Opinion

While there are many opinions about how we should educate our children in Jefferson County, we can all agree on one underlying principle — we care about our children, and we want the best for them.
Jeffco schools have struggled over the last three years to manage more than $60 million in state funding cuts without hurting kids. We have reduced costs, closed under-enrolled schools, trimmed staff, streamlined administration and cut compensation.

State needs more revenue to avoid devastating cuts
Editor:
As a parent and taxpayer, I am saddened and outraged by the ill-advised path that we are on in the name of reducing spending.
We are in a race to the bottom — to become last in the nation for education funding. Colorado is 48th in funding K-12 education, 49th in funding higher education, and we are falling faster every day.

For much of its 150-year history, the Sheriff’s Office has relied on volunteer deputies — the reserves — to assist with public safety assignments throughout Jefferson County. These state-certified law enforcement officers are essential to our agency’s mission, and soon we’ll be looking to add a few new faces to their ranks. Do you have what it takes?
 
Who are the reserves?

If you think you’re seeing more negative campaign ads this year, it’s not just you. 2010 is shaping up to be an all-time high — or low — for negative campaigning. It’s gotten so bad, a recent Denver Post headline read, “It’s a miracle! Some positive campaign ads!” I still haven’t seen those yet.

Sometimes I wonder whether we use the right nomenclature to describe the basic political divide in America. We see “liberals” on this side and “conservatives” on that side, with Democrats generally representing the former and Republicans the latter.

But a compelling case can be made that the political landscape is really more sensibly divided into those who believe government should have a limited role (libertarians) and those who prefer government to have a more active role (statists). 

At what point will we finally have enough surveillance cameras? It’s hard to go anywhere without being watched by at least one, and often several, closed-circuit eyes in the sky. On a typical five-minute walk in downtown Denver, you don’t have to look very hard to find 20 or more cameras. They’re on lampposts, the sides of buildings, on ceilings, atop traffic lights and along walls.

So it’s come to this. In perhaps the most favorable Republican year since at least 1994, scandal-plagued GOP front-runner Scott McInnis can’t even close the deal on his own party’s nomination, much less the general election. 

In the week following the Sept. 11 attacks, Colorado Congresswoman Diana DeGette attended religious services at both a Jewish synagogue and an Islamic mosque. Her visit to Temple Emanuel coincided with our Rosh Hashanah services, which are very well attended, and Rabbi Steve Foster, the spiritual leader of the congregation, welcomed her publicly and made a point of telling everyone in attendance that she was attending the mosque that week as well.

Negative attacks, they say, have long been part of politics. In “Going Dirty: the Art of Negative Campaigning” by David Mark, we’re told that in the 1828 presidential election, Andrew Jackson’s political allies nicknamed John Quincy Adams “the Pimp,” a reference to “a rumor that while he was ambassador to Russia a decade earlier, he had coerced a young woman into having an affair with a czar.”