22 years later - Alleged Father's Day Bank Killer - meets "the Judge of all the earth"

James King, key figure in mystery of Denver Father's Day Massacre, dies

Excerpt:

The man tried and acquitted in Denver's infamous "Father's Day Massacre" case has died after living a shunned existence for 21 years and recently suffering from dementia. But James King's passing has not quelled speculation about whether he got away with killing four bank guards on June 16, 1991.

Comment: More information on the crime here and here. Reference to God the Judge is from Genesis 18:25, "Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?". A New Testament reference would be Acts 17:31, "He has appointed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness by the Man whom He has ordained. He has given assurance of this to all by raising Him from the dead"; Romans 2:16, "God will judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ"; and 1 Peter 4:5, "They will give an account to Him who is ready to judge the living and the dead"

Cableland's oddities

Denver Aims to Sell Home Too Odd to Be the Mayor’s

Excerpts:

12-foot fire pole in the master bedroom, the 88 television sets and the retro tanning bed ...

... portraits of barely clad women in the bathroom, personal notes from Gerald R. Ford and John F. Kennedy adorning the walls and a pink baby grand piano ...

Comment: I agree with this assessment

“I used to joke that he was a man for whom money was no object and pleasure was the only object,” said Mr. Hickenlooper, whose wife vowed that she would sooner live in the county jail after staying a weekend at the Cableland mansion with their young son.

Official site: Cableland. Streeview

Olympic economics

A $1 Billion Hangover From an Olympic Party

Excerpt:

Well before the Games began, the global recession pushed several of the Games’s sponsors, including Nortel Networks and General Motors, into bankruptcy. Whistler Blackcomb, the resort that is hosting the Alpine skiing events, will soon be sold at auction.

Security costs, first estimated at $165 million, are now headed toward $1 billion.

Still, organizers insist the operating budget will break even. But that forecast includes $423 million in emergency money from the International Olympic Committee, and detailed financial information will not appear until after the Games are over.

As for Vancouver’s municipal government and the taxpayers, the bad news is already in. The immediate Olympic legacy for this city of 580,000 people is a nearly $1 billion debt from bailing out the Olympic Village development. Beyond that, people in Vancouver and British Columbia have already seen cuts in services like education, health care and arts financing from their provincial government, which is stuck with many other Olympics-related costs.

Comment: Denver (Colorado actually!) did the right thing to turn down the Olympics. More below. An Minnesota taxpayers .... think twice before we bid to host!

Colorado only state ever to turn down Olympics

Colorado stunned the world in 1972.

With a brash young lawyer-lawmaker named Dick Lamm leading the way, residents said they didn't want the 1976 Winter Olympics.

And they said it in a big way. The landmark vote on Nov. 7, 1972, wasn't even close -- 514,228 to 350,964. A 59.4 percent majority said they weren't willing to spend tax dollars to have the Games in their state.

2020 Summer Olympics

Legislation has been introduced in the Minnesota Legislature to create a task force to explore a 2020 Olympic bid for Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul. The city's past Olympic bid history included unsuccessful bids in 1932, 1948, 1952 (when the city finished second to Helsinki to host the Summer Games), and 1956. The city also finished second to Atlanta as the U.S. bid city for the 1996 Summer Olympics. TCF Bank Stadium is expandable to 80,000 seats and could serve as the Twin Cities' Olympic Stadium

Denver light rail - more taxes needed?

Grand Plans for Rail in Denver Hit a Wall of Fiscal Realities

Excerpt:

Projected costs have ballooned to nearly $7 billion, and the system faces a budget gap of $2.2 billion, mainly because of a sharp drop in sales tax revenues. Worse still, most rail lines are still on the drawing board, and the 10,000 or so workers needed when construction reaches full swing beginning in 2011 have not yet been hired, muting the economic stimulus.

Voters could be presented with a proposed sales tax increase as early as next year to finish a system that remains mostly an idea.

Comment: It's more expensive than buses!