A sampling of recent editorials from Colorado newspapers:
NATIONAL:
The Daily Sentinel, Grand Junction, Colo., Dec. 21, on bill designed to make it more difficult for mentally unstable people to purchase guns:
One might think that a gun bill which had the support of such traditionally opposing groups as the National Rifle Association and the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence would have an easy time winning passage in Congress.
But that hasn’t been the case for legislation that would make it easier to detect people with documented mental-health problems when they attempt to buy guns. The sensible measure finally won congressional passage on Wednesday, but it remains uncertain whether President George W. Bush will sign it or veto it.
The bill had been introduced in Congress years ago but it never really came close to passage. It garnered renewed publicity and additional support last April following the shootings at Virginia Tech University. After the mass murders there, it was revealed that Seung-Hui Cho, who killed 32 students and himself, used two guns he had bought despite his well-documented history of mental illness. But the legislation stalled again shortly afterward, only to be revived this month
The legislation would clarify what mental health records should be reported to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, which retailers use to determine whether to sell someone a gun.
That entirely reasonable provision was held up in large part by Oklahoma Republican Sen. Tom Coburn until provisions were added saying states would receive some financial relief from the federal government for the cost of complying with the rules and that the government would pay the legal costs of veterans who successfully prove they were wrongly kept from purchasing a gun because of inaccurate mental-health data.
Bush should sign the bill without hesitation. It is a logical means to make it more difficult for mentally unstable people to acquire guns, without trampling on the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding Americans.
Editorial: 7—4A—gun—edit.html
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The Gazette, Colorado Springs, Colo., Dec. 20, on Congress finally managing to pass a budget:
If your family or business operated this way it would soon be shunned by creditors and suppliers. But the U.S. government operated without a budget for this fiscal year, which began Oct. 1, until now, thanks to petty and sometimes incompetent maneuvering. But Congress, an institution that can’t keep its own house in order, has no qualms about passing rules to keep other sectors of society in line.
The federal budget is supposed to consist of 13 separate appropriations, all passed before Oct. 1. But Congress has been busy passing futile resolutions that won’t change the administration’s course in Iraq, and this administration doesn’t know how to negotiate except through the threat of a veto. So it’s taken them a while to get it together.
Because they all want to get home for the holidays, instead of considering governmental departments separately, they threw everything except defense into one $555 billion “omnibus” spending bill. One major problem with such bills is that it’s easier for politicians to hide wasteful spending in them. In addition, it’s more difficult to track legitimate spending in these huge bills. No one really knows what they’re voting on.
By calling regular funding for border security, veterans care and even security for political conventions “emergencies,” the House managed to spend more than the White House wanted. But since it wasn’t the $22 billion extra that congressional Democrats originally wanted, President Bush has given it lukewarm approval—stymieing congressional Republicans who thought the administration wanted them to go to the mattresses on this one.
The Democrats had promised that “earmarks”—pet projects inserted at the behest of a single member without hearings or other deliberations—would be reduced by 50 percent. Citizens Against Government Waste, however, counted 11,043 earmarks in this year’s budget, compared with 9,963 in the fiscal 2006 budget. Total earmark spending, however, was down.
“Congress refuses to rein in its wasteful spending or curb its corruption,” said Rep. John Shadegg, R-Ariz.
Democrats were less than pleased with the results, looking for more spending on domestic programs. They were satisfied, however, with moves that restored some spending in areas Bush wanted to cut from the budget.
All the shenanigans cost us money, but at least now we have a budget.
Newspaper:
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STATE/REGIONAL:
The Durango Herald, Dec. 20, on the state’s voting machines:
Voting machines have been the subject of a great—and growing—amount of suspicion in recent years, much of which has been expressed most passionately by activists on the left. Now, at least some of those fears have been confirmed by a conservative Republican.
That political curiosity notwithstanding, the situation demands a fix that will be widely accepted and well understood. Vote counting can never be absolutely accurate, but it must always be perfectly fair.
On Dec. 17, Secretary of State Mike Coffman decertified voting machines used in 53 of the state’s 65 counties. Three of four brands his office tested failed to perform up to state standards. With that, it remains up in the air how elections will be conducted in some of the state’s largest counties.
Southwest Colorado is largely unaffected. La Plata, Archuleta and Montezuma counties primarily rely on machines made by Premier Election Systems, which passed all of Coffman’s tests and remain certified. Montezuma County does have some Hart machines, which were decertified.
Also worrisome is that Ohio’s secretary of state has decertified his state’s Premier machines. That could boost any challenge critics might mount to the use of those devices.
That also points to the national nature of this controversy and to the underlying problems. Counties bought electronic voting machines in part to comply with the Help America Vote Act, which Congress passed in the wake of the 2000 election debacle. That election convinced observers of the need to find a better way to count votes and fueled fears of voting fraud and manipulated outcomes.
Contributing to those fears are several factors. One is widespread experience with real computer problems and unfriendly software. (If Windows Vista is involved, the race between Barrack Obama and Hillary Clinton could be won by Dick Cheney—but in any case would require the voter to accept a series of user agreements.)
Another is a simple distrust of technology. How does a citizen know, for example, that voting machines cannot be programmed so that every third vote cast for candidate A is actually recorded for candidate B?
Still another is Democrats’ distrust of the Bush administration and the politicizing of what should be nonpartisan government agencies.
All of those concerns have led to repeated calls for returning to paper ballots. But in part at least, that idea mistakes the nature of the problem.
The 2000 election was a statistical dead heat, essentially within the margin of error. There is simply no way to ensure a perfect count across a nation of 300 million people. Besides, many of the worst problems with that count happened with paper ballots. Remember “hanging chads”?
And no party has a monopoly on fraud. In response to questions about Chicago’s role in his election, President John F. Kennedy famously joked that if Lake Michigan had been dredged, Herbert Hoover would still have been president.
Mike Coffman has his work cut out for him. But he is on the right track. Ensuring a valid vote count will take hard work, attention to detail and an absolute dedication to openness and transparency. In all that, Coffman is well qualified.
No one can ensure that no vote will ever by lost or miscounted. What Coffman can and must do is assure voters that the overall process will be honest and fair.
Editorial: n&article—path/opinion/opin071220—1.htm
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Fort Collins Coloradoan, Dec. 21, on the state’s preparedness for a flu pandemic:
Colorado received some good news and some potentially concerning news regarding its ability to respond to a flu pandemic.
Colorado scored a nine out of 10 on a scale of emergency preparedness in a national report by the Trust for America’s Health. The report measured emergency plans and ability to distribute resources, including medicine, in the case of a deadly flu outbreak.
However, Colorado was one of only seven states that were criticized in the report for not stockpiling antiviral medications should a flu epidemic occur.
The reasons for not stockpiling the medicine appear logical. Dr. Ned Colange, the Colorado Department of Health chief medical officer, said the state determined that the federal government’s strategic national stockpile already has dedicated more than 687,000 courses of antivirals for Colorado. Colange said this is enough to treat the likely number of high-risk residents who might contract the flu. Additionally, he said antivirals have a shelf life of only five years, meaning the state would have to keep purchasing the medicine to make sure it was viable.
“We’re really talking about using precious state resources to pay for a drug of really uncertain benefit that would be used to address an event of uncertain timing and uncertain severity,” Colange told The Associated Press.
All this seems to make sense, but state health officials also must ensure that the public understands such measures.
He and other public health officials must assure Coloradans that all measures taken so far to train and prepare for a public health disaster should be adequate. Another concern is that our neighboring state, Wyoming, received a poor grade from the report. Will this increase Coloradans’ risks?
While this report overall looks favorably on how the state of Colorado would respond to a pandemic, it remains an individual responsibility rather than a government mandate to be prepared in case such an epidemic becomes reality.
While government officials are left to weigh risks and availability of antiviral medications, the best tack for Coloradans remains to prepare for the worst and hope for the best.
Editorial: 10334/1014/CUSTOMERSERVICE02
