House Rep. Scott Tipton votes against financial transparency in government, against protecting citizens’ health and against American workers
Think House Representative Scott Tipton is on your side? Think again.
In the last couple of weeks, Rep. Tipton has voted against cleaner air, against creating more American jobs, and in favor of keeping financial information secret that would allow Congress to tell if changes President Trump proposes in the U.S. tax code would benefit his family’s income.
The Trump administration has made a breathtaking and invasive demand to all 50 states demanding they turn over personal information on every individual registered voter in the country. The administration wants names, addresses, birth dates, political party affiliations, records of elections in which people have voted and the last four digits of people’s social security numbers.
Colorado Secretary of State Wayne Williams, a Republican, plans to turn the information right over on July 16 without any argument.
But there is one thing you can do to stop the Trump administration from getting your personal information: ask the Mesa County Clerk to make your voter information confidential.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The first week of Donald Trump’s presidency has made one thing clear: Americans must start considering Mr. Trump’s mental health a serious problem.
U.S. Congressman Ted Lieu of Los Angeles County
In the wake of the insults President-Elect Donald Trump hurled at civil rights icon Congressman John Lewis today on Twitter, just days before Martin Luther King Day and his own inauguration, Congressman Ted W. Lieu (D – Los Angeles County) issued the following statement explaining his decision to not attend Trump’s inauguration on January 20, 2017.
The flap started when Rep. Lewis said in an interview today with Meet The Press host Chuck Todd that he will not be attending Trump’s inauguration in part because he doesn’t think Trump is a legitimate president due to Russia’s reported interference the U.S. election.
Former Mexican President Vicente Fox (2000-2006) has been trolling Donald Trump on Twitter and responding to Trump’s incessant Tweets in English, writing devastating responses questioning his legitimacy as president, telling him Mexico won’t pay for the (expletive) wall he’s been promising to build between the U.S. and Mexico, and much more:
U.S. Intelligence Community reports President-elect Donald Trump got assistance in winning the election from Russian President Vladimir Putin himself
The U.S. Intelligence community (CIA, FBI and NSA) jointly issued a formal report today stating that Russian President Putin ordered a campaign to influence the U.S. presidential election and help elect Donald Trump. The report states that Russians worked to undermine Hillary Clinton’s candidacy and promote Trump. The entire unclassified version of the report is available to the public on Scribd:
Following is an excerpt from the report, with bold emphasis added:
“We assess with high confidence that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election, the consistent goals of which were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency.
We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump. When it appeared to Moscow that Secretary Clinton was likely to win the election, the Russian influence campaign then focused on undermining her expected presidency.
English writer Lord Acton once said “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
The House of Representatives proved Lord Acton correct yesterday when, as their first act as the majority in the 115th House of Representatives, Republicans met in secret, at night behind closed doors, and voted to amend House rules to gut the independent Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE).
The OCE is responsible for investigating corruption and misconduct by House members. It was created in 2008 after Randy “Duke” Cunningham, a former Republican representative from California, was sentenced to prison on bribery and other criminal charges he incurred while in office. The OCE perhaps best known for its investigations into the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal, and investigating former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, who in 2010 was convicted on criminal charges of conspiracy to launder corporate money into political donations. In his defense, DeLay argued he was improperly convicted for just “doing what everybody was doing.”
If overall Republicans felt they were serving their constituents honestly and ethically in the best way they knew how, they probably wouldn’t give much thought to the OCE. But instead, they focused on it quickly and early with an eye towards destroying it. So why carry out an attack aimed at constraining the OCE, if not to pave the way for unfettered unethical activities like those we’ve already seen so much of in Congress?
18 year old Aria Watson, a student in Oregon, created a series of photographs of women with some of Donald’ Trump’s misogynistic statements written on them for a photography class. The project has gone viral.
Women inside and outside the government are chilled by the news today that Donald Trump’s transition team has asked the State Department to provide him with detailed information on U.S. programs aimed at benefitting women around the world, as well as a list of positions in the department that are involved in reducing gender violence and promoting women in the workplace. A senior official said people in the State Department are “freaked out” by the request and deeply concerned Trump wants to roll back these diplomatic efforts, many of which were spearheaded by Hillary Clinton.
It’s no wonder they’re concerned.
Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump are listed as directors of the “Opening Day” foundation, created December 14th.
An invitation from a new nonprofit group called the “Opening Day Foundation” surfaced December 20th offering access to Donald J. Trump on the evening of his inauguration in exchange for donations of $500,000 to $1 million. Trump’s sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, are listed as directors of the Opening Day Foundation on legal documents establishing the Opening Day Foundation, which was created on December 14, 2016. No address was provided for the foundation. The web address of the foundation is OpeningDay45.com. The “45” might refer to the fact that Trump will be the 45th president of the United States. The website only offers a landing page with a logo and no further information.
On December 19, the electoral college will vote on who the next president of the U.S. will be, and they are not all bound by law to vote for Mr. Trump. Now that it’s been concluded that Clinton won the popular vote by more than 2 million, it would be within the Eletoral College’s purview to change who they vote for.
At the same time, Constitutional experts are arguing that unless Donald Trump divests himself of all of his foreign business holdings, he will be in violation of Article 9, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution as soon as he takes his oath to uphold it.
