Do it for our kids’ kidsÂ
Of all the things we’d love to leave our children and future generations, a healthy place for them to raise children of their own may be the most important. But today, we use fuels that pollute the air our kids breathe and the water they drink. We are changing our climate and, with it, many things we depend upon for the future.
What do we want to work for and be remembered for? We can leave our children and future generations an America where the air is clean and the water is safe. By increasing the use and production of the safe sources of sustainable energy we have now, like wind and solar, we can be proud of what we have created for generations to come and have a happy surprise when we open our energy bills. The choice is ours to make for a clean energy future.
The best way to get there seems to me to be supporting our clean energy municipal utility here in Boulder and, at the national level, asking Sens. Bennet and Gardner and Rep. Polis to support a revenue-neutral carbon fee and dividend. This would place a fee on the carbon content of fuels and return all that money to American households on an equitable basis. A market-based approach like this will protect the poor and the middle class and help the economy without growing government, while cutting carbon pollution in half.
This is a future I can be excited about.
Randy Compton/Boulder
Roses are red and thanksÂ
Thanks for running the best column I have seen in alternative newsweeklies, and I’ve read and written for many: American Life in Poetry. These are wonderful, thought-provoking, soothing interludes in what is often an edition full of anxiety and accusation. Which is what ANs are for, that and entertainment news.
Excellent move to stop taking local submissions and let U.S. Poet Laureate Ted Kooser provide the selections. At least I think you were taking some local stuff before, because I stopped reading them. Smart move running this column, “our great good luck.”
Richard Wall/Lafayette
Rep. Polis, as we say in Colorado, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
All across the state, Coloradans are expressing their deep disappointment in Rep. Jared Polis’ vote to support [Nov. 19] SAFE Act, which adds yet another layer to an already years-long process of admitting refugees into the United States, in the wake of the bombing of Syria.
And yet, in the faraway distant time of Sept. 11, 2015, Rep. Polis was among the more than 70 Democratic members of Congress who signed onto a letter in support of the Obama administration’s plan (tinyurl.com/p78vc7b) to increase the number of refugees admitted to include 100,000 Syrians by the end of 2016. He was among those who pledged to commit “adequate additional resources … for security checks, to meet the increased demand.”
Additional resources does not equate to additional hurdles for people fleeing for their lives, not in our book.
To make matters worse, Rep. Polis has to date declined to hold the Obama administration responsible for the unconstitutional escalation of hostilities via bombing and undeclared perpetual war in the Middle East. Essentially, he has done nothing to stem the tide of refugees in the first place.
The combination of Rep. Polis’ failure to call attention to unauthorized war and his bait-and-switch regarding “resources” for refugees has caused an inhumane vise in which Syrian refugees are now squeezed. This vote is, put plainly, unconscionable.
And what is the cynical political rationale for linking arms with the extreme right-wing, xenophobic beneficiaries of the profits of war gifted by the military industrial complex? The security screening that refugees have undergone thus far is more than adequate. In fact, out of the 750,000-odd refugees resettled in the United States since 9/11, only three have been arrested on terrorist charges (tinyurl.com/ o5zg3z5) This situation ain’t broke, and it doesn’t need the SAFE Act’s “fix.”
Perhaps Rep. Polis finds himself in a not-so-safe electoral district after all, since last year’s corporate Democrat stunt of withdrawing support for two anti-fracking ballot initiatives. Perhaps after spurning his base, he now has to scramble to be in the good graces of what right-leaning voters might still live in CD-2.
Now is the time for Coloradans of good conscience to finally abandon the DNC hijinks and games of bait and switch. The Green Party of Colorado is now recruiting for a candidate to challenge Rep. Polis next year, and we will be working to fix what’s “broke” in Colorado’s CD-2. Will the challenger please step forward?
Andrea Merida, Co-Chair, Green Party of Colorado/Denver
Colorado Legislature — interested but impotent
In 1999, with over 10 percent of Coloradans living in poverty, the Colorado Legislature declared minimum wages to be a matter of state interest in the Labor Peace Act (C.R.S. Title 8, Article 3) and denied Colorado cities the legal authority to raise minimum wages.
For the next seven years the Colorado legislature failed to pass any minimum wage legislation. So in 2006, Coloradans put the state minimum wage outside the legislature’s control by initiating and passing a constitutional amendment to raise the minimum wage and index it to inflation.
Now, in 2015, with 15 percent of Coloradans living in poverty, Colorado Revised Statutes still claim exclusive control of minimum wages by the state legislature, in violation of the Colorado Constitution.
HB15-1300 would have fixed the Labor Peace Act by repealing the legislature’s claim of statewide control. But the Senate State, Veterans, and Military Affairs Committee killed the bill on April 15.
It is time to hold the Colorado Legislature accountable with a court suit to strike down its unconstitutional claim to control of minimum wages.
Harry Hempy/Jamestown
Stop getting a daily dose
A recent 20-minute film by awardwinning documentarian Jeremy Seifert, entitled “Our Daily Dose,” is worth viewing if you care about your children’s health. In the words of Erin Brokovich, “My career has been about making people aware of harmful exposures and the deception that often accompanies those exposures. Drinking water fluoridation is harmful, we’ve been deceived to believe it is safe, and with new found knowledge we must all act now to stop it.” The film is viewable online. For more detailed information, check out www. fluoridealert.org.
William Pollauf/Boulder
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