Amendment 41
I'm ok with it. Maybe all the people they had write the amendment went to a Denver area school where English is a suggestion. Thank your jarad. I for one, appreciate that you pushed this. It is time that gov was cleaned up. I just hope that a cleaned up version can make it into the feds and other states. There is nothing wrong with this amendment. It obviously is very good as evidenced by all the people crying foul and looking for a way to change it. Don't be one of the fools who believes the lies...your representatives and the lobbyist want things just as they were before this amendment....corrupt. George, I've lived here for some 77 years now; and I really would ge grateful for some evidence of the amount of "sorruption" you seem to find in State government. Colorado State government, please, not the Washington D.C. examples that are quite well documented, and easily remembered. Also, since "representatives and the lobbyist" are your bete noir here, would you please also explain how denying the Nobel Prize - should one ever be offered - to a researcher at University Hospital, or a scholarship to the child of a file clerk in the office of the Department of Sanitation is going to prevent "things (being) . . . corrupt"? Even Mr. Polis now admits that the consequences of the Amendment are "not really what were intended". And several prominent lawyers have indicated that these consequences are quite real, not "lies" as you put it. But then, I guess I'm just one of those you see as being a "fool", since I voted against it in the first place; and continue to be against it for the good reason that it is so poorly written, and such a bad law. CJG, first, the nobel and other awards are NOT known at this time. Just because a bunch of hysterical state employees and lobbyists claim this does not make it so. For example, they were claiming that state employee children could not receive scholarships. Now the courts have said that they can. I believe that shortly the courts will rule that any award, such as the fields or nobel, is an obvious attempt to award somebody and not an attempt to influence. Where this will cause issues is if somebody wishes to reward just kids of gov. empl. or it it is a one-time thing. Then it will be construed as possible influenence. I support our troops but I do not support this war. Our military does not even know who the enemy is anymore. As of January 22, 2007, 3,057 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003 (according to the Associated Press count). At least 22,834 members of the U.S. military have been injured. I do not have a count of how many Iraqi people have been injured and killed. To date, five million Iraq citizens have left Iraq. Many who had enough money have left for their safety. Even some who do not have enough money have left their jobs, house, everything with hardly anything so they at least have their lives. Many teachers have been killed leaving students to teach in their place. Each day that students show up for class, their lives are threatened. Since the war, women have lost their rights they once had in Iraq. Iraq was one of the most progressive Middle Eastern countries in its treatment of women. They were encouraged to go to school and enter the workforce. The war changed this. President Bush said that increasing women?s rights was essential to creating a new, democratic Iraq. Younger women now fear being snatched on their way to school. Their college degrees mean nothing in the new Iraq. Older women who attained an education and career are seeing their independence slip away. There still is not enough efficient equipment and armor to protect our troops. If we send more troops, how will we be able to provide additional effective equipment if the equipment they now have is not effective? We are wearing our troops down. Many have had four tours; some of these have been back to back. How can they be prepared to fight physically or mentally? A poll conducted by Army Times showed only 35 percent of service members approve of the way the war is being conducted. We are spending billions of dollars on this war. We are in debt to other countries for much of this money. How can we afford to continue this war with the most precious loss of human life and also dependency on other countries? If we are going to stay in Iraq until victory, victory will only be gained because no one will be left in Iraq; they will either have been killed or vacated Iraq. If we cannot even control drug traffic, how can we ever think we can stop terrorism. Our time and money spent would be used better by monitoring people entering the U.S. When warnings come in, we need to check them out and not dismiss them. We need communication systems that allow the FBI, police and fire fighters to work together. We also need to lose our ego and verbally communicate with the rest of the world and not always just do it our way. We need to drop the attitude that it?s our way or no way. grr, I beg your pardon,sir. The effects of this law were known well before it was sold to the public as "curing" an imaginary set of ills. And, as you point out, the matter of scholarships has already gone into the Courts. However, the one current decision allowing scholarships on the basis of being something "earned" is neither final, nor uncontested by those who refuse to recognize the poor quality of the Amendment to begin with. And, the authors, as well as those contesting the Court decision have a basis in the State Constitution. (Indeed, that's why they chose to use the Amendment process to get this mess onto the books in the first place.) The Amendment was badly worded, and almost everyone who took the time to read it pointed that out. Additionally, a goodly number of voters, having taken the time to read it, voted against it. I have enough teaching experience in my 77 years to be able to parse and construe sentences. And nothing in the Amendment even attempted to deal with "influence". Rather it was a matter of flat out prohibition of any gift over $50 in value to any person in government, employed by any government angency or division, and to any and all immediate members of the family of such person. And I am not a government employee, or a family member of such; nor am I a lobbyist. And I really find it rather . . . shall we say "disingenuous" of you to indicate that only "hysterical state employees and lobbyists" were against the Amendment to begin with, and are the only ones trying to deal with it today. You cite 3 instances of corruption, and 1 "possible". In citing the example from Jeffco I should think you would realize that it is nothing more than a cop-out to state that "we'll never know" how much other "corruption" might exist, or have existed in the State. That's equivalent to saying that our major newspapers - 2 of which are right here in Denver, the Capitol City - along with all our TV media - some 6 news departments also here in the Metro area - all have been "asleep at the switch" for years and years. They haven't. And anyone who has taken the time to keep up with any of the media locally well knows that. Colorado already had a basic "ethics" Statute, well before Amendment 41; and all in all, it was doing a good job. Certainly, it was doing a much better one than the mess now jammed into the State Constitution, where it is pretty much beyond any form of correction other than outright repeal - or possible complete overturn by a Federal Court. (Vide: The old Amendment 2 of some years ago.) Learning how to deal with problems in a reasonable - and reasoned - way is a far better example of the exercise of good citizenship than going after people to whom one imputes imaginary "wholesale guilt" with a shotgun approach.
During the past political season, there were voices crying in the wilderness warning us to consider carefully what we were asking for in Amendment 41. We now have what we asked for. Oh, woe! Does Amendment 41 really mean what it says?
Everyone is dithering about because the chickens are coming home to roost. Legions of lawyers are assembling to corkscrew the amendment’s words into definitions that Webster’s Dictionary never knew existed. Judge
. .
Were they unable to read and comprehend their own words?
I offer this thought to
That's an interesting theory. The more people who are trying to clarify - or even repeal - a law, the better the law. And not only that, but those who are attempting to make the change are telling "lies", and also "corrupt".
Now as to corruption; hummm, off the cuff:
And the last 2 are well documented in the paper. As to influence buying, well, it was never illegal before. How much corrput influence is there? We will never know.
BTW, You will probably bring up the silly example of ritter not being able to fly on a new airline's route at DIA. Well, if Ritter flying that route is SO important to the airline, then the state should fork out the several grand for it. Perhaps a better use of his time, would be to go to the gate and greet a few people or better yet, focus on the state's need.
Posted by grr on March 1, 2007 07:55 AM