MORE MANIPULATION BY THE MEDIA

“Trillion-dollar trouble” screamed The Denver Post’s 60-point front-page headline over a two-and-one-half page presentation by reporter David Olinger on 3/20/09, followed by “Hazards in the water,” another two pages of near hysteria two days later -- all detailing how laggard we are for letting Colorado’s infrastructure just fall apart and it’s going to cost $2.2 trillion in the next five years to fix it.

Thusly the Post’s stern lecture series gets off to a feeble start by trying to pin the blame on you and me for somehow failing to address every conceivable infrastructure problem our state faces (where have all the politicians and their comforting press gone?) and forcing people to live in conditions of their own making, such as having to toss dishwater out the back door. No mention is made of governmental foibles such as misdirecting highway funds statewide or the bottomless FasTracks money pit or lack of personal responsibility.

Whose fault is it that our roads and bridges are crumbling? Never mind that the railroads used to build roadbeds and bridges that lasted a long time and did not crumble under the pounding of extraordinarily heavy loads and stress. And oh, they were maintained at a negligible cost, a must factor in the private sector.

Issue: Safe water, sanitary sewers. Haven’t those who choose to live in a rural setting ever heard of caveat emptor? (As most people should know, Colorado abounds in rocky soil, impervious adobe and shale deposits.) Olinger tells of the expensive sewage pumping and exporting necessary in a rural neighborhood but offers no clue as to why installing a modern disposal system would not be cheaper and safer in the long run.

The city of Alamosa’s water problems sound even more devastating (not good news for the local chamber of commerce), but because Colorado municipalities possess the unique authority to issue bonds to provide reasonably safe water and sanitary sewer services without a vote of the people, there is simply no excuse outside of an emergency for Alamosa to be distributing unsafe water. What has happened to the once state law that required domestic water providers in Colorado to publish frequent purity test results in the local newspaper so the people may know?

Not only do these rural and city “victims” apparently refuse to pony up for the most basic of services and repairs or replacements like the rest of us do, they expect us to pay for theirs too.

Unfortunately, this same blame-game is permeating Colorado’s primary and secondary educational system as well, as more and more people look to the state and now the federal government to pay for constructing and repairing their local school facilities. Why not? No use paying for something yourself if you can find someone else to pay for it.

It used to be called sustainability; now the politically correct code words are bailout or stimulus, the obvious reason for this series. I can scarcely wait to see the Post’s next episode to find out what else is my fault. All I can say is, I’ve done my best to try to be a responsible citizen.