Show me the company you keep and Mitchell’s first mistake as BOCC Chair…
Published in The Flume – February 2, 2023
While campaigning for District 3 Commissioner, Dave Wissel visited the Chuck and Julie Show several times. He hoped, I suppose, to boost his bona fides amongst rightmost-leaning folks who believe the darndest things. The Chuck and Julie Show is a podcast production that gives airtime to the entire spectrum of political lunacy on the far right. It is unknown if Wissel solicited their help or if they reached out to him.
The Chuck and Julie Show, Chuck Bonniwell and Julie Hayden, aired on 710 KNUS until December 2019, when it was canceled. KNUS booted the show after Bonniwell, believing the Trump impeachment hearings were getting a little monotonous, said, “You wish for a nice school shooting to interrupt.”
They then established their own podcast. During a podcast in 2020, Bonniwell, who also owns and publishes the Cherry Creek/Glendale Chronicle, called the COVID pandemic the “pansy-demic.” He said the pandemic was affecting the old, the indigent, and the sick, costing society huge amounts of money to care for them. “…they are takers from the economy,” he said, “on Medicare and whatever else. Their deaths [are] not hurting the economy. It’s enabling the economy.”
In November last year, they brought Randy Coporon, Colorado Republican National Committeeman, in on a discussion about Jamal Khashoggi. Khashoggi was the Washington Post reporter assassinated and dismembered by Saudi Arabians. Bonniwell cracked Julie and Randy up by saying, “I think dismembering a Washington Post reporter should be allowed.”
Bonniwell’s quips accurately reflect the flavor of the Chuck and Julie Show. Nothing beats a school shooting to liven things up. Only pansies believe pandemics require a public health response. The old, the poor, and the sick are takers. Their deaths enhance the economy. Dismembering journalists is funnier than a barrel of monkeys.
That Wissel would be happy to have Chuck and Julie on his side says more about him than it does them. So show me the company you keep, and I’ll show you who you are.
November 14, 2022, the podcast featured Wissel, who’d won the District 3 Commissioner race just a week before. At one point, Bonniwell asked Wissel about the other two commissioners on the board. Wissel described Amy Mitchell as “…on the outside looking in.”
What does that mean? Is she just an observer who doesn’t know what she’s doing? Unlike Wissel’s perception of himself, is she naïve and unschooled, unable to get to the bottom of what he calls “the shroud of darkness” that he believes permeates the county? Or, most likely, is it just because no one but he has the wherewithal to know what’s best for Park County?
What does this bode for the people of Park County?
Curiously, the Commissioners’ Work Session, scheduled for January 31, 2023 (it will have occurred before the publication of this piece), will not be viewable by the citizens of Park County via Zoom. They have been broadcast via Zoom since the advent of COVID for about two years.
Work sessions are more informative than the formal BOCC meetings that follow them. Issues are discussed in detail, and the informal back and forth from the commissioners is enlightening. Public business is undertaken, and the public has a right to watch and listen. A statutory requirement. Since I’m told 65 percent of the county’s population is on the Bailey side, the Zoom option is invaluable. (The forty-five or fifty-minute drive to Fairplay from this side of the county in winter across the Highway of Death is not something to be relished.)
The agenda for the meeting included 2023 missions, goals, processes, and committees. Important stuff. In the past, the Commission’s transparency via Zoom attendance was assured. So why was that not the case for the January 31 meeting? What’s happened since the work session before that? Why has transparency been shut down?
Oh yeah. Dave Wissel joined the board. Amy Mitchell is now the chair.
I emailed the Commission on Friday, January 27, asking why there was no Zoom option for the meeting. I said it denies transparency and contributes to the perception public business is being conducted behind closed doors.
Interestingly, I sent the same email directly to Commission Chair Amy Mitchell. The system rejected that email because “You used words or phrases that are blocked because of their popularity among spammers. Try re-wording…”
Apparently, Mitchell’s account rejects emails with the word transparency in them. So that’s the word I took out, and I changed Zoom to streaming.
Mitchell responded with a song and dance about the format not being amenable to Zoom. Since they would be working on a “white board” and “developing working rules,” the Zoom audience would become frustrated.
Ahem…
I responded that a Zoom viewer’s level of frustration should be left to the Zoom viewer. Blacking out the work session for the most significant number of viewers only contributes to speculation that transparency in county government is being stifled.
She did not respond to that.
If it was decided to turn on the Zoom option for this meeting, the above might indicate why that happened.
If, on the other hand, the Zoom option wasn’t turned on, Dave Wissel’s sentiments on his Commissioner website are instructive: “Democracy dies in the dark.”
