Am I some kind of a smart guy? Loyal readers may recall that I recently pointed out on these pages that even in very close elections one candidate always piled up a pretty hefty majority in the Electoral College, rendering the votes of any one state meaningless in the great scheme of things (HCN, 10/23/00: […]
Jon Margolis
Posted inNovember 6, 2000: 'Re-inhabitation' revisited
CARA’s not quite the girl she used to be
WASHINGTON, D.C. – When we last left Cara, our maiden in perpetual distress, she had escaped from the railroad tracks to which she had been tied by evil members of the House of Representatives, who hoped that an onrushing freight train or mass indifference would do her in. Not Cara, a game kid if ever […]
Posted inOctober 23, 2000: Stalking Slade
In presidential politics, the West has a bad hand
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Life, as someone once pointed out, is unfair. Someone, no doubt, pointed it out millennia ago, but the observation is generally attributed to John F. Kennedy, among whose distinctions was winning the closest presidential election in living memory. A mere 118,570 more Americans voted for Kennedy than for Richard M. Nixon 40 […]
Posted inSeptember 11, 2000: Holy water
Remembering an establishment revolutionary
John Sawhill wasn’t planning to stick around as president of The Nature Conservancy for much longer. As he told some associates, 10 years is a long time for one of those high-powered jobs, and as a 63-year-old diabetic, Sawhill was starting to think about a life with fewer plane trips and less tension. Maybe he […]
Posted inJune 5, 2000: Change on the Plains
Can ‘property rightsniks’ stop a popular bill?
WASHINGTON, D.C. – You know folks are going to lose when they choose Helen Chenoweth-Hage to close their argument. Resplendent in a red suit, perhaps symbolic of going down in flames, the Idaho Republican stood at the well of the House and used her two minutes to … well, that wasn’t quite clear; her rhetoric […]
Posted inApril 24, 2000: At your service: Unions help some Western workers serve themselves
The U.S. isn’t dead yet
WASHINGTON, D.C. – On the first day of the first spring of the millennium, one of the world’s largest and most powerful global corporations did as it was told. Parke-Davis, a division of the multibillion-dollar Warner-Lambert Company, announced that it was withdrawing the diabetes drug Rezulin from the market, as directed by the Food and […]
Posted inJanuary 31, 2000: Searching for pasture
Protesters raised the right questions
WASHINGTON, D.C. – So here I was last year, in this Washington, the one with the big domed building, and all the way across the country in the other Washington, the one with the big domed mountain, there was real political action – smashing Starbucks. Well, explained one of the peaceful protesters via my hotel […]
Posted inDecember 6, 1999: Peggy Godfrey's long, strange trip
In this election, the West is lost
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Congratulations, Westerners, you only have to live through 10 more months or so of presidential politics. Then Donald Trump, Warren Beatty, Cybil Shepard and other great intellects of our time will be off our television screens, at least masquerading as politicians, and you won’t have to think about the presidential election. What’s […]
Posted inNovember 22, 1999: Go tell it on the mountain
In Washington, the emperor is on Babbitt’s side
Washington, D.C. – In the combat arena to which your nation’s government has degenerated, belligerents armed with rhetorical excess and bilious discourtesy hurl their weapons at each other hoping to inflict humiliation, if not political death. In the center ring of this civic (but uncivil) Forum, the big-name gladiators fight over the federal budget and […]
Posted inSeptember 27, 1999: The Millworker and the Forest
Do you want more wilderness? Good luck
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Poor W. Howard Gray didn’t know what hit him. Just a few years before, in the early 1960s, the head of the American Mining Congress seemed justified in confidently predicting oblivion for this absurd proposal to set aside millions of acres of land for … well, for doing nothing with it. All […]
Posted inAugust 16, 1999: Standing up for the underdog
Never underestimate a working majority
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Four years ago, shortly after the Republicans took control of Congress, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas, glorying in her new status as a member of the majority, rose on the Senate floor to propose an amendment to the Interior Appropriations bill. She goofed. Still a newcomer (she had won the 1992 […]
Posted inAugust 2, 1999: Jon Marvel vs. the Marlboro Man
The quiet Takings Project is trespassing on democracy
WASHINGTON, D.C. – In a modern brick building across Lafayette Park from the White House, on a one-block street called Madison Place, several judicial officers of the United States government are engaged in a … in a … well, in what seems to be a conspiracy to subvert it. Not doing a bad job of […]
Posted inMay 24, 1999: The last weird place
New twist in an old law has everyone screaming
WASHINGTON, D.C. – A good horror movie’s secret of success is not how scary the special effects or even how gory the final scene. No, it’s that totally unexpected twist just before the end, the one in which the monster turns his wrath on someone considered safe. John Leshy is a horror-flick fan. It’s one […]
Posted inApril 26, 1999: Visionaries or dreamers?
Congress searches for a ‘green conspiracy’
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Congress does not just sit around and pass laws. Nosiree, Bob. It makes sure the executive branch does its job right. This is known as congressional oversight, and it helps to keep the big boys honest. When a government project goes awry, a congressional committee will track down the facts, expose the […]
Posted inMarch 29, 1999: Wheeling and dealing
Take the green elephant off the endangered list
WASHINGTON, D.C. – When the congressional crunch comes – and come it will – over torpedoing the Forest Service road-building moratorium, or the president’s plan to add 5 million acres of national park land to the wilderness system, or another slew of riders on an appropriations bill, here are some of the congressmen on whom […]
Posted inMarch 1, 1999: Working the land back to health
Beware Alaskans bearing gifts
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Oh, impressed, are you, that Bill Clinton wants to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to buy more land for the public domain? Well, consider this: So does Don Young. No, the crotchety, conservative chairman of the House Resources Committee has not turned green, or at least not very green. The bill […]
Posted inNovember 23, 1998: A patchwork peace unravels
The West of the ’90s is the South of the ’60s
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Well, so much for the Revolution. It was decimated on the Pacific Coast, demolished in the Northeast, even damaged in the South. And it never amounted to much in the Midwest. So after four short years, it has been expunged, this much-discussed political sea change, often called the Gingrich Revolution, gone and […]
Posted inNovember 9, 1998: Grizzly war
Defensive GOP cleans up its budget act
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Look no further, ye seekers of political truth, who wish to know why the Republicans surrendered 30 or so riders to the appropriations bill – riders that authorized their friends to chop down more trees, graze more cattle and build more roads and airports on public land throughout the West. The answer […]
Posted inSeptember 28, 1998: A senator for the New West in the race of his life
Congress avoids buying public land
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Thirty-five years ago, in that golden age when a president could engage in White House trysts without worrying about it, one of those presidents endorsed the idea of a self-financing fund to raise money so the government could buy land. It was a popular idea, so popular that it soon became law, […]
Posted inAugust 31, 1998: Excavating Ecotopia
These legislative riders sit low in the saddle
WASHINGTON, D.C. – In Pale Rider, a 1985 third-rate version of the movie Shane, Clint Eastwood plays the slow-talking, straight-shooting gunman (and clergyman to boot, credibility not being this flick’s strong suit) who saves settlers from a big mining company. The riders being discussed hereabouts are pale enough, but not one of them would discomfit […]