When Nicky was 9, the plague swept through their community and neither his father or mother were spared. Nonna’s brother was a priest and he took young Nicky in. Nicky loved the church and wanted to be a priest just like his uncle was. When he was a young man, he realized his dream and entered the priesthood. The Church sent him to Myra in Turkey to be a priest in the only church for miles around. The village of Myra was also on the sea and Nicky loved to sail and fish in the blue Mediterranean. Nicky had given his vow of poverty and no one in village was aware of his inherited wealth.

Like most villages, Myra had some pretty rich people, including Nicky as well as desperately poor people struggling to get by. Among the poorest of the poor was a family on the outskirts of town, a widower and his three daughters aged 13 through 15. The widower and his daughters lived in a sod covered shanty built up against a low hill. The widower had gotten himself deeply in debt to a “businessman” who ran houses of prostitution along the coast. To make matters worse, the widower had no way to make a proper dowry for his girls. In that part of the world, a girl became of age when she reached 16. The widower’s oldest daughter would turn 16 during the winter solstice and that was only a few weeks away. The “businessman” had a nifty idea for the widower. When the oldest turned 16, the “businessman” would take her and erase a third of the debt. What to do? What to do?

The widower went to Church for confession. Behind the ornate screen he talked to the only priest in town, Nicky. He wanted to know how to pray, how to ask God to help him in this terrible predicament. His oldest daughter would turn 16 tomorrow. He cried and cried as he returned home with no clear answer except prayer. 

As was their family custom, each night the widower’s three young girls would leave their outdoor shoes at the front doorstep of their home and put on cloth slippers while inside the house. Late in the evening, when all was quiet, Nicky quietly walked up to the doorstep and put a small leather bag of gold coins into the largest of the girl’s shoes. He then retreated to his church without awakening anyone and went to bed.

The next morning, the girls came outside to put their shoes on. The oldest felt a lump in one of her shoes and discovered the small leather bag. The three girls ran to their father and showed him the bag. He was overjoyed.

When the “businessman” came around to see the widower, he was surprised when the widower handed him a third of what he owed. The rest of the gold in the bag would be a dowry for the oldest girl. The “businessman” was surprised but not disappointed. After all the second daughter was prettier than the oldest and the youngest was prettiest of them all. He could wait a year.

The oldest daughter was able to marry a fine young farmer who lived in the next valley to the north. The two remaining girls looked with envy on their older sister who found the gift in her shoe.

The seasons came and went. It was time for the second daughter to turn 16. The “businessman” knew the widower was as poor as ever and would never be able to pay off another third of his debt. The “businessman” slept soundly, knowing that tomorrow he would have a new girl for his “business”.

When the morning came, the two remaining daughters came outside to start the day. Wonder of wonders! There was another small leather bag just like last year. The widower heard the joyful shouting and again another daughter would have a dowry.

When the “businessman” came by to collect, the girls excitedly told him about the miracle of finding a bag of coins just like last year. The widower took him aside and paid off his second third. The “businessman” mumbled to himself that next year there wouldn’t be any third bag of gold coins.

When the youngest girl, who now lived alone with her father, came upon the eve of her 16^th birthday, the “businessman” was ready. When it became dark and all were asleep, the “businessman” went to the now-famous doorstep. There on the doorstep were the small shoes of the youngest daughter and the larger men’s boots of the widower. The “businessman” sat down to wait and guard the shoes. If anyone was going to get a bag of gold coins and a fresh young girl it was going to be him.

That night, Nicky walked towards the widower’s sod shanty in the dark and then stopped when he saw in the distance that the shoes had someone guarding them. He quietly turned to the left and walked behind the sod shanty and over the hill supporting it. He silently crawled over the sod roof until he got to the chimney. It felt cold. Any fire that had been in it would be out by now. Nicky reached into his pocket and decided the only way was to drop the leather bag down the chimney. Surely the widower or the daughter would find it and yet another girl would be saved.

What Nicky didn’t know was that the third daughter washed out her stockings each night and dried them over the warm coals of the fireplace. Down the leather bag went, brushing against one side of the chimney and finally landing right in one of the youngest daughter’s stockings.

Nicky never told anyone about the three girls or the three bags of gold coins for many years and even then he only told the old widower when reading him his last rites. By that time his generosity with the young children of his church was quite well known.

When Nicky finally passed away, the people of Myra were heartbroken. They petitioned the Church in Rome to consider Nicky for sainthood. People came forward and swore to the many miraculous things he had done in his lifetime. The Church agreed and he became Saint Nicholas.

To this day children put up their stockings by the chimney in hopes that Saint Nicholas, now Santa Claus, will visit them.

Nikolaos of Myra lived from the year 270 a.d. to the date of his death on December 6, 343 a.d.   There are so many stories and legends about him and this story is an amalgam of  a number of them.  We are now in the political season with debates, name calling, insults and $10,000 bets. It would surely be nice if we could just stop for a few days and let Mary have her baby in the manger. Miracles do happen.

Bankruptcy has been around since at least 1787. In the United States, it is a matter placed under Federal jurisdiction by the United States Constitution (in Article 1, Section 8, Clause 4), which allows Congress to enact “uniform laws on the subject of bankruptcies throughout the United States.” The Congress has enacted statute law governing bankruptcy, primarily in the form of the Bankruptcy Code, located at Title 11 of the United States Code. Federal law is amplified by state law in some places where Federal law fails to speak or expressly defers to state law.

The large U.S. Lenders, called affectionately the “Banksters” by the Occupy Wall Streeters, decided that they wanted to force College Students to become permanently indebted to them and the way to accomplish this was to change a section of the Bankruptcy Code concerning non-dischargeability. Since the founding of our country, individuals that are drowning in debt have a solution through bankruptcy filing, to get a fresh start. In order to temporize this great individual power, the U.S. Congress enacted some lender safeguards for the bad actors who are really trying to cheat the lenders.

Section 523 of the Bankruptcy Code makes certain debts non-dischargeable. Almost all of the non-dischargeable provisions concern debtors acting in bad faith, i.e. running up debt dishonestly in order to use a bankruptcy filing as a way to have their cake and eat it too.

The Banksters weren’t satisfied with the provisions in Section 523, and, during the Clinton administration, they got their Congressmen to introduce the Bankruptcy Reform Act of 1999. Under the proposed Act, a new category of bad actors was created, the College student. The new, non-dischargeable debts would be “an educational benefit overpayment or loan made, insured, or guaranteed by a governmental unit, or made under any program funded in whole or in part by a governmental unit or nonprofit.”

The 1999 bill passed the House and Senate but never became law during this term. However, in 2001, the issue was revived in the Bankruptcy Reform Act of 2001. The 2001 Act had the very same student loan provisions making them non-dischargeable. This too was voted on by both House and Senate. It never became law.

Finally, in 2005, the Bankruptcy Act was finally passed and signed into law. The 2005 bill, called the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005, or “BAPCPA” for short, once again had the very same student loan language as the 1999 and 2001 attempts. With the passage of BAPCPA, student loan obligations became eternal, and would last for a student’s life time. If a 21 year old graduated from college with $50,000 in debt, he or she would be permanently obligated until the debt and all interest and fees were paid, no matter what the student’s situation was. With the new bankruptcy law, student loans became like tattoos, easy to put on but permanent and almost impossible to remove.

The Republicans get a bad wrap from the Occupy Wall Streeters. Republicans are known as being hardnosed and rigid when it comes to handouts, whether with welfare or in loan forgiveness. The Democrats, on the other hand, have tried to painstakingly identify themselves as the warmer, softer, party. The Dems would like to be known as the party that likes welfare, likes to help those when they are down, likes those that are down and out. If you look at the Main Stream Media’s description of Republicans and Democrats, the Dems are indeed the kinder softer, party.

So how did this mean old Bankruptcy law get passed if it seeks to make debt slaves of young people who merely strived to improve their lot in life? In large part it was the very Democrats that have been lauded in the New York Times, Washington Post and, of course, New York Magazine, among other left-wing liberal media outlets.

We took the time to see who voted to enslave young college grads by voting for any of the three attempts to make student loans non-dischargeable. We expected Republicans, but among the list were pretty much all of the Democrats’ movers and shakers, especially New York based Dem Politicians. See the list below.

Joe Biden of Delaware

Steve Israel of New York

Steny Hoyer of Maryland

Anthony Wiener of New York

Harry Reid of Nevada

Hillary Clinton of New York

Barney Frank of Massachusetts

Charles Schumer of New York

Max Baucus of Montana

Patrick Leahy of Vermont

Carl Levin of Michigan

Barbara Mikulski of Maryland

Diane Feinstein of California

Ronald Wyden of Oregon

Debby Stabenow of Michigan

Kent Conrad of North Dakota

Daniel Inouye of Hawaii

Mary Landrieu of Louisiana

Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut

Ben Nelson of Nebraska

Alcee Hastings of Florida

James Clyburn of South Carolina

When you look at the Republicans who voted for BAPCPA, you are not surprised. Republicans are hard nosed when it comes to debt repayment and ought to be affiliated with the Banksters, if you listen to the Occupy Wall Streeters. They are acting out of their established principals and philosophy. But when you see this “murderer’s row” of Democrats that have openly supported and voted to make student loans non-dischargeable, you have to conclude that they are acting out of hypocrisy. It doesn’t take much research to find that most of the Dem names above are funded and supported by the very Banksters that the OWS crowd is demonstrating against. For the OWS crowd, we have included a montage of Congressional Dems. Print it out. It makes a great dart board.

Mike Robinson is Sr. Partner at Robinson & Henry P.C.,  ph. 303-688-0944, a Castle Rock, CO Law Firm.

Ms. McCrummen has a rather interesting criminal history herself, as public criminal records in multiple states stretching across 4 time zones have shown.

Ms. McCrummen’s criminal history began with North Carolina Case # 1992 CR 00654, a violation of the Article 19 – False Pretenses and Cheats section of the North Carolina Criminal Code. Ms. McCrummen was convicted of a crime punishable by up to six months of imprisonment for writing a hot check that was deemed worthless.

In 2005, the apparently unrepentant Ms. McCrummen was again found guilty in the 2005 Virginia Case #059GT0504714900 for failing to obey a highway sign. 

The following year, McCrummen was found guilty in yet another Virginia criminal case, #153GT0604021200, speeding 46 miles an hour in a 25 mile speed zone. 

Last year, in August, 2010, Ms. McCrummen was found guilty in Arizona Case # M-07510TR-2010025209 of speeding once again. She plead guilty but failed to pay the fine imposed by the court and returned to Washington having skipped out on paying her fine to the criminal court. A collection review was held in September, after she had escaped Arizona’s jurisdiction to D.C., and her case was assigned to the Fines/Fees and Restitution Enforcement (FARE) Program established to collect delinquent court ordered restitution, fines, fees, and surcharges . After the FARE team tracked her down at her Washington D.C. apartment, they finally appeared to get her attention and on October 23, 2010 she paid the defaulted fine to the criminal court, almost two months after her conviction. McCrummen has now found herself a four-time loser in the states’ criminal courts. She currently resides outside of the jurisdiction of the three states where she committed her crimes. 

As you can see from this simple outline of Ms. Stephanie McCrummen’s past, under the Post’s journalistic standards, it is pretty easy to throw mud on someone even if they didn’t do anything truly wrong. Over the years, the journalistic standards of the Washington Post have fallen into a death spiral of innuendo and name calling, as seen in McCrummen’s ni**erhead story. They can create guilt out of thin air as we have in the public records concerning the Post Staff Writer in question. The Post should quit its despicable methodology of reporting the news. For now, Ms. McCrummen and the Post owe Governor Perry an apology. 

Mike Robinson is Sr. Partner at Robinson & Henry P.C., a Castle Rock, CO Law Firm. Ph. 303-688-0944.

In the 1930′s, labor unions got legitimacy.  Under the Roosevelt administration, labor unions got protection and the ability to organize industrial laborers.  The Unions then represented workers who made things.  The United Auto Workers, Mineworkers, Steelworkers, etc.   It was good to be a Union boss.

Now we are in the 21st century and so many U.S. manufacturing jobs have disappeared.  Unions have seen their membership shrink as the reason for their existence has withered on the vine.  Union bosses have a good rich life, paid for by the dues of their workers.  So the bosses made the decision to go outside the industrial world that had justified their existence.  One area of greatest union  growth in today’s world is the government worker.

The AFL-CIO is America’ largest union.  Among its components are the following:

AFGE - with 600,000 federal employees.
AFSCME – with 1.6 million nurses, child care providers, EMT’s and sanitation workers.
SEIU- Service Employees International Union with 1.8 million employees in health care, public services and janitors.  The SEIU is in hot water for being in bed with ACORN.
AFT – American Federation of Teachers – with 850,000 teachers, school related personnel, nurses and other healthcare professionals.

Because the AFL-CIO is under pressure to expand their worker base and because so many of the new growth areas are government and health care workers, it is no wonder that all of the AFL-CIO entities are strongly in favor of a Single Payer Government Health Care system, Card Check and Obama.  This results in some rather startling positions for a labor union to take.

The American Federation of Teachers strongly supports Government health care.
The American Federation of Teachers strongly supports the Employee Free Choice Act also know as Card Check.
The American Federation of Teachers board unanimously endorsed Barack Obama for president well before he became his party’s nominee.

In our area, there has been a significant rise in the number of charter schools within the Douglas County, Colorado School District.  The teachers and employees at these charter schools do not belong to a union.  They don’t pay union dues.  Charter schools do not have any limitations imposed upon them by union contracts.   The AFL-CIO wants a piece of this action and so far they are shut out.  If the charters are unionized, there would be little difference between them and the unionized public schools.

The AFL-CIO game plan is surprisingly simple.  The Douglas County School board has 7 districts with elected school board members.  Four of the districts seats are up election this year.  The AFL-CIO through its AFT section, has handpicked a candidate for each of the four districts.  To be endorsed by the AFL-CIO, the handpicked candidates presumably had to fill out a union questionnaire and be interviewed.  They would voice the right beliefs and make the right promises to get endorse.
The four candidates that met the approval of the AFL-CIO are:

Sue Catterall, a democrat running in District B.
Kevin Leung, running in District D
Kristine Turner, running in District E
Emily Hansen, a democrat running in District G

A union sweep in the upcoming election will likely open the doors to unionizing the Charter Schools.

The Republican Party has taken notice of this union power play.  They have endorsed four candidates themselves.  The four candidates that met the approval of the Douglas County Republicans are:

John Carson, running in District B vs. Catterall
Daniel Gerken, running in District D vs. Leung
Doug Benevento, running in District E vs. Turner
Meghann Silverthorne, running in District G vs. Hansen

For a Douglas County Voter, the choices are stark in light of the union’s power play.

If you like Government Health Care, unionized Charter Schools and Barack Obama, go with the union picked candidates.

If you don’t want Government Health Care, unionized Charters or the direction the country is heading, go with the Republican endorsed candidates.

All of the candidates above, live in Douglas County.  All are well educated.  The two groups differ philosophically and fundamentally in their world view of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

On October 5th, one of the last school board candidate forums was held in Castle Rock.   Both sides had rehearsed their talking points.  In summary, the union backed candidates want to pass bonds and raise taxes to pay the union teachers and school workers. The union candidates approved the board’s decision to cut off bus service to certain kids and parents of the district.

The Republican backed candidates want to pay attention to and represent the taxpayers of Douglas County.  After all, only 38% of property tax payers have kids in the DC Schools.   These candidates strongly disapproved of the school bus cuts, since busses represent only ½ % of the school district budget.  They look at bond or tax hikes with skepticism.

The union backed candidates care about the teachers and other union members.  The Republican backed candidates care about the parents, homeowners and kids.

Since this is a county wide election, voters will get the chance to vote for all 4 seats.  The campaign signs you see are mostly for the union backed candidates and are likely paid for by the AFL-CIO.  It is a mail-in election and the ballots will appear in your mailbox shortly.

Mike Robinson is Senior Partner at Robinson & Henry P.C., a Castle Rock Law Firm.

Temps of 50 degrees and an overcast, drizzly rain didn’t deter the dedicated throng who attended the 2 nd Castle Rock Tea Party. Held in coordination with Tea Parties being held all across the country, the enthusiastic crowd heard an invocation from The Rock’s Pastor, J.R. Polhemus, music from the WMD Blue Grass band along with scheduled speakers, Sarah Wiltse, Emily Falvey, Drs. Marshall Foster and Paul Prentice, Chris Fellows, Sean Paige, Bill Schroeder, Sean Rima and Lisa Mills. Tea Party Organizer Paul Donahue was inspired by the participants.

Perhaps the most touching part of this Tea Party was the reading of the Preamble to the Constitution by Sarah Wiltse. The words, written in 1787 in Philadelphia, live today as they have for over two centuries.

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

Over the past eight months that the Obama Administration has held power, the energy level has noticeably shifted from the “Hope and Change” progressives to the Tea Party set. The most recent revelation of Obama-related A.C.O.R.N. giving instructions on how to start a prostitution business with government funds has not helped the Progressives. Perhaps the worst words an Obama acolyte can hear now is “How is that Hope and Change thing working out for you?” So far not too well.

Mike Robinson is Senior Partner at Robinson & Henry P.C., a Castle Rock Law Firm.

On a warm June day the Terrorists watched the comfortable Douglas County home from a distance, waiting for the father to leave for work. Darkly, they watched the oddly complected family, seeking to drive them and their kind from the neighborhood and make the area ethnicly clean. After the father had left for work and was out of sight, they moved in.

They attacked the wife first.

Ellen Hungate, the mother of two small girls, was raped, stabbed repeatedly and scalped. The Terrorists then turned on the little girls. Toddler Laura V. Hungate, aged 2 and baby Florence V. Hungate, aged 5 months, had their throats slashed so violently that their heads were barely still attached. The Terrorists set fire to the house and waited. The children’s father, Nathan, saw smoke in the distance and hurried back to save his home and family. The terrorists were waiting. Nathan Ward Hungate’s body was later found mutilated and scalped as well, about 100 yards from his home. [2]

The Terrorists cut a boy’s head off and, after slicing his body into pieces, piled the pieces together near the boy’s house. They put his severed head on top of the heap. [5]

The message was clear, all foreigners must leave the neighborhood or die. Elsewhere, a farmer, on returning to his home at sundown, beheld the horrible sight of his wife scalped and nailed by her hands and feet to the side of the house. [3]

Each of these horrific terrorist attacks happened in Colorado with the goal of driving people out of their homes and land. Ethnic Cleansing was the order of the day.

All of this happened In 1864.

After searchers found the Hungate family , they took their tortured bodies to Denver and placed them on display in the shop window of an unused store building, near what is now the Denver Civic Center. This awful display lasted for several hours and many Denver residents came by to see. [2] Everyone was horrified. The Rocky Mountain News wrote story after story about how American citizens were not safe from the marauding Indians. The sitting Territorial Governor, John Evans, organized a Colorado Cavalry to begin the process of stamping out this Indian Terrorist activity. The Indian War had now truly begun.

On August 21, 1864, one of Evans’ Calvary soldiers, Conrad Moschel, was unfortunate enough to be captured by the Terrorists. A few days later, he was found near Franktown, CO with an arrow in his back, a gunshot wound and he too had been scalped. He was buried where he fell and a carving in the rock wall overlooking his grave is a somber memorial to this very day. Moschel was the last Douglas County man to be killed by Indians.

During the Indian uprising, a total of 208 men, women and children, ranchers, emigrants, herders and soldiers were killed by Indians.[1]

In November, 1864, the Colorado Cavalry under Colonel Chivington attacked a Cheyenne and Arapahoe encampment at Sand Creek. 175 Indians were killed there. When the dust cleared, the following was found among the dead Indians:

a.Scalps of men, women and children several of which had not had time to dry and tan since taken.[1]
b. Scalps taken from the belts of dead warriors on the Sand Creek battlefield.[1]
c. An Indian blanket fringed with white-women’s scalps.[1]

Afterward, a Washington committee found the Sand Creek Battle was really a Sand Creek Massacre. Newly installed U.S. President Andrew Johnson quickly relieved John Evans as territorial governor. The Indian tribes were eventually resettled in Oklahoma. Evans and Chivington established and grew the University of Denver. Both were received as heroes in Colorado for the remainder of their lives. [1]

Most recently, Google began its project of electronically scanning in old books and making them searchable on the Internet. Many of these books have been out of circulation for decades. Because of Google’s efforts, you can now read books and magazines from these long ago days. The rather gory descriptions in this article come directly from the old books and magazines. Most of the authors were alive and active participants during the Indian Uprising. This is not revisionist history but eyewtness history as it happened. If you would like to explore this original material, the links are below. The number codes show which publication the Terror anecdote came from. Much of the drama took place here in Douglas County, Colorado.

Right now there is yet another war happening. In the Middle East, Islamic Jihadists are trying to drive out all non-moslems from this region of the world. Countries like Lebanon, Syria and Iraq with sizable numbers of Christian and Jewish communities have been ethnically cleansed by the present day Terrorists, leaving behind property and possessions as they fled for their lives. America too was a casualty on 9/11/02 in the Terrorists’ efforts to force us to leave this vitalregion.

Today, the U.S. Government has established a 2,400 acre National Historic Site where Sand Creek happened. It is all paid for with our tax dollars. The Hungates have a 4 square foot remembrance in Denver’s Fairmount Cemetary, privately financed. Terror victim Conrad Moschel is remembered by some words carved in a rock and a grave stone hidden by scrub oak erected and paid for by his children.

Our U.S. Government has not paid for any memorial to the 208 Americans who died in this earlier War on Terror.

Source Material:

Massacres of the Mountains: a history of the Indian Wars (1886)[1]

Massacre along the Medicine Road[2]

Chambers’s Journal of Popular Literature, Science and Arts (1884)[3]

History of Colorado, Vol. 1 (1918)[4]

The Trail: a magazine “for Colorado” – The Personal Memoirs of Capt. Chas. Christy (1908)[5]

Mike Robinson is Senior Partner at Robinson & Henry, P.C., a Castle Rock Law Firm.

On the morning of September 2nd, in reaction to a huge volume of phone calls to the School District, Officials posted a notice concerning the September 8, 2009 Obama speech to students. As an attachment to the notice, the Officials included a .pdf form entitled “Presidential Address Permission Form.” You can view the .pdf of the release form here. The form posted was taken from Douglas County School Board approved form IJA-E, the Guest Speaker Permission Form.You can see it here.

It provides for an alternative activity if a parent doesn’t want their child to hear a guest speaker or if a signed permission form is not returned to the school, i.e. an “Opt In” form. Because of this, a parent doesn’t have to do anything to stop their child from seeing the Obama Address.

Later on the very same day, DCSD Officials made the unusual decision to alter the posted, approved form and change the form language so that a parent must now print out the form, sign it and return it to the child’s school, or their child will be required to be influenced by the Obama Address. This altered form is called the ” Presidential Address Permission Form – Opt Out“. You can see the altered form here.

A thorough search of the DCSD school records as shown on the District’s web site shows that there is no “Opt Out” form adopted or approved by the Douglas County School District. Ms. Susan Meek, the Acting Director of Communication for the District declined to comment on this abrupt change of the parental consent form or to return phone calls and emails. A review of the metadata on the Opt Out form’s .pdf shows that the form was written by Ms. Stacey Neith, a Communications Specialist in Ms. Meek’s office.

If any parent is offended or would like to comment on this unusual extra-legal action by school officials, Ms. Meek may be contacted at 303-387-0030 or 720-971-9830.

Since the bill’s public release, a lot of people have gotten fired up in support and in opposition to it. Each side has called the other liars, and worse. One part of the bill in particular has touched a nerve. That is Section 1233, ADVANCE CARE PLANNING CONSULTATION.

Although the section is only ten pages long, it is still hard to digest. Below is a condensed version of this Section with cites to page number and line number. In Section 1233, the person being consulted is an individual over 65 in the medicare program. The Consultant is called a “practitioner”.

p. 428, l. 14-19 – A ‘practitioner” is a physician, nurse practitioner or physician’s assistant. The practitioner is the one who consults on Advanced Care Planning with the individual. There is nothing in the health care bill that states the consultation is voluntary.

p. 425, l. 17-21 – The practitioner first gives an explanation of and counsels on advance directives, living wills, durable powers of attorney and health care proxies.

p. 426, l. 4-8 – The practitioner then explains and counsels end-of-life services, palliative care where they ease pain without curing the underlying disease, hospice programs for meeting the physical needs of the terminally ill and the benefits for such services. The practitioner does not have to explain any drawbacks of these end-of-life services such as death itself.

P. 426, l. 9-16 – The practitioner finally explains the Order Regarding Life Sustaining Treatment and why it is beneficial to the individual and the individual’s family. The practitioner does not have to explain any drawbacks of this Order such as death itself.

After the consultation is over, the individual is not involved with any further parts of the Advance Care Planning Consultation. In no part of the process is the individual required to sign anything or execute any planning documents.

p. 427, l. 10-25 – Having a consultation in and of itself, allows the practitioner to formulate an Order Regarding Life Sustaining Treatment without any further input from the individual. The Order just needs to be signed by a physician, nurse practitioner or physician’s assistant to be in full force and effect. The Order is an actionable medical order designed to stay with the individual and to be followed by health care professionals for the remainder of the individual’s care.

p. 430, l. 1-4 The only input from the individual for the formulation of the Order is that it communicate the individual’s preferences regarding treatment. Since the individual doesn’t have to sign anything or affirmatively state anything during the consultation, it is up to the practitioner to presume and interpret the individual’s preferences.

p. 430, l. 13-24 The Order has the power to limit medical interventions, limit the use of antibiotics, limit nutrition and limit hydration. The Order can address whether an individual goes to the hospital or remains at a hospice or other nursing home.

So where does the language in the Order come from?

p. 428, l. 5-13 The Order is guided by a coalition of stakeholders including state hospice associations, home health association, etc. This is the section that has been decried as a “Death Panel” by Gov. Palin and others.

Since this house bill is written to reduce the growth of health care spending and people over 65 consume health care dollars at the end-of-life, it is pretty easy to see why Section 1233 was inserted into the health care bill.

Older Americans are not stupid. They can read and they can comprehend this health bill. No wonder so many older Americans are turning out in droves at town hall meetings. You would be angry too if the federal government was trying to kill you off.

If you want to vent, below are the phone numbers for our congress members and senators. Give them a buzz.

Dianna Degette – CD1 – 202-225-4431

Jared Polis – CD2 – 202-225-2161

John Salazar – CD3 – 202-225-4761

Betsy Markey – CD4 – 202-225-4676

Doug Lamborn – CD5- 202-225-4422

Mike Coffman – CD6 – 202-226-4623

Ed Perlmutter – CD7 – 202-225-2645

Mark Udall – Senate – 202-224-5941

Mike Bennett – Senate – 202-224-5852

Mike Robinson is Senior Partner at Robinson & Henry P.C., a Castle Rock, CO law firm.

Using 2007 economic figures, the average Douglas County resident pays 46% more to the state government than the average Boulder County resident. Boulder County has a state senator named Brandon Shaffer who is currently the President of the Colorado State Senate. Although his constituents pay less to fund the Colorado Government than we in Douglas County do, Shaffer is still the man to see because he has control of the state’s purse strings.

This month, Senator Shaffer held a posh two-day retreat for political bigwigs concerning “conflict resolution” and “team building”. He decided that this kumbaya event was important enough to spend taxpayer’s money, including money disproportionately provided by Douglas County taxpayers. This in spite of the fact that the state government is broke and furloughing workers to horde cash. So how many of Douglas County’s five representatives got the gold ticket to attend the posh two day retreat?

none. nada. zilche.

Our county had no representation at this affair. Our county was taxed, and taxed heavily, to provide Mr. Shaffer the money for this affair. It looks an awful lot like “Taxation Without Representation”.

In Boston, back in the 1770′s, a lot of people got pretty upset about this “Taxation Without Representation” business . They got so fed up that one night they stormed aboard a ship and tossed boxes of tea into the harbor. The government in Britain had increased taxes on the colonies to pay for the Empire’s excesses. Sound familiar?

On our Independence day, Saturday, July 4, 2009, there will be a gathering at 100 N. Wilcox Street, Castle Rock, CO behind Town Hall from noon till 2:00 pm. It is the Castle Rock Tea Party, part of a national movement to protest the spending of trillions of dollars which will leave our great-grandchildren a debt they must pay. There will be live music, food, speakers and a military flyover.

Unfortunately political despotism didn’t end with the Revolutionary War. After all, last year State Senator Shaffer wanted to move up to Washington, as the U. S. Congressman from the 4th District. Perhaps a few moments in the private sector would do him some good.

Mike Robinson is Senior Partner at the Castle Rock Law Firm of Robinson & Henry, P.C. Mr. Robinson was assisted in writing this story by Ryan Wood, an Associate with the firm.