NEW WEST FEATURE

Born Abroad, Raised Here, Some Immigrant Students Pin Futures on Dream Act

It was the end of the school day, and Alex Alvarado was hunching over his Spanish test. Although he grew up speaking Spanish at home, he never learned formal grammar. Besides, he needs language classes for college, and college is definitely in his plans. Exactly how he’ll get there, though, and what he’ll do afterward, is in question.

Like many at Roaring Fork High School in Carbondale, Colo., Alvarado has spent nearly all his life in this country, but he wasn’t born here. Now a 17-year-old senior, Alvarado faces an uncertain future. He’s undocumented in the only country he knows and a stranger in the country of his birth. “I can’t see myself in Mexico at all,” he said. “I’m from there. I wouldn’t be ashamed of going there. But it’s not my home. I don’t know anybody there. I might have family there, but I don’t know them.”

Alvarado has become an activist for the Dream Act, a measure designed to give people like him a path to citizenship. Outgoing House speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid plan to bring the legislation to a vote this year in Congress’ lame duck session. President Barack Obama supports it. But it’s failed before and Republicans are sharpening their opposition.

NEW WEST FEATURE

Could a Name Change Put A Colorado Landmark on the National Radar?

It’s easy to miss Colorado National Monument when you’re driving Interstate 70 from Denver to the canyon country of southern Utah. Signs on the freeway point the way to the monument, but the name hardly conjures images of what’s found there.

“Visitors and locals think they’re going to a stone monument,” or a historic site — hardly a reason to inspire a detour off the freeway, monument Superintendent Joan Anzelmo says.

The geological and historical wonders there — unique hanging canyons, the 23-mile Rim Rock Drive built by the Civilian Conservation Corps, newly-discovered paleontological sites and precipitous red rock cliffs and canyons — are reasons Anzelmo, U.S. Sen. Mark Udall, D-Colo., and the local visitor’s bureau want Congress to re-designate it “Colorado Canyons National Park.”

STOP NEGOTIATING?

Now Anti-Wolf Groups Are Blowing It

No reasonable deed goes unpunished, eh?

That must be how wildlife managers or advocates who actually want to resolve the wolf-delisting impasse must feel.

On September 23, I posted a commentary with the title, Pro-Wolf Groups Blew It where I criticized the left-leaning plaintiffs in the various lawsuits for pushing too hard, too long, and turning fence setters and most western politicians into the anti-wolf camp and possibly endangering the integrity of the Endangered Species Act.

Now, the pendulum has swung to the far right.

NEW WEST FEATURE

One Victory, One Loss and a Fight From the Shadows

It’s been an up-and-down week for Western Tradition Partnership. One day, the right-wing political group won a major judgment that found Montana’s century-old campaign finance laws unconstitutional. Another day, the group, famous for lobbing 11th-hour attacks against political foes, was found in violation of state campaign laws.

Its behavior “raises the specter of corruption of the electoral process,” announced Dennis Unsworth, Montana’s commissioner of political practices, and will likely result in a fine.

Just two years old, the pro-industry group has won most battles and lost a few, but it keeps on fighting, mostly from the shadows, in a war against liberal and moderate political candidates using anonymous donors and superheated campaign rhetoric as its weapons.

New West Feature

In Colorado Race, It’s Big Money, Big Stakes and Small-Town Voters

Cowboy hats are a common sight in Rifle, Colorado. Gas industry caps may be even more common. It’s a rugged Western town with a heritage of ranching and a recent boom – and bust – of natural gas drilling, a place where politics tend rightward, but voters boast a common-sense approach.

Voters here, and across Western Colorado, will play a key role in deciding the balance of Congress. Among 112 House seats in play across the country, Colorado’s third Congressional district is one of just 37 considered a tossup. Only three others – Arizona’s first, New Mexico’s second and Nevada’s third districts – are in the West.

In past years, the incumbent here, Rep. John Salazar, was a shoe-in. A potato seed farmer from the tiny town of Manassa in the impoverished San Luis Valley, Salazar, a moderate Democrat, reflected the rural nature of this sprawling district. But it’s a different political climate this time around, and a different economic climate. That’s obvious here, where oil and gas jobs and construction work have disappeared and Salazar is struggling to hold onto his seat.

COULD IT ALL HAVE BEEN OVER ON SEPTEMBER 30?

Leading Sportsman Blasts Montana Senators for Derailing Wolf Delisting

The founder of Sportsmen for Fish and Wildlife (SFW), a multi-state conservation group that has been aggressively pushing for a congressional resolution to the wolf delisting controversy, claims Montana Senators Max Baucus and Jon Tester, both Democrats, are not his allies.

Instead, he insists, both the Montana Senators worked behind the scenes to actually derail delisting efforts at the same time they were jointly introducing a bill to delist the wolf.

No, I’m not making it up.

Training for Afghanistan

Air Force Expansion Could Mean Not-So-Friendly Skies Over the West

Attention citizens of Colorado, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming: Get ready for new neighbors in your skies as the U.S. Air Force plans to train pilots over far-reaching swaths of the West.

The Air Force’s existing training areas, developed during the Cold War, are too small and flat to prepare pilots for the war in Afghanistan where planes and weapons now have longer ranges and reach higher altitudes than decades ago.  To bring training up to speed with modern aircraft and warfare technology, two Western Air Force bases—Ellsworth in South Dakota and Cannon in New Mexico—are seeking public input on expansions of their training areas.

According to its draft environmental impact statement, Ellsworth Air Force Base plans to more than quadruple the size of its Powder River Training Complex from about 9,500 square miles situated roughly between Miles City, Mont., and Rapid City, S.D., to about 40,000 square miles spanning a swath of North and South Dakota, Montana, and Wyoming. Nearly 3,000 “sorties” or training flights of B-1 and B-52 bombers would be allowed (according to the DEIS at page 2-58), plus additional flights of other aircraft, though wing commander Colonel Jeffrey Taliaferro expects only about 900 flights to go out from Ellsworth annually.  B-1s may fly as low as 500 feet above ground level, but B-52s fly higher.

The planes would drop chaff—very fine strands of silica coated with aluminum that create a cloud-like decoy to hide planes from radar —and lit flares that would burn out before they reach the ground. In addition, though not currently planned, the Air Force would reserve the option for up to 20 aircraft to fly together in special exercises on up to 10 days per year, some reaching supersonic flight, which causes a loud sonic boom, at heights of 10,000 or more feet.

STRANGE BEDFELLOWS

Across Political Spectrum, Opposition Builds to Colorado Anti-Tax Issues

Never mind the governor’s race or who’s running for the legislature. The part of the ballot that could have the biggest impact on Colorado’s future may be three initiatives meant to slash taxes and government spending.

The measures were appealing enough to win over most voters in early polls, but they have since proven so controversial that politicians across the political spectrum, from Democrats to mainstream Republicans to the Tea Party right, are lining up to oppose them.

“I’ve never been as frightened with any measure on the ballot as I have been with these three,” said Tom Clark, executive vice president of the Metro Denver Economic Development Corp. “This is not a social experiment that we’re dealing with. This is a prescription for economic depression for Colorado.”

AMAZING RACE

Curry’s Write-In Campaign Challenges the Odds

What Colorado state Rep. Kathleen Curry is doing has never been done before. Not successfully, anyway.

No write-in candidate has ever successfully won a race in Colorado. And only one unaffiliated voter is known to have won a seat in the state legislature – back in 1891.

“I wouldn’t be running if I thought I had a zero-percent chance,” Curry said. “I think I have a good percent chance.”