Author: Vince Bzdek
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Suddenly, Colorado has a private school choice program │ Vince Bzdek
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By Vince Bzdek When I was a kid going to St. John’s Catholic grade school in Denver, I remember asking my mom if she and dad minded paying taxes for public schools since all her kids attended Catholic ones. We don’t mind, she told me. It’s our choice to send you to St. John’s for…
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Clash of the titans: Democratic race for governor pits two candidates similar in focus, but very different in style | Vince Bzdek
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By Vince Bzdek The race for governor is shaping up to be a clash of Democratic titans, U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet and Attorney General Phil Weiser. They are two of Colorado’s highest profile politicians with deep track records who are remarkably similar in their visions for Colorado’s future, and their choice of our state’s…
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9 things you probably didn’t know about the American Revolution | Vince Bzdek
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By Vince Bzdek What is most striking about Ken Burns’ extraordinary new PBS documentary on the American Revolution is how alike we are right now to those folks in 1776. Take away the tricorn hats and ruffled shirts and they were just as divided as we are now, just as polyglot and p—ed off and…
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Why do out-of-state donors have more power than in-state voters? | Vince Bzdek
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Why is Michael Bloomberg, the former presidential candidate, three-term New York mayor and founder of the financial info firm that bears his name, spending millions on Colorado elections? The short answer: because he can. The liberal New Yorker has donated $2.7 million to support Denver’s flavored tobacco ban, Referendum 301, to be decided on Tuesday. Two…
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A voice trying to pull us back from the brink | Vince Bzdek
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By Vince Bzdek Two weeks after Charlie Kirk was assassinated in Utah, it’s worth noting what didn’t happen, especially in Utah. “I want you to look at how Utahans reacted,” Republican Gov. Spencer Cox said after the suspect was caught. “There was no rioting. There was no looting. There were no cars set on fire.…
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Realness Project teaches exiting inmates ‘the art of being human’ | Vince Bzdek
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When Shawna Pierson was incarcerated at La Vista Correctional Facility, she thought she knew everything. “I was at a place where I was kind of indignant. Nobody could really teach me anything. I had it all figured out,” she told me in an interview. She said she was “hurting people, breaking them down and destroying…
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Eighty years ago this week, a flock of flyboys saved the world | Vince Bzdek
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The flyboys were in the air as long as 17 hours on the night bombing raids from the Mariana Islands to Tokyo. Round trip was approximately 3,000 miles. Along the way the crews — average age 22 — faced Japanese Zeros, anti-aircraft fire, mechanical issues, air sickness, high winds and turbulence. “The Japanese fire from the…
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Panel on challenges to journalism shows the question is more important than the answer | Vince Bzdek
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A recent panel discussion on the many challenges journalism faces at the moment demonstrated the value of a good question. We five journalists on the panel weren’t able to answer all the questions posed to us by the moderator and a highly engaged audience, but I think we all came away from the evening with…
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The Everywhere War comes to Boulder | Vince Bzdek
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Two headlines in The Wall Street Journal last week brought home how small the world has become. “The Intifada comes to Boulder,” read one. “Ukraine’s drone strike is a warning — for the U.S.,” read the other. The first referred to how the Palestinian uprising against Israel suddenly landed in our backyard last Sunday when…
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Lest we forget: The lessons of World War II | Vince Bzdek
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At the beginning of “The Book of Laughter and Forgetting,” the great Czech author Milan Kundera tells the story of a cold, snowy day in Czechoslovakia in 1948 at the height of Communist rule. A man named Clementis stood next to Communist Leader Klement Gottwald on a balcony overlooking a crowd. Because of the cold,…
