I’m old enough to remember the great civil rights struggles of the 1960s, as well as the organizations that led them, like the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Student Non-violent Co-ordinating Committee, and the Congress of Racial Equality. They accomplished much, and even though our next American president will be an African-American, there is doubtless […]
Ed Quillen
Posted inGoat
Interior design at the Interior Department
When U.S. Sen. Ken Salazar of Colorado takes office later this month as Secretary of the Department of Interior, he’ll have one plush “executive washroom.” According to the Washington Post, outgoing Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne recently spent $235,000 of our tax money on a new bathroom for the fifth-floor office. The renovation included a new […]
Posted inGoat
Another Colorado senate race
We just finished one U.S. Senate race in Colorado, and now we face another. In the 2008 election, Democrat Mark Udall handily defeated Republican Bob Schaffer by a 52-43 margin to replace retiring Republican Wayne Allard. But on Dec. 17, president-elect Barack Obama named Colorado’s other U.S. senator, Ken Salazar, as his choice for secretary […]
Posted inWotr
This is the time to make land management make sense
The federal deficit is already gigantic, and it keeps getting bigger in order to stimulate the plummeting economy. But times of crisis are also times of opportunity. This is the perfect chance for the Obama administration to improve the way the federal lands are managed. Consider the big three land agencies: the Forest Service, the […]
Posted inDecember 22, 2008: What a mess
Change we could believe in
The federal deficit is already gigantic, and there’s serious talk of making it even bigger in order to stimulate the plummeting economy. But times of crisis are also times of opportunity. This is the perfect chance for the Obama administration to improve the way the federal lands are managed. At the moment, increased budgets for […]
Posted inGoat
Staying connected
Heating with wood provides a paradox. The process provides a warm indoor fire, isolating you from the cold outdoors. And yet it makes you more connected to the outdoors. Let it be noted that I use wood for supplemental heat, more or less. Our century-old house has a gas furnace, and while I’m glad it’s […]
Posted inGoat
Obama and public lands
Even though the West was a key battleground in the 2008 presidential election, our issues — public lands, water, endangered species, etc. — didn’t get a lot of attention from either candidate. And for the past three months, the economy has dominated the news. But our issues do appear in this interesting piece by Les […]
Posted inGoat
Where geography still matters
As president-elect Barack Obama goes about picking a cabinet, we hear a lot about a book of popular history that was published three years ago: Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, by Doris Kearns Goodwin. Some parallels seem almost eerie. Abraham Lincoln’s main rival for the Republican nomination in 1860 was William […]
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 […]
Posted inArticles
Mayberry and Peyton Place
Given that the vast majority of Americans (almost four out of five) live in urban areas, we small town residents might well feel flattered by the attention we received during this presidential campaign. Not all the attention was complimentary, though. Democratic nominee Barack Obama observed that “You go into some of these small towns in […]
Posted inGoat
Vote early, if not often
For quite a while, I resisted the temptations of “early voting” or “voting by mail,” and remained steadfast in my preference for voting the old-fashioned way: at my precinct on Election Day. It made me feel something like the way I felt when I attended church as a kid, that I was joining others in […]
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 inGoat
A guidebook we might use
We’ve got a tight U.S. Senate race in Colorado. The incumbent Republican, Wayne Allard, is stepping out after two terms. Competing to replace him are Democrat Mark Udall and Republican Bob Schaffer. Udall’s environmental credentials seem pretty solid, given his voting record in the House, where he has represented Colorado’s second congressional district for the […]
Posted inWotr
We’ve heard the “drill now” drumbeat before
Perhaps it is telling that when it comes to energy policy, President George W. Bush has inspired nostalgia for Jimmy Carter. “If we had only followed Carter’s energy plan,” people say, “we wouldn’t be in this fix now.” For Westerners, though, following Carter would have been a big mistake. Granted, there were some sensible aspects […]
Posted inGoat
Do you live in a small town?
We’ve been hearing a lot about small towns during the campaigns this year, ranging from Barack Obama’s comment about bitter residents to Sarah Palin’s service as a small-town mayor. That means it might be a good time to find out whether you live in one. Community size is a consideration, of course, but these factors […]
Posted inGoat
Late aspen, early melting
Despite the best efforts of many concerned friends, I remain something of an agnostic on whether climate change is caused by humans or is part of a natural cycle. After all, on my daily walks with the dog along the Arkansas River, I can gaze across our wide valley and stare up the narrow valley […]
Posted inGoat
Pigs and politics
In recent days, American political discourse has not been dominated by the Republican elephant, nor by the Democratic donkey, but instead by the humblest of barnyard livestock — the pig, as in “You can put lipstick on a pig. It’s still a pig.” Does anyone actually put lipstick on a pig? The swine I see […]
Posted inSeptember 9, 2008: Reclaiming the low country
The deja-vu of ‘Drill here, drill now’
Perhaps it is telling that when it comes to energy policy, President George W. Bush has inspired nostalgia for Jimmy Carter. “If we had only followed Carter’s energy plan,” people say, “we wouldn’t be in this fix now.” For Westerners, though, that’s a big mistake. Granted, there were some sensible aspects to Carter’s energy policies, […]
Posted inGoat
New GOP tax policy?
Like most Americans, I can’t say I know much about the governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin. But I have read that during her relatively brief tenure, she’s been a reformer who fought to raise taxes on oil companies, and then used the money to distribute $1,200 checks to Alaska residents. This could be a winning […]