Today's Opinions

A recent story on National Public Radio suggested that people who find themselves with mortgage balances that are more than their homes are worth would be smart to stop making payments, have their homes foreclosed upon and then go buy another house in the same neighborhood based on the newly diminished housing values. They even found a contracts lawyer to say the reason there are default provisions in contracts is because defaulting on contracts is a rational option that is available to anyone who enters into any contract.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision allowing more corporate spending on elections has generated a great deal of attention. 

In Congress, politicians (who fill their own coffers with corporate dollars) feign indignation: They are shocked — shocked! — that tainted money is influencing elections. To fix it, they propose a set of “reforms” to clean up campaign spending once and for all.

When I first met former Colorado attorney general Duane Woodard in 1981, he was a member of the Public Utilities Commission. He and the other two commissioners were charged with evaluating requests from utilities to raise their rates. A variety of businesses, governments and residential consumers that needed utility services would routinely challenge the rate hikes. The PUC needed to determine that utilities received a fair rate of return while ensuring that consumers got fair rates.