A sampling of recent editorials from Colorado newspapers:
NATIONAL:
The Denver Post, Feb. 11, on President Obama changing birth control stipulations in his health care reform:
You can call President Obama’s very public retreat on contraception and religious rights a compromise or a surrender. But, however you frame it, the important thing is that the president ended up doing the right thing.
The place where religious freedoms and reproductive rights meet is often a political and constitutional minefield. And Obama stepped right into the middle of it last summer in announcing rules that employer-provided health insurance plans must include free birth control.
The plan, part of the health care reform law, exempted expressly religious institutions, such as churches, from rules that violate their religious beliefs. But it did not exempt religious institutions with a more secular calling, including Catholic hospitals, universities and charities.
The original plan was loudly criticized—and from many sides. Progressive Catholics such as former Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine split from the plan. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has been a strong opponent. And most of the GOP presidential field have said that the president’s plan was, in effect, a declaration of war on religion.
Clearly, the Obama administration did not see the storm of disapproval coming, although the president had reportedly been warned by many Catholics in his administration, including Vice President Joe Biden.
Searching for a compromise, Obama found one in his home state of Hawaii, where the rules on insurance and contraception offered a solution.
Obama’s new plan basically takes the church out of the equation. The church-related institutions no longer have to offer their employees insurance that includes contraception. And, in looking at the free speech issue, the churches do not have to inform employees of alternate means of acquiring free birth control.
The burden will now basically fall on the insurance companies, who will not only have to inform these employees of their rights, but also provide free birth control as part of any preventative package.
The logic for insurers, according to the Obama administration, is that the price of contraception is far cheaper for the insurance companies than the cost of covering pregnancy and childbirth. Women’s groups also point out that contraception reduces unwanted pregnancies and, therefore, reduces the number of abortions.
The initial reaction to the ruling seems to be positive. The Catholic Health Association, which had criticized Obama’s plan, embraced the compromise. The bishops, who many expect to still oppose the plan, issued a statement calling it a “first step.”
This allows the church, and the Obama administration, a way out of a conflict that never needed to have happened.
The church is not directly involved, and women’s access to birth control has not been jeopardized.
We believe the compromise, which should have been worked out in advance of the original ruling, is one that all sides should now be able to embrace.
Editorial:
———
The Pueblo Chieftain, Feb. 14, on President Obama’s latest budget plan:
President Barack Obama on Monday unveiled his latest budget that is loaded with deficit spending and tax increases on the wealthy but avoids tough choices on the soaring costs of entitlements.
The president’s budget request to Congress forecasts a deficit of $1.33 trillion in the current fiscal year—even higher than expected—and calls for at least $1.5 trillion in tax hikes over the next decade. By including $350 billion in short-term stimulus spending, Mr. Obama is submitting a plan that is ready-made for his re-election campaign.
Douglas Holtz-Eakin, former director of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, said, “He has put out budgets that lead to a death spiral. His budgets have never added up, and he has a propensity to use it as a very powerful campaign tool.”
This is the fourth Obama budget proposal calling for deficits on the high side of $1 trillion. This current proposal is for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1.
What the president is attempting to do is enlarge the entitlement society, for he fails in his budget proposal to attack the financial time bombs that are Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.
According to the Heritage Foundation’s latest Index of Dependency—which measures the degree to which individuals rely on benefits funded by the tax payments of other Americans—these four facts illustrate the reality that our country is losing the spirit of independence that is the heart of citizenship:
Takers get more than makers: Individuals received on average $32,748 worth of benefits annually in 2010, the most recent year for which full data is available. By comparison, the average personal disposable income of tax-paying Americans was $32,446.
More takers mean more costs for taxpayers: An estimated 67.3 million people in America depended on government for food stamps, retirement income, health care, job training and a host of other benefits.
Fewer makers to support each taker: Just as former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher predicted, sooner or later the entitlement state runs out of other peoples’ money to redistribute. In 2010, nearly half—49.5 percent—of all adult Americans paid no federal income taxes.
Ranks of the takers are exploding: The baby boomer generation has begun retiring and within the next 25 years their ranks will swell to more than 70 million. Virtually all of them will depend on government for many benefits.
Alexis de Tocqueville said that the American republic will last only “until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury.” With his budget plan, President Obama hopes that the takers will propel him back into office this November.
Editorial:
———
STATE:
The Daily Sentinel, Feb. 12, on merger plan for state’s parks and wildlife departments:
The Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission approved a 250-page Merger Implementation Plan for the combined agencies Feb. 9, amid surprisingly little anxiety or objection.
In fact, it appears the merger of the two state agencies, which was approved by legislation that passed easily last year and was officially begun last July, has gone more smoothly than many observers anticipated, including The Daily Sentinel.
But one critical area of concern is only partially addressed in the merger plan. Exactly how it is dealt with will be determined over coming months.
That issue involves the potential comingling of funds between what used to be the Division of Parks and the Division of Wildlife, when much of their funding can only be spent for specific uses under federal or state law and the Colorado Constitution.
For instance, the wildlife agency receives federal money from the Pittman-Robertson and Dingell-Johnson funds, and that money can only be used for specified wildlife-related projects. Both agencies have also received money from the Colorado Lottery and Great Outdoors Colorado that also must be used in the manner they are directed.
Stakeholders in both groups, but especially wildlife organizations, spoke out last year about the problems that could be created—including a possible requirement to repay the federal money—if the funds were comingled and used improperly.
The Parks and Wildlife Commission, formed from the two separate citizens commissions that used to oversee each agency, has recognized the potential problem of comingled funds. In the lengthy Merger Implementation Plan, it says: “Maintaining appropriate segregation of and adequately accounting for the use of these different funds will be paramount to the success of the merger.”
Details on how that segregation will be accomplished have, however, yet to be established.
“Separately, a technical work group has been formed to address the fund segregation and accounting issues inherent in implementing the recommendations of the work groups and the Transition Team,” the merger plan says. “That work group will identify the precise mechanisms that will be put in place across a range of different circumstances to insure proper segregation and accounting of funds.”
That’s fine, but care must be taken as other recommendations in the plan are implemented to share financial services and accounting functions.
That concern aside, it appears the two now-combined commissions and the staff of the two agencies—with input from stakeholder groups—have crafted a reasonable plan to merge the two agencies and save state money.
Editorial:
———
Loveland Daily Reporter-Herald, Feb. 10, on “Make My Day” law:
Shooting a home intruder became legal when the state passed the “Make My Day” law in the 1980s.
But should business owners and their employees receive that same immunity in the workplace?
That’s the proposal in the “Make My Day Better” law making its way through the Colorado Legislature. It passed the House on an initial reading Feb. 9.
Thankfully, many believe the Democratic-controlled Senate will kill the bill, as several attempts to pass the law have failed in the past.
As written, the bill is simply too broad, allowing all employees of a business to become “justified in using any degree of physical force, including deadly force, against another person” when that other person has committed a crime. It goes so far as to allow such force even when that person “intends” to commit a crime or the employee “reasonably believes that the other person might use any physical force, no matter how slight, against any occupant of the dwelling or place of business.”
The words “intention” and “no matter how slight” set dangerously low thresholds for use of potentially deadly force.
Further, House Bill 1088 grants immunity from criminal prosecution and civil liability.
One of the bill’s sponsors asks: “Are you worth somehow less in the workplace than you are in your residence?”
The simple answer is “No.” But conflicts with strangers are more likely to occur in the course of doing business.
And that should worry business owners, as the proposed law says nothing about protecting a proprietor whose employees choose to carry out justice on their behalf under such broad definitions. If the shooter is immune, could the business owner be liable?
Current law allows for the right to self-defense and adequately addresses self-protection at home.
This attempt at making the law better isn’t on target.
Editorial:
