I'm doing most of my writing on the Rocky Mountain region over at the Rocky Mountain Progressive Network, which I launched with some good liberal business friends about five weeks ago now.
It's gone very well; we've had over 17,000 unique visitors (big for an unmarketed start-up in Colorado) and more importantly have affected the debate on a host of issues significantly. And, the radical right hates us. One far-right-wing Colorado Representative called my writing 'Better than Lenin's'.
One of my favorite pieces is this one which talks about the contrast between Denver's new mayor's effort to remake the city as a new Bohemia -- and the radical right which controls the state's success in re-labeling Colorado the Hate State;
It's not just the media's hyper-focus on the Bryant case. And it's not just white supremacist extremists who are finding a Rocky Mountain home here.
The fact is that the state's right-wing leadership's success promoting divisive positions of all sorts (usually drafted by and at the behest of Beltway extremists) has sent a loud and clear signal to the world that Colorado is open for hate business.
Again.
Some have been around long enough to remember the Amendment 2 campaign in Colorado a decade ago. That effort to exorcise all but heterosexuals from the State went down in flames, but severely burned the Colorado economy along the way.
Colorado became known as 'the hate state' in media across the country. Conference business declined by some $80 million. Major corporations refused to relocate to Denver based on the campaign. It took years for the state to lose the 'hate' moniker.
Hope you find things of interest there, and interested in your thoughts, as always.
