I’m told it’s a good day when you get to say “motherfucker” in federal court

Posted on February 16, 2017 by Eric Verlo

The Colorado Springs Gazette was not amused. Nor was the Denverite about my testimony yesterday in US district court, seeking an injunction against the Denver International Airport’s free speech permit. The city attorney tried to discredit me by forcing me to recite for the federal judge the full unabridge text of the sign I held at DIA. It was a riff on anti-Nazi cleric Martin Niemöller’s oft-paraphrased parable: “First they came for the Socialists, but I said nothing, etc”, this time foreshortened as a visceral response to Trump’s Muslim Ban: “-and we said NOT TODAY [strong expletive]!” We argued about whether my message was “welcoming”. I assured her that it was very warmly received and could not be interpreted as anything but uniquivocal solidarity. So I read it forcefully, resisting the inclination to lean into the microphone on the last word. Afterward my attorneys assured me it’s a good day in their line of work when you get to say MOTHERFUCKER in court! Judge William Martinez restricted hearing testimony to the single day (Wednesday) and promised to rule on the preliminary injunction by Friday, February 17.

A lesson the US forgot about Iraq? Prosecute war criminals like General McMaster, don’t spread their “lessons”

Posted on November 26, 2013 by Eric Verlo

COLORADO SPRINGS– Whose fault is it that America is “forgetting the lessons of Iraq and Afghanistan”? We never learned them… Instead of prosecuting war criminals like General “H.R.” McMaster, fans of neoliberal genocide like the Colorado Springs World Affairs Council celebrate the yahoo and let him infect public minds about how the atrocity of TEL AFAR was a victory and not the crime against humanity it resembles. What was this bastard’s kernel of wisdom about his fine-tuning of a counterinsurgency technique which dates to America’s Indian Wars? Don’t be afraid to call genocide a “win”. Uncritical Gazette reporter Tom Roeder quotes McMaster saying Americans should be “unabashed.” Unabashed! Goddamn moral degenerate and we stand him up in front of crowds without a noose and scaffold! We have only ourselves to blame that our blimpneck officers congratulate themselves for their lessons learned.

Gazette not only blocks story of local fracking protest, but assigns goon to disrupt it

Posted on December 17, 2012 by Eric Verlo

COLORADO SPRINGS, COLO.- This past Tuesday saw the largest demonstration yet against oil and gas drilling in Colorado Springs and the ugly practice of hydraulic fracturing. Several dozen fractivists allied with Colorado Springs Citizens for Community Rights (CSCCR) and Occupy were joined on the steps of City Hall by Colorado College students who’d marched from their campus with banners and posters denouncing fracking. You didn’t hear about it did you? After the rally everyone filled the council chamber to give 3-minute personal testimonials that ran for two hours. That too went unreported, in particular by the Gazette, who had two reporters in the room, one who’d conducted interviews, and both who took notes during the presentations. But neither produced a story — an odd dereliction of responsibility you might say. Even more odd was the role played by Gazette editorial page writer Wayne Laugesen who ultimately opined on the city council’s decision to postpone their vote, as “caving to anti-energy activists”, offering no details. Laugesen actually interjected himself into the rally outside as a lone counter-protester, interrupting interviews being filmed for TV stations KRDO and KKTV. When they asked Laugesen to let them do their job, the goon replied that he was doing his. So the Gazette was not satisfied to blackout reports of the community rally, but aimed to sabotage it as well.

Whose job was Wayne Laugesen doing exactly? Was he confusing his publisher for the overseers who hold his tether: the pro-industry PR mill Americans For Prosperity? It could be. But the Gazette is now hardly distinguishable from contract stink-tank corporate profiteering advocacy. When conservative mummies Freedom Communications supervised the Gazette, the pretense was tax-cutting, tax-dodging libertarianism. The Gazette’s new owner made his billions in corrupt oil, real estate and privatization schemes, so prospects are looking dim for the region’s daily paper to offer authentic news. Having their editorial hit-man on the ground as a pretend grass root weed killer is a disturbing development that must not go unchallenged.

Contrast the Gazette blackout and the relatively tepid coverage by the weekly Independent, with the monthly African American Voice which gave the previous anti-fracking rally a front-page, full color, two-page article, whose theme accurately accused the city council of being “out of touch with the community.” AAV publisher James Tucker has participated in several of the rallies and understands whose interest he represents.

On the other hand, Tuesday was the umpteenth time the Gazette has ignored the rising community effort to oppose the oil and gas lobby. For many months of city council meetings, Gazette correspondent Daniel Chacon has dutifully sat at his stenographer’s seat and witnessed testimony after testimony from community voices without reporting a single one. On one particularly contentious council meeting in November, Chacon summarized the council’s decision without mentioning the overwhelming community presence.

This Tueday’s voices were joined by EPA-whistleblower Wes Wilson and environmental activist Phil Doe, who’d come from Denver to testify before the Colorado Springs council. Phil Doe made an earnest plea for council to support the people of Longmont, who had just succeeded in voting in a ban against facking. It seemed an improbable request, to ask the Springs city council to back the people of Longmont, while council opposed supporting their own. But Doe’s request highlighted the incongruity of our council’s stand. Would they take the side of the oil industry against the electorally established will of the people of Longmont? How utterly undemocratically corrupt of them if they do not.

But that’s council, and there is still time for their constituents to pin their ears if they continue to pretend their only masters are the oil players. With his gentle logic, Phil Doe offered city council a redemption it can’t refuse. Unless of course, his act and their response goes unreported.

It’s time the Gazette is called out for what it is, not just a propaganda arm for regional kleptocrats, but a corporate mercenary spoiler, willing to stoop to unprecedented lows to fowl public well-being.

El Paso County Clerk Wayne Williams wants voter registration fraud evidence pulled from net

Posted on September 27, 2012 by Eric Verlo

Romney supporter, 20-year-old Mormon Victoria Bautista, registering only Republican voters COLORADO SPRINGS– A young voter registration activist, by admission soliciting only Mitt Romney supporters, was caught on video saying she worked for the El Paso County Clerk, mistakenly as it turns out. Local Dems have run with the story while Clerk & Recorder Wayne Williams and the Colorado Springs Gazette, both notorious GOP bullies, insist the viral video be taken down because it misrepresents the truth, missing the point about WHO was misrepresenting the truth. Whether the young woman spoke in error, she and perhaps others are representing themselves as county representatives, and the clerk’s damage control is revealing. After clarifying that his office does not employ partisan foot soldiers (although examples abound of Democrats being purged from his staff), Williams scolds only the video taker for “spreading disinformation”. He does not warn citizens to question volunteers who pretend official status, nor does he offer evidence of reprimands or special retraining. Of course all sides are protecting the identity of the 20-year-old Victoria Bautista. Why? At 20 she’s not getting any smarter, or educated obviously. I hardly think it serves our society to coddle anyone screwing with civic participation. Many of our current officials are evidence of what happens when you nurture mediocrity in politics. Are we so hard up we want idiots in authority? I think that’s a characteristic best pruned aggressively like you would rot.

One man’s war hero is another’s snitch. Iraqi informant Jasim Mohammed Ramadon is also an American rapist.

Posted on August 17, 2012 by Eric Verlo

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo.– Haha. Iraqi “war hero” Jasim Mohammed “Steve-O” Ramadon was granted asylum in the US after snitching on his countrymen, his tribe, and own father, as a youth informer for the US Army. An American soldier brought Ramadon back to Ft. Carson and praised him as a war hero in his memoir. Now Ramadan has been getting himself into trouble for drunk driving and beating women. Recently, he and four other Iraqi expats were arrested for the violent sexual assault of a neighbor, probably the everyday rape M.O. of American soldiers in occupied lands. I’m laughing because while Ramadon betrayed his dad, beat his girlfriend, and now faces charges of rape, local teabag Red White & Blue guy Jim Cross stepped forward as character witness for Ramadon, saying “his heart is in the right place.” Does being a conservative jingoist mean you have to hit every sour note?

I was reminded of Cross today because our City Hall fracking protest was interrupted by the stereotypical blimp-neck sticking his smartphone in our faces with lame gotcha questions, beginning with the usual insincere “So what’s this about?” Today’s idiot was no brighter than Cross, and thought he’d caught us up because we protested oil drilling yet drove there burning fossil fuels. These guys are almost worth having cameras turned on them, so dopey are their leading questions and smug oversimplifications. This one seemed too dumb to actually be of interest, but it turns out we could have unmasked a local media bully. I learned only later that our camera-wielding heckler was the Gazette’s editorialist Wayne Laugesen. So now I’ve confirmed my suspicion that Mr. Laugesen’s relentlessly backward editorials must be cribbed verbatim from right-wing PR mills. For all their nauseating inanity, the editorials are too consistent with the corporate talking points to emit from the moron we saw today. Of course, one man’s idiot is a ditto-head’s intellectual. Laugesen trailed us as we walked to lunch, but filmed it like we were running away from his lard ass.

Heads kept down in Colorado Springs as professional gunman, Army Ranger ‘Little Monster’, threatens rampage

Posted on July 23, 2012 by Eric Verlo

COLO. SPRINGS– The CSGT morning headline described Aurora shooter: GUNMAN WAS LIKE ASSASSIN GOING TO WAR, but the next news cycle warned of a pro, this time an Army Ranger, cruising the city, who’d flown from Fort Lewis, Washington with the intention of killing his ex-fiance, her new boyfriend, then himself. The 5-foot-5 Sgt. Joshua Johnston Daner, a special forces soldier nicknamed “Little Monster”, has three guns, “violent tendencies” and possibly an injured hand from punching a wall. If you think having to look out for one Army Ranger is bad, imagine a city in a US war zone, Iraq or Afghanistan where Daner served for example, bracing for teams of “Little Monsters”, a death squad of Rangers, or brigades of regulars behaving with less discipline than special ops, with the authority to hit you as they would a wall.

With no clue to the whereabouts of said ex, Colorado Springs residents are bracing for a city wide free fire zone, though a drive-by at a strip-bar seems the most likely scenario. If you’re not chatting up a stripper looking to scam a soldier for their life insurance, you’re probably not in the line of fire.

So far the Gazette has this:

Daner has served eight four- or five-month tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, said Mark Edwards, an Army Human Resources spokesman. He most recently returned in February 2011 from a five-month tour in Afghanistan, Edwards said.

Daner entered the Army in 2003, completed ranger training in July 2006 and has been stationed at Fort Lewis since around that time, Edwards said. Daner has received numerous military commendations, including the Afghanistan Campaign Medal with one campaign star, as well as the Iraq Campaign Medal with one campaign star, Edwards said.

Army Rangers are a group of highly-trained troops who specialize in airborne operations, along with raiding facilities and enemy compounds, according to the Army. The 2nd Battalion of the 75th Ranger Regiment is stationed at Joint Base Lewis-McChord.

No reports yet of a Daner rap-sheet, though obviously investigators should look to his deployment record for priors.

Colorado police brutality retrospective: the 1934 Relief Strike Battle, UP story “Girl Radical Leads Mob in Denver Riot”

Posted on July 22, 2012 by Eric Verlo

If one image captures the “Relief Strike Riot” of October 30, 1934, it’s of Patrolman CV Satt who continues to fire his service revolver after he’s felled by a bottle thrown by a striking picketer. Although Colorado newspapers were anti-union, their accounts vary enough to reveal the escalation of violence for which the DPD was responsible and for which they and the newspapers I’ll bet have never apologized. This article will be the first of a series to unearth the newspaper accounts which documented the events of Oct. 29 through Nov. 3, 1934, mostly because the police tactics and media defamation are remarkably similar today.

(Caption on above photograph: “This remarkable photograph was taken when the rioting between Denver police and “relief strike” picketers was at its height at W. Jewell ave. and the Platte River yesterday. Patrolman C. V. Satt is shown rising after he had been struck over the head with bricks and a shovel. He has his service pistol in his hand, ready to fire at his assailants, but Sergt. Henry Durkop is restraining him.”)

INTRODUCTION: THE BATTLE
As with many “riots”, the confrontation of Oct. 30, 1934 was instigated by the abrupt arrest and detention of a union organizer. What follows is an entertaining eyewitness account which attempts to defame the picketers and laud the police officers for their restraint, although the other reports and photographic record suggested otherwise.

Colorado Springs Evening Telegraph, October 31, 1934, page 1, column 8: GIRL RADICAL LEADS MOB IN DENVER RIOT — FERA Project Pickets Spurred Into Battle by Woman Believed Imported Agitator By DAVIS CAMPBELL, United Press Staff Correspondent

DENVER, Colo, Oct 30 (UP)– A dark haired, attractive girl led demonstrators into hand to hand battle with police here today, as the picketers, under alleged communist leadership, sought to force a strike of Denver FERA workers.

The girl, who was believed by police to have been an imported communist sympathizer, was the spearhead of the rush of demonstrators who attempted to rescue their arrested leader, Gene Corish, 35, of Denver, from the hands of police.

I followed the demonstrators from the time they gathered with the intention of picketing the FERA projects. Police believed they planned to descend on a project at Alameda avenue and Cherry creek. Instead they headed for another at Evans street and the Platte river.

FERA Workers Fight Reds.

There they rushed into a group of FERA workers and sought to take away their tools. The relief workers fought back. But, by the force of superior numbers the demonstrators were winning the spirited battle when police rushed up.

Several picks and shovels had been thrown into the stream.

The police leaped into the midst of the hand to hand fighting. They seized Corish, who appeared to be the leader of the rioters, and dragged him to a patrol wagon.

Instantly the girl leader of the rioters set up a cry of “Don’t let the (here she used an unprintable epithet) have him” and she started toward the patrol wagon swinging a shovel someone had wrenched from a worker.

Others joined the rush. Bricks and clods flew thru the air toward the little band of a dozen husky policemen, outnumbered about 50 to 1 by the rioters.

The patrolmen formed a cordon around the patrol wagon, and retreated slowly toward it, fighting every step of the way, but using only their clubs and fists. They very apparently were seeking to avoid serious injury to anyone.

Officer Felled by Bottle.

Suddenly a beer bottle flew thru the air and struck one of the patrolmen (I learned later he was Carl V. Satt), squarely on the head. Satt dropped like a log.

A rioter stood over him with a shovel in his hands, apparently ready to swing another blow at the unconscious man.

Driven to desperation by this development, police drew their pistols and fired what sounded to me like more than 30 shots.

A rioter dropped, wounded thru the hip. He was Henry Brown, later found to be superficially wounded.

I think Patrolman Marshall Stanton shot him. Stanton told me later he believed this was the case.

I was certain, as I watched from some distance away, that I saw two other rioters drop, but, if others were wounded, they were carried along by their fellows and were not taken to hospitals.

Rapidly the ranks of the demonstrators broke, giving ground before the police fire. Several paused long enough to hurl bricks and rocks such as those which had already injured Sergt. James Pitt and Sergt. Henry Duerkop.

The police made 10 arrests in all.

Thru all the violence, FERA workers sided with police. They appeared determined not to give up their jobs.

INTRO 2: PHOTOGRAPHS
From the Rocky Mountain News, October 31, 1934, page 4

Caption reads: “A group of the “strikers” parading near the Cherry Creek relief project. Only 21 bona fide relief workers in Denver left their jobs yesterday to strike.”

Caption reads: “This view was taken just before police and so-called relief striker started their bloody battle at the Platte River near W. Jewell ave. yesterday. The arrow points to Patrolman C. V. Satt, who was struck in the head by a missile and critically injured. Other patrolmen are shown on duty around the patrol wagon, as one of the picket leaders is being placed inside.”

Caption reads: “During the heat of the battle. This view shows the action in the encounter between police and strike picketers on the Platte River yesterday. Two of the picketers, knocked down by policemen, are shown lying on the ground.”

Caption reads: “After the smoke of battle. This shows the battleground where strikers and police met yesterday just after all the action had ceased. Two strikers are shown down on the ground and beyond them is Patrolman C. V. Satt, who was perhaps fatally injured when struck by missiles of the strikers. He is prone on the ground but has pulled out his revolver.”

Caption reads: “R. W. Rankin, a relief supervisor, shown waiting for the ambulance after he had been struck over the head by a patrolman following a private fight at the strike demonstration held yesterday at Civic Center. He suffered a severe scalp wound.”

Caption reads: Henry W. Brown, who was shot in the hip during the encounter between the demonstrators and police on the Platte River yesterday. He is shown here as he lay on a cot in county jail after his wound had been treated in Colorado General Hospital.”

INTRO 3: NEWS HEADLINES

CS Gazette, (AP) Oct 29, 1934:
Relief Strikers March on Capitol – Governor Refuses to Talk to Crowd When One ‘Red’ Won’t Keep Still

Rocky Mountain News, Oct 30
‘Relief Strikers’ March On Capitol, make Demands – Threaten Violence at Projects Today If Officials Do Not Grant All They Seek
Will Rogers – Says Bread Line Is Encouraged by Deficit of New York Stock Exchange
Young Folk Lambast Older Generation For Getting World Into Present Mess – No Punches Pulled as Boys and Girls Have Their Say

CS Evening Telegraph, Oct 30,
RELIEF RIOTERS BATTLE DENVER POLICE
Agitators Shot and Four Officers Injured as Mob Tries to Foment Strike – Blazing Guns Disperse Communist Led Crowd, Radio Car and Gas Station Burned, Score of Attackers Hurt, FERA Workers Refuse to Walk Out
Girl Radical Leads Mob in Denver Riot – FERA Project Pickets Spurred Into Battle by Woman Believed Imported Agitator

RMN, Oct 31
POLICE ARMY WITH MACHINE GUNS WILL GUARD FERA WORKERS TODAY
Force of 300 Officers Will Use Bullets and Tear Gas If Necessary to Protect Relief Workers From Molestation – Agitators Threaten Violence After Yesterday’s Bloody Clash
Witness Says Police Fired When Driven Back to Car – Gives Graphic Account of Rush by Screaming Men and Women Who Volleyed Rocks at Officers

CS Gazette, Oct 31,
RESUMPTION OF VIOLENCE IN DENVER STRIKE FEARED
City Tense After Bloody Riot on South Platte – Barricade Erected at Table Mountain, to Be Visited Today by Agitators

CS Evening Telegraph, Oct 31,
DENVER QUIET BUT TENSE AFTER RIOTING
Mob Gathers But Fails to Carry Out Threat to March on projects – Police Precautions Against Further Outbreaks Nip New Demonstrations; Report Agitators on Way to Foment Trouble in El Paso County – Mob Gathers in Englewood but Fails to Carry Out Threat to March Against FERA Projects
Don’t Expect Any Agitator Trouble on C. S. Relief Jobs p1, c7
Mountain at Golden Resembles Fortified Castle as Workers Prepare to Resist Strike Mob p1, c7

New York Times, Oct 31
‘Hunger Marchers’ Routed at Albany; Rioting in Denver – Many Injured in Denver – Relief Strikers Attempt to halt Federal Project–One Shot Fighting Police, p1, c1

RMN, Nov 1
Relief Strike Riots Subside as Police Act – Agitators Fail to Start Anything at Various FERA Projects
Pretty Girl From Illinois Finds Denver Police Nice p4, c1

CSET, Nov 1
Roundup Ends Denver Relief Strike Threat – With Agitators Arrested, Leaderless Mob’s Spirit Broken; Plot to Spread Disorder in State Fails
U.C.L.A. Branded Communist Hotbed

RMN, Nov 2
File Charges Today Naming 15 as Rioters – Two of Group Face Fine of $1,000 and Year in Jail If Acts Are Proved, p14
College Students Battle Radicalism – Form Vigilante Committee at Coast School

Are Colorado Springs Citizens Being Gagged On Fracking Issue?

Posted on May 16, 2012 by NMT

Our colleague Lotus has initiated some fruitful correspondence on the subject of the still-impending fracking of the Pikes Peak region. In light of the City’s abrupt cancellation of the May 17 public hearing, we’ll present excerpts of his emails and telephone notes here.

Are Colorado Springs Citizens Being Gagged On Fracking Issue?

The fracking hearing was cancelled. The more I learn about how the fracking issue is being dealt with in Colorado Springs, the more it looks like citizens have very little room for input. This even seems to be true of the way the City Council Advisory Committee on fracking was run – very little room for public input.

The letter from Councilman Val Snider below seems to be saying that the public will only be allowed to respond to the recommendations of the advisory committee, will not be allowed general input concerning the issue of fracking.

It appears that 4-5 people from Huerfano/Las Animas Counties, who have been harmed by fracking, may be willing to speak to the city council and the public here in Colorado Springs. But the process seems to be so closed that it does not appear likely that these people who were harmed will be allowed to speak, allowed to warn people here in Colorado Springs what may be in store for them if they allow fracking in Colorado Springs. The informal Council meetings do not allow for public input. The formal meeting only allow for 3 minutes of input on subjects not on the agenda. And what will be on the agenda may not allow for general input, will be limited to discussion of the recommendations of the committee.

I read articles about how the El Paso County Commission dealt with fracking, and they ignored the recommendations of their own planning commission when they watered down their regulations. Where is the protection of our water, land and air when it comes to fracking? There does not seem to be much of any.

Lotus

From Colorado Springs City Councilman Val Snyder:

Hi Lotus,

The city will not be having any public meetings on fracking. The city will have public meetings on the recommendations of the Oil and Gas Committee on areas of potential regulation for oil and gas activities. The first public meeting on this is May 24, 6-8pm, at the City Administration Building.

There will be opportunities for public comment before City Council, as the potential oil and gas regulations work their way through the process. The first is tentatively scheduled for June 12, a formal Council meeting.

…

Thank you for your writing.

Val

From a telephone conversation with May Jensen:

Anti-Fracking Info From Mary Jensen & Other Info
(From my notes, so hope is accurate.)

I have been wondering why people from other communities who have been harmed by fracking (their land, water, personally, etc) have not been asked to speak to the local Colorado Springs City Council, El Paso County Commissioners, etc. So I finally located the author of a letter to the editor of the CS Independent, Mary Jensen, who has a doctorate in applied clinical nutrition.

Mary Jensen’s March 8-14, 2012 email:

Fracking concoction by Mary Jensen:

Across the state and the country, there is documented evidence of wells being contaminated by chemicals used in oil and gas fracking. Yet Gov. John Hickenlooper recently demonstrated how supposedly safe fracked water is by taking “a swig of it.”

I am incensed at the example he’s setting — playing Russian roulette by drinking water that may or may not have been sanitized for a cheap publicity stunt. He need only look as far as his own state to see the irreparable harm done to our people, our livestock, our air, our water and our lands.
Here are some materials Hickenlooper might have ingested in his fracked beverage:

• Benzene, a powerful bone-marrow poison (aplastic anemia) associated with leukemia, breast and uterine cancer. It may also cause fatigue, skin and mucous membrane irritation, and narcotic behavior including lightheadedness, disorientation, loss of consciousness and coma.

• Styrene, which may cause eye and mucous membrane irritation, neurotoxic effects in the central and peripheral nervous systems, loss of consciousness and death.

• Toluene, which may cause muscular incoordination, tremors, hearing loss, dizziness, vertigo, emotional instability and delusions, liver and kidney damage, and anemia — besides potential harm to developing fetuses.

• Xylene, with cancer-causing and neurotoxic effects, which can cause reproductive abnormalities and death through respiratory or cardiac arrest. More toxic than benzene and toluene!

• Methylene chloride, which may cause cancer, liver and kidney damage, central nervous system disorders and worse.

• Or any of more than 1,000 other safe “food additives” used by the oil and gas industry.

Hickenlooper is welcome to come down to Huerfano and Las Animas counties to talk with the ranchers and other folks who have been irreparably damaged by these poisons.

— Mary Jensen, Ph.D.

From telephone conversation with Mary Jensen on 5-12-12:

Mary especially emphasized that we should get Josh Joswick to speak to our elected leaders. Josh Joswick: commissioner in southern Colorado’s La Plata County, which successfully fought state regulators and companies in court for a say in oil and gas production.

http://www.chron.com/business/energy/article/Drilling-threatens-nature-Colorado-residents-say-1968302.php

Josh Joswick is now a Staff Organizer, Oil and Gas Issues the San Juan Citizens Alliance Staff Organizer, Colorado Energy Issues josh@sanjuancitizens.org Josh brings nearly 20 years of experience in dealing with the oil and gas industry to the position of Oil and Gas Issues Organizer. He served three terms as a La Plata County Commissioner from January 1993 to January 2005; in that capacity, locally he worked to see that La Plata County’s oil and gas land use regulations were not only enforced but expanded to protect surface owners’ rights. Josh has dealt with numerous agencies, and legislative and Congressional elected officials, to uphold the rights of local governments to exercise their land use authority as it pertained to oil and gas development, and to assert the right of local government to address with the environmental impacts of oil and gas development.

http://www.sanjuancitizens.org/otherpages/contact.shtml

http://www.spoke.com/people/josh-joswick-3e1429c09e597c10008191b9

Mary Jensen said there are probably at least 4-5 people who have been adversely affected by fracking that would be willing to travel to Colorado Springs in order to speak to the Council. Many people have gone to court and signed a settlement that they later learned prevents them from speaking to the press. Many of these people have spent everything they have fighting the fracking companies in court.

Silencing Communities: How the Fracking Industry Keeps Its Secrets
http://truth-out.org/news/item/9004-silencing-communities-how-the-fracking-industry-keeps-its- secrets

See attached two page fracking information add that was run in the LaVeta Signature and Huerfano County Journal. Organizers paid over $2,000 for these adds.

Mary mentioned that 6 people in her area have died of brain cancer, and another person has brain cancer.

Mary Jensen went on to say that she had heard that drilling down around Trinidad was disastrous in terms of contaminating many wells, but she did not have specifics. Her understanding is that the gas company declared bankruptcy and walked away from it all. (Contaminated wells are not likely to be usable for 100 years.)

In one of the Gazette articles, see below, it said that the Colorado Springs moratorium on fracking ends May 31, 2012. (A reason to extend the moratorium would be in order to provide more time to revise the regulatory structure.)

Mary said that fracking, this dangerous method of oil and gas extraction, is not more effective than simply drilling for oil and gas. Read: Deborah Rogers Transcript of “In Their Own Words: Examining Shale Gas Hype”

http://preservethefingerlakes.org/?p=127

Mary said that there is now a network of 14 anti-fracking organizations. The contact for getting on the Grassroots EnErgy activist Network (GREEN) is Citizens for Huerfano County, Kelly Kringel, kkringel@gmail.com

The CHC website is http://www.huerfanofrack.com/.

Also there is going to be a Colorado Grassroots Fractivist Summit, Jun 9, 2012

Mary stated that it was important that I visit the website TEDX http://www.endocrinedisruption.com/home.php and learn about the 600+ chemical used in fracking hundreds of which adversely affect the endocrine system.

http://www.endocrinedisruption.com/home.php

Mary said another important resource on fracking is A Primer for Local Governments on Environmental Liability

http://www.mrsc.org/subjects/environment/envliabprim.pdf

She said that the president of Citizens for Huerfano County, Kelly Kringel, kkringel@gmail.com , would be able to provide me with access to this document. The CHC website is
http://www.huerfanofrack.com/

On http://www.huerfanofrack.com/ I located POW: Protect Our Wells appears to be a mainly Colorado Springs based group. The president is Sandy Martin, 719-351-1640, sandra@protectourwells.org .

Other board members also seem to have CS area phone numbers

http://www.protectourwells.org/ ,
http://www.protectourwells.org/BOD.html .
http://www.huerfanofrack.com/
also listed the Sierra Club
http://rmc.sierraclub.org/ppg/
and Green Cities Coalition, which I am already familiar with.
http://www.greencitiescoalition.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=88&Itemid=30

Both of these organizations have people on the committee advising the Colorado Springs City Council on fracking.

Mary said that Perry Cabot from Colorado State University in Pueblo was helping people in her area with base line water studies. These are needed in order to later prove well contamination.

Mary said the Land Owner’s Guide To Oil and Gas Development by the Oil and Gas Accountability Project was another important document. And also the book Oil and Gas At Your Door: 970-259-3353.

Citizens for Huerfano County President, Kelly Kringel, kkringel@gmail.com, asked in an email if I knew Mary Talbott. I do not, so I did a search and came up with:

Mary Talbott & fracking issue:

Commissioner to energy company: ‘We’re scared of you’

http://www.gazette.com/articles/drilling-127253-county-approved.html

Citizens, county respond to frack attack

(Talbott, who is retired from the El Paso County Department of Health and Environment and does not live near prospective drill sites)

County, city leaders to get a present on Tuesday

(She plans to hand them a copy of “Split Estate,” a 75-minute DVD about drilling issues in Rifle, Colo. )

http://thecountyseat.freedomblogging.com/tag/el-paso-county-commissioners/

Talbott presented fracking report to El Paso County Board of Health (bottom p 3)

http://www.elpasocountyhealth.org/sites/default/files/11_14_11_Minutes.pdf

What has happened in El Paso County…Majority of Commissioners Ignored head of own planning commission, and the recommendations of the Commission!

Gazette article:

County adopts slimmed-down oil and gas regulations

ANDREW WINEKE
THE GAZETTE

http://www.gazette.com/articles/talbott-129368-denver-citizens.html

El Paso County commissioners on Tuesday narrowly approved a basic set of regulations to govern oil and gas drilling in the county.

The Board of County Commissioners voted 3-2 to approve a proposal that was significantly scaled down from what the county’s planning commission approved earlier this month. The regulations govern transportation, emergency response, noxious weeds and, controversially, water quality issues related to drilling.

Commissioners Peggy Littleton and Darryl Glenn objected to the water quality regulations, arguing that the county was overstepping its authority because the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission also regulates drilling-related water issues.

“I think it would be irresponsible for us to open ourselves up to lawsuits,” Littleton said.
The Attorney General’s Office and oil and gas commission director Dave Neslin have expressed concern over the county’s proposed rules, both in the version approved by the planning commission and a trimmed-down version the county’s planning staff developed last week, arguing that the county can’t regulate areas where the state has its rules in place.

However, commissioners Amy Lathen, Sallie Clark and Dennis Hisey said that water quality was too important to leave up to the state.

“I really don’t mind pushing the envelope when it comes to our water quality,” Hisey said.
The water quality monitoring regulations adopted by the county are similar to what the oil and gas commission has agreed to in other counties, requiring wells to be monitored initially for a baseline measurement and then at one, three, and six-year intervals after drilling begins.

The commissioners scrapped most of the rules proposed by the planning commission, including measures that would have governed setbacks from structures and property lines, mitigation of visual impacts and noise and impacts to wildlife. The commissioners will instead try to address those issues by working with the oil and gas commission on an intergovernmental agreement.

Getting some kind of oil and gas regulations in place was vitally important for the county, since a moratorium on oil and gas permits expired at midnight Tuesday and the county had no other regulations in place. Houston-based Ultra Resources has applied to drill six wells in El Paso County, four in unincorporated parts of the county and two more in Banning Lewis Ranch, inside the Colorado Springs city limits. The city imposed its own moratorium and set up a task force to study oil and gas regulations. The task force plans to make a recommendation to City Council by early May.
All of this was decided in a meeting that stretched nearly nine hours Tuesday. Several dozen speakers weighed in on the proposed regulations on each side of the issue.

Jeff Cahill, who lives near the Corral Bluffs Open Space, said that the proposed drilling has already hurt his property values and made it difficult for he and his wife to sell their home.
“They say they’re not going to impact us,” he told the commission. “Well, they’ve already impacted me.”

Steve Hicks, chairman of the El Paso County planning commission, urged the commission to pass more stringent regulations such as those approved by the planning commission.

“At times, there needs to be extra regulation where the state doesn’t go far enough, and this is one of them,” he said.

Other speakers praised the economic potential of expanded oil and gas development in the county.
Bob Stovall recounted his experience as an oil and gas lawyer and a city attorney in Farmington, N.M.

“Air is pretty clean there. Water is pretty clean there – and that’s after 100 years of oil and gas,” he said. “If oil and gas is around in this county, it could be good for us and it can be done well.”

Tisha Conoly Schuller, president and CEO of the Colorado Oil and Gas Association, said the county’s new regulations were a good framework to build on.

“The El Paso County commissioners made significant progress today,” she said. “The rules passed are 90 percent within the guidance provided by the Attorney General. There are still a couple of important issues to work through, but I am confident that the county is serious about finding common ground, and after seeing the progress made today, we will continue to work toward county regulations that are protective of the environment and within the scope of the county’s jurisdiction.”

Read more:

http://www.gazette.com/articles/county-132696-water-quality.html#ixzz1ujNiqAjK

Split Estate: an eye-opening examination of the consequences and conflicts that can arise between surface land owners in the western United States, and those who own and extract the energy and mineral rights below. http://splitestate.com/

http://www.splitestate.com/video_clips.html
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?rh=n%3A2625373011%2Ck%3Asplit+estate+dvd&k eywords=split+estate+dvd&ie=UTF8

“split estate,” in which landowners have surface rights but someone else owns the rights to the underground minerals. Josh Joswick : commissioner in southern Colorado’s La Plata County, which successfully fought state regulators and companies in court for a say in oil and gas production.

http://www.chron.com/business/energy/article/Drilling-threatens-nature-Colorado-residents-say- 1968302.php ;

http://www.spoke.com/people/josh-joswick-3e1429c09e597c10008191b9

Gasland, a documentary on fracking.
http://www.gaslandthemovie.com/whats- fracking/affirming-gasland ,
http://www.gaslandthemovie.com/
http://gizmodo.com/5905909/gasland-the-definitive-documentary-on-fracking

Frack-happy Ultra Petroleum is the city’s largest private landowner. What kind of neighbor might it be?

Ultra Petroleum Corp., which owns subsidiary Ultra Resources…has most of the leases and permits in El Paso County and Colorado Springs

http://www.csindy.com/coloradosprings/close-up/Content?oid=2422410

The unconstitutional National Day of Prayer: yes, its advocates live here

Posted on May 12, 2012 by Eric Verlo

Oh for God’s Sake. Is there no end to Colorado Springs’ dumbshittedness? The Colorado supreme court rules against the constitutionality of a national Day of Prayer, to the objection of, the National Day of Prayer Task Force, whose headquarters are HERE in Colorado Springs! Of course the annual proclamation is a violation of the separation of church and state, and the NDPTF doesn’t plan to appeal the decision, but they’ve put out the call for you to appeal it, and they want Governor Hickenlooper to defy the court. Who are these litigious theocratic fascists? Oddly the Gazette article paraphrased the group’s press release without attributing its statements to any spokesperson, perhaps the Gazette is embarrassed for them, you’d like to think. I shall not be surprised if next I learn that Colorado Springs submits an application everyday for its anti-intellectual prowess to be recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records.

Real estate is not for you

Posted on March 8, 2012 by Eric Verlo

Here’s how real estate works, though not for you or me, or the millions of Americans losing their homes to foreclosure. The Gazette recorded real estate developer Lars Akerberg, reacting to the foreclosure of the Chidlaw Building which he bought in 1993 for $2 million. “It kind of hurts in a way.” Lars is actually defaulting on a 2006 loan for $14 million, only $1 million of it repaid. The article doesn’t mention how much of that went into the building, to whom it was paid, or the property’s current value, so Akerberg can probably say “It’s a little bit emotional, but what can you do?” because he’s losing $2 million but gets to keep an undisclosed part of the $13m. The Gazette article is a lesson in real estate, banking, and how the media obscures the swindles. Akerberg adds the salt, I think talking to you and me: “But that’s the way things are. You can’t help it.”

Legalismo

Posted on October 21, 2011 by Steve Bass

This is a direct copy of the email i sent earlier today and then copied and pasted some before it dawned on me it would be much easier and more effective to post it here. Collins is a law professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder. His referenced comment appeared in the Colorado Springs Gazette on 18 Oct, after my arrest but before the paper got the news to rectify a time-frame misconception i tossed around earlier. The version of that story is dated 17 Oct, but the paper version came out the following morning.

I remain without legal representation and will accept any offer to confer, but no tapdancers to take the case. I’m not so stupid as to imagine i can learn the Byzantine procedure of Our shameful legal system before the 8th of November well enough to get the point across if i represent myself, but neither will i accept representation from someone who will not take my approach.

Professor Collins:

I am the guy arrested for camping in Colorado Springs.

Although the perfectly certain fact has yet to sink in amongst many of my cohorts here in Colorado Springs, i am well aware that the point you made for the CSpgs Gazette the other day is entirely true. No-camping ordinances are by no means unconstitutional. This fact highlights the argument against the amendment of that original document by many of our founders fearful that the enumeration of some rights would expose others to attack. Current events managed to plop a soapbox and peculiarly focused bullhorn directly in my lap. I intend to plead not guilty on grounds that no-camping laws violate the pre-constitutional right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” and that this case is exemplar of the general and drastic erosion of human rights in the U.S., and across the entire globe. I am not particularly concerned as to the outcome of the case, but extraordinarily pleased at the opportunity to publicly state a few sentiments i believe by observation to be both common and woefully unarticulated.

I remain unbacked by any legal practitioner and i’d love your input, discussion, advice, council, suggestions, or connection, in any “and/or” configuration that suits your fancy.

Warmest Regards,

Steve Bass

“Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken.” –Oscar Wilde

(Reprinted from Hipgnosis)

Colorado Springs corruption detectives sniff desperation of lottery ticket clerks

Posted on August 29, 2011 by Eric Verlo

You’d think Colorado Springs’ many kleptocrats, considering our locale’s famously embarrassing lower than average IQ, must be stupid enough to get caught. Other than the odd treasurer with a gambling habit, law enforcement is not going after them. Instead, according to an article in today’s Gazette, local detectives are policing convenience store clerks, exposing the corruption of workers who have to tender anything over a five into a time-lock safe. A Colorado Lotto sting operation busted two out of twenty clerks surveyed this weekend who pretended their customers had losing tickets, and who later tried to redeem the tickets for themselves. One of the corrupted employees worked at the west side Farmcrest, now she’s on the lam, so I have a personal interest in calling the sweep an entrapment.

Obviously. In her shoes, a likely pretty awful daily grind, what might you have been tempted to do?

Here’s how it worked: the special Lotto detective, yeah, I carry a badge, hits random ticket outlets, equipped with a trick ticket which when fed into the Lotto equipment registers as a $100,000 winner. This is handed to each clerk under the pretext that the pretend-ticket-holder wants to know if his/her ticket is a winner. If it is, hurrays all around, the secret shopper leaves congratulated without further ado. If the clerk palms the ticket, inserts a bum ticket kept handy, and tells the mystery shopper theirs is a dud, the detective returns to the office to lay in wait for that clerk to visit in person to claim to the “prize”.

Now the story doesn’t say that particular clerks were targeted based on flagged irregularities, or for having redeemed a suspicious percentage of winning tickets, or for having entered the same non-winning ticket at repeated intervals during the same work shift. Actuarial predictors could probably narrow the hunt, but there the prey becomes perhaps too crafty. Instead the mystery shoppers cast a wide net, sweetened with a $100,000 lure.

You may think I’m too soft on a miscreant clerk betraying her fellow poverty-wage peers, those who tithe what they can’t afford for the regular vicarious, virtual delusion that any successive investment in the lottery could deliver them into riches. Perhaps it’s more obvious to her than to most that with lottery tickets the payoff is in holding the ticket, the dreams you entertain, before you confirm it’s very very unlikely to be worth more than nothing. Perhaps she knows the only way you’re going to quit the destructive habit is to lose the last umpteenth time. I know in Cripple Creek when I saw a slot machine paying out, or heard someone tell of returning from Las Vegas with a positive cash balance, I thought, oh no, that only encourages the idiots. Perhaps a lottery sales clerk gets to know her regular customers and knows how severely each cannot afford the deprivations which their gambling compels.

Of course the Lotto secret shopper is not going to be confused for a regular. But who knows what profile undercover officers project. Maybe they’re nasty customers, someone a clerk would hate to see win. I have no idea. Imagine you are that detective, eager to trip someone up, with the scruples of a condescending law enforcer who suspects all. I’ll bet you’d be as rude as your undercover video camera allows. If the clerk isn’t alerted by your undercover behavior, it might be the creepiness of your insincerity that prompts her to tell you your ticket is not a winner. Her disdain may even be compounded by the factor that you can’t even verify the ticket yourself at the DIY kiosks. On top of that you’re an asshole.

At the core, what you’ve done is dangle $100,000 in front of a clerk who earns minimum hourly wage, who’s not permitted to work more than 20 hours a week and thus has to hold two or three jobs, earning no overtime. You’ve targeted a person who is cannon fodder for armed robbery holdups, without cause. It’s a tribute to the average clerk’s honesty, or a sign of their heightened state of fright, that more do not fall to temptation.

The Colorado Lotto’s pretense for exemption from the state’s otherwise fairly puritanical isolation of gambling communities is that it’s tolerated because it funds Colorado’s park system. The contrivance of this Lotto police sting operation suggest the program also aims to supplement municipal and correctional system coffers.

You tell me whether publicizing such successful stings gives people more or less comfort in the lottery’s integrity. I’d be inclined to say no. If the Lotto really wanted, system safeguards could easily subvert the best efforts of dishonest clerks.

I draw consolation in thinking this entrapment scenario prompts an obvious defense for my poor Westside victim. She told the undercover shopper that the ticket was not a winner. In fact it was not a winning ticket, it was a fraud.

The Wondrous Tale of Brer Lamborn, Brer FOX & Obama the Tar Baby. Uncle Remus and Racism in Colorado Springs.

Posted on August 15, 2011 by Eric Verlo

COLORADO SPRINGS- If US Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-CO) remembered one thing from the Uncle Remus stories, it was not to touch that Tar Baby! You know, the one Brer Rabbit mistook for a cute black infant who would not tip his hat to his better. Or was that a Porch-Monkey? Colorado’s 5th District is unclear about the distinction if the local media and Fox News are to be believed. Either term refers to a poor person whose sticky problems become your “quagmire” if you ignore your natural prejudice to their skin color and you let them touch you. Can a representative of bigots be bothered to know if a racial slur is offensive? According to Lamborn, he can’t. More important, the congressman reiterates –as he professes his apology to people taking umbrage at racism he hadn’t intended to express– is: NOT TO TOUCH THAT OBAMA!

To be clear, Doug Lamborn hasn’t apologized to his constituents, he’s only claimed to have sent President Obama a letter, assuring all that Obama, the black untouchable, will have the grace to forgive him as “a man of character”.

And so this Uncle Remus tale simply goes on…

The story so far
Lamborn calls black US president a Tar-Baby, public outrage ensues, Gazette newspaper lends support to Lamborn’s excuse that Tar-Baby wasn’t used in racist sense. Protests held by NAACP, community groups and local progressives, all which Lamborn refuses to meet. Lamborn office erects sign NO PROTESTS.

ACT II: Lamborn office calls for his supporters to rally, presumably under the “no protest” sign. His office issues a press release: AP, Fox News, national and statewide outlets report before the fact that LAMBORN SUPPORTERS RALLY. Huffpo and Springs activists scramble to get images of said protest sanctioned despite “no protest” sign, find none. Local TV station KOAA which had depicted rally with a photo, hours before it was alleged to happen, omitted to mention photo was from file, conveniently unfocused and likely of a past year election event.

With every shenanigan, the theme resounds: the Colorado Springs establishment supports what Doug Lamborn said about Obama being a Tar Baby.

Racism in Colorado Springs
No one is in denial about the unsavory support behind Doug Lamborn. So does Colorado Springs support his bigotry?

Does the Tea Party shit in Acacia Park? You should see those clan gatherings, you can’t find a parking space for blocks, then it’s a sea of hate-filled white faces, with Doug Lamborn right there up front.

The comment section of every local media blog overflows with indignation that “Tar-Baby” is being construed to be racist. Commentators assert their preference for Freedom of Speech over Political Correctness.

BTW, Colorado Springs is as segregated as Chicago, with black neighborhoods, churches and schools. Many lives never cross the path of another of different ethnicity, so we’re blameless actually when we conclude there’s no racism here.

Except toward Hispanics, grouped conveniently with illegal immigrants, who don’t count, by definition, according to our favorite definition: legality. Same as used to apply to slaves.

The Pikes Peak region was a hotbed of clan activity in the 1930s, and obviously before that. At the turn of the century, the good folks of Limon had to hold up a lynching, make the poor young black boy wait hours in the November cold because hundreds wanted to come on the train from Colorado Springs to see 16-year-old Preston Porter burned alive at the stake.

Lynchings of Native Americans weren’t even recorded, being as they were, sanctioned as vermin control. It was seldom that white men distinguished themselves by speaking out in defense of Indians. Pikes Peak volunteers rode with Colonel Chivington to commit the Sand Creek Massacre.

Today downtown Colorado Springs boasts a lone statue of an African-American, a William Seymour, among the city notables immortalized in bronze. His is the only likeness made to take off his hat, outdoors, I kid you not.

Speaking of which, that was Tar-Baby’s offense.

Brer Rabbit and the Tar-Baby
Brer Rabbit was passing by the little black figure, and called out a friendly hello. But Tar-Baby wouldn’t answer when spoken to. When he wouldn’t even take off his hat, Brer Rabbit figured he’d teach him a lesson. Apparently, it’s not inappropriate to clobber some status of people if they’ve disrespected you.

Of course that was the only way Brer Fox’s plan was going to ensnare the rabbit, to mire him in the tar.

You might ask, how did Brer Fox know that Rabbit was going to mix it up with the Tar Baby? Would Rabbit have laid his hand on the baby if he’d been white? Would it have mattered if a white baby didn’t answer to his greeting?

Put aside that the Tar Baby expression became a racial slur in itself, the original Tar-Baby character impersonated an African-American child who didn’t show the expected deference to a rabbit.

The accompanying images reflect the changing visual representation of Tar-Baby. He makes his first appearance in an early chapter of the Uncle Remus Tales (as collected by Joel Chandler Harris) called “The Wonderful Tar-Baby Story.” Above is one of the original illustrations by artist A.B. Frost. There Brer Fox creates a “baby” made of tar to lure Brer Rabbit into his clutches.

The next images are from Disney versions. First the animated film SONG OF THE SOUTH, then the children’s books which followed.

Disney famously has not released Song Of The South after its theatrical run. The depictions were too ethnic, and Tar-Baby recalled the black-face entertainment that ought not to have so amused white audiences. Black-face is what passes for a negro face to whites. Similarly, a baby made of tar passes for a negro, but only in exaggeration. Oblivious to many, apparently, is that African-Americans are not by any approximation black. If Brer Fox had made a baby out of milk, would white people confuse its color for their flesh tone?

Disney rewrote the tale for its children’s book series, making the tar baby this time out of glue. Not only that, but they gave him ears to resemble a rabbit. This preempted confusing him for a human baby, black or white. Now Brer Rabbit could be seen taking him for his kin, which of course shifts the premise, and might puzzle some children to wonder why Brer Rabbit is so quick to come to blows.

Uncle Remus
Some will probably ask in earnest: are the Uncle Remus tales racist? No, but their context is complicated. The stories emerged from the plantation South, from storytellers who lived in slavery. The lessons imparted are universal, but the particulars were obviously crafted to help slaves come to terms with their unchallengeable fate. Shall I quote a few passages to see if you get the idea?

Brer Tarrypin, he lay back up dar, he did, des es proud ez a nigger wid a cook possum.
–chapter 10

He scrape it clean en lick it dry, en den he go back ter wuk lookin’ mo’ samer dan a nigger w’at de patter-rollers bin had holt un.
–chapter 17

Dey er mighty biggity, dem house niggers is, but I notices dat dey don’t let nuthin’ pass. Dey goes ‘long wid der han’s en der mouf open, en w’at one don’t ketch de tother one do.
-chapter 27

How about this wrenching bit from A Story of War?

Nigger dat knows he’s gwineter git thumped kin sorter fix hisse’f, en I tuck’n fix up like de war wuz gwineter come right in at de front gate.

From chapter 33: Why the Negro is Black:

ONE night, while the little boy was watching Uncle Remus twisting and waxing some shoe-thread, he made what appeared to him to be a very curious discovery. He discovered that the palms of the old man’s hands were as white as his own, and the fact was such a source of wonder that he at last made it the subject of remark. The response of Uncle Remus led to the earnest recital of a piece of unwritten history that must prove interesting to ethnologists.

“Tooby sho de pa’m er my han’s w’ite, honey,” he quietly remarked, “en, w’en it come ter dat, dey wuz a time w’en all de w’ite folks ‘uz black—blacker dan me, kaze I done bin yer so long dat I bin sorter bleach out.”

The little boy laughed. He thought Uncle Remus was making him the victim of one of his jokes; but the youngster was never more mistaken. The old man was serious. Nevertheless, he failed to rebuke the ill-timed mirth of the child, appearing to be altogether engrossed in his work. After a while, he resumed:

“Yasser. Fokes dunner w’at bin yit, let ‘lone w’at gwinter be. Niggers is niggers now, but de time wuz w’en we ‘uz all niggers tergedder.”

“When was that, Uncle Remus?”

“Way back yander. In dem times we ‘uz all un us black; we ‘uz all niggers tergedder, en ‘cordin’ ter all de ‘counts w’at I years fokes ‘uz gittin’ ‘long ’bout ez well in dem days ez dey is now.

But atter ‘w’ile de news come dat dere wuz a pon’ er water some’rs in de naberhood, w’ich ef dey’d git inter dey’d be wash off nice en w’ite,

en den one un um, he fine de place en make er splunge inter de pon’, en come out w’ite ez a town gal.

En den, bless grashus! w’en de fokes seed it, dey make a break fer de pon’,

en dem w’at wuz de soopless, dey got in fus’ en dey come out w’ite;

en dem w’at wuz de nex’ soopless, dey got in nex’, en dey come out merlatters;

en dey wuz sech a crowd un um dat dey mighty nigh use de water up, w’ich w’en dem yuthers come long, de morest dey could do wuz ter paddle about wid der foots en dabble in it wid der han’s.

Dem wuz de niggers, en down ter dis day dey ain’t no w’ite ’bout a nigger ‘ceppin de pa’ms er der han’s en de soles er der foot.”

And my favorite passage, called Turnip Salad:

“How many er you boys,” said he, as he put his basket down, “is done a han’s turn dis day? En yit de week’s done commence. I year talk er niggers dat’s got money in de bank, but I lay hit ain’t none er you fellers. Whar you speck you gwineter git yo’ dinner, en how you speck you gwineter git ‘long?”

“Oh, we sorter knocks ‘roun’ an’ picks up a livin’,” responded one.

“Dat’s w’at make I say w’at I duz,” said Uncle Remus. “Fokes go ’bout in de day-time an’ makes a livin’, an’ you come ‘long w’en dey er res’in’ der bones an’ picks it up. I ain’t no han’ at figgers, but I lay I k’n count up right yer in de san’ en number up how menny days hit’ll be ‘fo’ you ‘er cuppled on ter de chain-gang.”

“De ole man’s holler’n now sho’,” said one of the listeners, gazing with admiration on the venerable old darkey.

“I ain’t takin’ no chances ’bout vittles. Hit’s proned inter me fum de fus dat I got ter eat, en I knows dat I got fer ter grub for w’at I gits. Hit’s agin de mor’l law fer niggers fer ter eat w’en dey don’t wuk, an’ w’en you see um ‘pariently fattenin’ on a’r, you k’n des bet dat ruinashun’s gwine on some’rs.”

What about “nigger”?
When Russel Means writes of today’s economic and anti-democratic troubles, and addresses America’s newly impoverished middle class by saying Welcome to the Reservation, this is the wisdom I think he’s looking to impart. Welcome to niggerdom, Nigger.

With that word now struck from Huckleberry Finn, the concept of “nigger” becomes harder to grasp and can’t teach us its lesson.

Listen to Uncle Remus talk about what it means to be a lowest class being, beneath the interest of humanity, untouchable, as government functionaries like Doug Lamborn would prefer the underclass laborer remain.

It’s against the moral law for niggers to eat when they don’t work. AND
I ain’t handy with figures, but I lay I can count on one hand how many days it’ll be before [“knocking around” will land you niggers] in the chain-gang.

I suggest you reread that last passage of Uncle Remus in its original. Now I’ll try my hand at the last half of that phrase:

It’s against the moral law for niggers to eat when they don’t work, and when you see them apparently fattening on air, you can just bet that ruination is going on somewhere.

OMG the Colorado Springs Gazette Telegraph agrees Obama is a Tar-Baby

Posted on August 9, 2011 by Eric Verlo

YES OF COURSE my surprised is feigned, but not my embarrassment. How in the world does a newspaper of not insignificant distribution (okay, readership perhaps) not restrain itself from supporting a bigoted remark like Congressman Lamborn’s? Whether the racism was inadvertent or idiotic, at best the comparison of America’s black president to a “Tar-Baby” could have been remarked upon, if one didn’t want to condemn it, but the Colorado Springs Gazette chose to support its Tea-Party libertarian by belittling criticism that the reference to the Uncle Remus stereotype was racist. In historic perspective it recalls the days when Colorado newspapers endorsed lynchings, and later the Klan. In essence that’s not ancient history. People no further away than Denver can dismiss Lamborn as typical of Pikes Peak mouth-breathers, and the Gazette editorial page confirms them. Indignation doesn’t begin to touch it.

No America, justice has not been done

Posted on May 2, 2011 by Eric Verlo

This didn’t always need explaining– lynching and body snatching are INJUSTICES. There used to be an understanding of what “taking the law into your own hands” meant. Killing someone outright doesn’t bring them to justice, and I’m not alone to assert that killing someone -even after a trial- is premeditated murder. We’re not hearing any such voices on the media unfortunately. Even in the days of mob lynching, the crowd once drained of its blood-lust would sober to the crime it committed, often masked. That said, the press has always responded with statements of pitiable glee. In Colorado, even the most gruesome lynchings, race-related and otherwise, prompted congratulatory editorials from the Colorado Springs Gazette, the Rocky Mountain News and the rest. However, political leaders were usually more careful not to be celebrating extra-judicial revenge killing.

Today even world leaders seem to be piling on with attaboys. Dispiriting really.

The facts emerging from bin Laden’s killing just get worse and worse. If Osama was indeed in a military-secured compound, a whole secured zone apparently, what reason could possibly be given for why every usual method would not be used to bring him into custody? Where was he going to go? Did we need to kill his entourage like we did Saddam Hussein’s sons? The fact that this raid is purported to have been planned for months makes the assassination all the more purposeful.

And then we learn his body was buried at sea, which the media uncritically recite is “in accordance to Islamic tradition” even as Muslims refute it. Besides of course suggesting that today’s raid was only Kabuki theater for disposing of OBL’s ten-year-dead corpse, conveniently making the body disappear makes dark humor of mocking Habeas Corpus. Where already America disregards the fundamental right of a trial of your peers.

Bin Laden’s colleagues are denied the jury of peers and instead judged through kangaroo military tribunals, patently illegal by international law. Lynching of course dispenses of even that formality.

But lynching victims of the earlier times were not deprived of their bodies. How dare the US declare itself judge, executioner AND God over Osama bin Laden’s remains?!

The pretext is that they don’t want a shrine made of wherever his family would have chosen to bury him. But of course, that will not be ours to decide. At the very least the site of bin Laden’s murder will already be a shrine for those in Islamabad. It will certainly be ironic if the WTC in New York City will be the most significant memory of Osama bin Laden’s deeds and become ground zero for his enormous fame worldwide.

Local cyclists shred Garden of the Gods

Posted on April 25, 2011 by Eric Verlo

GARDEN OF THE GODS, COLORADO SPRINGS– Mountain bike X-tremists and thrillcraft eco-vandals Jason Memmelaar and Chris Heath weren’t apprehended by the El Paso County Sheriff or the CSPD, but interrupted by off-duty park ranger Stephanie Stover, who saw them cutting tree limbs to expand an illegal downhill run. When she scattered the limbs across the trail to ameliorate erosion, she later found a note which warned:
“Why would you do that? You will hurt my friends. If I see you do this I will hurt you and no one will hear you scream.”
Reached by the Gazette via Facebook, Heath denied he left the note, or that he’d built the mile-long trail across protected park land, though he did brag about using the trail “a bunch.” So there it is, CSPD, let the citations fly. Trail repairs won’t begin until May, so there’s still time if you want to make their downhill track a surprise obstacle course. Will screams go unheard? We can test that hypothesis.

I don’t really recommend leaving malicious booby traps like tire spikes, barbed-wire, or a chest high bailing wire strung with tensioners because that could injure others, for example children on bikes however errant, and then too, wildlife. Branches across the path are enough to interrupt the course and can be seen and avoided by hikers. Best of course to safeguard the vicinity by hiking nearby with a camera and cellphone and report the offenders directly to park authorities. Curious to see what the bikers would do if they came upon YOU scattering branches, if you’re not a woman alone on that stretch of the Garden of the Gods.

In the case of Messrs. Memmelaar and Heath, they’re not just asshole despoilers of nature, they’re pro-racers for some kind of circuit for environment-scarring sports. Probably the exposure in Barry Noreen’s column is the last thing their sponsors want. It will be interesting to see how much they care about a public outcry.

I should think they might want to orchestrate a public apology for their “rogue” bikers. Maybe the white Dodge Spirit van with New York plates mentioned in the Gazette is already ferrying friends to the site where they are volunteering to repair the damage before official efforts begin.

If not, keep a lookout for the two elsewhere around town. Perhaps with the heat on Rampart Range Road, they’ll now be looking to foul fresh topsoil of other open spaces, like that of Red Rock canyon.

Have a look at this photographic confession offered at Memmelaar‘s website:

Helicopter crashes in foothills of Pikes Peak, local Gazette calls it hard landing

Posted on June 30, 2010 by Eric Verlo

COLORADO SPRINGS- The complicit media accepts the Army’s characterization of the 1:30AM crash as a “hard landing” and neither the condition of the Apache Longbow aircraft nor its occupants is being revealed; even though emergency vehicles reached the downed Apache via Gold Camp Road and the crew were rushed to Memorial Hospital, civilian jurisdiction. The citizens of Colorado Springs are being kept on a need to know basis, as Fort Carson increases its flight training for choppers being deployed to Afghanistan, even as the training battleground becomes the skies about our neighborhoods.

Scriptmatix “penny auctions” such as Quibids are less scams than pure fraud

Posted on June 19, 2010 by Eric Verlo

101

Shell games tempt only the gullible, don’t they? So long as YOU don’t fall for them, what’s a little income redistribution among wretches? That’s an attitude shared only by the uninitiated. So-called internet “penny auctions” exploit human vulnerability like trust and avarice, leaving victims to blame their own stupidity or greed. You may shrug off getting burned as a lesson learned, but all confidence tricks count on that. Websites like Quibids and Scriptmatix’s PennyAuction are neither novel discount methods, adventure shopping, gambling scenarios or lotteries. They are con games that lead you to believe you are getting something for your money, until you don’t.

Just because YOU can figure it out -from an objective distance- doesn’t mean Quibids is not patently dishonest. US laws governing fraud are enforced by local statutes, but common law is enough to define this internet scam as representation of falsehood with the intent to profit. Whether or not the auctions use shill bidders, or fail to honor unprofitable outcomes, as have been accused by disgruntled victims, the websites are misrepresentations. The former are obvious illegal practices. The latter is fraud. Or are we so cynical that we accept this kind of scam as merely “predatory capitalism?”

Wikipedia defines fraud in layman’s terms:

1. a representation of an existing fact;
2. its materiality;
3. its falsity;
4. the speaker’s knowledge of its falsity;
5. the speaker’s intent that it shall be acted upon by the plaintiff;
6. plaintiff’s ignorance of its falsity;
7. plaintiff’s reliance on the truth of the representation;
8. plaintiff’s right to rely upon it; and
9. consequent damages suffered by plaintiff.

In particular this scam begin with what’s known as the advance-fee fraud except this buy-in is ongoing and lasts until a mark is tapped-out.

Quibids and ilk call themselves “penny auctions” as if there is such a thing. Onlooker suspicions are assuaged by the inherent implication that if a business scam has a name, it must not be a crime.

Are penny auctions a veritable thing, besides the self-defined new crook on the block? Well, yes, but. The “penny auctions” of yesteryear had nothing to do with these pay-to-play auction schemes where bidders buy vouchers for the privilege to ante into a bidding pool. Penny auction refers to the Depression era strategy of sabotaging farm liquidation auctions by forcing the auctioneer to accept bids in increments of one penny. Aided by cooperative neighbors, bankruptcy victims were able to grind their creditor’s actions to a halt, for a time, because collusion was itself unlawful. Obviously this is a far cry from the neo penny auctions which require customers to buy “bids” with which to place dibs on a desired item, increasing its auction price by a penny each time and prolonging the bidding for another fixed period.

On Quibids, price and time increments can vary between auction items to confuse watchers trying to do the math. As an average, a bidder might pay 60 cents each time he wants to put his name on the desired item, raise its price a penny, and extend the auction expiration by another ten seconds. The last person to cease paying money to keep the auction up in the air gets the item for the final price. But the final cost includes of course what he paid to play.

Imagine musical chairs except you pay 60 cents for every successive measure, an unlimited number of party-goers circling a solitary chair. So long as somebody pays the piper, everyone gets to stay in. Except they’re not “in” are they? Only the last person who put money in gets to take the chair.

The music stops when the next to last person refuses to ante up.

On the internet, the victory or loss is experienced alone. Your embarrassment is “shared,” but anonymous. Now imagine a convention hall, full of sidelined bidders who dropped out as they realized the insanity of paying into a potentially endless kitty whose real value to them represented a diminishing return. Imagine dozens or scores of former adversaries looking on as the last man standing gets the chair, everyone else leaves empty handed and empty pocketed, while the house rakes in the pot worth many times the value of the chair. Think that scam would fly in a non-virtual world?

In the real world, marks who’ve fallen victim quickly learn that there’s a racket of onlookers quick to step in and silence any complaints. Try to warn off the next bystander who looks like they’re about to fall prey and you’ll see exactly what criminal muscle lurks behind the charm of the charlatan.

Oh, it’s a silly, silly hook this penny bidding scheme, and online it’s hard to tell how many dupes are actually taken in. We have only the Quibids customer relations departments to assure us that none of the other bidders are phantom bots or paid shills. It would be so easy of course for the javascript to be otherwise. The same voices explain that Quibids can afford to offer its auction items at these unbelievable discounts due to the income derived from its inventive bid-selling process.

Simple math suggests they could award a winning lot several times over and still keep a tidy profit. Yet their FAQ explain that 50% of their transaction result in an operational loss. If indeed this is true, that percentage is factoring the auctions they offer for packages of “bids,” where customers place bids to win more bids. One can only hope that buyers are given the upper hand on these transactions. Otherwise the 50% percentage tabulates the auctions by number and not their dollar value. Quibids’ losses are phantom, worthless bids sold at a fraction of their worthless value, versus their profitable ones, where $200 consumer goods net $1000 or more.

That kind of scheme resembles a lottery where more tickets are purchased for a fixed-sum reward. Quibids deflects categorization as a gambling scheme by explaining that auction losers have the option to apply their losses toward the retail price of the item, if they elect to purchase it as consolation. How many players take them up on such an offer, only they know.

Upon losing the Christmas raffle, would having the option to buy the turkey at above retail price be reassurance enough for you to prove the affair wasn’t in reality an unregulated raffle?

First of all, the sites use very clever software, and a money-changing scheme to defy the average grasp of math. But the trap mechanism well oiled, the more duplicitous energy goes into the promotion. Quibids is using social networking and email to expand the reach of the news outlets they ensnare. Our attention was drawn when this week the Colorado Springs Gazette directed its readers to this exciting new discount website.

A scan of the various “penny auction” websites would seem to indicate they are using identical software. That opens a whole other can of worms, doesn’t it? This could be an installation one can license, just as one would WordPress or Zen Cart. In fact there is a PHP setup marketed by Scriptmatix who charge $1,250 plus for an installation. First they nail people greedy enough to want Nikon D90s for next to nothing, then they turn their dupes into willing con artists themselves.

Here’s a screen grab from the Scriptmatix brochure, where they explain what kind of return eager entrepreneurs can expect on their $1,249 investment.

It might look like a safer legal recourse to franchise the “penny auction” scheme and let client operators do the defrauding and ultimately face the authorities. Maybe selling the blueprint to a confidence trick does not constitute a crime. Unless of course you are pretending to peddle a fully legitimate business model that you know is actually against the law. We’re back to fraud.

Of course the key to convincing users that your site is not a ripoff lies with successful PR. It’s very likely that many of these multiple installations are Quibids figuring out how to outrun Google searches of Quibids+Scam. Aptly-named rival Swipe-bids for example looks more to me like a designated heavy, meant to make Quibids appear to be honest by comparison. Who knows how many websites this operation has used to elude tar and feathers.

Here’s the SWIPE-BIDS website whose main page stream a promotional video, actually for a competitor, as if it was its own. On watchdog sites, Quibids cries foul, but it’s hard to tell what argument is authentic.

Does “swipe” seem a term well chosen to inspire trust? It’s as obvious as a black hat in a wrestling match. Of course “Quibids” is the most poetic choice for truth-in-tradenames. “Qui” is French for who and doesn’t that account for the mysterious identity of who is bidding against you?

And the watchdog websites sprouting up to monitor the penny auction eruption are themselves shadow operations. Any “penny auction watch” that prefaces their posts with the concession that some auction sites are good and some are bad, is obviously shilling for someone. They may be a village idiot with no concept of the scamming afoot, or they’re innocent at all. But this is speculation.

By all appearances, these sites are reaping Keystone times six, and simply drop-shipping the goods.

A legal indictment of Quibids can precede a formal investigation based simply on their of self-promotion. Theirs may look like expertly crafted PR, and these days of diminished expectations about the objectivity of our media, it may suit many to congratulate the charlatans on their savvy, but Quibids’ self-promotion documents their intent to defraud.

Layers of press releases and paid editorial columns appear to shore up a single real news item which the Quibids outfit eked from an Oklahoma news team earlier this year.

At right are stills from KWES NEWS9 reporting about Quibids, as far as they were told, a home-grown auction website.

Quibids hasn’t chintzed on PR, but they do appear to lack for real faces to front their operation…

According to their own site, Quibids was the brainchild of Oklahoma City entrepreneur Matt Beckham, joined by Shaun Tilford, Jeff Geurts, Josh Duty, Bart Consedine, and spokeswoman Jill Farrand. The 27-year-old Beckham’s identity is confirmed by the Quibids.com domain registration.

Have a look at who NEWS9 is interviewing for the so-called customer testimonial. The kyron reads “Zach Stevens” who purports to be thrilled with the deal he’s gotten on Quibids.

Do we know whether this interview footage was pre-packaged for the NEWS9 team? The distinction is unimportant, but we might note that the cuffed sleeve does not belong to the female reporter.

This TV segment streams on the upper right corner of the auction sites, serving as a de facto suggestion of the site’s legitimacy. The footage streams in a very small window.

But enlarged in these captures, a closeup of “Zach’s” laptop and username reveals this “customer” is none other than Quibids’ owner Matt Beckham, smiling like he has no idea the perp walk that awaits him.

Would you believe Fortune 500 corps & “Bat Gangs?” Yeah, that’s the ticket.

Posted on February 17, 2010 by Eric Verlo

From the same mouth that told reporters the ludicrous tale that scouts from two Fortune 500 companies told a local realtor (let’s leave her unnamed, shall we) they rejected locating in Colorado Springs on account of the city’s homeless camps along I-25 –yeah right– comes a really despicable meme she’s now trying to spread of teenage “bat gangs” purportedly terrorizing our homeless.

The fabrication serves two purposes: to lend urgency to efforts to get the homeless out of their tents, and to scare the vulnerable would-be victims themselves. A tent isn’t shelter enough if there are gangs of youth ready to bludgeon every homeless they encounter.

I was almost taken in myself when I received this email titled “HOMELESS ATTACKS”, the text of which has also been copy and pasted unto other online forums:

Sitting here with a homeless friend who got beat up by the Bat Gang on Saturday. He said it was 8 kids with baseball bats who attacked him under the Bijou Bridge. He was taken to Memorial Hospital and spent the night. He got stitches around his right eye and his right elbow.

We’re lucky he is alive! Again we need your support to transition the homeless out of the tent camps to shelters.

It turns out a user “Beepbeep” has been peddling this hard on local websites, luckily without much traction. Any ideas about how to intervene if she lands another TV interview? Fear-mongering like this slanders the CSPD and further erodes the image of Colorado Springs.

A search of the Gazette brings up the murder last year of a vagrant on the I-25 pedestrian overpass, killed with a baseball bat. A teen bragged to his a friend about the crime, and now the friend may be implicated as well. This is a development from the recent trial. From this our enterprising Iago has extrapolated a “bat gang” of malevolent teens, to put fear into stories told around homeless campfires.

Her most recent example cannot be corroborated. Even given the benefit of the doubt, our misinformant may have fallen dupe to a homeless cliche, the public drunk’s version of “a dog ate my homework.” I remember from friends cleaning up their act at the Salvation Army, when someone fell off the wagon and returned literally bruised, from a fall or fight they were too inebriated to remember, the blame was cast away from themselves. What happened was often a recurring theme, the bang-up attributed to “teenage tormentors” armed with bats.

Can you think of a more despicable strategy, to haunt the neighborhood with a fictional specter, all for the sake of trying to shoo the homeless out of town. It’s the KKK’s burning cross strategy isn’t it?

New ICE building is half windowless

Posted on December 17, 2009 by Eric Verlo

As reported by the Gazette on Nov 30, the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) division of the Department of Homeland Security has opened an office in Colorado Springs in the Pueblo Bank and Trust Building. The implication is of a lonely field office to monitor the busy I-25 corridor, but the Nation Magazine is reporting that ICE locations nationwide are being used as unmarked and unmonitored detention facilities for undisclosed detainees. I can’t vouch for ours. Anyone up for a photo field trip? Bring your papers.

According to the Gazette, the office has been a pet pork project of Congressman Doug Lamborn. Their description of the new facilities:

The downtown office in Colorado Springs is the ninth ICE office in Colorado and houses several cubicles and conference rooms as well as a cache of secure rooms to be used for interviews, confidential paperwork and holding weapons.

Detentions have been until now subcontracted with El Paso County. Currently the county holds approximately 150 detainees for ICE.

Did you catch this choice segment of the story? County Commissioner Jim Bensberg apparently confuses “to have a chilling effect” with crime deterrence:

“The presence of the federal office will have a chilling effect on a wide variety of activities,” he said, without elaborating.

“There were days I thought this would never happen,” he said. “If I had a tail right now, I’d be wagging it.”

DUI gone postal

Posted on November 13, 2009 by Brother Jonah

News 5 is trying metaphorically to crucify the Postal Service and especially the Postal Workers union because a mail-carrier wasn’t fired for being convicted of DUI. So I thought to myself (as I often do) “Self, I bet Freedom Communications has literally hundreds of people working for them who have DUI convictions”.

Their piss-and-moan about it is (allegedly) that the Postal Service is losing money. This from minions of a Corporation that’s in bankruptcy. And one of their subsidiaries, the Colorado Springs Gazette, has just laid off half their employees.

But whenever a person takes the stand in court, either as a witness or a defendant, he has to state where and for whom he works. So, fair being fair, posting a partial list of the employees of their Corporate Masters who have criminal convictions would perhaps be in order. I thought of doing it myself, look up the transcripts and report thereof…

Leaving out the names of those who work labor jobs for them, drivers, warehouse, the temps who stuff the circulars into the Sunday and Wednesday papers and assemble the mailings… cut those guys a lot of slack. They already are in wage bondage to a hostile employer anyway. Edit to add… they were the first to go in the layoffs.

On the other hand, there’s a TV reporter from Dallas and who I believe works for one of the Denver stations now, Leeza Gibbons., who was convicted of joyriding on I 30 from Grand Prairie to the west side of Ft Worth at 110 miles an hour and leading the po-pos from 8 different municipalities, 2 counties and the State Department of Public Safety on a high speed chase. And this kind of event isn’t really all that rare. That would be the type to publish. Also any who would fit into a suit and tie on a regular basis.

The ones who slither in and out of their corporate boardroom. The ones who are serving up the Union-bashing and the ones who ordered it done.

It’s also convenient that the Union Bashing is done at a time when two of their Loyal Corporate Partners are demanding that the Grocery Workers Union accept a really arrogant “Last and Best Offer” contract.

we need Lisners of the PEOPLE NOT Dictators of the PEOPLE! USA! ROCKS!

Posted on October 19, 2009 by Eric Verlo

Television cameras today gravitated toward Doug Lamborn supporters. Thank goodness this flag-waver showed up with a sign to confirm visually the nagging suspicion that his crowd was illiterate.

Lamborn snickered, literally sniggered, about the success of the summer’s tea party gatherings and his hopes for more.

CHANGE THAT WORKS brought bingo cards with each square representing an Obamacare untruth Lamborn could be expected to roll out to frighten the audience. As he hit each phrase, players would shout “YOU LIE” until the eventual “BINGO!” The Gazette labeled us hecklers, but got a picture of Pattie scanning her scorecard, and me holding off an interloper.

I hope the Gazette goes with this photo for tomorrow’s print edition. Health Care Reform up against the forces of darkness.

As audience members challenged Lamborn’s presentation, sinister looking men would crowd in on us, some physically threatening, others trying to mumble through arguments. The net effect created a disruptive buzz which actually diverted our energies to engage the town hall forum. I found it effective to block their gaze by sticking up my hand, which also prevented their approach. Rita circulated handouts which cautioned the men against personal confrontations. News photographers captured the images, but note that none of these men would reveal their names.

Loring documented the goons, including this one who addressed Loring’s video camera with his best Tony Soprano impression: “How ya doin? Got a little camera?”

Loring’s video is already online. Mark will put together a CSAction video shortly. Gazette comment section troll MBurke has posted pictures of the meeting.

Here’s the full image, taken after the town hall meeting, all cameras on her. Yes, that’s Doug Bruce in the background, pushing his latest attack on the Colorado Springs municipal budget.

Anti-tax pig Doug Bruce was there handing out brochures about his stealth stormwater fee proposal.

Big Insurance greed? COS is Sick Of It!

Posted on October 13, 2009 by Eric Verlo

KRDO‘s Eric Singer called today’s health care reform rally “very one sided,” so much so, seeing it, “you might have done a double-take.” Because it wasn’t our backwater’s customary Teabag Pity Party where agitated ignorants throw their own hopes for adequate health care into the drink; but KRDO doesn’t report those anti-rallies as one-sided. Of course, KRDO’s advertisers are the medical system conglomerates, pharmaceuticals, and big insurance! Greed. We are sick of it!

The Gazette repeated their usual mantra that health care reform is unaffordable, but offered a refreshingly frank representation of Pattie’s nuanced address to the energized crowd.

The full Gazette article:

Health care reform activists rally in Springs
October 13, 2009 3:45 PM
MARIA ST.LOUIS-SANCHEZ
THE GAZETTE

Patti Mulkey wants to work and be a productive member of society. Unfortunately, she says, her health insurance doesn’t cover all of the extensive treatment she needs for her chronic kidney disease. She said her insurance plan keeps her alive, but doesn’t provide enough care that would let her go back to work.

“They make decisions without knowing how this affects everyone’s lives,” she said to a small, but vocal group of people at a rally Tuesday for health care reform in front of Colorado springs’ City Hall. “People who are ill don’t want to be ill. They want to be working and well.”

The “Rally Against Greed” attracted about 40 people carrying signs that read “Greed Sucks” and “Jesus Didn’t Charge Premiums.” The rally was organized by the group Change that Works, a liberal organization that endorses a public option for health care.

While protestors were vehement Tuesday, the rally wasn’t close to the size of other local rallies against the proposed reforms. Instead of focusing on the cost of expanded health care, organizers blamed insurance companies for the high costs in relating the stories of people coping with illnesses.

Like Mulkey, many of the people who attended the rally said they had health insurance, but it didn’t pay for their care. Pat Hill said that even with health insurance, she was paying $750 a month in medical bills stemming from complications from cancer treatments.

James Tucker, a local activist, said the people who reject the proposed reforms may regret it.

“If they don’t get involved and join us, they will pay a price when they need the care,” he said.

Sean Paige appointed to City Council

Posted on October 9, 2009 by Eric Verlo

Here’s the plan. After the Tuesday noon RALLY AGAINST GREED on the city steps, dash up to the city council chambers where ex-Gazette editor, now Teabag charlatan, Sean Paige will be attending his first meeting. Before 1PM, sign up to speak during the public comment period, you’ll be allotted three minutes. What is there to say about Paige’s appointment over qualified candidates to replace Councilman Jerry Heimlicher? Just say “You’ve GOT to be freaking kidding me.” Leave a long pause as you look each of them in the eye. Repeat. Make it a long 3 minutes.

Weiss TABOR reform has votes to pass!

Posted on August 24, 2009 by Eric Verlo

COLORADO SPRINGS- I attended a COS city council meeting today, lured by the prospect that Vice Mayor Larry Small was going to call the CS Independent publisher a liar to his face.

I’m always excited at the prospect of differences of opinion reaching a level of incivility. Do we care about these issues? Or is it all about liking each other, regardless who’s oppressing whom? We gentlemen debaters, after all, are never those affected by the injustices in question.

To the city’s credit, Small made it a point at the very start of the meeting to make a public apology. He and John Weiss shook hands and that was that. What’s more, he cast his vote with Weiss’s proposal, a deciding vote, to put repeal of the city’s TABOR restrictions on the next ballot.

Small is not saying he’s for it, simply considering that it might be germane to consult the voters. Where it stands, the city council members declared their intentions on how they will vote tomorrow, and 5-4, they intend to back the proposal.

Without any name calling.

That said, some pyrotechnics can very easily be a bore. For example, there were grunts from the peanut gallery at this meeting, in particular from ex-editorial page tyrant Sean Paige. The silver-locked loudmouth, now shilling for Local Liberty Action, sat in the back and harrumphed as Weiss gave his reasons for reforming TABOR. Although Paige is no longer with the Gazette, I’ve seen him gesticulating at local Teaparty rallies. Like his Norquesque mentors, the editorial bully is set on strangling the baby in the bathwater.

How satisfying then to see Paige grovel before city council to urge them “not to throw [his TABOR] baby out with the bath water.”

Paige spoke as if “TABOR proponents” need to be consulted in any ongoing discussions about reforming it. Just because those idiots got the law passed, and doomed municipalities to impoverished services, who is to say their voice should have a grandfather clause? Here’s a chance for city council to hear the cries of outrage from Colorado Springs residents who want the damn thing repealed. They want their public services back.

TABOR was an initiative which asserted that a citizen couldn’t trust their representatives with tax dollars. What does it mean to have councilmen say they “believe in TABOR.” They know they shouldn’t be trusted? Did they run for election on that slogan?

Here’s a chance for the city pols to grab the reins. What else are they supposed to be deciding at their jobs?

And they took it, with four dissenting opinions. First, Bernie Herpin, who doesn’t see any reason to rush to address TABOR’s ratchet lunacy.

Another no vote comes from Jerry Heimlicher. The meeting’s highlight was Councilman Jerry Heimlicher’s kiss-fest with Sean Paige. Let Westside voters who rejected Democrat Dave Gardner as an alternative, note what Heimlicher can be very obstinate when he’s decided he’d rather give in to the Teabaggers.

Two more NOs came from Glen and Purvis. Purvis took the chance to compare proponent Richard Skorman’s voice to the sound of a belt sander. He explained how Skorman had interrupted his weekend of fixing his deck.

Tom Gallagher was the councilman who brought the issue for his colleagues to decide. He spoke about how incredulous it was that he was siding with Weiss on an issue, and hesitated greatly to defy his conservative friends. “I live on their side of the playing field.” But he lead the support. With Hente, Small, Martin and Rivera joining him.

Did I say Rivera? Yes.

We all looked at each other in surprise, but there it was, Mayor Lionel Rivera saying he thought it was a capital idea to give the citizens of the city the last word on whether to reform TABOR.

Scott Hente made the day’s most noteworthy remark. He thanked the assembled crowd for having upheld a civil discourse. He was impressed that it was unlike the many town hall meetings he’s been seeing on the news. I took this to be acknowledgment that he recognized the sawdust floor populism emanating from Sean Paige’s back corner.

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