Governing by Committee

Upon seeing this cartoon the other day, I had a good chuckle. Thanks to the artist Benjamin Hummel for the permission to repost it here:



If there's anything for which our current governor has a proclivity, it's hiding behind the decisions of well-crafted panels, councils, and commissions. It's interesting to note how the "blue ribbon panel" has been a recurring theme here at Ritter Watch:

In November we wrote: "Last year he set in motion a bunch of blue ribbon panels whose goal, individually and collectively, was to spend Colorado taxpayers into poverty. He appointed roadbuilding hawks to the roadbuilding panel and health care hawks to the healthcare panel, and so on."

Later we clued readers into this report: "Governor Bill Ritter's 32-member blue-ribbon panel is recommending a $100 average increase in vehicle registration fees as part of its $1.5 billion plan to pay for much-needed transportation infrastructure maintenance and improvements."

It's not just transportation, but education, too.

Sometimes, though, a good picture really does tell the story better. So hats off to Hummel for his clever cartoon - we invite you to check out all his work on his site.

Kory Nelson Was Unimpressed

The Rocky Mountain News has a web only takedown of one line on education in Bill Ritter's State of the State address:

"I am proposing that we establish policies that assume all students have the potential to succeed in college and that we prepare them accordingly.”

Nelson proceeded to make observations that almost anyone knowledgable in the field of education could have made. One wonders why Bill Ritter is so clueless on the matter.

Nelson wrote a long essay well worth reading, but sometimes the comments are equally useful and interesting. Here is one:

It's increasingly obvious that CO elected a dunce--Bill Ritter--and that his blizzard of Blue Ribbon Commissions are going to produce nothing more than $3.1 billion in annual tax and fee hikes ($650 for every man, woman and child in the state) for the taxpayers--just as we are on the cusp of economic recession that requires tax cuts and not hikes. Ritter seems to be totally vacant of any original ideas and wants to govern by unaccountable committees and commissions, the membership of which didn't receive one single vote. That's not leadership, that's followship.

I hope CO voters r-e-c-a-l-l Gray Davis of California and what the citizens ultimately did to him as he fell further and further out of touch with reality.

Dumbing Down Colorado Students

Except for the legal profession, which doesn't mind appearing to have devolved itself into little more than a sophisticated organized theft ring acting under the color of law, few well paying professions operate without a core background in math.

Engineers start at $80,000 or more a year. Personnel managers at $30,000 if they are lucky; New journalists are lucky to get $20,000. Doctors, who use a lot of math to get past the Chemistry courses, can start at $150,000. Musicians, except Rock Stars, live in poverty.

We were amazed to find a reference to Bill Ritter's new education proposal and a quote from one of his advisers:

Ritter's proposal, under discussion for weeks with school leaders, is equivalent to taking the education system apart and putting it back together.

Instead of passing a set number of courses to graduate, students would have to demonstrate competency in key areas, such as math or English.

And students might pick up those competencies in new ways - learning math, for example, as part of a career education course in computers.

"What's in Algebra II that's so important?" said Matt Gianneschi, Ritter's education adviser. "How can it be delivered in high school? Does it need to be in a course called 'Algebra II?'

Can you see a Chemistry teacher being forced to teach a junior how to solve for a variable in an equation before he tries to teach the Chemistry? When music teachers and lawyers are put in charge of education, we get some really dumb outcomes. Right Michael Merrifield? Right Bill Ritter?

We discovered this little gem when the Rocky published a letter to the editor about it.