NoCoPolitics.com

Political Targeting of Auto Dealers?

I have to admit, my first reaction was skepticism as well: Of course there are more GOP donors among the closed dealerships... most dealers are Republicans.

538 ran the numbers.

There's no conspiracy here, folks -- just some bad math.

(h/t the Corner)

Buy Shrimp Boil Tickets Online

Click on this link to buy tickets for the Larimer County Republican Party Shrimp Boil on June 12.

(Type in "Andrew Boucher" in the "Additional Information" field - there's a contest to see who sells the most tickets).

"Anyway, like I was sayin', shrimp is the fruit of the sea.  You can barbecue it, boil it, broil it, bake it, saute it.  Dey's uh, shrimp-kabobs, shrimp creole, shrimp gumbo.  Pan fried, deep fried, stir-fried.  There's pineapple shrimp, lemon shrimp, coconut shrimp, pepper shrimp, shrimp soup, shrimp stew, shrimp salad, shrimp and potatoes, shrimp burger, shrimp sandwich.  That.. that's about it."

Health Care Costs Hurting Competitiveness?

Harvard professor of economics Greg Mankiw runs the numbers.  (Actually, the CBO runs the numbers for him.)

A common argument, often made by ostensibly sophisticated commentators, is that the United States needs to reform its health care system to maintain its international competitiveness. Regardless of your views of health care reform, this particular argument is, to put it bluntly, nonsense.

Read This

Here's Peter Robinson's take on Clifford Asness and the new nervousness among the business community.

At a party the following evening, a partner at a private equity fund told the table about his banker friends. "They're just outraged," he said.

First, the administration had forced the bankers to accept government money to strengthen their balance sheets. Then it had excoriated them for failing to lend amounts that would have weakened their balance sheets. Now? The bankers just want the government off their backs--but the administration is refusing to let them repay the capital they had never wanted in the first place.

Why haven't the bankers spoken out?

"These days," the private equity partner replied, "the government owns the banks. Nobody's going to speak out against his owners, right? That's just basic business practice. At least that's what the bankers are all saying to themselves."

Here's Asness' original post.  If you haven't yet, read the whole thing.

I've never seen the business community this concerned.

Trash Districting to the Voters?

Stacy Lynne is collecting signatures to bring a repeal of trash districts to the ballot. 

What I'll Be Watching Tonight

Mike Judge has a new animated series coming out.  The topic?

Director Mike Judge’s new animated television series “The Goode Family” is a send-up of a clan of environmentalists who live by the words “What would Al Gore do?” Gerald and Helen Goode want nothing more than to minimize their carbon footprint. They feed their dog, Che, only veggies (much to the pet’s dismay) and Mr. Goode dutifully separates sheets of toilet paper when his wife accidentally buys two-ply. And, of course, the family drives a hybrid.

Here's the trailer:

Diggs Brown: 2009 Citizen of the Year

The Fort Collins Board of Realtors has named Diggs Brown their 2009 Citizen of the Year.

The former City Councilmember was the driving force behind the NoCOST government transparency bill in Fort Collins.  He conceived and led the fight for the Veterans Plaza.  He stood up for the taxpayers and job-creators of Fort Collins.  He was a champion of constituent services.

And for the past six months he's been serving overseas as a Major in the U.S. Army Special Forces.  Like so many others, he packed up his career, said goodbye to his friends and family and put his life on hold to serve his country.

Congratulations, Diggs.  We're looking forward to your safe return.

Uh oh...

Sotomayor on property rights. 

Here's Ian Murray in the Corner:

The Supreme Court ruled in the Kelo case that governments can take private property and give it to developers as part of a general redevelopment plan that they rationally believe will benefit the public good (My colleague Hans Bader argued at the time that that violated basic axioms of constitutional construction, and rendered the Constitution’s “public use” clause redundant).

But Judge Sotomayor went well beyond that, to hold that property owners have no legal redress even in the face of what legal commentators have called extortion, in Didden v. City of Port Chester. In that case, a developer told a property owner to either give him $800,000 or half his property, or he would seize it by having the Village of Port Chester condemn it. When the property owner refused, the developer promptly had the town condemn it and transfer it to him. Judge Sotomayor and two of her colleagues upheld this seizure against a constitutional challenge in an unpublished opinion.

Richard Epstein writes in Forbes:

The case involved about as naked an abuse of government power as could be imagined. Bart Didden came up with an idea to build a pharmacy on land he owned in a redevelopment district in Port Chester over which the town of Port Chester had given Greg Wasser control. Wasser told Didden that he would approve the project only if Didden paid him $800,000 or gave him a partnership interest. The "or else" was that the land would be promptly condemned by the village, and Wasser would put up a pharmacy himself. Just that came to pass. But the Second Circuit panel on which Sotomayor sat did not raise an eyebrow. Its entire analysis reads as follows: "We agree with the district court that [Wasser's] voluntary attempt to resolve appellants' demands was neither an unconstitutional exaction in the form of extortion nor an equal protection violation."

Maybe I am missing something, but American business should shudder in its boots if Judge Sotomayor takes this attitude to the Supreme Court

Elections, especially Presidential and U.S. Senate elections, have consequences.

(h/t Townhall)

FCN: The Final Column

Alas, the Fort Collins Now is no more.

Here is my final column:

And so ends Fort Collins Now.

Weekly newspapers fill a very specific role in a community's media mix. Because they can't track breaking news, they tend to focus on features and in-depth investigative reporting. Fort Collins Now was at its absolute best when its reporters followed a story from start to finish, asking tough questions, digging deep and providing the readers with a clear narrative in one concise, well-written story.

It will be sorely missed.

Fort Collins Now isn't the first paper to cease publication, and it certainly won't be the last. Newspapers are a tough business with razor-thin margins. In the past few years, the free Craigslist service has hurt newspapers' classified advertising revenues. When this current recession hit, it simultaneously devastated two industries that have traditionally been cornerstone newspaper advertisers: auto sales and real estate. Today, just about every print publication in America is struggling. The Rocky Mountain News closed up shop earlier this year. The Tucson Citizen and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer have become online-only publications. The New York Times itself is bleeding red ink. This is happening all over the country, throughout the publishing industry.

But the demand for accurate reporting, in-depth features and insightful opinion goes on. People will always look for well-written articles about their local community, government and culture. They will continue to seek out challenging commentary. The decline of the newspaper industry is not a decline in the demand for news. It is simply a reshuffling of the business model.

We're seeing a fragmenting of media, driven by the technology that allows anyone to self-publish online. I believe that because of this lower barrier to entry, five years from now we'll have more news gatherers, more columnists and more publications than we have today in Fort Collins. The content will be more compartmentalized and more opinion-driven. You'll have familiar voices that you agree with and trust to provide your news ... and your next door neighbor will probably be reading someone completely different.

(Actually, we've seen this before. At the turn of the century there were more than a dozen New York newspapers, each with its own point of view and each with its own readership. As the cost of publication rose, they consolidated, but when costs are low, media fragmentation is the norm.)

I joined Fort Collins Now when it was the Weekly almost four years ago. By my count, I've written 122 columns, more than 75,000 words of opinion. I hope that I've raised a few questions, made you laugh, and represented my beliefs well. Maybe I've even won a few readers over to my side.

I'll continue writing online at my Web site, www.nocopolitics.com, and I hope you'll continue to read what I have to say — even if you disagree. More importantly, however, I hope you'll join me online. Start your own blog. Find your niche and start writing. Football fanatic? Write about the Rams' chances this fall. Political junkie? File a weekly report from the City Council meeting. Got an opinion about the restaurants in town? Write reviews. That is the future of media, for better and for worse. Be a part of it.

Finally, not many people realize how I came to write a regular column for Fort Collins Now. I joined what was then the Fort Collins Weekly at the invitation of then-editor Greg Campbell. Campbell had read a rather harsh critique of one of his stories that I had posted online, and he tracked me down and offered me a column.

That dedication to building a diverse and wide-reaching group of commentators is community journalism at its finest. It is the proud legacy of Fort Collins Weekly/Fort Collins Now, and it will be missed.

Wherever this new media takes us, let's try to emulate that type of open exchange of opinion.

Brian Ivers at Memorial Day Services

During his speech, Ivers said he knew, even while growing up in Australia, that he wanted to become an American and serve in the Marines.

"I'm an Australian by birth, an American by choice and a Marine by the grace of God," Ivers said, eliciting a few "hoo-rahs" from the crowd.

Standing in front of the memorial with the names of Larimer County men and women who have served in the military during wars, Ivers reminded the crowd of their sacrifices.

"When I look at those names, I understand what they did ... but I don't know them," Ivers said. "These are people. They lived and breathed, and they had dreams and desires, and they gave it all up."

Full story here.

I'm proud to be working with Brian to help draft Diggs Brown to run for Congress.  (Brian is the Chairman of Draft Diggs.)