Archive for August, 2008
Transit is very conducive to empirical analysis. Translation: Since you can count, measure and time every detail of a transit system, the use of real information to evaluate what the public is getting for its money is both easy and advisable. Otherwise, without some factual basis to evaluate what transit does now and how much more it can potentially do, public policy decisions will be based on perception and assumption - or perhaps on nothing at all.
RFTA is about to propose a major service expansion, so this is an ideal time to gain some insight into the standard statistical tools used to measure transit performance, consider which numbers really matter or apply, and propose some new data points for weighing where we are and where we might want to go from here.
Continue Reading August 20th, 2008
After the hot-damn town hall meeting about affordable housing at the Paepcke, I was more than willing to leave the Burlingate affordable housing fiasco behind. When you’re sick of both sides—when your allies are cursing you out harder than the other times—it’s time to step back.
Just not yet.
The City, you see, is trying to pull another fast one.
Continue Reading August 19th, 2008
A question for today’s class: in the history of television advertising, has any private citizen ever ponyed up $50 million-plus for the greater good of the American people, with no strings attached?
The answer, of course, is no—not ever—maybe because it’s just not the American way. There’s always an angle to be had, most especially when we’re talking about oil.
This just in: as the chief bottle-washer at both a radio talk show and blog called “Con Games,” I consider it my particular duty in our unprecedented republic to keep a close eye out for the con, especially when it arrives right here in my adopted hometown of Aspen, where I keep my first, second, and third homes.
Thus T, Boone Pickens, the billionaire oil man who has now turned his attention to the Pickens Plan (pickensplan.com), an energy revamp that will accelerate our wing-flapping when it comes to wind—ramping it up to 20 percent or so starting with Sweetwater, Texas, and then points north—and cleverly deploying the freed-up capacity to replace imported oil with natural gas in the transportation sector. The goal, as he said in Aspen last week: to fix “our $700 billion problem”—the $700 billion in imported oil that we need per annum to keep the economy pumping like, well, like an oil well in Texas. The Pickens Plan includes spending $58 million of his own T. Boone coin on advertising to get the point across.
Continue Reading August 18th, 2008
Each fall teachers spend a lot of time reviewing what was taught last spring. It can take as much as six weeks or more. This is because of the “summer slide”. We all need a break from our “regular work”. Sports and recreational activities are wonderful. But our minds don’t have to become dormant over the summer. Ron Fairchild, the executive director of the Center for Summer Learning at Johns Hopkins University, suggests there are many ways to try to reduce the recovery time. Suggestions include visits to museums, the local library, educational trips, less time on computer games and TV, encouraging reading and math problems.
Continue Reading August 16th, 2008
Aspen is unique in that everyone is exceedingly wealthy, or is about to become so.
For example, the guy who makes balloon animals on the weekends is about to become the richest man in New Zealand. It’s true. He told me so himself. First, he needs to save up enough money to buy a plane ticket to Auckland, but that’s a minor detail. Once he gets himself there, he’s going to present a plan to the government that will not only make him a billionaire many times over, but also flood the country’s vaults with more money than they could possibly spend. (The government of New Zealand is apparently very open to meetings with anyone, even vagrant, balloon artists.)
Continue Reading August 15th, 2008
Aspen Community Theatre is offering a free acting workshop on August 26th from 7 pm to 9 pm hosted by Marisa Post, the director and choreographer for Aspen Community Theatre’s fall musical, Chicago.
The workshop will focus on some of the elements that make a scene work - character, relationship, text, subtext, humor, and emotion, and how the actor can make sense of them during the short, pressure-packed audition process. Students should be prepared to read in front of the group from the provided text.
Marisa Post received her theatre training at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, NYC and is currently the Director of Education at Theatre Aspen. She has worked as a professional actress, in New York and nationally. As a director and choreographer, Marisa has created new and published works for the stage, including Umbrella Man, Little Shop of Horrors, A Little Night Music, I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change and The Sound of Music
Enrollment is limited.
Call Carol Bayley @ 920-3937 to register
August 14th, 2008
Aspen Community Theatre is offering a free dance workshop on August 23rd from 10 am to 3 pm hosted by Marisa Post, the director and choreographer for Aspen Community Theatre’s fall musical, "Chicago."
Synonymous with the show "Chicago" is the name of its brilliant director and choreographer Bob Fosse. Highly stylized, this dance class will explore the essential ingredients in the choreography of Fosse, including his dance roots in vaudeville, burlesque and jazz. The workshop will include a film history of vaudeville and burlesque, a session on how to follow choreography, culminating in a dance class designed to pull it all together. This class is perfect for actors, singers and dancers of all experience levels.
Marisa Post received her theatre training at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, NYC and is currently the Director of Education at Theatre Aspen. She has worked as a professional actress, in New York and nationally. As a director and choreographer, Marisa has created new and published works for the stage, including Umbrella Man, Little Shop of Horrors, A Little Night Music, I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change and The Sound of Music.
Enrollment is limited. Please call Carol Bayley @ 920.3937 to register.
August 14th, 2008
Well, my friends, if John McCain calls his audience “my friends” one more time I will never say the words “missing in action” again. If he refers to “my fellow Americans” again I will force-feed the Republican nominee with quotations from Chairman LBJ about marital fidelity.
The Straight Talker his ownself made his way to the rock-ribbed Republican Rocky Mountains Thursday for a late-summer idyll, stopping to shake the money tree in Vail and then again in Aspen, going home on the Straight Talk Express with something like $500,000 minimum—not so bad for half-a-day’s work and no ad hominem attacks. In between, under the gentle aegis of the Aspen Institute, he did what pols do when they come to the place where power speaks to power: they sit back like movie stars accepting lifetime achievement interviews on AMC, albeit without the kettle corn and film clips.
The moneyed interests hereabouts in Aspen and thereabouts in Vail long ago made their peace with the erstwhile maverick, deciding they could live with him and his melanoma in the face of Obama Nation. And why not? There was much to like about McCain in person on the stump—he was a war hero, my fellow Americans—including his Surging references to integrity, his faux-more-years liberalism, and his cornball jokes about turning his nose up on ethanol in Iowa.
Continue Reading August 14th, 2008
Senator McCain,
Welcome to Aspen. From your web page we learn that “America needs leadership that fulfills its duties with unfailing integrity, accountability, and common sense.” Honest words or are you just one more in the long parade of hypocrites that has plunged America to the brink of tyranny? My question is easily answered with a simple yes or no.
The Constitution states “Congress shall make no law... abridging the right of the people to petition the government for a redress of grievances.” For years, the We the People Foundation has legally, respectfully petitioned, demanding answers to specific questions. Questions supported by irrefutable evidence, finding that our government has been acting in gross violation of the tax clauses of the Constitution and the essential principles upon which this nation was founded.
While the petition, signed by over 80 thousand Americans, includes numerous Supreme Court cases, the Congressional Record, the IRS code, etc. three grievances are decisive. “Admit or deny that there is no federal statute which explicitly imposes any legal obligation upon ordinary Americans to pay a direct, un-apportioned tax on the fruits of their labor.”
“Admit or deny that there is no federal statute explicitly providing any legal authority for American companies to withhold income tax from the ordinary wages of American workers.”
“Admit or deny that in criminal income tax prosecutions, the Department of Justice routinely fails, and is unable, to cite, even in the indictment itself, any federal statute specifically requiring the payment of individual income taxes.”
These are the most vital grievances the Founding Fathers could have envisioned. Taxation without a law! Citizens imprisoned without a law! Our government totally out of control! Yet the petition was ignored by the president, Congress, yourself included, the IRS and Justice Department. In federal court our government argued that while the First Amendment does, indeed, grant the right to petition, the Constitution does not require a response.
The court concurred with this absurdity, forcing the foundation to appeal to the Supreme Court. Our highest court then refused to even hear the case, although the lawsuit would have required a judicial declaration, for the first time in history, of the constitutional meaning of the last ten words of the First Amendment. Meanwhile, our government, appallingly, still refuses to “show us the law” while insisting that filing is based on “voluntary compliance.”
If our government continues to violate the Constitution, Robert Schulz, chairman of the foundation, will soon begin a fast till death or resolution on the National Mall. The petition can be examined and signed at www.givemeliberty.org/revolution.
Senator McCain, aware of the above, having sworn to uphold our Constitution, will you, can you, simply state, for the record, the law that requires a citizen to file an income tax return? Yes or no? If no, will you give assurance that you will do your best to rectify this outrageous oppression? Without an answer we have to believe you are, after all, just one more in the long parade.
August 13th, 2008
Eat local! Has a nice ring, doesn’t it? Indeed, for millions of environmentally concerned eaters the allure of this mantra has been irresistible. Due largely to the impassioned literary efforts of an exclusive cadre of savvy food writers, buying locally grown food—and all that it entails—has quickly evolved into nothing less than an expression of earnest environmental virtue.
Continue Reading August 13th, 2008
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