You might think the lucky recipients of taxpayer-subsidized housing in Aspen would be careful to maintain those houses. But the law of unintended consequences is at work.

Here’s what happens: Houses are bought at prices set by the local government housing authority. Those prices are way less than market value — often an 80 to 90 percent discount. Aspen taxpayers make up the difference.

When the residents resell their houses, their resale price also is set by the housing authority. Once again, it is a small fraction of market value.

Since the government-set prices are so far below market value, there’s no doubt that the sellers will receive that price in full. Whether the houses are in tip-top shape or falling down, the selling prices will be the same so there’s no economic incentive to maintain them. Indeed, the homeowner association reserves established by the residents of the projects for ongoing maintenance are only 22 percent of what is necessary. The maintenance that the other 78 percent is supposed to pay for is simply left undone.

The current debate is whether local government should give the homeowners associations taxpayer money to make up that 78 percent.

But what then? Continue reading →

“You say you want a revolution / Well, you know / We all want to change the world.”

— John Lennon and Paul McCartney

They say a competent prosecutor can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich. Well, this year in politics, people are so angry that they just might elect one to the presidency. People are so angry that they’re mad.

An election that was supposed to be between the wife of one former president and the brother and son of two others has become a train wreck into a Dumpster fire at a homeless encampment.

The people’s anger is justified. Government doesn’t work, and I mean that statement in all senses.

But that’s been the case for a long time. This year, something is different. Two distinct phenomena have fanned run-of-the-mill anger into stark raving madness. One is on the left, and one is on the right. Continue reading →

“Are you Albert?” A stranger asked me that question as we rode up a lift during Gay Ski Week.

Except that his pronunciation of “Albert” put the emphasis on the last syllable and dropped the “t” at the end. So it came out more like “Al-BARE.”

I always try to make our foreign visitors feel welcome and wanted to do the same with this fellow from, I guessed, Argentina. His “Al-BARE” was obviously a Spanish pronunciation of “Albert.” As for the identity of this “Albert” for whom he mistook me, I hadn’t a clue.

Keeping with my welcoming heart, and always on the lookout to impress people with the multilinguality I perceive in myself, answered him in Spanish. “No, mi llama Glenn.”

“Hi, Glenn,” he replied. “I was wondering if you’re Al-BARE?” He remained in English, which was perfect with no trace of accent, with the exception of his Spanish pronunciation of “Albert.”

His insistence on speaking English annoyed me slightly because it reminded me that whenever I’m in a Spanish-speaking country, they always seem to prefer that we converse in English. In fact, they pretend not to understand my Spanish. I’ve concluded that people in Spanish-speaking countries don’t actually speak Spanish.

In any event, I reasoned, I always have to speak English in their Spanish-speaking countries so they should have to speak Spanish in my English-speaking one.

But I digress. I answered in the language he seemed to prefer, and very directly this time. “No. I’m Glenn, not Albert.”

“No, no, no, no-no-no.” He was chuckling and shaking his head. “I’m asking if you’re a bear.”

I looked at him puzzled. “A bear?”
Continue reading →

“Trump is just like Hitler,” proclaimed an amateur politico on a social media site the other day.

I thought that was overblown and said so. Donald Trump is sometimes a buffoon (and sometimes not). But Donald Trump is Adolf Hitler the way Dan Quail is Jack Kennedy — not at all.

The person who posted the Hitler comparison replied to me by listing policies of Trump that he didn’t like. I told him that I shared his dislike for some of those policies but not others. I noted that in any event, these policies fell short of sending people to the gas chambers.

His contention that Trump was just like Hitler, I told him, seemed to just be another way of saying he didn’t like Trump. Fine, but his dislike for Trump does not make him Hitler.

Then I told him that comparing Trump to Hitler is worse than a mere exaggeration. It constitutes a demonization of a person merely for disagreeing politically — a tactic to which Hitler himself was prone. Finally, it trivializes the monstrosity of Hitler and the plight of his victims.

At that, he exploded. He said he could not carry on a discussion with a person like me, who disagrees with him, and implied that I was just like Hitler, too.

Then I remembered Godwin’s Law. That’s the principle Continue reading →

The great man we honored again last week had a dream. It was of a nation where people are “judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

Let’s measure our progress on the 53-year-old dream of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

In some areas, our progress has been impressive. It’s no longer socially acceptable to express racism. There will always be a few misanthropes of various colors, I suppose, but today they mostly hide their racism.

And it’s not just our social constructs that have become more protective but also our laws. It is now illegal to discriminate on the basis of race in hotels, restaurants, housing or employment. The days of Bull Connor and George Wallace barring blacks from public buildings are gone forever.

Freed of those societal and legal shackles, blacks have ascended to the highest levels of government, medicine, law, education, science and business. We’ve elected black mayors in dozens of big cities. A black neurosurgeon is running (as a Republican!) for president.

And he wouldn’t be the first black president. In a moment I thought I would never live to see, we elected a black president seven years ago. His election spoke to the greatness of the nation and its people (can you imagine this happening in Japan or France?), the progress of blacks within it and his own personal achievement as a black man.

But not all is good. Continue reading →

Here’s an embarrassing confession.  After over six years here in Aspen, and nearly a lifetime in Colorado, I’m now an Aspen local.  Not only that, but I also have friends who are locals.

I know myself and I know my friends.  I recognize that no self-respecting visitor wants to be mistaken for one of us.  So as a public service, here’s a handy guide for how to behave in a way that no one will mistake you for a local: Continue reading →

We cheated death for another year, didn’t we? So now it’s time again to ring in the new year, wring out the old one and mop up the rancid drippings with a newspaper column.

Affordable lodging was the big news here in Aspen. The members of the City Council wanted to waive the town’s zoning laws for a hotel on Main Street to provide “affordable lodging” at $400 a night.

Their idea was that Aspenites would be enriched by the presence of the impoverished skiers whom this “affordable lodge” would attract. The voters voted it down.

So why does a mere hotel proposal go to the voters? It’s because the Aspen City Council is too busy with such things as the warming of the globe to look after mundane matters like the will of the locals. So the people passed a referendum to look out for themselves.

In that globe-warming pastime that the local politicos pursue feverishly to the exclusion of local matters, the mayor Continue reading →

Have you ever noticed that people who profess such deepness and profundity that they don’t care about their own money always seem to have an inordinate interest in other people’s money? Up here in Aspen, this paradox thrives.

There are two kinds of people here: The ones who are rich and care about their own money and the ones who are not and care about the same money.

The rich ones can be annoying. For the most part, they are friendly and generous to a fault. But is it really necessary to pay other people to wash your car, clean your house, fetch your skis, wipe your butt and scratch your back?

I say it’s not. And the fact that they pay through the nose for those services doesn’t make me feel much better about it. People should be self-sufficient. They should wash their own car, clean their own houses, fetch their own skis, wipe their own butts and find a friend to scratch their backs in exchange for scratching the friend’s back.

Some of the Aspen rich are trustafarian types or successful gold diggers (and I’m not referring to the miners who died out last century). But most made it on their own. How did they navigate the business world successfully if they need help to find their skis?

The answer, of course, is that Continue reading →

“You lied to me!” So said my 6-year-old daughter to me one merry Christmas.

We always made a big deal out of Christmas. It was the one night that I did the cooking, and that alone made it interesting. We lingered over the food, drank wine and eventually moved on to the entree that’s my specialty, the single-malt scotch.

After the guests had eaten enough of my dinner that they could plausibly pretend they were full, our tradition was to open gifts. We thought that the gifts, and one another, looked better in the dim Christmas Eve lights with a few drinks than in the bright Christmas Day lights with a hangover. The kids often put on a little play.

Eventually, the party ended and the guests went home. After the stockings were hung by the chimney with care, the kids would nestle all snug in their beds in hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there. Hallucinogenic visions of plums and whatnot danced in their sugar-infused heads.

When not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse, the curtain lifted on my own little play. Continue reading →

Let me get this straight: You’re real cool and edgy.

You think global warming is the greatest threat to America, Maya Angelou is better than Shakespeare, people with more money than you have too much and big government is suited for every task except the task of defending the country. Oh, and you’re way into, like, several Eastern religions.

To which I say, “Yawn.”

Come on. You think exactly what your college professors told you to think, exactly what government bureaucrats told you to think and exactly what your friends told you to think — all because your goal in life is to be exactly like them.

And I’m supposed to give you credit for being edgy?

Let’s take a little historical journey into edginess. Continue reading →