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.”
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.
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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.”
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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.”
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Hick reports raising $403,597 in August
Democrat John Hickenlooper announced today that his campaign raised $403,597 in August. Neither his official campaign finance report nor those of Republican candidate Dan Maes and American Constitution Party candidate Tom Tancredo were posted on the Colorado Secretary of State’s website as of 3 today.
The campaign reported spending $357,789 in August and having $171,542 cash on hand. To date, the campaign has raised $2.74 million.
Just business: Five Colorado insurers won’t offer individual child coverage
Parents who don’t have health insurance buy individual policies for their kids but five health insurance companies in Colorado will no longer offer that kind of coverage. The insurers say offering child policies made business sense when they could just cover healthy kids but that since federal law now requires them to offer insurance to all kids, including kids with pre-existing medical conditions, they are withdrawing from their child-only plans.
Insurance executives told the Denver Business Journal Friday that insurers who stay in the individual child market will be at a “competitive disadvantage” because after September 23rd they will be forced by federal law to provide for the “influx of children needing costly disease treatment.” There is no state law that requires insurers to offer the child-only policies. The companies who have fled the market include Humana, Aetna, Cigna, Assurant and United Healthcare of Colorado.
A Colorado Division of Insurance director, Jo Donlin, said the division is watching to see how access to insurance in the state is affected before commenting on the withdrawals.
The Business Journal reported that the child-only market makes up only 2 percent to 5 percent of sales annually.
Executives seemed to suggest that the government has in effect provided half a mandate, that if it is going to require all insurance companies in the market to offer all children coverage, it should also require all companies to enter the child-only market to spread out costs and erase the problem of competitive disadvantage.
“We regret having to make this change, but writing child-only policies is feasible only when there are a number of other insurers willing to do the same,” Jim Turner, corporate spokesman for Humana, told the Journal.
He said that the administrative costs of the policies are also not as well covered because there are few people in the lower-cost child-only market and new laws require that 80 percent of the price of an insurance plan pay for actual medical care.
Parents without insurance who have sick kids and who hoped for relief this fall may have to continue waiting.
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Maes, Hick give Tancredo cold shoulder in joint 10-debate schedule
Friday, American Constitution candidate for governor Tom Tancredo issued a statement asking Democratic candidate John Hickenlooper to agree to six one-on-one debates with Tancredo.
Apparently ignoring Tancredo’s request, Hickenlooper today issued a joint statement with Republican candidate Dan Maes saying those two candidates had agreed on 10 debates between the two of them —leaving Tancredo out in the cold.
Are they afraid to debate Tancredo? Neither candidate immediately returned calls wherein that question was posed to voice mail. Tancredo also did not quickly return a call. The Maes-Hickenlooper joint release says: “The debate schedule is based on invitations the campaigns received and joint availability of the candidates. Any decision on inviting third-party candidates is up to the individual event sponsors.”
They released the following schedule:
Sept. 2: Colorado Decides 2010 “Gubernatorial General Election Debate;” Denver
Sept. 11: Club 20; Grand Junction
Sept. 17: Progressive 15; Loveland
Sept. 25: Action 22; Colorado Springs
Oct. 5: Channel 7; Denver
Oct. 12 Pueblo Chieftain; Pueblo
Oct. 13: The Denver Post/ 9news; Denver
Oct. 14 Colorado Association of Commerce and Industry; Denver
Oct. 22 Fox 31; Denver
Oct. 29 CBS 4; Denver
The two candidates also pledged in the release to run an issues oriented campaign. “Coloradans are sick and tired of the personal attacks that tend to typify election season,” Maes said in the release. “John and I will engage each other on the issues.”
Hickenlooper, in the same release, is quoted as saying, “Dan and I have had healthy disagreements on various issues throughout the campaign so far, but I respect the way he has campaigned with class and respect.”
Tancredo, in his release last Friday, said “Since Dan Maes is no longer a viable opponent today, I am challenging Mayor Hickenlooper to six one-on-one debates.”
California highway experts say Hick’s I-70 trucking restrictions could fly
The Colorado Independent on Friday reported that gubernatorial candidate John Hickenlooper had floated the idea of restricting large truck traffic on I-70 west of Denver during peak hours as a way of alleviating congestion on holiday weekends or on busy ski weekends. The story also quoted a Colorado Department of Transportation spokesman saying that the federal government would not allow such a restriction.
Could I-70 gridlock be fixed by restricting truck traffic? (Photo courtesy of i70solutions.org)
It turns out that such a restriction is not completely out of the question.
California has been restricting truck traffic on I-80 over Donner Pass since the 1960s. CalTrans spokesman Mark Dinger says some sections of I-80 are extremely dangerous when you combine snowy conditions with skier traffic, tourists and large trucks.
He says the state has an “agreement” with the larger trucking companies to cooperate in the ban, but he noted that “cooperation” is not strictly needed as the state has the ability to ticket drivers who violate the ban and even to impound any trucks that violate the ban.
He says the state actually has parking areas where trucks are directed to park and wait until weather and traffic conditions improve.
“We try not to mix trucks and tourists when the weather is bad,” he said.
According to Nancy Dinger, spokeswoman for the Federal Department of Transportation, Colorado could restrict truck traffic on I-70, but only with the express written approval of the Federal Highway Administration.
She sent this regulation, 23 CFR 658.11:
“(d) Deletions and use restrictions-Federal-aid interstate. (1) The deletion of, or imposition of use restrictions on, any specific segment of the Interstate Highway System on the National Network, except as otherwise provided in this part, must be approved by the FHWA. Such action will be initiated on the FHWA’s own initiative or on the request of the Governor or the Governor’s authorized representative of the State in which the Interstate segment is located. Requests from the Governor or the Governor’s authorized representative shall be submitted along with justification for the deletion or restriction, in writing, to the appropriate FHWA Division Office for transmittal to Washington
Headquarters.”
Dinger said any interstate highway running through Colorado is the property of Colorado and that it is Colorado’s responsibility to manage those highways as effectively as possible.
“States are responsible for operating the roads and using strategies to manage congestion. Then again, there are federal regulations aimed at ensuring mobility and access. It’s difficult to say what can or cannot be done without having the specifics on what the state is proposing,” she said via email.