…On that note, the following bumper sticker was spotted in the parking lot at Sprouts Farmers Market on 12/16/2017:
Corruption, Crazy Republicans, Deplorables, Equal rights, Ethics, Extremism, Hate, Human rights, Intolerance, LGBT issues, Religion, Separation of Church and State, Stupid Republicans
Trump’s shocking U.S. District Court nominees
by 1 Comment
• •
Three of President Donald Trump’s nominees for U.S. District Court judgeships have gone down in flames in the last few days for reasons that make Americans scratch their heads about how they could ever have been nominated to in the first place.
Trump’s nominee for U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia, Matthew Spencer Petersen, appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, December 14, 2017 and was forced to admit he had never tried a single case in any court of law, and had never filed a single motion or conducted even one deposition on his own over the course of his entire legal career. He was also stunningly unable to answer even the most basic questions about legal procedures common to federal courts.
Activism, Consumer advocacy, Economics, Ethics, Grand Junction Chamber, New marijuana economy, Poverty, Weird Grand Junction Stuff
Local business owners want “a Chamber for the rest of us”
by 1 Comment
• •Two small business owners in Grand Junction are fed up and ready to start a new organization that will do what they thought the Grand Junction Area Chamber of Commerce was supposed to do: boost small local businesses and improve life in town for those struggling at the lower end of the income scale.
Shawn Carr, a technology specialist who owns GJ Computer Center, and Billy Jacobs, owner of XZRT Gaming on Orchard Mesa, say the Grand Junction Area Chamber falls far short of providing local small businesses what they really need.
To illustrate this, Shawn tells how he recently attended a Chamber event billed as a way for businesses to promote themselves to other businesses. He brought a pocket full of business cards to the event, but when he got there found every booth but one represented a national or international conglomerate based outside of town. He ended up handing out only one business card, and walked away thinking it’s time someone did better than this.
Ethics, Marketing, Public health, Safety, Violence
The G.J. Sentinel hawks cheap handguns while wishing readers “a safe and happy holiday”
by 7 Comments
• •The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel ran a big ad in it’s Thanksgiving Day paper selling handguns for cheap while on it’s Facebook page it simultaneously wishes readers a “safe and happy holiday.”
Many area residents would consider the ad alone grossly inappropriate in a community that recently reached a record high suicide rate, and which has for years struggled with one of the highest suicide rates in the nation.
Crazy Republicans, Hate, LGBT issues, Religious hypocrisy, Security, Trump Insanity
Trump-linked hate graffiti found at Horizon Drive Safeway
by 75 Comments
• •An employee at the Horizon Drive Safeway discovered hateful anti-gay graffiti scrawled in the store’s restroom tonight and posted photos of it on social media. The employee discovered the graffiti while changing out of work clothes in the restroom.
One message was “Trump 2020” with a swastika. The other message said “God hates all fags,” also with a swastika.
Crazy Republicans, Deplorables, Elections, Equal rights, Ethics, Fake patriotism, Human rights, politics, Religious hypocrisy, Women
Trump endorses accused child molester Roy Moore for Senate
by 11 Comments
• •In a new low for the country, President Donald Trump has endorsed the denials of Roy Moore, the Alabama Republican senate candidate who has been accused of engaging in sexual misconduct with teenagers. Trump’s endorsement indicates he has elevated the strength of Moore’s denials about the encounters over accounts given by the eight women who stepped forward and graphically described the sexual assaults by Moore they experienced when they were younger and Moore was in his 30s.
Moore made a name for himself as a public Ten Commandments moralizer while he served as Chief Justice for the state of Alabama, but he was twice ejected from his position on the Court for violating federal laws. Despite getting kicked off the bench twice for failing to follow the law and being accused of sexually molesting teenagers, Moore has maintained the support of many Christian conservatives in the state. He now also has the support of President Trump.
Corruption, Crazy Republicans, Intolerance, politics, Religion, Religious hypocrisy, Secularism, Separation of Church and State, Weird Grand Junction Stuff
What Roy Moore and Grand Junction City Council have in common
by 27 Comments
• •Roy Moore, the Alabama Republican senatorial candidate accused of sexual predation, brings thoughts right back here to Grand Junction, because Moore and Grand Junction have two big things in common.
They are 1) the Ten Commandments, and 2) an eagerness to defy U.S. law.
Moore was twice thrown out of his job as Chief Justice for the state of Alabama for defying U.S. law. After the Supreme Court’s 2015 landmark ruling legalizing gay marriage, Moore ordered the state’s probate court judges not to issue marriage licenses for same-sex couples. A commission charged him with violating federal judicial orders and kicked him off the court in 2016. That was the second time Moore was ejected for violating the law.
Corporations, Crazy Republicans, Ethics, politics
Rep. Scott Tipton just voted to end many of your tax deductions
by 3 Comments
• •Republican western slope House Representative Scott Tipton just voted to increase the national debt by more than a trillion dollars and alter the federal tax code in ways that will likely create hardship for many of his constituents. Every Democrat and thirteen Republican House members voted against the bill, but Tipton wasn’t one of them. The vote was a relatively close 226 in favor to 205 against.
Tipton voted to pass HR-1, the Republican “tax reform” bill which ends many of the deductions people have long used to help reduce their taxable income. Here are some of the things the bill will do:
Crazy Republicans, Stupid Republicans, Trump Insanity
Trump babbles incoherently while delivering a speech in South Korea, Nov. 7, 2017
by 2 Comments
• •Crazy Republicans, Democracy, Ethics, Fake patriotism, Gun violence, Human rights, politics, Safety, Security
Republicans at every level of government have blood on their hands for U.S. gun massacres
by 19 Comments
• •Another day, another gun massacre.
Still Republican legislators don’t even lift a finger to address it. “Thoughts and prayers” is their only response, since it holds off action on the insane proliferation of guns in this country, and blocks discussion of what can be done about mass gun violence in the U.S.
There is only one reason why gun massacres are now a common occurrence: America is awash in guns. It’s way too easy to get guns, even extremely dangerous ones, and it has been for far too long. People can legally amass entire arsenals. The colossal number of guns washing around in the U.S. compared to other countries makes it extremely easy for anyone with even the most petty grievance to use a gun to settle a perceived score by killing people en masse.
And that’s exactly what is happening.
Corruption, Crazy Republicans, Democracy, Equal rights, Ethics, Extremism, politics, Propaganda, Religion, Separation of Church and State, Trump Insanity, Women
Read the fine print: Republican “tax reform” bill injects religious dogma into the tax code
by 21 Comments
• •You don’t typically think of a tax reform bill as a vehicle to push a religious agenda onto the rest of the country, but Trump’s “tax reform” bill does exactly that.
Buried deep inside the Republicans’ proposed “tax reform” bill is a provision conferring rights on “unborn children,” which the bill defines as “a child in utero…a member of the species Homo Sapiens, at any stage of development.” The provision appears on page 93 of the 429-page bill, in a section amending the rules on “529 plans,” which are tax-free investment accounts that allow families to save for a child’s college education. People have long been able to set up 529 plans for children that don’t yet exist, but changing the wording of the law intentionally enshrines recognition of the unborn into federal law, something anti-abortion activists and supporters of fetal “personhood” have long sought to do.
Consumer advocacy, Democracy, Environment, Grassroots advocacy, politics, Safety, Weird Grand Junction Stuff
If you had your say, where would City of Grand Junction taxpayer dollars go?
by 3 Comments
• •Consumer advocacy, Corporations, Economics, Energy
XCel will raise your gas rates every year for the next three years unless you say something NOW!
by 2 Comments
• •This is really short notice, but if money is tight in your household you need to know that the Colorado Public Utilities Commission (PUC) is holding a meeting tonight at the Mesa County Public Library to solicit public comments on a proposal by Xcel Energy (pdf) to raise natural gas rates by $139 million over the next three years.
The public comment hearing is today, November 2, at the Mesa County Central Library, 443 N. 6th St., in Grand Junction starting at 4 p.m. and continuing until 7 p.m. You can drop in any time during those hours, or submit comments by snailmail or email.
Economics, Elections, Lobbying, politics
AnneLandmanBlog Voter Guide, 2017
by 2 Comments
• •Following are AnneLandmanBlog’s recommendations on how to vote on this November’s Mesa County ballot (pdf). I’ve spent quite a bit of time researching the issues, listening to all the candidates, reading their websites, following the money spent on the ballot issues and researching both pro and con arguments on the tax measures. As a result, I have come to the following conclusions. A discussion of my thoughts on each vote follows the recommendations:
Children, Crazy Republicans, Economics, Education, Grand Junction Chamber, politics, Religion, Separation of Church and State
The Grand Junction Area Chamber, a master of contradiction
by 1 Comment
• •Consumer advocacy, Corruption, Democracy, Deplorables, Ethics, politics, Security, Trump Insanity
Tipton and Gardner vote to end consumers’ right to sue when big banks steal from them
by 17 Comments
• •Why is the stock market zooming up so high?
Because the Trump administration is gutting consumer protections, most notably against the big banks, so the banks can more freely commit fraud and fleece customers like you and me without being held accountable.
Republicans just voted to end consumer protection rules that ban banks from forcing people into arbitration after banks defraud them. The rule strips Americans of their right to go to court to get justice against fraudulent activity, theft and other wrongdoing by big banks.
Democracy, Deplorables, Ethics, Extremism, politics
AZ Senator Jeff Flake’s bombshell speech about Republicans’ “complicity in this alarming and dangerous state of affairs” with Trump as U.S. President
by 7 Comments
• •Arizona’s Republican Senator Jeff Flake made a hair-raising speech on the Senate floor today, announcing he will not run for re-election and declaring he “will no longer be complicit or silent” in the face of President Trump’s “reckless, outrageous and undignified” behavior.
Now, ten months into his presidency, Trump has shown stalwarts of his own political party as well as the rest of the nation that he is unfit to lead the country.
The question now is, what can we do about it?
Following is the full text of Senator Flake’s bombshell speech:
Activism, Diane Schwenke, Elections, Ethics, Grand Junction Chamber, Grassroots advocacy, politics, Weird Grand Junction Stuff
Sentinel wrongly blames citizens for North Avenue name change “imbroglio”
by 18 Comments
• •In an op-ed in today’s Daily Sentinel, the paper blames KeepNorth4Ever — the citizen group lobbying to keep “North Avenue” from becoming “University Boulevard” — for turning the issue into an “imbrolgio,” saying they failed to pay adequate attention to local government. The op-ed also blames KeepNorth4Ever for “sowing division” in the community by their activities.
The paper’s narrow, sour-grapes style viewpoint misses the bigger picture and places blame when instead plaudits are due.