Media Reports on Hate Crimes Fuel Misconceptions of Bias
by Jessica Peck Corry

This column originally appeared at www.HumanEvents.com on November 26, 2007.

DENVER– Media reports here this month are proclaiming that Colorado saw a 10 percent rise in hate crimes over the past year. Religious discrimination — it is suggested –is raging out of control. Such reporting, however, reflects not the truth but rather the increasingly transparent agenda of a desperate and aging victim industry.

From its front page, The Denver Post proclaimed, “Hate Crimes Up 10% in State.” Similarly, the city’s other major paper, the Rocky Mountain News declared, “Colo. Hate Crimes Up 10 Percent, Religious-based Incidents Jump.”

The source of outrage? An FBI report concluding that between 2005 and 2006, the U.S. saw a 7.8 percent increase in the number of hate crimes reported, from 7,163 incidents in 2005 to 7,722 last year.

In Colorado, a state with nearly 5 million residents, the FBI report found that the number of hate crimes reported rose from just 125 in 2005 to 138 last year. Reporting of hate crimes involving religion also rose, but just barely, from just 22 in 2005 to 42 in 2006. Meanwhile, race-related hate crimes statewide saw no increase, with 59 reported both years, and headlines made no mention of the fact that ethnicity-bias crimes dropped 30 percent, from 27 in 2005 to 19 in 2006.

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Despite the benign Colorado findings, the numbers have been the source of much hysteria, compelling Bruce DeBoskey, regional director of the Anti-Defamation League, to sound the alarm bells of intolerance in a press release. “We’re seeing a tremendous increase in religiously based hate crimes in Colorado,” he told a reporter.

A tremendous increase? In Denver, a city of nearly 567,000 residents and a total metropolitan population of more than 2.4 million, law enforcement agencies reported just one religious-based hate crime. This was a fact neglected by the media. While the News mentioned it in the tenth paragraph of its 12 paragraph report, the Post didn’t reference it at all.

Instead, print and broadcast reporters universally focused on an alleged outbreak of intolerance in Colorado Springs, a city 65 miles to the south. According to the Post, the ethnically and religiously diverse community of nearly 400,000 was experiencing a “surge” in religious-based crimes — representing the highest increase in the state.

But the FBI report revealed that reported incidents rose from just two to 12. According to Colorado Springs Police Lt. Skip Arms, who spoke to both the News and the Post, “with the thousands of calls we take,” the figures were “so small that there really is no significance to them.”

Not only that, but it’s questionable whether many of the crimes characterized as religiously-based can even legitimately be considered such. Arms told the Post that crimes reported to the FBI included “graffiti with some religious overtones to them. There is not any specific target to any specific religion or denomination or anything like that.”

Reporters could have led with these points, but instead they chose to endorse damaging misperceptions about the current state of racial and religious tolerance. By raising hysterics, DeBoskey was just following the national lead of the Rev. Al Sharpton, who in a yawner of predictability took to the streets of Charleston, West Virginia, to denounce what he called a “severe increase in hate crimes.” According to an Associated Press report, he did so with several hundred followers marching at his side and for the purpose of condemning “the lack of prosecution and serious investigation by the Justice Department to counter this increase in hate crimes.”

As proof of America’s continued racism, Sharpton focused on the racial strife plaguing Jena, Louisiana. Things turned sour there in 2006, when a black student discovered nooses hanging from a tree. While three white students were suspended from school for their involvement in the incident, this wasn’t enough for activists who wanted the students charged under federal law with hate crimes.

Subsequently, six black teens carried out a retaliatory assault on a white student that left him unconscious. While attempted second-degree murder charges were later reduced to aggravated assault, it wasn’t enough for Sharpton and his minions, who still believed that the prosecution was excessive. They remained silent, however, when federal authorities declined to charge these students with hate crimes.

Clearly, Colorado and Louisiana have vastly different histories and live different cultural realities. But together they represent a reality experienced in nearly every community across America. The overwhelming majority of their residents have never — and will never — engage in a hate crime.

While it’s easy to blame bigotry for our woes, clearly we’ve got bigger problems to deal with. While just a few thousand American blacks were the targets of hate crimes last year, the FBI reports that more than 800,000 were victims of violent crimes.

Ultimately, DeBoskey and Sharpton find themselves in a precarious but lucrative position. They must construct a reality where discrimination and bigotry are the prevailing source of our societal problems. Their pocketbooks and entire livelihood depend on perpetuating such a myth.

Savvy reporters should attempt to get on the payroll.

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Jessica Peck Corry (Jessica@i2i.org) is a policy analyst with the Independence Institute in Golden, Colo., where she specializes in land use, higher education, and civil rights policy.”

This column originally appeared in the Salida Mountain Press on Nov. 15, 2007
Smoking first, then cheeseburgers
by Jessica Peck Corry

Smoking first, then cheeseburgers - so goes the logical extension of Michael Carrigan’s thinking.

The well-intentioned University of Colorado regent is pushing a system-wide ban on all outdoor smoking. He said he was inspired by desire to protect young people from dying of lung cancer.

“I’ve had a number of close relatives die from smoking, including my grandparents and my uncle, who was my namesake,” Carrigan told The Rocky Mountain News. “I would like to see the next generation be free of smoking.”

If saving people from the bad decisions they want to make is what this crusade is all about, shouldn’t banning cholesterol-laden fast food as a way to fight heart disease be his top target? It’s heart disease - not lung cancer - that’s America’s number one killer, taking nearly a million U.S. lives every year.

But why stop at heart disease? Let’s take on all of America’s most lethal killers. Diabetes must be next. As a diabetic myself from an immediate family of five diabetics, shouldn’t the government also protect my daughters from the future possible complications of the disease?

Candy bars must go. And no more sugary cereals in dormitory cafeterias. Carrigan could push to impose fat-taxes on all off-campus pizza joints. Surely, he’d be able to find receptive allies in the Boulder City Council.

Perhaps CU could mandate an hour of exercise every day.

Think our universities wouldn’t go that far? Think again. During the last few decades, universities increasingly have defined their roles as moral enforcers of good student behavior. As a result, we’ve been left with campuses where administrators eagerly serve in loco parentis - or “in the place of a parent.”

With the aid of nannyist legislators at all levels of government, universities have established strict policies forbidding alcohol consumption by anyone younger than 21 years old. They’ve worked with the federal government to enforce legislation revoking financial aid for anyone caught for even the most minor off-campus marijuana offenses.

And now, of course, smoking is under attack - even when it’s done outdoors and outside the smelling distance of another person’s unwilling nostrils.

All three of these policies have one thing in common - they’re destined to be miserable failures. Alcohol woes at CU have been nationally documented, with hundreds of CU-Boulder students arrested for alcohol-related offenses every year.

And since 1998, when President Clinton signed into law the federal government anti-marijuana financial aid ban, more than 200,000 students nationwide have lost publicly-funded loans and grants. With an estimated 25-percent of college students doubling as smokers, we can assume that under Carrigan’s plan, the number of smoking tickets will rival those issued for marijuana or alcohol possession.

Now, let me give my full disclaimer. Drinking too much can be bad. Drugs can lead to trouble. And smoking can kill you. But all these facts are secondary to the larger questions we should be asking.

Our universities should not serve as moral enforcers. Instead of punishing students based upon their out-of-class behavior, the focus should be instead on how such behavior impacts in-class performance. Universities can start by imposing rigorous attendance requirements.

If a student is perpetually too drunk to attend class the next morning, he’s going to learn the hard way college is about more than partying. If another student is too stoned to study for finals, she’s going to learn pretty quickly the entire university - including her professors - means business.

In a time when CU students are facing back-to-back tuition increases, and administrative bloat continues to spin out of control, Carrigan and his fellow regents clearly have their hands full. That’s before you consider the impact his proposal would have on the workload of campus police - who could easily fill their days fighting the scourge of smokers.

When my daughters attend college, I want to be the first person they call when they’ve made a mistake and need help. I don’t need Carrigan or any other university official parenting for me.

I’d rather they focus on what we elected them to do - which is to run a top-tier research institution as effectively and efficiently as possible.

Jessica Peck Corry is director of the Campus Accountability Project and Property Rights Project for the Independence Institute, a non-partisan, non-profit public policy research organization providing information to citizens, government officials and public leaders.

This column originally appeared in the Denver Post’s PoliticsWest section on Nov. 15, 2007

By Jessica Peck Corry

I’ve got some troubling news: The power lunch is continuing its sad decline. Well, at least it’s not as fun as it should be.

While once this midday ritual brought together leaders, sealed business deals, and launched bi-partisan compromises, today it has become a confusing mess of politically correct gender-related etiquette that has taken all the pleasure out of what should be a union of two of life’s greatest joys — getting to eat and not having to work.

It all starts at the door to the restaurant. I frequently see the bewilderment on the faces of men from ten feet away. And it’s understandable. After all, they must navigate a potential landmine of possible gender offenses all within a span of less than an hour.

Among the questions they must now consider: How hard should I shake a woman’s hand? Is she expecting me to kiss her on the cheek? Should I offer to take her coat? Will she be offended if I get the door? Should I pull out her chair? If there is that awkward moment of silence before the waitress (sorry, I mean server) comes, should I ask her about her kids?

And then there is deciding what to order. I’ve noticed that men don’t eat red meat at lunches anymore. It’s a tragedy. Last week when I sat down to lunch with two male lunch companions, I took the initiative of ordering first (lest they be considered sexist for offering me the privilege). My selection was quick. Beef, a Diet Coke, and French fries. They both went with salads. And ordering an alcoholic beverage was not even a consideration.

I must concede that while I’m still in my twenties, I’m not quite a veteran of power lunching. I’ve only heard of the martini lunches of yesteryear. I guess I just always assumed that adults would allow themselves to have fun. And maybe if we all had a martini, it wouldn’t be so awkward when the bill comes.

It’s generally understood that the person who requests the lunch, pays. But what if you’re lunching with that rare woman who thinks men should always pay? What if you both requested the lunch? Is it O.K. to ask to split the bill if she doesn’t offer first?

Jessica Peck Corry is a public policy analyst with the Independence Institute in Golden, Colo.
And all these internal questions must be resolved before you consider the implications of lunching with a lobbyist. Colorado’s well-intentioned but overly strict ethics laws can make even the most innocent lunch the source of a reporter’s investigation. Similar prohibitions are being imposed in the culture of political power lunching at the national level.

According to a recent Washingtonian report, “Maître d’s across (Washington) report more requests for separate checks in the wake of lobbying-related corruption scandals. . .one lobbyist explained over lunch at Bobby Van’s Grill on New York Avenue, ‘I’m not risking my career to buy a burger for some 23-year-old committee staffer.’”

Being a grownup should be fun. Somehow we’ve forgotten this and our stomachs are suffering as a result. Come join me in celebrating the power lunch. Turn off your cell phone and devour a steak. I won’t tell. And while you’re at it, light up that cigar (outdoors only, of course), enjoy your martini, and tell me about your wife and kids. Life’s too short to live on pins and needles. It’s certainly too short to live on lettuce alone.

When the bill comes, you can breathe a sigh of relief — I won’t be offended at all if you pay. Another plus — you won’t be required to report the lunch to the FEC.

This column originally appeared in the Denver Post’s PoliticsWest section on Nov. 8, 2007
By Jessica Peck Corry

In the aftermath of a front page Sunday Denver Post editorial condemning Gov. Bill Ritter’s secretive push to impose collective bargaining on state employees, state Democrats are floundering in their response. The question: What should they be doing to help rebuild the trust they’ve lost with voters?

The Post editorial didn’t just condemn Ritter’s pro-labor executive order; it went into detail about the dire consequences that could result from the governor’s actions: “We’re concerned this may be the beginning of the end of Ritter as governor.”

But is this the beginning of the end? Will Ritter be Colorado’s first one-term governor in nearly 60 years? Certainly, elected officials have survived worse than this, but if Ritter wants to shake his well-earned reputation as a back room operator, he needs to start opening the governing process to the public.

While Ritter attempted to bounce back this week in both major Denver newspapers with his own opinion pieces defending his actions, he has now been effectively pegged by Colorado’s opinion leaders as someone who resorts to sneaky political maneuvers to avoid an honest political debate.

But all is not lost for Ritter. He can begin patching up his sinking ship by revealing to voters any other promises he has made — including those he intends to keep — to Big Labor organizations. He can begin this process by releasing all union questionnaires he filled out during last year’s campaign.

Ritter should also be open about any communication he and his staff have had with Howard Dean, chair of the Democratic National Committee. Voters deserve to know whether Ritter’s executive order was a quid pro quo for bringing the party’s convention to Denver next summer.

Of course, Ritter can opt not to reveal anything to the public. But the assumption could then only be that he has something to hide or that as the Post put it “he’s simply a toady to labor bosses and the old vestiges of his party — a bag man for unions and special interests. ”

And certainly unions are ready for results after the hefty investment they made to Democrats during the 2006 election. Denver political strategist Rob Fairbank, a former GOP state legislator, tallied up union small donor committee contributions in that election and concluded that labor contributed $2.5 million in anonymous contributions to Colorado’s statewide and local candidates.

Other Colorado Democrats, including House Majority Leader Alice Madden, who benefited heavily from labor’s support in 2006, are now attempting to aid Ritter’s recovery. Madden leads the failed resurgence by attempting to perpetuate class warfare so bigoted and ignorant that it now threatens to alienate all Republican voters — who now still hold a statewide registration advantage over Democrats.

Madden sounded off in Tuesday’s Rocky Mountain News, briefly defending Ritter before launching a visceral attack on the GOP:

“This executive order is, number one, about opening lines of communication and making employees feel like they are an important part of the process,” she said. “Why that scares Republicans, to me, seems like part of their continued war on the middle class…While Bill Ritter is busy governing, the Republicans are busy campaigning.”

So let’s get this straight. This executive order is “about opening lines of communication” by creating a more inclusive process? If that’s the case, then Ritter shouldn’t have resorted to secrecy to introduce the order — announcing it late on a Friday afternoon, without a press conference, and without giving legislators an opportunity to reform, improve or vote on what could ultimately be one of the most expensive personnel decisions Colorado has ever faced.

But Madden’s sophomoric spin didn’t just stop there. If justice is served, her rhetoric attacking the GOP for its “continued war on the middle class” will fall flat on its face. After last weekend’s debacle, it’s clear that Democrats are the ones who are actually perpetuating such a war.

Madden fails to remember that when government expands, it’s middle class taxpayers that pay. According to the Post editorial, collective bargaining can drive up the cost of doing business by 30 percent. What will this do the tax-paying small business owners who provide the vast majority of jobs in Colorado?

Madden is drinking too much of the Big Labor Kool-Aid. Today, just 7 percent of Colorado’s workforce is unionized. While union money plays a key role in modern elections, its role in the free market continues its sad plummet.

But Madden is headstrong. She’ll likely continue her attack. And it could be good for Republicans. They can position themselves politically as the legitimate voice of small business owners and employees — the non-unionized hard-working coalitions that have been largely forgotten by the Democratic majority currently holding the reins at the state Capitol. The GOP should focus on the real issues that affect real Coloradans, including the rising costs of government mandates and red tape.

So is the Post right that Ritter’s executive order is the beginning of the end for a previously popular governor? Time will tell. In the meantime, Democrats must resolve their internal dilemma — do they represent the special interest labor money that filled their campaign coffers or the hard-working Colorado small business owners who voted for them on Election Day? In 2006, voters fell hard for Big Labor’s “pro-business” message. They aren’t likely to fall for it twice, especially if Ritter and his friends continue their back room approach.

By Jessica Peck Corry

This column originally appeared in the Denver Post’s PoliticsWest section on Oct. 25, 2007

There is nothing more annoying than powerful women playing the victim card. It’s a fact I’m reminded of this week as Debbie Stafford — a longtime Republican now turned Democrat — suggests that she was “battered” by her former party’s leaders.

The state representative from Aurora asserts that her decision to become a Democrat had little to do with policy — and more to do with protest. “If I believe someone is being battered…I would tell them to pack their bags and get out fast. My party was trying to batter me into submission,” she told a Denver Post reporter last week.

In trying to paint her party as abusive, Stafford only reveals her own impulsive weaknesses. She claims the final straw came during this year’s legislative session when she says she was retaliated against for breaking with GOP leadership to support a bill that lowered the standard for construction defects lawsuits. According to Post reporter Jennifer Brown, Stafford broke down in tears as she recalled how her unpopular vote turned her into an “outcast.”

While Stafford insists on wearing a victim label, we can only hope that she wouldn’t instruct abuse victims to seek cover under another abusive relationship. But if we are to accept her accusations as gospel, this is exactly what she has done. Now as a Democrat, she is going to find herself and her conservative social views painfully at odds with her new party’s expectations.

What an eye-opening she is going to get next January at the beginning of the 2008 legislative session, when the kisses, hugs and bouquets stop coming from her new party colleagues. Certainly, union bosses won’t take kindly to her pro-school choice views. The feminist lobby isn’t likely to pat her on the back for her pro-life stance.

If Stafford had logically thought through her decision, she would have fought back by demanding change within her party. If she really felt she needed to leave the GOP, she should have become an independent, rejecting partisan status altogether.

Fortunately, for Stafford’s own sake, she is term-limited. Her switch will likely have little to no practical impact. She was overwhelmingly elected in a district that supported her conservative stances, including her opposition to gay marriage, stem cell research, and amnesty for illegal immigrants. Democrats now hold a 40-25 member lead in the House, and Stafford’s district will likely once again elect a Republican in the 2008 election.

Lest I be accused of battering Stafford myself, let me give credit where credit is due. She has been through a lot in life. A few years ago, I joined in a standing ovation after she gave a speech detailing her experiences in an abusive marriage and her subsequent struggles to succeed — which she did — as a single mother. My admiration then strikes a strong contrast to my disappointment now.

Jessica Peck Corry is a public policy analyst with the Independence Institute in Golden, Colo.
How can she now retreat from the core ideals of her party, bowing her head in tears, so flabbergasted and so frustrated by the basic realities of our competitive political system? It sends a troubling message to women across the nation. It says we’re weak and paints us not as leaders, but as followers.

As a Republican myself, I’ve been an outspoken critic of my party’s leadership frequently over the years. When you believe in something, you’ve got to fight to make it better. Abandoning my core philosophy, even at a time when too many Republicans at the national level are pushing to expand the government’s role in our lives every day, just isn’t an option. Why would I leave a party weakened by the temptations of socialism for another faction that not only encourages government expansion, but lives and breathes such a philosophy?

Perhaps Stafford is finally home. After all, Colorado’s most powerful elected female Democrat, state Senate President Joan Fitz-Gerald, has similarly pulled the victim card, bemoaning our political system as an “old boys” network. Give me a break. Girls are running the show and getting the headlines.

Let’s mop up those tears and get back in the fight.

This column originally appeared in the Pueblo Chieftain on Nov. 3, 2007

We must know our history or we are doomed to repeat it.

This often repeated phrase, plastered on the walls of college classrooms across America, is dissolving into little more than a forgotten platitude in the face of growing student civic illiteracy.

Unfortunately, Colorado’s college and universities aren’t immune. According to a recent national test, half of our college students can’t adequately articulate key civic concepts, including basic freedoms defined under the Bill of Rights or famous civil rights cases that have led to a more equitable U.S. society.

Before you write off such knowledge as too academic to be essential, think again. In a time of international turmoil, complete with a war raging in the Middle East, how can we prevail amidst such ignorance? The answer: We simply can’t.

As part of a survey conducted by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute’s National Civic Literacy Board, researchers began their work with a simple question: “Is American higher education preparing students for lives as informed and engaged citizens?”

Researchers then contacted more than 14,000 randomly selected college freshmen and seniors at the selected institutions, including the University of Colorado and Colorado State University, and had them complete a 60 multiple-choice question test. The assessment was designed to measure knowledge in four key areas, including American history, government, America’s relationship with the world and market economies.

While CU and CSU both saw student performance on the exam rise substantially between freshman and senior years, the overall numbers were still abysmal. CSU student performance rose from 40.6 percent to 51.5 percent between freshmen and seniors; CU performance rose from 39.7 percent to 48.6 in the same period.

If there is any good news to be gleaned from the findings, it is that both institutions fared well in this knowledge gain when compared to schools in other states.

Of the 50 institutions evaluated under “The Coming Crisis in Citizenship: Higher Education’s Failure to Teach America’s History and Institutions,” CSU ranked second in the amount of civic knowledge gained and the University of Colorado ranked close behind, at fifth.

While Colorado’s colleges are obviously teaching students a thing or two about our country, we can’t celebrate yet when one in two CU and CSU seniors still can’t pass the test. The numbers were also paltry compared to top national institutions, including Princeton, Harvard, Yale and Georgetown, where students performed at nearly 70 percent, both during the freshman and senior years.

Colorado taxpayers commit thousands of dollars per student each year to higher education because we believe in the power of molding educated and informed leaders for tomorrow. One of the basic tenants of such leadership must be historical and contemporary political and economic knowledge.

The ISI test demonstrates that too many of our students are ignorant not only about the American Revolution, but also about more recent conflicts, including the Cold War and the ongoing conflicts in the Persian Gulf.

They have a difficult time conceptualizing on inflation or the value of money, and fail miserably at understanding sources of market prosperity.

If we want to reverse the tides of ignorance, we must demand that our education leaders work aggressively to ensure that every Colorado college graduate is civically literate. From math majors to communications majors, all students deserve to be armed with knowledge that will help them understand - and lead - in the world of tomorrow.

To achieve this goal, our universities must require more course work designed to enforce civic literacy. As the ISI findings indicate, student civic literacy directly correlates with the number of history, economics and political science courses a student takes.

Unfortunately, at our universities, particularly at CU, leaders have lost focus on the need to teach real knowledge of key historic and civic facts, caring more about perpetuating obtuse and largely subjective sociological theories like diversity and oppression.

CU Regent Tom Lucero has long championed the need to better educate our students concerning documented historic facts and quantifiable market variables. Unfortunately, however, his recent efforts to establish an academic department dedicated to such goals have been stalled by university administrators concerned only with appeasing radical faculty members who would rather preach than educate.

Love America or hate it, one thing is clear. Our students cannot lead in their chosen direction if they do not know where we came from or how our system of government works.

We cannot let our universities ignore their obligation to graduate civically literate citizens.