Commentary

 
Over the past few years, the Colorado State University Board of Governors has become increasingly secretive. During the spring of 2009, the BOG’s stealth maneuvers became so extreme that several Colorado legislators introduced House Bill 1369, which was intended to require the CSU Board of Governors to conduct its business with greater transparency. In a separate action, [...]

You know by now that in Washington, DC, on Wednesday, an elderly white supremacist and anti-Semite named James W. von Brunn allegedly walked into the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum with a .22-caliber rifle and killed a security guard before being brought down himself. He’s 88 years old, with a long record of hatred and paranoid fantasies about the Illuminati and a Global Zionist state. How bitter the bile that has curdled for so many decades.

New York Times columnist David Brooks Friday outlines the cultural revolution the country will have to undergo in order to survive. It’s not upbeat. It’s not very hopeful. It’s a little like something cranky grampa would be muttering to himself under a blanket on the porch. First: No more buying; only saving. Second: Politicians must make themselves unpopular, partly by not reforming health care because there’s just no way to pay for it, dagnammit.

In recent years, colleges and universities have encountered increasing pressure to operate like businesses. As the logic goes, businesses must survive in a cutthroat climate of unfettered competition and, thus, their organizations need to be leaner, more efficient and more responsive to the needs of their customers than not-for-profit organizations, such as colleges and universities.

The risk of long-delayed health insurance reform collapsing under its own weight could come from an unlikely faction — the political Left.

That sinking reality was in full voice Wednesday at a Denver town hall forum featuring Howard Dean, the former Democratic National Committee chairman, ex-Vermont governor and a physician.

WASHINGTON — Even as Democrats in the U.S. House are celebrating their deal with conservative-leaning colleagues on climate change legislation, the real winners under the compromise have been the coal, electric and auto industries, which are largely the source of the nation’s carbon emissions.

For several months, the media has been pushing the fairy tale that the United States moved beyond racism with the election of President Obama.

As untrue as that is, there are people who started acting on their post-racial fantasies years ago, eight years in fact, as the Bush Administration used that excuse to essentially stop enforcing the civil rights laws we already have. President Obama and his administration have the opportunity to take dramatic steps towards dismantling institutional racism and inequality by simply enforcing the laws that are already on the books. Rather than blindness or silence, taking this action requires us to live in reality so that we can change that reality.

Americans are more conscious of debt than ever. Feeling burned by bank overdraft fees of $30 or more, or by credit-card interest rates that can top 25 percent, a growing number of consumers are turning to prepaid, reloadable “cash cards.”

For a large segment of users, primarily low- and moderate-income consumers, these cards function as ersatz bank accounts. These consumers are referred to as the “unbanked” in card-industry parlance. With a cash card, those with poor credit or too little money to meet banks’ minimum account balance requirements can participate in the retail transactions most people take for granted: ordering goods online, paying for items with a quick swipe, getting cash on demand from ATMs.

This year is the 55th birthday of the birth control pill. It is also 44 years since the U.S. Supreme Court decriminalized birth control in Griswold v. Connecticut. Yet, debates over family planning and contraception are alive and widespread. Coloradans witnessed this first hand last fall when the “personhood” amendment that could have re-criminalized birth control in the state was defeated. Similar measures have already been introduced in seven other states so far this year.

As someone who was fortunate to twice win Electoral College elections, I took great interest in Denver Talk Radio host Mike Rosen’s recent defense of the current system. His attack on the principle of “One Person, One Vote“ embodied in Democrats’ attempts to secure a majority of Electoral College votes for whomever wins the national popular vote borders on bizarre as he attempts to defend a system based, in part, on concepts of the privilege of royalty (e.g., the U.S. Senate paralleling the English House of Lords).