New West Network

My Page: Guest Writer

The Fiscal Health of States

Heavy use of citizen initiatives is one of the clearest predictions of states that are in danger of following California “to the brink of insolvency,” according to an extensive survey of state financial problems by the nonpartisan Pew Center on the States. Oregon, looking toward a critical vote in January, is perhaps the next state in danger of insolvency; if voters reject a $733 million tax increase on upper incomes and corporations, the state will face a huge budget deficit even after cutting state spending by $2 billion in the 2009 legislative session.

Among the states with the most serious financial problems, the top seven all have a super-majority requirement for their legislatures to pass taxes without a popular vote, allowing a minority to deadlock revenue measures; and six of the seven endangered states make use of citizen initiatives and referendums. Across the country, the two work hand in hand; nearly every state with a super-majority got there via citizen initiative.

Washington falls into that category. A stronger economy and sounder state financial management keep it from the “endangered” list, although it still ranks 14th among the 50 states in terms of fiscal trouble.

New Conflicts arise

Montanans living along the winding Teton River, well east of the Rocky Mountain Front were quick to notice their new neighbor this summer. As early as the beginning of July, ranchers and other landowners along the prairie began intermittently spotting a solitary grizzly bear journeying east away from the mountains.

Residents of the rural grasslands, including Mike Madel, Montana Fish, Wildlife and Park’s Region 4 Grizzly Bear Management Specialist based in Choteau, were even more surprised in mid-July when members of a local ranching family captured photographs of the lone bear on their land along the Teton north of Fort Benton, ambling through open prairie nearly 100 miles from the mountains, where Ursus arctos horribilis is expected these days.

For Madel and other bear managers in the state, the bear’s arrival so far beyond the range of today’s grizzlies and into historic habitat was a revelation – and one that would be the first of many throughout the summer and fall. Madel, a 23-year veteran of working with grizzlies along the Front, called 2009 an “unprecedented” year for bears wandering back on to the prairie, and says the bears’ presence there is only likely to increase in coming years.

That means an entire population of humans will now have to learn how to cohabitate with grizzlies. While the plains are historically grizzly country, for many living there now, the return of the grizzly is – to put it lightly – a surprise. 

Guest Column from Montana Petroleum Association

The following opinion piece is from the Montana Petroleum Association.

While the U.S. Senate considers a “cap-and-trade” bill that includes creation of a new federal bureaucracy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the Montana Petroleum Association (MPA) is becoming more concerned about the toll such a plan would take on our industry and on Montana consumers. The Senate bill, modeled after one that passed the U.S. House of Representatives in June, is nearly 1,000 pages long. We have sifted through most of the proposal, and with each reading it becomes clear what this bill will and won’t do.

From Wyofile

Sweetwater Station, Wyo.—If you blink once or your attention drifts for an instant on the two-lane highway between Muddy Gap and the Lander, Wyoming, you may miss one of the world’s great road signs, a weathered, wooden square flanked by an American flag:  “Old Books Fresh Eggs For Sale.”

And if you don’t stop and go inside the two-story, structurally-reinforced, climate-controlled book barn stuffed with more than 75,000 hardback volumes ranging from leather-bound Balzac to first-edition Beatrix Potter, you will miss one of Wyoming’s and the Mountain West’s hidden treats.

Owners Lynda “Mad Dog” German and Polly “The Pilgrim” Hinds moved their Mad Dog and The Pilgrim Booksellers from Denver to Sweetwater Station in 2000 after an unpleasant encounter with the Aurora, Colorado, Police Department.

Guest Opinion

Many of us will be afield this fall spending time in our favorite hunting and fishing spots. We will be enjoying the tradition of these field sports so important to our lives. But as you head out to the fields, rivers and streams we want you to be aware of an important tool for conservation of those areas we find near and dear to our hearts.

The United States Congress this fall will have a unique opportunity to secure full and dedicated funding of the Land and Water Conservation Fund, the principal source of federal dollars for protecting land in America’s national parks, forests, and other public landscapes and ensuring recreational opportunities for Americans in every state in the nation.

Since 1977, this fund has been authorized at $900 million per year. Most of the funds come from off-shore oil and gas leases, and are to be used for the purchase, from willing sellers, of land with outstanding natural, recreation, scenic, and other attributes, and for the development of outdoor recreation lands and facilities at the state and local level.

With the 10th anniversary of the “Battle in Seattle” coming up Nov. 30, expect a lot of stories about WTO. The Seattle Times, for example, is already asking you to send in your memories of 1999.

Coverage will include “then-and-now” looks at how the world has and hasn’t changed. One interesting trend: The protest tactics developed by the left in the 1960s and practiced by anti-globalization protesters in the 1990s are emulated and echoed in the Obama era by the American right wing. We’ve gone from “turtles and Teamsters” to “Teabaggers.”

Book Review

A coworker once quipped that a good study is one where the researcher’s stand on the issue  is hard to determine. This coworker then offered up Kristin Luker’s Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood, an especially even-handed study of activist supporters and opponents of abortion, as a good example. An analogous measure of quality, I think, might be whether a researcher with little personal experience of the subject under study can observe and describe that topic sensitively and well.

Take the new book Hollowing Out the Middle: The Rural Brain Drain and What It Means for America by sociologists Patrick Carr and Maria Kefalas. Admitted urbanites whose original research agenda didn’t include a detour through the country, Carr and Kefalas undertook an ethnographic study of youth pathways to adulthood in a pseudonymous small Iowa town, “Ellis.” But if you didn’t read their confession about not being rural residents themselves, you probably wouldn’t be able to guess it.

UM Activism for the Planet

UM has now launched its new Climate Change Studies minor program, the first of its kind in the nation. Last spring, the Green Thread Initiative held its first workshop to help professors introduce climate and sustainability topics into their curriculum, allowing more environmental dialogue throughout campus. Faculty members across campus are directly addressing different aspects of climate change in their own work, creating an interdisciplinary curriculum and minor through departments from economics to journalism, forestry to ethics, and science to law.

Students like me are gaining valuable skills through this strong education in science, society, and solutions to climate change. The Environmental Studies Department is even funding two of us to represent UM at the international climate treaties in Copenhagen this December. My environmental studies major together with this climate minor are providing me critical advocacy skills, and I know that I am not the only student that UM has helped become empowered in enacting change.

Healthcare Reform

Congressional legislation to reshape the U.S. health insurance system, H.R. 3962, passed by a tiny five-vote margin late Saturday night, as 39 Democrats – most of them representing rural districts—broke with the president and opposed the sweeping bill.

Voting overwhelmingly along party lines, the House passed the Affordable Health Care for America Act 220-215. Of the 39 Democrats who voted against the bill, 33 represent districts with higher-than-average rural populations. (Congressional districts’ rurality is based on 2000 Census figures and calculations by the USDA found here).

Nationwide, 21% of Americans live in rural communities.

Community Service

President Barack Obama’s call for volunteerism is being heard loud and clear in Montana. But long before the president came to office, the Treasure State was a bastion for community service. Now, with Obama’s plan to triple the size of AmeriCorps, Montana could be gearing up for a considerable increase in its already sizeable volunteer base.

Montana perennially has one of the highest rates of community service in the nation. A study by Volunteering in America states that 36.6 percent of Montanans volunteer for some form of service, giving the state the sixth-highest rate in the nation.

But beyond the leanings of its own residents, Montana is also a foremost destination for volunteers.