Superego VS Really Doing Something to Help the Planet

Here's how superego conflates with arrogance, stupidity, a waste of money, and the space program. But before TCR describes Man’s next silly folly, consider what $35 million would do to help solve clean water problems in a place like, say, Africa.

TCR knows of an engineer who while observing children playing on an African school playground, which had only a swing and a merry go round, and also observing the children’s mothers increasingly lengthy treks each day (we’re talking miles here) to get drinking and cooking water, put everything together and designed a deep water well and pump system that was driven by the merry go round, so each day before and after school and during recess, the village’s children pumped the water to the surface by expending a near infinite supply of energy bound up inside their little bodies. The mothers could then get the family’s water supply when they picked up their children from school, saving hours per day per family. The system cost about $10,000, so our $35 million would handle water supplies for about 3,500 villages.

Enter Cirque du Soleil (which has recently set up camp in downtown Denver) and its Canadian billionaire founder Guy Laliberte who has paid Russia $35 million to ride on a Russian rocket to the International Space Station.

Why, you ask? Well, you had better sit down, before we tell you.

Laliberte ‘s going to read a statement to the world about the planet's water problems, a message to Planet Earth he calls it.

Let’s see. We’ve got satellite technology and scientists on the ground that probably tells us everything we’re ever going to want or need to know about the planet’s water. We have an internet, radio and television networks, news media publications, and alleged cable news networks – not to mention the U.S. Postal Service – all to spread the word about water.

TCR ponders the value of sending one superego into space (except maybe on a one-way mission to Mars) versus installing 3,500 merry go round/water well pumps in African villages.

What would be a better message to Planet Earth?

Colorado Drivers Hot Over New License Fees

Colorado starts its new automobile registration fee structure on July 1, and with average increases of $40, no one is happy about it, except the asphalt companies that will get all the road maintenance contracts. Colorado drivers already are steaming over a new late registration penalty fees that took effect June 1.

In the old days (up to May 31, 2009), if you were late getting your new car tags, you might get a slap on the wrist with a $10 penalty, and this was usually waived by the county office that issues your plate tags, because you were always charged for every month you drove your car on public roads. Now late registrants are getting whacked with penalties up to $100, and no waivers, all thanks to a new mandate from the Democrats who control the state legislature and Democratic Gov. Bill Ritter. (In contrast, the GOP would just let the roads crumble and then hire some Italian company to build toll roads across the state that no one uses.)

Hot letters, emails and phone calls are already pouring into legislative offices. This reaction was predictable. Everyone's pinching pennies these days. Even TCR senior staffers now pick up every Lincoln Penney, heads up or tails up, shiny or dull. While we need funds to just maintain our roads, the fee surcharges and the exorbitant late fees simply convey to the public that government has become little more than a money grubber using the coercive power of the state to extract every last penny from taxpayers' pockets. It makes moderate Democrats cringe.

Look for the the legislature to change the penalties, and possibly the fees, as their constituents rightly beat them over the head with their complaints. But that won't happen until next year, unless Gov. Ritter calls a special session to deal with Colorado's rapidly vanishing budget.

TCR is not interested in seeing more unemployed people on the street competing for the ever shrinking numbers of jobs, but realistically, government has to do what every family and nearly every company has done -- slash 20-50 per cent out of their operating budgets.

That means start all over, not raise fees and penalties.

This is not good!

Montgomery Burns contemplating releasing his hounds.

Colorado Governor Bill Ritter explaining why the senior property tax credit is being suspended to pay for state government operations, rather than simply laying off state workers.

Both Political Camps Aim to Scare the P Out of Us All

The Righties and the Corporate Media always get the big rap because they hustle so-called negative news -- the fear-mongering, blood and gore (B & G) stuff that permeates our hyper mediated culture. There's a lot to complain about in this regard. Former Veep Dick Cheney's out on a nationwide toot ranting about Obama, saying he'd order the same interrogation techniques if he had to do it over again, and predicting another terrorist hit within our borders. The feds' accidental posting of the entire country's nuclear resource locations didn't help, even though Department of Energy chief Steven Chu said no big deal. (Say "Chief Chu" three times fast with your grandkid; he or she will get a kick out of it, and you'll be a hero.) The local TV newsinfopromoadvertainment package leads with bleeders like the latest car crash, starved horses or suicide bombing. The Denver Post, what's left of daily print journalism in the Mile High City, likes to highlight B & G on its website. You get the picture.

But fear-mongering rises to new heights in Leftie media. Take The Discovery Channel's Treehugger.com, (a rather sophomoric moniker) newsinfopromoadvertainment website that robo-sends endless emails on the latest green-clean-alternate energy uber alles-buy a forty thousand electric car or else-death to oil-I'm OK you're OK missives.

TCR received word this very day from Treehugger.com that your bedroom is trying to kill you. Yes, Virginia, anthropomorphizing inanimate objects is no longer limited to the likes of Disney, Warner Brothers, Pixar and South Park Studios. Now, thanks to The Discovery Channel and Treehugger.com, that safe haven you crawl into each night as a respite from all the fear-mongering and B & G shot at you all day long has been brought to life as a three-dimensional killing machine that holds you within its grasp at least eight hours a day, ready to kill you at any moment.

Treehugger.com doesn't tell us just what might trigger a sudden death convulsion like the lethal snap of the Venus fly trap, but gives us five things to be afraid of: the oil-based foams, flame retardants, or dust mites in your pillows; the fire- and bug- resistant chemicals in your mattress; the glues in all your bedroom furniture; glues and other volatile organize compounds used to make or install rugs and carpets; and all the chemicals used to make or apply paint and wallpaper to your walls. That's basically everything, except maybe the stuffed elephant from your childhood. Each little death-trap explanation contains a convenient link to "green" products that can replace your deadly ones, how to buy them, pay for them with credit, and get them shipped to your home, should you survive long enough to place an order.

No matter what your political persuasion, fear rules.

Netbooks: Misnamed, But Another Great Innovation

Josh Quittner (Netbooks,Time Magazine, May 25, 2009) missed the point altogether when he claimed to be “mystified” over the popularity of netbooks. The term “netbook” is a marketing icon aimed at convincing consumers they need to subscribe to extremely overpriced wireless network services to use the handy computers. The popular devices are more aptly named mini-computers, and they will serve typical consumer needs far better than Quittner implies. It won't be through the use of wireless data plans either.

These devices are, in fact, full fledged portable computers. Mine, for example has a 1.6G processor and a 120 GB hard drive on board, along with a sound car, 3 USB ports, two SD card ports, an ethernet port, a VGA monitor port and built-in wireless, which I use at home or with any one of the free access points I am near during the day. Consumers, 99.9 per cent of whom need only the basic functions of a computer, will trump the “netbook” concept and use these devices simply as small lightweight computers, storing their documents on an internal hard drive, a USB thumb drive or an SD card, depending on the model they buy. Accessing a wireless network, at a minimum cost of $600 per year, is only for those so inclined; it is not pivotal to the function of these tiny computers.

TCR senior staffers have been writing professionally for 40 years now, and the key technological advances that have really helped the profession have included the IBM Selectric typewriter, the mag-card machine, terminal based word processing systems, desktop computers, “transportable” computers like the Kaypro, the Tandy Model 100 (about the size of a small phone book), the basic laptop, the Apple 12-inch Powerbook, and, now, the 2-pound mini computer (smaller than a best-selling hardback book). Just toss it in your bag and go. The point of the mini's popularity should be obvious.

Boyles' April 1st KHOW Show Was A Tour de Force

Boyles came out of his corner swinging on April Fools' Day, swinging at Romer, and in so doing showed Denver what the old KHOW was like.

Now, that's Peter Boyles, morning drive-time yakker for what's left of KHOW, the one-time Denver radio and news powerhouse, now merely another Clear Channel pipeline for syndicated gasbags and a few local personalities. And that wasn't former Governor Roy Romer who took the brunt of Boyles' wrath. It was Romer's kid, Chris, who hunkers down in the state senate eyeing daddy's old chief executive chair on the first floor of the Colorado Statehouse.

But Boyles' anger over Romer's slick (some say slimy) political move to bust a controversial bill out of the Senate Appropriations Committee turned the radio station into the KHOW of old, albeit only for an hour or two. Boyles ranted, as he has been for some time, over Romer's Senate Bill 170 that would grant in-state tuition to children of illegal immigrants provided they've completed three years of high school in Colorado.

Boyles', no doubt educated by his buddy Tiger Tom Tancredo, a former Colorado congressman, has joined the anti illegal immigrant crowd that believes any help for any of these people for any reason is an outrage against the United States of America. He's not alone in his viewpoint.

It doesn't matter how you feel about the specific bill, which would provide some help for a few hundred kids who were dragged here years ago by their parents who, at the urging of U.S. employers and the hope for a better life, chose to ignore our laws and settle here illegally. The kids had no say in the matter. Any listener to KHOW on the day in question, Wednesday, April 1 (no joke!), got an earful of what radio news or whatever you want to call the incessant gasbag programs could actually do.

Boyles and company put out the word to listeners and encouraged them to head for the state capitol and jam the committee hearing room with people who opposed the bill. And a bunch of them did it! He also had a few callers "live" at the scene via cellphone, reporting to the station in real time what was going on.

Then, Boyles' producer, Greg Hollenback, piped in a live feed of the Appropriations Committee meeting, giving listeners a blow-by-blow account of the ruminations over the bill, Romer's somewhat scattered explanations of it (he called it an education bill, a jobs bill, and finally a bill to prevent teen pregnancy), Republican committee members' ill-fated attempts to amend the bill and then the final 5-4 vote that sent the measure to the full Senate for floor debate. The show was a tour de force in Denver radio, opening a window into the often baffling world of legislative politics to Boyles' listeners.

Indeed, what happened with SB 170 was a classic case of deft political moves by the party in power, in this case Democrats. With a single Democrat on the committee opposed to the measure, Sen. Moe Keller of Wheat Ridge, the bill was stuck in committee because the vote for it's approval worked out at 5-5, had the entire committee membership been present. A tie vote would send the bill nowhere. But one Republican committee member, Sen. Ted Harvey of Highlands Ranch, was called out of state for a serious family medical emergency. He is an opponent of the measure. As his plane was leaving DIA the afternoon before, Appropriations Committee Chairman Sen. Abel Tapia of Pueblo announced the committee would consider the bill early the following morning, on April Fools' Day.

Romer, as the bill's sponsor, was the committee's only witness. He pitched his bill, which if enacted into law is certain to toss Colorado into costly litigation as well as spur a statewide petition movement to have it repealed, glibly cast aside Republican arguments against it, and then sat back as the committee voted 5-4 to approve the measure and send it on for full Senate debate.

By this time, Boyles' and Hollenback had gotten Sen. Harvey on the phone. Harvey was in Florida, unable to vote, and could only listen to the live committee feed as the lawmakers approved the bill he would have voted against. He told Boyles' listeners that when he left town the day before he thought the bill was scheduled for a hearing on Friday, after he returned with his Alzheimer's stricken father-in-law.

And fans of Boyles' morning show heard it all -- live.

Generally, talk-radio gasbags do little more than generate heat when it comes to important public policy issues. With the loss of about half of the city's working journalists in the past year or so, it was uplifting to see a Denver radio station jump in, even though it was somewhat on a whim, to provide revealing live coverage of what our elected officials really do down at the statehouse. KHOW, for a change, generated light.

For those interested, audio feeds for the Colorado House and the Colorado Senate, full sessions and committee meetings, have been streamed live for many years over the internet. You can also watch the full the House of Representatives via the net. Just head for http://www.leg.state.co.us/ and click on: "Video/Audio Broadcasts of Current Proceedings."

-TCR-

Colorado, Going Broke, Thinks About 2018 Winter Olympics

Gov. Bill Ritter is making rumblings about mounting a bid for the 2018 Winter Olympics. He'll probably get bucked off.

It's de'ja vous all over again.

Currently, the State of Colorado is broke, and scrambling to trim a billion or two from the state budget over the next couple of years.

The collapse of Colorado's ill-fated attempt to host the 1976 winter games (the state actually was awarded the bid) was all about money. Questions arose when the behind-the-door planners could not really say how the event was going to be financed.

More than a few people were PO'd when the Denver organizing committee chose to build all new facilities (again, who was footing the bill?) instead of using the existing facilities in the state.

Then there were incidents like the airbrushed snow on the Mt. Sniktau photos showing where the downhill events would have been held. Snow probably would have to have been trucked in. And what about Vail or Aspen, the sites of many international skiing events? Fagettaboutit! The downtown Denver boys had a plan to build a new ski area, whether snow actually fell on it or not. Again, no one knew who was going to pay the tab.

Or, how about DU law professor Vance Dittman, who woke up one morning to find out the bobsled run was going to slice right through his backyard in Evergreen? He promptly formed Protect Our Mountain Environment (POME) to actively work against the shoddy Olympic planning and vague funding schemes.

Eventually, at the behest of organizations like POME and future Gov. Dick Lamm, Colorado voters simply passed a constitutional amendment that forbid the spending of state tax dollars on the event.

Poof! The winter games were sent packing, and rightly so. The organizers had no financing lined up and expected the taxpayers to pick up the difference. How is that going to change in 2018?

Gov. Ritter's new faux bid for the 2018 winter games is, in all likelihood, even less thought out than the secret plans for Colorado's lame attempt in 1976. It's questionable whether taxpayers, weary from funding the impoverished millionaires and billionaires involved in Denver's professional sports cartel, are going to want to take on the winter games.

Just look at the hand wringing to the northwest where sister city Vancouver, BC, host of the 2010 Winter Olympics, is reeling over the mounting costs, and praying just to break even. The city has already put up $81 million and borrowed another $366 million to bail out the waterfront luxury pads built to serve as the athlete's village, the private developer having dropped the ball a long time ago.

The security costs have ballooned from $143 million to $814 million, and the media center has doubled in cost to $140 million plus. The provincial government (equivalent to our state government) has set aside nearly $500 million for even more security and infrastructure, a budget expected to swell many times over by the time the games open next year.

Experts say the cost of the Vancouver winter games could tap out at nearly $5 billion, some $2 billion over the estimated return through ticket sales, TV rights, trolley fares, and Cuban cigar sales.

Colorado taxpayers won't put up with this -- again.