Everything about this Aspen Daily News story is repulsive:
Sheriffs miffed about Biden's impact on local communitiesMy first reaction to this was: Are you kidding me? The sheriff of the county that includes Aspen is bitching about money? You mean this Aspen?
Weekend visit by vice president was costly to local law enforcement
The sheriffs on both ends of the Roaring Fork Valley expressed their displeasure Sunday about the impact and costs that Vice President Joe Biden's short visit to Aspen this past weekend placed on their communities and agencies.
Helicopters buzzing above Aspen and multiple road closures along Highway 82 and Interstate 70 on Friday and Saturday accompanied Biden's entourage, which involved a 40-car motorcade and at least nine local law enforcement agencies.
Biden, who stayed in town for less than 24 hours, was here to speak at a private event involving journalist Charlie Rose and other entities, according to sources.
"The responsible thing to do when big corporations invite him here is to consider the impact not only financially on a small county but also everyone here," said Pitkin County Sheriff Joe DiSalvo....
The lowest-priced single-family home on the market in Aspen is listed for $559,000. It's located in a trailer park.With that kind of money, there ought to be enough money to pay for a 40-car motorcade for every man, woman, and child in the county and surrounding counties, at will. I'm exaggerating, but not by much. Why does a place where at least 50 billionaires on the Forbes 400 list own property have any government budget worries?
... The average home price in this mountain town has increased over the past four years, to $6 million in 2010 from $5.4 million in 2006, according to multiple-listings data. The median price for single-family homes is now the highest in the country at $4.6 million, says San Francisco-based Altos Research, surpassing the Hamptons, Beverly Hills and Palm Beach.
Sales of luxury Aspen estates -- the sorts of over-the-top places with leather walls and outdoor heated infinity pools -- have remained remarkably healthy....
Last month, a home in the Maroon Creek neighborhood with an indoor heated swimming pool, basketball court and outdoor hot tub overlooking a waterfall sold for $13 million. The buyer was Russian Alexander Zanadvorov, the 40-year-old owner of Sedmoi Kontinent, a chain of supermarkets.
With celebrity regulars like Lance Armstrong and Goldie Hawn, Aspen is an anointed stop on the international jet-set circuit, a place where the wealthy come to play and spend....
And you have a problem with thorough security for the vice president of the United States? Do you seriously believe the protection the Executive Branch receives right now is excessive?
On the other hand, what is this crap Biden is jetting off to? A private confab organized by a huge private equity firm (well, Biden is from Delaware, after all), and hosted by that gaseous hero of liberal totebaggers, Charlie Rose?
(And did Biden go to this in order to grovel for cash for his 2016 presidential run, which is obviously going to end in failure? As awful as it is to be a plutocrat bootlicker, how much worse is it to be a plutocrat bootlicker when there isn't the slightest chance that you're going to get anything out of it?)
It's all repulsive. A meteor can't wipe our civilization out soon enough.
Don't worry about a meteorite - that's too quick!
ReplyDeleteWe're slowly boiling away life on this planet.
Sadly, Steve, you and I are about the same age, so we're seeing it happen right before your eyes.
On a happy not, the two of us probably won't be alive when the real poo-poo hits the fan!
"Note," not 'not.'
ReplyDelete@Victor-Who's there?
ReplyDeleteNow, now, guys -- try reading about what life was like in, oh, Elizabethan England/Europe, or ancient Rome, or Tsarist Russia, or imperial China, or....
ReplyDeleteWell, the point is, we're sliding downhill from the brief post-WWII golden age of relative income equality and relative domestic tranquility and prosperity to the far more usual condition of human existence -- massive disparities in wealth and a life that's nasty, brutish and short for the vast mass of humanity.
The special sauce for us is that we're taking the whole planet down with us this time.
Why, yes. Yes, I AM a fucking ray of sunshine this morning.
Or is that "ray of fucking sunshine"? I can never keep it straight. You'd think I'd know by now.
ReplyDelete@Peabody who?
ReplyDeletePeabody knows the trouble I've seen.
I was in Aspen in late summer 2008 when John McCain flew in for a financial summit meeting hosted by the head of Federal Express who has a house in Aspen. The candidate's arrival was preceded by the bone shaking roar of a military transport plane flying low over the town as it fixed course on Aspen's short mountainside runway. Cops with bomb-sniffing dogs patrolled the hotel where much of the Republican brain trust would stay. As my family and I were fleeing the conservative invasion, we saw McCain's motorcade driving along the main thoroughfare: a least four battleship-class SUV's with tinted windows that were bookended by cops on motorcycles and in cars. How many people complained then about the costs and inconvenience?
ReplyDeleteI vote for the Yellowstone caldera, myself.
ReplyDeleteYeh, at least with the caldera we'd go out with a bang, not a whimper. Although a ten-mile-wide meteorite might be more spectacular.
ReplyDelete