hal bidlack
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BIDLACK | Reminders of Colo.’s Camp Amache in border separations
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It was windy the day I walked among the ruins, but it’s almost always windy there. Row after row of foundations – all that remains of the hundreds of buildings that once stood on over 600 acres of high plains Colorado east of Lamar. The Granada War Relocation Center – better known as Camp Amache…
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BIDLACK: By and large, our public servants aren’t in it for the pay
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A March 9 story in the Colorado Springs Gazette noted that nearly 4,000 people working for the state of Colorado have salaries higher than the governor. Our Mr. Hickenlooper has an annual salary of $90,000, which is not bad as incomes go, but that ranks him near the bottom of the pay scale nationally. Gubernatorial paychecks…
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BIDLACK: The most un-American thing
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There is a great deal I could write about this week regarding national politics – such as a president thinking it witty to tell a Pocahontas joke to a group of Native American war heroes, or the increasingly interesting race to become the next governor of Colorado. I could write about the dangerous and draconian…
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BIDLACK: Patriotism by proxy
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Back in the mid 1990’s, I was sent by the Air Force Academy to the University of Michigan to pursue a Ph.D., after which I returned to the USAFA faculty to continue teaching. During that grad school stint, we chose to live in a small town about 45 minutes north of Ann Arbor. We enjoyed…
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BIDLACK: Think locally, act locally — and embrace federalism
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As a former congressional candidate this may seem like an odd thing for me to say, but folks, you are paying way too much attention to our national government, and way too little attention to the state and local governments. I admit, most of my adult life had been dedicated to working at the national…
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FEEDBACK: Fossils vs. renewables; Trump vs. media, and more
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Let’s cool down the heated energy debate For years now there has been a heated debate on energy in Colorado, with one side stating we need to rid our state of fossil fuels and the other stating we need to rid our state of renewable energy. Neither side has been willing to give an inch.…
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BIDLACK: Kneeling, name calling and never again
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Do you know the name George Santayana? I suspect not, unless you are a student of late 19th and early 20th century Spanish philosophers. Heck, I had to look him up myself, and learned that he was born in Madrid, was educated at Harvard, and died in Rome in 1952. You may not have heard…
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BIDLACK: Donald Trump — proud of being uninformed; keeper of the nuclear keys
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I spent the bulk of my 25-plus-year military career dealing with the fabled sword of war. I started off in 1981 as a “finger on the button” ICBM launch officer just north of here, at F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Cheyenne, Wyoming. There, with the Cold War in full bloom, I was very much…
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BIDLACK: In defense of political correctness, mostly, kind of…
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It is politically correct these days to rail against, well, being politically correct. We see people bombastically pronouncing political correctness as an evil affronting all that is good and decent in society. We see extreme pronouncements of self-righteous rage and sanctimonious cheerleading. We toss around the term “snowflake” to mean anyone we think is not…
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BIDLACK: On circular firing squads and Republican primaries
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For the past month, I’ve written about my 2008 run for the U.S. Congress. These essays have looked inward, at my campaign and the lessons I learned from running. In this essay, please allow me an outward look at my Republican opponents, and to let me swap out my partisan “candidate” hat for my old…
