Prevent RapesSupport Concealed Carry
An animal rapes another woman, and the powers that be hold another community meeting at which they dole out the same old advice about not walking alone at night. No matter that the most recent victim was driving a paper route. The advocationally concerned write Letters-to-the-Editor gushing about the rewards of volunteering for the Boulder Rape Crisis Team. According to one mans testimonial in The Daily Camera, men who volunteer make a decision to help a community in crisis and gain experience offering information and assistance to survivors of sexual assault as a part of a wonderfully diverse and compassionate team that can demonstrate that men are a necessary part of the healing process.[1]
Medicare Reform Must Precede A Prescription Drug Benefit:
Usually the Independence Institute only publishes documents written by Independence Institute authors. We made an exception here because this material is an excellent explanation of the tremendous public health problems that would be created by President Clinton’s proposal for price controls on prescription medicines. Thus, even though we have no position on the author’s proposal to expand Medicare to include out-patients, we think that the author’s description of disaster that price caps would create is very much worth reading.
Leftist Actions Speak Louder Than Words
The peculiar mix of doublespeak and intransigent intolerance that characterizes the Left was on full display in three separate incidents last week.
Before Charlton Hestons March 21 speech at CU-Boulder, the Colorado Daily reported that 2nd Amendment defenders protested loudly but peacefully outside Macky auditorium until a large contingent of gun-control advocates arrived. [1] Tensions rose. Mr. Robert Howell threw a punch at another man, scuffled briefly, and was wrestled to the ground by police officers. The Denver Rocky Mountain News reported that Mr. Howell is vice-president of the Boulder chapter of the Bell Campaign.[2] Charitably speaking, the Bell Campaign consists of utopian dreamers who would consider even complete gun prohibition a reasonable restriction, and who believe that when guns are outlawed not even criminals will have guns. Its accuracy can be gauged from its web page where, as of this writing, it calls Boulder a suburb of Denver.[3]
Is Mental Health Treatment A Fraud?
According to Robyn Dawes, a professor at Carnegie-Mellon University and a distinguished researcher on psychological evaluation and decision-making, the evidence is quite clear. Mental health practitioners possess no special insights into the individual human condition.
How Much Should We Spend on Government?
The Denver Post reported that House Speaker Russ George, R-Rifle, “acknowledges” that the TABOR amendment has “hampered the Legislature’s ability to adjust fiscal policy to keep pace with the economy” and has “slowed” the Legislature’s ability to cut taxes.[1] This is a curious statement. TABOR imposed limits on state expenditure growth and required that tax increases be put to a popular vote. Apparently “adjusting fiscal policy to keep pace with the economy” means nothing more than growing government by grabbing ever increasing amounts from taxpayer wallets.
Refunding the Surplus: Welfare, Whiskey, and Car Keys
Author P.J. O’Rourke says that “giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.” With proposals to spend millions on everything from treating the “disease” of obesity to funding 12 day care centers that will determine the “best” way to raise pre-schoolers littering the current legislative session, it is clearly past time for Colorado’s government to take the cure and start a healthy program of diet and exercise. We’ve got MADD to dry out the teenagers. Now we need TADS–Taxpayers Against Drunken Spending–to dry out state government.
Student Fees: Buy the Education, Skip the Brainwash
A recent letter to the Colorado Daily [1] illustrated the vast philosophical chasm separating those who believe in individual liberty from those who believe in Big Brother.
The letter opposed House Bill 1127. The bill would make it illegal for state colleges and universities to require students to pay fees to support politically active student groups. The letter writer claimed that “student fees do not fund any groups that endanger public peace, health or safety. Our groups are only working to enhance campus life and to make our world a better placeWithout BSA [the Black Student Alliance] and other community interest groups such as Amnesty International, the Women’s Resource Center, and Stop Hate on Campus, our students might not be as peaceful, healthy or safeour ideas would be held silent without proper fund-raising.”[1]
Money for Nothing: Increased School Spending
Reader Steve Woznia does not buy the claim that the huge increases in spending on public schools are out of line. In a February 4, 2000, letter-to-the-editor in the Colorado Daily, Mr. Woozier wrote that “The needs of a modern school are much greater than the needs of a school from 100 years ago (or even 20 years ago). Transportation costs, building costs, facility maintenance costs, extra curricular activity costs, and administrative costs have all dramatically increased the cost of a modern school.” So have immigration and special education. Mr. Woznia believes that “Claiming the population of a low-income inner city school is similar to the population of a parochial schools is beyond erroneous; it is naively deceptive.”
Liberal Logic's Slippery Slope
Having legislators listen to public testimony, an activity almost as exciting as watching paint dry, is essential to keeping us safe from democracy. Despite the tedium, some of last week’s legislative hearings did provide insight into the thought processes of those who champion the Nanny State.
Private Money Buys Public Influence
What do you call it when the executive branch of state government accepts millions of dollars in private money from an extraordinarily wealthy private group? Especially when the private group advertises that it wants to use its wealth to affect state policy on a hotly contested public policy issue?
School Vouchers–Short Run Good, Long Run Disaster
The pitiful state of K-12 public education presents one of public policy’s cruelest dilemmas. Government schools fail many of those forced to attend. Those harmed the most are typically those who most desperately need the leg up that education provides. Plagued by adult neglect or impoverished circumstances, they have no other resource.
Recommended Reading
In a January 4th letter-to-the editor of the Denver Rocky Mountain News, Mr. Joseph E. Cordova of Littleton wrote “I am confused as to why people are so devoted to keeping a constitutional right that allows us to own a tool that when used correctly either destroys or damages lifeI honestly believe that if James Madison and his colleagues were alive to see what the musket has evolved into today and the horrific events that firearms have caused, they would not be offended if we were to change their original thoughts.”[1]
