As I write this there is a young lady at the downtown Greeley Safeway collecting signatures for a petition to sell regular beer in grocery stores. She was in a Safeway uniform, so I can only assume that the Safeway corporation is paying it’s employees to collect signatures to pass laws that favor them in the State of Colorado.

If there are changes made to the petition laws in this State as has been much discussed, I think this should be one of them. I like the petition system, but I don’t think out of state corporations should be able to pay employees to collect the signatures. I hope this effort fails, and I may have to go shop and another store for a while.

The UNC Mirror posted this pro-abortion opinion piece on their website this morning

Once again, the legal system has proven to be successful when handling the delicate subject of abortion. Although there are some people who believe their opinion is being slammed by the iron fist of biased left-wing dominance, the fact remains that abortion is still a human right. Pro-life advocates proposed an amendment Thursday to a ballot in the upcoming November election to change the language of an amendment in the Colorado voter’s “blue book” guide. The guide is an informational pamphlet that gives voters a briefing of the ballots. The judge who reviewed the proposal denied the revision.

Colorado State Representative, Jim Riesberg, will be hosting his first forum of 2008 on Saturday, January 5.

The Community Forum will take place from 9-10:30 a.m. at the Jack Meakin’s Community Resource Center, 3700 Golden St., Evans.

The Colorado State Independent Living Council is seeking public comment on services for people with disabilities for their statewide plan.

Individuals with disabilities, families, service providers and the general public are invited to attend from 4-6 p.m., April 25, at Community Meeting Room at the Harmony Library, 4616 South Shields Street in Fort Collins.

State Rep. Jim Riesberg, D-Greeley, is hosting a community forum to present an overview of housing legislation and explore critical housing issues in Colorado on Saturday, April 14th, from 9 a.m.-10:30 a.m. at the Monfort Children’s Clinic, 100 N. 11th Ave, Greeley.

Rep. Jim Riesberg, D-Greeley, is sponsoring a bill, House Bill 1100, that will increase funding for Older Coloradans Cash Fund to $5 Million.

The Older Coloradans Cash Fund is designed to help provide services that allow senior citizens remain self-sufficeint and stay in their homes rather than move to some type of care facility.

A list of all of Jim’s current projects can be found here.

Election time is so interesting. It’s always funny to me to drive around an notice people’s political affiliations.

Look Marge, the Johnsons have campaign posters in their yard. Such nice people, who would have thought they were democrats. Guess little Billy isn’t going to be able to go to Freddy’s birthday party after all. Thank God we found out.

What I find amusing is the way that everyone seems to support ALL of the party candidates. Sure, Angie Paccione and Bill Ritter are both decent candidates, but Solomon Little Owl? Come on. I really like when there are all of the major candidates’ posters in the yards and along with two or three candidates for school board or county commissioner that you’ve never heard of, but are supposed to vote for because they are Republicans. If everyone just supports one party’s candidates, why do we even bother to vote for individuals? Why don’t we just go down and select D or R? Our whole society wants to pigeonhole EVERYONE as either a liberal or a conservative - both groups painting the other as devils. I know I don’t fit perfectly into either mold, and I’m guessing you don’t either.

Remember, when you go to vote, don’t vote for a party, vote for a person.

In the fiasco that was the Colorado legislature’s special session our own Jim Riesberg was a standout. The whole special session appeared to me to be just a power struggle between Democrats and Republicans. Republicans wanted to put the immigration issue on the ballot and let the voters decide. Democrats on the other hand wanted to ‘do their elected job’. Riesberg himself was quoted as saying

“We pass 400 laws a year, and we don’t put 400 things on the ballot,” he said. “If we can do the job the voters send us to do, why do we have to put it on the ballot?”

Good for him, I think. Problem is the Democrats then killed House Bill 1018, which would have required employers to get a state issued ID when hiring an employee, undoubtably due to pressure from lobbyists. Instead they passed the nearly incomprehensible HB1023 that bans non-emergency taxpayer-funded services from anyone without a state issued ID. Now maybe I’m crazy, but exactly what kind of non-emergency services is this going to cover? Are IDs going to be needed when enrolling a kid for school? If you call to report a non-emergency crime, like theft, are the cops going to ask for an ID? Wouldn’t it just be simpler to keep employers from hiring illegal immigrants?

I’m guessing if HB1018 had become a ballot issue it would have passed with flying colors, instead the Democrats ‘did the job the voters elected them for’. Appearantly they know what we want better than we do ourselves.

It appears we have a new candidate in the race for Colorado Governor.
LaSalle farmer Chuck Sylvester has his website up as a canidadate for Governor.

Personally, I am very interested in Chuck as a candidate. He appears to be a fairly normal Weld County farmer. Kind of the everyman candidate. He is still an unknown, so I’m not willing to really give an ‘endorsement’ yet, but with the likes of Bill Ritter and Bob Beauprez running for Governor Chuck maybe a good choice. (besides, how cool would it be to have a governor named Chuck?)

As part of the upcoming election process I would like to come up with some questionnaire for our elected officials. I would encourage anyone visiting the site to leave comments about the major issues we face in Northern Colorado and what we expect out of our federal, state, county and local elected officials and specific questions you, our readers, would like to have answered by candidates for office.

Once we have a good list of questions I will post them here and email them to the appropriate candidates to see if we can get some dialog going.