Progress Now Action

(Cross-posted copiously, because it's just that good.)

I adjusted this Candorville comic to better fit on blog pages so I could share it as widely as it deserves.



If you don't get it in your local dead tree news venue, Candorville can be enjoyed online HERE.

This weekend, I happened to be looking through a batch of old clippings from the Basement of Doom, part of a lot we bought at an estate auction many years ago. This headline, which my research says is from a January 1953 editorial from the Pueblo Chieftain, said:

It's About Time We Awoke To The Oil Industry's Double Talk

Opening sentence: "We wholeheartedly endorse the ultimatum given by Governor Thornton and the chairman of the State Legislature's special oil tax committee to the oil industry to come up with a "fair and equitable" plan for its own taxation or take what the Legislature will hand it."

A little Googling showed me that Gov. Thornton had gotten tired of waiting for the oil industry to quit whining about how more taxation would kill the industry in Colorado. (Gosh, doesn't THAT sound familiar?) They had promised to come up with a plan everyone could live with, on their own, if the voters would just kindly not vote in an oil severance tax bill on the fall ballot.

Well, of course once the election was over the oilies didn't live up to their promise. So Gov. Thornton put his cowboy boot down in January and said they had THREE DAYS to come up with something, or the Lege would do it for them! And that's exactly what happened.

I will have to leave it to economists and/or historians to fill in the blanks of what happened between those days and now. Makes you wonder, though. Will someone in 2063 be looking back and marveling at how our elected officials stepped up to do the right thing for the state and the people way back in 2008?

We can only hope.

Tell 'em to check THIS LISTING on eBay!

Sure, Brighton is not exactly right next door to the Pepsi Center, and maybe $299 a night ($1495.00 total) is a TAD steep...but hey, it's the Comfort Inn! AND it's a smoking room! What could be bad?

As you may know, especially if you happened to read THIS POST by Pat Waak on the Colorado Dems blog, a committee has been formed to examine the problems we experienced at the State Convention and Assembly in Colorado Springs last month. Our goal is to pinpoint causes so that the problems aren't repeated in the future.

I say OUR goal because I volunteered to be on this committee, representing the Eastern Plains.

Right now we are getting organized, figuring out sub-committees, and collecting input from county officials, delegates, alternates and anyone else who has an opinion on the Democratic Party events in Colorado Springs on May 16 & 17th.

Besides the local counties I am to contact, I have volunteered to spread the word about the Ad Hoc committee and the opinion collection process via the blogosphere. If YOU want to make a statement, you can either comment here, direct me to a blog post elsewhere, or email me with what you want to say.

If you just want to have your concerns heard, that's fine. Bringing them to my attention will ensure your thoughts become part of the public record and history. What will be even MORE useful, though, is if you add your ideas and suggestions for future improvements and problem prevention.

The collection period will end June 27th. I hope to hear from you! Tell your friends!

I wasn't goofing off because it was a holiday weekend, I swear! JUST as I was patting myself on the back last Friday evening for being almost caught up, I noticed I was suddenly awfully congested in my chest. As though it had been booked for a tour by Bronchitis and the Wheezers, the atonal faux-accordion-pop group.

So I was mainly in bed from then until noon or so today. Thank goodness for my trusty laptop, which not only let me keep up virtually with the big world, but is warm and comforting to cuddle when you are sore from coughing.

Could have been worse, of course. In a funny co-incidence, as I was looking over the blogs I read on Wednesdays I found this article on Damn Interesting.com about The Heroes of SARS. It's an excellent overview of the epidemic from start to finish, showing how some things that are often politicized worked RIGHT for once. There's even a whistle-blower who got listened to! And not stomped on later!

By the way, if anyone is interested in ancient history, I did a write-up on my personal experiences and views of the State Assembly and Convention.

First part of Friday

Second part, Friday

Saturday

John Edwards to be Obama's VP? Check out the link below and be the first kid on your block to go "Hmmmm...."

http://www.kissmybigbluebutt.com/
(Top post in the ones for May 22.)

(x-posted extensively because we can all use a smile)

My son Sterling snapped this shot of our local Representative Wes McKinley marching in yesterday's Lamar Days parade.

(x-posted, because I care)

I've been at the Mildly Toasted stage of Cheesed Off ever since Thursday, because of Colorado Ethics Watch First Annual "Ethics Roundup".

It's not that I think it's a bad idea, or that it was done by bad/misguided people. Definitely not. But on two of the three sites where I've seen it mentioned, I am not the only one wondering why the heck Wes McKinley got added to the Ten Most Corrupt list.

Here's what they got him on: his staff failed to file required campaign reports on time. Twice.

Yes, someone should have done it, and yes, it's Wes's responsibility, in the end, to see it got done. But he got fined, so he's paid his debt to society, as it were. Also, it should be noted there were NO irregularities mentioned in the CEW's report, just the naughty, naughty lateness.

It has not yet been adequately explained to me how being late with something makes a person corrupt. (If failing to meet deadlines = Evil!, wow, am *I* ever going to Hell!)

I'll tell you what this reminds me of -- school. Did you ever have an assignment that you didn't get finished on time? I sure did. Some teachers would dock you a letter grade. OTHERS would refuse to take any late papers at all, ever, and give you an F.

I guess if CEW wants to be That Guy, they have a right to make that choice. But it seems to me that being rigid and punitive, equating failures of clerical technicalities with conflicts of interest, alleged bribery and/or physical violence, brings their sense of balance and judgment into question.

If their judgment is questionable, why should the public care about who they put on their list?

So all in all, I'm afraid I have to give CEW a C- for their report. Next time, please show your work.

The common perception about Marilyn Musgrave's intellect is that she's not the sharpest disc on the manure spreader. (That's meant to be an ag joke, but if you prefer to see it as political commentary, fine by me.)

Even so, I was flabbergasted by THIS ARTICLE in the online Greeley Tribune, telling about Marilyn explaining the so-called stimulus check procedure to residents at a local retirement community.

MM said she was concerned about seniors who live off of Social Security...LIKE HER MOTHER.

0.o

I don't know the details of Marilyn's personal finances, of course, but I'm pretty sure there are no poor Republicans holding congressional seats. Which means there are two possibilities here.

One, Marilyn was cluelessly trying to bond with her audience by saying they were in the same financial straits as her poor dear old aged mother living month to month on her meager SS checks...even though it was a little fib and her mom has plenty of other assets.

OR....

Marilyn's mom lives on or near the poverty line while her daughter jets back and forth from DC and lives the high life like all the other Bushistas.

I wonder which it is?

I hope you were one of the people who watched Obama's speech, either live or as one of the over a million so far on YouTube. Either way, you can tell your grands someday that you saw history being made.

If you aren't offended by The Bad Words, here's a hilarious 'live blogging' commentary on the speech by the infamous Rude Pundit.

10:59: Damn. We're not used to this sort of honesty from a candidate. Can't compute. Cynicism circuit shorting out.

(x-posted variously)

At the end of January our area hospital, Prowers Medical Center in Lamar, Colorado, officially announced they were in trouble. They ended up over a million dollars in the red for 2007, part of a downhill financial slide that has been going on for some time.

Like most hospitals, PMC uses a management company, Quorum Health Resources. Quorum helped PMC come up with a '100 day plan', which started with laying off 12 workers (only 2 of whom were not clinicians of some kind). (No one actually asked, but how much do you bet Quorum gets their fee off the top every time a payment period comes around? I'm just sayin'.)

Naturally this announcement and action kicked the local rumor machine into high gear. So on Tuesday night an open meeting was held to let the public ask questions and find out what was being done to meet the crisis.

The Cultural Events room at the library was packed, with dozens of people lining the walls. Members of the current hospital board gave a presentation of current findings before opening the floor to questions.

We were told PMC had to write off approximately $2 million in charity/unpaid charges for 2007. Only about 1/3 of the patients it sees have private insurance. Medicare pays only 1% above cost on the bills charged to it, and Medicaid pays a mere 35% of what is billed to it. The average cost of a patient's hospital treatment has doubled over the past few years to $10K. Therefore the basic problem is that most of the self-paying and Medicaid patients that the hospital treats represent a loss that private insurance payments and current government funding can't cover. Hence the bleeding of red ink.   Read More »

I just done got my hair did. Well, a haircut anyway, by Lamar Community College's finest! Now I am making a list of things not to forget. Then pretty soon I will go back to looking in my closet and shaking my head sadly....

Anyway, if you see me, pop over and say Hi!

This is what I look like -- in black and white.



(and minus 45 years.)

In color, and these days, I have bright blue hair. Yeah, you've seen me around....

(Variously x-posted)

This is the Arkansas River.



You can't see my house from here, but it's about two miles upstream and half a mile to the left.

I do not like the idea of a billion gallons of water contaminated with lead, cadmium and Lord alone knows what else whooshing by down here, bringing all the birds and fish it killed upstream as it goes.

I'm weird like that.

The ongoing screw-ups and circular finger-pointings surrounding the situation up in the Leadville mines that makes this toxic overflow a potential threat have been going on since AT LEAST 1995, and maybe longer than that, from what I've read. And you can pretty much put what's actually been DONE about it so far in your eye and never blink.

So a guy named Tom Weins, State Senator for the area, gets the idea to use this new-fangled web thingie to whip up some public outrage and attention, partly by starting a web site: http://www.savethearkansasriver.org/

The plan worked, because the affected government agencies, who seem to have more lead in their butts than Leadville ever THOUGHT of producing, have been shamed into action...maybe. In time? Maybe. We can hope.

But what is bothering me now are the folks I think of as being on MY side of the political spectrum, in favor of saving the Earth and all that, who are all PO'd about Weins' website. Why? Because...he might be getting some political gain out of it.

I'm not 100% sure HOW he's going to gain, since the mayor and some of the Leadville citizens are furious over the fallout from the revelation of the problem. Costing the town and the people there money can't possibly be good for getting future votes, and getting a reputation as a guy who will kicks up a huge fuss instead of working quietly behind the scenes with The System won't make him more liked by the Powers That Be. But maybe that's one of the many things I don't understand about Politics.

Yeah. The guy's a Republican. Some of them HAVE to be right about things SOME of the time, right? Law of averages and all that?

As I said in my comments on Colorado Confidential,
I bet if that Weins guy was a Dem, we'd be pinning a medal on him and treating him to a ticker tape parade for being such a super-duper friend of the environment.

But that's just my opinion. Why not go to the site and read the links and comments (especially the comments!) for yourself?

Maybe even leave one? Help save my favorite backyard river?

This purpose of this post is two-fold; to entice you to go HERE and read my blog report about Udall's visit to Lamar yesterday, and also to show off this pic of him and my son Mike.



If you scroll down and read the post below the one I just referred you to, you can read all about Mike's contribution to the meeting as well!

(X-posted to the SquareState.net)

On ColoradoPols the other day, DavidThi808 was talking about the super-delegates and wondering about their powers.

Which led me to go find this:



I don't know if it's because I am a Libra or a Liberal, but I often find myself, well, seeing a little of both sides on controversial issues.

SuperDelegates to the DNC are those lucky folks who get a critical vote of their very own to cast for who they want to see as the nominee. On the one hand, it does seem like those who are Supers because they got elected to office by The People ought to consider what those People are saying as they decide whether to rally behind Obama or Clinton.

On the other hand, the Supers get this special personal vote because they DO something for the Party. Yeah, it seems like a sweet deal to hold a glamorous office with an important title and then rake in the perks as well. But having done my tiny little job in the most minor office of a very low-populated county...it is my well-considered opinion that I wouldn't run for office EVER. Even if I won the Lotto and could afford it! It's way too much hassle for a little fleeting fame and minuscule reward.

So maybe it's fair for Supers to have their special votes.

Now that I've thought about it by writing about it, I guess my opinion is...still in the middle. (Oh, like you're surprised.)

It's kind of like what we expect from those we elect. We want them to fully study the issues they're going to be voting on, not just hang back to see which lobbyists or pollsters shout loudest before making up their minds. So it would be reasonable for the Supers to consider both their own opinions, AND how their districts voted.

What I DON'T think is okay is any hint of collusion or deal-brokering behind the scenes.

So if the Supers will be transparent in presenting their reasoning, and follow the rules as established...then I say let the votes fall as they may!

(PS, I'll give a Genuine Replica No-Prize to whoever can give the real identity of the character in the pic.)

Step up, don't be shy!

We just had the gold-medal award-winning record-breaking GOP-freaking fantastically amazing caucus turn-out of all time (so far).

There are swarms of new bees buzzing! NOW, how do we keep them active and making honey for the election in the fall?

Let's all think of some ideas, and don't worry about whether someone else will think they are the best ideas ever. Just...share them. The thing about ideas is that often they generate MORE ideas. And one that might not totally work where I live (rural and red) could be perfect for Pueblo or awesome for Alamosa.

I'll start. We are going to harvest the emails and PO addresses our county collected at the caucuses, and use those to start a 'known active' mailing list. It was pretty expensive to mail a postcard to every Dem household in our county, but mailing a few hundred postcards before other events? Doable.

An idea I want to promote down here is to start up some committees new people can join. Bake sale contributers? Someone to work a MONTHLY voter registration table? (Maybe combine those two ideas? Register people AND sell them cookies?)

I once read something about how to be happy: you need something to do, something to care about and something to hope for.

The way I see it, we Dems have the power to help a LOT of people get happy!

So first...ideas!

Your turn!

(x-posted like woah!)

One of the things that impresses me about the Udall campaign so far is how eager they are to try new ways to reach out to voters. For example, Friday afternoon they held a conference call where Mark Udall talked with a batch of bloggers. I'm not sure how I made the list, since I am a bit of a new bee in the pol-blogging world. (I'm not too proud to admit this was a big boost to my self-esteem!) Since they were nice enough to include me, I feel like it's only polite to actually, you know, blog about the call.   Read More »

I hate to admit it, but Texas has out-whacko'd us this week. (Wait, there's something not quite right about that...oh, what the heck, let's go with it.)

A guy named Dean Hrbacek, who is pretty well known in his part of Texas (kind of near the Gulf and Houston and Sugar Land and all that), wants to run for Congress. He seems to have everything he needs, including a crack Photoshop specialist who morphed his head onto the body of (possibly) a former political rival who does not have NEARLY the, ah, gravitas that Mr. H does in real life. (Think Doug Bruce's head on Andy Romanov's body...IF YOU DARE.)

I had been enjoying this saga from the beginning, because I am a regular reader of Kiss My Big Blue Butt, (formerly The World's Most Dangerous Beauty Salon, Inc.), and it's just been getting better every day. TODAY it reached the apex of net notoriety by getting picked up on DAVE BARRY's blog.

All I can say is, our politicos are going to have to try a whole lot harder from here on out.

To really get the full effect, click on over to Kiss My Big Blue Butt, scroll down to January 18th, and enjoy!

I've had TWO politically motivated calls today! You'd think it was 2008 or something!

The first one was someone fund-raising for Obama, and I have to say, if most of his co-workers are cut from the same cloth, no wonder Obama's campaign is doing so well. He was quick, on message, and responsive without seeming at all robotic, AND he took the time to chat just a little and tell me a joke at the end! I HAD to promise a small donation just because he did such a darned good job!

The other call I got was from a campaign worker asking if I could come phone-bank for Jared. I explained I couldn't because it would be a 4-5 hour drive for me. He must have been working off a donor list, because he asked incredulously if I was NOT in CD-2. "Nope," I said, "I just like Jared."

So there I go, mixing people up again!

...so I will probably have to get some on my own.

I ran across an ad for a company with some pretty hysterical t-shirts. They are striving to be bipartisan, and sadly they do not give points for referrals, so I am only sharing the link for your entertainment value.

http://www.electiontees.com/


I probably wouldn't wear this out in public, although I admire the snarkiness of the humor.


Think I'm going to buy one of these, though.