Corporate Fascism

Or Being a Progressive, The Colorado Way

There is a number of examples of the majority of the Lakewood City Council (and other cities in Colorado) shilling for the Big Business Enterprise, most recent being the unnecessary, developer-profit-ensuring, resident-abuse-enabling policy for Metro Districts. Here is a version some of the citizens had proposed. Plain English. No lawyer-speak:

“There shall be no Metro Districts allowed in the City of Lakewood, Colorado.”

There are other ways for finance a development, such as rolling the cost of the infrastructure in to the price of the house. Which you then finance by taking out a mortgage, which you, the consumer, can pay off on your terms and then own the property.

On the first go-around, Lakewood City Council poured over a version full of holes and trap-doors to enable an impressive amount of resident abuse in the May of 2024. And, instead of allowing the public to have input on the policy, they only invited one of the preeminent pushers for the Metro Districts in Colorado and permitted them to speak freely.

Not a single representative to represent the interests of the residents, current or future, was invited during the study session.

Then, they did it again on the 4^th of November, 2024. You gotta have that “second reading”. So that later, when you show up after being told how to vote by the corrupt city staff, you can claim that “you’ve done your due diligence.” God forbid you actually do some independent research and study the policies of the cities that actually listened to their constituents and did something to protect their interests and rights. Just as Longmont and Westminster did. Two cities with far more vibrant economies than Lakewood to boot.

According to Lakewood own publication, the city has lost jobs. Which is pretty impressive, and not in a good way, considering the whole state has been going through an economic boom over the same time. Despite the city’s bullshit claim of more housing creating jobs - it has not. It has, however, ensured more cash flow from the Metro Districts and the thousands of residents who were turned in to renters.

Normally, metro districts are supposed to provide services such as water and sewer. Instead, in Colorado, they often provide easy financing (read, cash flow) for developers, because they can set their own bond rate (to be collected for decades to come), lend themselves money and force residents to pay the interest without any disagreeable voices until it's too late. And, Lakewood City Council seems to be fine with that. It has not occurred to them that maybe, just maybe, forcing through policies advantageous to big business enterprise to fleece the constituents is, maybe, just maybe, skating dangerously close to been akin to corporate fascism.

Rather than championing real economic development, addressing crime, building (and maintaining) parks and rec. centers, as well as supporting the deployment of sorely needed public transit, Lakewood Government has been rather busy pushing through policies designed to extract ever more profit from the thousands of renters and residents saddled with Metro District fees.

This is a copy of an email which I had sent to each member of the Lakewood City Council recently (posted here with minor edits for spelling):

“Hello,

Wanted to send this along, in case the moderators decide to block this from the comments site.

I stopped coming to the city council meetings quite some time ago, since it had become obvious that the city government had started to lean toward corporate fascism.

Council members would talk about pretending to listen to the community, while forcing through policies intended to enrich their business backers.

The public would ask for economic development and the council would hand over millions earmarked for economic development to developers.

The public would ask for the Metro Districts to be banned, and the city council is tripping over themselves to make sure that the developers have yet another mechanism to extract money from the public.

The public has been asking for the council to ratify a policy which would finally make the developers pay their fair share for the park and open space land, and the council is using political tricks to deny what the public has been asking for.

People ask for affordable housing and instead the city council fosters the development of over-priced rentals, owned by corporations that may have been colluding on the price setting, turning more and more people into perpetual rent slaves.

Despite the bullshit claim that more housing spurs job creation, Lakewood has lost jobs in the last ten years (according to Lakewood's own publication). Not a single world class company has been approached to consider coming to Lakewood, while the city council keeps claiming that subsidizing developer profits is economic development.

And, just to put a cherry on the top, some on this city council also like to hide their support for antisemitism behind the veneer of free speech, while denying the public their right to the same on any number of the above and other topics.

Corrupt and hypocritical. Save for the council members such as Rich Olver, who, despite being in a political snake-pit, has tried to listen to his constituents and vote with his consciousness, instead being a political boot-licker.

Having been in the position of an elected official who actually listened to the constituents, shame on you.

Alex.”

Now, go pay your mortgage or rent, and then, your ever increasing taxes, and then, your metro district mills (don’t worry, if you are renting, those get rolled in to your rent, somehow), and then, your exponentially increasing home insurance, and then, your exponentially increasing car insurance, and then, your exponentially increasing health insurance premiums. Oh, you hardly have anything left over to buy groceries or save some money for your child’s college (where they might get accosted if they are Jewish)? Also, make sure you don’t use the gas fire place, when you are without power for the second day in the row in the winter, due to Colorado having a second-world-country-level electrical power grid. It’s the progressive thing to do.