Blog: Generation Recreation

Today's ski industry is centered around making money off land instead of making turns in powder. The mountain is merely a commodity, an expensive amenity to be exploited for financial interests that have nothing to do with outdoor recreation. The Yellowstone Club was never about skiing. The ski area was merely the carrot dangled in front of buyers to sell them land and the exclusivity that accompanies deep pockets. [more]

Column: Politics

No matter your feelings about gay equality and marriage, the issue is firmly political. It’s the civil rights movement of our day, and can no longer be relegated to a fringe few --especially after the passage of Proposition 8, which bans gay marriage, in California ten days ago.

Donors from many states gave money to help pass Prop. 8, but Idahoans donated more than $400,000 to pass it, second only to Utah in out-of-state contributions.

Several publications, including Pride Depot, are calling for a boycott of businesses on the donor list.

A national day of protest called “Join the Impact – Promote Love and Equality in Your City” on Saturday aims to bring national attention and a collective experience to people who want to claim their support for gay marriage and their objection to the California initiative.

In the Rocky Mountain West – at least in the states where New West publishes - there are 19 events scheduled for tomorrow, all at 11:30 Mountain Time, which are listed here. [more]

08 Presidential Election

A new report from the Center for Rural Strategies and our friends over at the online journal the Daily Yonder released a report this week that details who flipped where in last week's presidential election.

In all, 372 counties "flipped" parties from 2004, a majority of them going from Republican to Democrat. The data shows the Midwest played a huge role in the tip for Sen. Barack Obama and overall, rural counties provided a big boost.

In the Rocky Mountain West 21 counties flipped, all of them to Democrat. Of those 21 counties, 16 are considered "rural," including three in Colorado, two in Idaho, five in Montana, four in New Mexico and one each in Utah and Wyoming. [more]

THE CONFESSIONS OF A REGULAR NUT

I'm not a gun nut. I'm a regular nut who owns guns, but only to hunt, not to defend my home and family, join the militia or fight the forces of tyranny.

Gun nuts don't scare or intimidate me. Instead, I'm learning a few things from them. You can, too. [more]

Tales From Bankruptcy Court

A Montana bankruptcy judge reluctantly breathed three weeks of life into the Yellowstone Club in a Missoula courtroom Thursday when he OK'd a three-week loan to keep the club operating during the next stage of bankruptcy hearings.

"Why am I doing this?" asked U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Ralph B. Kirscher, who called it "troubling" and "overkill" that his order included the terms and conditions of a $4.4 million temporary bailout loan from lender Credit Suisse to the luxurious-but-broke private club.

"What happens if I don't sign this order?" Kirscher said. "If you would have asked me at one o'clock last night, I would have said, 'This isn't going to get signed. I'll let things fall where they may.'" [more]

News Analysis

It's an odd twist of fate that the Blixseth who was sitting in the witness chair in a Missoula federal courthouse Wednesday was named Edra. Sure, Edra Blixseth is nominally the owner of the Yellowstone Club, the uber-exclusive resort near Big Sky that's now mired in bankruptcy. She thus bears much of the responsibility for trying to sort out the mess, even though her equity in the club is almost certainly worthless and lender Credit Suisse effectively controls the property. She's been involved with the venture from the beginning, and is certainly no business neophyte.

Yet as everyone familiar with the situation knows all too well, the Blixseth who built the Yellowstone Club, the person who persuaded the likes of Bill Gates to join up, the person whose non-stop, on-the-edge deal-making both made the club possible and created its current predicament, is named Tim. His sudden absence from the scene is strange; dozens of lawyers, thousands of pages of legal filings, a financial fiasco of major proportions -- and hardly a word about Tim. [more]

Poor Little Rich Club

Once touted as the world's pre-eminent leisure community for the mega-rich, with billionaires from Bill Gates on down among its members, the Yellowstone Club near Big Sky, Montana, doesn’t have enough cash in the bank to buy propane, owner Edra Blixseth said in bankruptcy court in Missoula Wednesday.

The four companies that operate collectively as the Yellowstone Club filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in Montana on Monday, citing debts of about $360 million, most of it owed to a consortium of lenders led by international bank Credit Suisse. Chapter 11 allows a business to operate while it reorganizes its debt, and in this case the bankruptcy filing comes in the wake of an ugly divorce, allegations of large-scale financial impropriety, and a complete meltdown of the high-end real estate market and the credit markets that funded it.

The club doesn't have enough cash to make its $600,000 monthly payroll for its 521 employees or to buy food for its restaurants, or for the electricity needed to operate the chairlifts at its storied private ski area. Last week, the club's checking account had only about $40,000.

[more]

Guest Column

Every four years those of us living in the Intermountain West --a largely federal landscape filled with vast potential and spectacular resources -- find ourselves wondering who will be appointed as our new landlord, and why.

Past Secretaries of the Interior have been assigned an acutely partisan and political role, typically delivered as a reward to a former Governor or loyal ideologue. This triggers a vicious cycle. A Dirk Kempthorne or Gale Norton sets out to undo the work of a Bruce Babbitt, who reversed James Watt’s extremes, who in turn tried to roll back the legacy of Cecil Andrus. The next appointment to Interior can continue to whipsaw the West, offering more of the same, or provide it with a deep-rooted, nonpartisan voice of pragmatism and stability.

Here in the American West, there is no more respected conservation leader than Utah writer and natural historian, Terry Tempest Williams. [more]

The 2008 Data Book from Montana Kids Count, which just hit the shelves, is boring and bland, but its informative sections on juvenile justice and the data snapshots of Native American women and children sound alarm bells.

Here's an example. On page 9, in the middle of a chart, is this shocking bit of news: Native women in Montana have an average life expectancy of 64 years, compared to 81 for the general population.

Sixty-four years!

[more]

Bob Wire Has a Point (It's Under His Cowboy Hat)

“Well, Speaker has been doing great in science, great in math, and we’re in the middle of our unit in social studies. Here’s the rubric that explains the grading system, and here are a couple of papers she’s written.” She slid the pages across the table, and I sat back, thinking, unit? Unit of what? Whole blood? Rubric? I thought they came in cube form. The terminology I’ve been hearing from the kids and their teachers since they entered kindertarten has me wondering if I ever really attended school, or was it all just a vivid nightmare. I have to admit that I did wet the bed as a child. From the hallway.

“And you can see that she’s very proficient in her reading…” Mrs. A began.

“Yeah, she gets that from Barb,” I said, cutting her off. “Barb’s reading at an eighth grade level.” My laughter was cut off by the pain of Barb’s heel on my instep, which I interpreted as “no sex for a month.” [more]