In the letter, he said he feared that Colorado was demographically becoming “Eastern California.”

The letter follows:

I recently spoke to a Republican group meeting in Littleton. During the question and answer portion I was asked to comment on the continuing internet feud that is the manifestation of lingering resentments emanating out of the gubernatorial campaign. The person asking went on to say that there are deep divisions in the Republican Party that need to be healed and wanted to know what I was going to do about it. I explained that my hope would be to have a unified Republican Party committed to conservative principles but that the division between conservatives and moderates within the Party has been there as long as I can remember. However, in the past it did not keep us from winning elections. I believe that the combination of McCain-Feingold and the Colorado Democracy Alliance (CODA) created the deadly cocktail that has thrown the Republican Party in Colorado into disarray. Unless Republicans develop a robust strategy to combat this reality, they will always be a step or two behind the curve.

We cannot discount the possibility that, adding to problems for conservatives, Colorado may be becoming “Eastern California” from the standpoint of political demographics.

Since I have no ability to do much about the latter, I will concentrate on actions that can be undertaken to deal with the organizational problems conservatives face in Colorado.

Although the goals of the Liberty Groups are compatible with MOST Republicans, there is some work that needs to be done in order to eliminate any obstacles to cooperation on issues and candidates that advance that common agenda.

Let me suggest a pretty simple undertaking and that is to have the leaders of all Republican and Liberty Groups around the state schedule some joint meetings in the next month or two for the purpose of coming up with agreements and strategies for advancing the front lines in the war of ideas.

There are many folks who will read this who have membership in both the local Republican Club and one or more Liberty Groups and could be the catalysts for the meetings. Perhaps Dick Wadams (sic) and the Liberty Group leadership could draw up a statement that would serve as the discussion point for such meetings with the hope that it could become the articulation of future interaction.

I would be happy to do so but, other than this communication on the subject, I fear my involvement might prove unhelpful for obvious reasons. I would, however, be happy to register as a Republican and work for a better Colorado.

Sincerely,
Tom Tancredo

The Denver Post gets top honors as the most influential media outlet in Colorado, of course, for reasons that are obvious and go beyond the McInnis plagiarism coverage.

But number two is pretty surprising. It’s the Caplis and Silverman show, which airs 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. on KHOW 630 AM.

I can’t stand the show sometimes (especially when centrist/right Silverman idles as Caplis acts like a spinmeister for the Republicans), but I mostly like it a lot. And this election season I’ve been floored by the show’s impact, substance, and entertainment-value—on a regular basis.

The show’s string of major hits began in Aug. of 2009 when Scott McInnis inexplicably lashed out at both Caplis and Silverman and claimed to be more generous than they. The bizarre outburst, in which McInnis “went off the rails,” according to The Post, got quite a bit of media attention and in retrospect set the bizarre tenor of the McInnis campaign to come, including his comment on the show in April, also widely publicized, that he’s the kind of person who donates elk meat to folks in need, rather than giving to nonprofit groups.

That info came when McInnis was refusing to talk to The Post, after the newspaper had asked to review his tax returns. So McInnis explained himself on Caplis and Silverman.

In the same elk interview, Silverman became the first in the media to ask McInnis what he did to earn $150,000 from the Hasan Family Foundation, which was mentioned among McInnis’ 2005 income sources in The Post, where it might have died without Silverman. Silverman asked McInnis if he was trying to help the foundation foster a better understanding between U.S. citizens and Muslim cultures. But no no, McInnis eagerly corrected him and said the foundation paid him to “write” articles on Colorado water.

As the primary wore on, all the major GOP players and many Dems were regulars on Caplis and Silverman. In your car on the way home, it was like listening to a mix of live breaking news bits, in-depth discussions of politics and various issues, and five-star drive-time drama and comedy–and tragedy. It felt like a town hall, showing how great talk radio can be. Unfortunately, John Hickenlooper appears to be avoiding the show, after a contentious appearance earlier this year about his charitable contributions, and Michael Bennet didn’t materialize.

“Dan Maes was a frequent guest on the show, and while they didn’t treat him with kid gloves, his accessibility and willingness to step into the arena helped place him on an equal status with McInnis or even above McInnis,” said Westword’s “Latest Word” blogger and media critic Michael Roberts.

I asked Roberts if he agreed with me that Caplis and Silverman, now in its sixth year on the air, deserves the number two spot among media outlets for impact on this year’s primary.

“In terms of that specific primary, I think you can make a very good argument that it was second to The Post, which clearly had the biggest impact,” Roberts told me, adding that Channel 7’s interview with Rolly Fisher was also a major journalistic triumph. “But the Caplis and Silverman show wasn’t one hit or two, but had an impact over the long haul.”

Roberts also thinks that Caplis’ early abandonment of McInnis, days after the plagiarism scandal hit the news, contributed to the conservative rush away from him.

Silverman, who credits producer Brad Lopez for landing great guests, wrote me that regular interviewees Ken Buck and Jane Norton both had “huge” ad buys on their show, “so they must have thought voters were listening.”

“Dan Caplis and I are both trial lawyers so we should have skills at questioning,” writes Silverman, who’s now an unaffiliated voter in contrast to partisan Republican Caplis. “We try to use courtroom etiquette including no interrupting. I fancy myself a political free agent and ask tough but fair questions to Dems and Repubs.”

He continues: “Some talk radio hosts (i.e. Limbaugh) call opposition politicians schoolyard names or otherwise belittle or caricature them. I understand why politicos avoid such shows. We do not do that. Our show is more like a friendly courtroom. Often, Dan and I are on different political sides, so there is usually some balance in the overall experience for the guest and listener.”

Some balance, yes, but no much if you look at the big picture. I mean, the show creates the illusion that the political spectrum in America runs from the center-right (Silverman) to the far-right (social-conservative Caplis). That drives me nuts, as I’ve written previously, and motivates me to find some real balance by listening to progressive David Sirota, who’s doing a great job in the mornings on AM760. But I have to agree with Silverman that pairing Caplis with a guy like Sirota would probably fail—and the number of quality guests would certainly decrease. Still, I’d like to see a talk-show experiment in Denver with a true lefty and Caplis-like righty.

But we have the Caplis and Silverman, and for this year at least, it’s been about as good as you could hope for from a political talk-radio show.

Spokespersons for the state-workers labor group Colorado Workers for Innovation and New Solutions (WINS) and for Planned Parenthood Votes Colorado say voters should know what they’re getting in the Maes-Williams ticket.

Speaking for the more than 31,000 state employees WINS represents, President Pattie Johnston said Maes has promised to cut 2,000 state employees if he is elected and to repeal an executive order allowing government employees to form quasi-unions such as Colorado WINS. She said Williams has also opposed legislation to implement a new more fair system of pay evaluation for government employees.

“The Maes-Williams platform to lay off thousands of Colorado workers and to oppose efforts to build a competitive and accountable state workforce is astounding. It’s bad for our families and our economy,” she said.

Maes has yet to say where exactly he would make the cuts in the state workforce nor has he addressed legal questions that might rise around the blanket layoffs.

Williams only said that the state had pandered to unions for too long and criticized the legislature for working to provide a pay program that could raise salaries and increase the cost of government during the recession, according to the Pueblo Chieftain.

“What does that say, when even the Democratic governor can’t buy into this Legislature’s actions?” she said.

She was referring to House Bill 1409, an attempt to fix what Democratic Gov. Bill Ritter called a “broken” pay-for-performance system. The bill would have attached any raises for state employees to time served but also to required performance reviews. Raises would also be subject to legislative approval and only would have gone into effect once personal income had increased by 5 percent in the state. I the end, Ritter vetoed the bill.

Planned Parenthood Votes Colorado said they thought Williams might support continuing a ban on state funding for their organization and also endorse Amendment 62, the so-called personhood Initiative.

“We hope that Ms. Williams will not take the extreme position on access to abortion care that candidate Dan Maes is advocating,” Kinsey Hasstedt, political affairs manager for the group said. “Maes has publicly expressed his support for Amendment 62, which would not only ban abortion in all circumstances, but also ban safe, commonly used forms of birth control that the majority of women in their childbearing years depend on to prevent pregnancy.

“In addition, the issue of state funding is a moot point. Planned Parenthood does not take state or federal family planning grant funds. Rather, we provide family planning services, excluding abortion, to Medicaid clients. Thousands of our clients throughout the state depend on us for this essential preventive health care.”

Williams supports a ban on abortion with exceptions for cases of rape, incest or the life of the mother, and was one of nine Republican legislators who asked then-Gov. Bill Owen’s to protect Planned Parenthood funding. She has said she will disagree with Maes on abortion but has so far been non-committal on funding exceptions for Planned Parenthood, an abortion provider but also one of the most frequented reproductive health-care organizations in the state, as around the country. In 1999 she joined nine other women legislators supporting state funding for Planned Parenthood.

Maes picked moderate former state representative Williams as his running mate Thursday, acknowledging that he needed a running mate with experience.

“I know what I lack, and what I lack is Tambor Williams. She will bring the political experience to the table that I lack,” said Maes to a crowd at his headquarters in Englewood.

Greeley Republican Williams served two terms in the Colorado legislature from 1997 to 2001 and led the Department of Regulatory Agencies for two years beginning in 2004.

She is experienced but she is also a political moderate, compared to Maes, who supports the personhood amendment, an Arizona-like law for immigration, and has said that a Denver bike-sharing program might lead to more U.N. control.

Williams supported controversial Referendums C&D in 2006, measures that sought to keep refunds for taxpayers in order to pay for education.

At the press conference Thursday, she spoke about those positions.

“I didn’t support Ref C by itself. I supported it thinking that Ref D would also pass, which would have required that the excess revenue be spent on transportation. I never intended it to be a free-for-all to just grow government.”

When asked whether she was pro-choice, she said, “I wish it were that easy. I will probably say I am pro-life, with the exceptions that we have come to respect — that is the life of the mother, rape, incest. I think there are times when pro-life has to give way to the best of possible choices, and they’re never, ever easy.”

—
Additional writing and reporting by Luke Johnson.

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And who was leading the frenzy, calling for the firing of Churchill after, and in some cased before, it was determined he committed plagiarism? Denver’s top-rated talk show hosts. Those guys.

KHOW’s duo of Caplis and Silverman was out in front of the pack.

On July 27, 2007, the Rocky Mountain News reported that Dan Caplis cut a vacation short to broadcast the Churchill firing. Caplis told the Rocky at the time: “This is the people’s victory, and talk radio played a part in it. But that’s what we’re here for. We shouldn’t be bragging about it – we just did our job. If we don’t do our job, bad guys like Churchill win.”

Asked Tuesday whether he thought gubernatorial candidate Scott McInnis should withdraw from the race after allegations of the former congressman’s plagiarism first appeared in the Denver Post, Caplis responded:

“Fair question. The same standard should apply to a candidate for any higher office as applies university professor. Plagiarism is extremely serious. Now we just have to see what the facts are. Hopefully we’ll have a chance to talk to Scott on the show today. Absolutely the same standards should apply to a candidate as a university professor.”

Caplis is an arch conservative who considered a gubernatorial run himself. For a talk-show host like Caplis, who openly supports McInnis and opposed Churchill, you might say, if you were Ward Churchill, that the chickens have come home to roost.

I asked his co-host, centrist Craig Silverman, if he thought McInnis should withdraw. Silverman first questioned McInnis about what he did for the Hasan Family Foundation after the job was mentioned in the Denver Post, eliciting the response from McInnis that a “series of in-depth articles on water” were written.

Like Caplis, Silverman called for Churchill’s firing, but strictly due to the plagiarism issue, not because of his inflammatory essays.

“I have lots of thoughts on the subject,” he told me. “I’m going to formulate them and let them spill forth on my radio show [KHOW, 630 AM] between 3 p.m. and 6. We are going to be talking about it big time, as Dick Cheney would say.”

Silverman added: “I definitely made the Ward Churchill connection before you brought it up. So I’ll talk about it.”

KOA talk show host Mike Rosen was also on the Churchill war path, saying over and over and over that the case against Churchill had nothing to do with free speech and everything to do with plagiarism, an act of unforgivable academic misconduct.

In an Aug. 3, 2007 column in the Rocky, Rosen wrote: ” The party line of Churchill apologists is that he was really fired for expressing his beliefs and that the findings of CU faculty panels that investigated his serial academic fraud were merely a ruse. Nonsense. Churchill is a proven liar and cheat.”

Via email, I asked Rosen if he thought, in light of his previous criticism of Churchill, that McInnis should step aside. “No,” he answered. “Not comparable. Churchill’s behavior was far more serious.”

You might think that KHOW talk-show host Peter Boyles, who polluted the air with the Jon Bonet Ramsey case, would have been one of the anti-Churchill leaders, but he was more restrained at the time.

Today, when I asked him if McInnis should go the way of Churchill, he told me, “That’s a great question. You know, I read Crummy’s piece, and I’m not trying to dodge ya, I don’t know enough about it other than what I read in Crummy’s piece. Nobody’s better than Crummy.”

He went on to say, “The worst campaign I ever saw was Bruce Benson, until I saw Pete Coors, until I saw Bob Beauprez, and this one is the icing on the cake.”

Transparency is an essential part of managing public institutions. That is, exacting public scrutiny has a tendency to keep leaders honest. In the absence of such scrutiny, leaders tend to wander from that straight and narrow path. Transparency is the key to good governance.

Indeed, it is that truism which makes the CSU Board of Governors’ recent passion for secrecy so worrisome. 

Again, one must ask, what’s with all the secrecy? As long as the CSU Board of Governors makes decisions that serve the better interests of their constituents, there should be no need for secrecy. Of course, therein lies the rub. Secrets become essential when leaders of public institutions place their own interests above those of their constituents.

The decision to install Joe Blake as CSU System Chancellor is an ideal case in point. No doubt, the CSU Board of Governors had some inkling that conferring a plum sinecure on one of its own members would likely stir outcries of cronyism. Therefore, the BOG concealed key elements of the chancellor search process in order to minimize public oversight until its eyebrow-raising conclusion was a fait accompli. 

Additionally, the CSU Board of Governors’ dogged secrecy has effectively suppressed the curious circumstances surrounding the departure of former Chancellor Larry Penley — who, hard-working Coloradans might like to know, negotiated a sweet severance package (including payouts of $389,000 per year until 2010) at Colorado tax-payer’s expense. Thus, the lesson to gain from this is, as long as public officials can maintain secrecy, they can usually violate the public’s trust with impunity.  

Of course, there are additional advantages to keeping secrets. Stealth has often been employed by leaders who are angling for additional power. For example, under Colorado Law, creating new public institutions of higher education requires a decision on the part of the state legislature. The power of conferring legislative authority on public colleges and universities remains the preserve of the legislature largely because, in anointing new colleges and universities, the state must also assume responsibility for funding those institutions. Yet, in spite of this constraint, several years ago the CSU Board of Governors, without bothering to secure legislative authority, created the third campus in its System, CSU-Global.

If you visit the CSU System homepage, you will see three boxes in the center of the page that link to the three campuses in the CSU System: including two that enjoy legislative authority, i.e., CSU-Fort Collins and CSU-Pueblo, and one that does not, CSU-Global. Further, on January 28, 2009, Diane Evans, Treasurer for the Board of Governors, affirmed in an open forum at CSU-Pueblo that, though CSU-Global happens to be a “virtual” university, from the perspective of the CSU Board of Governors, CSU-Global occupies a stature that is equivalent to the other two CSU System campuses. Dick Robinson, who co-chaired the open forum and who happens to be a past Chair of the CSU Governing Board, concurred with Diane Evans.

Robinson stated that, from the perspective of the CSU Board of Governors, there are three campuses in the CSU System and, though each has a different mission, the Board of Governors recognizes each as an independent campus in the CSU System. 

Wow. So, who needs legislative authority when you can get what you want more efficiently without it?

Although, by this time, the fact of CSU-Global’s existence should be a surprise to no one, the manner in which CSU-Global came into existence should be alarming to everyone. By stealthily arrogating the right to create a third campus on its own volition, the CSU Board of Governors has set a major precedent: no longer do Colorado institutions of higher education need to gain approval from the state in order to create new, publicly supported colleges or universities. That is quite a coup d’etat.

Okay, so, what’s the big deal? After all, one could argue that the CSU Board of Governors knows what’s best for Colorado State University and, thus, the BOG should have every right to make decisions independently of state and public interference. Compelling as such an argument may be, it does overlook one key point: Colorado State University is a taxpayer-funded institution. The people of Colorado own and operate Colorado State University. The CSU Board of Governors has been appointed not to serve themselves, but to serve the better interests of the people of Colorado. In its zeal to operate under a cloud of secrecy, the CSU Board of Governors seems to have overlooked those all-important truths.

Fortunately, there is a simple solution to this problem. The people of Colorado can remind the CSU Board of Governors that they work for us. If Colorado’s taxpayers demand more transparency and compliance with state rules and regulations, then the BOG will have no choice but to comply. Isn’t it great to live in a democracy?

Transparency is the very least — and yet it is perhaps the most important quality — that taxpayers should expect from their public servants. It’s time to let the light shine in at Colorado State University.  

Timothy McGettigan is a professor of sociology at Colorado State University-Pueblo. 

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(Photo/barjack, Flickr)

You will know, too, of the recent killing, while ushering at his local church, of Dr. George Tiller, one of the few doctors in the country still performing late term abortions. Sadly, this case was proof that fatal violence works. His family has announced that his Wichita, Kansas, clinic will not be reopened.

You may be less familiar with the June 1st shootings in an army recruiting office in Little Rock that killed one soldier and wounded another. The suspect in question is an African-American Muslim convert who says he acted in retaliation for U.S. military activity in the Middle East.

Soon, however, these terrible deeds will be forgotten, as are already the three policemen killed by an assault weapon in Pittsburgh; the four policemen killed in Oakland, California; the 13 people gunned down in Binghamton, New York; the 10 in an Alabama shooting spree; five in Santa Clara, California; the eight dead in a North Carolina, nursing home. All during this year alone.

There is much talk about hate talk; hate crimes against blacks, whites, immigrants, Muslims, Jews; about violence committed in the name of bigotry or religion. But why don’t we talk about guns?

We’re arming ourselves to death. Even as gunshots ricocheted around the country, an amendment allowing concealed weapons in national parks snuck into the popular credit card reform bill. Another victory for the gun lobby, to sounds of silence from the White House.

Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, wrote, just days before the Holocaust Museum incident, that “rather than propose concrete action that makes it harder for dangerous people to get firearms — while still respecting the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding gun owners — all Washington can seem to muster after high-profile shootings are ‘thoughts and prayers’ for the victims and their families.

“For his part, the President has also included sincere expressions of ‘deep sadness’ at these tragic losses — though without any call to change any of our policies to prevent those losses.”

Yet, as a presidential candidate, Obama pledged “our determination to do whatever it takes to eradicate this violence from our streets, from our schools, from our neighborhoods and our cities. That is our duty as Americans.”

The fact is, neither party will stand up to the National Rifle Association, the best known front group for the arms merchants. In Virginia, just across the Potomac River from the Holocaust Museum, this week’s Democratic primary for governor was won by state legislator R. Creigh Deeds, a man who supports allowing concealed weapons in restaurants that serve alcohol and opposes limiting handgun purchases to one a month.

After Wednesday’s shooting, a conservative organization immediately offered those of us in the media a chance to interview the founder of “Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership,” whose expertise, it was said, is in helping people understand why gun control doesn’t belong in a civilized society.

The e-mail went on to say, “Your audience will appreciate [his] non nonsense common sense talk that will make them wonder why anyone wants to ban guns in the first place.”

Thanks, but no thanks. And no thanks to his counterparts among Christians and Muslims who use every violent shedding of blood to try to promote the worship of guns. Guns don’t kill people, they say. People kill people. True. People kill people — with guns.

So let the faithful of every persuasion keep their guns for hunting and skeet, for trap and target practice, for collecting. They can even have a permit for a gun to protect their business or home, even though it’s 22 times more likely to shoot a member of the family (including suicides) than an intruder.

But please, there are already some 200 million, privately owned firearms in America. Every year there are 30,000 gun deaths and in some years more than 400,000 non-fatal, gun-related assaults. The next time someone wades through a pool of blood to sidle up and champion the preservation of firearms, can’t we just say, no thanks?

Enough’s enough.

Bill Moyers is managing editor and Michael Winship is senior writer of the weekly public affairs program Bill Moyers Journal, which airs Friday night on PBS. Check local airtimes.

[T]he political challenges [are] most hellacious… Basically, everything that a politician might do to make voters happier in the near term will have horrible long-term consequences. Stimulate the economy too much now and you wind up with ruinous inflation down the road. Preserve failing companies and you wind up with Japanese stagnation. Cushion the decline in living standards with easy money now and you just move from a housing bubble to a commodities bubble.

The members of the political class … will have to refrain from doing anything that might further damage America’s fiscal position, which is extremely fragile. That means not passing a health care reform package unless it is really and truly paid for. That means forming a Social Security commission next year to tackle that entitlement problem.

As Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., might put it: “To my colleagues who are fear mongering and saying we should do nothing to reform health care, I say, ‘How bout we do something about the $700 billion per year wasted today on ineffective health care!’”

Conservative Brooks curiously seems to condemn Bush-style pandering politics while also embracing Bush bugaboos.

On the Social Security “entitlement” deficit referenced by Brooks that Pres. Bush campaigned to portray as so dangerously massive, for example… The deficit is projected to be 0.6 percent of GDP over the next 75 years according to the Social Security Trustees and only 0.4 percent according to the Congressional Budget Office. Compare those figures to the long-term cost of the Bush tax cuts, which add up to about 2 percent of GDP or about $11.1 trillion, almost triple the amount.

h/t the Economic Policy Institute’s Monique Morrissey

Photo/Colorado State University-Pueblo

In the unforgiving crucible of free market competition, only the fittest businesses — those that deliver the highest quality products at fair market value — will survive. Of course, the seemingly endless government bail-outs following the 2008 financial crash cast a dubious light on the above claims, nevertheless, the notion that higher education should embrace a more business-like organizational philosophy remains deeply entrenched. Colorado State University’s recent hiring of its first-ever System Chancellor offers an illuminating example of this sensibility in practice.

On May 6, 2009, the CSU Board of Governors announced the hiring of Joe Blake as its System Chancellor. It is fair to say that Blake is a somewhat curious choice for CSU’s System Chancellor because, although he can brag of extensive contacts in the Denver business community — his most recent job was as president of the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce — his resume is conspicuously absent of academic credentials.

Indeed, it is noteworthy that, in assembling its search committee, the CSU Board of Governors intentionally excluded faculty and student representatives. In response to protests concerning the limited composition of the chancellor search committee, Michelle McKinney, a public relations representative for the CSU System Board of Governors, stated baldly, “Search committee members were chosen for their knowledge and understanding of complex, billion dollar businesses.” In other words, from the perspective of the CSU Board of Governors, Colorado State University is a business. Therefore, when it comes to choosing the University’s leaders, the CSU Board of Governors considers input from successful businesspeople to be more pertinent than the opinions of academics.

Viewing these events through the most optimistic lens, one could argue that vast changes are in the offing for higher education. In an Information Society, college degrees have become an ever more essential ingredient for success. Yet, indispensable as college degrees may be, with each passing year, students encounter more difficulty gaining access to and completing higher education. Escalating costs coupled with reduced public funding have shifted the burden of college finance onto the backs of individual students. As students face the prospect of accumulating home mortgage-sized debt over the course of their college careers, many gifted, but financially-strapped students will have no choice but to forgo higher education.

Somehow, some way educators must find a way to change that dynamic: college and university leaders must find a way to make higher education more affordable and soon! Insights from the business realm will certainly be helpful in that process. Business leaders are only too well aware of the hazards of running afoul of consumer expectations. When a valued good becomes excessively overpriced, consumers tend to take their buying power elsewhere.

As a case in point, consider the Big Three automakers. Not long ago the Big Three were the titans of industrial America, but having fallen out of step with their customers, automakers have hit upon tough times. Once again, in a free market society it behooves organizations to deliver the highest quality products at affordable prices. Consumer loyalty is not inexhaustible.

Indeed, higher education must change in order to meet the needs of its twenty-first century students. Fortunately, I am pleased to report that higher education has undertaken a variety of initiatives to achieve precisely that goal. To begin with, most colleges and universities have implemented flexible degree programs to permit students with limited time and extensive non-academic responsibilities (i.e., full-time jobs, family obligations, military service, etc.) to progress toward college degrees at a pace that suits their lifestyles. In addition, many universities have employed the latest technologies in an effort to reach out to place-bound students. Thus, many students who lack the necessary mobility and wherewithal to pursue a traditional on-campus education can still procure college degrees via online or “virtual” higher education opportunities.

Changing times have dictated that higher education must also change. Thus far, higher education has responded admirably. Yet, as with all successful institutions, to ensure ongoing success, higher education must constantly seek ways to reinvent and improve itself. Still, as planners look to the future, I believe it is important to consider the strengths and weaknesses of higher education in as broad a framework as possible.

Much as higher education can benefit from the insights of business leaders, it is essential to recognize that higher education is not a business, nor should it ever become one.

While higher education can and must synergize with business in many ways, business and higher education are distinct pursuits. Elementally, business is a for-profit activity, whereas higher education is a not-for-profit endeavor. This is the case, quite simply, because education is not a commodity; one cannot purchase an education the same way that one might purchase a pair of snow tires. Education is an investment that requires years of patience, diligence and perseverance before one can hope to reap a windfall.

Certainly, education is not cheap. It has taken an enormous investment to lay the educational foundation for the Information Society. However, I think it is fair to say that, having laid that groundwork, the dividends realized thus far have been spectacular: because of its investment in higher education, the US can claim the distinction of being the inventor of and, in spite recent setbacks, the unparalleled leader of the Information Society.

Undeniably, one way of mitigating higher education costs might be to seek new ways of transforming education into a for-profit endeavor — one would expect such initiatives to be a topic of primary interest to business leaders. However, I wonder if it is possible to extract profit from higher education without simultaneously impoverishing it?

Further, viewing higher education as a resource from which to extract profit represents the antithesis of the educational philosophy that has elevated the US to its singular position as leader of the Information Society. The US has achieved prominence in the global village by investing in, rather than siphoning wealth from higher education.

Therefore, I believe it is possible for the US to continue reaping great rewards from higher education, but only by enhancing its commitment to access-for-all, and by maintaining its philosophy of education as a long-term investment in the future. The US will remain the leader of the Information Society, but only so long as we recognize that the business of higher education is to lay the foundation upon which to build a more enlightened, democratic, and prosperous world for one and all.

Timothy McGettigan is a Professor of Sociology at Colorado State University – Pueblo.

Howard Dean makes the pitch for public option health insurance at a May 27 meeting in Denver.

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.

In his characteristically blunt political bedside manner, Dean rallied the crowd, “It’s not up to the right wing of the Republican Party, it’s not up to the health insurance companies, it’s not even up to Barack Obama … it’s up to you” to ensure Congress delivers patient-centric health insurance reform.

Whooping, hollering and a few crowd-pleasing political digs aside, Dean’s push for a universal “public option” that would allow people to buy into a government-run health care program, popularly known as Medicare for All, was met with cool skepticism by the left-leaning audience of 300 that clearly favored a single-payer plan and the abolition of private insurers.

But the political wisdom, such that it is in Washington, D.C., is that a single-payer plan is off the table according to U.S. Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., the chairman of the powerful Senate Finance Committee and a leader in health care reform on Capitol Hill. The single-payer showdown came to a head when Baucus had a disruptive group of five doctors and nurses ejected from a May 12 Senate hearing after they protested being excluded from the discussion.

Single-payer proponents were further left in the lurch when President Obama backed off campaign promises for a sole public health care financing program for the more moderate public option approach.

Dean dismissed concerns about the challenge of getting the steadfast single-payer faction to join a coalition with public option backers to fight the more entrenched insurance industry interests as congressional hearings advance toward the president’s August deadline for a health care reform package.

“The truth is there is no pure single-payer on the face of the Earth,” Dean told the Colorado Independent in an interview before the town hall. “Every system has a private insurance out.

“My attitude toward this is let’s get something. Let’s get the ball rolling. Let’s not have an argument between two poles. Let’s pick a middle course. Of course, the right wing and the insurance companies are already attacking the middle course. If there’s no public option we shouldn’t do anything. The last thing you want to do is pour a trillion dollars into something we already know doesn’t work right.”

Dean’s hard-won political skills from the Iowa caucuses to the smoke-filled rooms of the nation’s capitol may come in handy to head off another potential reform game-ender.

Domestic policy blogger Ezra Klein writes today at the Washington Post that liberal labor unions and policy groups may knee-cap reform efforts over a tax proposal backed by the Democrats. The Senate is expected to cap the employer tax exclusion — the estimated $300 billion annual tax break for firms that provide health care insurance to workers. Savings from the tax credit cap would be used to pay for the public option.

Capping the employer health care exclusion is good policy. Eliminating it entirely would be better policy. It’s true that some unions, like AFSCME, would see the value of their employer benefits degrade slightly. (Some unions, like Service Employees International Union, would scarcely be affected at all. Janitors are not, as a rule, given generous employer health benefits.) But the labor movement, as a whole, is much worse off in a world where the employer exclusion is capped but we have health reform than in a world where we don’t have health care reform and can’t control premium costs.

In that world, employers who offer health benefits will be ever less competitive against their stingier competitors. Union shops will close as the associated labor costs become unsustainable. Employers will fight ever harder against unionization because they’ll be terrified of being trapped into health coverage arrangements that they can’t control.

Concerns that industry lobbyists, unenlightened business groups and conservative ideologues will undermine, if not outright kill, health care reform may be supplanted by the Left’s own circular firing squad.

Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif. (Bridgette Blair, Flickr)

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.

Details of the compromise are still emerging, but already the chief sponsors of the measure — Reps. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Edward Markey (D-Mass.) — have been forced to lower carbon-reduction targets, cut renewable fuel standards and dole out billions of dollars in benefits to the nation’s largest polluting industries. Many environmentalists say the compromise comes at the too-high cost of undermining the bill’s very purpose, which is to slash emissions dramatically enough to prevent a warming planet from heating further. Some are asking Democrats either to bolster the environmental protections or to scrap the proposal altogether.

“We are not prepared to ‘give away the farm’ just so that we can say that we helped to get legislation passed,” Janet Keating, executive director of the West Virginia-based Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, said in a statement Friday. “There are some costs that are too high to pay when it comes to the environment, clean air and clean water. We urge Congress to either fix the Waxman-Markey bill or dump it and start over.”

The saga highlights the thorny congressional climate change debate, where partisan politics takes a backseat to regional interests, and the influence of the energy lobby is king. Indeed, the concessions from Waxman and Markey to this point have been made to satisfy Democrats representing regions heavy with coal, oil and automaker interests.

The resulting dynamic is one of multi-layered tension that pits industry against environmentalists, regional interests against national and global interests, and congressional lawmakers against emission reforms that might help the planet, but could also cost jobs in their districts.

“I’m just trying to take care of the principal concerns that would impact my region, in particular my district,” Rep. Charles Gonzales, a Houston-based Democrat who’s pushing for more benefits for oil refineries in the House bill, told Politico Thursday.

In the eyes of many environmentalists, that brand of regional protectionism might yield short-term gains for some areas of the country, but will come at the cost of a deteriorating globe. They’re asking what good is it to protect polluters in a world where you can’t drink the water or breath the air, and the oceans are swallowing the coasts?

Erich Pica, director of domestic policy programs at Friends of the Earth, said the moderate Democrats are “holding hostage” the reforms necessary to tackle the problem in a way that reflects its urgency. “They have every right to protect their constituents,” Pica said. “But as members of Congress they also represent the entire country, and they should know when to sacrifice their regional interests for the sake of the larger common good. All they see is protecting oil or protecting coal. That’s not helpful.”

Indeed, the United Nations issued a report Thursday indicating that the world’s poorest countries, which are expected to suffer the brunt of the floods, draughts and storms associated with climate change, already require as much as $2 billion to adjust to the warming conditions. The UN is asking for donors to raise the funds.

Faced with similar reports, Waxman and Markey introduced a draft climate change bill in March — diluted significantly in the more recent compromise. And from an industry perspective, there’s something in there for nearly everyone.

For the coal and electric utility industries, for example, the compromise bill requires that U.S. emissions be reduced 17 percent by 2020, down from the 20 percent reduction promoted in the initial draft. The new bill also tamps down an earlier provision that states get at least 25 percent of their electricity from renewable sources by 2025, instead dropping that floor to 15 percent.

Additionally, although President Barack Obama had campaigned on a platform of selling 100 percent of so-called pollution permits to industry — a strategy he said would generate $646 billion to fight global warming over the next decade — the House compromise gives all but 15 percent of those permits away for free.

The changes were enough to gather the support of several key members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, including Rep. Rick Boucher (Va.), a coal-country Democrat who had threatened to oppose the stronger draft. But the bows to industry also bring into question whether lawmakers resigned to shield their provincial industries are even capable of passing the reforms scientists say would be required to stem America’s contributions to the warming planet.

The changes, said Tyson Slocum, director of the energy and climate program at Public Citizen, “threaten to render this bill ineffective for a long period of time.”

There were other concessions as well. To satisfy Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.), another powerful member of the committee, Waxman and Markey have agreed to give 3 percent of pollution permits to the nation’s automakers to fund research for more fuel efficient vehicles.

The compromise also waters down the so-called cash-for-clunkers program*, which ostensibly encourages drivers to turn in their gas guzzlers in exchange for a federal subsidy on more fuel efficient models. Yet under the compromise proposal, the new fuel efficiencies are hardly dramatic. For example, drivers trading in trucks between 6,000 and 8,500 pounds would be eligible for a $3,500 voucher for purchasing the same-sized vehicle that’s more efficient by just 1 mile per gallon.

Daniel Becker, director of the Safe Climate Campaign, said the program does much more to help struggling automakers sell large, unpopular models than it does to reduce greenhouse emissions.

“It’s a $4 billion giveaway to move gas guzzling vehicles that nobody wants off the lots,” Becker said.

Also, to get oil-friendly Democrats like Gonzales on board, the House compromise will give 2 percent of the pollution permits to oil refineries.

And these changes have arrived before the amendment process begins. House Republicans have vowed to dilute the environmental protections even further during debate in the Energy and Commerce Committee or on the House floor. Indeed, Sen. Joe Barton (Tex.), the senior Republican on E&C, has predicted that Republicans will succeed in altering the bill to consider nuclear energy and so-called “clean coal” renewable fuels.

“The president and his allies have decided that man-made carbon dioxide is a witch’s brew that’s killing the planet,” Barton said in a statement, “and they think that just because the cap-and-trade cure stings doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have to swallow it.”

The Energy and Commerce Committee, headed by Waxman, is expected to take up the bill next week, with House Democratic leaders hoping to pass the bill before the August recess.

Influencing the debate, the nation’s largest carbon emitters have contributed enormous sums of money to lobby Congress this year. The oil and gas industries, for example, have already spent $44.6 million and the electric utilities have tallied an additional $34.4 million, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. By contrast, the renewable energy sector has spent only $14.4 million on lobbying over the same span, and environmental groups have tallied just $4.7 million.

It’s not just Waxman and Markey who are struggling against the current of regional protectionism in the fight against climate change. The Environmental Protection Agency last week proposed new renewable fuel standards that, for the first time, would factor things like worldwide deforestation when calculating the environment impacts of biofuel production. The proposal was hailed by environmentalsist who have long argued that production of ethanol, for example, has depleted global food supplies, forcing farmers elsewhere to clear forests — a major source of carbon emissions — to make up the difference.

Yet, after eight years of Bush-era regulators who didn’t believe in regulation and environmental protection officials who didn’t believe in environmental protection, congressional lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are suddenly feeling the sting of an EPA living up to its name.

Indeed, since the EPA unveiled its proposal, Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) has blasted the proposal as “very detrimental to ethanol.” Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) charged that the changes “would effectively kill renewable fuels in South Dakota and across the country because of environmental extremism within the EPA.” And Rep. Collin Peterson (D-Minn.), who heads the House Agriculture Committee, has already introduced legislation to prevent the so-called “indirect land use” provision from ever taking hold.

The message is clear: If climate change reforms are ever to clear Congress, they can’t confront industry too severely — even if those industries are responsible for same carbon emissions creating the problem.

Some lawmakers appear to recognize that probable reality. Next week the Senate environmental panel will host a hearing entitled “Business Opportunities and Climate Policy.”

*Cash for clunkers was not in the original proposal, but attached during committee debate a few days later.