A sampling of recent editorials from Colorado newspapers:
NATIONAL:
The Denver Post, Feb. 15, on the need for serious food safety reform:
As if the economy wasn’t enough to stress about, now we can’t even open a bag of peanut butter crackers without having panic attacks.
This country has suffered through a significant number of food contamination problems, some even proving fatal, over the past few years. The incidents, however repulsive, mostly appeared to be accidental.
That doesn’t seem to be the case in the salmonella contamination scandal that has emerged from a peanut processing plant in rural Georgia.
The filthy conditions and utter contempt for the public’s welfare that have emerged in a widening investigation of Peanut Corporation of America make an irrefutable case for an overhaul of the nation’s food safety system.
For too long, this nation’s food inspection system has been scattered among different agencies, underfunded, lacked a coherent structure and modern techniques.
Many good reform ideas have been taking shape in Congress and among interest groups, including farm-to-table tracking of produce and other commodities, putting all food safety functions under one regulatory roof and giving the government authority to recall products.
Earlier this month, as details from the peanut scandal became public, President Barack Obama said a “complete review” of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration was necessary.
The latest developments in the peanut scandal should strengthen that resolve.
It has become apparent from e-mails unearthed in a growing investigation of Peanut Corporation of America that company executives knew their products had a history of testing positive for salmonella, yet they shipped them anyway.
“Turn them loose,” the company’s owner told the plant manager in an e-mail disclosed in a House hearing last week.
The tainted peanut products, used to make hundreds of items like peanut butter crackers, ice cream and energy bars, have sickened some 600 people and may have caused the deaths of nine others.
The government investigation also showed that plant owners and operators knew full well that they had routine contamination problems. The company even reportedly stopped using a particular lab because it gave them too many positive results.
The outrage that federal lawmakers expressed in a hearing last week was palpable. The peanut company owner, Stewart Parnell, was called to testify, but he declined to answer questions, citing his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.
Nevertheless, lawmakers let him have it.
One of them brandished a jar of the company’s peanut products wrapped in crime scene tape and asked the company owner to eat some of it.
It was a theatrical move, but it made a valid point.
Now, we can only hope that all of the outrage and passion expressed by lawmakers translates into cogent, up-to-date food safety policy.
Turn them loose.
Editorial:
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Rocky Mountain News, Denver, Feb. 14, on Doctors who won’t say no:
Was there ever any doubt that Dr. Michael Kamrava was a reckless maverick who flouted the norms of responsible medical practice? Certainly not after the full story emerged from Southern California over the past two weeks of Nadya Suleman and her octuplets. But the case against Kamrava has been strengthened even more with a new report by the Los Angeles Times that another of his patients is pregnant—with quadruplets.
Playing Russian roulette with the health of women and their children is apparently a habit for the doctor and his West Coast IVF Clinic.
Large multiple births elevate the risks for the mother and often result in lower birth weights and a greater incidence of disabilities and other complications for the babies. Not to mention they heighten the likelihood of wildly higher medical costs.
In the case of the impending quadruplets, for example, the mother is already hospitalized even though her delivery date “could be two or three months from now,” the Times says. Kamrava reportedly transferred seven embryos to the woman, who is approaching 50. He used the eggs of a woman in her 20s. The American Society for Reproductive Medicine recommends one embryo—or at most two—for women up to 35, and a maximum of five in older women. Using the eggs of a younger woman elevated the chances of multiple births.
Suleman, meanwhile, is an apparently unemployed, depressive 33-year-old unwed mother of six (prior to the octuplets) who lives with her parents in a modest, single-story home in Whittier, Calif., and reportedly owes nearly a million dollars on two other houses she owns there. Suleman has admitted that six embryos had been implanted for each of her seven pregnancies—at least three times the number of embryos recommended for women of her age by the association of fertility specialists.
What troubles us—and the California medical board, too, we’re glad to note—is the judgment exercised by Kamrava in helping Suleman conceive her brood. Both the medical board and the reproductive medicine society are investigating whether any ethical standards were breached.
“Historically, we have been very hesitant to regulate anything close to procreation from parents making judgments about how many children they will have and when,” an ethics professor at Santa Clara University told the Los Angeles Times.
“However, that worked under a natural process of fertilization and incubation,” he added. “There are serious questions about whether it works in an era of scientifically enhanced procreation.”
Exactly. To be sure, government has no business telling women how many children they may—or “should”—have. Start down that road and you will end up in the suffocating embrace of an all-wise state dictating lifestyle choices. It’s one thing, however, for bureaucrats to dictate family size. It’s quite another for professional associations to crack down hard, as they should, on doctors who won’t say no to women demanding multiple embryos to maximize their chances for childbirth.
According to The New York Times, “Only 11 percent of in vitro procedures in the United States involve(d) single embryos” in 2006, even though recently promulgated guidelines say that “in many cases, it is healthier to implant only one embryo.”
Granted, the fertility industry is still relatively young and has mushroomed in size in recent years. No doubt it is still refining its sense of what is ethical and what is not. But the cases involving Kamrava are not close calls. And if the medical profession can’t regulate itself in this area, then government will inevitably feel obliged to establish the rules of the game.
Editorial:
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STATE/REGIONAL:
Greeley Tribune, Feb. 15, on the tuition equity bill:
Education is the key to many good things.
It creates a better and more diverse work force. It improves the economy and our quality of life. It creates a more content populace, one that can support itself and its families.
So, why would we want to deny education to anyone?
Exactly.
That’s why we support the tuition equity bill currently before the state legislature. The bill would allow undocumented Colorado residents to pay in-state, rather than out-of-state tuition at Colorado colleges and universities.
We know this bill has lured anti-immigration advocates out of the woodwork. Many question why the state would give any leeway to illegal immigrants to attend our colleges and universities.
Here’s the answer:
“This is an education issue rather than an immigration issue,” said Matt Sundeen, senior policy adviser and general counsel for The Bell Policy Center, a think-tank based in Denver.
We agree.
Many of these students, sons and daughters of illegal immigrants, are here through no fault of their own. They’ve been successful in completing high school, or obtaining a GED.
But then what? Their illegal status does not allow them to qualify for in-state tuition. And out-of-state tuition is definitely cost-prohibitive for many of these students.
In-state tuition in Colorado averages about $2,300 each semester, whereas out-of-state tuition averages $7,000. And lets face it: People aren’t knocking down the doors to give these students scholarships and grants to help them obtain a higher degree.
Naysayers argue that illegal immigrants should not get any tuition breaks because they don’t contribute to our state coffers. That simply isn’t true. It is estimated that illegal immigrants pay between $150-200 million to Colorado in sales, income, gasoline and property taxes per year. That’s a hefty chunk of change.
Many business organizations have thrown their support behind this bill, citing the need for a well-educated workforce. Universities and colleges support it as a way to attract more tuition-paying students in tough times.
“Opening educational opportunity for more of our high school graduates means our state will have a more developed work force down the road, and will be able to attract more high-growth industries,” said Dick Monfort, a Weld County businessman and chairman of the University of Northern Colorado Board of Trustees. Monfort is a strong supporter of the tuition equity bill.
In fact, the diverse group of individuals and organizations supporting this bill is a tell-tale sign that it is the right thing to do. Many, like Monfort, who tend to be politically conservative, see the benefit of educating all our residents, regardless of their immigration status.
It has been suggested that the bill could be amended to require students to sign an affidavit stating they are applying for legal immigration status. That might seem like a good idea on the surface, and many states have instituted just such a requirement. But the reality is, the waiting list for visa’s in this country are years long. Many of these students could never obtain legal visas before graduating from college.
Immigration is a federal issue, and we strongly believe our Congress needs to address issues such as border security, instituting a guest-worker program and giving illegal immigrants a pathway to citizenship. But that, unfortunately, is out of state’s hands. And this issue is immediate.
Some may think this bill gives illegal immigrants something for nothing. We think it’s just the opposite. We are giving these residents an opportunity in the hopes they might become productive members of our society.
And, isn’t that what America is all about?
Editorial:
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Fort Collins Coloradoan, Feb. 15, on the decision against filing charges for Markey-Musgrave campaign ads:
Political campaigns are messy affairs, with accusations flying back and forth. In recent years, many campaigns have gotten out of hand with a focus on attack instead of informing, so it’s understandable that some would seek to rein in the increasingly obnoxious political dialogue in the country.
But the courtroom is not the proper place to try to bring some semblance of civility back to the political process. District Attorney Larry Abrahamson was correct last week when he decided against filing criminal charges over complaints about campaign advertising by Northern Colorado’s two congressional candidates, Republican Marilyn Musgrave and Democrat Betsy Markey.
There’s no need to rehash the history of that bitter campaign, but Markey and Musgrave in September filed complaints against each other saying campaign advertising violated a Colorado law against “knowingly” or “recklessly” making false statements to influence voters.
A bipartisan panel of five prosecutors reviewed the complaints and recommended against criminal charges, and Abrahamson concurred.
All came to the conclusion that the statements in the ads weren’t based on “actual malice,” a high standard the Supreme Court has set for punishing speech about public figures. The standard is set to rightfully encourage robust political discourse, even if that discourse sometimes turns ugly.
The decision not to file charges shouldn’t be seen as an endorsement of the advertisements. The panel reviewing the complaint found “the perception communicated to the public may have been inaccurate, misleading or false” and “there was not an effort by either campaign to be as accurate or informative as possible.”
The Colorado Legislature passed the law creating criminal penalties for false political speech in 2005. Though the motives may have been good, it’s unlikely that the law will result in a successful prosecution. The Supreme Court has correctly set a very high bar for punishing political speech, and only the most outrageous conduct would meet that test.
The power to reward or punish political speech should rest with voters, not with courts.
Editorial:
