County commissioners should listen to 
alternative voices on BLM travel plan

The Mesa County commissioners recently encouraged “the public to come forward and provide as much comment as possible regarding the BLM’s draft Resource Management Plan before the June 24 deadline.” Seems like an excellent idea, and who better to provide a forum for the community to speak out on the issue than the county commissioners? Since the commissioners represent all their constituents, they should recognize that off-highway vehicle riders are only one user group ...

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City Council shouldn’t funnel 
taxpayer funds to the chamber

Monday, the new Grand Junction City Council members, as their first act, voted to restore city funds to the Grand Junction Area Chamber of Commerce. Given the fact that the previous council voted 4-2 to terminate the relationship, it seems impetuous for this inexperienced council to jump to an important decision so quickly. Especially since the two continuing council members who voted to terminate the relationship were absent. Rather than treat this issue as a tit-for-tat, the new council ...

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Mesa County folks to join statewide 
celebration of new civil unions law

This is a May Day to celebrate in Colorado. The civil unions law, giving same-sex couples the right to form legally protected relationships, goes into effect today. Throughout the state, preparations are being made for celebrations that will include mass civil union ceremonies. “It’s really meaningful. To have the recognition of your love and relationship, just like any other relationship by the state, is an important both legal and symbolic thing,” Democratic House ...

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‘A Place at the Table’ puts 
human face on area hunger

An articulate fifth-grader named Rosie, from Collbran, has become the face of western small town hunger in a recently released documentary film titled, “A Place at the Table.” The footage was shot in Collbran and other urban and rural areas by directors Kristi Jacobson and Lori Silverbush. The film focuses on the lack of access to healthy food in what it calls America’s “food deserts.” Food deserts are “those corners of rural and urban America with no ...

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Legislators should not rush to pass HB 1303 without public comment

The quick endorsement by liberal civic action groups of Rep. Dickey Lee Hullinghorst’s fast-tracking Voter Access and Modernized Election Act (HB 1303) suggests it comes as no surprise to them. By the time the news hit Twitter, Colorado Common Cause and Progress Now Colorado were going online, urging members to pester their representatives to vote for the bill. Progress Now Colorado reminds its members, “We live in the 21st century. Technology is changing our lives, and ...

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A common front is needed for 
single-payer insurance advocates

Even as the Colorado Legislature works to put the final touches on the Colorado Insurance Exchanges required by Obamacare, critics are pushing on two fronts for a single-payer system, instead. Sen. Irene Aguilar, D-Denver, has introduced a bill to create a Colorado Health Care Cooperative to provide a single-payer system instead of the exchanges established under Obamacare. Meantime, Health Care for All Colorado, is reviving its effort from 2008 to build grass-roots support for a ballot ...

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More bureaucracy won’t create better marijuana regulation

What would happen to recreational marijuana regulation in Colorado if the taxpayers failed to pass the 15 percent tax on pot products when it goes to the ballot next fall? While that is not a likely scenario, as the public becomes more aware of the massive debacle made of efforts to regulate the medical marijuana industry, Coloradans might be reluctant to put a great deal more money on the line for enforcing rules for recreational pot. The history of medical marijuana regulation in ...

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Legislature should act now to end 
capital punishment in Colorado

Good for Senate Majority Leader Morgan Carroll and Speaker of the House Mark Ferrandino! After passing controversial legislation on gun safety, civil unions, energy extraction and other contentious issues, they would have been justified in whiling away the remainder of the term regulating marijuana like alcohol. Instead, they are taking on the death penalty. House Bill 1264 to abolish capital punishment in Colorado was introduced Friday. “The death penalty is a failed public ...

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Public has a second chance 
to preserve the Roan Plateau

The Roan Plateau is back. Not that it ever went anywhere. It just wasn’t ours anymore. The BLM decided to lease it for oil and gas drilling. Refusing even to consider an option not to lease the top of the Roan at all, or the overwhelming choice of the people to preserve the top of the plateau by drilling directionally from the surrounding cliffs, the BLM arbitrarily decided in 2006 to lease the top despite widespread opposition. So, it has been up there right along, looming 3,500 ...

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Religion at its best and worst 
in fight over civil unions bill

As the Colorado Civil Unions Bill (Senate Bill 11) moves toward almost certain passage in the House in the near future, one of the back-stories is the religious reaction to the bill. At one extreme is the right-wing, anti-homosexuality group National Organization for Marriage —listed as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. At the other is a lone Republican representative who breaks with her conservative caucus to vote her conscience because she “wanted to be able ...

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Polis should address environmental and health issues in GMO legislation

Coloradans concerned about the quality and safety of their food have to be disappointed by state House Democrats. Last week, they killed in committee a bill to require labeling of genetically modified organisms (GMO) and genetically engineered (GE) food and feed crops sold in Colorado. As defined by the Huffington Post, “A GMO (genetically modified organism) is the result of a laboratory process where genes from the DNA of one species are extracted and artificially forced into the ...

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Estonia is latest to discover oil shale 
effort more difficult than expected

Shale oil in the Green River formation has once again proved to be more elusive in reality than it appears to be in theory. The latest investors to learn this fact are the Estonians. In a line stretching back to 1910, they are the latest to see their hope for a quick fortune in oil shale go up in smoke. Estonians are the world’s leading experts on getting energy from shale. Shale is their only domestic source of fossil-fuel energy, and it has produced most of their energy since World ...

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Public education should
 honor Lincoln and Darwin

Feb. 12 was Abraham Lincoln’s birthday and Charles Darwin’s. The two were born at almost the same time, an ocean apart. Yet their lives would converge. Darwin’s “Origin of Species” was published in 1859 — a year before Lincoln was elected president. These two events defined both men. With attacks on the teaching of science at the national, state and local levels, and continuing efforts to retard or reverse progress in civil rights, Lincoln and Darwin ...

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Colorado Democrats derail 
assault on science education

Members of the right-wing fringe in the state Capitol must be growing frustrated as their cherished agenda falls before their eyes. First Democrats told them they couldn’t authorize teachers to pack guns to school. Now they say teachers can’t bring their Bibles into the classroom either. The Academic Freedom Act (House Bill 1086), introduced in the House by Rep. Steve Humphrey, R-Weld County, and sponsored in the Senate by Sen. Scott Renfroe, R-Weld County, would have permitted ...

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Colorado Democrats derail 
assault on science education

Members of the right-wing fringe in the state Capitol must be growing frustrated as their cherished agenda falls before their eyes. First Democrats told them they couldn’t authorize teachers to pack guns to school. Now they say teachers can’t bring their Bibles into the classroom either. The Academic Freedom Act (House Bill 1086), introduced in the House by Rep. Steve Humphrey, R-Weld County, and sponsored in the Senate by Sen. Scott Renfroe, R-Weld County, would have permitted ...

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Radical right-wing history has no place 
in School District 51’s curriculum

Let me be clear from the outset: This column is not a criticism of Mormons, the LDS Church or the hundreds of excellent Mormon historians who write and teach history. What it does question is the bias—with one notable exception—reflected in the list of history texts recommended to the District 51 School Board by member Jeff Leany, as reported in a Sentinel story Friday. With the exception of David McCullough’s “1776,” none of the works listed meet the minimal ...

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Council should negotiate with Brady 
before taking issue to the ballot

There will be a mystery at City Hall tonight when the City Council meets to affirm its decision to put the issue of industrial zoning on the riverfront to a vote of the people. What mysterious knowledge or theory persuades council members that they must not, under any circumstances, engage in discussions with the Brady Trucking Company to resolve Brady’s need for an industrial site for its business and the people’s desire to remove industrial operations from the river to allow ...

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More guns are not the solution 
to mass shootings in our schools

“This is our first task, caring for our children. It’s our first job. If we don’t get that right, we don’t get anything right. That’s how, as a society, we will be judged.” — President Barack Obama State Sen. Steve King of Grand Junction wasted no time getting behind the NRA-backed cry for more firepower following the tragic killing of 20 young children and six of their teachers in Newtown, Conn. Even before the new session was gaveled to ...

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Governor fails to lead on gun safety after Aurora, Newtown

A day before the tragic news from Newtown, Conn., shocked the nation, Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper seemed to position Colorado at the forefront of a call for a national dialogue on gun safety and automatic weapons. On Dec. 12, five months after a disturbed young man killed 12 and wounded 70 theater patrons in Aurora, the governor told an AP reporter, “The time is right” to talk about gun control. “I wanted to have at least a couple of months off after the shooting in ...

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North Fork Valley gas leases 
should be withdrawn by BLM

If rumors that Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar plans to resign his position at the end of President Barack Obama’s first term are true, he could do western Colorado a great service by intervening in the Bureau of Land Management’s resurrected plan to offer leases for gas drilling in the North Fork Valley. As described in a new petition being circulated by the group We the People, to urge the Obama administration to withdraw the leases, “Western Colorado’s ...

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Commissioners need to reconsider 
their stance on marijuana shops

After more than two years of experience with medical marijuana, which continues to be widely available despite the inconvenience caused by the county’s prohibition against pot dispensaries, the Mesa County commissioners are once again advocating against commercial marijuana shops in unincorporated Mesa County. The passage of Amendment 64 has sent the newly elected commission members, led by veteran Commissioner Steve Acquafresca, rushing with unnecessary speed to correct a ...

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December meeting is last chance 
to testify on drill-pad setbacks

Western Slope gas patch residents have one more opportunity to make their voices heard by the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Committee on how close to their homes oil and gas drilling pads can be located. On Dec. 10 and Dec. 11, the COGCC will hold its final public hearings on rules for drilling pad setbacks from homes and public facilities and for required monitoring of groundwater near drilling sites. Presently, the required setback in urban settings is 350 feet. In rural areas, it is ...

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President Barack Obama and 
America’s new values voters

When John Kennedy was asked if he was a liberal, he replied that it depends on the definition. “If by a ‘Liberal’ they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people — their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights and their civil liberties — someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our ...

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Hurricane Sandy may 
flatten Romney campaign

At the beginning of his 2012 campaign, President Barack Obama said, “The one thing that we absolutely know for sure is that if we don’t work even harder than we did in 2008, then we’re going to have a government that tells the American people, ‘You are on your own.’ “If you get sick, you’re on your own,” he continued. “If you can’t afford college, you’re on your own. If you don’t like that some corporation is polluting ...

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Amendment 65 is not the only path to election reform

If Amendment 65 passes Nov. 6, Colorado will become the 10th state to join the national effort to overturn the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling that allows corporations and rich individuals to contribute unlimited funds to political campaigns. In addition, dozens of municipalities, counties, private organizations and other groups have endorsed similar legislation or proposed ballot resolutions. Just this month, after months of effort, the city of Fort Collins joined Boulder as ...

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Pace’s pragmatism right prescrition for removing congressional gridlock.

Grover Norquist and his Americans for Tax Reform organizations just plunked down $1.3 million for a new anti-Sal Pace ad campaign on all the Colorado cable channels. Somebody must be worried. Incumbent 3rd District Congressman Scott Tipton is in the final weeks of a tight contest with former state Rep. Sal Pace. Although the polls show the two candidates essentially tied, apparently Norquist fears the tide is turning for Pace. Tipton has already sworn allegiance to Norquist’s ...

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Sal Pace’s position on health care is closer to Romney’s than Tipton’s

In his latest attack ad against Sal Pace, Colorado’s 3rd District Congressman Scott Tipton shows the same disrespect for the truth that has characterized the Romney/Ryan campaign for president. Of all the misrepresentations of President Barack Obama’s budget plans, Mitt Romney’s charge that Obama would take $716 billion from Medicare to fund Obamacare is probably the most often and the most thoroughly debunked misrepresentation of the president’s actual ...

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Gessler should investigate GOP voter activities in Colorado

Colorado Secretary of State Scott Gessler took office with a determination to root out the voter fraud he believed was partly responsible for Democratic political victories. Thousands of names of people registered to vote in Colorado, he asserted, were fraudulent. This number decreased substantially over time until, eventually, 4,000 letters were sent to registered voters asking them to prove their citizenship. In the end, 482 people presented proof of citizenship, and 90 percent of the ...

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Despite federal court setback, 
fight for secret ballot continues

According to the Colorado Constitution, “no ballots shall be marked in any way whereby the ballot can be identified as the ballot of the person casting it” (Article VII, Section 8). Notably, the language of the Colorado Constitution makes no exception to this rule for county clerks or others involved with administering elections. Nevertheless, some Colorado county clerks have declared themselves and their staffs exempt from the law protecting the secret ballot. Because of our ...

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Utah leases decision won’t prevent future threats to pristine lands

The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision to uphold Interior Secretary Ken Salazar’s cancellation of oil and gas leases close to the boundaries of Arches, Canyonlands and Dinosaur National Parks has been widely celebrated by environmentalists as a victory for public lands protection from unlimited energy development. “Utah’s spectacular public lands are the real winner in this ruling,” said Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance staff attorney David Garbett. It ...

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Romney flip-flops and Ryan lies an unlikely road to the White House

After their performances at the Republican National Convention drew criticism for Mitt Romney’s refusal to take a position and hold to it, and Paul Ryan’s propensity for distorting the facts, both men are in the news again for the same failures. Romney had distinguished himself as a master of the flip-flop even before his nomination speech added more confusion as to what, if anything, he actually believes. Even some of his supporters are beginning to wonder about his ...

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‘Practical politics’ of Romney/Ryan campaign unfettered by facts

“The whole aim of practical politics” said H.L. Mencken, “is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” With a cynicism that only Mencken could appreciate, the Romney/Ryan campaign appears to have decided to base its entire campaign on such imagined hobgoblins. Putting the worst spin possible on the other party’s achievements — even when this ...

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Secret ballot decision could impact Mesa County elections

Mesa County Clerk Shelia Reiner should inform county voters of the implications of Secretary of State Scott Gessler’s recent election rule change forbidding printing ballots with bar codes that can be linked to individual voters. Although the ruling applies to 44 counties that use preprinted bar codes to identify ballots — a practice not used in Mesa County — the principle of ballot secrecy should apply to all voting procedures. Reiner has demonstrated that the batching ...

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Romney and Ryan push a Medicare plan 
relying on vouchers for new retirees

By challenging President Obama to a debate on Medicare and the Affordable Care Act, Mitt Romney and his vice presidential choice, Paul Ryan, have made Obama’s most important achievement the center of the campaign debate. Using distorted, misrepresented or fabricated charges Romney and Ryan are selling the narrative that they, rather than Obama, will save Medicare. With his 78-year-old mother standing by, Ryan laid out plans for saving Medicare in an address to seniors in an upscale ...

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Tipton, Pace offer clear choice between gridlock, progress

Just as Rep. Scott Tipton was explaining to state Rep. Sal Pace, his opponent for the 3rd District House seat, that his participation in Republican obstructionism was a principled defense of conservative ideals, Vice President Joe Biden blew away any GOP pretense to either ideals or principle. According to investigative reporter Michael Grunwald, Biden said that, during the transition period between the Bush and Obama administrations, “he was warned not to expect any cooperation on ...

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Women must stand with Obama to protect health care rights

The last time President Barack Obama came to Grand Junction, it was to celebrate the community-based medical system in Mesa County. He held our community up to the nation as an example of how quality medical care could be delivered at an affordable cost, while still achieving good medical outcomes. But he also came to deliver his own message on health care reform. He drew a standing ovation for his promise to pass a health care bill to extend medical benefits to all Americans. Though it ...

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Tipton puts party before constituents when it comes to vote on Bush tax cuts

No need to ask how Rep. Scott Tipton will vote on the Senate bill passed last week to end the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, while extending them for tax-payers making less than $200,000 ($250,000 for couples) per year. As he did when the House played chicken with the economy last year over raising the national debt ceiling, Tipton will vote with his party, regardless of the consequences for the nation. According to The Pueblo Chieftain. Tipton has already informed his ...

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Real ID Act will redefine relationship between citizens and the government

While Republicans and Democrats fight each other over voter registrations and alleged election fraud, their raucous quarrel obscures the real voter ID policy unfolding in Colorado and the nation. When the federal Real ID Act takes effect this coming January, the nation will make a major step toward the adoption of a national identity card. As the Colorado House said in a joint resolution when the act passed, the law “in effect creates a national identification card by requiring that ...

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Commissioners should encourage county clerk to settle ballot lawsuit

Among important issues facing the Mesa County commissioners in the waning months of two members’ term are the legal entanglements between the county and Marilyn Marks of Aspen, who is an advocate for transparent elections. Denied the right to review ballots after an unsuccessful run for mayor of Aspen, Marks was shocked to learn it was common practice in Colorado for county clerks to deny citizens access to ballots to verify reported vote tallies because it is possible to link some ...

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Founding Fathers side with Roberts on mandatory health insurance

Here is a Fourth of July trivia question for history buffs, and legal eagles: Name something presidents George Washington, John Adams and Barack Obama have in common. Answer: Legislation mandating the purchase of health insurance. Harvard Law School professor Einer Elhauge explains that some people “argue that the Constitution’s framers could not possibly have envisioned a congressional power to force purchases. However, in 1790, the first Congress ... required all ship owners ...

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High Court decision could make Colorado next Wisconsin

On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a decision in a Montana election case that extends the controversial Citizens United ruling to state and local elections. “The question presented in this case is whether the holding of Citizens United applies to the Montana state law,” the majority opinion said. “There can be no serious doubt that it does.” The ruling means the lid is off for state and local political campaign contributions. Limitless corporate or ...

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Vote on franking bill revives ‘Spendy Scott’ nickname

Last year, when fiscal conservative Rep. Scott Tipton took some flack for his free spending ways, the Colorado Pols website predicted: “How Tipton will continue to perpetuate his ‘smaller government’ image despite his big spending ways will be vital to his re-election in 2012. ‘Spendy’ Scott Tipton isn’t the kind of moniker he’ll be looking for.” Colorado Pols was reacting to the new last year that “Tipton spent more money on staff ...

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Rep. Lamborn’s flip-flop on oil shale subsidies could cost him in November

He was for it before he was against it before he was for it. Rep. Doug Lamborn, the Colorado Springs Republican, never met an oil and gas subsidy he didn’t like. So it was a surprise in February when he called for companies to use their own money to develop commercial oil shale. “I say let the companies experiment at their own expense — on their own dime,” Lamborn told a House hearing, “and see if they can find a commercially viable process that works to ...

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Rep. Scott Tipton looks backward to the nation’s economic future

Congressman Scott Tipton wasted no time in jumping on the president for the weak job numbers in May. “There’s a path to job creation and economic recovery in this country, but with the most recent jobs numbers showing an increase in unemployment during May and 40 straight months of unemployment over eight percent … it’s clear that the president is not following it.” In short, Tipton wants a Republican economy. The “path” he refers to is the Paul ...

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Obama, McNulty ensure civil unions will be an issue in November election

When President Barack Obama declared his support for same-sex marriage, it set off a barrage of questions about his motive. Was it an unwanted distraction precipitated by Vice President Joe Biden’s announcement that he was “comfortable” with same-sex marriage? Or was it a deliberate strategy to put gay civil rights on the table as a campaign issue without it seeming calculated? The debate continues on that question. It is unlikely that anyone will ‘fess up before ...

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Gov. Hickenlooper should veto this flawed election reform bill

When I learned the Colorado Legislature had passed a bill “to protect voting privacy while also ensuring transparency in the process,” I was taken aback. I thought the Constitution did that. Though silent on the topic of ballot privacy, the U. S. Constitution is usually interpreted as requiring that ballots be secret. Americans have been protected by secret ballots from coercion, intimidation or retaliation for their election choices since the founding of the American ...

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Ruling protects unbelievers from state-sanctioned prayers

The latest minority groups to gain recognition from the Colorado Court of Appeals as a protected class are the atheists, freethinkers, agnostics and other non-believers and doubters who object to the infusion of religion into politics. Largely overshadowed in the media by the dust-up over legislation that would extend to members of Colorado’s lesbian and gay community the right to (almost) equal protection under the law, the Colorado Court of Appeals recently handed down an important ...

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Romney presidency would threaten public lands in Western states

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney poses a real threat to the public lands that are essential to the economy and quality of life in the West. When asked by the Reno Gazette-Journal editorial board last January if he would sell public lands back to the state, Romney answered, “I don’t know the reason that the government owns such a large share of Nevada ... Unless there’s a valid, and legitimate, and compelling governmental purpose, I don’t know why the ...

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The mystery, riddle and enigma of the North Fork Valley leases

The BLM plan to lease 30,000 acres of land in the North Fork Valley of Delta and Gunnison counties is, for many of the local inhabitants, “a mystery wrapped in a riddle inside an enigma.” BLM hearings, community sponsored meetings and extensive investigations since the announcement of the plan in December 2011 have failed to unravel the mystery, answer the riddle or explain the enigma. Scheduled for August 2012, the 22 nominated parcels threaten the future of the valley’s ...

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Sal Pace blasts Tipton campaign’s insensitivity to working Americans

Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District race made national TV last week when MSNBC’s Ed Shultz featured Democratic congressional candidate Sal Pace’s response to a callous comment on the plight of ordinary working Americans by the Congressman Scott Tipton’s campaign. In an interview with the right-leaning Colorado Observer, Tipton’s campaign manager Michael Fortney was feeling confident about Tipton’s re-election chances. “With gas prices doubled, ...

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