from BoycottRush.org

Send a message to Rush Limbaugh’s advertisers: Tell them it’s time to stop supporting his anti-woman hate speech.

So far seven (7) national advertisers have pulled out of the Rush Limbaugh radio show and you can follow the action on Twitter using the hashtag #stoprush or by following the link above.

Update Monday March 5 11:51 Mountain:

Monday, March 5, 12:13 p.m.: Rush Limbaugh just lost another advertiser.

AOL on Monday became the eighth company to pull its ads from Limbaugh’s radio talk show in the wake of his inflammatory comments about a 30-year-old Georgetown law student who advocated for President Obama’s contraception policy.

“At AOL one of our core values is that we act with integrity,” the company said in a statement on its Facebook page. “We have monitored the unfolding events and have determined that Mr. Limbaugh’s comments are not in line with our values. As a result we have made the decision to suspend advertising on The Rush Limbaugh Radio show.”

Rush in Denver on KOA AM850

ClearChannel Communications syndicates the Rush Limbaugh show nationally. In Denver their outlet is KOA AM 850 ClearChannel doesn’t care what Limbaugh says as long as he delivers an audience and sponsors. To them it is strictly a business decision. If Rush Limbaugh starts costing them money they may decide to drop him.

The Gypsy Chief blog supports the national effort to boycott this toxic talker. Our effort focuses on the local level, so I have written to AM Sales Director Rosemary Bennett to let her know that I will never buy any product or service advertised on KOA during the Limbaugh show. Rosemary Bennett’s phone number is (303) 713 – 8355 according to their website. I have a daughter about the same age as Sandra Fluke. If anybody ever called my daughter the vile things Limbaugh called this 30 year old Georgetown Law student I would be after him with a horsewhip. … just sayin’

Express mail forms and priority mailboxes sit on display at the Capitol Station, Monday, December 5, 2011, in Springfield, Illinois. (AP Photo/Seth Perlman)

There are many appropriate targets for Occupy Wall Street protests. But the OWS protesters hit a bull’s-eye when they invaded a National Press Club briefing where Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe—who likes to make like a corporate executive and refer to himself as “Chief Operating Officer of the US Postal Service”—was giving a speech about the need to close local post offices, layoff workers and, though this was unspoken, take the steps that will lead to the privatization of the one of the country’s greatest public assets.

“Stop closing post offices,” chanted the activists who occupied the press club. “Don’t privatize the post office. It’s a public service. It’s not a profit center for FedEx and UPS to rip off the people.”

Postmasters general do not usually become the targets of passionate opposition. But the protesters were chanting: “Hey, hey, ho, ho, Donahoe has got to go.”

And rightly so.

On Monday, Donahue laid out a plan that, if implemented, would destroy the postal service as most Americans know it.

And the destruction would come not out of necessity but to perpetuate an austerity lie.

The supposed financial crisis facing the US Postal Service is actually a fiscal fantasy, The USPS, which continues to provide vital services to 150 million households and business each day, which sustains rural communities and urban neighborhoods across he country as a Main Street mainstay, which employs hundreds of thousands of Americans and which has a history of being in the forefront of technological and societal progress, is not in trouble because of competition from the Internet or changing letter-writing patterns. It is in crisis because Congress forced the the postal service to pay roughly $5.5 billion a year into a trust fund for future retiree pensions. The USPS inspector general says the postal service has overfunded pension obligations by $75 billion—something no other federal agency is required to do. In addition, the postal service has been slapped with other charges and obligations that make it appear to be headed for bankruptcy. Simply treating the USPS fairly when it comes to the prepayment of pensions would ease most of the burden facing the postal service.

But Congress is dithering, the for-profit mail services that want to carve up the USPS are salivating, and the postmaster general is surrendering—proposing to end next-day delivery of letters, postcards and other First Class mail.

That postmaster general surrender was signaled Monday by a brutal proposal for deep cost cutting that could:

1. So diminish and slow down first-class mail delivery that the changes will create an opening for private carriers; indeed, Americans are almost being pushed into the arms of UPS and FedEx.
2. Ultimately cause as many as 100,000 job losses is the biggest single blow to employment by any employer in the country, Postal service job cuts hit people of color, women and veterans hardest, as the USPS has a long history of hiring staffs that “look like America.” The proposed closing of more than 250 of 561 postal sorting centers is the equivalent of a wave of factory closings like nothing the country saw even in the depths of the recent recession.
3. Have a devastating impact on thousands of rural communities, where post offices are slated for closure. This is really a case of Washington abandoning rural areas and hard-hit urban neighborhoods at precisely the time they need the support of an engaged federal government.
4. So delay delivery that it would create a nine-day lag time for periodical. This would be devastating for the print press and for the public discourse. Weekly newspapers and magazines might not even arrive until after their next editions were published.
5. Wreck havoc with absentee voting and military voting processes that are already a mess in many states. Hardest hit will be states that have gone to vote-by-mail systems, such as Oregon. At a time when Voter ID laws are making it harder to cast ballots at the polls, this makes absentee voting critical.

By every reasonable measure, the postal service is proposing suicide in the form of not-so-slow cuts. “The Postal Service plan will hasten the demise of the USPS,” American Postal Workers Union president Cliff Guffey said with regard to the agency’s announcement that it would seek an advisory opinion from the Postal Regulatory Commission on plans to eliminate next-day delivery of first-class mail and periodicals. “The USPS should be modernizing and striving to remain relevant in the digital age, not reducing service to the American people.”

Under what the postmaster general’s “cost-cutting plan,” the postal service would shutter almost half the nation’s mail-processing centers and shed tens of thousands of jobs—at a time when even the most optimistic observers say the country faces a steep climb to address widespread unemployment. The changes would make it impossible for the postal service to reconstitute itself in better times. As such, they an open invitation to private carriers to take over lucrative routes and services—while leaving the great mass of Americans with diminished and substandard services.

The cuts proposed by the postmaster general go way beyond cost-cutting. This is the sounding of the death knell for a postal service that traces its roots to the nation’s first days and that remains an essential service for isolated rural communities and neglected urban neighborhoods.

“The so-called Postmaster General is going to announce details that will lead to the end of the United States Postal Service and universal postal delivery in this country,” said Congressman Peter DeFazio, D-Oregon, who highlighted the damage the postal service will do to the broader economy.

“This would be an incredible blow to our economy. With real unemployment at 16 percent we cannot afford another 100,000 people laid off,” explained DeFazio. “I’ve already heard from small business owners that rely on USPS and are concerned that the plan would kill their businesses. Some rural Oregonians would have to drive 15 to 20 miles to access their mail. Subscribers of small rural weekly newspapers would have to wait 7-9 days for their papers to be delivered. This is a short-sighted proposal that fails to address the serious long-term issues facing USPS.“

Related: Are We About to Lost the Postal Service?

Related: Doing It Their Way: Government Layoffs Worsening Unemployment

Related: U. S. Postal Service Plans Dramatic Cuts

Colorado Related: 63 Colorado Post Offices On List To Be Closed

30 of the 63 Colorado Post Offices mentioned are in Cory Gardner’s 4th Congressional District while another 23 are located in Scott Tipton’s 3rd Congressional District

Posted by Gypsy Chief

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officer raises weapon during an arrest in Denver, CO 10/29/2011

Posted by Gypsy Chief

seen at Occupy Denver protest courtesy of Veronica Rael

With permission from Brandi we reprint portions

Future history books will refer to the Occupy Wall Street movement as an epic phenomenon. For now, many are still trying to understand the concept and how it pertains to Denver, Fort Collins, Colorado Springs, Pueblo, Greeley, Grand Junction, Aspen, Durango, Boulder and their own local communities as well. A few days into the Occupy Wall Street movement, supporters from all over Colorado began gathering in different online forums, from Facebook to Twitter, finally emerging as a collective on Broadway and Colfax. Friday, Sept 23, was the first day of sign holding by approximately 25 people, including many commuters. The next day the group had doubled, and began their first march down 16th Street Mall. By the third night, Denver was a 24-hour occupation, consisting of about five people, and hasn’t stopped growing since; their last march turned out nearly 5,000.

With a few keystrokes and then a few more, a revolution began. Ignoring the movement has become difficult as it continues to grow exponentially. In the face of 4 am raids by Colorado State Troopers in riot gear, Denver Police Department standoffs with nonviolent protesters (again with police in riot gear), and unwarranted uses of pepper-spray and batons, many commuters have begun organizing in their local communities and creating what seems to be a second wave of occupations, known collectively as Occupy Colorado. The occupations located in every major Colorado city were already organizing shortly after Occupy Denver began. The backlash created by Governor John Hickenlooper and Mayor Michael Hancock’s responses to the protest, combined with the wildly unpopular encounters against riot police forces, resulting in several dozen arrests, have merely served to fuel the hunger of the Colorado population to right the injustices these occupations believe to be so wrong.

Balance of Huffington Post article here

Posted by Gypsy Chief

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America’s “nuclear power renaissance” – and a concurrent Colorado uranium mining revival — could cool considerably in the wake of a 8.9 earthquake and tsunami off Japan’s northeast coast that caused two partial meltdowns at two nuclear reactors and serious problems at two more plants.

The growing disaster plaguing four of Japan’s 54 nuclear reactors – the third most in the world behind only the United States (104) and France (58) – has sparked unpleasant memories of the Chernobyl meltdown in the Ukraine in 1986 and the Three Mile Island incident in Pennsylvania in 1979. The mounting crisis in Japan — where officials now fear radioactive steam may spew into the atmosphere for weeks — is sending shockwaves through the nuclear power industry.

Both Chernobyl and Three Mile Island contributed to a decades-long slowdown in nuclear power production in the United States, although the nation still generates 20 percent of its electrical power from nuclear facilities. America’s 104 nuclear reactors are located in 31 states, mostly east of the Mississippi River, and none are in Colorado.

But Colorado historically has been a hotbed of uranium production dating back to World War II and the Cold War, and the state has slowly been ramping back up its uranium milling and mining operations to meet an anticipated spike in demand as nuclear power enjoys renewed interest because it doesn’t generate nearly the carbon emissions of conventional fossil fuels.

More: Colorado Independent Story
Related link: Citizens Against Resource Destruction
Photo Credit US Energy Information Administration
Posted by Gypsy Chief

At New Belgium Jan. 31

Please join us for a big picture discussion on the benefits of conserving Colorado’s remaining open spaces, protecting our state parks, keeping family farmers and ranchers on their land, and expanding opportunities for sustainable agriculture.

The Colorado Landscapes Project

Colorado’s parks, wide open spaces, and rural farm and ranch lands make our state a beautiful place to live. These lands provide opportunities for outdoor recreation, sustain intact wildlife habitat, and bring locally-grown food to our tables.

But from family farms to state parks, our landscape faces threats. Sprawling development has eaten up 2.5 million acres of Colorado’s open lands in the last two decades. Plus, the ongoing budget crisis has put Colorado State Parks funding on the chopping block and created pressure to fund our parks by opening them up to drilling. Programs such as Great Outdoors Colorado, the Land & Water Conservation Fund, and Colorado State Parks are critical to conserve our remaining open spaces.

Fort Collins Event Monday Jan. 31

With Rep. Randy Fischer, Legacy Land Trust, Larimer County Open Lands Program, and Grow Your Own Meal
Monday, January 31, 2011 at 6:30 PM
New Belgium Brewing Company
500 Linden St, Fort Collins, CO 80524

Source: Environment Colorado

Posted by Gypsy Chief

Drilling on the Pinedale Anticline. Photo by Linda Baker Wyoming Outdoors

PRBRC in Wyoming Talks Frack

Hydraulic fracturing or “fracking” as it is best known, has drawn its share of controversy nationwide as well as locally from environmental groups, who have raised concerns over safety issues. Shannon Anderson with the Powder River Basin Resource Council explains the process of fracking.

PRBRC Board Member John Fenton says that the fluids that are used in the fracking process are what pose the real concern.

Fenton said that during the Bush/Cheney Administration, the drilling companies did not have to adhere to the safe water drinking act and other environmental rules. This meant that they did not have to disclose the chemicals that were being used in the fracking process. Fenton went on to say that most of the chemicals that are used are highly toxic and that their effects to humans and the environment are not yet known.

Source is Sheridan Media: Sheridan WY

CO House Members Receive Industry Contributions

Mike Coffman (R-CO) $44,250

Campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry, 2009-2010
Source: Open Secrets
To the: Hinchey-DeGette-Polis group

Diana DeGette (D-CO) $2,750
Jared Polis (D-CO) $0

Photo Credit: Sheridan Media, Sheridan, WY
Posted by Gypsy ChiefFollow @GypsyChief

ACLU Colorado

Prof. Courtenay Daum, CSU Political Science Department, spoke last night to a packed house … it was Bill of Rights Day … her subject “The Roberts Supreme Court Comes of Age: How Did We Get Here and Where Are We Going?” The roots of the Roberts Court may be traced back to the Ronald Reagan administration. At the time the federal judiciary was deemed to have a liberal bias. Reagan took it as a priority to nominate conservative judges. Roughly half of the federal bench was appointed during the Reagan administration. Republicans held a Senate majority for six of the eight years of the Reagan era. The professor traced the careers of the five most conservative sitting Supreme Court Justices. /

Breaking: Chief justice urges progress

More info is here

After her initial presentation the audience had many questions; they moved the session into dialogue mode. Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission 130 S. Ct. 876 got the most questions along with the proper role of corporations in society. The recent District court ruling that a portion of The Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010 is unconstitutional makes it more likely that the Supreme Court will accept a case challenging the new health care law. She discussed two Second Amendment cases: District of Columbia vs. Heller 554 U.S. 290 (2008) and McDonald v Chicago 561 U. S. ___. On separation of church and state, an ACLU perennial, Daum said that challenges to the State of Kentucky creationist theme park are likely to be handled at a lower court level. A school voucher case is a more likely vehicle for the Roberts Court. [Perhaps a case such as Arizona Christian School Tuition Organization v Kathleen M. Winn, et al 09-987 - Gypsy Chief's comment]

The meeting sponsored by ACLU of Colorado was held at the
Coloradoan Community Meeting Room. Gypsy Chief estimates that there were just over 100 in attendance. Our previous story about this can be found here.

Daum also discussed what might have happened if President Obama had nominated Cass Sunstein and he had been confirmed. Would such a shift have pushed Justice Kennedy into the more conservative camp? Gypsy Chief, just being snarky, wondered if the Supreme Court would entertain a case in which South Georgia pigs and chickens banded together to sue their owners. See Giraffe et al vs. Chambliss on this blog. One of the high points for me was a discussion of judicial activism. Activism, Daum said, is a philosophy, not a political posture. The Roberts Court, beginning in its second term, has shown a proclivity toward overturning precedent, even recent precedent. There was also a comment that Chief Justice Earl Warren was a liberal. Frankly, I think that is wrong. As I’ve said before Earl Warren was a conservative bent on gradual continuous constitutional reform. This has a tradition which dates back to Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France.

Posted by Gypsy Chief

As Fort Collins takes the first steps toward transition it is nice to learn that we are not alone. Yes, of course, if Fort Collins becomes a transition town we join a world wide movement transitionnetwork.org… and this will always be true. Yet, I like the idea that we have friends closer to home … along the Front Range. Transition Colorado has a website and an active community that I have been learning from.

Transition Fort Collins is on the way. A first meeting was held on December 1, 2010 at Bean Cycle Coffee Shop. There was a good sized group of community activists attending. They represented people from among others, The Center for Peace, Justice and Environment, Fort Collins Sustainability Group, and their Colorado State University counterparts. Meeting notes are on the way. A second meeting is scheduled for January 5, 2011. Stay tuned it should be an exciting ride. Speaking for myself only, I like the idea that a statewide group is available to help.

Posted by Gypsy Chief

Yes and No on 62 rally at state capitol

State of Colorado, Secretary of State has just released – Wednesday, November 24 – official 2010 State Cumulative Report.

Amendment 62 failed with 29.498% yes, 70.502% no statewide. This much we knew on election night. To take a closer look I waited until official results were presented on the Secretary of State website.

Did Amendment 62 carry any county?

No. The high water mark was Conejos County with 45.037% yes, the low was San Miguel County with 15.387% yes.

The top ten counties in terms of percentage yes on 62 are:

Conejos 45.037%
Yuma 40.910%
Archuleta 40.762%
El Paso 40.665%
Cheyenne 40.591%
Rio Grande 40.567%
Fremont 40.179%
Delta 39.950%
Las Animas 39.416%
Custer 39.289%

The bottom ten counties are:

Clear Creek 21.323%
San Juan 20.957%
Gunnison 19.839%
Jackson 19.777%
Summit 16.963%
Routt 18.699%
Denver 17.067%
Boulder 17.029%
Pitkin 16.963%
San Miguel 15.387%

Where were the votes cast?

There were 1,722,548 total votes. I ranked the counties by total votes and ran a cumulative vote total: Here are the top ten.

COUNTY Percent of State Cumulative
Jefferson 12.751% 219,643
Arapahoe 11.022% 409,510
El Paso 10.971% 598,494
Denver 10.639% 781,755
Boulder 7.037% 902,972
Larimer 7.027% 1,024,023
Douglas 6.526% 1,136,431
Adams 6.273% 1,244,489
Weld 4.501% 1,322,020
Mesa 3.119% 1,375,748
These top ten counties cast 79.867% of all votes on the measure.

I ranked all counties by percent yes and calculated the effect their yes votes had on the total yes vote. For example El Paso County voted 40.665% yes and those votes contributed 15.125% to all of the yes vote on the measure. Jefferson County voted 26.749% yes and those votes contributed 11.563% to all of the yes vote. Arapahoe County voted 27.962% yes and those votes contributed 10.449% to all of the yes vote. There was no other county that contributed as much as 10.000% to the total yes vote. Clearly El Paso County is an outlier. If there were more places like El Paso County in Colorado the margin of difference would have been closer.The measure would have failed – but not as badly. I considered taking a standard deviation on percent of support and doing z-scores on all counties. Decided not to because I don’t think it would add much to the analysis.
It took 861,275 no votes statewide to sink the measure. I ranked counties by total no votes and ran a cumulative no. The no votes from eight counties sank 62:

COUNTY Total No Cumulative No

Jefferson 160,891 160,891
Denver 151,984 312,875
Arapahoe 136,777 449,652
El Paso 112,134 561,786
Boulder 100,575 662,361
Larimer 84,998 747,359
Douglas 74,361 821,720
Adams 73,851 895,571
There is our friend El Paso County again. The yes votes from this county contributed significantly to the total yes vote. However the no votes
also contributed significantly to defeat the measure.

Method and Limitations

This analysis is done on a county by county basis from official election returns. Colorado counties vary so much in population, economic activity, education, culture and so forth that the idea of a typical county is meaningless. Nonetheless I wanted to see if there were wide variations in percent of support for the measure as between counties.

It appears that there is based on the range of Conejos County (45.037) to San Miguel County (15.387). Certainly a next step would be to break down the vote by gender, income, education, political party and so forth. Since the measure failed so badly some may wonder if further analysis along these lines is warranted. Then again there is a steady stream of political science majors (such as yours truly eons ago) who may want to look deeper. Staying with county by county analysis for a moment a scatter diagram might plot percent support against total votes. Perhaps counties could be grouped by geographic region or main economic activity.

We have blogged about Amendment 62 before.

My own interest lies in another direction. I took on this project as a warmup for a look at the 4th Congressional District race. What can election returns tell us about that? An analysis of election strategy posted on ColoradoPols before the election got me thinking back to the days when my friends and I were doing real estate appraisals on typewriters. ‘Cut and paste’ meant do arithmetic on a calculator, type it up, photocopy, use scissors and cellophane tape to assemble a spreadsheet then photocopy that to make the final presentation. If there was a late-breaking comparable you got to do it over. Someone found an unused Everex 286-12 with 640k of ram. It had a mystery
program which turned out to be SuperCalc 4. Love at first sight for an appraiser.

When I get to the 4th Congressional District I want to take a look specifically at nine counties that I arbitrarily label as southeast. They are Baca, Bent, Cheyenne, Crowley, Kiowa, Kit Carson, Lincoln, Otero, and Prowers. The statewide average yes vote on 62 was 29.498; the average for these nine counties was 36.919%. There were not enough votes there to make a material difference in the outcome for 62. Was that true as well in the Markey-Gardner race?

Photo Credit: Denver Westword Blogs.

Posted by Gypsy Chief