A sampling of recent editorials from Colorado newspapers:
NATIONAL:
The Pueblo Chieftain, Jan. 7, on $100-a-barrel oil:
Last week oil traded briefly at about $100 a barrel, 10 times the price a decade ago. Still, analysts don’t expect record-high prices by themselves to send the economy into recession, simply because expensive as oil is, energy doesn’t consume as big a chunk of Americans’ budgets as it did a few decades ago.
Nevertheless, gasoline prices hovering at or near $3 per gallon don’t appear to be going away. But the public seems to be adjusting.
For one thing, economists say that generally the jump in oil is less devastating than previous spikes because incomes have risen faster than energy costs. However, with growing demand for oil in China and India, there seems to be no relief in sight.
It would not have had to come to this, though. Oil industry experts say there are huge reserves beneath the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and off our shores below the seas.
That oil is staying put, for the time being, at least, thanks to radical environmentalists. As far as ANWR is concerned, measures to open up that rich energy trove have died in the Senate, most recently in 2005 and 2006.
ANWR comprises 19 million acres in northeast Alaska, 17.5 million of which are totally off limits to drilling or any other kind of economic activity. Radical greens have put a lot of their energy into stopping this measure in recent years. They use propaganda showing snowy mountain ranges to decry the “despoliation” of one of the nation’s “last great places.”
The site of the drilling would not be those pristine mountains, but a flat plain closer to the Arctic Ocean. The drilling site would be limited to a parcel of land measuring only 2,000 acres, less than a tenth of the area of the city of Pueblo and only a tiny fraction of ANWR.
To put it into perspective, Alaska has 141 million acres of protected lands, an area equal to the size of California and New York combined.
Drilling critics have—with some success—tried to confuse wildlife refuges with national parks, wilderness areas and other more highly protected categories of public lands. But national wildlife refuges typically allow limited mining, logging, drilling, ranching or other activities.
Another wildlife refuge in Alaska, the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge, has been the site of drilling for decades. The oil production there rarely makes the news because it has not caused any problems, although Kenai has far more wildlife than ANWR.
Still, the radical greens have tried to make a case that ANWR drilling, and the pipeline which would transport the oil to port, would harm the caribou in the area. However, the caribou herd that migrates through Prudhoe Bay has increased from 3,000 head to 23,000 since drilling commenced there in 1977.
Drilling would not harm ANWR. But drilling there has been precluded time and again by a Big Lie.
Remember that the next time you fill up at the pump.
Editorial:
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The Gazette, Colorado Springs, Colo., Jan. 5, on Pakistan looking to the future:
A Pakistani disc jockey working the evening drive time received an e-mail request from a listener to play “Long Road to Ruin,” but decided not to play it. “That’s not positive,” she told a New York Times interviewer. “No. It’s loud.”
Instead, she stuck with songs like “Don’t Stop the Music.” and Tom Petty’s “The Waiting.” “I want to keep it mellow but happy,” she said. “People in Pakistan deserve a break.”
People in Pakistan do deserve a break after days of rioting that left the charred hulks of cars all over city streets and looted trucks along highways. Most shops were shuttered between Dec. 27 and Jan. 1 and open for only a few hours then. Rumors of another assassination drove people inside and conspiracy theories abounded.
Whether Pakistan will pull through without major upheavals, including the possibility that its nuclear arsenal, reputedly secured fairly well by the military, might be subject to looting or worse, is difficult to say. Unfortunately, the world’s major powers are virtually powerless to prevent a downward spiral. Prevention of further chaos must come from within Pakistan itself. Perhaps disc jockeys refusing to play more negative songs just now will be part of the solution.
The more important steps must come from the government, such as it is. While it is encouraging that President Pervez Musharraf says he has invited Scotland Yard to participate in an inquiry into Benazir Bhutto’s assassination, it is shocking that she was buried without an autopsy and the scene of the assassination was cleaned up, destroying whatever evidence a more painstaking investigation might have unearthed.
A full-blown international inquiry, similar to the one conducted after the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese premier Rafik Hariri, might not come up with a definitive answer. But it would be worth doing nonetheless, if only to restore a modicum of credibility.
In a country with a history of democratic stability the postponement of an election might be troubling, but in Pakistan it simply means that vote-rigging by the government—Bhutto had reportedly planned to deliver a report on such machinations to two American politicians the day she was killed—will be done later rather than this week.
Some American politicians have urged Musharraf to resign. That’s probably a good idea—eventually. But the perception of U.S. meddling, already widespread, would be healthy to avoid just now.
It goes against the grain to hope the military maintains its power, but since the military controls Pakistan’s nuclear weapons (and too much else), that may be the least-worst outcome to hope for. The world can only wait and hope that reason outweighs emotion in Pakistan.
Newspaper:
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STATE/REGIONAL:
Fort Collins Coloradoan, Jan. 6, on the coming legislative session:
The upcoming legislative session will be seminal to Coloradans on many levels.
First, it appears that lawmakers are poised to take steps to address the state’s constitutional quagmire. Competing limitations set forth in the Taxpayers Bill of Rights (which includes a prohibitive spending formula for the state budget), Amendment 23 (which guarantees funding for K-12 education despite the state’s economic condition) and the Gallagher Amendment (which places a greater taxation burden on business) have created a budget nightmare in which lawmakers have little or no flexibility to respond to needs, such as higher education and transportation.
Although voters correctly approved Referendum C in 2005 to suspend for five years spending limitations set forth in TABOR, it remains only a temporary fix. A permanent solution that allows for flexibility while also emphasizing efficiency is needed.
House Speaker Andrew Romanoff said earlier this year he will introduce a proposed constitutional amendment that would temporarily suspend the “single-subject” rule that prevents ballot topics from including more than one subject. If voters approved the suspension, it would allow lawmakers to craft a reform package that would address TABOR, Gallagher and Amendment 23 all at once.
We agree with Sen. Bob Bacon, a Fort Collins Democrat, that this is the time to resolve this constitutional stranglehold on the state budget.
The challenge, though, is for Romanoff and other leaders to identify to voters and lawmakers just what kind of changes to the amendments they will propose. For example, Sen. Steve Johnson, R-Fort Collins, said he would support adjusting the spending formula set forth in TABOR but doesn’t want to alter the amendment’s requirement that tax questions must be approved by voters.
The constitutional questions are complicated, meaning the onus will be on lawmakers and Gov. Ritter to explain why such changes are needed to improve Colorado.
In the meantime, task forces on health care, transportation and higher education are expected to reveal their recommendations to boost funding and promote reform. The governor will have to identify priorities here to avoid pitting very real needs against each other on the state ballot.
This is a key time for Coloradans to both participate in their state government by helping to identify priorities and in gaining insight into how well-intended constitutional amendments have handcuffed Colorado from improving its infrastructure and economic opportunities. The session opens Jan. 9—it’s one worth watching.
Editorial: 60337/1014/CUSTOMERSERVICE02
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Rocky Mountain News, Jan. 4, on the recent audit of Colorado’s homeland security efforts:
The scathing federal audit released Thursday about Colorado’s compliance with U.S. Department of Homeland Security directives is, on the most obvious level, an indictment of the strategies employed by the administration of former Gov. Bill Owens.
In a larger sense, however, it should serve as a cautionary tale of how “free” money from Washington—even lots of it that’s intended to address a major public priority—can be squandered or spent haphazardly if the right systems aren’t in place.
We were critical of the former governor’s approach to managing homeland security grants when he announced it in May 2003. It dispersed responsibilities among several government agencies and lacked benchmarks to measure performance. As a result, accountability was blurred and oversight became an afterthought.
Sadly, the audit vindicated those concerns. It evaluated about 15 percent of the $156 million in federal grants that were provided roughly during Owens’ final three years in office. It called Colorado’s homeland security organization “ineffective,” providing “minimal assurance that its processes were well controlled” or that its funding was directed in ways to minimize risks and enhance security.
In addition, the committee selected to oversee the state’s homeland security programs did not meet regularly; failed to properly review applications for grants; did not monitor contractors and local agencies; did not evaluate the projects it funded based on the purported risks they would address; and did not report to the governor quarterly, as the law demands.
Beyond basic lapses in administration, training of first responders was at times haphazard or nonexistent. Emergency response equipment that was supposed to be used in training exercises sat in crates, unopened. The phone system in a command vehicle did not work—but it could not be replaced under warranty because the agency that bought the vehicle didn’t list the phone system in its equipment inventory, so no one knew to test it in advance.
Aside from that, Mrs. Lincoln, what did you think about the play?
Gov. Bill Ritter has taken strides that address the major concerns raised by the audit. Ritter has made one person—Gen. Mason Whitney—responsible for coordinating security efforts, and provided Whitney with experienced managers to keep tabs on how federal grants are being spent.
Looking forward, Whitney has insisted that all new federal grants to local governments be allocated based on risks. Personnel training and exercise drills now apparently meet guidelines set by federal officials. Equipment is regularly tested to make sure it’s in sound working order and properly maintained.
Coloradans should consider themselves lucky, in a way. Despite the mismanagement of that federal money, the audit says that Washington may want no more than 5 percent of it—$7.8 million—back.
The audit findings also make you wonder how many of the homeland security grants nationally have been frittered away. We’d bet the total sum is staggering.
Editorial:
