Investing in our children

Child poverty, hunger, and lack of access to quality education and medical care are challenges the Colorado Children’s Campaign has been working to address for 40 years.

The programs our country has built to help address these challenges have been an important part of the solution. Our upcoming KIDS COUNT in Colorado! report helps tell the story: Federal support for Medicaid has helped bring Colorado’s uninsured rate for children below 5% — down from 13% in 2013.

About one in four Colorado children’s families use the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) to help afford groceries.

But as part of the budget reconciliation process, Congress is considering dramatic cuts and structural changes to Medicaid, SNAP, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), and other programs that help low-income children and families.

According to the bipartisan advocacy group First Focus on Children, current budget proposals could end 30% of our nation’s investment in children and nearly 50% of its investment in babies and toddlers.

The United Ways of Colorado recently found nearly one in three Colorado households with children struggling to make ends meet in 2023. The cost of living remains high and the economic outlook is uncertain.

Cutting funding for Medicaid, SNAP, and other programs would worsen many Colorado families’ financial struggles.

And local economies would suffer. The Commonwealth Institute recently estimated that Medicaid and SNAP cuts could result in 14,000 jobs lost in Colorado next year and significant cuts or closures for health care providers in rural areas.

If federal funding is cut significantly, Colorado cannot fill in the gaps. Our state’s balanced budget requirement and the Taxpayers’ Bill of Rights, or TABOR, mean Colorado, unlike other states, cannot raise taxes or borrow money to cover the loss of federal dollars.

Our Legislature struggled to cut $1.2 billion from the budget this year and expects another tight year ahead.

Colorado’s congressional representatives can make a real difference for the children in their districts by opposing cuts that will affect their access to food, medical care, and other basic needs.

I believe our community will do everything it can to take care of children no matter what decisions are made in Washington.

But our representatives need to act now to prevent unnecessary harm and avoid cutting Medicaid, SNAP, and other proven programs. When their needs are met, kids can learn, grow, and flourish — and get the chance to just be kids. What could be a better investment?

Heather Tritten, Colorado Children’s

Campaign

Denver

Democracy dies in darkness

Mainstream information sources in the U.S. — including TV networks, newspapers, social media, search engines, and fact-checkers — overwhelmingly lean left-of-center. This ideological imbalance isn’t just anecdotal; it’s systemic and traceable across platforms and policies.

Major networks like CNN, MSNBC, ABC, and CBS use editorial framing that aligns with progressive values, especially on race, climate, gender, and government regulation.

Newspapers like the New York Times and Washington Post regularly frame cultural and political issues through activist lenses. Their editorial boards and reporters often display strong political homogeneity.

Search engines, especially Google, compound this imbalance. Independent studies, like those from Dr. Robert Epstein, show liberal candidates consistently rank higher in search results.

Autocomplete suppression and algorithmic down-ranking often hide or de-emphasize conservative viewpoints. Google-owned YouTube also de-monetizes or bans right-of-center creators under vague “misinformation” or “hate” policies.

Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Reddit use moderation standards that disproportionately penalize conservative users. Stories unfavorable to the left — like the Hunter Biden laptop — have been suppressed, often labeled “misinformation” only to later be confirmed.

Even AI tools and fact-checkers skew left. Tools like ChatGPT are trained on filtered data that reflect mainstream academic and media biases. Fact-checkers like PolitiFact and Snopes more often target Republican claims and use left-leaning sources to adjudicate facts.

This consistent ideological tilt has consequences: it shapes public perception, distorts polls, limits debate, and influences elections. When one side of the ideological spectrum controls most information flow, it’s not just bias — it’s power.

The new Biden revelations bring serious concerns into focus. The Washington Post is right, “Democracy dies in darkness”. It is time for a national discussion and a reinstatement of truth and integrity in reporting. Truth must be transparent and tested ; not controlled and curated.

Ron Robins

Monument

Hypocrisy in Colorado

On May 17, the Gazette published, and an article written by Marianne Goodland titled “Polis: Local governments must comply with housing laws”. Polis is threatening to pull $100 million in funding from local governments for not complying with the absurd new 2024-2025 zoning, building codes and other unreasonable new laws.

There are no residential occupancy limits, additional accessory dwellings, minimum parking limits, housing transit-oriented communities, sustainable affordable housing assistance, residential stair modernization, or regional factory-built structures.

As of this writing, 6 cities have filed suit against the State of Colorado. Specifically, to stop these rules from being enforced.

Those cities are Aurora, Arvada, Glendale, Greenwood Village, Lafyette and Westminster.

These rules were written to force taxpayers to live where they don’t want to live and under circumstances they don’t want to deal with.

Frankly, after reviewing these silly laws, they should be challenged and found to be unconstitutional! No limit to how many people can live in a residential property, limit your ability to park a car, residential structures must be built close to RTD, one stairway for a five-story apartment building. What kind of crap is this?

Colorado is already unaffordable with high property taxes, high sales tax, high energy costs, bad roads, high crime and not getting any better. Last week an Arapahoe County DA virtually let off a 15-year-old illegal for murdering a young American woman.

The elected officials in Colorado continue to pass laws and rules that make no sense, do nothing for the quality of life, or improvements that affect the tax-paying citizens of this once great STATE.

They continue to ignore Federal law and Federal mandates.

It is time to start paying attention to what these idiots are doing and stop it. The State of Colorado belongs to the tax-paying citizens. It’s apparent Polis and his team think they work for the illegals and the homeless.

The elected officials are looking through a rose colored lens, only in Denver and Boulder

It’s just a matter of time before the DOJ and the rest of the Federal Government agencies start looking at Colorado and filing suits to enforce the Federal laws they are ignoring. I can’t wait!

Just a quick adder: the Bent County Sheriff in Colorado is not going to enforce the Hunter Safety Course required to purchase a semi-automatic weapon, which is another unconstitutional law infringing on our Second Amendment rights.

Trig Travis

Aurora