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Energy Policy

The Bush Administration, as part of its effort to lock in policies via administrative rules before leaving office, has put takens steps to open 800 million acres of land in the West to oil shale exploration. The move comes just a few weeks after a moratorium on shale oil leases expired. The independent investigative news site Pro Publica has an in-depth look at an issue that is likely to provoke much controversy in Colorado, Wyoming and Utah for many years to come.

While oil shale has a lot of promise, as detailed by Hal Herring here at NewWest.Net a few months back, it also has potentially immense environmental consequences, and it's not clear it can be extracted in a way that ultimately yields more energy than it consumes.

Westerners in Washington

New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, a one-time Clinton Administration Energy Secretary who infuriated his former patron with a critical early endorsement of Obama, will be named Secretary of Commerce in the Obama Administration. The popular governor had made no secret of his desire to return to Washington, but was taken out of the running for Secretary of State when that job went to Hillary Clinton.

Obama has also decided on his key economic advisors, with New York Federal Reserve president Timothy Geithner as Treasury Secretary and former Treasury chief and Harvard President Lawrence Summers as head of the National economics Council. Obama also said in a radio address Saturday that he plans to launch a broad jobs-based stimulous package.

Richardson's appointment follows the selection of Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano as head of Homeland Security. With former South Dakota Senator Tom Daschle heading Health and Human Services, and with Montanan Jim Messina playing a key role as head of personnel at the White House, Westerners seem to be well-represented on the Obama team so far.

But there's still no clear indication on the cabinet jobs that are most important for the West: the Departments of Interior, Energy and Agriculture.

Guest Commentary

The Montana Supreme Court finally handed down its long awaited ruling on the so-called “Mitchell Slough case.” Brought by the Bitterroot River Protective Association (BRPA), the appeal challenged the right of “rich out-of-state landowners” to limit public access to the Mitchell Slough. The plaintiffs argued that the Mitchell is a “natural, perennial-flowing stream” and as such is open to access by the public under Montana’s Stream Access Law (SAL). The state supreme court bought BRPA’s argument and reversed a lower court ruling denying public access.

The fact that the lower court found the Mitchell to be man-made while the supreme court found the opposite illustrates the slippery nature of the definition. Like so many legal battles, however, the technical legal sparring in the Mitchell case missed two truly important implications of the decision. [more]

Update

For more than 20 years, the Mitchell Slough in Montana's Bitterroot Valley has become a showcase of the battle between public access and private property rights and Monday the Montana Supreme Court ruled in favor of the former.

With a 54-page ruling, the Supreme Court deemed the waterway a natural stream, which means access to it is protected by Montana's stream access law, which is among the strongest in the country. The ruling has been coming for more than two years and overturns two lower-court decisions that had defined the stream the way the Bitterroot Conservation District and several high-profile landowners had advocated it be: Just a ditch.

The case, which has been watched closely across the West as a crucial test of stream access law, has been a long-running extravaganza of protests, celebrity, and political maneuvering but more than that, it has been a spur for complex and often heated discussions on water rights, landownership, what's natural and what's not and most of all, how to square the values of the Old West with the demands of the New.

The Ravalli Republic's Perry Backus has a detailed story on yesterday's ruling here and to catch up on the case and it's implications, Greg Lemon wrote a very good primer for NewWest.Net when the case first went to the high court. [more]

Guest Opinion: Children Chant

When second- and third-graders chanted "Assassinate Obama" on a Madison School District bus recently, district spokeswoman Janet Goodliffe explained that most of the children didn't understand what the words mean. According to The Associated Press, she attributed the chant to the community's being "highly conservative" and overwhelmingly for John McCain.

I admire Janet Goodliffe as a preschool education leader. But as a teacher, she offered tortured excuses instead of capitalizing on a great teaching opportunity.

This is not an isolated incident. As a former teacher and Idaho Falls school volunteer, Luella Hendrickson, wrote on this page Thursday, after the election, children in her daughter's elementary class condemned Obama for being a Muslim, not being a U.S. citizen, selling out to the Arabs, taking away our guns, etc.

Anyone with ears to hear know these children were parroting their parents. Children get the drift from home: The new president is radical, dangerous and not to be trusted.

How terribly sad. [more]

Diary of a Mad Voter: Joan McCarter

The Bush administration has given the incoming Obama team (and the American people) yet another middle finger. First they announced--on Election Day, the day the American people decisively rejected "drill, baby, drill"--that they were putting huge swaths of Utah's most beautiful and fragile canyonlands under the auction block. Now they think they've figured out a way to make their policy of "rape the land first, don't bother with the questions ever" permanent. [more]

Missoula City News

Rising costs and slower growth mean a municipal budget that's tighter than ever at Missoula's City Hall.

Missoula Mayor John Engen has asked department heads to cut costs, and he has planned with Alec Hansen of the Montana League of Cities and Towns to lobby for a local option sales tax at the upcoming legislative session in Helena.

"We're going to come back with the same thing we've promoted for years and years, which is the local option tourist tax," Hansen said. [more]

Guest Column

As newly elected legislators prepare to join returning Westerns in the halls of Congress they have an opportunity to help build a new economy in the rural West. By supporting programs that unlock the entrepreneurial spirit of rural America, Western legislators can deliver on their promise to create opportunity for rural communities in their states. [more]

Guest Column

There is a time to be sanguine about the past and let it go, and a time to take stock of reality.

Nearly eight years ago, David Orr, a distinguished professor of environmental studies at Oberlin College, joined a group of leading natural resource experts who sought a meeting with newly elected president George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney to discuss green issues they believed were pressing for the nation.

The concerns were packaged in a white paper. Among them: addressing climate change and the need for a sound American energy policy that would emphasize renewable fuels as a way of reducing CO2 emissions, achieving a healthier environment, and enhancing our strategic defense against hostile Middle Eastern nations with huge oil supplies. [more]

President-elect Barack Obama has chosen Jim Messina, former chief of staff for Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., as one of his deputy chiefs of staff in the White House.

Messina, who partly grew up in Boise and graduated from the University of Montana, worked as Obama’s campaign chief of staff and will now be part of Obama’s tight inner circle as the President-elect prepares to take over in Washington.

Messina is a long-time political figure in Montana who started his career in the statehouse in 1991. In August, Messina did an interview with High Country News‘ Ray Ring, (You can read the full interview, titled “Obama’s Western Ace-In-The-Hole” here) in which he he said:

I think that’s what (much of the West) is—Westerners are not partisan. ... People ask me all the time, “Why are Democrats doing so well in Montana?” It’s because we are able to speak to all Montanans about issues that are important to all, like public access to lands—that’s not a Democratic issue or a Republican issue, but the fact is, Democrats are better at it than Republicans are, and it speaks to a whole bunch of people who are unaffiliated and who care deeply about it.

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