The Colorado Privacy Act will soon be here, pushback on the idea of a wage gap (and/or its magnitude), and a bill to increase the minimum age to prosecute.
An update on the Colorado Privacy Act ...
I posted a while back about the Colorado Privacy Act. This is the law from a couple years back that, among other things, would require more transparency with regard to what is done with your data and give you a universal opt-out for sharing/selling of same.
The AG's office recently finished up its draft rules and they'll now go to the Secretary of State's office for publishing then they'll go into effect in July.
More on the legal/compliance aspect in the article below.
https://www.lawweekcolorado.com/article/final-version-of-colorado-privacy-act-published/
Pushing back on the idea of the wage gap ...
We return (again) to the idea of lazy journalists not doing any independent looking of their own and merely acting as obedient scribes to the causes/politicians they agree with.
The op ed below gives some pushback on the idea that a wage gap of of 84% exists after slew of stories came out on the "Wage Gap Day" the supposed date at which women start earning money for the year (as opposed to men who've been earning since Jan 1).
I do not dispute the idea of a wage gap in between various professions. I myself would love to earn the millions that professional athletes earn, and we as a society do not pay, for example, those that care for our elderly in nursing homes hardly anything.
We could debate whether those gaps are right or not, but no reasonable debate could happen over the truth of them.
The same, however, cannot be said about the 84% figure quoted above. The reason I say this is because that figure is arrived at in a sloppy manner. It averages too much: it's simply compares average earnings for men to those for women.
A fairer standard (and one for which the wage gap either disappears or is reduced greatly to numbers around 98%) is to compare like for like. Good luck getting a reporter to take 5 minutes to look that up on Google, however.
Hell, good luck getting a reporter to even acknowledge that there might be disagreement on the 84% figure.
Do your due diligence by taking the time to read things like the below. Whether you agree or no, it's good for you to read some counterpoint which you won't get elsewhere.
https://pagetwo.completecolorado.com/2023/03/17/sharf-lazy-journalism-exaggerates-colorado-wage-gap/
Increasing the minimum age at which you can prosecute someone?
A new bill is headed to its first committee hearing on Wed 4/5 (see the bill page linked first below) that would effectively raise the minimum age that a child could get involved with the justice system if he or she commits a crime to age 12. There are some notable exceptions--murder is one, the way felonies are handled up to age 14 is another, you'll find more in the bill summary on its page.
**Interestingly (to me at any rate) this bill has bipartisan support. The Republicans on the bill aren't "Priola" squishy ones either.
Prior to reading the bill's page, I saw it in the CPR article linked second below. Having now read both, I must admit to some ambivalence. I taught high school freshmen (not much older than 13) for a long time and I know exactly how dunderheaded they are. I also find the argument that sending kids to juvie can train them for a career in criminality to be somewhat persuasive.
Equally compelling to me (frightening) was what I read in the attached screenshot.
Give both a look and if you have more clarity on it than I do, you'll find the usual information for advocating on the bill's page. Feel free, too, to add your thoughts in the comments below.
https://leg.colorado.gov/bills/hb23-1249
https://www.cpr.org/2023/03/31/new-colorado-bill-aims-to-increase-age-limit-that-juveniles-can-be-prosecuted-under/