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As loyal citizens of Colorado, we have a duty to support auto dealers, real-estate developers, insurance companies and similar public-spirited people who contribute to legislative campaigns.
And with the ballot initiatives this year, we can also fulfill that duty by voting properly to ease the lot of our oppressed millionaires and billionaires.
Figuring out just how to vote properly can be tricky, though, on account of some misleading propaganda.
For instance, a TV ad appeared few weeks ago urging
metro residents to support a new football stadium so that
Denver can keep its professional football team and remain a
world-class city.
Several other people were in the room, so I asked them
if they thought London, Paris and Rome were world-class
cities.
Unanimously they agreed.
But they couldn't be,
I said, since they don't
have NFL teams.
Are they trying to tell us that Jacksonville,
Florida, is a world-class city, and that Los Angeles hasn't
been one since the Rams moved to St. Louis?
someone
asked.
Sounds that way,
I said. Poor Los Angeles, a
mere provincial backwater compared to dynamic Denver.
Let's that metro voters stay the course and provide Pat
Bowlen more luxury skyboxes to rent to millionaires so that
they can watch other millionaires collide with each
other.
That one was easy to analyze, despite the world-class
city
rhetoric designed to obscure the real issue -- how
much of your money does Pat Bowlen deserve?
But this isn't always so simple. Referendum B, for instance, would let the state spend some of the money it is supposed to refund under the TABOR Amendment; this money is dedicated to transportation, local schools and colleges.
In theory, almost everyone, rather than just the wealthy, would benefit from an improved Colorado infrastructure.
But in practice, well, improved transportation means more and wider highways, which means bigger commuter zones and thus more open land that will be profitable to subdivide and develop. In other words, we get to pay to diminish our quality of life while other people get rich in the process.
Amendment 14, which would regulate swine production, looked pretty simple at first -- small family farms vs. big corporate hog farms. It's one thing to have a neighbor down the road who keeps a few pigs, and quite another to have 15,000 porkers penned just upwind and atop your water table.
But this one isn't quite so simple. You may have heard of Philip Anschutz, Colorado's own billionaire. He's the public-spirited fellow who made about $3 billion by gutting our railroad network when he merged his lines into the Union Pacific in 1996.
He owns a 45,000-acre retreat along the South Platte River east of Greeley. About 10 years ago, he wanted to expand his domain, but some other billionaires, the Bass brothers of Texas, beat him to a neighboring ranch. They own National Hog Farms, and were soon producing 300,000 hogs a year upwind from Anschutz's hunting lodge.
The aroma diminished the experience (though as a native of Weld County, home of huge cattle feedlots and the widespread spraying of malodorous chemicals, I have to wonder how anyone noticed the hogs), so Anschutz sued. He lost. He arranged for a local referendum, which lost.
So now he's arranged for a statewide referendum -- the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that of the $268,000 raised by supporters of Amendment 14, $252,000 has come from Anschutz.
If it passes, National will likely have to close its
Colorado pork facility. So will some true family
operations, according to two hog producers I've talked to.
One, who operates out near Sterling, noted that I can't
even find a contractor willing to try building a roof over
my 70,000-square-foot waste lagoon. And what happens when
we get an 80-mph wind with a winter blizzard? Any roof
could come apart, with the pieces sailing away and cutting
the electric lines that my neighbors rely on. My insurance
guy just laughed when I asked him about covering that
possibility.
Neither of them was opposed to reasonable
regulation,
since we breathe this air and drink this
water, too.
And one noted that the legislature
should be able to come up with some rules that protect the
public and the air and water without putting us out of
business.
But Anschutz hasn't cared before who he puts out of business, and after all, National's hog farm detracts from the pleasures and perks that billionaires and their guests deserve.
So this is a tough call. When it comes to hogs, how do you pick between the Bass brothers and Phil Anschutz? The only consolation is that at least one billionaire will hate the outcome, no matter what happens Tuesday.
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