Friday, May 27, 2016
State track and field meet results
Graduation time
DougCO superintendent quits for Texas gig. Hundreds of Texans protest Liz Fagen's hire.
Liz Fagen, the embattled superintendent of the 67,000-student Douglas County Schools, announced her resignation Tuesday to become superintendent of Humble Independent School District, just outside of Houston.
A petition on Change.org, with more than 600 signatures collected in its first nine hours, calls on the Humble School Board to reconsider its decision to hire Fagen. The petition sponsors are “Concerned Parents of Humble.” The district has about 39,000 students but is expected to grow to 52,000 within the next decade.
A petition in Colorado, started by DougCo school district high school students, drew more than 1,800 signatures and protested high rates of teacher turnover under Fagen. The movement also helped launch a student walkout at Ponderosa High School, which led to a heated meeting between the walk-out's organizer, sophomore Grace Davis, School Board President Meghann Silverthorn and Vice-President Judith Reynolds, who have since been asked by Davis to resign.
Fagen, who was appointed by a conservative board majority, has been superintendent of DougCo schools since 2010.
“Dr. Fagen has led many changes and improvements in the past six years in Douglas County,” said DougCO board president Meghann Silverthorn. “We're grateful for her tireless service and commitment to education. We wish her and her family all the best in her future endeavors.”
Her tenure has been marked by nearly constant controversy. Within a year of her appointment, the board launched a voucher program eventually declared unconstitutional by the Colorado Supreme Court. The case now awaits a hearing at the U.S. Supreme Court, which will likely not happen this term. The board also ended its collective bargaining relationship with the Douglas County Federation of Teachers in 2012 and now requires teachers to individually negotiate contracts with their school principals.
The unanimous conservative 7-0 majority shrank to a narrow 4-3 majority in last November's elections. The four remaining conservative members, including Silverthorn and Reynolds, are up for re-election in 2017.
That played on the minds of the Douglas County Federation of Teachers, a parents' group that supports teachers and opposes the conservative board majority, and at least one former member of that majority.
Justin Williams, a former conservative board member who was term-limited in 2015, said recently that the majority would not hold unless they cut ties with Fagen. In a YouTube video posted by a Facebook group, Douglas County Parents, Williams cited Fagen's hiring as one of his greatest accomplishments during his time on the board. But since 2010, the board majority has lost support, he said. “There were people who supported us in this cause the last time [who] have switched over. I've come to the conclusion…that if we go forward in the next election in 2017 without a superintendent change, we're going to lose.”
The video was shot at a May 2 meeting of Liberty Libations, a conservative networking group in Douglas County.
“Although we believe that this is a positive step towards reclaiming public education in Douglas County, we also realize that Dr. Fagen acted in concert with the school board that directed her,” said Douglas County Federation of Teachers President Kallie Leyba on Tuesday. “Until a majority of board members are elected who support public education and who will treat teachers and staff as the professionals they are, there will be no significant change in the direction of the district.”
In a statement Tuesday, Douglas County Parents said in the district teacher turnover has nearly doubled since Fagen took the helm. As a result of reforms, including the voucher program, the district has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on lawsuits and experienced a never-before-seen level of community dissatisfaction with the school district.
Jason Virdin, a spokesman for Douglas County Parents, said the group is hopeful Fagen's resignation will be “a positive step toward the healing of our school district and community … We are anxious to start the healing process.”
The struggle against the conservative board majority is far from over, said Virdin. Before the board hires a new superintendent, they should resolve the investigation of board president Silverthorn and vice-president Reynolds, at the request of the student protest leader Davis.
“Douglas County Parents continues to support [Davis] in her request for the resignation of both directors,” Virdin said.
In the meantime, Humble ISD School Board President Robert Sitton is enthusiastic about bringing Fagen on. “We are excited about getting the best education mind in the country.”
Said Sitton: “When people talk about education, we want them to say, 'you really need to go see what Humble ISD is doing.' She is, in our opinion, the leader to take us there. She is innovative, visionary and not afraid to take risks if it enhances education.”
A man who's interested acts predictably
Wiretap: Hillary Clinton's email scandal isn't disappearing
Trust issues
The State Department inspector general's report on Hillary Clinton's emails hit her where she is most vulnerable - on the issue of trust. And it wasn't long before Donald Trump was saying that “Crooked Hillary is as crooked as they come.” Via The New York Times.
User error
Clinton's email problem just got a lot worse. A whole lot worse. Via Chris Cillizza at The Washington Post.
Damn emails
It looks like Bernie still has no interest in the “damn emails.” Via Politico.
No unity
Trump's idea of party unity: He attacks GOP Gov. Susana Martinez in her home state. Do you wonder why Paul Ryan is having so much trouble pulling the trigger on an endorsement? Via The Washington Post.
Taking responsibility
Joan Walsh: The media are not helpless in the wake of Hurricane Don and his campaign of personal destruction. Now they need to act like it. Via The Nation.
Strategy needed
Clinton has no idea how to attack Trump. Just watch Elizabeth Warren do it, and you can see how badly Clinton fails. Via Slate.
Pounding Trump
At The National Review, they keep pounding Trump. Charles Murray writes that “Hillary is even worse” doesn't cut it.
New house
The Obamas have found a post-White House place to live - a nine-bedroom rental with a mother-in-law suite and room for the Secret Service. Via The New York Times.
Liberal arts
Long read: A letter from Oberlin. What's really roiling the liberal-arts campus. Via The New Yorker.
Photo credit: Gage Skidmore, Creative Commons, Flickr.
After years of drought and overuse, the San Luis Valley aquifer refills
This story first appeared in High Country News.
The San Luis Valley in southern Colorado is an 8,000-square-mile expanse of farmland speckled with potato, alfalfa, barley and quinoa fields between the San Juan and Sangre de Cristo mountain ranges. Only about 7 inches of rain fall each year in the San Luis Valley. But while farmers and ranchers can't depend on moisture above ground, they make up the difference beneath it. The valley is underlain by a vast aquifer, which is punctured by more than 6,000 wells that pump water onto the valley's crops and supports the livelihoods of 46,000 residents.
For generations, the aquifer provided enough water to sustain the arid farming community. But beginning in 2002, a multi-year drought shrunk the nearby streams and water table. Farmers and ranchers began to notice the falling levels of the Rio Grande and the rapidly draining aquifer. Some wells throughout the valley abruptly stopped working.
The aquifer dwindled so much that the Closed Basin Project, a Bureau of Reclamation pumping effort that had long met downstream water diversions and delivered flows to the Rio Grande River to maintain the Alamosa National Wildlife Refuge, failed to convey enough water to the valley's farms and ranches. “We operate in a highly over-appropriated system,” says Cleave Simpson, manager of the Rio Grande Water Conservation District, the main water management entity in the San Luis Valley. “Agriculture had overgrown and far outstretched water supply.”
Without change, state water regulators could shut off thousands of wells. So the valley's farmers and ranchers, unlike other agriculture communities in the West, did something nearly unprecedented: They decided not to ignore the problem.
In 2006, the Rio Grande Water Conservation District and San Luis Valley water users created the sub-district project, an innovative solution for solving water problems. The plan would charge farmers and ranchers $75 per acre-foot for the groundwater they pumped, and in turn use the funds to pay farmers to fallow portions of their fields, limiting demand on the water supply, as High County News reported in 2013. The experiment began at sub-district 1, the valley's largest of six sub-districts, which sits at the heart of the San Luis Valley in aptly named Centre, just west of the Great Sand Dunes National Park.
Today, four years into the operation of the project after it launched in 2012, the aquifer is rebounding. Water users in sub-district 1 have pumped one-third less water, down to about 200,000 acre feet last year compared to more than 320,000 before the project. Area farmers have fallowed 10,000 acres that once hosted thirsty alfalfa or potato crops. Since a low point in 2013, the aquifer has recovered nearly 250,000 acre-feet of water. By 2021, the sub-district project plans to fallow a total of 40,000 acres, unless the ultimate goal of rebounding the aquifer can be reached through other conservation efforts, like improving soil quality and rotating to more efficient crops.
The plan's proponents say it provides a template for groundwater management in other arid communities whose agricultural economies are imperiled by drought. “The residents of the valley know that they are in this together, and that the valley has overgrown the water available to us,” says Craig Cotten, Almosa-based division engineer for the Colorado Division of Water Resources. “This is a water user-led solution, which makes it unique. I really think this can be a model.”
Crucially, the plan is state-mandated, which requires everyone to either participate in a district, fallow their fields or work with water engineers to develop their own augmentation plans, which in turn need to be approved by state water courts. Those choices - paying premiums for groundwater or scaling down operations significantly - have been tough for farmers. Nevertheless, Simpson says the valley's water users have gotten on board. “It's not comfortable but most everyone has really come forward,” Simpson says. “It's a bit of a paradigm shift for farmers who are individualistic and don't typically work together - but by necessity they realize that we will bankrupt ourselves if we continue to stretch our water resource.”
But water users in the San Luis Valley have also gone beyond the call of duty, says Heather Dutton, manager of the San Luis Valley Water Conservancy District. While the SLVWCD helps include users in its augmentation plan as an alternative to joining the sub-district project, Dutton says that few water users have gone that route. That's partly because farmers and ranchers themselves have helped create the sub-district rules, through participating in public meetings and getting involved with the board of managers. “This has been a good exercise in self-governance,” Dutton says. “It's been a success story in people coming together and trying things that my grandpa's era would have thought were crazy.”
Although sub-district 1 has proved a success, the broader sub-district project remains in its fledging stages. In March, Colorado District Court in Rio Grande County mandated that sub-district 2, a cluster of a hundred or so wells between Monte Vista and Del Norte, unroll as phase two of the program. The second district is currently forming a board of managers to develop official rules for farmers and ranchers within the territory. The Rio Grande Water Conservation District is still working with valley residents to implement the remaining four sub-districts.
Still, the project's first phase has been encouraging for residents. Patrick O'Neill grew up in Central California's San Joaquin Valley and first came to the San Luis Valley in 1998 to work as an intern at Agro Engineering, a consulting company. Though he later returned to his family farm in California, he came to feel that the Central Valley, built on its own wasteful groundwater use, was not sustainable. He returned to the San Luis Valley in 2005, where he now owns Soil Health Services in Alamosa and works with area farmers and ranchers to improve soil health. “I chose this place in a very deliberate way for my home because there's potential for putting our water system back into balance,” O'Neill says. “People here are much more conscious of how much water they are using.”
George Whitten, a long-time rancher, says the drought has provided a tough but valuable lesson for the San Luis Valley. “It's a beautiful segue,” he says. “The drought has caused people here to think about the future. Soil is no longer just a medium to put seeds in and water isn't endless. It may take awhile, but I think we will wind up as a healthier community because we had to come together to restore the aquifer.”
High Country News is a nonprofit news organization that covers the important issues that define the American West. Subscribe, get the enewsletter, and follow HCN on Facebook and Twitter.
This story is part of the “Small towns, big change” project through the Solutions Journalism Network.
Paige Blankenbuehler is an editorial fellow at High Country News. She tweets@paigeblank
“To syndicate High Country News stories, contact syndication@hcn.org.
Photo credit: Andrew Cullen, Creative Commons, Flickr.
Ryan Frazier won't be booted from the Senate race
Former Aurora City Councilman Ryan Frazier was set for another debate with his four Republican rivals yesterday when the news came in: A judge ruled he won't have to drop out of the race.
That, of course, is not a message ready made for a campaign commercial, but it settles weeks of uncertainty about Frazier's candidacy and sets up the June 28 primary officially as a five-man race to see who voters choose as their best shot against Democratic. U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet.
Like two other Republicans in the race, ex-lawmaker Jon Keyser and businessman Robert Blaha, Frazier was initially denied access to the ballot by the Secretary of State. That office, which looks into whether candidates have turned in enough petition signatures from voters to qualify, ruled all three had come up short. They each needed 1,500 signatures from valid Republican voters in each of Colorado's seven congressional districts, and paid Colorado firms to handle the effort.
The race was unusual this year in that four candidates - former Colorado State University athletic director Jack Graham was the other - had decided to make the ballot by gathering petitions instead of going through the caucus-assembly process like El Paso County Commissioner Darryl Glenn.
Keyser and Blaha successfully sued the Secretary of State to get on the ballot. Frazier took his case to the State Supreme Court where he attacked the strict rules governing how the petition process works. A judge had earlier said Frazier's name could appear on early ballots that were already being printed, but the candidate would have to withdraw from the race if he ended up losing in court.
But now that court fight is over.
District Court Judge Elizabeth Starrs ruled Fraziers petitions are valid and he doesn't have to worry about campaigning for naught. Judges in Colorado use a legal doctrine called “substantial compliance” which is less strict than the Secretary of State's compliance when it comes to deciding whether candidates deserve to make the ballot.
“This Court is satisfied that the additional signatures were from registered Republican voters from the 3rd Congressional District,” Starrs wrote in her ruling. “Mr. Frazier has shown by a preponderance of the evidence that he has a sufficient number of signatures which substantially comply with the statutory requirements.”
During a debate last week, Frazier framed his court fight over the petition process as one against a broken system.
“This isn't a question of whether our campaign can manage a petition or not. These are valid signatures that we've reviewed, we've found time and again represent valid Republican voters whose signatures were thrown out for clerical or technical errors and, quite frankly, should be counted,” he said. That the state's highest court took up his challenge, he said, showed that “they, too, see the errors in the system.”
The State Supreme Court handed the case back down to Starrs, who made her ruling via teleconference May 25.
As The Colorado Independent has previously written, the real legacy of this topsy turvy Republican primary for U.S. Senate might be a full examination of the way candidates petition onto the ballot in Colorado.
Photo credit: Frazier for Colorado
Wednesday, May 25, 2016
Republican Senate candidates and marijuana
Tuesday, May 24, 2016
Littwin: Deep end: Trump evokes Vince Foster suicide conspiracy
Congratulations if you had Vince Foster on your Donald Trump fantasy league team. It was a bold pick, but, when it comes to the Donald, you know that going bold is the only way that points toward victory.
I mean, did you really think Trump was going to suddenly become more, uh, presidential? Have you already forgotten that on the day Trump virtually clinched the GOP nomination, he was flogging the idea that Ted Cruz's father was somehow linked to the Kennedy assassination?
There's no limit on crazy in this campaign, no limit on conspiracy theories, no Mexicans who aren't potential rapists, no refugees who aren't potential terrorists, no Muslims who aren't celebrating 9/11, no vaccinations that couldn't lead to autism, no pillow that couldn't have killed Antonin Scalia.
People keep asking what it is about America that Trump has plugged into, but it should be clear by now: His upcoming nomination is the ultimate (or we can hope) victory for talk radio and all the contaminated media it has spawned. Where's Chris Christie to order a quarantine when you need him?
Anyone could have guessed that it wouldn't take Trump long to turn the campaign away from stopping Muslims at the border - is anyone still keeping count of the refugee terrorists? - and make it into a Bill-Cinton-cigar-chomping-'90s-nostagia tour, even though, technically, the Big Dog isn't the one running for president. So, you'd have been a fool not to have picked Clinton accusers Juanita Broaddrick and Kathleen Willey on your team. Trump said he had no choice - and, gosh, you can see his point, since the Clinton campaign keeps bringing up the long list of ugly things he has said about or done to women.
The only surprise is that this glance backward to the '90s has happened so quickly. It is still May, and the election, I fear, is not until November.
Ah, the 90s, those days when hypocrites roamed the land and when Republicans leaders - you remember, the child molester and his gang of serial adulterers - were tossing around impeachment papers and, Ken Starr, who has been silent about sex scandals at the college over which he now presides, was giving us, uh, blow by blow and when the Big Dog was being defended by - yes - the short-fingered vulgarian who said at the time, and I quote, that Clinton was being slammed “over something that was totally unimportant.”
Of course, Trump being Trump, even back then, didn't stop there. He said that the whole Monica Lewinsky scandal wouldn't have been so bad if Clinton had been messing around with really classy women like JFK did with Marilyn or like the Donald did with whoever was on the list that day.
The Washington Post's Fact Checker offers up this memory-lane interview with Trump by Chris Matthews, who long ago asked him if he ever thought about running for president.
Trump: “Can you imagine how controversial that'd be? You think about him with the women. How about me with the women? Can you imagine …”
Well, no, we couldn't. Now, yes, we have to.
And so Vince Foster.
This was always crazy-time stuff. It emerged around the time of the video being hawked by Jerry Falwell that accused Clinton of possibly murdering various people. Vince Foster kills himself on a park bench, and it's a terrible tragedy for his family and close friends, who include both of the Clintons. And so naturally, the Clintons were accused in the far spaces of loony land - spaces that still exist on the Internet and in Donald Trump's campaign offices at Trump Towers - of killing Foster.
(In some versions, Foster and Hillary were lovers, and, of course, he worked at the Rose Law Firm, and if it wasn't the Clintons who killed him, who would it be – Ted Cruz's father?)
For you kids out there, this was before Twitter, before Facebook, back when cable TV news was in its infancy, but still it was possible for rumors to spread, if slightly more slowly, into every corner of this great country, especially if you were Trump and did a “John Miller” by pretending to be your own PR man.
If you were alive back then, you'd know, I guess, that there were four GOP investigations into the matter - that's no Benghazi number, but still - and all of which found that poor Vince Foster had committed suicide.
What's different, of course, is that the person now spreading the rumors is the presumptive Republican nominee for president.
Of course it's the same presumptive nominee who was a leader in the birther movement and who went investigating agents to Hawaii, who, he said, “cannot believe what they're finding.” Many of us cannot believe it either, since Trump has never actually said what they found.
And Foster? How did this come up? Trump brought it up, although he says he hates to because, you know. He said the whole thing was “very serious” and that the circumstances “very fishy.”
“He had intimate knowledge of what was going on,” Trump said of Foster. “He knew everything that was going on, and then all of a sudden he committed suicide. … I will say there are people who continue to bring it up because they think it was absolutely a murder. I don't do that because I don't think it's fair.”
Trump may not think it's fair, but, on the other hand, he's running even in the polls with Hillary Clinton, Democrats are freaking, and if it comes to that, it'll be a while longer before Vince Foster, or any of us, are at peace.
Photo credit: Gage Skidmore, Creative Commons, Flickr.
Community voice: Learn the facts about your DA race
What do you know about your district attorney?
The Denver Justice Project sees this role as the most influential in the criminal justice system. The DA has power, influence and discretion that historically has gone unmonitored, unchecked and unrecognized by the general public. Power like – will crimes be charged as misdemeanors, felonies, or even prosecuted at all? And this includes against law enforcement. DAs decide who is eligible for victim's assistance, how far they want to take charges, who will be targeted for the death penalty, and so much more. These monumental decisions alter the course of people's lives, impacting family members, loved ones and community. Yet these important DA elections often go unwatched, and sometimes even uncontested. The Denver DA is the highest paid state elected official. Current Denver DA Mitchell Morrissey has been in office for 12 years. He created a third term for the position after running unopposed. This office states that it acts on behalf of the people, but the public has been given little to no understanding – about its true dynamics. Unlike other elected officials, the DA's office has rarely been responsive, accessible, or accountable to its constituency.
The Denver Justice Project has developed a community teach-in curriculum that we are facilitating across the Denver metro area. This curriculum includes our 10-point voter education tool that details these 10 focuses:
- Mass incarceration
- Fighting cultural patterns and practices of violence in law enforcement
- Decriminalizing public health issues
- Transparency and openness to community input
- Conviction reviews
- Bail reform
- Respecting the right to protest
- Immigration
- Juvenile justice
- What organizational change needs to take place in your DA's office and does the office reflect the community?
The curriculum is being used as a tool for understanding the dynamics and complexities of the Denver DA's office and how it can better serve the public in the future. This is in preparation for the upcoming district attorney primaries on June 28, 2016 and the election at large in November, 2016. But more importantly, the training should be used as a critical assessment for why we as community need to pay attention to the District Attorney's race in Denver, across Colorado and even across the country.
Our next community teach in will be Wednesday, May 25th at Park Hill Congregational Church. 2600 Leyden St, Denver, CO 80207 6:00pm to 8:00pm.
Photo credit: Paul Sableman, Creative Commons, Flickr.
Monday, May 23, 2016
Why Colorado's largest labor group won't endorse Michael Bennet
The state's largest labor union, the Colorado AFL-CIO, is not endorsing incumbent Democratic U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet for re-election, showing just how much the issue of trade could play in the 2016 elections.
The lack of an endorsement has also allowed a third party candidate challenging Bennet to capitalize on the move.
The Colorado AFL-CIO represents more than 300,000 union members and families in the state. Over the weekend, its political committee met after interviewing candidates in the closely watched Colorado U.S. Senate race.
One issue dominated the discussion when it came to endorsements: Trade.
“The Trans-Pacific Partnership weighed heavily on our affiliates' decision to remain neutral in the U.S. Senate race,” said Sam Gilchrist, director of the Colorado AFL-CIO, in a statement. “We deeply respect Senator Bennet, and all he has done for Colorado's working families. However, the affiliates present at our convention could not reach the two-thirds majority needed to endorse.”
Bennet has not yet taken a public position on TPP.
But Bennet voted on a measure giving Obama the authority to “fast track” negotiations for it and other global trade agreements, and Bennet has drawn fire from the AFL-CIO for his stance on trade before. Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have come out against TPP.
That the state's largest labor group took a pass on Bennet this year isn't to say he's lost union support in Colorado or nationally. At least 10 organized labor groups from the Sheet Metal Workers to Air Traffic Controllers to the Rural Letter Carriers Association have contributed to his campaign.
“Michael's proud to be supported by a majority of union members across Colorado and in the Senate he'll continue fighting for middle-class families and working to get things done for Colorado,” says his campaign spokeswoman Alyssa Roberts.
The Trans-Pacific Partnership is a trade agreement backed by President Barack Obama among some countries that corner the Pacific Ocean and is geared toward reducing trade barriers among them.
“But it will do a lot of other things, too,” writes Vox.com in an explanation of the deal. “The agreement could require countries to adopt stricter labor and environmental rules, provide stronger legal protections to drug companies, lengthen the term of copyright protection, give foreign investors a new way to challenge countries' laws and regulations, and much more.”
The Colorado AFL-CIO, which endorsed Bennet in 2010, is angry about the trade agreement.
“The trade deal as a whole is very concerning for us,” Gilchrist told The Colorado Independent in an interview, adding that it should have had more public input. “[Bennet] voting for fast track allowed that process to be expedited and that's where our concern was,” he said.
Gilchrist added, however, that he felt Bennet is being thoughtful about where he'll ultimately come down on the deal. Being on the top of the ticket, though, “he bore the brunt of our delegates anger on trade,” Gilchrist said.
Despite the labor group's neutrality in the Colorado U.S. Senate race, the state's Green Party candidate, Arn Menconi, who was interviewed by the AFL-CIO, says it's a plus for his campaign.
“This is great for me to hear that they've taken a pass on this because it shows that the unions have realized that the Democratic Party is not fighting for unions,” Menconi says. “We've seen that steady decline.”
Once one of the more powerful forces in Democratic politics, organized labor is seeing its electoral might challenged by environmental groups with big money and organizing efforts at the national level.
A recent New York Times story detailed a rift between the two interest groups over turnout efforts, which has caused headaches for the Democratic Party during this election cycle.
The AFL-CIO extended an offer to all candidates to respond to their questionnaire and give an interview for a potential endorsement, Gilchrist said. No Republicans in the U.S. Senate race accepted that invitation.
The group will do another round of endorsements after the June primaries.
Photo credit: AFL-CIO America's Union, Creative Commons, Flickr.
Friday, May 20, 2016
Former Commerce City officer sentenced to probation
What's up with this messy GOP US Senate primary in Colorado?
Talk to enough county GOP chairs across Colorado about the U.S. Senate primary, and themes emerge: Darryl Glenn is everywhere, things are quieter than usual, and the drama that has brought public attention to this race is also hurting Republicans.
Indeed, one county party chair interviewed - we're withholding his name for his own sake - couldn't immediately recall the names of all five GOP candidates on the June 28 primary ballot vying to unseat Democratic U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet in the fall.
Asked what she's been hearing lately about Colorado's top statewide race, Joy Hoffman, chair of the Arapahoe County Republicans, said, “Not a damn thing. It's eerie. It's just very odd. Everybody's waiting to see what the courts are going to say.”
With just a few weeks before ballots drop, that's likely not something the five candidates want to hear. After all, it's already been a turbulent race.
The Colorado Republican U.S. Senate primary turned into a courtroom drama when the Secretary of State blocked three candidates trying to petition their way onto the ballot for not having gathered enough signatures. The race had already been unusual for Colorado in that so many candidates skipped the traditional caucus-assembly process to petition onto the ballot.
The four of them were ex-NFL quarterback Jack Graham who was a registered Democrat just 18 months before announcing his candidacy; former lawmaker Jon Keyser who quit his first term in the legislature to run for U.S. Senate; businessman Robert Blaha who was found to have accepted excessive campaign contributions; and ex-Aurora City Councilman Ryan Frazier, who is on the ballot with the provision that he might have to withdraw from the race.
Only one candidate, El Paso County Commissioner Darryl Glenn, earned his way onto the ballot by going through the caucus-assembly process where he knocked out six others after delivering a rousing speech at the GOP's April 9 state assembly.
Since then the primary has ripped apart at the seams, earning national ridicule and rankling Republican officials in Colorado.
In March, Graham, who seeded his campaign with $1 million, turned in more than enough petition signatures to get on the ballot. But those who followed - Keyser, Blaha and Frazier - did not, according to the Secretary of State. So what's a blocked candidate to do? Sue the Republican Secretary of State, Wayne Williams, which they did, successfully lawyering their way onto the ballot. One candidate, Frazier, has taken his case to the State Supreme Court where he is attacking Colorado's strict rules that govern the signature-gathering process. In an unusual move, a judge put the candidate on the ballot provisionally, ruling Frazier must drop out if he fails to persuade the high court.
That was not the worst of it.
“One fiasco after another,” is how Richard Hollabaugh, chairman of the Fremont County GOP, described the turn of events in a recent interview.
Once the three Senate candidates were out of the courtroom, one of them, Keyser, wilted under the glare of TV lights after reporter Marshall Zelinger found at least 13 forged signatures on petitions that helped him get on the ballot. Making matters worse, the Secretary of State announced his office had found the name of a dead voter among Keyser's petitions, and also that election officials there had known about the issue for a month before it became public.
What has all this meant for some Republicans in Colorado who are following this race?
“It turns me off,” says La Plata County GOP chair Travis Oliger. “I don't think that's a good thing to have. Sounds to me like something the Democrats do. I don't care for that, just having signatures from people who are dead. It doesn't turn me on, that's for sure. It's not that hard to get that many signatures.”
But apparently it is.
Candidate campaigns are allowed to pay private companies that hire subcontracted workers to gather signatures to get a candidate on the ballot. That's 1,500 signatures of registered Republican voters in each of the state's seven congressional districts. A voter may only sign for one candidate. If one person's signature is found on multiple candidates' petitions, the first one counted by the Secretary of State is the only one that counts.
The candidate petition process came in with progressive-era reforms at the beginning of the 20th Century. But in recent years, a cottage industry of petition-gathering firms on both sides of the partisan divide in Colorado have sprouted up to sell their services for as much as $200,000 to candidates. Some of these companies, apparently, don't do the best job.
“Now we have a phenomenon that did not exists at all 50 years ago where people just skip the assemblies,” says Robert Loevy, a political science professor emeritus at Colorado College.
Petitioning onto the ballot traditionally offended Colorado's grassroots base, loyal party members who participate in the precinct caucuses, county and congressional assemblies and the state convention, and some of that resentment still remains.
“I think there is a legitimate feeling that the petitioning process allows the money people to bypass the grassroots,” says Bob Jenkins, current chairman of the Pitkin County GOP.
In 1980, then-Secretary of State Mary Estill Buchanan successfully petitioned her way onto the Republican primary ballot. Later, Bruce Benson, a wealthy oil man who is now the president of the University of Colorado, won a three-way GOP primary for governor in 1994 through the petition process. At the time, doing so was so unusual that a chapter in a book by Loevy about the 1994 governor's race that deals with Benson's decision to petition on is titled “Not Your Ordinary Candidate.”
In 2014, however, Bob Beauprez successfully petitioned onto the ballot in the GOP governor's race. Congressman Mike Coffman and former Congressman Tom Tancredo have also used the petition process.
“It's ramped up. I think this is actually a pretty new trend,” says Beauprez's 2014 campaign manager Dustin Olson. “But I think it could swing back the other way.”
Fast forward to 2016, and four out of the five candidates on the U.S. Senate ballot in Colorado petitioned on. But for three of them, getting there has taken a brutal toll, and has made it likely that the real legacy of this race will be a full examination of Colorado's petitioning system. While Frazier is fighting the state's petition rules on constitutional grounds in the state Supreme Court, Blaha has called on Secretary of State Williams to resign because of the controversy.
Out in Montezuma County, the chair of the Republican Party there, Danny Wilkin, has been wincing at the mess this whole petition process has caused this year.
“The part of us eating our own, if we don't pull back … it's going to kill us in the general election,” he says.
Wilkin once tried to petition onto a local ballot himself when he ran for county commissioner, so he knows the process. He says if you want to be in politics you have to understand the game and how it's played.
“It turns me off when people go after the system,” he said in an interview, adding later, “As Republicans we have to be responsible for our own actions.”
The grassroots and Glenn
Walden, Colorado, is a small town about 140 miles northwest of Denver.
“It is very difficult to get any candidates here to Jackson County, a very remote ranching valley,” says the county GOP chairwoman there, Wendy Larsen. Her town has “nothing else around us.”
In Walden, Republicans are paying more attention to local races, like those for county commissioner and a local policy fight over lifting a moratorium on marijuana sales, than the big U.S. Senate race, she says.
But folks in the local Republican circles in which Larsen travels told her they'd love to see Darryl Glenn if Larsen could bring him to Walden. That was after Glenn's winner-take-all victory and his now-famous speech at the April 9 state convention in which he earned 70 percent of the vote from Republican activists. Larsen asked Glenn if he might be interested in visiting Walden. He said he'd come to speak there on Saturday, May 21.
“For our delegation to get him here, I was actually very surprised to hear [he'd come],” Larsen says. As a county party official, she can't support one candidate over another. When people ask her about Glenn, she says she just plays them a video of his speech.
That Glenn is willing to travel out to Walden on a Saturday to meet a handful of rural Republicans doesn't surprise party officials across Colorado who have seen him campaigning through their own counties for more than a year.
“I think the one who has been here the most is probably Darryl Glenn,” says Richard Hollabaugh, the Fremont County Republican Party chair.
“I think Darryl Glenn is probably the favorite around here,” says Oliger in La Plata. “He's done a good job, he's been down here I think four times.”
Out in Mineral County, a rural part of Colorado with about 250 registered Republicans, the former mayor of Creede and the county's current GOP chairman, Eric Grossman, isn't afraid to speak his mind about his enthusiasm for Glenn, a candidate he has met in person at least six times.
“I appreciate the other candidates. They're all great men, but they all got into the race late,” he told The Colorado Independent. “Why they don't rally behind (Glenn) is astonishing to me.”
Grossman says the Republican electorate this year is fueled by the anti-establishment sentiment behind Donald Trump. Republicans are sick of mainstream politicians, he says, knocking Glenn's four rivals for going outside the caucus-assembly process and paying companies six figures to gather signatures for them.
“I don't have a lot of sympathy for those candidates who want to sue a Republican Secretary of State,” he said, adding later, “There's a wave and an obvious trend happening, and the fact that the mainstream is not acknowledging that is astonishing.”
'Is there going to be a bombshell?'
There was a time when Michael Bennet was considered the most vulnerable incumbent Democratic U.S. Senator in the country. Early in the primary, when there were some 15 candidates, Republicans said the large field proved how beatable Bennet is in the fall - and how much appetite there was to be the Colorado Republican who could do it.
That has changed.
When it came to file for the office, Colorado's crop of top-tier Republicans decided to take a pass on the race, from Congressmen Mike Coffman and Scott Tipton to Arapahoe-area District Attorney George Brauchler.
“We don't have a bench. We don't even have a folding chair,” says Jon Caldara, a Republican who runs the libertarian Independence Institute.
For the candidates who did get in the race, the petition drama is widely seen as a drag on this primary as the five-person field comes into focus for the June ballot. “Are Republicans blowing their chance in the Colorado Senate race?” asked The Washington Post in a recent headline. Roll Call ran a piece titled “How Michael Bennet got lucky.”
Add into this mix the chaotic aftermath of the Colorado Republican state convention on April 9 in which Ted Cruz swept the state's delegates. That led Donald Trump to breath fire at the state party, claiming they ran a rigged election. For some, such focus on that chaos dimmed excitement for down-ballot races like the one for U.S. Senate.
“It seems to me that the presidential campaign had sucked so much air out of the room that people now are just starting to look at the Senate candidates,” says Jeremy Weathers, an executive committeeman for the Colorado GOP and chair of the Yuma County Republican Party.
“At this point I think there's just kind of a lot of uncertainty,” says Phillips County Republican Party Chairman Steve Young. “We still don't know a lot about some of the candidates.”
In Garfield County, the GOP chairman there, David Merritt, says Republicans he talks to are following the Senate race.
“I would say that as a group they haven't gravitated toward any one candidate,” he says. “Some folks prefer different individuals.”
How exactly Republicans will decide on who can beat Michael Bennet might come into sharper focus in the next few weeks. Ballots begin dropping June 6th, and the election will be June 28.
Big bucks candidates like Graham and Blaha are likely to run TV spots.
But out in some counties, which aren't served by the Front Range TV markets, candidates would have to air ads in New Mexico to get them in front of Republican Colorado voters. Voters in La Plata, for instance, won't see the televised debates on their TVs, either.
This will also be the first big contested Republican primary for U.S. Senate in which voters will be able to cast their ballots entirely by mail. Arapahoe County's GOP chair Joy Hoffman says Republicans will hold onto their ballots longer than they might if it were a general election. They'll want to see if something is going to happen between June 6 and June 28 before voting and mailing their ballots in.
Their thought will be, “Is there going to be a bombshell?” Hoffman said in an ominous tone.
Given the current state of the Republican U.S. Senate primary in Colorado, that is one very good question.
[Photo credit: NCVO London via Creative Commons on Flickr]
Why Colorado's education commissioner quit
Colorado's Commissioner of Education announced Thursday he is quitting after just four months in the position. The job was more than Rich Crandall could handle, according to a joint statement from the board and him.
Crandall's resignation takes effect immediately, according to a spokesman for the Colorado Department of Education, although it must still be formally accepted by the Board of Education. That will likely happen Friday, when the board meets to appoint an interim commissioner, according to a department news release.
Crandall officially stepped into the job on January 19 of this year, after being named the sole finalist by the board earlier in the month. The board approved his hiring on a 7-0 vote.
Crandall is a former Arizona state senator who served six years before resigning to take the helm at the Wyoming Department of Education, a job he started in July 2013, overseeing 91,000 students statewide. Crandall was appointed by the governor but the state's Supreme Court said in January 2014 that the governor did not have the authority to appoint what had previously been an elected position. Crandall left Wyoming in April, 2014 and returned to Arizona, where he owns a nationwide company that provides consulting dieticians to assisted living and long-term care facilities.
The Colorado Board of Education hired Crandall despite his lack of significant management experience in education. Prior to his time in Wyoming, Crandall's most-closely related educational role was as chair from 2005 to 2008 of the Mesa Public Schools (AZ) Board of Education, a district with 69,000 students. He acknowledged in his job application he has never worked as a teacher or principal.
In announcing his departure, Crandall cited family responsibilities and the demands of the job.
“The realities of my large family being out of state, including school age children, as well as the demands of the position and the time required to fully serve a state as diverse and expansive as Colorado, lead me to this decision,” Crandall said.
That same news release included a statement from board Chair Steve Durham, which said that while he appreciated the importance Crandall put on family needs, he also recognized his own “professional and personal limitations in this demanding position.”
According to Chalkbeat Colorado, Crandall's resignation comes on the heels of a number of departures in the department. A year ago, it lost its deputy commissioner, associate commissioner in charge of assessments, its top administrative officer and its communications chief. The department still has not filled several of those positions.
The board's chair in 2015, Marcia Neal, also quit a year ago, citing a “dysfunctional” board.
Kerrie Dallman, president of the Colorado Education Association, told The Colorado Independent Thursday that the appointment of an interim commissioner will be critical in the days to come.
The lack of experienced staff in some areas is a huge problem, Dallman said, particularly with implementation deadlines looming, some tied to the Every Student Succeeds Act, which replaced No Child Left Behind.
Thursday, May 19, 2016
1977 Benelli Sei 750 for Sale
Everything sounds beautiful and exotic when spoken in French or Italian, especially if you don't understand the language. I mean, couldn't Bidet be a luxury water-fountain manufacturer? And don't Quattroporte and Benelli Sei just roll off the tongue? What's that you say? Quattroporte just means “four doors” and Sei is just Italian for “six”? Well that's disappointing… So basically, today's Benelli Sei 750 is the epitome of “truth in advertising”: a motorcycle from Benelli that displaces 750cc and has six cylinders.
It sounds way less sexy when you put it that way.
Of course, when you've just produced an exotic, inline-six motorcycle, giving it a fancy name probably isn't necessary: the bike speaks for itself. And that's exactly what Alejandro De Tomaso intended: when the bike was introduced, it was meant as a statement to the Japanese “big four” that the Italian brands could compete with them on every level. Not completely true, of course, but at least in terms of engineering extravagance it was accurate.
The early 750cc bikes were superseded by a 900cc version in 1978 that looked basically identical, only with more displacement. Styling is relatively conservative, although that fat engine sitting across the frame shouts the bike's intentions loudly enough, with a wall of exhaust headers that helps create one of the most exotic noises in motorcycling. You might be tricked into thinking the cylinder count would give it a car-like exhaust note. The reality is a ripping noise that's impossibly smooth and electric, head-turning in a way that the styling is not.
From the original eBay listing: 2007 BMW 1200s for sale">1977 Benelli Sei 750 for Sale
A Six cylinder Italian work of art, one of the three or four of the best sounding motorcycles in the world and one of the most coveted collector motorcycles available today. This example has been with the same owner/mechanic since 1979.It was loved, taken care of, and ridden until 1995 when it was professionally and meticulously restored by him from the ground up,mechanically and visually,work including a complete engine overhaul with all new parts as well as a full restoration of chassis and all ancillaries. As noted in photos, the motorcycle will come with a complete new 6 into 6 exhaust system, as well as a new seat cover and stock turn indicators. Documentation and photos accompany it. The bike has since been ridden sparingly by the same owner from 1996 till 2016 and shows 16000 miles on the clock (800 miles a year),which was zeroed after the restoration in 1995. It still looks and drives like new and will be a great addition to any collectors or enthusiasts garage. These motorcycles have been climbing in value right through the last few years and show now signs of slowing down. They rarely come up for sale and are almost impossible to find with this kind of record and history since new. I purchased it only a short time ago with the intention of keeping it indefinitely in my collection but as life and timing inevitably goes,a one owner Vincent Black Shadow that I have been trying to buy for ten years has eventually been offered to me by its original owner and in order to buy it,I sadly have to sell the Benelli and two other motorcycles in my collection. This motorcycle is not and will never be for the bargain hunter or time waster out there so please don't waste your time or mine. If I don't get the price that it is worth or very close to it, I will just have to pick another one of my motorcycles to sell in its place. This is a genuine opportunity for an intelligent and savvy collector or afficionado who is looking to buy a Perfect Benelli 750 SEI,don't miss it and hate your decision later,both financially and emotionally. Thank you for looking. Like a boss.
Yes, the seller actually included “like a boss” at the end of the listing.
Introduced in 1972, years before the similarly-spec'd Honda CBX, the Sei was never really produced in great numbers, although they do show up on eBay from time-to-time, often in slightly-abandoned condition, which is interesting because very nice CBXs show up for sale all the time. No big surprise though, since the Sei is a pretty expensive bike to maintain and source parts for. Many probably needed maintenance and were just left to rot when owners found out what service and parts were going to cost. I think they're a bit like 80s Alfa Romeos used to be: interesting and exotic, but expensive, difficult to maintain, and not really worth all that much. They languished in obscurity for a long time, although prices seem to be on the rise now.
This particular example appears to be in very good shape both mechanically and cosmetically, although that cracked tachometer face would really annoy me, and the seller mentions a complete cosmetic and mechanical restoration. That's very reassuring, although that Buy It Now price of $17,000 seems pretty ambitious, even for a bike this nice.
Wednesday, May 18, 2016
Man killed in Northglenn motorcycle accident
Tuesday, May 17, 2016
Jon Keyser hits media for coverage of his petition problems
DENVER - Republican U.S. Senate candidate Jon Keyser lashed out at media organizations during a Tuesday evening debate, accusing reporters of a double standard in coverage of forged signatures found on petitions that allowed him on the ballot.
For days, the 34-year-old lawyer and combat veteran had dodged serious questions about those signatures. He refused to answer questions during two candidate forums last week and subsequent interviews with reporters. On Tuesday, The Denver Post published what it characterized as an exclusive interview with the candidate about the topic, which Keyser called “a very serious issue.”
Toward the beginning of Tuesday evening's debate, Keyser brought up the controversy himself, saying he wanted to clear the air.
“The signature issue that I've been dealing with is something that I didn't come out with and speak about right away because I think leaders have to have the courage, the integrity, and the discipline, to make sure that they have all the information that they can gather before they come out and talk about an honest answer,” he said. “And here's the truth: My campaign hired a company, that company hired another company, and that company hired a subcontracted employee that wound up, it looks like, circumventing the law. And that's wrong.”
Then Keyser turned his attention toward media and coverage of the scandal.
“Now, The Denver Post, I think, has done a good job at covering the story for what it is, but frankly, there's a lot of media outlets in this state that really have done a lot of the heavy lifting and carried the water for the liberals on this to disguise Michael Bennet's record and get us talking about anything that doesn't involve Michael Bennet,” he said.
Keyser continued:
I think there's a big problem here in the media because there's a double standard that exists. Frankly, I don't know of anybody jumping out of the bushes to ask Michael Bennet questions about his vote on Iran or his support of closing Guantanamo Bay and importing the world's most dangerous terrorists to the United States and probably right here to Colorado. How about his support of Obamacare and the fact that it's failed.
The “jumping out of the bushes” line is a newer riff on an earlier Keyser critique about a TV reporter “creeping around” his house when the reporter knocked on his door to try and get comment for a story.
Later in the debate, Keyser said he thought the petition process to get on the primary ballot in Colorado is “the most complicated process that we have probably in the country in order to get onto the ballot in the first place.”
In Colorado there are two ways to get on the ballot. The petition route, which led three of the five Republican candidates to go to court to get on the ballot. One candidate, El Paso County Commissioner Darryl Glenn, went a different route, earning 70 percent of the vote from thousands of delegates during the GOP state convention in early April.
In an interview with The Colorado Independent Tuesday, Glenn said, “Everywhere I go, people will come up to me and tell me that is a factor,” when it comes to who they are voting for this year.
“People that made the decision to petition on the ballot, they made a calculated decision early on that wrote off a portion of the base,” he said, adding that with the “Trump phenomenon” this election cycle, people are aggravated.
The five Republicans running in the primary are Glenn, Keyser, Former NFL quarterback Jack Graham, businessman Robert Blaha, and former Aurora City Councilman Ryan Frazier.
Frazier is on the ballot after going to the state Supreme Court because of his petitions, but a judge said if he loses his court challenge he'll have to withdraw from the race. During Tuesday's debate he said of the petition process, “The system is broken, the rules are stuck in the last century, and I'm fighting to make sure every valid voter signature is counted.”
Frazier also went on to say, “This isn't a question of whether our campaign can manage a petition or not, these are valid signatures that we've reviewed, we've found time and again represent valid Republican voters whose signatures were thrown out for clerical or technical errors and, quite frankly, should be counted.” That justices on the state's highest court took up his challenge, he said, shows that “they, too, see the errors in the system.”
The Denver Post sponsored Tuesday's debate, which was held in the newspaper's auditorium.
[Photo credit: schmilblick via Creative Commons on Flickr]
Zombie voter bites Jon Keyser's U.S. Senate bid in Colorado
File this one under “One thing a Republican candidate never wants to see”: A dead voter's signature on a petition to get him on the ballot.
But that's the allegation from Colorado's Republican Secretary of State, Wayne Williams, who today released a statement saying he “notified the Denver district attorney that a petition circulator turned in the signature of a deceased voter.”
In recent years, Republicans across the country have over-hyped inaccurate reports of “zombie voters,” fear mongering about in-person voter fraud, which is extremely rare. They've done this while trying to enact restrictive voting measures to make voting more difficult.
The dead voter's signature here in Colorado, which was rejected, appeared among petitions that helped Republican U.S. Senate candidate Jon Keyser get on the June primary ballot. Keyser's campaign had to gather 1,500 valid signatures from Republican voters in each of the state's seven congressional districts in order to qualify for the primary. His campaign contracted with a Republican-leaning firm, Clear Creek, which outsourced work to a Democratic-leaning firm, Black Diamond, to gather the petitions.
The Secretary of State's office stated Keyser didn't have enough signatures when his campaign handed them in, but his campaign sued, and a judge allowed Keyser on the ballot. Since then, Denver7 TV reporter Marshall Zelinger found at least 10 forged signatures on Keyser's petitions. Keyser told The Denver Post the forged signatures are a “very serious thing.”
A 34-year-old combat veteran, lawyer, and former lawmaker who has establishment Republican backing in the race, Keyser will remain on the ballot because of a court order despite the forgeries and allegations of a dead voter's John Hancock on his petitions.
In 2013, Keyser himself got into the voter fraud fray when as a lawmaker he suggested he had improperly received duplicate ballots in the mail. It turned out that wasn't the case. Colorado Democrats that year had passed a package of voting laws that made voting easier, especially by allowing Coloradans to vote entirely by mail, and Keyser's suggestion was the new election laws weren't working properly.
“C'mon Man!” he'd tweeted, including the hashtag #FailedSystem.
[Photo credit: Daniel Hollister via Creative Commons on Flickr]
Lakewood exhibit shines spotlight on mental health illness
Cross dressing allegation hits Colorado Springs House race
You might think campaign allegations of “cross dressing” are a transphobic anachronism in 2016.
Not in Colorado Springs.
According to a weekend story in The Colorado Springs Gazette, “A negative campaign mailer sent to supporters of Larry Liston paints the Republican state House of Representatives candidate as a cross-dressing liberal.”
The letter, from Republican state Sen. Kent Lambert, was sent to Liston's donors. Lambert is supporting Liston's opponent, current GOP Rep. Janak Joshi of Colorado Springs.
“One page of the letter includes two photos of Liston from Hummers, a skit put on by the minority party in the House chambers every year skewering the majority party,” the Gazette reported. The photos carry this cutline: “Undoctored, fair-use photos of Larry Liston. 2005, Larry Liston cross dressing on the House floor making fun of Rep. Carroll and again in 2009 making fun of another female legislator.”
Hummers is an annual end-of-session skit held on the floor of the House in which men in the legislature occasionally dress as their female colleagues, donning wigs, dresses and even fake breasts.
The tradition goes back decades in Colorado. Liston said the picture of him dressed as a woman was taken during one such Hummers skit about a decade ago.
“I was spoofing Senator Morgan Carroll,” he told The Colorado Independent. “She knew all about it, and she thought it was as funny as anybody. I wore a bright red wig. And that's the tradition.”
What is not a tradition, Liston says, is someone using photographs from the Hummers skits as a campaign cudgel.
“There's always been a bond or sort of a gentleman's agreement between both parties that these skits are never to be used against any member,” he says. “And that's always been the case.”
Some lawmakers in the past have taken issue with members of the press shooting photos during the skits.
The four-page Lambert letter sent to those who contributed to Liston's campaign also included “a link to a story about criticism Liston faced” for calling unwed mothers “sluts,” The Gazette reported. Liston, who was a member of the House at the time, later apologized for the remarks he made during a caucus lunch, which at the time drew criticism from lawmakers in both parties.
Lambert didn't return a voice message by the time this story was posted, but he told The Gazette, “I thought it was a very polite letter, saying we greatly respect your opinions on this but you may not understand his record. It's not intended to be a threat and it's not a threat.”
Liston says he thinks the letter might have backfired. Some of his contributors who got the letter have already given more to his campaign after receiving it, he says.
Says Liston: “If they want to accuse me, quote, of being a 'crossdresser,' fine. I don't care. But to go after somebody's donors, that's what's never been done before.”
Push Connect Notify bonus review
Push Connect Notify is releasing today, a Jimmy Kim software which is the newest player in the browser notification space. It may be the most sophisticated browser push notification software on the market yet. It's appeal is based upon a simple premise- that right now, you are letting potential customers fall by the wayside and you don't even know it. Instead, you can capture prospects and reach back out to them with “browser notifications.”
With Push Connect Notify, leverage customers even after they leave your site with browser push notification technology that will get you more subscribers without the need for any landing page or coding required. If you can copy and paste you can implement this technology as the software (in the cloud) generates the code for you.
Watch the Demo here and see for yourself.
With this revolution in push notification technology, you have the power to dictate what your customer see's and how they digest it. This is what marketers dream of, being able to reach their customer in a personal and impactful way. It's easy for a customer to blow off a generic landing page, but much harder when the notification is poking them, begging for action. Utilize technology 90% of businesses miss out on and take advantage of a proven system to increasing conversions and sales.
Once you implement this tool, you will soon realize how dramatic an effect this software has on your business.
While e-mail communication with customers will definitely remain to be vital, all techniques to boost internet site web traffic and sales should be made use of at the specific very same time. Those messages are provided to leads in real-time, so they might instantly have a look at the consumer's website or associate offer. To acquire messages people do not have to install anything.
Push Connect Notify pierced disruption as well as likewise permits immediate message as well as response. Push Response not simply makes it possible for to send out application like signals without an application, nevertheless is has really autoresponder like qualities in advance. People will absolutely get means a great deal even more internet site web traffic, click with as well as sales after Push Response is added to the voucher mix.
Push Connect Notify licenses clients to send out limitless messages, establish unlimited lists, generate unlimited adhere to up collection, as well as likewise make usage of geo targeting. Push Connect Notify is the software application program which makes it possible for the specific to produce a listing of people that went to a website as well as likewise to call them back directly on their computer system desktop computer systems as well as additionally android devices without making usage of email or retargeting advertising campaigns. Push Connect Notify straight message program is a new ways to obtain to website visitors, which could possibly work along with the different other strategies to take off internet website traffic as well as additionally sales.
Push Connect Notify (with the OTO) has similar features to email autoresponder, yet instead of sending emails you could possibly send quick messages straight to the consumer's computer system home computer or android device, along with the person does not additionally should be on their internet browser or website to get them.
Let's look closer at Push Connect Notify:
Did Jimmy Kim came up with ingenious way to not only take browser notification to the next level but also build an email list with with Push Connect Notify? Let's examine it.
Now most people are familiar with Push Notification on their mobile devices. Those tiny messages that pop up any time you get a message, need an update or simply have too much crap on your phone.
While some of them are a bit annoying, for most part they are a good thing as they allow you to know what is happening in real time. And of course, you can always play around with the setting to allow only the ones you care about through. Like anyone has time to do that.
However, did you ever see a notification on a browser? If you're been using Chrome chances are you did however, Firefox and other popular browsers just started implementing them this year.
So what does that mean? Push Notification on all of the major browsers is about to explode and thanks to Jimmy Kim's new tool you can get a share of the action.
Inside Look at Push Connect Notify
The way Push Connect Notify works is quite straight forward. All you really do is customize the notification sign up. After that you get a piece of javascript that you can put on any WordPress site or any website that takes javascript and you're done.
Kim's strong point is the javascript is hosted on an outside cloud system. This mean it will not slow down your site, nor will you have to make a separate one for every website you want to put it on.
On top of the ability to have people opt-in to your push notification, the PCN also builds your list for free. So not only will you be able to send push notification, or messages to people through the browser, but also email them as well.
How about sending the actual notifications? Take a look
In this example, it is a lot like sending an autoresponder message or a broadcast. Type in the title, body and link. After that select recipients and you're ready to go.
So what are you waiting for? Grab Push Connect now.
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Monday, May 16, 2016
St. Anthony Medical Pavilion completed
Sunday, May 15, 2016
Social CPA Academy review, Video Spinn bonus headline week's IM releases
This week's IM launches includes Social CPA Academy review and Video Spinn bonus. Also launching is Jimmy Kim's Push Notify Connect, another take on browser-based communication via notifications. Here's a quick preview:
Social CPA Academy
CPA can be one of the best ways to earn online, when it works. Sadly, too many courses have been launched that teach outdated methods that don't deliver the goods. To make it big, you need to follow the experts. The full time, underground CPA marketers that are making 5 figures or more each month.
And have been doing it for a long time. So you know their systems work, and are built to last.Have recently found just that system, created by a real CPA marketer who built this method from scratch and has been using it with incredible results for over 18 months. Tried, tested and proven. See It In Action Here!
So simple beginners can jump right in. With enough profit potential that even advanced marketers can use it to easily create another passive income stream.Know the secret the world's TOP CPA marketers use to make ridiculous amounts of commissions without breaking a sweat? They know how to control traffic AND add quality leads to their list every single day.
That's the difference between 6 and 7 figure CPA marketers and anyone fighting to make just a couple of bucks here and there. The good news is it's not hard to copy the experts, if you know exactly how they do it. This step by step training has been created by a top CPA marketer who does this stuff every day. And has perfected a simple system that banks the most cash in the least time.
By far one of the best CPA methods out there.
- Cash in with the easiest, most powerful combination of CPA and FB ever created.
- Get in on the Gold Rush by tackling a method that's never been revealed before
- Effortlessly build a huge targeted list and get PAID to do it
- Zero experience required. Very non-techy friendly.
- Results in 7 days OR LESS!
- Only $5/day for ads needed
Video Spinn
You need videos for your marketing. You can't escape that fact.
But suppose you wanted 100 unique videos. Yes, one hundred. How long would it take you to make them?
(If you're asking why you'd need 100 unique videos, well… SEO, viral marketing, product showcases, commercials, list building, affiliate marketing, event marketing, product creation, even creating them for clients. You get the idea, LOTS of reasons.)
Anyway, most people think it would take days to make 100 unique videos. And that's if you know what you're doing with complicated video software.
Maybe you think you're smarter than everyone else because you thought “I'd outsource them.” OK, that will save you tons of time, for sure. But pay an outsourcer $5 to $20 per video and you're spending $500 to $2000. Not too great on the budget. And it might take you a few weeks to get the job done.
There's a better way.
Anthony Aires and Pat Flanagan have released a new video app called Video Spinn. Feed it a folder of images, video clips, or a combination, and it produces up to 100 unique videos in one shot. You can add watermarks, branding pics or videos to the beginning and/or end of each video, even randomly selected music if you have audio tracks. You can even give it a list of the keywords/phrases you're targeting and it will name the videos from that list.
And it takes just a few mouse clicks. That's it. Video Spinn will take your content and turn it into unique videos according to the easy settings you pick.
Video Spinn is an innovative desktop app (for both Windows and Mac) that lets you create hundreds - even thousands - of unique videos with just a few mouse clicks. Video Spinn can create randomized slideshow videos using folders of images and/or video clips. These are perfect for SEO, YouTube domination, offline client commercials, video personalization, affiliate marketing via video, video branding, keyword targeting, and more! We're finding new uses every day.
It's so simple… You give the app your folder of content, pick the number of images/clips to use in each video, min and max time for each image/clip to be shown, what transitions to use, what optional watermark to use… you can even designate an intro and/or outro video to tack onto each slideshow, plus a folder to pull random music tracks from. Tell it how many videos to crank out, click the Spin button, and Video Spinn starts chugging out unique randomized videos.
Here's a complete walkthrough where I show how easy and quick it is to create unique videos for video marketing and SEO with Video Spinn:
Push Notify Connect
Another notification product comes from Jimmy Kim. When it comes to connecting with your customer, being able to keep the communications open and clear is one of the quickest ways you can convert a skeptical visitor into a paying customer.So, with such a crucial aspect of your business reliant on communicating with your customers, shouldn't you do anything and everything in your power to talk to them?
That's a no brainer, of course you should! Well, imagine if you could reach out to your customer, even when they weren't visiting your site… You're business would be booming! For the longest time, this has never been possible… but today that all changes.
Introducing Push Notify Connect.
With this game changing software you can immediately and effectively communicate with your customers, even outside of our website! It's as simple as copying and pasting a piece of code into your website. Once you do that, you have the power to send them push notifications of anything you want, even when they aren't visiting your website. Click here and see for yourself. This technology is already being used by the biggest Fortune 100 companies and now its available to you.
