APR gratitude
The staff at Aspen Public Radio would like to thank everyone who made a gift during our summer membership drive! We started the week at $0 and by midnight on Friday had secured $25,055 in financial support from you, with donations continuing to come in … because listeners know this year is different.
Last month, Congress voted to rescind previously approved appropriations with real and immediate consequence: the station has lost $154,000 in federal funding which we now need to raise locally by December 31.
If you have the ability to make a gift of support. Now is the time to join in this fight to defend public media and the role of local journalism in our community.
Whether you tune in to 91.5FM/88.9FM or go online to www.aspenpublicradio.org for informative, entertaining and educational programming each and every day, depend on our team of local reporters for context and understanding or rely on the station to be on the air when the power is out, cell service is down or evacuation orders are underway, Aspen Public Radio has been on the air since 1981 because of local listener support.
With individual contributions, local governments and foundations, vehicle donations, City Market rewards, underwriters and major gifts to support dedicated reporting desks, there are so many ways you make the work of this radio station possible. Thank you.
Breeze Richardson
Aspen Public Radio
Plan ahead and keep your cool
Family trips are coming to an end as school begins, so we might imagine less competition for our asphalt.
However, in the upcoming week — and for the rest of the school year — the Roaring Fork Valley (Aspen to Rifle) will find over 12,000 persons accessing our schools not only in the early mornings but throughout the day.
Allow extra time to reach destinations; you can thank yourself at the end of any driving trip. Danger is just one letter away from anger. Be safe, be community invested.
Diane Reynolds
Take A Minute / Slow Down in Town
HIPPA concerns
As a family physician, one of my priorities is protecting the privacy of my patients. Medical confidentiality is protected under a regulation known as HIPAA, or the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. This rule covers the way in which protected health information is handled. It prevents details that could identify an individual, such as their birthdate or social security number, and information about specific health diagnoses, from being disclosed to others. I am extremely concerned about a variety of impending risks to this protected information.
The largest breach of confidentiality is sharing personal identifying and medical information between Medicaid and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The U.S. Health Department reported an agreement between Medicaid and ICE that allows ICE to use Palantir software to access information about approximately 79 million Medicaid enrollees. This data sharing is intended to help ICE more easily locate individuals that it believes are in the US illegally. The reality is that unless an undocumented person is in life-threatening distress, they will not qualify for Medicaid. According to the Congressional Research Service, in 2023, noncitizens represented only 6% or fewer than five-million Medicaid enrollees under the age of 65. The compromised information includes personal details of more than 74 million American Medicaid enrollees.
Other potential compromised health data relates to unhoused persons and autistic individuals. According to the National Coalition for the Homeless, legislators are discussing laws to share health data on unhoused people with the intent of considering mandated medical treatment. While this is a population with a high prevalence of health issues, this legislation will not differentiate between those who might or might not benefit from treatments. The American Civil Liberty Union notes that the Department of Health and Human Services is advocating for an “autism registry” but hasn’t engaged with autistic populations to determine how this registry will serve their needs. The department also has not provided details of what data it will seek and how it will keep the data anonymous and secure.
These are gross violations of our protected health information. Regulations like HIPAA are in place for many reasons. Compromising our medical confidentiality also increases the risk of bad health outcomes. If patients fear for their privacy, they may not seek medical care until they are sicker and more desperate and their health issues are harder to cure. In the process of undermining our protected health information, we are putting at risk some of our most vulnerable populations. Contact your legislators and tell them to keep protected medical information confidential!
Maria Chansky
Glenwood Springs
Compromising science
The current administration’s actions are actively erasing and rewriting the foundational climate science I rely on as a climate educator. This isn’t just a political disagreement; it’s a direct threat to the integrity of our public education system and the future of our students.
As an environmental science adjunct faculty, I depend on the gold standard of non-biased government data from sources like the National Climate Assessment, NOAA’s climate.gov, and NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio. These resources, which have long been the bedrock of scientific instruction, are now under threat or already being scrubbed from the public square. They are essential for teaching students about the worsening climate crisis and providing the credible data and accessible tools necessary for informed learning and research.
The recent announcement by the U.S. Energy Secretary that his team is “reviewing” and “updating” peer-reviewed national climate reports is profoundly alarming. This isn’t about updating research; it’s about deliberately undermining it. This move insinuates a plan to not just bury the scientific evidence but to replace it with outright misinformation to downplay the crisis. The cynical logic is clear: If the data is erased, the problem doesn’t truly exist and we can evade responsibility for addressing it.
This has immediate and tangible consequences for educators like me. As I plan my curriculum for the upcoming semester, I am scrambling to download and archive everything I can, not just for this year but for years to come. I’m being forced to become a digital archivist just to ensure my students have access to the most accurate, reliable science available.
Our schools, colleges and communities deserve access to the very best planetary and climate science. Our elected officials, including Senator John Hickenlooper, Senator Michael Bennet, and Representative Jeff Hurd, must stand up to these attacks on scientific integrity. We must protect these vital resources for our students. If we cannot trust our own government for unbiased data, where else can we turn to educate the next generation?
Sarah Johnson
Basalt
Appalled and embarrassed
I grew up in Carbondale. Carbondale is my home town. I love my home town. It taught me the importance of acceptance, tolerance and working together, even with those with who you disagree. It taught me how to come together, meet your neighbors and learn how to be a proactive part of the community.
I am appalled and embarrassed that my home town, which I love so much, has become a place where hate and homophobia can be accepted, tolerated and allowed to occur without adequate intervention from the authorities.
Recently, there have been reports of alleged harassment at our local LGBTQ-friendly Food Forest. Apparently, the suspected perpetrator claimed homosexuality is evil. Frankly, people who cannot love and embrace all of God’s children are evil. I wish we could stand together in support of our LGBTQIA neighbors in solidarity and in opposition to their abuse.
Instead, radio silence. We are better than that. Carbondale is better than that. Can’t Carbondale be a hate-free zone? It can’t if we don’t care to be heard.
Gabrielle Anastasia Wescott-Shamis
Hopkins, Minnesota
An omitted Constitution
On Aug. 7, it was noticed that an online version of the United States Constitution, maintained by the Library of Congress, was missing parts of Article I — the part of the Constitution that lays out the rights and duties of Congress. Parts of Section Eight and all of Sections Nine and 10 were gone.
Those include Congress’s control over the District of Columbia, Congress’s power to make the laws, the promise that habeas corpus would not be suspended, the stipulation that no money can be used by the government unless Congress has appropriated it, the requirement that no president can accept gifts from foreign countries and the specification that only Congress can levy tariffs
John Hoffmann
Carbondale
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