AnneLandmanBlog.com

Health, Public health

The U.S. has a measles epidemic, but is it in Grand Junction?

by Anne Landman • May 30, 2019 • 3 Comments

States where measles outbreaks have occurred in the U.S. as of May 24, 2019

The growing number of unvaccinated people in the U.S. has led to the largest outbreak of measles in the U.S. since the disease was declared eradicated in 2000. Cases of measles have been reported in Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, New Mexico, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, Tennessee, and Washington state.

According to the Mesa County Health Department, there have been no cases of measles reported so far in Grand Junction, and only one case in Denver in January, 2019. But don’t let that make you complacent. People travel widely to and from stricken areas, and could bring the epidemic to Colorado large scale at any time. Measles is an extremely contagious viral disease. When a person with measles leaves a room, people who enter that room afterwards can catch the disease for up to two hours after the infected person has left.

There’s a seat on Grand Junction Regional Airport Board up for grabs

by Anne Landman • May 27, 2019 • 1 Comment

Want to gain some influence in town, and have a voice without having to get elected? Here’s another chance to do just that.

With self-declared “deplorable” Grand Junction City Councilman Duncan McArthur leaving his his seat on Council, yet another position besides his Council seat has opened up: a seat on the Grand Junction Regional Airport Authority.

The seat is currently being offered to the public, albeit quietly. You have to dig a little to find information about the vacancy and how to apply, but the page with what little information there is about the airport board is here.

Now’s your chance! City seeks to fill open City Council District E seat

by Anne Landman • May 21, 2019 • 3 Comments

The $64,000 plaza in front of Grand Junction City Hall, installed for the purposes of circumventing laws regarding separation of church and state and keeping the Ten Commandments tablet on public land.

If you’ve ever wanted to serve on Grand Junction City Council but didn’t want to have to endure a campaign and election to do it, now is your chance.

City Councilor Duncan McArthur is stepping down from his seat on Council because of health problems, and City Council will be choosing his replacement.

Mr. McArthur represents District E (map). To be eligible to fill this vacant seat and if you want to obey the law, you must have lived within the boundaries of District E for a minimum of 12 months. The boundaries include all of the green area represented on this map, and comprise a strip of land between 7th and 12th Streets running south from Orchard Ave., all City land south of D Road/Riverside Parkway, and all City land on Orchard Mesa. The eastern boundary extends to 32 Road, but the City is a hopscotch of parcels to the east, so if you’re interested in the seat, consult the map to see if your residence is within City boundaries or not.

ACLU Sues CO State Senator Ray Scott for Blocking Constituent on Social Media

by Anne Landman • May 13, 2019 • 26 Comments

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

May 13, 2019

MEDIA CONTACT:

Vanessa Michel, Director of Communications

Office: 720-402-3112, Mobile: 917-399-0733

Deanna Hirsch, Media Strategist

Office: 720-402-3122, Mobile: 720-971-2393

ACLU Sues Colorado State Senator for Blocking Constituent on Social Media

DENVER – ACLU of Colorado filed a lawsuit in Federal District Court this morning against Colorado State Senator Ray Scott for blocking constituent Anne Landman from his official Facebook and Twitter pages. Landman, a resident of Colorado Senate District 7 in Grand Junction, speaks out regularly on public policy issues and writes about Colorado politics on her blog. She also uses social media to interact with fellow constituents and elected officials. Landman had been able to interact with Scott and others in these spaces until June 2017, when she wrote an article critical of Scott’s position regarding climate change and posted it on his official Facebook page. In response, Scott blocked Landman from his Facebook page and official Twitter account.

Sen. Ray Scott sponsors bill to eliminate price break for low-income energy consumers

by Anne Landman • April 21, 2019 • 1 Comment

Colorado State Senator Ray Scott

Last week State Senator Ray Scott embarrassed Mesa County residents and made a fool of himself by actually saying out loud on the Senate floor that climate change has led to “massive improvements” in our climate.

Now Scott is co-sponsoring a bill, SB 19-250 (pdf), that will deal a blow to low income people served by Black Hills Energy, the gas and electricity provider for residents of Pueblo, Canyon City, Ordway and Westcliffe. Scott’s bill would do away with a two-tiered rate structure Black Hills Energy put in place in 2017 to help low income energy consumers by giving them more protection from a state-approved rate increase that happened that same year.

Western Colorado Atheists and Freethinkers’ spring message

by Anne Landman • April 17, 2019 • 3 Comments

Billboard by Sprouts

Western Colorado Atheists and Freethinkers (WCAF) has a message for Grand Valley residents this spring: Atheism is “a personal relationship with reality.”

WCAF is the area’s longest-serving secular group, and their billboard is to help encourage people come to logical conclusions based on verifiable facts rather than basing conclusions on dogma, fables, mythology, superstition or sheer faith. That’s the message of the group’s spring, 2019 billboard, which went up today on I-70B by Rimrock Marketplace in front of Hobby Lobby and Chick-Fil-A. The board is west-facing and visible to traffic coming into town. It will be up for one week. Take photos with it while you can.

Free digital literacy resources available from Southern Poverty Law Center

by Anne Landman • April 6, 2019 • 3 Comments

Are you a teacher looking for ways to teach kids how to tell the difference between real and “fake” news, how to determine whether an online source is legitimate, reliable and fair, and how to engage in social media discussions responsibly? Are you looking for ways to help kids negotiate topics in the news, like immigration, civil rights, race and gender identity?

Well, here’s your answer.

The Southern Poverty Law Center now offers free Common Core-compatible classroom materials and resources that can help kids discern malicious online fare like propaganda deployed by hate groups to recruit new members, false conspiracy theories and racist lies. It will also help kids become more sophisticated consumers of news and social media and navigate topics like race and ethnicity, religion, variations in ability, immigration, class, bullying and bias, gender and sexual identity and rights and activism.

And did we mention it’s all free?

SPLC’s, program, “Teaching Tolerance,” includes K-12 lesson plans that align with Common Core standards and offers professional development tools that will help teachers increase their own online savvy. Teachers can access a multitude of resources, like lessons for different grade levels, student tasks, lesson plans, teaching strategies for different grade levels, film kits, printable posters and other classroom materials, and they are all available at no cost by visiting Tolerance.org.

Children, Education, Ethics, Health care, Human rights, politics, Religion, Secularism, Separation of Church and State

Colorado bill would prohibit teaching religious doctrine in public school sex ed curriculum

by Anne Landman • April 2, 2019 • 4 Comments

Colorado State Senator Don Coram

Delta County School District, are you listening?

Colorado State Senator Don Coram, a Republican who represents Montrose and Ouray counties, is a sponsor of HB19-1032, “Comprehensive Human Sexuality Education,” a bill to prohibit sex ed instruction in K-12 public schools from “explicitly or implicitly teaching or endorsing religious ideology or sectarian tenets or doctrines, using shame-based or stigmatizing language or instructional tools, employing gender norms or gender stereotypes, or excluding the relational or sexual experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender individuals.”

The bill would appropriate least $1 million annually for a grant program to carry out the new law, and it would give highest priority for the grant funds to rural public schools.

Why is this bill needed? Because of the Delta County School District.

Local students win essay contest awards of $500 and $250

by Anne Landman • March 30, 2019 • 1 Comment

An awards ceremony will be held tomorrow, Sunday, March 31 at 1:15 p.m. in the Monument Room of the downtown Mesa County Public Library to announce the winners of Western Colorado Atheists and Freethinkers‘ 2018 Student Essay Contest.

The contest, announced last September, was open to all middle and high school students in Mesa County. The topic for submissions was the importance of separation of church and state to our country, and our democracy.

A student from Grand Junction High School won the high school award of $500 and a student from Redlands Middle School won the middle school award of $250.

One good thing Trump has done: Banning bump stocks

by Anne Landman • March 29, 2019 • 3 Comments

Trump banned bump stocks last December by executive action, and the new law is effective NOW.

Watch out, local gun nuts. President Donald Trump is coming for your guns.

Last December, President Trump issued an executive order banning bump stocks (pdf), devices that use the recoil energy generated from each shot of a semi-automatic rifle to increase the firearms’ rate of fire. The new rule amended the definition of “machine gun” to include bump stocks.

The ban went into effect three days ago, on March 26, 2019, exactly 90 days after it was published in the Federal Register.

On March 28, 2019 the U.S. Supreme Court refused an effort by gun nuts to block the ban, so Trump’s new rule is currently in full force, making anyone who owns a bump stock a felon.

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