UP News

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(crossposted on Daily Kos)
Here in Colorado, we just had our annual Democratic Party Jefferson Jackson dinner. The speaker was former Clinton Aide, and CNN commentator, Paul Begala.
There were two things about this dinner that surprised me.
The first was the ability of Paul Begala as a speaker, (his closing topic about his Grandmother's visit to the White House brought down the house)
and second, was the level of support for Andrew Romanoff for a Senate Primary run in 2010...

First of all, I was pleasantly surprised by Paul Begala. The man can give a speech. He is one those rare democrats that can weave his beliefs and religion into his speech without coming across as preachy. Thank you Mr. Begala.

Secondly, our first official testing of the waters was quite successful. At the Colorado Convention Center, the annual JJ Dinner was larger than it has ever been, and our numbers of elected officials was larger than it has ever been.
As we handed our volunteers their clipboards with sign up sheets and stickers that said "Friends of Andrew Romanoff", I was a little skeptical about how willing people would be to show their support. It takes nerve for volunteers to circulate petitions for a primary at a formal function.
However, my volunteers were running out of stickers and out of sign up sheets and were turning people away by the time dinner started.

Senior Citizens don't come up to you and grab your arm and tell you "tell him we are behind him" for nothing.

And, even more so, elected officials in the State House and Senate have a lot to risk by signing our sheets to support Andrew Romanoff in a primary, yet they still did so.
And this dinner was not a freebie. Tickets were over $100, and the people there are part of the fundraising base.
Barack Obama has proven that when the people are behind you, they can outraise the millionaires and make their voices heard.

Thanks to Ray, Lori, Alex, Faren, Julia and to Sarah for your hard work last night. (sorry I did not print up more stickers and sign up sheets!!!)

Mr. Romanoff, if you are reading this, the support for you is real, the people are behind you.

As you might have read, after hearing people's opinions in the community on Ritter's pass on Romanoff (not to mention Perlmutter, Hickenlooper, J.Salazar, and DeGette) for Senate, I started a facebook group for Andrew Romanoff for Senate for 2010.
Since doing this,  several people have spoken to me to let me know that there is growing support for Andrew Romanoff for a Senate primary for 2010.

So, we are starting a "Andrew Romanoff for Senate 2010" table at the Jefferson Jackson dinner on March 7th.
If you knew the people I knew who were wanting this to go forward (and there a more than a few of you) I'd bet you'd be interersted in supporting his candidacy.

Event:

Celebrating Real Change: 2009 Jefferson-Jackson Dinner  
The 76th Annual Jefferson Jackson Dinner will be held on Saturday, March 7, 2009 at the Korbel Ballroom in the Colorado Convention Center at 700 14th Street, Denver, CO 80202.  

Registration and silent auction begins at 5:30 p.m.  
VIP reception is at 6:00 p.m.
Dinner and program run from 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m

Cost is $125 per ticket.
email me at ultimatepolitics@hotmail.com to arrange the ticket purchase,

and join the group here. 

I just started my new job travelling the state to help abused and neglected children. While visiting a small rural town in Colorado (Lamar) I decided to go to the Prowers county dems meeting. It was a very good meeting,but something unexpected happened.
I suddenly got the 'preacher' over supporting Andrew Romanoff in a primary for Senate in 2010.At this meeting of die-hard rural dems, someone mentioned getting more young people involved in Democratic politics.
Neat idea, I thought, so I suggested getting a Young Dems chapter started. (more on that soon)
Next, another person mentioned getting a guest speaker to speak to a new Young Dems group, then names of elected officials started.
Then "it" happened.
I could not fathom having appointed (and yes, that should be a dirty word) Senator Michael Bennett speaking on being a public servant politically, after his appointment over several other people, most notably, Andrew Romanoff. How could he speak on his service to Colorado and why being involved in community,politics and government, is so important when you imagine the comparison. Romanoff - worked hard, got elected, served 8 years, several as House Speaker, only to be passed over for 2 different statewide posts for someone who has lived in Colorado for less time than I have? (9 years for me)
It made no sense.
So I let loose on supporting Romanoff, openly, for a primary.
And the strangest thing happened - people liked the idea and were more behind it than I could have imagined.
So here we are, me writing this, and you reading and deciding now, will you, fellow dem Coloradoan, tread the safe ground and stick with Gov. Ritter's appointment, who by any objective measures, is more vulnerable to Republican opponents than Romanoff, or will you take a stand now to support the candidate who can win, and more importantly, has proven he can serve his constituents and will represent our needs, concerns, and interests in the U.S. Senate
We Support Romanoff for Senate 2010 

In this article, I wrote about how the Secretary of State of Colorado, Mike Coffman is engaging in activities that would make it easy to steal Colorado's votes, and the national election, for McCain.
Now, in the state that has been compared to 2004's Ohio, Coffman is throwing out thousands of new voter registration forms through a minor technicality.
While this may anger you in a general way, it angers me personally even more. You see, while working on a voter registration drive to get Obama elected,my team and even me personally have registered numerous voters, and have heard from many voters, especially in our African American communities "this will be my first time voting", and to know now that they are going to be turned away at the polls, along with all of the other people registered by Rock the Vote, ACORN, the Obama Campaign and the Democratic party, makes me sick to my stomach.
Read more for the background on this story and Coffman's outrageous ruling to disenfranchise voters.

In what I previously covered:

1. Colorado, according to Stu Rothenberg's  What's the Top Electoral College State This Year?, Colorado is now THE swing state as Florida and Ohio were in 2000 and 2004.

2. Secretary of State Mike Coffman broke the law last year by allowing his database manager Dan Kopelman to manage the database while he was running a Republican voter database company on the side. See story by Dan Whipple

3. Coffman's State Elections Director was discovered to be staying at a loft owned by the software salesman who manages the Voting Machines for our state, machines that have already been de-certified, then re-certified by Coffman. She resigned pending an investigation, and it calls into question the veracity of our voting machine process.

4. Now, Coffman has ruled on new voter registrations and decided this:

(from Colorado Pols' Dan Willis)

At Issue: Forms used by Voter Registration Drives. They include a place for people to include their Driver's License Number, State ID Card Number or Social Security Number (only requires last 4 digits). There is a box present which states "I do not have a Colorado Driver's license or Dept. of Revenue identification number" which people are supposed to mark if they are going to only give an SSN.
The Secretary of State has included in his Rules (dated July 2008) that any new voter who does not mark that box and only gives their SSN shall not be registered to vote.  In mid-September he issued a memo to the County Clerks telling them specifically to not register anyone who does this.
Consequence: Thousands of new voters are attempting to register to vote, thinking they are successful because they signed up through some organization such as ACORN or any of the political parties, but are not registered and will not be allowed to vote if they do not correct their forms.

When I say thousands, I am not over-exaggerating. In Denver County alone (the only one I have numbers for so far) this ruling has resulting in approx. 3000 denied voter registrations! And that is just one county, and one with thousands of more forms to even look at!

The SoS's sorry excuse? They claim to upholding the law, specifically CRS 1-2-204(f.5) which states:
"In the case of an elector who has been issued a current and valid Colorado driver's license, the elector's Colorado driver's license number. If, instead of a driver's license, the elector has been issued a current and valid identification card by the department of revenue in accordance with part 3 of article 2 of title 42, C.R.S., the elector shall provide the number of the identification card. If the elector has not been issued a current and valid Colorado driver's license or identification card, the elector shall answer that he or she does not have a driver's license or identification card and shall provide the last four digits of the elector's social security number. If the elector does not have a social security number, the elector shall answer that he or she does not have a social security number."

I have looked at our copies of Voter Registrations. Thousands of them. And the majority of these people who think they are registered to vote are going to be disenfranchised by this devious, deceptive, and underhanded ruling.
This may cost us the state for Obama, maybe even the entire general election.

(Here is the interview with Colorado Ethic's Watch Chantel Taylor and Colorado Media Matter's Bill Menezes on these issues and the failure of the media to report these criminal activities.)

Please continue to forward this to any lawyers you know or contact the Secretary of State's office here,
or the Denver District Attorney's office.

Welcome back to another installment of UP News. The guys in this interview are indeed, card carrying liberals, and not only that, they are the ones coordinating events for the Big Tent event for Bloggers in Denver for the Convention. John Erhardt and Aaron Silverstein are my kind of activists. Both are Editors for Square State, which is one of the main blogs in Colorado. Additionally, Aaron is with Democrats Work and will be organizing the Delegates for Actions in Denver the week of the convention. John is the state coordinator of Living Liberally/Drinking Liberally and says if you want to be a CARD CARRYING LIBERAL! then visit the living liberally website here. i highly recommend coming to visit.

This past week, a coalition of progressive groups gathered in Columbus, Ohio to make the people's voices heard on the subject of affordable Healthcare. This group included SEIU,ACORN,Progress Ohio,UHCAN (Universal Health Care Action Network),SPAN (Single Payer Action Network),Justice for Janitors, and Gamaliel affiliates AMOS and NOAH Speakers: Bruce Colburn, SEIU Brian Rothenberg, ProgressOhio.org Stephanie Beck Borden, Gamaliel/AMOS Cathy Levine and Christine Conroy UHCAN Ohio. Hattip to Lorraine Bieber of Progress Ohio At the same time, the insurance industry's spokes people were placing the blame on the providers and the people were not buying it. AHIP (American's Health Insurance Plan) finally met with some frustrated citizens who have seen too many denials to healthcare claims. Keep reading, unless you have had been supported by government paid healthcare. This video, which is 3 minutes, is cut from a solid hour of loud chants and protests over the state of our healthcare. It starts with a march around the capitol of Ohio, up to the location of the AHIP meeting, and includes Brian Rothenberg of ProgressOhio.org, who points out that the health insurance companies are kicking off a national public relations tour, just as the oil companies are kicking off their new PR tours about how good they have been to us. Mr. Rothenberg, you do the Ohio Progressive community proud. AND Ohio Governor Ted Strickland rallies the troops While we rallied on the outside, here is what was happening on the inside - listen to this incredulous audio from the AHIP meeting courtesy nyceve Kim asks

"Why would Angela Braly (CEO of Wellpoint) make such a comment? Would she sacrifice on the 9 million dollars she made this year, would she sacrifice?" [Angela Braly is the CEO of Wellpoint. In April she told investors "we won't sacrifice profitability for membership". [applause]

Spin Answer of the year:

Ignagni: "You talk to a hospital, you talk to a doctor, you talk to any concerns, you talk to a profit or not-for profit industry, you hear no margin, no mission. So the question is, you rather be in the black not the red, to do anything in our society is very important."

rise up...

My guest today is Doug Vilsack, and he is here to tell us about a situation in Ecuador. What happened there and who did you meet? Doug Vilsack - I went to Ecuador where I met an amazing person, Pablo Fajardo. He grew up in Ecuador, and with much adversity, got his High School diploma, a rare thing there. Later he got a computer degree, then a law degree. In 2000, he got started working on his first case, the Chevron/Texaco case. This case had been tied up in the U.S. courts for years, and got transferred to Ecuador. So he was working on the case, and the lead lawyer quit. So basically a year out of law school he became the lead attorney taking on Chevron, which is a big case - the damage estimate is said to be 6 billion. This will be the biggest environmental case in the world, the first time that a big oil company will be held responsible for evironmental damages.

Question - Doug, what happened with the news coverage of this case, particularly CNN? A - So Pablo Fajardo is the lawyer and he got a CNN 'heroes' award this year, a humanitarian award. He was one of 7,000 nominated and won the award in the fighting for justice category, a process which included being voted on by a blue ribbon panel with folks like Lance Armstrong. He got to go to New York and accept the award and he got his story published on the website. Q - On CNN's Website? A - Yes on CNN's website, it got published on there for a few days then a few days later it disappeared. Turns out that Chevron had just kicked off this big ad campaign worth millions to try to sell Chevron as an environmentally friendly and supportive of sustainable energy, and it turned out, Chevron talked to CNN and got them to pull the story from the website. Question - So it is not like they bowed to the advertising about any story, but a story they made, for an award that they gave out !?! A - Yes, then Chevron put out press releases in Ecuador saying Pablo had somehow defrauded and tricked CNN into giving him the award. You know Lance Armstrong voted for him for this award - how would this guy in the Amazon Rainforest somehow trick Lance Armstrong? Question - So first they scrub the story up here, then do a PR campaign in Ecuador and, if you are living in a country with not as many good educational resources, and you've got some corporation spending millions of dollars or more defrauding this person...it is so unfair. A - Yes, there is a big difference in the resources Chevron has and the resources these people have, it is a David and Goliath Story. It almost works to their advantage, because Chevron is there in California with a team of lawyers, and they can't believe that this guy 1 year out of law school could beat them, so they underestimated him at every step. Its racism really, when you are looking at this guy who doesn't have the education and hasn't grown up with all the things these Harvard lawyers have had. They think they can beat him, and they are not, and that shows that the human spirit can triumph over those folks who think they can bully you around. One of the most important things to do is to think of these folks in Ecuador as your neighbor. You meet these people and they are like anyone else, they are struggling, they are trying to get by, and they are trying to make ends meet. They are just like anyone else in the world, trying to farm and survive and they are being harmed by the stuff we put in our cars, so we need to think about that. There is a great article in Vanity Fair - google it, it is called Jungle Law. And you can go to the website texacotoxico.org or chevrontoxico.com. Jungle Law

Some statistics that Doug and I discussed related to the condition of the land and water where these people live in Ecuador: The toxity rates for Benzene, a by product of sloppy oil drilling, is over 1000 times the EPA level in the states. *Chevron covered open oil pits with dirt as their 'clean up', resulting in the spoiling of the groundwater and land in general. *Childhood leukemia is at 3 times the national average in these homes. *In many homes, one or more of the family members is dying from rare forms of cancer from toxicity exposure from the oil extraction and by products. *Families that rely on cattle or livestock, as most do, have had many animals lose weight and die, and the females abort their offspring, leaving no new animals for food or income. All this is going on while Chevron is promoting their 'Human Energy' of their new PR campaign. Not only that, Chevron had this to say in the court hearing in Ecuador:

(from Vanity Fair, by William Langewiesche)Chevron ... denies that the judge is fair, denies that the plaintiffs have legitimate complaints, denies that their soil and water samples are meaningful, denies that the methods the company used to extract oil in the past were substandard, denies that it contaminated the forest, denies that the forest is contaminated, denies that there is a link between the drinking water and high rates of cancer, leukemia, birth defects, and skin disease, denies that unusual health problems have been demonstrated--and, for added measure, denies that it bears responsibility for any environmental damage that might after all be found to exist. ... Over the 17 years that Texaco operated this conduit to the sea, until Petroecuador assumed control, in 1989, the pipeline suffered 27 major breaks and spilled nearly 17 million gallons of oil, much of which was not cleaned up. The volume of the spills has been widely reported. For comparison, the grounding of the Exxon Valdez spilled 11 million gallons....

But here is their PR campaign on how much they care. (Is that the voice of actor Scott Campbell from 'Singles' - the character that wanted a light rail in Seattle?) This ad is so slick, I almost believe them. Until I remember that they have attacked Pablo in his own country through an full on attack ad campaign, accusing him of defrauding CNN to win a humanitarian award. Not only that, but the methods that polluted Ecuador is now being exported to other countries. These other countries who are being polluted include Angola and other companies like Shell, polluting the Niger Delta. More here: http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Africa/Bush_BlackGold_WAfrica.html credit to Chris Fagan

The Delta region, home to Nigeria's oil industry, is poor and polluted. The antiquated oil pipeline system is subject to regular spills and gas fires. The people are subject to routine savage repression by police and soldiers. In the 1990s, the government executed Ken Saro-Wiwa, a leader of the Ogoni people, along with seven others. Saro-Wiwa's brother revealed that Shell Oil, which controls 50 percent of oil operations in the Niger Delta, offered to halt the executions if Ken Saro-Wiwa agreed to call off the Ogoni people's demonstrations against Shell. The accounts are legion of oil companies, principally Shell and Chevron, hiring mercenaries or soldiers to kill political opponents or local activists.

Not only that, but these oil companies are located in the places that are also the home to some of the worst dictators, that the U.S. and Bushco has supported, not to mention that we are in Iraq for mainly oil revenues. I don't know if Barack Obama will do as much as I want on this subject, but he is our best chance. We must start demanding an all electric car sector. We know we have had the technology since they killed the electric car. We know that there is more than enough wind and solar power to supply our entire country with both electricity for businesses and homes, AND quote : we could put our entire auto fleet on wind generated electricity through these plug in hybrids. http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/6/23/16450/5398/260/540786 We can't simply think of the impact of oil in terms of only hurting the environment, because we have naively trusted that the oil companies would not literally kill people in other countries through their oil drilling practices. I am tired of trusting big oil. I don't trust them, nor the Bush agenda and not even those who are looking for timid middling steps to change the way we address energy. We were lied to, yet we are still guilty of complicity in the damage that has been done and will keep being done until we end our dependence on all oil. In Oil We Trusted and in Oil we have killed. I say no more. We must stop this. Visit the website on Ecuador here texacotoxico.org or chevrontoxico.com

In parts 1-3 of this 'blogumentary' we covered the amount of renewable energy just waiting for us to tap, how local governments and people are getting involved, and how we need the federal government to change the laws to support renewable energy. (and a good bit of information from Dcoronata on Geothermal energy. Now for the bread and butter issue: jobs. With the economic forecast showing a continued housing slump and general signs of a recession, a decade long approach of offshoring jobs, bad unemployment numbers, and no real growth in any job sector except service jobs, there seems to be a lot wrong with our country's economic health. Fortunately, there is a solution for these problems, the emergence of green collar jobs. In this installment, we are going to be listening to Richard Eidlin from the Apollo Alliance, and Carmen Rhodes from FRESC.

Question - How do we get good jobs from Renewable energy and what does the Apollo alliance do? A- (Richard Eidlin) The Apollo alliance (whose slogan is: Good Jobs, Clean energy, Freedom from Foreign Oil) is a coalition of business, labor and environmental groups focused on growing the economy in a substainable prosperous way by investing in clean energy that will result in MILLIONS of good jobs across the United States. This includes jobs in the automotive industry, building and infrastructure, construction, engineering... that would impact electrical engineers, contractors, construction workers, marketing people, installation techs, bringing new jobs to the market.

(me) One of the tings you are hoping to do is to go into the urban sectors where jobs have been lost, and retrain and re-employ workers to make solar panels or intricate parts for wind turbines... (Richard Eidlin) Yes, particularly in the industrial midwest, there is a tremendous opportunity to create a manufacturing base once again. There are a lot of facilities lying dormant, many skilled workers - what we need now is the political will and capital to bring those jobs back. For instance, parts to wind turbines could be manufactured in parts of Ohio or Michigan if legislators would act on this.

Carmen, what is FRESC and what do you do? FRESC (whose slogan is Good Jobs, Good Communities) is a Colorado organization looking to create and retain good paying jobs, create and maintain low income housing with environmental sustainability in mind, and we really believe in connecting environmental sustainability with economic sustainability with workers. But, it is not going to 'just happen'. We have to be systematic and strategic about how that happens, so that people building things (like electric) light rail sysytems, that the work is done by construction workers who are making good wages and have health care. (me) you mentioned the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) in Denver moving in this direction. (Carmen Rhodes) Organized labor, like the building trade, are really training the next generation of construction workers to have the skills necessary to build with environmental sustainability. Here at the IBEW, they have installed solar panels as a training opportunity for their workers and now have also saved hundreds of dollars in energy costs.

Remember Millions of new jobs, and not jobs serving coffee or mopping floors, but engineering and manufacturing jobs, jobs that have been outsourced and that took a lot of the middle class livelihood with them. Get in touch with these individuals at www.apolloalliance.org and www.fresc.org.

Ron Lehr of the American Wind Energy Association agrees, AWEA, there has got to be some movement on the National level by the Federal Government, if we are really going to embrace the change necessary to move our country forward quickly. Here is the interview:

If you put a 'V' on the country with the bottom of the V at Texas, all those plains states have enormous wind resources. If we can get transmission lines to the coast where the people live, we could put our entire auto fleet on wind generated electricity through these plug in hybrids. Question - why isn't this happening? A- People think "well, why doesn't the market just take care of this?"We don't have a free market in the energy sector. There is no aspect in energy that is near a free market. We subsidize the oil, coil and gas industry through our tax dollars. The nuclear industry is subsidized by the Price-Anderson Act (which subsidizes all clean up costs over $900 million dollars) without which the Nuclear industry could not insure itself and therefore, could not exist, so that is clearly a tax subsidy. (the only challenge to the Price Anderson Act was in my home state of NC, which went before the Supreme court and lost in the Duke Power vs. Environmental Study Group decision.)

In 1992, the Congress approved a subsidy for wind and other renewable energy, the Production Tax Credit, which equalizes the tax incentives that other energy industries get. Since then, the Production Tax Credit has gone out of existence 3 times. All of the other subsidies for the fossil industries are fixed in the tax code, they are all permanent. They must think we are stupid in Washington. We've got permanent subsidies for the things we don't want, and inconsistent subsidies for the things we do want. They need to hear from people about this. One way is to go to AWEA.org, and get on the action alert to fix this Production Tax Credit situation.

Indeed, the 'free market' has been controlled for the past 100 years through an oligarchy of a few companies all interconnected between oil, coal, gas, and of course, automobiles. These companies have gotten legislation for their tax subsidies from us, while stifling subsidies for renewable energy. We are now paying $4 a gallon, while the oil industry is still getting subsidized. Imagine, if our government was subsidizing Wind or Solar the way other governments are. For instance, it has been China, that is leading the way with their brand new MAGLEV Windmill Technology which actually uses wind power to generate a magnetic field to run the windmill blades with no moving machinery, or ball bearings, just a suspended magnetic field supporting the turbine. We need to go in a new direction to compete and to save the planet. It is true that the World's economy is shifting to renewables, and despite the 'smart people' saying it is a world that is going to be about getting control of the oil, I believe that the revitalization of America's job sector and restoring the middle class will be putting people to work in building electric light rails, solar panel factories and windmill factories. We can be the leader and put our eonconomy back on track: