The Southern Utes mean business. Their investment company, the Southern Ute Growth Fund, manages more than $1 billion in assets, including a set of real estate development companies and an oil and gas drilling business. Just this week, they opened a new high-end casino on their reservation south of Durango, Colorado. But the Utes are […]
Southern Utes discover a new kind of crude
Posted inGoat
Recession in the gasfield?
Last weekend, the family and I drove over to Grand Junction, Colo., about an hour away from here, to run some errands. GJ, as we call it, is the metropolitan and service center of Colorado’s Western Slope. In other words, it’s awash with malls, big boxes, strip malls and fast food chains, not to mention […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Gun owners take revenge
MONTANA. Dan Cooper, the co-founder and president of Cooper Firearms of Montana, a small gun manufacturing company in Stevensville, was forced to resign recently after stirred-up gun advocates called him a traitor and threatened reprisals against his business. Cooper’s blunder? He told USA Today that he supported Barack Obama for president and had donated to […]
Posted inWotr
Everybody wants to move to my town
Kiplinger’s Personal Finance was hardly telling Boiseans anything new last summer when it ranked the city fourth among the nation’s 10 best places to live, work and play. Over the last few years, we’ve gotten pretty used to being at or near the top of such lists: Forbes, Money, National Geographic Adventure, Inc.com, MSN BestLife, […]
Posted inGoat
Mambo like only bureaucracy can
Continuing a tradition of relatively strong stands on environmental degradation caused by natural gas drilling and other forms of development, the Rocky Mountain region (Region 8) office of the Environmental Protection Agency is now questioning a proposal to divert flows from Colorado’s only wild and scenic river: the Cache la Poudre. The agency contends that […]
Posted inNovember 21, 2008: Ultimate solution?
“Homosexuals are not some cabal”
As a gay former Mormon who grew up in Idaho Falls, “Prophets and Politics” perfectly articulates why this issue is just as important outside of California (HCN, 10/27/08). It pains me to see my childhood friends who attend BYU-Idaho spending so much time and money on this issue with the endorsement of the LDS church. […]
Posted inNovember 21, 2008: Ultimate solution?
Can’t see the forest for the guns
I’m frankly flabbergasted that, in an era so defined by crises of the environment, energy, and economy, that folks are still voting on useless wedge issues like guns and abortion — and voting for folks that are hopelessly deficient on the first three but who pander on the last two (HCN, 10/27/08). These issues were […]
Posted inNovember 21, 2008: Ultimate solution?
Getting out the (gun) vote
As someone who is a “liberal Democrat” on most issues and an Abe Lincoln “conservative” on others, I believe it has been a profound mistake for the Democrats to throw away the gun owner’s vote as they have for years (HCN, 10/27/08). I grew up in Ohio plinking with my dad’s .22. I’m a gun […]
Posted inGoat
Mrs. T. Boone Pickens to the (horse) rescue
We’ve chronicled the sad story of the horse glut in the United States, brought on partly because of the slaughterhouse ban enacted two years ago, partly because of the rising cost of fuel and hay, and partly because of the failing economy. It all comes down to the unpleasant fact that there more horses than […]
Posted inNovember 21, 2008: Ultimate solution?
No friends of the Indians
Regarding your story “Power to the First People,” in Montana in the 2006 election, it was the seven counties with reservations which assured Democrat Jon Tester his narrow victory over incumbent GOP Sen. Conrad Burns, a charlatan good ol’ boy tainted by his associations with lobbyist Jack Abramoff (HCN, 10/27/08). The Democrats should never forget […]
Posted inNovember 21, 2008: Ultimate solution?
Back to bison
The ranching and sport-hunting communities in Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming exhibit none of the tolerance of the wolf, much less the knowledge, shown by Native Americans (HCN, 11/10/08). It is hate, sheer hate, that drives these communities’ actions and led to the deliberate extinction of wolves in the last century. If the state wolf “management” […]
Posted inNovember 21, 2008: Ultimate solution?
Big water
Regarding your story “Liquid Assets,” this summer at Mount Shasta I learned from locals that Shasta Dam releases, in August, were running at the equivalent of the spring flood stage. Why would we do that during a drought, in a period fraught with intense pressure to build more dams, canals and other forms of water […]
Posted inNovember 21, 2008: Ultimate solution?
Risky gun business
I was shocked by Hal Herring’s commentary on abandoning gun control (HCN, 10/27/08). More than the inaccuracies about “the Democrats” being against the Second Amendment and the clearly mistaken judgment that Democrats are declining, it was upsetting to read the absurd notion that owning guns protects us against tyranny. Where has this author been for […]
Posted inWotr
Conscientious objectors 65 years ago
During the Vietnam War, I registered for the draft as a conscientious objector willing to serve in the military. Along with many other college students, that is how I protested the war in Viet Nam. Now we’re mired in the sands of Iraq — our desert Vietnam. But this is a different time; the Iraq […]
Posted inGoat
Already one Westerner gets job in Obama admin
Jim Messina — born in Denver, raised in Boise, with a University of Montana bachelor’s degree in political science — will be a deputy chief of staff in Barack Obama’s White House. Messina worked his tail off to get there. He was chief of staff for Obama’s campaign, and his political experience stretches from Alaska […]
Posted inGoat
Administration publishes final oil shale regs
The Bush administration has a little more than two months left in office, but those two months promise to be an exciting — and probably distressing — time for those of us interested in federal land policy. The administration hopes to change a number of administrative rules before it rides into the sunset, and none […]
Posted inGoat
Dam deal advances Bush’s Klamath River agenda
This week the Bush Administration, Warren Buffett’s PacifiCorp and the state governments of Oregon and California announced an “Agreement in Principle” to remove four of the five dams on the Klamath River. If all goes according to their plan, removal of four dams would begin in 2020. A fifth dam – Keno in Oregon – […]
Posted inNovember 21, 2008: Ultimate solution?
Welcome to hard times
First, there’s the dark cloud: The economy of the Mountain West is going into the tank for a few years, and there’s not much that anybody — including the Democratic Congress and President Barack Obama — can do about it. But then there’s the silver lining: As our regional economy tanks, the West will become […]
Posted inGoat
Public land for sale?
Given the size of the federal debt, $10 trillion and growing, it shouldn’t be a surprise that there are proposals to reduce it. And why go through the pain of raising taxes or reducing spending when the federal government could just sell some public land — abundant in the West — and apply the proceeds […]