Let me tell you a little story about an Idaho Republican who looked at the Republican candidates running in the party primary for mayor of Boise in 2003 and decided that one of them, a fella named Chuck Winder, wasn't quite, well, he wasn't quite Republican enough. Apparently a party registration didn't satisfy. So this Republican, who will go unnamed for a good two years, made himself the purity judge, purity jury, and purity executioner in the case of candidate Winder. Here's what he did:
"I ordered and I paid for" telephone calls to Republican voters of Boise on the night before the election, he admitted this year. At the time, though, his automated phone message identified itself to voters as "Citizens for Trustworthy Government." Trustworthy, heh heh. That'll become funny to you in a minute. What did these cloak-of-darkness callers tell voters?
Their message made it clear there was a connection between Winder, the candidate for mayor, and the recent scandals of former Mayor Brent Coles and his chief of staff, Gary Lyman. There's a connection, voters were assured. Mm-hm. Winders was hip-deep in it.
This is the actual message: "Hello, I'm from Citizens for Trustworthy Government. The Statesman and TV news confirm that Chuck Winder cut an insider deal with Gary Lyman to give an out-of-state business buddy rent-free office space at the public-owned train depot. This Winder-Lyman deal cost taxpayers thousands. The attorney general has been asked to open a felony investigation into why Winder and Lyman ignored state law, had nothing in writing and didn't tell the City Council. Let's fight for honest government. Thank you."
"It really wasn't personal," our anonymous Republican told one reporter this summer, two years after the dirty deed. "I don't have anything against Chuck Winder. This was really about process and the campaign finance process." He told another that "the calls were not meant to attack Winder personally but to make a point." He only "gave voters information about Winder, but didn't tell them how to vote," he explained to another.
In fact, our anonymous Republican did exactly the opposite, in a big way: He paid for radio ads telling Boiseans not to vote in the mayoral election that year.
Winder lost his primary, missing a chance at a runoff with Dave Bieter, who went on to win the primary and the general election. The city of Boise cried foul. Saying that (remember this basic theme for a minute) "voters have the right to know who is supporting candidates running for office, so they can make informed decisions," city leaders sought to prosecute the "John Doe" for breaking Idaho election laws. People who spend money for or against a candidate are required to register with elections officials, and "Doe" didn't.
On July 7 this year, our anonymous Republican outed himself in an affidavit.
He is Laird J. Maxwell, who bragged recently to the Boise Weekly that his friend, Howie Rich, entrusted him with a grant of hundreds of thousands of dollars to carry out Rich's ballot initiative agenda in Montana and Idaho. (Refresh your memory here: http://www.dailykos.com/...)
So what if Boise City Attorney Cary Colianni investigates and intends to press charges? "The city doesn't have a case," he sniffs. So what if a lot of people think Winder has grounds to file a civil case against him for slander? "Yeah, right," Maxwell snorts. He's immune, he says, because his automated message didn't say, `Don't vote for Winder.' He's clever, this one. Just ask him and he'll tell you how much.
Trustworthy. See, I told you it would get funny in a minute.
Now, why would we want to spend another minute on a story such as this one, about a narcissist with an attorney? We would because of Maxwell's work for Rich, because of his use of Rich's money to reach into other states and play with their ballot initiative processes, and because of the radical agenda that Maxwell has adopted alongside his East Coast buddy, the scion of SoHo.
Mind you, Maxwell doesn't tell you what he doesn't want you to know. Asked how many calls he made to smear Winder in 2003, he demurs. Asked how much he spent, he ignores. Asked whether he acted alone, he claims all credit for himself. Of course he acted alone, he would have you know. And why wouldn't he?
Luckily for us, Maxwell enjoys talking about himself, which makes him an especially colorful FOH - Friend of Howie - and gives us one more reason to read a little further.
Not much is known about Maxwell until his shenanigans to smear Winder in 2003. But by 2005, he was getting aroused by ballot initiative politics. The U.S. Supreme Court in Kelo v. New London, Connecticut, issued a ruling that allowed municipalities to take private property if the municipality's need for tax revenue was sufficient to justify the action.
Maxwell `bout wet himself. He wrote an opinion editorial for publication in the Boise Weekly, and I'm embarrassed on their behalf to say they printed it. In it, Maxwell - and this really is the mark of a great leader - referred to himself not only in the third person, but identified himself by title, too, and then he quoted himself. That's right, he told you... what he had told you. Read this, which was written by Maxwell:
"Laird Maxwell, chairman of Idahoans for Tax Reform said, `This horrid ruling now mean no individual's property is safe from the government land grabbers. Your home is now the government's castle, when they want it." Whoo, how the steam rises from the page. That's passion. He'd make a good reader in the children's corner of the library, wouldn't he? You think he's ever done community theater?
Heh, heh, and then, like the lecher who coaxed you into his Plymouth with pleas for "just" a peck on the cheek, he slips you the tongue: "Maxwell wrote: `I urge you not to delay. It is very important that citizens from across the nation immediately object to this new ability for the local government politicians to grab your land and give it to their big contributing cronies. We will do our part from Idaho, with your action."
Whoa. Laird Maxwell, quoting Laird Maxwell, had the nerve to warn his fellow Idahoans about "big contributing cronies." Ought Howard Rich be offended, or darkly tickled instead?
Because Maxwell would want you to read the rest of the excellent op-ed by Laird Maxwell, in which the author quotes one Laird Maxwell, here's your link: http://www.boiseweekly.com/.... You'll want to wash up afterward.
You know, after all that, I feel dirty right now, just telling you that Maxwell has two weblogs of his own (though I think that he created one just to pass off to a little older fella so he'd have something to do with his time). But I'm compelled. Here they are:
http://libertyspuds.blogspot.com/ and http://howcomestatism.blogspot.com/. Spuds, indeed.
When he's not blogging, Maxwell's getting around, according to Land Use Watch in Oregon: "Though he is from Idaho, Laird Maxwell works in Montana, and is campaigning in Nebraska, while in Idaho collecting signatures for a ballot measure passed in Oregon, over land use regulation that will be on the ballot in all those States plus California and Washington this November."
LUW reports that Maxwell has funneled $380,000 (likely of Howard Rich's money) into a Nebraska ballot initiative effort that has raised only $2,000 from ALL OTHER SOURCES. You know, `cause it's a grassroots campaign important to Nebraskans. And there in the heartland of America, Laird Maxwell has his own Laird Maxwell, a fella named Mike Groene, who has never met Maxwell - just as Maxwell has never met his benefactor, his close personal friend Howard Rich.
Maxwell's hand was on the wheel in Oregon last year when Measure 37 was approved, says LUW here: http://www.landusewatch.com/.... And they say he has a thing for pork, too: "One logo Maxwell likes to use in online writings about his personal economic principles happens to be an image of a pig, which is fitting due to his long struggle to guarantee the right of rogue landowners to build actual pig farms amid some of the most scenic and environmentally sensitive areas in the western United States. Perhaps pig farms are more sightly and appropriate than a gravel pit or trailer park and we should be thankful for his suggestion."
All right, so what does Oregon's Measure 37 have to do with Kelo, and what does it have to do with Idaho's Proposition 2? Let's go to June of this year, when Maxwell succeeded at getting enough signatures to put his Proposition 2 on the November ballot, to get the details.
As explained by Jason Kaufman in the July 12 edition of the Mountain Express, Maxwell's Proposition 2 requires would require governments to pay Idaho landowners whose property value is reduced by any land-use laws approved after the proposition becomes law.
Well, that sounds fair. Government takes grandma's house; Laird Maxwell wants to ensure that the government pays grandma for her house. So this is a measure that protects the little guy. And grandma. Right?
Not so fast, says Ned Williamson, attorney for the city of Hailey, Idaho. Williamson explained the situation to Kaufman in a little more detail. It appears that Proposition 2 is not all it appears... "If it passes it would be a significant change. You'll see planning come to a halt," Williamson says. What? Planning?
Damn straight. Jerome Mapp is a longtime urban planner, says Shea Anderson of the Boise Weekly, and he's a former Boise City Council member. Mapp says Maxwell's Prop 2 is Topic 1 among planners like himself.
Last week, Mapp and other planners attended a Western Planners Conference (they're that organized) in Boise, and they could hardly keep focused on the speaker's slideshow presentation on Hurricane Katrina. See, last year, the Idaho legislature passed a law preventing California-based Sempra Energy from building a nasty coal-burning power plant on its property near Burley. If Maxwell's Prop 2 passes this November, the law adopted by Idaho's lawmakers protecting Idaho from Sempra's pollution will be moot. "Sempra could come back. They could build it without any rules or regulations," Mapp told Anderson.
Patricia Nilsson, Idaho Planning Association president, told Anderson, "The whole purpose of planning is, `Shared burden, shared benefit.' If we throw that away, it's just going to be neighbor against neighbor." Ah, shades of the Old West, where a gunslinger like Maxwell could ride in with three-day stubble, tie up his horse, set up shop in the saloon and terrorize a little town `til its knees rattled. Them were the good ol' days, before city slickers brought in their notions of shared burden, shared benefit. Hmp. Progress.
Mapp, Nilsson and their marauding band of planners in Boise apparently talked about what's happened in Oregon, where voters swallowed Measure 37, which does the same thing as Maxwell's Prop 2. (Hey, do you wonder if...)
According to Anderson's report in the August 9 edition of the Boise Weekly, found here http://www.boiseweekly.com/... "Researchers at Portland State University said in a report that Measure 37 `has disabled the tools used over the past four decades to prevent sprawl and preserve agricultural and forest land in Oregon."
(Note to self: Ask Google who would benefit from the deregulation of forest land in Oregon.)
"Ask the question, What do you want Hailey to look like forever," Hailey's city attorney Williamson told the Mountain Express's Kaufman. "Any decrease in value, the city may be paying for. I don't think we will make many more amendments (if the initiative is approved)."
O, wait. So let's say I own a corner lot at Fifth and Oak, and on it sits my dear grandma's house, which she left me in her will, God bless her time. But I hit the big time investing in the Carlyle Group before Dubya invaded Iraq, and I don't have to lift a finger for the rest of my days, so I already live in a palatial mountain aerie and don't need grandma's flat. So, as she would have wanted me to, I'm going to have it bulldozed and build me a leather goods store, or a nightclub called the Stockyard, or a Ruby Tuesday's franchise just to make spending money on the side - BUT the GUVMINT has rezoned my little lot and it's not to be used for those sorts of business, or any business at all. Ah, it's becoming clearer to me now... my little spit of land could be very lucrative for me, but the GUVMINT tells me I can't exercise my God-given right to TAKE a profit from this property. It's as if the guvmint is TAKING my filthy lucre away from me, instead.
Ahhh... So Maxwell's measure says, if an action by the government causes a decrease in the value of my property, the government has to pay me for that loss.
And, with what money is the government going to pay me for that loss? Why, its tax revenues, of course. So I use Maxwell's law as a club to beat the city over the head, and it pays me handily out of the funds it otherwise would have used to provide for the fire department, or the police department, or the public health department, or the public schools, or the hospital, or the local jail, or any one of a host of municipal obligations. We won't have any law enforcement and public health anymore, but I'll rest at night knowing I got the full benefit that grandma intended for me to have when she left me her house.
God bless Laird Maxwell for looking out for my profit.
And God bless Jason Kaufman for bringing Hailey's concerns to our attention here: http://www.mtexpress.com/....
As if to put an exclamation mark at the end of Kaufman's article, the kind editors of the Mountain Express offered their own impression of Maxwell's contribution to society, with subtlety. "Chaos for your town," they called their editorial on July 14. Apparently, the editors of the Mountain Express already know a little about Maxwell.
"This creation with hidden meaning is the brainchild of Laird Maxwell, Idaho's rising star in Far Right schemes and chieftain of `Idahoans For Tax Reform,' which is devoted, according to its Web site, to making Idaho `the lowest taxed, least regulated, most free state in the nation,' the editors write. "That gives some hint of the vision of Prop 2's author - to transform Idaho into a state with bare-bones public services in schools, roads, law enforcement and other traditional community services."
Ouch. They must've heard how dirty he treated Chuck Winder in 2003, too. Read for yourself: http://www.mtexpress.com/....
"So, signers of the Proposition 2 petition probably believe it's all about restricting government's `eminent domain' right to condemn private property because hundreds of words in the proposed new law were devoted to that," they add. "That was sugar coating. The real intent of Prop 2 is in the final few hundred words that restrict the right of communities to zone and rezone property. If cities do re-zone, taxpayers would be asked to pay owners for any alleged economic `losses'."
"Fringe Republican conservatives have been trying to foist this `property rights' nightmare on the nation for years--and succeeded recently in Oregon. Prop 2 would put every property's value at risk from damage by unfettered uses next door. It would destroy communities and drive up taxes. Defeating Prop 2 is a must."
Well, that cleared it up for me. But since I knew Maxwell was Howard Rich's ol' pard in the Wild West, I wasn't hard to convince to start with.
P.S.: For the record, notes about our anonymous friend came from KTVB here, http://www.ktvb.com/... and from the Idaho Statesman here, http://idahostatesman.com/... and from our blogging friends at The Unequivocal Notion here: http://the-unequivocal-notion.blogspot.com/. Thanks to all.
At least one blogger has had enough of Maxwell's dirty tricks with dirty money. The Sniff Test says Maxwell's paid signature-gatherers weren't telling the whole story when hitting up Idahoans for their John Hancocks this spring. "When all those paid workers were out there collecting signatures, they pushed the entire idea as `eminent domain,' i.e., the idea that the government can't take your property so another PRIVATE entity can make more money off of it."
"Sounds good, right? But, hidden behind the first page of a multi-page initiative, is language that says if a county zones a piece of property as agricultural land and you want to build a Hooters on it, the taxpayers have to give you the money you MIGHT have earned. It's known as a `takings' bill. The people paid some $300,000 to push those petitions weren't talking about the takings part at all. They hid it behind the eminent domain factor. It was a complete camouflage."
But that doesn't sound like our Maxwell, does it? He's "Citizens for Trustworthy Government," after all.
Sniff Test has an idea: "Reporters, someone ought to check out the Maxwell family holdings and find out why Laird is so passionately committed to doing away with ANY restriction on land use and ANY possible tax. There's more to this guy than meets the eye. It's the usual problem with the media: no resources, no training, no time to do real reporting. But for many, there's no real curiosity about what drives things. They don't ask the why questions anymore."
Go here and thank Sniff Test for helping us ask the `why' questions: http://thesnifftest.typepad.com/...