Cycling towards Socialism!

bcycleAw, nice bike!  Looks innocuous, right?  NO!  That red bike is the friendly looking twin of the black helicopter!

Republican gubernatorial candidate Dan Maes is warning voters that Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper’s policies, particularly his efforts to boost bike riding, are “converting Denver into a United Nations community.”

“This is all very well-disguised, but it will be exposed,” Maes told about 50 supporters who showed up at a campaign rally last week in Centennial.

From this Denver Post article, we learn that downtown bike-sharing in Denver is in fact an insidious plot by the UN to take away our freedoms.

Sadly, it’s happening near me too.

Thank god for the clear-headed Tea Party folks candidates like this, who will protect us from such evils!

“At first, I thought, ‘Gosh, public transportation, what’s wrong with that, and what’s wrong with people parking their cars and riding their bikes? And what’s wrong with incentives for green cars?’ But if you do your homework and research, you realize ICLEI is part of a greater strategy to rein in American cities under a United Nations treaty,” Maes said.

(And remember, the Red Dawn invasion started in Colorado.  Don’t let it happen again!  And did I mention that the bike is…. RED?  Cue Glen Beck blackboard scribble)

Late update 9/12/2010: Turns out maybe saying too many stupid things makes you unelectable after all. Perhaps a bit of sanity prevails in the electorate and/or political circles?

5 thoughts on “Cycling towards Socialism!

  1. Interesting article. But I think your post misrepresented Maes’ concern – it’s not the bikes that are a concern, it’s the mayors’ signing of a UN document as a guide to policy decisions. The issue is that US politicians are starting to use UN guidelines; it’s the whole ‘slippery slope’ dilemma. Now I don’t think Maes’ fears are at all justified in this instance, but I don’t blame him for being paranoid – it’s hard to know what to look for these days.

    Coincidentally, the ‘slippery slope’ reasoning is the only real problem I have with GB. His facts are firm – he gives dates, references (which I do look up) – and his conclusions are reasonable, but he excludes a lot of factors that generally block or at least slow the draconian scenarios he represents. Sure, totalitarian regimes have been formed using similar tactics and methods that are being used in modern politics, and there are plenty of folks who would like to see it happen again. I tend to side with Bill O’Reilly most of the time on this – there’s just so many factors that get in the way of the slippery slope, and, provided people are given accurate information, it’s going to be exceptionally hard to get where the total’s want to go.

    I’m not going to stick around and debate who said ‘hi’ first when GB bumped into Whoopi Goldberg on the bus (or was it subway? LIAR!!!). Interesting article, though.

  2. Sorry Pete, is the candidate not tea party-fueled? I’ll double check & edit if not. Ok, implicating the whole party for this guy’s actions isn’t fair, I can retract that.

  3. Zachary, well, I don’t have a transcript of what exactly he said, just the quotes in the article. I see nothing wrong or slippery with metropolitan areas from all over the world working together on a plan for sustainability and efficiency.

    From what I can gather, Maes has it backwards. He seems to imply that the UN is somehow foisting this onto cities as a back door, “part of a greater strategy to rein in American cities under a United Nations treaty”

    Leaving aside that as far as I know, cities don’t sign UN treaties, this would appear to be voluntary coordination towards a shared international goal. Good ideas can arise outside the US, and/or in coordination with other nations. ICLEI would seem to be a good example of this.

    “United Nations” are hot-button words for some people, and I think it’s being exploited.

    I don’t understand the reaction some have to sustainability efforts. Maes seems to have an agenda against this. In a radio interview, he bemoaned how a Democratic state government foisted a renewable energy standard on the voters of the state, when in fact Amendment 37 was a approved by the voters themselves by a reasonable margin, under a Republican administration.

  4. You raise some good points – keep in mind, however, most conservatives like the Republican’s record about as much as they like Obama – so the fact that the R’s passed similar measures or supported them is kind of moot – most Republican’s are either admitted progressives or influenced by them.

    Which is why it’s annoying when President Obama points to Republicans who support (or used to support) an agenda similar to his, as though that’s reassuring the skeptics – the Republicans aren’t all that much different from the Democrats at this point.

    Beyond that, I agree that, whether you buy into stuff like PO or GW, it only makes sense for society to move to renewable or more efficient energy sources and practices – but since a lot of admitted socialists and other radicals tie themselves into the Green movement, conservatives are understandably skeptical. And conservatives have always been wary of the UN – so seeing *any* action that appears to prompted by UN measures is a red flag.

    I’m not defending Maes as a candidate – I don’t know his position, and for all I know he could be a nut case trying to profit off the Tea Party and populace fear. But from that article, I think his fears are reasonably mainstream as far as conservative thought goes. But I freely admit that this was a lousy issue to get his positions.

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