believe it. I'm on the alternates' list to play, I was going to head up to Vail tonight. Lots of players had already come in from around the country, or are holding plane tickets to get here.
I'm sick about it.
Via Random Act of Kindness, a place called Drug War Rant. Blogger Pete Guither shares this quote:
A prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded... Prohibition goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a manīs appetite by legislation, and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes.
-- Abraham Lincoln
I hadn't heard that one before.
Arthur Silber has a devastating takedown of neoconservatism, at least Irving Kristol's version of neoconservatism. I can't possibly reflect the scope of Arthur's arguments here, so if you have even a passing interest in the subject you should go read the whole thing. But even in his rather lengthy piece, (by blog standards) he notes:
It would require an even lengthier article than this to address all the points raised in Kristol's essay, so I will confine myself here to what I consider the major points he makes.
And I will touch on a minor point Kristol makes, because he inflames a particular pet peeve of mine. Kristol:
The older, traditional elements in the Republican party have difficulty coming to terms with this new reality in foreign affairs, just as they cannot reconcile economic conservatism with social and cultural conservatism.
The reason American conservatives have trouble reconciling these things is that there is no philosophical link between economic conservatism and social/cultural conservatism. The only reason traditional conservatives favor free markets is because the nation's founders favored free markets. It's an accident of history. Conservatives in other countries tend to favor whatever market system their forefathers favored, the most prominent example being Russian conservatives who pine for the old controlled economy.
Traditional American conservatives favor liberal economic policies, liberal in the sense of maximum individual freedom, the hallmark of liberal politics.
I won't blame conservatives for this confusion, since it was American 'liberals' who perverted the term generations ago by advocating a government controlled economy. That's a decidedly non-liberal concept.
I don't know that Kristol, who isn't liberal in any sense, would appreciate the nuance.
Texas Governor Rick Perry has pardoned 35 of the people convicted in the Tulia witch trials drug ring stings. As regular readers know, the primary evidence in their convictions, the testimony of an officer named Tom Coleman, was largely fabricated. The lawsuits will continue:
Blackburn said the Tulia busts began to unravel with a key defense discovery in April 2002 that proved testimony of Tom Coleman, the sole undercover officer and prosecution witness, had lied.
Defendant Tanya White was days from her trial, he said, when documents emerged showing she was banking in Oklahoma on the day Coleman claims she delivered cocaine to him.
"This proved forever that Coleman was a liar and that he was perjuring himself in order to falsely convict black people in Tulia. Once we proved that, frankly, it's all been downhill for them since," Blackburn said.
Will Harrell, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, said the federal lawsuit will seek to reform the drug task system throughout Texas.
He said systemic flaws such as police misconduct, abuse of authority and inadequate legal representation for the poor need to be addressed.
Go get 'em!
TalkLeft has related news.
With the timing common to all great comedy, I was blessed with two parking tickets this morning, a fitting follow-up to lasts night's post.
One side of my street is under construction, so both cars were parked on the other side of the street. That's the side that gets its once monthly sweeping today.
So Denver scores $60 from me, pending my decision to fight it.
Zomby got to this article before I could get home tonight and blog it myself. Seems that the Denver police union is unhappy with the current police chief, and is threatening to write fewer tickets if he's not replaced. The threat being Denver needs the ticket revenue for the general budget.
Denver police won't write tickets to help the city's coffers as long as Gerry Whitman is leading the department, the union implies in a letter to Mayor John Hickenlooper's transition committee...
Detective Robert Freund, vice president of the PPA's board, said he thought it was a mistake to view the statements about ticket writing as threats from the organization.
"Let's face it, the police department is one of the few agencies in the city and county of Denver that generates revenue," Freund said. "How much revenue is generated - basically, the more you like your job, and the happier you are, the more productive you are . . . I don't see it as a threat. I see it as right now, we have a police department that isn't very happy."
Ah-huh. Sure. I share Zomby's revulsion over the whole affair. Says he:
What a load of BS. Firstly, tickets are not written (or should not be written) as a form of further taxation of the citizens. Tickets are issued (or should be issued) because people have broken the law not because the city needs to shore up its tax revenue. I mean, that would be like making a deal with tobacco companies to rape loads of the income that they make from selling legal products to help balance state budgets. Oh, sorry, oops.
It's bad, but it's no surprise. A year or two ago Denver tried to raise revenue by increasing parking meter rates and increasing the number of parking tickets issued. This from The State of Colorado, Feb. of '02.
The city is counting on a 46 percent revenue increase generated from the meters and tickets. Parking enforcement agents are expected to write 75 or more tickets a day as a performance standard.
You've read that correctly. The city needs the money, so parking monitors are required to write at least 75 tickets a day, regardless of how many cars are actually illegally parked!
Ethics and city government are only casual aquaintances. I don't think Denver is unique in that respect.
It's not enough that the California recall is wildly entertaining, but it's performing an invaluable public service as well. Thanks to the recall we now know that uber-annoyance Arianna Huffington is a hopeless hypocrite as well.
I'd say good riddance, but I suppose that a certain crowd will still support her, and we'll have to put up with her for years to come.
When I first looked at the recall effort in Cali, and saw several Republican candidates, I wondered how any of them could hope to beat Cruz Bustamante, who is the only mainstream Democrat in the field.
Nick Gillespie cites the Field Poll (PDF file), which shows Bustamante leading Schwarzenegger by a 25% to 22% margin.
But that's only half the story. The same poll has 37% of voters opposing the recall. I have to think that most of those voters are Davis supporters and Democratic partisans, many of whom are refusing to support any of the candidates on the recall ballot. My guess is when they are in the privacy of the voting booth they will vote for Davis' Lt. Governor, Bustamante, and his vote total will be close to that 37% figure. So any candidate that beats Bustamante will have to garner 37% or better. With only 14% undecided that will be a tough task for any of them.
TalkLeft's Jeralyn Merritt is interviewed by Vincent Carroll in the Aug. 14th edition of the Rocky Mountain News. Says she:
They say the Constitution doesn't apply at Guantanamo. Therefore you don't have the right to a lawyer if you can't afford one or to even effective assistance. They're expecting these lawyers to not only fund their own transportation back and forth to Guantanamo, they're also expecting them to pay for their own time and then on top of that to pay for their security clearance.
I had the pleasure of meeting her at Saturday's Rocky Mountain Blogger Bash. Very cool.
Correction Article was published Aug. 14th. Text above changed to correct date.
Matt Welch catches up with Colorado Congresscritter Tom Tancredo with a post at Hit and Run.
I posted a some of the same stuff here more than two weeks ago.
Matt cites some more juicy Tancredoisms, including:
We are creating linguistic ghettos where millions of immigrants speak no English while replicating living standards such as those found in Haiti, Calcutta and poor nations [...]
Instapundit linked to this article detailing the threat of a volcanic eruption of Mt. Rainier. Tens of thousands of Washington residents are at risk.
Sunday's Denver Post had an front page feature on a worrisome gas bubble building on the floor of Yellowstone Lake. Seems they've just started comprehensive mapping of the floor of the lake, so scientists don't know how long the bubble has been there, or how unstable it is. If it decides to let loose, the results would be devestating.
That same article mentions something called the Hebgen Lake earthquake, which occurred northwest of Yellowstone in Montana in 1959. I was unfamiliar with the event so I did a little Googling and found this, and this. The Hebgen Earthquake was a massive 7.5 magnitude, and killed 28 people, many of whom were asleep camping when landslides covered them. Fortunately the region is very sparsely populated.
A mountainside along the Madison River collapsed during the quake and slid across the river, creating a natural dam. The resulting reservoir is called Quake Lake, and is 53 meters deep.
I love this kind of stuff, and I can't believe I didn't know all this before.
Harry J. Anslinger was the first director of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, formed in 1931. In 1937 he said, in testimony before congress:
"There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the US, and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz and swing, result from marijuana usage. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers and any others."
"... the primary reason to outlaw marijuana is its effect on the degenerate races."
This friendly reminder of the origins of our War on Drugs is brought to you by Walter in Denver, purveyor of sane opinion for over one year.
... I don't trust anything in the Times unless a blogger has confirmed it.
Via Unqualified Offerings, Dan Scheltema's Dislogue. Great reading, especially the parts about food. And a good looking blog, too. Quite a sense of style.
Update Reading through some of the posts I've discovered Dan and I have something else in common. We both grew up as missionary kids in South America. He; Baptist in the Amazon, me; Lutheran in the Andes.
This letter to the editor to the Rocky on Aug. 5th brings up so many issues I hesitate to address it at all, but here goes....
Letter writer Steve Fickler writes that income tax is a kind of slavery (July 24). I am amazed.
In my lifetime, I have never felt the lash of the whip. I've never been beaten by a foreman. I lived with my parents without fear that I might be sold to someone else. I grew up free.
I have to agree with the letter writer here. Whips are SO out of style. When it comes to tax collection, guns are the standard of the age. If you care to argue the point, stop paying your taxes. When someone comes to collect, offer some resistance. See what happens next.
Or at least so I thought. I had always thought that slavery was forced servitude. I must thank Fickler for correcting my misunderstanding.
Last time I checked, Congress has the power to tax "for the common defense and general welfare of the United States . . ."
Everyone in this country should take some time to read the Constitution.
I'd say you should read it at least once a month. It's a short, well-written document. Knowing what it says might clear up some of the crackpot ideas that people have about the government.
Thomas Neville
Aurora
Many poeple, libertarians included, fall into the trap of equating moral rectitude with the rule of law. Just because the income tax is permitted by the constitution doesn't mean it isn't slavery. If the institution of slavery itself was protected by the constitution would our letter writer still rush to its defense?
Time now for a very brief primer on human rights. Volumes could, and have, been written on the subject, but to allow for our letter writer's attention span I'll keep it very short.
There is one basis to the concept of human rights, that each individual owns him or her self. A person who does not own him(her)self is a slave. It follows that the fruits of each individual's actions, income, belong to the individual. To say otherwise is to claim ownership over the individual. So when anyone, including a government, claims ownership of someone's income, they are claiming ownership of that person.
In the U.S. these days the tax burden is only about half of the average person's income. So we are about half free. I'm one of those glass-is-half-full types.
Yesterday's Rocky Mountain News contained this letter to the editor:
It appears some city workers are not willing to live with the same risks the rest of us with real jobs have - i.e., when things get tight, layoffs happen ("New mayor gets earful over city workers' pay," July 31).
It's about time they realize they are not part of a privileged class but are the most expendable workers there are, since they live off the productive efforts of the rest of us. Hence, the less of them the better.
Man has not invented a mechanism less efficient at recycling money than a government. If these mullets don't like it, they should go out and try to find a real job in a company that has to justify its existence through profitability rather than leeching off the rest of us.
Larry Heesch
Littleton
Larry, let me tell you, I know a lot of city workers. I can vouch for the quality of their character. Let me assure you, you don't want them to find out where you live. I hope 'Larry Heesch' is an assumed name.
If you live in California you could do worse than vote for Gary Coleman in the upcoming recall election. The East Bay Express has the scoop:
If there's one class of people Gary Coleman despises, it's career politicians who play games with our tax dollars, while the little guy gets diddly-squat. If elected, he promises to give those Sacramento fat cats what for. "I'd kick in the ass every member of the House that had more than two secretaries," he snarls. "Because that's a waste of public funds. I believe that public service means just that: service. And I'd kick the ass of everyone who had their little pet projects and issues that had nothing to do with keeping California solvent and attracting corporations here." When this newspaper told him that during the recent budget deadlock, members of the state legislature were seen smoking cigars and drinking what appeared to be expensive Scotch on the capitol building balcony, Gary wigged out and vowed to "find them and put my size four-and-a-halfs so deep into their colon!"
Seriously, how many other candidates will do anything as productive as that?
(via Agoraphilia via Hit and Run)
My friend Stuart Close runs a restaurant. Not just any, but one attached to a prominent brewery here in Denver. This part of Colorado, you see, is blessed with a number of fine small breweries, perhaps more per capita than any other part of the nation. Stuart's place is the Breckenridge brewery on Kalamath Street. He's got a large smoker and produces fine smoked meats, including the best smoked chicken wings, and ribs, ooohhh...., let me get back to my story. Last week I went in and was served an unusual barbeque sammich. Pulled pork, vinagar, red peppers and cole slaw, no barbeque sauce at all. Tastes even better than it sounds. You might think I exaggerate, but today the Denver Post concurs. and quotes Stuart:
"The barbecue with the peppers is a little spicy-it adds up over the course of the sandwich," says Close. The coleslaw provides cool respite from the
heat. "It's a contrast-you spice up a little, then you cool off a little."
A sammich so good it got its own newspaper article. The beer's good there, too. One of these times when Colorado bloggers get together we've got to do it at the Breckenridge barbeque.
Aginst Th' Law
It's against the law to walk, and against the law to talk
Against the law to loaf, against the law to work
Against the law to read, against the law to write
Against the law to be a black, a brown, or white
Everything's against the law
I'm a low-pay daddy singing the high-price blues
It's against the law to eat, against the law to drink
Against the law to worry, against the law to think
Against the law to marry or try to settle down
Against the law to ramble like a bum from town to town
Everything's against the law
I'm a low-pay daddy singing the high-price blues
It's against the law to come, against the law to go
Against the law to ride, against the law to roll
Against the law to hug and against the law to kiss
Against the law to shoot, against the law to miss
Everything's against the law
I'm a low-pay daddy singing the high-price blues
It's against the law to gamble, against the law to roam
Against the law to organize or try to build a home
Against the law to sing, it's against the law to dance
Against the law to tell you all the trouble on my hands
Everything in Winston-Salem is against the law
I'm a low-pay daddy singing the high-price blues
Woody Guthrie wrote this way back in 1947. I wonder what he'd think of today's hyper-regulated society.
This song was found in a collection of lyrics the Guthrie family had kept over the years, but the music to go with it was lost. Billy Bragg and Wilco wrote music to this and other 'lost' Guthrie tunes just a few years ago and published them on CD's entitled Mermaid Avenue, Vol's I & II. If you have a CD player and a pulse you should own those already.
Dale Amon of Samizdata fame has a simple quiz for you.
1) Whose idea was the Department of Homeland Security?
2) Who suggested the US use pre-emptive action against States harbouring WMD?
I'll give you a hint - they were bipartisan ideas. The answers are provided at the link above.
No, not the way you might think. Atrios linked to this Cato Institute opinion piece about out of control spending by the Bush administration, because he liked this part:
But perhaps we are being unfair to former President Clinton. After all, in inflation-adjusted terms, Clinton had overseen a total spending increase of only 3.5 percent at the same point in his administration. More importantly, after his first three years in office, non-defense discretionary spending actually went down by 0.7 percent. This is contrasted by Bush's three-year total spending increase of 15.6 percent and a 20.8 percent explosion in non-defense discretionary spending.
Reading in the comments section on the Atrios post, (always good fun) we find some leftists perplexed by these numbers:
Where is this money going if not defense related? Most social programs are flat or cut, education, energy, environment, urban development, all the same. So where's it going? - Loser (yes, the commenter really calls himself 'loser')
Loser couldn't be more wrong. There are some cuts, somewhere, I suppose. But spending is up accross the board. From the Cato article:
Government agencies that Republicans were calling to be abolished less than 10 years ago, such as education and labor, have enjoyed jaw-dropping spending increases under Bush of 70 percent and 65 percent respectively.
What is confounding to the left, so much so that I don't think they dare admit to it, is that Bush is spending money on social aid programs at a rate they couldn't manage. Clinton could not have passed these sorts of budgets through a Republican or even Democrat congress, but Bush has no such impediment. Congress goes along with his budgets because to Republicans he's their guy, and the Democrats like these spending items anyway.
This is a similar scenario to the Clinton welfare reform. No way a Republican president could have passed such a thing, even with a Republican congress.
Here's an interesting question. Will any Democratic presidential candidate take advantage of these budgets by proposing to cut spending on social programs? Could you imagine one of them with a Reaganesque campaign of 'Big Government is Bad?'
I won't hold my breath.
I really have to hand it to the Cato Institute for sticking by their guns even when a supposed ally is in the Whitehouse.
Software engineer Paul Boutin has an interesting article at Slate concerning the fraud potential of electronic voting machines:
The two most popular scenarios for Hack the Vote '04 are either a Kevin Mitnick-style cyberpunk tapping into the machines remotely, or Cheney board-member cronies who order back doors built into the software. Hollywood-style plots like these are about as likely as they sound. Instead, Stanford University computer science professor David Dill, who has been campaigning for better voting machines, says the most likely hack would be an inside job carried out by an accomplished, partisan hacker who lands a trusted job at Diebold, ES&S, or one of the election offices. "Imagine a programmer, system administrator, or even a janitor who gets access to the code," Dill says.
Boutin's solution, besides the obvious need for a paper trail, is open-source software.
(via Instapundit)