Andrus Center for Public Policy Blog

The Shield of Moral Rectitude Earlier this month one of the true senatorial “statesman” from the Pacific Northwest states, former five-term senator and two-term governor from Oregon, 89-year-old Mark O.  Hatfield, was laid to rest.  By definition, a “statesman” is one who rises above petty partisan interests, is an independent thinker who puts the best …

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Who Survives? USFS or NPS I’d like to combine two of the recent posts in this space by Chris Carlson and offer up a provocative wager to our readers. To set the stage: Chris opined, and I agree, that we’d likely see a push to overturn the Winters Doctrine pertaining to Native American water rights …

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Mark Trahant on the lousy economy… Writing recently at the NewWest website, author and Fort Hall, Idaho resident Mark Trahant says the United States is halfway into a “lost decade” of economic growth. Trahant says: “The late, great author Wallace Stegner wrote about the idea of a West populated by federal employees in Salt Lake …

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It’s All About Water, Stupid! With apologies to James Carville, the political consultant who came up with Bill Clinton’s campaign mantra – “it’s the economy, stupid,” the future in the American west is all about water, its allocation, its cost and its rapid depletion. Scientists, naturalists, writers, farmers and ranchers, politicians are all too aware …

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You Can’t Make ‘Em Like That Anymore When the famous photographer Margaret Bourke-White made her iconic 1936 Life magazine cover shot of the still under construction spillway at Fort Peck Dam – the very first cover of the magazine – the country had no environmental impact statements. A cost-benefit analysis? Huh, what’s that? There was …

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