The Chilean miners were rescued. Before the dust even cleared, the Wall Street Journal was busy cranking out op-eds praising free market capitalism for the success of the operation:
That's right. In an open economy, you will never know what is out there on the leading developmental edge of this or that industry. But the reality behind the miracles is the same: Someone innovates something useful, makes money from it, and re-innovates, or someone else trumps their innovation. Most of the time, no one notices. All it does is create jobs, wealth and well-being. But without this system running in the background, without the year-over-year progress embedded in these capitalist innovations, those trapped miners would be dead....
Basically, the miners wouldn't have been rescued without the Center Rock drill bit, built by a Pennsylvania company called Center Rock, Inc, a private company.
Henniger's op-ed was in response to an Obama quote at a recent rally: "The basic idea is that if we put our blind faith in the market and we let corporations do whatever they want and we leave everybody else to fend for themselves, then America somehow automatically is going to grow and prosper."
Henniger:
The U.S. has a government led by a mindset obsessed with 250K-a-year "millionaires" and given to mocking "our blind faith in the market." In a fast-moving world filled with nations intent on catching up with or passing us, this policy path is a waste of time.
The miners' rescue is a thrilling moment for Chile, an imprimatur on its rising status. But I'm thinking of that 74-person outfit in Berlin, Pa., whose high-tech drill bit opened the earth to free them. You know there are tens of thousands of stories like this in the U.S., as big as Google and small as Center Rock. I'm glad one of them helped save the Chileans. What's needed now is a new American economic model that lets our innovators rescue the rest of us.
Er...? For starters, Hennigner left out the beginning of the Obama quote: "We know what that agenda was. You cut taxes, mostly for millionaires and billionaires. You cut regulations for special interests. You try to bust the unions. You cut back on investments in education and clean energy and research and technology." The President - and progressive policy - isn't about thwarting innovation, it's about not letting the market drive work conditions and business practice without government oversight through environmental, financial, and safety regulations.
Ellie Boldman Hill's first day in public office won't come for another three months, but the representative-elect from Missoula is in Washington, D.C., this week - where she'll be feted as one of the most notable rising stars among America's young politicos.
Hill, the recently elected state legislator for House District 94 who spends her days running Missoula's Poverello Center, has been named to Time magazine's list of "40 Under 40 Political Rising Stars." Hill will receive recognition at a banquet Thursday night on Capitol Hill, and will be profiled in a forthcoming issue of the magazine.
Holy smokes! Hill has no idea how she ended up on Time's list -- she hasn't even served in office yet, but they're got the right person. Hill has boundless energy and ambition, and is a good soul who'll be doing good work for a long time.
Congratulations, Ellie!
Update: Here's the profile of Hill along with a hilarious caricature. Check it out! And thanks to Ellie for naming LiTW as her "go-to blog."
Also kudos to Stephanie Schriock, Tester's former CoS and now working for EMILY's List, for making the list, too. Montana's very well represented!
Threatened bull trout - and bull trout habitat - got some good news this week as the Obama Administration and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service greatly expanded protections for waterways critical to the restoration of threatened bull trout.
The final rule issued by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service represented a major expansion of the streams, lakes and reservoirs protected as critical habitat for the fish, primarily on federal lands in Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Nevada, and a reversal of Bush administration policy on endangered species.
The new ruling protects 19,000 miles of streams, which is five times more than the 2005 rule, and 490,000 acres of lakes and reservoirs, which is more than three times greater than previously ordered. But the 754 miles of marine shoreline in Washington state was a reduction to make room for U.S. Navy testing grounds.
Faced with a lawsuit, Fish and Wildlife agreed last year to revise the 2005 critical habitat designation after an inspector general's report found it was among dozens of decisions improperly interfered with by former deputy assistant secretary of Interior Julie MacDonald, who resigned in 2007.
Montanans, and others, who value native fish and their habitat should celebrate this important critical habitat designation for bull trout. Much of the credit goes to two Montana-based organizations: Friends of the Wild Swan (sorry, no website) and Alliance for the Wild Rockies. A chronology of the issue from 1985 to 2009 is available here.
You can bet the lobbyists and political supporters of the timber, mining and grazing industry will blast this designation of critical habitat for the threatened bull trout. After all, now logging, mining, grazing and oil and gas development projects on public lands will now have to more fully take bull trout, their habitat and their recovery, into account.
In the coming days and weeks, it will also certainly be interesting to see if Montana Trout Unlimited, the National Wildlife Federation and the Montana Wilderness Association support and celebrate the Obama Administration/USFWS's new bull trout critical habitat designations...or if these "Tester bill collaborators" will stand with their new friends in the timber industry in opposition to these new rules. Stay tuned....
Montana Women Vote's 2010 voter guide is available.
The Bozeman Chronicleendorses JP Pomnichowsi: "Pomnichowski deserves a return trip to Helena. Her reasonableness and experience is needed, and she was successful in her last two terms in carrying legislation that has done good things for southwest Montana, particularly downtown Bozeman."
Based on his legal history, HD 3's GOP candidate, Jerry O'Neil, is probably not worthy of the public trust of an elected office.
The Indyprofiles HD 92, which features LiTW friend Bryce Bennett and his Republican opponent, Don Harbaugh. Frank on Bennett: "Bennett is a 25-year-old political organizer who could be the youngest legislator and the first openly gay man to serve in Helena. He's passionate about progressive issues, as evidenced by his work with Forward Montana, MontPIRG and Montana Conservation Voters, and has mobilized a horde of volunteers to knock on doors and register voters leading up to the Election Day on Nov. 2."
Kristi Allen-Gailushas drops her complaint against Helena's sex-ed program because "she received no support from the community and the cost of pursuing the legal challenge on her own was too much." No support, eh? Hm...
Speaking of the Helena sex-ed curriculum, a revised version passed.
Marnee Banks was a little taken aback by the "behavior of the Helena community" during the school board proceedings, saying that "people disrupted others while they were testifying, clapped, booed, jeered, and even had standing ovations." While "both sides broke the...rules...the opponents of the curriculum were much worse." The school board allowed the disruptions to occur. Marnee, meet IOKIYAR. The Helena school board is not the first organization to let conservatives bully them and the general public. How's your coverage of the midterm elections?
John Adams doesn't think the "jokes" coming from some of the darker corners during this year's election are particularly funny...
Bill Schneider thinks pro-wolf groups "blew it" by taking their case to court and not compromising beforehand: "As we languish in this ridiculous ego-centric impasse where neither side wants to show a sign of weakness by making the first move, anger has swollen to a point where some agencies and sporting groups refuse to even say the words, "settle" or "settlement" because they fear it might imply they gave into the pro-wolfers. Even if the plaintiffs had a sudden change of heart, it probably wouldn't matter."
Montana scientist Jerry Bromenshenk makes national news for finding the cause of Colony Collapse Disorder, which had been decimating honeybees across the country. Only...he took funding from pesticide manufacturer Bayer Crop Science and left pesticides out of his investigation. "Others are funded to do that," said Bromenshenk. I'd guess Bromenshenk is being up-and-up in his claims that Bayer's money didn't influence his results. Still, this is a pervasive problem: corporate dollars as a whole do distort scientific research by funding studies that have corporate-friendly assumptions or findings.
New York's Republican gubernatorial candidate, Carl Paladino, said children "should not be 'brainwashed' into thinking homosexuality was acceptable." Paladino's prepared text: "There is nothing to be proud of in being a dysfunctional homosexual."
A federal judge orders an injunction against the US military's DADT policy.
Man. This is your Republican party getting off on voter fraud: "In a private phone conversation that was secretly recorded, Mark Kirk, the Republican U.S. Senate candidate in Illinois, told state Republican leaders last week about his plan to send 'voter integrity' squads to four predominately African American neighborhoods of Chicago 'where the other side might be tempted to jigger the numbers somewhat.'" Jamil Smith tweets: "Odd that Republican Mark Kirk considers the likelihood of so-called "voter fraud" to be a function of melanin..."
What do you call bullying when a principal does it?
More than 35 parents and guardians of students who reportedly were publicly shamed at a school assembly for failing grades packed the regular Poplar School Board meeting Monday night and were quickly ushered into a closed-session meeting.
This is really pretty unbelievable. Similarly unbelievable is Aaron Flint's response:
I can only imagine if this would have happened to me when I was a kid. My parents probably would have thanked the principal for giving me the kick in the rear I would have deserved.
Poplar isn't a run-of-the-mill school. It is facing intense poverty and has faced a rash of suicides in the past year (5 suicides in a year in a middle school).
And this isn't about some tough-minded, hard-hearted v. touchy-feely liberal debate either. If you want to change behavior, these sorts of shenanigans are pretty much the dead wrong way to do it. Call me crazy, but I'm guessing that the children in question were aware of their own grades. So the students didn't learn anything (if they did, this is an even more shameful exercise). They specifically didn't learn how to do better.
Maybe the research I've read is wrong. Maybe the best way to turn kids around is just to yell at them more in public. Or maybe we should actually solve the damn problem.
Robert Pape, a University of Chicago political science professor and former Air Force lecturer, will present findings on Capitol Hill Tuesday that argue that the majority of suicide terrorism around the world since 1980 has had a common cause: military occupation....
"We have lots of evidence now that when you put the foreign military presence in, it triggers suicide terrorism campaigns, ... and that when the foreign forces leave, it takes away almost 100% of the terrorist campaign," Pape said in an interview last week on his findings.
Yet many conservatives bend over backwards to show that inherent characteristics of race or religion or region make certain people more naturally prone to violence. Haven't they seen Red Dawn, fer chrissakes?
Steve Bullock has been doing a hell of a job standing up for Montana's ban on corporate spending in elections, making the sort of case that just may reversed Citizens United on the basis of facts (what do they say -- good judges decide cases, not law).
One of his opponents in these cases is Western Tradition Partnership, the apparent one-time employer of Tim Ravndal (the tea party leader who joked about Matthew Shepard's death on Facebook). Western Tradition Partnership is the epitome of entitled good-old-boyism. And they just took it a step further.
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, the WTP's executive director Donald Ferguson compared "Montana regulations to state poll taxes, which the Supreme Court found unconstitutional in 1966. Montana's position, Mr. Ferguson says, is like saying poll taxes are no burden because 'you just have to pay a tax and then you can vote.'"
For a group with such a dodgy record on civil and human rights, that's a bold statement. Did I say bold? I meant borderline racist. Poll taxes were hardly a standalone thing. They were a part of an entire set of laws and practices that involved attacking black men, women, and children with dogs and fire hoses. Corporations, on the other hand, are business entities created by the state to limit liability. Not exactly the same thing. Not even close, in fact.
Update -- In another news story that buries the lede, Montana state investigator Robert Hoffman "said his investigation has found evidence that Western Tradition Partnership intends to or has tried to solicit donations from officers of several foreign corporations or their affiliations, including some based in Canada, South Africa and the United Kingdom." Foreign contributions to influence federal elections are still illegal. All corporate contributions to influence state elections are still illegal.
Ryan Lizza has a dazzling whirlwind tour of the failure of the U.S. Senate to pass climate legislation -- a failure that some of Lizza's sources indicate will set a hard carbon cap back years (huge victory for ice caps yearning to be oceans).
Climate change suffered from a lot of problems: a trio of backers who are possibly uniquely unsuited to passing major legislation, a crowded plate of legislation moving forward, and an issue that uniquely moves the right but moves only a relatively elite segment of the left.
Beyond that, it really suffered from what I'll simply call the U.S. Senate. Coming off of the 2008 elections, voters handed Democrats 60 U.S. Senate seats (one by the narrowest of margins). But unlike most foreign countries, our parties (especially the Dems) are fairly big tents and a number of members feel very little need to follow the party line.
In addition, there is a lot of good reason for minority parties in the U.S. (as elsewhere) to stand against the majority party.
So add all of this up and combine it with the filibuster and the tendency in American politics is to reward the most self-interested, short-sighted, and least competent lawmakers. It was the filibuster that gave us the Cornhusker Kickback in the health care bill - the special package of goodies that Ben Nelson demanded in exchange for his vote. It also resulted in the ridiculous Gang of Six negotiations that resulted in watered-down legislation but no Republican votes for the measure.
There's an important lesson here -- from virtually any policy experts' viewpoint, the health care bill would have been improved by passing a bill that only required 51 votes instead of 60.
The next Congress will have an option to bring back the ability of a Senator to call the question (a rule that existed in the early years of the Senate). There are other reforms that could be considered, some stronger (abolish the Senate), some weaker (water down the cloture, but keep it in place). But the body would be wise to abolish the rules. It is making our nation ungovernable. A nation that cannot solve collective challenges without unanimous consent is a nation that will not long survive.
Ed Kemmick, the long-time Gazette reporter and columnist who has turned heads recently for his savage coverage of the Tea Party, turns his sights on the anti-predatory lending initiative moving toward a vote on November 2nd.
Supporters of the initiative (I consider myself one) owe it to themselves to grapple with Ed's arguments, which mostly center on his own concern that this is pretty damn patronizing. I may have some more thoughts later. Ed also attracted that rarest of all prizes -- a coherent comment on a newspaper website from someone writing under the name "Reality Check."
Ed; you got this one wrong. Back in the 70s I had occasion to take out my last high interest loan, it was 38% if I remember right. There were finance companies that specialized in this kind of credit, and I had used this company before. The difference was there was a $500 minimum, but you could always make an advance payment for what you didn't need, and you had a monthly payment for 12 or 24 months. You didn't have to come up with the whole nut in 2 weeks. I always paid mine back as fast as possible because there was no penalty for early repayment and I could control how much the loan cost that way. Last time I had to fix my car in Portland so I could get back to Montana for my summer work. Never held a grudge about the interest rate; understood the risk, felt it fair and saw the loans as necessary. The payday lenders and title pawn loan sharks saw a way to make a killing off of vulnerable people; you Ed are an exception, but still got ripped off. There is a better way... Peace to all, Reality
Ultimately, I still fall in favor of ending these exorbitantly high-interest operations in Montana. My own preference would be that we find ways to actually compete. I would imagine that if someone figured out how to offer similar loans at a lower cost, they could have a competitive business. Operating such a thing out of a non-profit would probably be a competitive advantage.
Like Ed, I've found myself in places where I wanted to take advantage of a payday loan. The time I tried to take one out, though, I wasn't employed; I was doing contract work. That apparently made me too much of a credit risk and I was denied a loan. I don't remember how I got through that cash crunch, but I apparently did. Given the choice between status quo and abolition of these loans, I'll choose abolition. But I do wish we could find more meaningful short-term credit options for low-income people.
Update -- Ed is getting some strong (and strongly supported) pushback in comments. I'd recommend checking it out.
