The Guillotine is Rolled Out For Greeley Schools District 6

Greeley's District 6 Administration and Board are in the process of organizing spring cleaning. Schools are being scheduled to be shut. Cameron will see its head roll. Jefferson is being merged. Just what that means I am not certain. It appears to mean that all the alternative students and "problems" will be stuffed into one school. Cuts are coming, to the best of my knowledge, to every area except the top run of administrators and to the middle-class white schools like Christa McAuliffe Elementary.

The kids who need the most attention, require specialized help, are lower performers in general, some from homes with fewer resources--rounded up and stuffed into one facility. What could go wrong? The newest teachers in, with the freshest skill set, may be the first out.

In the meantime it isn't clear how extensive operational cuts will be. The Operations Manager has been busy making recommendations and it appears the board is following his lead regardless of the impact on the quality of learning. Still no public appearance by Ms. Lang and her $200 thousand plus a year income.

Teachers have, or were, wearing black shirts to represent the day the Board enforced a contract upon them.

The local teachers union appears to be either overwhelmed or under performing. The mainstream media isn't covering it from a teacher's angle. The concept that the Union has been broken by the Board certainly is real from my own perspective. The public isn't likely to come to the side of the teachers when they have just dumped the plea for more public funds down the drain. And Greeley citizens as a whole do not seem willing to put pressure on the administration to make cuts across the board rather than to focus on some demographics that are not popular.

In general, it is pretty clear that the youth of Greeley are not a priority for the taxpayers. And, in my opinion, it is pretty clear that the Board, Ms. Lang, and Mr. Eads are using the opportunity to clean house. Heads on the chopping block will be the newly hired, political enemies, and any job where a highly skilled person is drawing a realistic salary and can be replaced by a common "Joe".

Of course the State is demanding cuts and probably demanding that a plan be developed and submitted to the State. Mr. Ritter, a pseudo-Democrat, is focused on the Republican agenda for the State budget even though he has decided not to be elected. We can only hope that someone will be reviewing this plan that has the guts to stand up for what is best for the education of the students.

You don't have to be a genius to figure out that if the State removes a million dollars or more from the local budget that it would serve to take out jobs which reduce incoming taxes even further which grows the problem instead of helping resolution. In the meantime while expenditures are being reduced the number of students requiring an education doesn't change. They are all still there at the doors waiting for their opportunity to enter the adult world workforce with a half-baked education and compete with other communities for real wage paying jobs.

All in all it is depressing. The future of Greeley has just been flushed down the toilet and the public doesn't seem too distressed or too informed. I think it is time to call in the State. It is time for parents to go sit outside the Governor's door. It is time to take the students along too and show them the political process and how it works when the government doesn't pay attention to the needs of the future and/or is willing to force certain segments of the population, without as much political power, to bare the brunt of poor ideology, planning, and the cuts that are the natural consequence thereof. The Greeley District 6 Administration and Board is obviously not up to the task, overwhelmed, and willing to make cuts not in the best interest of education but in the best interests of what an Operations Manager recommends. The top level administrator isn't willing to face the public or the bulk of the district's employees. The cuts have already been politicized and are likely to continue in that direction.

Just where is Ms. Lang the District Superintendent? Doesn't the public deserve to meet her face to face and have her explain her reasoning and position. After all Ms. Lang, so it seems, will be retaining her job and her contract. Shouldn't Ms. Lang have to look the teachers, staff, and operations people in the face and explain to them why they have been selected to have their careers pulled out from under them? Ms. Lang should earn those big bucks and take on the big responsibilities--regardless of how hard they may be.

The one advantage, in all this mess, possible is that the people, to the best of my knowledge, who have been hired in the past for low wages based on ideology without the appropriate skills for the job, advanced on the basis of politics rather than educational best interests, could be forced to leave. The "good-old-boy network" could be dissembled in mass firings and rehirings only, unfortunately, the "good-old-boys" are doing the firing and rehiring.

Hence the call for the State to step in.

So the picture I paint here isn't pretty. The subject isn't getting the media and public coverage it deserves. The local fish-wrap is just an extended arm of the public relations sector of the District. Of course to be fair there isn't a good solution to be had and times are tough. But the cuts and changes are being driven less by the best interests of education than by political interests and naive extremist chopping block-watch-the-heads-roll maneuvering. That, or it is being driven by sheer panic and a lack of consensus on what to do. These administrators are over their heads and don't have the skills to deal with the situation in a fair and objective way. Special hires need to be made who have the background skills and objectivity for educational purposes.

Hence the call for the State to step in, again.

Which all leads me back to the supposition, how many times can I say it, it is time for the State to come in and take over the management of Greeley Colorado's infamous District 6. For the sake of the students, the classes in Greeley without political power, the future of Greeley itself, and also for the sake of the taxpayers. Somebody needs to do the real job, the whole job, and do it with the least politics and the maximum professionalism.

And where is Ms. Lang?

Healthcare Reform: Greeley's Thunderhead on Frog-Walking Conservative Democrats

A guest posting, written over the course of the last few months as the nations law makers bicker over health care, by the Greeley blogger Thunderhead. Thunderhead describes the legislative fallout of first giving the insurance industry the power to ignore antitrust legislation after WWII, for valid reasons, and now, three-quarters of a decade later, removing from the current House bill on healthcare reform the language which would have terminated such an advantage for the insurance industry.

Article 1 by Thunderhead

For health care reform in the congress, a hidebound Republican Party is frog-walking conservative democrats away from the establishment of single-payer policies. As unemployment numbers stretch into the multi-millions, as the dollar undergoes devaluation, as more American work is outsourced by chasing cheap labor-gradients around the world, we’re just going to have to take Bush’s advice and buy that health insurance savings account after all. You remember…the republican solution to health care?

Instead of repealing insurance mandates and anticompetitive legislation, the Senate Finance Committee’s reform of health insurance does nothing to lower health care costs. In fact, competition is inhibited to support existing monopolistic and cartel formation. The Finance Committee’s policy-making elite relies upon the continued abandonment of federal antitrust enforcement to further the erosion of competition; it also ensures that the industry’s captive customer base undergoes additional harm from systematic denial of vital medical services in support of corporate/investor profits.

Let us ask our health insurance agents: “What percentage of my spouse’s health and of my children’s health should be subject to profit-taking?”

But why must we now advocate for competition? While competition is the health of our economic system most businesses, large or small, given the chance, will seek to eliminate it; competition protects the life of the economy and requires constant vigilance by congress. It is not true that free markets self-regulate; unrestrained, undisciplined markets are deregulated markets that hinder rivalry and rush toward monopolization—toward anti-business and the brute-force application of corporate economic might alone--wiping out competition and consumer choice along a trail of fraud and deceit. Government, the necessary evil, provides the proper restraint, discipline, regulation and enforcement which makes an economy work for everyone, the poor, the middle-class, and the wealthy.

The Transition Report on Competition Policy compiled by the American Antitrust Institute states: that “…competition is the preferred regulator of business behavior.” The conclusion is undeniable--competition lowers costs. Competition is the market’s equivalent of natural selection. Bailouts are indicators that congress, over several administrations, failed to maintain competition in our markets. The aggregate of coincidence, folks, points to intent. Look to congressional PAC funding to see theirs.

By refusing to invest the health insurance industry with competition the Senate Finance Committee publicly demonstrates that it has no interest in improving health care by controlling costs. Instead, the Finance Committee is perpetuating a monopolized health insurance market.

Competition, essential to economists from Adam Smith to Milton Friedman, is now portrayed, through blustering media repetition, as a radicalized Bolshevik notion since it comes to a monopolized insurance market by means of “infused” competition via public option, that is, by government—the only entity large enough to compete with monopolization. Thus the Finance Committee will not place competition at the feet of an insurance industry which begs, by policies harmful to its customers, for regulation.

The 60 member democratic majority is, in part, complicit with the shrinking ranks of the republicans in forging a bill unpalatable to the public. All things considered, much of the Senate simply cares more about the relationships they’ve forged with large corporations. Their word, commitment and pride, is vested in those who pay to get them elected and re-elected.

Yet you have to wonder why they are not upfront about the wretched truth of their policies. The exertion of extraordinary corporate influence on congress is the most fundamentally obvious example of conflict of interest, anywhere. It is what happens when congress understands the natural human weakness to accept bribery then sanctifies it with legality. How do we think it will turn out?

Congressional Shocker: Betsy Markey Bats For The Other Team

It would appear that I am not the only one peeved at the Democrats voting against health care reform. Thunderhead, a Greeley Colorado resident, posted the following note to my previous thoughts about Northern Colorado's Congresswoman Betsy Markey. I thought I'd repost it here.

Thunderhead: No one wants you on their football team when you cannot come through in the pinch.The Virginia governor's race should have been example enough, Betsy. Virginia's progressive base stayed home last Tuesday because their democratic governor decided he'd behave legislatively, like a Republican, and did so throughout his term. Like Virginia, we mistakenly believed you were on our team. The rule of thumb: when there's a choice between a republican candidate, and a democrat who acts like a republican, the republican will be chosen every time.That is what happened in Va. and is why Betsy, you do not deserve, nor will you win a second term as House Representative in this district. You betrayed your base on an historical issue. You may think, like other handwringing democrats who cannot be progressive, "what will the voters do instead, vote in a republican?" Wrong reasoning:That is what the, now former, democratic governor of Va. thought.To your base you are now a republican; you cannot make it up by voting left on other important issues; you voted to keep our health insurance industry monopolized, you voted for zero competition for the health insurance cartel, your base told you clearly: single or payer or robust public option. Always do what your base tells you. If in doubt within your district, always do what progressives nationally tell you; progressive democrats are progressive democrats anywhere in the country; they're not timid shape-shifting chimeras. But you knew better Betsy; you chose to be a political hybrid and try to hold your base hostage to a republican taking your seat. But it was you who brought harm to your base. You're a lame duck now, one year in to a two year term. And you are no democrat.

Betsy Markey Votes to Support Second Class Citzenship

It deeply saddened me this morning to find Betsy Markey voted against the Health Care Reform bill. While I realize she is playing to the conservative base in Northern Colorado it is appalling to watch someone in office drive the rest of us, also on the bus, over the cliff.

Bye-bye Betsy. You have lost every voter in my family. Sometimes you have to stand up for what is logical and reasonable and in the interest of those without political power. But it takes a spine to do so in this region.

I've never taken to the idea of single issue voting. But in the case of health care reform I believe it transcends other single issues that have become before it. Voting to support the egalitarian viewpoint that there are fundamentally two types of people who live in this society--those who die early and painfully because they do not have enough accumulated wealth or status as compared to those who have status, political power, and wealth is a fundamental undermining of all the principles on which this nation was established. Generations upon generations of my family have worked their fingers to the bone to keep this country moving towards equality.

It is not the 1920's any longer Betsy. We are reaching the carrying-capacity point of many of our current systems. Those systems designed for "the few" cannot be expected to carry everyone into the future. Voting against a reasonable health care reform plan is foolish unless you hold to the egalitarian notion that there are two classes of people in our society and one of those classes deserves to work for the other but be rewarded with only as much gruel as the holders of political power will permit a second class citizen to gain.

Personally I don't want to live in a society based on those principles. My ancestors left Europe in 1660 to shed the suffocating cloak of oppression. I cannot vote for a representative who desires, whether blindly or simply for re-election purposes, to use her power of authority as an elected representative of the people to restore such an abusive and inhumane system.

Second class citizenship based on wealth is class warfare.

For more information on Democrats who voted against the bill, this morning's New York Times is carrying a list.

Betsy Markey(COLO. 4)

+12

MCCAIN

+1%

18%

Negotiations: Greeley Colorado District 6 Teachers Get Thrown Under the Bus

Greeley Colorado District 6 school teachers got a parochial school lesson last evening from the District School Board when the Board basically decided on a package deal for the teachers. Teachers are howling and the Union is threatening action. It remains to be seen what can or can't be done. While it would be reasonable during an economic downturn to curtail cost of living increases it is a hard pill to swallow when federal stimulus funds are coming into the district and a recovery is well underway except in job creation. Top that off with the fact that the Consumer Price Index shows that what $1.00 bought in 2007 now costs $1.04 or a $50,000 salary in 2007 is worth 2,080.27 less than it was in 2007.

Of course the District is facing the same problem. It is going to have to spend $1.04 for every $1.00 spent previously and with property values sinking, the Tabor Act limiting tax increases not yet through the court system, and 3A swinging in the wind, I'd be sweating bullets too if I were on that School Board. Except that I suspect the State automatically adjusts the payments to the local schools for increases and, as I said previously, the state and local schools are eligible for stimulus funding. I've posted a couple of paragraphs on the federal money below taken from the Colorado Department of Education website. There are a few opportunities too, if I am reading the language on this page correctly, that District 6 should be applying for that could help with building attractive pay packages for high quality teachers and administrators in the future. Hope someone is on that and making it happen.

Overview

Congress designed the State Fiscal Stabilization Fund to prevent reductions in critical education and other services.

The Recovery Act allocates the following:

1. A one-time appropriation of $53.6 billion for the overall State Fiscal Stabilization Fund
2. $39.7 billion in Education State Grants for states to use first in restoring state support of primary, secondary, and higher education through 2011 to the greater of 2008 or 2009 levels, and $8.8 billion in Government Services Grants to support any public safety or other government services, including education
3. At least $4.35 billion to fund Race to the Top State Grants, which includes $350 million in Standards and Assessments Grants
4. Up to $650 million in competitive grants to LEAs or nonprofit organizations under the Investing in Innovation Fund

Funding

Colorado is expected to receive $760,242,539 in Recovery Act funding for its State Fiscal Stabilization Fund state allocation, which includes $621.9 million for its Education State Grant and $138.3 million for its Government Services Grant.

I'll write more on the negotiation topic when I get more information. I haven't posted too much on the topic as it is because to be honest it is difficult to tell facts from fiction and media hype. I've been in the middle of mediation before and it is not a whole lot of fun to have the media perpetuating panic points. For example, a mild one, I heard last week that the Board were secretly putting new contracts in front of some select teachers and telling them they should sign them and that the new contracts would allow the teachers to be fired at will once signed.

I sent that worried teacher back to dig for more details because it just sounded more than a little implausible that those details were correct. Every one is worried about the state of education in Greeley District 6. That much is obviously the truth.

Part II: Greeley School District Latino Levy Blues

My "tour guides" tell me it is hopeless. Greeley Colorado has acted conservatively since the first domesticated cow dropped onto the farmer's fields decades ago. Greeley's local systems will remain bound financially and ideologically by voters dedicated to shredding government involvement in just about anything. The current debate over the Greeley District 6 Mill Levy Override is just another notch on the conservative belt.

My response to this mindset is that I don't want to deal with labels. What creates a reasonable and sensible outcome for the citizens of Greeley still makes sense whatever lick-it-and-stick-it label one wishes to categorize it under.

If private industry could handle effective education without the profit interest driving every decision I'd be fine with that. If private industry could create an effective transportation system, that could service everyone at an affordable price, I'd be fine with that too. If the essence of community needs like energy, health care, and other minimalistic survival needs could be handled in the same way I'd agree with that too.

But private industry doesn't work well in the delivery of public goods (utilities, education, transportation, and so on) most simply because demand outstrips supply. Every person requires some regardless of ability to pay. Did it work better in 1940? Yes it did--much better.

There were less people to service. Less diversity of needs. Less developed complexity of needs recognized. The spiderweb of need just keeps spinning bigger as the population expands and society finds new ways to examine the threads. Supply, earlier in the century, could meet reasonable demand without a company having to become a megalithic gigantic-titantic bureaucratic system.

The investment in assets was reasonable in earlier decades and the costs to start up within the means of several companies. Competition could and did flourish. If you could put together the investment capital and had the management expertise on your team a person(s) could build a company to compete and turn a profit without government subsidies. Now the costs to enter the market are so high that competition is very limited and left to the "big guns" and their ever soaring needs to return a higher ROI to their investors.

And when the "big guns" can't do they are enticed through big government subsidies. The ultimate marriage producing the ultimate opportunity for corruption and inflated costs.

My point is that those days are gone. A centrally organized system, like the government, has to be used to create public systems like education because they have gone beyond the reach of the common working man and woman. And the only entity we have that can serve all the people (well most the people), most the time, without making decisions based on profit but on the good the economy receives from the value invested, is the government. (I can hear the boo and hisses from here.)

Not the prudent option for everything but the prudent option in this case. The way I look at it is that I can check big government by being a pragmatic and well educated voter. I can't check big corporate interests without being a big investor or a very powerful politician. Essentially, as a working class stiff, I am shut out when education, transportation, and other public goods are in private hands. I need these goods, my children need these goods, and these are the ladder to success in America. I, with others, can create much more effective regulation and oversight than any politicized federal agency by rallying like-minded people suffering like-minded consequences to vote out elected public officials overseeing any public system. The true beauty of democratic principles in action--equality. In private hands our youths' educational options are doomed to the powers of capitalism and the market forces. Not a pretty sight in my opinion.

My point here is that conservative politics do not preclude building a good education system. Managing the expense of the system is just prudent reasoning not politics. A dollar invested by taxpayers should show a dollar's worth of value at the very least. A dollar + over the long run if we are good at it. Managing the expense of the education system to cut off its blood supply so that less value is returned because it is a government based program is dubious reasoning and political ideology at its worst. It is snipping off your community nose in spite of its face.

So now it is 2009 and we all want to decide how Greeley District 6 will spend its money and whether it really needs more money to create the return investment expected (value to the community) by increasing taxes. Well how many local citizens really know how to manage and run a system this complex and this big? I don't. And I have management background and training. But I do know that I expect elected officials to hire the most qualified people available to do the job and I expect voters to keep a watch over whether that job is being done well or not.

The outcome is the pudding proof. And our pudding is on fire only it is not called a flambe.

In other words, so far the outcome is seriously lacking. The returns on the community investment, the value we are getting, are dubious at best.

Looking at the Greeley Mill Levy Override brings this issue square about in the face of Greeley citizens and taxpayers. If the objective is to create the most education value for the dollars invested then Greeley citizens and taxpayers certainly have every obligation to uncover why D6 performance continues to be sub par and that the plan being put forth by the Administration will remedy these issues just as fast as possible.

According to the Greeley Tribune this week Greeley District 6 School Board President Bruce Broderius infers that Greeley's low performance is due to specific low performers he'd like to be able to cut out of the test score statistics. I hope he intends to clarify this statement.

My response is that Greeley District Six has an obligation to all students and not just choice cuts the District would like to make. Additionally I've decided to take a look at some of the potential causes of the sub par performance of District 6 from my own perspective. I published a list in my previous post in this series. I'll take on the first four items here. Mostly because the first four are the easiest to answer.

• Is the performance problem related to the notion that Greeley is a unique district?
• Is the performance problem related to the collective IQ of the students?
• Is the performance problem related to the collective IQ of the parents?
• Is the performance problem related to the collective IQ of the community?

Really this is just one question. "Is it us?"

I'll just cut to the chase here and address the racism inherent in this discussion and one which many, including authority figures and media figures, are want to use to distract from the real problem at hand. Other districts in Colorado also have high minority populations and immigrant populations without the same performance issues. Additionally Greeley already receives more funding than other local districts, like Poudre, that show a 14% Latino population in their school district. Greeley has a 44% identified Latino population.

Greeley Federal Funds in 05/06 Per Student $845.

Poudre Federal Funds in 05/06 Per Student $562.

Greeley Local Funds in 05/06 Per Student $2,826.

Poudre Local Funds in 05/06 Per Student $5,274.

Greeley State Funds in 05/06 Per Student $4,376.

Poudre State Funds in 05/06 Per Student $3,257.

Okay, close your eyes. Let's take a closer look at what's happening in relationship to these funding dollars. Here come the numbers.

This section will look at a comparison between the Greeley District Six costs and that of the Poudre District. I use ratios to examine the numerical relationship below because Poudre had about thirty five thousand students in 05/06 while Geeley had a bit over twenty-four thousand. We have to compare apples to apples as much as possible and not oranges to apples.

Administratively District 6 with 24,809 students is running .0006 administrators per student while Poudre Valley with 35,630 students is running .0005 administrators per student. However District Administrative support in Poudre is higher at .0046 per student than Greeley's Administrative support which is at .0038. What entails District Administrator support can very widely between districts. One district might hire Vice Principal's for instance whose job duties are very isolated while others may hire for the same position and also assign teaching duties.

Essentially the above ratios are one indicator that Poudre School District is performing more efficiently, in general, than Greeley District Six. What it does suggest is that Poudre is doing more per dollar and returning more value per taxpayer dollar spent based on testing results.

In this regard it is understandable that the District Six Board and Administrators would want to defend its performance achievement by claiming the district has additional burdens of low performing students. In response I'd ask if the additional resources, both Federal and State, which have been received (see above) are meant to provide for this difference, in part or in whole--if the special need indeed exists. With these numbers it would be possible to construct a similar ratio for special instructional services and would give an idea how these monies are being used. If the additional revenue sources have been provided and special services are not being provided I'd imagine that would be a big issue. If there are additional monies and they've been allotted accordingly then there should be no reason to use the "underperforming" populations as a scape goat for general poor performance.

At present I do not have these statistics on LEP and/or IEP learners. If anyone wants to provide them I'd be grateful.

Personally I have no issue with seeing the variety of performance issues related with LEP students or second-language students as a subsection of performance. Unfortunately though these figures are not being reported by either Greeley District Six or Poudre to the National Statistics site or the NCES site is withholding this information. However Greeley District Six, according to the NCES site for 2005/2006, as I stated above, had about forty-four percent of students identified as being of Latino origin to Poudre's 14%.

It is a thin line between inferring that all Latino students are low performers and saying that students with second-language development issues are performance issues. That 44% percent figure means very little without accurate figures on which students are nonnative citizens or first generation immigrants. Racism is not something this District wants to actively promote anymore than it does tacitly already through exclusion of programs directed specifically at migrant and low performance students.

I don't see how anyone can live in Greeley and not be painfully aware of the racial stigma and divides which exist in this city. Programs that have racial implications, probably in the average Greeley citizen's mindset, have been banned, disingenuously dismissed, renamed, and a host of other politically opportunistic political tactics used to avoid creating the very programs that would hopefully address some of the nonperformance issues.

But you will be happy to know the school board is aiming to produce more charter schools which ultimately tend to serve the top performers.

The School Board isn't the only entity at fault here. The citizens of Greeley create this environment and, I'll argue a bit wildly, through their elected officials have institutionalized the scape goat mentality in order to give free reign to arguments keeping government and taxation minimalistic.

Guess what Greeley--It doesn't work in education. Education is an investment. The more you invest the more harvest this community will reap.

As investment examples, in 2005/06 Poudre paid out in salaries per student 24,185.00 Greeley paid out in salaries 17,547.5 per student. Greeley by comparison is running much lower in salary dollars spent per student.

Greeley looks on paper like it is the prudent investor but in reality the job just is not getting done. So which administration/community is the wiser investor?

It indeed may very well be that "we" are the problem. At least in part. But not in the way expedient local mindsets may think. While we probably don't suffer from lower intelligence quotients in general we do suffer from political ideologies applied with two wide a brush stroke. The problem may be the fact that the collective culture of Greeley is being harvested by our youth. And the harvest has turned out to be only "middlin' pickins".

I'll continue this conversation in Part III of this series. if you've got a beef with a statistic--let me know. It wasn't my favorite course.

Northern Colorado Mimics Los Angeles Basin

For a time now, as I drive around Northern Colorado (usually lost), I have pondered the region's seemingly insatiable desire to become the Rockies version of the Los Angeles basin. Sprawling developments plopped in the middle of fields of corn, aquifers seemingly unthought of as raging boom town populations dispersed across the region, economic development agencies actively promoting specialized futures for some cities, and seemingly irrational (or complete lack thereof) zoning regulations.

Colorado will be the ultimate parody of the Los Angeles basin. Minus of course the critical environmental factor will most likely be water rather than bad, cough, air trapped into a basin. Boulder can play Beverly Hills 90210. Fort Collins can be the new blended good-side of Hollywood and Granada Hills. Loveland as Simi Valley with Greeley as Newhall and Neanderthal land. I'm just not quite sure where to stereotype Denver in yet. I haven't spent enough time in town I guess.

What puzzles me however is why the voters and citizens of Colorado are sitting back and watching it sprawl. I've picked up on the whole "We are the Libertarians" thing. I've recognized the whole neanderthallic "Tea Party" concepts. But for years I have heard my ninety-five year-ol ranching uncle talking about ways to tie all his properties up in a land trust so "the blankity-blank develops won't get their hands on it once I die." This from the most die hard conservative bastion of fiscal, social, and emotional constraint I've ever heard tell of. My uncle tells stories of watching men hang in "hangtown" California. Strung up for their color, for looking wrong at the right citizen, or because someone just plain didn't like them. "They let 'em swing from the porch of the hardware store."

Okay so environmentalist attitudes and progressive politics do not necessarily have to go hand in hand. But yet the area ranchers and farmers seem quite subdued in Northern Colorado. Where I come from the farmers, the ranchers, and the citizens would be armed with hayforks and pitchforks and demanding their own bizarro show called the "Town Hall".

My tour guides suggest this complacency is due to the fact the farmers and ranchers are struggling so hard that they may yet need the developers and their money if the big farm subsidies sink the small Mom and Pop ship any further. In my view a few more monopolistic-megalithlic-snail-snotter corporations controlling the markets--like our not so beloved JBS Swift and the bell will be tolling for those small Mom and Pops.

Another suggestion that has come my way is that "..so what... that's what's going to happen and we'll just have to live with it...".

I never buy into the idea that development can't be organized and planned. If you are working class or fixed residents of the area it is a prudent thing to keep a watchful eye out for what the future is developing for your quality of life. I do however buy into the notion it takes a lot of political clout, political power, economic power, or in lieu of these things, voter outrage and collective interest to create change.

Today, which brings me a few belated paragraphs later to my point, I have picked up another potential clue about the historic tendencies in Colorado that clear some of the fuzz off my puzzle. President Bush's Interior Cabinet Secretary is being investigated by Congress for potentially being in bed, and obviously enjoying it, with big corporate energy interests. The investigators of the very same Department of the Interior which she led turned her over to the Justice Department. That is NOT a good sign. Same said Secretary, Ms. Norton, previously served as Colorado's Attorney General.

I am just shocked. Aren't you? Who'd guess? The idea that such a conservative area would have the same elemental types of corrupt influences in government as the liberal state I just left behind. The players are different. The issues are different. But the motives stay the same.

Maybe we are all much more culpable, together, for the nation's spiral into gross special-interests than we would like to acknowledge. At least on the surface.

Here's a clip from the main article from the Los Angeles Times.

Interior Department investigators referred the case to the Justice Department after concluding that there was sufficient evidence of potential illegal conduct, according to federal law enforcement and Interior officials. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive and confidential nature of the case.

Those officials said the referral was based on an already comprehensive Interior Department investigation that included interviews with numerous Interior employees. The Justice Department has assigned prosecutors from its public integrity section and the U.S. attorney's office in Washington to the case.

Norton, 55, was President Bush's first Interior secretary. She had worked as an Interior Department attorney before being elected Colorado's attorney general. Later, as a private lawyer, she represented mining, timber and oil companies.

As Interior secretary, she embraced an industry-friendly approach to environmental regulation that she called "cooperative conservation" and pushed the department to open more public land for energy production.