New format for TV Week
You cannot be serious with this “streamlined” TV Week! It’s one-half the number of pages as the previous guide. To accomplish that, you have eliminated all the “unnecessary” things such as … program descriptions! They were brief enough already.
What possible justification can there be for this “streamlining” other than to save yourselves money? One of the main reasons I’ve subscribed to the Sunday paper was for TV Week. (It is unavailable without a subscription). I’d like a guide that is both informative and readable. This current “streamlined” version is neither.
One would think the Denver Post-Rocky Mountain News merger and printing a joint weekend paper would have been enough of a money-saving move for Denver’s tweedle dee-tweedle dum newspaper. Apparently not.
Please bring back the previous readable TV Week, or I likely will not be alone in implementing another cost-savings move: canceling my subscription.
Peter Tonks, Denver
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Half the reason I even subscribe to your paper is for the TV guide, sad to say. It has always been adequate, merely adequate. The new guide is not only inadequate, it’s pathetic. Can you really not include the channel numbers other than at the beginning of the guide? You have followed suit, like most companies, by giving your consumers as little as possible. If you don’t at least go back to the way it was, I’ll have no use for your paper and will terminate my subscription.
Daniel Hambrick, Denver
Sand Creek Massacre site
Re: “Song for Sand Creek; Hopes for healing given voice at historic site’s dedication,” April 29 news story.
The site of the Sand Creek Massacre has been dedicated. At last. Today, what took place is openly called a massacre. For years, many denied it, a powerful family whitewashed it, and a beautiful Colorado mountain was named for the instigator. Sadly, that mountain is still named Evans.
What is astonishing is that your paper can run a story about Sand Creek, the dedication, and bits of what happened so many years ago without saying why it happened and who was responsible. Nor does your story tell what became of those responsible, Gov. John Evans and Col. John Chivington, in their own lifetimes as a result of the massacre.
Ironically, Evans’ name appeared nowhere in your story. The story of Sand Creek without that name is more than injustice.
Recent history is filled with stories of “good people” looking the other way, pretending not to know what atrocities were at their doorsteps. It should be noted that, following the massacre, there were those who did stand up and tell the true story. There were consequences. Although, for more than 100 years, there have been those who have spared no expense to revise history and bury the truth. Were the descendents of Evans and Chivington at the dedication? Now, that would take real courage. Own up and seek forgiveness.
Gary Giem, Denver
Gun-control laws
Re: “Gun control and Va. Tech,” April 29 Open Forum.
The state of Utah allows people who have a concealed-weapon permit to carry a gun onto school grounds. As a result, Utah has had no teachers shot for giving low grades, no students in gun duels, no principals riddled with bullets, no school shootings of any kind. Utah’s only mass murder happened a few months ago at a Salt Lake City shopping center that, like Columbine and Virginia Tech, had been declared a “gun-free zone.”
There’s a reason massacres occur in these so-called “gun-free zones,” where the attackers know they can kill as many people as they want and nobody will be there to stop them. It’s the same reason they do not occur in places where people are allowed the means to defend themselves.
Dave Olson, Westminster
Light bulbs and pollution
Re: “Canada’s fluorescent light-bulb mandate,” May 2 Open Forum.
Letter-writer Katie Soles says that fluorescent bulbs are “energy-efficient poison” due to the mercury they contain. While any entity that mandates use of compact fluorescent lights (CFLs) has a responsibility to promote easy take-back and/or recycling programs to ensure that used bulbs do not end up in the trash or landfills, if these programs are installed correctly, CFLs would actually reduce the amount of mercury in our environment.
According to the EPA Energy Star program, “coal-fired power plants emit 13.6 milligrams of mercury to produce the electricity required to use an incandescent light bulb, compared to 3.3 milligrams for a CFL.” As more than three-fourths of Colorado’s electricity comes from coal-fired power plants, we could reduce the amount of mercury emitted by nearly 25 percent by using (and properly disposing of) compact fluorescent bulbs.
Laura Dravenstott, Centennial
Impacts of immigration
Re: “Immigrant families’ choice: Go or split up,” April 29 news story.
Your headline does not accurately depict reality. It should read “Illegal immigrant families’ choice: Go or split up.” I submit the illegal parents made their choice when they crossed our borders unlawfully, obtained false identification (possibly from an American citizen), availed themselves of our education system and our health care (including having babies). Their first choice was unwise in that it led them to the “gut-wrenching” decision to leave the children or take them back to Mexico. Subsequently, they have made the second unwise choice by leaving their children behind without benefit of parents to care for them on a daily basis.
Had the first choice been to enter the U.S. legally, the “gut-wrenching” decision would have been avoided. Let us hope that others contemplating illegal access to this country will make the intelligent choice of going through the legal process. There are consequences to choices.
Carla Beckman, Westminster
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Congress will be discussing new immigration legislation soon. The existing situation, in which a poor law has routinely been ignored by all levels of government, has resulted in a complex situation and much human suffering. A small, real-life story from our own community illustrates the costs of our failure to adopt a workable and humane immigration law.
A woman I know was brought to this country as a small child. She grew up here and married a local man. They both worked, bought a house and started a family. They were a typical American family until two years ago, when immigration suddenly became a national issue. Although her husband is a U.S. citizen, she is undocumented. They started the process to get her citizenship. The costs financially and emotionally have shattered the family. She had to give up her job and go to Mexico. She took the baby. Their older child remained here with her husband. She has been living for more than six months in a country she barely knows.
Meanwhile, her husband is here working and taking care of their child, who is in school. This winter he turned off the heat in their house in order to make house payments. He finally asked for help when the freezing temperatures persisted. He had never taken charity in his life. As summer comes, they still do not know when she will be allowed to come home.
As you listen to the debates about new immigration laws, I hope you will remember this family and support decent legislation. Undocumented doesn’t automatically equate with criminal.
Beverly Springer, Longmont
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Re: “We’ll need more immigrants,” April 29 Perspective article.
Shannon O’Neil is flat wrong in claiming that more immigrant workers are needed to “alleviate the labor crunch” and thereby support baby boomers’ retirement.
As noted by Michael A. Hiltzik in his book “The Plot Against Social Security,” this notion was debunked in the 1996 Social Security Trustees’ Report. The report noted that while a declining worker ratio was the “popular explanation” for Social Security woes, it was not the correct one.
In fact, the ratio change has almost nothing to do with any emerging deficit from “changing demographics.” Indeed, the projected ratio decline “to 2.0 or less” had been taken fully into account in the 1983 Social Security reforms.
As the report correctly noted, these reforms were designed specifically to build a reserve fund to protect the smaller population of workers when boomers begin retiring.
The real threat to Social Security is the penchant of politicos to continue to raid the reserves in order to fund pork and wars of choice. By doing so, they make the deficits appear much less than really are.
Phil Stahl, Colorado Springs
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Let’s say you’re a small building contractor and you need to hire an extra hand. You place an ad in the Denver Post classifieds and two guys apply for the job. One of them is a 19-year-old with no experience, but who’s eager to learn your trade. The other is 30 years old, has his own tools, and has been doing the job for 15 years. If you hire the 19-year-old, you’ll have to pay a host of taxes – from workers’ comp, to unemployment, to FICA, etc. – and pay the associated bookkeeping expenses. The 30-year-old? Well, let’s just say you wouldn’t have to pay any of that.
Gee, which guy do you hire?
Shannon O’Neil, a “fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations” and a poli-sci prof at Columbia University would like to see America throw that 19-year-old under the bus – the bus that’s going to bring the 30-year-old up from Mexico.
JM Schell, Arvada
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We have all heard that America’s economy depends on illegal immigrants because they fill jobs that Americans won’t do. Yet I remain unconvinced. If there were no illegal immigrants to fill the less desirable jobs, employers would have no choice but to raise wages until those same jobs became more appealing. That is the law of supply and demand. Naturally, the cost of goods and services would increase as a result, but then again, the same thing happens when the minimum wage is increased. Besides, instead of paying more for goods and services, Americans are paying more for health care, infrastructure and social services.
Michael D. Smith, Lakewood
TO THE POINT
As if CSAP weren’t bad enough, DPS now administers three additional grade-level benchmark tests to students with special learning needs. Someone needs to devise a better measuring stick for those students not functioning at grade level.
Linda Roemish, Denver
Re: “Rabbit ears stylish again as HDTV craze grows,” April 29. Unfortunately, all of the antennae in the world will not improve the abysmal quality of contemporary TV programming.
Richard D. Stacy, Montrose
Re: “Aurora class crisis,” April 29. How can any school teach children who don’t speak the same language? If 40 percent of children in Japan came to school and did not understand Japanese, their schools would fail also. Any doubt about the impact on our schools from illegal aliens?
Vivian Taylor, Aurora
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