There is no doubt left on the matter of prayer at School District 51 graduation ceremonies: School-sponsored prayers are not permitted at District 51 graduation ceremonies.
Some parents this year objected to prayers being included in Palisade High Schools’ graduation ceremony, and rightly so.
It violated federal law, and school district policy.
Tipton voted against letting babies get health insurance immediately upon birth, to allow the parents time to prove their baby’s citizenship.
Republican House Representative Scott Tipton, who represents Colorado’s western slope, voted “NO” on a measure to assure that newborn babies are covered with health insurance immediately after birth for up to one year to give parents time to verify their baby’s citizenship status.
Shame on Sportsman’s Warehouse for advertising guns on sale for Father’s Day. Mesa County has one of the highest suicide rates in the country, and women comprise 75% of all fatal domestic violence victims by guns in the U.S.
Sportsmans’ Warehouse ran a big ad in today’s Daily Sentinel touting a big sale on guns and ammo for Father’s Day.
This does our area a big disservice.
There is a huge intersection between fatal domestic violence killings and guns, and keeping guns in the home raises the risk of homicide, suicide and accidental shootings tremendously.
In Colorado alone, there have been 105 domestic violence homicides by gun since 2006.
Many remembered the days in the not-so-distant past, though, when a turnout of 10 or 12 people backing a progressive cause in our area was considered a successful turnout.
How times have changed on the western slope!
A recently-released confidential transcript of an April, 2017 phone call from President Donald Trump to Filipino President Rodrigo Duterte reveals Trump praised Duterte, telling him he’s been “doing an unbelievable job on the drug problem” in his country.
President Duterte has had death squads gun down approximately 7,000 Filipino citizens in the streets of his 
country since June, 2016, in a systematic program of extrajudicial killings. Often the killers, many of whom reportedly received compensation for each person they killed, plant evidence to try to justify the killings.
The spot where the proposed cell phone tower is to be located, in the field at 26 1/2 and G Roads, across the street from Holy Family School
If you live in the area of 26 1/2 and H Roads, a big change is coming to your neighborhood, and it may not be a change you’re going to like.
Verizon Wireless has submitted plans to the Grand Junction Planning Department to build a cell phone tower in a field right near the corner of 26 1/2 and H Roads, in the city-owned cornfield known as “Saccomano Park.”
Grand Junction Area Chamber of Commerce President Diane Schwenke and the Chamber’s Board oppose a legal ruling that protects Colorado residents from drilling hazards.
The Grand Junction Area Chamber of Commerce is squarely opposed to protecting Colorado residents’ safety when it comes to oil and gas operations, and is demonstrating this by siding with oil and gas companies in an ongoing court case filed by Colorado children who feel their health, safety and the environment are threatened by overly permissive drilling and fracking activity.
CO State Senator Rep Ray Scott (R), climate change denier and citer of foul-mouthed climate change denial author
Three days ago, Colorado State Senator Ray Scott (R-Dist. 7) posted a link on his blog to a Forbes article titled “’97% of Climate Scientists Agree’ is 100% Wrong.”
Scott posted the article as a way to tell his constituents who value the environment, “Ha! I told you so! Global warming is fake!”
The author of the article is Alex Epstein, who has a BA in philosophy from Duke University, but no scientific background. Epstein is a staunch, paid philosophical defender of the fossil fuel industry. His biggest claim to fame is a book he authored in 2014 called “The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels,” which seeks to make a philosophical case for fossil fuel use, evidently because a valid scientific case for continued fossil fuel use can’t be made.
Here’s a question for Mesa County workers:
When was the last time your political party helped make your life better?
If you can’t think of anything, there’s a reason.
The dominant political party in our area has long been the Republican Party, but if you work for a salary or hourly wage, or have a small business, are registered as a Republican and think the Republican party has your best interests at heart, think again.
While some stayed home dying Easter eggs Saturday, almost 300 western slope citizens turned out for the national Tax March to demand Donald Trump make his tax returns public. Marchers gathered at Grand Junction City Hall and listened to speeches before starting off on a figure 8-shaped route through downtown that took them along Main Street, Grand Avenue and by the Post Office, where they mailed post cards to Trump saying they want him to release his taxes.
On January 11, 2017, Trump dismissed the idea that voters were interested in his tax returns, claiming the only people who care about his tax returns are members of the media. But he was proved badly wrong when on April 15, thousands of people in hundreds of cities across across the country took to the streets to demand he make his taxes public. An ABC News/Washington Post poll (pdf) released on January 16,2017 showed 74% of Americans want to see Trump’s returns.
Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB) bomb, the largest non-nuclear conventional bomb in existence
Moab residents are not happy that the name “MOAB” is being associated with the massive bomb the Trump administration dropped on Afghanistan yesterday.
The largest non-nuclear bomb in the United States’ weapons arsenal, the GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB), nicknamed the “Mother of All Bombs” (MOAB). It was dropped yesterday, leading the acronym MOAB to be broadcast over national news repeatedly for the last 24 hours.
Asked about how Moab residents feel about the name of their town being associated with destruction, Moab City Councilman Kyle Bailey responded, “Mayor Sakrison and the Moab City Council sent a letter to Bush administration in 2003 protesting the association of the name [of this bomb] with Moab. Some people in Moab do like the association.” The city councilman sent a link to the February, 2003 BBC article about the mayor’s protest.
Colby Olford broke the law for years, then the Mesa County Commissioners caught up with him — and rewarded him for it.
The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel reported on March 15 that Mesa County’s three Republican County Commissioners publicly admonished a Collbran landowner for violating the law by hosting commercial events on his property for years without required permits.
Then they rewarded him by making his activities legal.
Word is out that Central High School’s Senior Student Senate has voted to change the school’s annual baccalaureate from a religious event featuring a blessing by a pastor to a secular event featuring 3-5 minute speeches by students about what they are grateful for. By the time the Student Senate voted on the issue, it was too late to change the name of the event because the materials promoting it had already been printed, but they say next year the name of the event will be changed as well.
Donahue with her bag of spaghetti, which she uses to illustrate what girls’ brains are like
A school district in Tulsa County, Oklahoma has banned sexual abstinence speaker Shelly Donahue from returning after students complained that her comments during a “sex ed” presentation were demeaning to girls and insulting to children of broken families.
The news of her being banned pertains to Colorado’s western slope because Delta County School District regularly hires Shelly Donahue to give the very same talk to Delta high school seniors.
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.
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 2B – Spending 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.
The Grand Valley’s springtime air is fouled with smoke from open burning
It’s springtime and open burning season is upon us once again, giving Grand Valley residents sore throats, burning eyes, runny noses, headaches and asthma attacks. Beautiful spring days that dawn clear and bright are soon fouled by dense plumes of smoke that drift across the valley forcing people to close their doors and windows and grab their inhalers. KKCO 11 News on March 16 said, “Add in an early allergy season and you have a recipe for a breathing disaster.”
And a disaster it is, for many people, and not just for their health, but for their property, too.
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.
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.”
