Hypocrisy of SB 252
Sponsors excluded from cost of own bill: Two of the main State Senate sponsors, Senate president John Morse (D-Colorado Springs) and Senator Gail Schwartz (D-Aspen) conveniently carved their own districts out of the bill. Because municipally owned utilities are excluded from the bill, Morse won’t have to pay the cost of his own legislation. While […]
Denver centric eco-left targets rural Colorado
Denver area eco-leftists have rural Colorado in their sights. In a September 2012 letter to state legislative candidates, Colorado Environmental Coalition Executive Director Elise Jones (now Boulder County Commissioner) and Colorado Conservation Voters Executive Director Pete Maysmith implied that dirty air in the Denver metro area may be the result of rural Colorado’s not having […]
The Constitutional Issues In Same-Sex Marriage
I’ve found that most of the discussion about same-sex marriage, even among lawyers, tends to mis-characterize the constitutional issues. This is particularly true of the “equal protection” issues. Under the Constitution as originally understood, jurisdiction over domestic relations outside federal enclaves and federal territories was reserved to the states. State laws dealing with domestic relations […]
Let’s Not Allow Test Cheating Scandals to Lead to Faulty Conclusions
Let’s go over it again: Standardized tests are far from the be-all and end-all of education. But if we’re not going to put money in student backpacks and make schools directly accountable to parents, how can such assessments NOT be used as a key component of measuring student progress, teacher effectiveness, and school quality? If […]
Well, Teachers Union Leaders Could Use a New Argument Against School Choice
Take your hats off to those teachers union officials, they sure know how to plan ahead sometimes. The Education Intelligence Agency’s Mike Antonucci brings our attention to a PBS Newshour clip in which NEA president Dennis Van Roekel tried to respond to a question about why private educational choice works at the college level but […]
Split Partisan SB 213 Vote Shifts Debate from Real Reform to Raising Taxes
In case you haven’t been following me on Twitter (which raises the question: Why not?), you may not have noticed that the big education bill of the 2013 Colorado legislative session has made its way through the State Senate. As a new Ed News Colorado story by Todd Engdahl highlights, Senate Bill 213 has advanced […]
Colorado Hydro Fails to Put the “New” in Renewable
By Brandon Ratterman Colorado is having trouble defining hydroelectricity. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) considers it to be a renewable resource, and the Colorado Energy Office calculates hydroelectric power’s emission rate as equal to wind and solar. Despite these two distinctions, Colorado’s renewable energy standard defines hydroelectricity as renewable only if the generating facility is […]
Change of Heart on Choice, Reform, Funding, and Unions: Time for Ed Is Playing!!
It’s been several days since I’ve had a chance to write here. The end of my spring break provided a lot of time for reflection on some issues that really have been bothering me. Now that I’ve had time to re-evaluate my well-known positions on some key education issues, I feel it is my obligation […]
Post Column Cites DeGrow’s Call for Deeper Student Funding Reforms
In his latest Sunday column, the Denver Post‘s Vincent Carroll cites remarks from Ben DeGrow about the need for more substantive changes in Senate Bill 213, a proposal by Colorado senator Michael Johnston to modify the school finance formula. Carroll notes that SB 213’s adoption is tied to voters approving a billion-dollar tax increase on […]
Oregon’s Cannibalism of Environmentalism
By Brandon Ratterman Almost 60 percent of Oregon’s electricity is generated from hydroelectric power, which is considered by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as a renewable energy resource. However, the state is struggling to meet the mandated renewable portfolio standard (RPS) of 15 percent renewable generation by 2015, as hydroelectricity generated at facilities built before […]
