Just a year after record snowfall throughout much of the Rocky Mountain West, the region is locked in a snow drought not seen since Jimmy Carter surrendered the White House to Ronald Reagan in the early 1980s. The record dry conditions have lawmakers and industry observers extremely concerned about looming water shortages and wildfire danger.
It was a modest start, but a start nonetheless for disaffected worker bees representing the 99 percent toiling in the 1-percent playground of the rich and famous in Aspen on Monday.
Audio smuggled out of the right-wing billionaire benefactor Koch Brothers’ secret meeting in Beaver Creek last month has made headlines for the red-meat rhetoric it captured and for identifying the high-profile attendees who sneaked in and out of the event. The fact that Charles Koch welcomed the crowd by referring to the coming presidential election as a Saddam Hussein-style “mother of all wars” is unsurprising but also unsettling– and not just because it’s an aggressive overstatement. It’s unsettling because there’s a mystery tied to it. The vehemence of the call to action– the high-intensity language and the plea for round after round of million-dollar donations– seems poorly matched with the threat to the Kochs and their friends posed by the nation’s conservative Democratic president.
Here’s a sentence you don’t see much these days: A new newspaper will hit the streets Thursday. Erin Chavez, former Associate Publisher of the Vail Mountaineer, which closed in June along with the Denver Daily News, will launch a weekly called “Sneak Peak Vail.”
Boulder Democrat Jared Polis ranks No. 6 on Roll Call’s list of the wealthiest members of Congress, with $65.91 million in assets.
First lady Michelle Obama and her daughters Malia and Sasha are skiing Vail Mountain today, according to several sources and local reports. President Barack Obama reportedly did not accompany his family to Vail for the Presidents Day Weekend.
A lot of formerly more wealthy Coloradans are watching with interest recent revelations stemming from numerous lawsuits trying to recover the ill-gotten gains of Ponzi schemer Bernie Madoff. Thursday’s New York Times blockbuster was that JPMorgan Chase officials allegedly ignored clear signs of Madoff’s fraud despite their own deep suspicions. Bank officials deny any wrongdoing.
VAIL — Last year saw a new record number of foreclosures in Vail, Beaver Creek and surrounding Eagle County, but it also saw a significant increase in home sales over 2009, which may wind up being the low mark in a mountain real estate crash unlike anything since the 1980s. Counties throughout the high country — from Pitkin (Aspen) to Routt (Steamboat) to San Miguel (Telluride) – all set new records for the number of foreclosures, according to the Denver Post, surpassing dubious marks all established in the 1980s.
On Saturday, just a week after the suicide in SoHo of Mark Madoff, Vail’s Sonnenalp Hotel will host a “Bernie Madoff Auction of fine art, jewelry, rugs, bronzes and more due to losses causes by” the infamous Ponzi schemer now serving 150 years in prison.
VAIL — A former bank teller robbed at gunpoint by a pair of Australian snowboarders here five years ago says she feels violated all over again by a book written by one of the so-called “Dumb and Dumber” bank robbers. “It made me feel incredibly violated and disrespected,” Jessica Gunther said of Anthony Prince’s new book, Bank Robbery for Beginners. “I feel almost like I did the day it happened … as if my own progress has been undone.”
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