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Steve Pittman

Steve joined the Colorado Forward Party in 2023 and has volunteered with the Infrastructure subcommittee since then.

Steve joined Common Cause shortly after it was formed in 1970 with a mission to reduce the influence of money in politics. He drifted away after it became clear that Common Cause was not making substantial progress in its mission. He has been active in politics on and off since. For example, he worked for Ross Perot's campaign in 1992.

Steve believes members of the Colorado Forward Party must acknowledge that if we grow to the size needed to be influential, we are going to experience growing pains. We must accept that we are at times going to be far from perfect, but that’s okay because perfection is the enemy of incremental progress toward our goals. We must all pledge to lead, follow, or get out of the way as we move forward.

Steve believes that American citizens can legitimately disagree about fundamental issues and the truth is that most views are correct some of the time. He therefore believes that policies and legislation crafted to accommodate most views will usually be better than policies and legislation which represent a few views.

Steve believes the purpose of democratic political debate is therefore not to change anyone’s mind. The purpose of democratic political debate is to ensure that the various constituencies understand each other’s positions so that legislation, policies, etc can be crafted which appeal to the broadest possible spectrum of constituents.

Steve believes there are norms, mores, and principles which govern healthy democratic political debate, including criteria which valid objective evidence must meet, but believes there is considerable disagreement nowadays about what is meant by 'valid objective evidence'. He believes that the disagreement grew rapidly in the 1960s with the rise of a dysfunctional counterculture, has continued to grow, and is one fundamental cause of political paralysis nowadays.

Steve believes it is important for the Colorado Forward Party to put a stake in the ground regarding the meaning of 'valid objective evidence' in democratic political debate.

Steve retired from IBM at the end of 2019. His last several decades there were spent as a Computer Systems Architect. He joined IBM in 1971. He was born in Alabama, lived in northern Silicon Valley (Fremont, Ca) for 30 years, and moved to Colorado in 2011 because he and his then-wife believed that, while Silicon Valley was a great place to live and work, it was not that good a place to raise their young daughters. He is now divorced and is lucky to be helping two happy teenagers launch themselves on their trajectories in life.

For a little more about me, please see my profile page on Wikipedia,


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