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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

Going to the Dogs

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All this barking, howling, yapping and snarling lately about allowing dogs into affordable housing prompted me to check out the Aspen Animal Control website at http://www.aspen

pitkin.com/Departments/Animal-Safety. It’s one of 43 different city departments, not including subdepartments and not including county ones.

(And, yes, we need every single one, especially the Global Warming Department. And the Sister City Department, where we spend tax dollars to “relationship” with six “sister” cities. And the Map Department, where you can get a map made with your tax dollars complete with a disclaimer written by the City Attorney Department saying it might not be accurate.)

The website contains a “Frequently Asked Questions” page. On that page there are no questions at all, but there are lots of answers. It’s like “Jeopardy!” where the answer is given and you have to guess the question.

The answer given to one unasked frequently asked question is “any dog off its property must be on a leash no longer than 10 feet in length.”

But this answer raises questions beyond the unasked one that it answered. First of all, who knew that the dogs of Aspen own property? Of course, if any dogs would own property, they would indeed be the ones in Aspen. Even after Bernie Madoff fleeced them, they still live pretty high on the hog. Unsurprisingly, this dog property is not affordable housing.

Come to think of it, the website doesn’t say that the property owned by these 1 percenter dogs is real estate at all. Maybe it’s alimony, Land Rovers, royalties, solar-panel tax credits, currency futures and derivatives. (If you need to ask what a derivative is, maybe that’s why you’re in affordable housing while the dogs of Aspen are on Red Mountain.)

Whether they own property or not, they are supposed to be licensed. Those that aren’t are, umm, undocumented.

They say that the cost for the license “will be $6.00 for altered dogs and $16.00 for intact dogs.”  I think “altered” ones are those that have “had a little work done,” as we say here in Glitter Gulch. “Intact” ones are, well, have you heard the expression “big dog”?

While you’re down at Animal Control getting your dog of Aspen licensed or “worked on,” or maybe just showing off your big dog’s big dog, note the statement on its website that “The Animal Safety Division will remove nuisance raccoons and skunks,” apparently in answer to the unasked frequently asked question “What kind of raccoons and skunks will Animal Control remove?”

I appreciate the government answer about removing “nuisance” raccoons and skunks from our houses, even though nobody asked the question, but now I have a follow-up question. Namely, is there any other kind? I can hear the Animal Control guy now: “Oh, yeah, buddy, you got a family of raccoons in the attic chewing up the wiring and one in the medicine cabinet eating the Viagra, but they’re not a nuisance any more than the skunk in the dryer. What do you expect in affordable housing?”

We are cautioned that, this being the government talking, they won’t be removed right away. “There must be alternative measures taken” first, which are not specified. They can’t remove nuisance animals right away because that would be like a (drum roll) – nuisance-animal cliff! First, let’s talk awhile, call one another names and then postpone it a few months. Then do that again.

What exactly would be the alternative to removing a skunk from the dryer or an ADHD raccoon family from the attic? That the resident and skunk undergo joint counseling? No, not the kind of “joint” counseling legalized in the recent election. I mean the kind where you, your husband and the skunk get together and you talk to the stinky critter – and to the skunk, too.

And why do you have to be a “citizen” to get them to remove the nasty thing (no, not the husband)? Do noncitizens have to live with raccoons and skunks? Next, we’ll be asking them to speak English (no, not the raccoons and skunks).

And what’s this about “citizens” anyway? This is Aspen, and we’re comrades, not citizens, and we love one another, doggone it, and if you ever forget it, we’ll send you to Siberia or Vail.

Animal Control boasts that “We answer all questions concerning big game in the area.” Well, not quite all. It goes on to say that if you have questions about “big game hunting or damage to real property,” they don’t answer that kind. Sorry. And there’s no offer to remove “nuisance” big game or even alter it. You got a bear in the kitchen? You’re on your own, buster. Remove or alter it yourself. But whatever you do, don’t do it until you’ve tried and documented every possible alternative measure including Ritalin and “joint” counseling.

Which brings us back to the dog ordinance. Even more puzzling than the reference to dog property is the requirement that the dogs of Aspen must be on leashes. In walking about town and even in the local stores, restaurants, gondolas, buses, theaters, chairlifts, grocery stores, bars, Learjets, synagogues and churches, one would never know.

So next time you’re sprinting up the Ute Trail, sweat pouring and lungs roaring, and you get attacked by a wild and dangerous animal that is off its Red Mountain property and has “had a little work done” on it, tie it up with all 10 feet of a leash 10 feet in length, and muzzle it if necessary to protect yourself from the danger of being bitten, clawed, followed home, slobbered on, licked, marked, flea’d or leg-humped.

Then, and only then, you can safely pet her dog.

Published in The Aspen Times on Feb. 7 at http://www.aspentimes.com/news/6321996-113/columns-columnsivg-apcolorado-apunitedstates

Wringing Out the Old Year

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It’s time to ring in the new year and wring out the old with some reflections on the election, the world, our fair city and, obligatorily, the fiscal cliff.

First, the election. Colorado voted to legalize marijuana in contravention to federal law. Apart from the joy of telling the feds to shove it, the argument for legalization is that it’s no worse than alcohol, and we all know what a good thing alcohol is. Now we’ll be able to get drunk on vodka and high on pot brownies for the drive home.

Speaking of the feds, the re-elected president nominated a new secretary of state, a certain John Kerry, who said that the soldiers in the Vietnam War were “war criminals.” The soldiers he was talking about were the American ones.

Back when Kerry ran for president against George W. Bush, the media were so dazzled by Kerry’s perspicacious proclamations that they declared him real smart. Later analysis of their respective military IQ tests, however, suggested that neither was a rocket scientist, but Bush was probably the smarter of the two despite his Texas accent and his inability to comprehend the criminality of American soldiers.

Kerry did have the sense to marry the 74-year-old heiress to the Heinz ketchup fortune, making him the richest member of the U.S. Senate. But this ketchup money doesn’t flow easily from the bottle. The senior senator from Massachusetts moored his yacht in Rhode Island in order to avoid taxes on it in his home state.

So the Cabinet position that is America’s envoy to the world, held by Thomas Jefferson, John Quincy Adams, Daniel Webster and Henry Kissinger, will now be occupied by a boy-toy to a ketchup heiress who is not as smart as Bush and evades yacht taxes while going around saying that American soldiers are war criminals.

Here in Aspen, we voted whether to spend more (and more) to squeeze electricity out of a streamlet so small that you can wade across without getting your shins wet (or, some days, even the tops of your feet). We voted “no.” Our vote not to spend more, however, has not stopped the City Council from planning to do exactly that.

We know that the council did notice our vote because it scolded us for voting wrongly. If we keep voting this way, then I suppose the council won’t let us vote at all.

When it’s not scolding locals for refusing to spend more, the council is scolding the visitors for refusing to spend less. They should spend less on downtown condos, the council says, because such condos and their rooftop hot tubs smack of “exclusivity.” What we need downtown instead is regulated, subsidized, nonexclusive and tub-free “affordable housing.” That’s council-speak for condos paid for by taxpayers. Other taxpayers. Like the wealthy ones who won’t be allowed to live there.

Wealthy taxpayers who pay for these nonexclusive condos will be excluded from them, but the councilmen themselves won’t be. Rumor is that most of them, including the mayor, are on the subsidized housing dole.

On to the fiscal cliff. The federal government spends about a trillion dollars a year more than it receives. It’s the American way – to spend like the Greeks.

In May, our “leaders” considered what to do about that. Math being math, the only options were some combination of spending less money on expenditures (oops, I mean “investments”) and raising more money with higher taxes on everyone who makes more than the people doing the raising (because that’s “fair”).

After lots of talk, the leaders kicked the can down the road past the election. If they couldn’t agree, then certain spending cuts and tax increases would occur automatically on Jan 1. The net effect would be a small dent in the deficit.

So far, so good. But then the “economists” on CNN said the only way to keep the economy afloat (or at least submerged no deeper) is to carefully avoid denting the deficit. Any deficit dents, they warned, would be like (drum roll) – a fiscal cliff! (They would have called it a fiscal Armageddon but didn’t want anyone to think they are religious.)

Ideally, this undented deficit would go toward “good” things like solar-energy companies, union perks and laptops for the homeless. But it doesn’t really matter so long as we keep the deficit in mint condition for our children and grandchildren so they can repay it by sending the Chinese money that they might otherwise waste on school, housing and food.

Predictably, to avoid the dreaded (another drum roll) fiscal cliff, the leaders on New Year’s Eve kicked the can down the road again, this time for another two months.

So we are in a strange three-step treatment plan, you see, the first step of which is to admit that we have a spending addiction that will kill us, the second step of which is to pledge to stop at a certain date in the future, and the third step of which is to postpone that date over and over.

This will be fun while it lasts. Pass the brownies.

Published in The Aspen Times on Jan. 10, 2013 at http://www.aspentimes.com/news/6320888-113/columns-columnsivg-apcolorado-apunitedstates