Grant Grigorian's Blog » politics

Hank Brown

Grant Grigorian — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 22:22:33 +0000

I saw Hank Brown today at the Denver County GOP breakfast. I’ve never seen him in person before despite the fact that I was a student at CU while he was the president there. He completely looks his part – he looks like a senator – and therefore when he speaks you can’t help but listen.

There was an interesting profile of him in the Denver Post the other day.

On a related note – I signed up to be on the “Communications Committee” of the organization – we’ll see where it takes me.

Getting involved in local politics

Grant Grigorian — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 13:55:58 +0000

As I’ve written about it here before, I’ve been looking for a way to get involved and to learn more about politics. I’d like to learn more about how candidates bubble up to win elections and about what goes on in the “back-end” of political activities.

To start, this week I attended a so called “New Denver Republican” meeting hosted by Mr. John Wren, who in the past, among other things, tried to raise opposition to the popular Denver mayor John Hickenlooper‘s inevitable re-election in 2007 (which he won by 87%!).

The meeting was interesting. The main lesson I took away from it were that it is best to start getting involved locally, very locally, such in the precinct level. To find out which precinct I live in, I went to a list of maps, and found that I live in House District 8, Precinct 0834 (source):

Heathcare Reform in Colorado: Blue Ribbon Commission

Grant Grigorian — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 05:27:28 +0000

This is not news to those that follow Colorado state policy, but just over a year ago then-Governor Bill Owens signed Senate Bill 208, which established the The Blue Ribbon Commission for Health Care Reform (aka 208 Commission). The commission’s goal is to

“study and establish health care reform models for expanding coverage, especially for the underinsured and uninsured, and to decrease health care costs for Colorado residents.”

The Commission is required to make final recommendations for comprehensive health care reform to the General Assembly by November 30, 2007.

What’s interesting about the work of the commission is that as part of it’s work, the commission solicited reform proposals from… well, from anyone who was interested enough to submit one. And indeed, there was no shortage of input (there were 31 in all).

In May of this year, the commission selected four proposals to to “undergo detailed ‘modeling’ analysis, the next step in the process of identifying proposals to submit to the General Assembly for consideration.”

The four proposals represent a wide spectrum of reforms and for a public public buff like me, they also represent a chance to really dig below the surface and analyze the benefits and costs of the reform actions. This is also an opportunity to learn about how state government works – how lively debate can (or can not) shape the course of legislation.

I will review and discuss each proposal separately in future posts.

Christine Quinn: a politician to watch

Grant Grigorian — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 04:48:21 +0000

This is a third video in a row to be posted here and I apologize for that – but I couldn’t resist.

Charlie Rose had a great guest on and I would like to share my excitement with you.

The guest’s name was Christine Quinn and she the Speaker of the New York City Council. There are two things to be said immediately: she is a very liberal Democrat and I don’t live in New York. It doesn’t matter.

I saw a very energetic, smart and passionate woman who loves her job. Granted, she is a politician, and everything she says has to be taken with a grain of salt. Nevertheless, she was very impressive.

TED Talks: Allison Hunt gets a new hip in Canada.

Grant Grigorian — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 03:38:35 +0000

TEDster Allison Hunt‘s five-minute talk finds humor and marketing strategy in the most unlikely of places — her own hip-replacement surgery. As the world scrutinizes broken health-care systems, this particularly timely clip shows how getting to the front of a two-year waiting list can have an altruistic effect. (Recorded March 2007 in Monterey, CA. Duration: 5:00.)

Election 2008: Initial Elimination, or Do You Believe in Evolution?

Grant Grigorian — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 05:04:19 +0000

We often talk about the need to elect our political leaders based “on the issues” rather than popularity, party loyalty, or media coverage. I don’t like that too often the public attention is paid on the highly publicized, but completely trivial aspects of the presidential race: like Howard Dean’s yelp, Al Gore’s sighs during the debates, or even sweaty Nixon on televised debates.

So, in order to not fall into the “public opinion” trap, I will try to sort through where the candidates stand on issues which are important to me.

Today’s Criteria: Do you believe in evolution?

On May 3, 2007 debate of the Republican candidates, a question was posed: How many of you don’t believe in evolution?

The three hands that went up—indicating that they did not believe in evolution—were (former) Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas, Rep. Tom Tancredo of Colorado, and Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas.

So, in the Republican camp, that leaves:

That leaves 8.