Colorado: Bob Schaffer

The pattern emerging in the weird and sordid business life of Scott Shires points to two possible conclusions: He’s cornered the market on shifty accounting practices or this fellow has the worst luck in the world by attracting pretty shady clients.

The Denver Post reported Wednesday that Shires was indicted for aiding restaurateur Jeffrey Castardi on an alleged money-laundering scheme to hide an illegal gambling operation. Predictably, Shires denies any wrongdoing, claiming that he began to have second thoughts about his association with Castardi. “I said, ‘I can’t hang around this dude,’” Shires told the Post.

Shires, who has served as the registered agent for dozens of Republican political committees and 527s for more than a decade, has quite the colorful professional history.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced Tuesday afternoon that fourth-generation Colorado resident Will Shafroth, who ran unsuccessfully for Congress last summer, will be the department’s deputy assistant secretary for fish, wildlife and parks. A few weeks ago Salazar nominated another Colorado politician as Shafroth’s boss, naming former Senate candidate and one-time U.S. Attorney Tom Strickland as his assistant secretary for fish, wildlife and parks.

The announcement from Salazar’s office:

Salazar Names Land Conservation Leader Will Shafroth Deputy Assistant Secretary for Fish, Wildlife and Parks

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar has named Will Shafroth, a land conservationist executive and founding director of the Colorado Conservation Trust and Great Outdoors Colorado Trust Fund, as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Fish, Wildlife and Parks.

If you ask Ron Wolfe, the Republican mayor of Avon, Tom Stone has played a major role in marginalizing his party in Eagle County, where there was a Democratic sweep in November and the GOP trails in voter registration for the first time in recent memory.

And as Republicans continue to take stock of their defeats nationally and locally, there’s debate over whether Stone, a Realtor and former county commissioner, would be a better GOP party chairman than Dick Wadhams.

“If anything, [Tom Stone is] the Rush Limbaugh of Eagle County,” Wolfe told the Colorado Independent Tuesday. “I don’t think Tom had a history here of working well with anyone who was anything but super-, super-conservative.

It must be true.  

Or apparently that is enough 'fact' for Face-the-State to launch into a speculative article "Could Curry be the next Buescher."

The tale turns on this ominous quote by oil and gas mouthpiece and known dissembler Kathy Hall:

According to Kathy Hall, western slope director for the Colorado Oil and Gas Association, Colorado has already seen a loss of about $3 billion in drilling activity since the new regulations passed last year. The economy of Curry's western slope district relies heavily on the energy industry.

"The drop in drilling translates into a loss of millions of dollars of severance tax revenues," said Hall.