Encouraging you to speak up about your just transition. Cattle producers, help us out, what do you think? Fixing an error in an open letter to a reporter.
If you’re losing your job in a coal mine or coal-powered plant, speak up about your Just Transition.
Do you live near or work in one of the coal mines being shut down in Colorado? Do you live near or work in one of the coal-fired power plants being shut down in Colorado?
Would you like to make a difference in this state?
I saw the tweet by Polis (screengrab attached) and went to the state's Office of Just Transition page (linked below).
While reading an idea occurred to me. Polis can brag about how good a job he and this office are doing. I can write about it too, but anything I write is secondhand.
There's nothing like living it to give you a different take on the process and it's a take that people along the Front Range need to hear.
I would like, therefore, to encourage you to write a letter to the editor and/or an op ed and submit it to a Front Range Paper.
I'm not going to tell you what to say. I don't even care if your thesis is that "everything's going swimmingly". I just want the people living it to speak up and share their experiences.
If I can help you in some way with this effort (I've written a few op eds and have some experience, though I'm no expert), I am happy to. Please ask!
Contributions don't have to be money, you don't have to be an expert, they can be little things like speaking up to people. Give it some serious thought.
https://cdle.colorado.gov/offices/the-office-of-just-transition/colorado-just-transition-action-plan
What do you think--and I especially ask this of cattle producers.
There are a fair number of cattle producers that read this and I would love to hear what you think about the issue. I say that especially because I don't know enough to comment and also because there are a number of folks not involved in Ag who might be curious (and benefit to hear).
The op ed below details a proposal to (if I've understood correctly, and anyone out there please feel free to correct me if I've messed up) come up with a legal designation somewhere between a veterinarian and vet tech as a way to help fill gaps in rural animal care--specifically the care of cattle.
There are a couple of pre-requisite concepts the unfamiliar would need to help understand the problem.
1. There are certain things that vets do that are statutorily defined. To give an analogy, when you go to the doctor's office, only the actual doctor, the MD, and not the medical assistant that takes your vitals can prescribe medicine. The assistant may know from experience exactly what needs to happen, but our laws say that only the doctor can say "you need [fill in the blank]." The same applies to vets and, and in particular, to vets working with large animals and livestock. Statute regulates that only DVM's (the equivalent of an MD) can do certain things.
2. There is a shortage of vets in rural areas. The analogy for this one is simple here too. There is a shortage of healthcare providers in rural areas too--especially specialists in my experience. Right now, if I want to see a dermatologist (an MD and not his nurse practitioner), it means a month's wait.
The thinking in the proposed program would be that if you make a program somewhere in the middle you'll get more people being vets and more of them working in rural areas. In theory, this would be similar to the nurse practitioner above. You might open the field to people wiling to live in rural areas but not willing to go the full DVM route to do it.
I know where I sit on this issue in terms of medicine. Some of this is informed by my being the son of an RN. I have a healthy view of doctors that puts them somewhere below that of a God walking the earth. In other words, I know enough about medicine and about the practice of it to know that MD's are not perfect and also that they protect their turf. Some things are written into law as job security for them even though an experienced RN (NP, LNP, PA) could likely do just as well.
In that sense, reading about how the Colorado Veterinary Medicine Association doesn't care for this proposal makes me skeptical. Are they just protecting their turf?
The thing is, I know more about human medicine and the business behind it than I do about cattle or vets that work on cattle.
That's why I say I would love to hear from someone who does. If you're moved to, please speak up!
https://www.coloradopolitics.com/opinion/beware-legislating-sweeping-ag-veterinarian-changes-gabel/article_1015cd7a-9928-11ed-a042-674f36ea8e9f.html
Fair is fair and I missed a detail in my open letter
The original title for this post was "Political Spin and Lazy Reporting by the Denver Post". I hold to that still and will detail why below, but I think that there is something just as important to mention in this post.
I need to be fair to the reporter and share a point he made with you. Believe you me, the temptation to just ghost edit my original open letter and post was tough to fight.
Let's start here. If you look at screenshot 1 you will see the original version of the open letter I sent to the editors at the Denver Post, Nick Coltrain (Post reporter) and Rep Boesenecker. I sent this a couple days back. So that you can see what I refer to I included the links I reference in the email at the bottom of this post.
The reporter's (Mr. Coltrain's) response is in screenshot 2.
To be fair to Mr. Coltrain, I need to say that he makes a fair point. In case it wasn't clear, let me go through the point of contention below.
--In my original letter, I reference the following quote from Mr. Coltrain's article:
"He [Democratic Rep. Andrew Boesenecker, a sponsor of the draft "Assault Weapons" ban bill] cited a 2018 study by the Rand Corporation, which was updated this month, that found even state-level weapon bans reduce mass shooting deaths to 55% of what’s expected without the bans."
--Without a link in the original article (it's there now interestingly) I wondered at this study and wanted to check its results. I never got an email back from Coltrain or Boendecker, so I wrote the open letter in screenshot 1.
--Mr. Coltrain took pains to point out to me that a quote similar to Boesenecker's appears in the report (see screenshot 3).
He's right. Plain and simple.
I'd like to say that I saw this and I sure as hell would've liked to have accounted for it in my open letter. I didn't, and I need to acknowledge that this point was made in the RAND study. In other words Rep Boesenecker's quote is technically correct.
Technically.
There is no way for me to say this without it sounding defensive. There probably is a little bit of that in this, no one likes to have a mistake pointed out. Having acknowledged my mistake , however, there remain some important points to make here.
Important points that don't cover my mistake, that don't negate it, but that remain wholly above the fact that the line in screenshot 3 is in the report. These are things I reminded Mr. Coltrain of.
Those are:
--I think it's significant that I got no response til I wrote the editors. I guess a quesiton from a reader didn't rate til it might have hurt his job.
--This is still (STILL and I will say it til I go to my grave) an example of lazy reporting. The quote from Boesenecker is technically correct but it misses a ton of detail and puts spin on what RAND found. Look at screenshots 4, 5, and 6. Yes, the 55% reduction quote comes from the body of the study but it's one study of 4 that RAND felt used a valid method and the only one of four that showed a reduction over all (a reduction which, by the way, could be a reduction to anywhere between 33% and 92%). That's why RAND lists it as statistically significant but limited.
--Zooming out, overall there is no conclusive evidence that assault weapons have any effect whatsoever on mass shootings. Period. End of sentence. Rep Boesenecker can pull a tiny quote out and gloss over a ton of detail, but it should be the job of journalists to take that quote and put it in context. Mr. Coltrain did not. The fact that he didn't allowed an elected official to sneak something into an article which many people will see and take as vetted, complete fact.
Yes Mr. Coltrain is correct in pointing out a detail I missed and should have included (and/or dealt with) in my original letter. No excuse on my part.
Knowing that two wrongs don't make a right, however, this doesn't excuse his slipshod reporting. That still doesn't excuse the fact that the Denver Post didn't catch this detail and no one thought to take 5 minutes on Google to inform themselves of what the study actually stated prior to letting this slip by.
https://www.denverpost.com/2023/01/23/colorado-democrats-assault-weapon-ban-sales/
https://www.rand.org/research/gun-policy/analysis/ban-assault-weapons/mass-shootings.html