Tuesday, December 31, 2013

Bag full of resolutions for the New Year


    In case some folks have a hard time coming up with New Year’s resolutions, here are a few ideas:
    Sponsors of the Predator Derby hunting contest in Salmon: To quit giving the state and hunters a bad name by organizing and offering cash prizes in preda-tor-killing contests.
    Idaho congressional delegation: To let the Af-fordable Care Act work, then fix or overturn it if it doesn’t.
    Idaho Gov. Butch Otter: To disband a committee set up to examine if federal land should be turned over to the state because the costs, as calculated by an economist outside state government, may precipitate seas of red ink.
    Residents and visitors who love Sun Valley: To shop locally, especially in this thin snow year.
    Idaho Transportation Department: To refuse to accept “surprises” like the chaos of the construction project on state Highway 75 south of Ketchum.
    Local voters: To pat ourselves on the back periodi-cally for supporting public initiatives like the sales tax increase for air that make the local economy healthier.
    Idaho Legislature: To come to grips with the fact that federal courts have held bans on same-sex mar-riage to be unconstitutional.
    New Sun Valley City Council: To make the city’s new motto “Quietly effective” instead of “Noisily Dys-functional.”
    All American citizens: To base politics on facts, not solely on belief.
    U.S. Congress: To do its homework and quit forcing citizens to live from fiscal crisis to fiscal crisis.
    Blaine County School District: To level with the public and explain why it parted company with Super-intendent Lonnie Barber just as the school year began and paid him $600,000 in severance.
    Brick-and-mortar retailers: To refuse to stop lobbying Congress and state legislatures until they approve the same sales tax on Internet sales that their businesses collect on store sales.
    City of Hailey: To soften its stance on developing nothing outside Friedman Memorial Airport’s fence and to permit buying property for a larger safety zone.
    Obama administration: To get Hailey’s Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl out of the hands of the Taliban after four years and bring him home.
    Wood River Valley residents: To never forget the firefighters who saved the Wood River Valley—twice, and to continue to donate generously to local fire de-partment funds and the Wildland Firefighter Foundation that help injured firefighters and their families.
    City of Sun Valley: To restore marketing funds to the levels promised when the city destroyed a previous chamber of commerce and formed the Sun Valley Mar-keting Alliance.
    Local elected officials: To review all public salaries and align them with local compensation levels, not those in other more prosperous states or larger coun-ties.
    Mother Nature: To stop torturing the West with fires, drought and floods and restore normal climate cycles.
    Humans: To face the fact that our activities are negatively affecting Earth’s climate and begin correc-tions before the impacts become huge and unmanage-able.
    Friedman Memorial Airport board members: To accept congratulations for helping to adapt the airport in order to bring regional jet service to the area.
    Mountain bikers: To stay off muddy winter trails to prevent damage.
    Baldy and Dollar mountains’ snowmaking crews: To take a bow for the good skiing they are creating every day in spite of Mother Nature’s cruel with-holding.
    Wolf haters: To put down their copies of “Little Red Riding Hood” and read scientific predator studies instead.
    Wolf lovers: To realize no self-respecting wolf would be named “Fluffy.”
    Internet comment-board trolls: To quit the name calling, ad hominem attacks (look them up) and pro-fanity and to learn the value of intelligent debate.
    Night cyclists and night walkers: To light up with headlights and LED dog collars and to ride and walk in the proper lanes to prevent collisions with vehicles.
    Supporters of a national monument to protect the White Cloud and Boulder Mountains: To push the Central Idaho Economic Development and Recrea-tion Act with President Obama as an outline so that it’s a known quantity instead of an amorphous mass that inspires opposition because of fear of the unknown.
    President Obama: To consider protecting the Boulder and White Cloud Mountains by creating a national monument.
    Blaine County and Wood River Valley cities: To enforce laws and ordinances that ban private incursions on public property in order to preserve public access.
    50 states: To help stop attacks by mentally ill kill-ers and quit using prisons as warehouses for the men-tally ill by requiring insurance companies to put men-tal-health treatment on the same footing as cancer treatment and by setting up specialized treatment fa-cilities.




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