Columns

By Paul Belanger
I too read Sandy Barnes’ article about the Mike Nelson-Jim White presentations on global warming. I was dismayed to read Howard Sperry’s May 14 reply claiming simplistic, one-sided “beliefs.”

If you took a social studies class in the past 30 years, there’s no way you could avoid knowing chapter and verse about McCarthyism, J. Edgar Hoover’s abuses at the FBI, and President Nixon’s “enemies list.”

 The paranoid abuse of government power in the latter half of the last century led to a healthy skepticism of federal leadership, and justifiably so. While corruption itself is nothing new, it became more visible in the television era. Today we rightfully look at those events as low points in American history.

The Colorado legislature adjourned May 8 after completing the work of the first session of the 69th General Assembly. Highly contentious issues and partisan wrangling characterized the session. Democrats controlled the House, the Senate and the governor’s office after a two-year period in which control of the legislature was split, as Republicans controlled the House in 2011 and 2012 by a narrow 33-32 margin.

It’s been a pretty good couple of weeks for decisions by and about Evergreen’s primary governmental entities. The ill-advised attempt to recall the board of directors of the Evergreen Fire Protection District was snuffed out by a landslide vote, and the Evergreen Park and Recreation District board kept the faith with the American Legion and other supporters of the Buchanan Park veterans memorial by approving a statue to complete the memorial.