by Charles Bonniwell | Mar 4, 2022 | Editorials
Dr. Dawn Comstock, Former Executive Director, Jefferson County Public Health
Colorado’s politically savvy Governor Jared Polis was the first Democrat governor to declare the COVID-19 pandemic to be over and ended all state mandates. Of course, 75% of Coloradans remained under mask and other mandates imposed by local health authorities, so nothing really changed other than Polis being hailed by the left wing and right wing as a man of the people.
Our progressive City and County of Denver loved its mask mandates, social distancing, and lockdowns. Denver’s problem was if all the surrounding counties of Jefferson, Arapahoe, Adams, and Douglas did not follow suit the slow ruination of downtown and the city would be accelerated with businesses and residents deserting it for the suburbs.
That was why the rise of the Colorado health officials was so important. Dr. John Douglas of Tri-County Health (Arapahoe, Adams, and Douglas) and Dr. Dawn Comstock of Jefferson County Health, along with their respective boards, could lockdown and mask up those counties without any say of the citizens and their elected officials and they did so with relish.
No amount of public protestation mattered. Schools went to “virtual learning” (meaning no learning at all) to the delight of schoolteachers’ unions who demonstrated that their highest goal is to be able to get full pay with little or no work. Parents did notice that Catholic and other private schools stayed open without any increase in COVID-19, but their teachers were not unionized.
Dr. John Douglas, Executive Director, Tri-County Public Health
It did not seem to matter to Dr. Douglas that he was slowly destroying the state’s largest and best-known health department. First Douglas County, then Adams County, and finally even Arapahoe County withdrew from Tri-State Health destroying the jobs of over 600 health professionals and staff. The most employable of that health department have exited to new jobs while the people filling those vacancies were so substandard that having Tri-County on your resume is now considered a black mark.
Dr. Douglas did not seem to care as mandates and lockdowns were more important to him than anything else. It did not seem to matter to him that masks and lockdowns appear not to slow the spread of the virus or its severity, and may have caused more deaths from suicide and other causes than it saved. Being 68-years-old Dr. Douglas did not have to worry about getting a new job as he can retire on a highly generous public pension and his co-workers be damned.
His counterpart in Jefferson County, Dr. Comstock is not quite as fortunate. She was hired in February of last year replacing Dr. Mark Johnson who retired as the head of Jefferson County Health after over 30 years to become the president of the Colorado Medical Society. He went out with unanimous praise and honors.
Dr. Comstock got her board to reinstate the all-important mask mandate in the fall of 2021 along with other anti-COVID measures. She didn’t seem to notice that the public had turned against her. She even went to court to try to force three private Christian schools to bow down to her mask mandate. She was the only witness in a daylong hearing with the court packed with parents who did not want their kids masked all day long, especially since the cloth masks were deemed ineffective in stopping the spread of the virus. She won the court battle but lost the war.
She was hauled before the Jefferson County Board of Health on February 7 for a two-hour executive session where she apparently refused to back down on the mask mandates and was required to resign. The Board then quickly lifted the mandates.
Because of health official tyrants like Drs. Douglas and Comstock many people in Colorado have learned not to entrust their lives to unelected bureaucrats even if they have the appellation “Dr.” before their names.
Lord Acton’s admonition that “power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely” applies to all manner of men and women no matter what their profession.
by Charles Bonniwell | Dec 17, 2021 | Main Articles
So Why Are We Still Wearing Masks? Mask Mandates Cause End Of Tri-County Health
by Charles Bonniwell
Canny Politician: Colorado Governor Jared Polis has gone on a national media tour receiving praise for declaring the COVID-19 medical emergency over and the lack of any need for mask mandates while 75% of the state’s population still remain under local mask mandates.
Colorado Governor Jared Polis made national news by appearing on Colorado Public Radio and declaring that after 16 months since he issued a medical emergency, the emergency was “over” and that there would be no statewide or vaccine requirements. He opined that:
“You don’t tell people to wear a jacket when they go out in winter and force them to (wear it). If they get frostbite, it’s their own darn fault. If you haven’t been vaccinated, that’s your choice. I respect that. But it’s your fault when you’re in the hospital with COVID.”
It was quite a reversal from just a few weeks earlier when he halted elective or cosmetic procedures to try to save hospital beds for COVID patients.
So why then are people in Metro Denver still wearing masks? Polis had stated that, “Public health [officials] don’t get to tell people what to wear; that’s not their job.” That is apparently not what some local health officials in Colorado believe.
On November 23, 2021, Denver Mayor Michael Hancock reinstated mask mandates requiring all indoor Denver businesses and venues “mask up” unless they choose to require proof of vaccination. Hancock followed the lead of Jefferson, Adams, and Arapahoe counties.
Still Under The Mask: Notwithstanding Colorado Governor Jared Polis declaring the COVID-19 pandemic emergency over and there being no need for statewide mask mandates, 75% of the population of the state are under some form of a mask mandate.
Tri-County Health Acts
Tri-County Health Department had preceded Hancock after waiting in vain for Polis to impose new statewide mask mandates. “If the state is unwilling to act, metro-wide action to implement mask mandates can provide some benefit given the size of our population and number of hospitalizations,” said Dr. John Douglas, executive director for the Tri-County Health Department, which covers Adams, and Arapahoe counties.
Other counties in Colorado that also presently have mask mandates are Boulder County, Larimer County, Pitkin County, and San Miguel County. In fact, notwithstanding the lifting of the state emergency by Polis, over 75% of the population of the state still live under mask or vaccine mandates.
Polis was not going, however, full Governor Ron DeSantis, who banned all local mask mandates in Florida.
While Polis received generally positive press nationally on his declaration that the COVID-19 emergency is over, not everyone in Colorado was thrilled. The editorial board of the Aurora Sentinel criticized Polis saying his action was “a grave disservice” to the state and that “the pandemic emergency in Colorado and across the nation is not over. It is far from over.”
The Destruction Of Tri-County Health
Local mask mandates are also not popular in Colorado in some circles. The Tri-County Health Department was until recent
ly considered the premier and most respected health department in the state covering 1.3 million people (25% of the state population) in Adams, Arapahoe, and Douglas counties with 431 employees. Founded in 1948, it will be totally dismantled in just over one year due almost solely to mask mandates. Many blame Dr. John Douglas, the 69-year-old executive director of the department, and his insistence on mask mandates.
The Tri-County Health mask mandates, first ordered in July of 2020, allowed municipalities and counties to opt out. Those mask mandates preceded those that Polis issued statewide. At the time, Polis announced: “Wearing a mask is not a political statement. I don’t know how, in anybody’s mind, this became a political football.”
Douglas County, all of whose county commissioners are Republicans, balked and threatened to leave Tri-County Health when Tri-County decided to prevent counties from opting out from its mask mandates. Douglas County formalized its withdrawal in September of 2021. At the time, Tri-County also imposed the mandate for all people above the age of two in all schools and childcare facilities.
Adams County, all of whose county commissioners are Democrats, had also opted out of the Tri-County Health mask mandates. When that option disappeared, on October 19, 2021, the commissioners elected to leave subject to the mandatory one year notice.
That only left Arapahoe County whose county commissioners are split between Republicans and Democrats. On December 14, 2021, Arapahoe County, after over 60 minutes of public testimony demanding that the county get out of and remove the mask mandates and other COVID-19 restrictions, the commissioners voted to say goodbye to Dr. Douglas and his Tri-County Board.
Douglas Views The Wreckage
When interviewed by The Denver Post on the dissolution of a 74-year-old institution like Tri-County Health over mask mandates, Dr. Douglas stated:
Clueless: The executive director of the Tri-County Health Department, Dr. John Douglas, is blamed for the demise of the 74-year-old institution with mask mandates of dubious value. If the 400 plus workers of Tri-County’s Health Department who are losing their jobs are looking for a mea culpa from him they will be disappointed as he doesn’t appear to see what he might have done differently.
“If you had asked me to take a multiple-choice test three years ago about what would be the most controversial issues if we were to have a pandemic, and mask-wearing was one of my options, it would have been last on whatever list you gave me. I could just not have imagined that this would have become so.”
Given that the efficacy of non-surgical masks in preventing COVID-19 is a matter of dispute particularly as it applies to children, it does not appear to occur to Dr. Douglas that perhaps he should have given some credence himself to listening to all of the people who went before the various county commissioners demanding to leave Tri-County Health over mask mandates.
The question remains, given all that has happened, why most Coloradans are still required to wear masks. As a practical matter, the mandates of Tri-County Health are still law until the end of 2022 when the entity dissolves. Of course, people want to wear masks for health or political reasons. Enforcement of mask mandates, however, won’t be a law enforcement priority so many who do not enjoy wearing masks will flout the applicable law and that will certainly not help the moral authority of future local health directives.
by Charles Bonniwell | Dec 17, 2021 | Editorials
Now is the winter of Denver Mayor Michael Hancock’s discontent. A pitiable individual who has been deserted by all but the developer vultures and others that feed off his political carcass for fun and profit. Even his wife of 28 years, Mary Louise Lee, has deserted the philandering mayor and is seeking a divorce. His Honor’s biggest problem is that his final day isn’t officially until July 23, 2023.
He has told friends that he plans to move to Florida once his term is over. Who could blame him? In places with traditional corruption like Mexico, you pay a politician off upfront and then get the actions from the politician you need. In this country it’s just the opposite. The politician does not get paid off until after he leaves office in the form of consulting contracts, board positions, and other sinecures. That form of payoff is deemed perfectly acceptable in America. Still, it’s better off to retire to Florida before getting your just rewards. That way it will be done far from the probing eyes of the Denver media.
Still, every day left in political office, Hancock must take one more humiliating bite of the proverbial sh*t sandwich. After waiting weeks for Governor Polis to reinstitute statewide COVID-19 mask mandates, and after surrounding counties did so, Hancock finally acted. Then Polis announced that the pandemic is over and there is no need for mask mandates. Polis then goes on a triumphant national media blitz on his “courageous” announcement while Hancock once again looks clueless.
Governor Polis seems to take delight in embarrassing this Denver mayor. When Major League Baseball decided to move the All-Star Game from Atlanta because the Commissioner didn’t like new Georgia voting laws, the Colorado Governor’s Office announced that: “The Governor will be burning up the phones the next few days to see if there is an opening to bring the All-Star game to Denver.” Other notable Colorado politicians like Denver Congresswoman Diana DeGette and Secretary of State Jena Griswold encouraged MLB to come to Denver. Notably absent was the mayor of Denver. Why would anyone care what the useless politically inert mayor thought?
Polis isn’t the only one who likes to humiliate Hancock. Hancock has put all his political might and a lot of the Denver taxpayer’s money behind the effort by Westside Development to get rid of the conservation easement on the Park Hill Golf Course area, and destroy the open space with a development. Denver’s first African American mayor Wellington Webb decided to take on Westside Development and behind the scenes Hancock.
The white developers who support Hancock love to play the race card. They successfully turned Hancock’s opponent in the last election, Jamie Giellis, into a caricature of a white supremist. For the November Initiative 301 and 302 which initially determined the Park Hill Golf Course area fate, they tried to make believe, as stated by Wellington Webb, that “Park Hill is inhabited by racist bullies.” But Webb was a more formidable force than Giellis and this time Hancock’s race baiting failed overwhelmingly at the polls.
Hancock’s own City Council also likes to kick him around these days. For Hancock’s first two terms the extraordinary powers of the mayor in the city charter kept the Councilmembers at bay, but not for the third term. The Council put three proposals on the November 2020 ballot, opposed by Hancock, that expanded the Council’s powers and limited those of the mayor. The first allowed the Council to hire their own professionals, including legal council, without the approval of the executive branch. The second, which was even opposed by former Mayor Webb, mandated Council approval for 14 mayoral appointments. The third one gave the Council the power to initiate appropriation of new and excess revenue. The voters gleefully approved all three and for the first time in over 100 years the strong mayor form of Denver government was not so strong.
Having lost the voters, his City Council, and his wife, Hancock appears to do little more than spend his days working out at the Denver Athletic Club getting his “beach body” ready. Perhaps the City Council should pass a provision whereby he could move to Florida and work virtually as mayor of Denver from the beach. It would cheer him up and it is doubtful anyone in Denver would notice.
— Editorial Board
by Charles Bonniwell | Nov 19, 2021 | Main Articles
Developer Still Seeks Commercialization With Help Of Hancock Administration
by Charles Bonniwell
From Above: An aerial view of the entire 155-acre Park Hill Golf Course area under threat of commercialization from developer Westside Investment Partners and the Hancock Administration.
The voters appeared to overwhelmingly state that they wanted the 155-acre Park Hill Golf Course area to remain green space. By an almost 2-to-1 margin, voters approved Initiated Ordinance 301 which required citywide voter approval to build on the land. The initiative and the campaign were headed up by former mayoral candidate Penfield Tate III, who headed up Save Open Space Denver (“SOS Denver”), and former Denver mayor and Park Hill resident Wellington Webb. The slogan of the campaign was “Green over Concrete.”
Tate indicated that the message hit home for residents who have seen massive new density across Denver, supported with the direct and indirect support of Denver Mayor Michael Hancock. The developer, Westside Investment Partners (“Westside”) bought the property in 2019 for $24 million from Clayton Early Learning. Westside put up its own Initiative 302 which was almost exactly the same as 301 but exempted golf courses from the definition of a conservative easement. The net effect of 301 and 302 passing would allow the developer to proceed with development of Park Hill, notwithstanding the passage of 301. Tate indicated that he was pleased that the voters were not fooled by Westside’s tricky, similar sounding Initiative.
Visioning Process
Still Leading: Former Denver mayor Wellington Webb, a Park Hill resident, has help to lead the fight to stop the commercialization of the Park Hill Golf Course area.
Still Under Threat: Notwithstanding an overwhelming 2-to-1 vote in Ballot Initiative 301 and 302 to require a city-wide vote before lifting a conservation easement on the 155 acre Park Hill Golf Course, developer Westside Investment Partners with the strong backing of the Hancock Administration and taxpayer dollars is moving full steam ahead to try to commercialize the green space.
The battle continues with Hancock and Westside trying to figure out how to outmaneuver Webb and Tate and the citizens who want more and not less open space. Some say the Hancock Administration has gone to extraordinary lengths to help Westside. In what critics contend was a contrived lawsuit, Westside sued the city over a drainage easement on the land. In settlement, the city provided an enormous war chest of $6 million for Westside to fight citizen groups like SOS Denver. That agreement gives Westside a three-year window for a public engagement process (i.e., a public relations campaign).
The city set up an expensive Denver taxpayer funded “Park Hill Golf Course Area Visioning Process” which basically plans the commercial development on behalf of Westside with a 27-member Park Hill Steering Committee. It appears that the Steering Committee is largely composed of apparently pro-development members.
Another Lawsuit
SOS Denver’s response was to file a lawsuit against Mayor Hancock and the City and County of Denver in June 2021 that alleges the public planning process is illegal until the conservation easement is lifted.
“The city has to follow the law. That’s the whole point of our lawsuit,” declared Tate. He stated the entire public engagement process was a sham and a waste of taxpayer dollars. The city issued a statement that the Park Hill planning process was a very standard one and that gathering community input for future use did not in any way interfere with the conservation easement.
The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly: Attorney and former mayoral candidate Penfield Tate Hill III, below, headed up Save Open Space Denver and helped win Ballot Initiative 301 and defeat Ballot Initiative 302 proposed by Westside Investment Partners (“Westside”) whose public face is Kenneth Ho, above. Ho was supported by Park Hill Steering Committee member Pastor Del Phillips, right, who claimed green open space in Park Hill is somehow racist and who is considered by his critics to be little more than a shill for Westside.
Holleran Group’s (Westside’s partner) CEO & Managing Partner Norman Harris indicated that it was not slowing down due to the overwhelming vote of Denver’s citizens. With a massive fortune to be made if the conservation easement on Park Hill can be eliminated, Holleran proclaimed it to be a visioning process, in a story published by The Denverite:
“We are going to double down on our community outreach to assure that we are bringing the right folks to the table and truly achieve an equitable outcome,” Harris said. “We’re very confident that we are going to be successful, and we just really look forward to the opportunity to bring more people into the conversation.”
Park Hill Steering Committee head Pastor Del Phillips indicated that preventing the commercial development was racist in nature given the history of Park Hill. He stated at a rally in October:
“I think it is highly unusual how people say this is about saving green space… This is really about people who believe they have the right to choose where other folks want to live.”
Kenneth Ho of Westside did not see the 2-to-1 vote against its initiative as a loss for the commercial development of Park Hill but rather: “We understand that residents want to hear more details about what this can be.” He went on to declare: “I think what the initiative does is it now says we need to come up with a plan for the voters to vote on. I think the next step is to develop that and put some specifics around the plan.”
What’s Next
Pastor Del Phillips
Penfield Tate Hill III
The Steering Committee is expected to provide the city its recommendations by Thanksgiving in the form of a Vision Summary which is expected to be very pro developer and little more than a glossed over version of what Westside wants. It will be used to give pro developer recommendations to the Denver City Council by the Community Planning and Development department which is controlled by the Hancock Administration.
SOS Denver indicates it is ready for the fight first at the City Council level and if that fails on a second ballot measure now required by Initiative 301 to lift the conservation easement.
Wellington Webb declared: “For me, what’s next is to get reengaged with my Nuggets tickets. Then we go back and look at what are the areas for reconciliation to some degree.”
by Charles Bonniwell | Oct 22, 2021 | Feature Story Bottom Left
Yes it was on Friday the 13th, a day steeped in mythology as a day of ill omens, in March of 2020, that President Donald J. Trump speaking in the White House Rose Garden, declared a national emergency that could free up $50 billion to help fight the pandemic and said that he was empowering the secretary of Health and Human Services to waive certain laws and regulations to ensure that the COVID-19 virus can be contained and patients treated.
“To unleash the full power of the federal government … I am officially declaring a national emergency,” Trump said.
“Two very big words,” he added.
Yes, they were and marked the beginning of the end to his presidency. The concept was to institute on a state-by-state basis lockdowns, mask mandates, and social distancing so that COVID-19 cases would be spread over a longer period so that ICU beds and ventilator machines would not be overwhelmed. All we had to do was go on a stay-at-home vacation for 15 days and all would be well. Approaching the two-year anniversary of that declaration we cannot be amazed at our overwhelming naiveté.
The result was a long-term worldwide recession, the loss of personal freedom, and liberty throughout the once called “Free World” from Italy to Australia, and the imposition of the “dictatorship of the public health bureaucracy.” If Karl Marx had only realized that the overthrow of democracy and capitalism did not require a bloody revolution but simply a public health mandate, we could have saved tens of millions of lives. In China, the apparent source of COVID-19, and the only remaining major country with a communist government, perhaps they did. They closed the city of Wuhan, China, from the rest of China but opened Wuhan up to the rest of the world. No COVID-19 recession for China but a recession for the rest of the world. Brilliant!
Of course, Trump was not the only politician to egregiously suffer due to that fateful Friday the 13th. Democrat New York Governor Andrew Cuomo initially rode the COVID-19 wave to great adulation, even garnering an International Emmy for his daily COVID briefings. In the end, however, he had to resign in disgrace in part from of the discovery that his dictates that nursing homes had to take in contiguous COVID-19 patients cost thousands of lives, which he fraudulently tried to hide. The coup de grâce came with the revelation that the so-called “LuvGov” was, in fact, a serial sexual harasser.
But what if Trump had ignored the advice from ever contradicting Dr. Anthony Fauci and the highly political Center for Disease Control and Prevention, and rode through the Ides of March doing nothing but shepherding through the development and distribution of vaccines for COVID-19. The one European country that ignored all of the lockdown mandates and impingements on civil liberties was surprisingly, Sweden, headed by the Swedish Social Democratic Party. From the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Public Health Agency, Folkhälsomyndigheten, embarked on a de-facto herd immunity approach, allowing community transmission to occur relatively unchecked. There were no mandatory measures taken to limit crowds on public transport, in shopping malls, or in other crowded venues, while recommending only a limit of 50 people for gatherings. Sweden’s mortality rates were lower than the European Union and the United States and its economy prospered.
In America, states like Nebraska, Wyoming, and Florida, which limited and quickly lifted COVID-19 restrictions appear to have weathered comparatively well when put up against highly restrictive states such as New York and California. Colorado, under Governor Polis, took a somewhat middle ground and at least did not go with the Draconian measures adopted by states such as Michigan, under the leadership of Governor Whitmer. In Denver we did get to see up close and personal the hypocrisy of the political elites when Mayor Hancock was at DIA texting to city employees not to travel over the Thanksgiving holidays, while he was heading to Texas and Mississippi to spend the holidays with family.
Was it all worth it? The autocrats and authoritarians and their admirers on the left and right will tell you it was. They certainly learned how easy it is to cower and control a populace. But at least for some the lesson learned is that next time they tell us the equivalent of it is just “15 days to flatten the curve” we know what they mean. It is time to again destroy liberty and freedom for as long as they can possibly get away with it.
— Editorial Board
