I don't know why organizations are so resistant to change. Please keep bringing things to our attention. Please run for office. Once you hit a tipping point, the momentum that can come out of this could bring changes quickly. Unless the reality is that the remaining locals are too much in the minority, or actually want Ketchum to become Aspen so they can make money selling out. Perhaps the battle is already lost.
Perry, I agree with AF that the City Council doesn't sit around plotting to replace locals with tourists, but it may be an inevitable consequence of their not-necessarily-disinterested actions. I also agree that "exterminate" is too strong a word. But whether myopic, incendiary, or plaintive, I applaud all the digging you do and encourage you to keep doing it. For me, 98% of the value of your reporting is the facts you dig out about what this or that organization or program is doing. I occasionally attend City Council meetings and other municipal functions, but without the Ketchum Sun's reporting I'd be lost. You provide an invaluable service in that regard and may very well be moving the needle. At the very least, you are moving the needle indirectly for many (at least 800) of us. If the price of that service is your editorializing, I'm fine with it. Let's face it, "facts" are never reported from a completely unbiased source. I consider myself perfectly capable of filtering fact from opinion and checking facts. Some of those opinions I agree with, some I half agree with, and some I disagree with. So what?!
Two suggestions: 1) append a glossary of acronyms somewhere (at the end?) of each issue. There are too many to keep track of, especially for those of us whose attention waxes and wanes; 2) honestly report what has happened to the budgets of the WRV's various municipalities over time. This might be difficult given all the outsourcing you say the Ketchum City Council has done as well as all the nonprofits (e.g., Mountain Humane) that use private dollars to perform what are traditionally governmental functions.
Years ago the mayor told me he wanted to to turn Letchum into Zermatt. That requires getting rid of the locals as happened on Zermatt. And the parking.
I guess if I charged for this blog I’d be more “discrete.” It’s not journalism. It’s my opinions based on connecting the dots from what I’ve been able to uncover.
Thanks for going to meetings. I wish more people would speak up.
Perry, since you asked for feedback (“I am always looking for people to tell me where I am wrong”), if I had to use two words the would be “somewhat myopic”. Although you’re obviously well-intentioned (I support your efforts), much of the time I think you are being reductionistic and naive. This is what I think might improve the delivery of your message. Why do I say ‘somewhat myopic’?
Case in point: “Anyone who analyzes the actions of the Ketchum City Council must realize that their goal is to replace low-profit locals with high-profit tourists and create dorms with income limits to keep tourism industry wages low and maximize profits.” The problem with that statement: even if it is a goal as you say, it’s not “their goal”. Sure, they own it but they don’t sit around thinking (as you imply), "How can we replace the locals with tourists and bring in more slave labor to serve them?” I know you're not a conspiracy theorist, Perry, but you can sound like one. It doesn't help your case.
Using the word “extermination” in this sentence strikes me as being incendiary and petulant: “If you voted for Fire Consolidation or LOT for Air or anything like that, the joke is on you—you contributed to the extermination of locals.” Using the word ‘extermination’ is itself extremist in this day and age. I’d be a little more careful with your wording. Details matter, right?
Your language often overlooks the fact that it is the economic system-at-large, driven by an inherently rapacious free-market ethic that provides both the context and the impetus for the valley's inefficient, unbalanced and destructive funding mechanisms. What has happened to Ketchum is a sign of the times and it has been happening globally for years. You know this. Plus, you live in a right-wing conservative state that embraces the ultimately ill-fated logic of unbridled American-style capitalism. (No, I'm not a rabid left-wing radical socialist.)
Take the need for balanced regulations and taxes that can help shape the short-term rental market in Ketchum. If you look at regulation as a form of checks and balances it’s largely a problem of mechanics. How are effective laws and policies crafted? The Idaho state government’s laissez-faire abeyance to the false gods of consumerism is in lockstep with the pinheaded promises made by Dorito Boy, your next “papier-mâché” president. It started in 1980 with Reagan and his handlers who rationalized the transfer of wealth by endorsing the Laffer Curve. They knew a gift when they saw it coming. The concept of “trickle-down” economics is the most cynical play in the history of socioeconomic engineering; it’s also the most bitterly ironic name ever given to a way of thinking about sharing wealth.
Climate instability is an obvious corollary of all this. Eventually, it will rob the planet's economies of their vitality and your troubles with overtourism will be obliterated. Perry, sometimes you’re in danger of missing the forest for the trees (we all are) and resembling the conspiracy theorists with some of your wording. It all gets a bit febrile. The valley’s local governments do not have a consciously planned design to replace the locals with tourists and “exterminate” the locals who can’t make the cut. A fixation on bad actors (ghosts in the machine?) in city government misses the fact that they are largely unconscious tools, extensions of an ethos that endorses the concentration of power and capital as a self-evident imperative. Sadly, it’s also human nature and that fact alone legitimizes the need for public policy.
This much seems axiomatic: Government regulation that’s creatively progressive and dynamic is a valid mechanism to positively influence an inherently Machiavellian human instinct. You’d be more likely to move the needle in City Hall — you’re falling at present — if you filed a suit with the state based on the premise that it’s discriminatory, arbitrary, economically and socially destructive to deny resort towns the ability to license, regulate and tax short-term rentals as registered businesses. The goal is to counter the loss of long-term housing, not engage in ad hominem diatribes and polemics. Hell, even if you lost the case (you probably would), you'd raise the visibility of the issue in the press, in other states with similar problems, and quite possibly in the national press. Brad Little would love you for it (more revenue) and so would the SVC (not).
This reply you made to one of my recent comments is a symptom of learned helplessness: “Appreciate that comment and the article. None of the tools in BC are legal in Idaho. They aren’t likely to be legal given the election outcome." This lacks any semblance of agency. Unless the laws are changed at the state level the Council's decision-making process and that of their successors will follow suit. Think it over lest you end up reducing your outrage to a tempest in a teapot. The people who are making the decisions in the WRV don’t care about what you think. To at least some of them you probably resemble a village idiot. You need to get their attention.
Besides, at this rate it will be too late. Climate change will ensure that, most likely when it fails to snow in Idaho over multiple winters. It probably isn't that far away. If you're making slow progress you're failing because time is running out. SVC will be counting the money taken from the poor sods to whom it sold the resort. Property values will start to fall because of the compromised quality of life and the lack of opportunity. Tax revenue will drop and eventually the WRV's little towns will collapse like dying stars. Don't save it up for a rainy day, spend the time and money now. Get yourself some allies with the right skill-sets and go for the jugular vein. Failing do so will eventually reduce your messages to a clichés and your Substack forum to an exercise in preaching to the converted, a digital relic of "those who tried to stem the tide".
You’re always looking for people to tell you where you are wrong? As I’ve said before, I don’t think you are wrong, exactly, I just think you’re not quite on target. Cheers.
PS. Perry, as a follow-up listen to the conversation (embedded in the article in The New Yorker article ) between Rachel Maddow and David Remnick at the magazine's yearly Festival, and then transpose her views to the political context in Idaho. The old saying "You can't fight City Hall" comes to mind. It might be better to do an end-run around it and sue the poor Kool-Aid swilling cretins at state level for abrogation of their duty to protect resort towns from being destroyed from within. Remember, sooner or later, climate change is going to eliminate one major revenue stream for the local economy (ies). Snow -
From Wikipedia: ..."She earned a degree in public policy at Stanford in 1994. At graduation, she was awarded the John Gardner Fellowship. She was the recipient of a Rhodes Scholarship and began her postgraduate study in 1995 at Lincoln College, Oxford. She had also been awarded a Marshall Scholarship the same year but turned it down in favor of the Rhodes. This made her the first openly lesbian winner of the Rhodes Scholarship. In 2001, she earned a Doctor of Philosophy (DPhil) in politics at the University of Oxford." ...
As the airport continues its never ending expansion, the FAA will make demands and requirements of Friedman that can`t be met triggering the process of relocation. In the end it won`t matter who wants what, relocation is inevitable.
I don't know why organizations are so resistant to change. Please keep bringing things to our attention. Please run for office. Once you hit a tipping point, the momentum that can come out of this could bring changes quickly. Unless the reality is that the remaining locals are too much in the minority, or actually want Ketchum to become Aspen so they can make money selling out. Perhaps the battle is already lost.
We never give up!
Perry, I agree with AF that the City Council doesn't sit around plotting to replace locals with tourists, but it may be an inevitable consequence of their not-necessarily-disinterested actions. I also agree that "exterminate" is too strong a word. But whether myopic, incendiary, or plaintive, I applaud all the digging you do and encourage you to keep doing it. For me, 98% of the value of your reporting is the facts you dig out about what this or that organization or program is doing. I occasionally attend City Council meetings and other municipal functions, but without the Ketchum Sun's reporting I'd be lost. You provide an invaluable service in that regard and may very well be moving the needle. At the very least, you are moving the needle indirectly for many (at least 800) of us. If the price of that service is your editorializing, I'm fine with it. Let's face it, "facts" are never reported from a completely unbiased source. I consider myself perfectly capable of filtering fact from opinion and checking facts. Some of those opinions I agree with, some I half agree with, and some I disagree with. So what?!
Two suggestions: 1) append a glossary of acronyms somewhere (at the end?) of each issue. There are too many to keep track of, especially for those of us whose attention waxes and wanes; 2) honestly report what has happened to the budgets of the WRV's various municipalities over time. This might be difficult given all the outsourcing you say the Ketchum City Council has done as well as all the nonprofits (e.g., Mountain Humane) that use private dollars to perform what are traditionally governmental functions.
Thanks.
Thanks for the comment.
Years ago the mayor told me he wanted to to turn Letchum into Zermatt. That requires getting rid of the locals as happened on Zermatt. And the parking.
I guess if I charged for this blog I’d be more “discrete.” It’s not journalism. It’s my opinions based on connecting the dots from what I’ve been able to uncover.
Thanks for going to meetings. I wish more people would speak up.
Perry, since you asked for feedback (“I am always looking for people to tell me where I am wrong”), if I had to use two words the would be “somewhat myopic”. Although you’re obviously well-intentioned (I support your efforts), much of the time I think you are being reductionistic and naive. This is what I think might improve the delivery of your message. Why do I say ‘somewhat myopic’?
Case in point: “Anyone who analyzes the actions of the Ketchum City Council must realize that their goal is to replace low-profit locals with high-profit tourists and create dorms with income limits to keep tourism industry wages low and maximize profits.” The problem with that statement: even if it is a goal as you say, it’s not “their goal”. Sure, they own it but they don’t sit around thinking (as you imply), "How can we replace the locals with tourists and bring in more slave labor to serve them?” I know you're not a conspiracy theorist, Perry, but you can sound like one. It doesn't help your case.
Using the word “extermination” in this sentence strikes me as being incendiary and petulant: “If you voted for Fire Consolidation or LOT for Air or anything like that, the joke is on you—you contributed to the extermination of locals.” Using the word ‘extermination’ is itself extremist in this day and age. I’d be a little more careful with your wording. Details matter, right?
Your language often overlooks the fact that it is the economic system-at-large, driven by an inherently rapacious free-market ethic that provides both the context and the impetus for the valley's inefficient, unbalanced and destructive funding mechanisms. What has happened to Ketchum is a sign of the times and it has been happening globally for years. You know this. Plus, you live in a right-wing conservative state that embraces the ultimately ill-fated logic of unbridled American-style capitalism. (No, I'm not a rabid left-wing radical socialist.)
Take the need for balanced regulations and taxes that can help shape the short-term rental market in Ketchum. If you look at regulation as a form of checks and balances it’s largely a problem of mechanics. How are effective laws and policies crafted? The Idaho state government’s laissez-faire abeyance to the false gods of consumerism is in lockstep with the pinheaded promises made by Dorito Boy, your next “papier-mâché” president. It started in 1980 with Reagan and his handlers who rationalized the transfer of wealth by endorsing the Laffer Curve. They knew a gift when they saw it coming. The concept of “trickle-down” economics is the most cynical play in the history of socioeconomic engineering; it’s also the most bitterly ironic name ever given to a way of thinking about sharing wealth.
Climate instability is an obvious corollary of all this. Eventually, it will rob the planet's economies of their vitality and your troubles with overtourism will be obliterated. Perry, sometimes you’re in danger of missing the forest for the trees (we all are) and resembling the conspiracy theorists with some of your wording. It all gets a bit febrile. The valley’s local governments do not have a consciously planned design to replace the locals with tourists and “exterminate” the locals who can’t make the cut. A fixation on bad actors (ghosts in the machine?) in city government misses the fact that they are largely unconscious tools, extensions of an ethos that endorses the concentration of power and capital as a self-evident imperative. Sadly, it’s also human nature and that fact alone legitimizes the need for public policy.
This much seems axiomatic: Government regulation that’s creatively progressive and dynamic is a valid mechanism to positively influence an inherently Machiavellian human instinct. You’d be more likely to move the needle in City Hall — you’re falling at present — if you filed a suit with the state based on the premise that it’s discriminatory, arbitrary, economically and socially destructive to deny resort towns the ability to license, regulate and tax short-term rentals as registered businesses. The goal is to counter the loss of long-term housing, not engage in ad hominem diatribes and polemics. Hell, even if you lost the case (you probably would), you'd raise the visibility of the issue in the press, in other states with similar problems, and quite possibly in the national press. Brad Little would love you for it (more revenue) and so would the SVC (not).
This reply you made to one of my recent comments is a symptom of learned helplessness: “Appreciate that comment and the article. None of the tools in BC are legal in Idaho. They aren’t likely to be legal given the election outcome." This lacks any semblance of agency. Unless the laws are changed at the state level the Council's decision-making process and that of their successors will follow suit. Think it over lest you end up reducing your outrage to a tempest in a teapot. The people who are making the decisions in the WRV don’t care about what you think. To at least some of them you probably resemble a village idiot. You need to get their attention.
Besides, at this rate it will be too late. Climate change will ensure that, most likely when it fails to snow in Idaho over multiple winters. It probably isn't that far away. If you're making slow progress you're failing because time is running out. SVC will be counting the money taken from the poor sods to whom it sold the resort. Property values will start to fall because of the compromised quality of life and the lack of opportunity. Tax revenue will drop and eventually the WRV's little towns will collapse like dying stars. Don't save it up for a rainy day, spend the time and money now. Get yourself some allies with the right skill-sets and go for the jugular vein. Failing do so will eventually reduce your messages to a clichés and your Substack forum to an exercise in preaching to the converted, a digital relic of "those who tried to stem the tide".
You’re always looking for people to tell you where you are wrong? As I’ve said before, I don’t think you are wrong, exactly, I just think you’re not quite on target. Cheers.
PS. Perry, as a follow-up listen to the conversation (embedded in the article in The New Yorker article ) between Rachel Maddow and David Remnick at the magazine's yearly Festival, and then transpose her views to the political context in Idaho. The old saying "You can't fight City Hall" comes to mind. It might be better to do an end-run around it and sue the poor Kool-Aid swilling cretins at state level for abrogation of their duty to protect resort towns from being destroyed from within. Remember, sooner or later, climate change is going to eliminate one major revenue stream for the local economy (ies). Snow -
newyorker.com/news/the-lede/how-donald-trump-gave-democrats-the-working-class-blues
From Wikipedia: ..."She earned a degree in public policy at Stanford in 1994. At graduation, she was awarded the John Gardner Fellowship. She was the recipient of a Rhodes Scholarship and began her postgraduate study in 1995 at Lincoln College, Oxford. She had also been awarded a Marshall Scholarship the same year but turned it down in favor of the Rhodes. This made her the first openly lesbian winner of the Rhodes Scholarship. In 2001, she earned a Doctor of Philosophy (DPhil) in politics at the University of Oxford." ...
As the airport continues its never ending expansion, the FAA will make demands and requirements of Friedman that can`t be met triggering the process of relocation. In the end it won`t matter who wants what, relocation is inevitable.