Voting to keep your choices on energy sources. Opinion pages used for coordinated PR efforts.
Voting to keep your choices on energy sources.
The op ed linked below details a potential addition to Colorado's ballot (it won't be this year because you cannot vote on any initiatives outside of TABOR in odd-number years).
Quoting the op ed (with link left intact):
"Thankfully, there’s a way to provide just such a choice to Colorado voters. A ballot measure on 'Consumer Right to Energy Choice' has been approved by the Title Board, and now voters should have a say. This measure would recognize government regulations restricting or banning common products and services — including gas-powered vehicles, stoves, heaters and lawnmowers — create burdens for working families. It would stop state and local governments from telling consumers they can’t use an energy source of their choice, provided the source is in common use. Polling for this measure shows it has broad support."
For convenience's sake, I included a link below the op ed that will take you to the Secretary of State's initiative tracker in case you'd like to follow the progress of this measure.
It's natural and good to be concerned about pollution, but you cannot make greenhouse gases the SOLE criteria by which you judge things without having other (perhaps worse) consequences. There are other things, things that affect the here and now, that matter too: as Ms. Burton Brown has it in her op ed, people want choice, they want reliability, and they worry about costs. I know I do.
If you share this view, I will leave you with one more quote from the op ed:
"But it’s not enough to have the energy sector behind a measure like this. To pass it, it will take grassroots support from Coloradans across the state. When you listen to all the talk of “raising revenue” at the legislature but also see their mandates and penalties for the energy industry, it’s clear there is little chance politicians wise up. So, it’s time to put energy choice into the hands of the people."
Ms. Burton Brown is again right. Having the support of the energy industry is good, but that doesn't mean we can just sit back waiting for it to happen. Keep an eye out for news on this and for the petitions. Share with others when you hear.
I will update as I hear more. If you hear something worth sharing and don't see it here, please give me a heads up.
https://www.coloradopolitics.com/2025/08/21/taking-energy-choice-to-the-ballot-opinion/#google_vignette
https://www.sos.state.co.us/pubs/elections/Initiatives/titleBoard/
Opinion pages used for coordinated PR efforts
The post below was inspired by (and leans on) the FB page Colorado Wolf Tracker. I attached screenshots 1 and 2 from that page. Colorado Wolf Tracker is a private FB page, but the author Mr. Michael agreed to let me use his name and post.
I'll leave it to you to read Mr. Michael's post, but I can summarize it pretty quickly. Three op eds appeared in various papers recently (Boulder Daily Camera, Aspen Daily News, and the Grand Junction Sentinel) with suspiciously similar titles.**
The text, however, is not similar. It is exactly the same. In case you want to read the op ed, I put a link to the Boulder Daily Camera version first below. Read one, you've read all.
If you have ever looked in more than one news source as part of your daily crawl, you have likely seen something like this. It's not at all unusual for the same story to appear in different outlets. I'm sure reporters get emails from PR people all the time, and some percentage of them get jazzed about this or that. They go to their editor, get the okay, write the story.
The second link below is an example. It's an earlier piece I did after noting that the group "Warm Cookies of the Revolution" got loving profile articles in both the Sun and CPR within a suspiciously short amount of time.
What was new to me (and probably I shouldn't be too surprised) about what I saw in CO Wolf Tracker was that efforts like this--the PR push to get a message out in multiple outlets--happens in the opinion sections too. What also makes it surprising is that, like Mr. Michael, I have been told with regard to my op eds that the outlet I'm pitching to almost always requires that I not send it to other outlets. They like exclusivity.
Why this seemed to have not happened here got me curious, so I reached out to the opinion editors from all three outlets listed above. I either got no response or no one wanting to go on record. If that changes I'll update. Absent hearing, the best I could surmise is that the papers have no policy, they don't enforce the ones they have (in this case and/or others), or the author lied. I don't think my list is exhaustive, so if you have thoughts, please feel free to add to the comments.
Mr. Michael did respond to an email asking if I could share his post, and was kind enough to send along (if you read his FB post carefully you'll note how he references this kind of thing happening before with op eds) examples of other authors' work appearing across multiple outlets.
I attached what he sent as screenshot 3 (which you will note is a national push and has out of state outlets) and screenshot 4 (which you will note is the infamous op ed written by CPW commissioners ahead of the vote on the big cat hunting ban).
Apparently the three op eds we started with today are not an exception in an otherwise ironclad rule. Regardless, I find it as disappointing as I do with this dynamic in news; I don't think it's a good idea in either case.
You could perhaps reasonably argue that PR-as-news is worse when it fills up the news sections of multiple outlets, but I think it's just as bad in the opinion section. If the purpose of an opinion section is to debate various ideas and have a relatively open forum, that doesn't happen as well when it devolves into yet another space for organized groups to get their word out. We live in a finite world and every time a copy/paste op ed gets put in a paper, it's one less unique voice to hear.
One last thing to leave you with. What else do coordinated op eds say?
They say to me that, at least here in Colorado, conservatives are behind in the game and need to catch up. If you can write decently, and have knowledge of a particular topic, you should be trying to get your voice out there.
Perhaps with more choices, editors will serve up more variety. No guarantee, but it won't happen until and unless conservatives try.
**As someone who's written an op ed or two in my time, I can say that the titles are usually not up to the author. I think it's safe to assume that's the case here as well.
It's going to take something like a state energy ballot initiative to break the green stranglehold on energy diversity. In fact, Trump should be suggesting something similar to this nationally. I won't be surprised to see the left act like a swarm of mad hornets in any attempt to break their green energy dream. This is a torpedo to the socialist Titanic. If we don't get this passed, we could quite easily see ourselves standing around flaming barrels to stay warm in the winter or standing in line at Xcel pay stations with cash in hand to keep the electricity flowing.