Carter’s criticism of the Bush administration
Re: “Bush’s foreign work ‘worst,’ Carter says,” May 20 news brief.
Former President Jimmy Carter is quoted as saying the Bush administration is the worst in history. Mr. Carter has obviously forgotten his own administration’s disastrous record that included gasoline shortages (remember sitting in long gas lines?), the highest unemployment in decades (remember the misery index?), 14 percent mortgage rates, the Iran hostage crisis, etc.
Mr. Carter’s approval rating dropped to 28 percent, among the lowest ever recorded. Voters removed him from office and elected Ronald Reagan in a landslide. The Iran hostage crisis was resolved a few short weeks after that.
If Mr. Carter is looking for the worst administration in history, he should buy a mirror.
Charles Newton, Highlands Ranch
…
Former President Carter’s recent remarks to the Arkansas Democrat Gazette, calling the current American foreign policy “the worst in history,” were hardly appropriate, especially in time of war. Carter’s own administration was not without criticism, such as the mishandling of the Iran hostage affair and Panama Canal treaty. As the White House aptly put it, the former president’s remarks are “increasingly irrelevant.”
B. Stuckey, Denver
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Kudos to former President Carter, whose disapproval of President Bush’s administration included its faith-based initiative funding.
In 2002, President Bush devised a way to give religious groups access to the public purse. Bypassing Congress, which is prohibited from funding religion by the First Amendment, he used executive orders and regulatory changes affecting various Cabinet-level departments and lower federal offices to create faith-based offices at federal agencies. The White House then sponsored regional conferences around the country urging religious groups to apply for tax aid.
Our country was founded on the principle of religious freedom, including freedom from other people’s religion. We must return to this basic value in the election of 2008 by choosing a president who will abolish the publicly funded faith-based programs established by this administration.
Janet Brazill, Colorado Springs
In Wikipedia, should we trust?
Re: “Baby stegosaurus,” May 22 news story.
I was disappointed to see that The Denver Post cited Wikipedia as a source in its front-page article on a baby stegosaurus. Many educators these days teach students that Wikipedia can be a good place to start research for a general overview on a topic and some keywords for searching more trustworthy sources. However, as a final, authoritative source in a works-cited page, many educators find Wikipedia to be unacceptable. This is because the content on Wikipedia is not always created by experts and can be changed at any time by anyone surfing the Web.
We teach students to turn to magazine and newspaper articles, authoritative websites and databases, and reference books for research. This is because the content in these sources is written by experts or professionals who check their facts and have gone through an editor. For this baby stegosaurus article, the Encyclopedia Britannica would have been a more trustworthy source.
How ironic that The Denver Post is citing Wikipedia while we teach students to choose newspaper articles over Wikipedia.
Davinna Artibey, Denver
The writer is a teacher librarian at the Denver Center for International Studies, a grade 6-12 magnet school.
Proposals to reform health care in Colorado
As a Colorado taxpayer, breast cancer survivor and one whose first husband lost a long battle with cancer, I want to say that the state 208 Commission’s recent choices of proposals to evaluate all add up to one thing for me: I hope I never have a life-threatening condition again in Colorado if any of these proposals become reality. And I hope that nobody I love has to be subjected to the rationing, waiting and other debilitating results of what they evidently believe are the best of intentions.
Bringing more government involvement into health care “reform” is not a solution. It is a recipe for disaster. Of the proposals considered, only one reflected my views: the “FAIR” proposal, which has been cast aside. Only by reducing government involvement in health care will we get the kind of justice that will bring about the best care for all at the best possible price. We must remember that health care is not and cannot be free: the skills of doctors, researchers and technology companies must be fairly compensated. The alternative is slavery of the few taxpayers who will foot the huge (unworkable) bills and of the providers of health care who will ultimately leave the profession in order not to be enslaved by it.
This is not regulation on some dispensable part of our lives. This concerns everyone’s survival, to some degree; nobody will be untouched by the outcome of this process. We have a lot to lose.
Hannah Krening, Larkspur
Paying it forward
On Tuesday, a friend and I were having breakfast at Perkins on Buchtel Boulevard in East Denver. A young woman, wearing Levis and a University of Texas sweatshirt, came by on her way to the register and picked up all the meal checks in our area. When we sputtered, “Thanks!” she added, “Now, go and do something nice for someone else today.”
In this age of violence, greed and despair, when our national and world leaders seem timid and directionless, this anonymous woman showed me – and all of us – the way to hope and renewed life. Go and do something nice for someone today.
Fred Eyerman, Denver
FasTracks and diesel
Re: “RTD needs to rein in FasTracks cost hikes,” May 22 editorial.
The Post’s editorial suggesting return to diesel service for RTD overlooks a number of things. RTD’s east corridor will be heavily served. Would you be pleased to have diesel equipment roaring a few blocks from your home every 7.5 minutes in daytime and approximately every 15 minutes in the evening? Other factors are that the neighborhood would like the advantage of better transit service, but diesel equipment accelerates much more slowly than electric, requiring much wider spacing of stations to achieve a reasonable overall run time for each trip. In a nutshell, we are asked to endure more noise pollution and less useful service in regressing to diesel.
Norman Lane, Denver
Remembering an editor
Re: “Idema brought Pulitzer Prize winner to Post,” May 18 obituary.
When he was editor of the editorial page of The Denver Post in the late 1960s, James M. Idema, who died May 2 in Santa Fe, contributed significantly to the quality and development of the newspaper. He was a skilled journalist, a polished writer, a lover of literature and the arts and a man of depth and sensitivity.
Lawrence G. Weiss, Boulder
Online extras
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