I always chortle with delight when places like Orange County go bankrupt all because of their blind faith in a flawed political concept and I chortle even more when things like this happen to the Springs. Yesterday’s Post had a delightful little story about all the things that the City Governement in the Springs is having to cut because you have a city full of people that hate government and refuse to pay for it.

This tax-averse city is about to learn what it looks and feels like when budget cuts slash services most Americans consider part of the urban fabric.

More than a third of the streetlights in Colorado Springs will go dark Monday. The police helicopters are for sale on the Internet. The city is dumping firefighting jobs, a vice team, burglary investigators, beat cops — dozens of police and fire positions will go unfilled.

The parks department removed trash cans last week, replacing them with signs urging users to pack out their own litter.

Neighbors are encouraged to bring their own lawn mowers to local green spaces, because parks workers will mow them only once every two weeks. If that.

Water cutbacks mean most parks will be dead, brown turf by July; the flower and fertilizer budget is zero.

City recreation centers, indoor and outdoor pools, and a handful of museums will close for good March 31 unless they find private funding to stay open. Buses no longer run on evenings and weekends. The city won’t pay for any street paving, relying instead on a regional authority that can meet only about 10 percent of the need.

“I guess we’re going to find out what the tolerance level is for people,” said businessman Chuck Fowler, who is helping lead a private task force brainstorming for city budget fixes. “It’s a new day.”

Some residents are less sanguine, arguing that cuts to bus services, drug enforcement and treatment and job development are attacks on basic needs for the working class.

I love it!

But, it get’s better.

But the 2010 spending choices are complete, and local residents and businesses are preparing for a slew of changes:

• The steep parks and recreation cuts mean a radical reshifting of resources from more than 100 neighborhood parks to a few popular regional parks. The city cut watering drastically in 2009 but “got lucky” with weekly summer rains, said parks maintenance manager Kurt Schroeder.

With even more watering cuts, “if we repeat the weather of 2008, we’re at risk of losing every bit of turf we have in our neighborhood parks,” Schroeder said. Six city greenhouses are shut down. The city spent $19.6 million on parks in 2007; this year it will spend $3.1 million.

“If a playground burns down, I can’t replace it,” Schroeder said. Park fans’ only hope is the possibility of a new ballot tax pledged to recreation spending that might win over skeptical voters.

• Community center and pool closures have parents worried about day-care costs, idle teenagers and shut-in grandparents with nowhere to go.

Hillside Community Center, on the southeastern edge of downtown Colorado Springs in a low- to moderate-income neighborhood, is scrambling to find private partners to stay open. Moms such as Kirsten Williams doubt they can replace Hillside’s dedicated staff and preschool rates of $200 for six-week sessions.

“It’s affordable, the program is phenomenal, and the staff all grew up here,” Williams said. “You can’t re-create that kind of magic.”

Shutting down youth services is shortsighted, she argues. “You’re going to pay now, or you’re going to pay later. There’s trouble if kids don’t have things to do.”

• Though officials and citizens put public safety above all in the budget, police and firefighting still lost more than $5.5 million this year. Positions that will go empty range from a domestic violence specialist to a deputy chief to juvenile offender officers. Fire squad 108 loses three firefighters. Putting the helicopters up for sale and eliminating the officers and a mechanic banked $877,000.

• Tourism outlets have attacked budget choices that hit them precisely as they’re struggling to draw choosy visitors to the West.

The city cut three economic-development positions, land-use planning, long-range strategic planning and zoning and neighborhood inspectors. It also repossessed a large portion of a dedicated lodgers and car rental tax rather than transfer it to the visitors’ bureau.

“It’s going to hurt. If they don’t at least market Colorado Springs, it doesn’t get the people here,” said Nancy Stovall, owner of Pine Creek Art Gallery on the tourism strip of Old Colorado City. Other states, such as New Mexico and Wyoming, will continue to market, and tourism losses will further erode city sales-tax revenue, merchants say.

• Turning out the lights, literally, is one of the high-profile trims aggravating some residents. The city-run Colorado Springs Utilities will shut down 8,000 to 10,000 of more than 24,000 streetlights, to save $1.2 million in energy and bulb replacement.

Though, the money quote in the piece is this:

Community business leaders have jumped into the budget debate, some questioning city spending on what they see as “Ferrari”-level benefits for employees and high salaries in middle management. Broadmoor luxury resort chief executive Steve Bartolin wrote an open letter asking why the city spends $89,000 per employee, when his enterprise has a similar number of workers and spends only $24,000 on each.

Businessman Fowler, saying he is now speaking for the task force Bartolin supports, said the city should study the Broadmoor’s use of seasonal employees and realistic manager pay.

Ahhhh, yes, “Seasonal Employees”…which, in Colorado is code for “Illegal Aliens”, so it looks like it is long past time for ICE to invade the Broadmoor.

But all in all it looks like it is just going to be good times reading about the Springs over the next year as it descends into it’s predictable storm of chaos.

If they were to move this piece from just a Gallery to the Tate Modern, I would gladly pay cash dollars to go and see/participate in it.

~gleefully runs through the Tate Modern grabbing things to toss into the bin~

The winner last night was Jimmy Kimmel with his mockumentory of the whole thing in the style of a Ken Burns documentory.

Conan O’Brien upped the ante for most expensive bit to $4.8mil… 2009 Kentucky Derby winner Mine That Bird, wearing a mink Snuggie and watching restricted NFL Super Bowl footage.

About the late night wars over the past couple of weeks has been all of the shows pilling on Leno.

Gawker has been doing a workmanship like job of posting all the best bits…with Jimmy Kimmel instulting Jay to his face on his own show being only second to Conan’s 1.5 million+ comedy bit last night.

Yep, 1.5+ million.

That is what you get when you have a Bugatti Veyron Mouse with the orginal master copy of the Rolling Stones Satisfaction playing in the background.

Though Jalopnik is now reporting that the Bugatti was a loaner, the Stones song is so expensive that NBC has pulled the clip off of HULU.

Good times….good times…

Spring is around the Corner!

I saw a flock of 20 or so male Robin’s in the trees near the pond in back of work this evening.

Cindy McCain has lent her support and image to the No on H8 campaign, now let’s see if any Dems step up to the plate to do the same.

This is so going on my pull list, or at least buy it if is a one off.

Via io9, the King of RPG’s nicely drawn with what looks to be every Table Top RPG trope packed in there for good measure.

From, Andrew Sullivan of all people.

Here’s why it’s hard to see anything positive coming out of this debacle. Stephen Bainbridge, an intelligent man and one of the few conservatives who also found Bush and Cheney appalling, can write this:

Obama and the Congressional Democrats (especially in the House) governed for the last year as though the median voter is a Daily Kos fan.

This must come as some surprise to most Daily Kos fans. But if one had traveled to Mars and back this past year and read this statement, what would you assume had happened? I would assume that the banks had been nationalized, the stimulus was twice as large, that single-payer healthcare had been pushed through on narrow majority votes, that card-check had passed, that an immigration amnesty had been legislated, that prosecutions of Bush and Cheney for war crimes would be underway, that withdrawal from Afghanistan would be commencing, that no troops would be left in Iraq, that Larry Tribe was on the Supreme Court, that DADT and DOMA would be repealed, and so on.

It has been truly amusing to listen to the so-called liberal media and the Blue dog/Lieberdems follow Fox News talking points to blame everything on the “Left”, when the Left (you know, the party base) has suffered through nothing but perpetual disappointment for the past 12 months as Obama and Rahm sold everything that was said or promised during the election down the river in the name of bipartisanship and/or to pander to some sort of mythical “Moderate Independent” voter.

Via Glenn Greenwald.

Last night was a truely hellish experience with stuff coming out of both ends at a furious pace. First time I have ever had to wear a fleece coat to bed to keep from shivering.

Good news.

I had a drink of water 30 minutes ago and I have not vomitted it back up yet, as oppossed to the rest of the morning.

Nothing line unplanned travel after head-ache from hell over the weekend to make a peachy week.

Off to finish off the first series of ST:TOS and go to bed.