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 […]
Politics
Posted inJuly 5, 1999: The new faces of the West
A political outsider wages a clever campaign
Brian Schweitzer may be a farmer, but he is no country bumpkin. When the media-savvy 43-year-old Montanan announced his candidacy for the United States Senate, he did so from a podium at the Black Star Brewery. With him were several hundred pounds of premium Montana barley. He touted the popular Whitefish brew as a symbol […]
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 inJanuary 18, 1999: Desert sprawl
A statesman steps off the stage
When House Interior Committee Chairman Morris K. Udall of Arizona flew north in 1977 to hold hearings on a bill to protect more than 100 million acres in Alaska, locals in the town of Pelican hanged him in effigy. Ten years later, when Udall returned to Alaska to make a speech, an audience of chamber […]
Posted inDecember 21, 1998: Grand Canyon Gridlock
Uphill for these Idahoans
Gene Bray and Irene Wright of Meridian, Idaho, stopped by the HCN office just before Election Day with an insiders’ view of Idaho politics. Bray is a board member of the Idaho Watersheds Project, well known in the state for its confrontational anti-grazing billboards. The 900-member group aims to give state grazing allotments a break […]
Posted inDecember 21, 1998: Grand Canyon Gridlock
The last living Democrat in Idaho lays it on the line
Cecil Andrus writes the way he governed – in a brisk, plain-spoken style. His autobiography, Cecil Andrus: Politics Western Style, is as much a survival guide for Western Democrats and conservationists in hostile terrain as it is the story of his political life. How did Andrus, a former logger and an outspoken Democrat, survive 27 […]
Posted inNovember 23, 1998: A patchwork peace unravels
Mining takes another hit
MONTANA Mining takes another hit In a small second-floor office in downtown Helena, Mont., a dozen people held a sort of vigil on this chilly election night. They’d brought a television and rigged it with rabbit ears earlier in the day, and tuned the radio to the local public radio station. There, in the Montana […]
Posted inNovember 23, 1998: A patchwork peace unravels
Courting the green vote
ARIZONA Courting the green vote At first glance, it looked like a travel folder touting Arizona, so thick was the carpet of yellow flowers at the base of the San Francisco Peaks, and so perfectly red were the rock spires of Monument Valley. But the eight-page, glossy brochure was a campaign ad for a state […]
Posted inNovember 23, 1998: A patchwork peace unravels
Voters thread through the ballot
COLORADO Voters thread through the ballot Voters faced a list of complex initiatives and referenda in Colorado. Amendment 13 asked them to amend the constitution to protect the burgeoning hog industry on the state’s eastern plains from strict environmental rules. Voters defeated it, 553,000 to 348,000, then voted for Amendment 14, which revises state law […]
Posted inNovember 23, 1998: A patchwork peace unravels
Keep on cutting
OREGON Keep on cutting By a margin of 878,000 to 208,000, voters defeated a ban on clear-cutting forests on public and private lands in Oregon. Popular Gov. John Kitzhaber spoke out against the ban, and mainstream groups such as Oregon Trout Unlimited refused to support the measure’s backer, Oregonians for Labor Intensive Forest Economics. Opposition […]
Posted inNovember 23, 1998: A patchwork peace unravels
Split on trapping
California and Utah Split on trapping California voters said no to trapping, banning leghold traps in the state, 3,974,000 to 2,951,000. The debate pitted animal-rights groups and the Sierra Club against the Golden Gate Audubon Society and other groups that claimed trapping predators, such as foxes, is in some instances necessary for the recovery of […]
Posted inNovember 23, 1998: A patchwork peace unravels
Election day highlights from around the region
WYOMING Republicans continue their lock on Wyoming: They maintained two-thirds majorities in the state Legislature while sweeping state offices, and Barbara Cubin easily held onto her at-large seat in the U.S. House. Leading this year’s windmill-tilting for the Democrats was bar owner, law student and state Sen. John Vinich of Hudson, who took on incumbent […]
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
The 105th Congress didn’t come completely clean
At the last minute, out of the quagmire of the 105th Congress came word that the federal government is plunking down a $40 million down payment on the sprawling Baca Ranch in New Mexico (HCN, 8/3/98). In a Congress with few environmental victories, environmentalists were happy to put this one in the win column: “A […]
Posted inNovember 9, 1998: Grizzly war
Wise words from a veteran activist
National Audubon Society activist and HCN subscriber Hazel Wolf stole the show at the Great Old Broads for Wilderness conference in Escalante, Utah, last month. Just a few months past her 100th birthday, Wolf traveled from Seattle to give a campfire talk about the great women in her life. “When I was 5, I asked […]
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 inOctober 26, 1998: The Oregon way
On The Trail
Washington state voters are sure to elect a woman to the U.S. Senate Nov. 3. The question is, which woman – Democratic incumbent Patty Murray or Republican Linda Smith. Only nine seats in the U.S. Senate are now held by women. Smith jumped into the Senate race after serving two terms in the U.S. House […]
Posted inOctober 26, 1998: The Oregon way
The Oregon way
Governor John Kitzhaber casts for consensus in the Northwest’s troubled waters