August 2008

Members of the Greeley City Council were on the receiving end of a nasty tongue lashing Tuesday evening – from a colleague – after voting 5-1 against the designation of a historic preservation zone in one city neighborhood. “The decision comes after a long and contentious battle between residents aiming to protect the historical nature of the district and those worried about the loss of personal property rights,” reports The Greeley Tribune.

"You are doing nothing to foster the civic pride in this city," Councilwoman Pam Shaddock lectured. "You are doing nothing to approve the aesthetics and the economic vitality of this city. You are doing nothing to increase the quality of life for our citizens you are doing nothing to enhance our future economic development. You are doing nothing to promote good urban design. You are doing nothing to integrate historic preservation into our city. This is a sad day for our city."

Those who opposed the designation were doing something even more important, in my opinion; they were protecting citizens’ property rights against future encroachment by historic preservationists. And these preservationists can become small-time tyrants if given the chance, as folks in Port Royal, South Caroline, recently learned, when violating the town's historic guidelines became a crime, punishable by up to 30 days in jail and $500 a day in fines. Think it can't happen in America? Read about it yourself here.

Tuesday wasn’t a sad day for Greeley, but a day to celebrate, since those residents who want to preserve every historic detail of their properties can continue to do so, while those who want to be able to alter their property without getting prior approval from the aesthetic enforcers, and who don't want to have a historic preservation zone forced down their throats, will have that freedom as well.

And isn't preserving our historic rights and freedoms more important than obsessing over old facades?

Most of the images and words flowing out of Denver this week have been predictable, even boring. But one story stood out from the rest, in terms of what it potentially means for the future of American education.

The Rocky Mountain News reported Monday that a rift may be opening between some Democrats and the teachers’ unions, whose marriage has been among the most stable in modern American politics. At an event at the Denver Art Museum on the day before Democrats began trying to unify behind a single candidate and a coherent message, there was disunity over unions, with some in the party pointing to unions as a major impediment to improvement and innovation in public education.

Here’s how The Rocky reported it:

An eclectic mix of Democratic wunderkinds, tough-talking education reformers and one elder statesman - former Gov. Roy Romer - are challenging their party to step away from teachers unions and return to fighting for the educational rights of poor and minority children.

"It is a battle for the heart of the Democratic Party," said Corey Booker, the 39-year-old rising star mayor of Newark, N.J.

"We have been wrong in education," Booker said of his party and its alliances with teachers unions that put adults before children. "It's time to get right."

Booker was among those who appeared Sunday at the Denver Art Museum to challenge the Democratic Party to reconsider its course on education.

In references sometimes veiled and sometimes blunt, they tackled the party's often- cozy relationship with the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers, which typically support - financially and otherwise - Democratic candidates.

"The Democratic Party is supposed to look out for poor and minority kids," said Washington, D.C., schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee. "That's not the dynamic today," said Rhee, who is battling her city's union over a plan to overhaul teacher pay.

The rousing rhetoric shocked John Wilson, executive director of the NEA.

"I was absolutely stunned at the level of union-bashing," Wilson said. "I think leaders who wish to provide a vision and a plan for improving our schools undermine themselves by alienating the teachers . . . who have to carry out that plan."

Those behind the "Ed Challenge for Change" aren’t proposing anything too radical, at least in my view. The plan, reports The Rocky, includes universal access to preschool, extended school days and school years and – here’s where they run afoul of anti-school choice teachers’ unions – more access to charter schools. But that’s the point: The unions are so reflexively opposed to almost any change or reform, and so vicious in attacking those who support change, that they are even alienating their erstwhile allies among Democrats.

It’s not a good sign for a party seeking unity, perhaps. But for Americans who rank better education as a top national priority, and for teachers who don’t walk in lockstep with the union's politics and policy positions, this rift can only be seen as a hopeful and welcome development.

My former employer, The Colorado Springs Gazette, was kind enough to run a guest column from me today, proposing a new paradigm for managing city parks and open spaces.

This undoubtedly will generate a bristling response from park activists and parks department employees, who've never forgiven me for editorializing against extending the TOPS tax when I ran The G's opinion pages. But given the budget shortfall the city faces, and the fact that the parks department also will presumably have to tighten its belt in order to balance the books, perhaps my little brainstorm will stir some constructive thought and debate.

That's exactly what Local Liberty Online is designed to do.

What if you built a wind farm . . . but didn't build enough power lines to carry the electrical current?

It's not as far fetched as it might seem, as today's New York Times reports. In their haste to throw up wind farms, some people seem to have overlooked the concomitant necessity of expanding the grid that carries the current that makes the light switch go one. In their haste to jump aboard the renewable energy bandwagon, they put the cart before the horse.

"When the builders of the Maple Ridge Wind farm spent $320 million to put nearly 200 wind turbines in upstate New York, the idea was to get paid for producing electricity," writes the Times. "But at times, regional electric lines have been so congested that Maple Ridge has been forced to shut down even with a brisk wind blowing.

That is a symptom of a broad national problem. Expansive dreams about renewable energy, like Al Gore’s hope of replacing all fossil fuels in a decade, are bumping up against the reality of a power grid that cannot handle the new demands.

The dirty secret of clean energy is that while generating it is getting easier, moving it to market is not."

So what's the big deal, you ask? Slap up some transmission towers and build a bigger grid. But it's not as simple as that, as the story explains, and the technical challenges involved pale in comparison with the regulatory and political ones -- most notably, the not-in-my-backyard attitude of Americans who really seem to believe that light comes from light switches.

Backers of not-ready-for-primetime energy technologies are out in force at the DNC, looking for a government crutch to lean on, reports the Denver Post -- showing that the "new energy economy" touted by Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter, Barack Obama and other Democrats is and will be predicated on massive government intervention, from research support to subsidies to manipulations of energy markets through mandates and other means. And if they were looking for a sympathetic ear, they came to the right place.

Here's how the Post described the scene:

"From the eye-catching 131-foot wind turbine on display near the Colorado Convention Center to the onslaught of industry-sponsored events, the burgeoning renewable energy industry is using the Democratic National Convention as its coming-out party.

For some, the hope is to shine the spotlight on their new technologies. For others, the goal is to garner influence with politicians and regulators.

"They drive tax breaks," said Sam Ley, chief designer for Boulder-based Standard Renewable Energy. "They drive laws that affect whether or not HOAs (homeowner associations) can ban renewable energy systems.

"In a new industry like this, the only way any company can survive is if everybody bands together," Ley said.

Band together to get their hands in the taxpayers' pockets, that is, or to get government to regulate them an advantage in the marketplace.

Ron Lehr of the American Wind Energy Association -- who once (not surprisingly) chaired Colorado's Public Utilities Commission -- told The Post that "securing political favor" is the goal. The top priority for Lehr and others in the industry is to see that federal wind and solar tax credits are extended indefinitely. A second priority, according to reports, is approval of national renewable energy production quotas, similar to those that many states, including Colorado, have adopted.

Since as far back as the last energy crisis, I've been hearing and reading about how wind, solar and other renewables are just on the verge of major breakthroughs that will make them cost competitive with traditional, "dirty" energy technologies. All they need is a little assist from Uncle Sam and they'll be able to stand, and compete, on their own. Yet such pronouncements are belied by the chronic inability of these niche energy technologies to deliver on those promises -- and to stand on their own, without leaning on the government crutch.

If they're looking for enthusiastic enablers, they'll find them at the DNC.

It’s possible that terrorists will try to bring America to its knees by driving a car bomb into the Colorado Springs Police Operations Center, which, as The Gazette reported last week, may soon be surrounded with $175,000 security wall, paid for with federal homeland security money. Almost anything is possible, after all.

But the question we should ask, when we weigh the best uses of scarce homeland security dollars, and apply those dollars to actual projects, is whether this scenario is probable enough to justify the expenditure – in light of other things the money might be spent for.

The problem with homeland security spending since 9/11 is that, instead of “playing the probabilities,” most of the people handing out or receiving the cash prefer to “play the possibilities” -- arguing that anything is possible, so any and every expenditure is justified. Colorado Springs Lt. David Whitlock did this when, in attempting to justify the expense, he asked The Gazette, "How many times did planes strike the World Trade Center before 2001?"

The answer, of course, is “zero.” But terrorists had attempted to bring the structure down years earlier, with a bomb in an underground garage, increasing the probability they might strike again. Few could have anticipated that the next attempt would come with airliners, it's true. But there has never been a terror attack on the operations center of a U.S. police department. And it’s highly unlikely, given that terrorists prefer attacking soft targets where civilian casualties will be maximized. Killing police may be audacious, but it isn’t as easy or effective, in terms of sowing terror, as killing civilians.

Some people may shrug the expenditure off because it’s “federal money,” and because it will be spent elsewhere if it isn’t spent here. But there’s no such thing as “federal money.” Every cent that's spent, and frequently squandered, in the name of “homeland security” originates with you and me.

A few members of City Counsel at least seem skeptical of the expenditure. "My gut reaction is, why?" Randy Purvis told The Gazette. "It's still taxpayer money, but for the city budget, at least, it's a passthrough item. It won't take away money from other programs."

As a federal grant, it may not take money away from city programs. But it probably could be shown to be taking money away from higher priority homeland security projects, if one were in a position to see the big picture. Congress just sets aside these pots of “first responder” money, hoping Americans will equate more homeland defense spending with better homeland security, and much of the money gets doled out with little effort to establish priorities or play the probabilities. “Homeland security” has become just another excuse for distributing pork, in short. And this area has gotten its share, as The Gazette’s Pam Zubeck has done a good job of reporting on, here and here.

That’s how the county got a $250,000 Ballistic Engineered Armored Response & Rescue truck, which is designed for disasters but gets used for much more mundane police work, as The Gazette reported. Sheriff Terry Maketa calls the truck a bargain because it was paid for by Uncle Sam. But if you polled federal taxpayers, living in towns that didn’t get a truck, I think they might disagree.

Another way to justify such expenditures is to redefine “homeland security” so broadly that the term becomes all-encompassing – and meaningless. "Homeland security isn't just about catching bin Laden or trying to get the guy sneaking a dirty bomb across the border," Maketa told The Gazette. "Fire and floods have been a part of it, as well as crime at the local level. The feds know the locals don't have basic assets they need. It's an asset we feel is needed."

But handling local crime is a local responsibility. This truck is of absolutely no use in fighting fires or floods or 7 year locusts. And Uncle Sam shouldn’t be handing out goodies like Santa Clause, responding to local wish lists.

"Buying toys for boys doesn't make sense for longterm security," James Carafano, a homeland security expert with the conservative Heritage Foundation, told The Gazette, calling the truck’s purchase “ridiculous.” Federal Homeland Security money, Carafano says, should be reserved for activities or projects that "allow the country to respond as a nation."

"If someone thinks they need that,” says Carafano, "they should go out and buy it themselves."

Hate the thought of having a porn store open in your neighborhood?

Why not just buy the owner out and put it to better use, turning it into a community center or something?

I’ll tell you why not: because that can cost money. And besides, these days you don‘t actually have to own a piece of property to control it, thanks to zoning laws, historic preservation areas and other mechanisms for collectivizing property rights. All you need to do to shut down the porn store is lobby the right elected officials, or show up at the zoning meeting and cause a fuss. Property rights are conditional in today’s America, and that property is as good as yours if you know how to work the system.

The surprising news out of the Boulder area last weekend was that someone actually did things the right way and bought out the porn store.

"Jeff and Vicky Mead had been planning to open a porn shop in the two-story log cabin they own at 14863 Colo. 7 this month, and until recently were promoting the adult store with a large banner outside the building,” reports The Boulder Daily Camera. “But now the couple -- who have found themselves the center of some local residents' fury over the proposed 'Patterson XXX Porn Gallery' -- say they will instead sell the $428,000 building to a non-profit group that wants to convert it to a community center.”

The Meads only hit upon the porn store idea after the county shut down their ATV-rental business, which was housed in the same building. Whether there was an element of payback in their choice of business can’t be determined. But instead of continually trying to fight the Meads on their business choices, critic Margie Patterson finally decided to end the dispute by forming a non-profit, raising some money and buying the Meads out. And that’s the way all such disputes should be settled, in a country that still respects property rights.

It’s a win-win situation – with the added advantage that no one's property rights were trampled as a result.

The Meads will plow the sale proceeds into another business. And those in Allenspark who wanted to tell the Meads what to do with their property now can do with it exactly what they please -- unless some busy-bodies come crawling out of the woodwork, arguing that a community center doesn't belong there.

Detroit, Michigan and Dublin, Ireland: The two cities would seem to have little in common except an intimate acquaintance with hard times. But Dublin, although a basket case in the 1980s, is today enjoying an exciting economic renaissance, while Detroit continues on a downward trajectory.

A thoughtful piece by Ellen Creager in today's Detroit Free Press asks what the Motor City might learn from Dublin's stunning success.

Not everything that worked for Dublin applies in Detroit. The Irish city has a major advantage in that it skipped over the industrial/manufacturing phase, leaping from agriculture to high tech, so there was less rebuilding and environmental clean-up to do. Dublin is a capital city; Detroit is not. And Detroit, though it once had beautiful neighborhoods, lacks some of the inherent charm which makes Dublin a tourist draw. Detroit's infamously high crime rate, as well as 47-50 percent functional illiteracy rate (Dublin's is 15-20 percent), may be insurmountable hurdles to climb over.

But where Detroit -- or any other American city -- can follow in Dublin's footsteps is on tax policy. Here's a key passage:

Just slashing corporate taxes probably won't be enough to duplicate Dublin's success in Detroit. But it might help jump-start the Motor City's sputtering engine. And Detroit, at this point, has little to lose by trying.

"The biggest lesson Dublin may teach Detroit is that when you're on the bottom looking up, you've got to be bold," writes Creager. "When cities reinvent themselves as Dublin has and Detroit is trying to do, pain is involved, and some grief, and finally a rebirth."

Although long known as one of The Gazette's crack reporters, Pam Zubeck now is making a name for herself as a columnist, by routinely producing a "Spyglass" column that favors substance over windy rhetoric -- frequently making it as newsworthy as her straight reporting.

Today's contribution -- in which Zubeck tracks down the zip codes of those leading the push for a rumored county sales tax hike, by way of making the point that the relatively wealthy are least likely to feel the pain that would result -- is a good case in point. Any columnist can pontificate. It's nice to see one that does the homework required to dig up new facts.

(In a related news story, the "G" reports that 200 small business owners have signed a petition opposing any sales tax hike. This story, combined with Zubeck's piece, must have curdled the cream in this morning's coffee for tax hike proponents.)

No, this isn't a spoof put together by comedy writers at "The Daily Show" with John Stewart. It's an actual news story and clip from WCIV-TV, the ABC News affiliate in Charleston, South Carolina, where the City Council is passionately debating the pros and cons -- and the constitutionality -- of an ordinance banning low-riding pants.

Best of all is the part where a backer of the droopy drawer ordinance produces a manikin that models the objectionable fashion trend, evidently hoping that a visual aid will help sway his colleagues.

It's not Comedy Central. It's just another example of local government officials hard at work, looking for a non-problem to solve.

This Local Liberty Online quote of the day comes from Glenn Spagnuolo, co-founder of the protest group Recreate 68, in response to the pamphlets Denver Police are handing out to would-be Democratic National Convention protesters, laying down the rules of engagement.

"We have a pamphlet called the Constitution. A lot of us have read it already," Spagnuolo told the Denver Post.

Touche.

There are a lot of reasons to dislike zoning laws; most notably, because they trample property rights and hand too much power to professional planners and self-important planning boards and commissions. But in extreme cases they can breed real corruption, as this devastating expose in The Chicago Tribune illustrates.

Zoning laws in Chicago obviously serve as just another cog in the city's notoriously corrupt political machine. But that sort of thing might be expected when you approve laws that take away property rights from the individual and collectivize them, leaving the power over land- and property-use decisions in the hands of politicians, their well-connected cronies and a minority of vocal "community activists."

Chicago is an extreme case, no doubt. But the corruption begins with the injustice implicit in the zoning law itself.

Land acquired for “open space” is supposed to stay that way forever, right? Well, not necessarily.

The city of Boulder, a pioneer in the open space movement, is putting a portion of a historic old farm once acquired for open space on the auction block, according to the Boulder Daily Camera. And it’s not the first time the city has returned “public” land to private hands, according to the story.

Part of the farm has become a fiscal drain to maintain, as the story explains. Proceeds from the sale will be put to better use elsewhere in the park system. And surprisingly few protests are being registered, given that this is Boulder. This seems to me like a welcome development, if it helps shatter the taboo that seems to prevail against selling off open space or other parkland, even when doing so makes sense.

We’ve all seen stories about this city’s backlog in building-out parks. We periodically hear that the parks department, like every other city agency, is struggling to make ends meet. Yet the city continually is acquiring more acreage, almost on autopilot, through coerced land “donations” from developers and a trails and open space tax dedicated to purchasing more. At some point, one presumes, the city will have more parks and open spaces in its inventory than it can afford to manage – if that isn’t already the case. At some point, one hopes, its hunger for more land will be satisfied. The alternative scenario is an ever-expanding number of parks, with an ever-expanding claim on the city budget. And let’s not forget that all these acres are permanently removed from the tax rolls.

But where is it written that a park or open space must remain a park or open space forever? We don’t look at most other city or county assets that way. Why should parks be sacrosanct? Sure, county officials were recently heard threatening to sell-off parks in order to meet a budget shortfall. But that was just bluff and bluster, designed to get the public's attention.

Even Boulder has shown a willingness to selectively sell off parcels, when it makes sense to do so. Maybe we should be as open-minded about the possibilities.

Just thinking out loud here, but why not consider placing some sort of cap on the acreage the city can have in its inventory, either as a sum total or according to some per-capita formula, then require that the city, when it hits the cap, make changes in its inventory through sales and reinvestment or through swaps? Proceeds from the sale of underused or less-desirable parcels could be used to purchase something better, or to upgrade existing parks. The city could swap less valuable parcels for ones it values more. Parcels of less utility or value could be returned to private hands, and to the tax rolls. If the city could use the proceeds from the sale of the relatively nondescript blue stem prairie open space, out by the airport, in order to help pay for the arguably more desirable Section 16, wouldn't that be a trade-off worth making?

Of course, this cap-and-trade (or cap-and-sell) approach to managing parkland would require trade-offs. The city would be forced, through this process, to recognize limits, make choices and focus on quality rather than quantity. But that’s part of the problem. Park advocates don’t want to have to choose between the blue stem prairie and Section 16. They want them both; they want them all – even if the city can’t afford to satisfy their ravenous appetite for more parks.

And the city’s parks department doesn’t have to make many hard choices, either, as long as it can convince City Council that parks and open spaces are too politically popular to touch. A steady stream of TOPS revenue and forced land “donations” from developers are continually adding to the city’s land inventory, ensuring that the parks department and its budget will need to grow as well. But whether this can go on forever is doubtful.

What’s proposed wouldn’t mean holding a parks and open space fire sale, or reducing the present inventory of parkland at all. The inventory would continue to grow at a rate commensurate with the population (or whatever other formula one chooses). But a cap-and-trade system would help ensure that the city becomes much more selective about the acreage it purchases or acquires -- and that the city doesn’t acquire more parkland than it can responsibly manage.

The reporting and editorializing on the long-anticipated, much-contested oil and gas lease sale on the Roan Plateau was all over the place on the question of whether it was a success – though I count it as a minor triumph that it even happened, given the obstacles drilling opponents have erected over the last three or four years. The disparity of views, and the rush by the governor and other politicians to spin the issue in their favor, suggests the degree to which emotion and politics have infused the issue. It also underscores the fact that energy policy will be the defining issue of this campaign season.

Managing to capture the cognitive dissonance in a single story, The Denver Post headlined its report, “Roan oil, gas sales a gusher,” which certainly sounds positive. But here’s the Post’s somewhat jarring subhead: “Ritter, industry upset with tally.” In fact, the auction broke the record for an onshore lease sale by bringing in $114 million, which will be split by the feds and the state.

Yet the Post’s editorial page took a pessimistic tack, under the bizarre headline, “Roan, Roan, Roan they Gloat.” Its editorial repeated, with no support, Governor Bill Ritter’s dubious claim that phasing the sale in over a 30 year period, rather than auctioning it all off at once, would have generated much more revenue. “In our view, the modest return on the Roan leases clearly justifies the governor’s efforts to protect the state’s wildlife and other environmental treasures,” said The Post, “rather than selling our birthright for what proved to be a rather modest mess of pottage.”

A “modest mess of pottage?” Hardly. “No lease sale in the lower 48 states had ever generated that much money,” as the Post's reporters pointed out. It wasn’t as much as drilling advocates hoped for, but it far exceeded what the anti-drilling crowd predicted. In the end, it was what the market would bear.

And if the market -- meaning the companies doing the bidding -- undervalued the drilling rights, who’s to blame for that? In my view, Ritter and others in the anti-drilling crowd probably had a lot to do with scaring bidders off. Imagine for a moment that you're involved in the high stakes, high-risk game of energy extraction. Would you place your money on the Roan, given the controversy, protests and litigation it’s generated, or would you look elsewhere? The answer is obvious. "The dark cloud of uncertainty cast by these elected officials and the environmental groups through their lease sale protests, lawsuits and rulemaking efforts grossly impacted the value of the Roan," said the president of the Colorado Oil & Gas Association.

And what’s this about a “birthright” being “sold”? The land is being leased, temporarily, in order to extract a precious commodity below, which would be of absolutely no value unless these energy companies were willing to extract it. The scars these operations will leave on the land will be brief, in the grand scheme of things. And the commodity produced will be sold and re-sold, generating jobs and tax revenues and helping ensure that America's energy supply keeps pace with demand. The $114 million in lease sale revenues is $114 million neither the feds nor the state had before. And the drilling dividend will keep flowing for years to come, as the wells start producing and the companies make royalty payments. It’s melodramatic and silly to spin this as selling-off our “birthright.”

It's also revisionism to suggest that Ritter was objecting to the BLM's drilling plan because he was interested in maximizing state revenues. His true goal obviously was to minimize, if not stop, drilling on the Roan, as a pander to greens. It’s disingenuous for Ritter, who worked so hard to block drilling, to then turn around and complain about the lower-than-projected sale proceeds. But such are the contortions politicians must assume when they suddenly find that the polls, and the people, are against them.

The editorial board of the Rocky Mountain News look the long view, pointing out that the lease sale proceeds are only the beginning of long–term payout. The Rocky blamed “obstruction” by Ritter and anti-drilling groups for driving down the value of the leases. And it pointed out that “royalties Colorado will eventually receive from natural gas production on the Roan - anticipated to be between $400 million and $550 million over the first 20 years of drilling - will outstrip any windfall it might have immediately received from bids on the leases.”

The Rocky rounded out its Roan coverage with two pieces that helped put the issue in context. The first focused on how politicized the issue has become. The second piece focuses less on the political than on the practical reasons why the sale didn’t meet everyone's expectations. Kudos to The Rocky for helping readers get the biggest possible picture of the issues involved.

One of 25 original copies of the Declaration of Independence, touring the country as part of an effort to boost voter registration, will be in display in Denver during the Democratic National Convention, reports The Denver Post. And that's great.

Greater still would be if those in attendance actually take a few minutes to read it.

The choice of Bruce Benson for University of Colorado president wasn't greeted with wild applause, inside or outside the institution. Critics said he was too conservative, and too closely associated with Republicans, to hold such a position, though his predecessor, Hank Brown, was accused of some of the same things and acquitted himself admirably, by most accounts.

But Benson is obviously a quick study and already has mastered one critical job requirement: that he memorizes, and can repeat on cue, the "more money mantra." You know how it goes. Colorado's universities, though "great," are woefully underfunded. Colorado ranks 48th in the country in state spending on higher-ed, putting us in the same league as Mississippi and Louisiana. Colorado is in danger of falling behind, and losing its competitive edge, unless more money flows to the system. Etc. Etc. Etc.

Benson gave this spiel to a group meeting at the Greeley Country Club Wednesday, according to this report in The Greeley Tribune, and it came off without a hitch. He informed the gathering that CU "is riding a wave of good news," reports the Tribune, ticking-off a number of recent triumphs, including the approaching completion of CU's Anschutz Medical Campus in Denver, the $162.5 million in private donations CU took in last year, setting a new record, and the fact that CU ranks 7th nationally in federal research grants.

But then, lest attendees get the impression that CU is experiencing some sort of golden age, Benson felt compelled to rain on his own parade. The current level of taxpayer support for higher-ed is, he said, "not acceptable, in my opinion" -- demonstrating that, in at least one facet of the job, Benson has the right stuff to be CU president.

I come across some amazing, head-shaking stories when I'm doing the daily search for items to post on LLO's news aggregators. But some, like this one, merit special mention.

The story involves a New Castle, Pennsylvania, farm family who may have their cows evicted from a barn because the structure is less than 200 feet from a neighbor's property line, which violates county zoning laws. But here's the absurdity.

The barn is 100 years old.

The zoning law it violates was passed in 1986, and revised in 1999 -- meaning the barn had been there for nearly 80 years before the silly rules were made.

And the neighbor's property line is only closer than permitted because the family that owns the barn sold that parcel in 1994 -- to the people who are now complaining about the barn!

Injustice. Ingratitude. And the inflexibility of local despots who enforce frivolous zoning laws as if they came down from the mountain with Moses. It must be hard for the barn owners to believe they're still living in the "land of the free." This story really does deserve the "Twilight Zoned" tag I slapped on it.

It might also have been headlined, "Orwell's Animal Farm, 2008"

Memorial Health System CEO Dr. Larry McEvoy insisted in Monday's Gazette that he isn’t “panicked” over the enterprise’s vanishing profit margin, and that’s probably a good thing. A good CEO, like a good doctor, must learn to keep his composure when the pressure’s on. But the people of Colorado Springs, who also have a lot riding on the system’s fiscal wellbeing, might understandably want a second opinion about what's ailing Memorial. Many of them might be wondering whether it’s just got the sniffles, or whether the diagnosis, and prognosis, is more serious.

The story lays much of the blame on a “June blip,” noting that patient volume in June was considerably lower than expected, “leading to a $2 million loss.” But some contributing factors seem like more than just “blips.” A combination of lower reimbursement rates, higher costs for labor and supplies and debt payments on two major construction projects are said to be conspiring against the hospital. The Gazette story also mentions that Memorial’s investments lost $5 million in June, without elaborating.

Fluctuations in demand are obviously beyond the control of hospital administrators. But other factors, like debt service payments, labor and supply costs and reimbursement rates, though they obviously fluctuate, shouldn’t take administrators completely by surprise. Without more details, it’s hard to know whether the investment losses were preventable.

But the hospital's cushion was trending downward even before this seemingly precipitous decline, as the following chart, published in The Gazette story, shows:

Memorial Health System net income (profit from operations and nonoperating income)

2003. - $41.7 million
2004. - $33.5 million
2005. - $29.3 million
2006. - $29.5 million
2007. - $18.5 million
2008. (January through June) - $715,000

The silver lining is that the situation finally has City Council members exercising the level of scrutiny and oversight that seemed lacking before, and Springs residents are again seriously debating the pros and cons of having a city-owned health system. The mayor has appointed a special committee to take a closer look at how uncompensated care is impacting Memorial’s bottom line; hopefully, some deeper insights and helpful recommendations will result.

The potentially dark cloud looming behind the silver lining, however, is that Memorial's fiscal health could continue to deteriorate, despite the better level of oversight it's now receiving, and we could before long see a self-sustaining asset become a draining liability, which the city, if it finally decides to get out of the health care business, would have to sell for a fraction of what it was worth three or four years ago.

We had all better hope that Memorial is just down with a common cold, not cancer, and won't at some future date need life support from the city's general fund.

Denver's DA has dropped charges against a suspect snared in a ticket scalping sting outside Coors Field, reports today's Denver Post, because a videotape reportedly shows arresting officers brutalizing the suspect and breaking his teeth. Investigators now have turned their attention to the arresting officers rather than the arrestee. This report coincides with news that the ACLU is suing Denver over what the group calls a pattern of wrongful arrests, stemming from "sloppy" and "reckless" police work.

These are two examples of why this website, Local Liberty Online, will be posting news stories related to what we call "pugnacious" or "paramilitary" policing. One doesn't need to be an ACLU lawyer to recognize that police sometimes go overboard, trampling civil liberties along the way. And in post-9/11 America, it seems to me that we've seen a trend toward militarizing local police, all in the name of boosting "homeland security." I was struck a few months ago, while watching news footage of local police raiding a polygamist compound in Texas, that some arrived in armored personnel carriers, as if they were going into battle with the Taliban. I found this disturbing -- and not just because it seemed a questionable use of homeland security money.

Just a few weeks back, in a case that's become notorious, SWAT officers in one Maryland town smashed in the door of the mayor's house, gunning down his dogs and tying up him and his mother-in-law, though they were guilty of nothing more that living at an address where a drug package was delivered. The local police chief later conceded that Berwyn Heights Mayor Cheye Calvo "appears" to have been innocent. Here's a letter from Calvo to the Justice Department, detailing his ordeal and calling for a civil rights probe. The FBI is investigating.

Calvo points out that this sort of thing might happen to Americans more frequently than many of us imagine. It only came to light this time because SWAT busted in a mayor's door.

But back to the Denver ticket-scalping case for a moment.

I haven't seen the videotape, and I wasn't there. That means I'll have to trust Denver police to get to the bottom of what really went down. But my question is: Why are Denver cops conducting ticket scalping stings in the first place? How is public safety enhanced by busting people for reselling sporting event tickets? Is this a wise and cost-effective use of police manpower? It seems to me that, in addition to a probable case of excessive force, this constitutes an outrageous misuse of public resources.

The Gazette did a good little piece of reporting today with a story about how teacher leave policies impact everything from the student performance to the school district's bottom line. But one part of the story that particularly stood out for me is the response of Harrison School District 2 Superintendent Mike Miles, who continues to show a willingness to raise standards and innovate. Here's an excerpt from the story:

"One area district began addressing the issue last year by offering a monetary bonus for employees who had fewer than seven absences, defined as missing more than three hours in a day. Harrison School District 2 Superintendent Mike Miles said the district's absentee rate wasn't bad, but there was interest in making it better.

In the first year of the program, the full attendance rate - meaning the percentage of employees attending work the entire day - improved from 93.9 to 94.6 between the 2006-07 and the 2007-08 school year.

In all, about 1,650 of Harrison's teachers and support employees earned a check for 1 percent of their salary this summer by having fewer than seven absences. The total payout for the district was about $230,000."

The story doesn't say whether the payout saved the district money overall, but it does touch on the fact that high absentee rates among teachers might have some correlation with lowered student performance, so weighing the costs versus benefits of such an approach isn't so cut and dry.

What's even more encouraging than Miles' willingness to try new approaches is his refusal to settle for "good enough" thinking. Miles "said the district's absentee rate wasn't bad," reports the Gazette, "but there was interest in making it better." I like his attitude. Sometimes, just nurturing an interest in "making things better" can help turn around the internal culture of an organization. Miles seems to be doing that in District 2.

Foes of oil shale development in Colorado like to paint a gloomy picture of the aesthetic and environmental impacts large-scale production would have, and no reasonable person believes there won't be any, given that this isn't a trade-off free world. But what if the companies doing the work could extract significant quantities of this much-coveted commodity without stripping the surface bare or leaving massive scars on the land? How might that alter public opinion about moving forward?

Numerous stories have been written about how Shell Oil, working on private land, is experimenting with a technique for heating the shale underground, then slurping out the hydrocarbons that bleed out. The trick will be conducting such operations on a large enough scale to make it pay; and that's yet to be determined, as far as I know.

The Grand Junction Sentinel reports that Chevron is experimenting with similar, subsurface technologies, only using chemistry, rather than heat, to extract the kerogen. This could make the whole enterprise less energy-intensive, and presumably less costly, than Shell's approach. Company officials say the construction of a pilot plant might be ten years off.

None of this activity, it's true, will impact the energy market in the short-run. But it's very likely, were we able to fast-forward ourselves 10 years into the future, that our need for affordable and reliable energy will be just as acute then as it is today -- meaning that there's no time to waist. The always-sensible Charles Krauthammer has written two recent columns on this subject -- here and here -- I would recommend.

Will such promising technologies change the minds of those who now adamantly oppose oil shale development? I doubt it, because I don't think reason, practicality, facts or economics carry much weight in the highly-emotionalized, over-sensationalized environment in which today’s policy decisions are made. Too many politicians and people want pie-in-the-sky fantasies, rather than practical answers. Until that changes, I hold out little hope for a reality-based energy policy.

It's not just the poor and the powerless who can find themselves on the business end of a bulldozer when their property stands in the way of some grand new business development or "infrastructure improvement" for which government officials are willing to use eminent domain. As this Denver Post story shows, even relatively well-to-do and influential people, like Denver Broncos coach Mike Shanahan, can find themselves targeted for a "taking" when government goes on the offensive. The only difference is, this latter group can play defense.

Shanahan is part of an investment group that owns a piece of property that Denver's Regional Transportation District, or RTD, covets as a bus terminal. And RTD has the authority to use eminent domain to take what it wants, if the owner won't sell voluntarily, which, in this case, they won't.

Unlike average Joes who find themselves facing eminent domain, Shanahan and his partners have the resources and know-how to fight for their property rights when an 800-pound gorilla shows up, suggesting they sell or else. And I for one hope that Coach Shanahan & Co. mount a bruising goal line stance against RTD.

That’s because we all are at risk when eminent domain takings become an easy score for those doing the taking.

"It requires a mandate in order to get people to do what's in their best interests sometimes. It's called change." -- that's Gavin Newsome, mayor of the regulatory wonderland of San Francisco, announcing the roll-out of the nation's most draconian "green" building codes, which, according to one estimate, could cost the city's economy as much as $700 million a year to meet. You can read the complete story here.

This quote exemplifies the arrogance of the better-living-through-bigger-government crowd.

Things are getting personal in School District 11 -- and, for once, we can all probably agree it's a good thing.

A school district once infamous for the bickering and personal animosities between school board members is now getting personal in a different, and better, way, as senior district officials take a direct hand in trying to get drop-outs back in school. Today's Gazette has the full story. Some might be tempted to dismiss it as a gimmick, a "band-aid," or as a sign of desperation in a district where enrollment numbers are dropping. But I'm going to suspend my cynicism for now.

We can all debate what the district should or could be doing to prevent kids from falling through the cracks in the first place. But if the dialing for drop-outs effort signals a sincere and burning desire on the part of district leaders to address the issue, it's a welcome development indeed.

Just asking drop-outs to come back won't resolve all the issues that lead them to leave school in the first place. But knowing that someone in the district cares, and takes a personal interest in their circumstances and future, might by itself make a huge difference.

We keep being told by one side in the climate change debate that much of the science is now settled, and that "consensus" has been reached on the question of humanity's probable role in what's occurring. And this is being used to ratchet-up the pressure on skeptical or wavering politicians to take massive regulatory action in response to the "crisis."

But if researchers working within the same university can't even reach consensus on one small snapshot of this incredibly big and complex climate picture, how confident can we be that consensus exists within the scientific community as a whole?

The Seattle Times reports today that an angry rift has opened between researchers at the University of Washington over the question of whether snow pack in the Cascade Mountains has been adversely impacted by global warming. Some experts inside the university say that it has been; finding that seem to hew to the sensationalist line, but others aren't so sure, and suggest that the alleged loss of snow pack may not as bad as claimed, when one takes a longer view of things, and that other factors might be in play.

If reputable scientists can't even agree on what's happening to mountain snow pack in their own backyards, where they can study it first hand, how can they agree on the ultimate causes of climate changes that are global in scope?

Being able to responsibly manage public lands, and national forests especially, requires being able to take the long view -- to think and plan in time increments of 20, 50, sometimes even 100 years. And that's a major problem in the United States, given the public's short attention span, its expectation of instant gratification and, in the case of forest management, its frequent unwillingness to sacrifice short-term aesthetics for long term benefits.

This story in today's Boulder Daily Camera illustrates what I mean.

Boulder County, working in tandem with the state's Forest Service and researchers at Colorado State University, is removing hundreds of trees in the Bald Mountain Scenic Area in an attempt to "return the area to its pre-settlement state," reports the Camera. But some folks living nearby, and who visit the area, can only see the short-term scenic impacts, which they object to. Their untrained eyes see Colorado's dense forest thickets as healthy and normal, even though these stands are unnaturally overgrown, making them especially prone to wildfires and disease. They can't understand that the short-term removal of some trees will improve overall forest health in the long-run. All that matters to the critics is what the forest looks like now, today, when they go hiking there.

And this illustrates, in a nutshell, the public relations challenge facing federal land agencies, who need to confront a forest health crisis but frequently find their hands tied by the ever-present threat of litigation from radical, zero-cutting groups (who portray any removal of trees as a return to clear-cut "logging") and a public that can't see beyond short-term aesthetics and take the long view. These factors, along with the usual tape and what one former Forest Service chief called "analysis paralysis," largely explain the lack of meaningful response to the crisis.

Until we can overcome these hurdles, as well as good old bureaucratic inertia, little can or will be done to tackle the forest health problem in Colorado.

One additional note: It's odd to see so many environmentalists pulling their hair out about an alleged climate "crisis" of vaguely understood origins, predicated on computer models that predict what might happen hundreds of years into the future, even while a much more tangible and preventable ecological catastrophe unfolds right before their eyes.

Well, yes, we do seem to be lab rats in the eyes of the social engineers out there, who use incentives or coercion to “condition” us to live ecologically-correct lifestyles.

One such lab experiment is underway on Boulder’s Pearl Street pedestrian mall, where city officials have altered the proportion of recycling bins to trash containers in an effort to get the lab rats to drop the right items in the right receptacles.

Take note of how Lisa Green, who serves as urban parks manager for Boulder’s Parks and Recreation Department, describes the effort to promote recycling on the mall. “We really worked on trying to help people adapt their behavior more easily by putting recycling next to trash bins,” she told the Boulder Daily Camera -- sounding more like CU grad student, feeding corn kernels to pigeons, than a parks director dealing with human beings. Most social engineers are savvy enough to use more diplomatic language when describing their experiments.

Will the city's "stimulus" prompt the correct behavioral "response" from the lab rats walking the Pearl Street mall? Only time will tell. The city ought to get some Psychology 101 students from CU out there to monitor and record the results, as part of their lab work.

So, smile and wave next time you dispose of something on the Pearl Street mall; not only are you doing your part to save the planet, but you're helping advance our knowledge of the bahavioral sciences.

When the retail giant Wal-Mart proposed opening one of its stores in Durango, there was the usual outcry about how it would put local mom and pops out of business, destroy the town's ambiance and suck the life out of the rest of the local economy. Ten years after the store opened, despite the opposition, Durango has survived it, according to a story in today's Durango Herald. None of the horror stories have come true.

At least one former Wal-Mart opponent now even seems a convert. "I didn't support Wal-Mart coming in then, either," Carol Ann Canzona, a 22-year Durango resident and retired teacher told The Herald. "But quite honestly, I try to balance my support. Wal-Mart saves a lot of us who can't afford the luxury of paying more for basic supplies or appliances. By going there for those things, it allows the common folk to support our local people, too."

Ten years ago, Durango's downtown business district accounted for 56 percent of all sales taxes paid. Today, the formerly low-revenue-generating part of town where the Wal-Mart was located (which has since then also added a Home Depot) accounts for 41 percent of all sales tax revenues, with the downtown business district brings in 35 percent. And the overall pie has grown considerably, which has been good for Durango.

The tourists haven't stopped flocking to charming downtown; no one goes on vacation to visit out-of-town Wal-Mart stores. But the wider array of shopping options and lower prices have been a boon to locals.

But don't expect such stories to silence Wal-Mart-haters, or allay the fears these economic alarmists generate in the public at large, because much of the criticism is really ideological in nature -- and aimed at what Wal-Mart, as a capitalist success story, symbolizes.