*Coloradans can now get a COVID-19 vaccine at one of six locations without a prior appointment.
► As Meg Wingerter reports for The Denver Post, COVID-19 hospitalizations in Colorado have reached their highest levels since January and are approaching the peak levels of Spring 2020:
Data from the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment showed 12,877 people tested positive for COVID-19 in the week ending Sunday.
As of Tuesday afternoon, 957 people were hospitalized with confirmed or suspected COVID-19. The last time more people infected with the virus were receiving hospital care was Jan. 6, when the state was still recovering from the massive winter spike.
Counting only people with confirmed infections, 862 were hospitalized, which is only 26 fewer than on the worst day in April 2020, said Beth Carlton, an associate professor of environmental and occupational health at Colorado School of Public Health. The state’s COVID-19 trackers generally focus on hospitalizations where the person has tested positive, because of volatility in the number of people being evaluated for the virus from day to day.
“The number of people in the hospital is high, and poised to exceed the April 2020 peak,” she said.
Think about this for a moment: Hospitalizations in Colorado could soon surpass levels from the very first month in which COVID-19 was spreading through our state. Hospitalizations over Labor Day Weekend were worse this year than in 2020.
►The Washington Post reports on a big solar energy announcement from President Biden:
The Biden administration announced a blueprint Wednesday outlining how solar energy could produce nearly half of the nation’s electricity by mid-century, part of its ambitious bid to address climate change.
The new Energy Department analysis shows how the United States can scale up production of solar panels, which now provide 3 percent of the nation’s electricity, to 45 percent over the next three decades.
The move, which would transform the nation’s energy industry and infrastructure, shows how President Biden is determined to reshape the economy and cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in the face of staunch political opposition.
While the administration has not set a specific solar energy target, the president has called for 100 percent of the nation’s electricity to come from clean energy by 2035.
Remember when we had a President who was so anti-renewable energy that he believed wind turbines caused cancer? Elections matter.
►The Denver Post reports on the 169 new laws that took effect in Colorado on Tuesday.
Mexico’s supreme court voted Tuesday to decriminalize abortion, a striking step in a country with one of the world’s largest Catholic populations, and a decision that contrasts with tighter restrictions introduced across the border in Texas.
Ten supreme court judges ruled unconstitutional a law in northern Coahuila state that imposed up to three years of prison for women who underwent illegal abortions, or people who aided them. The eleventh judge was absent during the vote. The ruling is binding on other states.
“Today is a watershed in the history of the rights of women and pregnant people, above all the most vulnerable,” Chief Justice Arturo Zaldívar said.
The vote comes as a powerful women’s movement is transforming Mexico. Female politicians now make up half of Congress, and an ambitious constitutional reform passed in 2019 aims to ensure gender equality in senior government positions. While abortion remains illegal in most of Latin America, there has been a surge in demonstrations demanding more rights for women, particularly focused on rising violence.
► Congressman Joe Neguse (D-Boulderish) talks with MSNBC about a potential matchup with Rep. Lauren “Q*Bert” Boebert (R-ifle) in 2022:
► According to a press release from the Governor’s office, Colorado is getting a bunch of new jobs from the sports betting industry:
The Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade (OEDIT) announced today that Tipico, one of the largest online sports betting companies in the world, has selected Colorado as home to its new technology hub.
The company, established in Europe in 2004, expects the Colorado location to add as many as 441 jobs over the next eight years. Tipico currently has a 42-person office in Hoboken, NJ, and recently launched their proprietary sports betting product to consumers in the Centennial State.
“Colorado voters voted to make Colorado one of the first states to legalize sports betting and use the revenue generated to protect our way of life and precious water resources that support our outdoor recreation economy and agricultural community,” said Governor Jared Polis. “This move proves what we already know: Colorado is the best place to live and work and 441 new jobs will be created in Colorado thanks to this voter-driven decision.”
Many landlords felt a sense of relief on Aug. 26, when the U.S. Supreme Court vacated an extension of the federal moratorium on evictions for nonpayment of rent. But landlords and tenants may be dealing with fallout from the 17-month moratorium for a long time.
“It has definitely led to a lot of uncertainty for people,” says Patrick Noonan, manager of Colorado Housing Connects, an organization that helps landlords, tenants and homeowners find resources and is one of four nonprofits that administer federal rental assistance funds in partnership with the Colorado Division of Housing.
► As POLITICO reports, Republicans are using the bogeyman of “Critical Race Theory” to excite a new generation of local school board candidates who are easily susceptible to conspiratorial nonsense.
►Colorado Newsline looks at 9/11 from the perspective of people working at NORAD in Colorado Springs.
► As The Colorado Sun reports, the Douglas County Commissioners have voted to form their own health department as part of the process of leaving Tri-County Health Department. Naturally, the DougCo Commissioners appointed themselves to two of the five seats on a new health board.
Former president Donald Trump has signed a contract to provide commentary on a “gamecast” of Saturday’s boxing event headlined by Evander Holyfield vs. Vitor Belfort, Triller told ESPN.
His son, Donald Trump Jr., will join him at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Hollywood, Florida.
“I love great fighters and great fights,” Donald Trump Sr. said. “I look forward to seeing both this Saturday night and sharing my thoughts ringside. You won’t want to miss this special event.”
The Trumps will call the entire four-fight telecast that also includes Anderson Silva-Tito Ortiz and David Haye-Joe Fournier, according to Triller.
Money must be getting tight in Trumpland. The Trump’s aren’t even the main commentators for this nonsense boxing match (Holyfield is 58 YEARS OLD!!!).
ICYMI
► Congressperson Lauren “Q*Bert” Boebert is joining the parade of fellow right-wing Members of Congress who are threatening telecommunications companies over requests for information related to the January 6th insurrection.
► This week on The Get More Smarter Podcast…just, what a fun podcast (this joke makes more sense if you listen to the first few minutes of the show):
Don’t forget to give Colorado Pols a thumbs up on Facebook and Twitter.
The climate disasters have been relentless this summer. Hurricane Ida took down the power grid in New Orleans, where more than 300,000 households remain without electricity as of Wednesday. A few days later, Ida dumped 7 inches of rain on New York City, drowning people in their basements and paralyzing the subways. Deadly heat waves scorched the Pacific Northwest, a massive wildfire spurred residents to evacuate South Lake Tahoe and flash floods devastated Tennessee.
“These events tell us we’re not prepared,” said Alice Hill, who oversaw planning for climate risks on the National Security Council during the Obama administration. “We have built our cities, our communities, to a climate that no longer exists.”
After Ida, oil spills spied from space
From there, we scrutinized satellite imagery, ship tracking data and interviewed scientists, local officials and others involved in the cleanup to break news of a spill and cleanup that hadn’t yet been communicated to the public. The spill, thought to be from a damaged underwater pipe, is one of many now spotted in the Gulf. Read what we reported this week.
A report published earlier this year by the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that since the 1960s, federal regulators have allowed oil and gas producers in the Gulf to leave some 18,000 miles of pipeline on the seafloor, which are often abandoned without cleaning or burial.
How climate change is driving small towns to financial ruin
That danger is especially clear in North Carolina, where small towns near the coast are still reeling from Hurricane Matthew in 2016 and Hurricane Floyd in 2018. Those storms didn’t just cause flooding; they also pushed away residents and businesses, shrinking the tax base in towns that were already hard off economically. Now they’re struggling to pay for basic services.
The plight of those towns is a cautionary tale for what climate change means for much of small-town America. And they show the inherent contradictions in the federal government’s response to repetitive disasters — rebuilding some people’s homes, while paying others to leave, often in the same town, making those towns’ predicament even harder.
This would be most appropriate under one of the PewPew threads, but I'll leave it here. Eerily prescient. It's why Thomas Jefferson wrote the Bill on the General Diffusion of Knowledge.
September 08, 2021 10:51 AM UTC
2 Comments
The U.S. is not ready for climate reality
After Ida, oil spills spied from space
How climate change is driving small towns to financial ruin
This would be most appropriate under one of the PewPew threads, but I'll leave it here. Eerily prescient. It's why Thomas Jefferson wrote the Bill on the General Diffusion of Knowledge.
Democracy requires education.
From Carl Sagan's 1995 book: