Category: Economics

Democracy, Economics, Elections, Environment, Legal marijuana, New marijuana economy

Retail Marijuana Coming to DeBeque

by Anne Landman • April 3, 2014 • 0 Comments

The new marijuana economy crept a bit closer to Grand Junction this week, after the citizens of DeBeque, Colorado, just 25 miles east of Grand Junction, voted to approve the sale of retail pot.

DeBeque’s election is an object lesson for everyone who thinks their vote won’t count.

DeBeque has just over 500 residents. Of the 234 ballots sent out, 165 were cast. Of those, 69 were in favor of retail marijuana and 65 against. The measure won by just four votes.

DeBeque’s Town Clerk, Shirley Nichols, reports the election went smoothly, with no questionable ballots.

So, in DeBeque’s case, just four voters indisputably made Colorado history.

Hey, man, but isn’t retail pot illegal in Mesa County?

Amendment 64 legalized recreational use of marijuana throughout the state, but the law allows cities and counties to opt out of permitting retail marijuana commerce within their borders.

In August, 2013, Mesa County’s three Commissioners — Rose Pugliese, John Justman and Steve Aquafresca — unilaterally passed an ordinance banning retail marijuana commerce (pdf) in the county, but the measure only bans retail pot in unincorporated areas of the county. Incorporated cities and towns can make their own choice, so DeBeque, an incorporated town, can do whatever it wants.

And it did.

Interestingly, DeBeque citizens voted down a medical marijuana question in November, 2012. That measure failed by about 13 or 14 votes. So what’s changed since then?

Pot Culture Comes to Grand Junction Despite City and County Bans

by Anne Landman • March 20, 2014 • 1 Comment

Discontent's giant jobbing Bong Guy greets tourists driving into Grand Junction off of I-70B. Art was a creation of their employee Kyle O'Connor.

Discontent’s giant skateboarding, stoned Bong Guy greets tourists driving into Grand Junction off of I-70B. Art was created by their employee Kyle O’Connor.

Try as they may, the Grand Junction City Council, Mesa County Commissioners and even Diane Cox haven’t been able to stop the pot culture from seeping into Grand Junction. It’s starting to show up everywhere these days, despite city and county-wide bans on retail marijuana commerce.

Roasted Espresso and Subs on 5th Street and Colorado Avenue, the coolest coffee bar in town, now offers to add cannabis seeds to any item for $1.50. Shelled cannabis seeds contain a high amount of protein and nutrients like iron, vitamin B and calcium. Reader’s Digest calls them “super seeds” and says they are a “great source of complete protein and omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids. Cannabis seeds also contain phytosterols, plant-based compounds that help lower cholesterol levels.” The THC content of seeds is almost nonexistent.

Discontent at First Street and North Avenue — a high-visibility location at the west entrance to town — bills itself as a “lifestyle store for the counter-culture” and sells a wide selection of pipes, rolling papers, vaporizers, water pipes and other accessories. The quality of their selection of glass art bongs is so magnificent it’s hard to imagine actually using them to smoke. Discontent also carries skateboarding accessories, Van’s sneakers and clothing for the younger set, but they report their clientele has a wide age range. They had one customer who was 85 years old. (Discontent checks date of birth on customers’ IDs.) Discontent is now sporting a huge picture of a stoned, skateboarding bong-guy with bloodshot eyes on its front window.

Tourists coming in off I-70 stop in at Discontent to ask directions to the Colorado National Monument, but the store manager reports the most frequent question from tourists is “Where are the recreational pot shops?” Unfortunately, Discontent must direct them out of town to Rifle, Ridgway or Carbondale, where retail recreational marijuana stores are permitted, to spend their cash. Discontent has been so successful in its current location that they are planning to open a second store in Glenwood Springs, one of the places that has also allowed retail MJ sales. Locals can only watch helplessly as cash-laden pot tourists drive straight through town without stopping and head to points beyond to spend their money.

Denver County Fair Adds New Category: Marijuana

by Anne Landman • January 29, 2014 • 0 Comments

Poster advertising the 2014 Denver County Fair

In November, 2012, by a vote of 55 to 44 percent, Colorado approved Amendment 64, which legalized recreational use of marijuana. As a result, Colorado is now hosting a booming new pot industry, and this year the Denver County Fair will include a new agricultural category: marijuana. Nine newly-added contests will include judging for highest quality pot plants (done on appearance, not on THC content, and through the submission of photos only), best marijuana-infused brownies and savory foods, best handmade bongs and roach clips, and clothing and fabrics made from hemp. There will also be a joint-rolling competition, done with oregano.

Denver County’s first fair was held in 2011, and with its new-age urban chic culture and little agriculture within its borders, it departs from the typical county fair in notable ways. One of these differences is it’s mission. The Denver County Fair bills itself as 21st century place to share ideas and creativity, celebrate diversity, local culture and intellect. (Yes, intellect at a county fair.) Besides marijuana judging, events include a best tattoo contest, a sopapilla toss, a speed texting competition, a human chicken contest, a Geek Pavilion, speed knitting, the “Corpses and Crowns” Zombie Beauty Pageant, trick pigs, pie on a stick, an X-Treme pancake breakfast with a choice of over 60 different toppings like artichokes and gummy worms. There’s even a drag queen contest.

The National Cannabis Industry Association recently reported that Colorado’s new recreational cannabis industry made “well over $5 million in sales in the first five days” of its operation in January, 2014. The financial boon for the state is leaving marijuana purveyors stuffing their mattresses full of cash, since banks refuse to deal with marijuana-related businesses out of concern that processing money from marijuana sales could put them at risk of incurring federal charges of drug racketeering, since marijuana remains illegal at the federal level.

Advertising, Consumer advocacy, Economics, Energy

Shoot Out with High Noon Solar

by Anne Landman • January 4, 2014 • 0 Comments

Thinking of getting solar panels installed on your house or office? Great! Just don’t let your solar company rush you into a deal, and make sure they calculate the size of your system based on the correct power consumption data from your building. Any error will cost you for decades.

That’s our advice after having had a bad experience dealing with Grand Junction’s High Noon Solar. In their zeal to rush us into a soon-to-expire lease deal, High Noon miscalculated the size of power system we’d need. Now we’re stuck with a system that’s too small to offset our power bills to the extent that High Noon promised.

Lawsuit Filed Against Grand Junction Regional Airport Authority

by Anne Landman • December 20, 2013 • 2 Comments

Updated December 22, 2013

Gregg Palmer, former mayor of Grand Junction, served on the airport board during the time the FBI is questioning for fraud. Palmer is currently running for Mesa County Commissioner.

Gregg Palmer, owner of Brown’s Shoe Fit on Main Street and a former mayor of Grand Junction, served on the Airport Board during the time the FBI is investigating for fraud. Palmer is currently running for Mesa County Commissioner.

A lawsuit (pdf) was filed against the Grand Junction Regional Airport Authority and its former director December 18, 2013, by a former employee of the airport. Former Grand Junction Mayor Bill Pitts, who has knowledge of the case, appeared at a small gathering of local citizens at a bagel shop on Main Street Friday morning, December 20, to talk about the case.

Asked about the fraud at the heart of the case, Pitts explained part of it involves the long, black, electrified security fence constructed on three sides of the airport in 2011. The fence hurt airport-related businesses economically, forcing them to close or relocate. Pitts pointed out that a fault in the fence project is that it exists on only three sides of the airport, leaving an entire two-mile stretch along the north edge of the airport unprotected. When former airport manager Rex Tippets filled out a form required for the fencing project, Pitts said, there were numerous boxes that needed to be checked. One of them asked “Will any of the public be affected by the fence?,” and Tippets answered “No.” Despite how the public was affected by it, Pitts said no public hearing about the fence was ever held.

Grand Junction Chamber of Commerce Blows It Again

by Anne Landman • November 29, 2013 • 0 Comments

Photo of Chamber Board meeting at a lodge in Utah, printed in the Daily Sentinel.

The Grand Junction (Colorado) Area Chamber of Commerce urges citizens to shop local and “put their hard-earned dollars to work right here in your community.” Its “Blue Bandwagon Shop Local” campaign points out that patronizing local businesses helps create jobs in our area. In its full page ad in the November 25 Daily Sentinel, the chamber posted results from a “Shop Local Survey” and said that “85% [of business respondents] thought it was significantly or very important for the Chamber to promote shopping locally.”

Okay, great.

But directly beneath the “Shop Local” survey is a photo of Grand Junction Chamber Board members attending their “annual advance” meeting at “the beautiful Red Cliffs Lodge in Moab,” UTAH — an establishment not just out of the area, but clean out of the state.

List of Non-Chamber Member Businesses Grows

by Anne Landman • November 2, 2013 • 0 Comments

Mesa County citizens: Have you had enough of the Grand Junction Area Chamber of Commerce’s overbearing political antics, fake programs and bullying and intimidating of citizens? Do you need a pet groomer, mechanic or CPA? Plumber electrician or dentist? Do you want to vote with your wallet and avoid patronizing businesses that belong to the chamber when you do your holiday shopping this year? Check out the large and growing list of businesses that do not belong to the Chamber now posted at GJChamber.info. It now contains over 500 businesses, the majority of which are truly locally-owned small businesses, so the money you spend at these places will stay in our area, rebound many times over and really help boost our local economy: List of Non-Chamber-Member Businesses

Consumer advocacy, Corporations, Corruption, Economics, Front groups, politics, Propaganda

G.J. Chamber Ignores the Single Biggest Business Issue Around: the Government Shutdown

by Anne Landman • October 12, 2013 • 0 Comments

The Grand Junction Area Chamber of Commerce took the time to endorse school board candidates in a what is supposed to be a nonpartisan race, but hasn’t publicly advocated against the single biggest issue hurting businesses large and small in western Colorado right now: the government shutdown. The Colorado National Monument is closed, negatively impacting tourism and hospitality businesses. Major events scheduled to be held on BLM land have been canceled. The shutdown is hurting the local real estate industry, federal employees are furloughed, disabled veterans are preparing to lose their benefits, women on the WIC program are facing a loss of funding to feed their infants and news story after local news story has been covering the pain the shutdown is causing local businesses. But where is the Chamber on this issue? Have they contacted their House Representative to demand an end to the shutdown? They haven’t said. Have they issued a position statement on it? Not that anyone has heard. Their October newsletter doesn’t even mention the shutdown. No press releases, no news alerts, no advocacy to stop it. Why is the Chamber MIA on the government shutdown? Could it be another indicator that the Chamber is, in fact, a partisan political group rather than a pro-business group?

Economics, Elections

Glenwood Springs Approves Retail Sale of Recreational Marijuana

by Anne Landman • October 9, 2013 • 0 Comments

The Glenwood Springs, Colorado, City Council has approved retail sales of recreational marijuana, and will soon start working on devising rules for licensing retail vendors. Glenwood Springs Mayor Leo McKinney said, “There’s a sentiment on my council that we don’t like to see government get in the way of business, no matter what the business is.” Currently, a quarter of the medical marijuana business in Glenwood comes from Grand Junction and Mesa County. The Grand Junction City Council and Mesa County Commissioners have voted to ban retail sales of recreational marijuana. The Grand Junction Area Chamber of Commerce opposed Amendment 64, which legalized recreational use of marijuana state-wide, but has not offered the community an update on where they stand now that the measure’s passage is starting to create a new industry and generate new jobs and public revenue in Colorado. The Glenwood Springs Chamber of Commerce Board opposed Amendment 64, has not changed their position opposing recreational use of marijuana, and,according to Glenwood Chamber President Marianne Virgili, does not plan to revisit the issue any time soon.

Main Source: KREX-TV Grand Junction, October 9, 2013

Advertising, Corporations, Economics, Marketing, Pharmaceutical, Tobacco

Legal Marijuana and Big Tobacco

by Anne Landman • September 5, 2013 • 0 Comments

Will this soon be the new reality in Colorado and Washington?

Recreational use of marijuana is now legal in Colorado and Washington state. People can possess up to an ounce of marijuana and smoke it on private property without fear of legal punishment. Tobacco companies predicted this moment would come and have been preparing for liberalized marijuana laws since the last cultural shift occurred around pot in the 1970s.

Notes from a 1976 “Problem Laboratory” (brainstorming) session of Lorillard Tobacco Company’s advertising employees in April 1976 mention marijuana. Members of the group were encouraged to present their goals and wishes in the form of “How To” and “I wish” statements. Participants were instructed to come up all kinds of ideas, even ones that were illegal, immoral or non-feasible (all of which makes this document particularly fascinating and insightful). With all need to appear decent and moral removed, these employees were able to express their most sincere and ambitious wishes and desires for their products:

In Session #1 participants were asked to identify ways to give smokers more perceived value in their cigarettes. Ideas expressed by the group included Idea #38: “How to have a cigarette with MJ [marijuana] added to it.” While we’re there, other entertaining items include Idea #50: “How to make it so addictive: one cigarette and you’ve got him for life,” and (#51), “How to have a cigarette specifically for children (sparkler additive candy).” Even more: “How to have an aphrodisiac [in cigarettes],” “How to make cigarettes more like Linus’ blanket,” and “How [to use cigarettes to] deliver birth control (for men).”

Tea Party Links to Tobacco Industry Uncovered

by Anne Landman • February 8, 2013 • 2 Comments

Excerpt from a Tobacco Manufacturers Association summary of tobacco-related activities in the western hemisphere, January, 20000

Rather than being a purely grassroots movement that arose spontaneously in 2009 as the media has led people to believe, the Tea Party developed partly as a result of tobacco industry efforts to oppose smoking restrictions and tobacco taxes beginning in the 1980s, according to a new study by researchers at UC San Francisco. In 2002, long before the mainstream media widely discussed tea party politics, Citizens for a Sound Economy (CSE), a nonprofit funded in part by cigarette companies since 1987 to support a pro-tobacco political agenda, started its “US Tea Party project.” Its website, http://www.usteaparty.com, stated “Our US Tea Party is a national event, hosted continuously online and open to all Americans who feel our taxes are too high and the tax code is too complicated.’’ In 2004, CSE split into the two tea party organizations: Americans for Prosperity (AFP) and FreedomWorks. Those two groups, say the study authors, have since waged campaigns to turn public opinion against tobacco taxes, smoke-free laws and health care reform in general. “If you look at CSE, AFP and Freedom Works, you will see a number of the same key players, strategies and messages going back to the 1980s,” said lead author Amanda Fallin, PhD, RN, also a CTCRE fellow. “The records indicate that the Tea Party has been shaped by the tobacco industry, and is not a spontaneous grassroots movement at all.”

Grassroots Group Succeeds in Peeling Away Heartland Institute’s Funding

by Anne Landman • January 20, 2013 • 0 Comments

Screen shot 2013-01-20 at 11.48.55 AM A group called Forecast the Facts is leading a campaign to peel away corporate funders who give money the Heartland Institute, a prominent think tank that has been a leader in the effort to deny climate science. Heartland is known for its harsh and divisive anti-climate change PR tactics, like running cringe-inducing billboards along major highways that liken people who believe in climate change to mass murderers like Charles Manson and the Unabomber, Ted Kaczyinski. The Heartland Institute has flourished through funding from large corporations and industries that have a stake in climate change denial, including ExxonMobil, The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Murray Energy Corporation, Altria/Philip Morris, Microsoft, General Motors and biotech companies like Amgen and Bayer. Forecast the Facts’ grassroots effort to peel away funders looks like it’s paying off, too. The group calculated Heartland’s corporate and trade association funding for 2012 based on the amounts Heartland projected they would take in in their 2012 fundraising plan. Of $2.3 million in projected funding, Forecast the Facts has succeeded in getting corporations to withdraw $1.3 million, leaving about $990,000 remaining. More than 150,000 people have weighed in with various corporations through the project and urged them to pull their funding from Heartland. On its website, Forecast the Facts lists Heartland’s remaining corporate funders, the approximate amount the companies donate to the think tank, and phone numbers at each corporation that people can call to ask the company to stop funding Heartland.

Advertising, Consumer advocacy, Corporations, Economics, Ethics, Grassroots advocacy, Human rights, International, Lies, Marketing, Media

Expedia Uses its Clout to Crush Small, Independent Hotels

by Anne Landman • December 31, 2012 • 1 Comment

The owners of the Luna Blue Hotel on Mexico’s Caribbean coast reveal their experience with Expedia’s strong-arm tactics to try and ruin their business and push travelers to book at more bigger, more lucrative properties that have a more favorable relationship with the site.

Years ago, Tony and Cheri quit their jobs, left their lives in the U.S. and risked their entire life savings to pursue their dream of operating a small hotel on Mexico’s Caribbean coast. Their quaint, 18-room place, the Luna Blue Hotel, took some hits from the swine flu scare and state-side reports of central Mexico’s drug wars, but the couple vowed to hold on and get through it somehow. During that lean time, a representative of the powerhouse travel website Expedia approached the couple and offered to help them recover some of their lost business by listing their place on Expedia. The couple agreed it might be a good idea to list with the site, and signed on as an Expedia “partner.”

But almost immediately the relationship turned sour.

Look for This: Rounding on Restaurant Checks

by Anne Landman • December 30, 2012 • 0 Comments

penny2 Next time you dine out, take a close look at your check. Restaurants are starting to round the pennies on customers’ bills up or down, usually to the nearest nickel, to avoid having to deal with pennies. Chipoltle restaurants were caught doing this without notifying customers, and when customers noticed the practice and expressed irritation, the chain added a line on the bill titled “rounding” to openly account for the missing change. They also started rounding down in diners’ favor.

Apparently it’s worth it.

Restaurateurs say rounding speeds up finalizing bills and eliminates the hassle and expense of dealing with pennies, which are quickly becoming passe’. After all, pennies are now so worthless that people drop them all the time and don’t even bother to pick them up. Some businesses cope with the penny problem with “take a penny, leave a penny” jars, but many are just throwing up their hands and declaring they are done dealing with pennies altogether.

Hostess Fleeced its Workers, Showered Execs with Extra Cash

by Anne Landman • December 13, 2012 • 0 Comments

The Hostess Corporation, not labor unions, killed Twinkies through corporate greed.

Hostess Brands publicly blamed its workers’ union for forcing it out of business, but now Hostess CEO Gregory Rayburn has admitted to the Wall Street Journal that the company had been quietly ripping off its own workers. Hostess took money out of workers’ paychecks that was supposed to go towards their pensions and put it towards company operations instead, Rayburn admitted. Rayburn said the company was not under his management when those diversions occurred. During its dispute with the union, Hostess pressured employees to take another pay cut ostensibly due to financial difficulties, but in November, 2012 — while the company was undergoing bankruptcy filing — Hostess asked a judge to allow it pay out $1.8 million in bonuses to 19 of its top executives. The judge approved the bonuses, but did not, however, include any bonus pay for Rayburn, who was already being paid $125,000 a month, nor did the company seek any bonuses for its factory or other non-executive-level workers. The story that the union was responsible for tanking the Twinkie maker, then, is a myth designed to cast labor unions in a bad light.

Main source: Huffington Post, December 10, 2012

Corruption, Economics, Equal rights, Ethics, Ethnic/Minority, politics, Religion, Secularism

The City of Grand Junction, Colorado’s Shameful End-Run Around the Constitution

by Anne Landman • December 12, 2012 • 5 Comments

Grand Junction’s Ten Commandments tablet, donated in 1959 by the Fraternal Order of Eagles, which only admits people who believe in God.

Anyone who thinks that electing narrow-minded people to city councils in small American towns doesn’t get expensive, think again. The parochial minds of just five elected city council members in the town of Grand Junction, Colorado cost city taxpayers $64,000 and led to the creation of a big, permanent public reminder on City Hall grounds of how they spent that huge sum to evade the law and collectively thumb their nose at the U.S. Constitution.

It all started in 1959, when the City of Grand Junction accepted a gift from the Fraternal Order of Eagles (FOE), a do-good civic group that restricts its membership only to people who believe in God. The gift was a stone tablet engraved with the Ten Commandments, a religious symbol commanding people to worship God, which City officials installed on City Hall grounds. There it sat, little-noticed, for the next fifty years, its presence often obscured by mature landscaping. All that changed in 2000, when the City put the finishing touches on construction of a new City Hall building and relocated the Ten Commandments to a much more visible location on the grounds.

The tablet’s more prominent location made it more noticeable, and some local citizens also finally happened to notice the Constitutional violation it represented. As a result, in April, 2001 five local citizens and the American Civil Liberties Union sued the City over the monument, asking them to remove it because it made members of minority religious groups, nonbelievers and community political outsiders feel unwelcome. The plaintiffs also contended it represented a government establishment of religion.

Time for GOP to Dump Norquist, Handmaiden of Cigarette Companies

by Anne Landman • November 27, 2012 • 0 Comments

Grover Norquist and his group, Americans for Tax Reform, have long lobbied for tobacco industry interests — earning huge payouts from RJR and Philip Morris

Op-Ed

Grover Norquist, who for decades has been the patron saint of anti-tax sentiment for Republicans, is fast losing relevance as Republicans finally start to grasp that the only way America can get out of its fiscal mess is to raise taxes. Legislators are starting to see that their allegiance must be to the United States of America and its people, and not to Grover Norquist. But for GOP legislators, leaving Norquist behind will be one of the best things they can do to help get some credibility back with the American public. By pledging their allegiance to Norquist for so many years, Republicans have put stock in one of the most reliable allies of one of the world’s most reviled industries: the tobacco industry. Previously-secret tobacco industry documents show Norquist and his group Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) have for decades been highly dependable allies to Big Tobacco. Norquist was always at the cigarette makers’ beck and call whenever they needed him. As ATR president, Norquist annually sought and received hundreds of thousands of dollars from Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds to support the companies’ agenda of low cigarette and corporate taxes. In return for the big bucks, Norquist offered his organization up as a conduit for tobacco industry lobbying. Norquist figured prominently in Philip Morris’ quiet, internal 1995 “Get Government Off Our Back” project, in which the cigarette maker secretly created a phony “grassroots” group, to push to “shift government’s priorities” off regulating business. In 1999, Norquist helped cigarette makers fight President Clinton’s proposal to add a one dollar tax on cigarettes to fund health care. Norquist was cast as a “core ally” in Philip Morris’ efforts to enact “tort reform” to block people’s access to the courts. Norquist helped defend cigarette makers against the Department of Justice’s 1999 Lawsuit in which the industry was found guilty of perpetrating five decades of fraud against the American people. Philip Morris’ law firm of Covington and Burling even secretly took the privilege of drafting letters to government agencies, like FDA, that Norquist could sign so they would appear to be from ATR and not a tobacco company.

Walmart Workers Tell the Real Stories of Working at Walmart

by Anne Landman • November 24, 2012 • 0 Comments

Walmart employees have embarked on an effort to bring more respect, better pay and improved working conditions to all Walmart workers. Their group, Organization United for Respect at Walmart, or OURWalmart, has a website, ForRespect.org, lists exactly what employees want from Walmart. They want every employee to get a company policy manual and assurance that the company will enforce its policies equally without discrimination. They want full time work and wages and benefits high enough so they won’t have to depend on government assistance to survive. They seek dependable, predictable work schedules, and affordable health insurance. Walmart workers report that Walmart has been retaliating against workers who speak out about their low wages, unsafe working conditions and other issues they have with the company, and workers want the freedom to speak their mind without retaliation. OURWalmart also started a second website, WalmartAt50.org, to get a jump on the one-sided spin they expect the company to churn out about their anniversary. The site commemorates Walmart’s 50th anniversary by allowing Walmart “associates” to share stories of how they are treated at work, the difficulties they have in trying to advance within the company and what it’s like to try to live on Walmart’s super-low wages. The site also allows community members and owners of small businesses to post stories about how Walmart has impacted their living standards. Walmart workers and customers alike can share their stories on the site, and can upload photos. The site maintains that Walmart’s business model has dragged down the middle class and been bad for America. Their slogan is “Change Walmart to Rebuild America.” The site says that the “America Walmart helped to create isn’t working for most of us.”

Page 8 of 10

« 1 … 6 7 8 9 10 »