watching Idaho crumble

http://www.headwatersnews.org/pr.iddemocracy.html

Idaho's democracy, born with such promise on July 3, 1890, passed away on May 11. It was just shy of its 114th birthday and had been in failing health for most of the past 10 years.

An autopsy revealed the following:

* Idaho's once-robust electorate had atrophied. Only half of the voters bothered to show up. Last month's primary had one of the lowest turnouts in recent years.

-snip-

* Competition disappeared. The supply of sacrificial lambs and millionaires willing to spend their own money to create the illusion of campaign contests ran out.

-snip-


* Politicians started giving Idaho voters the brush-off. Last week, Crapo and his fellow Republican Sen. Larry Craig voted against Idaho's interests, their own governor and their fellow Idaho Republicans in the House to back the Department of Energy's ploy to leave some high-level radioactive wastes - and thereby save money - in South Carolina. It's a precedent Gov. Dirk Kempthorne said could hurt Idaho's ability to get its wastes cleaned up and removed from the INEEL.

-snip-


And nobody seemed all that upset about high-level appointees trading on their political connections. Kempthorne's natural resource adviser, Scott Turlington, went to work for Tamarack Resort near the Cascade Reservoir. The resort needed and got a 49-year lease of state lands during the time Turlington advised the governor.
-snip-
------------------------------

the last sentence in the article said: "May our late democracy rest in peace."

guess Idahoians are taking feel good pills and are in the land of the bushgang pharmaceutical corporations.