Coyote Gulch

Thursday, January 22, 2004

Macintosh Heaven
Steven C. Den Beste: "After a long, virtuous life in which he never used a 2-digit field to represent the year, a programmer died and was met at the Pearly Gates by none other than Saint Babbage himself ... "
6:57:25 PM

Colorado Water
State Representative Tom Wiens, R-Castle Rock, is proposing an expanded solution to the South Metro water woes, according to the Denver Post [January 22, 2004 , "A cheap quencher for south 'burbs"]. From the article, "To do it, water suppliers could tap Barr and Milton lakes and an underlying aquifer near Brighton with a 20-mile pipeline from an existing line at E-470 and Smoky Hill Road in Arapahoe County. The project, with an estimated cost of $25 million, is a bargain compared to other big-ticket ideas to bring water to a region hooked up to dwindling aquifers. The pipeline plan endorsed this week also comes with snags involving farmers' water rights and other legal issues, and competitors for the water, Mulhern said. Wiens' proposal is made possible by an an agreement reached last month: The East Cherry Creek Valley water district will buy 5,500 acre-feet of water per year over a 10-year period from two different water providers near Brighton. Wiens wants to expand that project."
7:09:11 AM

2004 Presidential Election
MP3 remix of Howard Dean's strident speech after the Iowa caucuses. Thanks to Doc Searls for the link. In another post, Searls says, "Clearly, its effects were regretable. It hurt the campaign. But it was also honest and authentic, and in the long run that can only help, for the simple reason that it was real."
Howard Dean and the other presidential candidates get another chance to show off their stuff in a debate tonight at Saint Anselm College. The debate at Saint Anselm College begins at 6 p.m. MST and will be broadcast live on Fox News (Comcast channel 42).
Update: Taegan Goddard asks Dick Bennett of the American Research Group to explain Tracking polls and also links to those tracking polls for New Hampshire. John Kerry is surging past Howard Dean. Suffolk University puts Kerry ahead 27 to 19 percent. Wesley Clark is third at 15 percent, Zogby has Kerry leading Dean 27 to 24 percent, with Clark at 15 percent, A Boston Globe/WBZ-TV poll shows Kerry ahead of Dean 31 to 21 percent, with Clark at 16 percent, American Research Group has Kerry leading 27 to 22 percent, with Clark at 19 percent.
6:41:34 AM

Denver November 2004 Election
Most of the speakers at yesterday's hearing on the FasTracks proposal were in favor of the expansion of RTD's reach, according to the Rocky Mountain News [January 22, 2004, "FasTracks gets vocal support"]. I guess that means they are also in favor of the increase in sales tax that should be on the November ballot. From the article, "Backers of the RTD plan to ask voters this fall to approve a 0.4-cent increase in the transit tax - now at 0.6 cents per dollar - to pay for FasTracks. They need to gather signatures to put it on the ballot in the seven-county district, but that won't happen unless DRCOG determines that the plan is feasible. That determination is scheduled to come in an April 21 vote by the DRCOG board."
Here's the coverage from the Denver Post [January 22, 2004, "Group: Poll finds support for FasTracks"]. From the article, "A group of Denver-area business and civic leaders has done early private polling showing RTD's $4.7 billion FasTracks transit expansion plan should get a favorable reception from voters in November. 'We're really encouraged that this thing is going to go,' said Peter Neukirch, president of Citizens for FasTracks Success, a nonprofit group set up to promote the plan. Neukirch, former president of the Southeast Business Partnership, said his group raised about $50,000 from business leaders to conduct the poll and set up focus groups on the FasTracks proposal. The group has hired political consulting and lobbying firm CRL Associates Inc. and its chief executive, Maria Garcia Berry, to plan the campaign to win voter approval in the seven-county metro area for a FasTracks tax increase."
I didn't find a link to a "FasTracks Success" website but the organization is mentioned by the Sierra Club and Smartgrowth online.
6:27:33 AM

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