A sampling of recent editorials from Colorado newspapers:
NATIONAL:
The Denver Post, April 23, on how to try Boston Marathon bombing suspect:
The Obama administration made the right call Monday in announcing that it was charging Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in federal court rather than hold and question him as an “enemy combatant,” as several Republican lawmakers and voices such as The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page have urged.
As a naturalized citizen, Tsarnaev could not be tried by a military commission anyway and eventually would have been transferred to a civilian court. So the main argument for holding him as an enemy combatant was to question him for an indefinite period without a lawyer.
In the absence of a clear and imminent threat of further terrorism, however, we don’t see how officials could properly justify dispensing with the suspect’s constitutional rights.
“All of the information that I have, they acted alone, these two individuals, the brothers,” Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino said on ABC News’ “This Week.”
No credible authority has contradicted the mayor even as several other officials, such as the Boston police chief, have voiced similar opinions.
In addition, it’s not clear Tsarnaev even meets the legal requirement for enemy combatant—that he is “part of or substantially supported al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States.” His older brother, Tamerlan, who was killed in a shootout last week with police, may well have fit the bill, given multiple reports of how he had become radicalized in recent years. But the younger Tsarnaev’s own sympathies are less well-known.
Not that the Obama administration has been a total stickler in upholding the suspect’s rights. We were disappointed to hear U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts Carmen Ortiz last week declare that they would invoke a public-safety exception to the Miranda rule, under which suspects must be advised of their right to remain silent and to have a lawyer.
But even this exception, involving a day or two of questioning without the Miranda warning, is surely justified only in the presence of an imminent threat—which simply doesn’t seem to apply here. And so we find ourselves agreeing with ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero, who in a statement last weekend said, “Every criminal defendant is entitled to be read Miranda rights. The public safety exception should be read narrowly. It applies only when there is a continued threat to public safety and is not an open-ended exception to the Miranda rule.”
We don’t discount the usefulness to prosecutors in interviewing a suspect before he acquires a lawyer. But the courts eventually came to frown on the practice because of the threat to the 5th and 6th amendments—which apply no less to suspects implicated in great evils as to common criminals.
Editorial:
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The Gazette, April 19, on why conservatives should support federal immigration bill:
When it comes to immigration, conservatives employ the same fallacious zero-sum-game ideology that President Barack Obama and other liberals use to create division between rich and poor.
Critics contend Obama wants poor Americans to believe the wealthy succeed at the expense of everyone else. One person’s gain comes at another person’s loss. There is only so much to go around. The message creates anxiety and a need for government to mandate that we all share wealth by overtaxing those who create it.
It’s easy to promote this concept to anyone who mistakes wealth as a product of government. If government gives a man a phone, he could forget that phones are created and produced by individuals motivated by wages and profits who can produce almost endless numbers of phones. If government gives a man food, he may forget that farmers produce food by planting and nurturing seeds. The phone producer may be rich, but he didn’t get that way by taking Androids from the poor. The farmer didn’t get ahead by stealing fruit from other Americans.
This country became stupendously wealthy by expecting individuals to produce slightly more than they consume. We would never be left with a pie to divide among us. We would function like a potluck dinner. Each family of four would cook up enough for a family of eight. The more who arrived, the bigger the bounty. None would fear another man’s arrival. The excess would easily feed the few who hadn’t the means to arrive with a dish.
The arrangement breaks down when those without a dish outnumber the rest. The American economy becomes dysfunctional when too many consume relative to those who produce.
Our government buys ads that promote food stamp dependence. It pays wages to those who have lost jobs—not just for emergency assistance, but to provide passive wages for years. It provides phones, computers and housing to those who don’t work. Workers spend $124 billion a year to pay for 9 million on disability. They consist of everyone from blind Americans—some of whom cannot work—to those with sore muscles and mood disorders. Eligibility has become more lenient, and recipients have tripled in three decades. Food stamps, once an emergency provision, are promoted as a means for college students to avoid part-time work.
Most CPAs, journalists, engineers and the like don’t shingle roofs or mop floors after losing jobs. They draw wages from the collective until they get a job of their liking. Politicians promote dependence to get elected and stay in power.
That’s why Western Slope farmer John Harold found himself in the New York Times during the summer of 2011. Harold wanted to help reduce unemployment. So he stopped hiring most of the migrant workers he had relied on for years to pick produce. He hired locally and found that American workers would not do the work. Most quit within six hours, deciding unemployment was better. Stories are common of farmers who have let food rot in fields after finding that Americans won’t do farm labor at almost any wage.
The “Gang of Eight”—a bipartisan group of senators—proposed sweeping immigration reforms this week that would bring order to chaos and allow more immigrants to live and work legally in our country. It would establish intense border security while creating guest-worker programs for low-skilled and high-skilled workers. It would establish rigorous criteria for immigrants to earn permanent residence or citizenship. Anyone in the country as a guest-worker would not qualify for federal benefits, including all forms of welfare and Obamacare.
Opponents have invoked zero-sum arguments, such as this:
“We have 20 million Americans who can’t find a full-time job,” said Roy Beck, head of NumbersUSA, which wants less immigration. “It’s as if the Gang of Eight lives in alternate universe.”
No, Mr. Beck. It’s as if the senators know that more people working, producing, earning and spending will grow our economy and help fund the 20 million Americans who have chosen government largess over unpleasant work.
We have become an entitlement society with too few producing relative to those who consume. That’s part of the reason we are mired in debt. The Gang of Eight, which includes Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet, wants us to benefit from a class of people who desire hard work and cannot choose federal assistance over hot, tiresome days in the sun. They also want to facilitate those with talents that we’d be wise to import. And they want to fix our border.
Conservatives would be smart to support this bill while ensuring that it creates more prosperity than dependence. Let’s invite people to the table who will produce more than they consume. It may be our economy’s last great hope.
Editorial:
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STATE:
The Durango Herald, April 17, on Colorado legislation providing Medicaid coverage for low-income residents:
Now that the federal Affordable Care Act has withstood a challenge in the U.S. Supreme Court, states must begin work in earnest to implement its provisions. There is much groundwork done to get health-insurance exchanges up and running, and the Colorado Legislature has taken up a provision to provide Medicaid coverage to more low-income Coloradans. In passing measure, along largely partisan lines, the Senate rightly recognized that investing in health-care coverage is less expensive than paying for the treatments of those who cannot afford it. While not free, it is a worthwhile expenditure.
Senate Bill 200, sponsored by Sen. Irene Aguilar, D-Denver, will extend Medicaid coverage to adults who earn up to 133 percent of the federal poverty level—$15,282 for a single person. This would affect an estimated 187,000 of today’s 800,000 uninsured Coloradans, to the tune of $1 billion next year. That is no small sum, of course, but neither is it an entitlement cornucopia offering Cadillac coverage to all who seek it. Instead, it is an appropriately gauged effort at bringing down the state’s health-care costs by extending coverage to those least likely to afford it on their own, and therefore most likely to be unable to pay for any health services they seek – likely long after any preventive or routine care could have offset a more serious health condition.
For the first several years of the expanded coverage, the federal government will carry the costs, with the state gradually stepping in to pick up the tab. The money for the coverage will come from a tax already being levied on hospital services.
Despite claims that Medicaid is ineffective and rife with fraudulent or improper spending, as state Sen. Ellen Roberts, R-Durango, cited as a concern, the efficacy of preventive care and regular access to doctors is well-supported. For those earning $15,000 a year or less, insurance coverage to provide such access is simply not attainable. If there are improvements to be made in how Medicaid is administered, that should be discussed and addressed, but the program is proved to be an effective means of covering those with limited incomes. Senate Bill 200 deserves passage; it will improve health care for many Coloradans and has the potential to save the state money in the long run.
Aguilar, who is a physician, has upped the ante on health-care coverage by proposing a measure that would provide universal coverage to all Coloradans. She killed the bill last week when it became clear she did not have the votes to move it, but the conversation was an important one. Even with the expanded coverage that SB 200 would provide, hundreds of thousands of Coloradans will not have insurance. Aguilar’s measure would have changed that by levying a payroll-based tax on Colorado employers and workers to cover a basic set of health-care services. The notion was not wildly popular, but Aguilar raises an interesting question of how best to care for those who still lack coverage.
There is more work to do in answering that question, and solving the conundrum of how to simultaneously bring down the cost of health care while expanding the universe of those who have access to it. Senate Bill 200 is a start, as was Aguilar’s failed measure.
Editorial:
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The Coloradoan, April 20, on Colorado election overhaul bill:
Last week, a bill to modernize Colorado’s election process thundered its way onto the floor of Colorado’s House of Representatives. Under the bill, Colorado would mail a ballot to every voter, regardless of whether they’re marked as active or inactive. It would allow prospective voters to register as late as Election Day. A state database would be created to flag duplicate votes in real time.
If voters choose, they could still show up in person.
These are all good things, but we’re frustrated by the method in which it came about.
The Democrats have gained enough of a majority in state politics this year to push bills through without Republican support. As such, this bill was drafted with no input from Republican legislators and no conversation with the department it would most affect: that of Colorado’s Secretary of State.
Democrats who helped push the bill forward claim bipartisan support through their consultation with county clerks, who straddle both sides of the spectrum. Dickey Lee Hullinghorst, Colorado’s House majority leader, told the board she doesn’t want this bill to become a partisan issue. And yet, by alienating the Secretary of State and Republican legislators, that sentiment seems to have come too late.
Unfortunately, this bill is being championed or derided based more on political infighting than on its merit.
The switch to an all-mail ballot system isn’t a huge problem in our book. Nearly 3/4 of voters voted by mail in the 2012 election, so most voters have already made the switch. And those who haven’t would still get the option of voting in person.
When it comes to same-day registration—the other big portion of the bill—opponents have reason to at least question potential fraud issues. We believe that same-day registration isn’t unusual and is ultimately in our best interests—nearly a quarter of U.S. states currently have this method in place. However, given that a voter can walk into a vote center and cast a provisional ballot with nothing more than an easily forged utility bill, we believe that increased voter ID laws should accompany this plan. Without bipartisan support, that’s not likely to happen.
If the bill passes, the Secretary of State’s office and county clerks will have until the fall to get the new provisions ready. That’s a short time frame to switch to all-mail balloting and implement election centers like those already in place in Larimer County. Most importantly, the creation of a real-time statewide database to prohibit dual votes would have to be created and spread statewide in a whirlwind amount of time.
It seems like everything about this bill is rushed, from it being submitted at the 11th hour of the session to its implementation timetable. And we all know that we rarely make the best decisions when placed under time-sensitive pressure.
We support the tenets of this bill. We want voting to be as easy of a process as possible for all residents of Colorado. We side with the majority of Colorado’s county clerks in believing that all-mail voting can be handled securely. We believe same-day registration can get more residents to show up at the polls, as long as fraud concerns are addressed.
They’re all things worthy of championing. But the method in which they came to be seems wrong, and the timing seems unnecessarily rushed.
Save this one for next year, and give legislators and citizens a better chance to weigh in.
Editorial:
