Tag: Politics

Crazy Republicans, Dangerous Republicans, Election deniers, Elections, Embarrassing Republicans, Ethics, Extremism, politics, Republicans violating laws, Tina Peters

Tina Peters losing support locally

by Anne Landman • June 14, 2022 • 20 Comments

Support for Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters appears to be waning among her “base” in Mesa County as people discover Peters is willing to lie and sacrifice other people to further her own ends.

The Daily Sentinel reported today that enthusiasm for Peters among members of the far-right group Stand for the Constitution (SFTC) appears to be waning. The group, previously a strong supporter of Peters, invited Peters’ opponent for Secretary of State, Mike O’Donnell, to speak at their most recent meeting. The meeting was sponsored in part by Andrea Barber, the sister-in-law of Gerald Wood, whose identity Tina Peters stole in order to smuggle a third person into the Elections Department to copy voting machine hard drives.

Former G.J. City Council candidate Mark McAllister speaks in support of Tina Peters at an August, 2021 rally organized by Stand for the Constitution in support of Tina Peters, while a supporter holds a sign that says “I Trust Tina Peters.” (Photo: YouTube)

Peters’ actions swept up Fruita resident Gerald Wood into the criminal investigation of Peters’ election tampering, forcing Wood to have to prove to authorities he was not present at the time Peters had the hard drives copied.

Oklahoma is just the beginning of what life will be like under Republican rule

by Anne Landman • June 13, 2022 • 25 Comments

In late May 2022, Oklahoma once again passed the nation’s worst abortion ban, making it the first state to effectively end women’s right to have an abortion, and making this article, that I first published on May 20, 2019, even more relevant.

Oklahoma Republicans just passed a mind-blowingly strict law that makes abortion illegal in virtually every circumstance, effectively terminating the right of women in the state to control their own bodies and reproductive fate.

Oklahoma wasn’t alone in this, either. Other Republican-dominated states are also enacting extremely strict laws that effectively make abortion illegal, with some banning the procedure as soon as a fetal heartbeat is detected.

Republicans base these laws on their belief that a fetus is a fully legal person entitled to all the rights and privileges that all legal American citizens enjoy.

But if actually put into effect, what do these beliefs really portend for life in America?

State of CO investigating Boebert’s 2020 mileage reimbursements & payment of tax liens on Shooters Grill

by Anne Landman • June 8, 2022 • 27 Comments

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.

Local rally planned to urge use of the 14th Amendment to disqualify Boebert from the ballot

by Anne Landman • June 5, 2022 • 20 Comments

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.

It’s happening! Tina Peters: The Movie

by Anne Landman • June 2, 2022 • 25 Comments

Screen shot of the 2 minute, 15 second movie trailer for “Selection Code,” made by Lara Logan and financed by My Pillow Guy Mike Lindell

Get out the popcorn, Mesa County.

A new “documentary” movie is coming out July 16 that tells the story of embattled Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters’ efforts to convince people that massive election fraud occurred in Mesa County’s voting machines.

In reality, a recent months-long, thorough investigation into allegations of voting machine problems by Mesa County District Attorney Dan Rubinstein and his team, the results of which were presented to the Mesa County Commissioners and the public last week, reveal that was not the case. The evidence revealed beyond a doubt that human action by a member of Peters’ own Elections Department staff, who was trying to remedy a frozen computer screen, was at the heart of Peters’ accusations, and the investigation found the County’s vote tabulating machines worked appropriately and counted ballots accurately.

Boebert votes against bill to help people access baby formula

by Anne Landman • May 20, 2022 • 11 Comments

House Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) was one of nine House Republicans who voted against the Access to Baby Formula Act, a bill introduced to help alleviate the national baby formula shortage. The bill passed on May 18, 2022 by a vote of 414-9.

Like Enstrom Candies? You might want to re-think that. They’re one of Boebert’s biggest donors.

by Anne Landman • May 15, 2022 • 10 Comments

Enstrom Candies is Lauren Boebert’s 4th biggest donor. Source: OpenSecrets.org

How OpenSecrets.org computes donations from an entity.

GovTrack officially lists Colorado House Representative Lauren Boebert as a participant in the January 6th, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters. She has had zero accomplishments while in office. Instead, to cover that up, she lied to her constituents and took credit for

Enstrom Candies, a favorite coffee shop, ice cream shop and candy factory in downtown Grand Junction, is Boebert’s 4th biggest donor

accomplishments achieved by Democrats. She supports Putin and Russia with her votes. She embarrassed all of Colorado with her shocking outbursts at the 2021 State of the Union address by President Biden, shouting out loud at him while he was talking about his deceased son. She openly insulted a group of Jews who were visiting the U.S. Capitol. She made homophobic comments about Transportation Secretary Pete Butigieg about his taking parental leave to care for his two newborn twins. Boebert made bigoted jokes to intentionally disparage a Democratic colleague. She challenged a wheelchair-bound House colleague to a sprint. She mocked the death of a 42 year old cinematographer who was accidentally killed on the set of a movie by a firearm. Boebert wants government to take orders from the church. She has openly promoted the white supremacist myth of “replacement theory” that is leading to more mass shootings in the U.S. She voted against a bill to help Americans get easier access to baby formula.

Court rules Republican County Clerk candidate Julie Fisher is not competent to run elections, either, and was complicit in Peters debacle

by Anne Landman • May 11, 2022 • 20 Comments

Julie Fisher, who is a candidate for Mesa County Clerk and Recorder in the Republican primary June 28th. The judge found she has insufficient experience to run elections and was complicit in the Tina Peters/Belinda Knisley capers.

On Tuesday, May 10, 2022, District Court Judge Valerie Robison granted an injunction that prohibits Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters and Deputy Clerk Belinda Knisley from running elections through 2022, making it the second year that the two top officials in the Mesa County Clerk’s Office have been barred from having anything to do with elections.

No less important, though, were Judge Robison’s findings about current employee in the Clerk’s office and Republican candidate for County Clerk Julie Fisher, whom Tina Peters had dubbed her “Second Chief Deputy Clerk.”

Robison found Fisher did not have adequate experience in handling elections, hadn’t taken the election training provided by the Secretary of State and that the position Tina had appointed Fisher to, “Second Chief Deputy Clerk,” was a fake position.

The Court ruled “there is no statutory provision for the position of “Second Chief Deputy Clerk” in the Clerk and Recorder’s Office.

Essentially, Tina invented the “Second Chief Deputy Clerk” position to do an end run around the County Commissioners and the Court, and appoint her own hand-picked person to perform her job in her and Knisley’s absence.

But Judge Robison wasn’t having any of that.

Tina Peters hires attorney who defended Bannon’s co-conspirator in “We Build the Wall” fraud

by Anne Landman • April 26, 2022 • 27 Comments

Harvey Steinberg (Photo: BestLawyers.com)

Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters has hired big-gun Colorado criminal defense attorney Harvey Steinberg of Denver to defend her in her criminal case(s).

Steinberg is the lawyer the Denver Broncos and other high-profile sports figures keep on speed dial for whenever they get busted for rape, road rage, domestic violence, DUIs, driving with a suspended license and such.

Steinberg is also the guy who defended Steve Bannon’s accomplice Brian Kolfage in the “We Build the Wall” fundraising scam.

“We Build The Wall” was a private fundraising campaign in which Bannon and accomplices, including Kolfage, defrauded hundreds of thousands of MAGA-heads out of over $25 million through an online crowdfunding campaign. Bannon and Kolfage pitched the campaign to unsuspecting Trump supporters as a private effort to build a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico. Bannon and Kolfage promised Trumpers they would “not take a penny in salary or compensation” for their efforts, and that “100% of the funds raised …[would] be used in the execution of our mission and purpose.”

Accused felon & election denier Tina Peters leads Republican primary for Secretary of State

by Anne Landman • April 12, 2022 • 38 Comments

In an event that shows just how far out of touch with reality Colorado’s Republic Party has become, election denier Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters, who was indicted a month ago on multiple felony charges related to tampering with election equipment, was the runaway winner for the Secretary of State nomination at the Colorado Republican Party state assembly April 9, 2022 in Colorado Springs. Peters won a whopping 62% of the vote, making her the Republicans’ front runner for Secretary of State in the primary election on June 28. Peters will oppose former two-term Jefferson County Clerk and Recorder and former president of the Colorado County Clerks Association Pam Anderson, on the primary ballot. Anderson petitioned her way onto the ballot. (Anderson’s mother-in-law is former longtime Colorado Senate Majority Leader Norma Anderson.) While Pam Anderson is a Republican, she not an election denier. Peters also faces Mike O’Donnell, a candidate from Yuma County.

Lindell steps in it, seals the case for the ethics complaint against Tina Peters; makes a statement that could leave her liable for a $1.6 million fine

by Anne Landman • April 5, 2022 • 16 Comments

My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell just sealed the case for Complaint #22-07 (pdf) to the Colorado Independent Ethics Commission against Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters for her skirting Colorado’s anti-corruption law by raising unlimited amounts of money through her legal defense fund.

In an apparent effort to try to get out of the ethics complaint, Peters recently shut down her Colorado-based legal defense fund website and moved her legal fundraising to a Minnesota-based “legal offense fund” operated by her fellow election conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell.

At an election denier rally today at the state Capitol in Denver, a 9News reporter asked Lindell how much he has raised for Peters’ legal defense fund. Lindell said, “I just put in all the money myself.” When the reporter asked Lindell how much that was, he answered, “I don’t know, I put in 3,4,5, maybe $800,000 of my own money.”

$800,000 would be the largest amount ever given to a Colorado politician or elected official.

Rep. Boebert takes credit for accomplishments achieved by Democrats

by Anne Landman • March 26, 2022 • 8 Comments

Republican House Rep. Lauren Boebert, CD-3, (Photo:Youtube)

Colorado House Rep. Lauren Boebert is lying and taking credit for accomplishments achieved in a spending bill she voted against. HR 2471, an omnibus spending bill passed in March, achieved Democratic priorities of increasing spending on Americans and reversing the priorities of Trump-era budgets that held the country back.

Rep. Lauren Boebert supports Putin and Russia with latest votes

by Anne Landman • March 18, 2022 • 28 Comments

Lauren Boebert

The U.S. House of Representatives voted 424-8 on March 17 to revoke normal trade relations with Russia and its ally Belarus over Russian President Vladimir Putin’s unprovoked, massive and aggressive military attack on Ukraine, a democratic country in eastern European that shares a border with Russia.

Putin first attacked Ukraine on February 24th, and since then he has been relentlessly bombing civilian targets, government buildings, apartment buildings, a maternity hospital, schools, a theater housing people trying to escape the bombing including children inside and people waiting in bread lines, all targets led President Biden to call Putin a “war criminal.”

Only eight members of Congress voted against the measure, a vote that effectively supported Russian President Putin. One of those votes was Colorado House Rep. Lauren Boebert, from the western slope.

Tina Peters scandal is having political repercussions in Garfield County

by Anne Landman • March 12, 2022 • 6 Comments

Long-time GarCo County Clerk & Recorder Jean Alberico (Photo: Sopris Sun)

Garfield County is feeling some ripple effects from the Tina Peters scandal, and there’s growing concern about it.

After four terms as Clerk and nearly 40 years of working in the Clerk’s office, long time Garfield County Clerk Jean Alberico, is retiring this year, which means there will be a contested election for the office of Clerk and Recorder in Garfield County for the first time in many years this election cycle. Normally few people care about the Clerk and Recorder’s office in their county, but Garfield County voters need look no further than Mesa County next door to understand the importance of this office and the disaster that can unfold if the wrong person is elected to it, as happened here in Mesa County.

Rep. Boebert embarrasses western Colorado again with shocking outburst at State of the Union

by Anne Landman • March 3, 2022 • 15 Comments

Colorado House Rep. Lauren Boebert once again roundly embarrassed her western Colorado constituents nationally with her continuing over-the-top bad behavior, this time by shouting at President Biden during his first State of the Union speech on March 1 as he began to talk about his deceased son, Beau, who died at age 46 from brain cancer in 2015. Biden raised the issue of members of the military who, like his son, had “ended up in flag-draped coffins” after being exposed to toxic burn pits in the military. As Biden mentioned the soldiers who had died, Boebert yelled out “You put them there. Thirteen of them!” apparently referencing the explosion carried out by an Isis bomber at the Kabul Airport in Afghanistan last August that killed 13 American service members.

Tina Peters: “There’s NO WAY that these people won in our town,” and few on the right actually care enough about her “bombshell forensic report” to read it

by Anne Landman • February 16, 2022 • 10 Comments

On February 11, 2022, the same day she was officially arrested and booked on charges of obstruction, Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters appeared as a speaker at an “Emergency Town Hall” event held by the right wing extremist group Faith, Education, Commerce United in Castle Rock, Colorado.

During the Q &A, a member of the audience asks Peters:

“I’d like to hear from Tina. Would you bring us up to speed on all this? I read in the paper … I don’t get it, I mean I sort of get it, but the whole thing .. They walk into a restaurant, they arrest you and then they let you go. I don’t get it. Could you give us a nice little synopsis here? What started this in the first place?”

Tina responds by saying in part,

“So I did not go out on a fishing expedition, I did not go out to, you know, find something to prove that Trump won. It was very obvious, I think, to everybody. But when I saw the City Council election, I said ‘there’s no way, there is NO WAY that these people won in our town.'”

Matt Crane, the Executive Director of the Colorado County Clerks Association, who is a Republican, responded to this statement by Tina Peters by saying:

Looks like District 51’s conservative school board majority is getting ready to fire Superintendent, Assistant Superintendent and Director of Equity & Inclusion

by Anne Landman • February 6, 2022 • 19 Comments

Meeting agenda quietly put up on the School Board’s website on short notice announcing a special meeting the next day to discuss employment contracts of the Superintendent, Assistant Superintendent and Director of Equity and Inclusion

The District 51 School Board’s new conservative majority — Andrea Haitz, Angela Lema and Willie Jones — appear to be getting ready to fire School District Superintendent, Diana Sirko, Assistant Superintendent Brian Hill and Tracy Gallegos, the District’s Director of Equity and Inclusion, who was hired into that position in July, 2021.

The three Board members gave short notice about a special meeting to be held on Monday, February 5 at 5:00 p.m. discuss these three employees’ contracts with attorneys they just hired in January to serve as their own representatives: David Price and Tammy Eret of Hoskin, Farina and Kampf.

The Board members produced the agenda on Saturday evening, 2/5/22, and then quietly slipped it onto the School Board’s meeting website (pdf) on Sunday evening, 2/6/21.

Cindy Ficklin ends her run for HD-55

by Anne Landman • December 26, 2021 • 26 Comments

————————————————————————–Local realtor and right wing extremist Cindy Ficklin posted on her Facebook page Sunday, 12/26/21, that she was withdrawing from the race for the House District 55 seat. She filed to run on 10/18/21. Her candidacy lasted only about two months.

Ficklin

Far right wing extremist Cindy Ficklin announced on Sunday, 12/26, that she has withdrawn her candidacy for the Colorado House District 55 seat.

Ficklin made the announcement in one of her usual extended, emoji-laden posts sprinkled with misspellings. She expressed shock that she had been called anti-semitic during her campaign, especially by her Republican Jewish friends, and admitted she had been ignorant about long-time anti-semitic tropes like saying Jews controlled all the banks the world. She expressed disappointment that people called her “gun-toting” when she only owns only “a couple baby Glocks.”

Ficklin lamented that the media had referred to her as a “conspiracy theorist,” saying

“I call it being the f*cking resistance, assholes.”

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