GOOFS

The Randy Weaver incident happened under George Bush Sr., not Bill Clinton, as hawk-eyed readers have pointed out to me. The correct expression is not “I could care less” but “I couldn’t care less.” That covers the f-ups so far, I think. And thanks to everyone who’s shown support for the great state of Montana. Appreciate it. To those who still can’t stand the place and can’t forgive the fact that the Constitution has given us as many senators as California or New York have, write your congressman, not me. And as for Montana being the recipient of more federal dollars per person than other places, I offer this: since the federal government owns a good part of the state in the form of national forests and parks and since the national highway system needs its roads from Seattle to Minneapolis to run continously, without gigantic gaps, we need a few more dollars, perhaps, than our population warrants. The indian reservations take money, too. Then there are the wheat farmers and cattle ranchers, whose operations are subsidized on the basis of their size, not on on the basis of the number of people who work on them. The ag subsidies are controversial and questionable, of course, but the overall fact that Montana sucks up funds out of proportion to the number of folks here has to do with its size, the needs of our federal landlords, the Forest Service and Park Service, and so on.

– posted by Walter