What is public media doing so we're all heard? Intended or not, AG Weiser's suits are about maintaining higher prices and taxes. I go where the CO Sun didn't: can you grow food on roofs under solar?

What is public media, funded by us all, doing to make sure all voices are heard?

If you're going by their coverage of the recent "No Kings" protests, not much.

I have three links for you at the bottom of this post. They are all taxpayer funded.

The first, an article, which I pulled from the Sun, is part of the Capitol News Alliance which got a grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The second and third are products of garden-variety public media (thus funded in part by taxpayer dollars through direct transfers from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting through National Public Radio). The second link is a CPR photo reprisal of the protests and the third link is to a Northern Colorado-focused report by KUNC.

Each link will give you plenty of voices from those attending the protests. Plenty of pictures of protestors holding signs too.

Perfectly valid. The voices of Coloradans who have concerns about the Trump administration, and their protests against it are reasonable fodder for any news organization, public or not.

But these links share other features too: a paucity of voices for those who disagree with the protests (either by counter-protests**), or by choosing to sit them out because they disagreed. You will see no quotes from counter-protestors included. You will see no quotes from anyone not protesting.

Private media can print what they'd like. They an amplify or ignore whomever they choose. Fair or not, balanced or not, done with journalistic integrity or not, it's their news outlet and they can do what they choose.

What is not fair, however, is for taxpayer-funded news to NOT include the voices of those that disagree. We all got to pay in to make this news coverage happen, why are some voices not included?

This strikes me as yet another case of public media outlets being all too happy to take our money--in fact raising holy hell if it's threatened--only to turn around and produce "news" that only includes the voices they prefer to amplify.

I wrote to the editors of the three papers who participated in producing this coverage (as opposed to trying to get to individual reporters whose names appeared at the bottom of the articles) to double check whether they tried to include any of the counter-protestors' thoughts and/or sought out any other perspectives to include.

Specifically, I asked:

--Whether or not they sought any of the voices of the counter demonstrators to add to their reporting

--Is there any plan to follow up and include the voices of those who didn't protest as to what they thought?
As of this writing, I have not heard from CPR News. If that changes, I'll update.

I heard back from the Sun's Dana Coffield. Her reply was only to remind me that the Sun doesn't receive public money. She didn't acknowledge or answer the questions above.

What Coffield says might be technically accurate in the sense that they do not get direct payments from CPB, but they do get free content to put in their paper that is the result of taxpayer funding. That is, they do in fact receive in-kind taxpayer contributions.

I followed up to ask her for further information on how and where the CPB money goes in the Alliance (never having really gotten a clear answer any Alliance members) and also to re-put my earlier questions. She has not responded by this writing. If that changes, I'll update.

I also received an email response from Mike Arnold of KUNC. I include his response in screenshot 1 (copied from my email).

Besides confirming what even a moment's thought could get you about the Sun receiving things (if not money) courtesy of taxpayers, I'd like you to first note what questions are not answered. Regarding his claim that "We understand how important it is to include different perspectives and keep our reporting balanced", I'm glad to hear him say it.

What I wish was that this was better reflected in their actual work product. I am not sure about you, but looking through the roster of stories in public media on any given day doesn't always inspire confidence on my part that the perspectives and issues that matter to people like myself amount to dry s**t to them.

Regarding the claim that reporters were given instructions to get the perspectives of "all sides" (something Mr. Arnold echoed in a follow up email responding to my follow up questions), more caution is needed. An absence of evidence is not the same as evidence of absence after all. There is also the possible issue that employees sometimes don't do what they're told.

Let me put my thoughts this way. There were indeed few counter protestors. I don't doubt that.

Still, I count 15 reporters' names at the end of the Sun story, and there was coverage over the entire state.

If 15 reporters across the entire state could not find one single dissenting voice to talk to, I would be surprised. I'd bet my lunch (I'd bet more than one) that if there was any noting of opinions other than that of the protestors, it was from afar and simply to point and say, "oh yeah, there's a MAGA flag".

What I mean is that I'm highly skeptical that anyone actually wanted to include any perspective save for that of the protestors.

**If you run a word search you will note at most 2 references in any of the links below to counter-protests.

https://coloradosun.com/2025/06/14/no-kings-protests-colorado-trump-administration/

https://www.cpr.org/2025/06/14/no-kings-protest-colorado/

https://www.kunc.org/news/2025-06-14/no-kings-protests-in-northern-colorado-draw-thousands-to-rally-against-trump

Related:

Offered by way of sharing some other voices that didn't make it into the mainstream lefty press:

https://sangredecristosentinel.com/2025/06/flag_day_leftist_violence/

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Whether or not AG Phil Weiser intends it, his suits are about maintaining higher prices and taxes.

I have lost count by this point many times our AG Phil Weiser has sued (or joined suits against) the Trump administration. I think 21? Who can keep pace with Weiser's blistering speed?

I was reading through his latest (see the first link below for a press release from his office about the suit) and it occurred to me. Whether or not Weiser intends it, he is suing to keep costs and taxes high.

Let's look at his most recent suit as an example.

Quoting the press release:

"Attorney General Phil Weiser today joined a coalition of attorneys general in filing a lawsuit challenging the unprecedented and unlawful use of the Congressional Review Act to reject the federal Clean Air Act waivers that allow California to adopt more stringent vehicle emissions standards for cars and medium and heavy-duty trucks. As allowed by federal law, Colorado has adopted California’s standards."

Some (perhaps oversimplified) context might be in order here. We have a federal system of government. In large part, the federal government's laws and rules supersede those of the states. This would be analogous to how, the laws and rules of the state supersede those of the county or city.

The Feds have written laws and/or rules that define standards for many products, cars among them. There are standards on pollution, mileage, etc. If you are to depart from these standards (in either direction apparently--more strict or less) you need a waiver.

California sought a waiver from the EPA, more than once, to make their rules on mileage and emissions stricter. They got it. Not too long after, like a younger sibling who doesn't know better, Colorado followed suit under the Hickenlooper gubernatorial administration. Some context on Colorado's moves to follow California can be found in the second link below. It's a CDPHE page covering some of the executive orders involved. Oh, Governor Polis, is that you in there too? As you can see in the link, Polis helped in this effort.

During the first Trump administration, Trump tried to stop California's waiver. They sued (not sure if CO did too, but wouldn't be surprised if we didn't at least join). The suit was rendered moot by Biden dropping the end to the waiver when he took office. Trump gets elected again, tries again though now via different means, and thus California and Colorado sue again.

The third link below (an NPR story) will give you plenty of history and detail, but the quick and dirty version is this: the waivers to allow California to be more strict were issued by the EPA involving a rulemaking process. Congress does have the power to overrule bureaucratic bodies like the EPA,** which in this case they did by passing a resolution. Trump signed this resolution making it law. Weiser and other blue states attorneys general contend that the law used to do this is improper; it does not allow for overturning an EPA rule.

That's the context in which this suit happens. Trump and Congressional Republicans are trying to overrule California's strict emission standards for all types of vehicles (including passenger vehicles, medium-duty and heavy-duty trucks). Since we're tied to California, this would overturn our (perhaps less so but still strict) rules. Our AG, arguing first on legal process and second on environmental grounds, is trying to stop it.

To see more of our AG's rationale, I included a lengthy segment of his press release as screenshot 1 attached.

Rather than getting bogged down in addressing Weiser's legal arguments, I want to come at this from another angle. Regardless of whether he intends it, Weiser's suits--present example included--have the ultimate effect of making sure your taxes and your cost of living stay high.

That is, when Weiser says (quoting him from his press release): “We’re in court to defend Colorado’s cost-effective clean car program, which was implemented to improve air quality, reduce harmful ozone pollution, and increase choices that Coloradans have when purchasing an electric vehicle.”

What he either doesn't realize or doesn't seem to acknowledge is that Colorado's requirements for cars drive the cost of their manufacture up. There is no way outside of the progressive dreamland that this doesn't result in higher prices.

What Weiser doesn't seem to get is that "increasing choices" in EV's means taking from us all (in Colorado and across the nation) to give subsidies largely to the wealthy along the Front Range to buy EV's, hybrids, etc. Governments don't generate wealth, they take it and give it to the people of their choosing.

Nor does Weiser seem to grasp that all of this goes for the vehicles that haul our freight or that cart people around. Increase the cost of manufacture, increase the prices to consumers. Subsidize electric buses? That takes tax money.

Unfortunately, this dynamic, this seeming ignorance is also evident in many of Weiser's other suits. Without respect to intent, lawsuits over cutting funding for AmeriCorps or medical research funding are efforts to make sure you continue to pay higher Federal taxes.

I don't know that I'm fully 100% behind each and every one of Trump's cuts. For example, AmeriCorps strikes me as a pretty good opportunity for people to earn their way to success; might be worth keeping around.

At the same time, we have got to do SOMETHING to get Federal spending under control. Suing at the drop of a hat, to make political hay (see "Related" below) does nothing to solve our nation's spending problem. All it does is make sure that, if the effort is successful, the spending which will break this country, can continue.


**I would just like to put in a word here for what a f**ked up government we have that an elected body can't, at any time of their choosing, undo rules by a bureaucratic agency!

https://coag.gov/press-releases/attorney-general-phil-weiser-trump-attack-clean-car-6-12-25/

https://cdphe.colorado.gov/zero-emission-vehicle-mandate-proposal#:~:text=On%20June%2019%2C%202018%2C%20Governor,Emission%20Vehicle%20(LEV)%20Standard.

https://www.npr.org/2025/05/22/nx-s1-5387729/senate-california-ev-air-pollution-waiver-revoked

Related:

One claim that Phil Weiser, our Colorado Attorney General, often makes is how important the rule of law is.

As part of my reading in preparing the post above, I read through the Denver Post article linked below.

In it you'll find the following quote:

“'One of the realities we have to look at is, Do we have judges — not just at the district court, but at the court of appeals — who are more hospitable or more hostile to the case?’ Weiser said."

Funny, I guess I wasn't aware of how the rule of law included judge shopping.

Good to know.

https://www.denverpost.com/2025/05/18/colorado-phil-weiser-lawsuits-donald-trump-democrats-federal-funding-tariffs/

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Does growing food on rooftops (under solar panels) actually work? I follow up what the Sun didn't.

I wrote back in early December about another of those gee-whiz Sun articles, this time about how a CSU researcher in Denver was studying the possibility of having both solar panels and gardens on Denver roofs. I linked to that newsletter first below if you're curious to read up.

I wrote the CSU researcher, Dr. Bousselot, and have been following up with her to get the actual published research that the Sun teased (and then apparently never followed up on) back in December.

Academia sometimes moves slowly, and you can get a sense of that here because the published paper on the topic which includes actual data on the yield of the plants grown in such a way is newly-out in a journal (and is linked second below).

I won't go point by point through the paper, but, as is often the case for real life outside the realm of credulous lefty journalism, reality is complicated and there is no simple yes or no answer to the question of whether you can grow food under solar panels in a rooftop garden.

When you grow under solar panels you are balancing a couple dynamics that relate to plant yield: sunlight input and water loss. On the one hand, less sun means less energy means less growth. On the other, greater soil moisture and less heat stress due to being shaded could mean more growth.

A quote from the paper's abstract fleshes out both this tension and the fact that there is no simple "it's good" or "it's bad" here:

"Treatments included a polycrystalline opaque silicon module, a cadmium telluride (CdTe) frameless opaque module, a 40% semitransparent CdTe module, and a full sun control. Four of the five leafy greens produced higher FW and DW [Fresh Weight and Dry Weight--common measurements of yield in plant studies because you need to separate out the amount of plant both in terms of non-water and water] under the 40% semitransparent modules compared with other treatments and the full sun control, except spinach. Most species also produced larger PSH [plant size at harvest--yet another measure though one subject to retention of water] under the photovoltaic (PV) module treatments compared with the full sun control. Leafy greens under the module treatments resulted in lower SC [stomatal conductance--a measure of how much water a plant is losing during the day due to its pores being open so it can photosynthesize]; however, lettuce and Swiss chard grown under the semitransparent module treatment produced higher SC compared with all other treatments. This research shows that incorporating photovoltaics on rooftop gardens influences the yield and SC of select leafy green crops. Although FW and DW mostly decreased under the deep shade treatments (opaque module, frameless module, and bifacial module) SC decreased, possibly due to less solar radiation on the leafy greens, reducing water use."**

This study neatly dovetails with what I was expecting (and expected given what I wrote in Dec 2024), with one notable exception.

I was expecting some lower yields, I was expecting the research to mainly be focused on greens (I doubt highly you can get anything to fruit in partial shade--fruits are too "costly" energy-wise for that), but I don't think I expected the best yields to be in the partially transparent panels. Clearly the water dynamic has more effect than I thought there'd be. I'm not sure how extendable this concept is, and I'm not sure about the economics of the transparent solar panels on top of all the extra material involved in growing greens on a rooftop, but it's clear I need to revisit my earlier thoughts.

It does seem that you can grow some foods decently well under some types of solar panels.

This study, its results, and the Sun article that came out to tease the results are a clear example of why science reporting, especially anything having to do with left reporters' favorite themes, stinks.

There are subtleties they miss, details they fail to be skeptical of, questions they fail to ask, and updates when the full research is out that don't ever make it into the paper.

Yet another reason you ought to be making sure that you do what they don't or won't.

**I've said it before, but an example bears highlighting. Note the guarded and circumscribed conclusions that actual science (as opposed to soundbite science) produces.

https://open.substack.com/pub/coloradoaccountabilityproject/p/warm-cookies-of-the-revolution-actually?r=15ij6n&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false

https://journals.ashs.org/horttech/view/journals/horttech/35/4/article-p402.xml