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Here’s a metaphor for Referendums C and D: You’re a healthy person and you eat right. You eat a balanced diet, avoid excessive sweets and carbs, and maintain a normal weight. Then the flu bug hits you. For three days, all you can eat is chicken broth. You lose 5 pounds before your appetite returns. But wait! The nutritional equivalent of TABOR now forces you to eat no more than what you ate for those three days, never mind the fact that you were sick. Man cannot eat by chicken broth alone, and you slowly wither away.
Stan Davis, Lakewood
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Proponents of Referendums C and D say these are not tax increases. I have even heard some who liken the return of taxpayer’s money, currently required by TABOR, to manufacturer’s coupons. I offer a different real-world analogy. Suppose you go to the store and buy something for $3. You hand the cashier a $5 bill. The cashier refuses to give you the requisite $2 in change. His action is justified, he says, because it doesn’t amount to a “price increase.” Who among us wouldn’t be furious at such an action?
This is what C and D are all about. The government is collecting more money than it should, and wants the ability to “keep the change” for five years. Whatever you choose to call it, it is a ripoff nonetheless.
TABOR is working. Leave it alone.
Bob Banta, Fort Collins
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Re: “How to earn $10.4 trillion,” Oct. 1 Bob Ewegen column.
Bob Ewegen seems to think ideas like individual rights and free markets are religious superstitions. He hopes that Referendum C will lead to better schools and highways, and claims that Jon Caldara’s fears about government growth are exaggerated. There are hopes and fears on both sides of this argument, but let’s put these feelings aside for a moment and look at the principles involved. Economic growth is fueled by the creation of new products and entire new markets. These cannot be ordered into existence by anyone; economic growth requires creativity, and creativity requires freedom. The more we lose control over our own private property, the more freedom we lose. Every cent that’s taxed away from citizens decreases our personal wealth and eliminates our freedom of economic choice; it reduces our ability to grow the economy. We can neither spend nor invest money that’s been taxed away. Coloradans implemented the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights for one basic reason: to preserve our economic freedom. This is the principle that Referendum C opposes.
Tom Hall, Louisville
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On Oct. 28, 1992, Douglas Bruce wrote in the Rocky Mountain News: “… there is no cut in revenue for any government under Amendment 1 – all we are monitoring is the rate of revenue growth … . There are no cuts whatsoever.”
Fast-forward to 2005. Evie Hudack of the Colorado Board of Education declares that Colorado is 50th in the nation in state funding for special education. A variety of statistics collected by organizations advocating for persons with developmental disabilities corroborates this trend.
The cause for the plummeting support of our most vulnerable citizens is TABOR’s ratchet effect. Subjecting funding for the developmentally disabled to economic disasters (recessions, terrorist action, etc.), rather than logical policy that takes into account their needs, is not just not nice. It is immoral.
The intent of Referendums C and D is not to change TABOR, per se, but to mitigate the ratchet effect. Speaking as the parent of a developmentally disabled young woman, I’ve seen enough crises in our community.
Edward R. Arnold, Boulder
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The failure of Referendums C and D will necessitate radical new cuts by Colorado universities and colleges (along with highways and social services) and eliminate the possibility of securing $147 million ($220 million with matching funds) to repair crumbling K-12 school buildings.
The Alliance for Quality Teaching is dedicated to ensuring that Colorado children have a quality teacher in every classroom, every day. It is essential for the accomplishment of this mission that C and D pass.
The research is clear – the most important factor in improving student achievement is quality teaching, and exemplary teacher training is critical. Additional cuts in higher education budgets will further reduce the resources available to Colorado’s teacher training institutions to adequately prepare new teachers. Equally important for recruiting and retaining talented teachers for our children are working conditions, including facilities. We cannot expect the best and the brightest to enter a profession that expects them to be satisfied with antiquated technology, crumbling plaster and leaky roofs.
Cal Frazier, President, Board of Directors, The Alliance for Quality Teaching, Denver
Tim Westerberg, Executive Director, The Alliance for Quality Teaching
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Typically, debate over the state’s budget seems to center around how to get more money rather than looking at how to reduce expenditures. I voted for the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights precisely because politicians seem incapable of restraining themselves from spending other people’s money. Let’s be clear on that point: taxes are other people’s money. It is easy to be generous when the money that you are spending is not your own.
Mark Sear, Lakewoodlast weekend to cover the search and rescue mission for hiker Michelle Vanek, not one of the reports I heard or read seized the opportunity to make the point that hikers should stay together.
Vanek’s disappearance is tragic. I cannot imagine the pain and loss her four children, husband, family and friends are dealing with. I cannot imagine how her hiking friend can reconcile the irreparable loss this one bad decision led to. So I write this letter in hope that we can all learn from this tragedy and commit to not let it happen again.
It’s really quite a simple lesson: Safety first. Only go as far as the weakest person can safely travel. And stay together.
We do not read about search and rescue missions for multiple hikers. No, it’s always about one person who took off alone, left the group to go back alone, or chose to go on when the rest of the group turned around.
Nancy Adam, Vail
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Re: “Fog and fear cloud Referendums C & D,” Oct. 2 John Andrews column.
In his column attacking my position on Referendums C and D, John Andrews admitted that he also saw problems with budget restrictions in the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights. He notes that, while in the Senate, he proposed withholding tax refunds, similar to Referendum C. One year out of office, he has changed his mind and now adopts the Alfred E. Neumann position, “What, me worry?”
Rather than responsibly discussing the budgetary needs of the state government – funding for courts, schools, community colleges, prisons and roads – Andrews fogs the issue of tax increase versus tax rate increase. We agree that Referendum C asks citizens to temporarily forgo their TABOR rebates. Andrews would do better to overcome his anti-tax fixation and propose some real solutions to the problems facing our state.
Andrews accuses supporters of C and D – supporters of withholding TABOR rebates – of engaging in fear tactics. We are afraid. If C and D are not passed, there will be dire consequences and the budgetary shortages will cost lives. Aid to the disabled, nursing home coverage and Medicaid benefits are all stretched to the limit.
Andrews suggests the legislature can simply cut the budgets of our community college system. Republicans have had control of the state’s budget for 40 of the past 41 years. There is nothing to cut – it is a bare-bones budget. We cannot make the badly needed repairs to old buildings at Adams State College, Arapahoe Community College, or Community College of Denver, let alone update these institutions with the new technology and innovations necessary for an educated workforce which will attract and retain jobs in Colorado.
If Referendums C and D fail and there is not enough to meet the basic needs provided by the state for the citizens of Colorado, what is Andrews’ solution? Auction off our treasured state parks?
Talk about fogging! Andrews leads the individual taxpayer to believe that they can now expect sizeable tax relief. But the impartial analysis shows that this will be small tax relief – less than $100 per year, paid over five years.
As Abe Lincoln noted in 1854, “he legitimate object of government, is to do for a community of people, whatever they need to have done, but cannot do, at all, or cannot, so well do, for themselves – in their separate, and individual capacities. … all which, in its nature … requires combined action, such as public roads and highways, public schools, charities, pauperism, orphanage, estates of the deceased, and the machinery of government itself.”
Referendums C and D ask the citizens to forgo a tax rebate. In exchange, citizens get better education, transportation and health care.
State Rep. Anne L. McGihon, Denver
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Should U.S. be in Iraq?
If there was one image that should tell us whether we should be in Iraq or not, it was the photograph of Iraqi citizens holding wreckage of a U.S. military vehicle destroyed by a roadside bomb in last Sunday’s Post. From the look of it, these people do not seem too upset. These are Iraqi citizens, not insurgents. Much different than the “flowers and candy” greeting that we were promised by the Bush administration.
Greg Robinson, Denver
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Solution to doctor shortage
Re: “Preparing for a doctor shortage,” Oct. 2 Perspective article.
Dr. Richard D. Krugman and Dr. Joel S. Levine cite our need to staff rural and other understaffed areas with general medical practitioners. The problem seems mainly economic: medical specialization in highly populated areas pays better than general practice in rural areas. There are programs with economic incentives like student loan forgiveness and tax breaks in return for rural service, but those programs alone cannot compete with simply earning more money in more remunerative career directions.
There is another non-monetary incentive to offer a group of qualified doctors who will serve in targeted areas: U.S. citizenship. We do give preferential immigration visa treatment to established doctors, but once they enter the U.S., they work where they want. However, there are also many doctors who are qualified to practice in their own countries, but need some further training to qualify to practice medicine in America. They often need only one or two more years of training to qualify, but in order to get that training, they must first enter the U.S. with student visas, forbidden to work and required to pay tuition and living expenses out of pocket, often tens of thousands of dollars.
Medical schools could sponsor otherwise qualified foreign doctors for employment-based visas, provide useful medically related work-study programs that would allow them to pay for the completion of their own education, and offer them U.S. citizenship on conclusion of some set term of service as general practitioners in targeted areas.
We can have qualified doctors in the field in only a few years, the doctor/citizens we would get will have proved themselves highly motivated, and it really doesn’t have to cost us anything.
Paul Brown, Denver
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Science and the Bible
Re: “The Bible as museum guide,” Sept. 25 news story.
The Denver Museum of Nature & Science has received comments about The Post’s article on Littleton-based Biblically Based Tours. Several people who have contacted us have misinterpreted our stance on evolution, so we feel it is important to clarify our position: Evolution is a fundamental scientific concept, and teaching evolution is essential to scientific literacy in today’s world. Evolutionary principles infuse every exhibit and program that explore life and its history on Earth at the museum. Indeed, our Prehistoric Journey exhibit is world-renowned for its depiction of the scientific evidence found in the fossil record that supports the evolution of life over 4 billion years. In addition, we are strongly committed to showcasing the most recent advances in science in our future exhibits.
The museum welcomes people of all races, ethnicities and religious beliefs. Private citizens may visit the museum, pay the fee for admission, and express different views from those prominently displayed in our exhibits. It is their right to do so. However, this does not mean the museum endorses these viewpoints.
The Denver Museum of Nature & Science’s governing Board of Trustees, senior leadership, and scientific and education staff have a strong commitment to supporting exhibits and educational programs that encourage critical thinking and a solid understanding of the scientific process as a means of understanding the natural world.
Kirk Johnson, Chief Curator & Curator of Paleontology, Denver Museum of Nature & Science
Richard Stucky, Curator of Paleoecology and Evolution, Denver Museum of Nature & Science
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Re: “Evolution vs. creationism,” Oct. 2 Open Forum.
Several letter-writers recently bashed the activities of Biblically Correct Tours, saying the tour leaders lacked any scientific data. Two questions regarding their comments: Have any of those writers attended a Biblically Correct Tour, and why didn’t Jim Spencer (“Biblical tour masquerades as science,” Sept. 25 column) mention any of the science behind the tours?
I have heard a portion of a tour. The tour leader specifically spoke about the peppered moth display. He rightly pointed out what happened to the moths through their color changes from light to dark to light again: they were still moths. By empirical observation, the adaptation of the moths to environmental changes proves only that the moth can adapt. It proves nothing about evolution.
If science is the issue, give us the scientific arguments behind evolution and creation and intelligent design.
Bob Nelson, Aurora
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Letter-writer Dan Kennicut requests a “debate” between a creation scientist and an evolution scientist about whether intelligent design is a science.
In fact, such a “debate” would be a colossal waste of any scientist’s time and space, since there is no real basis to regard intelligent design as a science. The reason is that it’s not a valid theory, since a valid theory – like evolution – has already made predictions that have been confirmed.
What can intelligent design predict? Nothing. Until intelligent design’s proponents accomplish that, it will remain rank speculation.
Phil Stahl, Colorado Springs
