Author Archives: onthebeatontrack

Happy Meals for the happy comrades of Aspen

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McDonald’s is a fine place with honest and sometimes nutritious food. It’s close to the slopes, too. Other good, inexpensive spots nearby include CP Burger, Poppycock’s, the Paradise Bakery, Jour de Fete, Starbucks, Boogie’s, New York Pizza and the Red Onion. And City Market now has prepared food for takeout.

But former Mayor Mick and his City Council perceived a problem, to which, naturally, they had a government solution. The perceived problem was that these 10 places are too few. The comrades of Aspen, the council said, want and therefore need and therefore are entitled to an 11th inexpensive restaurant near the slopes. Forget the fact that the market does not perceive this same need. What do capitalists know about the entitlements of the comrades?

So their government solution was to mandate such a place. Think of it as the local restaurant equivalent to the mandates of Obamacare.

Here’s how they did it: The developer of a building on Cooper Avenue needed government approval for his project (even though it complied with applicable building codes). Ah-ha, the council said. It conditioned the necessary project approvals on the developer renting out the basement to a government approved restaurant — one with a menu and prices acceptable to the council.

You see, the council believes that the people and the restaurants cannot be trusted with the important decision of choosing where to eat. Remember how the market thought that there was no demand to rent Soviet-style bicycles, that a hydroelectric plant was not workable, that there wasn’t free geothermal energy under Herron Park and that there was no need for heated concrete eggs at quarter-million-dollar bus stops? Council itself had to pursue those projects because the market refused, and — voila! — it wasted millions on those bad ideas, all of which proved, to the council, that it was right to pursue those bad ideas because if it hadn’t ,no one else would have.

So the courncil cooked up a mandate for an affordable restaurant in the Cooper Avenue project. Their mandate aspires to the complexity of the Obamacare mandates. The restaurant would be required to set menu prices in the bottom third of Aspen restaurants. There would be surveys conducted, calculations of where the bottom third fell, inspections of the new restaurant’s menu and comparisons of the prices of apples served at the old restaurants with the prices of oranges served at the new one.

In the event of a violation by the restaurant, as City Hall chooses to define “violation” from time to time, heads would roll, eggs would crack, toast would burn, the souffle would fall, and someone would eat cake. Or crow. Or something else unpalatable.

The council figured that violations wouldn’t happen, however, because the council didn’t want them to. Instead, it figured there would be Happy Meals for happy comrades, and billions and billions would be served, all of whom would express their gratitude by faithfully voting for the incumbent council members regardless of the term-limit law so that the council members could ride in the dining car of the taxpayer-subsidized, affordable-housing gravy train forever.

But, oops, the market is plotting a gravy train wreck. The council mandated what but forgot to mandate whom. When the developer duly sought someone to lease the space for the purpose of opening and operating the mandated restaurant, no one was interested. Turns out that the market (darn that market!) thinks that opening an inexpensive government-regulated restaurant in a high-rent district under the watchful eye of City Hall comrades is not an appealing proposition from the standpoint of (apologies for using the following vulgar word) profitability.

Not to worry. The council is stepping in to take over the task of finding a restaurateur. The developer was not able to, but hey, what do developers know about development? This is a job for the council hydroelectricians/geothermalites/Soviet bicycle renters/heated-concrete-egg layers!

Watching these council experts in action in the restaurant business will make their Aspen comrades swell with pride if not gastroenteritis.

While waiting to be served, the rest of us should whip up a name for this new government-mandated culinary sensation. Here are a few ideas:

1) Mick Donald’s.

2) Big Brother Bites (or BBBs).

3) ObamaFare.

4) Belly Out.

5) Shut Up and Eat.

OK, that’s my entire menu of names, and I don’t have access to taxpayer money for a consultant to gin up more. So let’s have a potluck naming contest. Leave your suggestions on the comment page, or email them to me. Feel free to make menu suggestions, too. Please make everything well-done.

The best suggestion earns a free dinner at the new government-approved restaurant. Second place gets two. Third place gets all you dare to eat.

Downbeats

Our library holds the world’s worst collection of DVD movies. A librarian explained that the library doesn’t want to stock popular movies because that would compete with the little family movie-rental store down the street. I appreciate that sentiment, but it suggests that maybe the library should not be in the movie business at all. It’s bad enough to spend library tax dollars to satisfy a demand for popular movies that the taxpayers want. Isn’t it even worse to spend library tax dollars to satisfy a nondemand for unpopular movies that the taxpayers don’t want?

Upbeats

In his first official act, the new mayor recently was sworn in. In a refreshing display of respect for the office he fills and the people he serves, he wore a coat and tie. There is hope.

Published in The Aspen Times on Aug. 15, 2013 at http://www.aspentimes.com/opinion/7699149-113/council-restaurant-comrades-government

There’s no Hot Water!

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“It’s an exciting opportunity,” gushed a city of Aspen spokeswoman with no scientific or business expertise. The “opportunity” about which she was excited was the city’s idea to get into the geothermal-energy business.

That was five years ago. Now there’s, well, less excitement. In place of the excitement, we have a $300,000 hole in the ground.

How exactly did our money get out of our pockets and down that hole?

It all started when the city heard rumors that miners in the old days emerged from the mines all hot and sweaty. (You don’t say! A hot and sweaty miner?)

So the city government wished, and therefore believed, that there was free geothermal energy to be had. See how exciting this is?

The city’s first step was to partner with experts in the utilities industry who had lots of specific experience in the production of geothermal energy.

Ha! Now I’m kidding, of course. It did no such thing because this is the gang that thinks it knows everything from running restaurants to producing hydroelectric energy to renting bicycles to real estate investing. Besides, what’s to know? It’s not rocket science; it’s just geothermal-energy generation.

No, instead, the city contracted with an outfit called Dan’s Water Well. Dan’s business is pumping money into the ground and pumping water out of it.

But wait — another exciting thing happened first. The city would get $50,000 in “free money” to pursue its “free energy” in the form of a state grant funded by other taxpayers. Even better, there was talk about getting another $3.5 million in additional “free money” in the form of a federal grant funded by faraway taxpayers. (The federal “free money” never materialized.)

Dan started drilling next to the Roaring Fork River by Herron Park in fall 2011. It was supposed to take him 30 to 45 days and $200,000 but wound up taking nearly two years and $300,000.

The first hole never hit water. It didn’t just fail to find water that was hot; it failed to find any water at all. That was quite an accomplishment, considering that the hole was only 100 feet from the river. Maybe Dan should have drilled horizontally.

The second hole finally did find water. It wasn’t at the 1,000 feet that was supposed to be the maximum for the hole but at 1,500 feet.

The tide went out on whatever excitement remained when the water was only 70 degrees. Even Dan likes his bathwater warmer than that.

The good news, they report, is that the pressure of the water is sufficient that it bubbles right up without the need for much pumping. So the water can be obtained for a cost that is equal to its value: zero. (That’s if you don’t include the $300,000 cost of drilling the well.)

Now the only excitement left and the only energy that is being produced are in the city’s frantic effort to spin this boondoggle as something other than dead in the water.

The spin cycle revolves around conjecture and hope that the water was perhaps warmer — maybe 90 degrees — at the bottom of the hole and that it cooled as it rose to the surface. The city infers from this that its hole isn’t exactly a gold mine but that it could be a silver mine. Or maybe copper. OK, at least tin.

This requires us to ignore three facts. First, the city doesn’t actually know the temperature of the water at 1,500 feet because it hasn’t put a thermometer down there to measure it. It’s possible that it is 90 degrees and it cooled off as it rose through the hole, as the city hopes and conjectures. But it’s also possible that it is 70 degrees — that it was 70 degrees at the bottom of the hole and it stayed 70 degrees when it came up the hole.

Second, even if the water is indeed 90 degrees at the bottom of the hole, that doesn’t represent a geothermal resource. Geologists know that the temperature of Earth’s upper crust typically goes up about 4 to 5 degrees for every 100 meters of depth. So at the bottom of a 1,500-foot (about 460-meter) hole, the temperature should be about 18 to 23 degrees warmer. In short, Dan found, at best, what he would find anywhere that is not geothermally active.

Third, the city itself said back in 2008 that it hoped to find water with a temperature of 140 degrees. (It takes about 200-degree water for the production of electricity, but the city’s hope was that 140-degree water might be useful to heat buildings — provided that a whole new insulated water-circulation system were designed and built to bring it from the hole to the buildings before if cooled off.) The city now says that the conjectured 90-degree water is “on the low end” of what might be useful. I suppose that in a sense 90 is indeed on the low end of 140. The very low end.

The bottom line is, first, that this latest episode of City Hall bureaucrats playing amateur scientists/businessmen has failed and, second, that the city is not candid about the failure. After going 50 percent over the budgeted money, going a total of 150 percent over the budgeted hole depth, going 2,000 percent over the budgeted time, disturbing neighbors to no end and creating a two-year eyesore, all we have is a financial black hole.

Maybe they can plug the hole with their never-used $1.5 million hydroelectric generator.

Published in The Aspen Times on July 13, 2013 at http://www.aspentimes.com/opinion/7528910-113/hole-degrees-energy-dan

Fly the Affordable Skies

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Airfares into and out of Aspen are not cheap. United Airlines explained that it’s all about the rules of economics.

But wait — this is Aspen! Here, we have replaced the rules of economics with the rules of government. After all, the city government is, or wants to be, in at least the following businesses:

• The affordable-hotel business, to ensure that homeless skiers who have just dropped $114 on a lift ticket can spend the night here before hitchhiking back to their shelters downvalley.

• The affordable-restaurant business because they have to eat, too (slopeside, of course).

• The affordable-housing business.

• The affordable-bicycle-rental business, where for a few bucks you can rent a bike for which the government paid $6,500 and which looks like it was made for $23 in the Soviet Union.

• The free-bus business, where, oh, don’t get me started again on the stone phalluses and concrete eggs (which are apparently orphans ­— no one will admit responsibility for laying them).

• The subsidized-movie business, where the Wheeler recently announced that taxpayer money will pay for “full digital cinema projection technology” (owwhhh!).

• Imaginary hydroelectric and geothermal energy businesses because, you see, the City Council knows more about energy generation than the utility companies.

• The residential real estate market, where the city has adopted a, shall we say, contrarian approach of “buy high, sell low.”

• The health-club business because, after all, if the city didn’t keep us fit, who would?

Sorry if I left out some.

So all aboard. If the city can get into the affordable hotel, restaurant, housing, bicycle, bus, movie, hydroelectric, geothermal, residential real estate and health-club businesses, why shouldn’t an affordable-airplane business take off?

Here’s the flight plan:

First, the city must buy some airplanes. Let’s get the kind that run on the city’s imaginary geothermal and hydroelectric power.

Spend money painting the airplanes with a psychedelic ’60s motif just like the firetrucks and ambulances because people won’t use a firetruck, ambulance or airplane that is drab.

Outlaw “free market” seats in first class. The fare for the first-class seats will depend on how much of your income you disclose.

Rich people will be allowed, but they have to ride coach, they have to pay extra, they have to wear down and not fur, and they have to get vilified.

We have lots of flights around Christmas and only a few in April, even though it’s easier to get a hotel room in April. So they should delay some of the Christmas flights a few months till April.

Lots of Australians come here. I like Australians, mate, but they aren’t very diverse. So cancel the flights from Australia and launch new flights from, say, the Congo and Cambodia. Congolese and Cambodians don’t ski, you say? Well, of course not; that’s because there are no flights to Aspen.

The speed limit for the airplanes will be 18 mph.

Each flight will have at least 100 flight attendants (dressed in polyester bell-bottoms to complement the paint job on the airplane). But since they will be city employees, the 100 flight attendants will not serve the passengers. Instead, the passengers will serve the flight attendants.

Adjacent to the airport, the city can spend gobs of money on an airplane museum to give people a reason to come here, as they did with the wildly successful $5 million fire-station museum downtown.

Of course, for safety reasons, there will be height restrictions around the airport except, of course, with respect to government buildings.

They can blow a big airport horn each day at noon just to remind everyone who’s boss.

They should stencil graphics of airplanes onto the runways, just like the new bicycle graphics on all the downtown streets. That way, the pilots will know where to land the airplanes.

(By the way, I think the city should stencil little pedestrians on all the sidewalks so people will know where to walk, stencil little tricycles on all the driveways so kids will know where to ride their tricycles and stencil a clown in front of City Hall on Galena Street so that people know where the circus is.)

Speaking of the pilots, they will be the City Council. I know there’s not much expertise on council ever since we term-limited the tennis instructor who could afford only one name and the Irish bike-wrecker. But I’m sure the remaining Renaissance men and woman know just as much about flying an airplane as they do about the hotel, restaurant, bicycle, housing, bus, movie, geothermal, hydroelectric, residential real estate and health-club businesses.

Buckle up.

Published in The Aspen Times on July 11, 2013 at http://www.aspentimes.com/opinion/7261071-113/affordable-business-airplane-airplanes

Fly the Affordable Skies

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Airfares into and out of Aspen are not cheap. United Airlines explained that it’s all about the rules of economics.

But wait — this is Aspen! Here, we have replaced the rules of economics with the rules of government. After all, the city government is, or wants to be, in at least the following businesses:

• The affordable-hotel business, to ensure that homeless skiers who have just dropped $114 on a lift ticket can spend the night here before hitchhiking back to their shelters downvalley.

• The affordable-restaurant business because they have to eat, too (slopeside, of course).

• The affordable-housing business.

• The affordable-bicycle-rental business, where for a few bucks you can rent a bike for which the government paid $6,500 and which looks like it was made for $23 in the Soviet Union.

• The free-bus business, where, oh, don’t get me started again on the stone phalluses and concrete eggs (which are apparently orphans ­— no one will admit responsibility for laying them).

• The subsidized-movie business, where the Wheeler recently announced that taxpayer money will pay for “full digital cinema projection technology” (owwhhh!).

• Imaginary hydroelectric and geothermal energy businesses because, you see, the City Council knows more about energy generation than the utility companies.

• The residential real estate market, where the city has adopted a, shall we say, contrarian approach of “buy high, sell low.”

• The health-club business because, after all, if the city didn’t keep us fit, who would?

Sorry if I left out some.

So all aboard. If the city can get into the affordable hotel, restaurant, housing, bicycle, bus, movie, hydroelectric, geothermal, residential real estate and health-club businesses, why shouldn’t an affordable-airplane business take off?

Here’s the flight plan:

First, the city must buy some airplanes. Let’s get the kind that run on the city’s imaginary geothermal and hydroelectric power.

Spend money painting the airplanes with a psychedelic ’60s motif just like the firetrucks and ambulances because people won’t use a firetruck, ambulance or airplane that is drab.

Outlaw “free market” seats in first class. The fare for the first-class seats will depend on how much of your income you disclose.

Rich people will be allowed, but they have to ride coach, they have to pay extra, they have to wear down and not fur, and they have to get vilified.

We have lots of flights around Christmas and only a few in April, even though it’s easier to get a hotel room in April. So they should delay some of the Christmas flights a few months till April.

Lots of Australians come here. I like Australians, mate, but they aren’t very diverse. So cancel the flights from Australia and launch new flights from, say, the Congo and Cambodia. Congolese and Cambodians don’t ski, you say? Well, of course not; that’s because there are no flights to Aspen.

The speed limit for the airplanes will be 18 mph.

Each flight will have at least 100 flight attendants (dressed in polyester bell-bottoms to complement the paint job on the airplane). But since they will be city employees, the 100 flight attendants will not serve the passengers. Instead, the passengers will serve the flight attendants.

Adjacent to the airport, the city can spend gobs of money on an airplane museum to give people a reason to come here, as they did with the wildly successful $5 million fire-station museum downtown.

Of course, for safety reasons, there will be height restrictions around the airport except, of course, with respect to government buildings.

They can blow a big airport horn each day at noon just to remind everyone who’s boss.

They should stencil graphics of airplanes onto the runways, just like the new bicycle graphics on all the downtown streets. That way, the pilots will know where to land the airplanes.

(By the way, I think the city should stencil little pedestrians on all the sidewalks so people will know where to walk, stencil little tricycles on all the driveways so kids will know where to ride their tricycles and stencil a clown in front of City Hall on Galena Street so that people know where the circus is.)

Speaking of the pilots, they will be the City Council. I know there’s not much expertise on council ever since we term-limited the tennis instructor who could afford only one name and the Irish bike-wrecker. But I’m sure the remaining Renaissance men and woman know just as much about flying an airplane as they do about the hotel, restaurant, bicycle, housing, bus, movie, geothermal, hydroelectric, residential real estate and health-club businesses.

Buckle up.

Glenn K. Beaton lives in Aspen and would like an affordable airplane ticket out when he just can’t take it anymore.

(Published in The Aspen Times on July 11, 2013 at http://www.aspentimes.com/opinion/7261071-113/affordable-business-airplane-airplanes)

He’s Lost that Lovin’ Feeling

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Remember Obamamania?

Without even asking if we wanted to know all about his little love life, a TV talking head on Election Night in 2008 confided — right in our living rooms, with the kids there — that the president-elect generated “a thrill up my leg.”

His co-talking head suggested that maybe he was getting carried away. He insisted he wasn’t. “Seriously,” he reiterated. Thankfully, the TV captures only their talking heads and not their thrilled legs.

At his 2008 speech at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, the campaigning future president drew an enraptured crowd of 200,000. Many fainted as he took the stage, and some reached out to touch his clothes.

The throngs enthused that he was “almost like the Messiah.” Oprah Winfrey didn’t disagree. She proclaimed, “I believe he is the one.”

At his victory speech the night of the election, he said he thought so, too. In the delirium he intoned, “We are the ones we have been waiting for.” More delirium ensued.

He was more than the messiah to them. He was a rock star.

But what a difference four years make. First, there was Obamacare. Then there was a “shellacking” (to use his own term) in the midterm elections. Then he was re-elected but with fewer votes than the first time — another historic first but not a good one. Now there’s an endless string of scandals about government spying on private citizens and targeting them with the Internal Revenue Service. On tap for next year: more Obamacare.

Maybe the thrill is gone. To find it, recapture it and send it back up the unseen and unsuspecting legs and loins of TV talking heads, he recently returned to the Brandenburg Gate for another really big show.

You could almost read between the lines. His lyrics were euro-banalities, but his rhythm was pure Motown:

“You’ve lost that lovin’ feeling,

Whoa, that lovin’ feeling,

You’ve lost that lovin’ feeling,

Now it’s gone, … gone … gone … wooooooh.”

It was a bust. Attendance was down by 97 percent. At exactly the same historic forum, where he’d drawn 200,000 four years ago and President Kennedy had drawn 450,000 50 years ago, he drew less than 5,000. The messiah who used to deliver the inspiration that made the whole world inspired drew fewer people than Barry Manilow does for “The Songs That Make the Whole World Sing.”

As for the scandals, he didn’t exactly mention them, but you could almost hear his embittered heart:

“And now you’re starting to criticiiiiiiize little things I dooooo.”

It got pathetic:

“Baby, baby, I get down on my knees for yoooou. If you would only love me like you used to doooo.”

OK, I’m exaggerating. He didn’t get down on his knees. But he did take his jacket off. Even that didn’t win their love or thrill their legs. Those Germans can be tough.

Toward the end, he and his handlers tried repetition and more rhythm:

“I need your love,” he crooned.

“He needs your love!” harmonized his backstage handlers.

“I need your love,” he repeated.

“He needs your love!” Now the backups were right behind him in turquoise tuxes, doing swivel-hips and hand-twirls in unison.

OK, I’m exaggerating again. But it’s no exaggeration to say that the few Germans who showed up for this free extravaganza got what they paid for it. They looked unthrilled, unmoved and, in some cases, unawake.

It didn’t help that the former messiah mispronounced their mayor’s name.

But it could have been worse, and later in the trip it was. He referred — three times — to the British finance minister, George Osborne, as “Jeffrey.” He didn’t want to risk making a fourth mistake in his apology, so he just said, “I’m sorry, man.”

He later explained that he’d confused the person he now calls “man” with an American rhythm and blues singer named Jeffrey Osborne. (No, they are not similar-looking.)

Does this mean that, in order to avoid such mistakes in the future, he will start calling everyone “man”? I can see it. To Vladimir Putin, “Hey, man, let’s fix Syria.” To Tiger Woods, “Hey, man, let’s do golf again.” In the Oval Office when he mutters, “Man, oh, man,” everyone in earshot will come running.

The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, presumably will be called “woman.” Will he call her “Pretty Woman”? “L.A. Woman”? “Witchy Woman”? “Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress”? I can hardly wait for Merkel to deck him.

Which brings us back to the not-so-big show in Berlin. German magazine Spiegel deadpanned, “The shine has come off Obama’s image.” Even the American talking head who’d been leg-thrilled in 2008 complained that “the late afternoon sun in Berlin, I think, ruined his use of the teleprompters.”

You see, even messiahs can have an off day when the late-afternoon sun melts their teleprompters (must have been global warming). The important thing to remember is it’s not his fault!

So now what? What do we do with a one-hit wonder who sticks around long after closing time to give eight years of bad encores?

If he were a concert tour, he’d be canceled.

Published in The Aspen Times on June 26, 2013 at http://www.aspentimes.com/opinion/7081306-113/love-didn-lovin-talking

Bus-ingham Phallus

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The government bus guy from the Roaring Fork Transportation Authority recently declared, “The eggs are colossally too big.”

I can’t argue with that.

In case you haven’t followed the bus-stop story, briefly it’s as follows: RFTA spent $250,000 in taxpayer money on each of the new bus stops — about $4 million altogether. Yes, the ones with the 16-foot stone towers with “RFTA” emblazoned on top.

RFTA wound up with what it evidently desired: fantastic, phallic monuments to RFTA. In a recent contest in these pages to name its bus-stop monuments, “Bus-ingham Phallus” narrowly won out over “Saint Peter’s Bus-ilica.” Other entries included “Mount Bus-more” and “Machu Buso.”

The bus guys assured us that their new bus stops “aren’t pricey.” You see, a quarter million for a bus stop is not pricey at all — provided it’s someone else’s money. Every dime of that was necessary, they explained, in order to avoid what they called “the prison look” of the old bus stops (who knew?).

That’s the old news. Here’s the new news: The bus stops are not finished yet, but RFTA has hatched an upgrade already. Its latest expenditure (er, I mean “investment”) is for a basket of — drumroll — concrete eggs. That’s not a typo. Each egg is about 2 feet high and 4 feet long. Some are gray, and some are pink.

Like giant Easter eggs in a weird sci-fi movie, these colossally too-big eggs will be scattered around gravel areas next to those colossally too-big stone phalluses with the colossally too-big tribute to RFTA on top.

Of course, it is only a matter of time before someone repositions a pair of the pink colossally-too-big eggs at the base of each colossally-too-big tower in order to produce a colossally-too-big concrete sculpture of — well, this is a family newspaper. Let’s just say size matters.

Each nest will be heated with underground heaters. County regulations prohibit heating the outdoors because the outdoors are so big. (Duh.) So RFTA applied for an exemption from the government regulations on the grounds that, hey, RFTA itself is the government! It is the regulator and not the regulated. The rest of us are required to do as it says, not as it does. (See “height restrictions, art museum.”)

A taxpayer (remember them?) might ask, “What is the cost of all this?” The bus guys aren’t saying. Presumably, the eggs are cheaper by the dozen. They aren’t even revealing the cost of heating them or the quantity of greenhouse gas that is thereby generated.

Here’s an alternative recipe for these government chefs to consider: If they insist on spending money and generating greenhouse gas to heat the outdoors at the bus stops, why not start with the bench where people sit and wait? While the government is poaching its eggs, I wouldn’t mind it toasting my buns.

The bus guy was asked the purpose of the colossally too-big hard-boiled gray and pink concrete eggs. He replied, “They’re for kids to play on. They’re kind of decorative, … and it kind of fits in with the dinosaur theme.”

What a great idea, kind of. Let’s attract children to the shoulder of Highway 82 by building playgrounds there! Playgrounds consisting of colossally too-big, round, heavy, concrete objects for the children to play on! And under!

The children who survive playing on and under the colossally too-big, round, heavy, concrete objects and also survive the highway traffic whizzing by are sure to increase ridership. And as Charles Darwin would tell you, those surviving children will be very fit.

Moreover, these things will protect the ditch from cars. Any car foolishly headed toward the ditch will be properly demolished good and well by the colossally too-big, concrete objects, and its occupants will be hurled through the windshield before the car gets anywhere close to that ditch. Alternatively, the car will get the best of the collision, in which case the colossally too-big, round, concrete objects will be cracked and scrambled into the patrons waiting for the bus.

Either way, a valuable lesson will be taught: Don’t try to make an omelet with the government’s colossally too-big, incubated, concrete eggs.

Fifty-eight years ago in Montgomery, Ala., a courageous African-American woman named Rosa Parks disobeyed a government order to give up her bus seat to a white man. Her single act of disobedience triggered a citywide bus boycott. Eventually, the government had to respond to the will of the people.

I’ll stipulate that the Aspen bus stops are not nearly as important as race relations. And I’ll further stipulate that Parks had far bigger “eggs” than I ever will. But as in Montgomery, this issue is indeed about the people standing up to a government that is colossally too big, colossally too rich, colossally too arrogant and colossally too stupid. This is the government that spends our money to target taxpayers for their political views, to target news reporters for reporting the news and to target phone users just for making phone calls.

I like public transportation, and I use it often. But at a time when some people are stretched to the breaking point, and we’re cutting back on programs like Meals on Wheels, these government types are spending our money on concrete eggs. Until they start caring about our money as much as their monuments, let’s send them a message. Let’s boycott their bus.

Published June 12, 2013 in The Aspen Times at http://www.aspentimes.com/news/6886636-113/bus-colossally-eggs-government

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Going Galt

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President Obama a few months ago signed a bill to increase taxes by $600 billion. The title of the bill is the American Taxpayer Relief Act. As for the fourth word of that title, if you’re Obama, apparently you spell “relief” as follows: T-A-X-I-N-C-R-E-A-S-E.

The president thereby achieved his goal of transferring more money away from the people who earned it with their labor over a lifetime and into the hands of people who earned it with their votes in November. As he relieved the former of the burden of their money, he thanked them: “I just want to thank the businessmen of this country for stepping up and paying even more than they already do. I will work with Congress to reduce spending because I realize that even if we take 100 percent of your earnings, it won’t cover our trillion-dollar deficit and wouldn’t be fair, either, but in the meantime you’ve helped save our bacon.”

Just kidding. He did take their money. But he didn’t thank them, and he didn’t even pretend that he wants to reduce spending. As for their businesses that generated their wealth, he famously declared, “You didn’t build that.”

For years, the top 5 percent of earners have paid almost 60 percent of the country’s federal income taxes — roughly 12 times their proportionate share. The technical term for such people is “givers.”

In contrast, the bottom 40 percent pay nothing at all in federal income taxes. The ratio of the federal benefits they receive (pick any number) to what they pay for those benefits (zero) is literally infinity. The technical term for such people is “takers.”

As you might expect, the wealthy also donate a much greater percentage of their income to charity. (Something you might not expect is that conservatives donate a much greater percentage of their income to charity than liberals in the same income bracket, but we’ll save that for another column.)

The president nonetheless complains that the givers have not been giving enough — that they have not been paying their “fair share.” So what exactly is their fair share? Well, the president doesn’t specify a number. Let’s just say he spells “fair share” as follows: M-O-R-E.

The president could learn a thing or two about business and fairness from John Galt. That brilliant inventor in “Atlas Shrugged” quit when the factory producing his inventions decided to run on Karl Marx’s creed “From each according to his ability, and to each according to his need.” (Yes, it’s a precursor to the Aspen affordable-housing scam.) Others join Galt. In the end, the talented titans who shouldered the world — much like Atlas in Greek mythology — shrugged. The resulting talentless world of takers tumbled.

Life might imitate literature. Recently, top golfer Phil Mickelson lamented that he didn’t like paying 60 percent of his income in federal taxes and California state taxes and was considering moving to Florida, where there is no state income tax. He was lambasted by the media, not for daring to withhold those taxes — he did pay those taxes — but for daring to pay them grudgingly.

Tiger Woods chimed in that he left California for Florida years ago for the same reason. And then, even liberal TV comedian/commentator Bill Maher said he, too, has had enough of confiscatory taxes. And this is from a guy who gave a million dollars to the Obama re-election campaign.

It’s not just California. The former president of France recently moved to high-tax London from even-higher-tax France. A leading French actor fled France for Russia for the same reason. Russia (former Marxists!) promptly granted him full citizenship.

But these lessons seem lost on the president. The businessmen who fund his redistributionist policies don’t earn his gratitude but his vilification. He name-calls them. To the president, “giver” is spelled as follows: G-R-E-E-D-Y-F-A-T-C-A-T.

I have a modest suggestion.

I realize that the givers will never be pitied. Thank goodness for that. For them, being pitied would be the worst possible insult.

And I realize that they won’t get thanked properly, at least not in their lifetimes. But that’s OK. They don’t do what they do for thanks.

No, the givers do what they do because even in 21st-century America, where our lives are regulated, where our liberty is lost and where we give trophies to Little Leaguers just for showing up and diplomas to students even if they don’t, we still have an inalienable right to pursue happiness. Achievements are what make the givers happy.

So my suggestion is merely this: Take their money if you must, and be envious if it makes you feel good, but let’s not vilify the achievers with ugly name-calling like “greedy fat cat” and endless demands for “more.” Don’t try to take their happiness, too. Else one of these days, they might just “go Galt.”

Published in The Aspen Times on May 15, 2013 at http://www.aspentimes.com/news/6529063-113/president-taxes-income-galt

Bus-ingham Phallus

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Can you guess what the new bus stops cost us?

Whatever you guessed, it was too low. The fare was a quarter-million dollars each. The total bill for 10 of them, plus two “double” ones, is about $4 million.

Yes, the ones with the big stone towers. That big phallus is not the chimney for a fireplace. No, we’re told that it houses the “technology and electronics.” Oh, of course. It’s for air-traffic control.

Just kidding. That’s a ridiculous idea because airplanes don’t stop at the bus stops. Sometimes even the buses don’t.

No, the “technology and electronics” are for the lighting and sound system. They rent out the bus stops for wedding receptions and bar mitzvahs.

Just kidding again. That, too, is a ridiculous idea because these government bureaucrats obviously aren’t concerned about generating rental income. If they need or want additional income, they already know where to get it – from the taxpayers.

Enough kidding. Atop each phallus, they’ve tattooed “RFTA” in 12-inch letters. That’s not the name of the Hindu god to whom you pray for the bus to come. That’s the acronym for the government god that built these monuments to itself – the Roaring Fork Transportation Authority. It especially likes the “Authority” part. That’s its middle name, almost, and don’t you forget it.

One of the Aspen City Council boys who, like all the other council boys, wants to be mayor (what happened to the permanent one?) tried (between votes to spend more taxpayer money on housing for himself) to throw the Authority under the bus by suggesting (after he knew it was too late to do anything about it) that these monuments had jumped the guardrail.

Like a deer in the headlights, the Authority manager (I’m guessing he’d like us to call him the “Authoritarian”) stared down the council boy and then got himself run over. He assured us that the bus monuments might look expensive but aren’t. He said that at a quarter-million apiece, they “aren’t pricey.”

Unconscionably expensive, perhaps, but they “aren’t pricey.”

They’re a good value, the Authority explained. You can’t have a bus stop that is “dark.” And “you want to be careful not to have the prison look.”

I so agree. The old, dark bus stops with the prison look often attracted filthy, rude, potty-mouthed reprobates. I used to think they were snowboarders just because they had snowboards, but I now realize that they were convicts attracted by “the prison look.”

There’s more from the Authority. A bus station has to be “appealing” in order to “entice” people to ride the bus, he said. If it isn’t, then people will take an offramp to a competing bus company that has nicer bus stops with a red-carpet room, free drinks, peanuts and priority boarding. Except there isn’t a competing company, of course, because the Authority is the government.

Keep in mind that the Authority’s measure of success is its number of riders. It doesn’t need to be cost-effective because, geez, didn’t I mention that it’s the government? So why not “entice” people to ride the bus by just paying them to?

Its current ridership is about 4 million trips per year. If it used the $4 million it spent on the monumental bus stops to pay people a buck a trip, it could generate another 4 million rider trips. That doubles its current annual ridership. If it raises it to $10 and serves Red Bull with vodka, it might even generate some big phalluses on which it could tattoo “RFTA.”

So far, its $4 million enticement program has increased ridership by exactly one. When I first saw the big RFTA phallus 16 feet above me, I pulled over, ditched my gas-guzzling, carbon-spewing SUV, kneeled in front of the phallus and prayed till the bus came. I’ve been riding back and forth between Truscott and Rubey Park ever since. If the Authority had just paid me the $4 million, I would have happily shared the old bus stops with those convicts armed with snowboards.

As part of this government monopoly’s strategy to entice people away from the nonexistent competition, the Authority informs us that it is also in the process of improving its “branding.” Maybe it should change its acronym to BMW.

It should at least shift gears on the weird RFTA brand atop each phallus. Let’s re-brand each one with a grandiloquent name befitting the Authority. I’ll jump-start this program with some suggestions:

1. Bus-ingham Phallus

2. Mount Bus-more

3. St. Peter’s Bus-ilica

4. Machu Bus-u

OK, I ran out of gas at four. Since I have no advertising agency paid for with tax dollars, let’s have a readers contest. Race to submit your suggestion online in the comment section to this column. In a week or when the next bus comes, whichever is first, I’ll pick winners.

Oops, this is Barack Obama’s America, so I’ll let him pick the winners. But if he doesn’t or if he picks Solyndra again, then I will.

First prize is an all-expenses-paid bus ride to the bus monument formerly known as the Intercept Lot. Second prize is the same thing, plus an autographed Glenn K. Beaton column.

Published in The Aspen Times on April 18, 2013 at http://www.aspentimes.com/news/6326881-113/columns-columnsivg-apcolorado-apunitedstates

The Lance Test

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Lance Armstrong is someone I know. Sort of. I was at 11,000 feet riding up Independence Pass a few years ago, and he blew by me like I was standing still. I know, being passed by Lance is a privilege, but it’s a common one. Except that I was on my motor scooter.

Let’s stipulate that what Lance did was wrong. He broke the rules of the game, and he broke the rules of life. He’s been prosecuted for it, he’s confessed to it, he’s been convicted of it, he’s been shamed for it, he’s been punished for it, and he’s apologized for it. And he’s implied that he will ask for forgiveness at some point in the future, but right now he doesn’t think he’s deserving of forgiveness, so he won’t even ask.

But people still want to stone him. Now the government is suing him for “defrauding” the U.S. Postal Service, which paid a zillion bucks to sponsor him. (No word on when the government will sue the Postal Service for spending a zillion bucks of taxpayer money to sponsor a bicyclist.)

There’s even talk about government lawyers prosecuting him criminally – they want to put him in jail. Not for doping, which was not a crime, but for lying about it. Lawyers, whose job is to spin the truth, want to put a man in jail for spinning it too well.

If this were softball, we’d call the 10-run rule and go home. If this were a boxing match, we’d say there has been a technical knockout. If this were football, they’d call a foul for unnecessary roughness. In short, there’s been a lot of piling on.

I have a test for all of you angry people who love to hate Lance, for all you underachievers who build yourselves up by tearing Lance down, for all the lawyers who feel threatened by Lance encroaching on your turf of trickery, for all you overweight armchair athletes whose idea of sport is to watch on TV a game you’ve never played while spraying beer-soaked exclamations like “Tell you what! He got hit a ton!”

To all of you (and you know who you are), take this test:

1) Have you had cancer? The kind that usually kills?

2) Have you had killer cancer in your testicles?

3) Have you had a cancerous testicle cut off?

4) Did you grow up without a father around?

5) Were you a teenage phenom – an athlete literally off the charts – on whom people placed extraordinary expectations?

6) Have you undergone chemotherapy?

7) Did you compete as a Texan in a European sport against Europeans in Europe who were all on performance-enhancing drugs -after your cancerous testicle had been cut off and you’d undergone chemotherapy?

8) Have you established a foundation to help cancer patients?

9) Have you had to confess your most embarrassing secrets to millions of people on national TV?

10) Have you had to confess your most embarrassing secrets to your son and tell him, “Stop defending me”?

Bonus question: Have you ever passed a motor scooter on your bike going uphill at 11,000 feet?

If you scored 8 or above, then feel free to continue piling on Lance if it makes you feel good. If you scored 4 to 7, then some introspection is appropriate. If you scored 3 or less, then you’re out of your league. You’ve never walked a mile in Lance’s shoes, much less ridden 100,000 miles on his bike.

(For the record, I personally took the Lance test. The game of life is not yet over, but I’m in the fourth quarter, and Lance is ahead of me by a touchdown, a two-point conversion and a field goal.)

And if you’re one of those fleshy government lawyer/prosecutors with six weeks of paid vacation, ask yourself whether Lance is truly a threat to society or just a threat to your fragile underperforming squishy, emasculated self. (If a guy with just one testicle is stronger than you, after all, then how many do you have? Do the math.)

Let’s reflect a bit. Why do we as a society worship strangers on TV? Why do we idolize people we never met and know little about? Why do we deify them, then envy their status as deities, then hope for their fall and then celebrate their destruction? And then find someone else on whom to repeat the whole pointless exercise?

Here’s a different approach. If you need a god in your life (and I, for one, do), then stop looking for him on ESPN. Look instead in the local church, synagogue or mosque. Look for him in people you love. Best of all, look for him inside yourself, for indeed the kingdom is within you. Beat the cancer within you. Win the race within you. Find the charity within you. Get in the game, the real one. The one that is – I’ll say it again – within you.

If instead you insist on making gods out of humans you’ve never met because that’s easier and more entertaining for you, OK. In a free country, that’s your prerogative. But when your godly humans turn out to be more human than godly, please don’t bore us with your self-righteous sanctimony.

Published in The Aspen Times on March 21, 2013 at http://www.aspentimes.com/news/6325950-113/columns-columnsivg-apcolorado-apunitedstates

New Blood But Not Too New

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The Aspen Times recently opined that we need “new blood” on City Council. Hmm, why might that be?

Let’s start with the council member who also is mayor. He once went to Europe on a “Sister City Tour” for which the city reimbursed him $2,400. He tweeted (how hip!) that being feted in Chamonix, Davos and other swanky resorts “feels like work.”

He likes his “work.” A lot. He’s in his third term of this “work.” Before he became the mayor, he was the previous mayor; and before he became the previous mayor, he was the mayor before that. And before he became the mayor before that, he was a Pitkin County commissioner and on the Aspen-Pitkin County Housing Authority (not sure what that is, but it can’t be good) Board.

And before that, he boasts, he became interested in politics at age 6. He was urinating on his enemies figuratively at an age when the rest of us were still doing it literally. He’s apparently been a politician of sorts ever since, interrupted only by a brief spell a few years ago so he could recover from a bicycle crash.

He wants to be mayor of Aspen the way Hugo Chavez wants to be president of Venezuela – for life, at least.

But the people passed a law that prohibits a mayor from staying in office from here to eternity. This term-limit law requires that once in a while the hand of graft shake a different tree.

Our precocious and hard- “working” mayor is one step ahead of the law, however. He’s scheming to run for one of the other four council seats while simultaneously endorsing for mayor the guy who currently holds that council seat. So the net effect would be for the two of them to just switch seats on the council (wink, wink).

After criticism that he’s violating the spirit, if not the letter, of the law, the mayor got a subordinate called “city attorney” to write a memo on city time saying it’s A-OK with him.

The mayor says the reason he has to stick around, like a wet booger on a 9-year-old, is that otherwise the “developers” (aka “vampires”) will take over. No, there aren’t any developers or vampires on council now, and none have expressed any interest. Maybe that’s because they have businesses to run. I doubt it’s because they’re busy visiting Chamonix and Davos at taxpayer expense.

Moreover, if the mayor lost his tenured “job” as the local taker-in-chief, he might lose his hall pass to taxpayer-subsidized affordable housing. Yikes!

Like the mayor, three of the other four council members are on the affordable-housing dole. It’s better than Mom’s basement because you can have sleepovers without Mom’s permission.

The council meetings are as much fun as a birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese. Recently they talked about how to make Aspen more “welcoming” to businesses. This is long after they banned big businesses and shortly after they demanded a $100,000 tribute to (surprise!) affordable housing from a little gallery that showed local art in an unused hallway.

One of them worried at that meeting that making Aspen more welcoming to business might result in “pop-up” businesses. Don’t you hate it when a business pops up and crashes your business’s welcoming party?

The solution, they speechified, is to add to the city website a “welcoming” page that will be created and maintained by paid “staff resources” (a commodity that is apparently not in short supply – see “city attorney” above). And the “staff resources” will “outreach” to businesses – but not to big ones, little ones or pop-up ones.

Personally, if I were a businessman on the receiving end of an “outreach” from the council boys or their sandbox subordinates, I would immediately (1) bathe in rubbing alcohol, (2) take antiviral medication and (3) flee town faster than you can say “affordable-

housing mitigation fee.”

Yes, we could use a little new blood on City Council. But not too new. This time, let’s make sure it’s from people older than 13.

Published in The Aspen Times on Feb. 21, 2013 at http://www.aspentimes.com/news/6323807-113/columns-columnsivg-apcolorado-apunitedstates