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January 29- February 4, 2009 editorial@boulderweekly.com
• See Uncensored
• See Jim Hightower
• Danish Plan
Expand your sources
(Re: “Making the grade,” news, Jan. 22.) Thank you for your ongoing coverage of the issues facing Columbine Elementary. I think it is very important that our community stays aware of the situation there. However, in choosing to rely almost exclusively on the commentary of two people for both your articles on Columbine, you have presented a very limited perspective. While Alexis Phillips and Eric Dobbs should be commended for helping make the public aware of the dilemma facing Columbine, they are not the only voices of the Columbine community. As the parent of a former Columbine student, I know that their opinions do not represent those of all the families involved.
We are an Anglo family for whom Columbine is our neighborhood school. We were excited to have our daughter attend a school that provided diversity in its student makeup. I became very active at the school, volunteering in the classroom regularly and becoming an officer on the school PTA. However, after two years we decided to open enroll to another BVSD school. We transferred schools because Columbine was not meeting our daughter’s needs academically or socially. In all the coverage you’ve provided, as well as that provided by KGNU and the Daily Camera, there has been little input from the families who did choose to enroll their children at Columbine and later left. As pointed out in your article this week, the issues with Columbine are very complicated. In the interest of journalism and keeping the public better informed of all sides of the problem we hope you will look towards a more diverse group of sources in the future.
Linda Cohen/via Internet
An offense to Moe
(Re: “No Moe Bush,” cover story, Jan. 15.) The cover art of the Jan. 15-21 edition is patently offensive. You “Photoshopped” a black sugarbowl haircut onto an image of George Bush to make him resemble Moe Howard of The Three Stooges; the caption confirms your intent. How could you be so harsh toward a person who worked so hard and did so much?
Moe Howard’s memory does not deserve this. His trademark slapstick was beloved by many children for decades. Some of us still remember, 50 years on, snippets of the Stooges best. Granted, Howard was no Cary Grant, but his character acting was renowned. As an individual he was well known to be kind and generous. Even in jest, connecting him to our inept, divisive, lawless and malevolent 43rd president is a poor choice.
Better you had stayed with the classic Bush — Alfred E. Neuman. AEN’s “What, me worry?” slogan fits Bush to a T. Moreover, all you need to do is find a puckishly grinning Bush pic and Photoshop out one tooth. And finally, since AEN is a fictional character, you’d not be denigrating the memory of an actual person.
Seriously, I hope that with time and good American effort, we will be able to heal the divisions, restore the laws, unwind the massive debt, return to peace, and otherwise wash away Bush’s legacy to the point we can one day see him as merely a buffoon instead of an arch-villain.
Dick Dunn/Hygiene, Colo.
Trash TABOR
At long last many in the state are waking up to the warts on TABOR. One has only to look at California to see what can happen when a state’s public sector economy is handcuffed. TABOR’s stated focus is the property tax. Unintended consequences include the mess we see now, within an economy of perhaps permanently reduced consumption.
TABOR makes local governments almost solely reliant on sales-tax revenues; anyone with half a brain can see where that is taking us. The property tax is vastly less regressive than sales taxes, and it is high time those with the assets once again pay their fair share for community needs. Property tax is one of the last three similar items (another is mortgage interest) still deductible on federal income tax returns; so what’s not to like?
Repeal of TABOR might itself lead to one unintended consequence — cities and towns may choose only expensive new-home construction via “beauty” contests and the like, meaning less affordable housing, assuming the residential market revives someday. But on balance, fairness, fiscal sense and sustainable public services, demand that TABOR be consigned to the trash heap of history, and now.
Gregory Iwan/Longmont
A presidential failure
From the perspective of his right-wing party, George Bush had a successful presidency. He managed to gut the treasury with his inefficient $450-billion prescription drug bill, $3 trillion war for oil in Iraq, and $350-billion reward to inept bankers for squandering their holdings. In the words of Grover Norquist, a Bush adviser and leader in the neo-conservative movement, government should be shrunk so small it could be “drowned in a bathtub.” They never shrank the government, but now the Democrats will have to increase the deficit to get the country working again. Bush’s only failure, from the neo-con perspective, was his inability to put the Social Security fund into the stock market. Sometimes a failure in the presidency is a good thing!
Tom Lopez/Longmont
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