Colorado Rising Action's suit over the Democrat's secret quadratic voting system. Livestock grazing as conservation?
Colorado Rising Action, a conservative group that is behind a whole lot of things in this state (ballot initiatives and lawsuits), just added another lawsuit to their plate.
This one is over the Democrat's secret, quadratic voting system at the Assembly.**
I'll leave it to you to read the article for yourself but I think I can heavily satirize the Colorado Senate President's (Fenberg) response thusly:
Oh, it's just a partisan pile-on and they're trying to make us appear as though we're withholding things from the public. We were going to probably stop using it anyway so we just went ahead and stopped. And then they sued.
But totally guys, it's all legal and above board. Seriously. We didn't have any fears at all about a court verdict.
**Something I thought was curiously (conveniently?) absent from the lawsuit brought by Democrat Reps Epps and Marshall in their lawsuit over Open Meetings Law violations in the capitol.
https://www.cpr.org/2023/07/26/democrats-secret-ballot-system-colorado-senate-conservative-lawsuit/
Not to get too far into the weeds or to stray too much out of a state issue, but I wanted to share the op ed below by Mrs. Gabel.
Reason being that, despite it being about a more Federal issue and about a Bureau of Land Management rulemaking, Mrs. Gabel makes a good point. Quoting:
"One of the major facts — not talking points, but facts — is that livestock grazing is conservation. Period. Well managed grazing reduces invasive species, cultivates healthy rangelands, maintains wildlife habitat, serves as fire mitigation, and grazing on public lands is closely monitored."
Not to be too persnickety here, but I would amend this statement a little to say that in my mind livestock grazing is "completely compatible with conservation".
Minor wording changes aside, the point made by Mrs. Gabel is a solid one, and for exactly the reasons that she points out.
I would add one more that doesn't appear on this list. Grazing livestock on public lands is a good way to turn land that would not have much other use into a resource. A resource that helps people generate income and make food. This is particularly the case if you consider some of the scrublands that get grazed: trying to farm that kind of land would be a nonstarter, and it's probably not going to entice enough tourism to generate the income that ranching gets.
Given that we can use these lands for this purpose without detrimental environmental impacts, the fact that the BLM is trying to shut it down is baffling.
https://denvergazette.com/opinion/columns/column-well-managed-grazing-is-conservation-gabel/article_712f177b-2079-50f2-b4a3-6741b71ccde5.html?fbclid=IwAR3bEXYNwdpWwTwQUzdnslszy0Qv9AkiZrq3i3qHX0ZWFH2EQXtDeUB50QI
Related:
Another (more recent) op ed by Mrs. Gabel with some interesting history of the Colorado Beef Quality Assurance program.
Worth reading in its own right, I wanted to note something here.
I have certainly complained about this enough in the past, so in the interest of fairness, I wanted to relate that it looks like Polis decided to finally have some sense about his Ag appointments. As I wrote once in an op ed (paraphrasing): our state abounds with women who know all about Production Ag.
Looks like Polis finally chose to dip into that well.
https://www.coloradopolitics.com/opinion/colorados-cattle-industry-carries-its-own-weight-gabel/article_3f12f5da-28ca-11ee-bcdd-93cc493dfb6d.html