A good man was at his place of worship, praying to God. He said, "Lord there is so much trouble in the world. There is injustice, poverty, conflict and violence. Lord, please send someone to help...please."God spoke. He said, "I did. I sent you." There is an election on Tuesday, Vote.
Colorado
I'm taking the advice of Colorado State Senator Ken Gordon, who has been working tirelessly to help Colorado by fixing TABOR through Referendum C & D, and I'm urging you to go vote for Referendum C & D. I can't stress enough how important it is to vote for these two initiatives. On a personal level, many of my CU friends are paying higher costs of tuition than many of my friends at CMC. This is unacceptable. CU's world-class public education has produced brilliant scholars and is an institution that we, as Coloradans, need to protect. These rising student fees are not part of the normal economic cycle, but are part of a glitch created by TABOR. Students should be allowed to return to pre-recession levels of spending and not have these unnecessary financial burdens.
Do something to help. Vote yourself, of course, but do something in addition. The outcome of this election hangs by a thread. And this applies in other counties as well. Even if you have a mailed ballot, many people never fill them out or send them in.
Here are three arguments that Ken Gordon has had some success with. I think they are persuasive, and they have the added benefit of being true.- C and D are only an attempt to get us back to where we would have been with state services if the recession had not happened. We are not trying to do anything new or extravagant. It is just that the TABOR amendment requires a vote of the people to let services come back to pre-recession levels after a recession is over. The services we are talking about are, education, a health care safety net, and roads and bridges.
- Because Medicaid is a federal program with matching funds, prison spending is driven by sentencing laws, and K-12 education is protected by Amendment 23, cuts that will be necessary if C and D do not pass will disproportionately affect colleges and universities. Colorado will be the first state to defund higher education, and a state that already does a poor job of getting its high school graduates into college, will become much worse. In this century the good jobs and the good economies will go to the states and countries that turn out the engineers, writers, and math and science majors who can work in the jobs of the future. We should be putting more into education not less. Even conservatives should be concerned that more and more of the best scientists, computer engineers and mathematicians are coming from China, Singapore and India. It is a security issue. (If people complain about Amendment 23, they should know that we still fund K-12 poorly compared to other states.)
- Colorado has 8700 people with developmental disabilities on waiting lists for supports and services. Many of these people will die before they come off the waiting list. In other states people with disabilities get services, and it is cost-effective because with early intervention many disabled children can attend typical classrooms, get jobs and be productive rather than being institutionalized for life. The failure to care for the disabled is hard on our hearts. We can do better.
