January 5, 2012

SandBox Comments: Aspen Times/Melanie Sturm "America's New Years resolution: fiscal fitness"

"...Like a long-running soap opera whose actors change though the story line doesn't, we spend $4 billion more than we have every day — and growing. Since 2008, spending skyrocketed past our historical average of 20 percent of gross domestic product to 25 percent.

The problem isn't merely the amount of debt — though as Sen. Obama asserted before voting against the 2006 debt-ceiling increase, “Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren” — it's the size of the debt relative to our economy that reflects poor economic health. With our debt-to-GDP ratio at 100.3 percent versus 69.8 percent in 2008, we're living on “borrowed” time unless politicians stop deluding themselves that a stagnant private sector can finance a growing public sector.

The eurozone crisis offers America a timely warning that the battle of the spending and debt bulge is an existential one. Europe's saga is our “Chronicle of a Death Foretold,” except America can avert doom by slashing spending levels and lifting private-sector burdens. If Sweden, Ireland and a new reform-minded Spanish government can do both — the reverse of what we've done during the Great Recession — America should, too...."
(Melanie Sturm)

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SandBox Comments: Crested Butte News "Council to consider support for Bear Ranch deal "

Just say YES.

Bill Koch's proposal for Bear Creek Ranch is and always has been, win-win.

"Former Crested Butte mayor Tom Glass of the Western Land Group, Inc. came before the council Tuesday, January 3 asking for a letter of support for the exchange. “We’ve been at this a long time,” he told the council. “Bear Ranch is a working ranch 20 miles west of here near Erickson Springs. The owner [energy billionaire Bill Koch] wants to obtain a strip of BLM land that split the ranch. We have proposed a land exchange.”

Under the proposal, Koch would obtain 1,846 acres of BLM land in six parcels near the property that would tie the Bear Ranch together. In exchange, he would purchase parcels of land near the Curecanti National Recreation Area, Dinosaur National Monument, Marble, Paonia and Erickson Springs and give them to the public....."

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SandBox Comments: Vail Daily News "‘Wildways for Wildlife' in Vail"

This has been in the works here in Colorado for years.  The folks are pretty happy over how beautiful this concept is  and that it solves the problem as well.

We can hardly wait to get through the seemingly endless preliminaries with all powers that be and actually get construction started.

Imagine...these 'wildways' throughout the entire U.S.

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