Laura G — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 05:24:02 GMT

Agree with the previous commenter’s views about toxic (mostly Republican) political, legal, and moral corruption.
This shows up in the West as impacts to natural resources: fish species, wildlife herds, forests, and natural wilderness areas. Yet those same resources are the most viable future economic sector, which needs ‘outdoor tourism’—hunting, fishing, skiing, boating, hiking, camping, river kayaking, and other outdoor activities. Note that several of the activities just mentioned rely on good water supplies, as does Ag throughout the West.

In an era that requires transitioning to a ‘tourist-based economy, the West needs strong environmental regs and competent agencies to administer them. Instead, BushCheney and their criminal pals at Abramoff LLC handed public assets off to their corporate cronies, making the transition to the tourist-based economy more difficult by the day. (Except, of course, for the Uber Rich—who live along the Bitteroot Valley, and in pockets around Kalispell, Whitefish, and Coeur D’Alene, where they’ve all managed to buy up their own, personal tracts of wilderness. The rest of us have to wait in line at overcrowded national parks.)

In addition to the need for action on better environmental regs, there is an urgent need for federal leadership to address sprawl—and significantly, the Western Gov (Richardson) was the ONLY candidate to speak with any credibility about this issue. Sprawl is a ‘hot button’ term for a cluster of related issues: transportation, water, the economy, farming and ranching resources, recreational lands, and public safety.

Sprawl is a blight throughout the West—whether Kalispell, Boise, Spokane, Coeur D’Alene, Salt Lake City, or Denver, sprawl is impacting wildlife herds, water quality, farmlands, and rural lifestyles.
Sprawl is cheap to build, and the West has been sub-division heaven for every builder and wannabe developer—partly because people are moving to smaller towns in the West for three things: ** affordable lifestyles ** smaller communities where they can get involved and have an impact ** recreational opportunities
The lack of good urban planning and land use laws, added to the recent waves of immigration, has seriously impacted many cities throughout the West.

The Dems have an opportunity to address sprawl because the Republicans have zero credibility on this issue—but sprawl is also tied to the mortgage system and the current meltdown in that industry. Some of the hideous subdivisions eating up good forage lands around Kalispell are grim testament to human stupidity, and they are symptomatic of short-term, boom-and-bust, private interests damaging the public heritage.

To underscore the absolute lack of Republican credibility on anything related to land, land use, or natural resources, the Dems would be smart to note that the Republicans did nothing to update mineral rights, mining rights, drilling rights, and timber rights that are basically legal holdovers from the 1880s(!). The Republicans did a splendid job of protecting corporate cronies; even the conservative good ol’ boys that I know hold the Republicans in utter contempt these days over what’s happened to herds, fisheries, and forests out West.

What’s changed politically in the past five or eight years is that now, even socially conservative hunters and fishermen recognize that the federal government’s policies have been too weak and too late to protect irreplaceable resources. For the feds to try and blame state and local governments is irresponsible—the Columbia River system, or any large river system requires federal oversight and protection. Here’s hoping for increased coalition-building between the ‘greens’ and the ‘hook ‘n bait’ groups; they’re finally realizing they have a ‘common enemy’—and it’s federal irresponsibility, rather than one another. That is a huge paradigm shift from when Clinton held office.

As for immigration… businesses are screwed, individuals are screwed, and everyone that I’ve heard talk about the topic is thoroughly disgusted that the US government can’t get its act together and figure out a workable solution. At this point, even if the law is bad, people need to know what it MEANS. Right now, it’s a mess of confusion, which places everyone at risk for unwittingly doing something that will haul them into court. It’s absolutely ridiculous for small business owners to worry about getting raided, when they’ve tried to follow the law—as well as they can manage to figure out what they’re supposed to do to comply with it. The immigration mess is almost a synopsis of BushCheney’s leadership failures—if they couldn’t solve this fundamental problem in 7 years, they’re utterly inept in addressing the problems that people actually need solved.

The Washington Independent - U.S. news and politics - washingtonindependent.com: Comments by Laura G