Motley Blog

My subject today is the lack of affordable, healthy, food in the resort town of Telluride, Colorado.

I've talked recently about the failure of our new regional transit authority, SMART, to provide usable transit to nearby affordable housing and how poor wastewater planning is limiting that housing.

The food issue goes to these same decent living points in an elitist town.

Telluride is not a food desert in the typical urban, inner city, sense- quality food is available here, but the cost is prohibitively high for many and the comparison, though not exact, is relevant.

Audio Link

Continue reading "COMMENTARY: Food Desert in a Ski Town?" »

Jonathan Thompson, arguably the most prominent Journalist in SW Colorado, recently visited my current home town, Telluride. At 8750', Telluride is most definitely a hypoxia suffering 'crazy town'.

This particular short piece, originally published in the High Country News in February of 2015, is my favorite of his. At the time of this classic Thompson was based in Silverton, Colorado, his 'crazy town'.

This is not just fun and games, in this related longer feature piece Thompson analyzes the link between altitude and suicide.

https://www.hcn.org/articles/is-altitude-causing-suicide-in-the-west

Crazy Town

Jonathan Thompson

February 16, 2015

Recent research suggests that living at high altitude can affect brain chemistry in such a way as to induce either euphoria or depression. Lack of oxygen to the brain, or hypoxia, might explain both your “Rocky Mountain High” and the Interior West’s high rate of suicide.

Continue reading "CRAZY TOWN" »

Tags:

• altitude
• elevation
• hypoxia
• Jonathan Thompson
• small town politics
• telluride

SMOKE AND RAIN

Through the smoke and rain, lightning struck into the mountain's box canyon. A canyon become smoke stack.

The smoke was not from some industrial pit of Mordor, or from the mines of yesteryear, but wildfires to the Southwest, burning for weeks.

But still our homes were tainted, a slightly stick breath restricting malignancy.

With the summer monsoon comes the Southwest wind, carrying the smoke straight here. And the promise of rain.

A promise in light, in lightning, corroborated in thunder.

Followed by a potent silence under sublime gray skies pierced by gray topped mountain ridges.

Still, the smoke.

It begins to rain, hard.

The gray of dusk takes the sublimity to black.

The smoke is gone, but still the malignancy lingers.

It will for awhile.

Ah, the Rain.

I've never met the Trump Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch, but I have been before the Federal Tenth Court of Appeals on three separate occasions. The Court - based in Denver and serving Colorado, Wyoming, Kansas, Oklahoma, Utah, and New Mexico - is a strange hybrid of bi-partisan western progressiveness and more conservative practices. I've only been in the State of Colorado for 6 years now, but it appears that the conservative influences come from the neighboring state of Texas and its oil and gas money. The State Governor, Democrat John Hickenlooper, a former oil and gas engineer, evidences this influence.

The most significant of my appearances before this body dealt with a post foreclosure crisis camping ticket which violated my constitutional rights, and, equally, was used to justify the confiscation of my personal property maliciously and without due process. This property right precedent is important.

Continue reading "The Tool, Neil Gorsuch, and Post 2008 Property Rights" »

At Robert Kennedy's funeral his brother Edward quoted from a recent presidential campaign speech of his:

All of us will ultimately be judged and as the years pass we will surely judge ourselves, on the effort we have contributed to building a new world society and the extent to which our ideals and goals have shaped that effort.

The future does not belong to those who are content with today, apathetic toward common problems and their fellow man alike, timid and fearful in the face of new ideas and bold projects. Rather it will belong to those who can blend vision, reason and courage in a personal commitment to the ideals and great enterprises of American Society.

Our future may lie beyond our vision, but it is not completely beyond our control. It is the shaping impulse of America that neither fate nor nature nor the irresistible tides of history, but the work of our own hands, matched to reason and principle, will determine our destiny. There is pride in that, even arrogance, but there is also experience and truth. In any event, it is the only way we can live.

Thanks to Stephen Pinker and his 2002 book 'Blank Slate'.

The Parties versus the People

How to Turn Republicans and Democrats into Americans

By Mickey Edwards

2012

Mickey Edwards spent 16 years in congress starting with the Reagan years and in leadership during the Gingrich takeover led by many Reagan era College Republicans. In this book he analyzes the crisis level problems of partisan politics and proposes detailed solutions in a compact and easily readable tome. My only critique would be his omission of the legal profession in the partisan context, including the large numbers of that profession occupying our national legislature.

Political parties are not inherently bad - citizens of common disposition will naturally seek each other out and combine to seek out agreed-upon ends. But when the pursuit of party power becomes the end goal and not merely a tool for achieving a better society, it is democracy itself which is laid beneath the guillotine's blade.

Continue reading "THE PARTIES VERSUS THE PEOPLE" »

Although Hilary Clinton is clearly winning the Presidential battle in the corporate media it is the sad truth that she is every bit as corrosive and divisive to America as is her competitor, Donald Trump. Yes, it is a different demographic segment - the traditional American middle class as opposed to the threats posed against traditional minorities by Trump.

Most disturbing is her corruption of feminism and female professionals by establishing legal precedents that abrogate constitutional rights via accusations of harassment, etc - without due process or fact - the rule of gossip, not law.

Certainly Donald Trump represents this same legal standard towards minorities, but the takeaway fact is that our narrow and divisive electoral system has committed corporate treason and constitutional rape against all of us under the color of law and the propaganda of the corporate media.

Although Hilary is the most experienced candidate, the roots of her experience documents this problem clearly.