“KNAZI” Host Next On 2020 Defamation Revenge Tour

4
  by: Colorado Pols November 16, 2021 at 8:36 AM MST

Randy Corporon.

As the Colorado Sun’s Daniel Ducassi reports:

A former executive at Denver-based Dominion Voting Systems filed a defamation lawsuit against conservative Colorado media figure Randy Corporon and conservative broadcaster Salem Media Group, which owns Denver radio station 710 KNUS, where Corporon hosts a show.

The legal action by Eric Coomer over the weekend is similar to a previous lawsuit Coomer filed against former President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign, Trump-associated lawyers, conservative Colorado commentator Joe Oltmann and various conservative media outlets.

The new lawsuit alleges Corporon and Denver-based 710 KNUS “elevated Dr. Coomer into the national spotlight, invaded his privacy, threatened his security, and fundamentally defamed his reputation through a relentless election fraud campaign.”

710 KNUS is not Denver’s highest-rated AM radio station, but in recent years the station has become by far the most overtly far-right political of Denver’s slowly declining community of once-legendary talk radio outlets. Scandal at KNUS has been at a steady boil for some years now after a producer at the station was fired in 2019 after being exposed as a straight-up Hitler-adoring Nazi in his spare time. The firing of Steffan Tubbs’ producer took place just after another host was fired for daring to criticize then-President Donald Trump and yet another host got fired for wishing for a “nice school shooting” to distract from Trump impeachment news then dominating the headlines.

Despite all of these very good incentives for Republicans who don’t want to be associated with far-right extremism in order to preserve their electability with the general nonradicalized public to stay away, KNUS remains a regular friendly forum for Colorado Republicans to directly connect with some of their most ardent supporters–and for some reason escape the stigma associated with legitimizing a forum for repulsive cranks and literal Nazis.

Or in this case, a chief proponent of the “Big Lie” that the 2020 election was stolen. 9NEWS:

The lawsuit also said Salem Media and its hosts were “enthusiastic and consistent” pushers of voter fraud claims, though they did not provide evidence.

Coomer’s attorneys name several hosts in the suit. They include Corporon, who is Colorado’s Republican National committeeman, Peter Boyles, Deborah Flora, who is running for Colorado’s U.S. Senate seat in 2022, and George Brauchler, the former district attorney in the 18th Judicial District who is a legal analyst for 9NEWS. Corporon is the only individual named as a defendant.

As we’ve seen in previous court action on Eric Coomer’s quest to hold the principal agents of the “Big Lie” accountable for driving him into hiding and severely damaging his and his company’s reputation, don’t look for Randy Corporon or anyone else named above to defend the substance of their previous claims about the 2020 elections. Despite all the talk radio bravado from Corporon, they’re past that now. Corporon apparently doesn’t mind being in court or at least threatening to go to court, since he’s representing leading coup planner John Eastman’s threat to sue the University of Colorado–which hasn’t gone anywhere yet. But once in court, these defendants seek only to prove they didn’t maliciously invent the “Big Lie”–not that the “Big Lie” was actually true.

The massive disconnect between the bubble of “Big Lie” believers and everyone else, to include the inhabitants of every courtroom in America, cannot be reconciled without the Randy Corporons of the world finally admitting what they seem only willing to imply in court to save their own asses: and none of these lies are true, that Donald Trump lost the 2020 elections, and the assault on the democratic process that ensued from Trump’s refusal to accept the result is one of the greatest crimes ever perpetrated against American democracy.

Which would make Coomer’s charge of defamation true, but also by far the lesser crime.

Like the Scopes Monkey Trial itself, much more than defamation is in the balance.

Tuesday Open Thread

6
  by: Colorado Pols November 16, 2021 at 6:57 AM MST

“You can preach a better sermon with your life than with your lips.”

–Oliver Goldsmith

Colorado GOP Vice Chair Speaks to Conspiracist Group FEC United

1
  by: Erik Maulbetsch November 15, 2021 at 12:32 PM MST

(Today’s Republican Party — Promoted by Colorado Pols)

UPDATE: Vice Chair Rahn returned CTR’s request for comment soon after publication. Her comments have been added.

The ties between the Colorado Republican Party and FEC United, a far-right conspiracy group that includes a militia division, are still going strong. The recent revelation that state GOP chair Kristi Burton Brown previously served as president of the extremist group that has promoted numerous conspiracy theories hasn’t dissuaded the party from sending one of its top officials to headline FEC United events twice in the past month.

Vice-Chair Priscilla Rahn spoke to FEC United’s Denver chapter yesterday evening, giving a speech called “Unpacking CRT” that purports to explain Critical Race Theory. She gave the same speech to the group’s El Paso County chapter Oct. 19.

CRT is a graduate-school-level theory that addresses racial bias and injustice throughout the American legal system. Over the past year conservative media has transformed it into talking point encompassing any and all efforts to address history, race and social justice in K-12 schools.

Rahn’s speech falsely equates CRT with Marxism and “Cancel Culture” with concentration camps. Rahn has given this talk to other conservative groups before. The Colorado Times Recorder reported and fact-checked a slide from the same presentation she gave in Larimer County this past July.

Her decision to share this FEC United and its militia division, the United American Defense Force, is notable considering that both FEC and UADF are organizing members to attend local school board meetings and voice objections not only to public health regulations such as mask requirements but also to curriculum.

Last month a Colorado Springs District 20 spokesperson noted that other attendees of its Oct. 21 board meeting complained that UADF members were combative and intimidating. The group issued a similar call to action for a Douglas Conty School Board meeting the following week. Though more visible recently, FEC/UADF organizing to “pack school board meetings” has been going on for months. Militia members wearing UADF attire attended a Cherry Creek School Board meeting in July.

Thursday evening, Rahn dismissed CRT as merely a theory of “brainiacs” at universities. She went to recount her school’s staff meeting immediately after Jan. 6 insurrection, mocking her principal’s decision to hold an emergency meeting about the storming of the U.S. Capitol as hypocritical since there hadn’t been a similar call following the George Floyd protests in May 2020 that included clashes between activists and law enforcement.

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Barbara Kirkmeyer “For Colorado,” This Time Anyway

13
  by: Colorado Pols November 15, 2021 at 11:47 AM MST

This morning, Republican state Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer of Weld County announced her bid for Congress in brand-spanking-new CD-8, set to be one of the most closely divided and watched new congressional contests in the 2022 midterm elections nationwide. Kirkmeyer opens a GOP primary matchup against former state Rep. Lori Saine, with state Sen. Kevin Priola considering an uphill “RiNO” bid against the conservative tide in today’s Republican Party.

Be assured that Kirkmeyer is running in CD-8, despite what her Twitter profile says:

Oops! You can’t blame Kirkmeyer for recycling her assets from her failed 2014 run for Congress in a much more conservative CD-4, but ready-for-primetime campaigns are supposed to fix these things before the local political blog is forced to do their quality assurance checking. Since we’re not paid by the campaign, we have no obligation to be nice about pointing out obvious mistakes.

Although Sen. Kirkmeyer is being billed as a more viable alternative to hard-charging conservative Lori Saine, it’s a label that might not work for Kirkmeyer in the general election–and that’s assuming she can prevail in the Republican primary where “viability” is a highly subjective standard at best. Kirkmeyer has long labored to appease the far-right Republican base in Weld County, including as a major proponent of the ill-fated campaign by a group of mostly-rural northeastern Colorado counties to secede from the state and form “North Colorado.”

Generally speaking, swing voters prefer candidates who want to serve their state and not secede from it.

There’s every reason to believe that Kirkmeyer will be competitive in the Republican primary–but the more Kirkmeyer does to prove her conservative mettle against an opponent with no such requirement, the more she’ll damage her prospects in the general election. At the same time, Kirkmeyer is stymied in any run to the center by her own record as a product of Weld County’s wacky Republican politics.

Not a good fit for what could be one of America’s swingiest swing districts in 2022.

Get More Smarter on Monday (Nov. 15)

2
  by: Colorado Pols November 15, 2021 at 10:47 AM MST

Happy National Recycling Day. Please do some recycling. Let’s Get More Smarter. If you think we missed something important, please include the link in the comments below (here’s a good example). If you are more of an audio learner, check out The Get More Smarter Podcast. And don’t forget to find us on Facebook and Twitter. 

 

CORONAVIRUS INFO…

*Colorado Coronavirus info:
CDPHE Coronavirus website 

*Daily Coronavirus numbers in Colorado:
 http://covid19.colorado.gov

*How you can help in Colorado:
COVRN.com

*Locate a COVID-19 testing site in Colorado:
Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment 

 

► Several Colorado politicians — including Gov. Jared Polis, Sen. John Hickenlooper, Denver Mayor Michael Hancock, and Rep. Joe Neguse (D-Boulderish) — will be at the White House today to witness President Biden sign his name to the recently-passed infrastructure bill. 

The editorial board of The Denver Post, meanwhile, is very happy about the infrastructure bill:

To put it lightly, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act will address some of Colorado’s largest needs if the money is used wisely.

Samantha Silverberg, special assistant to the president for transportation and infrastructure, told reporters on a call last week that Biden’s administration learned a lot of lessons from the American Recovery Act of 2009, which pumped about $800 billion into the economy between 2009 and 2019 in an attempt to prevent economic disaster from the 2008 financial crisis.

“We are going to really rigorously track in a very transparent way with dashboards and online documents how every dollar is being spent,” Silverberg said. “We want to make sure every dollar is spent efficiently, transparently.”

 

► The Colorado Supreme Court has approved redistricting maps for the State House and State Senate.

 

► Governor Jared Polis is warning that Colorado’s rising COVID-19 cases present an unsustainable problem. Other news outlets, including The Colorado Sun, are wondering why Polis is still reluctant to issue a mask mandate. Polis avoided the question during a Sunday appearance on “Face the Nation.”

Meanwhile, 6 Denver Metro counties will require proof of vaccination at large indoor events.

 

► State Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer made the long-expected announcement that she plans to seek the Republican nomination for Congress in CO-08.

In related news, Congressman Ed Perlmutter (D-Jefferson County) tells Colorado Public Radio that he plans to seek re-election in the newly-drawn CO-07.

 

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Move Over Eastman Memo, Here’s The Ellis Memo

2
  by: Colorado Pols November 15, 2021 at 10:17 AM MST

Rudy Giuliani, Colorado attorney Jenna Ellis.

As readers know, the U.S. House Select Committee investigating the violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on January 6th of this year has subpoenaed ex-University of Colorado “visiting conservative scholar” John Eastman to testify about his allegedly central role in the planning of a last-ditch attempt to overturn the results on the 2020 presidential election on that day. Eastman, a key player in the “war room” organized in Washington D.C. to coordinate what could in the worst case have been a combined strategy of procedural chicanery and violence to flip the election, committed all of these actions while holding his position at Colorado’s flagship university with the enthusiastic support of Republican gubernatorial candidate Heidi Ganahl.

But as ABC News reported Sunday, Eastman wasn’t the only member of Trump’s legal team–or for that matter the only Colorado-connected lawyer for Trump’s legal team–drawing up plans to flip an election won by Joe Biden by over seven million total popular votes. In addition to Eastman, Colorado lawyer Jenna Ellis, whose “constitutional law” credentials have turned out to be rather flimsy, had her own plan for sowing one last desperate bit of parliamentary chaos on January 6th:

The memo, written by former President Donald Trump’s campaign lawyer Jenna Ellis, is reported for the first time in Karl’s upcoming book, “Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show” — demonstrating how Pence was under even more pressure than previously known to overturn the results of the 2020 election…

Ellis, in the memo, outlined a multi-step strategy: On Jan. 6, the day Congress was to certify the 2020 election results, Pence was to send back the electoral votes from six battleground states that Trump falsely claimed he had won.

The memo said that Pence would give the states a deadline of “7pm eastern standard time on January 15th” to send back a new set of votes, according to Karl.

Then, Ellis wrote, if any state legislature missed that deadline, “no electoral votes can be opened and counted from that state.”

The endgame here would be to throw the election to the U.S. House, where the rule of one vote per state would allow the possibility that a majority of Republican state delegations could hand the election to Trump. It’s no less of a longshot strategy than Eastman’s own, which Eastman himself makes no effort to defend except when he thinks he’s talking to the party faithful.  Jenna Ellis’ memo, like Eastman’s, was as much about giving Trump rhetorical ammunition to rally the rioters on January 6th as a serious proposal for Mike Pence to consider. They both serve the secondary objective identified early on by Steve Bannon: perpetuating the myth of the stolen 2020 election to “kill [the Biden] administration in the crib.”

While John Eastman, Rudy Giuliani, and other members of Trump’s legal team who filed contemptibly baseless lawsuits have paid with sanctions against their law licenses, Jenna Ellis has not been punished by Colorado’s attorney oversight body the Office of Attorney Regulation Counsel. In fact, while Giuliani had his license suspended and Eastman is a pariah in the academic world, Ellis has a new show on Newsmax and seems blissfully unaffected by the disgrace suffered by her peers.

Perhaps news that Ellis was doing everything she could to keep up with John Eastman will change that.

The GMS Podcast: Charles “Chaz” Tedesco Gets More Smarter

0
  by: Colorado Pols November 15, 2021 at 9:34 AM MST

Adams County Commissioner Charles “Chaz” Tedesco

This week on Episode #91 of The Get More Smarter Podcast, hosts Jason Bane and Ian Silverii talk with Adams County Commissioner  Charles “Chaz” Tedesco about his decision to run for Congress in CO-08 and about why Republican Lori Saine should never have access to a tank.

Jason and Ian also discuss “infrastructure week” (for real this time); more nuttiness from Mesa County Clerk and Recorder Tina Peters; and whether a bald white dude from Louisiana is right about the problem facing Democrats in 2022.

Catch up on previous episodes of The Get More Smarter Podcast at GetMoreSmarter.com.

Questions? Comments? Complaints? Hit us up at AngryRants@getmoresmarter.com.

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | TuneIn

Monday Open Thread

28
  by: Colorado Pols November 15, 2021 at 6:31 AM MST

“Ill habits gather unseen degrees, as brooks make rivers, rivers run to seas.”

–John Dryden

Weekend Open Thread

42
  by: Colorado Pols November 13, 2021 at 7:17 AM MST

“As long as inequality and other social problems plague us, populists will try to exploit them.”

–Kofi Annan

“The Big Line” Is not a Poll, and Other Notes

17
  by: Colorado Pols November 12, 2021 at 1:56 PM MST

 

Republican U.S. Senate candidate Eli Bremer was a guest on something called “The Richard Randall Show” earlier this week. We’re noting Bremer’s right-wing radio appearance here only because Colorado Pols and “The Big Line” were an early topic during the discussion. We listened to the interview and transcribed the relevant sections below…

During his introduction of Bremer, host Richard Randall opened things up with some bellyaching about “The Big Line,” which he may or may not think represents actual scientific polling results: 

RANDALL: I was doing a little bit of research on you and Greg Lopez, and I got on to “The Big Line” by ColoradoPols.com, and they’re ranking the odds for various races…

…You know, I’m looking at this poll, and it was November 5, and I think it’s B.S. And I think one of the things that I think, a lot of folks on the left, or even left-leaning media do, is that they try to make it sound as though, you know, Greg Lopez doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell. This Eli Bremer, hell would have to freeze over before he would ever have a chance against a great Senator like Michael Bennet who has done so much for the State of Colorado and for the nation…they’ve got him at 70%, and then they’ve got you at 20%, and then they have a bunch of other candidates who go from 20, 10, 10, 5…

I think sometimes they do that because they want people to think, these guys have no chance of winning. I’m just going to stay home. Why do I even bother with this stuff? What would you say to somebody who is starting to have that attitude?

First of all, “The Big Line” has been a feature of ColoradoPols.com since our inception in 2004. It is most definitely NOT A POLL, nor have we ever pretended otherwise. Here’s what it has said at the bottom of “The Big Line” for more than a decade:

It is an accurate, if unscientific, look at the races from insider perspectives from both parties. It does NOT reflect who we might like to see win, but reflects who has the best chance to win a General Election based on inside information and our analysis of that information.

“The Big Line” is our analysis of the changing odds of the most prominent races in Colorado each major election cycle. It’s just our opinion.

Love it or hate it, we’re usually correct. History bears this out.

As for Randall’s suggestion that Colorado voters are deciding whether or not to vote every year based on what it says on “The Big Line”… well, that’s probably true.

Also, Greg Lopez absolutely does not have a snowball’s chance in hell of being elected Governor of Colorado.

Let’s continue with the interview…

BREMER: Well, I think it’s…first, you’ve got to remember where it came from. That’s not even left-leaning. That’s a leftist blog website. It’s not a poll — it’s their opinion.

The other thing I think that is really interesting to point out is that in the 2020 election, Republicans did not lose. We won 100% of the, quote, “toss up” congressional seats around the country — one of which was won by my friend Mike Garcia, who’s the first Republican in California to gain a congressional seat in 22 years. He’s a friend and supporter. But that shows us, when 100% of the toss-ups are won by Republicans, that the ratings systems are off. 

My rule of thumb is that the ratings systems are always ticked one to the left. So, if they say it leans Dem, which is where the Colorado Senate is now — I’m not sure where they put the governor — but on the Senate they say it leans Dem…that’s actually probably a toss-up. By the time it’s a toss-up it’s usually a Leans R. 

And then, polling, if you look historically at the Real Clear Politics average, in many cases it’s about 5 points skewed to the left. I think that the polling and the ratings are largely controlled by liberals, and they…you can just look back historically. Don’t take my word for it — look back historically and then adjust in your own mind accordingly. So, take it with a grain of salt.

Kudos to Bremer for pointing out that “The Big Line” is just our opinion of things. The rest of his argument is a bit muddled…

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Jimmy Kimmel Roasts Lauren Boebert: “IRL or SNL?”

11
  by: Colorado Pols November 12, 2021 at 9:45 AM MST

If you’ve ever thought over the past year and a half since freshman GOP train wreck Rep. Lauren Boebert came into Colorado politics like a wrecking ball that her schtick is so over-the-top that it seems like a parody of itself, you’re apparently not alone. Last night, ABC late-night host Jimmy Kimmel unveiled a “man on the street” stunt using actual footage from Boebert’s recent video updates to constituents, like the one where Boebert demanded to know “how many puppies were eaten alive under Fauci’s watch.”

The twist? Kimmel’s crew at first told passers-by the clips of Boebert were Saturday Night Live sketches:

 

And then broke it to them that this was actually Lauren Boebert. Since most of the folks interviewed had sympathy for Boebert being mocked by SNL until they realized this was the real Lauren Boebert speaking with a straight face, their reactions once the truth is revealed are…memorable.

Will every CD-3 voter see this clip? No. But…

Lauren Boebert is costing Republicans votes on a grander scale now.

Get More Smarter on Friday (Nov. 12)

9
  by: Colorado Pols November 12, 2021 at 9:40 AM MST

There are only 49 days left in 2021. Let’s Get More Smarter. If you think we missed something important, please include the link in the comments below (here’s a good example). If you are more of an audio learner, check out The Get More Smarter Podcast. And don’t forget to find us on Facebook and Twitter. 

 

CORONAVIRUS INFO…

*Colorado Coronavirus info:
CDPHE Coronavirus website 

*Daily Coronavirus numbers in Colorado:
 http://covid19.colorado.gov

*How you can help in Colorado:
COVRN.com

*Locate a COVID-19 testing site in Colorado:
Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment 

 

► Could Colorado be forced to start rationing health care as it battles against a surge of COVID-19 infections? We could be close to that point, as The Denver Post reports:

If the current acceleration in COVID-19 hospitalizations continues, the state could run out of hospital beds by the end of December, though Gov. Jared Polis has called on facilities to find space for 300 to 500 more patients. It’s not clear how hospitals would find enough staff for those additional beds, though.

State officials have estimated Colorado has 2,000 to 2,200 beds that could potentially be used for COVID-19 patients, and as of Thursday afternoon, 1,466 of them were full. If all of those beds were filled with people who have the virus, it would leave very little room for anything else to go wrong, from a bad flu season to traffic injuries during a snowstorm.

Dr. Eric France, the state’s chief medical officer, said at a Thursday meeting of the Governor’s Expert Emergency Epidemic Response Committee that it’s possible Colorado will need to activate its hospital crisis standards of care, which allow for rationing, in the next few weeks. [Pols emphasis]

It doesn’t need to be this way — just get vaccinated, people!

Colorado Public Radio takes a deeper look at why COVID-19 cases in Colorado have gotten so bad lately. Governor Jared Polis is providing a live COVID-19 update at noon on Friday.

 

► This is a totally normal thing for a former President of the United States to say out loud. From The Washington Post:

Former president Donald Trump said he considered it “common sense” for his supporters to chant “Hang Mike Pence!” during the Jan. 6 insurrection but that he never feared for his vice president’s safety. [Pols emphasis]

Audio of Trump’s comments to ABC News’s Jonathan Karl were published Friday by Axios in advance of a forthcoming book by Karl.

In the exchange, Trump again took issue with Pence for not intervening to change the results as he presided over the count of electoral college votes by Congress. The count was ultimately interrupted after rioters breached the Capitol and Pence was whisked out of the chamber amid threats on his life.

Asked by Karl if he was worried about Pence’s safety, Trump said: “No, I thought he was well-protected.”

In related news, former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows failed to appear for a deposition on Friday in front of the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection.

 

► The Aurora Sentinel digs into the story of the pending breakup of the Tri-County Health Department:

After more than seven decades of collaboration, the Tri-County Health Department is disbanding over increasingly difficult to reconcile approaches to public health, leaving Aurora — a city of almost 400,000 people with land in Adams, Arapahoe and Douglas county — in an awkward position.

As the three counties prepare to go their own separate ways, Aurora will either have to navigate being served by three public health agencies or embark on the ambitious task of forming its own health department, similar to Denver and Broomfield, which each operate as both cities and counties.

Local elected and public health officials have mixed feelings on the best approach…

…Douglas County voted to leave Tri-County in September after clashing with other members of the department over public health measures during the pandemic. Things came to a head in August, when the other board of health members overruled Douglas County’s representatives to impose a mask mandate in all K-12 schools.

A month later, Adams County voted to leave the department as well, a decision that left the Arapahoe County’s board of commissioners in the lurch.

 

Click below to keep learning stuff…

 

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Friday Open Thread

52
  by: Colorado Pols November 12, 2021 at 6:59 AM MST

“Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose.”

–Bill Gates

Get More Smarter on Veterans Day (Nov. 11)

10
  by: Colorado Pols November 11, 2021 at 10:45 AM MST

Go thank a Veteran today. Let’s Get More Smarter. If you think we missed something important, please include the link in the comments below (here’s a good example). If you are more of an audio learner, check out The Get More Smarter Podcast. And don’t forget to find us on Facebook and Twitter. 

 

CORONAVIRUS INFO…

*Colorado Coronavirus info:
CDPHE Coronavirus website 

*Daily Coronavirus numbers in Colorado:
 http://covid19.colorado.gov

*How you can help in Colorado:
COVRN.com

*Locate a COVID-19 testing site in Colorado:
Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment 

 

► Declaring the state to be at high risk of COVID-19 exposure, Gov. Jared Polis signed an Executive Order ensuring that every Colorado adult can receive a COVID-19 booster shot six months after their last dose. The Colorado Sun and Colorado Public Radio wonder why Polis is still resisting another mask mandate, though vaccine requirements for large indoor events could be just around the corner. 

The New York Times, meanwhile, looks at the research and data about waning COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness:

As tens of millions who are eligible in the United States consider signing up for a Covid-19 booster shot, a growing body of early global research shows that the vaccines authorized in the United States remain highly protective against the disease’s worst outcomes over time, with some exceptions among older people and those with weakened immune systems.

But while the vaccines’ effectiveness against severe disease and hospitalization has mostly held steady, even through the summer surge of the highly transmissible Delta variant, a number of published studies show that their protection against infection, with or without symptoms, has fallen.

Public health experts say this decline does not mean that the vaccines are not working. [Pols emphasis] 

 

► The Colorado Sun looks at how the big infrastructure deal in Congress will help speed up the process of increasing broadband internet access in Colorado:

Colorado’s efforts to end its rural digital divide could finally happen with the $1 trillion U.S. infrastructure bill, currently awaiting President Joe Biden’s signature.

At least $100 million for broadband infrastructure will end up in Colorado, but it could be much more, said Tony Neal-Graves, chief information officer and executive director of the Colorado Office of Information Technology.

“When we go through it and try to estimate how much money could potentially flow to the state of Colorado, directly or indirectly depending on the type of grant program it is, it could be north of a billion dollars,” Neal-Graves said.Congress passed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act this week. In it, $65 billion has been set aside to pay for the cost to extend broadband service to those who still don’t have it in all 50 states, Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico and U.S. territories.

President Biden, meanwhile, is promising that the infrastructure deal will start to ease a growing pressure on the economy.

 

► The Washington Post examines two figures defining the economy in the Biden administration: Inflation and job-creation numbers.

The Associated Press explains the inflation problem:

Much of it is the flipside of very good news. Slammed by COVID-19, the U.S. economy collapsed in the spring of 2020 as lockdowns took effect, businesses closed or cut hours and consumers stayed home as a health precaution. Employers slashed 22 million jobs. Economic output plunged at a record-shattering 31% annual rate in last year’s April-June quarter.

Everyone braced for more misery. Companies cut investment. Restocking was put off. And a brutal recession ensued.

Yet instead of sinking into a prolonged downturn, the economy staged an unexpectedly rousing recovery, fueled by massive government spending and a bevy of emergency moves by the Fed. By spring, the rollout of vaccines had emboldened consumers to return to restaurants, bars and shops.Suddenly, businesses had to scramble to meet demand. They couldn’t hire fast enough to plug job openings — a near record 10.4 million in August — or buy enough supplies to fill customer orders. As business roared back, ports and freight yards couldn’t handle the traffic. Global supply chains became snarled.

Costs rose. And companies found that they could pass along those higher costs in the form of higher prices to consumers, many of whom had managed to sock away a ton of savings during the pandemic.

 

Click below to keep learning stuff…

 

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