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Hundreds of protesters took to the streets of Dublin city centre over the weekend to object to hotel developments planned for the sites of two cultural institutions the Cobblestone pub in Smithfield and Merchants Arch in Temple Bar.

owever, there is a growing sense that this joint campaign could just be the beginning of a wider movement aimed at halting the proliferation of hotel developments at the expense of Dublins built heritage. The latest controversies have led to renewed criticism of Dublin City Councils planning decisions and have resulted in growing frustration at the appeals process under An Bord Pleanla.

With dire warnings that international tourists will soon be coming to Dublin to simply gaze at hotels and apartment blocks, we take a look at some recent developments that have pitted the preservation of our cultural heritage against modern-day progress.

It may not look like an iconic building from the outside, but the Cobblestone pub is considered by many to be one of the last bastions of traditional Irish music in the city.

Since a planning notice went up on October 1, outlining proposals for a nine-storey, 114-bed hotel on the site, thousands have taken to social media and the streets to express their opposition and outrage.

While the applicants, Marron Estates Ltd, have committed to retaining the iconic pub as part of the overall redevelopment, there are fears that the historic character of the protected building will be lost if a 5,818 sq m hotel is permitted.

Much of the local political reaction so far has been unequivocal, with Labours Joe Costello branding the plan cultural vandalism and Social Democrats TD Gary Gannon warning that Dublin is losing the parts of the city that make it interesting.

Following Saturdays protest march from Smithfield to Dublin City Councils Civic Offices, which organisers estimate was attended by between 1,500 and 2,000 people, more than 31,000 have now signed an online Save the Cobblestone petition.

Musician Eoghan Ceannabhin, who organised the campaign, said the protest and petition were part of a wider effort to halt the encroachment of developer-led projects at the expense of the citys cultural heritage.

At the moment, our focus is on encouraging people to make submissions to Dublin City Council in advance of the November 4 deadline for observations, but we plan to come out on the streets again before then, he said. There is a wider issue about democracy around planning, which can also be seen in the Moore Street campaign.

The famous pedestrian route linking the Hapenny Bridge with Temple Bar will be kept open to the public if a controversial hotel development goes ahead at Merchants Arch but that hasnt stopped over 51,000 people signing an online petition objecting to the plan.

It involves the demolition of a number of retail units and the construction of a boutique hotel and restaurant at the iconic archway.

Permission for the development was granted to publican Tom Doone, who owns the Merchants Arch bar, by Dublin City Council earlier this year. An appeal was lodged by former Irish Times environment editor Frank McDonald and Temple Bar residents.

However, An Bord Pleanla upheld the councils decision, despite a recommendation from its own inspector to refuse permission. Previous efforts to develop a hotel at this location had been turned down by the board.

The decision to grant permission for the hotel has been criticised by Temple Bar residents and An Taisce. Comedian and television presenter Dara Briain also informed his 2.5 million Twitter followers of his objections to the plan.

Merchants Arch, which fronts onto Wellington Quay, was originally a guild hall and dates back to 1821.

A decision by the city council in October 2020 to grant permission for a 54-bed tourist hostel on a site connected to James Joyce was seen as a full-on assault on the citys cultural heritage.

More than 100 leading names from the worlds of literature, academia and the arts including film director Lenny Abrahamson and writers Sally Rooney, John Banville and Salman Rushdie were strongly opposed to the plans for the house at 15 Ushers Island.

The tourist hostel plan was also opposed by the Arts Council, An Taisce and the Department of Culture and Heritage.

The property was formerly the home of Joyces grand aunts and was the setting for his short story The Dead. It was used as a location for the 1987 film adaptation of the story, directed by John Huston and starring Donal McCann and Anjelica Huston.

Bestselling novelist Colm Tibn was among those to lodge an appeal. However, earlier this year, An Bord Pleanla upheld the councils decision to grant permission. The boards inspector noted in his report that a previous permission in 1996 to develop the property as a cultural centre had not been implemented or fully realised. Describing the property as being in a neglected condition, he said it was recognised that the best method of conserving a historic building is to keep it in active use.

A long campaign to see the historic 1916 battleground site on Moore Street retained and protected is back in the news again this month.

Members of the Moore Street Preservation Trust and 1916 Relatives Alliance have now produced an alternative plan for the wider area, outside the State-owned national monument at 14-17 Moore Street, which will form part of a cultural quarter.

UK developers Hammerson are seeking permission from Dublin City Council for a mixed retail, office and residential scheme on a 5.5-acre site between Moore Street and OConnell Street.

However, 1916 relatives and campaigners including James Heron Connolly, grandson of James Connolly are calling on the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage, Darragh OBrien, to support the alternative plan, which proposes the reinstatement of several historic buildings and the development of a new courtyard space behind Moore Street.

Earlier this year, a report into the future of Moore Street called for urgent ministerial and Government approval for the Irish Heritage Trusts proposal for the restoration of the national monument.

The Moore Street Advisory Group (MSAG) also recommended that nobody with a commercially vested interest should be appointed to a committee for the proposed visitor centre.

There was much consternation in Ballsbridge in September 2020 when the former home of 1916 leader The ORahilly was demolished to make way for a planned apartment and hotel development.

Even though it had permission from An Bord Pleanla, eyebrows were raised when the Herbert Park property was demolished early one morning. Dublin City Council was in the process of having it added to its Record of Protected Structures at the time.

The council immediately ordered work to stop on the site, pending an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the demolition. Local residents, meanwhile, were given permission in the High Court to seek a judicial review into the matter.

Commenting at the time, Siobhn Cuffe, chair of the Pembroke Road Association, said: The destruction of the house in the early morning of September 29 is utterly shocking. City councillors had voted that it would be listed and preserved.

She added that the proposed 12-storey block would be three times the maximum height permitted in the area.

Despite previous plans for a Covent Garden style development on the site of the former Iveagh Market in the Liberties, the fate of the historic building hangs in the balance due to ongoing legal actions.

The Iveagh Market was gifted to the people of Dublin by the Guinness family in 1906 to provide a permanent home for stall holders who operated around St Patricks Cathedral. It ran as a market until the 1990s but has been idle since then.

The property is at the centre of a legal dispute over its ownership. Last December, Lord Iveagh invoked a reverter clause in the original deeds that stated the building could be repossessed if it was not being used for its intended purpose as a market.

The move sparked legal action from publican Martin Keane, who had secured two previous planning permissions from Dublin City Council to develop the building, although the projects did not proceed.

A separate legal action is being taken by the developer against Dublin City Council after the local authority refused to grant him a third planning permission.

There is growing concern that the Francis Street landmark could ultimately be lost to the community due to the poor condition of its roof, which has resulted in significant water damage to the interior.

Essential repairs required are estimated at 13m, while the cost of redeveloping the building is put at over 30m.

In a recent statement, the Liberties Cultural Association said the condition of the Iveagh Market demanded immediate attention.

The markets require urgent and essential arresting action, a spokesperson said. The securing of the building from further deterioration and decay must be carried out immediately.

Liberties Cultural Association are asking for all parties to come together and come up with a solution. It's up to them to solve the problem.

It was claimed that the very soul of Dublin was at stake when the Bernard Shaw pub in Portobello closed its doors in October 2019.

While the exact reason for the South Richmond Street pubs closure after 13 years was unclear, a statement from the owners said: "Its with heavy hearts that we announce the end of our Bernard Shaw adventure.

"Weve tried really hard over the last few months to renew the lease, stay on longer, or buy the place. A lot of things didnt go our way over the last 12 months either, but its out of our hands now unfortunately."

A favourite haunt of the citys so-called hipsters, even singer Hozier added his voice to the outpouring of grief on social media when the pub closed.

What is most special and unique about Dublin are Dubliners themselves, and spaces like this where culture and community is fostered and grows, he tweeted. Without interesting places like these, the city loses its heartbeat.

The southsides loss, however, was to be the northsides gain and the Bernard Shaw has since reopened at Cross Guns Bridge in Phibsboro.

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From the Cobblestone to Merchant's Arch and Moore St the places at the forefront of Dublin's culture wars - Independent.ie

Southwest Airlines canceled over 1,000 flights this weekend. Thousands of passengers were left stranded in airports across the country on Sunday, after a quarter of all flights never took off. Southwest blamed air traffic control issues for the cancelations, but to many, they seemed connected to Southwest's new COVID-19 vaccine mandate, which its pilots asked a court to block. Were the canceled flights the result of a "sick out" on the part of pilots refusing to get vaccinated? The pilots' union denied it, but when Amtrak started canceling trains Sunday afternoon due to "unforeseen crew issues," the idea that a general strike is brewing started to circulate, a response to the mass firings of other working-class and middle class Americansnurses and police officerswho have refused the vaccine.

You might have expected that the Left would be championing what looks like it might be a powerful form of collective action on the part of working-class Americans. There was a time some can still recall when the Left stood for labor and collective power. Instead, you saw prominent Left-wing voices denouncing Southwest employees as terrorists and demanding they be put on no-fly lists; many others defended the mass firing of nurses and cops. And it was Republicans and conservatives, infamous for their laissez-faire free market policies that favor the rich, who were cheering the striking workers and tweeting the hashtag #GeneralStrike.

This inversion of the politics that ruled the U.S. for much of the 20th century didn't happen overnight. Most recently, it's an extension of the COVID lockdown class divide that separated those who could work from the safety of their homesaccountants and bankers and lawyers and project managers and, yes, journalistsfrom those whose jobs required they brave the pandemic to support their familiesgrocery store workers, deliverymen and women, drivers, pilots, small business owners, and of course, healthcare workers. This was a class divide as much as an economic dividethe college educated vs. the working class. And you can see where each side of the political aisle sees its base by which position it took on this divide: Democrats favored lockdowns while Republicans took the side of those whose work was either outside the home or eliminated.

We now know how this story ended: with conservatives cheering collective action and liberals who stood at the windows of their home offices clapping nurses for putting their lives on the line now championing companies firing them for refusing the vaccine. Never mind that they might have antibodies. Never mind that they know how to keep themselves from getting COVID-19 and how to keep it from spreading, lessons learned in the most dangerous, COVID-infested places while liberals were safely quarantined. Never mind that Black Americans are the least likely to get vaccinated and are now facing exclusion from dining out and going to the movies and expulsion from jobsjobs they worked when it was the most dangerous to do so (there was a Black Lives Matter protest against vaccine mandates last month).

But this divide didn't start with the pandemic. It's been a long time in the making. And it's not even a purely American phenomenon. French economist Thomas Piketty has documented a massive shift in Western democracies across the globe since the 1960s, in which liberal political parties have lost their working-class base to become parties made up of and catering to the highly educated. Thus, in 1980, the Democrats won just 24 of the 100 counties where people are most likely to have a college degree; the Republicans took 76 of them. In 2020, Trump won a mere 16; Biden took 84 of them.

It's not just about education, though. The Democrats' new highly educated base is also increasingly affluent. The Democrats won just nine out of the 100 highest-income counties in 1980; by 2020, Biden won over half of them. The class divide has even led to minority groups increasingly voting for Republicans, a change that's been driven almost entirely by working-class members of those communities.

For a long time, the attrition of working-class voters to the Republican Party was read as a success of the culture wars. In his 2005 bestseller What's the Matter with Kansas?, Thomas Frank famously argued that the white working class were voting for free-market Republicans because conservatives had whipped them into a state of agitation with a culture war so devious it convinced them to abandon their economic interests. The truth is a little more complicated: With the Democrats taking the lead on globalization, both parties had abandoned the working class economically; at least Republicans didn't sneer at their values while doing so.

As liberal elites came to define the culture of institutions like the media and the corporate culture of everything from Nike to American Express, conservative institutions like Fox News and Republican politicians could get away with sticking with culture war issues; it was enough not to insult the worldview and values of working-class Americans, who tend to be more conservative on a host of issues.

But what we're seeing now is the possibility that the American working class is developing a class consciousness that's populist economically, too, albeit in its own way. Forced to defend their autonomy in the face of vaccine mandates, working-class Americans across industries are fighting back and insisting on their collective power. And while they may not pick the issues today's highly educated Left might wish they did, this moment is presenting Democrats with a stark choice: Do they want to be the side sneering at working-class Americans and cheering at the companies who are firing them? Or do they want to be the side that stands for their empowerment and autonomy, however they themselves choose to define it?

Batya Ungar-Sargon is the deputy opinion editor of Newsweek. Her book "Bad News: How Woke Media Is Undermining Democracy," will be out later this month.

The views in this article are the writer's own.

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Working-Class Americans Are Standing Up for Themselvesand the Left Is Denouncing Them | Opinion - Newsweek

AS usual, while the Tory conference in Manchester had a backdrop of very serious issues for working people, it wasnt itself a serious occasion. It was essentially a large gathering of lobbyists, looking for sinecures and contracts.

While attacks on the woke peppered the conference, this too has become a joke term, used to signify anything Tories dont like, which is most things apart from profit and exploitation.

Boris Johnsons speech on the last day was no exception, best characterised as not very good light entertainment, containing lines like Hereward the Woke.

Even so, Johnson did use it to flag a few points that the Tories will continue to press on, not least their ideological culture wars.

Given that the culture secretary is now Nadine Dorries, a best-selling writer of pulp fiction, socialists might reasonably think there are more important things to focus on.

However the culture war, particularly its historical department, can have consequences.

Johnson said that he was minded to ignore those who claim Winston Churchill was a racist

Hewent on:But as time has gone by it has become evident that this isnt just a joke they really do want to rewrite our national story We really are at risk of a cancelculture, know-nothing iconoclasm.

He concluded that the Tories would defend Our history not because we are proud of everything, but because trying to edit it now is as dishonest as a celebrity trying furtively to change his entry in Wikipedia.

The reality is that racism was part of Churchills worldview and that is well documented, although there is much else that can also be said historically about him and Johnson, amongothers, has done so.

Johnson, who did not mention that October is Black History Month, struck entirely the wrong note about British history and he did so deliberately.

Yet while this may seem objectionable but hardly unexpected from the Tories, there is a sharply practical side.

Official threats to reduce support for the National Trust and other heritage organisations because they want to look at the realities of Britains imperial past continue.

While Johnson continues the mantra that statues of historical figures, no matter how racist, must stay up, the constant refrain of Oliver Dowden, now Tory Party chairman, no statues marking figures who stood up against racism have appeared.

One depicting Betty Williams, the first black headmistress in Wales, was erected in central Cardiff recently, but that was under the auspices of the Welsh Labour government.

In Wales black history is on the school curriculum, but not, of course, in England.

The impact of the disgraceful cut to universal credit is more pressing, but an understanding of British history remains important because it reflects not only the imperial society that the country was but, depending on how it is told, the kind of country Britain is now and will become.

There is a specific Tory purpose to all this. If black and ethnic minority people, working-class women, LGBT people, the disabled and others have no place in British history, then there is a delegitimisation in the present too.

In short, the Tories are trying to write people not just out of history but out of the future too.

It is Johnson who wants to cancel the bits of British history he finds inconvenient.

Socialist historians are in favour of telling the whole story and there is a good deal of research still required to do that, including the real history of black and ethnic minority people in Britain stretching back at least to the Tudors.

Keith Flett is a socialist historian.

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After conference the Tory war on history will intensify - Morning Star Online

MICHAEL NAVA has set his eighth Henry Rios mystery novel in 1986, a year that seems both distant and familiar. The pandemic raging then was AIDS a virus deadlier than COVID-19, if somewhat harder to catch. What should have been a simple public health emergency became a battlefield in the culture wars, because AIDS initially was seen as a homosexual disease.

While the Reagan administration dithered, longtime foes of gay liberation (Pat Buchanan comes to mind) rushed in to regain ground they had lost in the 70s, proclaiming that the disease was no less than Gods punishment for degeneracy. In 1986, even William F. Buckley Jr., that exemplar of gentlemanly conservatism, opined in The New York Times that everyone detected with AIDS should be tattooed in the upper forearm, to protect common-needle users, and on the buttocks, to prevent the victimization of other homosexuals.

Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.

Also in 1986, an initiative (in reality Proposition 64, but called Prop 54 in Navas novel) appeared on the California ballot, calling for HIV-positive people to be subject to quarantine and isolation statutes and regulations. Born of the widespread, if mistaken, fear that AIDS could be spread through the air or by casual touch, the measure triggered a corresponding panic among gays. Wouldnt it just be an excuse for people who didnt like them anyway to dump them into concentration camps in the desert?

This is the atmosphere in which Henry Rios like his creator, a gay Latino defense attorney in Los Angeles strives to represent an activist group called QUEER that opposes Prop 54. The group claims to be nonviolent, but one of its members, Theo Latour, an HIV-positive drug addict and ex-porn star, is accused of bombing a large fundamentalist church, Ekklesia, killing its pastor, Daniel Herron, who has publicly backed the initiative. Complicating matters is the fact that Rios, a recovering alcoholic who has put his love life on hold while he rebuilds his law practice, is falling for a young man, Josh Mandel, who happens to be Theos roommate.

Also, as it turns out, Herron wasnt as conservative a Christian as QUEER members might have thought. Nava gives us the backstory first: Herron was a former Haight-Ashbury hippie who had a peace-and-love kind of faith before he married the daughter of Ekklesias fire-and-brimstone founder and, with misgivings, yoked himself to the inerrancy of scriptures such as the injunction in Leviticus that any man who lies with another man should be put to death.

In fact, Herron has an explosive secret even bigger than the bomb. He has discovered that a lover from his hippie days, a Black woman in San Francisco, had a son by him. The boy, Wyatt, is HIV-positive and already seriously ill. To Herrons credit, love trumps doctrine, and he desperately tries to get access to drugs that arent approved by the FDA but are available over the counter in Mexico. Without revealing his identity, he asks QUEER for help in smuggling the drugs and even consults Rios about it.

After the bombing, it becomes evident that an old-line faction loyal to Ekklesias founder isnt unhappy to be rid of Herron. After his death, his conflicted widow, Jessica, finds herself a pawn in a power struggle within the church. And because gay people, like Black people, have long memories of official misconduct, Rios begins to suspect that a shadowy anti-terrorism unit of the Los Angeles Police Department has infiltrated QUEER and, to discredit the group and help the Prop 54 campaign, had an agent provocateur encourage Theo to plant the bombs.

In 1986, the Rodney King riots were only six years away and Daryl Gates was still chief of the LAPD, following two other right-wing icons: William Parker and Ed Davis. Nava runs down that history for readers who may have forgotten it. The LAPD wasnt shy about adopting the COINTELPRO tactics of J. Edgar Hoovers FBI for local purposes, using anticommunism as a rationale to attack dissident groups of every kind.

The outstanding thing about Henry Rios, compared to your typical hardboiled literary crime solver, is what a reasonable and decent guy he is a genuine humanist. He believes in his fellow human beings despite having plenty of reasons not to. He lives in a society in which a significant minority, with varying degrees of seriousness, deny that he has a right to exist unless he denies his inborn nature, and he works in a legal system that has always been biased against his kind.

Theres a telling scene in which he and Josh, exploring what both men hope will become a long-term relationship, discuss how Spain expelled Joshs Jewish ancestors while conquering Rioss indigenous ancestors in Mexico. Josh remarks:

History is just one long bloodbath, isnt it, Henry?

I breathed in the warm air, the scent of skin. Well, theres the official history, the one that gets written down, which is mostly a history of cruelty and destruction and then theres the unwritten history, the secret history of kindness.

He smiled. If its not written down, how do you know about it?

By inference. If humans were only cruel and destructive, we would have gone out of business a long time ago. Therefore, the reason weve survived is because the cruelty has been tempered with kindness. Its not as dramatic and the people involved arent usually the ones in charge, so no one bothers to record it. Human history is basically a contest between our better instincts and our worst ones.

Which one will win? Josh asks.

I dont know. All I know is youve got to choose a side.

Rios knows which side hes on, but Nava is obliged to give the other side a hearing, so he writes from several points of view. This sacrifices the suspense of a mystery story we learn who some of the villains are before Rios does for the sake of a thriller structure in which seemingly unrelated narratives converge.

Full disclosure: Im an old straight white guy, and an agnostic. Therefore, Im not the best judge of how accurately Nava portrays the lives of religious conservatives. I can only say whether the parts of Lies with Man that concern the Herrons and other Ekklesia members are convincing to me as fiction. And I must admit that I find them somewhat stiff and forced, despite the authors good intentions. I doubt that many members of similar churches would recognize themselves here. Daniel Herron seems to be the only genuine, feeling Christian in the bunch. Jessica loves her father more than Jesus or her husband, losing her faith and turning to drink when shes left alone to face being ousted by the old guard, who mouth biblical platitudes but seem thoroughly corrupted by worldly power.

On the other hand, Nava is at home in describing gay life in Los Angeles in 1986, at an in-between stage when groups like QUEER exist but the parents of young men like Theo and Josh are still apt to disown them and put them out on the streets, and when icy blasts of AIDS-induced puritanism have withered the bathhouse culture of the 70s. Henry Rios insists that same-sex love is as valid as any other and models responsibility in his relationship with Josh, but he also insists on the importance of gay sex itself and refuses to regret or condemn his own youthful promiscuity or Theos, for that matter. This would have been a brave stance for Rios to take in 1986, and its brave enough today, for puritanism is always the bigots first weapon of choice. Nava isnt afraid to get a little raunchy when his story calls for it.

Where hes really at home is in showing us how a defense attorney thinks and operates. Readers of Lies with Man will get an eye-opening education in the differences between civil and criminal law and the negotiations that go on every day, inside and outside every courtroom, among lawyers, judges, prosecutors, and police.

With such an admirable protagonist, a crime novel needs rough-edged secondary characters, and Nava is up to the challenge. Two stand out. First, there is Freeman Vidor, Rioss trusty investigator, a thin, chain-smoking Black man who is utterly without illusions about humans and human nature, a cynic to the bone. [] As far as he was concerned, we were all specimens he regarded with clear-eyed curiosity and mordant humor. Then there is Marc Unger, an assistant city attorney whose job is to protect the LAPDs reputation and minimize the citys losses from excessive force and wrongful death suits against officers. Unger is a well-dressed, heavy-drinking gay man with a foot in each camp: openly flirtatious with other gays but closeted in his official role.

Rios likes him in a way but cant trust him, because Unger is capable of blatantly lying when Theo is found dead, an apparent suicide, in the county jail. The jail is under the jurisdiction of the Sheriffs Department, not the LAPD, Unger reminds him, and anyway, the police arent murderers. Rios knows this isnt necessarily true. You may think Im a sellout, Unger says when its all over, but [] youre as much a part of the system as I am. Im very good at my job, and sometimes part of my job, like part of yours, is choking back the puke and making the deal. Rios doesnt argue not then but theres no doubt he looks forward to a time when such compromises will no longer be necessary.

Michael Harris reviewed books for the Los Angeles Timesfor more than 20 years. His latest novel,White Poison: A Tale of the Gold Rush, is available on Amazon.

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The Secret History of Kindness: On Michael Nava's Lies with Man - lareviewofbooks

When Initiative 19, now Amendment 78, was first filed, the states nonpartisan Legislative Council offered its take on the proposed constitutional amendment. In a March 9 memo to the measures proponents, 49 questions and comments are listed that illuminate numerous potential impacts the proposal would have on how our state government currently operates.

Also read: POINT | Yes on 78; nix exec. branch slush funds

The comments reveal how the measure would do far more than what the proponents purported. Instead of just restricting the governors ability to appropriate emergency dollars, Amendment 78 tries to bring a whole swath of other dollars under the legislatures control. Even if you think restricting our governors authority over emergency relief dollars is a good idea, Amendment 78s reach probably isnt what youre looking for.

Here are just a few of the very serious possibilities the Legislative Council flagged:

Could the General Assembly continuously appropriate any money that currently is otherwise authorized by law?

...Would the amended version of section 33 require that the General Assembly appropriate money for highway projects rather than delegating this authority, by law, to a commission?

...the Department of Health Care Policy and Financing would not be able to use available federal funds to make provider reimbursements until the General Assembly appropriates the money. This may lead to a disruption of services or federal payments. Upon receiving these notes, did Amendment 78s authors slow down and consider the implications of what they proposed? No. Consumed with turning a talking point about the governors spending authority during a public health crisis into a political win on the ballot, they made a few marginal tweaks and steamed ahead.

Colorado is no stranger to unintended consequences on the ballot, but this one may well take the cake. If it passes, Amendment 78 will open our state up to unending shenanigans and showdowns. At a minimum, it will slow down federal relief in times of crisis. At worst, it could bring Washington-style stalemate politics to Colorado.

Right now, there are hundreds of types of dollars that pass through the state treasurers office and to their intended purposes. This is how our government operates throughout the year. Under existing law, state agencies and governmental entities (like our public universities) are already authorized to spend these dollars according to terms dictated by their source. And it isnt just federal dollars that are considered custodial -- its also legal settlement dollars and grants for numerous partnerships that make our state work. Nonprofits throughout the state interact with these funds. Most alarmingly, it puts emergency funds at risk for the Coloradans who need them, fast. When the floods hit in 2013, millions of federal dollars came to our aid, quickly and efficiently. When fires hit, money flows through the state to where its needed. And when a global pandemic struck, our community conduits worked.

But if Amendment 78 passes, this efficiency and speed will end. Well need a special session every time a natural disaster occurs. Beyond simply doubling the work our part-time legislature must do, it will create numerous opportunities for legislators to object to the role federal dollars play in our state. Health care dollars, transportation and transit funding, conservation funding, funding for scientific research -- this is what we are talking about when we talk about the funds affected by Amendment 78.

In a time of debt-ceiling showdowns and culture wars, do we want more opportunities to choke up our most important public systems with political theater? A vote for Amendment 78 is a vote for a recklessly written invitation for dysfunction and disagreement on simple questions that have already been decided. Vote no.

Scott Wasserman is the president of the Bell Policy Center in Denver.

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COUNTERPOINT | No on 78; it will sow dysfunction | Opinion | coloradopolitics.com - coloradopolitics.com