Our Platform for Outlining Colorado’s Future

Reasons  to agree: People on both sides of the isle, say that he is very respectful, to those with whome he disagrees. During his two year tenure on the D.C. Circuit, Roberts authored 49 opinions, eliciting only two dissents from other judges, and authoring only three dissents of his own. This shows that Roberts works well with others, and builds consensus. Roberts is one of twelve Catholic justices — out of 110 justices total — in the history of the Supreme Court. [ 37 ] His wife is an attorney and a trustee (along with  Clarence Thomas ) at her alma mater, the  College of the Holy Cross  in  Worcester, Massachusetts . He must be pretty cool to have got a smart girl like that to marry him. Roberts graduated graduating with an A.B. in history summa cum laude in three years from Harvard. Before attending  Harvard Law School , was the managing editor of the  Harvard Law Review , [ 3 ]  and graduated with his J.D. magna cum laude. [ 5 ...

Reasons  to agree: People hate smart kids. Americans are way over-fascinated with calling smart people nerds, and geeks. This is not done so much in other cultures. Background: “I try to avoid an either/or approach to solving the problems of this country. There are questions of individual responsibility and questions of societal responsibility to be dealt with. The best example is an education. I’m going to insist that we’ve got decent funding, enough teachers, and computers in the classroom, but unless you turn off the television set and get over a certain anti-intellectualism that I think pervades some low-income communities, our children are not going to achieve .” ~ Meet The Press, NBC News Jul 25, 2004

  Q: If one of your daughters asked you, “Daddy, did God really create the world in 6 days?” What would you say? A: What I believe is that God created the universe, and that the 6 days in the Bible may not be 6 days as we understand it. My belief is that the story that the Bible tells about God creating this magnificent Earth, that is fundamentally true. Now whether it happened exactly as we might understand it reading the text of the Bible, that I don’t presume to know. But one last point--I do believe in evolution. I don’t think that is incompatible with Christian faith. Just as I don’t think science generally is incompatible with Christian faith. There are those who suggest that if you have a scientific bent of mind, then somehow you should reject religion. And I fundamentally disagree with that. In fact, the more I learn about the world, the more I know about science, the more I’m amazed about the mystery of this planet and this universe. And it strengthens my faith as opposed ...

Reasons  to agree: We should reward good behavior and punish bad behavior .  “ Teachers are extraordinarily frustrated about how their performance is assessed. And not just their own performance, but the school’s performance generally. So they’re teaching to the tests all the time. What I have said is that we should be able to get buy-in from teachers in terms of how to measure progress. Every teacher I think wants to succeed. And if we give them a pathway to professional development, where we’re creating master teachers, they are helping with apprenticeships for young new teachers, they are involved in a variety of other activities, that are really adding value to the schools, then we should be able to give them more money for it. But we should only do it if the teachers themselves have some buy-in in terms of how they’re measured. They can’t be judged simply on standardized tests that don’t take into account whether children are prepared before they get to school or not.” ~ ...

Reasons  to agree: Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. We have spent more and more money per student in public schools over the past 30 years, and our performance has only gotten worse. Background: “We’ll make sure that every child in this country gets a world-class education from the day they’re born until the day they graduate from college. What McCain is offering amounts to little more than the same tired rhetoric about vouchers. We need to move beyond the same debate we’ve been having for the past 30 years when we haven’t gotten anything done. We need to fix & improve our public schools, not throw our hands up and walk away from them. We need to uphold the ideal of public education, but we also need reform. That’s why I’ve introduced a comprehensive strategy to recruit an army of new quality teachers to our communities--and to pay them more & give them more support. We’ll invest in early childhood education programs so t...

Reasons  to agree: Those students in Education departments across the country have had worse ACT, and SAT grades than other college departments. They even have worse grades than Criminal Justice departments (cops). It is sad that cops can know math, geography, history, and science, better than those that we put in charge of teaching our children. We need higher standards for teachers, if we are going to pay them more. I'm not saying every teacher is stupid. If you are a teacher, and you are offended, than you prove my point. You are stupid. The facts are the facts, and if you get mad because of the facts, than you are stupid. I'm from Idaho. I'm not offended when you say bad things about people from Idaho, in general, because I know that you are not talking about me specifically. Of course their are a lot of very smart people who are teachers. I thought about going into teaching. My father, whom I love and respect very much is a teacher. My mother in law is also a very good...

Reasons  to agree: "In a global economy where the most valuable skill you can sell is your knowledge, a good education is no longer just a pathway to opportunity--it is a prerequisite. And yet, we have one of the highest high school dropout rates of any industrialized nation. And half of the students who begin college never finish. This is a prescription for economic decline.   So tonight, I ask every American to commit to at least one year or more of higher education or career training. This can be community college or a four-year school; vocational training or an apprenticeship. But every American will need to get more than a high school diploma. And dropping out of high school is no longer an option. It's not just quitting on yourself, it's quitting on your country. That's why we will provide the support necessary for all young Americans to complete college and meet a new goal: By 2020, America will once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the ...

Reasons  to agree: Obama said, "I got high [to] push questions of who I was out of my mind.” People do things for a lot of reasons. To say that he used drugs for one reason, because he was having problems with his racial identity, seems to be playing the melodramatic race card. I'm not saying that it might have been part of the reason that he used drugs, but to fully blame all his drug use with racial identity problems, like he did in his book, seems a little melodramatic. Melodrama involves an oversimplified hero. Obama seems to see himself as a hero, in a very simplistic way. He wrote two or three autobiographies about himself, before he was even un unaccomplished senator. Now that he is president, he can write a few autobiogaphies, but he has already written two or three.

Reasons  to agree: When Obama said,  “Pot had helped, and booze; maybe a little blow when you could afford it. Not smack though" ( Dreams from My Father), he thought he would reach those who had used drugs and convence them to go straight. However he will have reached more straight kids and convinced them to use drugs, by making it sound cool, showing that he was able to beat it, and using their street names, as though he is still trying to have "street cred".  Reasons  to agree: Obama is right that selling 15 tablets of Ecstasy should not be in the same class of felony as raping a woman at knifepoint .

Reasons  to agree:  The person who is buying the ecstasy wants to buy it. Reasons  to disagree:

Reasons  to agree with Obama: If you get killed because you made someone mad, or they want to steal your car, or because you were in the wrong place in the wrong time, that is one thing. But gangs are specifically targetting cops. We need them to be un-afraid of going into dangerous places. If they are not safe, than none of us are safe. It should be worse to kill cops, because they stand in the place of all of us in keeping our society together, and all that thin-blue-line stuff. Background: Q: On mandatory death sentences for gang members who kill cops you voted no. Would you explain? OBAMA: [The proposed legislation] was entirely unnecessary and unconstitutional. It suggested that I could kill a police officer but because I’m not a gang member, I would be treated differently. I think both cases should be death penalty eligible. KEYES: Senator Obama does not think it superfluous to have hate crimes legislation that adds a special animus to certain acts of violence already penaliz...

Reasons  to agree: Q: On the right to let cops go into dangerous places with search warrants without knocking, you voted no as well. Would you explain? OBAMA: With respect to the potential for police officers not to knock when they go in, there’s an issue of search and seizures and there must be some parameters for law enforcement to protect our civil liberties. Source: Illinois Senate Debate #3: Barack Obama vs. Alan Keyes Oct 21, 2004

Reasons  to agree: “While the evidence tells me that the death penalty does little to deter crime, I believe there are some crimes--mass murder, the rape and murder of a child--so heinous that the community is justified in expressing the full measure of its outrage by meting out the ultimate punishment. On the other hand, the way capital cases were tried in Illinois at the time was so rife with error, questionable police tactics, racial bias, and shoddy lawyering, that 13 death row inmates had been exonerated” The Audacity of Hope, by Barack Obama, p. 58 Oct 1, 2006

Reasons  to agree: “Obama had a 2002 bill to stop police abuse. Chicago had become infamous for use of torture by police to help frame innocent people. Thirteen innocent men on Death Row were exonerated and released, some of them victims of these tortured confessions. Illinois desperately needed some action to restore confidence in the police. Obama’s proposal was to require videotaping of interrogations of suspects in capital cases. When Obama began, the idea of a bill was opposed by police, prosecutors, most of the senate and the governor. The governor was determined not to appear soft on crime, and had promised to veto any proposal for mandatory tapings. By the time Obama finished his work, the police and prosecutors embraced the bill, it passed in the Illinois Senate by a vote of 58-0. The governor took the unusual step of reversing himself to sign it, and Illinois became the first state to require such tapings.” ~ The Improbable Quest, by John K. Wilson, p.145 Oct 30, 2007. I thin...

Reasons  to agree: “I don’t want to wake up four years from now and discover that we still have more young black men in prison than in college.” ~ Barack Obama, fund-raiser in Harlem, NY, Nov. 29, 2007. “Simply untrue, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. There may be a case for arguing, as some Obama supporters have done, that the total number of black prisoners is slightly higher than the total number of black students. But I can only fact check the comparison the candidate actually made, which was between young black men in prison and in college. Rather than acknowledge the error, the Obama campaign declined to provide statistical support.” Source: GovWatch on 2008 Pinocchio Awards for Biggest Fib of 2007 Jan 1, 2008. As GovWatch points out, there are more black men in prison (age 18 to 100 years old) than there are “young   black men” in college. However Obama said there were more young black men in prison than in college, which is far from true.

Reasons  to agree: Rich people use cocain. Poor people use crack. It is wrong to punish the poor people more.

"Obama will work to ban racial profiling" ~ Campaign booklet, “Blueprint for Change”, p. 48-49 Feb 2, 2008 Reasons  to agree: Race should only be considered when it is used to describe a specific suspect in a specific crime and only when used in a manner like other physical descriptions (e.g., hair color, weight, distinguishing marks). This is often referred to as the "be on the lookout" (B.O.L.O.) exception. “If we know that in our criminal justice system, African-Americans and whites, for the same crime, receive--are arrested at very different rates, are convicted at very different rates, receive very different sentences. That is something that we have to talk about. But that’s a substantive issue and it has to do with how do we pursue racial justice. If I am president, I will have a civil rights division that is working with local law enforcement so that they are enforcing laws fairly and justly. But I would expect a white president or a woman president should wa...

Reasons  to agree: An Obama campaign booklet, “Blueprint for Change”, p. 42 Feb 2, 2008 said: “Obama will work to ensure that ex-offenders have access to job training, substance abuse and mental health counseling, and employment opportunities. Obama will also create a prison-to-work incentive program and reduce barriers to employment.” There is no specific plan, just a promiced outcome. No real-world analasis of trying to figure out how much things will cost, or how they will force people to hire ex-cons... It is nice to say that you want ex-cons to be able to get jobs, but it is stupid to just say your going to do it, without saying how, looking at how much it will cost, or trying to figure out if you even have the money to do it. For instance should the Federal Government be spending tax money collected from New York, and California, to pay ex-cons from Idaho, to go to a jobs program in Pennsylvania? The federal government shouldn't be doing crap lack that. They should have limit...

Reasons  to agree: “How many times in the last year has this city lost a child at the hands of another child? How many times have our hearts stopped in the middle of the night with the sound of a gunshot or a siren? How many teenagers have we seen hanging around on street corners when they should be sitting in a classroom? How many are sitting in prison when they should be working, or at least looking for a job? How many in this generation are we willing to lose to poverty or violence or addiction? How many?” “Yes, we need more cops on the street. Yes, we need fewer guns in the hands of people who shouldn’t have them. Yes, we need more money for our schools. Yes, we need more jobs and more job training and more opportunity in our communities.” “But we also need families to raise our children. We need fathers to realize that responsibility does not end at conception. We need them to realize that what makes you a man is not the ability to have a child--it’s the courage to raise one.” Bar...

Reasons to agree: We should not let baby-kissers make important decisions. We should not let people who are willing summerize their ideas for American's future in a 30 second campaign commersial. We should not give power to the type of person who wants power. No politicians are appointed. They all self-choose. This is stupid. You don't advance in the military because you want to. You advance if you imprese those above you. The same with business. Politicians should be appointed. People have problems who want to control other people's lives. Politicians should get a dog, plant a garden, or have kids, and try their little experiments on a scale that will only hurt them when they make mistakes. 

Reasons  to disagree: We should reward good behavior and punish bad behavior . Fighting for people who do nothing but "stand around on street corner" is rewarding bad behavior. Obama didn't stand around on street corners. It sounds cruel, but kids need to see that people who make bad decisions fail. That prevents more bad decisions. But it all depends on what you mean by "fight for". We should, of course, be smart. If we can fight for them in a way that does not reward bad behavior, but gives them different options, that is ok, but that is the problem with generic stupid language, like "fight for". A lot of parents fight for their kids, and cause damage... sometimes it is better to let the kids fight for themselves... but this language is stupid... Usually compassion is not a limitless resource. When you have compassion on criminals, to some degree, you are less able to provide compassion to law abiding citizens. You will have less money, time, and oth...

Reasons to agree: People, like dogs, seek rewards, and avoid punishments. The Parable of the Talents tells us that law of the harvest. We can all agree on some very basic definitions of good and bad. Even if we make some mistakes, and accidently call some good things bad, the effort in the long run, will result in more good being done than bad. It may seem cruel to "reward" those who are smart, but it is cruel to those in the future, if we create an un-just society, or a backwards society. Our challenges that we face in the future will need smart people. We have to reward those who seek education. We should reward behavior people that help the environment. Reasons to disagree: If I don't like what you call "good" and "bad" then you might end up, then I might think you are rewarding bad behavior and punishing good behavior. It is hard to judge "bad" behavior. For instance, if you get bad grades, is it because you are lazy (bad), or disadvan...

  Reasons to agree: We should reward good behavior and punish bad behavior If you are going to have sin taxes, you should also have virtue tax credits. If a behavior helps America as a whole, it isn't wasting money giving tax incentives; it might actually bring in more money. Reasons  to disagree: The government shouldn't determine what is "good" business behavior and "bad business behavior. Some businesses could win more jobs if they had 30% of their employees in India... for instance, if they keep losing jobs to South Korean firms, because employment costs are too high, maybe it would help them keep at least some of the work coming into the states, instead of going to companies that are 100% foreign. These should be business, not political decisions.  Background: Obama’s “REAL USA” Corporations Plan (Responsible, Accountable, Loyal USA Corporations) will reward companies that create quality jobs in America with tax incentives. Companies will be required to: l...

  Reasons to agree with Obama: Big farms located far away are bad. People should be allowed to have goats, and chickens in the suberbs. People should grow food not grass. It is a waste of time to plant grass, put fertilizers, pesticides, and weed killer, down, and every week mow a lawn while burning gas in a 2 cylinder engine that spits out carbon dioxide, when you could spend 1/2 the time growing a better looking yard that actually gave you fruits, vegetable, and nuts for free. There should be more local farms, and less giant farms that all produce the same thing. Reasons to disagree: Words are cheap. You shouldn't get any credit until you take actions.

Background: Q: Last year, some parents of second graders in Lexington, Massachusetts, were outraged to learn their children’s teacher had read a story about same-sex marriage, about a prince who marries another prince. Would you be comfortable reading this story to your children as part of their school curriculum? A: My 9-year-old and my 6-year-old are already aware that there are same-sex couples. And my wife and I have talked about it. One of the things I want to communicate to my children is not to be afraid of people who are different because there have been times in our history when I was considered different. And one of the things I think the next president has to do is to stop fanning people’s fears. Q: Have you sat with your daughters to discuss same-sex marriage? A: My wife has. Source: 2007 Democratic primary debate at Dartmouth College Sep 6, 2007 Reasons to agree: People get very upset with the government. They want it to do all these things and have all these powers, but ...

Reasons  to agree with Obama: "I think that the Confederate flag should be put in a museum. That’s where it belongs. But we’ve got an enormous debate that’s taking place in this country right now. And we’ve got to engage the people of South Carolina in that debate." Source: 2007 South Carolina Democratic primary debate, on MSNBC Apr 26, 2007. However Mike Huckabee said; "if somebody came to Arkansas and told us what to do with our flag, we'd tell 'em what to do with the pole, that's what we'd do." That is real classy when a former preacher makes jokes about sodomising someone with a flag pole. Huckabee always talks about how he is a “Christian leader” but he made jokes about shoving a flag pole up the collective butts of people who thought the confederate flag was somewhat racist.

  Reasons  to agree with Obama: Obama is right about the disparity between sentencing crack and powder-based cocaine  . Obama is right to try to ban racial profiling. Obama has said: “[Those who worked on civil rights in the past realized that] to achieve racial equality was not simply good for African-Americans, but it was good for America as a whole; that we could not be what we might be as a nation unless we healed the brutal wounds of slavery and Jim Crow." Obama has said; "Now, we have made enormous progress, but the progress we have made is not good enough. As many have already mentioned, we live in a society that remains separated in terms of life opportunities for African-Americans, for Latinos, and the rest of the nation." Obama is right. Its not always about race, but often about historical economic opportunities. For instance, many Irish came to American in deep poverty because they were fleeing the potato famine. African American's aren't always the v...