At the risk of starting another unbirdy thread, I want to pick up one of
David Wright's comments regarding cats: "On a small scale this mirrors
the curious inconsistency of the majority of Americans who claim to see
themselves as 'environmentalists,' but nevertheless choose to vote for
anti-environmental candidates." I pick on this comment because the
issue must be close to the hearts of all Tweeters, who are obviously
people of good will who want to preserve our world. The sad story is
that the majority of Americans did _not_ vote for
anti-environmentalists. The majority of voters didn't vote. Our current
mess of politicians was elected by something like 21% of the electorate,
including a lot of hard-core right-wingers, a newly mobilized group of
religious fundamentalists, and a lot of people having a fit over the
previous crop of politicians without any real knowledge of what the
previous crop had actually done. The question, friends, is: How do we
again get the vast majority of Americans back to learning about the
issues and voting for representatives who will truly represent what the
majority wants? I keep hearing rumblings about Green Parties in some
states. Is there a Washington State Green Party? What is it doing? Are
any Tweeters involved in it?

Yesterday, our dear Legislature voted to make us victims of a gigantic
extortion game by developers and land-speculators. One helluva lot of
wetlands are going to be filled, a lot of forests destroyed, before we
can correct the damage. Who will tell the people? How will we get them
to care?

Burt Guttman guttmanb at elwha.evergreen.edu
The Evergreen State College Voice: 360-866-6000, x. 6755
Olympia, WA 98505 FAX: 360-866-6794