< PREVIOUS ] [ 1989 Index ] [ Ed Quillen HOME ] [ SEARCH ] [ NEXT >
Spring cleaning is an annual ritual. The start of the new year is another good time to winnow one's file cabinets and bookshelves. This is right in the middle of those times, but I have no choice. I'm surrounded by piled-up material that threatens to bury me in an roaring avalanche of paper triggered by the slightest provocation -- a cavorting cat, a ringing telephone, or another of these deplete-your-lungs-and-lie-on-the-floor-until-you-catch-your -breath sneezes brought on by the flu that's going around.
Among the material stacked around my keyboard are ideas that, for one reason or another, never became full-fledged columns. So I'll clean them out now.
· The proposed congressional pay raise went down in a storm of public protest. That's probably well and good, but thinking about governmental salaries leads to some startling conclusions. I just read that it will cost about $6 million to run a campaign to replace Sen. Bill Armstrong next year. The job pays $89,500 a year, but there are a lot of fringe benefits. Figure it's really worth about $200,000 a year, for six years. So a candidate is raising and spending $6 million to receive $1.2 million. That's a negative return of about 13 percent a year. No wonder the federal budget is in trouble when we keep electing people who think that makes financial sense.
· Another argument was that a pay raise was
needed in order to attract good people to Congress. You
might define good people
as those whom you might
have heard of even if they had not gained public office.
Colorado has six representatives. Three would probably meet
that definition of good people
: Hank Brown, Pat
Schroeder and Ben Nighthorse Campbell. The other three --
David Skaggs, Joel Hefley and Dan Schaeffer -- are people
you hardly hear of, even though they serve in Congress. So
we're batting .500 with the current pay scale. The real
question, though, is whether that average would improve if
there were a pay raise.
· State Rep. Chris Paulson proposed that driver's licenses for 16- and 17-year-olds be tied to school attendance and getting good grades. Others have suggested than any drug conviction, whether driving-related or not, result in loss of driving privileges. We have a state whose entire transportation policy is to build more roads and require people to drive cars -- no buses or trains, as far as the legislature is concerned -- so that if you don't have a driver's license, it will be impossible to work, shop or carry on a social life.
What an easy way to get people to toe the line. They
could even extend this concept to take away the driver's
licenses, and thus the ability to function in society, of
people who criticized legislators, or those who questioned
the need for Two Forks, or those who ran against Republican
incumbents. After all, driving is a privilege,
not a
right, and any privilege
the state gives, it can
take away, for any reason.
· What is this Presidents' Day
holiday we
had Monday? I can understand celebrating George Washington
and Abraham Lincoln, both distinguished leaders who held
our country together. But does this mean we're also
honoring Warren G. Harding, Millard Fillmore and James
Buchanan and Richard Nixon? There must be a better excuse
for a holiday. Why not just call it what it is -- a
three-day midwinter weekend that bolsters the ski
industry?
· State Sen. Terry Considine has proposed that
half the tax money now going to the Regional Transportation
District for mass transit should instead be used to build
more highways. That's one idea that won't clear the
air.
It's as if you had a pulmonary disease, and
decided that you'd go buy cartons of Camel straights with
half the money you had been spending on doctors.
My apologies to Ed Scott, for borrowing from his usual writing style. I should feel better, now that I've done some cleaning. But I don't. I'm going to swallow a handful of generic sinus tablets, wash them down with 80-proof Nyquil, and crawl back into bed. It may not work, but for a few hours, I won't care.
< PREVIOUS ] [ 1989 Index ] [ Ed Quillen HOME ] [ SEARCH ] [ NEXT >