 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. |
October 2007 | Main
We used to debate whether religious symbols were appropriate — or even legal — on public property at Christmas time. Now we apparently must debate whether anything that makes someone think of Christmas should be displayed.
We used to debate whether religious symbols were appropriate — or even legal — on public property at Christmas time. Now we apparently must debate whether anything that makes someone think of Christmas should be displayed.
A city appointed task force in Fort Collins has concluded that the answer is no. Even objects that have no more religious significance than a fat elf with a long white beard might jeopardize the civic goal of ensuring that all citizens “feel valued, welcomed and included.” As a result, for example, the task force would allow no colored lights on city buildings or in common areas inside. And no ornaments. It would even mandate that any “garlands of greenery” be “unadorned.”
Mustn’t let a ribbon give the public the wrong idea.
Apparently the worry is that someone who doesn’t celebrate Dec. 25 might notice a red ribbon and think, “Aha! They’re pushing Christmas.” The next thing you know, the poor fellow will be seeking advice from a therapist on how to cope. What kind of “inclusive” city would willingly subject its citizens to such traumatic ordeals? Better to limit displays to white lights, icicles, snowflakes, snowmen, penguins, polar bears, and skis (all declared harmless by the task force) rather than flirt with the harrowing possibility that a string of colored lights might trigger a bout of depression in a sensitive passerby.
Like all such regulatory schemes, however, the Fort Collins plan overlooks a couple of possible hitches. The first is that it’s not so easy to placate the modern American with a chip on his shoulder. Someone angered or alienated by the sight of a red ribbon on a green bough will very likely take offense at a string of white lights and a snowman, too. Isn’t there a famous snowman named Frosty associated with Christmas? Isn’t that proof that Fort Collins would be attempting to promote Christmas by approving a symbol with such obvious significance?
For that matter, think of the precedent the city would set by adopting the task force’s policy. Millions of Americans — including some who live in Fort Collins — celebrate Christmas purely as a cultural event. They are not professing Christians and do not believe any aspect of Christian theology, yet they put up a tree, exchange gifts and maybe hum a stanza from a nonreligious carol such as Deck the Halls. If Fort Collins officials concur with their task force that even the nonreligious components of Christmas — the purely cultural trappings — must be banned on public property for risk of offending someone, what will the city do about other holidays it keeps?
Some Americans are offended by displays of patriotism. They believe national pride is dangerous, that it is a springboard for military adventures, imperialism and a host of other ills. Does Fort Collins intend to make such people “feel valued, welcomed and included” on Fourth of July and Memorial Day by downplaying or even banning symbols of national pride and the military on its property? But why not, if the city’s goal is to exclude all cultural symbols that aren’t inclusive?
“In a pluralistic society, there’s nothing that everyone celebrates,” notes Kevin Seamus Hasson, founder and chairman of the Washington, D.C.-based Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, in his book The Right to Be Wrong.
This even goes for Thanksgiving. There are Indian activists who believe Thanksgiving — coming to your neighborhood in nine days — should be a national day of mourning. Will Fort Collins attempt to make them “feel valued, welcomed and included” by banning all traditional scenes involving Pilgrims, banquets and turkeys?
Officials who decide to scrub one holiday from the calendar in the name of a uniting “all city residents and visitors in the spirit of community celebration” may soon discover their work is more complicated than they thought.
Vincent Carroll is editor of the editorial pages. Reach him at carrollv@RockyMountainNews.com.
Remember the old Borscht Belt definition of chutzpah: a kid who kills his parents and then pleads for mercy from the court because he’s an orphan?
Maybe that’s where Christina Grafner and Josh Norris got the inspiration for their plan to sue state and county child welfare agencies for $150,000 each, claiming the government failed to protect their son.
The government failed to protect their son? What about them?
Remember the old Borscht Belt definition of chutzpah: a kid who kills his parents and then pleads for mercy from the court because he’s an orphan?
Maybe that’s where Christina Grafner and Josh Norris got the inspiration for their plan to sue state and county child welfare agencies for $150,000 each, claiming the government failed to protect their son.
The government failed to protect their son? What about them?
Sure the government stumbled, as anyone knows who has followed the heartrending case of Chandler Grafner’s death by starvation. And maybe someone should collect money from the bungling agencies — if it would do any good and if the beneficiaries’ own hands were clean.
But Christina Grafner? The poster parent for bad choices and how not to raise a son? Or Norris, who first set eyes on his 7-year-old offspring, according to The Denver Post, at the youngster’s funeral? How do they deserve $300,000 of your and my taxes?
If we wanted to be uncharitable, we could discuss the various official reports over the years involving Grafner and her children, or her relationship with one of two people charged with killing the boy. But let’s confine ourselves to a single incident, on March 26, 2006, as recounted by the Rocky: “Wheat Ridge police encountered Christina — showing the signs of ‘someone using stimulants such as methamphetamine or crack cocaine’ — after being alerted to a pickup parked oddly at the side of the road.
“Her two sons were in the truck, one of them with no shoes on his feet on a 50-degree day. Police found the crack pipe. And an officer noticed that Chandler’s arms were ‘very thin’ and began asking about it.
“One of the boys told a police officer that neither of them ‘had anything to eat in three days,’ according to the report of the incident.”
Chandler faced long odds from the moment of his conception, and a bureaucracy that failed to appreciate his peril in the weeks before he died was only the final betrayal in a long and sorry list.
No-strike clause shaky?
You’re aware, no doubt, that Gov. Bill Ritter put a no-strike clause in his executive order inviting unions to organize state workers. What you might not have heard is that Jo Romero, president of the Colorado Federation of Public Employees, says she believes state workers could still strike under existing federal law and a 1992 ruling by the state Supreme Court.
And she may be right. The governor himself acknowledged the possibility that his no-strike clause might not be the last word on the subject when he briefed Rocky editor John Temple and me last week, although he obviously believes unions would be making a huge mistake to defy his order so long as he’s the chief executive. What the governor giveth, the governor can take away.
Still, so long as state law doesn’t explicitly bar strikes by public employees, you can bet that one day the unions will use the threat of a strike — or even an outright walkout — as leverage against the state. Lawmakers next spring should spare Coloradans this prospect by putting Ritter’s ban into statute.
Deflating the myth
Have you heard the Lexus radio ad that pokes fun at examples of conventional wisdom that turned out to be wrong? It’s a good theme, except the ad recycles a piece of “conventional wisdom” that was nothing of the sort.
In 1491, the ad says, conventional wisdom believed the Earth was flat.
Actually, no. For years historians of science have been trying to debunk this myth concocted in the 19th century, but with only partial success. It endures in the minds of many as an example of how the Enlightenment allegedly banished mindless superstitution from the public stage — except that it isn’t true.
“All educated people throughout Europe knew the Earth’s spherical shape and its approximate circumference” by 1492, reports historian J.B. Russell in his book Inventing the Flat Earth: Columbus and Modern Historians. Indeed, the most popular medieval book on astronomy, according to sociologist Rodney Stark, was titled Sphere.
“No contemporary document concerning Columbus, including his own journal and his son’s History of the Admiral, nor any account of other early voyages including Magellan’s, makes any mention of the shape of the Earth,” Stark writes. “Everyone knew.”
Vincent Carroll is editor of the editorial pages. Reach him at carrollv@RockyMountainNews.com.
Gov. Bill Ritter’s Climate Action Plan is a “living document,” we are told early in the text, meaning “it does not include the full array of measures we will need to undertake to comprehensively address climate change in Colorado.”
I’ll say. The plan barely includes the warm-up drills for the grueling acrobatics that would be needed to reach the governor’s goals of a 20 percent reduction in greenhouse gases by 2020 and 80 percent by 2050 (with 2005 as the base).
Gov. Bill Ritter’s Climate Action Plan is a “living document,” we are told early in the text, meaning “it does not include the full array of measures we will need to undertake to comprehensively address climate change in Colorado.”
I’ll say. The plan barely includes the warm-up drills for the grueling acrobatics that would be needed to reach the governor’s goals of a 20 percent reduction in greenhouse gases by 2020 and 80 percent by 2050 (with 2005 as the base).
In that respect, the Climate Action Plan is a faith-based document. The governor and his advisers “hope and expect” that new technology will appear that allows us to reach their goals without economic dislocation. Ritter turns out to be like most politicians on the question of sacrifice: You will find not a word of warning that the forced transformation of the state’s energy base in a few short decades might result — almost certainly will result, if politicians are serious about such goals — in slower economic growth, and that we might want to adjust our expectations accordingly.
No, my fellow Coloradans: The transformation will be painless, even “exciting.” “New jobs, new businesses and new investments” will cascade into our midst. No sacrifice necessary, thank goodness.
If this were actually true, the New Energy Economy would unfold without prodding, as consumers, businesses, manufacturers and utilities shifted from fossil fuels to more inexpensive, attractive options. But since this isn’t occurring with the speed desired by those most worried about global warming, government here and in Washington is determined to stack the deck. They will use incentives and taxes to realign the prices of different energy sources; grant massive subsidies to such expensive technologies as clean coal; and issue mandates boosting the price (and greenness) of various consumer products, including cars.
None of this will be pain-free, even if government officials don’t have to ever wave a bill in front of a single voter’s face.
That task will be reserved for the likes of Tim Taylor, CEO of Public Service Co. of Colorado (an Xcel company), who stood dutifully beside Ritter during Monday’s announcement of the Climate Action Plan. Utility executives are apparently used to being the least popular kids on the block.
And the answer is . . .
The authors of the Colorado Climate Action Plan worked to ensure that their first recommendations come across as moderate and judicious, but occasionally the result leaves readers wondering about their candor. An example, from Page 20: “We are not prepared today to address what the state’s position should be with respect to permitting new conventional coal-fired power plants that would serve Colorado consumers.” But they promise a verdict within 12 months.
Permit me to puncture the suspense: Under this administration, the state’s position will be to oppose the permitting of any new conventional coal-fired power plants — or to impose so many conditions that the end result is the same.
The nuke juke
Unlike Al Gore, Ritter officially sees a possible role for nuclear power in the quest to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But the paragraph on nuclear energy in his climate plan seems to dismiss current technology as inadequate while implying that it’s unsafe.
Unsafe compared to what, one wonders? The climate plan notes that nuclear power “is widely used in parts of Europe and Asia,” as if more than 100 nuclear plants didn’t produce 20 percent of the electricity in the United States, too. Has there been a raft of accidents in the industry that we haven’t heard about?
For a variety of reasons, Colorado isn’t a likely location for a new nuclear plant. Still, it’s misleading and unfortunate that a plan ostensibly interested in reducing emissions from fossil fuels acts as if nuclear energy were merely another speculative, unproven technology on which the verdict is still uncertain.
Vincent Carroll is editor of the editorial pages. Reach him at carrollv@RockyMountainNews.com.
"Denver Post owner Dean Singleton’s front-page editorial attacking Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter on Sunday appears unprecedented in its name-calling, at least in the newspaper’s recent history,” insists former Post columnist Jim Spencer on the liberal Web site ColoradoConfidential.com.
Another prominent progressive site, ColoradoPols.com, was equally agog, declaring that “Running a front-page editorial in a major metropolitan newspaper is indefensibly wrong.”
Really? So this is engraved on tablets somewhere?
"Denver Post owner Dean Singleton’s front-page editorial attacking Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter on Sunday appears unprecedented in its name-calling, at least in the newspaper’s recent history,” insists former Post columnist Jim Spencer on the liberal Web site ColoradoConfidential.com.
Another prominent progressive site, ColoradoPols.com, was equally agog, declaring that “Running a front-page editorial in a major metropolitan newspaper is indefensibly wrong.”
Really? So this is engraved on tablets somewhere?
Sure, the editorial’s language was rough (if no more so than many of Spencer’s denunciations through the years), and the placement was rare indeed (although I don’t recall similar indignation on the Left when the Post ran a front-page endorsement of Referendums C and D two years ago). Yet the most remarkable thing about the editorial was neither its bile nor its billing. It was the thesis itself.
The editorial writhed with worry that Ritter had “corrupted” his “relationship with business” to the point that he’d “lost whatever business support he had to reform Colorado’s budget process” or to extend Referendum C. As if that weren’t bad enough, he’d jeopardized his chance to “shepherd a comprehensive health-care solution through the Statehouse” and to create a “new revenue stream for higher education.”
Yet as any observer of this state during the past two or three decades could tell you, the “business community” lives by two cardinal rules in dealing with government: When politicians try to impose greater burdens on them, they raise holy hell. But when politicians target the rest of us, business leaders either stand by silently or, more often, mobilize in support of the effort.
Extend Ref C when it expires? Major business groups will lock arms with the governor in urging voters to do so.
Reform the budget process? Same deal (and probably
A comprehensive health-care solution? If the plan includes additional mandates on employers, you bet it will be controversial with business. But if it involves sin taxes and an income or sales tax bite on average Coloradans, at least some business leaders are likely to be cheering it on.
Same pattern for new revenue for higher ed: If the suggested source is a hike in severance taxes, the energy industry will mightily resist. But if the source is Joe and Jane Taxpayer . . . .
Thanks to the business community, virtually every major initiative to enlarge government in Colorado in the past quarter-century — in Denver, the metro area and statewide — has enjoyed vastly more resources than the opposition. Only the grass-roots efforts of average Coloradans managed to stop a few of these schemes.
The Post editorial attacking Ritter teems with laments over the alleged betrayal of “business” — the word itself appears at least nine times. Yet you’ll search in vain for a reference to ordinary taxpayers who might feel no less betrayed — men and women who wonder, for example, why on earth the governor thinks he needs to encourage unions for a comparatively well-paid state work force at a time when he’s talking about creating a model for 21st century government. For if unions boost the cost of government and block future attempts to streamline delivery of services, it won’t be just business who pays the piper.
Vincent Carroll is editor of the editorial pages. Reach him at carrollv@RockyMountainNews.com.
Just when you thought Bill Maher was a total dead weight on the culture, up pops the comic with a gift of genuine value. In the space of a few weeks, Maher has turned himself into a target of the 9/11 conspiracy cult — first by dropping a few jokes at the cult’s expense and then by ejecting a handful of its zealots from his Real Time show while calling one a “nut case” on his way out.
Just when you thought Bill Maher was a total dead weight on the culture, up pops the comic with a gift of genuine value. In the space of a few weeks, Maher has turned himself into a target of the 9/11 conspiracy cult — first by dropping a few jokes at the cult’s expense and then by ejecting a handful of its zealots from his Real Time show while calling one a “nut case” on his way out.
Until recently, the “9/11 truth movement” — the Truthers, so-called — had been gaining ground with public opinion in a quest to rewrite the history of the 2001 terrorist attacks as an inside job. But this paranoid fable’s momentum seems to have stalled — maybe because a new administration is only a year away, or maybe because the theory butts up against memories we share that even the cleverest arguments can’t wipe out.
As Maher quipped, “How big a lunatic do you have to be to watch two giant airliners packed with jet fuel slam into buildings on live TV, igniting a massive inferno that burns for two hours, and then think, ‘Well if you believe that was the cause.’ Stop asking me to raise this ridiculous topic on this show and start asking your doctor if Paxil is right for you.”
If you’re a comic, the only rational attitude toward the 9/11 cult is ridicule. If you’re a politician, it’s indignation. That’s what Bill Clinton eventually unleashed on the cultists when he too was interrupted and heckled during a recent speech at a Minneapolis fundraiser.
At first Clinton was disposed to reason with them. “No, [9/11] wasn’t a fraud,” he said. “I’ll be glad to talk about it if you’ll shut up and let me talk.” But of course the cultists wouldn’t pipe down, provoking Clinton into an emotional ad-lib.
“How dare you? I live in New York, and I know who did that. You guys have got to be careful, or you’re going to give Minnesota a bad reputation.”
Minnesota? These guys give human beings a bad reputation.
A pointless penalty
“Mental health experts will spend four days in January testifying on whether Jose Luis Rubi-Nava is mentally retarded, based on a sealed report presented to Douglas County Judge Paul King on Friday.”
— The Sunday Denver Post, Oct. 28
You see, a really slow person is competent to be incarcerated for the rest of his life, but he can’t be executed. So decreed the U.S. Supreme Court in one of a number of rulings that have created a minefield of obstacles for prosecutors seeking death sentences.
An IQ of 70? Prepare a lethal injection. An IQ of 69? Why, killing him would be barbaric.
The rules on capital punishment are so intricate and shifting, and the punishment itself so infrequently imposed in Colorado, it’s a miracle that any constituency for it survives in this state.
Some of us consider the death penalty flat-out wrong. But even if you disagree, you’ve got to wonder if the endless hearings and appeals (four days to determine Rubi-Nava’s intelligence?) for such a tiny payoff — one execution in Colorado since 1967 — are really worth it. Even before the Supreme Court began to micromanage death-penalty law in the early 1970s, Colorado was hardly a hotbed of executions. By one count, a relatively paltry 101 such sentences had been carried out going all the way back to 1859, before Colorado was even a state.
Isn’t it time to admit that locking someone up for the rest of his life with no prospect of parole is a fate grim enough to satisfy the claims of both justice and public safety?
Vincent Carroll is editor of the editorial pages. Reach him at carrollv@RockyMountainNews.com.