Our Platform for Outlining Colorado’s Future

Reasons  to agree: When you have administrators  in Federal, State, and County agencies all with the same responsibility you are wasting money. When you have  administrators  in Federal, State, and County agencies all with the same responsibility there is no accountability for the performance of any of the government agencies. When the federal government has a mission that is the same as more local governments, they often don't really do anything besides set standards which the local agencies are not required to follow, and  funnels  money which they takes from individuals in each state, and put is back into other states. This whole process is overly complex, prone to corruption, bad incentives, inefficient with our money, and leads to bad results.  Reasons  to disagree:   Probable interest  of those who agree: Probable interest  of those who disagree: Common Interest Opposing Interest   Images  That agree    Ima...

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: 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: 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 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: “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: 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 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...

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 ...

Obama said: " The Republicans may have a different attitude, because they haven’t been appearing before forums that are diverse. The policies that they have promoted have not been good at providing ladders for upward mobility and opportunity for all people . That is a fight that all of us will fight. But I don’t want us to get drawn into this notion that somehow this is going to be a race that splits along racial lines.  Source:  2008 Congressional Black Caucus Democratic debate  Jan 21, 2008. Reasons  to disagree with Obama: Obama said that republican policies, "have not been good at providing ladders for upward mobility and opportunity for all people". However democrats have been in a majority in all the places most hard hit by poverty for the last 60 years. We have spent hundreds of trillions of dollars on poverty. Democrats have been in charge in New Orleans, for decades, but somehow republicans got blamed for their problems. Democrats have been in charge in all the ...

Amendment intends to pay down the Federal debt and eliminate government waste by reducing spending on programs rated ineffective by the Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART). Reasons  to disagree with Obama: We have programs out there that have made absolutely no effort at all to measure their results. I believe these are the worst offenders. In the following years, I hope Congress will look at those programs to create accountability.  Reference:  Allard Amendment ; Bill  S.Amdt.491 on S.Con.Res.21  ; vote number  2007-090  on Mar 22, 2007 People like Obama always critisize business, but government needs to learn that it is the outcome that matters not how much money is thrown at a problem.

Background: Obama said; "It's useful to remind ourselves that our free market system is the result neither of natural law nor of Divine Providence. Rather, it emerged through a painful process of trial and error. And although the benefits of our free market system are mostly derived from the individual efforts of generations of men and women pursuing their own vision of happiness, in each and every period of great economic upheaval and transition we depended on government action to open up opportunity, encourage competition, and make the market work better." ~ Obamanomics, by John R. Talbott, p. 69 Jul 1, 2008 Reasons  to disagree with Obama: How does Obama know what divine providence is? Obama is not only a politician, but a prophit who can tell us what the mind of God is?  Obama is way wrong to say that the free market does not follow natural law. The free market works, when it follows natural law. One natural law is the law of the harvest: that you reap what you sow.  ...

Reasons  to agree with Obama: Government should not "protect" one aspect of our economy. This is called corporate welfare. Obama just wanted the votes of rural downstate votors. Obama said; "Our rural communities are the backbone of Illinois. Yet, factories have closed, jobs have disappeared, and homes and farms have been foreclosed upon. Effective federal programs are necessary to protect the rural economy."   Source: Campaign website, ObamaForIllinois.com, On The Issues May 2, 2004

Background:  In a 2005 commencement address, Obama described the conservative philosophy of government as “to give everyone one big refund on their government, divvy it up by individual portions, in the form of tax breaks, hand it out, and encourage everyone to use their share to go buy their own health care, their own retirement plan, their own child care, their own education, and so on. In Washington, they call this the Ownership Society. But in our past there has been another term for it, Social Darwinism, every man or woman for him or herself. It’s a tempting idea, because it doesn’t require much thought or ingenuity.“ Reasons  to agree (that Obama is wrong) Obama says the o wnership society is the same as social darwinism. People take care of stuff they own. However, if the government gives you a house, you will not take good care of it. If the government gives you free healthcare, you will over-use it. Everyone miximizes their own reward. That is why the ownership society works. ...

Reasons  to agree: 1.         Obama said; "The fact that we’re spending $12 billion every month in Iraq means that we can’t engage in the kind of infrastructure improvements that are going to make us more competitive, we can’t deliver on the kinds of health care reforms that Clinton and I are looking for. McCain is willing to have these troops over there for 100 years. The notion that we would sustain that kind of effort and neglect not only making us more secure here at home, more competitive here at home, allow our economy to sink." -Source: 2008 Democratic debate at University of Texas in Austin Feb 21, 2008. Obama was saying that McCain was going to be spending $12 billion a month in Iraq. All McCain was saying is that we still have troops in Germany, and Japan. That it's not a problem having our troops in a place, its just a problem if people are dying, and money is being spent. Obama mischaracterized what McCain said. 2.        Obama constantly made fun of McCai...

Reasons to disagree with Obama: Obama self rightously accused Clinton of "resort(ing) to the same typical politics that we’ve seen in Washington" ( 2008 Congressional Black Caucus Democratic debate Jan 21, 2008) and then accused her of mischaracterizing his beliefs. However Obama often mischaracterizes the views of those he disagrees with . Interest of those who agree Interest of those who disagree Webpages that agree Webpages that agree

Reasons to agree: Obama said; "It's not going to happen. We're not going to go round them up ... We should give them a pathway to citizenship ( Obama at Joliet town hall )" But no one wants to "round them up". Obama used strawman arguments with the stimulas bill. Whenever people would criticize it, he would say, "well some people don't want to do anything". Background: A straw man argument is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position. [1] To "attack a straw man" is to create the illusion of having refuted a proposition by substituting a superficially similar proposition (the "straw man"), and refuting it, without ever having actually refuted the original position Interest  of those who agree (that Obama is wrong): Promoting the Republican Party by attacking a democrat. Promoting more logical debate. Racism (criticizing a minority, Obama, because he is a minority). Interest  of those w...