Missoula City Analysis

What’s the Real Missoula: Generous Hippie or Quiet Conservative?

Missoula is a liberal town ready to shell out bucks to support its progressive ideals, or the Garden City is a dollars-and-cents conservative place, anxious to rein in government and trim taxes.

Whatever the state's perception of Missoula may be (as the state's bleeding heart, usually), the Missoula City Council has been either been split 7-5 or evenly divided -- often along classic liberal-conservative lines -- for years. And as the economic crunch continues, the debate has gotten even louder.

The most recent flare-up arose over $651,000 allotted for new dump trucks and other city vehicles. According to Mayor John Engen's office, the purchase, which the council approved on a 7-5 vote last week, fit the city's basic mission, to take care of necessities such as fixing streets while reducing long-term fuel costs. Over the last decade, while growing in size by about one-third, the city has cut unleaded gas usage by 10 percent and diesel by 8 percent.

But that's not how everyone sees it.

Cabinet Appointments

Obama Punting on Agriculture Reform?

While Obama's centrist cabinet appointments on the economy and national security have been well-received in most quarters, there could be a lot more dissent if he goes ahead with one of the current front-runners for Agriculture Secretary, reports Jonathan Hiskes at Crosscut.

Citing The Hill, Hiskes says that Reps. Collin Peterson (D-Minn.) and Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (D-S.D.) are the leading contenders for Agriculture - and that both are representative of the status quo.

Agriculture reform is both a budget issue and a social issue as the organic- and local-food movements gain momentum. Indeed, reform of irrational subsidy programs and various types of incentive schemes that favor chemically-oriented agribusiness over family farms is potentially a great opportunity for Obama and his message of change. We don't know Peterson or Sandlin, but when it comes to Ag, we definitely support change.

News Brief

Western Governors Create Energy Wish List for Obama

The bi-partisan Western Governors' Association has given President-elect Barack Obama a four-page letter detailing its recommendations for the new administration's energy policy, including an "aggressive and achievable national greenhouse gas emissions reduction goal."

The letter, signed by Utah Gov. John Huntsman Jr. and Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer also urges Obama to "promptly" (within the first 100 days of office) to, among other things: Propose a national mandatory system of emissions reductions through "market-based mechanisms;" Pursue a national energy efficiency program; Establish an oil import reduction goal; and spend tens of billions of dollars each year to encourage private investment in clean energy.

The Obama Effect

Gun Sales Boom—Fact or Hype?

Since the election of Barack Obama, and the Democratic near-sweep of Congress, two weeks ago there have beenhundreds of news stories about an up surge of gun sales across the West and across the country. Many of these have appeared in newspapers in the Rocky Mountain West: the Denver Post, Boulder's Daily Camera, the Salt Lake Tribune, and so on. The problem is, while these accounts seem to present persuasive evidence, they're almost all based on anecdotal evidence.

The Thanksgiving Table

Thankful for Thanksgiving Without Pirates

The chaotic and violent East African country of Somalia has no official government, but it has some big-time pirates. Their latest acquisition on the high seas, just last week, was a Saudi oil tanker the size of three aircraft carriers.

Not even Johnny Depp could have pulled that off, but audacity isn’t a problem for this kind of piracy, which has become a career for some Somalis. Faced with little choice in a country ravaged by warlords and combat for more than 20 years, pirates were once people who stole because of hunger, and then hunger turned to greed.

Poverty which leads to crime and violence – an ancient story unfortunately still with us.

It’s impossible for ordinary Somalis to try to organize against the warlords. “How can we do there?” asked Mali, a Somali mother newly arrived in Boise with her two daughters. “Just to step the line outside the village we are killed,” she said.

The Somali refugees in Boise know about pirates

Saga of the Super-Rich

Yellowstone Club Returns to Bankruptcy Court, to Sink Further Into Debt

As Edra Blixseth and the Yellowstone Club return to a U.S. Bankruptcy Court on Tuesday, the central questions will not revolve around paying the club's debts -- but rather miring the club deeper in red ink.

The club's lawyers filed a motion on Monday to ask U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Ralph B. Kirscher to OK a second emergency loan to keep the club operating while in bankruptcy.

Two weeks ago, the club where only the best would do didn't have enough money for propane for heat, or the shuttle to move employees to and from nearby towns, much less enough cash to actually pay those employees, even for one more day.

That's when the club filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in Montana court. Chapter 11 allows a business to remain open while it makes a plan to pay its debts. The filing came in the wake of an ugly divorce between Edra Blixseth and ex-husband Tim, allegations of large-scale financial impropriety and the collapse of the high-end real estate market as well as the credit markets that funded it.

Energy Policy

Bush Administration Pushes Through New Oil Shale Rules

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

The Obama Team: Richardson to Commerce

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.

LeMond Continues Long Legal Fight With Yellowstone Club

The Tour de France might come to seem less grueling -- and certainly less murky -- than Greg LeMond's two-year legal fight against the Yellowstone Club, which he resumed this week when he asked a Montana judge to order club owner Edra Blixseth to pay him the final $13.5 million of a $21.5 million settlement, a Bloomberg story says.

The judge granted LeMond's request, but the cycling great, who won the world's top cycling race in 1986, 1989 and 1990, will have to get in line for his money. The Yellowstone Club, which Edra Blixseth only won control of in August after a long and bitter public divorce with former timber executive Tim, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Nov. 10.

In her filing in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Butte, Montana, Blixseth tallied the club's debts at about $350 million. The biggest liability is $307 million, not including interest, to Credit Suisse Group. The Zurich-based bank loaned the club $375 million in 2005.

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By Robert Struckman, 11-21-08 | comments (8) | email story | print story

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