Channel 1 Networks
Aaron is the webmaster of Channel 1 Networks and video editor/camera man for most all produced media content.
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A county land-use office to help with rebuilding regulations
Oct 10th
Boulder County, Colo. – The Boulder County Planning Commission and Board of County Commissioners will be considering interim development regulations for homes and other structures damaged or destroyed by the historic rains, mudslides and flooding of September 2013. Two upcoming Public Hearings have been scheduled:
What: Planning Commission Public Hearing
When: Wednesday, October 16, 2013, 4:30 pm
Where: Commissioners’ Hearing Room, third floor, Boulder County Courthouse, 1325 Pearl St., Boulder
What: Board of County Commissioners Public Hearing
When: Wednesday, October 23, 2013, 4:30 pm
Where: Commissioners’ Hearing Room, third floor, Boulder County Courthouse, 1325 Pearl St., Boulder
Boulder County is planning for the need and desire to rebuild quickly and restore the community while implementing measures to protect public safety and investments through hazard mitigation and avoidance.
“The goal is rebuilding resilient communities which can better withstand extreme events and maintain the community fabric of these impacted areas,” said Land Use Director Dale Case. “Wise, sustainable rebuilding regulations are a vital part of the recovery process.”
In the aftermath of the unprecedented destruction and the magnitude of extreme weather experienced in September, county staff have closely examined existing regulations dating back to the 1990s and determined that they don’t sufficiently meet public safety standards in all circumstances. For example, current regulations allow property owners to replace structures in some cases without a review and in other cases a review which would require a floodplain development permit which may not adequately address currently known flooding behavior.
Given our community’s recent extreme weather experience, county officials believe is counterproductive for individuals, insurance companies and the public to invest the time, money, and energy into rebuilding in a location that is known to be hazardous.
In many cases the regulations will allow rebuilding to occur within existing lot lines, but require that structures be raised up out of the flood hazard areas or relocated out of hazard areas to a safer location on the property. The current regulations also require structures to be rebuilt at the same height as the old structures. The proposed regulations will allow changes in height to accommodate floodproofing, such as raising the height of the structure to avoid future flood damage.
These interim regulations are proposed to be in effect until April 30, 2014. During this time, property owners can rebuild destroyed or substantially damaged structures in safer locations, in a way that meets the floodplain development requirements (if the new structure is proposed to be located in a floodplain) without going through Site Plan Review. Land Use staff will work with property owners and representatives from other county departments to perform a Hazard Mitigation Review. The goal of this review is to help property owners rebuild in a way that is more resilient to future disasters.
During this interim period staff is committed to reaching out to the communities to understand the needs and issues of residents who are facing complex issues to restore their homes, property and lives. As part of the effort to assist property owners and residents impacted by the flood the county has set up a Flood Recovery Center at the county’s Land Use Department staffed by functional experts in onsite wastewater (septic) systems, floodplain regulations, planning and building code. The center and the county will also pursue other restoration resources and hazard mitigation programs to assist those impacted.
The staff recommendation and proposed regulations have been posted to the Land Use Department’s website(www.bouldercounty.org/property/build/pages/lucodeupdatedc130003.aspx) for public review and comment. Residents are encouraged to read the draft, call us at 720-564-2623 if you have questions, email your comments to planner@bouldercounty.org, attend the upcoming public hearings, and make your opinion known.
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OPED: Koch brothers poisonous tentacles
Oct 9th
From the Huffington Post
by Eric Zuesse
Investigative Historian
Posted by Ron Baird
Boulder Channel 1 News editor
On October 7th, I reported in a two-part story, how the Koch brothers and their friends started in 2002 a plan to get control of the Republican Party so as to become enabled ultimately to shut down the Federal Government and maybe even drive it into default, so as to cause the American public to despise “government,” but actually to despise democracy itself; i.e., to despise this country’s democratic government, specifically.
Today, I report on the crucial role that the tobacco industry played in helping the Kochs to finance this operation, all of which was done with a profound contempt for the public, and with a deep pride for these aristocrats to rule the U.S. instead of the despised public controlling public policy through an honest and transparent Congress and Presidency.
Whereas that previous news report focused upon the Kochs’ expansion of their orbit of control to include the Heritage Foundation, from 2002 onwards, which is an operation that has not previously been covered, today’s report concerns instead the three major foundations that the Kochs themselves started and operated during this period: Americans For Prosperity, FreedomWorks, and Citizens for a Sound Economy.
The scholars, Amanda Fallin, Rachel Grana, and Stanton A. Glantz, published on 8 February 2013 in the online edition of the journal Tobacco Control, their blockbuster study,“‘To quarterback behind the scenes, third-party efforts’: the tobacco industry and the Tea Party,” and they laid out there the history of the key alliance between the tobacco companies and the Koch brothers.
This enormous study, through thousands of pages of archives, was funded by the National Cancer Institute; and it reported that, “Rather than being a purely grassroots movement that spontaneously developed in 2009, the Tea Party has developed over time, in part through decades of work by the tobacco industry and other corporate interests. … Simultaneously, they funded and worked through third-party groups, such as Citizens for a Sound Economy, the predecessor of AFP [Americans For Prosperity] and FreedomWorks,” all of which were/are Koch operations.
These researchers reported that, “In 2002, … CSE started its US Tea Party (http://www.usteaparty.com) project, the website of which stated ‘our US Tea Party is a national event, hosted continuously online and open to all Americans who feel our taxes are too high and the tax code is too complicated.'” (Amazingly, that damning webpage can still be accessed, via the web’s archive authority.)
Already, “Between 1991 and 2002 the tobacco companies, mainly Philip Morris, provided CSE with at least US$5.3 million,” and Philip Morris’s V.P. for Government Affairs justified these expenditures in a memo by saying: “They are adding this level of value. They have provided significant grassroots assistance, in the nature of several thousand calls to the Hill,” and are “very active on our behalf in the field in key states with key Members” of Congress. So: when the “spontaneous” “Tea Party” organization rose up in February 2009, to protest Obamacare, it was actually neither spontaneous, nor at all new.
America’s greatest living investigative journalist is perhaps Pam Martens, who provided a good summary of that study, and she supplemented it with an investigation of her own. In her 20 May 2013 article at her muckraking site “Wall Street on Parade,” she headlined “The Criminal Case Against the Tea Party Cabal,” and she reported also an additional Philip Morris memo (not mentioned by those three researchers), which described the role of CSE as follows: “We are funding a major (400K) grassroots initiative in the districts of House Energy & Commerce members to educate and mobilize consumers, through town hall meetings, radio and print ads, direct mail, patch-through calls to the Capitol switchboard, editorial board visits, polling data, meetings with Members and staff, and the release of studies and other educational pieces.”
They had already done this during 1994, with the Clinton Administration’s proposed healthcare reform, and they claimed there that it was “to show the Clinton plan as a government-run health care system replete with higher taxes and government spending, massive job losses, less choice, rationing of care and extensive bureaucracies. CSE is taking aim at the heart of the plan – employer mandates, new entitlements, price controls, mandatory health alliances, heavy load of new taxes and global budgets – and, with the program well underway, [it] is by all accounts getting rave reviews in the respective districts.”
Another wing of this operation to gut democratic government has been operated by Grover Norquist, who, on 25 May 2001, said on NPR’s “Morning Edition”: “I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.” He was referring only to taxes, not really to spending (which many naïves interpreted him to mean).
Virtually every Republican congressional candidate thus signed Norquist’s “No New Taxes Pledge,” in order for them to be able to qualify for Norquist’s massive campaign-funding commitments from mega-corporate America. Norquist had been set up by Ronald Reagan to run Americans for Tax Reform, in order to do this, but the idea wasn’t actually new with Reagan. The far-right economist Milton Friedman had first introduced this idea, in 1978; candidate Ronald Reagan then adopted and defended it in 1980. Here’s how Reagan himself put it, during a Presidential debate, on 21 September 1980: “John tells us that, first, we’ve got to reduce spending before we can reduce taxes. Well, if you’ve got a kid that’s extravagant, you can lecture him all you want to about his extravagance. Or you can cut his allowance and achieve the same end much quicker.”
The idea of the plan is basically to strangle democracy. This is done by privatizing everything, so that the aristocracy, who already own most of the private wealth in this country, will be able to farm the public – farm the serfs with debt, as the public used to be known during the feudal era. Now, however, the aristocracy are no longer based upon their passing on to their heirs vast landed estates with serfs, but passing on to them vast international corporations with employees and consumers; so, instead of acres, they pass on shares of stock. So, instead of feudalism, it’s fascism. It is the modernized form of feudalism; it is conservative dictatorship for the world of today.
Their plan is working, brilliantly. They call it “libertarian,” but the liberty is to be only for aristocrats. For everyone else, it’s serfdom, if not outright slavery. Conservatives love hierarchy; it is morality, in their vision of things.
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CU’s X-men and X-women both rise in Cross Country standings
Oct 8th
NEW ORLEANS – The University of Colorado men’s cross country team held strong at second in the USTFCCCA Top-30 Coaches’ Poll this week for the second straight week, while the women moved up two positions to 12th overall.
The CU men are once again the top Pac-12 program in the poll. They picked up 341 points this week and finished 19 points behind Oklahoma State. The Cowboys recorded a perfect score of 360 points with all 12 first-place votes this week. Northern Arizona remained at third with 335 points and Oregon stayed at fourth this week with 326 points.
Providence continues to be the top team in the women’s poll. The Friars received 359 points with 11 of the 12 first-place votes this week. Florida State held strong at second (342) and Arizona stayed at third this week. The Wildcats also received the final first-place vote for a total of 340 points.
The regional rankings were released on Monday and have both the men and women ranked No. 1 in the NCAA Mountain Region. The men are above Northern Arizona and the women are in front of New Mexico.
The Buffs are off until October 19 when they will compete at the NCAA Pre-National Invitational at Terre Haute, Ind. Indiana State will once against host the NCAA Championships (November 23) and this meet offers teams a chance to preview the course.
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