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.

The Greeley Tribune had some reader editorials on Scott Renfroe, Angie Paccione and Dale Hall.

I’ll let you draw your own conclusions, except for one comment.  What does it say about a person if the only qualification they have worth talking about is experience?

In a widely UNDER REPORTED story Colorado lawmakers latest attempts to make seat belt laws a primary offense didn’t make it through the state house.

Personally, I’m against this law and any laws of this nature. Wearing seat belts is a fine idea, and most of us do it most of the time. This law is just a thinly veiled attempt to move us closer to a Papers Please society where law enforcement can harrass anyone for anything. The US government spends millions if not billions every year on seat belt enforcement with programs like Click it or Ticket, money which would be much better spent attempting to alleviate traffic problems and finding alternative, safer ways of transportation. Instead of doing something constructive the government seems much more intent on intimidation and bullying it’s citizens.

Fortunately this is one step towards totalitarianism that we didn’t take (yet)