Forest protection
Re: “Outfitters favor roadless areas,” June 18 sports story.
The letter sent by 130 Colorado outfitters to the Colorado Roadless Areas Review Task Force reaffirms the overwhelming public support for continuing roadless-area protections in our state. Indeed, Coloradans have submitted a total of more than 110,000 comments calling for strong protections for our backcountry forests, 16,000 of which were submitted directly to the task force this year.
The outfitters’ letter also echoes the sentiment expressed in a letter sent last fall to the task force by an ad hoc coalition of nine prominent Colorado sportsmen’s groups.
The outfitters’ added voice is a welcome one. Outfitters spend countless hours in Colorado’s backcountry and know firsthand that protecting our roadless forests is vital to our state’s economy and to preserving traditional activities, like hunting, fishing and hiking.
Their letter also comes just in time. The Roadless Areas Review Task Force is expected to produce recommendations on the future management of more than 4 million acres of Colorado’s national forest land sometime in July.
TJ Brown, Denver
American health care
Re: “Town’s ills an uphill struggle for practitioner,” June 18 news story.
I would like to commend Ann Cox for her sacrifice and compassion in caring for Colorado’s uninsured. Cox’s experience illuminates an ailing U.S. health care system.
In medical school, I learned that it was important for diabetics to control their blood sugars in order to prevent kidney disease. During my first year of internal medicine residency, I saw many diabetics without insurance approaching dialysis or kidney transplant because they could not afford to monitor and treat their blood sugars.
We spend twice as much as the rest of the industrialized world per capita on health care. Sadly, when compared to other industrialized nations, we rank near the bottom in life expectancy, infant mortality and other health indicators. The World Health Organization ranks the U.S. health care system 37th in the world.
One factor in our poor performance likely relates to the existence of 45 million uninsured Americans. Studies mirror Cox’s experience in showing that being uninsured is associated with detection of cancer at more advanced stages, receiving less needed care, and a higher risk of death.
What will it take for the people and leaders of the United States to be moved to adopt universal health care?
Chad Stickrath, M.D., Denver
The writer is an internal medicine resident at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center.
The lupus battle
Re: “Heart of a competitor,” June 18 sports story.
Patty Turgeon is truly a competitor. The feature article profiling Patty and her fight against lupus is inspiring. Young women between the ages of 18 and 45 are the most likely to be diagnosed with this chronic debilitating disease. Lupus has no known cause and no known cure.
The Lupus Foundation of Colorado works with those diagnosed with lupus, their families and friends. The foundation offers education, resources, emergency assistance and has 17 support groups with trained facilitators across the state, including a group for teens and one for the parents of teens who have lupus. Our website, lupuscolorado.org offers updated information on clinical trials and research.
We urge anyone who is diagnosed with lupus to call us at 800-858-1292 or 303-333-2300, and we will help you as we have helped others who are fighting this life-long battle.
Skip Schlenk, CEO, Lupus Foundation of Colorado
Home foreclosure
Re: “Foreclosures send homeowners down Uneasy Street,” June 18 news story.
I was quite sorry to learn about how many people have had and are having their homes foreclosed. When I started reading, I anticipated that the “bad guys” had caused all the trouble and that “something should be done,” a common enough response.
However, as I continued reading, I realized that most of the problem was caused by people who, so imbued with their passion for home ownership, did not think about how they could provide their monthly payments if their income was suddenly disrupted. To make any huge purchase and depend solely on each month’s paycheck is, alas, a spectacular error.
It is sadly true that most poor people, even if they can purchase a house are not likely to keep it too long. Life’s vicissitudes dissolve planning that lacks a safety net. Worse, it is unlikely that poor people will ever develop enough wealth to feel comfortable about owning a home. So, doing something about evil lenders will hardly make a difference.
Life, as we all know, is unfair.
Bertram Rothschild, Aurora
…
Thanks for the interesting story about foreclosures in the Denver area. I wish you would have included one additional factor which may have contributed to people losing their homes. I’m wondering how many of the people in your article who lost their home used the assistance of a certified Realtor as their buyer’s agent during their purchase, including the arrangement of financing.
While any loss of a home is tragic, it was clear that the buyers in your article made numerous poor decisions. A buyer’s agent’s job is to put their buyer’s needs ahead of the needs of all others. If the buyers purchased their homes directly from KB Homes without the assistance of a Realtor, then they had no one on their side looking out for them. I guarantee the sales agents representing the KB duplexes were very nice and cordial, but they work for and are paid by the seller, so you cannot fault KB Homes or their agents. Anyone who buys a home needs to have a Realtor on their side, too.
Randy Willis, Parker
Term limits and activist judges
Re: “Imperial judges need term limits,” June 18 John Andrews column.
Former state Sen. John Andrews’ sentiments may be in the right place regarding judges – he has previously labeled some of them “black-robed dictators” – but his proposed initiative is way off the mark. A putative judge can do a lot of damage in 10 years, and the so-called retention vote is utterly useless as a protective tool to remove even the most corrupt trial or appellate judge.
Besides, Colorado already has “term limits” for judges. The provision is found in Article XIII of the state constitution and is commonly known as impeachment. Some of the very worst damage the judicial branch of state government inflicts on its citizens occurs in that misnamed division called “family law,” where a divorce or child custody proceeding is more akin to a Kafkaesque nightmare than it is to justice and equity. And the appellate courts do little more than rubber-stamp the often vicious, vengeful and illegal “decisions” of the district courts.
Now, if the branch that was supposed to be co-equal to the judiciary (hint: the legislature) would simply grow a collective spine and exercise its constitutional oversight duty (impeachment is provided for in the state constitution for a reason), our outlaw judges would be permanently out of office instead of spending their days destroying the lives and depriving the fundamental rights of children and parents in separated families.
Robert Muchnick, Executive Director, Center for Children’s Justice, Inc., Denver
…
I am an opponent of term limits, particularly for the judiciary. I have practiced law more than 50 years, with the first 45 years as an active litigator. I was also the first elected district attorney of the 8th Judicial District.
When I first practiced, the judges were all elected, and it was a miracle if a competent judge was elected.
The Bar Association spearheaded a non-partisan campaign to eliminate election of judges and the enactment of our present excellent system. It is not a perfect system, but it is the best in the nation. Adequate checks and balances exist. In the past several years, an overload of ex-prosecutors has occurred, but the process evens itself.
Term limits eliminate too many excellent lawyers who will not leave their private practice to be subject to the whim of voters. Also, the newly elected judges will not necessarily vote the way John Andrews and others wish. We must have an independent judiciary.
Gene E. Fischer, Fort Collins
…
I’m getting weary of politicians hauling out their “activist judges” complaint every time a court issues a decision that doesn’t support their agenda. How unseemly would it be if individual judges rounded up a media audience and issued their own opinion every time the executive or legislative branch took an action? It’s time members of the executive and legislative branches of government got off their soap boxes and showed a basic respect for the other constitutionally-defined branch of government. And if you can’t word a ballot initiative in a manner that meets the law, maybe it is time to look inward.
Larry Smith, Boulder
Network neutrality
Colorado’s U.S. senators are persons of deep faith and were undoubtedly interested in two lead stories in the June 16 Denver Post. Page One reported a huge gift to the Presbyterian Church (“Local church elder donates $150 million”). Page Two reported on Catholic liturgical changes (“Bishops back translation that alters Catholic prayers”). Both stories mentioned churches’ declining ability to serve.
Our senators will help or hurt all communities of faith in how they decide on “network neutrality.” I urge them to protect vigorous freedom of religious expression by supporting network neutrality, which, if passed, will help every religious group in America. Without it, their efforts to reach out through the Internet to fellow believers and those seeking belief will suffer.
If the bill does not pass, church websites and other high-tech religious communications efforts will be isolated in a “slow lane.” And the porn-mongers will be in the fast lane.
Dave Diepenbrock, Arvada
…
How ironic that an article about communications fails to communicate. Philip J. Weiser’s article (“Rhetoric clouds ‘network neutrality’ debate,” June 18 Perspective) did nothing to further the understanding of the issue he was talking about. He talked around the practical application of new rules with a bunch of high-faluting words. He may be a professor of law and telecommunications, but he is not a communicator. He made the cardinal sin of talking above his audience and in fact clouded the issues more than illuminated them.
On the other hand, Ed Quillen, talking about the same subject (“Ensure ‘network neutrality”‘), put it in terms the average layman could understand. His approach was more information- oriented rather than trying to impress with code words and four-syllable words calculated to impress and rather less to inform.
Mike Hudson, Pueblo
TO THE POINT
There is no more war in Iraq. It was over in 2003 when U.S. forces defeated the Iraqi military and overthrew their government. What we have now is an “occupation.” We won the war. Now let’s end the three-year occupation.
Ann Wederspahn, Littleton
One person, George W. Bush, has done more damage to the United States than an enemy military force could do in years.
Gordon Riley, Littleton
Ann Coulter is a clear example that attack dogs can go mad. Her attacks on the widows of Sept. 11 and John Murtha have even outflanked Ward Churchill’s choice of words in sheer outrageousness.
Robert Porath, Boulder
With regard to your article “Legal gap may let girls wed at age 12”: In Colorado, adolescents can now get legally married, but gay adults in long-term, committed, loving realtionships cannot.
Marc Krasnow, New York City
The appellate court seems to have forgotten the contractual aspects of marriage. If a 14-year-old cannot make a valid contract, how can that same child make a valid marriage?
Susan Winchester, Westminster
The only time the Catholic Church should be front-page news is when it opens its records to law enforcement so all the pedophiles it harbors can be prosecuted. Otherwise it is not newsworthy.
Gayle Merves, Lone Tree
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