Need More Water, Not More Meetings

May 9, 2016

Several recent events have drawn national attention to something Westerners deal with all the time – water. We have always known that problems of both water supply and water quality can affect millions of lives and cost billions of dollars. Water is usually not the hottest topic in politics, but the record-breaking drought in California, […]

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Off With His Head!

March 28, 2016

When Thomas Jefferson was sworn in as the nation’s third President in 1801, much of the civilized world was shocked. The aristocracy of Europe, still mocking the quaint American concept that common people could govern themselves, never thought they would see it. It was said that never before in world history had a government left […]

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Oh the Buzzin’ of the Bees

March 28, 2016

Bees and honey have been important to my family for generations, though I’m not sure which is more important to us. My granddad was an apiarist (beekeeper), with hives in the high mountain clover of Garfield, Eagle and Routt Counties, and he made a living selling honey during the Depression and World War II. My […]

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I’d Like to (Be Paid to) Study That!

March 11, 2016

Someone once told me that if a golfer tries imagines the hole is larger, he will putt better. I’m not sure if that’s true, but the National Science Foundation gave researchers at Purdue University $350,000 to find out. The study was inconclusive, which means two things: we still can’t putt very well, and Purdue needs […]

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Advice Before Consent

March 11, 2016

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s death sparks another political battle over the high court, whose balance of power hangs on one vote. Several vitally important rulings have recently been decided by a 5-4 majority, so battle lines are already drawn. President Obama sees a chance to turn the court into a liberal majority, and Republican […]

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Conservation’s Greatest Hits

March 11, 2016

Earlier this week we celebrated President’s Day. I don’t know how many Americans took time out of their day off to ponder the achievements of Washington, Lincoln, Harrison, or Polk. But the U.S. Department of the Interior did. Interior put up a website on the legacies of “Eight presidents who shaped America’s public lands,” which […]

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Your Utility Bill is Safe, For the Moment

March 11, 2016

The U.S. Supreme Court last month issued an injunction blocking the EPA from implementing its Clean Power Plan, which would end America’s use of coal, its cheapest and most abundant source of electricity. I’ve written about it twice, because Western Colorado’s economy is so dependent on coal. It employs over 2,000 people and generates $58 […]

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Same As It Ever Was

March 11, 2016

Like many westerners who deal with water issues, I have often found myself explaining our complex system of water laws, which seem bizarre in parts of the country where it rains all the time. People in such places (like Washington, D.C.) have trouble understanding why the right to use water is considered property, why someone […]

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You Mean It’s Really About Money?

February 22, 2016

Almost all the climate economists in the world now agree. Tax carbon dioxide and do it now. Since President Obama failed to secure the binding international agreements he so wanted from the International Climate Conference in Paris last month, the U.N. and its allies have another strategy. Leaders who use global warming as a tool […]

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File the Pink Copy by Date

February 22, 2016

When I first started work on Capitol Hill in the 1970s, we used three colors of carbon paper to file and cross-reference every outgoing snail-mail letter. We filed the pink copies by date, yellow by issue, and green by constituent name. It was considered very efficient in days when Senators routinely received 1000 letters a […]

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