Stars n Moons 05/16/07
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
By PJH Staff
More taste, less filling
For shame, Wyoming DMV. How dare you mess with an icon, with tradition?
Beginning in 2009, motorists will be given the opportunity to switch
over to the new license plate. I pray no one does. The new tags are
defective.
The updated plates will employ the same drab powder blue/white color
scheme but gone will be the Devil’s Tower backdrop, which bowed in
1999. It will be replaced by the Tetons. That’s the good news. Then the
DMV starts screwing up.
The vertically-stacked county numbers – which, for those who still
wonder, are based on assessed valuations as of 1928 – will now be
horizontally placed and as big as the individual plate numbers. That’s
bad news for Teton County drivers who eternally suffer the
“hoity-toity” stigma when traveling the Cowboy State. (Just try driving
three miles over the posted speed limit in downtown Dubois with “22”
tags and see how long it takes the cash register to ring in the
Sheriff’s patrol truck.)
But the real issue, the dirty deed, is the incredible shrinking bucking
horse. Officials have scaled down the state’s instantly recognizable
iconic emblem. Not since 1936 has the signature artwork ever been
meddled with. The new look shrinks this classic “road-eo” graphic to
approximately half its current size. Unacceptable, fellow
Wyomingites.
— Jake Nichols
Some politicians need a time out
You wouldn’t want a chemist negotiating with Osama Bin Laden or waging
the War on Terror, would you? So why the hell would you want
politicians determining the fate of wildlife and the environment?
The recent proposal to remove gray wolves in the Yellowstone area from
the Endangered Species List has ecologists, wildlife biologists and
researchers – i.e., those that know their asses from their heads when
it comes to wolves and the health of their population –up in arms.
Legislatures in Idaho, Wyoming and Montana propose to reduce the
minimum populations drastically, a move that over 230 scientists
worldwide denounced in a letter to federal wildlife officials.
Politicians making decisions that go beyond their field of expertise
seems to be a reoccurring theme these days. Rick Piltz, the man that
blew the whistle on government censorship of a scientific climate
change research project, presents another example of political and
economic interests overruling scientific evidence and the right of the
people of the United States to know that we are killing ourselves by
having oil for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
What’s next? Politicians making decisions for trained armed generals on
the ground in Iraq from their plush Capitol Hill offices? Oh wait,
that’s been happening from the get go.
—Lucille Rice
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