Just the other morning, I mailed off my absentee ballot. I’d carefully colored in all the ovals, signed it, smacked on a stamp and tossed that baby into the mailbox. Civic duty done? Maybe not. Last month, for example, New Mexico’s secretary of State had to admit that incorrect information had been mailed to more […]
I want my vote to count, but will it?
Posted inOctober 27, 2008: Prophets and politics
Power to the first people
Native Americans are poised to swing some Western battleground states
Posted inGoat
Dove Creek Dreams
Fields here are draped over hillsides and wrapped around sandstone canyons like brown and green quilts. Farm machinery rolls along county two-lanes, filling them from shoulder to shoulder. Houses of the hunker-down school of architecture sit here and there, each surrounded by a scruff of thirsty trees. This is Dove Creek, Colorado, the Pinto Bean […]
Posted inOctober 27, 2008: Prophets and politics
Watery shell game
Regarding “a river runs near it,” we really shouldn’t call this water development (hcn, 9/15/08). It really is just water reallocation. No new water is being developed. Every time we reallocate water in substantial quantities, we do so crudely. This is probably just a little less crude than in the past, but we really don’t […]
Posted inOctober 27, 2008: Prophets and politics
Future carnage
The toll that humans take on the rest of the planet has bothered me for quite some time (hcn, 10/13/08). I am 50 years old and remember an article in my weekly reader in about third grade (circa 1967) about the population explosion. It troubled me enough then and since that i decided not to […]
Posted inOctober 27, 2008: Prophets and politics
Who’s left behind?
In regards to the writers on the range piece, “a macabre measure of the human footprint,” most everybody’s working with the idea of too many of us, except for those who believe there can never be too many of us because god’s taking care of that (hcn, 10/13/08). For the rest, it leads directly to […]
Posted inOctober 27, 2008: Prophets and politics
Out stealing water
Oh, really? Theft of the property of others is now called “water harvesting” (hcn, 10/13/08). So … Even if you are a government agency or municipality, by all means necessary, just take what doesn’t belong to you. It has become the way of solving situations, where someone has recently arrived on the scene, knowing full […]
Posted inOctober 27, 2008: Prophets and politics
An eye on the agencies
Regarding your recent story “the great giveaway,” i retired as national recreation director for the bureau of land management in 2003, because i saw the bush administration consistently subvert the overall mission of the blm through the appointment of politicos willing to overrule professional judgment and substitute white house imperatives (hcn, 10/13/08). I retired earlier […]
Posted inOctober 27, 2008: Prophets and politics
The great barbecue, revisited
Paul Vandevelder’s article was right about the end of western welfare, in my opinion (hcn, 10/13/08). Large government deficits and the recent unraveling of our credit-based economy will likely have lasting effects on the west. While we may not be able to depend any longer on government largesse to fund bridges, dams, and other pet […]
Posted inOctober 27, 2008: Prophets and politics
The coming quake
Is Los Angeles ready for the Big One?
Posted inArticles
Audio: Researching Rexburg
Rexburg, Idaho, may be the most Mormon of any town in the nation. HCN Senior Editor Ray Ring spent time in Rexburg, getting to know the place, and trying to understand what happens when religion completely saturates a community. He wrote about it in his story, Prophets and Politics, in the Oct. 27 issue of […]
Posted inWotr
Take a hike!
“I thought we’d go for a hike,” I told the boy I’m mentoring. “You know, look at stuff.” “How about we go to a movie?” he parried. “Or we could play electronic poker.” He’s not an unusual kid. There has been a major swing in his generation away from all things outdoors. The National Academy […]
Posted inOctober 27, 2008: Prophets and politics
Prophets and politics
Will the Mormon Church decide who gets married in California?
Posted inGoat
Unaccustomed attention
For a lifelong Coloradan, this has been a strange election year. We’re a “swing state” where the polls are close in the presidentail race, and that’s a novelty. In the past 60 years, the Democratic candidate has carried Colorado only three times: Harry Truman in 1948, Lyndon Johnson in 1964, and Bill Clinton in 1992. […]
Posted inWotr
Another chance emerges for salmon
This fall, the most endangered salmon on earth is giving us another chance to save it from extinction. Snake River sockeye salmon are small as salmon go, with a blue sheen when they leave the Pacific Ocean. That sheen has burnt bright red 850 miles and two months later by the time they reach their […]
Posted inWotr
For many Americans, voting this November will be historic
Strange the things that come to you through your kids. A week ago my daughter, Ruby, came home with an eighth-grade social studies assignment on the civil rights movement of the 1960s. “You know,” I told her, “your grandparents were involved with civil rights when I was a kid. Maybe you should talk to them. […]
Posted inGoat
Winning the West
Like much of the country and all of the media, HCN is focused on the upcoming election. One of the ways we’re feeding our obsession is by surfing the web, seeking out new tidbits, poll numbers, and punditry. To help you navigate the political world from the base of our Winning the West page, you […]
Posted inGoat
The wolf-go-round
Seven months ago, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service took gray wolves in the Northern Rockies and Oregon off the endangered species list, marking the end of 34 years of protection. In July U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy issued an injunction against killing wolves in the region after conservationists filed suit, saying it was too […]
Posted inGoat
BLM steamrolls another protection for public lands
On Oct. 10, the Bureau of Land Management proposed a rule change that will make it harder for the Department of Interior secretaries and Congress to protect public lands through an “emergency withdrawal.” In June, the House Natural Resources Committee used the rule that the BLM is attempting to change when it called for an […]
Posted inGoat
ABC censors clean energy ad
Oil companies have bought influence in Washington and used that influence to make life easier for themselves and harder for their competitors. This may be a controversial statement, but it’s not an unfounded one, given the amount of money the oil industry pours into politics and the regularity with which it gets its way in […]