We all know that the job market is tough, right? And we all know that journalism is not a growth industry, right? So given that the New York Times has yet to call and offer me Tom Friedman’s job, I may need to consider other fields of endeavor. Not that I’m looking for a job - but it always makes sense to explore whatever options might be available.

Here are my - let’s not call them requirements - desiderata for a new position.

• A salary commensurate with my wisdom, experience, and continuing need for ready cash
• No economy class travel
• Performance metrics so vague that years will pass before your employers are aware that you’re not meeting expectations
• Bronco tickets, as well as tickets to every major sporting event
• Located right here in Colorado Springs
• A snazzy office with a private balcony
• Highly competent assistant(s) to do the actual work
• Full party schedule, preferably featuring attractive celebrities.

You may find this list unreasonable, even delusional, but I’m dead serious. The job’s open, and I’m applying.

That’s right - say hello to the future CEO of the United States Olympic Committee!

Why, you ask, should they hire me?

Because I am, if anything, overqualified for the job.

You want athletic background? I still have my second team all-league certificate from my days playing youth hockey, not to mention the fact that my high school yearbook noted that I scored a goal for the soccer team. Not only that, I sailed around the world (although the wind did the actual work of propelling the vessel). And finally, I ride my bike for 15 or 20 miles almost every morning, and have occasionally passed other cyclists.

Political experience? City Council (elected, not appointed, I’ll have you know!)

Knowing how to deal with the media? Dudes, I am the media!

At ease with corporate titans? I once met the president of a now-defunct New York Stock Exchange listed company on an elevator when I worked in New York City - and less than six months ago I had a seven-minute conversation with Scott Flanders, now the CEO of Playboy Enterprises!

Speak foreign languages? Fluent French and Tahitian! And not only that, I speak and write English fluently - a skill which former USOC honchos (or honchas) may have lacked.

A cheap hire? You got it! No relocation package, no fancy perks - just pay me half of Stephanie Streeter’s salary, and I’ll work like a dog…not that dogs work very hard, but you know what I mean.

Able to get on with the self-important ex-jocks who run the National Governing Bodies? No problem-I’m just as self-important as they are, and I know how to convince ‘em that they’re getting everything they want while simultaneously shrinking their budgets.

Looks/thinks/acts like a CEO? I starred in a locally made sort-of movie last year, The Evil Brain from Planet X. (Check it out) I played a reanimated corpse possessed by the Evil Brain-and tell me that’s not exactly equivalent to the CEO of Goldman Sachs!

An example for America’s youth? This may be a problem, since the new USOC headquarters building is located within a few steps of nine of my favorite downtown bars - but I’ll promise to stay away from them during working hours…unless I have a crucially important meeting with Mike Moran.

Dynamic new initiatives? I’m so about positive change! No breakfast meetings, no mid-morning meetings, and group rides every noon. And as for the athletes, just let ‘em work out and hope for the best - which brings us to…

Corporate confidentiality. You know those “gold medals?” Do those kids who have devoted their lives to getting one know that they’re not gold at all, but gold-plated brass? Don’t tell ‘em! Bad for the image, bad for the brand - and imagine what it’d cost to mint solid gold medals! From now on, we’ll shoot for either the affordable silver medal, or the economical bronze. Forget the gold.

You may think that this is a joke, but that’s what they said about Sean Paige - and now he’s sitting through six-hour meetings, and getting paid peanuts. Dare to dream, right??!!

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Posted by Rob Larimer on October 30th, 2009 :: Filed under Uncategorized

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Spent much of Monday as a proud parent, watching my daughter and 500 other law school graduates being sworn in as members of the Colorado Bar.

Held at the Boettcher Concert Hall in Denver, the event featured a special session of the Colorado Supreme Court, speeches by various dignitaries and a surprisingly talented all-lawyer brass quintet.

Chief Justice Mary Mullarkey made what may well have been a graceful and appropriate speech, but Boettcher’s notoriously bad acoustics made much of it incomprehensible. Good training nonetheless for newbie attorneys who’ll have to listen to and absorb hours of mumbled courtroom testimony. Mullarkey then had the unenviable task of introducing 52 on-stage dignitaries, including enough judges to strike terror into the heart of any would-be perp.

Although all the assembled dignitaries were attorneys, none were corporate lawyers. That may have accounted for the idealistic, high-falutin’ quality of the speechifying, which stressed honesty, ethical behavior, and giving back to the community.

And on such a halcyon autumn afternoon, it was possible to believe that every person who repeated the oath administered by the Chief Justice would abide by it, in letter and in spirit.

Here’s the oath.

I do solemnly swear by the Everliving God that:

I will support the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of Colorado;
I will maintain the respect due to Courts and judicial officers;
I will employ only such means as are consistent with truth and honor;
I will treat all persons whom I encounter through my practice of law with fairness, courtesy, respect and honesty;
I will use my knowledge of the law for the betterment of society and the improvement of the legal system;
I will never reject, from any consideration personal to myself, the cause of the defenseless or oppressed;
I will at all times faithfully and diligently adhere to the Colorado Rules of professional Conduct.
If I were in the business of selling firearms, I’d publicly support the fiery Republican gunnies who oppose most forms of gun control. Privately, I’d funnel as much money as I could spare into the campaigns of ardently anti-gun lib’ruls.

There’s only one sure-fire way to increase gun sales-elect Democrats! If the citizens of our great nation are convinced that the guv’mint is fixin’ to take away their right to buy guns and/or ammo, they respond as any shopper would: they rush out and buy before supplies are gone.

Here’s the news from the reality-based community: guns aren’t going to be banned. Not this year, not next year, nor at any point in the foreseeable future. That’s a fight that no sane politician is going to start. Maybe the country would be better off without tens of millions of handguns in private hands-and maybe the country would also be better off without those noisy, polluting cars and airplanes. We’ve got guns, we’ve got cars, we’ve got planes. And some of us have more than one car, and more than one gun. And whether I have no guns, or 20, that’s my business-and if we keep electin’ those crazed lib’ruls, I might have to make it 21.

And what about the apparent transformation of former Gazette publisher P. Scott McKibben from ruthless corporate titan to non-profit pussycat? McKibben, who slashed costs and personnel at the G, and abruptly decamped after a couple of years for a job with L.A.Times, just changed jobs. His new position: executive director of the Tournament of Roses in Pasadena! Smart guy-he’s figured out that working for bankrupt media companies is no longer a rewarding career path, and has made a great lateral move. No more disgruntled, whiny journalists for P.Scott-just 800+ volunteers, a small staff, and the Rose Bowl.

Congrats, Scott - and far from raining on your parade, let me be the first to offer congratulations and suggest that a couple of free ducats to the New Year’s Day classic would make any journalist very gruntled indeed. …

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Posted by John Hazlehurst on October 28th, 2009 :: Filed under Blog
Tags :: gun, Lawyers, Rose Bowl

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Let’s assume that 2C fails, and that our fair city’s fiscal woes continue.  Let’s further assume that the votes split.

Voters from the North End, Broadmoor, Patty Jewett, Ivywild, Cheyenne Canyon and Skyway are supportive, while residents of the suburban ring oppose the measure.

Such an outcome would confirm once again that Colorado Springs is not one city, but two - a blue heart encircled by a red rope.

Take the city’s historic core, add Manitou Springs, Cedar Heights, Pleasant Valley, and everything west of Interstate 25 from Fillmore south, and you have a diverse little city, characterized by historic architecture, museums, mom-and-pop businesses and moderate politics.

It could well be the finest place to live in America.

Denver’s culture without Denver traffic!  Boulder without crazy politics and drunken students!  Aspen without high prices, obnoxious celebrities and too much snow!

It could be, but for one thing. Most of the residents of our could-be city don’t control their own destiny.

The “Red Lords” of suburbia reign over them.

Better funding for city services? No!  Historic preservation? Nonsense! Fix up the historic City Auditorium?  Why bother?  Close the Pioneers Museum?  Works for us! Pay cops and firefighters less?  Good idea!!!

If 2C goes down, maybe it’ll be time to think about jurisdictional realignment.

Why shouldn’t the now-powerless residents of the city’s blue heart get together and secede from the city?  I know, I know - secession has not been a popular concept since the late unpleasantness between North and South during the 1860s.  But that was a long time ago - think of it as divorce.

Like an endlessly quarreling couple who might once have been well-suited to each other, the two cities which share the name of Colorado Springs ought to face the facts and negotiate an amiable separation.

Suburban residents will no longer have to spend time dealing with/apologizing for the lunatics in the city core, and vice versa.  Taxaholics can tax themselves, and taxophobes can keep on cutting. We’ll all have the best of possible worlds, regardless of our political leanings.

Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness - that’s our new motto!

Secessionists of the city, unite!  You have nothing to lose but your chains!

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Posted by John Hazlehurst on October 22nd, 2009 :: Filed under Blog
Tags :: Issue 2C, secession

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Where angels fear to tread, as the old saw goes. And it remains to be seen whether Councilmember Tom Gallagher has acted foolishly or angelically in proposing an across-the-board 10 percent pay cut for city employees.

Such a cut, Gallagher says, would save $16 million, and go a long ways toward overcoming the city’s projected $24 million budget deficit.

For at least thirty years, councilmembers have held one thing sacrosanct: the welfare of city employees. City workers are sure to vote in the often-ignored April council elections, and probably constitute the single largest voting bloc-especially if you include employees of Colorado Springs Utilities and Memorial Health Systems.

City employees have traditionally been compensated according to complex metrics which rely heavily upon compensation levels in comparable municipalities. Clearly, the use of such formulae may result in steadily increasing compensation for the employees of all cities in the measured sample.

To the best of my knowledge, no previous councilmember has ever dared call for an outright pay cut for city employees. That’s the third rail of municipal politics - touch it and you die.

So let’s give the oft-maligned and sometimes eccentric Gallagher credit - he’s about to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel of his own devising. It helps that he’s term-limited, and has no reason to coddle favor with voters in some future municipal election, but it’s still a gutsy move.

But does it make sense? A 10 percent pay cut would be devastating for me, and, I suspect, for most of us. But given the choice between such a pay cut and no job, I’d take the pay cut and hope for better times.

My guess is that Gallagher’s proposal will fly in some form. With Sean Paige aboard to stiffen the backs of the now four-member conservative bloc (Gallagher, Darryl Glenn, Bernie Herpin and Paige), it’s likely that council will follow the lead of the county commissioners and do what they have to do. In the best of worlds, that would mean some combination of pay cuts, furloughs, and moderate service reductions, leaving parks, the museum, community centers and swimming pools unscathed.

It’s a tough call-but these are tough times. For most of us, it means working harder, earning less, or coping with layoffs and firings. During the last week, two close friends have lost their private sector jobs through no fault of their own - and I know that they’d be delighted to have a job at the city - even with a 10 percent pay cut. Or maybe even 20…

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Posted by Rob Larimer on October 16th, 2009 :: Filed under Uncategorized

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City Council’s decision to appoint former Gazette editorial page editor Sean Paige to fill the vacant District 3 seat has aroused controversy, to put it mildly.

Paige applied for the position as a joke, found that he had some support, became serious and won the race.

Paige’s sudden ascendancy has not been greeted with universal applause. Three-quarters of the respondents to a poll on CSBJ’s Web site say that Paige was “the wrong choice” for City Council.

Detractors note that Paige has lived in the city for less than seven years, and that his views are very different from those of his predecessor, Jerry Heimlicher.

Heimlicher, who was overwhelmingly elected to a second term by District 3 voters, believed that local government should actively promote economic development and neighborhood revitalization. He was supported by community activists, by historic preservationists, by small businesspeople and by substantial majorities in every District 3 precinct.

Bewilderingly diverse, District 3 includes Nob Hill, the West Side, parts of the North End and Broadmoor, South Nevada, and much of the city’s south side. Its residents are just as diverse, politically somewhat liberal and notably cranky.

Paige isn’t just conservative-he’s a conservative with a capital “L,” for libertarian.

In case you’ve never read one of the G’s editorials, libertarians are just as cranky as West Siders. Inspired by both the liberal and conservative playbooks, libertarians generally dislike much of what passes for government, fervently support your right to bear arms, to smoke dope, to open strip bars, and to paint your house bright purple, regardless of neighborhood covenants. They’d just as soon government keep out of your wallet, and out of your bedroom. Nice in theory, a little more complicated in practice.

Since leaving the Gazette, Paige has founded a nonprofit, Local Liberty Action. According to the organization’s Web site, “LLA was established to celebrate and perpetuate the limited government ideals that made the United States a bastion of freedom, opportunity and prosperity - and to counter the growing tendency of some Americans to look first to government for all the answers. We hope to change the way citizens think and act by being highly respected and persuasive advocates for limited government, free market capitalism, property rights and economic and civic literacy.”

As an editorial writer, as an advocate for limited government and as a persuasive opponent (or supporter) in argument, Paige has few peers.

But now that he’s a member of City Council, he may have some ‘splainin’ to do …

Ours is a representative democracy. In practice, that requires elected officials to find a balance between representing their constituents and following the dictates of their own conscience. He was appointed, not elected-and a lot of his new constituents have views widely at variance with his own.

In Paige’s case, he’ll have many challenges.

Will he, for example, keep his day job with Local Liberty Action? It’s a policy-oriented nonprofit, like the ACLU, the AARP or the Cato Institute. His opponents could argue that such employment is inherently conflictual.

It’s fine to advocate limited government, but political philosophies of any kind often run aground on the shoals of reality.

Council members need to keep the creaky ship of state afloat, not debate the finer points of naval architecture. Paige’s constituents knew where Heimlicher stood on South Nevada renewal, on the acquisition of White Acres and Section 16, on Issue 2C and on the U.S. Olympic Committee deal.

Where does Paige stand on these, and dozens of other issues unique to the district?
He’s opposed to 2C, but what will he do if it doesn’t pass? Will he offer constructive, practical suggestions, or simply recite the conservative playbook?

Paige is no Stepford wife, no mindless adherent of ivory tower libertarianism. He brings a refreshing skepticism, an inquiring and powerful intellect, and an evident desire to serve the city and work with his new constituents.

He’ll find, as all politicians do, that policy is made and implemented in the real world, and that compromise is inevitable and necessary. He’ll find that his constituents are interested in results, not words.

If a West Side sewer line backs up and floods a dozen homes with raw sewage on a Saturday night, he’ll have to show up and deal with it, because that’s what his constituents expect.

Today, the city faces challenges that might be graver than any since the 1930s. Decades of rising tax revenue and expanding services have given way to a new era of austerity.

Paige will have his hands full.

And I, for one, look forward to watching him try to change the city, and watching the city change him.

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Posted by John Hazlehurst on October 14th, 2009 :: Filed under Blog
Tags :: Colorado Springs City Council, Sean Paige

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Why did the 100+ members of the International Olympic Committee blow off Chicago, Tokyo, and Madrid in favor of Rio de Janeiro?

We think we know the answers.

They nixed Chicago because they were mad at the USOC, didn’t much like Stephanie Streeter, and thought that Obama should have spent a week in Copenhagen buttering them up instead of a mere five hours.

Madrid didn’t make the cut because Barcelona got the Games during 1992, and former IOC boss Juan Antonio Samaranch no longer controls his once-loyal minions on the Committee.

And Tokyo? Beijing just hosted the games-and Japan and China may be regarded by the IOC as essentially the same country, just as Canada and the U.S. are often lumped together.

So that left Rio. And although Rio may have a very small, very insignificant crime problem, it’s one of the most beautiful and glamorous cities in the world, isn’t it? No terrorists, no Al Qaeda, just Copacabana beach, Carnavale and sleek, beautiful friendly people in skimpy clothes, right?

Maybe not.

In fact, as Jon Lee Anderson reports in this week’s New Yorker, Rio de Janeiro more closely resembles Baghdad, Mogadishu, or Port Au Prince than it does any of its three erstwhile competitors.

Here are some statistics.

Of Rio’s 14 million inhabitants, three million live in one of nearly a thousand favelas, shantytowns which receive few municipal services, and are ruled by gangster-headed militias. Thanks to an extensive black market in guns, the militias are well-armed, with arsenals that include hand grenades, assault rifles, machine guns, and anti-aircraft weapons. The militias deal drugs, collect taxes, and impose their version of law and order upon their hapless subjects.

Rio leads the world’s cities in “violent intentional deaths,” with five thousand murders last year. The category doesn’t include “rape resulting in death,” nor “riots resulting in death.” 22 cops were killed, and 1,188 cariocas met their maker at the hands of the police. Anderson quotes Alfredo Sirkis, a prominent local elected official in Rio, who told him that “Rio is one of the very few cities in the world where you have whole areas controlled by armed forces that are not of the state.”

The police are widely perceived as just another militia, albeit more brutal and less well-armed than their unofficial counterparts. Nowadays, the dividing lines between the favelas and what we think of as Rio, the affluent Zona Sul, are more and more fluid. The city becomes more violent and more dangerous every year-so the IOC had better hope that the Brazilian government finds a way to seal off most of the city from the Olympics.

Let’s see: a city controlled by armed, disaffected militias headed by youthful nihilists who, as Anderson notes, routinely deal with enemies by torturing them, dismembering the bodies, and leaving the remains on the street-perfect for the Olympics, right? No way they’d make common cause with Al Qaeda … we all know that terrorists hate the Samba!

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Posted by John Hazlehurst on October 8th, 2009 :: Filed under Blog

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There’s something inherently distasteful about a common governmental process that allows elected officials to appoint other should-be elected officials.

Consider Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter’s out-of-the-blue appointment of Michael Bennet to the Senate seat vacated by Ken Salazar’s resignation or New York Gov. Basil Paterson’s (who only ascended to that office after Eliot Spitzer’s dalliance with ladies of the afternoon became known) appointment of an obscure upstate Congresswoman to succeed Hillary Clinton.

And we haven’t even mentioned Rod whatshisname…

This afternoon, City Council will give each of 19 hopefuls ten minutes of face time, as they seek to choose The One to occupy the District 3 seat.

As a resident of District 3, I’ve got a dog in the fight. But after skimming through a few of the candidate’s responses to half a dozen innocuous questions posed by the Gazette, I’m dismayed.

Save only Sean Paige, our earnest job seekers delivered clichés by the bushel, or responses so eccentric that you wondered how they’d made it this far on their journeys through life.

One refused to answer most of the Gazette’s questions, noting that she would respond during her 10-minute interview this afternoon. Clearly, she doesn’t think that newspaper readers are an important constituency-and she’s right. The only votes that count in this “election” are those of the eight people at the council dais.

Another suggested that the city ought to start a bank, make loans aligned with civic purposes, and thereby rake in the dough. Sounds good to me - and I’ll be the first in line to apply for a small loan!

But, as one who once sat for many hours at that dais, thereby wasting what should have been the most financially productive years of my life, some unsolicited advice for this afternoon’s supplicants.

• Keep it short. Don’t use your full ten minutes. Council members would rather have a bomb thrower than a blowhard as a colleague.
• Remember, you don’t know anything, compared to the masters of the universe whom you aspire to join. Don’t talk about all your great ideas and programs-they don’t care.
• If selected, you’re the rookie. Your job: keep quiet, bring snacks, and volunteer for unpleasant duties.
• You’re appointed; they’re elected. Until you win an actual election, you’re a seat filler. Defer to their wisdom.
• Make it clear that you respect and support your superiors. They don’t want or need dissenting voices, or new forms of critical analysis. They’ve got Douglas Bruce to do that, not to mention Sean Paige.

Good luck! I hope you all lose-but someone will be the biggest loser of all, and get appointed. To you, my sympathies. Have fun working like a dog for $6,250 annually … would have been great pay in 1909, though!

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Posted by John Hazlehurst on October 6th, 2009 :: Filed under Uncategorized
Tags :: City Council, Sean Paige

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Breakfast this morning at the spectacular, LEED platinum building that houses the National Association of Realtors.

The building is spectacular for the best of reasons. It’s not some hulking stone monster that tries to express the power and magnificence of its tenant, nor is it a coldly anonymous glass tower. It’s a modest, light filled structure, brilliantly designed to fit on a site so strangely configured that it would seem unbelievable. LEED platinum means that it’s as green, as energy efficient, and as sustainable as the state of the art permits-and that’s quite a statement by NAR.

An organization housed in such a building has made a statement about itself, and about the future of the real estate industry that sends a more convincing message to policy makers and the public than any press release.

We listened to one of the founders of the Center for Creative Leadership, who spoke of change. CCL, as you may know, has multiple campuses throughout the world, one of which is in Colorado Springs. CCL sponsors/was instrumental in founding the Colorado Springs Leadership Institute (CSLI).

He led us through half a dozen exercises. I was baffled. My comment: “I’ll sit on the porch and shake my cane at change!”

After breakfast, A dozen of us joined K Street lobbyist Mark Plotz of the National Center for Bicycling and Walking for - what else? - a walk through the neighborhood surrounding our hotel, and periodic street corner discussions of how cities can become more bike/pedestrian friendly.

For cyclists, Washington is a nightmare. There are no bike lanes to speak of, the streets are clogged with trucks, aggressively driven taxis,and frantic political staffers talking/texting simultaneously on two cell phones. Despite this, Washington has a “free bike” program, with a dozen locations from which you can, with a swipe of your “bike card,” unlock a bike and ride away. There was one such location, complete with a dozen bikes, on Massachusetts Avenue at Dupont Circle.

That’s fine - except that, as Mark admitted with an amused smile, to ride a bike on Mass. Ave. would be not just risky, but suicidal. Nancy Lewis, who for many years ran our city’s Park & Rec Department, was in our group. The modest Lewis said nothing, so I felt obliged to gloat a little bit about our notably bike-friendly city. In this respect, at least, we’re light years ahead of our nation’s capital!

Walking back, Plotz told Lewis, and other group members about a grant program for which El Paso County would be eligible, which might bring the region several million dollars during a two year period, some of which could be used for bike/pedestrian related purposes. It was a perfect example of the kind of unplanned, unexpected and potentially beneficial outcomes that the Chamber hopes for/expects from this trip.

For me, the best feature of the trip has been meeting/interacting with the other participants. Theoretically, I could have done that in Colorado Springs. I could have won a $5 bet with Larry Liston, or spent an hour or two talking politics with Wayne Williams, or learned how Shawnee Huckstep built TechWise with nothing but perseverance, intelligence, and her own refusal to fail. Lisa McElvaney might have told me about sustainable business practices in Abu Dhabi, and Steve Imke would have been glad to tell me about the risks of drilling for gas on the Western Slope. But they’re busy folks, and it’s unlikely that we would ever have had occasion to talk for more than a few minutes.

That is, I guess, what they call networking … who knew??!!

Yet more random thoughts:

-There may be, as I snidely implied the other day, a lot of bad neoclassical architecture in Washington, but there are others. I had forgotten that the Capitol literally takes your breath away, and that Union Station may be the grandest public building ever erected in America.

-Did I see President Obama? Yup! At least I think so … coming back from Union Station early this afternoon, traffic was stopped by a motorcade led by (count ‘em!) seven police motorcycles and two police cars, and consisting of three limos and a hulking black SUV, and followed by two more cop cars. Who’s important enough for such a motorcade, other than POTUS? Or maybe it was Joe Biden.

-Will I leave tomorrow with my disdain for/suspicion of “Washington” intact? No. I leave with respect and admiration for the people, appointed and elected, who are doing their best to “preserve, protect, and defend the United States …” That’s part of the president’s oath of office, and that is, I perhaps naively believe, what motivates all the players in our daily national political drama. Things move swiftly in Washington nowadays, as our energetic young president attacks problems which have proved insoluble for a generation or more. Maybe Obama will fail to deal effectively with health care, with nuclear proliferation, with climate change, or with Iraq/Afghanistan/Pakistan. But it won’t be for lack of trying, and it won’t be because all the actors in this grand drama, from Tom Donahue to Doug Lamborn to Mark Udall, haven’t played their roles in shaping the nation’s future.

We don’t know what the future holds - but during a bright fall afternoon in this beautiful city, anything seems possible.

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Posted by John Hazlehurst on October 1st, 2009 :: Filed under Uncategorized
Tags :: WashingtonD.C.

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