Commentary
“Look upon it as the dismantling of the middle class…. we are in the midst of the largest transfer of wealth in the nation’s history. It is a transfer from the middle class to the rich and from the middle class to the poor— courtesy of the people in Washington who rewrote the rules.”
Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele — “America: What Went Wrong”
The construction industry is one big honey pot. And when you get around honey you get sticky fingers.
McClave saw a glimpse of that when a sub contractor for the campus project allegedly was paid for work it didn’t do. McClave didn’t pay the bill. The contractor did, using the school district’s borrowed construction funds. I assume that’s being worked out.
That’s going to happen in construction. Sometimes things just disappear. Or don’t et built.
For eight years I worked for a home- builder developer and compared to the hurly burly of a big city daily, it was a dream job. Carpeting on the floor. Stained glass windows. A three-story granite former mansion that was a National Historic Site.
That was work life in a staff position at headquarters.
Out on the lines, it was a different picture.
Rolling fields and deserts in Colorado, Wisconsin, Utah and Idaho were being turned into improved lots with water, sewer and roads.
The home-building affiliate of the company was constructing homes and condominiums. (We called homebuilding an affiliate, parallel company because the main enterprise, Terracor, was already $30 million or more under water when I walked in the door. It would stay afloat for almost 10 years because it had the good fortune to be at the end of the line for the sequential bankruptcy of the developers which had been financed by the big real estate investment trusts of the 1970s.)
From just five projects, consider this track record.
The construction manager at Bloomington was fired. He had diverted construction materials from company projects to build his own dream home. Mike was a flamboyant Jewish guy with horn rim glasses and a beautiful blonde wife. He was a lot of fun to be around, always laughing.
But building a personal home for free with diverted labor and materials was like stealing from the company. A no go.
Then there was the mature, distinguished looking construction manager at the Pinery. I met him once for coffee in a restaurant and he extolled about the wonderful benefits and illumination he had received from belonging to a secret society. Looking back, of course, he was hinting I should knock on the door because it might open doors for me.
As it turned out, years later I joined a competing secret society, but my counter culture assessment of the symbolism of that fine group, and they were a fine group of men, left me empty and a little confused. Others with far broader observation skills than me have said that secret societies, though warring among themselves, seem to converge at the very top of the pyramid.
Anyway, I was shocked a few months later to learn that the distinguished gentleman was fired. Something about missing construction materials that had been paid for, or something like that. I do know that the first wave of condos at the Pinery used to lose their snow cover real fast after a storm. That’s because there was no insulation, I was told.
Bailey Creek was a different story. The affable older Mormon couple that managed it had been given permission to build a modest manager’s home on the property. Now, they had a green light to build something — but on a visit the headquarters big bosses were dismayed at how overbuild the home was. A gorgeous and huge stone fire place. Very spacious
The Bailey Creek “home” was so overbuilt it was taken over and used as a resident clubhouse instead. So this disaster was not so much outright theft, just lack of oversight and over exuberance.
But, as an aside, the stable manager’s job was abolished when it was determined a lot of saddles and tack had disappeared on his watch. But that wasn’t technically construction shrinkage.
And it’s not just the employees.
Years ago, old timers remember the early 1980s boom and then bust — which subsequently motivated the Reagan Administration to proclaim that the nation has been built and the country no longer needed as many workers as it did. This was part of their rationale for explaining the tough times that were to ensue.
With this as a background, my nuclear family purchased a very small home in Bennett, to get away from the Big City. I bought the house for something like $42,000 with a fixed rate loan just before interest skyrocketed. Eight months later, jobless, I would sell that house for an $8,000 profit. The buyer wasn’t really buying the home as much as he was the low interest rate. That was legal back then, before they invented accelerated payment due on sale clauses and the like.
But I digress. One night I heard noise and stepped outside my back door and switched on the back porch light.
I was absolutely floored to see what was happening in the construction area behind me. My porch light illuminated dozens of my fellow residents who were greedily snatching up lumber and materials from the unfinished homes and carrying them back to their homes to finish their basements or whatever. It was not unlike a disturbed anthill, there was so much stealing going on.
My faith in humanity fell to earth too that night.
But these stories are pretty tame compared to some of the construction rascals who “think big.”
I remember reading, I’m sure it was in Forbes magazine, about the New Jersey bank that agreed to finance a high-rise residential project on the ocean shore.
This was also back in the go-go ‘70s.
Every few weeks a bank executive would go out and check on the construction progress. He would be given a tour of the building as it rose into the sky.
Then he would go back to the office and approve the release of to pay the construction bills that were rolling in.
When the building was completed, and the money had all been dispersed, the banker then realized the rascals had been showing him the construction activity of another building that someone was actually constructing on an adjoining lot.
The bank had bought and paid for empty air.
You could say that all the labor and materials — absolutely all of it — had been diverted.
Construction is a honey pot.
Get around it and your fingers can get sticky.
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
Mark Udall
Dan’s Journal - commentary
By Dan Cunningham
“Sometimes we forget that art is a spiritual path and that spiritual journeys are characterized by time in the desert.”
Julia Cameron
Tall and senatorial looking, Mark Udall, D – Colo.) Seemed relaxed and at home Saturday afternoon at Bent’s Fort Inn.
A small group had been gathered together by Bent County Democratic Chairman Alex Netherton when Las Animas was added at the last minute to a brief weekend swing through southeastern Colorado.
Netherton apologized for the small turnout, saying he’d only had time to send information to television and radio about the Las Animas stop.
Udall at first joked with his visitors, alluding to the current “family motto: Vote for the Udall nearest you.” That was in reference to his cousin Tom Udall, (D – N. M.) also a five-term Congressman who is running for the U. S. Senate in New Mexico.
At least one attendee was silently thinking about the carpetbagger issue. That question was answered. Mark Udall migrated into Colorado to run successfully for Congress in 1998, but he told the gathering his mother was a Colorado native and that he had returned to her roots.
He said his cousin Tom similarly had returned to his mother’s roots in New Mexico. Mark Udall’s campaign site reveals his father also had brief ties to Colorado. Mark’s father is Morris (Mo) Udall, who played for the Denver Nuggets before serving 30 years as a Congressional representative from Arizona.
His uncle Stewart, Tom’s father, was also a Congressman and was Secretary of the Interior under Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson.
With a pedigree like that, Udall understandably brings an aura with him into any Democratic gathering whose members have a feel for the political history of the west.
And he also brings a fairly consistent battle-tested liberal perspective that goes back for generations and influences his contemporary thinking.
A campaign spokeswoman, Taylor West, told the Democrat that Udall has worked with Senator Allard on some issues, such as resolution of the environmental mess at Rocky Flats, which was turned into a wildlife refuge.
Within the Democratic Party, she said Udall’s lone challenger is a northeastern Colorado county chairman who is very cordial with the Udall campaign and who even helped organize an upcoming campaign stop. West said the man has said he is only running to call attention to some issues.
Because Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney’s Mormon background had played a role in the national debate, she was asked about Mark Udall’s relationship to his Mormon ancestors.
West said Mark’s grandfather had been a devout Mormon, his father had been a lapsed one and Mark has chosen to go another way.
The upcoming Senate race in Colorado should be a donnybrook, and so far the polls indicate a tight race between Udall and Republican front-runner Robert Schaefer, a former Congressman in the local Fourth District.
While Udall clearly resonates with the national mood on extricating from the Iraq conflict, Colorado will be a tough battleground.
Much of the economy around Denver is war-based. Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and other defense contractors have thousands of very high-wage workers who are directly benefiting from the defense industry and the “global” war against third world Afghanistan and Iraq.
One tenth of the nation’s black budget — perhaps $3 billion or more locally — is reportedly spent now at Buckley Field, which is far more than a sleepy Air National Guard field. A few years ago the Denver Business Journal reported that local economists became confused when the state economy stopped plunging into recession every five years due to the oil and energy cycle. They eventually realized the heavy spending at Buckley was smoothing out Denver’s historic booms and busts.
Under those large golf-ball domes in Aurora are downlinks that can listen to intelligence gathering satellites over both Europe and Asia due to Colorado’s unique location and high altitude.
Likewise, there has been a buildup in eavesdropping by others. Russia’s huge “disinformation?” agency Interfax reportedly has its world headquarters in Denver. It used to be downtown on Market Street in a guarded building that required a visitor to push a buzzer to gain admittance. It has since moved to Parker Road.
Several years ago it was reported in Catholic Family News that Denver was the global headquarters for Interfax and that more than a dozen KGB agents are routinely based there. A few years later I read in the Denver Business Journal an article about a Russian intern at Interfax, but there was no mention of spies. Most journalists show signs of either wanting to live or of just not knowing. Had I known and done the interview, I might not have asked. Or I might have.
At Colorado Springs there has been a massive buildup of military contractors and expansion of the local military bases, prompting the Department of Defense to make a grab for even more territory, the ranchlands surrounding Pinon Canyon.
(For a glimpse into how the defense industry works, I was once at a monthly Denver UFO Society – DUFOS, an apt acronym — when a member pointed to an attendee across the room. He said the man had owned a small ranch on the edge of Colorado Springs and he had lost dozens of cows due to mysterious cattle mutilations. The unlucky stockman sold out and now his former land holding was occupied by a defense contracting facility.)
The Udall campaign has already taken in $4 million to fund a campaign, even as Udall says the nation may not be tolerant of high-spending political battles any more. His campaign has described the low-budget foray into southeastern Colorado last weekend as another tactic to fight this campaign.
But money usually talks the louodest in politics. And really big bucks are flowing into Colorado’s defense industry. The family members, relatives and suppliers and communities feeding off the war time frenzy may perceive a threat to their prosperity, even as prosperity drains away from the areas not economically benefiting from the massive war spending.
In Colorado, for every rancher who knows Pinon Canyon expansion is a threat to his livelihood, there are one or more families who fear an end to the war will threaten their good times.
By Dan Cunningham
“Sometimes we forget that art is a spiritual path and that spiritual journeys are characterized by time in the desert.”
Julia Cameron
Tall and senatorial looking, Mark Udall, D – Colo.) Seemed relaxed and at home Saturday afternoon at Bent’s Fort Inn.
A small group had been gathered together by Bent County Democratic Chairman Alex Netherton when Las Animas was added at the last minute to a brief weekend swing through southeastern Colorado.
Netherton apologized for the small turnout, saying he’d only had time to send information to television and radio about the Las Animas stop.
Udall at first joked with his visitors, alluding to the current “family motto: Vote for the Udall nearest you.” That was in reference to his cousin Tom Udall, (D – N. M.) also a five-term Congressman who is running for the U. S. Senate in New Mexico.
At least one attendee was silently thinking about the carpetbagger issue. That question was answered. Mark Udall migrated into Colorado to run successfully for Congress in 1998, but he told the gathering his mother was a Colorado native and that he had returned to her roots.
He said his cousin Tom similarly had returned to his mother’s roots in New Mexico. Mark Udall’s campaign site reveals his father also had brief ties to Colorado. Mark’s father is Morris (Mo) Udall, who played for the Denver Nuggets before serving 30 years as a Congressional representative from Arizona.
His uncle Stewart, Tom’s father, was also a Congressman and was Secretary of the Interior under Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson.
With a pedigree like that, Udall understandably brings an aura with him into any Democratic gathering whose members have a feel for the political history of the west.
And he also brings a fairly consistent battle-tested liberal perspective that goes back for generations and influences his contemporary thinking.
A campaign spokeswoman, Taylor West, told the Democrat that Udall has worked with Senator Allard on some issues, such as resolution of the environmental mess at Rocky Flats, which was turned into a wildlife refuge.
Within the Democratic Party, she said Udall’s lone challenger is a northeastern Colorado county chairman who is very cordial with the Udall campaign and who even helped organize an upcoming campaign stop. West said the man has said he is only running to call attention to some issues.
Because Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney’s Mormon background had played a role in the national debate, she was asked about Mark Udall’s relationship to his Mormon ancestors.
West said Mark’s grandfather had been a devout Mormon, his father had been a lapsed one and Mark has chosen to go another way.
The upcoming Senate race in Colorado should be a donnybrook, and so far the polls indicate a tight race between Udall and Republican front-runner Robert Schaefer, a former Congressman in the local Fourth District.
While Udall clearly resonates with the national mood on extricating from the Iraq conflict, Colorado will be a tough battleground.
Much of the economy around Denver is war-based. Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and other defense contractors have thousands of very high-wage workers who are directly benefiting from the defense industry and the “global” war against third world Afghanistan and Iraq.
One tenth of the nation’s black budget — perhaps $3 billion or more locally — is reportedly spent now at Buckley Field, which is far more than a sleepy Air National Guard field. A few years ago the Denver Business Journal reported that local economists became confused when the state economy stopped plunging into recession every five years due to the oil and energy cycle. They eventually realized the heavy spending at Buckley was smoothing out Denver’s historic booms and busts.
Under those large golf-ball domes in Aurora are downlinks that can listen to intelligence gathering satellites over both Europe and Asia due to Colorado’s unique location and high altitude.
Likewise, there has been a buildup in eavesdropping by others. Russia’s huge “disinformation?” agency Interfax reportedly has its world headquarters in Denver. It used to be downtown on Market Street in a guarded building that required a visitor to push a buzzer to gain admittance. It has since moved to Parker Road.
Several years ago it was reported in Catholic Family News that Denver was the global headquarters for Interfax and that more than a dozen KGB agents are routinely based there. A few years later I read in the Denver Business Journal an article about a Russian intern at Interfax, but there was no mention of spies. Most journalists show signs of either wanting to live or of just not knowing. Had I known and done the interview, I might not have asked. Or I might have.
At Colorado Springs there has been a massive buildup of military contractors and expansion of the local military bases, prompting the Department of Defense to make a grab for even more territory, the ranchlands surrounding Pinon Canyon.
(For a glimpse into how the defense industry works, I was once at a monthly Denver UFO Society – DUFOS, an apt acronym — when a member pointed to an attendee across the room. He said the man had owned a small ranch on the edge of Colorado Springs and he had lost dozens of cows due to mysterious cattle mutilations. The unlucky stockman sold out and now his former land holding was occupied by a defense contracting facility.)
The Udall campaign has already taken in $4 million to fund a campaign, even as Udall says the nation may not be tolerant of high-spending political battles any more. His campaign has described the low-budget foray into southeastern Colorado last weekend as another tactic to fight this campaign.
But money usually talks the louodest in politics. And really big bucks are flowing into Colorado’s defense industry. The family members, relatives and suppliers and communities feeding off the war time frenzy may perceive a threat to their prosperity, even as prosperity drains away from the areas not economically benefiting from the massive war spending.
In Colorado, for every rancher who knows Pinon Canyon expansion is a threat to his livelihood, there are one or more families who fear an end to the war will threaten their good times.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
