Upvalley in the People’s Republic of Aspen, they have an “affordable housing” program. The theory is that some people should pay for the housing of other people.

The program is implemented in two ways. In the first, the city uses taxpayer money to buy or develop housing units. So the city is in the residential real estate business. The units of course lose money hand over fist, and require constant cash infusions because they charge rent that is far less than necessary to cover the purchase and development costs. That’s what it means to be subsidized, after all.

The second way is that the city coerces private developers into building affordable housing units as part of their developments. It does this in a crude but effective way: It conditions the building permit on the inclusion of affordable housing units where the rental rates are controlled by a city bureaucracy.

This, too, is in effect a taxpayer subsidy. The developers incur bigger expenses in developing housing in order to include the mandated affordable units. They have no alternative but to pass those bigger expenses on to the buyers of the other units, or else operate their development business at a loss. There’s no free lunch.

The program is fraught with practical problems. For one thing Continue reading →

Guess what these people have in common: Ansel Adams, Walt Disney, Bob Dylan, Thomas Edison, Bobby Fischer, Henry Ford, Bill Gates, Barry Goldwater, William Randolph Hearst, Steve Jobs, John D. Rockefeller, J.D. Salinger, Taylor Swift, Ted Turner, Mark Twain, Walt Whitman and Mark Zuckerberg.

In the old days here in Aspen, the cowboys had an expression.  When someone questioned their competence, they deadpanned, “It’s not my first rodeo.”

This expression comes to mind after watching President Barrack Obama the last seven years.

Early on, he told a Republican Congressman with whom he was negotiating over the budget, “Don’t call my bluff.”

I’m not a saloon poker player, but I do know that when you bluff it’s important not to tell the other players.

Obama bluffed.  He told the Republicans he was bluffing.  He asked them not to call his bluff.  They called it.  And Obama folded.  Huh.

In the field of negotiating with the opposing political party, it was Obama’s first rodeo.

In his first two years, Obama Continue reading →

“Anybody But Clinton” — or “ABC” — is now the battle cry of the Dems in the presidential campaign.

Here in swing state Colorado, and in other swing states as well, recent polls show Hillary Clinton badly trailing unknown Republican candidates. In particular, her scores on trustworthiness have plunged as people see her record of mendacity.

I’m not talking about the stale scandals of her husband’s presidency 15 years ago — the ones that Hillary attributed to a “vast right-wing conspiracy” until a certain stained blue dress turned up.

No, I’m talking about fresh ones. Just recently, Hillary:

• Set up a homebrew computer system on which she illegally intermingled government business as secretary of state, foundation business and personal business;

• Deleted 34,000 emails from that system after Congress requested them;

• Falsely maintained that there was no Congressional subpoena to produce those emails, and

• Falsely claimed that her email system did not transmit any classified government information. (The New York Times recently reported that in fact, it did. Two inspector generals — both appointed by President Barack Obama — are calling for a Justice Department investigation.)

Even prominent Dems such as Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein has publicly declared that Hillary Continue reading →

“Black Like Me” — that’s the title of a 1961 book by a white man named John Howard Griffin, who used makeup and a very dark tan to look black for six weeks in the segregated South.

The lesson of the book was that it was difficult being black. Blacks were discriminated against. No sensible white person would pretend to be black.

Things have changed.

It was recently reported that Rachel Dolezal, a darkish-skinned woman with frizzy hair, pretended to be black for the past decade. She didn’t suffer racial discrimination. In fact, she enjoyed racial favoritism. Her fake “blackness” got her a job with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, a professorship in African studies and a city job as an ombudsman.

Her parents finally outed her, stating that her ancestry is actually German and Czech. Childhood photos show a freckle-faced, pale girl with blond hair.

Blondes may have more fun, but blackness, she discovered, is a ticket to a prize in the affirmative-action game. Continue reading →