We’ll be hearing a lot about Medicare this election season, and reporters should study up on some of the expected flashpoints, so they can challenge candidates who try to deceive us.

A case in point is Rep. Scott Tipton’s appearance on 9News’ YourShow Sunday.

“When we’re talking about health care, I think we need to get the facts on the table,” Tipton told YourShow host Brandon Rittiman. “The President, this administration, and the people who support them voted to take away $575 billion dollars out of Medicare, hurting our senior citizens.”

As I’ve reported before, nonpartisan fact checkers have found this to be mostly or completely false. Politifact found the statement, “The new health care law ‘will cut $500 billion from Medicare. That will hurt the quality of our care,'” to be deep in its “mostly false” category, which is as false as its ratings go. Fact checkers at the Washington Post also found that the $500 billion is saved in Medicare efficiencies, which are “wrung from health-care providers, not Medicare beneficiaries.”

If you read the different analyses of this issue, the key point is that there’s no evidence that the $575 billion (It’s actually $500 billion) saved from Medicare will hurt seniors, while it’s clear that some services will be improved.

To be fair, Obamacare critics point to some element of uncertainty about how the cost savings will play out in the future, but they can’t point to a specific example of how seniors’ healthcare services would be diminished in any way. There’s no meat behind the allegation.

Tipton raised the $500 billion figure during his 2010 campaign, as noted by Pueblo Chieftain reporter Peter Roper, who handled Tipton’s accusation by adding a factual statement after Tipton’s allegation.

From an Oct. 29, 2010 article:

“…[Tipton] repeated his charge that Salazar and Democrats want to cut $500 billion from Medicare — a cut that Tipton said would hurt seniors. That part of the legislation calls for reducing the growth in Medicare expenses by $500 billion over 10 years by eliminating fraud and waste.” [BigMedia emphasis]

I’d go further, if I were reporting on Tipton, and write categorically that 1) nonpartisan fact checkers have found the allegation to be mostly or completely false, and 2) Republicans cannot offer specific examples of how seniors will be hurt due to Medicare cost-saving measures.

I’d also ask Tipton to provide specifics and report his response.

by Michael Lund

By now we’re all aware the pivotal role Hispanics will play in swing states (like Colorado) in November’s election.  As the political parties strategize and tune their message machines to reach Hispanics in Colorado and secure their votes, we wondered how well Denver’s English language TV news broadcasts cover Hispanic issues.

To do this, the BigMediaBlog designed a snapshot survey of Denver’s local television news broadcasts. We monitored the amount and type of coverage that included Hispanics on all four local stations:  CBS 4, KMGH 7, KUSA 9, and KVDR 31.

What we found can be classified as Good News/Bad News.  Here are the highlights of each:

Good news

• Hispanic reporters and anchors bring a welcome element of diversity and familiarity to Hispanic viewers. These include anchors Anne Trujillo (Channel 7 news, on vacation during our snapshot study period) and Dave Aguilera (CBS 4), and reporters Tammy Vigil, Melody Mendez, Nina Sporano (FOX 31), Dominic Garcia (CBS 4), and Valerie Castro (CBS4).  There are others, of course, but the aforementioned are those who appeared during the window of our study.
• Hispanics are featured in some local news coverage, representing our community across a range of topics (news, sports, weather, health, government, economic and business, public works, education, elections, labor, etc.).
• In news stories covering issues of shared interest and value to Hispanic and general audiences, coverage sometimes includes a Hispanic perspective.  For example, jobs and the economy are issues consistently highlighted by the Hispanic electorate and voters in general as being important to them in this election cycle.  In our snapshot survey, one story in particular stood out that qualified in this category:  Walmart’s opening of 5 neighborhood markets, bringing  new jobs to Denver.  While all four channels covered this story, only Fox31 expanded the story to interview job seekers, Hispanics included, and explored the relation and importance of the story to these individuals’ lives and job searches.  Their input made the story immediately more relevant and vital to an otherwise underrepresented population of TV news consumers.

Bad news

• In our study, crime stories dominate Hispanic related news, accounting for 60% of news stories that involve Hispanics.  These stories generally offer little to inform and engage the public and Hispanic populations, and often displace other stories on issues with equal or greater importance to our communities.  During the three days we were viewing, the predominant crime stories involved the murder of a clerk during a robbery of an auto parts store, escapees from a federal prison, and at least two cases of child abuse and negligence.   While crime trends might rate as important, these particular cases certainly were not highlighted as issues of reigning importance among Hispanics during this election cycle.  The economy was, however, and the only related story we found, excluding economic stories reported by Hispanic journalists, was the Walmart piece referenced above.
• The Hispanic community is misrepresented by an over-emphasis of crime.  In fact, when pictured in news stories, 38% of the time Hispanics were the accused or perpetrator in the story, as opposed to the reporter, a witness, a commentator, or a sympathetic subject.  Again, the proportion of Hispanic criminals to law-abiding Hispanics is grossly misrepresented by this figure, and alerts us to a need for more balanced coverage.
• Proportionately little time of a news broadcast is dedicated to covering Hispanic issues.  Excluding crime stories and weather and sports segments, Hispanic news accounts for just under 6% (on average) of the entire news coverage.  Obviously, to be representational of our Hispanic community in Denver, more substantive and engaging coverage of Hispanic news stories is needed.

This survey is a snapshot and as such gives a only a small glimpse of successes and areas for improvement in covering the people and the issues of priority to Hispanics, which often overlap with the composite population.  Hopefully, this study will at least serve to reflect on how our state and its citizens are portrayed during the upcoming election season, with our added notoriety and visibility as a swing state.  And more importantly, we hope that it reminds us all of the importance of an engaged and informed electorate, Hispanics and all voters alike.

Click here to view the data (stories, reporters, categories) upon which the snapshot study is based: Hispanics in Denver Local TV News

In a 20-15  party-line vote last Friday, Democratic State Senators defeated a measure that would have given symbolic support to the so-called “Blunt” amendment, which would allow employers to opt out of offering health-insurance coverage for health services, including contraception, that employers find objectionable on religious or moral grounds.

Media coverage of the measure should have folded in more views from outside the state Capitol, given the potential political ramifications of the issue, so I’m reporting a wider range of views to fill in the media gap.

Addressing the issue after the vote Friday, Colorado Republican Party Chair Ryan Call told Jon Caldara that in the national debate about whether the Obama Administration should have allowed employers to opt out of offering certain types of health care, like contraception, Republicans should have focused on “making it, rather than about big issues, making it about small issues.”

“The big issue there,” Call told Caldara, “was the question of religious liberty, about the government telling, not only religious organizations but private employers and persons what kind of health-care insurance they have to pay for, even if it violates questions of moral conscience.”

Democrats, he said, “were able to, at least attempt, try to make it about those smaller issues, are we trying to ban contraceptives, which is not the issue.”

“Horsepucky,” was progressive political consultant Laura Chapin’s response to Call in a  in a US News opinion piece:

“Approximately 99 percent of reproductive age American women have used birth control—and something used by almost every woman in America isn’t a small issue, it’s huge,” she wrote, adding that “it’s obviously a big issue to Republicans.”

“It’s big enough that they threatened to shut down the entire U.S. government over it last spring,” Chapin continued. “It’s big enough that Republican governors like Mitch Daniels have made defunding Planned Parenthood a top priority, as has their presidential candidate Mitt Romney. Romney even wants to eliminate federal funding for Title X, which provides family planning funding for five million low-income Americans.”

Senate Democrats in contested elections voted for the measure, including Colorado Senators Evie Hudak, Mary Hodge, and Linda Newell.

Fox 31 reported Newell’s view that the measure, called Senate Memorial 3, would be hard for business to comply with. Fox 31 reported:

“The problem for the businesses is this just opens up all kinds of liability disclosure issues,” Newell said, noting that one of her two daughters was listening to Friday’s debate inside the Senate chamber. “She wants to know what we’re doing in the state of Colorado to protect her freedoms.

“Right to privacy goes out the window with this bill because now you have to disclose. And it puts my daughter’s future boss right in the middle of her private life. They’ll have to ask, Do you use birth control? Are you having sex?

“I want my daughters to have access to proven methods of preventing pregnancy. I want my daughters to have the ability to be healthy and free.”

Larry Crowder, a Republican who’s running to represent contested Senate District 35, told me he hadn’t followed the debate at the state Capitol, but he said: “In my opinion it should be up to that employer. I’m not really in favor of mandates.”

“Health care provided by the employer is a great thing,” Crowder said. “And it’s an added tool to attract employees.  If you’re going to start putting a mandate on employers, what would be in the health care, that would be between the employee and the employer.  As far as a mandate, I would not be comfortable with that.”

As far as the symbolic resolution goes, Crowder said, “We’ve got more important issues to talk about and decide in the state than a nonbinding resolution. We should not get into the hype right now about nonbinding resolutions for political purposes.”

He also said the question about employer mandates is “premature,” with the U.S. Supreme Court reviewing Obamacare.

Republican Senate District 19 candidate Lang Sias had a similar view, saying jobs should be the focus. His likely opponent is Sen. Hudak.

Senate District 28 Candidate John Lyons had been at work and hadn’t had time to follow events at the State Capitol when I talked to him Friday, but he said, as a general matter, that this is “all about free market and government interference.”

“It’s up to the insurance companies to decide what they want to do and what they want to cover,” he said. “If people had more choice and competition among insurance companies, this problem would be solved.”

“Being a Republican, I don’t believe it’s the government’s job to dictate what the insurance companies should offer and what they shouldn’t,” he said.

Lyons’ Republican primary opponent, Art Carlson, agreed, saying: “I believe it’s up to the companies. I just don’t think it’s up to the government to force companies to do something like that.”

The annual Cinco de Mayo celebration falls on a Saturday this year, making it possible that more people will be participating in non-organized activities than have in recent years, particularly cruising along Federal Blvd.

Reconfigured medians along Federal, street closures, restricted exits from I-25, and other law enforcement crackdowns, like curfews, may explain the decreased Cinco-de-Mayo activities in the last few years. So the day of the week on which May 5 falls may not matter.

Efforts at collaborative peace keeping and ‘witnessing’ efforts organized by Nita Gonzalez, President of Escuela Tlaltelolco, may have decreased skirmishes and resultant visibility of cruising as well. Gonzales promoted safe cruising and respectful law enforcement.

Still, increased traffic problems and revelry, if they emerge this year, will likely attract media coverage, and so I thought I’d offer a few pro-active suggestions on how to encourage fairness in reporting on an event with a history of inflammatory coverage and divisive reactions within our community.

• Cinco de Mayo is not Mexican Independence Day, which is actually Sept. 16. Cinco de Mayo, which marks an historic victory by the Mexican Army at Puebla, Mexico, in 1862, is a celebration of Latin culture and freedom generally. The weaker and smaller Mexican farmers defeated the French.
• The organized Cinco de Mayo activities will take place at Civic Center Park May 5 and 6 from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.  This is one of the largest Cinco de Mayo celebrations in the country, drawing hundreds of thousands of people in the past. It’s a fundraising event organized by NEWSED Community Development Corporation and Santa Fe Drive Redevelopment Corporation. Booth space is sold to vendors and exhibitors of many types. Music, dancing, food, and more will be offered.
• The cruising that typically occurs on Cinco de Mayo weekend is not an organized activity. It occurs spontaneously, often concentrating along Federal. In the past, police have restricted cruising to specific parts of Federal and curfews have been enforced.
• Cruising is legal, and it’s a popular and peaceful activity among Mexican-Americans. Maintaining lowriders and converted vehicles is a hobby no different from other hobbies people take up.
• The intention of cruisers is obviously not to tie up traffic or prevent people from driving across Federal Blvd. (It could be helpful to have some pre-emptive coverage of traffic detours and closures and suggestions for avoiding the traffic tie-ups, if any.)
• Flag waving has been a highly visible part of Cindo-de-Mayo activities in the past. It’s misleading to attribute the flag-waving to Mexican nationals. It’s more a symbol of cultural and ethnic identity and origin,  and relatively unrelated to expressions of geo-politics or sovereignty or the like.

I have to preface this blog post by telling you I’m a critic of the American Legislative Exchange Council, known as ALEC. I don’t like the legislation that the outfit promotes (for example, discouraging registered voters from voting, encouraging people to fire guns at innocent people).

I also don’t like the way ALEC teams up in secret with conservative legislators and big corporations to draft anti-consumer laws.

I signed a petition as a hopeless gesture to get giant businesses to abandon ALEC, and I was floored when Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, MacDonald’s, and Proctor & Gamble dropped their sponsorship of ALEC in recent weeks, after it came to light that ALEC pushed legislation that may have led to the Trayvon Martin shooting.

My problems with ALEC may sound innocent enough to you, even pathetic given the power of big corporations, but to ALEC co-director Jonathan Williams, my views of ALEC and my actions against ALEC make me a Marxist. On Denver’s KLZ radio April 26, he said:

“You know,” Williams told KLZ, “at the end of the day though, companies should realize that capitalists are the folks who buy their products. The Marxists that are coming after us and coming after them are the folks who want to see them gone anyways.”

I had no idea I was a Marxist. I spent a lot of time studying Marxism in college, hoping I could be a Marxist someday, but I never could bring myself to agreeing with it.

But did Grassroots Radio Colorado hosts Ken Clark and Jason Worley object at all to Williams’ accusation? Nope.

Maybe that’s because you hear the Marxist card thrown around so much these days on conservative talk radio that it’s become standard fare?

Just this morning, KOA’s Mike Rosen pointed out on Facebook that President Obama’s new campaign slogan “forward” has “very well-established links to Marxism and Socialism.”

Forward? I thought it had roots in the old hippie slogan, “Never go straight. Go Forward.”

So, with Obama, I’m in good company as a not-yet-self-actualized Marxist.

Still, I consider myself fringe, but Williams doesn’t see the Marxists behind the anti-ALEC campaign as a rag-tag group. He didn’t mention Obama as being in the Marxist fold, but Williams sees real, serious power in the hands of American Marxists these days as they go after ALEC:

“There is a very coordinated intimidation campaign against some of our corporate sponsors and against many of our legislators across the country by folks who disagree with free-enterprise policy,” ALEC’s Williams told KLZ. “And they try to use extortionist techniques to intimidate the corporate members from getting involved.  It’s been a really sad state of affairs that we’ve been seeing over the last few weeks and some of the companies crumbling under these intimidation tactics.”

 Extortion? Intimidation?

I wish the KLZ talk-show hosts had delved into those bad things more. I thought the backlash against ALEC was an anomalous case study of successful citizen activism, with organizations like the Center for Media and Democracy creating an informative website, ALEC Exposed, and state groups like ProgressNow pushing out information about local legislative ties with ALEC.

And what about Williams saying ALEC’s corporate sponsors were “crumbling?”

I almost started to feel sorry for him, for his disappointment, but then I remembered I’m a Marxist, and I realized the weakening of ALEC, with corporations crumbling,  is the first step toward the proletarian revolution I’ve been waiting for since college.

Listen here to ALEC’s Jonathan Williams say that critics of ALEC are “Marxists”

Follow Jason Salzman on Twitter @bigmediablog

Even in their heyday, the big urban news outlets almost never covered state legislative races very well, much less school board, city council, and other local elections. Small-time election campaigns were seen, for the most part, as boring to the mass audience, especially on local TV news.

New media offer great ways to get to know local candidates in depth, if you have the tiniest bit of inclination dig it up with few clicks of a mouse.

One such new-media platform is internet-only radio, where even the lowliest candidate for the lowliest race can shine.

“Art’s Place,” which aired on BlogTalkRadio Saturdays from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. (and is available 24/7 via podcast) is one such example.

The host of “Art’s Place” is Art Carlson, who’s running in the Republican primary for Senate District 28.

Last Saturday, April 21, for example, Carlson had Art “Skip” Carlson on his show. (Yes, they have the same name, but Art Skip Carlson is running for House District 50.)

The interview, covering a wide range of topics, compliments and expands on information on his campaign website and elsewhere.

I won’t present the entire interview here, because you should just listen to it if you’re interested.  But I’ll pull out a few highlights:

ART CARLSON: Let’s find out a little bit more about you.  Why are you running for State House, Skip?

ART “SKIP” CARLSON:  Well, Art, I’m a fourth generation Coloradan.  In fact, I’m a fourth generation Weld County person. We’ve been active in politics, we’ve been active in the community for my whole life.  My parents were. My great uncle was governor of the state of Colorado.  We’ve had representatives from my family – my ancestry in the statehouse ever since Colorado became a state.  And you know, we had to vote on our constitution four times before it was ever actually accepted as a state.  We would not, had we been successful in our first run at the state, would not have been the Centennial State but would have indeed been in two years before.  So, with all of that background, I just thought  I needed to give something back to the community and the country that has been so great to me, full of opportunity.  I didn’t succeed at all things.  But I’ve had an opportunity to do things, and it’s been a great place to live and a great place to raise a family, and I just want to protect that.

ART CARLSON: All right. And what are your main issues that you’re going to tackle down at the capitol?

ART “SKIP” CARLSON: [chuckles] Well, you know, Art, that’s one thing that so many people ask me!  [inaudible] says, “Well, what are you going  to go down there and …”  I said, “you know, I don’t know that I’m going to go down there and do anything other than get rid of a bunch of things that don’t belong there.  I think, all of these people going down and saying, “I’m going to pass this law for this and, I’m going to pass this for that…” without thinking of the ramifications and looking into the past and seeing, well, if we got rid of something, maybe, your goal would be accomplished by getting rid of some of the encumbrances that we have in the Statehouse now.  But, what I’m going to have is opportunity.  My by-word is ‘Opportunity to succeed for all.’  Forget about some of these government regulations … some of this stuff.  I’m tired of governments – state, local, and so forth, giving these significant tax credits to huge corporations to come in and build their buildings, and go to work, and put our small businesses out of work, and we can’t work with our small businesses which is the backbone of Colorado, and the backbone of this country, to help them be successful and to flourish, because that is so much better.  So, that’s basically what I’m after, is getting back to local – as local as you can on anything and making sure that everybody has an opportunity to succeed….

ART “SKIP” CARLSON: …the past four years when the democrats controlled both houses and we had a really liberal governor, and they decided to put in these taxes.  And they figured out a way to get around TABOR.  But they don’t call them taxes. They call them fees.

ART CARLSON: [laughs]

ART “SKIP” CARLSON: … The FASTER thing that came in, where people just to go register their cars had to pay additional funds, is nothing but a huge, terrible tax on those who could least afford it, and that’s the low income, and those people who are on Social Security — on fixed income.  It hurt them significantly and it didn’t raise that much money.

ART CARLSON: That’s right!  I had two cars and I had to get rid of one because I just couldn’t afford the insurance and the taxes on it.

ART “SKIP” CARLSON: … We certainly need some money for road and bridge and so forth.  But we ought to think about working some deals, having a consumptive tax, perhaps raise the tax on the gas, on a exchange for getting rid of some of the things that the oil and gas people have to do, and to get rid of FASTER, would be far, far more fair, raise significantly more money, and be much, much better off for the entire community.

ART CARLSON: That’s right.  If we just grow the economy, that will bring in more revenue too.

ART “SKIP” CARLSON: Oh, absolutely!….

ART CARLSON: What are your thoughts on vouchers and charter schools?

ART “SKIP” CARLSON: “I love charter schools. My grandson is in a charter school.  And as I’m going down to the  Statehouse, I don’t think that I should have that responsibility, although I will have because that’s who it has deferred to. I think the local community should handle that stuff the best they possibly can. We put some new charter schools in here in Greeley, and they are doing extremely well. The public school is having a little bit of a tough time, but as it ends up, all and all, we’re doing a little bit better and I think if we do more of those things.

And I’m for vouchers. Vouchers are nothing more than competition, competition based on who’s doing the best job. If my grandson, who is one that we sent to a private school, and we sent him there only because he needed that, and that was the best place we could find for his education. We didn’t wake up one day and say, we got a bunch of money we want to waste. Let’s see, where can we waste money today. No, because we didn’t have the money to waste, but we invested it in my grandson’s education as well as a number of other people did here in Greeley. And that education he has gotten from that school has been just tremendous. And now it’s part of the Greeley system as a charter school, and they are doing very well…

ART CARLSON: …I really love living here in Colorado….

ART “SKIP” CARLSON: …Colorado is a wonderful place. We’ve got to keep working at it. I’ve  got another meeting that I have to run off to here, Art.

ART CARLSON: Well, it’s been great having you, Skip. It was an honor having you on the show. It’s so much fun talking to you. You have such knowledge of the state, and I really like to pick at your brain more. Unfortunately, next week is the last episode of Art’s Place since I have to devote more time to the campaign… I think it would be amazing at roll call when they have to announce two Art Carlsons.

ART “SKIP” CARLSON: …That would be a good thing.

ART CARLSON: Yes it would.

If you look around the web, you don’t find as many radio blogs in Colorado, like Art Carlson’s, as you might expect. And, as he said, he’s suspending his show. Carlson seems like the kind of guy who will help you get one going, if you want to pick up the slack.

On KHOW’s Caplis and Silverman show Wednesday, Republican House Speaker Frank McNulty tried to make the argument that it’s illegal to give undocumented college students a more affordable tuition rate.

Citing federal laws, McNulty said he doesn’t support “picking and choosing which laws we follow and which laws are okay to ignore.”

“Sure,” McNulty told co-host Craig Silverman. I get pulled over for speeding. I get a ticket. I pay my ticket. I have points taken off of my license. So there are penaltties there for ignoring the law.”

“Right,” Silverman responded. “But if your kid is in the car, he doesn’t get a ticket. You do.”

“Well, that’s true,” McNulty answered and quickly tried to move the conversation back toward picking and choosing laws.

It was a good point by Silverman, and he made it better than I could have, on a show that’s become more and more one-sided these days, when it comes to political topics.

Silverman could have sharpened his questioning earlier in the interview, when McNulty said:

McNulty: “And you know what? I get it! I get that these kids are here through no fault of their own. And I understand that that is, that that has a level of compassion that many of us share. But the bottom line is, the law is the law. And to say that we’re going to ignore the law in this one simple case, flies in the face of what our nation was founded on and is the main reason why I’m opposed to it.”

Neither Caplis nor Silverman pointed out that the legislation has passed in 13 other states, including Texas.

And even Colorado Attorney General John Suthers admitted on KOA’s Mike Rosen’s Show March 12 that the ASSET bill would be permissable under federal law, though Suthers said he didn’t like the way the bill was devised, saying it was “a complete run-around these two federal statutes.”

Suthers: As I say, twelve states have enacted similar legislation: Texas, California, Utah, New York, Washington, Illinois, Kansas, New Mexico, Nebraska, Wisconsin, Maryland, and Connecticut. Two cases have been filed. In California, students paying out-of-state tuition attending California universities filed a lawsuit saying this is just an end-around and I’m still being discriminated against. The District Court in California said, “No.” The California Court of Appeals reinstated the lawsuit. But in November of 2010 the California Supreme Court upheld this method for providing in-state tuition, and said it did not conflict with federal law. And on June 6, 2011, the United States Supreme Court denied cert in that case. A similar case was brought by a Missouri resident who was attending college in Kansas, saying that they were being denied the status, and it was unlawful discrimination under federal law, and that case was dismissed for lack of standing, and the U.S. Supreme Court declined cert, way back in June of 2008.

Suthers called ASSET “lawyering at its finest, or worse, depending on your perspective,” but he said it’s legal.

So next time McNulty or another Republican is on Caplis and Silverman, and he or she says how sympathetic they are toward the poor undocumented kids, but, like McNulty said, sorry, the law is the law, so nothing can be done, Caplis and Silverman should pipe up and say, yes, the law is the law, and ASSET is legal.

What are your other reasons for opposing it?

For this year, though, it’s too late to correct McNulty and possibly allow him to be the compassionate man he wants to be.

Last week Denver Post Editorial Page Editor Curtis Hubbard fired back at all those people who’ve said The Post’s commentary pages favor right-leaning points of view over left-leaning ones, or vice versa.

Hubbard presented the results of a bean-counting project conducted during the first quarter of 2012. He categorized editorials and columns on the Post’s commentary pages as being left of center, right of center, or  “nonpartisan or centrist.”

In his weekly column, Hubbard wrote that the majority of the opinion content was “nonpartisan or centrist” (43 percent of “local columns,” 55 percent of editorials, and 54 percent of syndicated columns).

Partisan opinion content was found to be mostly left of center according to Hubbard’s admittedly subjective count. Local columns were 32 percent left-of-center versus 25 percent right-of-center, editorials 26 percent versus 19 percent, and syndicated columnists 29 percent left-leaning versus 18 percent right-leaning.

In his column, Hubbard claimed that he had all the data in a spreadsheet.

Great, I thought, he can just shoot it over to me.

So I asked him for it, because media bean-counting is fun to audit, for me. And it can provide an excellent starting point for debates about the media.

“I hadn’t considered making it available for public review,” he emailed me.

This was a surprise to hear from an outfit that wants Mitt Romney to release his tax returns for public review. I trust Hubbard more than I trust Romney, but I like to verify what both of them say. Plus the ensuing debate about categorization would be educational. I hope, after due consideration, Hubbard releases his spreadsheet.

I asked Hubbard if he’d share his “local-columnist” data starting from the date of the departure of Mike Littwin. Last year, I showed (with bean counting) that the Post’s local columnists were fairly well balanced on the left-right scale. But with Littwin gone, I worried the opinion page would veer right with no in-house columnist to counter Vincent Carroll.

Hubbard wrote that “23 columns were published since Littwin’s departure [March 20], including work by Rosen, Hubbard, Carroll, Quillen, Andrews, Ditmer, and Barnes-Gelt.”

Of these 23 local columns, six were categorized as from the right, six as from the left, and 11 as non-partisan or centrist, according to Hubbard.

My audit of the same sample of columns showed them to be mostly right-leaning: seven centrist, six left-leaning, and 10 right-leaning. And my tally is only that close because I categorized four of nine columns by Vincent Carroll as “left-leaning.” That won’t happen typically, I’m guessing, but I could be wrong. (Worth noting is the fact that Carroll wrote 9 of 23 “local columns” that appeared in The Post during the first three-and-a-half weeks since Littwin left.) I’m happy to share my tally with anyone who wants to see it, by the way.

I asked Hubbard if he’d evaluated the political cartoons on the commentary page, and he replied that he had not done so but would start to do it going forward. That’s a good thing because my impression is that they lean right. But impressions are the worst kind of media criticism.

Hubbard wrote that readers’ feedback about his own bean counting had given him an idea, which sounds intriguing and innovative to me: add an interactive feature to the opinion section of The Post’s website that would allow site visitors to evaluate content (editorials, local columns, etc.) on a political scale. In other words, let readers count beans too.

Hubbard would like to “display for readers a feature that says something like ‘our grade’ of where a piece falls on the political spectrum and then allows them to vote. Ideally, it would be something that would keep a sort of running score sheet.”

Hubbard doubts that The Post has money to develop this Left-Center-Right feature, but he suggested that “if any of your astute readers would be interested in developing that piece of technology as a public service, I would be willing to discuss being their beta test site.”

It’s a great idea, and it would indeed be a public service. (And I’m not saying that just because he called you astute.)

And so, I extend the invitation.  Do you, or does anyone you know, have the expertise to aid in developing and implementing this feature? If so, contact Hubbard at The Post as soon as possible. (Any project in the newspaper industry these days is urgent.)

In any case, Hubbard wrote in his column that he plans to keep his internal spreadsheet up to date “to better inform our work moving forward.”

“Not only will it help to refute the charges of readers and campaigns in a highly charged election year, it will help us in our goal of producing opinion pages that are reflective and worthy of this great state,” he wrote in his column.

That’s true, especially if he can find a way to get readers involved and share his bean counting with us.

On KNUS’ Kelley and Company yesterday, host Steve Kelley asked Rep. Mike Coffman to name his choices to serve as the GOP vice presidential candidate.

Here’s what Coffman said:

“I think there are a number of people. I think Marco Rubio, though he’s said repeatedly he’s not interested. He’s certainly a possibility. As a United States Senator, I think he’d make a good vice president. I think on my side, Paul Ryan I think would make a great vice president. I think Bobby Jindal, governor of Louisiana would be good. And I’ve said Eric Cantor, Majority Leader in the House of Representatives. So I think we’ve got a pretty deep bench on the Republican side.”

[Listen to Rep. Coffman endorse Paul Ryan for Vice Prez on KNUS’ Kelley and Co 4-23-2012]

Kelley should have taken a couple minutes to allow Coffman to explain why he likes those guys. Why do they have what it takes to be VP?

Coffman’s suggestion of Rep. Ryan as a “great” VP choice is particularly significant, because you have to assume Coffman is saying that Ryan’s views (as expressed in his budget bill) would be advantageous Romney.

This would include, among other things, Ryan’s controversial proposal to end Medicare as currently designed for people born after 1956.

Maybe Kelley, or another reporter, will ask Coffman about his VP choices.

At the top of the home page of Colorado Hispanic Republicans’ website sits this quote by President Ronald Reagan:

“Latinos are Republicans. They just don’t know it yet.”

It’s not a quote that I’d slap across the top of my website if I were trying to make friends with Hispanics, but I have to admit I’m not a Republican.

But what would you do if you were a Republican, and it was your job to convince Democratic Hispanics to vote for your people in November?

It’s a good question, and a group of Republicans tried to answer it in an honest and illuminating discussion on KLZ’s Grassroots Radio Colorado April 11.

Radio host Ken Clark didn’t sugar coat the GOP’s problem in his first question to Pauline Olvera, a board member of Colorado Hispanic Republicans, whose website features the Reagan quote above.

“So the biggest problem I’ve seen in the Hispanic community and the black community is that they share our values; they just hate the Republican Party,” said Clark. “So what are you doing about that?”

Olvera gave a big broad answer, as she’s done before on the radio, practically bereft of specifics, saying her organization is trying “to connect with those communities’ values of ‘faith, family, and freedom.'” (Olvera is also a vice chair of the Denver Republican Party.)

Then Solomon Martinez, the Northern Colorado Chapter Chair for Colorado Hispanic Republicans, explained how Hispanics mindlessly cling to the Democratic Party because that’s the way they’ve always been. He cited his own parents.

How does he deal with these stubborn Hispanic Democrats?

Martinez: “I tell people, ‘Take the test.’ There’s websites you can go onto. You know, it’s Republican Democrat Test. Take the test. If it still shows that you’re a Democrat, then stay the Democrat Party. But you’re going to find that you’ll probably be a Republican, in most cases.” [Listen to Martinez suggest that Hispanics take Republican-Democrat test here.]

So now you see how the Reagan quote fits in.

It may sound condescending for Martinez to say that Colorado’s Hispanics are so clueless about politics that they don’t know the difference between Democrats and Republicans. But just take the Republican-Democrat test anyway. It’s about being open-minded. Hispanics will probably find their inner Democrat and forget any possible condescension involved in getting them there.

Another angle for the Colorado Hispanic Republicans, and the radio segment gives you the sense that this is the core strategy, is to encourage Hispanic Democrats to vote for Republicans without leaving the Democratic Party.

Forget the online Democrat-Republican test if you must, there’s no need to be a Democrat to vote Republican.

Martinez: We’re saying, ‘Come and join us! Come and talk to us! I’m not going to try and switch you over to Republican. Come and talk. Hear our values, hear our views. If you align with that, join us!’

This would be done by somehow identifying disaffected Hispanic Democrats, and connecting with them.

Everyone on the Grassroots Radio Colorado radio show was happy to discuss their own periods of disaffection with the Republican Party, and therefore show how they can relate to Hispanics who might be alienated by the Democratic Party. They seemed to be saying to Hispanics that it’s okay not to love your political party. We haven’t always loved ours, but we stuck to our party (though you should abandon yours), and our Republican Party has changed!

Olvera: I know I woke up when we had McCain, and I thought that here is a man that is going to sign that TARP bill, this is a man who is for amnesty – blanket amnesty, and I thought, “is this what the Republican party is giving us?” There really wasn’t that much difference. So it could have been something on that line that had people disenfranchised from the Republican Party. But now we stand a firm line in the sand, as to where we stand as a Republican Party. We have to stand firm on those principles, and get in there and do the right thing. [On Grassroots Radio Colorado, Republicans Discuss Complacency of GOP toward Hispanics 4-11-12]

Some conservative radio hosts might have let this go, without bringing up the name of Mitt Romney, whose name almost no one would think of when Olvera said that Republicans are now “firm line in the sand” when it comes to where they “stand as a Republican Party.”

But to his credit, Clark said later in the interview:

“I don’t know what’s going to happen when we throw Romney up there. I really don’t. I mean we had some real conservative choices, and the only thing that I would say to people is that Obama is so much worse.”

Olvera said previously that the Colorado Hispanic Republicans will be at Cinco De Mayo in Denver with a big banner, trying to put their tactics into action. This radio interview made me want to go see how they’re received.