Author Archives: Jason Salzman

U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner (R-CO) spent part of this week doing what you might call under-the-radar campaigning along the front range.

It’s been over two years since Gardner has faced constituents at a town hall meeting .

But Gardner has attended fundraisers, invitation-only discussions with businesspeople, and small press events or gatherings, announced with little or no advance notice.

That’s the model he followed this week after heading back to Colorado for Thanksgiving break.

Gardner attended a fundraiser Friday where he posed for photos with former GOP congressional candidate Peter Yu and Sheryl Fernandez, who is state Sen. Vicki Marble’s former legislative aide.

On Saturday, he stopped off at the Farm Bureau dinner, with Colorado Republican leader Ken Buck in attendance.

On Tuesday, Gardner joined a panel at the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley to mark a grant announcement by the Colorado United Health Foundation.

Gardner’s office promoted the event, which included remarks by Gardner, in a news release and on Twitter after it took place, per his habit of after-the-fact announcements.

Gardner spent part of August talking to small groups in Colorado, without inviting the wider public. Until recently, he’s been a regular on conservative talk radio shows, but he declined at least one radio interview recently recently, angering the host, who’s his friend.

Colorado’s junior senator went from the spring of 2016 until August of 2017 without holding a town hall, drawing sharp questions from reporters for dodging the public for so long.

Over a thousand of Gardner’s constituents were so upset that they held a town hall meeting in February, 2017, without Gardner, directing questions to a cardboard cutout of the senator.

The Gardner cutout, dubbed “Cardboard Cory,” went on to become a folk hero among Gardner’s opponents and others, appearing on Twitter, Facebook, and at events all over Colorado.

Activists even featured the cutout on a statewide bus tour.

As pressure mounted, Gardner finally surprised political observers by announcing he’d hold not one but three in-person town hall meetings on the same day, apparently trying to dilute the expected onslaught from the public. He started in Colorado Springs in the morning, then moved to Greeley and Lakewood (Colorado Christian University).

A Denver Post headline summarized the string of town halls this way: “On a ‘rowdy day’ of three town halls, Cory Gardner is shouted down by crowds.”

Conservative KNUS radio host Craig Silverman, who was fired on air Saturday for criticizing Trump, is a huge fan of Colorado Republican Sen. Cory Gardner.

Silverman said so when he introduced Gardner last year at a giant gathering of conservatives near Denver.

“This man [Gardner] may well be the first person from the great state of Colorado to become President of the United States,” Silverman told the crowd.

Silverman said Gardner is “respected” by, among others, “our President, Donald J. Trump.”

But Silverman’s increasingly skeptical view of Trump isn’t shared by Gardner, who endorsed Trump and won’t even tell reporters whether it’s appropriate for the President of the United States to ask a foreign leader to investigate a political opponent.

Now Silverman is saying “let’s not hide from hard truths or label it fake news,” while fellow Republican Gardner voted for a resolution slamming the impeachment inquiry.

Silverman, who voted for Trump, said on air Oct. 24 that he still “loves a lot of his policies,” but he asked fellow KNUS radio host Chuck Bonniwell, “What about [Trump] calling Republicans who don’t support him ‘human scum?'”

“He calls a lot of people bad names,” replied Bonniwell, before Bonniwell started screaming at Silverman over the impeachment hearings, with Silverman praising Ambassador William Taylor and asking whether Trump did “corrupt things in Ukraine to try to win the election” and Bonniwell calling Taylor a “joke.” Listen here at 3 min 30 seconds.

Silverman didn’t return a call seeking to know if he thinks Gardner should speak out on Trump like he’s done.

In Silverman’s view, should Gardner say, for example, whether it’s appropriate to ask a foreign leader to investigate a political rival?

Has Gardner’s behavior has made Silverman think less of the senator?

Listen to Silverman vs. Boniwell on KNUS Oct. 24:

Activists with the progressive Colorado Consumer Protection Coalition want to wipe away “unfair terms in contracts that remove everyday Coloradans’ ability to hold [corporations] responsible for everything from sexual harassment in the workplace to abuse and neglect in nursing homes.”

But how to do this?

On Halloween, how about dressing as a roll of toilet paper and pile of poop?

You use the toilet paper (e.g., laws, activism, public pressure) to wipe away the poop (e.g., clauses in contracts stopping you from holding corporations accountable) that’s buried in online “user agreements,” employment contracts, and fine print everywhere.

In addition to sending what some corporations might see as a below-the-belt message, the poop and toilet paper handed out candy and cards to the lunchtime crowd on Denver’s 16th Street Mall Thursday, which was Halloween.

The messages focused in particular on “forced arbitration,” a term that refers to often-hidden clauses in user agreements and other contracts that require consumers or employees to agree to use the corporation’s protocol for dispute settlement/arbitration, instead of a public process, like the court system or a lawsuit. Among other things, this serves to leave no public record of corporate misdeeds.

“Virtually nobody realizes that they’re giving up their legal rights when they sign a contract or click on a user agreement online because corporations hide forced arbitration in the fine print,” said Wendy Howell from the Colorado Working Families Party in a news release. “We’re here today to highlight companies that have earned a treat for eliminating unfair arbitration clauses and to expose others that have tricked their customers and workers into being trapped in an ugly corporate abuse of power.”

Demonstrators also said they wanted to spotlight some corporations, like McDonald’s, that have eliminated unfair arbitration clauses as deserving of treats.

“We’re trying to use the fun of the holiday to get the word out,” Robert Lindgren, Political and Organizing Director of the Colorado AFL-CIO told the Colorado Times Recorder. “We’re trying to do something different to have people take a break from their day and learn something new. Also, we wanted to do something that might get more traction as we share photos of goofy people in costumes.”

The Colorado Consumer Protection Coalition, which is a coalition of over 30 community groups, is pushing Colorado lawmakers to pass legislation next year “to bring transparency and fairness to forced arbitration and other forms of dispute resolution between corporations and consumers and employees,” according to the news release.

“He’s a narcissist, incredibly flawed, and I think he’s the greatest president of my lifetime,” said Chuck Bonniwell, right-wing radio host, to Craig Silverman, another conservative host, both on Colorado’s KNUS radio.

“I’ve heard you say that, and I love a lot of his policies,” replied Silverman. “But what about him calling Republicans who don’t support him ‘human scum?'”

“He calls lots of people bad names,” replied Bonniwell, who’s a Republican activist and publisher of the Cherry Creek Chronicle. ..”I find repellent, that’s not quite the same as human scum, the Republicans who refuse to support the president and who are no better than the Democrats. …He’s actually building the wall. He’s brought jobs back to America. I’m willing to forgive his many personal faults if his policies are great for America.”

“But what if he does corrupt things in Ukraine to try to win the election?” said Silverman, sliding toward an issue that tripped up Colorado Sen. Cory Gardner, who’s refused to say if it’s appropriate for a president to ask a foreign government to investigate a political rival.

“What corrupt things!” said Bonniwell, who loves to say how much he hates GOP Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah.

“…Do you like the procedure that’s being implemented to impeach the president?” asked Bonniwell.

“Oh my gosh, Chuck…This is normal.”

“It’s sad that you don’t recognize justice….” said Bonniwell.

Listen to the Oct. 24 battle on KNUS 710-AM here:

Denver Archbishop Samuel J. Aquila apologized Wednesday for sexual abuse of children in the Colorado Catholic Church, and then he went on the defensive, saying “perpetrators infect every organization,” not just the church.

“We must learn from the suffering of the victims and never assume that we could not face another perpetrator in our midst,” said Denver Archbishop Samuel J. Aquila in a video statement after the release of a partial investigation of sexual abuse in portions of Colorado’s Catholic Church. “Just in the last few years, it has become even more apparent that perpetrators infect every organization: the Boy Scouts, public schools, the Olympics, news organizations, colleges. These abuses can manifest in every part of our lives if we are not alert and responsive.”

Does Aquila think the church is being scapegoated?

The archdiocese’s office didn’t return an email seeking an answer to that question, but abuse survivors and advocates say the answer is a resounding no.

“On the one hand, we do know that child sexual abuse happens in every community and every organization. So that’s true,” said Jenny Stith, Director of the WINGS Foundation, which helps adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse. “But I think he may have been using that tactic to minimize the fact that the Catholic Church has such a history with this.” “In general, the response to the abuse within those institutions has been similar and self-protective,” added Stith. “And if there are any similarities, those are the ones that should should be highlighted.”

Aquila’s mention of news organizations could have been a reference to harassment and abuse that was publicized with the emergence of the #MeTo movement and mostly involved adults.

The investigation into abuse in the Catholic Church in Colorado, which turned up 166 incidents since 1950 involving 43 priests, focused narrowly on child sex abuse–and did not address any problems or incidents involving adults.

Denver KHOW radio host Dan Caplis, who doesn’t conceal his social conservativism, views sex assault in the public schools as “similar to what’s occurred in the church.”

Efforts to find out if Caplis thinks Catholics have been scapegoated were unsuccessful.

Regardless, Aquila has promised to stop abuse in the church.

“I want to remind you that a year ago, as your archbishop, I made a series of public promises to ensure the sins of the past are not repeated,” said Aquila in the video released Wednesday. “Today I stand by those promises and reassert my promises. …In these times we are called to be holy and to keep our eyes and hearts fixed on Jesus Christ for he alone is the one who can bring healing and redemption to each one of us personally and to the church.”

Had Denver Archbishop Samuel J. Aquila made himself available to reporters today, after the widely-covered release a partial investigation of sexual abuse in portions Colorado’s Catholic Church and related entities, he would have been asked why he thinks “homosexuality” is a cause for sexual abuse by priests.

There’s no science to back up his bigotry.

And it has no place coming from a religious leader who today promised that the “sins of the past” are not to be repeated.

Yet, Aquila apparently still stands behind a 2018 tweet of an article with the headline, “Active Homosexuality in the Priesthood Helped Cause This Crisis.”

Last year, Fox 31 Denver’s Joe St. George tried to question Aquila about the tweet but instead got a response from Mark Haas, a spokesman for the archdiocese.

Haas told St. George that not all LGBTQ people are pedophiles.

“No, he is not suggesting it’s one in the same, but Catholic Church teaching on homosexuality is well known,” Haas told St. George. “Teaching on any sexual act outside of a man and a woman in marriage open to procreation is viewed by the church as not living up to the teachings of the gospel.”

“He’s not suggesting they are one in the same” is about as reassuring as saying, “Yes, if you’re gay, I might not want you around my kids.” It’s offensive and awful.

With this kind of mindset at the helm of the local Catholic church, do we really think Aquila has the credibility to fight abuse in the church and deal responsibly with what happened?

At the end of a video response to today’s release of the investigation, which deserves some praise for sure, Aquila refers to an archdiocese website, where he wrote:

“Sexual abuse is a societal problem and there is no single answer or single action to eliminate all sexual abuse, but we will not rest in our efforts to protect children. We will use our resources and community partnerships to be a leader in this area, and we will strive to improve.”

There’s no single action to eliminate abuse, Aquila says, but it looks like going after LGBTQ people is at least part of the archbishop’s solution.