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Several years have passed since I changed my political party registration, but you know how most mailing lists work -- once you're on one, nothing short of dynamite removes your name.
(With one curious exception, though. We once ordered a
small rug from a close-out company like Damark or
Fingerhut. I figured that we would then receive catalogs
and fliers by the bale. But we never got anything after the
rug. This might catch on: Buy something from us, and
we'll leave you alone thereafter.
)
Anyway, upon my return to town after a weekend jaunt to Durango, I found a personalized letter from Chain Gang Gale Norton, our Republican state attorney general who wants to be a U.S. Senator next year.
She wanted money, of course. The usual GOP tactic is to frighten you with some awful fate like the recognition of Red China or an increase in the minimum wage, which can be prevented only if you open your checkbook.
What horror lurks if I don't open my wallet? Despite
his Administration's `War on the West,' Bill Clinton says
he'll target Colorado as critical to his re-election, and
so the Democrat Party will focus on this open Senate seat.
This is a must-win race for Republicans.
Sure. Colorado has eight electoral votes out of 538. We aren't critical to any national campaign. With many Democratic senators retiring, the U.S. Senate will remain solidly Republican, no matter what happens here; we don't matter much in that regard, either.
And what is this War on the West
? I recall the
regime of Ronald Reagan, that great friend of the West.
Farms were foreclosed, families lost ranches, mines and
mills closed. Rural counties lost population. The trend
continued into the Bush years. With friends like that, who
needs enemies?
If a War on the West
is underway, we should be
suffering out here in the boondocks. In a sense, we do
suffer, since we have problems we never had with Republican
presidents: parking woes, telephone line deficiency, road
congestion, housing shortage, to name a few.
The contrast between the Reagan-Bush years and the Clinton years was quite visible last weekend when I drive through Pagosa Springs. My last visit was in 1987, when it wasn't much more than a wide place in the road.
Now Pagosa stretches for miles of hideous suburban strip: franchise motels, fast-food joints, golf-course real-estate developments. It looks worse than Summit County or Woodland Park, and I thought that was impossible.
If there is a War on the West
underway, a vicious
assault on our traditional lifestyles, the campaign isn't
being conducted by an administration which would like some
modest reforms in grazing fees, timber sales and mineral
royalties. This war against us is instead conducted by
real-estate developers, subdividers, promoters, hustlers,
greedheads in general -- that is, the likely contributors
to Chain Gang Gale's campaign.
As she points out in her letter, I've served the
people, taking on the Federal government on key issues,
and this is our best chance in decades to put America on
the course to a smaller, less intrusive, and more effective
Federal government.
When was the last time our attorney general took on various intrusive federal agencies like the DEA, IRS, ATF and FBI? The biggest growth in government of late comes in prison construction, something she has never opposed.
She wants Colorado convicts on chain gangs, something
I've never seen, or even heard of, in my 44 years in this
state, although she says that her views have strong
roots in Colorado where I grew up, not inside the
Beltway.
To put it another way, if Chain Gang Gale were truly
concerned about limiting the size and scope of government,
she'd be trying to end to the War on Drugs,
rather
than contriving a War on the West
that exists only
in fevered GOP imaginations.
Oh well. I suspect that, if she takes her current job seriously, she's going to be too busy to run for the U.S. Senate anyway.
Aside from her letter, my mail also held an assortment of ballots, including one addressed to someone who used to have a post-office box that we've rented for the past two years -- another example, I guess, of mailing-list persistence.
The possibilities for fraud and ballot-stuffing seem endless. You could fill out all the ballots delivered to you, even if your name isn't on them. You could walk down the street right after the letter carrier and collect more ballots. With access to some printing machinery, you could forge ballots -- costly, perhaps, but far cheaper than campaigning if you seriously want something from the voters.
Throw in the expanded registration lists from
motor-voter registration,
add in the chances some
computer hacking at tally time, and no one will ever
believe that Colorado could hold an honest election with
the new system.
Charges and counter-charges will fly after this off-year election, the state attorney general will have to investigate, and with any luck, she'll be too busy to annoy me with any more propaganda.
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