Just so you aren’t confused, I am not talking about any meetings on the corner of 12th and North. No, I’m talking about downtown on Fifth and Rood. And while I am sure the faculty meet regularly at our university, those meetings don’t do nearly the damage the way our city council infects its personal petri dish known as the citizens of Grand Junction and Mesa County.  Pontificating and affirming amongst themselves like educated educators is the only explanation for what our city council continues to inflict upon the people.

I saw an opinion recently stating our all-knowing city council has lost its “appetite for experimentation.” And this was after the beginning of the article took paragraphs to describe the “pilot program” on Fourth and Fifth streets as an example of a good, needed experiment. If I had to guess, they are a biking buddy of our mayor and a few council members, or they don’t use Fourth and Fifth in their daily commute. Because even with using up all the spare PVC pipe in the valley, I have yet to see a bicyclist commuting on either street.

I can assure the author that a majority of the elected, learned leaders of Grand Junction have no shortage of experiments in the hopper. Why else would they increase the budget in such a nonchalant, yet dismissive of the public, manner and keep the taxes on resale goods (the other topic of the opinion) to keep the coffers filled?

After all, we just don’t know it’s for our own good. They just need to solve a problem for one person (read: buddy), and it’s worth every penny, effort and inconvenience to the other 99.99 percent of the people. I can imagine them saying, “We’re do-gooders, doing good, and we’ve got a study we’ve paid for to prove it’s a good in need of doing.” Such studies conveniently, make them immune from the consequences of the results of every edict, proclamation and policy they make or every dollar they waste. Except in the case of Fourth and Fifth streets, where’s it’s simply impossible to have a study saying this is a desperate need for our city — unless the PVC vendor had one. 

I know all too many will read this and retort, “All Craig does is (insert B word) and complain about things.” I mean, I do at times. But only about things worthy of my B-wording and complaining. Like the Fourth and Fifth Street jackassery and wondering why the premise with public servants always starts with, “We should be taxing that,” on things like resale goods. 

To help some of my detractors on the resale goods issue, these “leaders” would tax your garage sale if they could. After all, they just couldn’t take the “revenue hit” from not taxing our local resale shops, according to our former mayor.

Heaven forbid our city government base its community budgeting and priorities on the premise we fought a revolution on the concept the people are overtaxed. 

The truth is our government at all levels truly embraces the “Taxation without representation is tyranny” theory, but in the opposite way — although in Colorado we’ve changed the terminology to “fees” — to the point where it taxes WITH representation. It’s mainly because we tolerate this tyranny and keep electing folks who are more than happy to tax us into oblivion for our own good.

Here are two quotes to better understand my premise when it comes to the freedoms that are inalienable according to some parchment from 1787:

“When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion — when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing — when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors — when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don’t protect you against them, but protect them against you – when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice — you may know that your society is doomed.”  — Ayn Rand.

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” — C.S. Lewis

Now look at the actions of government and its do-gooders at all levels over your lifetime and tell me these aren’t commonplace in your experience. Don’t want to go back that far? Then how about during and after Covid 19? Still too remote? Then drive into town on Fourth Street and buy some pot and look at your receipt.

When it comes to taxes and tyranny, no one in our country does it better than those we elect. And no one does less good with the power and money that come from them.

Craig Hall is owner and publisher of the Business Times. Reach him at 424-5133 or publisher@thebusinesstimes.com