Willful blindness is a disease that destroys civilizations. It is the enemy within. You can choose to be blind to the outrageous actions of Big Pharma, Big Tech, Big Media, and their public ally, Big Government, and all their really Big Scams. Or, you can decide to take action. The first step to curing willful blindness is to start taking corrective measures and recognize the problems.
The first problem I want to discuss is the recall election of Lance McDaniel from the Cortez Re-1 School Board. Mr. McDaniel and his supporters are attempting to frame that his recall is an issue of free speech.
It is not.
Mr. McDaniel serves on a board that is responsible for oversight of our children’s education. As such, he has a duty to see that any special interest group, left or right, cannot be allowed to exploit our children. He has a duty to ensure oversight of curriculum that is implemented is based on facts rather than ideology. Both the 1619 Project and the Black Lives Matter (BLM) curriculum are riddled with historical inaccuracies and questionable opinions. BLM in their mission statement of Aug. 5, 2020, openly calls for the elimination of the nuclear family. Mr. McDaniel openly advocates for BLM.
Mr. McDaniel’s active involvement with the Rainbow Club is an area that has been the source of conflicting statements. Like many of you, I have seen screenshots of his social media posts and have heard two different versions of his participation in the club’s pizza gatherings. One version has him overseeing delivery of day-old pizza to the group, the other consists of him acting as a facilitator of sorts to the group. That is the problem with these sort of situations, and why it opens the door to speculation.
The county clerk will be mailing out ballots in February for the recall of Mr. McDaniel. The first order of business on the ballot will be whether or not to retain Mr. McDaniel on the RE-1 School Board. I will vote to recall him. Our community and our children need leadership that reflects good judgment.
A second problem that needs all hands on deck is Demand Water Management and the propaganda campaign of government to coerce us to give up our water rights for the greater good of conservation. This is a subset of a government wanting to strip all of our rights under the pretext that today’s problems are just too big to fit our outdated thinking of what a republic is. Only public/ private partnerships can decide what is the right policy. One thing at a time though.
Advocates of Demand Water Management in Colorado want to be the arbitrator of all water decisions involving allocation of Colorado River water. The Colorado Water Conservation Board is in danger of becoming a mouthpiece for Demand Water Management due to what I believe is an inability to distance itself from members who demonstrate conflicts of interest, yet refuse to recuse themselves. Think this through for a moment. Say you own water shares, do you think your voice is better expressed to a local entity and the board members you vote on, or nonprofits whose money supports people to get appointed to CWCB and other boards? Many non-profits and nongovernmental organizations embrace globalist views when it comes to natural resources such as land and water. They mount massive public relations campaigns about climate change, the environment, and our responsibility to undo the horrors of the environmental damage due to wanton capitalism. They prey on emotions, all the while claiming science is on their side. The recent ballot initiative on wolf re-introduction is one example of their tactics. The Colorado Sun reported (Dec. 8, 2020) that dark money nonprofits spent $2,266,566 to pass the ballot question. Agricultural interests, with farms and ranches in mind, managed to raise $952,850.
What I liked best about the Sun’s article was how the two nonprofits, North Fund and the Sixteen Thirty Fund, do not disclose their donors. They spent a total of $12.6 million on the 2020 Colorado Ballot Initiatives. Yet they claim transparency as an ethic. Imagine what they will spend to obtain our water.
Voters rely on media for much of their information. A recent article in the Journal brought news of a nonprofit, Conservation Colorado, that will be a force for change throughout the state. A Google search of its board and staff will tell you far more than the paper’s article in how that might play out.
The need to overhaul nonprofits and nongovernmental organizations engaged in these endeavors is critical if we are to claw back what has been the incremental erosion of our rights. At the very least we need to know who these people are, their budgets and boards need to be subject to voter approval, and their work needs to show demonstrated value against the funding they received before any new funding is appropriated.
The third issue that needs attention is the coronavirus. I do believe that COVID-19 is a serious bug. I also believe that much of the fallout from it has been more political than the actual numbers warrant. If you should need medical care, you quickly discover it’s all about COVID. Good luck with anything else. As a country we need to know what, if any, collusion existed between the creation of the virus, its possible escape from a lab in Wuhan, and any person, businesses, government, or organizations that have profited from it. Huge sectors of our economy and our way of life has been disrupted. Should an investigation reveal that a correlation exists, and it involves American citizens, then accountability demands justice. If, and I am emphasizing if, that should prove to be the case, then we really are in the realm of treason.
These three issues comprise a significant portion of how we live in our society. Education, Resources, Health and our ability to determine our own destiny in a free civilization are at stake.
Valerie Maez writes from Lewis, Colo.
