Voting for Joe Neguse
For 12 years I served on the CU Board of Regents, including two years as Chair. Six of those years I had the honor of serving with Joe Neguse, who was a consistent and passionate advocate for the University’s faculty, staff and students. Time and time again, Joe fought against the administration’s requests for tuition increases, knowing from his own experience how important it was to keep CU affordable.
On the Board of Regents, Joe worked for better health care coverage for students and ensured they could register to vote as part of their enrollment. Joe even went to battle for CU’s kitchen workers, demanding they be given meals during their shifts. Whether the stakes were big or small, Joe spoke for those without a voice.
Thus, as a Boulder native, graduate of Fairview High School and CU Law School, I am troubled by the negative campaign run by Mark Williams and his supporters. The contention that Joe is aligned with big business is downright absurd. With his time on the Board of Regents and protecting Colorado consumers as the youngest member of Gov. Hicklooper’s cabinet, Joe has literally spent his entire legal career in service to those less fortunate. We need more people like Joe Neguse in Congress, a lot more.
Michael Carrigan/CU Regent
On CD-2 race
Who the Democrats should nominate to replace departing Jared Polis (the primary is June 26) mirrors a larger national question: center-left Sanders supporters or center-right Establishment Democrats in the Hillary mode. Here in the Second District, it’s Our Revolution-endorsed Mark Williams versus Democratic National Committee-picked Joe Neguse, respectively.
The differences are substantial. First, Williams’ campaign is self-financed, depending on local supporters; Neguse’s campaign takes PAC money. Indeed, DNC people have been contacting Sanders candidates, like Williams, telling them that unless they have at least $250,000 to throw at the election, they should quit. Generally, Williams is a candidate of the people; Neguse, of the DNC and its wealthy sponsors. Neguse, incidentally, is a corporate lawyer, exactly what we don’t need more of in Congress.
Consider also how the two types relate to the 1 Percent. Like Hillary Clinton herself (and as documented in her well-paid Goldman Sachs speeches), the Establishment Democrats tend to service the super-rich; candidates like Mark Williams are trying to save America from them — Main Street, not Wall Street.
Then there’s foreign policy: Establishment Democrats have long been “patriotic” supporters of U.S. empire — we have roughly a thousand military bases on foreign soil and are constantly engaged in neocolonial wars of conquest and occupation. Our military budget is larger than the rest of the world’s combined. Yet, I recall scenes of jubilant Obama staffers celebrating after they’d inked a deal to sell vile Saudi Arabia over the next decade ten billion dollars in arms. Or consider “Madame Secretary” Hillary Clinton’s role when she essentially supported a 2009 military coup in Honduras that unseated a democratically elected reformist president. There’s nothing progressive, enlightened or particularly “American” about running an international plantation; apparently, Mark Williams knows this.
Lastly, in the puerile world of U.S. politics, where male candidates debate who has the larger hands and where anti-war Americans are dismissed as weak and unmanly, Williams is a veteran, a former fighter pilot — the antithesis of a “coward” or a “traitor.”
Bernie Sanders won Colorado primaries, and in the Second District, he did particularly well. Let us continue our enlightened ways; let Boulder be Boulder.
Paul Dougan/Boulder
Colorado River issues alarming
I thought Joel Dyer’s article about the Colorado River (Re: “The new model for saving the Colorado River might just kill it,” Dyertimes, May 31, 2018) was well-written and certainly alarming.
But I’ve become inured to the shock of the power of money to corrupt otherwise intelligent and reasonable people.
I think Dyer also misses the critical point underlying the problems facing the river.
An economic system that demands incessant growth while externalizing most negative costs such as environmental degradation is the real culprit.
That’s why I call it Cancer Capitalism, because like its malevolent namesake its constant demand for growth eventually kills its host.
Cancer truly is a stupid and greedy disease, which perfectly describes the mentality of those who run our Cancer Capitalist socioeconomic system.
Michael Korn/Fort Collins
