WASHINGTON, D.C. – The year is almost over. If you’re computing the time between now and Dec. 31, broaden your horizons. We are talking here about the legislative year, which ends on Oct. 2, liberating congresspersons to return home to campaign. Even subtracting weekends, this would leave almost 100 days for Congress its wonders to […]
Jon Margolis
Posted inMay 11, 1998: The working West: grassroots groups and their newsletters
A treatise on columnist Alexander Cockburn
WASHINGTON, D.C. – “Question Authority,” reads the bumper sticker slogan, and good advice it is. But so is this: Question the questioners of authority, who may have their own agenda, perhaps their own racket. Outrageousness sells these days, and as any viewer of “Crossfire” can attest, it sells better unencumbered by prudence or knowledge. Which […]
Posted inApril 27, 1998: The old West is going under
The latest 1,000-pound gorilla
WASHINGTON, D.C. – “Good evening, sir and madam, Henri here, your concierge, representing ‘All-Natural, Inc.,’ the contract manager of Frogwart Hollow National Forest. Place Number 23 is reserved for your recreational vehicle, and there you will find posted our fee schedule for walks to the simulated waterfall, per-hour rates for fishing in the beautiful Cootahatchie […]
Posted inFebruary 16, 1998: Private rights vs. public lands
The Land and Water Fund waits to be tapped
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Last year, something unusual occurred hereabouts, and though the extraordinary event did not go unnoticed, its extraordinariness was insufficiently appreciated. What happened was that the United States Congress lived up to an obligation. Though not unprecedented, this proximity to honor was rare enough to have deserved more attention than it received, especially […]
Posted inFebruary 2, 1998: Looking at dams in a new way
The scandal culture reaches Bruce Babbitt
WASHINGTON, D.C. – In a rational world, one would not have to wonder whether a special prosecutor might be appointed to investigate the doings of Bruce Babbitt, endangering his tenure as secretary of the Interior. In this world? Well, we’d better take a look. In the great scheme of things, it matters little whether Babbitt […]
Posted inDecember 22, 1997: Gold Rush: Mining seeks to tighten its grip on the 'last, best place'
An 1872 law still calls the shots
WASHINGTON, D.C. – It was a good year. The president was easily re-elected, there was a tight race for the baseball championship, and Congress passed landmark environmental legislation. Some things have changed since then, though. Ulysses Grant is better known for a question about the contents of his tomb than for his accomplishments as president, […]
Posted inDecember 8, 1997: Mono Lake: Victory over Los Angeles turns into local controversy
Saving species: A guide for the perplexed
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Policy is complicated. The goals of policy – a strong economy, peace (or war, depending on circumstances), clean air – are simple. But in a diverse, sometimes disagreeable society with conflicting institutions, a sprawling government and an intricate legal system, achieving those goals requires gobs of … well, process, and process can […]
Posted inNovember 24, 1997: Restoring a refuge: Cows depart, but can antelope recover?
Montana congressman sweetens a buyout
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Mysterious are the labyrinthine hallways of the Capitol; who knows what spirits lurk therein? Down those twisted tunnels and curved corridors are things that go bump in the night. Some of those bumps can vibrate all the way to Montana. One dark, murky night – indeed, it may have been Halloween night […]
Posted inOctober 27, 1997: Deconstructing the age of dams
A deal is no longer a deal in Washington
WASHINGTON, D.C. – There was never a whole lot of certainty in these parts, but not long ago you could count on a couple of things. One was that a deal was a deal. The other was that once you had killed something, it stayed dead. No longer. Remember Bob Dole’s “takings” bill, the one […]
Posted inSeptember 29, 1997: The timber wars evolve into a divisive attempt at peace
How a foe saved the Quincy Library Group’s bacon
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Politics has always made strange bedfellows, but this one was stranger than most. One day last July, George Miller took Don Young into one of those rooms near the House Chamber and did him a favor. Well, OK, it was only sort of a favor. But Miller is a liberal California Democrat, […]
Posted inSeptember 1, 1997: Radioactive waste from Hanford is seeping toward the Columbia
Utah’s bumbling obscures a valid complaint
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Now that government has become show business, one must classify political activities not according to ideology, party or faction but by genre. Is the senator (president, governor, whatever) wearing the smiling comedy face today, or the gloomier mask of the drama? Sometimes, though, there’s little doubt, as is the case with the […]
Posted inAugust 4, 1997: Vanishing habitat
Critics say ‘no surprises’ means no protection
Note: This article accompanies another one of this issue’s feature stories. WASHINGTON, D.C. – Before Mike O’Connell said a single word, you could tell he was going to be the first troublemaker. It wasn’t just that he wore a tie. O’Connell’s panel was the only one at the Habitat Conservation Plans conference held in Washington, […]
Posted inJune 23, 1997: On the trail of mining's corporate nomads
Politics here consists of hating the East
WASHINGTON, D.C. – As the leaders of the world’s great powers prepared to meet in the American West last weekend, events of great import, perchance even of historic significance, were occurring in some nations’ capitals. But not in this one. Western civilization may be at a turning point, but Washington doesn’t care. Washington is sex-obsessed. […]
Posted inMay 26, 1997: The sacred and profane collide in the West
Feds learn that a man’s ranch is his castle
WASHINGTON, D.C. – A few years ago, so the story goes, the Forest Service folks who deal with endangered species were taking aerial photographs to locate prairie dogs, and thereby the black-footed ferrets which prey on them. Which was fine – as long as the planes were flying over public land. When they started flying […]
Posted inMay 12, 1997: Planning under the gun: Cleaning up Lake Tahoe proves to be a dirty business
The Craig bill: Calm down, everybody
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Ah, for the glory years of the 104th. Those were the days, when Western Republicans filled the congressional hoppers with their dreams for their region’s public lands – plans to help one species or another chop more trees, chomp more grass, dig more mines and maybe even present some of the land […]
Posted inApril 14, 1997: Beauty and the Beast
Money: the real political organizer
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Now about this soft money business. As a descriptive term, “soft money” isn’t. It’s vague, if not downright misleading, considering that “soft money” is no softer than any other money. So let’s approach the subject from another perspective, not as an abstract “issue,” but as a case study of a real, living, […]
Posted inMarch 17, 1997: Working the Watershed
A U.S. senator who shoots from the hip
WASHINGTON, D.C. – How fitting it was that true celebrity came to Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell not over a vote in Congress, or a speech, or even when he switched parties, but over advertising. Briefly last year, Campbell was the “Banana Republican,” a literal poster boy in advertisements for the Gap-Banana Republic clothing-store chain, whose […]
Posted inFebruary 17, 1997: No home on the range
Clinton’s budget blows off a wilder West
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Teddy Roosevelt was in town the other day, arguing that the country is short-changing its parks and forests. No, this is not a time warp. This was Theodore Roosevelt IV of New York, an investment banker, a conservationist and – best of all – a Republican. It was a nice touch, having […]
Posted inFebruary 3, 1997: Bringing back the bighorn
Greens turn from defense to offense
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Something there is about January in these parts – a crispness in the air, the residue of New Year’s resolutions – that infuses even cynical political types with a sense of possibilities. That sense is enhanced when a new Congress comes to town, and every fourth January, when a president is inaugurated. […]
Posted inJanuary 20, 1997: Bees under siege
This year, Congress slunk into Washington
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Even without the small complication bestriding the opening of the 105th Congress, the difference between it and its predecessor could be discerned by a quick look at the schedules. Two years ago, the ebullient Republican majority of the House of Representatives came to town with revolutionary zeal, determined to remake the government, […]