Jack Shafer, of Slate.com, while making his argument that the press should boycott the conventions, wrote: … he may argue that meeting all the important politicos up close at the convention will produce future news dividends. But he’ll pout if you ask him whether the intimacy justifies the expense, which can easily exceed $3,000 per […]
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Posted inDnc 08
Drill Here. Drill Now. Pay Less?
If you’re attending the Democratic National Convention, and you can get past the Stormtrooper-looking police in riot gear, and past the people selling Obama buttons for $3 a pop, and you can keep plugging along even after running across the guy riding his bicycle with a giant flag reading: “You are going to Hell”, or […]
Posted inDnc 08
The Las Vegas of Politics
Denver, this week, feels a bit like Vegas. Okay, the lights aren’t so bright. And I haven’t run into any slot machines, yet. Or, for that matter, giant fountains spewing water into the dry desert air. Still. You know how, along the Vegas strip, there’s guys flipping those little cards at you, emblazoned with pics […]
Posted inDnc 08
The entrepreneurs
A crowd stood at the corner of Blake Street and the 16th Street Mall on Monday, flanking a pushcart overflowing with t-shirts. A painfully cheery young man named Toby wore one that was blazoned with the Qdoba Mexican Grill cartoon cactus. On the front it said “Burritos for Obama.” Other t-shirts offered up quesadillas and […]
Posted inDnc 08
Walking for Obama
This summer, I walked in the Paonia Cherry Days parade on the Fourth of July— past many of my former classmates, teachers and community—carrying a hand-painted “Obama’08” sign. The experience filled me with excitement and determination, not to mention a keen sense of my own vulnerability in this small, mostly Republican community. I spent most […]
Posted inDnc 08
WELCOME TO DENVER!
Downtown Denver, Aug. 25, where there are nearly as many journalists as there are riot-gear-clad cops. The High Country News team has just arrived. Stay tuned for more coverage from the Democratic National Convention in Denver.
Posted inGoat
Winning the West: HCN @ the DNC
What’s a Colorado journalist to do when, for the first time in a century, the Democratic National Convention comes to your state? The first impulse of the newshound: Go to Denver, of course, and get yourself a scoop (not to mention free food). Then comes that slightly bitter aftertaste when you realize that there are […]
Posted inGoat
The Roan lease price was high, but not high enough
The auctioning of the Roan Plateau’s nearly 55,000 acres of gas leases netted a record $114 million last week, as the BLM put “the most biodiverse lands in Colorado” up for sale. The highest per-acre price was $11,800, for leases below the rim of the Roan; the average was about $2100 per acre. Unless a […]
Posted inGoat
Smoke Trails
Have you noticed? Each year with the coming of fire season comes also a slew of guest commentaries and editorials in western newspapers promoting the idea that the current fire, smoke and destruction are the result of environmentalists’ lawsuits which have locked up the forests resulting in a build up of brush and tees that […]
Posted inGoat
Kiss your tail goodbye, desert pupfish
The Bush administration is preparing to deliver a sucker punch to the Endangered Species Act. A new proposal would hand over the responsibility of protecting endangered species from federal projects like dams and highways to the federal agencies themselves. Under current law, agencies such as the Bureau of Land Management and the Corps of Engineers […]
Posted inGoat
Celebrating local history
Organizing events is not one of my strong points; it’s work enough to organize words. Nonetheless, for most of the past 14 years, I’ve been more or less in charge of Anza Day in Poncha Springs, Colorado. Actually, it’s such a small event that it should be called “Anza Two Hours,” but it still takes […]
Posted inGoat
Not a moment too soon
“I can attest to the fact that (the Department of Interior) gets in your blood, but I can also say that it does not necessarily turn it green.” — Paul Hoffman, a deputy assistant secretary of the Interior, announcing his resignation this week. Hoffman, who got his post thanks to Vice President Dick Cheney, regularly […]
Posted inGoat
Owl be seeing you, too
Many thanks to San Francisco Chronicle columnist Jon Carroll, for his piece about High Country News titled Owl be seeing you. Carroll praises Kim Todd’s story on the spotted and barred owls — Hostile Takeover, published in our August 4 issue — and waxes eloquent as he recaps the main points of Todd’s feature. He […]
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Southern California’s Briny Beast
The long-suffering Salton Sea, notorious for its massive bird and fish die-offs, is finally to be put on an intravenous drip. A key committee in California’s state Assembly approved a bill last week that would provide $47 million to begin restoring the salty sink to some semblance of health. The full Assembly is expected to […]
Posted inGoat
Owl tales
Kim Todd’s feature – Conservation quandary in the August 4th edition – zeros in on key ethical questions which arise within the context of endangered species management in general and northern spotted owl (NSO) management in particular. But readers who are not familiar with the conflicts over forest management in the Pacific Northwest and northern […]
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Learning from tourists
My idea of a perfect vacation is one that does not involve my driving a car, and I managed that on a couple of earlier trips to Oregon with planes, trains, and my daughters’ cars — one lives in Eugene and the other lives in Bend. This time around, starting nearly a fortnight ago, I […]
Posted inGoat
What the frac’ is in those fluids
In the gas industry’s “frac’ing” process, approximately a million gallons of fluid, under extremely high pressure, is injected underground, and, with explosives, creates fractures in the strata, freeing natural gas from its underground chambers. Manufacturers of frac’ing fluids are allowed to keep their formulas proprietary, but they are required by the Occupational Safety and Health […]
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Fate of four Klamath River dams under negotiation
PacifiCorp – the Buffett-Berkshire Hathaway company which owns and operates the Klamath Hydroelectric Project – is in confidential negotiations with the federal Department of Interior and the States of California and Oregon concerning the fate of the Project and its five dams. Word has come from inside the talks that an “agreement in principle” to […]
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Does Tom Udall put families before fish? NO!
Front and center are two peace-seeking, fish-loving, tax-hiking, tree-hugging, jewelry-wearing, long haired hippies. The brains behind the Pearce campaign seem to think that connecting Udall to 1960’s and 70’s-style environmentalism will be enough to discredit him. Whether or not this will be a successful strategy amid the West’s shifting political winds remains to be seen. […]