Williams' GOP v Sun Reporter Fish: 2 things can be true at the same time. Then: what do you think about welfare, dry farming?
Two things can be true at the same time: Dave Williams made a dumb decision and Sandra Fish (Sun Reporter) showed up to the GOP convention when she was asked to not attend.
Let me start with a couple important notes about myself.
I am not a Republican. I am registered Independent, having recently switched from being a lifelong Libertarian (and only switched when I learned that Libertarians couldn't be on redistricting committees in this state).
I have also, in my career as a teacher, taken on assignments dealing with both student complaints and discipline. I do not like Dave Williams, I do not take it as my task to defend him, but I can tell you from this work that there are always two sides to every story and both should be heard.
The story of Sun reporter Sandra Fish getting kicked out of the Republican convention is no different.
Here are the facts, at least as I have them (and as reported by the Sun itself in the link below). Ms. Fish was told early in the morning on the day of the convention that she would not be allowed in to cover the event. She showed up anyway, was somehow given a press pass, and then later, when it was discovered that she was there, she was escorted out. She did not behave badly during the convention and went peaceably when asked to leave.
Cue the dogpile on this issue by social media, legislators, and others (along with some likely fundraising by both the nonprofit Sun and the CO Republican party). One of my personal favorite overstatements is Sun Editor Ryckman's likening this situation to the Soviet Union.
Pump the brakes here. Let's consider this calmly and rationally, because not only does fairness demand it, but because two things can be true at once.
State GOP chair Dave Williams (the decider on booting Ms. Fish) acted inappropriately. He should have allowed Ms. Fish to stay. His actions were ill-considered in a country that values free speech and a free press. Besides that, however, this is an unforced error. It was a private event, so no one lost their rights here, but why not allow reporters of all kinds in? Why give so many people that would want it cause to (legitimately) criticize you?
At the same time, Ms. Fish was told she wasn't welcome at a private event. She chose to go anyway, leaving me to wonder if the idea of a provoking a confrontation wasn't in the mix here. Her getting in the door, her getting a press pass is irrelevant to this story. That was almost surely a mistake; someone at the door was running on autopilot.
This is not an exact analogy, but if someone you didn't want at your event showed, would it be wrong for you to ask them to leave? The person that got booted could make as much hay as they'd like about the inappropriateness of it, but if they showed up after being told not to, is removing them terrible?
This is exactly what I mean about two sides to every story. Mr. Williams is a fool, but he's not Stalin. Ms. Fish is a reporter, but she's not a martyr to democracy either. She is, in fact, not even a bastion of openness herself: she blocked me on Twitter a while back after too many times of my asking her questions or pointing out the slant in her reporting.
The same applies for the legislators and other members of the media who are painting this as an assault on the First Amendment. They need to first tone down their language, and then they need to pay attention to the log in their own eyes before pointing out the mote in their neighbor's.
Democrat legislators, yes some of the very same people decrying the horrors visited upon Ms. Fish, recently voted in a law to exempt themselves from Colorado Open Meetings Law. They are still debating whether to rip holes in the Colorado Open Records Act. Many in the media spoke up about this, but I have yet to see the media
Many in our media seem to be only concerned about the First Amendment when it is something they can beat up conservatives over. Did you hear them howl about the CPW Commission violating my First Amendment Rights when they kicked me out of a Jan 10th meeting (something I'm currently in the process of trying reach a settlement with the AG's office over)? Did you hear them stand up in defense of Rachel Gabel of the FencePost when First Gentleman Marlon Reis insulted and berated her on social media?
The proper antidote to slanted reporting is not to try and silence it, it's to let it happen and call it out. Mr. Williams should have allowed Ms. Fish in, and then taken to his pulpit after the event to call out anything he felt she did inappropriately.
The proper antidote to being selective in who is allowed to offer press coverage is not to try and force a confrontation (unless it is a government function where you do indeed have a constitutional right), but to not show up where you're not invited and then take to your own pulpit to call it out. Ms. Fish should have stayed home and written a scathing op ed about the free press and the rightful role of the media in electoral politics.
The rest of us should remember that there are two sides to every story, that (more than) two things can be true at once, and that we should clean our own houses prior to pointing out someone else's mess.
https://coloradosun.com/2024/04/06/colorado-republican-party-kicks-out-colorado-sun-reporter/
What do you think? An interesting take on welfare (and how we approach gov't subsidies).
I enjoyed reading Mr. Armstrong's take on welfare in the op-ed below. It raised some interesting points. I'll leave it to you to read through the whole thing, but I did want to touch on a central theme in how our government offers its help (and perhaps an inconsistency in how we do it).
Think about how our government offers help to people.
There are the direct cash programs like welfare that offers money to people, you get a certain dollar amount on a repeating interval.
There are programs where you don't get direct cash, but you get something similar to it. Food stamps would be an example. It's "money" you can spend, but you're restricted in how you spend it.
Then there are programs where the government pays someone in your stead. That is a big part of Mr. Armstrong's op ed: he discusses at length a government program (which a current bill is looking to expand) which pays child care providers money so low-income parents can afford to put their kids in day care.
The question Mr. Armstrong puts is (paraphrasing) "why not just give the money that you would have spent on the day care directly to parents?"
It's an intriguing idea. I have to admit I feel some ambivalence about this.
I would enjoy seeing your thoughts on the matter. Feel free to add them to the comments if you'd like.
As for me, thinking this through seems to raise more questions than certainty, some of which echo Mr. Armstrong's op ed.
--Should the government be involved in helping people via wealth transfers like these at all? I don't think I'm ready to say no help should be offered. I am ready to question the amount and type we do now (including perhaps leaving the gov't out of the process).
--If we are going to have the government in the mix, what are the good and bad about the types of help referenced here? In other words, why not just do lump sum payments and let people decide for themselves how best to meet their needs? You will have people being stupid, but you have that no matter what you'd do. Straight cash money does give individuals maximum flexibility.
--What limits should we put on this? Limits on the amount of money? Limits based on making good choices (e.g. if you use child care money to put new rims on your boyfriend's truck)? Limits on how long one can draw this assistance? Some sort of "earning" of benefits?**
How about you? What do you think?
** I knew a single mother who was for a time on welfare and have seen enough stories about the matter to understand that sometimes the most beneficial choice someone on assistance can make (when you add up childcare on top of everything else if you try to work) is to be on assistance. As such, I often think some sort of graduated assistance program is best (and I say this for those on disability too) where you could draw partial benefits if you have a job.
https://pagetwo.completecolorado.com/2024/03/20/armstrong-rethinking-how-we-fund-welfare-in-colorado/
Farmers and Ranchers (particularly those in non-irrigated regions), what do you think?
I've written a fair bit on water issues and Ag. As more and more water is shunted out of rural areas in this state into metro areas, my concern is that we will end up depopulating those areas and drying them out.
In other words, that we run Ag out of this state, and then turn those areas to desert to support a continuous city along I-25 from Ft. Collins to Pueblo. Way simplified, an exaggeration, but whether this extreme example happens, the process of drying out rural areas and driving those people off the land has already begun.**
I saw the little short video I linked to below and wondered about it.
The people are discussing Texas, but I think you could make the same case for Colorado. As places dry out, as water rights are sold, operations to stay afloat will need to move to dry farming (if the people try to stay on the land).
Dry farming with winter wheat (and some other crops) can work decently, but it strikes me as risky.
So one of the people in the video is saying that farms should consider moving to rotational grazing instead of crops as a way to make dryland Ag work.
Since what I don't know about the matter could fill a warehouse, I thought I would put this up to anyone that does farming or ranching to weigh in on.
Farmers and Ranchers, what do you think about the video below: can dryland farms survive by switching to rangeland? Can they stay on as farms and are there ways to make dryland farming more feasible that they don't talk about below?
Couple last things.
I asked a friend about this and her concern was this might seem to pit farmers vs. ranchers. Not my intent here. I'm just curious for your thoughts on the matter.
I would also like to point out a principle here wholly apart from the issue of converting a farm if it goes dry: it's worth noting that grazing is a good way to get protein and other things from marginal land (such as BLM scrubland) and can be done with good stewardship practices.
**I would be remiss and unfair if I didn't mention that some of this is also driven by fewer people wanting to work the land. Wholly independent of water.