Until Aspen’s mob shouted it down it, valet parking service was planned this winter at the base of the Aspen Mountain gondola. No longer.

Local politicos saw an opportunity to bash business, which they always find profitable, and to accumulate some political capital — which is apparently the only kind of capital that is permissible to accumulate these days.

Take our mayor, a former tennis instructor. He whined: “I question the equitability and ethic of” the valet parking service.

Others politicians jumped in. With an analysis equaling her syntax, one councilwoman complained, “It had a huge insulting factor to locals. It was like separating the rich from the poor, and here you are going skiing and those rich people have something they can afford that you can’t.”

Well, we certainly want to avoid a “huge insulting factor to locals” especially if “here you are going skiing.” And it’s the government’s job to do that, whatever “that” is.

Emotions like envy being so useful to politicians, another councilwoman who was not armed with a pitchfork but could have been, grumbled, Continue reading →