Some of you know my passion for Aspen and some of you including Ramon roll your eyes

when I talk about it, but whatever you may think of how hoidy, toyty, highfalutin, snooty Aspen is,

it's a very, very important community in the country. It's where at the Aspen Institute and

over sushi or steaks, it's where a lot of folks from LA and New York and Miami and DC gather,

it's where ideas are transferred. It's a very, very important place. It's much more than just

a resort. And the fact that the politics of the community have changed or have developed into what

they have makes it very influential in the direction of this country. Glenn Beaton is the

writer, former writer and columnist in Colorado. His blog is The Aspen Beat. His new book is called

High Altitude, sorry, High Attitude, the liberal takeover of Aspen and Glenn and I were talking

off air before this discussion. And we both seem to share a passion for the region and the mountains

and the air and the great restaurants. But there are some really, really disturbing things. And I'm

not saying it's San Francisco just yet. But when I read about the housing welfare and the celebrity

cesspool and all the drugs and the things that you talk about happening in Aspen, I see the same

things that happened to San Francisco. Why'd you write this book, Glenn? Well, I lived in Aspen for

about 12 years. I just recently moved down Valley. So I'm still kind of within shouting gistens

of the place. But I saw a big part of the decline. It was already well underway when I moved there.

I had a prior career practicing law. But it really went south a lot while I was there. So I just

wanted to kind of tell the story of what happened to the place from my perspective, both before I came,

which involved a lot of historical research. And after I got there and observed it firsthand,

it's, as you say, it's, it's really declined. It's not San Francisco in the sense that it's filthy

and full of vagrants. They've never had vagrants in Aspen. I think, well, actually they did. They

had one guy and he was called the homeless guy. Everybody knew who the homeless guy was because it was

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