Live Missoula!

Missoula County’s population growth has slowed in the last several years from around percent annual growth in the '90s to about one percent annual growth, says Larry Swanson, the Director of the O’Connor Center for the Rocky Mountain West at the University of Montana.

County-wide population is about 100,000 and is now growing by about 1,000 people a year, which will require about 400 to 500 additional housing units each year. There is some natural increase (more people are born than die), but mostly there are more people moving in than moving out. Numbers from the UM Bureau of Business and Economic Research indicate that only about 25 percent of these are residents new to the area. The others are moving from somewhere else in Montana (50 percent) or have previous ties to the area (25 percent).

Swanson will be discussing the demographics of this growth this weekend on the Live Missoula! radio program airing Sunday, February 25 on News Radio 1290 KGVO at 10:30 a.m. [more]

MOVIN’ ON UP

Boise is starting to look a lot like U.S. cities in the early 20th century, when rural folk moved into the city for the jobs and cheaper living. A study done by and reported on by the Idaho Statesman shows that 43 percent of newcomers to Ada and Canyon counties from 2000 to 2005 moved from other places in Idaho. Only 11 percent came from California.

The data used comes from IRS tax-return address changes from 2000 to 2005 collected by the Charlotte Observer, a newspaper in North Carolina. It shows that the top four of five counties funneling people into the two urban counties are Idaho counties, while the fifth is Maricopa County in Arizona.

The Idaho Statesman reports, though, that while many Idahoans are moving to the “big city” for the jobs, the affordable housing and the amenities, those moving from out of state are attracted to the city’s smaller size. All told, that influx is increasing traffic and congestion, and much of the blame for burgeoning urban problems still falls on Californians — deserved or not. [more]

Author Interview

Ryan Sager is a columnist for the New York Post. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Reason, National Review, and the Atlantic Monthly. He is also the author of The Elephant in the Room, Evangelicals, Libertarians, and the Battle to Control the Republican Party. Writing before the midterm elections, Sager predicted that the Republican shift towards Southern values—religion, morality and tradition, as he sees it—would cost the party in the West where people tend to put more value on freedom, independence and privacy. I interviewed Sager, who lives in Brooklyn, on Thursday, December 21st. [more]

Lost your job? Living on the streets? Don’t come to Vegas. Lately, according to an article by Lynette Curtis in Las Vegas’ Review-Journal, the police have been seizing the shopping carts homeless people use to transport their clothing, blankets and medication. Metropolitan Police Sergeant Damian Walburn said the individuals involved have been allowed to retain their possessions, but they say otherwise. Said 64-year-old Dane Jensen of his involvement with the police, “…Metro came up. They said, ‘these are all stolen. You can’t remove anything from them. If you do, you’ll be prosecuted.”
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Arizona, Idaho and Utah

Arizona has displaced Nevada as the fastest-growing state, according to Census Bureau figures released yesterday and reported in the New York Times, with Idaho in third place. Utah was sixth and Colorado was eight - and if you discount the boost that Georgia and Texas received from Katrina refugees, five of the top six spots would be states in the intermountain West. Refugees from California were the biggest driver of Arizona's growth, the Times reports, while Texas emerged as a magnet for people from all over.

Can we cope with our aging demographics?

It is certainly not news that the U.S. is facing a crisis in care of the elderly. Since the oldest of the baby-boomers hit 60 this year, it stands to reason that the demographics spell problems ahead.

But it’s possible that many folks living in the New West – especially those newly settled in this wonderland of outdoor activity – may believe it’s a problem for other regions of the country, not here.

I beg to differ.

All around me, the parents of our vital, grabbing-life-with-both-hands residents are following their kids here, attracted, to be sure, by Montana’s beauty and recreational opportunities, but also wanting to be close to kids and grandkids as they enter their “golden years.” [more]

Monday Business Roundup

The federal raids last week that netted some 1,300 undocumented workers at Swift & Co. meatpacking plants across six states clearly demonstrated two facts: the INS is more serious than ever about busting laborers at American companies without targeting those companies themselves; and we are all complicit in the continued hidden-in-plain view hiring of illegal immigrants.

On Sunday the Post published a terrific feature by staff writers Elizabeth Aguilera and Greg Griffin, underlining in the clearest possible terms through interviews with businesspeople in Greeley, where 261 people were arrested, just how pervasive -- and accepted -- the underground economy is. The key quote: "It's really just accepted, the immigrant workers and the illegal immigrants. And why? Because they are needed," said Steve Mize, owner of Jerry's Market in Greeley. "It's not an argument; it just is."

Until it was sold in 2004, Swift & Co. was 46 percent owned by ConAgra Foods, which is a huge publicly owned company with a $13.5 billion market cap. Even after the sale, plenty of us including me are consumers of Swift products. The Greeley townspeople interviewed by Griffin and Aguilera had sharply differing views on illegal immigration, but they all agreed on one thing: our economy depends on these workers.

On his evening show on CNN Lou Dobbs rants against unimpeded immigration every night. I wonder if Dobbs, a multimillionaire ranch owner, uses products from Swift -- or any of the hundreds of other U.S. companies that routinely employ undocumented workers.

In other business news:

Political insiders in Denver start to lose hope of landing the 2008 Democratic Convention; Colorado restaurants reach all-time highs; and Vail Resorts on a roll going into the high season. [more]

Mitt Romney's presidential bid, Divine Strake, a possible Las Vegas earthquake, Senator Reid and the great pig, border disputes, M.A.D.D.

[more]

The Bus Stop at Rubey Park

Yesterday, near the end of the week in which Colorado's strict new immigration laws went into effect, a bill that tied the first increase in the national minimum wage in almost a decade to a big cut in the federal estate tax died in the Senate. Meanwhile, the controversial book by economist Jeff Faux, The Global Class War -- which alleges that groups of transnational elites Faux refers to as "the Party of Davos" are coalescing into a global ruling class that is indifferent to the fate of less fortunate people in their own nations -- recently went into its third printing.

The new issue of The Atlantic, meanwhile, includes a feature on a growth sector of the economy: personalized high-dollar services for the mega-rich.

Are these developments related? Well, that depends on how far beyond the headlines you're willing to go to discern the deeper economic and social forces that, for good or ill, are shaping our region and our country.
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Putting a Dollar Amount on an Ecosystem

The war between development and environment tends be too simplistic and trite in the Flathead these days. That's why, just maybe, a report by a UM economist may add a more interesting facet to the debate.

On July 5 the Bigfork Eagle published a story highlighting the work of Jack Stanford, director of the University of Montana Flathead Lake Biological Station (FLBS). Stanford, who has done extensive work on the biology and ecosystem of the Crown of the Continent and its "Crown Jewel," Flathead Lake, said that a UM economist estimates Flathead Lake's economic worth between $6 and $10 million dollars.

[more]