The Boulder Way

I guess Boulder's social engineers never heard the old adage about leading horses to water.

Gang Granola is trying to force healthier eating habits on area school kids, but the effort is faltering and losing money, according to this report in today's Daily Camera, indicating that the kids can't be force-fed jicama and beets and spaghetti squash (yum, yum!). The story doesn't say so, but the effort has probably spawned a booming black market in contraband Twinkies and Honey Buns at Sanchez Elementary School.

"If the adults are enthusiastic about it, the kids will try it," Sanchez Principal Doris Candelarie told the newspaper. "We're getting them to try different things. They've tried jicama, beets, apricots, plums. Many of them haven't had a lot of the fresher food. They've had to change their palates."

What planet is Candelarie living on? On the Earth I'm familiar with, there's a reverse correlation between the enthusiasms of adults and the tastes of their children. My mother's enthusiasm for liver and Castor oil never won me over, and I'm sure Candelarie's fondness for spaghetti squash is driving her young charges in the opposite direction.

Not to be deterred, the healthy food fanatics are collecting private donations in order to keep the food torture going. If curtailing options and subsidies won't work, the next step will probably turn coercive -- strapping members of the Healthy Food Resistance into modified dentist chairs, perhaps, and force-feeding them tofu burgers.

That's the Boulder way, after all -- better living through government intervention.

Voluntary . . . For Now

The social engineers who run Boulder have come up with a clever new way to encourage environmentally-correct lifestyle choices: residents are being asked to leave their cars at home and find alternative means of transport on certain days, based on the color of their vehicles:

Boulder to use car colors to discourage driving

Got a blue car? The city of Boulder wants you to consider commuting sans car on Mondays.

Red car? Take a break from driving on Wednesdays. White? Thursday is your designated day of the week to leave your vehicle at home.

On Labor Day weekend, the city plans to launch a campaign to encourage residents to "do their 14.3 percent" to cut down on the number of cars on the road -- reducing air pollution, cutting carbon and road rage -- by making a commitment to go car-free on the day of the week that's correlated to your vehicle's color. Those that stick to their car-less commitments can win prizes from the campaign's sponsors.

"We want to attract people to something other than driving for one day a week or more in a fun easy way," said Cris Jones, a transportation planner with the city's GO Boulder program.
Participation in the program -- called Driven to Drive Less -- will be voluntary, and so is the day that participants choose to take a break from being behind the wheel. (There's no penalty for red-car-owning participants who commit to being car fee on the white-car day.)

The connection to car colors -- and the program's whimsical Web site, driventodriveless.com -- is part of an intentional drive by the campaign's designer, Sukle Advertising, to give a light-hearted feel to the car-cutting movement."

But the problem with such "voluntary" efforts is that they have a troubling tendency to become mandatory if the public refuses to respond to the initial, milder attempt at conditioning. "Light-hearted" can turn heavy-handed if the social engineers don't get the results they want, using good-natured cajoling or peer group pressure. And even this purely "voluntary" approach is creepily coercive in a politically-correct bastion like Boulder.

Just imagine the social stigma that you would suffer, and the shame you would feel, and the looks of opprobrium you would get, for driving your blue SUV to the office on a Monday, or pulling into Starbucks on Wednesday in your red sports car (unless it's a Tesla Roadster, of course.). This city-sponsored bifurcation of drivers into two camps -- those who supposedly care about saving the planet and those who don't -- might even encourage episodes of road rage, as those who decline to conform become targets of verbal abuse, shaming or worse from the eco-authoritarians in their midst. Sounds like a way not of uniting people, around a common goal, but of dividing them, based on nothing more than the color of the car they drive.

Most such attempts at social conditioning have a darker side. If the social engineers can't get the results they want using a carrot, sooner or later they reach for the stick.

The Joke's on Boulder

Pranks succeed best when the situation is just plausible enough to be believable, at least until the victim catches-on. And that makes Boulder a practical joker's paradise, since almost anything, no matter how outlandish, is plausible in this notorious bastion of wacko-liberalism.

Does Boulder really have a Clean Sidewalk Cracks Ordinance? Not yet. But because it's the sort of place where such things are possible -- where equally ludicrous rules routinely get handed down by City Hall -- resident Patrick Murphy was prepared to believe it when a notice appeared on his door Thursday, reminding him of his civic duty to keep his sidewalk cracks manicured.

The April Fools Day prank was good enough to earn a write-up in The Boulder Camera:

"When Boulder resident Patrick Murphy stepped outside early Thursday morning to get the newspaper, he found what appeared to be a warning from the city about keeping his sidewalk cracks clear of debris.

According to the door hanger, the 58-year-old resident failed to comply with a municipal code that requires homeowners to “keep cracks in sidewalks free of dust and insect larvae.”

“Such persons shall remove dust and larvae from the full width of the cracks,” the notice read.
The warning went on to say that it's the responsibility of all Boulder residents to clear the cracks by noon the day “following wind,” and that violations could include fines up to $4,620 or the city could choose to clean the cracks and charge for the labor.

Murphy was stunned.

“I thought, wait a second, the cracks on my sidewalk are perfectly clean,” Murphy said.
The man then inspected the cracks in his neighbors' sidewalks, and said his were downright glistening compared to theirs.

“I kept saying, ‘No, no, this can't be true.'”

Murphy suspected a neighbor called in the apparent violation."

That Murphy found the situation so plausible says something funny, but also damning, about the regulatory wonderland (or regulatory madhouse, depending on your perspective) called Boulder. He eventually caught on to the gag, and got a good laugh out of it -- but he refuses to divulge the prankster's identity, for fear that he or she, by counterfeiting a city document, may have broken some other ordinance on the city's voluminous books. And city officials, who take everything (especially themselves) seriously, evidently weren't pleased about being the secondary butt of the joke.

"Sarah Huntley, a spokeswoman for Boulder police, said the prank probably wasn't illegal.
“We think it was probably done in good fun,” she said.

Still, she said the designer went to “great efforts to make it look official,” and that by including the real contact information for the city, staffers have spent time dealing with the prank instead of city business.

The city issued a statement Thursday afternoon about the prank, saying, "While we recognize this may have been an attempt at humor, the city of Boulder would like to caution residents about making phony documents on behalf of the city and/or impersonating official city personnel."

"This could be a citable offense, in some situations," the statement continues.

"Misunderstandings can result in staff time that could be spent on other city and community priorities."

"Other city and community priorities" like what? Collecting the city's carbon tax, perhaps? Or finding creative ways to spend it? Or finding ingenious new reasons to hassle property owners? With so many ridiculous rules and regulations to enforce, we can't have city staff wasting precious time responding to calls about a phony Sidewalk Crack Ordinance. These April Fools Day pranks are getting way, way out of hand -- something has got to be done about it. Maybe we need . . . . well, maybe we need some kind of Responsible Pranking Ordinance, which would fine instigators of pranks that create distractions for city staff.

That's the Boulder way, after all.

No joke.

Ex Post Facto "Incentives"

IBM probably spends more than $35,000 a year on ballpoint pens and paperclips. So does anyone really believe that the city of Boulder landed a new IBM service center, and the 500 jobs that go with it, because of $35,000 in tax "incentives" it will give the company?

The Boulder Daily Camera seems to believe it, judging from its diligence in drawing these causal connections. "IBM gets $35,000 business incentive from Boulder, will add 500 jobs," reads the headline. And Boulder city officials may also choose to believe it, since it would seem to justify this obvious misuse of public money. But does anyone else really, truly, honestly believe that a corporate behemoth like IBM made this decision based on a penny-ante $35,000 handout from the city?

You'd have to be a PhD to believe anything so far-fetched.

The company has been a presence in Boulder for years. It actually has a "campus" there. It made this move based not on a measly $35,000 in tax rebates, but because it makes compelling business sense, unrelated to this payment. The company apparently is shameless enough to take "free" money when "free" money is offered: the widespread bidding for jobs with public funds has created a mercenary culture inside too many board rooms. But no sensible person would in this case connect one event with the other.

I'm not saying "incentives" never matter. In some cases, they may make a difference, at the margins. But other factors still matter more -- like the fact that IBM already has a campus in Boulder. Corporate executives have become very shrewd about collecting "incentives" for choices they would probably have made without them.

If folks in Boulder want to believe that this $35,000 offering played a pivotal part in the decision, and congratulate themselves on their economic development prowess, who's going to pop their big green balloon? Certainly not the top brass at IBM, who are laughing about this all the way to the bank.

Property Rights Don't Grow on Trees

The college town of Boulder -- where predations on property owners are commonplace --reportedly is considering the use of eminent domain to take land it says is needed for a bike path. But what really has locals enraged isn't the land grab, or the violation of civil rights this entails -- but the fact that some trees might have to be removed to make way for the project.

That's Boulder for you.

Of the 58 comments posted in response to the Boulder Camera story as of 9:45 this morning, the last time I looked, only 4 expressed concerns about the trampling of property rights, and the abuse of government power, this involves. Most of the rest expressed anger about the trees.

But trees grow back. Do property rights?

Boulder is Proving Kyoto Critics Correct

If George W. Bush wasn't going to save the planet, then by golly Boulder was!

So the college town, like many other American cities, showed its determination to think locally and act globally (or is it think globally and act locally?) by mandating citywide greenhouse gas reductions fashioned after a Kyoto Treaty never ratified by the U.S.. City leaders may have harbored hopes that their grand gesture would shame the former president into finally signing on, even though critics said meeting the treaty's benchmarks (cutting greenhouse gas emissions to 7 percent below 1990 levels by 2012) would be costly, unachievable and could cripple the U.S. economy.

And Boulder is proving the Kyoto critics right.

The effort (much like Kyoto itself) is turning out to be a complete flop, according to a recent report in the Boulder Daily Camera, except when it comes to extricating taxes from businesses and building a nice little climate change bureaucracy for the city. About 32 percent of the $869,000 in "carbon taxes" collected by the city in 2008 went to "staff and administrative costs," according to a summary in the Boulder Camera, which was more than the $263, 684 the city spent trying to boost residential energy efficiency (which moved it 0.60 toward its Kyoto goal).

So the city government has grown its carbon footprint, by adding personnel and providing them with energy-sucking office space and office equipment, even while lecturing the rest of Boulderites about their environmentally-incorrect lifestyle choices.

Despite seven years of effort and a significant expenditure of tax dollars, the outcomes have been disappointing across the board. And that has a little more realism infusing the debate. Writes the Camera:

"Last year, staff from Boulder’s Office of Environmental Affairs told the City Council that without more funding the city will only make it a third of the way to its emissions target.

Now the Kyoto clock is ticking, and Boulder’s City Council is considering whether to raise the city’s carbon tax, passed by voters in 2006 to pay for greenhouse gas reductions. But even if the tax is increased to the maximum rate approved by voters, the city is likely to get only two-thirds of the way to its 2012 goal if it sticks to the current strategy.

Watching Boulder, well-known for its progressive environmental regulations, struggle to reduce emissions on its own has some people wondering if hitting the Kyoto goal is possible — or even desirable.

“Efforts to meet the Kyoto targets are arbitrary, especially for cities, and mostly symbolic,” said Roger Pielke Jr., an environmental studies professor at the University of Colorado who is known for picking apart climate policy. “To the extent that cities engage in shenanigans like offset schemes, such efforts give the appearance of doing something while doing little or nothing, which is probably worse than doing nothing.”

Arguing about who will meet Kyoto and who won’t is a distraction, he said.

“It is a waste of time for Boulder to try and meet the Kyoto goals,” he said. “A far better strategy would be to set targets for carbon intensity of energy supply and efficiency gains, and then see how well we can meet these targets.”

But rather than admit they erred -- and admit, by extension, that Kyoto skeptics may have been right -- backers of the program, like all good zealots, argue for soldiering on, believing that increasing the carbon tax, boosting public education and adopting more coercive methods can still turn this into something more than a grand but empty gesture.

All that matters, really, is that they tried.

"And even if none of the 900-some “Kyoto cities” meet their emission targets, there is still power in signing the agreement, according to Annie Strickler, spokeswoman for ICLEI, Local Governments for Sustainability. As a group representing a quarter of all Americans, the mayors make a powerful lobby for state and federal climate policies.

“In general, what we’ve seen as one of the most important pieces of what local governments are doing is the leadership they’ve shown pushing this issue nationally and internationally,” Strickler said. “The U.S. has been absent on the issue of global warming. That void has been filled by local governments.”

Strickler said there are many roadblocks for many local governments trying to reduce emissions, including an inability to set fuel-economy standards for vehicles or regulate utilities. But, she said, it’s local governments who are educating people and laying the groundwork for their residents to support federal action on climate change. “They’ve inspired people and inspired action,” Strickler said. “It informs the changes that people make in their daily lives and also what they are willing to get behind.”

Boulder can perhaps take solace in the fact that few if any of the American cities that jumped aboard the "Kyoto cities" bandwagon have even come close to meeting their goals: 2007 study on the progress of "Kyoto cities". But as this study shows, few of the mayors who signed on gave much consideration to the practical or economic implications of what they were doing. It was all about "symbolism" and short-term partisan politics, since the vast majority of "Kyoto cities" were (and still are) run by Democrats, who couldn't resist the temptation to take shots at a Republican president.

But you can drop the whole thing now, Boulder. The Republican is out and a Democrat is in. The all powerful and all-benevolent Obama will save the planet, even if he has to break the back of the American economy to do it.

Of Coronations and Cow Attacks

Yes, yes, I know today is the day everything changes for the better in America -- the day that the darkness and despair of the Bush years finally gives way to a new dawning of American hope and promise, as Abraham Obama takes the oath of office in Washington. But what I really want to blog about is a cow attack in a Boulder open space.

Here's how the Boulder Daily Camera covered the incident, followed by my selection of reader responses, which not only show that Boulderites can't resist a pun, but that some of them have a sly sense of humor about the slightly nutty place they call home.

Cow charges cyclist on Boulder open space

BOULDER, Colo. — A cow charged a woman on the South Boulder Creek Trail on Monday afternoon, knocking her down, officials said.

The woman was riding her bike on the trail when she encountered the cow, and she stopped to let the animal pass, said Pete Taylor, a ranger for Boulder Open Space and Mountain Parks. The cow knocked the woman over and walked on her legs, he said.

He said the woman -- whose name wasn't released -- wasn’t seriously injured, and she refused medical treatment.

She didn’t appear to do anything to provoke the animal, which witnesses said appeared to have an injured leg, he said. The cow had left the scene by the time rangers arrived, but hikers coming down the trail were warning others about the rogue bovine.

Marshall Mesa open space is leased by livestock owners and used as grazing land. Taylor said the cow’s owner was notified.

In 2003, a woman was rammed three times and her pelvis fractured by a grazing mama cow when she accidentally ran between the animal and her calf on the South Boulder Creek Trail.
Jason Vogel, vice president of the Boulder Mountain Bike Alliance, called Monday's attack "odd, rare and random" and said he hasn’t heard of any other cows going after cyclists. It’s not even common to come across cows on the trails, he said, though they often can be seen nearby. "It’s not something people should be concerned about," he said.

And now some of the responses:

"Udderly ridiculous."

"Obviously, she was invading the natural habitat of the bovine beast. One should tread there carefully, if not at all. Humans must pay attention to what mother nature is trying to tell them. We have far exceeded our grasp; do not cows need a home, too? Why? Why? Boulder!? Let them graze with grace! And do not insult them with your feeble, misguided attempts at recreation."

"This was an accident waiting to happen; there are so many off leash cows in the Open Space it was just a matter of time before one attacked a visitor. And who picks up their poop? And who keeps them out out of the riparian areas?? The answer is simple. The ranchers need to go to the OSMP and watch a video about the impact of off-leash cows in the open space, and pay a fee to get a green tag indicating the cow is safe. If the cow can't be trusted around people it should be kept in a "cow park" with a fence round it to keep it away from the populace. Cows in riparian areas or ditches should be leash only: they can get water at a trough. The farmers need to pick the poop and rangers need to ticket offenders."

"What's happening to the cow? Let's hope it's granted immoonity."

"A solitary cow? That's unherd of."

"This woman was clearly cycling beyond her weight class. That cow was roughly 6 times her size. May I suggest cycling trails near a farm that raises fainting goats?"

"It would have be-hooved this lady to pay closer attention when in the cow pasture."

"Clearly a case of an angry Republican cow. Can't take the changes happening. We will probably see more of this for awhile. If you're cycling, protesting, driving a Subaru or Prius, you might steer clear of known Republican cow hang-outs for a few months."

"The (Daily Camera) completely misses the obvious question. Is the lady a vegetarian or not? This could be a hate crime."

"I hear the cow is trying to get a book deal out of the whole thing. Really milking it for all it's worth."

"Arguably, the cow is to blame, but it's a mooed point."

"Why didn't she steer around the cow?"

"There's a guy in Wisconsin who knows how to take care of sh*t like this!"

"How much did the cow charge? I thought the trails were free?"

We now return you to coverage of the Barack Obamafest taking place today in Washington, D.C.