State House hopeful Beezley backs ADA despite disparaging comments
On Friday, Colorado State House candidate Don Beezley told me he supports the Americans with Disabilities Act, despite disparaging comments he made about it.
He said he’d like to see the state, not the federal government, make and enforce its own ADA-like law, but he nonetheless supports the act.
On Saturday, someone shot me an email pointing out that Beezley had previously told the Boulder Daily Camera that he opposed the ADA. The Camera reported Sept. 1:
Beezley also wrote [in 2005] about his opposition to the ADA, which he said forced him to make costly renovations to a restaurant he owned.
“I spent $5,000 to redo the bathrooms (on a small budget with no money). Prior to that, it had been a pleasure to help a disabled person out with a tray, a door or whatever. After that, I could only think, ‘you better use my d*** bathroom!’ when someone rolled in. ADA took other human beings from being someone with a challenge whom it might be a joy to help, and turned them into a burden. An enemy.” Beezley wrote in 2005.
Beezley said he still opposes the act, which he believes caused a preschool to discriminate against his diabetic son when it denied him admission.
“I think it’s very well-intentioned legislation, but like much other legislation, it’s had unintended consequences,” Beezley said Wednesday.
So, what’s the deal? Did the Camera err in reporting that Beezley opposes the ADA? Or did I get it wrong?
“It’s settled law at this point time, for the most part, and it is what it is,” he said. “But I think these things need to happen at the state level.
Asked directly if he opposes the ADA, Beezley said, “No.”
Billionaire Polluters Pay a Million to Foul California’s Air – Who’s Behind Prop 23?
By Ann Notthoff
NRDC
Of one thing you can be certain: when the Koch Brothers ride into town, dirty money follows. This is particularly bad news for California as the Koch Brothers last week arrived to join other out of state polluters trying to buy their right to keep polluting our air here in the Golden State.
The two billionaire siblings, David and Charles Koch, own Koch Industries, a Wichita-based oil conglomerate that maintains refineries in three states and 4,000 miles of pipeline.
As energy companies go, Koch Industries is something of a stealth entity. The Center for Public Integrity recently completed a major report on the company, noting that “Koch Industries could be the biggest oil company you have never heard of.” While it is little known to the public, its estimated revenues in 2009 were about $40 billion, making it bigger than AT&T, Microsoft or Merrill Lynch.
Doesn’t Sound Like a Come-on Line from 76 years ago…
“When a cold mama gets hot, boy how she sizzles.”
– Fellow Bus Passenger Hitting on Claudette Colbert in 1934’s It Happened One Night
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WATCH: Maes makes his case on YouTube woodsy home video
Dan Maes, the grassroots tea party candidate for governor of Colorado besieged and rejected by state Republican Party Chairman Dick Wadhams and Republican leaders in the state, has taken his case directly to the people with a YouTube in which he answers questions raised in the media over the last few months. The intimate video is shot against a rough-hewn log wall, presumably at the Maes’s half-a-million-dollar log home in Evergreen.
“Hi everybody. There seems to be a lot of questions out there regarding some issues around my campaign as of late and I’d like to get them cleared up right away so we can move on to victory on November Second.”
He wasn’t lying about being a secret agent in Kansas. He was involved in an investigation into a gambling ring and was fired as a result. He was a newcomer to politics and innocently bungled campaign finances. “I don’t know why the contribution wasn’t logged correctly. Our treasurer hasn’t been with us for eight months.” He has never embellished his business success. “I have never claimed to be a Fortune 500 CEO. I’ve never claimed to be a millionaire. I’m just an average middle-class guy who has owned and helped in small businesses and rose up from poverty to have a lifestyle that I’m proud of right now.”
Maes’s grassroots supporters may respond positively to the video. Maes doesn’t come off like a politician. His detractors may add that he doesn’t come off like a governor, either.
Cals to his offices for comment weren’t immediately returned.
Got a tip? Freelance story pitch? Send us an e-mail. Follow The Colorado Independent on Twitter.
Are reporters Allison Sherry and Amanda Terkel the same person?
The two reporters look like different people based on the photos that accompany their stories but this week they seem to have written and published the same story– a story about edits to policy positions made to U.S. Senate candidate Ken Buck’s website. Terkel is a bespectacled dark-haired senior reporter for the Huffington Post. Allison Sherry is a red-head politics reporter for the Denver Post. Terkel’s story came out first, on Tuesday, and Sherry’s came out today, Wednesday. There were no links or references to Terkel’s story in the story by Sherry. “We weren’t working together at all, so I’m not sure how her piece came about,” Terkel told the Colorado Independent, referring to Sherry’s piece.
Maybe the two were just working from the same tip. Or maybe we could just close the book now on those claims by traditional media that online media is merely “parasitic.”
Terkel’s lead:
Colorado Republican Ken Buck is a darling of the Tea Party movement, and he has admitted that this constituency was “huge” to his success over establishment candidate Jane Norton in the state’s U.S. Senate primary. In recent months, however, he has changed his website, moderating some of his more controversial policy positions.
She then compares past and current positions on Afghanistan and abortion.
Sherry’s lead:
Edits to GOP Senate candidate Ken Buck’s campaign website show him changing stances on stem-cell research and Afghanistan — something his campaign attributes to a cleaner message but his opponent says shows he is “moderating” earlier positions.
Sherry gets quotes from the Buck campaign. Terkel left messages but didn’t get a call back in time to include any quotes with her piece, which speaks to some facts of the shifting news-media environment: newspapers are still slower to publish, their reporters less pressured to turn around stories quickly, and officials still call those reporters back more readily.
Terkel includes plenty of links and block quotes from the website versions. Sherry’s story, clearly written for the offline edition of the paper, contains not a single link– not to Terkel’s story and not to the Buck website at the center of the story. Apart from the fact that Sherry is reporting about a website, her piece could have been written about Ken Buck’s grandfather for publication in a 1930′s broadsheet.
Note: Buck campaign spokesman Owen Loftus played down the suggestion that the campaign was softening Buck’s stances to appeal to general election voters. He pointed out to the Denver Post that the website edits occurred in the weeks before the primary voting, when Buck was facing hard-right-running Jane Norton.
“It’s ridiculous to say we’re changing our positions. If you’re using that argument, we would have made our positions stronger because at that time we were in the heat of the primary.”
And it’s true that, at least on Afghanistan, Buck had modified (or clarified) his view as early as June, as he made clear during a debate with Norton.
“ I don’t think the terrorists got the message,” Norton said at the time. “We need to double down in Afghanistan.”
Buck said the U.S. needed to exit Afghanistan once the drug trade was diminished and once the region was essentially secure.
“We are foolish if we think we’re going to turn Afghanistan into a western-style democracy,” he said, making reference to the fact that his son, Cody, attends West Point. This is not a mere election topic for him he said. “God bless us if we don’t give our troops an exit strategy to get back home.”
Got a tip? Freelance story pitch? Send us an e-mail. Follow The Colorado Independent on Twitter.
Poll: Hickenlooper leading in conservative Colorado Springs
There are certain things you can count on in Colorado politics. Denver will vote Democrat. Colorado Springs will vote Republican. Well, it may be time to reconsider that, at least in the case of Colorado Springs.
A poll released Tuesday by the Colorado Springs Gazette shows Denver Democratic Mayor John Hickenlooper leading the governor’s race in Colorado Springs with the support of 52 percent of those polled.
Republican Dan Maes was second with 34 percent and American Constitution candidate Tom Tancredo brought up the rear with 3 percent.
The poll, conducted by Public Opinion Strategies and FM3, contacted 473 voters in Colorado Springs and Pueblo — which often votes Democratic. It showed Republican Ken Buck leading incumbent Democrat Michael Bennet 56 percent to 30 percent in the U.S. Senate race.
Survival tales, mitigation questions linger as Fourmile Fire rages
BOULDER — As firefighters continued to battle the raging Fourmile Fire Tuesday and evacuees relived harrowing survival tales, politicians were already questioning wildfire mitigation efforts in the area and seeking future funding.
The Fourmile Fire west of Boulder Tuesday morning. (Photo by John Tomasic)
“We have done a lot in this area over the last couple of years to provide fire mitigation, clearing [vegetation] around properties, so we’ll see what the results are,” Gov. Bill Ritter said during a press conference Tuesday.
Ritter took a tour of Fourmile Canyon on Tuesday afternoon and issued an emergency disaster declaration authorizing $5 million in state aid for firefighting costs. He said the state will seek additional funds from the federal government if necessary.
Michael Sakowske, a potter who lost his home in the blaze, was aware of fire mitigation measures but said that more work was necessary: “They said they were doing fire mitigation, but it didn’t look like they had come through my backyard.”
Sen. Mark Udall praised quick work by the governor and the authorization of FEMA funds, but he also said the fire is a clear indication the full U.S. Senate needs to pass his National Forest Insect and Disease Emergency Act, which would direct federal resources to fire-prone areas ravaged by the mountain pine bark beetle epidemic.
“I will not rest in my efforts to secure additional funding and support to reduce the wildfire threats from dry, dense trees along the Front Range and throughout Colorado — as well as respond to the bark beetle threats,” Udall said in a release.
Sakowske said there was little time to react when the massive wildfire flared up Monday morning.
“I woke up to my neighbor pounding on my door. I ran outside and I could hear explosions and I felt the heat as ashes fell from the sky,” he said of the fire in Sunshine Canyon where his home was located. “Living up in the mountains, I’ve had my experience with fire over the years, but I could tell it was different this time.”
After problems with his family and the law, Sakowske said he came to Colorado to “start anew” 16 years ago and since then has been leading a peaceful and modest life making pottery in his old mining cabin. “I started over here and it was a good start, but now I’m going to have to start over again.”
As of Tuesday evening, dozens of structures had been destroyed and 3,500 Boulder County residents had been forced from 1,000 homes since the Fourmile Fire started Monday morning. More than 7,000 acres had burned.
Nine firefighters have lost their homes in the blaze, but there have been no injuries or deaths due to the fire, which was still burning out of control Tuesday evening. The fire may have been caused by a vehicle crashing into a propane tank, according to a 911 tape released Tuesday.
Monday night, the Red Cross provided emergency shelter and food for evacuees at the Coors Event Center at the University of Colorado. Thirteen evacuees checked in Monday night and another 11 checked in Tuesday, according to volunteer shelter manager David Turner.
The Coors Event Center lacks hot water, but transportation has been provided to the CU Recreation Center so that evacuees have access to showers.
“Here the evacuees are receiving everything they need as far as necessities go,” Turner said. “The only thing lacking is information on what’s happening up the canyon.”
The Red Cross shelter was scheduled to move to the YMCA at 2850 Mapleton. The majority of evacuees are staying with friends and family instead of relying on emergency response shelters.
Red Cross mental health volunteer David Root, a retired licensed therapist, says that along with basic necessities, evacuees also often need help handling the immense stress of loss and shock.
Although most needs of the evacuees are met, one problem that Root recognizes is that evacuees cannot bring their pets into the shelter. “In times of immense stress, people want to be with their pets to calm themselves down.”
More than 200 firefighters from at least 35 local, regional and national agencies were working to contain the fire late Tuesday.
Sakowske, who does not have insurance, says that while he grabbed his most important documents and photos, he wishes he had grabbed his pottery wheel. “It’s hard to think what’s really important in a situation like that. [The pottery wheel] was the last thing my father left me before he died … But at the very least I still have my hands, I can replace a wheel.”
Got a tip? Freelance story pitch? Send us an e-mail. Follow The Colorado Independent on Twitter.
Governor Considers Bill That Would Prohibit Marijuana Dispensaries from Being Located 600 Feet from Schools
Medical marijuana buyers’ clubs and dispensaries would be prohibited from being within 600 feet of public or private school under legislation on Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s desk.
Through local zoning ordinances, cities and counties already have the ability to restrict where various types of establishments are located. Los Angles, for example, faces court challenges over an ordinance that took effect in June that will close 439 marijuana collectives and forbids any remaining ones to be located within 1,000 feet of a school or another dispensary.
More than 40 cities and counties have passed ordinances regulating the activities of dispensaries— limits on plants and buds, for example. Several other cities including Walnut Creek and Danville, have passed local laws restricting dispensary locations. Berkeley restricts dispensaries from being within 1,000 feet of a school.
So far, the state has not inserted itself into local land use decision-making on the issue.
“As medical marijuana dispensaries continue to open throughout the state, they are increasingly located near schools and parks, public libraries and child care facilities,” wrote Assemblywoman Joan Buchanan, a San Ramon Democrat in justification for her bill, AB 2650.
“To keep medical marijuana dispensaries from further encroaching from (sic) places where children and families congregate, we believe we need to keep them a measured distance from these locations.”
State law currently prohibits a variety of activities within 1,000 feet of a school. Tobacco advertising on billboards is one. Possession of gun is another. Sex offenders cannot live within 1,000 feet of a school. Drug dealing within 1,000 feet of a school carries a harsher sentence.
Buchanan’s bill originally was a measure on medical treatment of inmates by Assemblyman Alberto Torrico, a Fremont Democrat.
She gutted that measure and replaced it with one that restricted dispensaries from being located within 1,000 feet of a school.
The Marijuana Policy Project, which favors legalizing and regulating marijuana, opposed Buchanan’s bill.
“MPP and our allies helped dramatically weaken the bill by reducing the buffer from 1,000 feet to 600 feet and grandfathering in dispensaries in cities with pre-existing ordinances that were less strict,” the group says on its website.
While Buchanan’s bill would “grandfather in” local ordinances approved prior to January 1, 2011, cities and counties are still free to pass more restrictive ordinances.
Among the bill’s supporters are the Association of California School Administrators, the California State PTA and the California Police Chiefs Association.
Home schools are not included in the bill’s restrictions.
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September 7 is the 69th day of the new fiscal year for which no budget has been enacted. The Legislature is required by the constitution to send the governor a spending plan by June 15, two weeks before the start of the fiscal year.
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Key Patient Protection Bills On Governor’s Desk
By Anthony Wright
Health Access
The California Legislature ended their session last week after passing over a dozen patient protection measures. If signed by the Governor, these bills will implement and improve a number of provisions of federal health care reform law, enacting a number of new consumer protections.
A lists of the measures related to implementing federal health reform, and how they fared in the California Legislature, is available on the front page of the Health Access website.
These bills that passed are now on the desk of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.