There is new drama surrounding state representative Angie Paccione. It seems that there was an email circulated that offered free trips to washington in exchange for contributions to the Paccione campaign and a Greeley man has filed a complaint.

This is just the latest shot in an ongoing war between current congressional representative Marilyn Musgrave and Paccione.

Here are a couple followups on previous articles:

Weld County Commissioners approved the new Ridgeview Farms development. Good to see our elected representatives are protecting property rights.,

Time’s up fro the noise petitions. Ufortunately it doesn’t sound like they got as many signatures as they needed.

LeRoy Johnson waives arraignment. Trial date is set for May 9. Guess we will have to wait a month to see if we have a lunatic in City Council.

Just a quick link to Weld County City Election Results.

Illegal immigrants. They are all the talk this week. From students walking out of class in protest to colorado politicians taking sides on the issue to Senator McCain’s plan receiving opposition in Congress.

I don’t understand why this is an issue at all. We already have laws concerning immigration and hiring of illegal immigrants that are being broken. Why do we not just enforce the existing laws. Illegal immigrants cross the US-Mexican border for one reason. Jobs. If these jobs, which are illegal, were eliminated we would have no immigration problem. Thing is, everyone seems to recognize that there are industries that need this low cost immigrant labor. So, what do we have for solutions. Currently there are two plans:

• Increase border security. Typically this idea is to spend billions of dollars to creat a 1951 mile long wall - smart
• Provide guest work visas so people that are here can stay and pay taxes

Let’s see, out of these two plans, the first will cost an exorbinant amount of money and will fail. There is no way we can secure and patrol nearly 2000 miles of border. It won’t help against terrorists, unless of course we build a wall across Canada too.

The second option allows low cost workers into the United States, generates tax revenue, stimulates local economys and drives down the cost of consumer goods.

Again, why is this an issue? If you want the immigrants out, demand that the immigration authorities shut down businesses that hire illegals. If you want to keep the costs of food, construction and any number of other things low, support the guest visas. Under no cirucmstances vote for ANY moron that thinks building a wall between here and Mexico is a good idea. It’s as dumb and undoable as the legendary ‘War on Drugs’ has been. Increased border security will just continue raising coyotes to the level of drug lord.

Appearantly Greeley City Councilman LeRoy Johnson has a little woman trouble. Councilman Johnson is innocent until proven guilty in our society, so unlike many of the commenters on the Tribune’s website, I won’t call for his resignation yet.

I do believe that this case should be watched very closely. If Johnson conducted himself in the manner described in these allegations he should definitely not be on our City Council.

Recently starting a political blog has been an education. I have learned several things so far. One of the things I have learned is that there are things called caucuses and the major political parties are holding them very soon, next week in fact.

The reason I found about about these caucus things actually had little to do with this blog. One of the local Republican party members called my sister and asked her to call 20 other people. She agreed, but there was a problem. The Republican party script did not leave a provision for a message. Now my sister is a good person, but she does not have time to call 20 people multiple times in attempts to get them to pick up the phone. In fact, many people I know don’t answer their phone any more unless they recognize the caller ID. They assume, as I do personally, that anyone that actually has something important to say will leave a message. I’m sure there are 15 or so people that my sister was asked to call that won’t know about the caucus because the party didn’t think it was a good idea to leave a message.

Now, I am also a member of the Republican party. I mention this somewhat hesitantly because my intention with this blog is to have a non-partisan/bi-partisan discussion about local politics. I will not take sides drawn up around party lines. I will post based on my personal ideas, but I also welcome points of view and comments from Democrats, Libertarians, Greens or any other party out there.

As a member of a major party I believe I am also eligible to attend a caucus on March 21, but no one called me (or at least didn’t leave a message, if they did) so I have no idea where this caucus thing is. I checked the Colorado Republican Party website. They have a convenient caucus locator tool. Unfortunately, it didn’t work for me. Then I tried the Weld County Republicans site. They have a link to find your caucus location as well, but it didn’t work in my browser. I had to open it up in the highly unsecure IE to find my caucus location (note: This isn’t really a big deal, but completely unnecessary and poor web design. There are many people who use Firefox as a security measure these days, why make your links unaccessible?). Finally I get to my page and it lists everything by precinct. I have no idea what my precinct is (whaddya think this is, Hill Street Blues) so I go to the County’s site, get my precinct information and finally find my caucus. I hope you democrats out there have an easier time figuring out where you’re supposed to go.

Now (finally) I know I’m having a caucus and I know where it is, but the real question is what do I do there? I’m not really sure, there doesn’t appear to be any kind of agenda or anything published on the website. Are we selecting candidates? Is there a list of the candidates we are going to pick? Does anyone really know?

This caucus situation is a prime example of my concern with local politics. The parties don’t appear to be able to communicate with their members. The average Joe has little idea what’s gong on. Both parties have websites that don’t communicate much information and make assumptions about your level of expertise.

I for one am going to attend my local caucus on March 21 at 7:00pm, if only to see what it’s all about. I encourage everyone else that is a member of one of the two major parties to do the same. Have a voice, make a difference!!

Saw this on the ncbr site yesterday

LOVELAND – A road-building trade group has chosen the streets that funnel traffic into the Promenade Shops at Centerra, the new open-air retail center in Loveland, as the best in Colorado among the state’s newly constructed roadways.

Anyone who has actually been out to Centerra will know why they won an award from the Colorado Asphalt Paving Association. There is like 5 miles of road before you actually get to the mall. You turn of the highway and it takes 20 minutes and three roundabouts to get to the movie theater. If I was building roads, I’d give them awards too…

The city of Evans is having elections for city council on April 4. There is a debate scheduled for tomorrow night. I encourage all Evans residents to attend.

The Evans Chamber of Commerce will be hosting a City Council Candidate Debate Forum on Wednesday, March 15 at 7:00 p.m. at the Evans Community Center. All candidates running for office for the Regular Municipal Election will be invited to attend this debate.

OK everybody, in case you missed the memo, the Greeley City Council is holding their quarterly Town Meeting tonight. The meeting will be from 5:30-6:30 pm at Billie Martinez Elementary School.

Interestingly enough I am going to attempt to attend this meeting. To date I have attended exactly ZERO town meetings in my life. Fortunately this blog has seemed to have a positive effect on at least one person - it’s author.

I encourage you to attend the meeting, if you cannot, I will attempt to have a summary tomorrow - that is if it’s not a complete yawn.

Update: Unfortunately, my employer needed my assistance at the end of the day today. As a result I wasn’t able to attend the town meeting. Hopefully it went well…

On March 10, 2006 Greeley had it’s very own protest. Local college students carried signs and chanted in downtown Greeley to express their displeasure with a recent decision by Weld County District Attorney, Ken Buck. The district attorney decided to not take a sexual assault case to court due to the circumstances surrounding the incident. It’s a long, complicated story involving an ex-lover and alcohol that I won’t go into here. Suffice it to say that Buck found the case to be unprovable based on his many years in the legal profession.

The thing I find interesting, and dissappointing, about this story is the way the protesters went about their demonstration. Appearantly it wasn’t enough just to express their views on the issue, they also felt the need to make personal attacks on the District Attorney with slogans like “Ken Buck, You Suck”. Hmm… maybe I should re-read the story. Sounds more like third graders in a school yard than university students at a serious protest.