Colorado Republican gubernatorial candidate Dan Maes says a Denver bike-sharing program could threaten residents’ “personal freedoms” because it is part of an attempt to control U.S. cities.
Maes said last week that an international environmental group that promotes Denver’s B-Cycle program is part of a “greater strategy to rein in American cities under a United Nations treaty.”
The group to which Maes was referring, the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives, is an association with more than 1,200 communities as members, half of which are in the United States…
Maes made the comments at a rally where he criticized Democratic Mayor John Hickenlooper’s initiative to increase bicycling in the Denver through the bike-sharing program. B-Cycle allows people to use about 400 bicycles at dozens of stations around the city for a daily or monthly fee.
“This is bigger than it looks like on the surface, and it could threaten our personal freedoms,” Maes said in comments that were first reported by the Denver Post…
Nate Strauch told The Associated Press that Maes was trying to say that the biking initiative is a “gateway program” being pushed by ECLEI on cities that eventually lead to extreme measures, such as the promotion of abortions and population control.
Anyone else feel subverted by their bicycle?
If you oppose these wacko’s you have to be so happy to let them Keep Talking.
Notice who is silent. Mitt Rommney. He and his real money (Billions) are just carving up TV commercials of sorry Sarah Palin.
Once they string her quotes with Chickens for Healtcare and UN Bikes no one will vote for her.
PS. China is using bike,laptops, and Walmart to drain us of our money. What’s Mr. Maes position on something important like tarrifs.
Tea Party continues the politics of distraction, just for the uneducated or lower IQ folks.
Only in America…
Does it necessarily follow that skateboards are a symbol of true American freedom?
Generally republicans seem to favor the larger body type – perhaps if they all began skateboarding around Washington they could demonstrate their true allegiance and fight the evils of cycling.
At least it would be more entertaining than Fox news!
They will only get my bicycle when they pry it off my cold dead ass…..
What will these idiots come up with next? Complaints about the government violating the first commandment, or trading livestock for healthcare?
Maybe I read too fast, but I didn’t find “teaparty” referenced in the linked article==he’s just a plain and ordinary Republican. Retarded sure, but just a republican. I wonder what he thinks of “mass transit?”
Does the guy have a viable competitor for Republican nomination? Otherwise, when people like this and too many others get any purchase at all in our political “system” it screams time for some changes. Gives back room politics a good name?
He’s the Tea Party Candidate, I looked it up.
They should call it the Nutter Party or the Tin Foil Hat Party. If I could get back my old Republican Party I might rejoin. You remember, the one that was for fiscal conservatism and the Constitution and respected intellectual discourse.
Translation for not-thinking-further-than-your-nose crowd. Suggested problem is not bikes or bicycling. Suggested problem is “community ownership” of those. You want to bike as much as you want in Denver or anywhere else do it (I do at least 30 miles per day) – on your own bicycle and in existing traffic and with existing law.
However, if bicycles are owned by Commune, bought from my tax money and traffic patterned not for best overall result but for needs of small minority who politically support Govt. meddling in our life in general – it is an item to be protested against as non-American and socal engineering of the worst kind (one done by our own money).
I think there are some nutballs who want everyone to give up their freedom to move about in private cars and take up modes like buses and bicycles. (Almost no one I know prefers to move this way.) These delusional people are for real and they are likely the ones Dan Maes refers to.
So dusanmal, we should close libraries, then?
Right on, Mr Maes!
That Christmas when my parents threatened my personal freedom by giving me my first bicycle, they claimed it was left by some Karl Marx look-alike named “Santa” in red jammies. Really? A guy named “female saint” in Spanish, who brings kids presents only after they go to a department store and sit in his lap? The horror!
Common bicycles? It will lead to tragedy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons
However if people want to form a group to conduct business under this system of renting shared bicycles, they should be free to do so. However, the bikes will wear out faster with more people using them. Who does the maintenance on these bikes?
If everyone owned their own shopping carts instead of sharing the store’s fleet of carts, then you would never have to deal with wobbly wheels. If your wheels started to wobble, you would fix them, or better yet, you would take care of the cart since it belonged to you and the wheels would never wobble.
I am not saying that it is communism to share bicycles or shopping carts. Sharing vs. individual ownership has been proven to work.
This common usage thing even hits schools. When I was growing up in school my parents bought me a box of crayons each year. That box lasted the whole year for me. Now the schools in my area make each kid bring crayons for classroom buckets of crayons. Each kid has to bring in three boxes of crayons so that the buckets last the year. Group owned crayons get broken faster, the paper gets peeled earlier, and the individual colors are hard to find.
Again, not illegal, but these bicyclist would be better served buying individual bikes for themselves.
I don’t under the far RIght and never will.
We also got Laura Lngraham arguing Bill O’Reilly that a national program to help encourage kids in public schools is a bad idea.
http://tv.gawker.com/5605917/laura-ingraham-wants-your-kids-to-be-obese
What’s insane about this is she would be up in arms if any Progressive tried to trim the Military’s budget by a few percents and save the country far, far more then this public school lunch program is going to cost.
“…the biking initiative is a “gateway program” being pushed by ECLEI on cities that eventually lead to extreme measures, such as the promotion of abortions and population control.”
Have you sat on a bike seat? Have you ridden a bicycle in traffic? The former is birth control while the latter is a form of assisted suicide. Bicyclist must have a death wish because I have witnessed them riding through red lights and stop signs without stopping. If you ride a bicycle on the road, then you should be required to follow all traffic laws.
#16 JMRouse said, “We also got Laura Lngraham arguing Bill O’Reilly that a national program to help encourage kids in public schools is a bad idea.”
It’s a school lunch program to keep kids from being obese. The trouble is, the progressives are so unhinged that if Laura Ingraham supported this program, the Left would say that she wants to starve school kids to death.
dusanmal:
Don’t know about Denver but in Minneapolis the bike share system isn’t owned by the city. It’s run by a non-profit with several private businesses providing initial funding along with public sources.
I’d say the bikes are used mostly by people visiting the city and those living in apartments or condos where keeping a bike just takes up valuable space.
If you’re looking for a communist plot, check out the sailboats and the canoes for rent at the local lakes. As far as I know those are owned by the park board.
Benjamin:
I don’t think anyone is out to eliminate personal ownership of bikes with these systems. In fact, the board of directors would be delighted if it increased the number of people who bought and used bikes in the city. It’s intended to promote cycling as a way of getting around town.
In Minneapolis $60 will get you a yearly subscription. $45 if you’re a student. That’s less than what it costs to get one tuneup. It’s a nice alternative if you don’t have a safe place to keep a bike. That’s all it is. An alternative.
Let’s look at the evidence:
1. Bicycles are powered by people.
2. Colorado is more fit than most other states.
3. Bicycling tends to reduce weight.
4. Greater bicycling leads to greater weight loss.
5. If you loose all your weight, you die.
Therefore, it’s a Communist plot.
Except for one more thing: What if it is a bicycle maker plot?
And who makes the most bicycles these days?
The Commies! Same answer.
Screw your Commie Chinese Bycicles!
Give me my American Anarchist Skateboard!
Look into “Agenda 21.”
These cities are associating themselves with programs (like this bike thingy) that are part of a larger set of initiatives that are, among other things, to be administered in part by the World Bank, who are known for encouraging privitization of water supplies and loan sharking the third world.
So to say, “it’s just bikes! this guy is a nut!” isn’t entirely true.
And what about the programs that allow people to share a car? I believe several large US cities have a program (or business ) where you timeshare a car. Great if you can use mass transit to get work, but need a car maybe twice a month for errands or to visit friends/relatives. Is it a more insidious commie plot or a capitalist answer to a real problem?
brm:
There are very few people or organizations that are complete ideological matches with myself. Further, there are some ideas that have come from ideological opposites that I support.
Just because a bicycle sharing program might have some loose association with an agenda that includes other programs administered by the World Bank, doesn’t mean that the bicycle sharing program is bad or has anything itself to do with the World Bank.
The tea party is many things to many people. For me it is like a group of people who apparently can’t use spell check. They don’t really make any sense on most occasions.
#25,
And what would it take to become a professional CAR LANE USER…
Gather persons up going to certain areas, and drop them off, at $1 per trip, INTO/OUT of the city.
Better/faster then a CAB service. and takes less fuel.
Or even work with a couple CORPS in mid town..PARK outside of the area, and a Small van, picks you up and DROPS you off.
BUT, no one is doing it. WHY??
Its REGULATED, TOTALLY..
Even if you could do it CHEAPER FASTER, and not with SUBSIDIES from the State/city..they WONT LET YOU DO IT.
Isn’t the teaparty (Taxed Enough Already) just a simple minded group of people who are single issue voters? No Taxes!!! Thats fine as far as it goes but they have no ideas at all on what programs to cut. Each teapartier then brings their own side dish to the party to the great delight of their opposition.
To be anything other than a laughing stock, the Teaparty needs to come up with a multiple year budget to bring the deficit down. They won’t do it. Dems and Pukes won’t do it either which is why they don’t have any credibility either.
And thats why massive inflation is right around the corner.
#19 tjspiel said, “In Minneapolis $60 will get you a yearly subscription. $45 if you’re a student. That’s less than what it costs to get one tuneup. It’s a nice alternative if you don’t have a safe place to keep a bike. That’s all it is. An alternative.”
Wow, $60 dollars. My bike cost me the cost of a hacksaw blade and a tune up cost me an hour or so in the garage. Are people so broken down that they can’t fix a bike themselves? The only money I laid out was for a new set of tires and tubes which I mounted and a stupid $15 sticker that the college required to be stuck on all student owned bikes.
Note that I did not steal the bike. My roommate gave me the bike after he graduated and had to go back to his communist country. He had forgotten the combination to his lock.
I can see paying a nominal fee for bie storage. I think some places charged $10 or $15 a month, so your $60 bucks a year would be a bargain over that, but I think you lose the advantage of having a bike tuned for you.
Still it is an alternative. However, I would rather have my own bike tuned for me, unless I was vacationing and needed to rent a bike for a few days or a week. I do not think bike rentals should be run by the government though.
I think Dan needs to have his office renovated with rubber wallpaper!
Benjamin:
I ride a bike to work and much prefer having my own to those rental bikes. But I’m also comfortable doing my own mechanical work and changing my own flats. Not everybody is. A lot of the bikes I see people ride (especially students) are whatever they could afford and don’t really fit right anyway.
Besides, the program here is NOT run by the government. I suspect it isn’t in Denver either. Just like the local cable provider isn’t. Even if it was, I don’t see a problem with it as long as the system works.
I like this quote from the article:
Maes said he thought promoting more bicycling was pretty harmless at first, but he realized later “that’s exactly the attitude they want you to have.”
Either we or not getting the full story here, or this Maes guy didn’t get the full story about what the bike-sharing program is. It is hard to believe that a serious contender for a moderate state could be so out there, but then again there are these guys:
http://alvingreeneforussenator.com/
http://politics.freesitenow.com/basilmarceauxforgovernor/
If you have seen videos of either of these guys, it is obvious they have an IQ less than 70. But even they are not saying things that sound quite this ridiculous.
Tjspiel has read my mind.
When I owned a bicycle years ago (it was stolen), I maintained it, patched or replaced the tires and tubes, and had a blast with it.
If the wheels needed tuning, I went to a bicycle shop to have the wheels tuned, but could do most of the rest of the maintenance myself. Simplest transportation I’ve ever had.