| |
|
Friday, July 7, 2006
|
|
Bloody Seventh
Andrew Sullivan is running this quote from London's mayor, Ken Livingstone, "Nothing you do, however many of us you kill, will stop that flight to our city where freedom is strong and where people can live in harmony with one another. Whatever you do, however many you kill, you will fail."
6:28:25 PM 
|
|
Richardson for president?
Bill Richardson is polling well in New Mexico in his quest to stay at the helm there, according to the Western Democrat, (Rasmussen Reports 6/27/06), Bill Richardson (D) 56%, John Dendahl (R) 32%." The New Mexico governor is a crowd favorite out here in the west. Many hope that he'll be the Democratic party nominee for 2008.
"2008 pres"
6:10:45 PM
|
|
Suthers for Attorney General?
There's an election angle in here someplace. We think it'll blow over due to lack of interest by the public.
We're hoping that someone will send us the link for the Trailhead Group. We'll happily link to them for their side.
Here's the link to Attorney General John Suthers website. He doesn't have a weblog or email list that we can find. Both would be fine tools for presenting their side of the story.
Thanks to ColoradoLib for the link.
"denver 2006"
5:42:42 PM
|
|
Fundraising in statewide races
Colorado Pols has the fundraising numbers for the governors race, "Bob Beauprez (R): $149,158 raised in June; $837,509 cash on hand. Bill Ritter (D): $360,000 raised in June; $n/a cash on hand."
Along with the numbers for Attorney General, "John Suthers (R): $21,425 raised in June; $217,362 cash on hand. Fern O'Brien (D): $14,430 raised in June; $8,221 cash on hand."
And numbers for Secretary of State, "Coffman raised about $63,000 in Q2, leaving him with about $83,000 cash on hand (keep in mind that Coffman transferred $68,000 from previous committees, including his short-lived gubernatorial campaign). Gordon, meanwhile, is spending money much faster than he is raising it. Gordon raised about $69,000 in Q2, but he only has about $29,000 cash on hand...nearly one-third less than Coffman."
And numbers for State Treasurer, "The latest financial reports for the State Treasurer race are in, and they pose an interesting question for Republican Mark Hillman, who has already burned through a lot of money. Hillman has raised about $247,000 since he first announced his candidacy last summer (including about $65,000 in Q2), but he only has $145,000 cash on hand. Ordinarily that might not be a big deal, but Hillman has accepted the voluntary spending limit cap of $500,000, which means that he's really going to have to tighten his wallet to save enough money for TV air time in the fall. Democrat Cary Kennedy, meanwhile, has raised a total of about $195,000 since announcing her candidacy in January (including about $88,000 in Q2), and has about $165,000 cash on hand."
"denver 2006"
7:25:12 AM
|
|
Immigration bill on fall ballot?
Republicans in the special session still want immigration legislation on the fall ballot, according to the Denver Post. From the article, "Republicans won round one of a special legislative session on immigration Thursday night by hijacking what they considered a weak proposal for cutting services to illegal immigrants with a ballot proposal that would put the issue before voters. The GOP victory in a Democratic-controlled Senate capped an opening day that was marked as much by election-year political posturing as debate on substantives issues. Republicans, upset that the Colorado Supreme Court last month threw out a citizens' initiative to ban most state services, successfully resurrected the proposal with an amendment that substituted the Democrats' Senate Bill 1...
"Democratic Sen. Bob Hagedorn, the sponsor of the hijacked bill, said the vote showed that the special session called by Gov. Bill Owens was about nothing more than partisan posturing for November, when control of both the governor's mansion and the statehouse are at stake. 'It's a charade. It's a mockery, this whole special session,' said a visibly frustrated Hagedorn. 'This is not about good public policy; this is about the November election.'[...]
"But it's not yet certain the measure will land on the ballot, because it must still win final Senate approval - and could be changed again - before it moves to the House. Lawmakers are fractured into two factions: the do-it-now crowd and the let-the-voters-decide crew. Most Republicans say they want to give citizens a chance to vote on whether to limit state spending on all but federally mandated services, such as emergency medical care and education, for illegal immigrants."
Here's the coverage from the Rocky Mountain News. They write, "In a stunning close to the first day of the special session, five Senate Democrats late Thursday sided with Republicans to send voters a measure limiting services to illegal immigrants. The defections made Republicans giddy, adding a dramatic twist in a fast-moving session likely to set the stage for a bitter November election. The proposal to limit government services was the cornerstone of the Democrats' agenda, but one they had expected to be signed into law and put into effect immediately, and not be put on the ballot."
"denver 2006"
7:00:40 AM
|
|
Global warming?
Western wildfires are increasing in frequency, size and destructiveness and may be a result of global warming according to this article from the Denver Post. They write, "Rising temperatures throughout the West have stoked an increase in large wildfires over the past 34 years as spring comes earlier, mountain snows melt sooner and forests dry to tinder, scientists reported Thursday. More than land-use changes or forest- management practices, the researchers concluded, the changing climate was the most important factor driving a quadrupling in the average number of large wildfires in the Western U.S. since 1970. All told, the average fire season has grown more than two months longer, while fires have become more frequent, longer-burning and harder to extinguish. They destroy 6.5 times more land than in the 1970s, the researchers found. Last year was the worst wildfire season on record, with more than 8.53 million acres burned nationwide by the end of December. This year, more than 60,000 wildfires have charred almost 3.9 million acres - twice the number of fires during the same period last year, according to the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho...
"Rising average temperatures are worsening the regional pattern of annual wildfires. The scientists found that climate change magnified a regional pattern of natural disaster that every year costs more than $1 billion in federal firefighting expenses and untold property damage...
"Average spring and summer temperatures in the West were more than 1.5 degrees higher between 1987 and 2003 than during the previous 17 years. In fact, the seasonal temperatures were the highest since record-keeping started in 1895, the researchers said. They reported that almost seven times as much forested federal land burned between 1987 and 2003 as during the previous 17 years. During the same period, the length of the wildfire season increased by 78 days. The average time between when a fire was discovered and it could be extinguished also lengthened - from 7.8 days to 37.1 days. The impact of rising temperatures on wildfires seemed most profound in the forests of the northern Rockies, which accounted for 60 percent of the blazes from 1987 to 2003, and least pronounced in arid Southern California, the researchers said."
"2008 pres"
6:55:04 AM
|
|
Republican River water shortages
Colorado may see another 30,000 acres of farmland dried up to help the state meet its obligations for water in the Republican River, according to the Sterling Journal Advocate. From the article, "The latest attempt of the Wray-based Republican River Water Conservation District to help Colorado meet its compact obligations with Nebraska and Kansas could result in the drying up another 30,000 acres of eastern Colorado irrigated farm land. The district's general manager, Stan Murphy, said interviews could begin this week with about 150 producers who applied for contracts through a $64 million Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program aimed at incentivizing farmers to shut down their wells permanently. The U.S. Department of Agriculture is putting up about 80 percent of the money. The order in which applicants will be called for interviews was determined by a drawing held last month at the state office of the USDA's Farm Service Agency in Lakewood. 'It's like changing the course of a river by moving one rock at a time,' Murphy said of the 2-year-old district's attempts to reduce depletions from the Republican River Basin. 'There's all kinds of things going on. It's going to take a long time.'[...]
"The RRWCD was created by the state Legislature in 2004 after a special master of the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Colorado has until December 2007 to get into compliance with the 1942 Republican River Compact, which set Colorado's allocation at 54,100 acre feet a year. A proliferation of wells in the 1950s and 1960s so overpumped the aquifer that by the year 2000, Colorado was out of compliance by about 6,400 acre feet a year. Scott Richrath, the Republican River program manager in the Colorado Division of Water Resources, said Colorado was 12,000 acre feet short on its delivery of water to the Nebraska border in each of the first two years of the 5-year stipulated agreement approved by the special master."
"colorado water"
6:38:13 AM
|
|
Good Samaritan bill?
Stephen L. Johnson, the EPA's top administrator, was howling with the residents of Clear Creek County yesterday, according to the Rocky Mountain News. From the article, "With hundreds of abandoned mines delivering untold tonnages of fish-killing copper, cadmium and zinc into Colorado's mountain streams daily, one might think that greens, government and corporate do-gooders would be climbing over one another to clean up the mess. Not so. A hitch in the nation's tangle of environmental laws can leave even the well-intentioned liable for the very pollution they are trying to eradicate, a disincentive to detoxify old hard-rock mines that has scared off even Colorado's own public health department. In the latest effort to call attention to this legal morass, the Environmental Protection Agency's top administrator, Stephen L. Johnson, paid a visit to the Clear Creek mining region west of Denver on Thursday. He called on Congress to pass a so-called 'Good Samaritan' law (SB1848) that would allow cleanups of old mine sites without the fear of lawsuits from government or third parties...
"Congress has been batting around similar proposals for more than a decade. But the bills get held back by worries that mining companies would use a new law to reopen mines, or that work would be done poorly, perhaps even increasing pollution, with no one accountable. But now, greens and government officials sense an opportunity. With President Bush backing a version of the Good Samaritan bill, bipartisan support in Congress for the concept and, in Johnson, an EPA administrator who has made the matter a priority, hope abounds that this might be the year...
"'Congress will fix it when they get the word we're at the tipping point,' Ed Rapp, of the Clear Creek Watershed Foundation, told a gathering of about 50 officials, environmentalists and academics who met at the Idaho Springs Visitors Center before accompanying Johnson to a press event at the McClelland Mine near Dumont. Several state agencies and private entities, including Coors Brewing Co., joined forces in the 1990s to clean up part of the McClelland site, on the banks of Clear Creek. Workers capped, graded and replanted the site. They also set their sights on the mine tunnel itself, where polluted waters carry some 10 pounds of metals a day into Clear Creek. Final designs and funds were in place, but the state ended up pulling back, fearful of legal language in the Clean Water Act and other laws that could leave it and other parties at risk of financial exposure if someone decided to sue over any pollution still leaching from the site. Colorado and the West is dotted with sites just like McClelland, as many as 500,000, according to some estimates. The largest polluting mines, places such as Summitville in south-central Colorado, benefit from federal Superfund laws. But it's the countless smaller sites, not big enough to fall under Superfund, that give regulators and environmentalists fits.
"Colorado's congressional delegation has long voiced support for Good Samaritan legislation, including Rep. Mark Udall of the 2nd district. U.S. Sens. Ken Salazar and Wayne Allard are sponsoring a new version of the bill this year. Rep. Bob Beauprez, of Colorado's 7th Congressional District and the Republican candidate for governor, attended Thursday's gathering and voiced his support for Good Samaritan legislation."
More coverage of the issue, from the Summit Daily News. They write, "At issue is the pollution-laden water that frequently trickles from orphaned mines, including numerous sites in Summit County. Often called acid mine drainage, the water can be heavily tainted with toxic heavy metals, in some cases at levels that are harmful to human health, and more frequently in concentrations toxic to aquatic life. That includes streams in Summit County like the Snake River, parts of which are listed as impaired under the Clean Water Act. Concentrations of metals, primarily zinc, exceed state standards set to protect aquatic life in the Snake. While a Snake River cleanup has already been targeted by several groups, passage of a good samaritan law would ease the effort immensely, said Carol Russell, of the EPA's mining program. The geographic scope of the problem is staggering, said Elizabeth Russell, of Trout Unlimited, the cold water fisheries conservation group that has taken a lead role in mine cleanup efforts recently. Russell, recently hired to focus on the Snake River cleanup in Summit County, said 40 percent of all headwaters streams in the West are impacted to some degree by acid mine drainage...
"As now written, federal environmental rules include strict liability provisions that assign perpetual responsibility for cleanups to anyone tackling remediation at abandoned mine sites. Johnson said that, while there have been various good samaritan proposals floating around for years, the latest version includes some compromise language that could pass muster in Congress. Among the issues that have tangled up the legislation in the past are the extent of involvement by the mining industry, for example whether mining companies should be allowed to re-mine cleanup areas. Public involvement has also been a question mark...
"Republican Congressman and gubernatorial candidate Bob Beauprez said abandoned mine remediation has been hampered by a lack of common sense, and promised to work with Democratic Rep. Mark Udall to get a good samaritan measure passed this year."
"colorado water"
6:22:35 AM
|
|
Aztlan?
Here's an article about Aztlan and immigration from the Los Angeles Times. From the article, "In the churning debate over immigration, there are perhaps no words as loaded or controversial as Aztlan, the name of the mythical Aztec homeland. For many it carries potent political overtones, for others it is a romantic ideal, and to those most opposed to illegal immigration it represents a strategic effort to reclaim land that was once part of Mexico...
"In Aztec folklore, Aztlan was believed to have been in northern Mexico, possibly along the western coast. Other accounts put it farther north, perhaps in what is now Arizona, Colorado or New Mexico. During the Chicano rights movement of the 1960s, Aztlan became a powerful rallying cry for militants who spoke of a reconquista, or reconquest, of the U.S. Southwest, turning it into an independent homeland for Latinos."
"2008 pres"
6:14:40 AM
|
|
Conservation working
The Colorado Springs Gazette is reporting that Colorado Springs residents are using much less water compared to earlier in the century. From the article, "Water use in Colorado Springs during a soggy Wednesday was the lowest for that date in at least six years, Colorado Springs Utilities reports. Residents used only 85.2 million gallons, 26 percent less than a year ago and half the 170 million gallons used in 2001 before watering restrictions kicked in the next year because of the drought...
"This year, residents have used 11.9 million gallons less than in 2001, the last year in which there were no watering restrictions. 'Remember we have 11 percent more customers now compared to then, so if we're using the same as 2001 as a community, we're using substantially less per household,' Grossman said. Storage in the city's reservoirs stands at 77.1 percent of capacity, the highest in four years and above the 35-year average of 71.7 percent. Most of the city's water comes from the Western Slope and is stored there in reservoirs. The City Council imposed watering restrictions in 2002 in response to the drought. The measures remained in place until May 1, when restrictions were replaced with block water rates. The new scale charges higher rates for those using the most water."
"colorado water"
6:08:18 AM
|
|
|
© Copyright 2009 John Orr.
Last update: 3/14/09; 8:21:25 PM.
|
|
|
