Pot shot at naught
We laughed, literally out loud, when we got the press release from CU bragging about how the university spent like 17 grand less on shutting down the campus’s 4/20 pot smokeout last spring than it did the year before.
Sure, $17,000 may sound like a lot of money to you and me, but it’s just a drop in the bucket when it comes to CU’s budget. They want us to be proud of them for spending only $107,794, down from $124,561 last year.
On fighting a drug that is now essentially legal in Colorado.
On an herb that has caused way more tax-generating pizza runs that it has injuries or deaths. (We all drive way slower and more carefully when high, right?)
And this was on a Saturday, when no classes are held, when there are hardly any research or educational activities to disrupt on campus.
Give us a break. The cost should have dropped to $17,000, not by $17,000.
The university should spend more on hiring additional good faculty — or hey, even better, reducing tuition — instead of shelling out six figures to serve as yet another nanny state in the city of Boulder.
Give us a nudge and pass the bong when the leaders of this university figure out that there is a natural secondary meaning for the term higher education. Especially in Boulder.
Pot shot at Scott
Hey, everybody makes mistakes. Even journalists.
We know that comes as a tremendous shock to all of you, given that reporters rank maybe one notch above car salesmen, porta-potty peepers and lawyers in terms of bad reputations.
But in this case we have to admit, nostra culpa, we screwed up. In last week’s issue, we intimated that Secretary of State Scott Gessler would be running for re-election. Apparently, he is not. But hold your applause, please.
Instead, he is running for governor.
Again, hold your applause. Please.
But we were also assured by some who know him best, after running a bit of a slam piece on him in this space last week, that he is actually a solid, stand-up guy who might have made a few mistakes earlier in his career. So, sure, we’ll give him a second, er, fourth chance.
And if he is running against Frackenlooper for governor, well, that might be a tougher choice than any of us would have thought a couple of years ago.
More ‘Gasland’
Hey, if you missed the early screening of Josh Fox’s new fracking movie, Gasland 2, when the filmmaker showed it to a packed house in the University of Colorado’s Glenn Miller Ballroom on May 22, you may want to tune in to see the premiere on HBO at 7 p.m. on Monday, July 8.
This time, Fox takes an even broader and deeper look at fracking and other oil and gas operations, paying special attention to Texas, Wyoming and Pennsylvania. He hits many of the topics that BW has been covering over the last couple of years, including the use of injection wells to dispose of wastewater and the export of natural gas overseas.
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