Letter to Longmont Times-Call
Published 7-15-08

MEDIA BIASED, GULLIBLE

     “Woman ticketed outside McCain event.” (T-C p. A5, 7-9-08). So went the blazing headline over another non-news story carried by most of the gullible media describing the “terrible abuse” political activists may be subjected to when their disruptive acts are noticed, they refuse to cooperate, and are turned away or arrested—as they should be. This time it was liberal activist Carol Kreck, an ex-newspaper reporter, who got caught trying to bring a “McCain=Bush” sign into a McCain meeting, where all signs had been declared off-limits beforehand. (Try taking an Obama=Carter sign into the Pepsi Center during the Democratic National Convention and see how far your First Amendment rights go.)

     This latest act is almost a carbon copy of a put-up job carried out against President Bush in 2005 by three Denver-area liberal activists who attempted to disrupt one of his rare meetings in Colorado and got caught on their way in. Some in the media sympathized with them for weeks afterward, and their lawsuit as far as I know still drags on, clogging-up an already overloaded judicial system.
     Talk about a biased media, Bob Schaffer who is running for the U.S. Senate certainly has his work cut out for him, as attempts are being made in news reports to envision him as some sort of a criminal for having been employed in the oil industry. We all cannot make a living arranging pack trips into the wilderness, tramping over the tundra. Some of us have to work at real jobs.
P.

SOME FLIP-FLOPPING IN LONGMONT
     In national politics it’s called flip-flopping. I don’t know how else to describe Longmont mayor pro-tem Karen Benker’s change of attitude toward the tax issues that surrounded the proposed LifeBridge Church annexation, and now her eagerness to divert city tax revenues into renovating a shopping mall—of all things. On one hand, she used to worry that the church-area’s proposed retail businesses might escape from paying their fair share of taxes into the city treasury (an unfounded fear), but now she apparently has no problem with supporting the Tax Increment Financing gimmick that would allow the mall owner to tap into the city’s tax revenue stream to help pay for renovating his property. Are we Longmont taxpayers to believe that this TIF money which won’t be flowing into the city treasury will never be missed?
     The questions seem endless and the investment of public money brings them into sharper focus. Under TIF, will the mall feature a new anchor store and if so, who will it be? Why did perfectly good stores such as Penney’s and Woodley’s leave Twin Peaks? They moved into other commercial areas (created without TIF subsidies, by the way) and are still generating tax revenues for our city.   How fair is it to these stores and all the other non-TIF businesses around town, to see a TIF-subsidized shopping mall bringing in competing stores?
     Leave the TIF subsidy out of the equation. Encourage the mall owner to bring in whatever mix of boutiques, major and minor outlets, cinema rooms, food stations and whatever else that is appropriate and he can afford, on his own terms.
     That’s the fair way.
P.

FIRE THE CRITIC!

     One would think that, if a newspaper were serious about self-examining its content and performance, it would look to someone with hard newspaper experience to serve as ombudsman--the longer and more diversified background in that field, the better. Just because someone writes well and calls himself or herself a journalist, or is knowledgeable in other subjects such as legal matters or public relations, that does not automatically qualify one to be an authority on newspapers.
     But that’s what we readers of the press are presently stuck with in the current version of the ombudsman column published weekly in the Rocky Mountain News. Titled On the Media, an expert on legal issues represents the conservative side of the political spectrum on one Saturday; an expert in public relations champions the liberal side the next Saturday. As far as I know, neither has had any on-the-job experience in the newspaper field.
     To its credit, after the Joint Operating Agreement with The Denver Post went into effect in 2002, the Rocky has tried to maintain a weekly ombudsman-type column. Carried over from the Post and devoted not only to critique its own news content but that of the Post and occasionally Denver’s electronic media as well, the column was fairly interesting for a while. But it wasn’t long until journalism professor Michael Tracey of the University of Colorado got hold of it and turned it into a liberal festival.
    The Rocky let Tracey go and brought in public relations whiz Jason Salzman to represent the liberal side. Salzman’s lack of newspaper experience is telling. He suggests in his latest column (7/5/08) that, since a potty-mouth word or two has slipped through, the Rocky should relax its moral standards and start printing more of the late George Carlin’s Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television.
    Like Lenny Bruce's vulgarisms, there’s a time and place for the regular use of these “fringe words.” But it’s not in a family newspaper that’s welcomed into one’s home.
P.

WWII RELOCATION CAMP AT GRANADA REVISITED
(In response to an article in the Rocky Mountain News, 7-4-08)

      Certainly and especially by hindsight, no one can be proud of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s order at the start of World War II to evacuate everyone of Japanese descent from the west coast to inland relocation centers, one of which was built at Granada, Colorado (Amache). He was only reflecting the mood of many Americans “to do whatever is necessary to save our country.” As a 15-year-old at the time living in Calhan, Colorado, I was aware of that feeling.
      Having lost so heavily at Pearl Harbor, there was a belief that we would soon be invaded. The angst that gripped America was heightened by the shocking news that on June 21, 1942 an Imperial Japanese Navy submarine shelled the U.S. Army’s Fort Stevens coastal defenses on the Oregon side of the mouth of the Columbia River with no return of fire. (historylink.org).
     Proving that the few coastal defenses we did have in place were woefully vulnerable, coupled with the belief that the penetrating warship may have received semaphore navigation signals from shore, this first attack on mainland American soil since 1812 no doubt sped up the opening of Colorado’s relocation camp. According to the 1945 Colorado Yearbook, 192 men, 19 women and one infant arrived on August 29, 1942 from the Merced, California center. This initial group was composed of hospital attendants, mess-hall workers, clerks and skilled mechanics. Amache’s total population in 1944 was 5,892.
     The state yearbook says the Granada center--enclosed by barbed wire and guarded by 90 soldiers from Ft. Sill, Oklahoma, in compliance with War Department standards--was located on a tract of 10,960 acres with more than 200 units surrounded by irrigated agricultural land for use by the evacuees. They had their own stores, a school, a hospital, and were self-governing. Evacuees who swore their allegiance to the United States after their standing had been found satisfactory were released to locate in Colorado.
      Life was not easy for them and Gov. Ralph Carr was correct in sympathizing with these evacuees,. Still there were only two true concentration camps in Colorado during the war; one was at Trinidad where 4,000 troops from Rommel’s Afrika Corps were held, the other was at Greeley.
     The Amache experience is a blot on our country’s history but by and large the people of Colorado and the nation for that matter had no more control over creating it than our Japanese friends who were forced to live there did in creating their native country’s attack on Pearl Harbor, a blot on their history.
     Why can’t we just all forgive and forget?
P.

COLORADO POLITICS

      Attempts by biased players in the news media to remove the Boulder connect from Rep. Mark Udall’s campaign for the U.S. Senate are just too brazen to go unnoticed. Examples: Much of a full-page, pro-Udall campaign story in the May 27 Rocky Mountain News dwelled on his “correct” address, followed by Denver Post columnist Ed Quillen’s “me too” remarks on June 1.
     A genuine career politician from a family dynasty, Udall proudly claimed far-left Boulder as his hometown when he first ran to serve the 2nd District in the U.S. House of Representatives, but now that he must seek votes from out around the state, of course, he’s never heard of the place.
     Instead of reporters presenting clever analogies about his dual address (Boulder/suburb Eldorado Springs) to help cover his tracks, the voters might appreciate seeing more about the Congressman’s authorship of legislation and his voting record during his lackadaisical 10 years in office. Other than voting the strict party line set by MoveOn.org, writing a resolution rebuking a talk-show host, and chairing a committee that rarely meets and serving on another, there doesn’t seem to be much activity.
     Why has Udall been rated “F” by the NRA on Second Amendment issues, and why did he score so poorly with the National Taxpayers Union?
     In a current TV ad, Udall boasts that he’s really going to do something about solving the energy crisis. With his party in control of the do-nothing 110th Congress, what has he been waiting for?
P.

SOME THOUGHTS ON THE PRESS

     Have Denver’s major newspapers abandoned Colorado’s conservatives? This is not a plea to turn bad news into good news; it is about the growing anti-conservative approach to news coverage in The Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News. Beyond in-house editorials, little choice remains between the two publications.
     Almost any public figure that espouses political or social conservatism is apt to be fair game for hostile reporting in either paper. (Jon Caldara, James Dobson and Rep. Tom Tancredo come to mind.)
     Reporters who cover Republicans are apt to import comments from left-leaning political scientists, usually of the academe; rarely do similar comments from right-leaning sources appear in stories about Democrats. How “analyses” are allowed to run any place outside the opinion page(s) is manipulative journalism.
     Both papers are bad about running anticonservative “ghost quotes” that often appear in wire copy. Associated Press senior writers David Espo and Ron Fournier, both remnants of Florida’s hanging-chad anti-Bush fame, are masters in using this “speaking on condition of anonymity” gimmick.
     One bright aspect of the Rocky: Vincent Carroll still has charge of the editorials and the ancillary commentary. While conservatives can rely on locals Carroll and columnist Mike Rosen to make sense, running amok are leftist columnists such as CU law professor Paul Campos and renown entertainer Garrison Keillor, he of nonprofit PBR fame and fortune who slams conservatives at least once in every offering. Then there is columnist Nat Hentoff’s eternal obsession with waterboarding, as he ignores the Islamic extremists who do flout the Geneva Conventions big-time. (This is America, Mr. Hentoff, and nobody has been suicide-bombed at Guantanamo.)
     The Post’s editorial page has improved under Dan Haley, gaining back some of the fairness Sue O’Brien always showed, but it boasts only one quasi-Republican, Bob Ewegen, who rarely has seen a Democratic tax increase or liberal policy he didn’t like. A bone has been thrown to right-wing writer John Andrews, but mainstay conservative columnist Al Knight apparently has been dispatched to outer Slobovia. And of course, the Post still periodically runs a column by Gail Schoettler, even after she was flagged ethically for accompanying her husband on several exotic excursions at taxpayer expense.
     In the Rocky’s news pages, Mike Littwin makes his living eviscerating conservatives, while the Post finally had the courtesy to replace its “Littwin” version (Spencer) with a moderate writer, David Harsanyi.
    The overwhelming majority of the American press including Denver’s two big dailies seem to enjoy driving conservatives away. I cannot believe this is a good way to win advertisers and subscribers, and the ongoing results are very telling.

PC

LETTER TO EDITOR

Published 5-17-07 Daily Camera

THE MIGHTY WOPBURGER

      Bugdust, Longjack, Ginger Rabbits, Joe the Wop, Chooch, Squeaky, the list goes on and on. 

      Those were just a few of the delightful nicknames of some wonderful Italians I knew in Louisville when I published the newspaper there, 1965-98. Had thought-policeman James Gambino been around, he could’ve drawn enormous amounts of attention to himself by correcting all of those friendly “insults.” So it’s probably just as well he attacked only the name of a sandwich made out of two pieces of Italian bread (or a hamburger bun if you wish), a flat cake of fried sausage, and a slice of mozzarella.)
     Still, the Rocky Mountain News spared no detail in building a thunderous case denigrating the historic Blue Parrot’s traditional offering. An ethnic expert in Washington D.C. was called in, and further we got to read about the arm-twisting by a Boulder Valley School District official who was pressured by Gambino to boycott Colacci’s wholesale spaghetti sauce (which incidentally is a separate business from the restaurant) over the offending sandwich. Now that is piling on—an insult that I say is far worse than the naming of a mere sandwich.
     Alas, what am I to do now when I want "woptoast" served with my breakfast eggs and sausage at the Blue Parrot? I guess I can always whisper my order into the waitperson’s ear. But only after looking around to see who’s spying on us.
     Don’t let the do-gooders obliterate the wopburger.
P.

LETTER TO EDITOR
7-27-07
KILLING WESTERN SLOPE ECONOMY
     There has to be a balance.
     Mineral extraction has long been an important contributor to the economy of Rio Blanco, Moffat and Garfield counties in northwestern Colorado, yet here we have a team of powerful Democrats--Sen. Ken Salazar, U.S. Reps Mark Udall and John Salazar and Gov. Bill Ritter—trying to halt drilling on the Roan Plateau and now in the Vermillion Basin. Opened in 1902 and expanded in the late 1940's, if drilling in that region has seriously disrupted the environment or interfered with the hunting, angling and backpacking pastimes of the able-bodied, then the state ought to have tapped its severance-tax reserves to mitigate the “damage” insofar as possible. What’s happened to all the hundreds of millions in those funds collected from energy production?
      Abandoning these fields will force alternatives, all right, such as windmill generators whose towers and propellers--unlike oil rigs--will remain long afterward to blight the landscape and kill the birds.
      Sen. Salazar blocked the Administration’s nominee to head the Bureau of Land Management because BLM denied Ritter another 120 days to “study” (polite word for neuter) the Roan Plan. Udall and J. Salazar tried to cut off BLM funding related to oil leasing there, hoping to stop it that way, but failed.
     The global-warming religion has mesmerized three once-moderate Colorado Democrats. Boulder’s Udall reflects his leftist constituency, but it’s too bad K. Salazar, J. Salazar and Ritter did not reveal while campaigning that they really don’t give a diddly-squat about preserving Colorado’s diverse economy.
     If these Democrats do succeed in shutting down drilling in northwestern Colorado, and it looks like they will, I suppose the county commissioners there can just go out and put on a new tax to make up the revenue loss. The people, in desperation, would just about have to vote “yes.”

PC

Letter sent to Longmont Times-Call
2-27-07 and published

Apparently Boulder County’s Parks and Open Space rangers have so little to do that the county commissioners have empowered them to write parking tickets. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not “for” illegal parking. I’m against the authoritarian attitude that currently engulfs our county government. Until the Boulder County Parks and Open Space Department establishes adequate on-site parking so the people can enjoy these public places without being hassled over parking, then a short delay for a deputy sheriff to write a parking ticket seems reasonable. With Boulder County contracting out police protection to the town of Superior (pop. 12,000), and providing 24/7 service to unincorporated Niwot (pop. 4,100), apparently there is no shortage of sheriff’s personnel, equipment or county money, so the wait shouldn’t be too long.

 
Other authoritarian acts of note lately by the commissioners:

--Issued $29 million in Certificates of Participation to construct the new Open Space/County Garage building just west of Longmont. All legal, this loophole allows the politicians to put the people in debt without holding an election.

--Using our hard-earned tax dollars to pursue an anti-religion lawsuit against a Niwot church that’s trying to exercise its First Amendment rights to serve its congregation by expanding its facilities.

 
--Using Boulder County open space tax-funds to play around with land-use projects in Weld County.

--Throwing $700,000 into a Web-based land-use tracking system to tighten the bureaucratic noose on every square inch of private property in rural Boulder County. What the commissioners don’t buy for open space, they are going to manage with an iron hand.  

Lastly, a “thank you” to the Longmont Daily Times-Call for stepping up its coverage of our Boulder County government. With one political party totally in charge and no debates, the need for more sunshine is critical.

Percy Conarroe

Contemporary history

PERSONAL LETTER TO ASNE
Re: Magazine Publisher’s Column 9-01-06--

     The American Society of Newspaper Editors is not doing itself proud by defending newspaper publishers who reveal our nation’s wartime espionage techniques.

     Advance units of the Islamic jihad drew us into this war by a series of provocations heightened by the killing of 3,000 innocent Americans on our soil. Despite the fact that we attacked no one, we are in a war that we cannot “talk” away and we must win it.
     The worst part of the offending news media’s “tell all” attitude is its deleterious effect on troop morale. I cannot imagine that it’s good news for our fighters to know that some newspapers back home, such as The New York Times, are making their role more difficult by describing in detail our government’s efforts to monitor the enemy’s finances and communications. ASNE’s plea--and that of others—aimed at protecting our constitutional rights is well taken and understandable. However, there is a time for everything and the proper time to get all frothed-up over these alleged constitutional “abuses” would be to find that, after the violence perpetrated against us is over, they’re still in effect.

     I have every confidence that our nation’s methods of espionage including warrant-less wiretapping will only be temporary, are necessary and appropriate in this age of sophisticated communications, and pose no threat to our everlasting personal freedom.

     The overriding danger is that if we do not convincingly win the war in Iraq, there is the strong possibility that if Iran develops nuclear weapons, which appears imminent, and the jihadists who think nothing of cutting off people’s heads and randomly blowing up innocent people--even their own--in order to advance their ideology get hold of nuke bombs, our American dream including our revered constitution could be glories of the past.
     We must outsmart our adversaries, not ourselves.
P.