A sampling of recent editorials from Colorado newspapers:
NATIONAL:
The Pueblo Chieftain, Dec. 21, on the extension of the Bush-era tax rates:
The two-year extension of the Bush-era tax rates is now the law of the land with President Barack Obama’s signature on the legislation on Dec. 17.
Mr. Obama had wanted to extend the lower tier of tax rates but raise the upper tier rates on those whom he called “millionaires and billionaires.” But families making $500,000 or $600,000 a year are hardly “millionaires and billionaires” although their rates would have jumped starting Jan. 1.
Yet the president finally agreed to maintaining the current rates for all.
The good news is that in the near term, tax uncertainty has been eliminated. And we hope this will spur private employers to consider hiring.
Businesses across the nation, from small operations to large-scale enterprises, have been leery of hiring because of the uncertainty about what their tax liabilities would be after the scheduled end of the Bush rates. This uncertainty has been an integral reason why the economy has been so slow to rebound from what’s been dubbed the Great Recession.
Not only on the national scale, we also hope the extension of tax rates will encourage employers in Pueblo and the rest of Colorado to start hiring on a substantial scale. Pueblo County’s jobless rate spiked to a recession high of 10.3 percent in November, according to preliminary figures issued by the state. Unemployment hasn’t been that high since a short recession in the 1990s and, before that, the city’s major recession due to huge layoffs in the early 1980s.
According to the recent state report, jobless rates in the region also rose in November. The Canon City area posted an 11.2 percent rate and Trinidad’s rate was at 8.9 percent.
Colorado’s overall rate of 8.6 percent placed it in a tie with Pennsylvania. North Dakota scored best with 3.8 percent while Nevada was worst at 14.3 percent.
We’d prefer that the federal tax rates were made permanent, and we hope the new Congress that will convene on Jan. 5 will move swiftly to implement that policy. That would give employers even more confidence that the economy once again is poised to take off.
Stay tuned.
Editorial:
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The Reporter-Herald, Dec. 20, on a study from The Center on Education Policy that analyzed state test score trends:
A new analysis of student test scores presents achievement gap data that show how our slow pace of educational improvement could be leaving behind a generation of students in some states and several generations in others.
The Center on Education Policy analyzed state test score trends to find that while the gap between students of different races, ethnic groups and income levels has narrowed in some states, it has widened in others. If progress continues as it has, the center found, it would take 105 years to close the gap between white and African-American students in one state. In others, the pace is closer to a decade.
This good-news, bad-news report is a companion to the center’s early research that found rising reading scores in 67 percent of the 23 states studied, according to an Education Week article.
For Colorado, the center found narrowing achievement gaps in math and reading, except for fourth-grade reading, where gaps widened between Native American and white students and between low-income students and other students. Reading gaps also widened between eighth-grade girls and boys and in fourth-grade math for Native American students.
The concept of America’s achievement gap has been discussed for decades.
This study’s new way of measuring that gap reminds us of the importance of addressing the issue now, as decades-long gaps leave a generation of children behind.
Keeping kids in school and helping them achieve is an important foundation of life. Education correlates to higher earning power just as poor academic performance correlates to incarceration and other challenges.
It’s cheaper and wiser to invest in youth.
The Achievement Gap Initiative of Harvard University found that student achievement rose when leadership focused thoughtfully and relentlessly on improving the quality of instruction.
Others say that good schools don’t solve the problem because families and communities are key.
The best solutions certainly involve everyone.
We as a nation—school administrators, teachers, parents and community leaders and members—must all accept responsibility and commit to our future.
It starts with our children.
Editorial:
STATE:
The Gazette, Dec. 16, on the need for the Colorado Legislature to allow civil unions for same-sex couples:
The political arm of Colorado Springs-based Focus on the Family has relentlessly opposed gay marriage. It helped pass Amendment 43 in 2006, which defines marriage as a union between one man and one woman. So much for religion defining marriage. Amendment 43 grants this authority to government. Don’t ask a minister, priest or rabbi about marriage; ask the Legislature and governor.
Heading toward a new Legislative session, Focus on the Family’s political arm, Citizen Link, plans to oppose a proposal for civil unions in Colorado. Mostly, the unions would facilitate civilized adjudication of property disputes when same-sex couples or other nonmarried couples break up.
“This is a steppingstone to one thing only, and that’s redefining marriage, and that has happened in other states,” said Citizen Link’s Jenny Tyree, as quoted in the Denver Post.
That’s an extreme, slippery-slope argument. It’s like the National Abortion Rights Action League opposing protection of unborn babies from violent crime because it’s a steppingstone to outlawing abortion.
Focus on the Family has been an asset to the country. It has provided support and guidance for Christians who desire to live more by the written word.
The organization’s downfall is the lobbying arm, which advocates the force of law to prevent others from living peacefully as they choose. By advocating government force, the organization invites advocacy of government control over religious lifestyles. It leads the way and invites opposition to expression of Christian traditions in public, such as manger scenes in December. It inspires a will to get back at Christians with a scouring of all Christian tradition from public view. Intolerance breeds intolerance.
It is impossible to reason how traditional, heterosexual marriages are threatened by other relationships among adults who would like to be married. Not long ago, some argued that a traditional marriage among two whites or two blacks would be threatened by another couple’s interracial marriage. It was the paranoid and impoverished construct of those who believed one couple’s good fortune was best maintained by another’s state-imposed deprivation. Experience shows us that one couple’s interracial marriage has exactly no effect on another couple’s same-race marriage.
But we aren’t even talking marriage. The obstacles to same-sex marriage in Colorado are nearly insurmountable. It was fine for churches to oppose same-sex couples, denouncing them as sinful and refusing to perform their weddings. But that freedom wasn’t enough for the political arm of Focus and several other religious institutions. They fought for and achieved blunt-force legal condemnation of same-sex marriage after Colorado survived 106 years without a constitutional amendment that defined marriage.
Today, same-sex couples aren’t just denied sacramental marriage in private institutions that rightly uphold moral convictions. Today, they cannot conduct the ordinary business of just getting through life.
To obtain just a bit more freedom, State Sen. Pat Steadman wants to introduce a bill that would give same-sex couples the limited protection that comes with registering their relationships as civil unions. Steadman, D-Denver, is gay and in a same-sex relationship. He has no interest in threatening the relationships of same-sex couples. He acknowledges that voters have spoken, and same-sex marriage isn’t a viable option. He just wants a more manageable life.
It seems un-Christian-like to advocate force of law, when not needed to maintain the peace, merely to hold down those considered sinful by some religious sects. Jesus didn’t burden prostitutes and tax collectors with government force. He dined with them.
Furthermore, nothing could be less conservative than forcing the will of a majority on individuals who lead peaceful lifestyles they’ve chosen. Conservatives used to advocate limiting the role of government in private lives, leaving moral guidance to churches.
For the sake of a more-free state, and in the interest of a free market of lifestyle choices that allows religion to flourish, cut same-sex couples some slack. At least allow them the second-class opportunity to register their relationships as “civil unions” in a state that denies them marriage.
Editorial:
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The Denver Post, Dec. 21, on flaws in the state’s concealed-weapons database that could endanger law-enforcement and citizens’ privacy:
Police have been relying on a database that is woefully flawed to acquire information about those with permits to carry concealed pistols in Colorado.
The database is both compromised by errors and overly intrusive to permit holders’ right to privacy.
We urge local law enforcement officials to take the program more seriously and to overhaul their reporting to the state database.
State auditors recently found far too many cases of flawed data, such as reports indicating a permit holder no longer was allowed to carry a handgun secretly, when in fact the person did still possess that right. Sometimes the errors occurred in the opposite direction, creating potential problems for police who consult the database before serving warrants.
What’s more, as many as 20 counties, including populous ones like El Paso and Douglas, don’t enter any permit information into the database, according to The Denver Post’s Kirk Mitchell. The lapse means that information for 16,000 permit holders isn’t available.
The audit estimated that 63 percent of some 51,000 entries in the Colorado Crime Information Center’s computer system are flawed.
The problem is that police regularly rely on the database. Incorrect or misleading information regarding whether a contact is armed obviously can put an officer at significant risk.
Auditors also found that far more information about permit holders is being entered into the database than state law requires.
Officials are entering data about a person’s race and occupation, for example, and even listing Social Security and driver’s license numbers in addition to the actual information requested on the application.
The right to carry a hidden gun is a serious matter, and law enforcement officials need to do a better job keeping track of these permits. If they don’t, lawmakers may need to step in and clarify how the process is meant to function.
Editorial:
