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.
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.
Mesa County voters have had enough of Tina Peters’ pillow talk
Mesa County Democrats had about 50 people turn out for their last literature drop event last weekend, a tremendous success.
The literature drops are aimed at educating voters in Mesa County about alternatives to voting for Republicans, who have racked up a remarkably long record of failure as elected officials, and caused Mesa County taxpayers much grief and expense.
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.
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.
NOTE: I’ve written about how to obtain an abortion in Mesa County before on this blog, most recently in 2020, but the landscape on this issue keeps changing. Some options disappear while others expand, and with potential changes looming on the national policy front, I’m re-visiting the topic, and will continue to update it periodically.
In light of the recently-leaked draft Supreme Court ruling indicating the right wing majority of the U.S. Supreme Court is likely next month to formally overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court ruling that assured abortion was legal throughout the U.S., it is prudent to revisit the issue of abortion in Colorado, and specifically how to obtain one in Grand Junction and on the western slope.
First of all, there is no reason to fear losing the right to have an abortion in Colorado, ever. Abortion will stay legal and accessible in Colorado, whatever the Supreme Court does.
Supporters of abortion rights attend a hastily-called rally in front of the old Mesa County Courthouse on 5/3/22 to protest an impending Supreme Court decision that threatens American womens’ right to obtain an abortion.
The Mesa County Women’s Right Action League organized a rally on short notice today in response to a leaked draft of a major Supreme Court decision published by Politico that indicates the far right majority on the Court will vote to eliminate women’s constitutionally-guaranteed right to obtain an abortion, a right women have had for 50 years. The rollback of womens’ freedom would be unprecedented.
Featured speakers included Jennifer Hancock, a board member of Cobalt, a Colorado-based organization that that helps people get access to abortions, Heidi Hesse of One Colorado, Jeriel Clark and Pastor Valerie Carlson of the American Lutheran Church.
Screenshot of the packed, angry but well-behaved crowd that faced down the new School Board President Andrea Haitz and the other new school board members Monday night, 2/7/22, as they made moves toward possibly firing district administrators. The screenshot is from a video taken at the beginning of the meeting, before the Board went into executive session to discuss the employment contracts of Superintendent Diana Sirko, Assistant Superintendent Brian Hill and the Director of Equity and Inclusion, Tracy Gallegos. An equal number of people were outside. A student in front is holding a sign that says “Don’t make me use my INSIDE VOICE!”
Former KKCO Channel 11 weatherman Butch McCain, who was fired last October for refusing to get vaccinated against Covid-19, stands in front of a fake weather map in a video promoting the anti-vax group Stop The Mandate GJ
Former longtime KKCO weatherman Butch McCain, who was fired from KKCO last October after refusing to get a Covid-19 vaccine in compliance with his employer Gray TV’s Covid-19 vaccine policy, is now promoting the anti-vax group Stop the Mandate GJ, which is encouraging others in our area to also refuse the vaccine.
McCain now appears on the first page of StoptheMandateGJ’s website, talking in front of a fake weather map and saying in part,
“It’s not about Covid any more, it’s about forced compliance…Let’s be the resistance to their nationwide tyranny…
Stop the Mandate GJ’s street address matches that of Greg Haitz’s business, Rimrock Wellness Center
Greg Haitz, owner of Rimrock Wellness Center
Rimrock Wellness Center, a chiropractic office at 12th and Patterson that also sells fat-loss treatments and supplements, has the same street address as “Stop the Mandate GJ,” the group agitating to stop hospitals, nursing homes and doctors’ offices from requiring health workers be vaccinated against Covid-19, the highly communicable, often deadly disease causing the pandemic. At the same time it is encouraging people to remain unvaccinated, Rimrock Wellness Center is also trying to profit off unvaccinated people’s fear of getting Covid-19, as well as their misperceptions of the relative safety and efficacy of Covid-19 vaccines.
In what apparently was meant as a slur toward trangender people, Garfield County election conspiracy theorist Sherronna Bishop, who calls herself “America’s Mom,” in this Instagam post today compared Grand Junction blogger Anne Landman to Admiral Rachel Levine, M.D., newly-appointed as U.S. Assistant Secretary of Health and among the most accomplished public health physicians in the country.
In what was meant to be a slur aimed at transgender people, Garfield County election conspiracy theorist Sherronna Bishop, who bills herself as “Americas Mom,” today in an Instagram post compared AnneLandmanBlog author Anne Landman to Admiral Rachel Levine, M.D., the highly accomplished public health physician who was recently confirmed by the U.S. Senate as the nation’s new Assistant Secretary of Health in the U.S. Department of Human Services.
So this appears to be the big news from Mike Lindell’s cyber symposium. They are saying Jena Griswold, the Colorado Secretary of State, along with Dominion “raided” the elections department of Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters (with a search warrant). pic.twitter.com/PvSSpxYq8E
— PatriotTakes 🇺🇸 (@patriottakes) August 11, 2021
The Daily Sentinel reported today that Republican Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters’ office is under criminal investigation by the Colorado Secretary of State (SOS) for an alleged election system security breach in which secret passwords to Mesa County’s voting machines were leaked and exposed on a right wing blog called GatewayPundit.
Fundraising email from Andrea Haitz announcing her campaign for D-51 school board
School District 51 Board Candidate Andrea Haitz sent out a red-meat fundraising email in July that offended teachers, parents and D-51 employees who have been working hard to give kids the best education possible while struggling with all the difficulties imposed by the coronavirus pandemic.
Haitz said,
“Politics is in the way of our children’s future. Political agendas are being jammed down our kids’ throats. Necessary tools that were once taught, like critical thinking, have now been replaced with divisive ideologies and revisionist history.
I will not watch our kids be brainwashed. I am taking a stand!
The email was a dog-whistle designed to extract donations from far-right conservatives who fear “Critical Race Theory,” (CRT) a body of legal and academic scholarship that proposes that race is a social and not a biological construct, and that discusses how race and a history of institutionalized racism have created and perpetuate a system that broadly disadvantages people of color in American society.
National news report on July 27 says current guidance is that all teachers, staff, students and visitors to schools should wear masks regardless of vaccination status, especially indoors in Covid hot spots. Mesa County is a Covidhot spot for the more contagious Delta variant.
Supporters for Open and Safe Schools (SOS), a group of Mesa County residents who are alarmed by the lax Covid-19 prevention protocols School District 51 put in place for this fall, is challenging the District’s “2021-22 Keeping Schools Open Plan” as insufficient to keep students and the surrounding community safe from COVID outbreaks and school closures amid a continuing pandemic.
District 51 announced its “Keeping Schools Open” plan on July 16, but the plan does not require students or staff to wear face coverings. Instead it makes masking optional, lets unvaccinated visitors onto schools grounds without wearing face coverings and only encourages, and does not require, staff and students over 12 years to be vaccinated against Covid-19.
15 year old Florida Covid patient who did not get the opportunity to get vaccinated
Currently children under 12 are not eligible for the Covid-19 vaccine, making them more susceptible to infection, especially with more transmissible Delta variant that spread rapidly in Mesa County after the County Commissioners ended all Covid protections in the county last spring. Currently only 43 percent of Mesa County adults over 12 years of age are fully vaccinated, far lower than the statewide average of 54 percent.
Mesa County has already had one pediatric COVID death.
The University of Colorado Denver’s Anthropology Department is looking for Coloradans who have attempted to reverse a drug overdose and who are willing to tell their stories in a digital storytelling project for the benefit of Colorado.
The goal of the project is to increase knowledge about the role the use of drugs like Naloxone and Narcan play in reducing opioid overdoses in Colorado. These personal stories will be recorded and used to increase awareness of the importance of these drugs in helping to reduce the opioid overdose epidemic in the state. The project will also benefit opioid users who are at risk of suffering an overdose.
