August 12, 2015 11:36 AM UTC

Get More Smarter on Wednesday (Aug. 12)

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• by: Colorado Pols

We have a Jesse Ventura sighting! It’s time to Get More Smarter with Colorado Pols! If you think we missed something important, please include the link in the comments below (here’s a good example).

TOP OF MIND TODAY…

► Democrat Morgan Carroll isn’t pulling any punches in her bid to unseat Rep. Mike Coffman (R-Aurora). Carroll is calling out Coffman for his lack of leadership on the Aurora VA Hospital project — particularly given Coffman’s role as Chairman of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations for the House Veteran’s Affairs Committee.

Meanwhile, the Rothenberg & Gonzales Political Report/Roll Call Ratings for 2016 Congressional races believes that Colorado’s CD-6 has become much more competitive, reclassifying the race from “Favored Republican” to “Leans Republican” as Carroll continues to gain momentum. EMILYs List is expected to announce today that it is backing Carroll in 2016.

► Colorado Attorney General Cynthia Coffman is expected to be joined by her counterparts from New Mexico and Utah for an announcement in Durango regarding the Animas River minewater spill. Check out this handy guide for questions and answers about the Animas River spill.

Get even more smarter after the jump…

IN CASE YOU ARE STANDING NEAR A WATER COOLER…

► The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel sees the writing on the wall for the coal industry, and says that it’s time to talk transition:

Colorado utilities’ plans to invest in renewable energy, advance energy
efficiency and transition from coal to cleaner sources of power will
significantly reduce emissions. Colorado is already on track to meet 75
percent of the emissions reductions required by the final goal. And going
forward the state has a lot of flexibility in choosing how to bridge the
gap.

Critics contend that enacting expensive changes in how we produce
electricity won’t significantly reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere.

So why do it at all? Because if the overwhelming majority of scientists are right, we’re close to a tipping point with regard to climate change. Any decrease keeps us from getting there and finding out if the cataclysmic predictions are true.

And the plan simply seizes on a direction America is headed anyway. Coal has been in a steady decline, in part because of a natural gas boom, but also because consumers like green energy. The low costs of coal-fired electrical generation don’t reflect other costs, like treating respiratory diseases from pollutants. Things important to the Western Slope, like agriculture, wildlife, orchards, vineyards, snowpack and runoff all stand to be impacted by climate change.

► Republican Scott Gessler may no longer be serving as Secretary of State, but that doesn’t mean Colorado has stopped writing checks on his behalf. On Tuesday, Gessler filed yet another appeal with the state Supreme Court over an ethics complaint stemming from Gessler’s use of taxpayer funds to travel to the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Florida in 2012. The SOS office continues to foot the bill for defending Gessler, to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

► Carbondale Republican Joyce Rankin will succeed Marcia Neal on the State Board of Education, all but ensuring that the State Board will remain in disarray.

► Residents in one Adams County neighborhood are concerned about 20 new oil and gas wells scheduled to begin drilling right in the middle of their Thornton-area community.

► Colorado Springs will ask voters to raise the sales tax for five years in order to generate funding to fix pothole-addled roads. Apparently the “free market” does not magically fix roads by itself unless someone is paying for it. 

► Is it really Ryan Frazier time for Republicans still searching for a 2016 U.S. Senate candidate in Colorado?

► Famous rich person Donald Trump leads all Republican Presidential hopefuls in new polls conducted in New Hampshire and Iowa. Elsewhere, former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura thinks he would be a good running mate for Trump. Yes, that is a real sentence.

OTHER LINKS YOU SHOULD CLICK

► Former Florida Governor and Republican Presidential candidate Jeb Bush has a new strategy for 2016: Picking a fight over the war in Iraq, which was the handiwork of his brother George W. Bush’s Presidential administration.

► Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig says he may seek the Democratic Presidential nomination because…eh, who cares?

ICYMI

► Colorado marijuana regulators are considering replacing the word “candy” on edible treats with an image of a red stop sign. Because the best way to keep kids away from something is to tell them not to touch it. 

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