 On Point Vincent Carroll, editor of the editorial pages, writes his On Point column most weekdays. He is also an author and freelance writer. Reach Vincent Carroll at carrollv@RockyMountainNews.com. |
August 2007 | Main | October 2007
So what do they have to say for themselves now?
What does MALDEF — the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Educational Fund — and the local activists who backed its legal manuevers for years make of the latest study revealing the pathetic progress of students taught in Spanish much of the day in Denver public schools?
Could we hear a few words from U.S. District Judge Richard Matsch, too?
So what do they have to say for themselves now?
What does MALDEF — the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Educational Fund — and the local activists who backed its legal manuevers for years make of the latest study revealing the pathetic progress of students taught in Spanish much of the day in Denver public schools?
Could we hear a few words from U.S. District Judge Richard Matsch, too? Could he explain again, just so we get it straight this time, why it is essential that as many children as possible — the “favored few,” he ironically dubbed them in 1983 — be diverted into instruction that seems to delay their progress learning English? While he’s at it, would he like to defend the consent decree he imposed on the district in 1984, or his disdain during those years for officials who thought kids should be mainstreamed if they spoke English as well as their parents’ native tongue?
And where is Norma Cantu when you most want to hear from her? As chief of Bill Clinton’s Office of Civil Rights, she fought Denver’s plans in the late 1990s to get kids out of mostly Spanish classes in three years instead of four or five, while offering parents an informed choice on the type of instruction they received. Perhaps Cantu could tell us why we should ignore a recent analysis by the Piton Foundation and the University of Colorado that found immigrant students immersed in English in Denver schools do better than those taught mostly in Spanish.
Not that this study is the first such disturbing indicator. There have been many. In the mid-1990s, the district itself admitted that “40 percent of students tested made no progress on a test of oral English proficiency” during a two-year period. Which is why officials were so determined to push reform in the face of federal opposition.
Unlike the bilingual ideologues, however, we’ll attempt to be reasonable. It’s fair to note, for example, that the abysmal performance of students taught largely in Spanish is not necessarily due to that fact. We’ll let Alan Gottlieb, formerly with Piton and now editor of the online publication HeadFirst (HeadFirstColorado.org) explain.
“When we started to tease [the data] apart,” he said recently on Colorado Public Radio, “what came to the fore was that in these schools where the kids were doing badly they’re taught in Spanish and in the schools where they’re doing well, they’re not being taught in Spanish. They’re being taught in English.”
But since most of the kids taught predominately in Spanish were in high-poverty schools and most of those immersed in English were in low-poverty schools, Gottlieb cautioned against premature conclusions.
“It could have something to do with teacher quality, teacher qualifications, or the quality of the curriculum in the Spanish-language program, and have nothing to do with the fact that they’re learning in Spanish,” he said. “I think this is a really good opportunity for Denver Public Schools to step back and really examine what’s going on with the program, which is called English Language Acquisition.”
It’s also time for a little soul searching among those who’ve spent the past quarter-century insisting that it was their way or the highway on bilingual education. Maybe they don’t have all of the answers after all. Maybe the people who’ve pushed for a more rapid transition to English, or more exposure to English from the beginning, weren’t simply narrow-minded, xenophobic and insensitive.
Maybe — just possibly, mind you — they were right.
Vincent Carroll is editor of the editorial pages. Reach him at carrollv@RockyMountainNews.com.
Juvenal Cervantes was short on time Wednesday when I caught up with him on his cell phone. “Two minutes,” he said. But the activist and co-chair of Realizing Our Community, a Greeley-sponsored group formed to help integrate immigrants into society and ease an ethnic divide, had time enough to insist that his organization was not considering asking white officials to apologize to minorities on behalf of the “European-American community.”
Which is interesting, since Cervantes did send an e-mail this month suggesting such an approach to an impressive array of public officials in the Greeley area. Why, he even offered a model for the apology
Juvenal Cervantes was short on time Wednesday when I caught up with him on his cell phone. “Two minutes,” he said. But the activist and co-chair of Realizing Our Community, a Greeley-sponsored group formed to help integrate immigrants into society and ease an ethnic divide, had time enough to insist that his organization was not considering asking white officials to apologize to minorities on behalf of the “European-American community.”
Which is interesting, since Cervantes did send an e-mail this month suggesting such an approach to an impressive array of public officials in the Greeley area. Why, he even offered a model for the apology. To wit:
“On behalf of [the] European-American community of Greeley, Colorado, I want to apologize to the Hispanic-American community and other non-European-American communities of Greeley, Colorado, for decades of silence, distance and oppression perpetrated towards you. We acknowledge and recognize the Hispanic-American and other non-European-American voices in our community as essential and vital constituencies of our community. Yet we have excluded, ignored, and dismissed these important groups of people. As we unveil the ROC Plan, we want to make a commitment to respecting, valuing, and integrating each and every individual irrespective of ethnicity, nationality, language, and or sexual orientation. Furthermore .. . . .”
The apology prattles on in this vein, after which Cervantes relates such wisdom as “reconciliation is a three-legged stool: remorse, restitution, and reconciliation.”
Restitution? Now there’s an idea sure to excite the enthusiasm of many long-time white residents who’ve never uttered an angry word regarding Hispanics, let alone actively sought to keep anyone down.
The idea of an apology, Cervantes told me, is “a point of dialogue that is right now not active. It may be a conversation that could take place.”
But where have such apologies helped, I wondered, noting his e-mail’s claim that “communities from other parts of the country” have “incorporated” such a statement. He said he’d look into it, but meanwhile couldn’t cite a single town.
Greeley might well need a group such as Realizing Our Community to promote intercultural understanding. But apologies of the sort contemplated by Cervantes do not foster reconciliation; they stoke anger and division. They scatter blame and censure upon the deserving and undeserving alike, as well as their ancestors. They caricature social relations rather than illuminate them.
Who has the standing to apologize for “European-Americans” anyway? The very notion of someone claiming such authority is offensive — or at least it is to anyone who still believes that being an American trumps a specific ethnicity and that we should be defined, even if we sometimes aren’t, first and foremost as individuals and independent moral agents.
“I believe that labels are for cans,” Cervantes said at a ROC meeting last week. “The moment we label someone, we’ve negated them.”
Curious advice from a man apparently comfortable with labeling people based on race as complict in “oppression.”
Vincent Carroll is editor of the editorial pages. Reach him at Carrollv@RockyMountainNews.com.
Isn’t it time for politicians to denounce the devious companies that are restricting supplies of a product vital to solar panels?
What happened to our leaders’ commitment to the New Energy Economy anyway?
When the price of oil rises, politicians can hardly wait to batter and blast Big Oil for supposedly manipulating markets. Why aren’t they stepping forward to do the same with Big Silicon?
Isn’t it time for politicians to denounce the devious companies that are restricting supplies of a product vital to solar panels?
What happened to our leaders’ commitment to the New Energy Economy anyway?
When the price of oil rises, politicians can hardly wait to batter and blast Big Oil for supposedly manipulating markets. Why aren’t they stepping forward to do the same with Big Silicon?
Why isn’t state House Speaker Andrew Romanoff deploring “price gouging” in the silicon markets? He certainly wasn’t shy about alleging price gouging when gasoline prices soared in 2005.
Back in the nation’s capital, the silence is equally disturbing. The same presidential candidate who has declared herself “tired frankly of being at the mercy of these large oil companies” has yet to be heard on this critical matter of the silicon shortage.
Yet as The Wall Street Journal reported last week, the shortage is no joke in the solar energy business.
“This refined silicon, the most costly and crucial element in solar panels, has been in short supply for the past four years,” the Journal reports. “There are only about a half-dozen companies worldwide that purify silicon from sand and quartz, and they haven’t built new refineries fast enough to keep up with rising demand. That’s left solar-panel manufacturers . . . to grapple with high prices from straitened supplies just as politicians and clean-energy advocates are pressing them to cut the steep cost of solar to compete with cheaper, less environmentally friendly fuels like coal.”
The price of solar installations was supposed to slide as their volume grew; instead the price has climbed. So why don’t we hear from angry politicians demanding congressional hearings and even criminal probes into the silicon shortage — as they routinely do whenever gasoline prices spike?
Here’s why. First, even demagogues are capable, when it’s convenient, of understanding how well-run companies can be caught flat-flooted by surging demand. Even political blowhards are smart enough to realize that major investments take time and that they must be justified, in any case, by the expectation of reasonable returns.
Another reason politicians hold their tongues, of course, is a reluctance to undermine the morality tale they’ve come to rely on when out on the hustings. There they depict ruthless, greedy fossil fuel suppliers pitted against the plucky, virtuous suppliers of renewable energy who need all the help they can get.
A final possibility: Renewable energy mandates require suckers like you and me to subsidize the purchase of solar panels by well-heeled homeowners. Better to keep quiet about what those solar gizmos actually cost lest utility ratepayers begin questioning the justice of it all.
Mythbusters
Twenty-two years ago, in the midst of national hysteria over abducted children, The Denver Post published a myth-shattering report proving that the vast majority of missing kids were runaways who returned within a few days or were children taken by another parent in a custody dispute.
The reporters won a Pulitzer Prize.
The Washington Post may not win a Pulitzer for its report Sunday on human trafficking in the United States, but it too torpedoes a widely held belief.
Human trafficking exists, of course — mostly in the form of women forced into the sex trade. But when Congress passed the Trafficking Victims Protection Act in 2000, it stipulated that “approximately 50,000 women and children are trafficked into the United States each year.”
In fact, reports The Washington Post, “The administration has identified 1,362 victims of human trafficking brought into the United States since 2000” — which, in a nation this large, is a puny figure.
And the huge sums spent to fight this alleged scourge? “Many of the organizations that received grants didn’t really have to do anything,” said the former head of Health and Human Service’s anti-trafficking program. “They were available to help victims. There weren’t any victims.”
Colorado has been busy, too, creating an Interagency Task Force on Human Trafficking and collecting federal money to help the victims.
If you want to help sex slaves in any quantity, though, first you’ll need a passport. Because the real epidemics of this vile phenomenon can only be found abroad.
Vincent Carroll is editor of the editorial pages. Reach him at carrollv@RockyMountainNews.com.
How does Scott Pelley think a madman acts when interviewed by an American television correspondent? Would he have to slobber on his suit and babble about conversations with invisible friends before Pelley would consider him crazy?
If not, then why would Pelley, a CBS veteran, presume to pronounce on the sanity of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad after spending a short time with him sparring over the issues of the day for a report on 60 Minutes?
How does Scott Pelley think a madman acts when interviewed by an American television correspondent? Would he have to slobber on his suit and babble about conversations with invisible friends before Pelley would consider him crazy?
If not, then why would Pelley, a CBS veteran, presume to pronounce on the sanity of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad after spending a short time with him sparring over the issues of the day for a report on 60 Minutes?
“He’s described in the West as a madman, crazy,” Pelley told Harry Smith of The Early Show. “That’s not the case. I found him to be, as many politicians are, very engaging, very friendly. He’s clearly not mad. He’s sane. In fact he’s very wily, I would tell you. . . . Crazy like a fox, perhaps.”
This is celebrity journalism elevated to a new level of arrogance — or a new nadir of naivete. Since when can’t a madman be engaging?
For that matter, what does “madman” even mean in the context of a national leader?
Was Hitler crazy? Was Stalin? Historians who’ve spent years immersed in the lives of those dictators would probably be reluctant to issue a judgment as confident as Pelley’s snap reading of Ahmadinejad.
In any case, Pelley is missing the point. Those who call Ahmadinejad a madman don’t usually pretend to have any special insight into his mental state. To begin with, they’re referring to the fact that many of his public statements sound jarringly odd to Western ears. His speech Monday at Columbia is yet another stellar case in point.
Then, too, the Iranian president appears frighteningly ignorant and reckless — the latter in his support for terrorists operating abroad and in his menacing rhetoric regarding Israel.
Finally, those who speculate about Ahmadinejad’s contact with reality are alarmed by such curiosities as his rambling, 18-page letter to President Bush last year. And by his obsession with “different perspectives” on the Holocaust, confirmed again Monday in his Columbia address.
“He’s clearly not mad,” Pelley tells us, as if clinical insanity is what anyone is actually worried about.
If a zealot wants to wipe a sovereign nation off the face of the earth — to cite just one the “wily” president’s fascinating goals — it doesn’t especially matter whether he’s insane.
He’s still crazy.
QED
“In Iran, we don’t have homosexuals like in your country. We don’t have that in our country. In Iran, we do not have this phenomenon. I don’t know who’s told you that we have it.”
— President Ahmadinejad at Columbia University
Sure, Ahmadinejad lives in a fantasy world, but at least we can sleep soundly tonight knowing that Scott Pelley has certified that he’s sane.
Vincent Carroll is editor of the editorial pages. Reach him at carrollv@RockyMountainNews.com.
The press release trumpeting 70 recommendations (these guys don’t stint!) by the Colorado Climate Action Panel cheerfully informs us that we can “Cut Emissions, Save Money.” It proceeds to explain that the “30 measures analyzed in terms of their cost-effectiveness were estimated to have a total net savings approaching $3 billion between now and 2020, according to preliminary analyses.”
Hmmm. The panel’s goal is to reduce the state’s emissions of greenhouse gases in 2020 by 20 percent from a 2005 baseline — or 37 percent from what’s now projected for that year. And yet we’re told that this dramatic reduction (or at least the majority of it that this plan would account for) will net us billions?
The press release trumpeting 70 recommendations (these guys don’t stint!) by the Colorado Climate Action Panel cheerfully informs us that we can “Cut Emissions, Save Money.” It proceeds to explain that the “30 measures analyzed in terms of their cost-effectiveness were estimated to have a total net savings approaching $3 billion between now and 2020, according to preliminary analyses.”
Hmmm. The panel’s goal is to reduce the state’s emissions of greenhouse gases in 2020 by 20 percent from a 2005 baseline — or 37 percent from what’s now projected for that year. And yet we’re told that this dramatic reduction (or at least the majority of it that this plan would account for) will net us billions?
No reputable economic analyis suggests that the Kyoto Protocol, which is arguably somewhat less ambitious in its emissions-cutting goals, is cost-free to the nations involved. The only question is whether the burden is worth the supposed benefit. Surely Colorado will pay the piper, too, in any major plan to reduce emissions.
At a more fundamental level, you have to wonder why consumers, whether individuals or businesses, would need to be forced to reduce energy use, or wheedled with subsidies to do so, if it were such a good deal for their wallets. In every other endeavor, we tend to choose the more efficient or inexpensive option — all other things being equal — without a panel of well-meaning citizens first identifying ways that we can be made to do so.
Why would we behave differently if potential savings from reducing greenhouse gases were as real as we’ve been told?
One of the recommendations you’ll particularly love: “demand side management” of electricity use, meaning dumping flat rates in favor of a tiered price structure. As your electricity use rose from tier to tier, your rate would jump.
True, demand-side pricing of water often makes sense because so much of it is used on lawns. But electricity use, for most of us, plays out differently. I don’t run appliances or leave lights on just for the heck of it. My family’s computers go to sleep automatically if we walk away from them; our outside lights turn on only when triggered by movement.
We could eat by candlelight, I suppose, or breakfast on cereal instead of plugging in the waffle iron, but somehow I doubt that would make much difference. If steeply tiered pricing is ever adopted, I’ll just brace myself for a fleecing.
Benefits fleeting
One figure you won’t find in the climate panel’s press release is how much Colorado would slow the world’s warming if it were to adopt this plan. The reason, no doubt, is that the gain is so slight that it can’t be credibly calculated.
Let’s return to Kyoto to see why. As Danish professor Bjorn Lomborg explains in his new book, Cool It, “Even if all countries had ratified it (the United States and Australia did not), and all countries live up to their commitments (which many will have a hard time doing) and stuck to them throughout the 21st century (which would get even harder) the change would have been minuscule. The temperature would be an immeasurable 0.1 degree (Fahrenheit) lower and even by 2100 only 0.3 degrees (Fahrenheit) lower. This means that the expected temperature increase of 4.7 degrees would be postponed just five years, from 2100 to 2105.”
When Lomborg says “the expected temperature increase of 4.7 degrees,” he means according to the “standard” future scenario predicted by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Some might respond that this only goes to show how badly much more drastic measures are needed to rein in emissions. If that’s their view, fine. But let’s be honest about the implications: The more drastic the measure, the greater its likely economic fallout. Only your mom still gives you free lunches.
Vincent Carroll is editor of the editorial pages. Reach him at carrollv@RockyMountainNews.com.
Love or loathe the Colorado Civil Rights Initiative, it’s straightforward, simple and easy to understand. No hidden agendas or confusing language. Just a stark ban on government discrimination based on race, sex or the other familiar categories.
So why did three state Supreme Court justices try to sabotage the amendment last week, claiming it violated the rule barring a ballot measure from having more than one subject?
Love or loathe the Colorado Civil Rights Initiative, it’s straightforward, simple and easy to understand. No hidden agendas or confusing language. Just a stark ban on government discrimination based on race, sex or the other familiar categories.
So why did three state Supreme Court justices try to sabotage the amendment last week, claiming it violated the rule barring a ballot measure from having more than one subject?
Crass politics is one possible explanation. Given the record of several justices in recent years, crass politics may even be the only plausible explanation.
One summer ago, you may remember, the court invoked the same all-purpose excuse to kill an initiative that would have barred governmental benefits for illegal immigrants. The proposed ballot measure may have been a blunt instrument deserving defeat at the polls — in my view, at least — but it clearly stuck to a single subject.
The Civil Rights Initiative, which in all likelihood will be on next year’s ballot, is even more tightly focused than the immigration measure.
The language approved by the state title board says “the state shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting.”
It then permits exceptions related to federal law and court decrees, while defining “state” to include higher education and local government.
Yet despite its clarity, the measure survived a legal challenge only because the court knotted in a tie. Three justices (Nancy Rice, Nathan Coats and Alison Eid) agreed it was a single subject, while three others (Mary Mullarkey, Greg Hobbs and Alex Martinez) said it wasn’t. Justice Michael Bender did not participate.
Justices don’t have to explain themselves when the court upholds a title board decision, but it’s no mystery what Chief Justice Mullarkey and her two colleagues were probably thinking given the legal briefs in the case.
The amendment’s opponents claim its language implies that preferential treatment “is simply a subcategory of ‘discrimination,’ ” and they dispute whether that’s the case.
Preferential treatment “can certainly involve forms of ‘discrimination,’ ” the litigants concede, but it also “involves a good bit more than that.” In fact, they say, some forms of preferential treatment “disadvantage no one.”
The short answer to this argument is that the measure’s sponsors obviously disagree. They believe “preferential treatment” is a subcategory of discrimination. That’s why they want it on the ballot — to end practices they consider wrong.
Nor are the measure’s sponsors unusual in mentioning discrimination and preferential treatment in the same breath. As the title board’s brief points out, “The United States Supreme Court has long acknowledged the close relationship between laws or actions that discriminate against an individual or a group based upon race, gender, nationality or ethnicity, and those that grant preferential treatment toward an individual or group.”
Every statute or amendment contains unanswered questions regarding its application, and the Colorado Civil Rights Initiative is no exception. But given the amendment’s overall clarity and narrow focus, it’s nothing less than scandalous that three justices of the state’s highest court were prepared to prevent voters from ever ruling on it.
If you want to understand their high-handed attitude, you could do worse than consult Squealer, the propagandist in George Orwell’s Animal Farm.
“Do not imagine, comrades, that leadership is a pleasure,” Squealer explains at one point. “On the contrary, it is a deep and heavy responsibility. No one believes more firmly than Comrade Napoleon that all animals are equal. He would be only too happy to let you make your decisions for yourselves. But sometimes you might make the wrong decisions, comrades, and then where should we be?”
Vincent Carroll is editor of the editorial pages. Reach him at carrollv@RockyMountain
News.com.
Pay no attention to the growing estimate of what you and your fellow Coloradans will pay in property taxes next year. The higher taxes are exceptionally good news — and if you don’t believe it, just ask the governor.
Pay no attention to the growing estimate of what you and your fellow Coloradans will pay in property taxes next year. The higher taxes are exceptionally good news — and if you don’t believe it, just ask the governor.
“Property values are going up, the tax rate didn’t change, and there’s more revenue for K-12 education,” says Evan Dreyer, the governor’s spokesman. “What part of ‘good news’ does Mr. (Dennis) Gallagher not understand?”
Surely Gallagher, the Denver auditor, must have done something awfully dumb to earn this rebuke. But in fact, he merely had the sense to point out that voters asked to hike taxes should bear in mind, when weighing the pros and cons of each proposal, that their property taxes will be going up already no matter what.
Which is true. The governor and Democratic lawmakers brought this about last spring when they ignored the clear language of the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, which bans “a tax policy change directly causing a net tax revenue gain” without a vote of the people.
Rather than concede voter rights, statehouse leaders took it upon themselves to “freeze” property tax rates. And while this sounds harmless enough, it has jump-started a rise in tax burdens in many communities that is likely to last indefinitely — which was precisely the point.
Back in the spring, additional property tax revenue was supposed to reach $48 million next year. Now the Legislative Council is saying the bonanza will equal $114 million — and that’s only the first year’s installment of the windfall.
If the Ritter administration believes this prospect is unalloyed “good news,” perhaps it should consult those Coloradans who will be paying more property tax even though their incomes are flat or actually in decline. Or is the good news that they can always sell their homes if they someday find themselves in too much of a squeeze?
Whose tax is it anyway?
It’s one thing to pay a capital gains tax when an appreciating asset is sold; it’s quite another to be bled annually by rising tax bills that might bear no relation to a homeowner’s ability to pay.
On the bright side, the state’s new policy on property taxes does give Coloradans an unexpected reason to appreciate a soft housing market.
You’d like to think lawmakers would have second thoughts if property values began to soar again in 1990s fashion, but don’t count on it. It usually takes a grass-roots revolt before government concedes it doesn’t need every dollar of revenue.
A recent article in The Wall Street Journal illustrates the point. Longtime residents of the Hawaiian island of Kauai, reeling from property tax hikes stoked by an influx of new wealth and rising home values, tried to amend the county charter to cap the increases. But when two-thirds of voters approved the amendment, Kauai officials moved the fight into the courts, where they ultimately prevailed.
For Coloradans who have lived under TABOR, this is where the story’s rhetoric gets amusing. According to the Journal, “Honolulu attorney Gary Slovin, for the county .. . . [argued] that allowing people to vote on taxes would create ‘chaos.’ A few members of the County Council publicly agreed. The Hawaii Government Employees Association, fearing government jobs held by union members might be cut, issued a statement to say that giving residents power over taxes was an ‘absurd proposition.’”
Officials in Colorado won’t claim it’s absurd for voters to wield power over taxes, of course, because we’ve somehow survived such a system for the past 15 years. But their resistance to any meaningful rollback or cap on property taxes is likely to be no less creative.
Vincent Carroll is editor of the editorial pages. Reach him at carrollv@RockyMountainNews.com.
“It’s not surprising to see Aspen’s City Council studying what it can do to mitigate the energy waste of large homes with huge energy appetites. The goal should not be to dictate the size of someone’s home (though we may eventually come to that) but to encourage energy conservation . . . .”
— Gail Schoettler,
The Denver Post, Sept. 9
Don’t you just love that phrase, “though we may eventually come to that”? When someone says “it may come to that” you can be sure it will come to that, or in fact already has come to that — and that the speaker couldn’t be happier with the news, either.
“It’s not surprising to see Aspen’s City Council studying what it can do to mitigate the energy waste of large homes with huge energy appetites. The goal should not be to dictate the size of someone’s home (though we may eventually come to that) but to encourage energy conservation . . . .”
— Gail Schoettler,
The Denver Post, Sept. 9
Don’t you just love that phrase, “though we may eventually come to that”? When someone says “it may come to that” you can be sure it will come to that, or in fact already has come to that — and that the speaker couldn’t be happier with the news, either.
Sure enough, Boulder County is pondering even now a draft version of regulations to limit the size of homes, and has been grappling with the idea for months. And you can bet many other communities are poised to follow the same path in coming years.
Indeed, global warming — the prod for Boulder’s proposed rules and Aspen’s initiative — is an all-purpose excuse offering eager officials the justification to regulate just about anything: the size and style of homes, what we drive, if we drive, and even such relatively trivial matters as labeling the number of miles food travels to its sales point (a goal of some environmentalists, especially in Europe).
But why stop there? Or perhaps more to the point, why begin there? Those who favor cracking down on profligate energy consumers seem to conveniently overlook equally fat targets that positively cry out for regulation — at least under the same bossy logic.
If we are going to coercively reshape people’s lifestyles — not my preference, I trust it’s clear — why not impose a personal mileage quota on international travel, especially if it’s at public expense?
Now, this might be a matter of some delicacy for Schoettler, the former Colorado lieutenant governor whose carbon footprint has received an impressive boost from her many forays abroad. Earlier this year, in fact, auditors at the University of Colorado identified no fewer than six overseas trips she took with her husband, the former head of CU-Denver’s Institute for International Business, in which the university paid some of her expenses, in the auditors’ view.
Schoettler maintains no university funds were involved. Let’s hope so, given that, according to The Denver Post, “auditors noted that 12 days of the trip [to India] consisted of activities such as safaris, elephant rides and tours.”
Isn’t it high time that those most worried about the “frightening threat” of global warming, to quote Schoettler again, rein in their own fuel-guzzling ways before they urge reform on others?
And no, riding an elephant does not count as a carbon offset against two flights across the Pacific.
Inputs matter
Readers who disputed a recent column of mine skeptical of the movement to “buy local” groceries consider it self-evident that the farther afield we forage for food, the more energy we consume.
It simply isn’t true. Another reader called my grateful attention to a New York Times column last month that makes my point in devastating detail.
As James McWilliams recounts, Lincoln University scientists “found that lamb raised on New Zealand’s clover-choked pastures and shipped 11,000 miles by boat to Britain produced 1,520 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions per ton while British lamb produced 6,280 pounds of carbon dioxide per ton, in part because poorer British pastures force farmers to use feed. In other words, it is four times more energy-efficient for Londoners to buy lamb imported from the other side of the world than to buy it from a producer in their backyard. Similar figures were found for dairy products and fruit.”
What matters is not only distance, it seems, but inputs such as “water use, harvesting techniques, fertilizer outlays . . . disposal of packaging, storage procedures and dozens of other cultivation inputs.”
Now admit it: Those grapes from Chile are looking more succulent already.
Reach Vincent Carroll at carrollv@RockyMountainNews.com.
It’s not often you get a call from Fallujah, Iraq, on the anniversary of 9/11. So when the switchboard asked if I would talk to Marine Col. Steve Ward, who was on another line claiming he knew me, I said of course.
It’s not often you get a call from Fallujah, Iraq, on the anniversary of 9/11. So when the switchboard asked if I would talk to Marine Col. Steve Ward, who was on another line claiming he knew me, I said of course.
The link on the Defense System Network crackled a bit as Ward spoke, but he was clearly feeling pretty good after his first few weeks in Iraq, having returned to active duty only last month.
“Progress in Anbar is probably better than even the press is portraying it,” he told me, “and the press has been doing a pretty good job” in recounting how the Sunni tribes there have turned on al-Qaida with the help of U.S. troops.
Specifically, he said, the security situation and the cooperation between the Sunnis and Americans are basis for hope.
Meanwhile, Ward is so taken with the quality of the leadership on the ground that he began quoting T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) — something to the effect that generals need to know about something other than how to fight. “We’ve got a lot of generals who know how to do something other than fight,” he said, and then singled out Brig. Gen. John Allen, whom The Wall Street Journal described as “a brainy and slightly built Marine” who is “one of the driving forces behind the strategy in al Anbar.”
As a plus, said the 47-year-old Ward, “There’s a certain relaxed intensity with the Marines these days. The b---s--- is gone.”
I’ve know Ward for many years, and had asked him to stay in touch after he left Denver. But when I told him I might recount the phone call in a column, he had one request: that I not mention his political position lest some readers get the wrong idea. Impossible, I told him — he’s a state senator (Republican, Littleton) and it would be weird to let that go unsaid. He relented.
So for the record: Ward is not one to flaunt his military rank as a political calling card. The Marines are too important to him to cheapen his service in that way.
Lessons from Anbar
For all the progress in Anbar province, it remains far from clear where it will eventually lead. That same Journal article that heaps praise on Gen. Allen explained how tribal loyalty is nourished with American money — lots of it. At one point the reporter describes how a sheik “reached out a hand and placed it on Gen. Allen’s knee. ‘This is my government,’ he said proudly.
“Gen. Allen sighed. ‘Unfortunately, that is the problem,’ he said.”
No less worrisome, according to the Journal, “With the threat of al-Qaida now gone from their area, many of the Anbari sheiks have begun to jockey with each other for power and influence. More ominously, some tribal leaders, including Sheik Heiss, complain that their real enemy now isn’t al-Qaida, but a Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad — the government the U.S. is trying to build up.”
In short, Anbar province is a piece of evidence for the arsenals of both optimists and pessimists on Iraq. It’s a sign of U.S. military progress and thus Exhibit A for optimists who insist we must maintain the effort; but pessimists might reasonably counter that even Anbar exemplifies the continuing inability of Iraqi factions to set aside their differences.
Columnist David Brooks in Tuesday’s New York Times argues that given these parallel realities — military progress but enduring sectarian distrust — “America’s best course is not to reunify Iraq, but simply to inhibit the violence as Iraqis feel their own way to partition.”
It’s not the vision President Bush stubbornly promotes, but it’s still a heck of a lot more appealing than, in Brooks’ words, a “cataclysmic civil war” followed perhaps by reversion to rule by a genocidal strong man.
Vincent Carroll is editor of the editorial pages. Reach him at carrollv@RockyMountainNews.com.
You just knew Gov. Bill Ritter would have a very good reason for moving toward collective bargaining for state workers despite the obvious dangers to the Colorado budget. You knew the move couldn’t be a crass political payoff to the union movement that supports his party.
Perish the thought!
You just knew Gov. Bill Ritter would have a very good reason for moving toward collective bargaining for state workers despite the obvious dangers to the Colorado budget. You knew the move couldn’t be a crass political payoff to the union movement that supports his party.
Perish the thought!
Now, thanks to the Rocky’s Chris Barge, we can begin to discern what might have prodded the governor into this unprecedented decision. As an article Monday revealed, Colorado government employees rank a disgraceful ninth place in compensation among the 50 states.
That’s right: Eight other states pay their workers more than Colorado. Eight!
It’s intolerable, of course. Surely a state poised to fulfill Ritter’s “Colorado Promise” ought to rank in the top two or three for government salaries. And so long as we’re setting admirable goals, why not aspire to No. 1?
Why should California or some state in New England always capture that honor?
Sure, a few spoilsports might note that apparently good pay isn’t all that state workers enjoy. In addition, they can potentially retire at an age when most private-sector employees face 10 to 15 years more in the workaday slog. But such graceless observations only demonstrate the critics’ pettiness. Would they really begrudge a second career to those state workers who want one and who can retire in time to start on a second track?
Speaking of fairness, let’s not forget that state workers’ medical benefits equal only 85 percent of those typically paid in the private sector. No doubt this gross injustice is another spur to Ritter’s interest in bringing collective bargaining to the Centennial State. How else to ensure public/private equity but through unions?
OK, OK, maybe there is another way, now that you mention it. Not so many years ago, after all, state workers’ medical benefits were only 37 percent of the prevailing private market. I got that figure from Jeff Wells — who should know, since he was director of the Department of Personnel and Administration under former Gov. Bill Owens. In other words, the state boosted its contribution for medical benefits even without the prodding of collective bargaining. Imagine!
Now, it’s only fair to point out that Ritter’s spokesman denies that compensation has anything to do with talks about collective bargaining. His exact words: “employee partnerships are not about money.”
If he’s correct, then Colorado will soon become the first place in America — heck, the world — in which union leverage is not used mainly to further the economic interests of its members. At which point we’ll dispense with all this talk about the Colorado Promise and begin referring to our Colorado Paradise.
Trickle-down theory?
By the way, if the governor believes collective bargaining might be just the ticket for state government, why wouldn’t it be desirable for all local governments, too? Surely that’s the logical next step for the legislature to take if it ends up approving some form of collective bargaining for state government.
I asked Sam Mamet, director of the Colorado Municipal League, if there was anything to this sequencing idea.
“To me, if collective bargaining is going to apply to state government today, it stands to reason that it is going to apply to local government tomorrow,” Mamet concurred. “Therefore these discussions (between the unions and the Ritter administration) are of some concern to local officials.”
You bet they are. And should be.
Vincent Carroll is editor of the editorial pages. Reach him at carollv@RockyMountainNews.com.
Reminder to Gov. Bill Ritter: You’re in charge. No fooling. So if you want to “strengthen partnerships with snowplow drivers, prison guards and the other men and women who make up the state work force,” as your spokesman says, then by all means, do so.
If they’re being overworked or mistreated, then put people in charge who’ll treat them right. If their suggestions and concerns are being ignored, find department heads who’ll listen to them.
If their initiatives are being suppressed, then do something about it.
What’s stopping you?
Reminder to Gov. Bill Ritter: You’re in charge. No fooling. So if you want to “strengthen partnerships with snowplow drivers, prison guards and the other men and women who make up the state work force,” as your spokesman says, then by all means, do so.
If they’re being overworked or mistreated, then put people in charge who’ll treat them right. If their suggestions and concerns are being ignored, find department heads who’ll listen to them.
If their initiatives are being suppressed, then do something about it.
What’s stopping you?
But your responsibility as governor is not mainly to state workers: It’s to all Colorado residents, including taxpayers who expect the most modern, efficient delivery of services that government can provide. At the moment, the state personnel system isn’t exactly known for its agility. In fact, it’s a dinosaur with some rules governing such matters as hiring, promoting and service contracts even written into the state constitution. That’s why as recently as three years ago the legislature referred a measure to voters to streamline and modernize the system. Unfortunately, an underfunded campaign doomed it at the polls.
And yet, governor, you seem positively eager to tie your management team’s hands still further by bolstering the influence and sway of public unions over the state’s work force. As this newspaper reported Wednesday, you’ve been hunkered down in a closed-door effort to fashion a bill that would bring collective bargaining to state government.
You sure you want to do this? Are you sure the state can’t be a good employer and “partner” without giving unions the keys to the kingdom?
Sure, some state workers have been feeling aggrieved since their wages were frozen for a while during the worst budget crunch at the Capitol since the Great Depression. But what else could lawmakers have done? You think private-sector workers get cost-of-living hikes when profits tank?
To be blunt, what will taxpayers get out of collective bargaining? Don’t forget to “strengthen partnerships” with them, too.
Quite a perk
We all know that corporate CEOs expect to get rich if they’re incompetent, and extremely rich if they’re good at what they do. That’s the American way, and a very pleasant way it is for those involved, thanks very much.
It was no surprise, in other words, that Qwest’s new CEO, Edward Mueller, recently was given a compensation package worth millions — and potentially many millions — over the coming years. And you’ll find no objection to it coming from this corner.
What is irritating, though, is an amendment to the agreement that allows Mueller’s stepdaughter to use the company jet to travel between Denver and California on a regular basis. It seems she’s still in school, so she and her mother will get to travel back and forth between California and Colorado through the end of next June.
“The amendment reflects a great appreciation for his family situation as his daughter wraps up her currrent schooling,” said a Qwest spokesman.
What the amendment reflects, in fact, is the grandiose sense of entitlement some corporate honchos unfortunately develop. Families moving to another job regularly deal with kids who must finish school, and Mueller’s wealth already allows him to handle the challenge better than most. But he insists on shifting every last dime of expense onto shareholders, who may wonder when their new chief will be demanding a full-time manservant and a scepter, too.
Vincent Carroll is editor of the editorial pages. Reach him at carrollv@RockyMountainNews.com.
I get a lecture every time I walk into my neighborhood Whole Foods store. “Be loyal, buy local,” declares a sign near the front door, all but wagging a finger in my face.
I get a lecture every time I walk into my neighborhood Whole Foods store. “Be loyal, buy local,” declares a sign near the front door, all but wagging a finger in my face.
At a Wild Oats store recently, my cashier was wearing a T-shirt sporting the image of a Colorado license plate emblazoned with the single word, “Local.”
At least once a week when reading the news, I’ll skim another feature story on the surge of interest in “locally grown” food. “The closer you are to the place where your food is grown,” one expert was quoted as saying, “the better you feel about it.”
Even the books that land on my desk reflect this newfound mania to stick near home for food. Plenty: One Man, One Woman and a Raucous Year of Eating Locally is a particularly earnest example of this trend, written by a couple from Vancouver.
You might wonder what could possibly be “raucous” about eating food for one year produced solely within 100 miles of your home, but you’ll just have to take the word of Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon for it.
(By the way, Whole Foods’ definition of locally grown is a lot more generous: “only produce that has traveled no more than . . . seven hours from the farm to our facility .. . ”)
Now, I’ve got nothing against locally grown. When I was a kid, my family grew a large share of the vegetables we consumed, from corn, peas, beans and lettuce to squash and tomatoes (in the latter case, canned in scores of jars and stored in the basement) — not to mention strawberries, blueberries and red and black raspberries. I love to visit farmers’ markets to this day, and make a point of buying Rocky Ford cantaloupe and Colorado peaches when I spot them in the grocer’s bin.
So why have I, with my appreciation for fresh and local, just about had it with the “buy local” mantra? Let me count the reasons.
- Some of the sentiment mirrors a darker, broader movement: the growing and mostly wrongheaded backlash against globalization — the belief that Americans would somehow be better off if we could just produce everything we own, from TVs and autos to every grape, tomato and orange as well. This is bad economics and a misreading of the reasons for American prosperity.
- Other localists fret about the amount of fossil fuels used to transport food long distances. But why is it more “wasteful” to ship food from other states and nations than, say, appliances or clothes? Does the local movement propose to return to a community-based economy in all fields of consumption, or just in farm products? And if only in the latter, why?
- Still other critics worry about the safety of food from large, “factory” farms, or argue that such farming is not “sustainable.” But the safety issue is hard to get too excited about given how rare outbreaks of disease, such as last fall’s spinach scare, occur. And sustainability is far more complicated than most critics admit. High-yield agriculture that exploits economies of scale also reduces the acreage needed to feed the world — which is a good thing ecologically, too.
So by all means, buy local when you feel like it. But don’t feel guilty when you don’t, or can’t. Indeed, revel in the fact that we can purchase so many fruits all year round from so many exotic locales — and that our stores are stocked with a more interesting variety of food than at any time in our lives.
Or in history, come to think of it.
Reach Vincent Carroll at carrollv @RockyMountainNews.com.