Tag: Fake patriotism

Crazy Republicans, Embarrassing Republicans, Extremism, Fake patriotism, Inept Republicans, Janet Rowland, Mesa County Republican Party, politics, Tina Peters, Trump Insanity, Weird western slope stuff

Commissioners appoint Wayne Williams, former SOS who contracted with Dominion Voting Systems, to run local elections

by Anne Landman • August 17, 2021 • 4 Comments

Wayne Williams, via Wikipedia, photo By Jeffrey Beall – Own work, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=72780852

The Board of Mesa County Commissioners (BOCC) held a rushed hearing this evening at which they appointed former Secretary of State Wayne Williams to oversee the 2021 election in Mesa County, taking swift action after Colorado Secretary of State (SOS) Jena Griswold stripped Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters’ of her ability to carry out elections.

The SOS can’t remove Peters from office because she was elected, but she can stop Peters from carrying out elections.

Griswold appointed current Mesa County Treasurer and former two-term County Clerk Sheila Reiner to oversee elections.

Reiner, a Republican, was term-limited out of the County Clerk’s office in 2018. Peters was elected in 2018 as her replacement. Peters is currently under criminal investigation in which, the SOS’s office says, all evidence shows she allegedly engineered a security breach of the county’s election equipment.

BOCC arm wrestles the Secretary of State for local control

School Board candidate Haitz sends out offensive fundraising email

by Anne Landman • August 7, 2021 • 1 Comment

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!

Will you join me by making a contribution to my campaign?”

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.

Rep. Boebert promotes herself while I-70 shutdown causes national emergency

by Anne Landman • August 3, 2021 • 3 Comments

Boebert promotes herself at the Rifle County Fair Demolition Derby August 2 while the nearby shutdown of I-70 chokes off the flow of supplies, gas, mail, groceries and other commerce to and from her district.

CD-3 House Representative Lauren Boebert was busy making a video of herself at the Rifle Demolition Derby August 2 while at the same time Colorado Governor Jared Polis was declaring a state of emergency and requesting a federal disaster designation in her district due to the shut down of I-70, the major east-west artery that supplies groceries, gas, tourism, mail and other key commerce to Boebert’s district on Colorado’s western slope. The shutdown of I-70 is also hampering national commerce, hence Gov. Polis’ request for a federal disaster declaration.

Boebert didn’t even mention in her video the major highway disaster unfolding nearby.

Western Slope Republicans need to apologize and tell the truth

by Anne Landman • January 21, 2021 • 18 Comments

Republican House Rep. Lauren Boebert, CD-3, (Photo:Youtube) — advanced the Big Lie about massive election fraud that led to the insurrection.

Donald Trump repeatedly claimed in the months following the election that he had won the election by a landslide, but it was stolen from him due to massive voter fraud.

It was the most outlandish lie of Trump’s term, maybe the craziest of his life, and it led thousands of his supporters to violently attack the Capitol in an insane attempt to overturn the results of the election on his behalf. We all watched, horrified, as hordes of angry Trump supporters bashed their way through barriers and stormed the Capitol holding their Confederate and “Don’t Tread on Me” yellow Gadsden flags, intent on capturing and killing legislators, journalists and anyone with a political opinion different from their own. The insurrection, based on lies, caused the death of five people, including a police officer.

Steve Bannon arrested for diverting donations from “Build the Wall” nonprofit to personal expenses, lavish lifestyle

by Anne Landman • August 20, 2020 • 4 Comments

Time magazine cover photo of Bannon, February, 2017

Western Colorado’s many Trump supporters won’t like today’s news that even more Trump associates are joining the universe of criminality surrounding President Donald Trump:

Former Trump campaign chair and White House adviser Steve Bannon has been arrested along with three others on charges they duped Trump’s supporters into believing they were contributing to building Trump’s border wall, when in reality Bannon and his colleagues diverted donations to fund their personal expenses and lavish lifestyles.

Bannon was arrested with veteran Brian Kolfage and political strategists Andrew Badolato and Timothy Shea. The four operated a crowdfunding site called “We the People Build the Wall” that later became the nonprofit “Build the Wall.”

Mesa County Commissioner write-in candidate faces steep hurdles, including misinformation and potential bias from Clerk’s Office

by Anne Landman • August 13, 2020 • 3 Comments

Employees of the Mesa County Clerk’s Elections department haven’t correctly understood what counts as a valid write-in vote, but the misunderstanding was discovered in enough time to correct it before the November general election.

The problem became apparent on July 13, 2020 when write-in candidate for the District 3 County Commissioner seat Bob Prescott, went to the Mesa County Clerk’s Elections Office to ask exactly what constitutes a valid write-in vote.

Prescott asks the clerk “What do you consider a legal vote” for a write-in candidate?

The clerk responds “That’s up to you. It needs to appear just like this, as ‘Bob Prescott.’ If they put in ‘Robert,” it would be rejected.”

According to Colorado law, that information was wrong.

Why the Republican candidate for 3rd Congressional District, Laurent Boebert, is batsh*t crazy

by Anne Landman • July 6, 2020 • 4 Comments

In May, 2020, Lauren Boebert, the Republican candidate for House Representative in the 3rd Congressional District (our district), was a guest on an online right wing political talk show called “Steel Truth” hosted by Ann Vandersteel.

We can now add Lauren Boebert to the ever-growing list of QAnon supporters who are running for Congress. https://t.co/VJbFGkYKLx pic.twitter.com/m1bklAfikp

— Right Wing Watch (@RightWingWatch) May 18, 2020

Republicans have one last-ditch chance to save themselves, and the country

by Anne Landman • January 25, 2020 • 2 Comments

The President’s defenders deny any reason exists to remove Donald Trump from office. There’s nothing to see here. Everything is fine and normal, the President’s call with Ukraine President Zelinsky was “perfect” and he did absolutely nothing wrong. The impeachment is all a big hoax.

Meanwhile, House Impeachment Managers have presented days worth of detailed evidence, including the President’s own damning words, testimony from alarmed government employees, timelines and tweets detailing the totality of the President’s corrupt behavior, how he put his own interests above those of the country, intimidated witnesses, hid evidence of his wrongdoing, invited foreign governments to influence our elections, violated the Constitution and his oath to protect national security.

The difference is stark.

In the words former Republican National Committee Chair Michael Steele:

“When national polling shows that these folks think that Donald Trump was a better president than Abraham Lincoln, you know this is fucked up.”

Citizens protest Pendley at new BLM office in G.J.

by Anne Landman • January 2, 2020 • 3 Comments

Protest Jan. 2 at BLM’s new offices on Horizon Drive.

About 35 people turned out in 27 degree weather to protest a visit from Acting Director of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) William Perry Pendley, a right wing anti-government zealot who was appointed to head the BLM without Senate approval.

Pendley was scheduled to visit the new Grand Junction BLM office on the morning of its first opening day.

The protest was at the BLM’s new offices at 760 Horizon Drive, which is also the same building that houses the corporate offices of oil and gas purveyor Chevron.

Rallies to support impeachment planned in G.J. and across the nation

by Anne Landman • December 14, 2019 • 0 Comments

A rally to urge Colorado’s elected officials to impeach and remove President Donald Trump is planned in Grand Junction on Tuesday, December 17 at 5:30 p.m. in the parking lot behind the federal building at 400 Rood Ave. Senator Cory Gardner’s office is in the federal building on Rood and House Representative Tipton’s office is in the Alpine Bank Building next door.

This national mobilization is scheduled the day before the House of Representatives is expected to vote on adopting two Articles of Impeachment (pdf) against President Trump that the House Judiciary Committee approved on Friday, December 13. The articles describe high crimes and misdemeanors the President has committed while in office:

Court Settlement: State Senator Ray Scott must unblock constituents from his social media

by Anne Landman • August 30, 2019 • 2 Comments

Senator Ray Scott blocked and banned constituents from his social media accounts simply for disagreeing with him on his policies. Then he got sued.

Every elected official in Colorado is now on notice: you cannot block constituents from your official social media accounts because they don’t agree with your point of view. If you do, you’re breaking the law.

ACLU of Colorado announced a settlement (pdf) today on behalf of Anne Landman, a constituent who State Senator Ray Scott blocked from his official social media accounts in 2017 after she was publicly critical of several of his policy positions. As a result of the lawsuit, Scott has now unblocked Landman and must refrain from censoring anyone else with critical viewpoints from his social media accounts as a Senator, or in any future elected position.

“The overwhelming majority of cases has made very clear that the official social media pages of public officials, like Senator Scott’s, are public forums where individual’s speech is constitutionally protected,” said ACLU Staff Attorney Sara Neel. “Recognizing this, Senator Scott has agreed to unblock all users from his social media pages and will not block anyone else in the future based on viewpoint.”

Lessons from the Shutdown

by Anne Landman • January 28, 2019 • 7 Comments

Donald Trump just put America through the longest federal government shutdown in history, single-handedly keeping over 800,000 federal workers from being paid for over a month, hobbling law enforcement agencies and airport security, blocking immigration proceedings, causing delays in airline flights across the country, forcing hundreds of thousands of people into having to make hard decisions between paying their mortgages, buying their medicine or feeding their kids.

In the end, neither Mr. Trump nor the country gained anything at all from this exercise, but we did learn some important lessons from it.

Rep. Scott Tipton votes to continue government shutdown, keep federal workers unpaid

by Anne Landman • January 14, 2019 • 1 Comment

House Rep. Scott Tipton voted to keep inflicting financial pain on government employees to help President Trump extort American taxpayers for $5.6 billion to pay for a 2,000 mile wall between the U.S. and Mexico. (Chart courtesy of the Daily Sentinel of Grand Junction.)

The western slope’s House representative in Washington, D.C., Scott Tipton, voted AGAINST a bill on Jan. 6 to end President Trump’s shutdown for most federal agencies.

The bill, HR 265, passed the House by a wide margin — 243 to 183 — and would have funded most of the parts of government that are shut down, including food safety inspections, child nutrition programs, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly known as the food stamp program), rural utilities programs, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Farm Credit programs and other crucial agencies and functions on which Americans depend.

Currently over 800,000 federal employees are furloughed or working without pay due to the shutdown, negatively impacting commerce across the country.

Election hacking? No biggie. Sen. Cory Gardner votes against funding election security

by Anne Landman • August 7, 2018 • 0 Comments

Chart: The Daily Sentinel of Grand Junction

Russia’s campaign to influence U.S. elections and help Donald Trump get elected must not be any big deal to Colorado’s Republican Senator Cory Gardner, who joined Senate Republicans in blocking an attempt by Democrats to include $250 million in the appropriations bill to help states upgrade their election security. The measure would have paid for states to replace their outdated, insecure voting machines, offer security training to election workers, upgrade voter registration software and fund other election security initiatives. All of the Democrats in the Senate voted for the measure, but Senate Republicans, including Cory Gardner, voted it down.

Next time your Republican elected officials boast that they are patriotic and love their country, remember this shameful vote.

Consumer advocacy, Corporations, Corruption, Economics, Elections, Ethics, Fake patriotism, politics, Republicans violating laws

State Senator Ray Scott of Mesa County caught double-dipping

by Anne Landman • June 5, 2018 • 1 Comment

A Daily Sentinel article from May 24 details how Republican State Senator Ray Scott double-billed his legislative expense account and his campaign account for over $1,000 in Uber rides, and didn’t correct it until the Sentinel exposed it and questioned him about it. The Sentinel obtained information on Scott’s expenditures through a Colorado Open Records Act (CORA) request to the state.

Disgraced white supremacist Milo Yiannopoulos plans talk in Grand Junction

by Anne Landman • March 2, 2018 • 7 Comments

Milo Yiannopoulos

People are hyperventilating over a scheduled appearance in Grand Junction by white supremacist provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos at 7:00 p.m. on April 14th at a currently undisclosed location. Some are planning protests, but the best thing to do might be to just yawn and ignore Yiannopoulos entirely.

Take our survey!

by Anne Landman • February 1, 2018 • 3 Comments

[socialpoll id=”2485002″ path=”/polls/2485002″ width=”600″]

Children, Deplorables, Diversity, Ethics, Extremism, Fake patriotism, Human rights, Lobbying, politics, Propaganda, Xenophobia

City Council endorses protections and path to citizenship for DACA recipients. G.J. citizens react.

by Anne Landman • January 23, 2018 • 21 Comments

On January 17, 2018, the Grand Junction City Council sent an official letter (above) to Senators Cory Gardner, Michael Bennet and House Representative Scott Tipton urging the House and Senate to pass “a clean bill as soon as possible to prevent the end of DACA [Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals] in March.”

Republican and “Deplorable” G.J. City Council member Duncan McArthur voted against the letter supporting young DACA recipients in our community

The letter was signed by Mayor J. Merrick (“Rick”) Taggart. City Council approved it on a 5-2 vote. Councilmembers Duncan McArthur and Barbara Traylor-Smith voted against it.

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