 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. |
April 2007 | Main | June 2007
Poor Brandon Marshall. Being a professional football player is such a burden. When you’re a celebrity, everyday events get blown out of proportion and it’s all so . . . you know, unfair.
Poor Brandon Marshall. Being a professional football player is such a burden. When you’re a celebrity, everyday events get blown out of proportion and it’s all so . . . you know, unfair.
“For my career to go through what it went through and my character and personality taking a hit over something that basically wasn’t valid was an eye-opener to the high profile that me as an athlete has,” the Denver Broncos receiver complained the other day after charges of domestic violence against him were dropped.
Here’s what Marshall means: Let’s say you find yourself in one of those raucous arguments with your girlfriend that typically ends with you in hot pursuit as she desperately hops into a cab, followed by an attempt on your part to use another vehicle to block the cab’s exit from an apartment complex. Surely you wouldn’t expect to see this trivial incident land in the media, would you?
How’s a fellow supposed to get his own Blackberry back, anyway? Appeal to the United Nations?
But when a guy like Marshall goes through life just trying to be his unleashed self, suddenly everyone want to talk about it. Now can you sense his frustration?
And by the way: Can you believe the nerve of the arresting officer, “to take me down for something that wasn’t a legit reason”?
Why would the officer even consider the possibility of a crime? All he’s got is a woman fleeing from a powerful, angry man. Oh, and a taxi driver who would later tell a reporter “He scared the s--- out of me, this guy,” in reference to Marshall. Come on, copper, a little adrenaline rush never hurt anyone. Lighten up.
Obviously the officer should have asked for Marshall’s autograph instead. For good measure, maybe he should have arrested the cab driver for failing to understand that Marshall simply wanted his phone/pager returned, and had adopted an energetic strategy for its retrieval.
This is America. Celebrities rule. At the very least they deserve every benefit of the doubt. No wonder Marshall can’t get over the injustice of it all.
Staggering implications
“Only 19 percent of Hispanic male eighth-graders enrolled in Denver Public Schools in fall 2001 graduated from a DPS high school in spring 2006, the lowest rate of any student group analyzed in the study.”
--Rocky Mountain News, May 30
Where will so many Hispanic male dropouts be in 20 or 30 years?
A few will achieve major success, of course, through entrepreneurial skill, hard work and occasional luck. Others will locate decent, secure jobs and migrate into the middle class.
But it’s also probably safe to say that many will have to claw and scrape to stay ahead in an economy that increasingly grants higher rewards to those who obtain advanced education and training.
“In 1980, an American with a college degree earned about 30 percent more than an American who stopped education at high school. But, in recent years, a person with a college education earned roughly 70 percent more,” write Nobel-winning economist Gary Becker and Kevin Murphy in the current issue of The American magazine.
Realistically, the likelihood that most young Hispanic males in Denver will be qualified to prosper in college any time soon is roughly zero. But if the present trend isn’t at least reversed, so that more begin to stay in high school, the implications for future social friction alone are simply staggering.
Vincent Carroll is editor of the editorial pages. Reach him at carrollv@RockyMountainNews.com.
“We know what’s best for our communities.”
— Broomfield Councilwoman Lori Cox
Here’s a thought Cox might want to chew on: Maybe the residents in her community actually know what’s best for themselves. Maybe they are capable of deciding whether they want to buy TV service from Qwest without her guidance.
“We know what’s best for our communities.”
— Broomfield Councilwoman Lori Cox
Here’s a thought Cox might want to chew on: Maybe the residents in her community actually know what’s best for themselves. Maybe they are capable of deciding whether they want to buy TV service from Qwest without her guidance.
But no, Cox and her fellow council members know best. They know that Broomfield residents should be denied the choice of Qwest’s TV and what its assistant vice president for Colorado calls “turbo broadband speeds.” As a Rocky article last week explained, “councilors said Qwest hadn’t done enough to bring DSL high-speed Internet into their community, and there were questions about the readiness of the TV technology.”
That last concern is particularly odd. Aren’t Broomfield residents clever enough to spurn a technology if it isn’t ready for prime time? If Qwest wants to invest millions upgrading its system for a video technology few will buy, why should Broomfield care? It’s not as if the city will be on the hook for any losses.
In dragging its feet on Qwest’s request for a municipal TV franchise, Broomfield and other Colorado cities are denying citizens greater choice while suppressing competition that will restrain prices and boost market penetration.
More market penetration would equal more franchise revenue for those cities, by the way.
In remarking that “We know what’s best for our communities,” Cox was reportedly referring to Qwest’s attempt to persuade the legislature to authorize a statewide video franchise for any willing provider. Such a law would of course pre-empt the ability of the Broomfield council to suppress commerce — in the eyes of local officials, a precious right that must be defended at all costs.
In fact, the idea of a local monopoly franchise for cable has always been questionable. In the 21st century, however, it’s utterly indefensible — as the Colorado Democratic Leadership Council explained in a recent online article. Under the headline “Getting Colorado More Bandwidth,” the DLC said, “What once may have been a ‘natural’ monopoly has turned into an unnecessarily government-protected one. Requiring service providers to go through the time-consuming process of getting franchise agreements, community-by-community, results in something much different than a dynamic and competitive marketplace.
“Promoting more competition will benefit consumers of cable, the Internet and telephone services.”
Why can’t local politicians see that? Because they are consumed with preserving historic control. Such a blinkered perspective ensures that in this case, they don’t know best.
Paradigm of remorse
For a model of how to admit a mistake and move on, Conifer High School set some sort of standard last week. Rather than attack critics of this year’s yearbook, which contained several pages dedicated to student drinking and drug use, officials took a deep breath and . . . blamed themselves.
“I apologize to the students, staff and community of Conifer High School for my poor judgment while advising this year’s yearbook staff,” wrote Amy McTague, the yearbook adviser, in a letter to Conifer parents. While she meant well, McTague said, intent “is irrelevant at this point .. . some elements are completely inappropriate.”
The Conifer principal was equally direct. “I cannot defend the use of certain pictures and quotes” in the yearbook, Pat Termin told parents in a single-page letter that apologized without attempting to shift blame.
You might think the Conifer principal and yearbook adviser had little choice but to express regret, but you’d be wrong. Some public schools boldly circle the wagons when someone complains about outrageous behavior.
One day after Conifer school leaders wrote their letters, officials in the Boulder Valley School District actually refused to denounce a panel discussion at Boulder High School last month that condoned teen sex and drug use.
“Overall, the panel was appropriate for presentation to high school students,” contended Superintendent George Garcia, while admitting two sentences later that its content was in “direct contradiction with district health and conduct standards.”
Vincent Carroll is editor of the editorial pages. Reach him at carrollv@RockyMountain
News.com.
In a moment of clarity a few days ago, the president of the Boulder Valley school board, Helayne Jones, admitted it had been a “huge mistake” to schedule a panel condoning teen sex at Boulder High School — and then require some students to attend.
Poor Jones. Her brief flirtation with the wrong sort of people, those hideous critics of sexual fulfillment for the young, was too much for her. So at Tuesday’s board meeting, she emphatically recanted.
In a moment of clarity a few days ago, the president of the Boulder Valley school board, Helayne Jones, admitted it had been a “huge mistake” to schedule a panel condoning teen sex at Boulder High School — and then require some students to attend.
Poor Jones. Her brief flirtation with the wrong sort of people, those hideous critics of sexual fulfillment for the young, was too much for her. So at Tuesday’s board meeting, she emphatically recanted. She said she regretted calling the panel from the Conference on World Affairs a huge mistake. And she defiantly pledged not to permit a “vocal minority with a political or religious agenda to misrepresent what is happening in our schools.”
Superintendent George Garcia ended up in the same sad place, although without the truculence. He issued a statement apologizing for the mandated attendance and admitting that the panel violated district policy by not reflecting “a broad range of views and perspectives, much less opposing points of view.” He even conceded that “certain points” were not only “unnecessarily crude” but also “in direct contradiction with district health and conduct standards.”
But like Jones, Garcia would not be stampeded into an alliance with the dark side, the “vocal minority” of outraged critics. “Overall,” he insisted, “the panel was appropriate for presentation to high school students.”
It was appropriate, in other words, except for the inappropriate parts. Garcia seems to have taken lessons from a friend of boxer Sonny Liston, who once quipped, “Sonny has his good points. It’s his bad points that aren’t so good.”
If Garcia meant that the four-person panel did not spend most of its time condoning teen sex, drug use and drinking, he is correct. Panelists spent only some of the time doing that. They also spent time issuing caveats about indulging in these pleasures carelessly or before a student might be emotionally ready, as if she or he would know. For that matter, they also squandered time in incoherent and vulgar blather, particularly when performing artist Antonio Sacre was holding forth.
But as Liston’s friend might say, the panel’s bad points were genuinely not so good. In fact, they were atrocious. Psychologist Joel Becker glibly encouraged kids to embrace “healthy sexual behavior,” and his rationale — that they were going to anyway, so why buck the tide? — was shared and endorsed to varying degrees by every other panelist.
Meanwhile, at a critical moment all four failed to caution Boulder students — minors, lest we forget — against using classmates as mere instruments of pleasure. To the contrary, each one said it was OK.
Board president Jones is quite right that we should not let a vocal minority “misrepresent what is happening in our schools.” And that may be especially true when the vocal minority is on a school board.
Vincent Carroll is editor of the editorial pages. Reach him at carrollv@RockyMountain
News.com.
Like most large universities, the University of Colorado does not prescribe a narrow core curriculum — a particular course in Western civilization or U.S. history, for example, in which every student must enroll.
But apparently some gaps in education are more critical than others. Enter “The Contemporary Research University and Student-Citizens,” a course that someday could be required of every incoming freshman.
Like most large universities, the University of Colorado does not prescribe a narrow core curriculum — a particular course in Western civilization or U.S. history, for example, in which every student must enroll.
But apparently some gaps in education are more critical than others. Enter “The Contemporary Research University and Student-Citizens,” a course that someday could be required of every incoming freshman.
And what a doozy it is, too. Students who can’t fix within 50 years the beginning of the Civil War — and believe me, they exist — would be required to immerse themselves in the latest theories regarding “white privilege”; they would consider such questions as “Am I My Parents’ Values?” They would contemplate the CU code of conduct, while mulling the “moral/ethical and behavior consequences of actions regarding alcohol, sexual assault/harassment.”
They would do all of this for college credit, no less, and even sop up a bit of history along the way. Yes, students would be expected to learn at least one sliver of the past: the history of universities! After all, who could imagine going through life unaware that the “Golden Age” of the American university ended in 1975?
“CU 101 is rationalized variously as a course about diversity, as a course to encourage responsible drinking behavior and as a course on the history of the university in classic and modern civilizations,” complained the chairwoman of the university’s Arts and Sciences Council, Barbara Buttenfield, in a letter to the Silver & Gold Record earlier this month.
Just so. The course is a mishmash. On the one hand, it would function as a mind-boggling extension of summer orientation — a point that CU regent Tom Lucero has made since its conception. All students would have to pay, in effect, for the sins of the few who can’t stay out of trouble with intoxicants or who erupt in ugly displays of intolerance. As Charles de Bartolome of the Economics Department told Provost Phil DiStefano at a meeting last month with the Arts and Sciences Council, “The course seems to be about changing student behavior, not academics.”
The neglect of academic content, however, is hardly the course’s worst fault. It is also Orwellian in the way it tries to reorient students’ social and political views, at least as regards race and gender. On those issues the perspective is akin to what might be expected in a politicized ethnic studies department — based upon the syllabus published in the Boulder Daily Camera (and from which the course content cited above was plucked).
Not that this bothers student body President Hadley Brown. “This is something I think is sorely needed,” she told the Daily Camera. “So many students at CU lack multicultural education and education about white privilege.”
Indoctrinate us, please!
The course is still a work in progress, and CU officials might decide in the end to drop the idea of a universitywide mandate. Last fall, a pilot version attracted only 31 volunteers. Earlier this month, however, the university sent letters to 400 students who expected to live next year in the Cheyenne Arapaho dormitory, informing them that they must take the course or find another place to live.
Is next fall the dress rehearsal for a full-scale rollout sometime later? Given the implacable influence of the diversity lobby in higher education, it would be foolish to bet against a mandate.
Vincent Carroll is editor of the editorial pages. Reach him at carrollv@RockyMountain
News.com.
Howard Zinn may be the most influential left-wing intellectual in America. If not, he certainly gives Noam Chomsky a run for his money given the remarkable reach of Zinn’s People’s History of the United States, a staple on numerous reading lists for high school and college courses (including one in which my daughter is now enrolled).
Maybe some of those professors and teachers will want to reassess their infatuation with the Marxist Zinn now that he has penned a blurb for a new book by a leader of the “9/11 truth movement” — those fickle folks who refuse to believe that al-Qaida brought down the Twin Towers.
Howard Zinn may be the most influential left-wing intellectual in America. If not, he certainly gives Noam Chomsky a run for his money given the remarkable reach of Zinn’s People’s History of the United States, a staple on numerous reading lists for high school and college courses (including one in which my daughter is now enrolled).
Maybe some of those professors and teachers will want to reassess their infatuation with the Marxist Zinn now that he has penned a blurb for a new book by a leader of the “9/11 truth movement” — those fickle folks who refuse to believe that al-Qaida brought down the Twin Towers.
“I believe that David Ray Griffin’s provocative questions about 9/11 deserve to be investigated and addressed,” Zinn writes on the back of Griffin’s Debunking 9/11 Debunking: An Answer to Popular Mechanics and Other Defenders of the Official Conspiracy Theory. (Members of the “truth movement” helpfully keep me stocked with their latest salvos in case my resistance to paranoid fables happens to dissolve.)
In case you couldn’t guess, the “official conspiracy theory” mocked in Griffin’s book is the idea that hijacked planes brought down the towers, smashed into the Pentagon and crashed in a Pennsylvania field. The “truth movement” thinks it knows better than to accept this straightforward version of history. “The evidence that 9/11 was an inside job is overwhelming,” Griffin declares.
Your government pulled off the equivalent of a Pearl Harbor attack on its own people, you see, and has been engaged in a cover-up ever since, abetted by a compliant and corrupt press.
Will this theory someday worm its way into the best-selling People’s History, too? The 2003 hardback edition still accepts the hijackers as 9/11’s culprits. But since Zinn seems to blame the United States for most of the world’s maladies anyway, he might as well point the finger at it for 9/11, too.
And a gullible populace
Then again, maybe a People’s History that declared 9/11 an “inside job” would actually sell better than the previous editions, given the increasing tendency of Americans to consider their elected leaders murderous criminals.
As hard as it is to believe — hard for me, anyway — a recent Rasmussen Reports survey found that “Democrats in America are evenly divided on the question of whether George W. Bush knew about the 9/11 terrorist attacks in advance. Thirty-five percent of Democrats believe he did know, 39 percent say he did not know, and 26 percent are not sure. ...”
“Overall, 22 percent of all voters believe the president knew about the attacks in advance. ... Young Americans are more likely than their elders to believe the president or the CIA knew about the attacks in advance.”
Of course young people are more likely to believe such claptrap: They’ve spent more time in the poisonous company of authors such as Zinn.
Krugman, not Bunyan
The New York Times’ Paul Krugman has fearlessly confronted the latest horror of modern life, and lived to tell the tale.
“Yesterday I did something risky,” Krugman wrote this week. “I ate a salad.
“These are anxious days at the lunch table. For all you know, there may be E. coli on your spinach, salmonella in your peanut butter and melamine in your pet’s food and, because it was in the feed, in your chicken sandwich.”
It is not yet known whether Krugman plans to devote future columns to congratulating himself for his death-defying willingness to drive a car and ride an escalator, but in an age so bereft of heroes, one can only pray that this 21st century dragon slayer continues with stories to inspire us all.
Vincent Carroll is editor of the editorial pages. Reach him at carrollv@RockyMountain
News.com.
‘I’ve been told this is a very liberal high school and that I’m probably speaking to the choir in telling you to have healthy sexual behavior because most of your parents have probably given you similar views. But, you know, when you’re 13, 12, 13, 14, then certainly one of the most appropriate sexual behaviors would be masturbation. Masturbate. Please masturbate!”
‘I’ve been told this is a very liberal high school and that I’m probably speaking to the choir in telling you to have healthy sexual behavior because most of your parents have probably given you similar views. But, you know, when you’re 13, 12, 13, 14, then certainly one of the most appropriate sexual behaviors would be masturbation. Masturbate. Please masturbate!”
Let’s see if we’ve got this straight. According to this speaker on a sex-and-drugs panel at Boulder High School last month, at which attendance was required, you should masturbate from age 12 through 14. And after 14? What’s “healthy sexual behavior” then, pray tell?
Rest assured the panel of four luminaries — including a psychology professor based in Beverly Hills and a Los Angeles “storyteller” — didn’t shrink from answering. Go for it: Have sex. Do drugs. Drink. You’re going to do it anyway. So do it “responsibly” and within the limits of “your emotional development” (as if a 16-year-old would have any idea what that is) and “what you can handle” (ditto).
One panelist advised finding “balance with having the fun and experimenting and enjoying what you’re doing, whether it’s learning, or sexually or with drugs or alcohol ... But keep focused.” (Not so easy after the third or fourth drink, but never mind the contradiction.) Another said, “I’m going to encourage you to have sex, and I’m going to encourage you to use drugs appropriately.”
Surely the lowlight of the day, based upon the audiotape, occurred when a female student asked the panelists, “Would you have sex with someone you liked but he doesn’t love you?” To accompanying laughs, one by one the panelists answered yes. As one of them smugly explained, “I’ve had sex with women who didn’t love me and it was one of the most incredible nights of my life.”
Now, it’s one thing to suggest that some parents — how many I have no idea — associated with a “very liberal high school,” or any high school, might not be surprised or even disappointed to discover their high school kids had experienced sex. But even if that’s true, it hardly means those parents would endorse a sexually promiscuous lifestyle for their teens. Surely the vast majority would not.
“I tend to agree with you,” said Boulder Valley Schools spokesman Briggs Gamblin when I put that proposition to him. Not that Gamblin expects the school’s long relationship with the Conference on World Affairs, which organized the panel, to change. But he did say the district regrets some of the program’s content as well as the fact that attendance was required.
According to Gamblin, the district’s director of health services has concluded that the program included too many statements that kids were going to have sex and drugs no matter what, that the content “was offensive and alienating to kids who don’t engage in these behaviors” and that an answer to a student who asked about abstinence “was thoughtless and offensive.”
True, true and true. But let’s not forget what else is true: The program encouraged teenagers to break laws regarding drugs and underage drinking; it sought to undermine religious teachings undoubtedly held by some students; it promoted a risky lifestyle; and it included moments that were unbelievably crass.
The Conference on World Affairs is standing by its program, by the way. Its statement, signed by conference director Jim Palmer and other officials, actually praised the panel for speaking “candidly and sensibly to the high school audience.”
At one point that day, a student asked “why people 11 and 12 and younger were having sex.” A panelist quickly blamed the media, bad parenting and “probably a lack of the ability to attend educational panels like this.”
Was he serious, or was the entire event a practical joke?
Vincent Carroll is editor of the editorial pages. Reach him at carrollv@RockyMountain
News.com.
Five years ago the Rocky Mountain News reported that the Roan Plateau in western Colorado “is on the Bureau of Land Management’s Top 10 list of areas across the country put on a fast track to expedite oil and gas drilling.”
Some fast track. The BLM has yet to lease the land.
Five years ago the Rocky Mountain News reported that the Roan Plateau in western Colorado “is on the Bureau of Land Management’s Top 10 list of areas across the country put on a fast track to expedite oil and gas drilling.”
Some fast track. The BLM has yet to lease the land. But the waddle of a federal bureaucracy is still too speedy for congressmen John Salazar and Mark Udall, who accuse the agency of rushing to judgment. This week, the pair called for a moratorium of at least one year on any leases, to provide more time for public comment on the BLM plan.
The Roan is an interesting test case for the seriousness of American energy policy. Drilling atop the plateau is being fought not only by environmentalists, who as a matter of head-in-sand principle oppose all new drilling, but also by some local communities and outdoor enthusiasts.
Against that opposition, however, must be weighed the following facts:
The Roan sits above what is possibly the largest untapped natural gas field in the lower 48 states — enough to heat 4 million homes for at least the next 20 years.
The BLM will impose development restrictions as severe as any in existence. Among other things, the rules would protect sight lines, limit drilling to only 350 acres at one time, mandate reclamation as drilling migrates from site to site, and permit only one operator to work on behalf of leaseholders.
Roan leasing could produce a tax bonanza for Colorado totaling billions of dollars over coming decades. Indeed, the state and local share of lease bonuses, which are one-time payments at the time leasing occurs, could alone soar to perhaps $1 billion, if recent bonuses on nearby land are any hint.
Duane Zavadil of the Bill Barrett Corp., which develops oil and natural gas properties in the West, tells me that all signs point to perhaps a $40,000 per acre bonus for the Roan. Maybe Gov. Bill Ritter doesn’t have to let our property taxes climb after all.
With coal becoming a pariah and nuclear still in the wings, is there anyone who doubts that this nation will be using more natural gas a decade from now than it does today — even with a profusion of new wind farms?
If opportunities like Roan Plateau aren’t seized, we will deserve whatever onerous heating bills come our way.
‘Sensibly’?
Leaders of the Conference on World Affairs in Boulder are defending a panel they organized for speaking “candidly and sensibly to the [Boulder] high school audience, providing cautionary information about alcohol consumption, drugs, sexual issues and teens.”
Here’s an example of that cautionary attitude in action: “I’m going to encourage you to have sex,” Los Angeles psychologist Joel Becker announced to students, “and I’m going to encourage you to use drugs appropriately. And why I am going to take that position is because you’re going to do it anyway.”
On the bright side, Becker didn’t actually encourage anyone to sell drugs or sex. A real bluenose, that Becker.
Tancredo singles
Maybe Tom Tancredo thinks illegal immigration is such a self-evident catastrophe that he doesn’t need to explain why during a major debate, let alone tell voters what he’d do about it. But in Tuesday’s forum in South Carolina, Colorado’s 6th District congressman once again never quite rounded the bases to make his case.
On one key answer, he had barely tagged first before the bell cut him off — in part because he spent so much time setting up a quip comparing the road to Damascus to the road to Des Moines.
Tancredo did manage to say that “the issue of immigration is enormously important to me” and that “this issue of immigration is one of the most serious public policy issues we face,” but he might want to put a little flesh on that skeleton the next time out.
Vincent Carroll is editor of the editorial pages. Reach him at carrollv@RockyMountain
News.com.
The mental-health industry doesn’t mince words when confronting the occasional heretic who doubts its holy quest. Its message: Of course insurance companies should be required to cover mental disorders to the same degree they cover physical illness. If you can’t see that, bub, you’re a raving bigot.
The mental-health industry doesn’t mince words when confronting the occasional heretic who doubts its holy quest. Its message: Of course insurance companies should be required to cover mental disorders to the same degree they cover physical illness. If you can’t see that, bub, you’re a raving bigot.
“All the discussion about the biological basis and cost is nothing but a ruse to cover discrimination,” declared Tony Robucci, president of the Colorado Psychiatric Society, in a recent letter objecting to a Rocky editorial on the topic.
Robucci is hardly the only industry spokesman to suggest opponents of total parity invent arguments to disguise prejudice against the mentally ill. But this rough-and-tumble tactic paid off: In its just concluded session, the legislature passed a law expanding the list of mental conditions for which insurance coverage must be “no less extensive than the coverage provided for a physical illness.” The new list even includes those elastic catchalls, “general anxiety disorder” and “social phobia.”
Opponents of parity do not, of course, doubt the existence of a range of mental disorders that can benefit from treatment. What they doubt is the willingness of the therapeutic profession to limit its grasp. Two years ago, for example, the National Institute of Mental Health proclaimed that more than half of Americans will be stricken with a mental illness in their lives — a "finding" with staggering implications for treatment costs.
If you wonder where it could all end, take a look at Sweden. “Swedes are among the healthiest people in the world according to the World Health Organization,” reported The Wall Street Journal last week. “And yet 13 percent of working-age Swedes live on some type of disability benefit — the highest proportion on the globe.”
Not surprisingly, “sick leave for psychological conditions such as depression, burnout or panic attacks has rocketed. Over 20 percent of the population complain of anxiety syndromes. ‘We are actually the safest country in the world,’ says David Eberhard, chief psychiatrist at St. Goran’s hospital in Stockholm. But ‘people are feeling psychologically worse and worse.’”
It is simply not credible to claim that mental disorders in all cases are afflictions indistinguishable from a broken leg. And it’s nice to see a psychiatrist acknowledge as much.
Real funny
Earlier this year, a student at Rocky Mountain High School in Fort Collins approached Amy Oliver, the director of operations at the Independence Institute who hosts a radio talk show in northern Colorado. The student showed her a test question from a math class that read in part: “In 1988, there were 6.047 million people registered to vote in Florida. ... The number of Democrats was 0.908 million more than the number of liars — I mean Republicans.”
Oliver called the principal, Tom Lopez, wondering what was up. In a voice mail and later conversation on March 29, Lopez confirmed that the question did come from his school, but that it was meant as “humor” between a teacher and students with whom he had “established a rapport.”
Last week, The Coloradoan in Fort Collins did its own story on the math test. “Lopez said that question was one of two versions the teacher created for the class, with the other reversing the partisan roles and referring to Democrats as liars,” the paper reported. “The teacher gave the differing versions to students based on the teacher’s assessment of a student’s political leanings, Lopez said.”
The article raises several questions. Oliver says Lopez never mentioned the second test in his voice mail or conversation with her six weeks ago. If so, that’s a curious oversight. Why not?
For that matter, how would a math teacher know the political leanings of his students unless he talked about politics a lot?
Why is a math teacher talking about politics a lot?
Vincent Carroll is editor of the editorial pages. Reach him at carrollv@RockyMountain
News.com.
Last weekend, two more New York City talk show hosts were forced to walk the plank for bad taste and worse judgment — the Don Imus disease — after what The Associated Press delicately calls a “prank phone call rife with offensive Asian stereotypes.”
Good riddance, you may say, and I wouldn’t argue. But should the same unforgiving standard apply to off-the-wall political views? The director of the left-wing Web site Colorado Media Matters seems to think so.
Last weekend, two more New York City talk show hosts were forced to walk the plank for bad taste and worse judgment — the Don Imus disease — after what The Associated Press delicately calls a “prank phone call rife with offensive Asian stereotypes.”
Good riddance, you may say, and I wouldn’t argue. But should the same unforgiving standard apply to off-the-wall political views? The director of the left-wing Web site Colorado Media Matters seems to think so.
“In the past several days,” Bill Menezes e-mailed me last week, “one of Clear Channel’s local radio talk show hosts likened the governor of Colorado to a rapist ... and another (Bob Newman) used the state’s most powerful radio station to call for the elimination of civil rights for all Muslim immigrants, including those who are naturalized U.S. citizens ... These comments followed a few days after a third host, Peter Boyles, promoted a YouTube video depicting physical violence and ethnic slurs against Hispanics.”
Menezes then asked what the Rocky thinks of this “use of the public airwaves.”
It’s not hard to tell what Menezes thinks: In a column last month, Menezes declared that radio hosts regularly cross a line that “Denver broadcasters — and their advertisers — should fear to tread.” He then suggested advertisers (uh oh, that word again) and listeners should do something about it.
But Menezes asks a fair question, so I’ll answer it (speaking for myself, not the Rocky).
Talk host Jon Caldara did not liken the governor to a rapist. He said, “What [Bill] Ritter and pals are doing is the equivalent of fiscal date rape. They are taking the money without asking you first.” The comparison is jarring, but no reasonable person would conclude that Caldara is saying fiscal date rape is the moral equivalent of rape.
If this is Menezes’ standard for a Don Imus moment in political commentary, there’s not a talk show host alive who’d survive the next six months.
On April 25, Boyles’ did indeed plug an ugly YouTube video, although he halted virtually in midsentence after someone in the background apparently warned him off. Boyles later said he’d never seen the video. Convenient? Maybe, but it’s also plausible given his original description of it, which never mentioned that it starred a comic trying to be funny. That would be the first thing anyone who saw it would be likely mention.
The last time I was on Boyles' show, he and I traded insults and spent half of the time talking over each other, so I hold no brief for his program or his doomsday take on immigration. But I don’t want him run off the air, either, just because he promotes what is, in the news media, an unpopular view.
Finally, the indefensible. Last week “Gunny” Bob Newman said he wants “every Muslim immigrant to America who holds a green card, a visa or who is a naturalized citizen to be required by law to wear a GPS tracking bracelet at all times. And the FBI and the NSA should monitor their phones and their e-mails ... as well as bug their places of work and their residences. If they don’t like the idea, or if they refuse, throw their asses out of this country.”
Newman’s extremist tirade on behalf of the unconstitutional monitoring of an entire class of citizens based upon their religion is, of course, vile — and that is the kindest thing that can be said for it. If Newman were more influential, maybe I’d be more alarmed.
The best protection against such bilge is the radio dial. Turn it to sports talk. Turn it to music. Turn it to any island of sanity and let Gunny Bob rant to his heart’s content. The great thing about the “public airwaves,” after all, is that there are so many of them.
Vincent Carroll is editor of the editorial pages. Reach him at carrollv@RockyMountain
News.com.
Molly and Alex Midyette should get on their knees every night and thank whatever providential power they might believe in for having the good fortune to live in Boulder County. In almost any other jurisdiction, at least one of them would very possibly be in jail.
Rather than traipsing about the Erie community while being monitored by an ankle bracelet, the suspect would be counting stale hours from the confines of a cell.
Molly and Alex Midyette should get on their knees every night and thank whatever providential power they might believe in for having the good fortune to live in Boulder County. In almost any other jurisdiction, at least one of them would very possibly be in jail.
Rather than traipsing about the Erie community while being monitored by an ankle bracelet, the suspect would be counting stale hours from the confines of a cell.
But the Midyettes are lucky. They live in a county where the district attorney is the feckless Mary Lacy, engineer of last year’s fiasco involving John Mark Karr as well as other assorted public travesties. And so, when a grand jury under the care and feeding of her office finally got around this week to indicting the two with child abuse for the death early last year of their infant son, Jason, the most serious charge was a Class 2 felony.
Now maybe you think that eight to 24 years, the normal range for a Class 2 conviction, minus “good time” of course, is a punishment fit for the crime. If so, you should read the grand jury’s indictment.
There you will discover that at his death, 10-week-old Jason had more than 20 broken bones “in various stages of healing,” including breaks in his arms, legs, ribs, hands and feet. His skull had been fractured, too, with a “complete loss of gray-white interface involving the cerebrum,” which is as bad as it sounds. And he had “contusions on the right and left temporal lobes of his brain” that were “older than other hemorrhages found in Jason’s brain.”
You will learn, too, from the testimony of an expert at The Children’s Hospital, that while many such injuries are fairly common in serious child abuse because of “abusive squeezing,” “violent shaking” or “twisting or pulling forces applied near the end of a bone,” the “hand and foot fractures are very uncommon, and are likely the result of a direct blow.”
Only one conclusion fits this sickening set of allegations: Jason was not dropped or bumped and thus bruised and broken by accident, or even in a single violent fit of quickly regretted rage. He was roughed up repeatedly, brutally, and without anyone reporting a single incident either to a doctor or a cop.
The only question is, by whom?
The grand jury thinks it knows. It indicted Alex Midyette, among other things, on a charge of knowingly or recklessly causing injury to his son. Molly Midyette was indicted essentially for standing by and failing to act. So why isn’t the father facing a count of first-degree murder, for which bail could easily be denied?
Perhaps only the prosecutors from Lacy’s office who presented evidence to the grand jury know for sure, but here’s what Colorado law says: “When a person knowingly causes the death of a child who has not yet attained 12 years of age and the person committing the offense is one in a position of trust with respect to the child, such person commits the crime of murder in the first degree.”
Former Denver prosecutor Craig Silverman, who’s provided first-rate commentary on this case for KHOW radio’s Caplis & Silverman Show as well as other venues, tells me that “knowingly” in legal parlance does not mean intentionally, let alone after deliberation. It’s a lower standard. Which makes the failure to recommend the more serious charge even more mysterious.
Meanwhile, in Denver, prosecutors waited only four days this week to file first-degree murder charges against a couple who allegedly starved a boy confined to a closet. The final torment of 7-year-old Chandler Grafner must have been indescribable.
But then, so was Jason Midyette’s.
Reach Vincent Carroll at carrollv@RockyMountainNews.com.
How invigorating to see professor Glenn Morris back in the news, warning us once again to brace ourselves for “conflict.” Morris wants the public to know that the governor and legislature’s failure to repeal Colorado’s Columbus Day holiday “has set the stage for additional conflict.”
Morris should know, since he’ll be a chief instigator of any future unpleasantness surrounding the holiday.
How invigorating to see professor Glenn Morris back in the news, warning us once again to brace ourselves for “conflict.” Morris wants the public to know that the governor and legislature’s failure to repeal Colorado’s Columbus Day holiday “has set the stage for additional conflict.”
Morris should know, since he’ll be a chief instigator of any future unpleasantness surrounding the holiday. Why, without conflict, he’d be merely an obscure academic nursing Churchillian views (Ward’s, not Winston’s) when he wasn’t decompressing from the intense burdens of an intellectual career with a much-deserved sabbatical.
“We will never allow another Columbus Day Parade in this city,” Morris infamously declared in 1992 after he and others who disdain constitutional rights frightened Denver parade participants, who had lined up and were ready to go, into calling off the event. This feat represents perhaps the summit of Morris’ résumé, although it is by no means the only time he’s sought to trample on First Amendment freedom, including much more recently, too.
As Morris has explained, “the continuing celebration of Columbus and his colonial legacy was sufficiently offensive and inciteful to American Indians as to justify our reaction to the parade.” And never mind, please, that this rationale is little different from the one used throughout history by everyone from monarchs to theocrats intent on scrubbing society clean of “offensive” language or symbols.
Whether Colorado should preserve its official holiday for Columbus is actually an interesting question, with good arguments available on either side. But the sight of Morris heading the opposition is as jarring as seeing Al Sharpton lead the chorus that demanded Don Imus’ firing. Activists who ignore the rights of others have no standing to lecture the public about which words and symbols are beyond the pale.
Sharpton’s Mormon slur
Speaking of the Rev. Sharpton, he insists he was not mocking Mitt Romney’s Mormon faith when he said earlier this week, “As for the one Mormon running for office, those who really believe in God will defeat him anyway, so don’t worry, that’s a temporary situation.”
Sharpton claims he was only contrasting “those who really believe in God” with Christopher Hitchens, an avowed atheist whom Sharpton was debating at the time.
If you listen to a few minutes of the actual debate, though, and not just the one-line YouTube clip, it sure doesn’t sound as if Sharpton is referring to Hitchens.
Even more to the point, Sharpton had no reason to say really believe in God — that “really” is the giveaway — unless he meant to contrast true belief with what he considers phony belief.
But Sharpton will no doubt slip out of this tight spot as he has from so many others. Hitchens’ presence gives him all of the alibi he needs.
Vincent Carroll is editor of the editorial pages. Reach him at carrollv@RockyMountain
News.com.
I can’t help myself, I’m pulling for Jared Polis.
True, the super-rich Polis bankrolled Colorado’s problem-riddled Amendment 41, either out of ignorance of what this “ethics” measure actually says or, worse, because he genuinely agrees with its draconian mandates.
I can’t help myself, I’m pulling for Jared Polis.
True, the super-rich Polis bankrolled Colorado’s problem-riddled Amendment 41, either out of ignorance of what this “ethics” measure actually says or, worse, because he genuinely agrees with its draconian mandates.
And yes, a few years ago Polis funded another ballot measure that might have been worse — it allowed people to register the same day they voted — which Coloradans wisely trampled at the polls.
Polis is also the fellow who bought himself a seat on the State Board of Education in 2000 to launch his political career, spending $1.2 million to campaign for a post that pays nothing and winning statewide by less than 100 votes. In effect, he’s been buying his way into prominence ever since — and out of trouble, too, by which I mean the legion of lobbyists, pollsters and spinmeisters he employed at the legislature to save his bacon on 41.
So why pull for a political dilettante like Polis? Because he’s potentially a more interesting Democratic candidate for the 2nd Congressional District — which will elect another liberal in 2008 to replace Mark Udall — than the presumed front-runner, Senate President Joan Fitz-Gerald.
And although Polis hasn’t officially announced his candidacy, most political observers are convinced it’s only a matter of time.
With Fitz-Gerald, unfortunately, it’s hard to imagine a position seriously at odds with any of her party’s major interest groups or an agenda that isn’t a cutout of the usual Washington talking points. But say what you will about Polis, he marches to his own drummer at times — on educational choice, to cite one example. He even established a string of charter schools for immigrants (The New American School, with campuses in Aurora, Northglenn and Lakewood, and a fourth to open this fall in Eagle County). Maybe he should give Fitz-Gerald a tour of them before they clash; she might hesitate before slamming charters again as a tool of “white flight.”
And Polis is a gifted entrepreneur. He made his biggest killing, with BlueMountain.com, because he was smart enough to sell before the dot-com bubble burst, but he’s hardly a one-shot marvel. Just last year he sold a company he founded at 22 for another jaw-dropping fortune. Meanwhile, his Techstars program helps seed other start-ups.
To be sure, success in business is no guarantee that a man understands economics. In Congress, Polis could still push for the growth-stifling policies so popular with his party’s left wing. Still, you’d hope that a fellow who understands the importance of an entrepreneurial culture would at least think twice before supporting policies likely to destroy it.
Vincent Carroll is editor of the editorial pages. Reach him at carrollv@RockyMountain
News.com.
No one will accuse the governor’s full-time adviser on climate change of Al Gore- type hypocrisy for her personal energy consumption. Heidi VanGenderen owns a hybrid vehicle, she told a Rocky reporter, dries clothes on a line out back, and boasts that her family’s house is “100 percent renewable powered” through Xcel’s Windsource program.
No one will accuse the governor’s full-time adviser on climate change of Al Gore- type hypocrisy for her personal energy consumption. Heidi VanGenderen owns a hybrid vehicle, she told a Rocky reporter, dries clothes on a line out back, and boasts that her family’s house is “100 percent renewable powered” through Xcel’s Windsource program.
All well and good, no doubt, with one clarification: Unless VanGenderen has a windmill atop her house, it is no more powered by renewables than mine is — or any other Xcel ratepayer’s.
In fact, most of the electrons coming into her home from the utility’s grid are generated by (cover your eyes, faint hearts) coal. The No. 2 source: natural gas.
What VanGenderen presumably meant is that she chooses to pay Xcel’s separate Windsource rate for an amount of kilowatt hours equal to her family’s energy usage. In that sense she and the nearly 50,000 customers who have signed up for Windsource in the three states where Xcel offers the program have probably helped the utility accelerate its acquisition of wind power.
If those customers wish to feel greener-than-thou about their contribution, more power to them. But the wind energy they subsidize supplements other sources; it doesn’t replace them.
Even if Xcel could route wind power separately to the houses of everyone in its Windsource program, those homes would still depend on baseload coal and natural gas for a good part of the time when the wind didn’t blow. Xcel can’t provide 100 percent renewables and still satisfy customer power demands — and neither can anyone else. That’s why, for example, the company is researching the possibility of using wind power to produce hydrogen, whose energy could be tapped when the wind fails.
Someday a governor’s climate adviser might well live in a house “100 percent renewable powered.” But for the forseeable future, that’s wishful thinking, and misleading to boot.
Ridiculous indeed
From his prison cell in Sterling, the financial rogue Will Hoover writes to thank me for “hitting a nerve” with a recent column. It seems that my quip “Life isn’t fair, of course, but why does it have to be ridiculous?” reminded Hoover “of where I’m at.”
Where he’s at, in case you’ve forgotten, is serving a 100-year sentence for bilking 25 investor clients of more than $13 million.
“Close to home,” Hoover observed, “we see [Qwest’s Joe] Nacchio likely suffering a Club Fed sentence in the eight-to- 10-year range. Like you, I don’t expect fairness in all of life’s pursuits, but why does it have to be ridiculous?”
Hey, let’s not get carried away here. Nacchio’s crimes were far less nasty than those of Hoover, who brazenly looted investors’ assets in a pyramid scheme that eventually imploded.
Nacchio’s insider trading wasn’t the cause of the free fall in stock price from which Qwest investors have yet to recover. He withheld information from investors precisely because he knew the company’s health was far more fragile than they did.
By contrast, Hoover was a pedal-to-the-metal cheat who might as well have slipped into clients’ homes and ransacked their safes.
That said, I stand by my 2005 assessment of Hoover’s 100-year sentence: It is grossly out of line with those imposed on other white-collar swindlers and indeed may be altogether unique. While Nacchio isn’t a relevant comparison, neither is a serial killer.
Vincent Carroll is editor of the editorial pages. Reach him at carrollv@RockyMountain
News.com.
Who was that woman hyperventilating about big business at the state Capitol earlier this week? Ah, yes, the House majority leader, Alice Madden, who provided a stark lesson in why populist rhetoric should be used sparingly: In large doses, it invariably insults the listener’s intelligence.
Who was that woman hyperventilating about big business at the state Capitol earlier this week? Ah, yes, the House majority leader, Alice Madden, who provided a stark lesson in why populist rhetoric should be used sparingly: In large doses, it invariably insults the listener’s intelligence.
“This was a [legislative] session of the people vs. the powerful special interests,” Madden said, according to a party press release. “Ordinary Coloradans won over shoddy homebuilders, ordinary Coloradans triumphed over big insurance, ordinary Coloradans beat back big pharmaceuticals, and most significantly, big oil and gas was trumped by ordinary Coloradans. A short time ago, oil and gas generated most of the power and held massive political power. We now have a range of alternative power sources and more balance in the power structure.”
Yes, we “ordinary” Coloradans are a doughty lot, are we not? In four short months we scared off more dragons than St. George, and an ugly bunch of monsters they are, too.
Some of them do awful things like expecting to make a profit for inventing and marketing drugs that save millions of lives; others produce the fuel that allows Madden to commute so effortlessly between Boulder and the Capitol. As for insurers, we won’t even try to explain their function: It’s too ghastly.
The scoundrels. Why can’t the people who run these businesses do something useful with their lives, like send out press releases demonizing the labor of their fellow citizens?
If Madden and House Speaker Andrew Romanoff, who is quoted in a Rocky article making nearly identical points, wish to crow about higher mandates for renewable energy, for example, or legislation to expand the availability of discount drugs, then they should by all means do so. Those measures were key to this year’s Democratic agenda, and their passage is therefore worth trumpeting by party leaders.
But they really ought to think twice before addressing “ordinary Coloradans” as if we walked around in torn bib overalls whose pockets were stuffed with faded screeds by Huey Long. It’s irritating to be treated like a bumpkin.
Still mighty useful
Speaking of “big oil and gas” and renewable energy, it’s worth remembering that we’re not dealing with a choice of one or the other. Not yet anyway. Most renewable energy — certainly wind — requires backup generation. And those backup plants usually run on natural gas because they’re far more easily fired up than base-load coal facilities.
Big oil and gas is what allows big wind power into the marketplace to begin with.
Piñon Pollyanna
Gov. Bill Ritter’s language was mild and optimistic Thursday when he signed a bill putting Colorado in opposition to any condemnation of land in order to triple the size of the Piñon Canyon Maneuver Site in southeastern Colorado.
“My conversations with the Army have all focused on their desire to expand Piñon Canyon without the use of eminent domain,” Ritter said. “And that is still my hope.”
It’s great that Ritter stands with the legislative majority on this matter. But his hope for a conflict-free expansion is hard to square with existing maps. Condemnation or the threat of it will almost certainly be employed if the Army is committed to acquiring 418,000 additional acres of land.
Vincent Carroll is editor of the editorial pages. Reach him at carrollv@Rocky
MountainNews.com.
Have statehouse Democrats planted a bomb with a slow-burning fuse within their own ranks by proudly freezing property tax rates so that future tax bills can rise? Very possibly. The detonation might not occur for years, of course, after today’s lawmakers by and large have moved on, but voters won’t bother with such distinctions.
Have statehouse Democrats planted a bomb with a slow-burning fuse within their own ranks by proudly freezing property tax rates so that future tax bills can rise? Very possibly. The detonation might not occur for years, of course, after today’s lawmakers by and large have moved on, but voters won’t bother with such distinctions.
If property taxes are escalating, say, a decade from now because of another hot real estate market and the fact that rates no longer ratchet down, voters will simply take out their anger on the present culprits’ successors.
The timing of the Democrats’ property tax gamble is somewhat ironic, as it occurs when resentment over soaring tax bills elsewhere is reaching a peak. Coloradans have largely been sheltered from this national trend by the very law that has just now been purged. From now on we’ll have to rely instead on our local school boards to cut rates if tax collections skyrocket. So good luck to one and all!
Last month the Tax Foundation released a report estimating that as a fraction of personal income, the state and local tax burden nationally will reach an all-time high this year of 11 percent. As the author, economist Curtis Dubay, explains, part of the reason is that “property tax collections have risen significantly for several years as local government officials apparently did not ratchet down rates enough to prevent a surge of revenue as the value of real estate soared between 2001 and 2006.”
As you might expect, this study estimates Colorado’s state-local tax burden, at 10.4 percent of income, as below the national average. Still, it’s well above the bottom tier of states. And Colorado’s ranking is rising quickly: It jumped from 41 on the state-local tax burden list in 2000 to No. 30 this year.
If you listen to some of our elected politicians at the state Capitol, meanwhile, you’ll realize that they won’t be satisfied until we’re vying for a Top 10 spot. And perhaps we’re on our way to that lofty destination, too, given the fuse they lit this week on property taxes.
Charter schools hammered
Charter school opponents in the legislature — a proudly reactionary bunch — are enjoying the last laugh of the session despite a series of earlier setbacks.
Never mind that that one of their leaders, Colorado Springs Democrat Mike Merrifield, resigned as chairman of the House Education Committee after a nasty e-mail of his came to light, or that their plan to eliminate the State Charter School Institute fizzled. Lawmakers who detest parental choice are an implacable lot who never lose sight of their goal. So with the session winding down, they exacted revenge. At the same time lawmakers were freezing property tax rates in order to raise more money for schools, they actually slashed funding for charter school facilities.
How’s that for irony: The parents of the 45,000 or so students who attend public charter schools will not only have to pay higher property taxes in many cases; they’ll also get less help from the state.
Vincent Carroll is editor of the editorial pages. Reach him at carrollv@RockyMountain
News.com.
They must be quaking in fear over at Denver City Hall this week after the merciless punishment of the parks manager who had better things to do than put in full-time hours for her full-time salary of $110,423. Manager Kim Bailey was told point-blank by Mayor John Hickenlooper that she actually would have to work for a living even though it’s much more fun to attend graduate school on the city’s dime.
They must be quaking in fear over at Denver City Hall this week after the merciless punishment of the parks manager who had better things to do than put in full-time hours for her full-time salary of $110,423. Manager Kim Bailey was told point-blank by Mayor John Hickenlooper that she actually would have to work for a living even though it’s much more fun to attend graduate school on the city’s dime.
No wonder it can be so hard sometimes to attract top-notch talent into public service. So long as we treat our best recruits like serfs, piling on impossible demands like a 40-hour work week, naturally many will seek the greener pastures of the private sector.
A Rocky report said Bailey was “emotional after the meeting.” Who wouldn’t be? Sure, the mayor publicly praised her performance, somewhat lavishly as a matter of fact. But then he had to spoil the moment by wondering whether “someone out of the office” as often as Bailey “couldn’t do more.” Whose eye wouldn’t moisten after a tongue-lashing like that?
Admittedly, Bailey was missing in action for more than three months during the year ending March 31. But some of it was vacation. The woman does get sick every now and then, too, you know. Meanwhile, if she wants to run off to class occasionally during business hours, who are mere taxpayers to dispute her dedication?
“If the perception is that my educational pursuits are preventing me from doing the work well, then discontinuing my studies is a sacrifice I’m willing to make,” Bailey said.
Let us salute the woman for her noble “sacrifice.” And let no one dare deny that the city’s parks are in the very best of hands.
Edwards’ gibberish
The single dumbest question in last week’s Democratic debate occurred when NBC anchor Brian Williams asked candidate John Edwards about one of his sidelights.
“Senator, I have a follow-up for you on modern-day America,” Williams said. “You’ve been a counsel to hedge funds. Do hedge funds make America any better in any way?”
Huh? Does Williams think all hedge funds are the same, that they follow the same investment strategy? Well, they don’t. What they do have in common is that they are restricted to people with lots of money to invest — people, for example, like Williams.
But presumably Edwards knows this and could forthrightly defend his work.
Wrong. If anything, Edwards’ response was even stranger. “I think the financial markets are an important component of trying to figure out what it is we need to do about the fact that we have 47 million people without health care, 37 million people who wake up in poverty every day,” he said. “They play an enormous role in how money moves in this country. And I happen to believe that we have a responsibility to the people in this country who wake up every day worried about feeding and clothing their children. And I think those people in New York who work in financial markets understand, in some ways at least, what can be done, and can play a significant role in trying to lift people up who are struggling.”
To put it charitably, this response is a dodge. To put it uncharitably, it’s gibberish.
It was up to Hillary Clinton to rescue Edwards by providing a partial defense of risk-taking investment. “I think that America is a great place because we have an entrepreneurial economy,” she told Williams. “We have people who are willing to make stakes in new enterprises and invest their money.”
Why couldn’t Edwards have said that, and more? And if he couldn’t, why was he a counsel for hedge funds?
Vincent Carroll is editor of the editorial pages. Reach him at carrollv@RockyMountainNews.com.
It’s Election Day, and not one in 10 Denver voters could likely even name Mayor John Hickenlooper’s opponent. Why does he have it so easy when his two immediate predecessors had to fight for political survival at the end of their first terms, each rallying to victory only during a nasty runoff?
One stock answer is that Hickenlooper is white and his predecessors weren’t.
It’s Election Day, and not one in 10 Denver voters could likely even name Mayor John Hickenlooper’s opponent. Why does he have it so easy when his two immediate predecessors had to fight for political survival at the end of their first terms, each rallying to victory only during a nasty runoff?
One stock answer is that Hickenlooper is white and his predecessors weren’t.
“Both Mayor [Federico] Peña and myself took arrows for being firsts,” contends former Mayor Wellington Webb, one of several people quoted in an article in last week’s Rocky to offer this explanation.
Webb has many good qualities, but giving critics the benefit of the doubt regarding their motives is not necessarily one of them. He and Peña found themselves in re-election donnybrooks for very different reasons, as the more statesmanlike Peña readily volunteers. Given Denver’s oil bust economy in 1987, Peña recalled, “any mayor would have received complaints regardless of ethnicity or race.”
It’s not as if accusations of racism were absent in ’87: I recall a particularly tense meeting that spring at the Rocky, for example, in which one Hispanic activist after another accused this newspaper’s coverage of being skewed against the embattled mayor.
It’s good to see that Peña hasn’t spent the past 20 years stoking such imaginary grievances. “The people of Denver have been very supportive of individuals regardless of ethnic background,” he says instead.
No one ever promised incumbents a free pass — even if you’d never know it from the evidence of this year’s municipal contests.
Tibet a hopeless cause
Is there any good cause more utterly hopeless than “Free Tibet”? Or, to quote the banner that got a 29-year-old Boulderite arrested last month at a Mount Everest base camp and expelled from China 36 hours later: “One World, One Dream, Free Tibet 2008.”
Tibet fell to Mao Zedong’s army more than 50 years ago, and its brutal integration into greater China has, if anything, accelerated in recent years, not slowed. Less than a year ago China even opened a railway to Tibet’s capital Lhasa — no mean feat given the 16,640-foot Tanggula Pass it must cross.
“Tibet, for better or worse, has been a region waiting for a train,” writes John Makin, a scholar at The American Enterprise Institute who traveled to Tibet last summer and who is remarkably serene about the cultural implications of further opening Tibet to Chinese commerce and settlement, not to mention new waves of outside tourism.
“Whether Tibetans will fare better under the Chinese government than they did under Lamaist theocracy remains to be seen,” he wrote in the magazine The American, while cheerily predicting that opportunities for youth “will multiply.” Still, he does admit that “the outlook for traditionalists is bleak.”
Yes, bleak is certainly one way to put it.
A news story said the Boulder activist, Kirsten Westby, is expected back in Colorado next week. Her political statement was risky, bold and idealistic — but it appears sadly futile, too.
Vincent Carroll is editor of the editorial pages. Reach him at carrollv@RockyMountain
News.com.