Six recent HCA articles by Vince Phillips cover two investigations with a shared thread — institutions that maintain control through opacity, fear, and structures designed to obscure who is really in charge. In Salida, a secret 61-page city attorney memo reveals the SNRCDC was never truly independent, city reserves were drained to near zero fixing a TABOR violation, and the Artspace deal that nearly followed would have surrendered prime downtown land for 45 years at $1-a-year rent. In Iran, Phillips walks readers through the lives of ordinary Iranians trapped by a regime they despise but cannot escape, then turns to the clerics and commanders who fight to the death because losing power means a Qaddafi-style end. Fear, forced complicity, and hidden control keep both systems alive long past the point where most people have lost faith in them.
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