Planks for successful Democratic platform in Idaho are abundant

"She had the trait of all conversationalists," writes Elizabeth Hardwick, "an immense availability."

Hardwick is describing Margaret Fuller, in the mid-1800s the first American woman to become a major influence on how Americans think and write. In learning about her, it was that "immense availability" that caught my eye.

It perfectly describes the lumber Idaho Democrats can assemble into an eventually popular platform on top of which a majority can be won, in contrast to the moment.

On Nov. 3, so few Democrats survived for the next Idaho Legislature that the Senate minority will have to assign an arm to this committee and a leg to that one -- only four "donkeys" remain.

Issues are "immensely available" to the losers, because the Republican hierarchy comprises not merely a juggernaut but a mindless, intolerant and unreceptive one. The money that finances it requires simply that the current desires of J.R. Simplot Co., Boise-Cascade, Potlatch, the utilities, the banks and several manufacturers be satisfied. It isn't a people's agenda.

It can be understood best by closely observing the deeds and utterances of the senior water boy, Sen. Larry Craig: Rail at the federal landlord, but work for the private ones (including those who specialize in ripping off Uncle Sam).

Meanwhile, as the one-party Legislature counts beans and transforms itself into an amateur investments-management board, Idaho has gone for more than a full generation without any party-generated reform in the way we govern ourselves and manage money.

In 1998, Boise is the only municipality in Idaho allowed to collect impact fees from new construction so population growth won't drive property taxes on existing real estate sky-high. To cite two extremes, in resurgent California, that fee can be as much as $30,000 on a single new house east of San Francisco Bay, and in ranch-oriented Montana, new impact-fee powers were created by voters in the Nov. 3 primary. Impact fees throughout the West are a vital tool for keeping property taxes stable, especially in states where Uncle Sam owns so much land and doesn't pay directly. But not in Idaho.

In two states I know of, New York and Texas, there are counties that are more than 150 years old but so small that they have long since contracted out to neighbors containing the accountants, appraisers and lawyers providing public services at a fraction of what the free-standing costs would be.

But the likes of Idaho's Clark, Camas, Boise and Lewis counties have no such option.

Ironically the Democrats mainly built the four dams on the lower Snake River that today threaten the extinction of the invaluable Northwest salmon run, but it is the Republicans who do the bidding of the aluminum companies. They treat the dams' piddling power production and trickle of barge traffic as if they were vital components of our economy instead of the stopper in the bottle that they really are.

When Idaho's sales tax was adopted in 1965, two-thirds of the dollars spent at retail went for goods. Today, as high as 70 percent of some people's spending is for services. The tax laws haven't been changed to deal with that reality. And there's been a slow accretion of exemption. Pitifully underfinanced Democratic governor candidate Bob Huntley in 1998 bravely put that obsolescence at issue. (If he'd had enough money to be heard, people would have listened.)

Significant only because it represents some unexamined areas, Idaho still requires you to go to a state-owned store to buy a jug of liquor. This socialism survives out of cupidity, not because it makes sense, any more than it makes sense to maintain coroners and prosecutors, no matter how tiny the courthouse, instead of using judicial districts as the foundations for such services.

I am out of space. But not out of planks. What about nails, and carpenters? They are "immensely available." Stay tuned.

Perry Swisher of Boise is a former newspaper editor, state legislator and public utilities commissioner.