Elections have consequences 
and might produce blisters

“War has rules. Mud wrestling has rules. Politics has no rules.” — Ross Perot It’s all over but the shouting. And the whining. And more doomsday predictions about the decline of morality and the end of civilization as we know it.  We’re hearing about “victory laps” and “legislative extravagance” and “the year of the unabashed liberal.” And that’s even before this morning’s Chamber of Commerce ...

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Too many eggs in energy basket 
for local economic development?

“There are as many opinions as there are experts.” — Franklin D. Roosevelt I don’t profess to be an expert at anything. Some have heard me talk about the three stages of learning.  I’m somewhere along that progression of first having all the answers, second knowing all the questions and finally, learning which questions deserve answers. But that doesn’t stop me from having an opinion on many matters. In fact, for almost a decade now, I’ve ...

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Most people aren’t eager 
to embrace inevitable change

One of the joys of inflicting myself on Daily Sentinel readers every week is the resulting back and forth with many of you. I’ve been both gratified and disappointed by your responses but seldom surprised. Last week was no exception. I’d written about how a weekend, off-road journey on Kokpelli Trail had put an exclamation point on some of the public-lands controversies we’re embroiled in, specifically mentioning the pending revision of the Resource Management Plan for ...

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Trying to connect the dots 
in public lands management

Somewhere between Rabbit Valley and Moab, as we chugged along slowly in four-wheel-drive with a handful of fellow Land Cruiser enthusiasts, along the four-track sections of Kokopelli Trail, the dots started to line up.  We were traversing wide-open, high-desert vistas framed by the snow-capped La Sals, bright spots of emerging early paintbrush adding an occasional bit of brilliant red to an awakening desert, all the while enjoying a landscape we all own. We take them for granted, ...

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Catching up on community events 
after a respite and road trip

There’s no shortage of topics to catch up on after skipping a column last week and spending 10 days on the road, enjoying family and the back roads of the southwest. Most recent is the reminder, via the travails of Grand Junction City Councilor-elect Rick Brainard, that our actions, and elections, have consequences. While some may wonder what Brainard’s jailing on domestic violence allegations over the weekend may mean regarding his City Council service, the probable answer ...

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Getting oil shale development right
 requires research-first approach

“A reasonable plan” is how Sunday’s Daily Sentinel editorial described revised plans for oil shale development announced last Friday by the U.S. Department of Interior as one of the final acts of departing Secretary Ken Salazar. It is indeed eminently reasonable to expect finalized research and development results that will first confirm exactly what industry says it desires — the ability to produce oil from “the rock that burns” in a manner that is ...

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The target remains blurred 
as we aim for safe schools

“For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat and wrong.” ­— H.L. Mencken We’ll see tonight, when District 51’s school safety committee presents its recommendations to the Board of Education, whether reason trumps emotion, whether our kids get “simple, neat and wrong” measures to ensure their classrooms remain safe or whether the complexities of accomplishing that are acknowledged. But not before a preliminary bout ...

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On giving ‘the business’ to 
the Grand Junction City Council

The clock is ticking. Mail ballots for the Grand Junction City Council election arrive this week. Some of us may find ours in our mailboxes today.  It’ll be an interesting election for a couple of reasons. First, we’ll see voters’ reaction to the occasional tendency of a majority of the current council to shoot themselves in both feet. Examples abound. They include the highly controversial decision to give three times the requested amount for the Avalon Theatre ...

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Sequester is so last week as we 
lurch toward the next fiscal cliff

Armageddon Plus 5, the end of the world as we know it, right? As fired former Fox News analyst Sarah Palin might have put it if she still had a platform to speak from, “How’s this whole sequestery thing workin’ out for ya?” It must be hell, I worried, as I picked up Monday morning’s Daily Sentinel. There’d be front-page stories confirming all sorts of evil consequences and an editorial and columns further analyzing all the local, state and national ...

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Washington’s not the only setting for the “blame game”

We may or may not be “sequestered” by the end of the week, something most of us will be shaking our heads about as partisans in Congress and the president lob volleys back and forth in the latest round of brinksmanship in Washington. But, after participating in and/or seeing the stories about local meetings last week, I’m not so sure we shouldn’t take a look in the mirror before disparaging the behavior of politicians in our nation’s capital. We do plenty of ...

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Governor, county commissioners offer 
plenty of ammunition for pundits

“I don’t make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts.” — Will Rogers Sometimes it’s hell having to come up with 750 words every week. Then there are rare times you wish you had twice the space. This is one of those times. Consider recent events involving our quirky governor and our shameless county commissioners. Those wondering what Steve Acquafresca might accomplish freed of domination of Craig Meis and Janet Rowland got an answer when ...

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Goodbye, Coach.  From Jimmy.

In my seventh decade, hardly anyone calls me “Jimmy” any more. Maybe my mother once in a while, Terry Farina on occasion, and Paul Abell, my oldest friend.  I tolerated “Jimmy” over the years from my aunts and uncles. I actually relished hearing my childhood moniker from the late Sam Suplizio, whether in exasperation or affection. As you age you’d like to think you’ve also matured some, maybe earned the “Jim” you prefer or the ...

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Rich in resources, arguments, the BLM finds confrontation

Pity the poor ol’ Bureau of Land Management. Or not, depending upon your perspective. If “stuff” flows downhill, the federal agency is at the bottom of a very long drainage with no indication that the flow will cease any time soon. Here’s just some of what’s rushing downhill in the direction of the BLM in western Colorado.  Several hundred people packed the bureau’s open house in Grand Junction last Thursday evening to take a look at alternatives ...

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Spreading the blame regarding 
county administrator’s firing

“Something’s happening here. What it is ain’t exactly clear.” — “For What It’s Worth,” Buffalo Springfield/Stephen Stills It didn’t take long for us to get an inkling of what kind of government to expect from our new Mesa County commissioners. If the dismissal of former County Administrator Chantal Unfug is any indication of what to expect, it’ll be a long and interesting four years.  Or at least two years, since one of ...

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Wrestling with complex questions

Wrestling with complex questions Is essential in gun control debate Five gun aficionados were wounded at gun shows in Ohio, Indiana and North Carolina this past weekend. A New Mexico fire department chaplain, his wife and three of his kids were killed, and another son was taken into custody after a horrific shooting spree in a home filled with weapons. Pro-gun demonstrations gather hundreds in Mesa County, Denver and elsewhere across the country; some participants feel the need to flaunt ...

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New elected officials take office, 
while candidates vie for City Council

Didn’t we just finish an election season? And now we have another one getting underway? Last week, two new Mesa County commissioners began their duties and, over in Denver, newly-elected Rep. Jared Wright officially began his term representing House District 54. Now the rubber hits the road, as speculation and promises make way for the realities of elected office and real-time decision-making. And soon we’ll be knee-deep in campaigning for Grand Junction City Council seats, ...

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Messages and tactics unchanged, 
even though energy battles evolve

One particular battle may be over by now. The war will continue. No, we’re not talking about the various ongoing elements of the self-imposed “fiscal cliff” crisis. Let’s consider, instead, the fight in Denver this week over revisions to rules for drilling activity being considered by the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission. Hearings before the commission on a range of issues began Monday and will continue this week. It’s telling, but perhaps not ...

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Teetering on the cliff demonstrates 
the dysfunctional nature of Congress

“Congress is an institution designed to represent the people. It has become a body where too often its members act as if they represent only Republicans or only Democrats. No wonder so many Americans hold it in such low regard.” — Dan Balz, Washington Post. Perhaps you’re reading this column today from the bottom of the fiscal cliff. Or not. That’s the danger of writing an opinion piece on Monday morning about congressional action still very much in ...

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Bad news aside, there’s still plenty 
of reasons to offer a Merry Christmas

Given current events, it’d be easy to be down in the dumps this Christmas morning. Recent lumps of coal in our stockings include the obvious: 20 elementary school students being buried at a time when they should be opening presents, a Congress and a president still pawing and snorting at the edge of the fiscal cliff, an all-too-slow recovery of our economy, an increasingly angry and divided country.  Any of you could add to that list. I hope you’ve chosen instead a more ...

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Will more broken hearts finally 
lead to a stronger backbone?

“God has called them all home.  For those of us who remain, let us find the strength to carry on and make our country worthy of their memory.” — President Obama Here we are once again, trying to make sense out of the senseless, attempting to wrap our heads and hearts around one more unspeakable tragedy that this time finds 20 young children and a half-dozen adults dead in still another deadly spray of bullets. Adding an exclamation point is the fact that Friday ...

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Local Republicans battle each other 
while Democrats don’t even suit up

“Any well-established village in New England or the northern Middle West could afford a town drunkard, a town atheist, and a few Democrats.” — D.W. Brogan. Add to that geography, as Charles Ashby outlined in Monday’s Daily Sentinel, a certain outlier red county in what’s turning into a consistently blue state.  You know, the county that sends a sullied Republican to the state House of Representatives in the absence of an alternative Democrat on the ...

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Delayed thanks are offered 
for an eventful Thanksgiving

The car is unpacked. The trailer has been returned. More than 1,800 miles and a week later, we’re back in our own bed. It’ll take a little more time for my waistline to return to some approximation of normal. It was a great Thanksgiving week with much to be thankful for.  One of the reasons for belated thanks is being able to go nine days without a political conversation or thinking much about politics, fiscal cliffs, liberals and conservatives and past and future ...

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Whoever wins presidential election 
will face an uphill partisan battle

We used to be a flyover state. No more. Having left Happy Valley on Friday to try once again to restock our depleted freezer with some Gunnison or Saguache county elk, I’ve been oblivious to the latest political happenings. By the time I left, nearly two-thirds of Mesa County’s eligible voters had cast ballots. The president and Mitt Romney, running mates Joe Biden and Paul Ryan and also Ann Romney had begun their final four-day blitz in Colorado. Greeley and Boulder were ...

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Time to look at local politics

I should have voted immediately after receiving my mail ballot. It might have saved me from this last-minute deluge of calls and emails as the 2012 campaign races to a close. My problem is compounded because I’m hearing from both sides, courtesy of signing up online for a ticket to Mitt Romney’s appearance at Central High School earlier this year. That’s prompted a long series of missives from “Mitt” and “Paul” and “Ann,” all presuming ...

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Sometimes it’s good to leave ‘important things’ alone

“A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.” ­— Henry David Thoreau I was AWOL last week. Apparently there was another debate. And a football game of some import.  I’m not sorry I missed ‘em. Hearing another round of talking points from President Obama and challenger Mitt Romney, even a come-from-behind conference win by Peyton Manning and the Denver Broncos, pale in comparison to spending five days in ...

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‘Scoreboard journalism’ has replaced 
real news about the 2012 campaign

Next up: Joe Biden vs. Paul Ryan. Somehow, I find it hard to believe either candidate will be snoozing through Thursday’s debate. Somewhere, the spinmeisters are already polishing their post-debate talking points.  This week’s news cycles will be so full of preview stories that the actual give-and-take might be anticlimactic save some Biden gaffe or Ryan jump over the carefully crafted ideological fences imposed by the guy at the top of his ticket. There might have been a ...

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Only talk is cheap when 
it comes to health care

We’re supposedly the model for community health care here in Mesa County. But that doesn’t mean we’re without problems. That’s one takeaway from last Thursday’s discussion of Sustainable Health Care Solutions sponsored by the Club 20 Foundation and the Colorado Trust. About 100 of your invited neighbors participated in the examination of attitudes regarding health care, one of 25 gatherings taking place across western Colorado. Here are some of our ...

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‘Just the facts’ presented about 
Mesa County’s jobs and economy

Once again, repeat after me: “The government doesn’t create jobs. Only the private sector creates jobs.” Now, go finish your red Kool-Aid. There it was last weekend, the subscript to a front-page headline in your Saturday Daily Sentinel once again debunking the mythology that seems to permeate much current politically-correct thinking. “Most employees receive paychecks from government, health care, retail,” it said, filling in some blanks under the banner ...

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Legacy of Foresight founders 
much more than bricks and mortar

The newest additions to our downtown art reflect a legacy for Grand Junction. And it’s not the legacy I first wondered about as the statues celebrating a half century of a twisty, landscaped and revitalized Main Street were dedicated the week before last. It’s no accident, Grand Junction-raised sculptor Ron Chapel said during the ceremony, that there are visages of Lee Schmidt, Joe Lacy and Dale Hollingsworth on both sides of the individual pillars on the north side of the ...

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Conventions are no longer ‘a chess tournament disguised as a circus’

“There is something about a national convention that makes it as fascinating as a revival or a hanging. It is vulgar, it is ugly, it is stupid, it is tedious, it is hard upon both the higher cerebral centers and the gluteus maximus, and yet it is still somehow charming.” — H.L. Mencken. They weren’t always so anti-climatic, our political conventions. They sometimes had a purpose long lost to primary election season and pre-convention candidate selection. They ...

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Separating wheat from chaff in public dialogue

“Charge and warn never offer a concrete solution.” — Franz Josef Strauss “Jim, did you hear any solutions in all of that?” my companion asked after lunch at the summer meeting of the Colorado Water Congress Thursday in Steamboat Springs. “Not one,” I replied. We’d just finished listening to one of those guys who makes a career in these times out of stepping off a brightly decorated bus several times a day in communities across our country ...

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Weekend events demonstrate that people matter in politics

“Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.” — Eleanor Roosevelt Let’s get this part out of the way. I’m using my “small mind” today, albeit reluctantly. (Though some of my “friends” among regular readers would argue my regular mind is demonstrably small.) That’s because people matter, especially those who would represent all of us in the political arena, be that locally, at the statewide ...

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Leadership lacking in discussion of National Monument name change

Last Thursday, you may have read in The Daily Sentinel about the House of Representatives passing bipartisan legislation to upgrade the Pinnacles National Monument in California to a national park. President Barack Obama, according to The Durango Herald last week, will use his power under the Antiquities Act to declare the Chimney Rock Archaeological Area near Pagosa Springs a national monument.  That’s the same power another president, Republican William Howard Taft, used 101 ...

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Is the nation’s political glass half empty or half full?

“The hardest thing about any political campaign is how to win without proving you are unworthy of winning.” — Adlai Stevenson. We’re inside 100 days. Suspended presidential campaigns (more aptly, “less-than-presidential” campaigns) have resumed. We’re seeing those commercials again. The Washington Post’s Dan Balz quotes media analysts as saying Mitt Romney and President Obama have already spent $59 million to air more than 170,000 negative ...

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Of guns, mental illness and proximity in the aftermath of Aurora shootings

There’s really only one thing to write about this week — the horrific tragedy early Friday morning at a movie theater in Aurora that left 12 dead, nearly 60 wounded. We all have personal reactions to these sorts of events.  My own was that, if this had happened five or six years ago, it could very well have been my son as one of the victims. It occurred at a theater complex Tony frequented while attending film school at Aurora Community College and living just across ...

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Fire, monsoons and painful lessons

It started with a few sprinkles as I drove south past Gateway and what used to be Uravan and on through the Disappointment Valley last Thursday morning. By midafternoon, headed home past Dolores and Rico and over Lizard Head Pass with yet another old Land Cruiser in tow, my windshield wipers were working hard to keep up with a steady rain bringing cool, wet relief to parched terrain. The rhythm of wiper blades competed with iTunes Friday evening as we drove over Kebler Pass to Crested ...

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‘Important’ health care stuff and a few less weighty matters

“Have you begun to consider what you might write about this week?” she posed, a few hours before my deadline. “Probably about how I’m not going to be writing about health care,” was my response. Let me explain, prior to a few words about health care. It’s a blessing but sometimes a curse, this regular position here on The Daily Sentinel’s editorial page.  The location is appropriate for commentary but frustrating in that I’m ...

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With ‘friends’ like these, I’m inspired to continue

“Well, this explains all of the new email friends I’ve picked up in the last week.” That email came after Daily Sentinel Publisher Jay Seaton learned members of the Western Slope Conservative Alliance had been alerted to complain about my “terrible reporting” in last Tuesday’s column. “Picked up a couple of new (ones) myself,” I responded. FYI, Josh Penry, Rick Wagner, Bill Grant and I are not reporters. Every week we offer our opinions. As ...

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Tinfoil hat brigade demands fealty from group of local county sheriffs

Time to bunker up, put on your tinfoil hat and hide your guns and bicycles. You can’t make this stuff up. Unfortunately, we don’t have to here in Happy Valley. There they were, hands over their hearts, reciting the Pledge of Allegiance prior to their grilling at the Masonic Lodge last Wednesday. Four elected county sheriffs were up in front of the Western Slope Conservative Alliance, being forced to defend their interactions with federal law enforcement agencies, reassure ...

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Remedial course is sorely needed in the lessons of practical politics

Perhaps you can help me here. I’ve identified a new subject for the political science classroom. Certainly the need has been demonstrated.  Now come those pesky details, such as creating an inviting title and finding a university interested in teaching the practical side of politics along with the theoretical. While the title of the course is still a work in progress, there’ll be no shortage of potential instructors. Candidate No. 1 would be the president himself, ...

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Dragging up a few issues as summer gets underway

✔ Draggin’ North That’s what we did back in my high school days, when the unofficial boundaries of teenage cruising were the Top Hat at Second Street and North Avenue and the A&W about 28 ¾ Road.  In between were a scattering of other eateries, Grand Junction’s original motel strip populated by mom ‘n’ pop lodging establishments, and the asphalt acres comprising the parking lot of our original shopping center, Teller Arms. The Top Hat ...

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Why JUCO isn’t just about baseball, but is also about community

It’s quite a view from the highest level of that new tower over the center stands at the Stocker Stadium/Suplizio Field complex in Lincoln Park. While the new facilities have hosted Colorado Mesa University and high school games and graduation ceremonies since being completed a few weeks ago, they’re getting their first real workout this week with the Alpine Bank Junior College World Series, or JUCO. It wasn’t just the scenery I was thinking about while looking out the ...

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Are we seeing a change in the weather or a change in climate?

Warm enough for you already? It certainly was for me on Saturday, while spending part of the day up on the roof reinvigorating the oldest of the swamp coolers that make life bearable in the Spehar household during the summer months. The day ended with a reddish glow on my skin and a sigh of relief that, as a result of my CPR (Cooler Preparedness Routine), the ancient contraption looked like it might make it through another season before needing replacement. Somewhere between changing ...

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Windex and other pressing issues that may affect our public lands

I entered the ballroom at Colorado Mesa University last Tuesday night hoping for inspiration. What I heard during discussion about the economic value of public lands, sponsored by the Mesa County Conservation Forum, left me mostly disillusioned and grumpier than usual.  In my life, the connection between public lands and our economy is very clear.  My current business finds me dealing with public lands issues frequently. Regular readers know my columns often display passion ...

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One size fits all for gas drilling, until it doesn’t

The whiplash must be painful.  When Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced last Friday a proposal to require public disclosure of the chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing of oil and gas wells drilled on public lands, the industry was quick to react. “BLM’s proposed regulations, which would mandate one-size-fits-all regulations on well construction and hydraulic fracturing operations on these lands, are redundant, ” Barry Russell, CEO of the Independent ...

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Learning from, or repeating, the history of Black Sunday

Thirty years ago tomorrow morning, about the time most of you will be scanning your Daily Sentinel while sipping early morning coffee, one of the defining moments in western Colorado history was occurring. It was Black Sunday. May 2, 1982. Exxon was shutting down its oil shale project, leaving thousands of workers outside locked gates near Parachute and effectively ending a boom fueled by frenzied expectations of more abundant, lower-priced gas and independence from foreign ...

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Myths collide with realities in our public discussions

“That’s not a lie. It’s a terminological inexactitude.” — Alexander Haig. It’s interesting to hear the mythology that sometimes surrounds public issues. Especially when the myths seem to circle back again and again. Here’s a personal favorite:  “Only the private sector creates real employment.” Hmmm. What about your friends and neighbors working for five of Mesa County’s top ten employers listed in the Grand Junction ...

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CBS reporter Mike Wallace put the ‘new’ in ‘news’

“The four most frightening words in the English language are ‘Mike Wallace is here.’” Those words, tt Colorado beer magnate Joe Coors, came to epitomize the career of Mike Wallace, the face of the CBS program “60 Minutes” for 38 years, from its inception in 1968 until his last piece six years ago. They so pleased the master of confrontational journalism that, when CBS used them in advertising to promote the program, he framed a copy for his ...

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Where’s the leadership regarding Colorado’s fiscal problems?

I was a liberal arts major during my first year of college at what we jokingly called North Avenue University.  When I did graduate from another college evidently more interested in collecting out-of-state tuition than in previous academic records, it was with an appropriately titled B.S. degree, earned partially by passing only fairly simple math classes.  During the final summer session necessary to finish my senior year, I barely survived the Introduction to Economics, a ...

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Where is the insta-news on important local events?

“If it’s news, it’s news to us” Back in the day, the license plate on my car read NEWS4U.  That was my second choice when I first obtained the vanity plate for the vehicle provided me by my former employer, the Associated Press.  The plate stayed with me when I left the AP to go into the radio business here in my hometown. It was finally retired from active duty six or seven years ago.  It now sits in a box out in the garage, a victim of recent ...

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