An economy in flux

We survived 2022, but will 2023 be better? One could hope but some of the same economic issues still haunt us. erefore, volatile nancial markets may continue for a bit.

Many investors may recall a mantra, “As January goes, so goes the year.” is is referring to how well the stock market performs the rst month of the year and could be an indicator for the entire year’s returns. Bill Greiner, CFA, chief economist for Mariner Wealth Advisors, states this is correct 72% of the time. at is good news since January was a positive month for the S&P 500.

Many issues still linger though, such as an increasing probability of a recession. One reason is the Federal Reserve Board’s indication to continue increasing interest rates to help curb in ation. We may also see corporate

About Letters To The Editor

Colorado Community Media welcomes letters to the editor. Please note the following rules:

• Email your letter to letters@coloradocommunitymedia.com. Do not send via postal mail. Put the words “letter to the editor” in the email subject line.

Letters To The Editor

Have a heart, invest in kids

With Valentine’s Day just behind us, love is in the air, and this time of the year is an excellent time to re ect on how we show love for our communities. At the heart of that is how we care for children and ensure they have a bright and healthy future.

My children bene ted from an incredible early childhood program. Seeing the joy they took in learning and how much they went on to love school underscored for me the value of investing in early education.

Unfortunately, it isn’t easy to access high-quality childcare, and there is signi cant room for improvement concerning investments in early childhood education. at’s why I’m urging policymakers to e reality is that re-use of existing structures for homes and businesses is the key...not using up more land, extending more water, gas sewer pipes, etc. requiring more lumber, etc. Many older and existing structures are actually constructed of re-resistant material like brick and masonry, adding to their re-use value. I, especially, would like to see some of the proposed school closings in Je erson County, instead, be re-used for smaller classrooms and a campus that includes housing for teachers and other service workers, rather than being sold o altogether.

Use existing housing rather build new Polis thinks that more housing is the key to economic health...a la the developers...one of Polis’s largest campaign contributors/promoters was the housing “industry”. And it shows.

Also, we have existing apartment complexes, such as mine, that

Financial Strategies

earnings begin to wane after holding up well last year.

is could be due to higher costs of borrowing along with the labor shortage.

Consumers are tired. Tired of winter, tired of economic uncertainty and in ation. Business owners are drained from trying to nd workers, rising lease rates and higher cost of goods. Investors are weary of stock market declines and interest rate increases. e war in Ukraine continues. COVID seems to have reappeared. is is when people are most pessimistic. And that creates opportunity. While everyone is crying in their soup, you could be taking advantage of

• Submit your letter by 5 p.m. on Wednesday in order to have it considered for publication in the following week’s newspaper.

• Letters must be no longer than 400 words.

• Letters should be exclusively submitted to Colorado Community Media and should not submitted to other outlets or previously posted have a heart and invest in kids, including childcare and early education, this Valentine’s Day.

Right now, families are struggling to nd high-quality, a ordable childcare. More than 50% of families live in areas without enough childcare, and the average cost of childcare can exceed the price of in-state college tuition. Too many children are missing out on the life-long bene ts of quality early learning.

Join me in urging Representative Brittany Pettersen to continue championing young children in her new role as a Member of Congress for House District 7. She can accomplish this by supporting robust funding for early childhood education in the 2024 appropriations bill.

Rachelle Todea, Westminster

increase the rent each year by more than 10% just to extract what they can. But the vacancy rate is high. We have over 80 vacant units in a complex of 320 or so. e apartments use up city water, Xcel gas and electricity (and their already installed lines) as well as city trash services, etc. ese are all infrastructure entities that could be e ciently used, rather than left idle just so that landlords (and in my instance, out-of-state, California, landlords) can make as much money by raising rents, as by having a fully-occupied apartment complex.

It is just plain WRONG and a very ine cient use of resources at a time when we need to be e cient and thoughtful about our existing and proposed infrastructure resources and their associated costs, as well as their associated drain on our environment.

Karen Kalavity, Westminster

bad news that puts your favorite stocks or sectors on sale. Greiner states that if there is a recession in 2023, “It will probably be a light, quick recession.” erefore, the rally days on the stock market indicate investors may be looking past a brief recession and trying to lock in some gains in the future. ere are other possibilities if there is not a recession. We could remain in the stag ation from last year, which could actually be worse, in my opinion. Stag ation is typically high in ation and low growth. is could drag out the e ects of rising interest rates causing the Fed to need to ght in ation even longer. on websites or social media. Submitted letters become the property of CCM and should not be republished elsewhere.

Recessions are healthy for the economy, and they are what gives us the business cycle. Hitting the reset button to reprice goods and services and trim o excesses that are not sustainable is a good thing.

• Letters advocating for a political candidate should focus on that candidate’s qualifications for o ce. We cannot publish letters that contain unverified negative information about e Fed could pull o a soft landing, where they pause interest rate hikes just in time to get the perfect combination of curbing in ation without halting too much growth. Most economists put this scenario at a very low probability. a candidate’s opponent. Letters advocating for or against a political candidate or ballot issue will not be published within 12 days of an election.

Prepare for some continued economic and market uctuations especially in the rst half of the year while the Fed is expected to continue hiking rates. If in ation continues to roll over, then we could see interest rates plateau and growth start to return. We’ll see a year from now how 2023 turns out: stagnant, recessed or the perfect landing.

Patricia Kummer has been a certied nancial planner professional and a duciary for over 35 years and is managing director for Mariner Wealth Advisors.

• Publication of any given letter is at our discretion. Letters are published as space is available.

MOHN

Richard “Dick” Mohn

November 7, 1945 - February 1, 2023

Richard “Dick” Mohn was born in Plain eld, NJ and passed away in ornton, CO on February 1st, 2023. He was a beloved member of his family and community and will be dearly missed. For more information on services, where to send donations, or to read a full-length obituary, please visit www. thenaturalfuneral.com/obituaries

BY CORINNE WESTEMAN CWESTEMAN@COLORADOCOMMUNITYMEDIA.COM

While working out at a gym in Golden recently, someone approached Ty Scrable and asked if he was associated with Colorado School of Mines. Scrable had to explain that, no, he’s just a Golden resident.

Unfortunately, Scrable said, this isn’t the rst time it’s happened.

“I get that a lot,” he said. “People think I’m a student, professor or tourist because I’m Black.”

Systemic racism stubbornly remains in Golden. But, as Scrable said, it has morphed from Ku Klux Klan demonstrations in the 1920s and racist housing policies in the 1940s to something less overt but still widespread and endlessly frustrating.

Because White people make up the overwhelming majority in the city and, thus, are seen as the norm, Scrable said, “many people don’t view me as part of my own community.” e newspaper, which now is part of Colorado Community Media, isn’t immune to biased coverage. is report is the product of its journalists attempting to examine the paper’s coverage of the Black community since the Civil Rights era and own up to its mistakes.

In the wake of Black Lives Matter demonstrations in the summer of 2020, many cities and newspapers across the United States have started reckoning with their pasts, examining how they’ve contributed to systemic racism, learning what they can do to be more inclusive and fair. e Golden community has started the process, and now it’s the Golden Transcript’s turn.

Since 1866, the Golden Transcript — known as the Colorado Transcript for its rst 103 years — has been a record keeper for Je erson County. While its stories are extensive and valuable, the paper contains original and reprinted content that was harmful to the Black community and other marginalized groups.

Just one example is its coverage of the Black Panther Party, a group that gained national attention in the late 1960s for its response to policing in Black communities across the country.

Between 1969-1971, the newspaper published approximately 170 articles that referenced the Black Panther Party. Nearly all of these articles

BEYOND THE GOLDEN TRANSCRIPT: Our efforts to reconcile racial mistrust begins with this story

In our newspaper this week, you’ll see an article about the Golden Transcript. It’s one of two dozen newspapers owned by Colorado Community Media, which also owns this paper. The article tackles the issue of systemic racism in the Transcript’s pages.

The idea for the project started in 2020, when the Colorado News Collaborative, Colorado Media Project and Free Press convened the Black Voices Working Group, which was made up of Black leaders, community members and journalists. The group addressed media coverage and focused on how to improve trust in mainstream media among the Black community. Acknowledging past harm was the No. 1 recommendation made by the group.

A few months later, I attended a Denver Press Club event where Jameka Lewis, a senior librarian at the BlairCaldwell African American Research Library, illustrated biases in mainstream local media coverage of the Black Panther Party in the 1960s and ’70s while exhibiting rare prints of the Black Panther Press. Many of Lewis’ examples came from the Transcript. Most articles were wire stories from other cities, but editors still chose to run them, affecting perceptions of the party in Golden.

We pursued and were awarded a grant from the nonpartisan Colorado Media Project to explore, uncover and analyze this issue in the form of the special report that is in this edition of your newspaper.

Our newsroom, which is predominantly White, also participated in the Maynard Institute’s diversity, equity and inclusion Fault Lines training along the way. West metro editor Kristen Fiore was a speaker at the Advancing Equity in Local News convening with journalists from publications like the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Washington Post to talk about this project.

We believe this story is important beyond Golden — and we hope to spark conversations in our communities across the Denver area about race and inclusion and how our news coverage impacts those issues.

Linda Carpio Shapley is publisher of Colorado Community Media, which runs two dozen weekly and monthly publications in eight counties. She can be reached at lshapley@coloradocommunitymedia.com