Liberal and Loving It

Today's "Sweatshop Schaffer" Report

And the bad news keeps on coming for Bob. What's amazing is there is no real damage control coming from the Schaffer campaign. Their whole approach seems to be refuse to talk about it and it'll go away.

That approach worked so well for Allen's "Macaca moment" that I can see why Dick Wadhams is choosing to follow the same playbook here. (Do you get the feeling that instead of a playbook Wadhams may just have a playsheet?)

First we have yesterday's Post article. This is the most damaging because this is where most people go for their serious in depth news. And it leads with:

At two key moments in the political life of Benigno Fitial — governor of the Northern Mariana Islands and a powerful former ally of now-jailed lobbyist Jack Abramoff — then-Congressman Bob Schaffer was among several Republican U.S lawmakers who stepped in to lend their support,...

Schaffer has also left himself open to being politically destroyed if anyone can find a photo of him meeting Abramoff. In a comment similiar to Hillary's Sarajevo sniper story (do these politicians all go to the same oracle for bad advice?) he said:

I have had no contact with the individuals in the story, particularly Jack Abramoff," Schaffer said. "It's a matter of fiction. That's all I'm going to say about it."

And then this beauty talking to KREX - talk about looking guilty (Bob - running away makes you look guilty, not innocent):

And finally, Talking Points Memo is running with this story big time including the following major inconsistency. Original statement:

"There were some examples of problems that we found, and we raised those with the equivalent of the attorney general," Schaffer said of his visit. But in many others, "the workers were smiling; they were happy."

Latest to Lynn Bartells:

Former congressman Bob Schaffer says the night he landed in Saipan to review working conditions in the U.S. territory, he demanded an immediate tour of a garment factory he heard had an unsavory reputation. A welcoming committee wanted to take Schaffer to his hotel, he said, but he prevailed. He said he found women working in a "sweatshop," and demanded leaders of the Northern Mariana Islands investigate.

The Schaffer campaign is clearly hoping this will go away. I think it will continue to hang around through November, just poping up every week or so - and that is the worst result for Bob. Good news though for Moderate Mark, the Democratic party, and the Amercian people.

SD-18 race update

I haven't heard anything on this race since the convention. No newspaper articles, no emails from the campaigns, no nothing. That's a bit surprising but not that much. We have 4 months until the election and this race comes after the presidential primary and the CD-2 races in most people's mind-share.

But I did notice one interesting thing. I track the search terms that lead people to this blog. There are 5 - 10 a day coming here that searched on "Cindy Carlisle". There are usually 0 searches for "Rollie Heath". Now it could be that Rollie's supporters tend to use the Internet less. It could be that Cindy's core supporters are more active right now. It could be a lot of things...

But if I was Rollie I would not view this as a good sign.

A recall is totally out of line

Ok, we have loads of people proposing a recall of Cowles, Morzel, etc. Now you can file a recall for any reason. You can even win a recall for any reason. But if we approach this responsibly, if we only wish to propose a recall for legit reasons - then no.

Here's the core problem. Macon Cowles, Crystal Gray, Lisa Morzel, & Susan Osborne ran on a platform of promising to strongly control Boulder's growth. They are doing exactly what they promised. Now granted, the vast majority of Boulder voters probably strongly disagree with their proposed building restrictions. But that same majority didn't bother to vote in the last election.

So between those who did vote and put these 4 into office and the remaining voters who chose to not vote, we got exactly what we were promised. So what we need to do is suck it up, fight these proposals as best we can, and wait for the 2009 election. And over the next 19 months the repercussions of this will hit the news and we will get enough voters to bring in a different council.

In the case of Matt Applebaum you do have a legit complaint in that he ran on a platform of taking an independent intelligent approach to his job. And he seems to be jumping on the "lets pass whatever the complainers want as quickly as possible" train. But this is not a change in his promised policies so much as it's an abrogation of his promise to be independent.

Now in the case of Crystal Gray there is a very legit reason to recall her - her Job Issues in Adams County. And winning that recall would probably be a slam dunk.

But for the rest, it's not fair to recall them for voting as they promised. And between Washington School being stopped and now this, we are going to have at least a couple of years of people trying to lock Boulder in time. They've got their's, screw the rest...

A Boulderites definition of a McMansion

Any house bigger than their own...

What about a Tax Impact Study on City Council proposals

Ok, first we have a projected shortfall coming up. I believe (I could not find the Camera article) that over the next 10 years we will be 95 million short.

Yet at the same time we have runaway spending programs like a requested 53% increase that somehow is supposed to reduce our carbon footprint (how is not exactly clear).

We have the City Council proposing to hammer the value of resident's homes, reducing the property tax revenues.

And the good news keeps on coming with sales tax going in to the tank.

And this may be shock to the trustifarians that live here, but the vast majority of people in Boulder work for a living, are uncertain about how safe their job is right now, and don't have much (if anything) in the way of extra money.

Each time the tax rate goes up, more shopping goes out of town and more hi-tech businesses move down the road to Interlocken. We may already be at the point that an increase in taxes will mean fewer total dollars.

So here's a thought. What if the City would include the economic impact of their proposals when they discuss them. It does not need to be that property tax revenue would drop 7.8358% if they pass the proposed brain-dead remodel restrictions. But at least something like property taxes would drop 5 - 9% if it's passed. A rough guess of the impact.

And the same thing for proposed tax increases - how much business will be driven out of town when a tax is increased 53%? When all taxes are collected, will the city even increase it's total take? Or will the increase drive enough business out of town that the total haul is reduced?

After all, if you increase taxes enough even Crystal Gray will spend her working hours shopping outside of Boulder instead of here.

You shall live as I do

Most people in Boulder are pretty normal. A bit more liberal than the country at large, but politics is not something they even think about that much. And those of us with kids, our top priorities are how are they doing in school, how are they doing with friends, is there a problem with drinking or drugs, and - oh my god they have a boyfriend and I'm not ready for that.

Against all that, the family, the job, sports, music, the dog leaving a present on the carpet, what the Boulder City Council does is so low down that most people here are barely aware that we have a City Council. And part of this stems from the fact that the stupidity of most council actions are not important enough to be worth the time to truly research the candidates before voting.

But not always. When Crossroads Mall had totally tanked and was sitting there empty. When people had to drive further to shop and libraries were on reduced hours, then what the City did was enough of a problem that it did require people to pay attention. And so we saw the election of Tom Eldridge, Mark Ruzzin, Suzy Ageton, etc.

And with a council where several members lived in reality, the City got down to working to come up with a mall that would be financially successful. And they did. The new mall has boatloads of tenants and is contributing sales tax once again.

And to reward that success, the voters zoned out in this last election. So we got a bunch of wing-nuts again. It's like national politics where we elect a Republican administration, they wreck everything, then we elect a Democrat to fix it. And once it's fixed, we elect a Republican to screw it up again. Here in Boulder we do the same thing electing people way out in la-la land (so far out I'm not even sure you can describe them as liberal). Then we elect grown-ups to fix their mess.

So we now have a small segment of the City that wants to tell everyone how large their house should be. Because every one of these people knows that there is no reason to have a house larger than theirs. Of course, even among this group they each have a different opinion. But that's ok because they know they are right.

First lets look at the historical part of this. The human race over the last several hundred years has gone from the entire family in a 1 room shack to larger and larger homes. This is what is known as progress.

And this is a key point. You don't see anyone claiming that we should go back to the standard residence of even 100 years ago. What people are doing is picking an arbitrary point, of about 30 years ago, and saying that that point in time is where we should freeze our advancement in our homes.

If you want to see what a town that is frozen in time looks like, go visit Charleston, S.C. It's a nice place to visit but it's only real industry is tourism. If Boulder is to remain an intellectually curious community, a center of research laboratories, hi-tech startups, and alternative energy companies, then it needs to continue to evolve.

The mindset of the Luddites that want to freeze Boulder in place are the antithesis of the intellectual vibrant community that is the Boulder of today. We need to respect our history, but not freeze our historical evolution.

Second, lets look at the mechanics of this. We do have some ugly houses being built. But many of them fit well within the guidelines, they're just butt-ugly. Second, one person's ugly is another's dream home. After all, no one spends hundreds of thousands of dollars to build something they dislike.

And then when people do need to remodel, what are their alternatives? If the extra space is very important to them, are you telling them they should then move to a new home? That destroys the community that develops when the same people stay in a neighborhood long term.

Not to mention, this mostly pushes out families with children. Nowadays most families want individual bedrooms for each child, and a room they can hang out in with their friends. What happens to a community when it has no children? More schools close, businesses close, the tax base is reduced. But even worse is the shuttered businesses and schools (more Washington school fights), a community with no children has no eye on the future. Why would it with no one to pass it on to.

We also have buildings here that make no sense, from Lolitas Market to homes in Chautauqua that are by today's definition too small for a couple with no kids. With housing prices squeezing the middle class out, do we want to exacerbate the problem even more?

Third, you want to preserve Martin Acres? Martin Acres? Do you know what Table Mesa and Martin Acres are? They're the Rock Creek of 40 years ago. It was thrown up as tract homes in the suburbs of Boulder. If these homes need to be preserved then we have become Charleston where nothing can be touched.

All the pops & scrapes in this part of town are doing is upgrading it from the tract homes of 40 years ago to the tract homes of today. This is not changing what this part of town is, it is merely being brought up to date.

Do we need some constraints? Yes. But it needs to be a reasonable thoughtful set of rules that lets us evolve our housing stock. And one that understands that there is a vast difference between Chautauqua and Downtown on one hand, and the vast stocks of 40 year old tract homes on the other.

And on this issue the City needs to pay attention to what the populace of Boulder as a whole wants, not the small loud contingent that wants to tell us all exactly how we must live our lives. Because if you start telling voters that they cannot change their home, and that through your actions you are depressing the worth of their largest asset - trust me, they will once again pay attention to who they elect and replace you with grown-ups.

Finally, a well deserved hat-tip to both the Planning Board and to Ken Wilson - voices of sanity. (I assume Suzy and Angelique have a sane view on this too - but they were not quoted in the Camera.)

ps - I have no plans to pop/scrape my house (it's already large enough).

I'm a delegate!

The results have been posted and I'm a delegate at the state and CD-2 conventions (CD-2 for both Obama & Polis). Next step, getting elected as a delegate to the national convention.

So to all of you reading this who are also delegates to the state/CD-2 convention, as each of you are brilliant, good looking, and all around wonderful people, I ask for your vote.

Update: Results are here.