Colorado will be the ultimate parody of the Los Angeles basin. Minus of course the critical environmental factor will most likely be water rather than bad, cough, air trapped into a basin. Boulder can play Beverly Hills 90210. Fort Collins can be the new blended good-side of Hollywood and Granada Hills. Loveland as Simi Valley with Greeley as Newhall and Neanderthal land. I'm just not quite sure where to stereotype Denver in yet. I haven't spent enough time in town I guess.
What puzzles me however is why the voters and citizens of Colorado are sitting back and watching it sprawl. I've picked up on the whole "We are the Libertarians" thing. I've recognized the whole neanderthallic "Tea Party" concepts. But for years I have heard my ninety-five year-ol ranching uncle talking about ways to tie all his properties up in a land trust so "the blankity-blank develops won't get their hands on it once I die." This from the most die hard conservative bastion of fiscal, social, and emotional constraint I've ever heard tell of. My uncle tells stories of watching men hang in "hangtown" California. Strung up for their color, for looking wrong at the right citizen, or because someone just plain didn't like them. "They let 'em swing from the porch of the hardware store."
Okay so environmentalist attitudes and progressive politics do not necessarily have to go hand in hand. But yet the area ranchers and farmers seem quite subdued in Northern Colorado. Where I come from the farmers, the ranchers, and the citizens would be armed with hayforks and pitchforks and demanding their own bizarro show called the "Town Hall".
My tour guides suggest this complacency is due to the fact the farmers and ranchers are struggling so hard that they may yet need the developers and their money if the big farm subsidies sink the small Mom and Pop ship any further. In my view a few more monopolistic-megalithlic-snail-snotter corporations controlling the markets--like our not so beloved JBS Swift and the bell will be tolling for those small Mom and Pops.
Another suggestion that has come my way is that "..so what... that's what's going to happen and we'll just have to live with it...".
I never buy into the idea that development can't be organized and planned. If you are working class or fixed residents of the area it is a prudent thing to keep a watchful eye out for what the future is developing for your quality of life. I do however buy into the notion it takes a lot of political clout, political power, economic power, or in lieu of these things, voter outrage and collective interest to create change.
Today, which brings me a few belated paragraphs later to my point, I have picked up another potential clue about the historic tendencies in Colorado that clear some of the fuzz off my puzzle. President Bush's Interior Cabinet Secretary is being investigated by Congress for potentially being in bed, and obviously enjoying it, with big corporate energy interests. The investigators of the very same Department of the Interior which she led turned her over to the Justice Department. That is NOT a good sign. Same said Secretary, Ms. Norton, previously served as Colorado's Attorney General.
I am just shocked. Aren't you? Who'd guess? The idea that such a conservative area would have the same elemental types of corrupt influences in government as the liberal state I just left behind. The players are different. The issues are different. But the motives stay the same.
Maybe we are all much more culpable, together, for the nation's spiral into gross special-interests than we would like to acknowledge. At least on the surface.
Here's a clip from the main article from the Los Angeles Times.
Interior Department investigators referred the case to the Justice Department after concluding that there was sufficient evidence of potential illegal conduct, according to federal law enforcement and Interior officials. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive and confidential nature of the case.
Those officials said the referral was based on an already comprehensive Interior Department investigation that included interviews with numerous Interior employees. The Justice Department has assigned prosecutors from its public integrity section and the U.S. attorney's office in Washington to the case.
Norton, 55, was President Bush's first Interior secretary. She had worked as an Interior Department attorney before being elected Colorado's attorney general. Later, as a private lawyer, she represented mining, timber and oil companies.
As Interior secretary, she embraced an industry-friendly approach to environmental regulation that she called "cooperative conservation" and pushed the department to open more public land for energy production.
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