Shortages of steel-toed boots in Helena? Yes, it's the Bakken, yet again

The article is too long and too jam-packed with information to summarize, so just go read Jan Falstad's article for Lee Newspapers entitled "Booming Bakken: Oil flurry spreads across Eastern Montana"

The usual information about housing shortages spreading ever westward in Montana is of course present, and there is this about traffic on I-94:

Like wagon trains of yesteryear, the traffic tells the tale of the Bakken oil boom.

Semitrailers haul sand, liquid nitrogen, pipe, tanks and modular homes across Montana to the oil fields and change the prairie night sky.

“When you drive down the interstate from Billings to Miles City or Glendive, all you see is traffic at night. It’s almost like the outskirts of Minneapolis,” said Mike Coryell, head of Miles City Economic Development Council.

Sigh. Yes, this is all too true. I log about 1000 miles a month pounding across eastern Montana highways, and I can attest that the days when one could put the cruise control on 82, put on some music, go to sleep, and wake up when you arrived at your destination are sadly gone. (Note to the beloved: I'm joking!)

On a more serious note, Falstad writes that the legislature has some serious work to do in sharing the wealth with the communities that created it. It's funny how Helena is full of politicians and bureaucrats who probably largely agree with President Obama's philosophy about "spreading the wealth around," particularly when the wealth flows from east to west in our fair state. That needs to change.

Under current law, the state keeps 50 percent of mineral tax revenues, schools get 20 percent, counties 19 percent and cities and towns, which shoulder most of the impacts, receive one-tenth of 1 percent.

She also notes that the real impact on Miles City may come if the Otter Creek coal fields start getting developed. I won't hold my breath.

But the most enjoyable part of the article was this:

One Helena mom couldn’t find steel-toed work boots for her son last summer because Bakken workers living in Montana’s capital and commuting to work had bought them all.

What will be next? Missoula becoming a bedroom community for the Bakken? That could prove interesting...

The Missoulian and Rick Hill -- an old-fashioned "Montana headline"

Wouldn't it be nice if all headlines were either accurate -- or if not, at least unintentionally funny like the one at right? When I started Montana Headlines some years ago, I arrived at the name in part because I had been dismayed by some of the headlines that appeared in my local Billings Gazette. At times, I felt that even when a news article was fair and balanced (if I may use the term), the headline would often be skewed. This is important because it colors the way an article is read, and to someone taking a quick glance at the paper who doesn't have time to read the whole article, the headline is the takeaway message.

There was a doozy of an example in a recent Charles Johnson article posted at the Missoulian:

Rick Hill has been campaigning to be Montana's governor for years

When the editors write a blazing headline like that, I'm thinking that I'm going to learn that Hill has been on the road for at least the last 4 years. No, the truth is more prosaic than that. Johnson wrote this in the body of the article: "For nearly two years – since the Monday following the November 2010 election – Rick Hill has been running for governor"

Out of a lengthy, factual, and even-handed feature article (would we expect anything else from Johnson?) about Rick Hill, the editors came up with that headline? For starters, it isn't even true. Most reasonable people would expect at least two full years (i.e. more than one) to have gone by in order to claim that someone has been doing something "for years." Most reasonable people would in reality probably expect more than two, but we can give the benefit of the doubt.

Today, beginning the slog of fundraising and campaigning shortly after the last election is pretty standard for a major office like governor. It hasn't been common in Montana in the past, but we'd best get used to it, and it certainly isn't newsworthy.

This doesn't mean I like long campaigns, mind you. Here is what I wrote back in February of 2007:

Political Armageddon comes to Montana: Yes, it's true. Monica Lindeen has started campaigning for the State Auditor position 3 1/2 months after the last election. You heard it right -- State Auditor. Interminable campaigns are annoying enough when it is for offices like, well, the President of the United States of America. But are Montanans really going to have a stomach for this?

I don't recall who the Missoulian endorsed for State Auditor in 2008, but I'll bet that just like the Billings Gazette did, the Missoulian editors endorsed Lindeen. Were there articles in the Missoulian where the headlines screamed that Lindeen had been campaigning for State Auditor "for years?" Doubt it.

(Update: the headline online has changed to "Governor's race: Rick Hill seeks major economic, regulatory reforms.” I don’t know what the final print edition headline was. Maybe the headline I saw was just the temporary work of a lowly night-shift editor. But it was around long enough to be aggregated.)

Montana GOP and reporting about the outhouse -- the power of headlines

It's Wednesday and time for a little Montana politics.

By now, the entire political world knows that a yahoo (we seem to have used that word more than once lately, but really -- is there a better one?) brought an outhouse to the parking lot outside the hotel where the Montana GOP state convention was being held.

It had a sign proclaiming that it was the "Obama Presidential Library," was reportedly painted to look like it had bullet-holes in it, had an Obama birth certificate inside with a scatological term of opprobrium written across it, and had the names of several nationally prominent Democratic women written on the wall inside, complete with a "for a good time call" message.

It is hard to imagine a uglier display of ad hominem boorishness. Our tender sensibilities are, in this vulgar world, frequently subjected to even greater depths of tastelessness just when we think we've seen it all. We have also been quite critical of hamfistedness whenever it rears its head at Montana GOP high command.

So we're about to pile on, right?

Wrong.

Why not? After all, the facts are clear, aren't they? The Missoulian had a headline saying "Montana GOP convention features bullet-riddled 'Obama outhouse'" -- and KFBB television in Great Falls led off with "Montana GOP Makes 'For a Good Time' Reference to First Lady."

Yes, but the problem is that those headlines were wrong, and they skewed every bit of coverage that followed. Those headlines seem to claim that the Montana GOP made this particular crude display -- but in point of fact "the Montana GOP" had nothing to do with it.

As a parenthetical note, way back in the mists of time, the title of this blog was inspired in part by a series of misleading headlines in the Billings Gazette that got our goat. The headline is often all that many readers see. They won't see the caveats inserted in the second half of the article, and many won't read the article at all. Misleading headlines (which, incidentally, are generally written by the editors, not the reporters writing the piece) can be just as damaging as errors in the text of the articles themselves. And that is true of the Missoulian piece. You have to get deep into the article to learn that the Montana GOP convention didn't "feature" the outhouse at all. Some person of interest left it in the hotel parking lot for folks to gawk at.

This particular piece of post-modern sculpture, we later learned, was created by a guy named Dave Hurtt, who had the deep insight to tell the NBC reporter interviewing him that "maybe my humor is a little bit crude for some people." Whoa -- say it isn't so! Andres Serrano, here we come...

In fact, from what we can gather from subsequent reporting, GOP officials immediately followed appropriate procedures by talking to the hotel staff about having it moved off the property. Which is about all that could be done. The outhouse was someone's private property sitting on someone else's private property, and GOP officials would have no right to physically dispose of it themselves.

What about expressions of outrage? Shouldn't that have been the immediate response of Montana GOP leaders? Indeed, some have found the lack of a hand-wringing response from GOP leaders to be a bit damning.

Let's think about that. So, the whole GOP convention should grind to a halt while a string of speakers condemn a crude act that went on in the hotel parking lot -- raising the question of "why are they making a big deal about this -- do they have something to hide?" GOP Chairman Will Deschamps probably did the best he could with a bad situation by calling it a "sideshow" and pointing out that the president should be treated with respect -- if you give something like this oxygen by paying serious attention to it, that's not good either. Do you run to reporters and condemn it immediately, thereby shining an even brighter spotlight on it -- when really what you are wanting is for the yahoo to take his blasted prank elsewhere and let you get back to the business of having your convention?

This is the sort of thing that is deeply embarrassing to serious Republicans with a sense of dignity and decorum -- which is the vast majority of us, in my experience. We're all for good humor around here -- even tasteless humor can sometimes be hilarious in just the right setting (cf. Saturday Night Live.) The outhouse stunt pulled by Mr. Hurtt piles offense upon offense -- the last and perhaps worst of which is that when it comes to this self-proclaimed "spoof," there just wasn't anything funny about it.

Montana yahoo embarrasses state on national stage

It’s Wednesday and time for a little Montana politics (and no, the photo on the right is not of the yahoo, but of the guy who got yahooed.)

So here’s the story. This big Hollywood producer who has a home in Montana gets an invite to speak at a small Montana high school. Amazingly enough, even though these movie types who own homes in Montana tend to live behind locked gates and have unlisted phone numbers, he actually says yes. An incredible opportunity for kids to hear from someone who made it big, right?

But then things turn darker -- there is at least one parent who is worried that an impressionable child might be indoctrinated with this Hollywood guy's political views. Complaints are made to the principal at the last minute, and the administrator caves. The producer is met at the door, and is essentially told, “guess what, consider yourself disinvited -- yeah, I know you drove an hour and a half to get here, but sorry, gotta protect children from guys like you.”

Those dang Montana yahoo right-wing nut-jobs and their obsessions with Hollywood liberal political bias, right?

Well, actually not...

It is rather amusing that this time it was lefties who censored what the tender ears of high school seniors in Ronan might hear. We all know that kids in high school these days lead very sheltered lives, and need protection...

Gerald Molen had been invited to speak to the senior class at Ronan... before he was disinvited. Molen was born in Great Falls and now is a semi-retired 77 year-old living in Bigfork. In between, he made a movie or two, including five Steven Spielberg films. His producing credits include Rain Man, Days of Thunder, Hook, Jurassic Park, Minority Report... and his Schindler’s List won an Oscar. Put simply, he was not a Hollywood lightweight.

He’s a very bad man, though. After all, he has a rather skeptical view of President Obama, and is making a film based on Dinesh D’Souza’s book The Roots of Obama’s Rage. Was Molen planning on political indoctrination? No, he was planning on a motivational talk to the kids, not that the principal bothered to ask before leaving Molen’s talk on the school’s cutting-room floor. The principal claims that he didn’t know how the talk would be “tied into the curriculum.” He also claims that he lets parents know about such things so they can opt their kids out. Come again? So the kids in Ronan -- population 1,812 -- have a chance to hear from a big-time movie producer and talk to him about his work, and their teachers had something more compelling and educational on the schedule?

Molen rightly labeled all of this a “lame excuse” in an op-ed he penned for the Kalispell Daily Interlake. Let’s play out this scenario a bit: suppose David Letterman, Tom Brokaw, or another liberal media star that owns a home in Montana accepts an invitation to talk to Ronan’s seniors. Are we seriously to believe that the principal would have demanded a copy of the talk and made sure that the talk would be “tied into the curriculum?” Or let’s say that Sen. Jon Tester, Sen. Max Baucus, or Gov. Brian Schweitzer agreed to talk to the kids about their work in Washington. If Republicans objected on the grounds that something partisan might be said, would the principal have met the planned speaker at the door on the day of the talk, letting him know that his talk had been nixed? Maybe so -- these sorts of hypotheticals are always in the realm of the unknowable -- but if so, it would be pretty silly of the parents to complain and even sillier of the principal to cave in to the pressure.

I remember when Pixar animator Bud Luckey, a Billings native, came to talk to kids at our local high school. It was an inspiring experience for the kids to get to hear from someone who had reached the highest levels of his craft in the movie industry. Granted, it didn’t really occur to me that the creator of Woody might try to indoctrinate my kid into some sort of liberal Hollywood perfidy. Even if it had, I would have trusted him to be respectful, keep an open mind, and laugh with me after the fact about any left-wing goofiness that he encountered.

The Ronan story has since gone viral, and Montana gets another moment in the national spotlight that is even more embarrassing than the governor’s crude comments about Mitt Romney’s father growing up on a “polygamy commune.”

As a final note, it was predictable perhaps that when the story first showed up on the radar of Montana’s Lee Newspapers, the headlines were not about the yahoo administrator who behaved so boorishly toward a distinguished guest, but rather about the yahoos in the “sick part of society” (as Molen put it when asked for a comment) who decided it would be fun to send anonymous threats to the principal.

So it all ended up following the preferred script (so to speak,) as far as The Missoulian, et al, were concerned -- by the time it was over, the controversy really was somehow all about those right-wing nut-jobs after all.

Sunday roundup and branding -- the Gazette, and beyond...

Image Courtesy of www.old-picture.com

"Costs of wildfires go to lawmakers": Or so reads the headline in the Gazette to Jennifer McKee's article. Hope springs eternal -- could it be that the tab for fighting wildfires was going to be split personally between Tester, Baucus, and Rehberg?

That might go a long ways towards explaining why Jon Tester is seen posing for photos in a nomex firefighting outfit as much as in a business suit lately.

But no, it is going to be us taxpayers footing the bill, after all.

More than that, the governor wants a bigger fund at his disposal and discretion. $16 million isn't enough, so he wants $25 million.

Let's hope Speaker Sales holds the line on that one.

Baucus votes to raise taxes on domestic oil production: Doug Mood of the Montana PSC, writing in the Missoulian, points out that Sen Baucus voted to raise taxes on domestic oil production. Such taxes raise the cost of gas at the pump (and for us to drive long distances regularly in Montana, this is no small matter,) raise the cost of doing business for those who use a lot of fuel (i.e. agriculture,) increase dependence on foreign oil (our domestic oil producers have to compete with foreign producers.)

Baucus was sticking it to domestic oil produced in the Gulf of Mexico, but indirectly this still hurts Montana's oil industry -- both production and refining.

Still waiting for a conservative "Golden Pen": This week's "Golden Pen" award from the Gazette editors goes to a writer who states that since the big tax surplus came from a strong economy rather than overtaxation, homeowners should donate their refund to charity. Nothing wrong with the exhortation to be charitable -- but we're waiting for a Golden Pen Award to go to someone who thinks Montana's taxes are too high. We'll be waiting, and waiting...

Montana is Canada's health-care backup system: In the AP article found in today's Gazette, a broad range of responses to the birth of Canadian quads in Great Falls due to health-care shortages in Canada are reported. There were some really interesting ones. Try this one, from Canada:

An official with the Calgary Health Region defends the move to send the Jepps to Great Falls.

"We did not have the capacity to take four new Level 3 babies, so the call goes to Edmonton and to Vancouver and across Western Canada to find out if there is bed space," explained Don Stewart. "We had found across Canada there were not four Level 3 beds available so that's when we looked to Montana, which is the closest facility to us with reasonable care and within a reasonable distance. That was only done after exhausting the options here at home.

"They (American critics) don't have all the facts and information, obviously," he added.

Stewart said there are 21 Level 3 incubators in Calgary, but a staffing shortage meant only 16 were in use when the Jepps were giving birth. Staffing levels will be increased by this fall, he added.

Um, actually we did have all the facts and information. The facts are that there are (as we pointed out) 7 cities in Alberta alone that are larger than Great Falls and that Calgary alone is larger than the entire state of Montana. The only additional information provided by this Canadian official is that the Canadian health-care system can't provide enough nurses to take care of those it is committed to helping.

Is this supposed to impress us with the superiority of Canadian health care?

And try this one from Jack Goldberg of "Friends of Medicare":

"It's clearly our view that the U.S. system is going to meet some demands better than ours, particularly for those who can pay the whole shot by themselves. But overall, the American system is far more expensive. And, of course, we all know it fails to insure some 50 million people," he noted.

"I think we need to appreciate that it's because of our publicly insured system that this couple was able to get access to a hugely expensive service in the United States that may very well be denied to tens of millions of Americans. So even what happened there is a point in favor of our system - that these people were able to get there," said Goldberg.

Let's get this straight. Is Goldberg implying that if a Great Falls couple without health insurance found themselves suddenly pregnant with quads -- they would have been sent to Canada for free health care, or that they would have been left to have their babies under a bridge?

One suspects that the quads would have been born right here in Montana, and that hospitals and doctors would have written off the costs that couldn't be met by state or federal assistance programs that might help.

In short, there are Canadians with health "insurance" who don't get treated, and Americans without health insurance who do get treated. Which is worse? How many Americans would want to suffer for months or even years on a waiting list for "elective" treatment like a hip replacement -- consoled by the fact that if they ever get it, it won't cost them anything?

Wyoming girl makes good: Incoming White House Press Secretary Dana Perino is an Evanston, WY native, and will be taking over for Tony Snow. This is a tough and thankless task, as Snow has discovered, and Perino is to be commended to stepping into those very big shoes.

Denny Rehberg weighs in on CHIP

While Montana Headlines wouldn't have given up the opportunity to critique a Gazette editorial, we are glad that Rep. Denny Rehberg took the time to answer directly many of the things that have been flying around regarding his opposition to the House version of CHIP expansion and to some aspects of the Senate bill.

He doesn't go along with the Democratic narrative, best expressed by the Gazette editors earlier this week when they said that those who support the more expansive versions of CHIP/SCHIP legislation are "recognizing the value of caring for children." By implication, those who have a different opinion don't "recognize the value of caring for children." One is amazed at how clearly they are able to peer into our dark little conservative hearts.

No, Rehberg goes on to mention a few (if we may say so) inconvenient truths:

1. CHIP was started in 1997 -- Rehberg is perhaps too modest to make the point (so we'll do it for him) that this legislation was first passed when Republicans controlled Congress. Oops. Those evil child-hating Republicans.

2. 19,000 currently eligible children aren't enrolled in CHIP in Montana. The implication here is that if funding is going to be increased (and Montana Headlines has never said anything but that it should be if we can afford it and if it is done in a way that doesn't undermine private insurance,) then the emphasis should be on getting currently eligible children enrolled first -- something that would, of course, use up much of the increased funding. It's only common sense that the priority should be on children in the lowest income families.

3. The bill won't cap income eligibility, but leaves it up to the states. Aren't conservatives in favor of individual states making their own rules? Well yes, if one state's increased spending is being paid for by it's own state tax dollars.

What happens if states dramatically raise the income limitations (which are indexed for poverty levels on a state-by-state basis) is that states with high cutoffs do two things: first, they directly compete with affordable private insurance plans -- competition being underwritten by the limitless deep pockets of the federal government. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy that the market won't develop lower cost insurance plans. Second, they shift money to themselves from states that choose more reasonable levels:

In fact, in some cases under the new proposal, a family of four with an earned income of $100,000 a year would qualify for CHIP whether they can afford private health insurance or not. In the end, fiscally responsible states like Montana will be left paying for health insurance for East Coast families earning triple the average Montanan.

4. As we have constantly reminded readers, this proposed legislation includes many adults -- including adults with no children. Rehberg echoes what we have said before:

If we want to provide additional health insurance for low-income adults, let's address that at a separate time. The “C” in CHIP is for “children.”

So, reminding the Gazette editors of their own words earlier this week, let's do this one "for the sake of the children," and have straight-up separate debates on uninsured adults later.

5. The bill as proposed "repeals a longstanding provision banning benefits from going to non-U.S. citizens."

Again, this takes the focus off America's kids.

Ouch. Democrats didn't realize they were doing that, did they? We really ought to keep this on our kids. For the sake of the children, of course.

Rehberg has taken a lot of guff from Democrats and the Montana press for his comments about the "extremist ideology" behind the House bill. This comment has been portrayed as meaning that taking care of poor children is an extremist ideology. Those who peddle such tripe know good and well that they are being disingenuous (to put it kindly.)

But there is indeed an ideology at work. Take anyone who has both had private insurance and also been in government-provided health-care systems, such as the military or the VA, and ask them to compare the quality of service they got under a government bureaucratic system to what they got under their private health insurance, and the answer is generally pretty clear: give them their private insurance.

Everyone likes the idea of getting free health-care -- but not everyone understands the implications of how that exactly works out. Those who do understand, are far more circumspect in their opinions. This is not to say that there aren't bad health insurance plans and that there aren't cracks that people fall through.

But the ideology that Rehberg is talking about is one that maintains that private insurance should be done away with, replaced with a single-payer Canadian-style system or a government-run VA-style system. For most Americans, that would be an unacceptable extremist ideology.

Do most Americans want to make sure that those who currently fall through the cracks are covered? Of course -- we are a compassionate people, overwhelmingly, no matter where on the political spectrum we fall. Do most Americans want to pay less for health care? Of course -- we as a people want to buy low and sell high. That's just part of the American way, and indeed the human way.

But as Rehberg points out, there are those who take these compassionate and thrifty desires of a majority of Americans and portray them as saying something very different:

As the Democrats continue to expand the program to those who don't need it, they are pushing forward an agenda of eliminating affordable, reliable health insurance from private providers and shifting to an inefficient, costly, government-run health-care plan.

Knowing they can't win this debate in the sunlight of public scrutiny, House Democrats are resorting to sabotaging a children's health program in order to play ideological games.


Is Rehberg open to voting for a bill more like that proposed in the Senate? Well, listening to those who believe that Rehberg thinks that providing CHIP coverage to low-income children, you'd think that the answer was a resounding "no." Indeed, if their portrayal of him was true, they'd be right -- but there's the problem, isn't it? Let's hear what Rehberg himself has to say:

The Senate approach, while not perfect, is a much more common sense plan for CHIP reauthorization. The Senate bill prohibits childless adults from enrolling and phases out current enrollees by 2008. Additionally, it prohibits CHIP funds from going to non-U.S. citizens. This bill includes these and other common sense provisions that the Democrats in the House have failed to address.

But as was pointed out in the Montana Headlines commentary yesterday, even the Senate legislation needs to be seen as a starting point. House Republicans have their own alternative legislation -- they are no strangers to funding CHIP -- after all, they were the ones who first started the program. Rehberg supports the alternative House provisions:

Ultimately, I support the House alternative CHIP legislation. This measure stops the out-of-control spending increases included in the Democrats' bill, puts financial caps on income eligibility, and addresses many of the same issues as the Senate bill - further proof there are fiscally responsible proposals available that will provide for America's neediest children.

Somehow we suspect -- much to the chagrin of Democrats and the Gazette editors alike -- that even this evil Republican House legislation would, if passed, cover all of the children currently provided for under CHIP, and many, many more besides.

There is room for disagreement on the details of how CHIP should be funded and run. Montana Headlines and Rehberg wouldn't necessarily agree on all the details -- nor would he expect all conservative Republicans to be in lockstep agreement.

One thing that everyone agrees on is that poor children shouldn't go without health care, and that having the federal government support CHIP is a good idea. Democrats know that Republicans believe this no less than do they, but it isn't good politics to admit to virtues in one's opponents, so they don't.

It's all of the other stuff being thrown into this legislation that is causing the problems, and those who would obfuscate the facts and demagogue the issue for political gain (masquerading as "the sake of the children") are just not being honest or fair.

In fact, they are being a bit extremist.

Sunday roundup and branding -- the Gazette, and beyond...

Baucus cashing in his CHIPs: Montana Headlines has made it clear in numerous posts that a civilized society that can afford it (not all civilized societies are wealthy, and not all wealthy societies are particularly civilized) should provide basic healthcare to children in low-income families. Whether their parents are low-income because they are disabled, lazy, down on their luck, substance abusers, from under-privileged backgrounds themselves, or whatever, really shouldn't matter.

Our goal should be to give every child the opportunity to become a productive member of society -- suffering from poor health care in childhood is a good way to ensure that they won't make it. And right now, we can afford it -- something that may not always be the case, by the way.

So Sen. Baucus is to be commended for working to expand CHIP eligibility to include more currently uninsured children, and the Republicans who worked to craft this compromise deal for a $35 billion increase are also to be commended.

Noelle Straub's somewhat snitty start to her article in today's Gazette doesn't do good service to illuminating the discussion, however:

In this corner: Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, his Democratic colleagues and some Republicans, fighting to help low-income kids get medical coverage.

In the opposite corner: President Bush, his administration and some conservatives, fighting against an increased government role in the health care system.

She eventually gets to some of the serious Republican concerns about this particular program, but the message is clear from the first paragraphs: Democrats like kids -- evil Republicans like kids, too -- but only to eat them for dinner as appetizers.

She mentions that the bill passed out of committee 17-4, so there really must have been a lot of conservative opposition.

There are serious points to be made, though, and Republicans have been right to ask questions and demand changes in the legislation as originally written.

Why are so many adults -- even many adults without children -- on a children's healthcare program? Is this a cynical way to avoid a straight-up debate over the expansion of government-funded healthcare for adults?

And what evidence is there that Democrats are genuinely concerned about possible adverse effects if the government undermines the current system of private health insurance, usually jointly funded by employer and employee contributions?

"I am deeply worried about further expansion will really lead to the undermining of the private health care system, which would take the greatest health care system in the world and convert it into a mediocre health care system," (President) Bush said.

As indeed he should be.

Of course, Michael Moore would have us believe that medical care in Cuba is better than that in the United States -- we're that bad.

The sentiment has been echoed by some here in the Montana blogosphere. If someone needs major surgery, though, it would be interesting to see if any of these fans of Cuban medical care would be willing to go to Cuba to have that surgery.

And not at a cushy Havana hospital that serves the nation's elite -- but rather in the Cuban equivalent of backwater communities like Billings, Missoula, or Bozeman.

How about it? Any takers? Would you rather be someone (even without insurance or money) needing a life-saving surgery in Billings -- or someone in an equally out-of-the-way Cuban town with full free health care?

Anyway, that is a digression -- CHIP (for children, that is) is one of Baucus's few good policies, and he is understandably riding it for all he's worth as he comes into an election year.

Oh what a relief it is (that Pat Davison lost): Charles Johnson has apparently been reading Montana Headlines. Well, not really, but it is interesting that today's "Horse Sense" column echoes what these pages have said repeatedly -- what a disaster it would have been for Montana (not to mention the Montana GOP) had Pat Davison won the GOP primary for governor.

Along the way, Johnson reminds us of numerous oddities, to say the least, in Davison's campaign. He closes with some harsh words about Billings businessman Mike Gustafson and his relationship to organizing a debate at MSU that seemed to be stacked to favor his friend and business colleague Davison.

Johnson's viewpoint is understandable, but it would seem that given how many people were taken in by Davison, Gustafson could be cut a little slack, rather than dragged into the conversation about Davison's breathtakingly bold criminality.

Plugging the local economy: Happy days are here again! The Billings Farmer's Market is back in business for the summer. It's good for your health (both the food and the walking,) good for encouraging local food producers, good for downtown Billings businesses that normally are closed or quiet on Saturdays, good for musicians who need more venues to hone their craft, and good for the soul.

Now, if only the weather would cooperate. See you there.

The Gazette Golden Pen Award: ...predictably goes again to someone who scolds Republicans. We're still waiting for a conservative with a Golden Pen. Granted, since we conservatives aren't that bright, it may be a long wait.

Thought-crimes legislation: A good opinion in the Missoulian recently addressed legislation that tacks on additional penalties for so-called "hate-crimes."

No matter the motivation, violence cannot and should not be tolerated.

But is an assault more heinous because the victim was attacked because of their religion or sexuality? And should the prosecution be more vigorous?

We think not. All people of this country should receive equal protection under the law - equally swift and forceful.

“We simply cannot accept violence that is motivated by bias and hate,” Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore., said in introducing the Senate version of the hate crimes bill.

We agree. Nor should we accept violence that is motivated by greed or jealousy or rage or mental illness.

We also should not accept any attempt to stifle free speech. And Smith's legislation could lay the foundation for making so-called “hate speech” a crime. And that we must resist. However ugly the words.

Well-stated. Hate-crimes legislation amounts to putting people in jail (or keeping them there longer) for their thoughts and feelings -- distasteful as those thoughts and feelings might be.

Missoulian editorial strikes the right note on free speech

Quoting with approval Chief Justice John Roberts in his recent opinion, “When the First Amendment is implicated, the tie goes to the speaker, not the censor,” the Missoulian comes down on the side of political free speech in a good editorial.

No one should doubt the good intention of those who attempted to remove influence-peddling from politics via restrictions on campaign contributions and spending.

As Fred Thompson, who supported McCain-Feingold, has unapologetically noted when Republicans have faulted him for that vote, there was something very wrong when the same person who donated 5 or 6 figures last week in soft money appeared in front of your committee the next week to lobby for your support -- with no-one else in the room knowing that he had given it.

But, like Thompson, the Missoulian notes the failure of those efforts. Good intentions, but obviously a wrong approach:

2002 campaign finance rewrite did nothing to curb the flow of special-interest money into elections, or to either temper or elevate the public discourse.

In fact, in 2004, the FEC cleared the way for “independent” political groups to channel virtually unlimited amounts of money into political campaigns via so-called 527 groups.

Referencing Section 527 of the Internal Revenue Code, these groups are tax-exempt and lie outside laws requiring disclosure of donors or limits on the amount of money any one donor may contribute.

These groups, and their money and influence, were untouched by last week's ruling. They can and will go right on drowning the electoral process with secret money.

The Montana Headlines telephone rang any number of times during the last Senatorial campaign so that someone from the east coast from moveon.org could ply their tax-exempt anti-Burns message on the household inhabitants.

Democratic 527's were hard at work before the ink was even dry on McCain-Feingold, so no-one was being fooled. One recalls seeing George Soros on C-Span, being questioned about the large amounts of money he was pouring into these organizations so soon after McCain-Feingold had been passed in order to stop that sort of thing. Soros's response was to shrug and say that he was following the law to the letter, which was true.

Fortunately, Republicans caught up just enough with the Swiftboat guys to get a little 527 payback and frustrate Mr. Soros in his attempt to buy the 2004 presidential election.

Many on the Republican side have been advocating, for some time, the idea that the key is full and immediate disclosure -- and forget the dollar restrictions. The Missoulian seems to agree with that sentiment, and Thompson has certainly floated the idea as an alternative.

While this idea, too, will be found to have flaws, it is certainly an improvement on the status quo.

There would be something profoundly wrong with a situation where pornography has a hallowed 1st amendment status while political speech -- the kind of speech that the 1st amendment was most concerned (if not exclusively concerned) with preserving -- is restricted. There is more for the SCOTUS to strike down and for Congress to take steps to rectify -- draconian limits on personal campaign contributions, for starters -- but this decision was a good start.

Sunday roundup and branding -- the Gazette, and beyond...

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Billings Gazette does good job in covering Pat Davison: Back in the infancy of Montana Headlines last December, when the Pat Davison "Ponzi scheme" scandal was breaking, we wrote that "at this point, Davison's name is widely known for one reason, and one reason only -- his defrauding of investors and his pleading guilty on federal charges."

It was important that we make this point, since prior to this major personal financial scandal, Davison was perhaps most widely known in Billings as having run unsuccessfully for governor.

We pointed out on more than one occasion that the Gazette had a penchant for identifying Davison as a Republican candidate for governor, giving the impression to the uninitiated that he was the GOP's nominee, when in fact Davison lost the primary badly, carrying only two counties statewide and carrying his home county (Yellowstone) only by a thin plurality.

In today's big Sunday front page article about Davison, the Gazette mentions him as a gubernatorial candidate early in the article, but doesn't identify him at that point as a Republican -- and deep in the article when it mentions that run, it correctly states that "Davison... lost soundly in the Republican primary." The article puts the political connections in their proper perspective.

The Davison story is a big one, with the amount of money defrauded from his investors now approaching $12 million, according to the Gazette article. While one feels bad for his family and friends that an article like this rehashes a painful history, there is no question that in Billings it deserves big coverage.

As pointed out here on this site before, it is a "cautionary tale" at many levels -- personal, business, social, and political.

In particular, it should be a reminder to big financial backers of Republican candidates in Montana (and Davison had a number of them in his failed bid) that those candidates need a careful vetting. Think of the huge damage that would have been done had Davison won the nomination, let alone the governorship itself -- and then had this scandal break. The Montana GOP just doesn't have any room for those kinds of PR disasters.

Montana lobbyists span the political spectrum: Chuck Johnson's article reporting what was spent on lobbying the 2007 legislature is revealing. More precisely, it reports what the lobbyists themselves report, which, as the article notes, is probably a significant underestimate.

Not surprisingly, the top spender was PPL Montana -- and also not surprisingly, the teacher's unions were close behind.

It is true that lobbyists are "trying to influence legislators," in the words of the article. Well, of course they are.

But in fairness, in a 90 day session, legislators have to be desperate for information that they need to make decisions and write bills.

Term limits have only exacerbated those problems. Lobbyists play a valuable role in helping legislators know how legislation will affect different groups of Montanans -- who is going to know better how a law will affect Montana ranchers, for instance, than the Montana Stockgrower's Association? (They weren't mentioned in the article -- we just use them as an example.)

There is still something a bit bothersome about having public employees lobby the government that employs them, but that isn't likely to change anytime soon in Montana -- in fact, as we add more and more people to the government payroll, such lobbying will only intensify.

One does wonder, though: when the governor is speaking to groups of teachers and public employees, does he rail on them for spending money on lobbyists?

Great new Montana business website: Anyone who hasn't checked out Jeff Mangan's major initiative -- a Montana business website -- needs to hasten on over to mtbusiness.com .

Maybe Denny Rehberg just likes being a Congressman: In his "Horse Sense" column, Chuck Johnson makes a good case that this is why Rehberg has passed up shots at open governor seats and is passing up the opportunity to challenge Max Baucus for a U.S. Senate seat.

We would guess that Rehberg will be poised to challenge Sen. Tester in 2012. But that is a long time from now -- and while Rehberg would be Baucus's most formidable challenger right now (and would have a decent shot at unseating him,) it is by no means certain that Rehberg will have the shiniest star when the Tester challenge comes along. Five years is a long time, and Rehberg's fortunes could wane, while exciting, new GOP political figures will almost certainly arise between now and then.

We have the feeling that Johnson is right -- he'll take on Tester in 2012 if he is the logical candidate, and would have in 2006. But he's not someone who is sitting around pining for a U.S. Senate seat, and won't be crushed if someone else gets the nod. It wouldn't at all be a bad thing for Montana or the Montana GOP for Rehberg to grow old and gray (and hold a lot of seniority) in our solo U.S. House seat.

City Lights: You ask a stupid question...: We now know what Ed Kemmick was doing between 4:30 and 4:45 on Friday -- thinking up questions to ask himself about Billings, pretending that they are questions real visitors to Billings might ask.

Does he have a great job or what?

Montana Headlines was a bit disappointed in a couple of the rhetorical questions posed at the end of the piece (inviting reader answers.)

For instance, his hypothetical visitor asks: "Is it hard to run in cowboy boots?"

As any Montana politician worth his salt will tell you on an election year, it's nearly impossible to run without them in these parts.

Talk Radio and the Fairness Doctrine: David Crisp over at the Billings Outpost has an interesting article on the subject, and he concludes that talk radio is indeed profoundly unfair. It's true: imagine the pain of being someone who wants to listen to a liberal radio talk-show in Billings -- especially if one considers NPR talk-shows to be too balanced and fair to be liberal.

But neither does Crisp advocate reinstating the so-called "Fairness Doctrine," which only ever had the effect of keeping all political opinion off the air.

The whole opinion piece is worth reading, but he makes one particularly intriguing comment: "Conservatives appear to be somewhat more interested in listening to talk radio, and liberals appear to be somewhat more open to listening to conservative hosts than conservatives are to liberal hosts."

Well, that may be true, and it may be that this is enough for market forces to tip things to a 100% conservative talk-radio format, as he maintains. But the explanation is much simpler, and Crisp alludes to it in passing, even if only mostly to discount it.

The bottom line is that when talk radio started to flourish, conservatives had for decades felt inundated by an uninterrupted supply of liberal slant -- the major networks, public radio and TV (except for Firing Line -- our one television show,) the major wire services, nearly all of the major newspapers in the country, and the public schools and college campuses where we (and later, our kids) were educated.

Most of the content was intended to be fair and neutral, and most of that succeeded in having some sort of neutrality. But where there was a slant, it was liberal. Think of it this way: if the mainstream media is 95% neutral and 5% liberal, then the net effect over time is one of a liberal slant, even if it succeeds an incredible 95% of the time in being neutral.

That doesn't mean that the entire mainstream media and educational institutions slant everything in a liberal direction, it just means that there was and is a sort of ideological Brezhnev doctrine at work -- things drift only in one direction, and that is leftward.

Talk radio was suddenly a place where conservatives were able at last to find opinions that were similar to their own, and it should be of no surprise that conservatives flocked to it. Talk radio didn't create that audience -- it found it.

After all, the men around whose boot-clad feet a young Montana Headlines played while they drank coffee, discussed the weather, speculated about agricultural prices, and cussed the government knew good and well, long before Rush Limbaugh and Fox News, that what they read in the papers and heard on television was filled with liberal bias and general lies.

Furthermore, given the perception that talk radio needed to balance out all of the above, it shouldn't be surprising that the style of conservative talk radio would be to push back, hard, against what it perceived as a monolithic and powerful liberal establishment.

The accuracy of the perceptions on which conservative talk radio thrived can, of course, be debated. But that they existed, and still exist today, is the operative force at work.

Speaking of fairness: Forget talk radio. What Montana Headlines is really concerned about is whether Kree Kirkman is going to make sure that his utopian green-friendly medieval fortress/village "Oberkleinberg" is fair and balanced, with a population that is 50% Republican and 50% Democrat.

Rehberg ends all doubts -- no Senate run

Congressman Denny Rehberg today announced that he would neither be running for the U.S. Senate seat currently held by Max Baucus nor challenging Gov. Brian Schweitzer in the latter's re-election bid.

He states that "speculation to the contrary only serves as a distraction from the strong candidates that Montana Republicans will field for each of these important races."

Rehberg is the only candidate with certain potential for giving a serious challenge in either race. Neither Baucus nor Schweitzer are unbeatable given the right candidate or circumstances. For instance, Rehberg was found to be in a statistical tie with Baucus in a hypothetical matchup last December.

Rehberg could defeat Baucus, no doubt about it, but were he to lose, the risks to his career and to the state party at this point in time are just too high. Rehberg is making the right decision, even though it is painful to contemplate that we may be allowing Baucus yet another bye.

With perfect hindsight, the state (and national) party should have insisted that Conrad Burns step aside, allowing Rehberg to run against Tester -- a race he would almost certainly have won. Rehberg was poised to run for that Senate seat in 2006, having delayed until practically the last minute to file for re-election to his Congressional seat -- hoping, one presumes, that Conrad would step aside and give him the nod.

But Burns was convinced he could win -- and frankly many of us thought he could as well. And of course, he almost did -- not that that counts for much of anything.

With Burns as the titular head of the Montana GOP it would have been difficult to get him to step aside, but the Montana GOP needs exactly the sort of robust leadership that can speak plainly to candidates who need to step aside.

With the election last month as state GOP chairman of Erik Iverson, who took over the Burns campaign in the closing weeks and almost pulled off a win against all odds, we hope that he will be able to coordinate that kind of robust leadership.

While the emphasis in the 2008 elections has to be on winning back the state Senate and on expanding the GOP's razor-thin edge in the House, Iverson's leadership will be tested by how he works behind the scenes to recruit and promote good candidates to challenge Baucus and Schweitzer -- candidates who, even if they lose, will make the Democrats work hard for those wins , and who will gain state-wide name recognition that will allow them to turn around and run again.

Sunday roundup and branding -- the Gazette, and beyond...

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He's the man: So show some respect -- and love.

GOP in for tune-up, oil-change, and lube: Or perhaps an overhaul. Something.

Craig Wilson, a political scientist from Montana State University-Billings, said he doesn't believe Republicans are as strong in Montana as they could be.

Quite an understatement. Wilson cites the failure of Republicans to identify credible challengers to Sen. Baucus and the governor. These are indeed problems, since it is not easy to gain state-wide name-recognition and political viability in a small-population state.

Rehberg could give a strong challenge to either of these Democrats in a well-run campaign. But the risk of losing the House seat would be unacceptably high, and chances of success would be less than even odds.

One thing that the GOP needs to work on is identifying and grooming good candidates at every level. And something that every GOP elected official needs to work on is preparing for the possibility of another run -- either for re-election or for a higher or different office.

Good candidates need to be willing to step "down," as well. If a good state legislator in Billings is term-limited, a run for the city council should be considered, for instance. Term-limited senators should go back to run for the House, taking their experience with them.

A lot is expected of new party chairman Erik Iverson -- he needs to succeed in making Republicans the party that Montanans trust and depend on.

The Gazette editorial page is number one: According to the Montana Newspaper Association's 2006 Better Newspaper Contest, that is. Opinion Editor Pat Bellinghausen won for the best editorial page and for the best editorial writing.

Those of us who found Missoulian's Steve Woodruff (unfortunately no longer at that paper) to be more balanced and to have a more engaging and less ponderous style of writing would disagree. He was also less condescending toward us ignorant peasants -- but that isn't the stuff that earns awards. It is, however, a bit surprising that Woodruff didn't get a few bonus points as a fraternal goodbye.

The problems with the Gazette opinion page are numerous, and tedious to recount. One can only be grateful for the fact that a large percentage of the Gazette's readers either don't look at the opinion page, or assume that if Bellinghausen is for it, then they should probably be against it. Loyal opposition and all that sort of thing.

France's move right continues: As noted before, MH doesn't understand the fine points of French politics, but the fact that Sarkozy's party won a clear parliamentary majority, allowing him to pursue his ambitious reforms, can only be a good thing.

The rest of Europe will be watching to see how Sarkozy implements his immigration-reform plans. Rather than eliminate family-reunification as the hard right in France had proposed, Sarkozy has proposed that family members must learn French and prove proficiency before coming to France, that the family member bringing them in prove that the means is there to support them (including having housing arranged,) and that would-be immigrants sign a declaration that they respect French national identity.

News organizations are portraying this parliamentary victory as a loss for Sarkozy, since it wasn't the landslide that had been predicted at one point, but it doesn't take away from the clear majority that will allow his legislation to move forward. Part of what cut into the vote were plans to reduce payroll taxes by shifting some of it to sales taxes -- more class-warfare stuff.

More show-voting from Sens. Baucus and Tester: This time a non-binding no-confidence vote on A.G. Gonzalez. Sen. Mike Enzi of WY voted against the measure.

What is it with these wimpy non-binding resolutions? If he's done bad things, then get on with impeachment proceedings. Otherwise get back to work rather than engaging in show-trials and show-voting.

One also hopes that Enzi voted against it because it was a silly non-binding resolution submitted only to play political games -- and not because Enzi has confidence in Gonzalez. If he does, then he's even further off-base than are Sens. Baucus and Tester, who at least recognize incompetence and cronyism when they see it.

Now we can go see the Cubs play more easily: Wrigley Field, ivy-covered walls, walking in downtown Chicago on those historic streets and across those great bridges. Now it's all a non-stop daily flight away from Billings on United Airlines -- but only for the summer.

The Canadians are coming: On vacation, that is. Those of us who enjoy traveling to Canada don't get the benefit of a strong dollar these days, but Montana is benefiting from the strength of the Canadian dollar against the US dollar. On a summer when high gas prices are going to keep a lot of American tourists home (to the great benefit of the environment,) our neighbors to the north may make up some of the difference.

Finally over for at least another year: It's enough to make anyone feel happy and gay. We will neither have the Gazette editorial page scolding us like children about tolerance (there sure were a lot of people downtown throwing eggs and shouting profanity at the Gay Pride parade in Billings, weren't there?... not)

Nor will we have to read angry letters to the editor reacting against the planned parade and Mayor Ron Tussing's enthusiasm for it. Montanans tend to be MYOB people -- which is both why there wasn't anyone downtown spewing hate against homosexuals, and why parades like this are silly.

It is odd that modern Americans obsessed with creating persecuted groups would simultaneously preach that what one does in the privacy of one's own bedroom is one's own private business -- and then have a big parade to celebrate and advertise what is done in the privacy of one's own bedroom (and that is nobody else's business.)

One can expect the Gazette to promote, and perhaps even organize a monogamous, married, 2.5 children-per-family Christian heterosexual pride parade later this summer.

Sunday roundup and branding -- the Gazette, and beyond...

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A COOL idea: Would country of origin labelling (COOL) prevent the kinds of tainted food issues that America has recently experienced? Strictly speaking, no, since any producer can process food poorly or use unsafe additives. The difference is that when one consumes locally produced food, there are recourses -- the more local the source, the more personal and effective the sanctions that can be applied by consumers to food producers and processors.

There are those who blame the tainted food supply from China on an insufficiently gargantuan U.S. army of food inspectors. A much simpler solution is to consume goods produced as locally as possible -- there is no law preventing that, and there is no law preventing local producers from proudly labeling their goods accordingly. If consumers vote with their dollars and preferentially use foods from local sources, a healthier food supply and a healthier local economy results.

There are problems with a top-down COOL program, including cost and hassle factors, so such issues need to be taken into account, but the ups outweigh the downs for everyone -- eventually even the grocers and food processors who are now opposing COOL, since there will be more satisfied consumers.

The death penalty reduces murders: In one of the more interesting developments in the death penalty argument, recent academic research has apparently shown that the death penalty does reduce murders (18 fewer murders as a result of each execution, according to one Emory University study, fewer according to other studies -- but fewer in every study.)

A disturbing outbreak of intellectual honesty has taken place in some corners of the academic world:

"Science does really draw a conclusion. It did. There is no question about it," said Naci Mocan, an economics professor at the University of Colorado at Denver. "The conclusion is there is a deterrent effect."

A 2003 study he co-authored, and a 2006 study that re-examined the data, found that each execution results in five fewer homicides, and commuting a death sentence means five more homicides. "The results are robust, they don't really go away," he said. "I oppose the death penalty. But my results show that the death penalty (deters) - what am I going to do, hide them?"

Predictable reactions of outrage at this particular inconvenient truth have ensued, some of it personally directed at the academics doing the research. Unlike scientists who proclaim another supposedly inconvenient truth (global warming,) the researchers involved welcome academic debate on the data and its interpretation:

Several authors of the pro-deterrent reports said they welcome criticism in the interests of science, but said their work is being attacked by opponents of capital punishment for their findings, not their flaws.

"Instead of people sitting down and saying 'let's see what the data shows,' it's people sitting down and saying 'let's show this is wrong,'" said Paul Rubin, an economist and co-author of an Emory University study. "Some scientists are out seeking the truth, and some of them have a position they would like to defend."

Montana Headlines has written on a number of occasions that we believe the death penalty is a legitimate and Constitutional means of criminal punishment and deterrent. We also have written regarding our support for legislation doing away with the death penalty in Montana, where it does not seem to be necessary at this time.

This is an issue that needs to be addressed state by state, precisely because crime patterns and local circumstances differ.

One thing is certain, an executed murderer is not going to escape to kill again (as so often happens) -- in that regard, it only makes sense that the death penalty would reduce murder rates, at least to some degree.

Taking the initiative: The process of public initiatives and referendums is an important one that allows citizens of Montana to address issues that our legislature is too timid or ineffective to address. Sec. State Brad Johnson's piece in the Missoulian outlines the changes made this past legislative session, most of which make the process one that will tend to work just fine for issues where there is a true uprising of Montana's citizens -- and make it harder for a single individual with a lot of money to abuse the process.

A referendum should be a rare last-ditch effort that reflects a failure on the part of Montana's legislature to get a job done. And yes, that does happen. Legislatures should, on the other hand, not be afraid to overturn or amend the results of such voter initiatives it the laws are poorly written. Is it politically risky? Yes, but it's also their job.

Legislators study and discuss bills at length, they hear hours of testimony and receive many letters from affected individuals, they make amendments when mistakes and problems are found with a bill, fine-tuning it. There is no such opportunity with initiatives, making them sources of what can be crudely-written laws with unpleasant unintended consequences. Measures get on the ballot as a result of signatures that are gathered with literally a few seconds of personal contact with voters, and most voters can't be fully informed about all of the implications of all of the measures on a ballot.

All in all, Sec. State Johnson, AG McGrath and the legislature are to be commended for the changes they have made -- and they shouldn't be afraid to tighten procedures even more. Those who are worried that these changes interfere with the democratic process or with free speech shouldn't be -- if a given measure doesn't make it on the ballot but is a good idea -- well, that's what we elect legislators for. If an overwhelming majority of Montanans want a change in the law, it is going to happen, one way or another -- sometimes through a ballot initiative.

Predatory ways: A lengthy article in the Missoula Independent talks about the work of a valuable agency, Wildlife Services. The main job of this agency is to eliminate predators that adversely affect domestic livestock production. The article isn't a positive one overall, but it does give a good picture of why the agency is an important one:

In 2006, according to statewide statistics, the sheep industry suffered a $1 million loss due to predators; the cattle industry lost an estimated $1.6 million to predators in 2005, the latest statistics available. While livestock producers typically employ a variety of nonlethal predator deterrents like guard dogs, fencing and hired herders, Wildlife Services specializes in lethality.

And while advances are being made continually in non-lethal means of protecting livestock, there is no substitution for eliminating problem animals and reducing the population of problem species like coyotes. All of this is part and parcel of finding a healthy balance between allowing ranchers to do what it takes to protect their livestock and allowing these predators to continue to exist in areas with active livestock production:

"With most farming or cropping operations, if they’ve got a pest in their field like an aphid or a weevil, they just go and spray the whole field. We don’t have that option…that’s why we use the government trapper as opposed to handling it on our own,” (a rancher) says. “We’d love to handle it on our own—give us 1080 [a heavily restricted poison] back and the authorization to use some chemicals and some toxins and we’ll just poison the whole damn ranch and we won’t have these problems, but that’s not acceptable in the eyes of the public. That’s why Wildlife Services is there to help us."

Costs are shared, with about half of the budget coming directly from livestock producers on a per-head basis. This is appropriate, since producers benefit and the public benefits -- both through a healthy livestock economy and through allowing healthy numbers of predators to exist, as opposed to the old-fashioned approach of just eliminating or nearly eliminating a given species.

Montana may be changing, but the importance of the livestock industry -- economically and culturally -- to the state isn't. Those who object to the methods used by Wildlife Services need to educate themselves on the importance of this program to ranchers. They are also welcome to come up with non-lethal alternatives that are just as effective in protecting ranchers. There are probably those who simply want ranchers to become an endangered species -- those who feel that way should state both their preferences and their political affiliations plainly.

Sunday roundup and branding -- the Gazette, and beyond...

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MYOB: The pharmacy owners in Great Falls who have decided not to carry birth control pills have been catching all sorts of grief, which really is amazing.

Part of the reaction is probably due to the fact that most of the people in a tizzy over it are from Missoula, where it is commonly believed that Great Falls has only one pharmacy, that the nearest alternative pharmacy for Great Fallens is in Calgary, and that even if there were more than one pharmacy in Great Falls, the residents wouldn't be bright enough to think of switching to the other one.

If the pharmacy had dropped a particular class of drugs because they believed the pharmaceutical manufacturers were making an immoral amount of money -- or if they had dropped a class of products because the carbon footprints of the factories were immorally large, they would be receiving the Granola Peace Prize right about now.

Go figure.

Golden Pen Award: Speaking of receiving awards, while we rarely read the letters to the editor in the Gazette, one thing that has caught our attention over time is the "Golden Pen Award." Doing a non-scientific survey based on the Gazette's search engine, it appears that the award invariably goes to a letter expressing a liberal sort of opinion -- except when it is a generic feel-good letter. Just one more objective piece of evidence that we Republicans really are a pretty unlettered bunch of knuckledraggers.

Rep. Rehberg on the Bush-Kennedy amnesty bill: Nothing fancy -- just a straight no-nonsense assessment of what a bad bill the current immigration "reform" measure really is. We have approved of how Sens. Tester and Baucus have voted so far on this bill. Rehberg's position is even stronger, if anything -- and somehow we imagine that we won't have to be watching his votes, when the time comes, as closely as we will have to watch Sens. Baucus and Tester.

Bill Kennedy's recent mailing for fundraising tries to make the case that Rehberg simply does President Bush's bidding. He'll have a hard time making that case, since Rehberg has done a good job of finding the right balance of party loyalty (without which a lone Congressman is dead in the water) and of knowing when the views of Montanans differ from those of many Republicans in other parts of the country. Just check out his ACU rating, and why he doesn't have a 100%. This is just one more example of Rehberg's natural bent toward a genuine Montana populism -- which is, of course, a mostly conservative sort of populism.

A CPA's opinion on whether Montana is "open for business": A nice piece in the Missoulian. No matter how much Democrats like to talk about "out of state tax-cheats," it is hard to escape the uneasy feeling that the real targets of the empire-building going on in the Montana DOR are the 20% of Montanans of modest means who already pay 60-70% of the taxes in this state -- not billionaires in Bel Air. This editorial strengthens that suspicion.

What Montanans should be demanding to see is concrete evidence and concrete examples of out-of-staters breaking Montana's tax laws, and how changing laws to address those specific situations will affect Montanans. The debate on this in Helena during the last session was long on rhetoric and short on specific examples -- in that regard, each party failed to make its case effectively.

Gas station owners caught in the middle

The Missoulian had some harsh words to say about Congress's recent legislation dealing with "price-gouging" at the gas pump:

Christened the Federal Price Gouging Prevention Act, the legislation is little more than an attempt to take political advantage of consumers grimacing at high summer-vacation gas prices. It does nothing to bring down those prices, and could actually send them soaring even higher.

The Missoulian's points are all good ones -- the real problems are dependence on foreign oil, failure to conserve enough, blocking exploration efforts, failing to develop alternatives... the usual.

The truly confused folks, though, are going to be gas station owners in a dozen or so states where there are mandatory mark-ups on gas. A case that recently got national attention was in Wisconsin, where an owner was threatened with a lawsuit by the state for charging senior citizens less than the mandatory 9.2% markup on wholesale price.

According to Wisconsin regulators, the discounts represent “unfair competition” against other gas stations, and that — get this — imperils consumers.

So the poor schmuck will get sued by the state if he imperils consumers by charging too little -- and sued by the feds if he imperils a Congressman's re-election by charging too much.

Sunday roundup and branding -- the Gazette, and beyond...

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HB 808 finally passes: As we stated yesterday, the political landscape has changed now that the Montana House has passed a reasonable version of HB 808. Now that all 8 appropriations bills have been passed by the House in accordance with House rules, the Senate has the duty of going to work on them.

Democrats aren't too happy that the GOP managed to put a bill together without their help, with Sen. Mike Cooney making the disparaging comment that it was "too little, too late."

Again, Democrats complained about the contents of the bill, but have no excuse, since amendments and votes would have been welcomed. It has been pretty easy to be a Democratic House member this session when it comes to the grind of appropriations bills and the appropriations committee -- just mindlessly vote "no," and leave the work of amending the bills into workable compromises in content to the Senate.

Speaking of the Montana Senate...: Charles Johnson has this to say about the Senate's version of partisanship, and we hope that it holds true in the coming weeks:

The Senate, thank goodness, is still the Senate, the good old reliable Montana Senate. Through thick or thin, whether Democrats or Republicans are in control, the two sides in the Senate can disagree on issues, but usually do so in an agreeable way.

Most senators even seem to actually like and respect most of their counterparts on the other side of the aisle. As an example of the Senate's collegiality, the one party had takeout dinners delivered to the other party during the long days right before the transmittal deadline last month. The next night, the other side reciprocated.

If that happened in the House, nobody would touch the food. They'd be afraid the other party had sprinkled arsenic on it.

Biodiesel hazards: Alternative energy sources are a must for America. Wind, geothermal, biodiesel, you name it. Alternative energy sources that arise competitively in the open market without the need for government subsidies are of course the most desirable, since they will be financially sustainable.

Tom Howard's piece demonstrates the complexities of the issue of biodiesel. The most important section of the piece is right at the end, however:

Ultimately, economics could derail Montana's efforts to develop biodiesel, Ulledalen said. Most plants producing ethanol and biodiesel are being built in the Midwest, where corn and oilseeds are plentiful and rail traffic is readily available.

There is a simple reason why corn and oilseeds are plentiful in the Midwest: rain. Corn ethanol production in particular is , if anything, destructive to Montana agriculture, since we are a state of corn consumers, not corn producers. The ethanol industry gets a 51 cent/gal. tax credit -- let the implications of the enormity of that subsidy sink in for a minute. This is driving up the price of corn for Montana's livestock producers.

Biodiesel has more promise, since dryland crops can be put to use in producing it, but we suspect that it is probably still a pipedream to have much bio-fuel coming from Montana. We should concentrate on what we do have: Wind, oil, coal, and gas -- traditional as well as "clean and green."

The Bitterroot truth: It seems that Steve Woodruff of the Missoulian is giving Ed Kemmick of the Gazette a run for his satirical money. Good stuff.

Paying for the privilege of being sued

The Missoulian yesterday had a good piece on the way that environmentalist groups are abusing the system by getting to file suit against the Forest Service with a very high level of assurance of having all or part of their legal bills paid by the Forest Service:

As long as we demand legally defensible perfection in land management, we hardly need to be so generous in paying the attorney fees of the people who've created an industry of finding imperfections. It's just not that hard to do under existing laws and regulations.

The ability to recover legal costs makes it easy and - at the risk of sounding cynical here - too tempting to sue over matters that really ought to be decided through public debate.

As it is, the public pays three times. It pays the Forest Service's cost of trying to manage the forests - including the substantial costs of trying to litigation-proof every significant action; it pays the costs of defending those decisions plus the reimbursement of the plaintiff's legal fees; and then it also pays the hard-to-quantify but never insignificant costs of the work not done.

The Missoulian suggests a higher trigger for being able to recover attorney's fees, and that seems quite sensible. What if a governmental agency favored by environmentalists (say, the EPA) were being sued to the extent that it couldn't do its job? And if the groups suing the EPA into inaction were pretty sure to have the EPA pay their legal fees on top of it all, environmentalist groups would be up in arms.

We are all for common-sense laws to keep our air and water clean and our forests healthy. But descending into mere obstructionism using the courts while not having to put anything on the line yourself (such as having to pay at least part the government's legal fees if you lose) is not common-sense.

Sunday roundup and branding -- the Gazette, and beyond...

How low can you go?: Republicans have always been used to making compromises in order to get spending bills through, but it seems that this year, those compromises may have to go in the opposite from the direction those compromises usually go.

The overall spending increases proposed by the Republicans in their 6 separate bills is about 13% -- which is fairly hefty. The thought is that these should be able to garner enough Republican and Democrat support to pass.

Republicans have 51 votes in theory, but the problem is that some Republicans won't vote for any spending increases at all. Mike Lange tells us that if he can't get enough Democratic votes to pass these bills as written, he'll have no choice but to start cutting the spending in those bills. "If I go low enough, I can get 51 votes," Lange said.

Rather than coming to some sort of an idea of what levels of spending they can live with and making these bills work, Democrats appear to be choosing an even more hard-ball approach masquerading as a sort of Fantasy Island:

"I think (the governor's budget) is going to come back,'' (Senate President) Cooney said. ''I honestly do believe that in the end, the House is going to have to go back to House Bill 2."

"Big-wigs" coming to Butte: Those are the words of Sen. Baucus's e-mail press release -- not ours.

Missoulian: why buck the "right track?": In Steve Woodruff's piece, he points out that Montanans last spring said, when polled, that they thought Montana was on the right track. So, why should Republicans be bucking the governor's plans? His answer is that it is raw partisanship on the part of the Republicans.

We're not so sure. In his one meeting with Speaker Scott Sales towards the start of the session, Gov. Schweitzer reportedly told him about the budget, "I'm not married to any of this." And yet, there have been no indications on the part of Democrats that they were willing to make significant compromises on the governor's budget, which left Republicans having to use the political process (imagine that?) to attempt to force compromises.

What if Montanans had been told last spring that Democrats were going to increase spending by a minimum of 23% in one year -- is Woodruff confident that Montanans would have responded by saying that this was the "right track" for Montana?

City Lights: It seems that Ed Kemmick is about as taken with the legislative Democrats' response to recent events in Helena as we are:

Democrats might have been able to make a case that the Republicans weren't playing the game by the rules, or they could have swallowed their pride and complained that the Republicans were playing the game better. But when they accused Republicans of treating politics like a game, they sounded as whiny as the Republicans grousing that the governor shouldn't wear jeans and should leave his dog at home.

He also notes the fact that Mike Lange obviously enjoys the battle:

The game-like nature of politics would explain why Rep. Mike Lange, a Billings Republican and the House majority leader, seems to be having so much fun in Helena. The beefy pipefitter with the boyish grin played football for Rocky Mountain College, and you can tell that Helena politicking perfectly suits his competitive spirit....

And why not? Very few politicians who rank as great achieved that status without being expert gamesmen. If politics is a sport, LBJ was a Super Bowl quarterback. If politics is like chess, Lincoln was a Kasparov.