Improving quite a bit on last week’s eyebrow-raisingly shoddy journalism, the Grand Junction Sentinel’s Gary Harmon comes respectably close today to setting the record straight:
The U.S. Energy Department’s proposal to store mercury in Mesa County has united Gov. Bill Ritter and two leading contenders for Ritter’s job.
In a letter he sent to Energy Secretary Steven Chu on Wednesday, Ritter described the proposal to dispose of the federal government’s stores of mercury as “deeply flawed.”
Two Grand Junction Republicans who want to take on Ritter in the November 2010 general election, Scott McInnis and Josh Penry, agreed.
The proposal to store mercury in Mesa County “has been met with a bipartisan thud,” Penry said. “I hope the Obama administration will pull the plug. We’re not interested in their mercury stimulus.”
McInnis, according to his spokesman, Sean Duffy, “looks forward to seeing the specific results that will come from (Ritter’s) letter. An equally aggressive approach to the continuing economic and jobs problems on the Western Slope would certainly be welcome.”
A nice warm fuzzy to cap this little exchange–as much as we love bloodsport controversy it’s refreshing to see some bipartisan unanimity once in awhile. We guess it’s unanimous, anyway–in a related Denver Post story today, reporter Lynn Bartels clears up additional details and talks to both Republican candidates about the issue. Curiously, candidate Scott McInnis seems reluctant to personally go on record. Why is he still hiding behind Steve King?
As for McInnis, he is against shipping mercury to Colorado but is letting local politicians handle it, said Sean Duffy, a McInnis spokesman. Republican state Rep. Steve King, R-Grand Junction, has come out against the proposal.
“We didn’t feel compelled to bang around in it because Steve was on top of it,” Duffy said.
We’re starting to think, like we said a few days ago, that maybe Steve King should be running for Governor instead of McInnis. Bartels also reported that Penry did in fact send his letter of opposition to the Energy Department pretty quickly after the hearing last week, vindicating him on a key question we had about his timing–and with Ritter having taken his own strong position against, that pretty much leaves only McInnis’ lame “Steve King speaks for me” nonresponses, you know, wanting.
One other thing: It’s our understanding that Rep. King actually supports Penry in the GOP gubernatorial primary. Do you think it’s a good idea for McInnis to use him this way? That’s one human shield we could picture morphing into a helpful toss…under the bus.
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That’s Penry’s idea of bipartisanship I guess. He can’t get away from the anti-stimulus rhetoric I guess.
If Sen. Penry cares so much about this issue, why did he skip the DOE meeting that was in SD-7 last month to attend a fund raising event in Greeley?
it’s pretty chicken shit of Bill Ritter to latch on to this issue and try to raise money from it BEFORE taking official action on behalf of the state.
The larger point is that this proposal came from the administration Bill Ritter “worked” so hard to put in charge. He tried to somehow blame the local republicans for this when, in fact, it’s his buddies in DC who are responsible.
You’d think one of his fellow oligarchs (elliman, marostica, carpenter, etc.) would have recognized this and had the guv pick up a god damn telephone or something.
As for McInnis, you shouldn’t be surprised he’s hiding behind Steve King on this one. Rep. King has more integrity in his mustache than McInnis does in his whole body.
Does it say that somewhere?
http://www.denverpost.com/poli…
I agree it was in poor taste to send the initial letter out as a fund raising mechanism. If you know me at all, you know I’m no Ritter shill.
But I still think that, cheap contribution seeking try aside, Ritter’s response was genuinely better than Josh Penry’s and Scott McInnis’.
Considering the spot where the DOE wants to dump this poison is right in Penry and McInnis’ back yard, you’d think they would have come out against it as forcefully as the Governor has.
The only thing Bill Ritter does forcefully is chase oil and gas jobs out of Colorado.
The only difference between Josh Penry and Bill Ritter on this mercury issue is that Ritter tried to make it a political issue BEFORE fulfilling his capacity as an elected official. Contrast that with Penry who drafted a letter to the Secretary of Energy BEFORE responding to the media and/or thinking about the issue’s political implications.
Ritter’s desperate.
But your first sentence is a giveaway–Bill Ritter doesn’t control the price of oil and gas, which in case you didn’t know, went down a whole hell of a lot due to this little thing called the worldwide financial crisis. Nice red herring though.
Bill Ritter wasn’t trying to make it a political issue at all. I don’t see where you’re getting that from. Aside from being a little less tactful than he could have been, he was trying to make people on his e-mail list aware of the impending poison deposit in our state.
Josh Penry on the other hand is all about making it political. From your talking points list alone, any casual observer can see that Penry is trying to score political points with the right by blaming Obama, rather than trying to actually lead. His “mercury stimulus” comment is evidence enough of that.
I didn’t notice the fundraising link.
I did notice that if you sent Ritter’s robot letter, you got a robot response from the Secretary’s computer. Dueling robots. What a way to make public policy.
was put in place long before Obama took office.
And the local DOE office was stupid for letting the local pols get blindsided by it.
No it wasn’t. (I hate being wrong.)
The Federal Register notice asking for expressions of interest was published March 20, 2009. Therefore, the proposal by the local office came later.
http://www.mercurystorageeis.c…
President Obama is considering storing toxic waste in Western Colorado.
Hope. Change. Mercury in Western Colorado.
Si Se Puede!
Ralphie did excellent research into the matter of the mercury storage. I know facts and truth have very little value to TaxCheat, but for those interested in the reasons behind the proposals, please read Ralphie’s good work at The Junction Daily Blog. Contrary to the loony TaxCheat’s assertion that this is being done on the whim of the Obama administration’s DOE, it is not. It is being done because Republican Tennessee Senator Lamar Alexander stuck NIMBY language into the Mercury Export Ban Act, S-906, which mandates that the mercury can no longer be stored at Alexnder’s home state location, Y-12. Thus, by law, the DOE has to seek other appropriate storage sites. And as Governor Ritter has gotten McInnis and late to the game Penry, to echo his position, the storage will not be done in Mesa County.
This wasn’t a Headquarters idea. The local office submitted an expression of interest. They didn’t need to. They asked for this. Nobody’s ramming it down our throats (yet).
I’m not calling in to question Ralphie’s obsessive research about the local DOE office. You’d think they fired him or something.
What I am doing is pointing out that no matter what anyone says, this issue came to be on Barack Obama’s watch. Do you mean to tell me that if this issue came up 3 years ago, Mike Huttner and his ilk wouldn’t be blaming George Bush and his Energy Department for wanting to “dump” on western Colorado?
Go crawl back under your rock, WST.
stems from the fact that the only way to get stuff in and out of the Cheney Reservoir location is via Highway 50, and I live on Orchard Mesa. If they’re going to be hauling mercury down Highway 50, which is the only way I can get anywhere from here, I damned sure want to know about it.
If it’s “obsessive” to want to know what the hell you’re talking about, I suggest you try it sometime.
RE being “fired,” I was laid off in the office downsizing of 1994. I harbor no ill will toward any of the people who work there. I left on good terms, listed as eligible for rehire. I have done two consulting jobs for the contractor in the intervening years.
Basically, I just think it’s a dumb project.
I hadnt read Ralphies research, excellent work.
Why would he jerk Ritter’s chain like this … one would think the Guv should have been in the loop on this one – way in advance!!