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Here are Some
DRIVING TIPS
(They are my pet peeves when it comes to you driving down the highway.) |
Thursday, April 5, 2007
DON'T USE YOUR BRAKES ON THE HIGHWAY.
When you have to use your brakes on the highway, you have done
something wrong. If you follow at a safe distance, don't drive a lot
faster (or slower) than the other traffic, and pay attention to what
you are doing, then you should be able to safely slow down to turn or
exit without ever using your brakes. Of course, sometimes it is some
other idiot who does something wrong, and sometimes you need to use
your brakes just to let the other traffic see that you are slowing
down. I have driven the highway without brakes for years.
Saturday, March 31, 2007
DON'T DRIVE FASTER THAN THE CAR IN FRONT OF YOU.
Sounds strange, but think about it: when you are in heavy traffic and
trying to change lanes, isn't it irritating to have that idiot
zooming up at +20mph to fill the gap? And while we're at it, isn't it
irritating to have the traffic on your right going +20mph when your
lane is only going +5mph? Speed a little over the other guys, just
not a lot.
DON'T DRIVE FASTER THAN THE CAR TO YOUR RIGHT.
Tuesday, June 27, 2006
Don't Cross the Solid White Line -
The solid white line is there for a reason: wait till you are past
the solid line before you change lanes. Think about it: you are going
around somebody you can go around a little later, and irritating all
kinds of people when you do it.
Don't Drive Next to a Bus -
or a truck, they cannot see you! They have an extended blind spot.
Remember your blind spot? Many people have forgotten about them.
Drivers of most large vehicles have the ability to detect a vehicle
driving next to them with electronics, but don't take a chance! drop
back behind them or go around them!
Thursday, June 01, 2006
SPEEDING ON I-25
Now that T-Rex has some nice wide lanes and smooth driving, the
traffic has edged up, up, up. Driving through what used to be the
narrows, we now go fast, fast, fast. Faster than the normal
10-miles-an-hour-over-the-speed-limit. I guess it's true, the nicer
the road the faster we will go. I always have to get out of the left
lane if I only want to go 65 now.
THE REAL SPEED LIMIT seems to be 10 over the
posted limit. I used to think it was maybe 20% over, but now people
go 45 in a 35 zone, 65 in a 55. Apparently only a school zone or a
police car can make us go anywhere close to the speed limit.
Tuesday, April 18, 2006
DON'T DRIVE IN THE LEFT LANE.
DON'T DRIVE IN THE RIGHT LANE.
Some pet peeves when driving on the highway:
The left lane should be for passing if you can manage it. Leave it
open for those idiots who are always running late.
The right lane should be for entering and exiting the highway, or for
slow moving traffic. Really, get out of the way there too!
People who drive faster than me are jerks.
People who drive slower than me are idiots.
People who drive the same speed as me are really the worst of all.
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Denver History of Public Transit 2
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Sunday, July 8, 2007
What Ever Happened to the old Tramway Lines?
In the Rocky Mountain News lately they have been talking about the
tracks of the old tramway cars still visible some places in Denver.
Mention was made that they were actually the same gauge as the
current light rail trains, but those old tracks would not support the
modern cars. Those old lines were first replaced with tramway cars
that hooked to an overhead line but did not run on tracks. As I had
posted previously, I recall riding those vehicles in the 1950s, I
specifically remember the Tramway North-Bound on Broadway at Colfax,
in front of the State Capitol Building. Broadway was a 2-way street
at that time.
The rest of the story: Henry Ford, and a group of other businessmen
representing the Oil Companies, made trips to Denver and other cities
around the country in the period after World War 2, 1940s and 1950s,
to discourage cities from using rail cars. He felt that he could sell
a lot more cars, and we would use a lot more gas by promoting this
vision. He was right. We have become so dependant on oil that we go
to war to protect the Oil Companies.
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RTD Private Contractors 2 |
Sunday, April 22, 2007
It is true that ATU is trying to change the law.
We would like to make it so that the RTD Board of Directors can
decide for themselves how many of our routes are given out to
subcontractors and how many routes we run. Sounds simple, doesn't it?
Unfortunately, there are knee-jerk Republicans out there who are
horrified at the thought of a Union actually doing something that
would help the public.
I have written about the subcontractors before (see my old blog), and
the truth is that a subcontracted route saves money only because the
drivers are paid about 1/3 less than a unionised driver, and they
receive no benefits like health insurance. On the other hand, their
company makes a profit, which RTD does not, and their managers are
probably paid more. Any actual savings that RTD makes depends on your
accounting and who you talk to.
We have said for years that if the subcontractors and the divisions
of RTD were on an equal footing, we could compete very well. If they
really want to privatize us, why not convert the entire RTD fleet to
private business. They could even sell off the divisions, that would
leave the Dispatching and Customer Service and actual administration
of RTD in the hands of the Board of Directors.
I do not know if it would be necessary to require all the
subcontractors to pay decent wages and give health benefits. That is
being done for many subcontracted entities in Denver, including the
"prevailing wage" clause that Denver has always required of
its subcontractors, and RTD has applied this to some of its
subcontractors as well. Most of the subcontractors cannot come even
close to hiring enough drivers, and any mechanics they hire soon
leave for better jobs. This is the main reason they have always done
so poorly in serving the public. They have more complaints, more
lates, more missed runs.
follow up: Governor Bill Ritter DID sign this one into law, there
was little opposition in the end (except from Jon Caldera).
Info Ride Bus
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Handicapped Parking 2 |
Monday, April 9, 2007
HANDICAPPED PARKING FINE IS $100.00
Yes, they got me! I did not know that you have to have an actual VAN
when the sign says "Vans Only" (even if it is very tiny).
If it says "Van Accessable" then you can park there with
your handicapped sign. You can't park on the striped area no matter
what or who you are. So what do you do if there are no parking spaces
(look at the Broncos Stadium)? You drive around and around until you
run out of gas. Any violation is one hundred dollars. You have to
park and walk a long ways to go to the Parking Ticket Judge.
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Handicapped Parking 1 |
Saturday, April 7, 2007
HANDICAPPED PARKING IRRITATES SOME PEOPLE.
I don't like parking in the handicapped spaces because it makes me
feel... well... handicapped. I have a charcot foot, which is the
result of Diabetic Neuropathy. I have been very lucky that it has
healed very well, but that is because I baby the foot. I do not wear
a special boot, but I have to wear expensive shoes that accomodate my
deformed right foot. The charcot foot came about because I broke my
foot, and because I had no feeling in the foot, I broke it over and
over again. Blood rushes to the foot, it heals very rapidly, but it
breaks again. You walk on a tiny rock, your foot twists, and because
you don't compensate for the twisting like normal people do, your
foot will break again. X-Rays showed that the bones in the middle
part of the foot where chipped, shattered and collapsed. By then,
yes, I did have pain, but not nearly as much pain as the
"phantom" shooting pains that I'd had when the neuropathy
began years before. The arch of the foot is gone, it looks like I
have two left feet.
At the same time, I need to walk on my feet fairly often to keep the
blood circulating. I can walk a couple hundred feet, and in fact
walking is easier than standing on the bad foot. Climbing stairs or
even a step is fairly difficult. The main potential for trouble other
than breaking the foot again is that I can develop ulcers on the foot
if too much pressure is put on it in any one place. I drive with my
left foot, I can no longer drive with a clutch.
And so, I try to park in a normal parking space, as long as it isn't
too far from the door. Of course, bad weather, when I can't see what
I'm walking on, means I need a handicapped space. If you see me
walking from my car and you cannot tell that I am handicapped, then
thank you! That is what I have tried to achieve. It just looks like a
slight limp, and the foot goes off at a slight angle. But, yes, I
really do appreciate a handicapped space at times.
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Denver History of Public Transit 1 |
Friday, April 6, 2007
Electric Trolley from 1940. I recall riding one of these in the
1950s, going south on Broadway from Colfax: in front of the State
Capitol Building.
Denver Tramway Corporation Bus, 1958. This one is still around today.
This Electric was converted to a horse-drawn trolley. About 1900.
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Taxi Cabs |
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
I PITY THOSE POOR CAB DRIVERS.
Cab driving was the only job I ever REALLY had fun at. I did it for
some 12 years, and then I worked in the phone room at Yellow for 6
years. (I was fired for Union Duties, but that is another story.)
The taxi drivers need to realize that they have to pay for insurance,
dispatching services, gas, car upkeep, even accounting. With the new
bill proposed they still will need all that, and even if they omit
dispatching (and thus serve no public at all), add the $10,000 plus
per year their company needs to pledge for serving the handicapped,
they will still make no money to speak of. You need to take in about
$30 per hour when driving. Hauling people (handicapped or not) and
getting $8.10 for 15 minutes of work will not do it unless you can do
4 trips like that in an hour. It doesn't work! It takes you another
15 minutes to get another call, go and pick them up, etc. Maybe a Car
Service like you see in New York City would work: pay a subscription
fee and/or $20 minimum for a short trip.
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Blizzard December 2006 2 |
Saturday, February 03, 2007
Clearing the Snow in Denver: For Mayor Hickenlooper: I don't know if
your advisors have been sheltering you from the truth, or if you have
just developed an odd form of snow blindness, but here is reality:
The news says you claim that "only half of the 14,000 blocks in
Denver have been cleared of snow," but I have my doubts that ANY
streets have been completely cleared. Even major arteries like
Colorado Boulevard have lanes in places that are impassible because
of ice. If Colorado Boulevard is someone else's responsibility (as a
highway), then please tell me a single street that is really
completely cleared. Even downtown has blocks of ice that force cars
to park somewhere else. Look at Broadway from 18th to Colfax.
Okay, maybe you mean streets that are somewhat cleared. Even around
the schools where it was claimed that the streets were cleared after
the 2nd week, the streets are cleared to pavement at no more than one
lane. The feeder streets around my house (the streets with paint and
traffic lights) are Yale and Dahlia. Both those streets have huge
piles of old iced snow along both sides. When we get a little warmth,
the streets become flooded and then ice over. When we start getting
real melting, every single sewer grate will be covered with ice and
the flooding will be worse. There is not one single bus stop that has
been cleared along those streets to the curb, so even if homeowners
could get to the sidewalks, there is no sense in clearing them.
The smallest side streets are just ice-packed, so we can get through
them fairly well. The worst streets are secondary streets like
Dartmouth, they are streets necessary to get to the small
side-streets and so have had tremendous numbers of vehicles driving
on them. That is where the ruts come in; my car is rather low, I
scrape bottom anywhere along Dartmouth. You should have had those
secondary streets cleared long, long ago. You say that Monday you
will start putting out contracts to help clear the city blocks. Thank
you, we will see how it goes.
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Car Starter |
Thursday, February 01, 2007
If your Starter is Going Out--you know, sometimes it turns over and
sometimes it just clicks a little--you might be able to last a year
or more while it goes. It works better in warm weather, and better
when the engine is warm. I found only one reference on the internet
to a possibility of messing up your engine, it didn't sound too likely.
What finally happened was this: one day we started the car and the
starter just kept going. You couldn't turn off the engine or the
starter. I thought I might disconnect the battery, would that work or
not? Before I got to that point, smoke started pouring out of the
starter and finally stopped. The engine was apparently not damaged,
but I had to replace the battery; it burned up as well as the
starter. It was only a couple years old, but I guess I can mark it up
to a learning experience. A bus driver told me later that he once had
a job keeping generators charged. When one of the starters went out
(stuck on), there were explosions, fire, and huge destruction. By the
way, my 1994 Camry was made in the U.S.A., and it shows.
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Blizzard December 2006 1 |
Saturday, January 27, 2007
CLEARING THE SNOW: Denver has never before had so much snow sitting
on the ground for so long (not in my lifetime, anyway). Snow here
usually melts and goes away in a few days. I hope we will learn
lessons from this snowstorm. We still have neighborhood streets
everywhere that are piled with snow causing nearly impossible
driving. After no plowing, the streets have become thick rutted ice.
Only the highways and main streets are in good condition, and even
the main streets still have too much snow to get to the sidewalks and
bus stops. The individual cities are responsible for clearing the
streets around bus stops, individual property owners are responsible
for the sidewalks to the bus stops.
My proposal is to have contractors (as the city does now), but have
little contractors with little plows and snow blowers to do the
neighborhoods; have them on call to start plowing whenever the snow
hits 3 or 4 inches or so. It might have to go through the Department
of Transportation rather than through the local governments. Use the
big equipment to haul away the snow if necessary.
Give these contractors (and any big equipment doing major streets)
instructions to:
Do not block any cars.
Do not block any bus stops (50 feet clearance would be nice).
Do not block any driveways.
Do not block any sidewalks.
Do not block any sewer grates.
Of course if lots of cars are parked along a street it may not be
possible to keep clear of everything, but even the act of moving the
snow when only a few inches have fallen will help to keep the piles
down. If these contractors have time within their contract, they
could also clear sidewalks, especially for the elderly and disabled
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Labor Peace Act |
Friday, January 26, 2007
Colorado's Labor Peace Act has made the state a strange place within
the labor movement/anti-labor movement. Our newly Democratic
Legislature and Governor may move our state closer to either a Right
to Work state or a Right to Union state. But I think that it will not
really change much at all. It would make it easier to require Union
Membership, but the truth is that when a given company has reached
the point where a Union is necessary (evil management), they will
have no problem getting MORE than 75% of the employees wanting a
union anyway.
Some are saying that repeal of the Labor Peace Act will be
"unfriendly to business," but that is not true. The Right
to Work states are the states that businesses do NOT want to move to
(states like Oklahoma and Arizona as opposed to states like Missouri
and California, for instance). The Right to Union States have higher
quality of life, as well as MUCH higher income.
follow up: DEMOCRATIC Governor Bill Ritter vetoed this
bill, the first big mistake of his reign.
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RTD Private Contractors |
Saturday, July 22, 2006
RTD has had private contractors running many of their routes since
May 1988. The legislation requiring this was originally sponsored by
Bill Owens, before he was elected Governor of Colorado. Ostensibly,
it was supposed to make RTD more efficient by adding competition to
the bus lines. What it really did was to eliminate Union jobs and
move that money to foreign corporations, paying much lower wages to
the workers.
I am the first to admit that any company that exists without
competition needs to have outside action to shake them up every so
often. That applies especially to a bureaucracy, it even applies to a
Union. I know this sounds vaguely Republican, but it is true. The
problem lies in just what the results of the action are. If the
desired action of the privatization law was to lower the wages of bus
drivers, then it has succeeded. If the desired action was to make bus
service more efficient in Denver then it has failed.
Efficient bus service means buses on time, serving the needs of all
the public, and providing a pleasant trip for all. The RTD mission
statement is "To meet our constituents' present and future
public transit needs by offering safe, clean, reliable, courteous,
accessible and cost-effective service throughout the district."
Statistics on the private contractors are very hard to come by. We do
not know how RTD decides or counts the complaints or problems that
exist. When asked, the management line is that private contractors
provide service very comparable to RTD routes. The statistics they
release show that private contractors are only slightly worse than
in-house routes.
But as one who takes the complaints over the phone, I can tell you
that the private contractors are much worse for running on-time, bus
break-downs, driving incidents, and courtesy. I personally think that
if RTD were to treat their divisions as they treat private
contractors, then they would have better statistics to report.
The riding public is aware of the differences. They report "that
bus is always late," meaning any time of the day or night. On
some routes, people have quit complaining because it just never
changes. Recently, RTD has been providing the private contractors
with newer buses (apparently because newer contractors were smart
enough to insist). That has improved matters greatly, since they do
not have to rely on their underpaid mechanics to maintain the buses.
One of the public's biggest complaints is that "the drivers
don't speak English." Bus drivers are required to call out the
stops where another bus is connecting, and to communicate with
passengers on ADA issues, etc. RTD assures us that all contractors
are required to hire only drivers fluent in English for this reason.
There are not many private contractors running our fixed-route buses.
There are only three companies that are able to run the routes, and
historically each company before them has gone away, often because of
their own management problems. There don't seem to be any other
companies anywhere in the US who can take over the routes, so it
isn't really free competition to speak of. The current companies
running 50% of RTDs routes are:
... Laidlaw: Originally a Canadian Company, Laidlaw emerged from a
bankruptcy in 2003 as Laidlaw International. Now listed on the New
York Stock Exchange, They own Greyhound.
... First Transit: First Transit is owned by FirstGroup plc, a
British Corporation. They are the United Kingdom's largest bus operator.
... Veolia: Currently changing their name from Connex, they are a
French company. Since their acquisitions of Connex and ATC, they have
become the largest private transportation company in the U.S.
... I will have more about these Contractors later.
Cal Marsella, RTD CEO, has stated several times recently that he
would like to privatize more of RTD, including the Light Rail. When
you think about it, what he is really saying is that he does not want
to run transportation services. He wants to only run the
administration services. In fact, he could privatize administration
services too; that might be more to the point of privatizing. I guess
that would put him out of a job too, though.
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Tranist Songs
Driving Songs
Transit Songs
Driving Songs index
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Thursday, May 04, 2006
Suggest Some Good Transit Songs
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I'm making a list of driving songs and transit songs.
Go to the link to see the lyrics.
TRANSIT SONGS:
Another one Rides the Bus - Weird Al Yankovic
Bus Stop
Charlie on the M.T.A. - Kingston Trio
Chattanooga Choo Choo - Glen Miller
Down by the Station
Gone to Look for America - Simon and Garfunkel
The Magic Bus - The Who
Swing Low Sweet Chariot
To Morrow - Kingston Trio
Waitin for the Bus - Z.Z. Top
The Wheels on the Bus go Round and Round - for kids.
PLEASE send me your suggestions to (EMail address): DrivingDenver at aol.com
DRIVING SONGS,
Baby You Can Drive My Car - The Beatles
Beep Beep - The Playmates
Cross Town Traffic - Jimi Hendrix
Dead Man's Curve - Jan and Dean
Fun Fun Fun - Beach Boys
G.T.O. - Ronny and the Daytonas
Hey Little Cobra - The Rip Chords
Hot Rod Lincoln - Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen
Seven Little Girls Sitting in the Back Seat Kissing and Hugging with
Fred - Curls?
Little Deuce Coop - Beach Boys
Little Old Lady from Pasadena - Jan and Dean
Maybelline - Chuck Berry
Me and Bobby McGee - Janis Joplin
409 - Beach Boys
No Particular Place to Go - Chuck Berry
They Paved Paradise - Joni Mitchell
Shut Down - Beach Boys
Surf City - Jan and Dean
Taxi - Harry Chapin
What else? (This list was originally started April 14, 2006)
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Quote |
Sunday, April 30, 2006
We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children.
--Native American Proverb, quoted in RTD's Monday Morning Q
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RTD Strike 4 |
Wednesday, April 12, 2006
RTD Welcomes us back!
The RTD blog on paper, the Monday Morning Q, is RTD manager Cal
Marsella's communications with his employees.
Cal, You do a great job speaking and writing to us. You are really
excellent at promoting your point. The only error that I saw was your
implying that the RTD Board of Directors was being attacked by the
union. Far from it, we found that the Board was very enlightened.
They have said they would make sure future negotiations go much smoother.
As you might expect, most of the employees I spoke with did not
change their views after reading your defense. It was nice of you to
admit that you based our raises on selected average wages in the
region, and the high raises of upper management were based on
national or international wages. I hope that in the future you at
least base our wage raises on comperable cities: cities where the
cost of living and inflation rates are similar. Maybe you could even
use cities in states where there are no right-to-work-for-less laws.
The lack of such a law in Colorado helps to keep the average wages in
Colorado well above the states around us.
And by the way, we do support better wages for supervisors and middle
management as well.
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RTD Strike 3 |
Monday, April 10, 2006
The RTD strike is over.
On April 7, 2006, ATU 1001 Union members voted to return to work. The
proposal brought a good raise in contributions for our Health
Insurance. It passed by 81%, though there was still considerable
disgruntling about the lack of respect.
I was originally going to say that nobody won in the strike, and that
is true (as is true of every strike), but perhaps I can put a
positive swing on it: everybody won something.
RTD won their $200,000 extra pay for every day we were out. RTD was
also able to save face by maintaining their budget: still a $1.80
raise over 3 years. And hopefully they won because they can now
improve their dialogue with the union.
Union members won because we helped lower our out-of-pocket Health
Insurance contributions, and we did get a higher raise up front. We
won because we saw very gracious customers supporting us, and
thanking us for returning so soon. We won because the RTD Board
members learned that they were kept in the dark during negotiations,
and they will insist on better communications in the future. They,
after all, are supposed to be the ones running the company. We also
got free coffee and doughnuts when we returned to work.
Governor Bill Owens won with the the memorable quote that will secure
his place in history: "This union reminds me of the youngster
who murders his parents and then throws himself on the mercy of the
court because he's now an orphan." Only a lame duck politician
could compare 1750 of his constituents to murderers.
The Transit-Riding public won with new appreciation of what the RTD
employees do for them. Thank you very much for your support! We hope
to never allow you to be put out again.
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RTD Strike 2 |
Saturday, April 08, 2006
How RTD Employees ended up striking
On March 29, 2006, RTD presented a modified proposal to the Union.
The terms were somewhat improved, but it was not really much of a
movement from the proposal that was rejected by 95% on March 26. To
stress the importance of the matter, the Union notified RTD that we
would strike on April 3 if there was no contract. The Union Executive
Board suggested the members approve this proposal, since nobody wants
to go through a strike, and because the Health & Welfare fund was
in jeopardy if a prolonged strike would come about.
A Union is the most democratic institution there is. Everything that
is done, every decision, every penny spent, has to be approved by the
membership. This isn't just a Representative Democracy, it is a true
Democracy. The company was aware of this, but they still did not heed
the Union's warnings when we asked for more money up front, and more
for health insurance. (See my previous posting.) You could say we
were pushed. And in fact the Colorado Department of Labor had set up
a link for RTD employees to apply for unemployment insurance. They
believed we would qualify as being locked out.
The Union members rejected the proposal, though not by a large
majority. I believe the members voting against it had simply reached
the end of the rope when it came to being abused. Raymond Hogar, a
Professor of Management at CSU, says unions seldom strike for just
money, they strike out of principle.
RTD set a certain amount they would spend on their union employees,
disregarding the tremendous raises they had given to top managers
during our wage freeze. They never moved from this amount. Even
during the strike, they took out a $500,000 contract to "protect
their property." Since RTD's main income is from sales tax
revenues, they received an extra net income of $200,000 per day
because they did not have to pay us. That is well over 1 million
dollars a week, according to RTD spokesman Scott Reed. (Reed's salary
had gone up 31% to over $118,000.) The union certainly did not want
to strike, only RTD could come out ahead.
That is why we had wanted binding arbitration from the beginning. The
people who suffered from the strike were the Riders and the Union
Members. And when you consider how many handicapped people, elderly
people, poor people, children and just plain commuters it affected,
you have to ask: why didn't RTD consider those people?
RTD said that they didn't want binding arbitration because the last
time they were forced into it, they had to pay more than what they
had budgeted. The Union proposed that any reasonable person looking
at the facts would have given us a reasonable contract.
Looking at the Blogs and other comments, it is easy to see who
supports Management regardless of the facts (and who supports Labor
regardless of the facts, for that matter.) Those who call for
privatizing the rest of RTD don't know that RTD already has a lot of
trouble hiring enough drivers and mechanics, and as the economy
improves they will find themselves facing the same for all the
lower-paid employees as well.
The private carriers pay less than RTD (especially considering health
insurance), but they don't force their drivers to work hundreds of
hours without days off. RTD Manager Cal Marsella says that if they
didn't have to force overtime from the bottom, it would work better.
But the truth is that, most of the time, ALL the bus drivers who
schedule their days off during the week will be forced to do overtime
nearly EVERY DAY. That is how you end up with bus drivers who work
for long periods without any days off. They have split shifts that
force them to be at work for 12 or more hours to get 8 hours of pay.
I think that if RTD treated their employees a little better,
encouraging an occasional day off and treating sick people to sick
pay, it would go a long ways towards solving any problems they may
think they have
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RTD Strike I |
RTD STRIKE, how it started
On March 26, 2006, the Union ATU Local 1001 voted to reject RTD's
"Last, Best, and Final Offer."
The following letter to RTD was written on March 28, 2006. It tells
the reasons for wanting a better contract. It shows some of the
disrespect we received: while managers received raises averaging
$9,000.00, we had no raises at all.
We need a raise now.
In 2003 we believed you when you said the company could not afford
raises, so we took a wage freeze.
In those 3 years, we have lost nearly 10% of our buying power due to
inflation. The inflation rate in 2005 was about 3.4%.
The company has gained by that inflation (and by the improved
economy) with increased sales tax revenues.
Your proposal of 15 cents a quarter will just about keep up with
inflation in the next 3 years, but does nothing for the problems we
have accumulated. Our credit card balances will never recover.
You may think we make a good living, but things have changed. The
median income in Colorado is over $40,000 a year (for a single
wage-earner family). What cost $1 in 1968 is now $5.
We need affordable health insurance.
Before 2003, we paid $66 a month for health insurance.
Even at the current rate of $190 a month, there are many people in
our lower-paid group who cannot afford it.
You know that the rate will rise dramatically this year, and the next
years as well. We need to provide our families with health insurance
we can afford.
We are dependant on you to maintain our families. |
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