An Idea Whose Time Has Come

July 23, 2019

Gustave Aimard famously wrote that “There is something more powerful than the brute force of bayonets: it is the idea whose time has come.” It could well be said of this week’s announcement that the Interior Department will, at long last, move the headquarters of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to Grand Junction. The […]

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Western Colorado’s Dymano

July 12, 2019

Occasionally you hear someone referred to as “a force to be reckoned with.” The Western Slope had a leader whose influence and personality were so powerful that, at Club 20, we only half-jokingly changed the expression to “a force to be Rectored with.” Peggy Rector’s passing this week in Rangely at the age of 80 […]

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Conservation v. the IRS

July 5, 2019

Governments own almost a fourth of the land in the United States, mostly federal, mostly in the West. We often wonder how much is enough, and worry about the constant growth in government ownership. Hundreds of millions are spent every year buying more. The most valuable private land is often subject to potential suburban development, […]

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Just a Little Bit More

June 27, 2019

The National Wildlife Refuge System began modestly in 1903, but today it is the largest wildlife conservation program in the world. It includes 562 refuges, totaling over 150 million acres, in all 50 states and numerous islands from the Caribbean to the South Pacific. That system just grew a bit more, thanks to a wealthy […]

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Consumer Products From Thin Air

June 21, 2019

I often write about where things come from, especially products we use in our daily lives, and what they are made of. No consumer products are made out of thin air. They all require manufacturing from raw materials that are either found, mined, or grown. In all cases, the raw elements are eventually returned back […]

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What If We Didn’t Need China?

June 14, 2019

The Administration’s crackdown on imports from China, intended to address a $420-billion trade deficit, may produce some unintended consequences. It was just revealed, for example, that the higher tariffs on Chinese goods might end the availability of free Bibles (nearly 100 percent of which are now printed in China) for prisons, schools, military bases, hospitals, […]

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Better Wait for a Real Crisis

June 7, 2019

Rob Reiner’s first comedy classic as a director, 1984’s “The Sure Thing,” is a saga of everything that can possibly go wrong for two students falling in love on a cross-country road trip. The ride they arranged from a bulletin board abandons them in the middle of nowhere, and after several failed hitch-hiking attempts, they […]

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How Much Are We Paying?

May 31, 2019

There is an old Reader’s Digest anecdote about a wealthy but absent-minded tycoon asking his top manager, “How long have you worked here?” To which the man says 30 years. He then asks, “How much am I paying you?” The manager tells him, and he finally says “And what is your name?” It seems a […]

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Western Slope Sacrifice Zone

May 24, 2019

During the 1970s oil shale boom, the Carter Administration considered Western Colorado a “national sacrifice zone.” Western Slope residents often consider themselves victims of policies that would sacrifice our communities and economies on the altar of urban politics. During the decade I was president of Club 20, Denver friends occasionally accused us of acting like […]

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Were They Even in the Same Meeting?

May 16, 2019

George Bernard Shaw once quipped, “The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.” That could apply to the famous 2009 meeting between House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Pope Benedict XVI, after which she reported that they discussed “poverty, hunger, and global warming.” The Pope, however, reported that he had […]

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