Wampum

Which is only fair since we don't read Working Assets. However, Avedon Carol does, so she caught Sirota's "go west" piece -- motivated by the potential for conflict between widely held surface (land) property claims and narrowly held sub-surface (mineral) claims, where the deer and the antelope role play as Little-R Republicans, etc.

We didn't see it that way. We saw water as the necessity plains and basin voters want, which the RNC hasn't been willing to give them in the six years it controlled all three branches of government, offering in lieu of water ... "life". See Water works and Forget Whitewater...what about "No Water"?.

Siirota wants to get the recreational fishing vote. I think we should be going after the water, not the fish. No farm, no ranch, between the Mississippi and the Cascades and Sierras, will be saved by burning western coal. They can stomach our godless communism, or sell off everything down to the homestead trees and go where ever the Hoover/Bush economy takes the dried out. The fish will have to walk too.

Update by MBW: I had Eric unpublish this until I could add an addendum. I think David "gets it" when it comes to surface vs. mineral rights. This is a huge issue for many Mountain State typically red voters. However, where he drops the ball is the fact that for many of these states, the revenue from mineral, gas and oil extraction is the ONLY real source of revenue these states have - Wyoming, South Dakota, Nevada - there is no property tax, and the other mountain states have minimal rates. If they were to shift the tax burden off the extraction industry, regular people, i.e., property owners, would have to pick up the burden. THIS is what stops many of the regular joes from supporting any Democratic move away from taxing the extraction industry, even if it means rocking horses in their backyard.

I like David Sirota, and I'm glad there is someone else out there who sees the potential in the Mountain State traditionally "red" vote. But I think, between the aforementioned tax shift and his emphasis on "recreational" sportsmen turning these states blue, he's off the mark.