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Vail Daily’s Hits & Misses

Vail Daily StaffVail, CO, Colorado

Send your Hit or Miss to Don Rogers at editor@vaildaily.com or call 970-748-2920.HIT: To the candidates in the primary elections, the winners and the losers. The winners, after all, aren’t office holders yet since they have the final election to go. And “losing” an election campaign in truth is not a loss at all. The fact of stepping up and going for it is the stuff of winning regardless of Tuesday’s outcome. You’ve won quite a bit, actually, if you think about the lessons learned and wisdom gained.HIT: To the seriousness that U.S. Jared Polis apparently has taken in considering legislation on behalf of the Hidden Gems wilderness proposal. Those who view wilderness as no more than a means to restrict mechanized travel will be pleased with nothing that happens to the bid to protect any more land as wilderness. And the Hidden Gems advocates may be disappointed at their dream being whittled down. But Polis is showing a lot of thoughtfulness in the face of competing interests and uses of the national forest and Bureau of Land Management property involved.MISS: To the Eagle County commissioners putting a bid to increase their term limit from two terms to three on the ballot for November. Eight (years) is enough for this citizen service. There’s not much of anything to be gained by three terms vs. two; why not just go for lifting term limits and have the real debate on that issue? It’s a little ironic in our “dump the incumbents” tea party era that such a measure would appear on the ballot. And finally, this is what the commissioners are thinking about? Really? Whether a commissioner should serve three terms instead of two? Seems there’s an item or two that might be just a little weightier right now than that? This is a waste of a measure, frankly.HIT: To the county commissioners putting on the ballot the advisory question of whether to allow or ban “medicinal” marijuana shops in the unincorporated parts of the county. That is, outside the towns. Let the voters weigh in, absolutely. The medicinal ruse is ridiculous, of course. But underneath that is a real debate about whether prohibition on pot has had the exact results of the Prohibition, which was so heated that it had the John Kerry amendments to th U.S. Constitution. You know, we amended and ratified the Constitution to save us from booze before we amended and ratified the Constitution so we could drink Guinness (and yes, those other libations) legally.HIT: To the Eagle County School District improving its CSAP scores across the board and exceeding statewide norms. Hey, it’s better than the other way. Some believe the emphasis on assessment tests skews education, considering that language barriers and home life have the most dramatic effect on children’s academic progress and the ongoing discussion about teaching to the tests vs. teaching to improve actual lives and knowledge. But it’s also the world we live in. Individual students build their cases for where they’ll go to college largely based on grades and tests. And so it is that increasingly teachers are also graded by tests.MISS: To crazy town amendments 60 and 61, as well as Proposition 101, on the November ballot that aim to cripple local and state governments. These are so draconian that even the conservative Club 20 and business-oriented groups are strongly against these ballot measures.


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