Tag: Politics

G.J. City Council Candidate Jesse Daniels is Generating Buzz

Momentum is growing for Grand Junction City Council candidate Jesse Daniels, the youngest and most modern-thinking city council candidate we’ve ever had. He’s fighting for some long-needed beneficial change in Grand Junction, and it’s about time.

Jesse is different kind of candidate. He has special appeal to the younger set who’ve long felt completely unrepresented on city council and longed for a change. Jesse knows how to roll…He has a logo, a Facebook page, understands social media and the importance of the Internet, and like most hard-working city residents, Jesse is a working person himself, not a retiree. He’s been involved in the goings-on in downtown Grand Junction for over 20 years.

AnneLandmanBlog Voter Guide, 2017

This guide offers AnneLandmanBlog’s recommendations on how to vote in the April 4, 2017 municipal election in Grand Junction. Recommendations are based on which candidates have the imagination, vision and new ideas to finally pull Grand Junction out of it’s persistent economic slump, and votes that offer the best long term outcomes for average working people and their families. In considering these recommendations, the needs of established businesses are considered, but not given any greater weight than the interests of average working city residents and their families.

Please note that all City residents can vote for candidates for all city council districts. AnneLandmanBlog does not make recommendations in races where candidates run unopposed.

Recommended votes:

City Council District A: Jesse Daniels

City Council District D: C.E. Duke Wortmann

City Council At-Large: C. Lincoln Pierce

Referred Measure 2A – Raising sales tax a quarter cent to fund an events center downtown: NO/AGAINST

Referred Measure 2BSpending funds set aside to pay the debt on the Riverside Parkway on road improvements instead: YES/FOR

 

This election is being conducted by a mail-in ballot. You will get your ballot in the U.S. mail and can either put your completed ballot in the the return envelope, stamp it and drop it in the U.S. Mail well before election day, take your completed ballot to the silver drop box outside Mesa County Central Services at 200 S. Spruce Street, or take it to the City Clerk’s office inside Grand Junction City Hall, 250 N. 5th Street. Ballots must be returned by 7:00 p.m. April 4, 2017 to be counted.

Undeveloped Parks Languish While City Pursues an Events Center

Matchett Park – Despite the City of Grand Junction putting on a community-wide planning effort in 2014 that resulted in a master plan and preferred alternative for development, and despite the City getting a GOCO grant to cover 75% of the cost it’s construction, nothing ever happened at Matchett Park

The City of Grand Junction owns a number of large land parcels around the valley that are designated as parks, but that are little more than vacant lots unused by the public.

Event Center Promos Mislead; Proposed Events are Costly

John Legend Table Tent

A quick glance at this tabletop promo for Measure 2A makes it look like John Legend is already booked in town, if only we had an events center. That’s not the case.

If you’ve eaten out lately, you may have seen table tents displayed at downtown restaurants promoting Measure 2A on the city ballot this coming April. The measure asks city residents to approve increasing the City’s sales tax by a quarter cent to fund a $60 million downtown events center.

But beware, these promos strive to deceive.

What is the Mesa County Federal Mineral Lease District, and Why Should We Care About it?

A guest post by Janet Johnson

Mesa County’s Federal Mineral Lease District is a huge slush fund that’s supposed to go towards helping areas of the county negatively affected by the oil and gas industry. But instead, most of the money has been getting funneled to Colorado Mesa University and projects that benefit the oil and gas industry itself.

On February 6, Colorado House Representative Yeulin Willett introduced HB-1152 in the Colorado legislature, a bill titled “Federal Mineral Lease District (FMLD) Investment Authority.” The bill certainly does “open an important conversation,” as the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel suggested in its February 2, 2017 op-ed on the subject.

Willett’s bill seeks to give counties “investment authority,” which would allow them to withhold some of the money the Department of Local Affairs (DOLA) gives to Federal Mineral Lease Districts and invest it in a permanent fund. This request for and composition of the bill originated with the Mesa County FMLD. The other counties in Colorado that have Federal Mineral Lease Districts are Garfield and Weld County.

Daily Sentinel Threatens CO Sen. Ray Scott with Defamation Lawsuit

Publisher of the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel

Jay Seaton, publisher of the Grand Junction, Colorado Daily Sentinel, publicly threatened Colorado State Senator Ray Scott with a defamation lawsuit in his editorial column Sunday, February 12, after Scott, in a tweet, charged the Sentinel with publishing “fake news.”

Mike Anton is Back, This Time Plugging an Events Center

Michael P. “I’m Your Worst Nightmare” Anton, author of the Grand Junction’s only negative campaign ad, and cheerleader for the chamber’s lies and political interference

Mike Anton is back, appearing on TV and speaking to groups around town, telling Grand Junction residents they should vote for an extra sales tax to build an events center downtown.

Do you remember Mike Anton?

No?

Well then let’s recap exactly who Mike Anton is, and what he has done over the last few years, so you will remember him:

Anton owns a business in town called EmTech. He sat on the board of directors of the Grand Junction Area Chamber of Commerce in 2013, the year the chamber backed Rick Brainard for city council.

Remember how THAT turned out?

U.S. Congressman Issues Statement on Decision Not to Attend Trump’s Inauguration

U.S. Congressman Ted Lieu of Los Angeles County

In the wake of the insults President-Elect Donald Trump hurled at civil rights icon Congressman John Lewis today on Twitter, just days before Martin Luther King Day and his own inauguration, Congressman Ted W. Lieu (D – Los Angeles County) issued the following statement explaining his decision to not attend Trump’s inauguration on January 20, 2017.

The flap started when Rep. Lewis said in an interview today with Meet The Press host Chuck Todd that he will not be attending Trump’s inauguration in part because he doesn’t think Trump is a legitimate president due to Russia’s reported interference the U.S. election.

Former Mexican President Questions Trump’s Legitimacy, Says Mexico Won’t Pay for his “F****en Wall”

Former Mexican President Vicente Fox (2000-2006) has been trolling Donald Trump on Twitter and responding to  Trump’s incessant Tweets in English, writing devastating responses questioning his legitimacy as president, telling him Mexico won’t pay for the (expletive) wall he’s been promising to build between the U.S. and Mexico, and much more:

 

 

 

Nationwide Team of Lawyers Submits Last-Ditch Effort to Stop Trump from Taking Office

Trump: Electorally illegitimate President-Elect?

The New York Times and other news outlets including AlterNetRawStory, and DailyKos are reporting that a bipartisan nationwide team of attorneys has performed detailed research into each of the 538 members of the electoral college and found that more than 50 members who voted for Donald Trump were ineligible to vote because they violated their state’s laws governing who is eligible to serve as an elector. For example, Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi served as an elector and voted for Trump, but the Florida state Constitution specifies electors cannot hold any other paid government office while serving as an elector. In other cases, electors did not reside in the congressional district they were charged with representing, or were not registered to vote in the districts they were supposed to represent as electors. Each of these situations constitute legal violations of eligibility to serve as electors.

The report states:

“We have reason to believe that there are at least 50 electoral votes that were not regularly given or not lawfully certified (16 Congressional District violations and 34 dual office-holder violations). The number could be over a hundred.”

The group issued an “Electoral Vote Objection Packet” containing this information, as well as the specific language they need to use to object to certification of the vote, to members of Congress and are asking them to stop the certification of the 2016 Electoral College results scheduled for 1:00 p.m. on Friday, January 6.

You can read the entire report here:

The Electoral Vote Objection Packet and spreadsheet detailing the problems the attorneys found with the 50+ electors can be seen here.

Creepy Republicans are Fortifying their Swamp; Tipton Won’t Say How He Voted

English writer Lord Acton once said “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

The House of Representatives proved Lord Acton correct yesterday when, as their first act as the majority in the 115th House of Representatives, Republicans met in secret, at night behind closed doors, and voted to amend House rules to gut the independent Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE).

The OCE is responsible for investigating corruption and misconduct by House members. It was created in 2008 after Randy “Duke” Cunningham, a former Republican representative from California, was sentenced to prison on bribery and other criminal charges he incurred while in office. The OCE perhaps best known for its investigations into the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal, and investigating former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, who in 2010 was convicted on criminal charges of conspiracy to launder corporate money into political donations. In his defense, DeLay argued he was improperly convicted for just “doing what everybody was doing.”

If overall Republicans felt they were serving their constituents honestly and ethically in the best way they knew how, they probably wouldn’t give much thought to the OCE. But instead, they focused on it quickly and early with an eye towards destroying it. So why carry out an attack aimed at constraining the OCE, if not to pave the way for unfettered unethical activities like those we’ve already seen so much of in Congress?

Mesa County Commissioner John Justman’s Smug Attitude Toward Constituents

Mesa County Commissioner John Justman’s attitude toward his “subjects,” as demonstrated by Bugs Bunny

Check out this online exchange between Mesa County Commissioner John Justman and one of his constituents:

On December 14, a Mesa County resident posted a link to an online petition titled “Defend the Arctic Refuge from Oil Drilling” on Facebook along with the comment “Tillerman will drill this.”

The person was referring to Donald Trump’s secretary of state nominee Rex Tillerson, the former CEO of Exxon, who has made drilling for oil his life’s work.

Surprisingly, the first person to chime in in the comment section below the post was none other than Mesa County Commissioner John Justman, who wrote “Good Job Tillerman,” signaling his approval for drilling the Earth to death while repeating the misspelling of Tillerson’s name.

In response, the constituent wrote:

 

“John sometimes I think you say these things to be funny. The truth is this time it is NOT funny. You will be dead before your grandchildren will have to deal with a entire change in the environment you and I have taken for granted. Today the North Pole had a high of over the freezing level and the “heatwave” is suppose to continue. These fragile areas have iconic creatures you and I are familiar, but your grandchildren will watch the last of those animals perish. If you believe that is good, then I question your fitness to serve as a Commissioner. That position takes great analytical and practical thinking about today and the future.”

To this take-down, Justman thundered back:

State Department and U.S. Women Worry Trump is Preparing to Cut Programs Benefitting Women

18 year old Aria Watson, a student in Oregon, created a series of photographs of women with some of Donald’ Trump’s misogynistic statements written on them for a photography class. The project has gone viral.

Women inside and outside the government are chilled by the news today that Donald Trump’s transition team has asked the State Department to provide him with detailed information on U.S. programs aimed at benefitting women around the world, as well as a list of positions in the department that are involved in reducing gender violence and promoting women in the workplace. A senior official said people in the State Department are “freaked out” by the request and deeply concerned Trump wants to roll back these diplomatic efforts, many of which were spearheaded by Hillary Clinton.

It’s no wonder they’re concerned.

Trump Children Sell Access to their Father in Exchange for Donations to Newly-Formed Nonprofit Foundation

Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump are listed as directors of the “Opening Day” foundation, created December 14th.

An invitation from a new nonprofit group called the “Opening Day Foundation” surfaced December 20th offering access to Donald J. Trump on the evening of his inauguration in exchange for donations of $500,000 to $1 million. Trump’s sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, are listed as directors of the Opening Day Foundation on legal documents establishing the Opening Day Foundation, which was created on December 14, 2016. No address was provided for the foundation. The web address of the foundation is OpeningDay45.com. The “45” might refer to the fact that Trump will be the 45th president of the United States. The website only offers a landing page with a logo and no further information.

Who are the Electors of the Electoral College?

trumpcorruptOn December 19, the electoral college will vote on who the next president of the U.S. will be, and they are not all bound by law to vote for Mr. Trump. Now that it’s been concluded that Clinton won the popular vote by more than 2 million, it would be within the Eletoral College’s purview to change who they vote for.

At the same time, Constitutional experts are arguing that unless Donald Trump divests himself of all of his foreign business holdings, he will be in violation of Article 9, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution as soon as he takes his oath to uphold it.

NYT Op Ed by Charles Blow: “No, Trump, We Can’t Just Get Along”

Recently I’ve heard it said that people who are shocked to the core and utterly dismayed by Trump’s election should just calm down, accept it and start getting along.

But Trump’s election is no normal phenomenon for this country, and to blindly accept it as though it were something normal is to abdicate our collective moral standing as a country.

Charles Blow, a New York Times opinion writer, did an excellent job of explaining why we should not accept Donald Trump’s election as something “normal,” and move on.

City Processing Marijuana Petitions

screen-shot-2016-11-21-at-12-59-11-pmOn Thursday, November 17, members of Grand Junction Cannabis Action Now (GJCAN) turned petitions in to the City containing 3,300 signatures to get a proposed ordinance (pdf) on next April’s citywide ballot to bring marijuana commerce back to Grand Junction.

The group needs 2,254 valid signatures for the proposal to advance.

The City has ten days from the day the petitions were turned in to validate the signatures, making November 27 the deadline for the city to declare whether the goal was met. City Clerk Stephanie Tuin says they are working now to validate the signatures, and says they actually validate each signature turned in.

If GJCAN has submitted enough valid signatures to get the measure on the ballot, City Council will get an opportunity at its January meeting to approve the petition’s wording and adopt the ordinance as-is. Council’s other option, if they are still too afraid to address the marijuana issue themselves, is to send it to the April ballot for a vote of City residents. Either way, by its inaction on the marijuana issue, Council has missed it’s opportunity to weigh in on the matter and left it to City residents.

That’s probably just as well, though.