by Mark Smiley | Nov 20, 2017 | Editorials
Perhaps the greatest upset of the November 7 election in Colorado was the approval by Denver voters of the citizen referred Initiative 300, better known as “Green Roof Initiative,” by a clear 54% to 46% margin. Denver resident Brandon Rietheimer and a group of environmental activists prevailed against the odds. They started this summer gaining signatures and submitted over 4,700 this past August to make the ballot.
The initiative mandates new buildings larger than 25,000 square feet must dedicate some of their roof space to trees, plants, solar panels or a mix. Existing buildings are not included unless they either expand to above 25,000 square feet or they need a new roof.
The initiative was opposed by all the forces and money that control the Mayor’s Office and the rest of the city. Rietheimer and his hardy band were outspent according to the financial disclosure records by an incredible 12 to 1 margin with the proponents raising only $20,000. Conversely the “no” side had over a quarter million dollars in their pockets to bend the voting public to their side.
The “no” contributors were a Who’s Who of those who wish to destroy Denver for their own purpose led by developer Pat Hamill’s Colorado Concern organization which has dozens of Denver fat cats whose only real “concern” is lining their own pockets at the expense of the public.
Will green roofs work? Will the Denver Botanic Gardens build an elaborate garden and display on top of its parking garage to the delight of thousands of visitors ever
y year? It goes without saying that the same will reduce noise and pollution in the city which is never a bad idea.
The Mayor’s greedy friends argued that it would increase the cost of developments in the city and, of course, it will. Similarly, any open space requirements or parking requirements also raise the cost of the potential developments until they are waived by the city’s corrupt Community Planning and Development Department. The mayor’s friends believe that the only real purpose of parks and open space is to be monetized for commercial enterprises which, of course, they did to Ruby Hill Park and Overland Park Golf Course.
They also love to see parks used for massive drainage holes to save land for development on the I-70 project. Wouldn’t want the Mayor’s friends’ land to be used for such a purpose.
If you hate the idea of greenery on top of roofs don’t despair — it’s not going to actually happen. Mayor Hancock after passage of the Initiative stated, “We have always made a good-faith effort to implement the initiatives — once the people have spoken, that’s our job.”
He is, of course, lying.
Initiative 300 provides that it can be amended after six months with two-thirds vote of the City Council. Pat Hamill and his friends own more than two-thirds of the City Council and it will be slowly amended until the Initiative becomes virtually meaningless.
Moreover, any implementation would have to go through the Department of Community Planning and Development. Its Executive Director is the corpulent Brad Buchanan. He proved with his interpretation of no parking required for micro units that he will perversely interpret virtually any provision of law for benefit of high density developers. Rietheimer and his band of rebels will find that Buchanan will determine Ordinance 300 to mean exactly the opposite of what they intended. Buchanan is Denver’s very own Queen of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland where any word in Ordinance 300 means “just what I [Brad Buchanan] choose it to mean — neither more nor less.” Mr. Rietheimer unfortunately is going to get to learn how things really work in today’s City and County of Denver.
But citizens for the first time ever during the Hancock Administration have shown that they can defeat all the King’s horses and all the King’s men even when outspent 12 to 1. For the first time, Pat Hamill’s regime has suffered a loss. Let us pray that this is just the beginning and not a one-time aberration.
— Editorial Board
by Mark Smiley | Oct 23, 2017 | Editorials
Beth McCann
The strange short career of Beth McCann as District Attorney of Denver gets darker virtually every day. As reported in our August editorial McCann had gone on the Craig Silverman Show on 710 KNUS to explain why she had not charged illegal alien Ricardo Lopez-Vera in the jailhouse death of William Anderson. She claimed that her chief deputy (apparently Ryan Brackley) had determined that the death was a matter of self-defense in a one punch landed fight after which Anderson had then fallen down and hit his head.
She declared the whole matter had taken no more than 12 seconds and a deputy sheriff had rushed up and saw Anderson in a wobbly state and falling down. She declared that there was only one witness to the actual fight who said it was a mutual combat scenario with Anderson throwing the first punch which missed and when Anderson was drawing back to throw another punch Lopez-Vera hit him causing Anderson to fall and hit his head on a step.
Without even waiting for a formal coroner’s autopsy report she declared Lopez-Vera innocent due to self-defense. Two days later she had him released on a de minimis $1,000 bail. He was then purportedly given a lift by the deputies to a hospital after which he disappeared.
The problem for McCann was that sheriff’s deputies who saw the mangled and battered body of Anderson knew that it could not have been caused by a one-punch fight and leaked that McCann was lying.
Federal ICE agents were also outraged that McCann refused to honor federal retainer requests and accused her of harboring and hiding a criminal illegal alien. McCann is a strong advocate for sanctuary city policies but even she does not go so far as publicly declaring that murder is allowable in Denver by persons illegally in the country.
It turns out McCann knew exactly where Lopez-Vera was after he was released from police custody since she had him on a monitored ankle bracelet. As far as the assertion the death was due to “self-defense” C.R.S. 18-1-704 explicitly states a claim of self-defense is not valid in the case of mutually agreed combat and, furthermore, there is no such thing as legal mutually agreed upon combat inside of a city jail.
Cyril Wecht
The Denver coroner has now issued the autopsy and it is clear that the so-called one punch fight was an utter fabrication. World famous forensic pathologist Cyril Wecht, who has performed 20,000 autopsies and supervised or reviewed 40,000 more, went on the Craig Silverman Show and declared that the multitude of head injuries, including the injuries to both sides of the neck, and injuries to the lower back could never have happened from a one punch fight where the victim fell down and hit his head. Apparently, it is far more likely that after punching Anderson, Lopez-Vera grabbed him by the neck and smashed his head into the concrete and then kicked the dying or dead Anderson.
The one witness to the fight appears to have been a gang member lookout for Lopez-Vera. What about the Deputy Sheriff statement that he was there in under 12 seconds and watched the wobbly Anderson falling over and hitting his head? In fact, we only have McCann’s claim to the same as the Sheriff’s Office is refusing to release to the press the Sheriff’s Report on the incident claiming the matter is confidential, since it is still under investigation. But, of course, the DA is not investigating the Anderson killing any more as she has publicly declared the same to be a matter of “self defense.”
As for DA McCann, she has gone into hiding, refusing to comment on the matter, having been caught red-handed lying about the facts of the case by Cyril Wecht.
Sheriff deputies and ICE agents want a grand jury empaneled by the U.S. Attorney’s office with McCann and her chief deputy Brackley indicted for conducting a fraudulent investigation and harboring an illegal alien in violation of federal law. Unfortunately for law enforcement, the Acting U.S. Attorney for the District of Colorado is Bob Troyer. He was an attorney in the Brownstein, Hyatt, Farber and Schreck law firm which means he is highly politically connected with the legal cesspool in Denver run by the Brownstein law firm that protects persons like DA McCann.
Some in law enforcement hope that a regular U.S. Attorney for Colorado will soon be appointed who is not part of and controlled by the Brownstein firm but they realize that the firm has its tentacles virtually everywhere as stated by journalist David Sirota. [Glendale Cherry Creek Chronicle, Editorial, October 2017, page 3.] Additionally they have apparently sworn that they will not stop in their pursuit of bringing DA Beth McCann to the bar of justice.
— Editorial Board
by Mark Smiley | Sep 25, 2017 | Editorials
David Sirota is a well-known nationally syndicated newspaper columnist, author blogger and former Denver radio host. He is a man of the Left and friend of the Democratic Party here in Colorado and nationally. Recently he has begun to do investigative journalism for International Business Times and he has indicated he wants to do so on a non-partisan basis.
His recent work at the Times demonstrates that he is a man of his word. His exposé titled “Democratic Governor Hires Health Care Industry Lobbyist to Push Obamacare Fixes in Congress” rips off the façade off Governor Hickenlooper’s so called bipartisan health care proposal he trotted out with Republican Ohio Governor John Kasich.
Sirota discloses that the governor has had the state pay the law/lobbyist firm of Brownstein Hyatt Farber and Schreck $17,500 a month purported for lobbying Congress, the Interior Department, the Justice Department and the Environmental Protection Agency on “issues related to federal spending and national service programs,” whatever that means. In addition apparently the Brownstein firm was to lobby for the Governor’s proposed bandaids to Obamacare.
$17,500 per month is chump change for the Brownstein firm, but when you have hundreds of these scams it adds up. Especially since the Brownstein firm would have to do no additional work for the taxpayer money handed them by the Colorado governor. The Brownstein firm is already lobbying for dozens of insurance, pharmaceutical and health care interests to prevent a single payer system being adopted as proposed by some Democrats, or a free market system proposed by some Republicans. They love the present Obamacare system they helped devise just with more subsidies and tax incentives for themselves.
Hickenlooper and Kasich have gone on television and across the country to sanctimoniously assert that they had come up with a “bipartisan” solution to our health care woes when in fact they are little more than sellouts to Big Pharma and the health insurance companies. Their plan involves massive increased subsidies to the insurance companies and even large tax credits for them providing health plans to “underserved counties.” In addition it has the individual health care mandates forcing Americans to buy the awful health care plans the insurance companies presently provide for individuals.
The Denver Post breathlessly reported in its sub-headline for the release of the plan that “Hickenlooper and Kasich have been working on the blueprint behind the scenes for weeks.” Hickenlooper has degrees in English and geology while Kasich a degree in political science. Neither has the slightest background in the medical field and would have no idea how to redo the health insurance quagmire. But Big Pharma and the health insurers have lots of ideas on how to stick it to the average American.
Sirota’s article also helps explain the mystery of Lieutenant Governor Donna Lynne. After Joe Garcia resigned the lieutenant governor position to take a real job, Hickenlooper appointed Lynne claiming he did so because he wanted someone who 1) had business experience and 2) had no political aspirations. We know the second stated reason was a lie as Lynne has just declared she is running to be the next governor of Colorado. We know that it was not just any business experience that the governor was looking for, but someone who had extensive contacts with the health insurance and health provider fields, which could be an enormous benefit for him should he run for the U.S. Senate in 2020 or even President. Lynne was the head of Kaiser Permanente, the massive integrated managed care consortium in Colorado and various other states. And surprise surprise, according to Sirota, Lynne was key in drafting the Hickenlooper/Kasich bipartisan plan.
It is no secret that health companies and oil companies in Colorado are terrified of Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jared Polis who wants single payer health care and no oil and gas fracking in the state. Notwithstanding the fact that Lynne has absolutely zero political experience or support, she is now running with the strong encouragement of Governor Hickenlooper. Why Lynne? Because with enough money and negative advertising she can soften up Polis for whatever Republican wins the other primary, who will undoubtedly not be for single payer and be for oil and gas fracking.
Which brings us to the Brownstein firm which is known as the “Octopus” since it has its tentacles virtually everywhere. Hickenlooper’s chief of staff is none other than Doug Friednash who was a partner in the Brownstein firm and who, according to Sirota, along with Lynne, strongly supported the $17,500 a month kickback to the Brownstein firm which would be considered illegal in many states but not apparently in Colorado.
One of the reasons it is not is that The Denver Post and the rest of the media in Colorado, with the exception of 710 KNUS radio, will never report on this scandal. Why? Well who is the lawyer for The Denver Post and many other media? None other than the Brownstein firm. The sewer runs deep in Colorado politics but most Coloradans will never find out about it and thus it is unlikely to ever change.
— Editorial Board
by Mark Smiley | Jul 24, 2017 | Editorials
Denver District Attorney Beth McCann was sworn into office a little more than six months ago, but already appears to have lost the trust of her predecessor Mitch Morrissey, the rank and file of the Denver Police, and much of the public at large.
Her handling of the Colorado Open Records Act (CORA) scandal involving Police Chief Robert White and Deputy Chief Matt Murray as well as the inmate killing at the Denver Jail has brought into serious question whether she remains intellectually capable of handling the difficult job as head law enforcement officer in the City and County of Denver. McCann gave interviews to the media in both cases, but the interviews raised even more questions than they answered.
The Denver Police had issued a press release accusing Angiella Arnot of sexual assault (along with a now former Denver Police Officer), but she was never charged. Longtime Denver DA Mitch Morrissey sent a letter to Police Chief White highly critical of Deputy DA Matt Maury’s “rush to judgment” in the arrest of an “innocent woman.” Chief White responded to the DA in a two sentence letter declaring he would “look at the totality of the situation and . . . ensure that the appropriate action is taken.”
When the Denver police union asked for a copy of the letter pursuant to CORA it was told that the police department was “unaware of any … electronic or written exchanges responsive to your request.” It was a lie and White and Maury knew it according to the one honest person in the sordid affair, Mary Dulacki, Department of Safety Records Coordinator.
It was an open and shut case of a criminal violation of CORA by the two highest cops in Denver. McCann had promised the voters during her campaign that she would strongly pursue cases of police misconduct. What she meant, of course, was that she would go after the cop on the beat, but vigorously ignore the most blatant criminal conduct on the part of the top echelon bosses. This has always been the modus operandi of the office of the Denver District Attorney. In the early 1960s 47 Denver police officers were charged as part of a massive burglary ring, but not a single higher up in the police department was brought before the bar of justice even though it was impossible that such a huge criminal enterprise could be going on without the implicit knowledge and consent of members of the top brass.
The blatant CORA criminal violation last year was too much for former DA Mitch Morrissey who said he would have definitely brought charges against Deputy Chief Murray and would have strongly considered charging Chief White. The head of the Denver police union, Nick Rogers, has publicly excoriated McCann indicating that the rank and file were losing all respect for her. McCann made matters worse by going on air with Channel 7’s Tony Kovaleski. She embarrassed herself by endlessly and unsuccessfully trying to hide the fact that her chief deputy had strongly recommended bringing charges.
Following that PR disaster McCann was caught red-handed as part of a scheme to hide the fact that an illegal immigrant, Ricardo Lopez Vera, had killed another inmate in the Denver jail. The Denver Sheriff’s Department had hidden him from ICE as part of the city’s widely acknowledged sanctuary city policy. McCann again compounded her error by doing another media interview this time on the The Craig Silverman Show on 710 KNUS where she was eviscerated by Silverman, a former Denver Chief Deputy DA.
The fact that at age 69 she no longer has the mental acuity she once had was dramatically demonstrated when she used the “f” word on air with Silverman. There are only seven words clearly banned by the FCC for which a radio station can be fined for airing and the “f” word is one of them. After over 40 years in public life, DA McCann is well aware of that limitation, but she is apparently unable to control herself.
Some individuals are mentally sharp well into their 90s while others begin to show serious mental deterioration by their late 60s. Obviously, McCann fits into the latter group.
The sad part is she is just beginning her term as DA. Denver has a woeful habit of endlessly re-electing incumbents no matter their infirmities. It can be expected that McCann, at age 80, will still be the Denver DA at the start of the year 2029. The DA’s office will, of course, be a wreck and utterly rudderless. It is said that people get the government they deserve, but even Denver’s severest critics would say we don’t deserve a District Attorney’s office like the one we now have.
— Editorial Board
by Mark Smiley | Jun 23, 2017 | Editorials
In Alexandre Dumas’ beloved historical novel The Three Musketeers, a young man named d’Artagnan travels to the capitol and joins the Three Musketeers of the Guard (Athos, Porthos and Aramis). Together they fight off the minions of Cardinal Richelieu, the evil minister to the weak King Louis XIII.
Today in Denver a modern parallel may be occurring. A young man, Jolon Clark, was elected to Denver City Council in 2015. Joining him on the Council were the Three Musketeers of the People — Wayne New, Paul Kashmann and Rafael Espinoza. The Three Musketeers were the only City Councilmembers elected without developer money and thus free to fight the good fight against the developers’ powerful corruption of Denver.
Slowly Clark began to learn of the perfidy of many of the other nine members and their lack of ethics or honesty. The “beefy, bloated and ethically challenged” director of the Orwellian named “Denver Community Planning Development Director” Brad Buchanan makes a perfect evil Cardinal Richelieu to the weak head of state, Mayor Michael Hancock.
The first real battle that Jolon Clark and the Three Musketeers have fought together was against the small lot exemption being used by Buchanan for his real estate developer friends to build micro-housing cells free from any parking requirements. This would have made finding on-street parking in some neighborhoods difficult, if not impossible, during certain times.
The residents fighting this proposal had gone to duplicitous Council President (and mayor-in-waiting) Albus Brooks who pretended to be their friend but intended to destroy their cause with a phony moratorium. In Dumas’ novel Albus Brooks would be the treacherous Richelieu spy Milady de Winter. Brooks had set up a crooked developer controlled “Task Force” whose basic purpose was to basically give developers everything they wanted and the neighborhoods nothing.
Our heroes led by Clark took up the citizens’ cause in the nick of time. Incredibly the city staff headed by Buchanan and the phony Task Force of Brooks called for no parking restrictions on the 3,000 plus small lots across the city. If the City had adopted the same, it would have made on-street parking in neighborhood after neighborhood throughout Denver a nightmare.
This is not by accident. Buchanan and his Planning Department literally want to make parking a nightmare so that all Denver residents, other than the very wealthy, are forced to walk, ride bikes or take public transportation in Denver with a rare Uber trip allowed. The old, the infirm, the crippled are to be sacrificed on the altar of the young and healthy millennials and of course the high density real estate developers who are the true enemy of Denver neighborhoods.
With rapiers drawn, Clark, New, Kashmann and Espinoza went to work. They convinced three other councilmembers to support a compromise whereby the parking requirement exemption would only apply for housing or offices in the first story, or the first two floors if within a quarter mile of a frequent bus line or within one-half mile of a light rail station. Apparently well-connected developers can still go to the City Council for full exemptions provided notice is given to the affected neighborhoods before a vote.
The vote was 7-6 in favor of the Musketeers and Denver neighborhood on-street parking was at least partially saved. With other amendments added, the final vote was 9-2, an abject humiliation for Albus Brooks, his Task Force and Planning Director Brad Buchanan. Only Brooks and developer owned Mary Beth Susman voted against the final version. If neighborhood groups are looking for a test recall case, Brooks and Susman would certainly be the names on the top of the list.
Of course, Denver and its neighborhoods are in continued danger. It can only be hoped that the alliance formed among d’Artagnan and the Three Musketeers continues strong to beat back the endless efforts of Buchanan, the weak Mayor, and the corrupt members of the Denver Council to destroy what makes Denver a great city, its neighborhoods.
As Dumas’s Musketeers would shout: “Un pour tous, tous pour un.!” — “All for one, and one for all!”
— Editorial Board
by Mark Smiley | May 26, 2017 | Editorials
The lead story on the front page of this issue of the Glendale Cherry Creek Chronicle discloses that the purported “investigative consultant” Charles Johnson who stalked and harassed the Glendale City Clerk and people who were quoted in the Chronicle critical of Mohammad Ali Kheirkhahi was, in fact, a top super-secret undercover Special Agent for the FBI. Visit the Chronicle’s website at www.glendalecherrycreek.com and watch the entire Glendale Police Department’s interrogation of Mr. Johnson pretending to be an investigative consultant in violation of Colorado law. God help us if that is the best the nation’s preeminent law enforcement agency has to offer.
Of course, it didn’t end there. Special Agent Kimberly Milka then went on to harass anyone who filed a complaint with the police departments of Lakewood or Glendale concerning Johnson’s stalking and harassment. Ms. Milka was clearly engaged in obstruction of justice and witness tampering, but who is going to stop the FBI when it violates citizens’ constitutional rights. The answer is no one.
We now know that Johnson’s and Milka’s criminal activities in Glendale are only the tip of the iceberg of FBI misconduct in this town of a little over 5,000 people. A former top Denver police officer who met several times with Mohammad Ali Kheirkhahi believed that Kheirkhahi was trying to get him to solicit a bribe from Mike Dunafon, the mayor of Glendale. The former officer wanted to wear a wire to record Kheirkhahi’s statements and even interviewed with the FBI.
It appears that the FBI in response did nothing with regards to Kheirkhahi and instead instituted a campaign with the purported help of Kheirkhahi to get others to try to bribe Glendale officials including Dunafon.
It is assumed the FBI did so because it believed city officials were susceptible to taking bribes. Ever since Glendale incorporated in 1952, to the vast annoyance of officials in Denver and The Denver Post who after World War II became the official cheerleader of the City and County of Denver, it was rumored that Glendale officials were corrupt especially considering liquor licenses. It was perhaps a case of self-projection, as in Denver at various times to get a liquor license one had to hire the right politically connected lawyers and know the right City Council members while Glendale granted them to virtually anyone who wanted one.
The City and County of Denver did not seem to understand Glendale’s laissez faire and libertarian attitude toward municipal governance. Glendale saw itself as too poor to turn anyone away who wanted to do business in the town. There was, of course, zero reason to bribe anyone in a town that would already give you what you wanted in the first place.
As a result of Denver being closed down and very restrictive as to liquor licenses and Glendale freely issuing them, Glendale became a youth and nightclub Mecca in the 1970s and 1980s with dozens of bars, nightclubs and restaurants along Colorado Boulevard, East Virginia Avenue, Leetsdale Drive and South Cherry Street.
In the 1990s Denver was able to revitalize downtown with the building of Coors Field and now issued liquor licenses to essentially anyone who wanted one in LODO. Conversely Glendale mayors Steve Ward and Joe Rice killed its downtown by trying to close one liquor establishment after another while preventing new ones from being granted.
When Glendale recently decided to try to bring back an eating and entertainment district along Cherry Creek and East Virginia Avenue the old canard that Glendale city government was corrupt was res
urrected by the FBI. It would have been nice if the FBI had bothered to check that the Glendale mayor and his wife are independently wealthy and Glendale city officials are compensated and therefore highly unlikely to accept bribes.
The Glendale Police Department tried to constantly keep highly controversial Denver FBI Public Corruption Section head Jonny Grusing aware of everything it was doing with regards to Charles Johnson and everything else going on in the city. The Glendale Police Department believes that the FBI in turn continually lied to them especially regarding Charles Johnson.
Glendale now does not believe anything that Jonny Grusing has to say. Of course, if a member of the public lies to the FBI you go to jail, while the FBI states it may freely lie to anyone it wants without any repercussions which is what Special Agents Jonny Grusing and Charles Johnson have taken to new levels.
For many regular citizens in Glendale as well as Glendale public officials, the FBI is not in their minds the nation’s preeminent law enforcement agency but at least at the local level is composed of people who lie, fabricate, harass, stalk and obstruct justice on a regular basis while seeking public corruption that does not appear to exist in Glendale. Grusing, in turn, has developed the reputation in some Denver metropolitan police departments as being a type of untrustworthy and “dirty cop.”
After the escapades of former FBI Director James Comey at a national level, the reputation of the Denver office feeds the narrative that something is seriously wrong with the FBI. Once that perception seeps in it will be difficult for the many honest and trustworthy local FBI agents to regain the public trust and respect they once had.
— Editorial Board
