U.S. Senate
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(D) J. Hickenlooper*
(R) Somebody
80%
20%
Governor
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(D) Michael Bennet
(D) Phil Weiser
60%↑
50%↓
Att. General
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(D) M. Dougherty
(D) Jena Griswold
(D) David Seligman
40%
40%
30%
Sec. of State
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(D) A. Gonzalez
(D) J. Danielson
(R) Sheri Davis
50%
40%
30%
State Treasurer
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(D) Brianna Titone
(D) Jeff Bridges
(R) Kevin Grantham
40%
40%
30%
CO-01 (Denver)
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(D) Diana DeGette*
(R) Somebody
90%
2%
CO-02 (Boulder-ish)
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(D) Joe Neguse*
(R) Somebody
90%
2%
CO-03 (West & Southern CO)
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(R) Jeff Hurd*
(D) Somebody
80%
40%
CO-04 (Northeast-ish Colorado)
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(R) Lauren Boebert*
(D) Trisha Calvarese
(D) Eileen Laubacher
90%
20%
20%
CO-05 (Colorado Springs)
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(R) Jeff Crank*
(D) Somebody
80%
20%
CO-06 (Aurora)
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(D) Jason Crow*
(R) Somebody
90%
10%
CO-07 (Jefferson County)
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(D) B. Pettersen*
(R) Somebody
90%
10%
CO-08 (Northern Colo.)
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(R) Gabe Evans*
(D) Manny Rutinel
(D) Shannon Bird
45%↓
40%
30%
State Senate Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
80%
20%
State House Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
95%
5%
January 06, 2008 08:46 PM UTC
14 Comments
I completely agree. I’ve read Edwards Plan to Build One America and I credit him for laying this plan out much like Governor Ritter had done during his campaign. Edwards is honest and open with his agenda.
I would also like to point you to Obama’s issues page on his website which has the Economy at the top of the list.
Both Edwards and Obama hit several of the same concerns that all of us have, creating a new innovative economy to rebuild the middle class and prevent predatory actions by some of the most profitable companies in America who take advantage of Americans.
However, while the “status quo” was attacking the “agents of change” when Clinton said Obama only has words instead of “experience.” I think John and Barack both have words that will inspire and motivate a nation, but right now (and this is no swipe at Edwards) Obama is able to motivate and mobilize independents and republicans to his cause to reform American.
The agents of change have an opportunity to build an incredible coalition, to bring the people together to reform Washington and solve the issues that have been “talked” about for the last few decades.
Thanks for the articles. I chuckled to read that “psychologists at the University of Leicester in Britain recently produced the world’s first map of happiness. Using data from the emerging science of happiness, they created a color-coded atlas of bliss, a topography of the human spirit, from Algeria to Zimbabwe.”
Measuring happiness is a pretty elusive thing, akin to finding the Holy Grail or Jimmy Hoffa in my view.
In my view, individual happiness is deeply rooted in education. Education provides an individual with exposure to ideas, promotes personal growth and provides economic opportunities. In my life, education made all the difference in how my life turned out versus my childhood peers. Education enabled me to live a comfortable life, to change jobs, to move to better jobs and environments, and to enjoy everything life has to offer. I’m not a trust fund baby –my dad was a fireman and I was the first child in my parents’ respective families to go to college. I figured out how to pay for my college, because going through life unskilled and uneducated was not an option in my family.
All the government social programs in the world cannot fix the problems of a worker whose lack of education only qualifies him or her for a minimum wage job.
The “bilge pumps” in my opinion are education. I suspect that the “color-coded atlas of bliss” is highly correlated with the degree of educational achievement of the countries studied, and that America’s decline mirrors its decline in educational achievement.
It is criminal that we spend what we spend on public education and see the numbers of kids who do not even graduate high-school. And the high-school graduation rates and performance in public schools continue to decline. The last public report I saw in the Denver Post said that high-school graduation rates in Denver and Aurora were less than 50%. Performance at grade level in math is the exception rather than rule for 10th graders in Colorado’s public schools.
Our flag-ship university is better known for Ward Churchill and its football team’s sexual antics than for the Nobel Prize winners it produced — and it probably spent more on its football team and firing Ward Churchill than it did on its Nobel Prize winning departments last year.
Business as usual or more money for the same thing seems like an insane strategy for education.
If you ignore the claims that terrorists are coming over the Mexican border, concerns about illegal immigration may really come down to concerns that uneducated, unskilled Mexicans are taking jobs away from a growing mass of uneducated, unskilled Americans.
As someone who did business internationally, I was always amazed to encounter people outside the United States who were biligual or multiligual. For me, language skills among “ordinary people” are a good indicator of the depth of education in a country. For example, I was headed for the Metro in Paris on one trip, and my way was blocked by a cop with his hand out (warning me of a bomb). He said something in French to me, and when it was apparent that I did not understand him, he switched to German, then to English, then to Spanish. An ordinary beat cop who could easily give warnings in four languages would be quite unusual in the United States and is a testament to French education.
I know that a bunch of folks will flame me for this pro-French statement. To save a responsive post, my answer to them is “Bite me.” (grin)
Unfortunately, I don’t see much of anything being done to fix education. Health care, global warming, keeping union contributors happy, the Iraq tar-baby, budget/tax issues de jure, voting machine certification, etc, etc, etc, will all likely take precedence to focusing on a reversing the decline in education.
I think I recall a study that found increased education tended to lead to slightly less happiness. I agree that education is key to our future, but I’m not sure it’s the key to happiness.
As to language skills, imagine if they spoke different languages in Wyoming, Utah, Kansas, and New Mexico. We would all be a lot more proficient.
We have the flip case, almost everyone’s second language is English so the downside to not learning another language in our case is a lot less than for that cop in France.
I do think education is key – but I think this problem the states need to step up and fix rather than waiting for the feds.
I also view education as the great transformative device in america–it was in my life. Its one of the main reasons I am a Democrat.
One interesting thing about language and Europe. I had a Belgian friend who said you have to speak multiple languages in Europe because the distances are so small and being in a bilingual country (belgium speaks french and flemish (Dutch)) you have to know both. Since his parents were english teachers and he was flemish, his english was actually better than his french (I found this out the hard way and we ended up tussling with a bunch of algerian gangsters–long story).
The point is–Europeans learn foriegn languages because they have to. English is the language of business, the language of power. Despite what the french want, that’s why everyone speaks it. It used to be french (or german in science), or latin or greek or at places persian or arabic. People learn what they need to know.
If you are lucky like my wife, you grow up multilingual. Most of us learn a language in school that we never use (my russian and german) or pick it up on the job (my contractor and kitchen spanish). The reality is we learn what we need to know.
Ironically, the decline of public education in recent years is one the main reasons I’m a Republican. I believe that our government cares more about satisfying the demands of politically connected teachers’ unions (who contribute to Democratic candidates) than they do about educating our kids.
Like it or not, the world is a global economy, and that’s unlikely to change. Europe’s geographic need to be conversant in several language is headed our way.
The manufactured goods we consume come from China or Korea. Our cars (at least the ones that don’t fall apart) come from Japan. Our clothes are assembled in the cheap labor country de jure (Cambodia, Thailand, Mexico, Sri Lanka). Our help desks are located in India and Pakistan. Mexicans work our farms and ranches and do the heaviest, dirtiest construction work Americans won’t do (stucco work, drywall finishing). When the Shanghai market melts down, our US portfolios suffer.
Thinking that the world will always do business in English, ’cause that’s the language of business, is probably wishful thinking. English will dominate only as long as we’re the largest consumer and investor economy in the world.
That will change if increasing numbers of our kids and their kids lack the basic education to create, win and/or keep good jobs that create wealth. No government policies and no amount of government spending will save them if their lack of education turns them into a generation of minimum wage earners.
If I had school age children these days, I would demand that they learn a language — probably Spanish or Chinese — and beat them if they failed to comply (grin).
You are right about politics, but one common language would be a good thing.. A cop (or firemen, or para-medics, etc) don’t always have time to say watch out for ??? in every language until they get to the one you understand.
In air traffic control, English has been mandated worldwide since the 1930’s, and it has made international travel safer.
This thing I am typing on is expanding the common language of the world (English) to every corner thereof.
The day will come when mankind once again has a common language.
My bet is it will be English.
Which is a good thing for this foreign language challenged guy. “Mi Espanol is muy malo y poquito, amigo.” OK, a bit more, but not a lot.
When my daughter visited China about ten years ago, there were many, many Chinese who wanted to be around her. I thought it was just cause she’ such a nice person, but no, it is because they wanted to practice English with a native speaker.
Chinese could take over as the lingua Franca someday, but it will be at least 100 years. English got to be the dominant language by some historical events like spreading through colonialism, the commercial and military success of the English speaking nations, international air travel, and so on.
If China can spread her influence in similar manners and conquest, she might take over.
Oh yeah, another factor is that English is an alphabet language, not pictorial. Very, very nice when a keyboard is power.
Something like 98% of conversations between people with different native languages are in English (some phone company did the study).
It’s English now because it is the dominant language in the 1st world. It will remain English because once everyone has learned it, they won’t want to switch (same reason we are still not on the metric system).
Almost everyone with a professional education in India speaks fluent English. China is aiming for the same and will soon be the largest English speaking country in the world.
I’ve worked in Japan, Taiwan, & Korea and worked with people in probably over 40 countries – and English has rarely been much of a problem (Spain & Chile being the main exceptions).
– dave
Especially in Europe and Scandinavia. The local cable in many of these countries carries Euro MTV in English, International CNN, the BBC etc.
France is another place where English is not as widely used by the local population, but it is growing.
In France, the culture ministry tries hard to keep the French language from being over run with English words.
In my opinion the movement to insist on English only contributes to xenophobia, racism and our isolation in the world.
When I went to college, a graduation requirement was 2 years of language, which I still think is a sensible requirement, but I would increase that requirement to 4 years in today’s global economy. I took Chinese, hoping to parlay that into a desk job during the Vietnam War.
In my corporate career, while English is common it is far from universal. The business meetings I attended in South America were almost always in Spanish or Portugese. One of my employers owned a 50% interest in one of the two cell phone companies in China, a deal brokered after Nixon opened up China. Our partners were the People’s Red Army. Meetings were conducted in Chinese. When my company applied for a license in France, the hearing was in French, not English.
My company’s books and annual reports in Japan were written and filed in Japanese, not English. Ditto for France, Mexico, Brazil, Germany, etc. A businessman who speaks only English gets nothing done in Japan, so I hired a Japanese citizen just for the purpose of getting things done in Japan.
When I hired people to work internationally, being bilingual was a requirement, and I rarely found that among folks educated in the US. My best employee was a Brazilian woman with dual US-Brazilian citizenship who spoke English, Portuguese, German, French and Italian.
The growth in the far East belies the assertion that character-based languages are somehow inferior to English and therefore can be disregarded.
I agree, as Sen. Dodd as always says, education is the most important issue. For our economy, we need a healthy and educated workforce to compete in the global market.