Andrea Haitz, District 51 School Board President
Some people have asked where they can read the text of the petition to recall District 51 School Board President Andrea Haitz.
You can read the entire petition here.
Red Flag Law talk flier
The League of Women Voters and Grand Valley Interfaith network will be co-sponsoring a free talk, “Understanding Colorado’s Red Flag Law,” on Monday, May 22, 2023 at 7:00 p.m. at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation, 536 Ouray Ave. The featured speaker will be Tom Mauser of Colorado Ceasefire, whose son, Daniel Mauser, was murdered in the Columbine High School shooting on April 20, 1999.
District 51 School Board President Andrea Haitz
The committee leading the Recall Andrea Haitz effort is looking for volunteers to help in circulating petitions and collecting voter signatures in support of the recall. A launch event is planned for Saturday, May 13th at 9:00 A.M in Lincoln Park.
A short (~15 minute) training session will be provided for all circulators, as well as information regarding prime locations and upcoming events for circulating. Water, snacks, and shade will also be provided. The launch event will conclude at 2:00 P.M, although any volunteer who has been trained may circulate their petition(s) at any time they desire until July 11th.
“We need the passion and the investment of our local community to help achieve a brighter future for our children, and ensure transparency in our schooling system. Join the Recall Andrea Haitz effort and meet your neighbors and fellow community members in Lincoln Park to learn how to fight for a great cause!” says Charley Allen.
Please reach out to tyrus@bestslopepublicaffairs.com with any questions.
…or contact Charley Allan, cell: 970-623-3179
The long-established Blue Pig Art Gallery in Palisade features quality art by local artists
Something’s going on at The Blue Pig Art Gallery at 101 W. Third Street in Palisade.
In January of this year, Darin Carei sold the building and the gallery to Charles and Heather Nowak for $1,135,000.
Things seemed pretty normal for awhile after the sale, with great local art continuing to be on display and art classes being offered in the building.
But things took a grim turn last Friday, when the new owners suddenly fired longtime Gallery director Kay Anglim Crane and the Gallery’s longtime bookkeeper, Sue Keddy.
After hosting two internal planning meetings and circulating emails (pdf) in which Grand Junction Community Development personnel warned the City faces a “really big surge” and “exponential growth” in the number of homeless people, and that the number of homeless kids in School District 51 is “staggering,” City Manager Greg Caton suddenly pulled the plug on a planned third meeting about homelessness, without any explanation why.
This left advocates for the homeless greatly concerned.
Crowd gathering in front of the old courthouse before the 2019 Womens March in downtown Grand Junction
Fifty years to the day after the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade made abortion a constitutional right, a march will be held locally in Grand Junction to demand that federal protections for abortion not only be restored, but be made even better than Roe allowed.
Last June (2022), the far-right Republican majority now sitting on the U.S. Supreme Court stunned the country when it reversed 50 years of precedent in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling, invalidating Roe v Wade. The ruling end Americans’ federally-protected right to obtain an abortion. It was the first time the Supreme Court has ever taken away a fundamental constitutional protection from people in the United States of America.
First 5 minutes of a 55 minute talk Lauren Boebert gave on September 9, where she was introduced as a Member of Congress
At a September 9, 2022 speech at the Truth and Liberty Coalition conference in Woodland Park — the same appearance where she confused the word “wanton” as in “wanton killing” with the word for the Chinese dumpling, the announcer introduced Lauren Boebert in her official capacity as a Member of Congress. But during her talk, Boebert talked less about policy and government and acted and spoke exactly like a televangelist preacher, strutting back and forth across the stage, invoking the apocalypse with lines like “we are in the last of the last days.” She urged her audience to “rise up and take our place in Christ and influence this nation as we were called to do,” adding, “you get to have a role in the second coming of Jesus! How cool is that?”
David Wheeler
David B. Wheeler of American Muckrakers Political Action Committee (PAC), filed a defamation lawsuit (pdf) against Lauren Boebert in North Carolina on October 5.
Wheeler, who operates the nonprofit PAC, alleges Boebert made false statements about him on national radio and TV news shows in retaliation for his opposing her re-election by releasing factual information about her to the press and media. Wheeler states his PAC suffered a 92% decrease in revenue after Boebert made the false statements about him.
Among other things, Wheeler says Boebert defamed him on the nationally-broadcast Sean Hannity show, saying he had called her a “drug addict” and a “prostitute,” and that Wheeler had made death threats against her. Wheeler says none of that is true.
Are you looking for a rewarding job that will give you a way to help people and make big difference in their lives?
Cobalt Advocates is looking to hire two to three more organizers on the western slope.
Cobalt operates the Cobalt Abortion Fund, a dedicated abortion fund that helps people cover the cost and manage the logistics of getting an abortion, like transportation, lodging and child care. The Cobalt Abortion fund is 100% donor-funded, and it is the only independent fund of its kind in Colorado.
Cobalt’s goal is to make sure no one has to endure any financial or logistical burdens when it comes to abortion.
This political map shows how the Grand Valley vote has changed since the 2016 election. Every single area on the valley floor has trended towards being more Democratic. If we can keep the trend going, we can finally stop electing embarrassing, unethical, unqualified, costly and irrational candidates who lie and commit crimes while in office, like Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters.
Mesa County Democrats will gather for a big canvassing event September 10th and are asking everyone’s help to get the word out about which state and local candidates belong to the only remaining political party that deals in reality.
House Rep. Lauren Boebert
Republican Colorado House Rep. Lauren Boebert may tell you she stands for freedom, but she is actually working to undermine your freedom.
A recent case in point: on July 21, 2022, Boebert voted against House Bill 8373, the “Right to Contraception Act.”
After the Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade in June and Clarence Thomas threatened to reconsider other privacy issues including the right to contraception, Democrat Kathy Manning of North Carolina introduced the Right to Contraception Act, to “protect a person’s ability to access contraceptives and to engage in contraception, and to protect a health care provider’s ability to provide contraceptives, contraception, and information related to contraception.”
Who doesn’t want to be assured they will have the personal freedom to learn about, access and use contraceptives as they see fit?
Lauren Boebert and 194 other House Republicans, that’s who. Only eight House Republicans who voted for the bill.
You can read the full text of the Right to Contraception Act here.
Fortunately, House Democrats advanced the bill to the Senate.
If you love freedom, it’s crucial to vote Democratic up and down the next ballot, since we now have a Christian activist Supreme Court that is taking action to restrict Americans’ rights in accordance with their own personal religious beliefs.
But if you want to be assured removal of more of your personal rights and freedoms, vote Republican.
Speaking to an audience at the Cornerstone Christian Center in Basalt on June 26, 2022 — two days before the primary election — House Rep. Lauren Boebert called for America to become a theocracy, a system of government in which the church directs the government.
Strutting back and forth across the stage like a televangelist, Boebert told the audience,
“The church is supposed to direct the government. The government is not supposed to direct the church. That is not how our founding fathers intended it. And I’m tired of this separation of church and state junk. That’s not the Constitution. It was in a stinking letter and it means nothing like what they say.”
Three of the new, Republican-appointed Supreme Court justices intentionally misled the Senate and the public during their confirmation hearings about their intent to overturn Roe V. Wade, the 1973 ruling that established a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion. Among the three judges who were dishonest was Coloradan Neil Gorsuch.
The Court’s ruling ended the 50 year-old established constitutional right of American women to determine their own futures with regard to child rearing, and gives states the ability to enact laws that force women to remain pregnant against their will. The ruling effectively imposes extremist right wing Christian religious beliefs upon half the country, and instantly creates two classes of people: one class fortunate enough to live in states that protect people’s right to make decisions about their own pregnancies and child-rearing, and a second class in the other states with no such protections, with laws in place that force females to carry all pregnancies to term, no matter a woman’s age, health, emotional or economic circumstances, how many children she already has, or whether she wants to be pregnant or not.
Sherronna Bishop in January, 2022
Notorious Garfield County election fraud conspiracist Sherronna Bishop and her husband, Neil, sold their home in Silt in early May and moved to Texas, where Bishop now stars in her own “Americas Mom” video and audio talk shows three times a week on Mike Lindell’s alt-tech streaming platform, FrankSpeech.com.
Political extremists are increasingly turning to small alt-tech platforms like FrankSpeech.com after being banned from broadcast television and major social media services like Facebook and Twitter for continually lying to the public, promoting false information and fringe political views.
In late May 2022, Oklahoma once again passed the nation’s worst abortion ban, making it the first state to effectively end women’s right to have an abortion, and making this article, that I first published on May 20, 2019, even more relevant.
Oklahoma Republicans just passed a mind-blowingly strict law that makes abortion illegal in virtually every circumstance, effectively terminating the right of women in the state to control their own bodies and reproductive fate.
Oklahoma wasn’t alone in this, either. Other Republican-dominated states are also enacting extremely strict laws that effectively make abortion illegal, with some banning the procedure as soon as a fetal heartbeat is detected.
Republicans base these laws on their belief that a fetus is a fully legal person entitled to all the rights and privileges that all legal American citizens enjoy.
But if actually put into effect, what do these beliefs really portend for life in America?
Lauren Boebert, shown at upper left in a 2019 Facebook post, holding the same flag flown by right wing extremists who stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021
The New York Times is reporting that the State of Colorado will investigate allegations of campaign finance fraud by CO House Rep. Lauren Boebert involving her excessive 2020 mileage reimbursements and subsequent payoff of multiple outstanding tax liens on her restaurant, Shooters Grill, in Rifle, CO.
In 2020, then-candidate Rep. Boebert reimbursed herself from her campaign fund for over $30,000 worth of mileage that she claimed to have traveled between April and November of 2020, during the pandemic, and then appeared to have used the funds to pay off tax liens against her Rifle, CO restaurant. The number of miles she claims to have driven was enough to circumnavigate the globe 1.5 times.
The national student-led group March For Our Lives will hold a local rally Saturday, June 11, from 10:00 a.m.-11:30 a.m. at the Old Mesa County Courthouse at 6th and Rood to demand legislators enact policy measures to reduce the epidemic of gun massacres now gripping America. The rally will feature local youth and adult speakers and a march through downtown Grand Junction and more.
The national progressive group OurRevolution, named after a book by Sen. Bernie Sanders, is planning a local rally at Rep. Lauren Boebert’s Grand Junction office on Horizon Drive to urge Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold to disqualify Boebert from being on the Colorado ballot by applying Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which says:
No Person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
