Below The Fold


Injury and insult   By Krista Peterson
Sick and weary victims of a deadly Libby mine are ready to move on. 

A LEGAL BATTLE  that’s raged for a decade in Montana could be coming to an end. The battle involves more than 1100 people who are suffering from health problems caused by exposure to an asbestos-contaminated vermiculite mine operated in the town of Libby by the W. R. Grace & Co. They claim that state officials failed to inform them about the dangers of exposure to asbestos, and that Montana essentially acted as an accomplice in the company’s attempt to conceal the serious health problems associated with exposure to asbestos.

In its pure state vermiculite contains no asbestos, but the ore in some mines is degraded with natural impurities that can include asbestos. Asbestos was once one of the most commonly used building materials in the U.S.

The Kalispell Daily Interlake has reported that a deal involving payment of $43 million to these victims is in the final stages. Many of the victims never actually stepped foot anywhere near the mine, but instead were contaminated by spouses or loved ones who worked in the mine, and carried the asbestos fibers home on their clothing. Because of the large number of victims, most of them will receive a paltry average of only $43,000. The payments will be determined on the level of related health problems and divided into three grades.

Sure, $43 million may seem like a lot of cash, but in fact this figure represents another tragedy. It would be extremely difficult to cover the medical expenses with only $43,000, when you consider that average medical costs for these problems often hit six figures. Although the victims will be receiving compensation for their problems, the state and W.R. Grace & Co. will be released and cleared of any present or future claims. Some of Grace’s victims view the deal as simply a convenient way for the state to sweep the problem under the rug. Throughout the litigation process victims were ordered to shut their mouths about the deal. Lawyers warned victims that if they made details of the settlement available to the media the agreement could be jeopardized. Some claimants have spoken out anonymously about their dissatisfaction with the settlement, but said they signed anyway just to put the matter behind them.

A landmark ruling in the case came in 2004 when the Montana Supreme Court ruled that Montana should’ve warned miners about the health risks of asbestos, which had been identified years earlier. It was even noted that company officials were aware of the dangers of asbestos exposure as far back as 1956, following an inspection of Grace’s mine by the state.

Serious diseases such as mesothelioma, asbestosis and cancer that many of the exposed victims contracted are particularly dangerous. Mesothelioma is difficult to diagnose, and the life expectancy for its victims is on average only a year.

Krista Peterson writes about health and safety issues. She lives in Florida.

Read more here about pleural mesothelioma

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Down Bill, Bad Bill. On May 7 Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer vetoed a bill that was an attempted end run around present zoning laws which will probably be declared unconstitutional by the Montana Supreme Court because they give people who own more land than other people more political power, a refutation of the concept of one person, one vote. The law and the bill make it difficult for local officials to prevent the digging of gravel pits, for example, in districts where much of the land is owned by someone who like gravel pits.

Both the bad bill and the bad law are the bastard brain children of the Montana Contractors Association and its Führer, Herr Field Marshal Cary Hegreberg. The MCA wants a Montana where its members can mine gravel any place and any time they want no matter how much their greed ruins the property values of others and the health and safety of entire rural residential neighborhoods.

According to Schweitzer, Senate Bill 379 would “elevate the rights of a minority of landowners over the rights of the community as a whole, and over other landowners whose quality of life and economic interests may also be affected —whether positively or negatively—by zoning. Moreover, if SB 379 takes effect because the current law is found to be unconstitutional, its provisions do not appear to remedy the current statutes being challenged. Local government officials should not be unreasonably limited in their ability to protect the interests of all their residents and the long-term development goals of their communities.”

Trumped. Sometimes it’s good to be the President. For example, midway through the May Day episode of Celebrity Apprentice, just as Nene Leakes was getting all up in Star Jones’ bidness, saying “You evil fat lady. You may have lost weight on the outside but your brain is still very fat,” NBC suddenly cut off the feed and switched to breaking news from the White House that Osama bin Laden had been killed by U.S. forces.

The build-up to the announcement went on for 95 minutes before the POTUS actually stepped to the podium. It must have been delicious revenge for Obama. Oh, not because of the bin Laden deal. But because his timing had completely ruined Donald Trump’s show. The fact that viewers all over our country tis of thee had to wait until Monday morning to find out that the beautiful but useless model, Hope Dworacyzk, had been fired, was excellent payback for the tedious weeks of petty harassment on the part of the Donald regarding Obama’s place of birth.

Trump, who sez the killing of bin Laden is a hoax, demands to see the death certificate.

Big Feet. Which private citizens consume the most energy in America? Obviously, a fat cat who flies around in his private jet from his chalet in Aspen to his beach house in Florida to his brownstone in Manhattan is a bigger volt pig than, say, a trailer court shut-in. However, certain combinations of life style and occupation result in people of relatively modest means whose carbon footprint is surprisingly large. For example, start with a study from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory revealing that marijuana grown indoors consumes fully 1 percent of the U.S. electricity supply and spews 17 million metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year. Now, think about the vast reservoirs of energy it takes to manufacture aluminum. Add to that the juice used to power golf carts. Finally, factor in the additional energy required to operate a vibrator. Thus, clearly, some of the biggest contributors to global warming are women professional golfers who smoke dope and drink Diet Pepsi.

30. Mass communication “educators” across the country are cringing after the regents of the University of Colorado decided by a 5-4 bipartisan vote April 14 to shut down the School of Journalism. Although the curriculum at the Boulder megaversity may still offer some sort of journalism “education,” even including the possibility for students to earn a dual degree in journalism and some other real academic discipline, the move has attracted the attention of politicians looking for ways to cut the fat from state budgets.

The troubled UC school, which was founded in 1939, recently lost accreditation for its Master’s Newsgathering program, and has been struggling, like a lot of j-schools, to remain relevant in a world where news is gathered and distributed increasingly by gizmos instead of newspapers. But the harder j-schools work to “teach” their students to tweet and feed and friend, oh my, the more their efforts resemble deleted scenes from Idiocracy. Of course, the inclusion of reporting in a college curriculum has always been derided. As Rolling Stone contributing editor Matt Taibbi said, “I mean this whole notion of journalism school—I can't believe people actually go to journalism school. You can learn the entire thing in like three days.“

Party Hardy. The online version of the April 2 New York Times has a front-page piece about Jim Messina, the 41-year-old University of Montana political “science” graduate who will be the Chief Push behind Barack Obama’s next campaign for POTUS. A native of Boise, Messina will mastermind Obama’s siege from Chicago, instead of the Beltway, a break with tradition Messina sez will help quarantine his efforts from the distractions of government.

One minor thing of note about Messina is that when he’s in town, it sounds like the fleet’s in town. For example, as the Times reported, “The mayor of Missoula, Mont., John Engen, invited Mr. Messina to speak at a seminar last fall at the University of Montana. Mr. Messina, a graduate of the university who is such a fan of the Grizzly athletic program that he wants his ashes to be scattered over the landmark ‘M’ on campus, was quoted in the student newspaper [the Kaimin] using a word unfit for this publication.”

Similes. No one was surprised when Montana’s Ravalli County Commissioners hired Terry Nelson to be their next planning director. After all, the Commissioners are largely Tea Bagging right-wing zealots who think zoning is a communist plot, and Nelson is a land developer who lined his pockets after selling off a chunk of land he was allowed to subdivide as a “family transfer.” Oh, and he’s also head of the county’s Republican Central Committee.

The fact that Nelson has no training as a planner didn’t seem to bother the leaders of Missoula’s retarded neighbor to the south. In terms of sound land use how bad is this choice? Well, it’s like hiring Gary Marbut to run the Jeanette Rankin Peace Center, or taking a driver’s ed class from Evel Knieval or sending your kids to a day-care run by Nathanial Bar-Jonah.

[Update: Calling Ravalli County retarded is an insult to retarded people, especially in light of the news that the Commissioners had to start all over picking a planner because this first ludicrous attempt came after failing to give the public enough time to comment, contrary to state law. And extra especially in light of the fact that on April 20 they voted again, and unanamously chose Nelson, again.]



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Dark Ages
A look at a couple of Montana laws that are illegal. By Bill Vaughn

SOME DOCUMENTS are only fun if you read between the lines. The Montana newspapers published by Lee Enterprises, for example, never investigate the backroom deals that result in such things such as airport expansions or subdevelopment approvals, and in the obituaries routinely list the culprit in some guy’s croaking as Christ (“Joe Blow is in the arms of Jesus”), or precipitated by “natural causes,” when you know full well that Mr. Blow drank himself to death. In the same spirit of discovery, it can be fun to read the laws of Montana looking for the ones that are unconstitutional and therefore illegal.

For example, 45-5-505 of the Montana Code Annotated 2009 says if you’re convicted of “deviate sexual relations” (defined in the Code as homosexual acts or sexual acts with an animal) you can be fined $50,000 and/or sent to prison for 10 years. Luckily for some, the Code doesn’t heap additional punishment for those beast-lovers convicted of having relations with an animal of the same sex.

Although the Montana Supreme Court has ruled that these provisions are unconstitutional, on March 18 House Gopers in committee killed SB276, which would have removed the homosexual language from the Code. And then on March 29 the entire House killed it again after a Dem legislator tried to have it “blasted” from committee. Pundits all over the country are howling in derision about the feudal climate of Montana.

And speaking of the Dark Ages, there’s a law on the books that says Montanans who own a lot of land have more political power than Montanans with less land. Sections 76-2-101 and 76-2-105 of the Code allow land barons who own at least 50 percent of the acreage in a zoning district to nullify an attempt on the part of the county commissioners to impose zoning the barons don’t like. The law is unconstitutional because it flies in the face of the court-tested concept of one man, er, person, one vote. Senate Bill 379 now before the salons would give the barons even more power, stipulating that the owners of only 25 40 percent of the land in a district can tell their democratically elected government where to shove it.

Hey, as long as the Gopers are giving the barons more political power than the serfs in Montana why not give them droit de segneur, as well, the alleged Medieval custom of allowing the lord to deflower his serfs’ daughters?

Taking the High Road By Bill Vaughn
Missoula County should secede from Montana and start its own state.

THE LIBERAL college town surrounded by a vast redneck wilderness is such common cultural geography it qualifies as a cliche. Look at North Carolina, for example, and Texas. In Montana the division has become especially pronounced the last few years as the University of Montana has grown to 15,000 students, and Missoula now rivals Billings as the largest city in the state.

In that old joke featuring the Barbies of different towns, Missoula Barbie "is made out of recycled plastic, has straight brown hair, archless feet, hairy armpits, no make-up, and Birkenstocks with white socks. She prefers to be called Willow. She does not want, or need, a Ken doll. If you purchase Willow's 'friend' you are eligible to receive the optional Subaru wagon and rainbow flag sticker. Available at REI."

While this is a slight exaggeration of the typical Missoulian, the biography of her Great Falls twin is dead on. "This recently paroled Barbie comes with a 9mm handgun, a Ray Lewis knife, a Chevy Silverado with tinted windows, a meth lab, and an addiction to Hillbilly Heroin. This model is only available after dark and must be paid for in cash (preferably small, untraceable bills) unless you are a cop, then we don't know what you're talking about."

Of course, the differences between Missoula and the rest of the state go beyond "lifestyle choices." While the 62nd Session of the Montana Legislature is dominated by Tea Baggers, Right-to-Lifers, and other Christian zombies, Missoula's delegation to Helena is 90 percent liberal Democrat (the only Republican is "Champ" Edmunds, a Jesus-humping mortgage banker). To say that the Missoula delegation and its esteemed colleagues don't agree politically is an understatement. Here are some of the things they're fighting about:

Environmental laws. Missoula wants them stronger; the Gopers want a return to the 1950s when there was no such thing as a constitutional guarantee of a "safe and healthy environment" and you were free to dump your shit into the river. The Montana Medical Marijuana Act was approved by a margin of 3-1 in Missoula. The Gopers tried  to repeal it. >The Missoula City Council passed an ordinance banning discrimination in hiring or housing based on sexual orientation. The Gopers in the House voted to repeal it. Gopers in the Senate are considering the measure and will probably pass it. And then there's the matter of The Megaload. While the rest of the state welcomes the transportation of whole refineries and parts of refineries on its highways because of the alleged economic benefit to roadside eateries, Missoula has consistently fought a losing battle to keep this industrial traffic out of the county.

The solution to Missoula's problems with the rest of the state is simple: fuck 'em. The only way the people of Missoula County can run their affairs the way they want is to start their own state. Well, yes, one of the county's most important assets is the University, which is funded in part by the state of Montana. That problem can be addressed by raising tuition and eliminating unnecessary curriculum, such as journalism, which is a trade, after all, and not a discipline.

The carving of one state from another is called partition, and it's not a radical act. Indeed, Maine used to be part of Massachusetts, and West Virginia part of Virginia. America, of course, was founded on the fuck you principle. You remember the Declaration of Independence, right? "When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another . . . "

We're not saying Missoula should secede from the United States. In fact, it's the right-wing wingnuts in the Legislature that don't like America and are trying to "nullify" federal laws governing guns and health care in much the same spirit as the South attempted to nullify the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

If Missoula could only cast off the shackles of reactionary Montana we could become a world-class tourist destination where visitors could play in sparkling clear rivers, smoke top-grade dope legally, travel the roads without fear of megaloads, and share a bed shamelessly with whomever they choose will have them.

More Notes from the Squalor Zone  By Bill Vaughn

Smurfed. During its belle époque the Smurfit-Stone paper factory west of Missoula emitted so much steam and heat the facility created its own weather. Now the only thing hanging over this steel ziggurat is a heavy sense of irony.

The corporation shut down the 50-year-old facility in 2010 because of lagging demand for cardboard containers made from the brown kraft paper the mill produced in vast quantities. Demand was lagging because Americans don't manufacture much of anything anymore, and therefore don't need containers to ship things in. The reason we don't make things any more is because our shit is now made by the Chinese, who have been flooding the American market with cheap, sometimes dangerous, and often shabby, consumer goods. The reason our shit is made by the Chinese is because their workers will work for rice balls; experienced Smurfit-Stone workers earned as much as $70,000 a year.

Instead of discouraging the export of manufacturing jobs to China by using the tax code and tariffs to keep Chinese junk out of America, Washington B.C. lawmakers encouraged it. Most of these lawmakers have been Republicans. (The many retards in the genetic backwater known as Montana House District 100, where the mill is located, might want to review this history the next time they're promised jobs by right-wing Goper creeps such as "Champ" Edmunds.)

It was hoped that another manufacturing company could be enticed into occupying the abandoned mill. But in February Smurfit-Stone announced that it had sold the mill and the 3200 acres it sits on to a Portland, Oregon investment company that intended to tear it down and sell the metal for scrap.

And where would this scrap likely end up? In China, of course.

Leggos From Hell
Imperial Oil is mired in a pricey land war. But it could have avoided the quagmire by looking much farther north. By Bill Vaughn

IT WAS AN ENGINEER'S wet dream: Design an entire refinery that can be transported in pieces and assembled at a remote site in some frozen outback, where it will transform tar sand into petroleum and make the company a shitload of cash.

Then the engineer wakes in a sweat. It wasn't a dream. It really happened.
But how can we afford to build this monster, she asks herself, if we have to buy North American steel and pay union scale? And how the fuck are we going to ship it into the wilderness?

Not to worry, her bosses tell her. We'll make it cheap, over there in the Wild West economy of Lower Kim Chee, load the pieces onto Pacific Ocean cargo ships, offload them from barges at a backwater port on the Snake River. Then the modules, which arrive in port appended to self-propelled vehicles, will be driven 1000 miles across two states and a province trailing an entourage of tugs, cops, and spotters.

Sounds like a plan, the engineer says, happy again.

In reality, Imperial Oil, a Canadian subsidiary of Exxon Mobile, has already accepted delivery of 33 modules from this pre-built refinery, out of the 207 that went into making the monster (some of these pieces are 200 feet long, 26 feet high and as wide as a two-lane blacktop). For Imperial, that's the good news. Then there's some more good news. After waiting nine months, the corporation has received permission from Montana's corrupt and incompetent bureaucracy to let it move the loads along Highway 12 to Missoula, then along Highway 200 to Great Falls, then north to Choteau and finally east to the Interstate and the Canadian border. Why this serpentine, backcountry route? No overpasses, that's why.

[Subsequent to our original post Imperial announced that it would chop these modules in half so they can be transported on the Interstate along a route it has yet to reveal; the loads will still be moved to Missoula on Highway 12, presumably, because that's the only road east out of Lewiston.]

For Imperial the bad news is a shitstorm of legal challenges and further delays as opponents gear up for a long fight against the corporation's scheme to turn narrow, twisty rural roads into an industrial corridor where mammoth loads like these will pass for years or decades until every ounce of Alberta's tar sand has been scraped from the planet. A book attacking the project has already been published, penned by a pair of professional hand-wringers.

Imperial could have avoided all this hassle and bad press by shipping from Korea through the Panama Canal and up the East Coast to the St. Lawrence and the Port of Duluth. The company claimed this was too expensive. Yeah? More expensive than dealing with enraged hoards of tree huggers, truckers, environmental lawyers and mom/pops who own small roadside businesses along the route?

But, say, what about the legendary Northwest Passage? Blocked for millenia by Arctic ice, global warming has begun to open summer shipping lanes. Several cargo ships have already made the passage. Five years ago even a cruise liner did it. The irony is unavoidable. Climate change experts such as the University of Montana's Steve Running claim that greenhouse gasses from burning fossil fuels have caused global warming. Which means that Imperial and Exxon Mobile are making it possible, through the sale of their product, to open up an economical ocean route from Korea, across the Northwest Passage above Alaska, to the Port of Churchill on the western shore of Hudson Bay. From there it's only 600 miles on ice roads to paydirt.

According to a spokesman for Imperial, Pius Rolheiser, the Northwest Passage was never considered. "Given Churchill's location," he told us, "distances involved would have been problematic."

Well, duh. Of course they'd be, if you shipped around Southeast Asia through the Suez Canal and then etcetera.


Click on the map to see a larger version


Even More Notes from the Squalor Zone  By Bill Vaughn

Bolo. While Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer was in Washington B.C. this week meeting with the White House and other Democratic governors, he took a few minutes to appear on MSNBC's "News Nation." Wearing his signature bolo tie, Schweitzer voiced yet again his belief that the solution to U.S. dependence on foreign oil is the technology of "clean coal” (an oxymoron), much of which would have to be strip-mined from the prairies of the Treasure State. He also lambasted local rules safeguarding citizens from transmission lines and pipelines, and touted Montana as one of only two states with a budget surplus. However, when asked by newsperson Tamron Hall his opinion of recent events pitting Wisconsin's governor against public sector unions, Schweitzer said that whatever happens in the state Senate in the long run the government will be damaged. "It's like a CEO who says on his first day on the job that his employees are lazy and overpaid. It's not good for morale.”

Silly Season. Some Montana voters fume that Tea Baggers in the 62nd Legislature are wasting our tax dollars by introducing bills that are frivolous and pointless. What, they don't think hunting with a spear and/or a silencer isn't worthy of consideration? Jeez. What about declaring that global warming is good? Anyway, here are some of their "ideas." You be the judge.

SJR2 Withdraw the United States of America from the United Nations 
HJR14 Says Montana has the power to decide whether federal government is "abridging” personal liberties and protect its citizens against "federal incursion.”
HJR20 Says the federal health-reform laws are "null and void” and not enforceable in Montana.
SB112 Legalize hunting with hand-thrown spear
HB112 Allow guns in schools 
SB114 Give sheriffs authority over the federal government in terror investigations
HB154 Eliminate educational requirements for persons seeking job of State Superintendent of Schools
SB161 Declares the federal health-reform laws unconstitutional and says Montana will not comply.
HB174 Legalize hunting with silencers 
HB205 Omit Barak Obama's name from the 2012 ballot because his father was born outside of America
SB216 Officially designate the "Code of the West” as the "Code of Montana” 
HB271 Allow anyone eligible to obtain a concealed weapon permit to carry without actually applying for a permit. It is already legal to carry a concealed weapon in rural areas without a permit.
HB244 Eliminate all state incentives for developing wind power
HB278 Create fully armed militia in every town 
SB279 Allow legislators to carry weapons in the Capitol
HB284 Forbids state employees from doing anything to implement the federal health-reform acts.
HB321 Declares the federal Endangered Species Act unconstitutional and invalid in Montana.
HB326 Lift nuclear ban for purpose of building a nuclear reactor in the Flathead Valley
HB354 Eliminate law that requires landlords to install carbon monoxide detectors 
HB381 Makes it a crime to enforce federal firearms laws on firearms manufactured in the state.
HB382 Creates an 11 person legislative commission that reviews all federal laws for possibly nullification by the Legislature.
HB384 Lift the prohibition on carrying concealed weapons in bars, churches and banks
HB438 Compulsory marriage counseling for people seeking a divorce 
HB443 Declares any future federal food safety laws to be void in Montana, for any food grown, processed or sold within the state.
HB448 Creates an interstate "firearm freedom compact” of states that have declared invalid the enforcement of federal firearms law for firearms manufactured in-state.
HB456 Requires schools to notify parents 48 hours in advance of sex education and receive the parent's written consent before their child attends.
HB506 Require the federal government to prove in court that the National Parks were lawfully acquired. 
HB516 Would prohibit local governments from enacting ordinances or policies that seek to protect residents from real or perceived discrimination based on their sexual orientation or gender as Missoula did through an ordinance. These classifications are not included in the Montana Human Rights Act.
HB544 Would require women to be evaluated at least one hour before an abortion to see if she is feeling pressured or is at risk of having a negative reaction after the operation. The measure would allow patients to sue doctors for $10,000 for failing to screen them.
HB549 Declare that global warming is good.
HB550 Declares that U.S. Environmental Protection Agency regulation of greenhouse gases is void in Montana.


Wish List    By Bill Vaughn
Four things the Montana Legislature could do to make us smile.


THIS IS THE TIME of year—well, every other year—when our thoughts turn to the upcoming Legislative Session in Helena and the good, bad and ugly that emit from that body.

For nine decades after Montana became a state in 1889 the Legislature was merely a gang of farmers and ranchers with nothing better to do during our relentless winters than smoke cigars, put their feet on their desks, read the newspapers, booze in the hotel bars, and pass a few bills that were good for farmers and ranchers. But when confronted with the task of writing a new constitution in 1972, the same class of hayseeds rose to the occasion as delegates to the Constitutional Convention and crafted one of the most forward-thinking pieces of populism in America.

Because of that success we always foolishly believe our lawmakers have our best interests in mind. So before the gavel falls we make a list of bills we wish would become laws, and send it around.

1. Make the prices paid for residential and commercial real estate public. Why should realtors be the only people who have access to the numbers? After all, a lot of these dolts can't do anything else for a living, these former hippies, pizza pie makers, and pyramid schemers. Public disclosure would give us all a firm picture of rising and falling property prices, and who's shaking and moving in the market. (Note: Finally, in the upcoming session, this wish might become a reality. That's because the Revenue and Transportation Interim Committee has already endorsed two separate bills to make real estate sales transparent.)

2. Impose a two-year moratorium on subdivisions. These atrocities are committed by county commissioners driven blind by greed for the revenue the counties get from the permitting process, a process that relies on the joke called the FEMA floodplain map. The result is housing built in river relief channels that will inevitably fill with water. During the moratorium the subdivision laws should tightened, and FEMA maps shitcanned in favor of aerial photography and professional flood and groundwater assessment. Gosh, we miss the days when pickups sported bumper stickers that said "Beautify Montana: Shoot A Land Develeoper."

3. Require that gravel can only be transported by heavy rail. This will concentrate gravel mining in places like the desecrated land owned by Smurfitt-Stone west of Missoula, and will keep the gravel goons away from rural residential neighborhoods such as Dark Acres.

4. While there are laudable grassroots efforts all over the country to reinvigorate short commuter train routes, we believe these are doomed to fail, unless the railroads offer commuters more than just a ride into the city. In urban centers where mass transit is neither efficient nor plentiful (and in America that's almost everywhere), some commuters will want to put their cars on the trains, or at least their bicycles, so they can run to market before commuting home at the end of the day.

And to make the experience of riding the train special these new rail ventures ought to offer casino-style gambling—you know, with roulette and blackjack and craps—and legalized prostitution of at least two varieties. Instead of boring yourself with the Missoulian on the way in from Polson or Hamilton wouldn't it be fun to get a nice blowjob before work, or pocket a hundred bucks from the tables?

Shut it down. We think the time is right for government, retail and industrial unions to stage a general strike in Wisconsin to demonstrate that the labor movement is far from dead, to strike a blow for collective bargaining, which is the only weapon working people have, and to tell the GOP exactly where to shove it.

Open the pod bay door, Hal. No one expects Jeopardy champions Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter to beat Watson, IBM's supercomputer. That's because IBM made sure the odds were rigged against them. And this fix went far beyond the one million books the company's geeks stored in Watson's memory.

First, while the humans—trapped inside their pathetic bodies—are forced to click clumsy signaling devices like a couple of rats in a Skinner Box, Watson chimes in with its answers electronically (we suspect that if the questions were administered as a written test Watson would fare no better than its competitors). Second, there have been no questions involving sight, sound or odor because Watson can't see, hear or smell. Finally, IBM made sure their gizmo wouldn't have to face any of those tricky word-play questions that are the downfall of many Jeopardy contestants.

While the three-day contest between man and metal has given Jeopardy its best ratings in four years, in the end the event is simply banal, an expensive infomercial for IBM and its engineers, who were packed into the audience to cheer for a pile of chips.



Beef or bison?
The prairies of Montana are at another crossroads. By Bill Vaughn
 

PHILLIPS COUNTY IS SO REMOTE and so sparsely populated the Air National Guard practices dogfights over it in fighter jets, and Air Force bombers fly lightless low-altitude missions roaring around at such decibels your shocked mind just goes blank. Ranchers home-school their kids not necessarily for religious or ideological reasons, but because the public schools are too far from the ranch. The winters are Arctic, the summers Saharan.

But this expanse of shortgrass prairie the size of Connecticut, sweeping across Northeastern Montana from the Missouri River Breaks to the Canadian border, is one of the best places in the world for grazing animals. There are spots where almost 200 different species of grass and forb grow together in a single square yard of turf. According to statistics collected by Beef magazine, Phillips ranks 25th among 500 U.S. counties in terms of cattle inventory. Still, this has always been ranching under siege. In 2009, for example, after months of hailstorms, drought, weird frosts, and grasshopper invasions, the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture declared that what had happened to Phillips and a dozen neighboring counties was a natural disaster. As a result of forage damage autumn calf weights were 50 to 60 pounds lower than normal.

These days ranchers here are facing yet another challenge: bison. And by extension, an organization that is bringing these animals back to Phillips. Over the next generation the nonprofit American Prairie Foundation (APF) intends to cobble together a 3 million-acre grassland empire home to roaming herds of

[read more]

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Notes from the Squalor Zone  By Bill Vaughn

You say you want a revolution. Newscasters such as Peter Jennings and Chris Mathews commenting on February's events in Egypt are fond of calling the resignation of that country's dictator the result of a "revolution." This is like calling a new detergent "revolutionary." Revolutions are about dramatic shifts in the ownership from one class to another of land, production facilities and distribution systems. In that sense, the American Revolution wasn't a revolution at all, but a transfer of power from one bunch of rich white men to another. Real revolutions occurred in France in 1789, Russia in 1917 and Cuba in 1959, for example, when monarchies and bourgeois elites lost their wealth to working people.

Tossers. The young insurgents in Cairo's Tahrir Square were brave, to be sure, as they battled the thugs working for Egypt's dictator, and by proxy, the succession of U.S. governments that have propped up this tyrant with foreign aid and the sale of arms. But these street fighters simply don't know how to throw a rock. They exhibit the foppy sidearm delivery of French kids, who certainly know thier cinema verité, but have no idea how to fire a fastball. Maybe Randy Johnson and Nolan Ryan could be called on as advisors.

Stare. It amazes us that news hacks such as the obnoxious and increasingly wide-bottomed Contessea Brewer of MSNBC, have not called forth an obvious evergreen whenever Egypt is in the news. After 5000 years of violence along the Nile, the Sphnix never blinks.

Up yours. If you own a dog it won't come as a surprise that some canines can be trained to detect colon and rectal cancers. No other species, it seems, gathers as much information about another of its kind by smelling butts.

Freddy's Feed & Read Redux. Leslie Evans writes at the website of Boryana Books, an eBook publisher, about Missoula's legendary independent bookstore: "This is about a place I never saw, and which has been gone for twelve years. Even longer ago, back in my Marxist days, in New York in the early seventies I was editor of a monthly magazine called the International Socialist Review. In 1973 we claimed a circulation of 6,851, a bit less than half from subscriptions and the rest listed as dealers and counter sales. The truth about this last is that almost all of the bundles went to branches of the Socialist Workers Party around the country and very few to bookstores. Now and then I would go downstairs in the party's Manhattan headquarters, where Flax Hermes, the blond athletic business manager, would show me the order lists. Among the handful of nonparty orders one stood out. It was called Freddy's Feed and Read. [read more: you'll need to scroll down the page a ways]

Moe, Larry, Cheese!  By Bill Vaughn
Montana's many stupid voters put corporate stooges in control of the Legislature. These voters are about to get what they richly deserve.

THE FOOLS who put the GOP in control of both houses of the Montana Legislature last November were easily manipulated into believing that these corporate stooges would create jobs. What most of these hare-brained citizens apparently didn't hear was the part about how the red party thinks that the way to rev up Montana's traditionally lethargic economy is by stripping from the law the environmental safeguards Montanans have struggled for decades to put in place.

The GOP and its little Teaparty playmates managed to camouflage the fact that tourists from all over the world visit Montana, and spend a sizable amount of coin here, because it's not like the urban cesspools they call home. In fact, tourism is the second most lucrative industry in the state, after agriculture. Does the GOP believe tourists will come here to see filthy rivers, bald mountains, and strip-mined prairies? Apparently. Here are two measures that industry and its fuck buddies in the Legislature have proposed in the first weeks of the 62nd Session.

Senate Bill183. This measure would strip county commissioners of the power to impose interim zoning on land threatened with industrial schemes that would ruin the neighborhood and destroy the equity homeowners have built up in their property. Written by the Montana Contractors Association and sponsored by Taylor Brown, a town pump representing Huntley's Senate District 22, SB183 is a response in part to the zoning Missoula's County Commissioners were forced by public sentiment to impose on a Lolo neighborhood where a contractor wanted to put in a gravel pit, asphalt mill and cement factory.

Although the Montana Supreme Court upheld the Commissioners, the GOP is going after local governments anyway. One of the GOP members of the Local Government Committee considering this insidious and anti-democratic bill is Bruce Tutvedt, a Kalispell-area rancher who likes to tell his stupidest constituents about the evils of government, but neglects to tell them he's one of Montana's largest recipients of federal agriculture subsidies.

House Bill 292. Although voters turned back an attempt by the right to destroy Montana's forward-thinking 1972 Constitution (mostly because they figured it's easier to keep the old thing than write a new one), an industry slut named Dan Kennedy from Laurel's Senate District 57 wants an amendment that would gut a fundamental right from the consitutional Declaration of Rights. Here's Kennedy's "tweak,” in bold:

"Section 3.  Inalienable rights. All persons are born free and have certain inalienable rights. They include the right to a clean, and healthful, and economically productive environment and the rights of pursuing life's basic necessities, enjoying and defending their lives and liberties, acquiring, possessing and protecting property, and seeking their safety, health and happiness in all lawful ways. In enjoying these rights, all persons recognize corresponding responsibilities.”

[Postscript] Does the Montana travel and tourism industry have lobbyists? If so, why aren't they weighing in against short-sighted schemes like these? I ask because it occurred to me how powerful the forces of preservation can be when it's money at stake. For example, I once lobbied the Italian embassy to allow me to take an inflatable boat to Venice so I could sail around in the canals. The Italians said, no way, Este; we're insulted you even ask.

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A Toad Story 
Under certain conditions, some spadefoot tadpoles receive mysterious messages–possibly from the dead–commanding them to turn into predatory cannibals. by Paul J. Driscoll

DURING THE FIRST WEEK of August, 2005, the tiny north-central Montana town of Big Sandy was visited by a plague of frogs—or perhaps more correctly, a plague of toads. These toads were described as about the diameter of a vanilla wafer and they were, according to one witness, "everywhere—it was as if the grass were alive.”

The "toadlets” were tadpoles only a day—or perhaps just a few hours—earlier in spawning pools just outside of the town. The explosion lasted only a couple of days as the toadlets dispersed through the streets, yards and walkways of Big Sandy, reportedly all moving in the same general direction. Their disappearance seemed as mysterious and as sudden as their arrival.

What were these creatures? I asked myself upon hearing news accounts that ultimately reached major national outlets, including the Paul Harvey program. These news reports didn't extend much beyond comparisons to the biblical ten plagues of Egypt, the second of which is a plague of frogs. Several species of toads in the West exhibit this type of explosive breeding strategy. Still, it is a rare event not often witnessed, let alone by a town of 600 people.

The Great Plains spadefoot toad is one of four very closely related species of small nocturnal toads found in North America. Taxonomists classify the spadefoot somewhat apart from "true toads”—the garden toads that made up the majority of the Big Sandy outbreak. Actually, the spadefoot is more closely related to frogs than toads. The spadefoot exhibits explosive breeding capabilities and, according to one Montana biologist, was almost certainly present during the Big Sandy congress of toads, but much more inconspicuous. 

A Double Life. Frogs, toads and salamanders are classified as amphibia, which means "double life” in Greek.  The first life is lived as a tadpole (or larva), hatched from eggs laid in water. The tadpole's life is more akin to a
fish—filtering oxygen through gills and moving through the natal pool with a fin-like tail. But the tadpole metamorphoses and grows legs and feet—first the rear and later the front legs. Internal lungs develop and the eyes migrate upward. The intestinal tract accommodates new foods and the mouth broadens and a rudimentary dentition forms. The famous sticky tongue develops. Finally, the tadpole begins to absorb its tail as the second phase of life begins. The toadlet leaves the water where it completes the transformation. The last vestige of its previous life is a nubbin of tail that is absorbed over several days. The remainder of its life will be terrestrial as a sub-adult and adult, returning to water only briefly to breed, completing the cycle.

This metamorphosis is the hallmark of amphibians everywhere and is widely observed by schoolchildren and scholars alike. The Spadefoot Toad, however, stacks a whole array of adaptive survival strategies onto the metamorphic

[read more]

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More Notes from the Squalor Zone  By Bill Vaughn

Driving While Stupid. We're never surprised—but always amused—when Senators get caught doing the things they condemn. Consider gay bashers such as Idaho's Larry Craig, who was arrested for soliciting gay sex in an airport pisser. Or North Carolina's John Edwards, champion of family values in the 2004 Presidential election, whose career ended when it was revealed that while his wife was fighting breast cancer he kept a mistress and fathered her child (we know a couple of fat cat liberal lawyers in Missoula who couldn't stay married either, and gave copious campaign money to this creep—did they see a kindred spirit?)

If these tawdry stories can be considered tragedy than here's our nominee for farce. On the evening of Jan. 14 Montana state Senator Jim Shockley was pulled over in Missoula and cited for possessing an open container of beer in his vehicle. Although he passed a breath test, the device detected alcohol in his system. Shockley had apparently quaffed a brewski before he got in his veek, then stopped to buy another one for the road. Because he wasn't officially drunk, he got off with a $51 misdemeanor citation.

That's funny. Because Shockley, who hates unions, environmentalists, and women's rights, but loves guns, is head of the judiciary committee considering stricter DUI laws. The Senator from Victor is sponsoring a measure that would create fast-food judges empowered to issue speedy search warrants so officers could demand a blood sample or a breath test from a suspected drunk before the miscreant had a chance to sober up.

Hooking Up. Sometimes we wake up with a start and flail around for our notebook so we can write down the ideas that occur to us in dreams. These usually amount to nothing more than Woody Allen's revelation for a terrific plot, which, by the light of day, seemed less profound than it did in the dead of night. "Boy meets girl.

But last night we had a doozy. First, consider this: The U.S. has allowed the Chinese to steal so many jobs from us through lowered tariffs on their cheap and crummy consumer products, our unemployment rate has risen to 10 percent, and theirs has dropped to 4 percent. Second, because Chinese parents have been producing 119 male babies for every 100 female infants over the course of several decades (part of this due to the sexist practice of aborting females fetuses), an enormous imbalance in the sex of people under 30 now exists. So many horny young men. The solution to their romantic problems and our economic ones is obvious: Ship U.S. hookers to China.

Read Us Our Rights. When politicians read the current U.S. Constitution Jan. 6 on the floor of the U.S. House, critics pointed out that had they read the unabridged document instead some Americans would have learned that the Founding Fathers didn't believe women and blacks were people, and regarded the masses of white male criminals, refugees, religious extremists and simple trash who were allowed to vote for Congressmen incapable of voting for Senators. A later version of the Constitution declared that it was illegal to drink.

Still, it's always good to hear our elected representatives recite the Bill of Rights, especially our faves, that of free speech and the bearing of arms, which we think go hand in hand. Because government needs to be reminded all the time of the powers citizens have granted themselves we think the Montana Constitution should be read on the floor of the state House with special emphasis given to the Declaration of Rights, and extra-especially to Section Three of that Declaration: "All persons are born free and have certain inalienable rights. They include the right to a clean and healthful environment and the rights of pursuing life's basic necessities, enjoying and defending their lives and liberties, acquiring, possessing and protecting property, and seeking their safety, health and happiness in all lawful ways.”

Whores. If "Champ” Edmunds has his way the rednecks, reactionaries and religicists who elected this odious Wells Fargo banker to represent Missoula's House District 100 will get what they richly deserve. Edmunds, a radical right-wing Jesus-humping extremist, intends to introduce legislation in the 62nd Montana Legislature that would repeal the Montana Environmental Protection Act (MEPA). "It's an additional source of red tape,” Edmunds told the press, "that makes companies not want to come here and use our natural resources.”

The core of MEPA is the provision that industry and the state of Montana must divulge their plans to exploit water, coal, timber, wind, or minerals before any exploitation can begin. This gives private citizens a chance to review these schemes and take action against them to protect the quality of their lives and the value of their property. Extractive industries don't like to show their hand because most people don't want their neighborhoods plundered so share-holders in some out-of-state corporation can make money.

MEPA only applies to government at the state level. But voters in HD100 should have remembered—but apparently forgot when they went to the polls—what happened in rural Missoula County beginning four years ago. First, a little grocery store owner with enough of his Daddy's money to buy a sizable ranch decided that gravel and not cattle was the best way to make money with this land, located on the right bank of the Clark Fork River.

He and his gravel industry cronies tried to sneak through a zoning change to make this possible. Although Dark Acres lies adjacent to this ranch, like most of our neighbors we weren't informed by the County Commissioners of this guy's zoning request. The scheme would have resulted in an asphalt plant and a cement factory polluting our air and water, and a parade of dump trunks clogging our narrow country roads.

When we all found out about it the shit hit the fan. Enormous political pressure generated by interests ranging from the Audubon Society and the Confederated Tribes was brought to bear on the Commissioners, who were forced to tell the little grocer, no way, Jose. A few months later the same situation arose in Lolo when a land developer wanted to ruin a rural neighborhood with the same kind of scheme. Again, when the neighbors got wind of it they forced the development-loving Missoula County Commissioners to do the right thing.

The fact is, government and industry will do most anything they want unless private citizens stand in their way. Without MEPA neighbors won't have time to mobilize because they won't know what secrets have passed between extractive industries and their government whores until it's too late to do anything about it. While the repeal of MEPA would never be upheld by the Montana Supreme Court because of provisions in the state Constitution, creeps like "Champ” Edmunds will never tire of trying to roll back decades of far-thinking legislation. The idiots who voted for this guy believing he might get them a job need to be reminded of this two years from now when they still don't have a job and it's time to return to the polls.

Closing Accounts. Is the Bank of America going to be the next bourgeois institution hammered by WikiLeaks? As the corporation's various classes of stock dip in the swirl of rumors that Julian Assange and his hacker smurfs are in possession of a hard drive that shows America's largest bank being naughty and not nice, officers are scurrying to control the damage. It's speculated that WikiLeaks intends to reveal corrupt or sloppy foreclosure policies on the part of BOA, mostly in the matter of mortgages it acquired when it made the colossal mistake of buying Countrywide in 2008.

The corporation's paranoia takes us back to that glowing winter night four decades ago when students at the University of California drove the cops out of Isla Vista and torched the Bank of America. Students were pissed because young men not old enough to vote were being drafted and sent to die in Vietnam. Although destroying the little branch office had no substantive impact on the course of the war, the gesture focused the Left's attention on Bank of America's close financial ties to the war industry, a cozy relationship that continues to this day.
Selling The News. Faced with fierce competition, news organizations have always been forced to pitch themselves at consumers like $20 hookers with open sores. Consider the wonderfully ludicrous claim by Fox that its news is "fair and balanced," the Atlanta Journal's promise that it "Covers Dixie Like the Dew" or the Aspen Daily News' "If you don't want it printed don't let it happen."

The Missoulian has apparently decided on a slogan, we guess. According to the blog of editor Sherry Devlin "We look forward to bringing you the stories of our lives in western Montana." Warm and fuzzy, to be sure, with a vague promise of some soap-operatic narrative, like Days of Our Lives. But when we want stories we read books or go to the movies. When we pick up a newspaper we want to see a slogan at work like that of Mother Jones—"comfort the afflicted, afflict the comfortable."

My Year at College
Although I'd dropped out just before graduation, I found myself back in the halls of my alma mater—this time as a teacher. By Bill Vaughn

As they stroll through the Rose Garden on a shadowed summer day, George Bush suddenly bends close to Margaret Thatcher to share a fervent, whispered word. The President is muy presidencial, as usual, and The Iron Lady is wrapped to the wattles in Shetland wool. But the camera here, like David Hemmings' camera in Blowup, has captured something unseemly. When the image is enlarged we see the Prime Minister's left hand loitering at her hip, and the Chief Executive's right hand creeping in for a naughty squeeze that's sure to send old Barbara huffing off for the rolling pin.

"Whoa,” says one of my students, spellbound. "How can they do that?”

"You mean, hit on a head of state?” I ask. A cheap shot, but it gets a laugh.

"No, fake it. When are we going to learn this?”

We're looking at the history of photographers who altered their subjects and their pictures in order to gain some higher political, aesthetic or professional ground. Here's the famous Stalinist erasure of Trotsky from a photograph of Lenin addressing a rally. Then some solemn landscapes of the Southwest that have undergone cosmetic surgery to remove unsightly powerlines, trailers and cars. And I've dredged up a dramatic photo on a 1949 cover of the Nashville Commercial Appeal's Sunday magazine that freezes Pittsburgh slugger Ralph Kiner the instant he's blistered a fat pitch.

Because of the rudimentary equipment available to the era's photographers we're persuaded to appreciate this one's skill in apprehending that unlikely aerophysical event. When I reveal that what actually happened was the guy simply nailed a hardball to Kiner's bat my students shrug. Compared to today's deceits these are tame cons indeed. Before the semester ends they'll know enough about desktop publishing to begin experimenting, if they choose, with beginning adulterations all their own.

Bush, of course, penetrated Thatcher's privacy zone only in cyberspace. These Rose Garden vignettes are from an article in Scientific American about image manipulation, as the chastising ethical voice calls it. Or, as commercial designers call it, digital enhancement. The article demonstrates how a craftsman using Photoshop can readily pluck details from a color picture and put them back down in arrangements that totally transform the meaning of the original image. Although fashion-forward graphic artists have profited from this technology since 1988, Scientific American, apparently, has just discovered it. And my students see something about the process the magazine has overlooked—that is, it's fun.

Their reaction takes me by surprise. But in the last months nothing these twenty-somethings have done or said was what I expected. Although there are a couple of advertising majors in class these are mostly journalism seniors and graduates who arrived at my mandatory course in publication design with a classic reporter's training built around a manual of ethics that would dizzy a Jesuit, and a stripped-down view of the world in which any question besides who, what, why, when and where is dismissed as so much fluff. I expected outrage or indignation about image manipulators, or least some knee-jerk superiority. After all, my colleagues on this and all other journalism faculties preach that an unwavering, objective reality exists (a faith shared with Maoists) and can be transported intact from one mind to another if the words used to describe it are precise and the pictures are like a mirror.

But for me all photographs, doctored or not, exist at some point on a continuum of misinformation, which is to say that even the best photographer

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More Notes from the Squalor Zone  By Bill Vaughn

Spinner. Although our television is on almost as much as was Winston Smith's, there are some shows we never watch. Days of Our Lives is one. Wheel of Fortune another. Well, yes, The Wheel is a staple of American dinner fare, but when we eat we prefer the mild intellectual challenge of Jeopardy! (although we understand that Wheel host Pat Sajak is smarter than the pretentious and humorless Jeopardy host Alex Trebek, who fared worse as a contestant on his own show than did Sajak, who is the son of a Polish-American truck driver.)

However, on Dec. 10 we stayed glued to the Wheel because Missoula food writer and gourmand Greg Patent was a contestant. His opponents were two young women. And they were no match for the buoyant, grey-haired chef, who was born in Hong Kong. Although Patent went bankrupt twice on the show, he finally won $15,590 and a trip to Antigua by solving these word puzzles: "I've got sunshine on a cloudy day" (lyric category), "sparrows and parakeets" (bird category), and "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again" (phrase category). And his spinning of the thousand-pound Wheel was so energetic we hope he didn't pop a plug.

A brand new Elf. Every winter we renew our campaign to move Holland's beloved ice-skating race, the Elfstedentocht, from Holland to the Erie Canal. The Elf pits professional-level speed skaters organized into clubs on a course connecting eleven provincial towns in Friesland. The pro race is followed by an amateur race in which any bumpkin with a pair of blades can follow the Elf's course over frozen canals, rivers and ponds.

The problem is, because of global warming, these waterways haven't iced solid enough to support racers since 1997. Upstate New York, however, almost always gets bitterly cold. That's why we think the state shouldn't drain the Erie Canal every winter, but let it freeze in order to provide an alternative route for the Elf. Since New York is a former Dutch colony, there is a historic argument to be made for this change of venue, as well. [read more]

Dinner date. Thanks to the Grizzly Commons for this photo story from Highway 40 in Alberta, Canada, some 90 minutes hours south of Grande Prairie near the Berland River.

Masks. Like a lot of daily newspapers in the U.S., the Janesville, Wisconsin Gazette receives a raft of comments about certain stories it runs on its online edition. According to its editor, Scott Angus, the 10,000 rants the paper gets every month are usually devoted to stories involving crimes, courts, accidents, race or sex. But Angus announced on Nov. 16 that it would no longer post comments on these kinds of stories. Why? Because "The nastiness is too much," he said. "The comments typically start out OK, but they deteriorate into insults, innuendo or otherwise offensive remarks."

That's because most of these posts are anonymous. The furious lynch mob mentality fueling our public shouting match is a direct result of online media allowing its readers to hide behind masks. In this angry world anyone can share their racism, sexism, class hatred, homophobia, and robust ignorance without fear of recrimination.

The Gazette will still publish letters to the editor in its print edition, and will continue to demand that real names and real street addresses accompany them.

Janesville is about the same size as our town, Missoula, Montana. And the daily circulation of the Gazette is in the same 25,000–27,000 range as our daily newspaper, The Missoulian. So why does the Missoulian continue to publish these sorts of loud, anonymous posts to its online edition? Probably because without them there would simply be no reason for the more vicious of its readers to go there any more.

Stihl Life. If you're planning to shuck the city and move to the country there are lots of tools that'll make your life easier. But only one that's essential. And that's a good chainsaw. We've worn out two of them in our twenty years at Dark Acres, and are midway through our third, a 20-inch Stihl Farm Boss.

While we've used this beast to bring down a couple of mighty trees, most of the saw's workdays are devoted to smaller matters. For example, on a recent extravagantly colored fall day chilled by the first kiss of winter, we started in
the morning by replacing the final hundred yards of odious barbed wire, which we inherited from the previous owners, with a horse-friendly two-rail pine fence. The Stihl made quick work of cutting the rails to length, then notching the ends so they rails would fit flush against the posts.

Then we brought down a small Ponderosa that had been killed by bark beetles, and cut it into rounds for firewood we threw in the Bronco's way-back. To make a full load we drove deeper into the forest to a spot where the wind had knocked over a quartet of mature water birch, a rarish Montana hardwood that burns long and hot.

Once the truck was full we lugged the Stihl by hand even deeper into the forest to a canopied trail where we ride our horses. The trail had been blocked by an enormous cottonwood limb that had thundered to the ground during a lightning storm. In ten minutes the Stihl had reduced the blockage to a series of rounds, which we easily rolled out of the way.

After lunch we attacked some pallets containing the remnants of a manufacturing operation, two-inch pine posts, twenty inches long, bound together by a pair of steel bands. We bought this firewood for the excellent price of $65 a cord, happy to see how quickly you could use it as tinder to start a fire in our otherwise unheated shack.

Finally, we brought the Stihl to bear on the fun part of the day: Cutting rails and planks for the eight-foot privacy fence we're building between ourselves and our obnoxious immediate neighbor. As the planks went up, one by one, and the sight of the neighbor's shitbox disappeared from view, we were reminded of why we moved to the country in the first place.

Gift With Purchase. That's the title of a new book our friend Elizabeth Mirabel Sain just published on Kindle, iPad, and all your lesser reading devices from sea to shining sea. A parody of The Road written before The Road was even a gleam in Cormac McCarthy's eye, Gift With Purchase is a story of young love and the end of shopping set in the Mall of America and deep inside America's ravaged heartland.

Mean, dark, hilarious, claustrophobic, dense and poignant, the only problem with the novel is that if you don't want to read it on your computer (hardly anyone reads books this way, because doing so is too much like work) you have to buy a reading device. So we think Amazon should give away the Kindle, and Apple should give away the iPad or discount it deeply. (Forget the Barnes and Noble device, the Nook—like Betamax, BN's little piece of junk won't be around a year from now.) This sort of gift with purchase—you give us a device and we'll buy some books—will save book-lovers tons of dough they'll be able to spend on terrific escapes such as Gift With Purchase.

Beautiful places, ugly moods. Montana's rural and suburban House District 100 is 120 square miles of luminous mountains and river valleys where a candidate like Willis Curdy ought to do well in a legislative race. He grew up on a ranch, worked for the Forest Service as a firefighter, smokejumper and pilot, and taught high school civics and government for three decades before retiring to devote his life to running for House District 100. He campaigned the old-fashioned way—going door-to-door, introducing himself to voters. In 2008 he lost to the Republican incumbent by a few votes. And on Nov. 2 Curdy got beat again, losing by an eight-point margin to a Wells Fargo banker who employed illegal campaign letters and was aided by a bank of mysterious telemarketers with heavy foreign accents calling voters on Curdy's "behalf."

This year even Jesus Christ would have gotten trounced in HD100 if he'd run as a Democrat. The reasons are simple, but hard to fix: An economy stifled by the greedy and short-sighted mortgage practices of banks like Wells Fargo, and the trade policies of successive administrations that allowed China to steal millions of American jobs.

Many voters in HD100 drive by a graphic reminder of this idiocracy every day: The vast steel necropolis that used to be Smurfitt-Stone's kraft paper mill, which paid as much as $70,000 a year in wages to its union workers. The corporation shuttered the mill last winter because America doesn't manufacture much of anything anymore, and therefore doesn't need kraft paper to make the boxes we used to ship things in.

Briar Patch
Daily newspapers have yet another competitor.
And this one might eat them alive. By Bill Vaughn

A NEW COMBATANT has joined the siege against the daily newspaper. AOL's burgeoning online reporting venture, Patch, is already operating 186 hyper-local online news bureaus in sixteen states and the District of Columbia. It plans to expand to 20 states and 500 bureaus by the end of this year. AOL Media president David Eun says the company will become the largest single hirer of journalists in the world. While some of these recent employees complain about the low pay and sweatshop conditions inside the Patch, and there have been allegations of plagiarism and the chicken shit attitude of some editors to avoid controversial stories, a typical Patch bureau can be operated for as little as 4 percent of the cost of running the average small daily. (Remember, there are no newsprint costs, and a miniscule outlay for distribution.)

For timid, financially stressed, and unimaginative small dailies such as the Missoula, Montana Missoulian, and its parent corporation, Lee Enterprises, this is not good news. If a Patch bureau opens here the town will begin crawling with ad salespeople whose single-minded purpose will be stealing revenue from the Missoulian.

Boo-hoo. The problem with Lee's chain of glorified shoppers is that they've never really cared to report a lot of local news. They like to fill their news holes with Associated Press stories because it's cheaper to do so than sending reporters into the neighborhoods to gather information about neighborhood events. These stories from AP tend to be day-old bread that everyone's already seen on the Tube or read on the Web.

I've been an advocate of the journalistic equivalent of house-to-house fighting since the 1990s, when I taught publication design for a few semesters at the University of Montana journalism school. The publication I coerced my students to write and produce was called Missoula Inside Out. They published juicy divorce transcripts, depositions from civil suits, details about real estate transactions, reports about epic neighborhood fights, the nuts and bolts of trailer court crimes, who was visiting whom from out-of-town, and a complete police blotter recording every incident, no matter how trivial. One reporter followed the actress Andie McDowell around town for a week, when she lived near Missoula, describing where she ate lunch and what she ordered, what she bought in the stores, who she was with.

In my prospectus for Missoula Inside Out I wrote: "These matters sound inconsequential, and to the gray analysts who monitor troop movements and currency fluctuations, maybe they are. But the relentless erosion of our sense of community has left Americans famished for simple information about the people next door."

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Wish List    By Bill Vaughn
Four things the Montana Legislature could do to make us smile.


THIS IS THE TIME of year—well, every other year—when our thoughts turn to the upcoming Legislative Session in Helena and the good, bad and ugly that emit from that body.

For nine decades after Montana became a state in 1889 the Legislature was merely a gang of farmers and ranchers with nothing better to do during our relentless winters than smoke cigars, put their feet on their desks, read the newspapers, booze in the hotel bars, and pass a few bills that were good for farmers and ranchers. But when confronted with the task of writing a new constitution in 1972, the same class of hayseeds rose to the occasion as delegates to the Constitutional Convention and crafted one of the most forward-thinking pieces of populism in America.

Because of that success we always foolishly believe our lawmakers have our best interests in mind. So before the gavel falls we make a list of bills we wish would become laws, and send it around.

1. Make the prices paid for residential and commercial real estate public. Why should realtors be the only people who have access to the numbers? After all, a lot of these dolts can't do anything else for a living, these former hippies, pizza pie makers, and pyramid schemers. Public disclosure would give us all a firm picture of rising and falling property prices, and who's shaking and moving in the market. (Note: Finally, in the upcoming session, this wish might become a reality. That's because the Revenue and Transportation Interim Committee has already endorsed two separate bills to make real estate sales transparent.)

2. Impose a two-year moratorium on subdivisions. These atrocities are committed by county commissioners driven blind by greed for the revenue the counties get from the permitting process, a process that relies on the joke called the FEMA floodplain map. The result is housing built in river relief channels that will inevitably fill with water. During the moratorium the subdivision laws should tightened, and FEMA maps shitcanned in favor of aerial photography and professional flood and groundwater assessment. Gosh, we miss the days when pickups sported bumper stickers that said "Beautify Montana: Shoot A Land Develeoper."

3. Require that gravel can only be transported by heavy rail. This will concentrate gravel mining in places like the desecrated land owned by Smurfitt-Stone west of Missoula, and will keep the gravel goons away from rural residential neighborhoods such as Dark Acres.

4. While there are laudable grassroots efforts all over the country to reinvigorate short commuter train routes, we believe these are doomed to fail, unless the railroads offer commuters more than just a ride into the city. In urban centers where mass transit is neither efficient nor plentiful (and in America that's almost everywhere), some commuters will want to put their cars on the trains, or at least their bicycles, so they can run to market before commuting home at the end of the day.

And to make the experience of riding the train special these new rail ventures ought to offer casino-style gambling—you know, with roulette and blackjack and craps—and legalized prostitution of at least two varieties. Instead of boring yourself with the Missoulian on the way in from Polson or Hamilton wouldn't it be fun to get a nice blowjob before work, or pocket a hundred bucks from the tables?


More Notes from the Squalor Zone  By Bill Vaughn


Mirage By Bill Vaughn
Sometimes the here and now gets mixed up with the there and then.

IT MUST BE A COW, this stubborn thing hiding in a tangle of scrub. At least that's what I figured was the source of my mare's wild eyes and racing pulse. As we walked our horses down to surround all but the thicket's lowest side, Kitty took the left flank, and Jerry Hamel, owner of this ranch, the right. You'd think three mounted people would be force enough to convince an ordinary heifer to flee. Especially since she could see that the other strays we'd extracted along this ridge were leaving her behind as they plodded toward a holding pen at the intersection of two fence lines below us in a meadow. But after we hollered and whistled and flapped our coils of rope nothing happened. A magpie yelled back, then flew away in a huff.

With a click I urged Timer forward, expecting the same enthusiasm for the work she'd shown all day. Instead, she balked. Then she balked again. After another of these lateral moves at the line of scrimmage I stopped pushing. Whatever was lurking inside these junipers and chokecherries, it wasn't a cow.

While I waited for something to happen an autumn breeze began hissing through the crowns of the Ponderosas. North across the National Bison Range and the Flathead Indian Reservation a higher wind was shredding a few bright clouds against the rocky tops of the Mission Mountains, a row of dinosaur teeth already gleaming with snow. [read more]

More Notes from the Squalor Zone  By Bill Vaughn

Boycott China. We avoid buying things made in China. Most of their stuff is junk. And some of it is downright dangerous. Look at the dogfood that killed all those dogs, the toothpaste that killed all those old people, and the pharmaceuticals that have made people sick across the globe. Double plus, Chinese products aren't made by Americans.

So we were bewildered to learn that Montana State University accepted $141,000 in Federal "stimulus" money to send nine paleontology students to China on a six-week junket to study dinosaur eggs. The all-expense paid trip, which put money in the pockets of thieves and corrupt capitalists (is that an oxymoron?) was funded by the National Science Foundation.

While the matter has been used as political fodder by shameless Goper losers such as John "Crash" McCain, we wonder why Montana students couldn't have done just as well studying Montana dinosaur eggs. There's a whole bunch of them at Egg Mountain in Teton County, a leisurely two-hour road-trip from Bozeman.

Euphemism. The idiots of the New Right have forced the idiots of the center to duck and cover. For example, they don't call themselves liberals any more, because neoconservatives and Tea Baggers have attached the odor of shit to the word. So they call themselves "progressives" and hope no one notices that their corporate, business-as-usual politics, camouflaged under a veneer of frosting, still stink.

Tea Bagged. Everyone knows by now that those Tea Party cultists are white, middle-aged, bourgeois, semi-educated, xenophobic racists pissed off for reasons they can't quite put their fingers on but has something to do with what their skinhead friends call "Mud People." One of our local groups is even advertising its bad taste by calling itself Montana Shrugged, named after one of the ten worst novels in the English language (okay, one of the thirty worst novels, if you count Danielle Steele as a novelist.)

Great Leaps Forward. We believe our garment, the Amazing and Versatile Food Suit, was the most innovative fashion invention of the late Twentieth Century. Although it never progressed from the beta version to actual commercial production, it quite simply revolutionized the way sporting events, concerts, and long, boring speeches were experienced. That it seemed to appeal more to guys than dolls probably had something to do with unavoidable aspects of its internal plumbing.

Now comes another tipping-point invention. This one promises nothing less than to shore up the foundations of an American institution: the marriage bed. Yes, friends, it's the Better Marriage Blanket. Are you ready to disavow your vows because your mate is ruining your bedtime together with foul smells? Is uncontrolled flatulence from your partner keeping you up at night? Suffer no more. The Better Marriage Blanket contains the same type of material used by the military to protect against chemical weapons. It works like this: The silent and unseen but deadly fart molecules pass through the sheet and into a layer of activated carbon that neutralizes smells. It's as simple as that. The device is only $19.95 and makes a great wedding or anniversary gift.

Why didn't we think of that?

Unresponsive
Content Farms harvest words arranged in sentences
in order to fill the spaces between ads on websites. By Bill Vaughn

AS A WRITER I'm always trying to sell to new markets. Sometimes it's a magazine (Audubon, The Atlantic, the New Yorker and the New York Times Book Review have never bothered to respond to my pitches, although I did sell two pieces this year to a new magazine, at least for me—American Cowboy). Sometimes it's a book publisher (I've begun shopping a crime novel I just finished to a few agents, none of whom have bothered to  respond, even though I was represented at various times by two power hitters in the biz, Kris Dahl at ICM, and Brian Lipson at Endeaver). And sometimes it's a website (neither Slate nor Huffington Post has bothered to respond, although I've written for their competitor, Salon).

Maybe it's the challenge I like. More probably, I need to have my feelings hurt just to see if I have any feelings left (um, apparently not).

When I heard about content farms plantations I knew I had to throw myself at them. These are outfits that buy words in order for websites to put something besides ads on their pages.

Associated Content puts words on websites that Yahoo owns. Demand Studios resells words to a number of online outlets such as eHow. And Seed supplies words to AOL websites such as Wallet Pop and Pop Eater.

When I say words, that's pretty much what I mean. Words in English arranged into sentences, with punctuation. Most of this "content" reads like something the Hollow Men would write. You know, "Our dried voices when we whisper together are quiet and meaningless, as wind in dry grass, or rats' feet over broken glass in our dry cellar."

I decided to try Seed because it pays better than the other farms. This is to say, almost nothing. I went through their list of suggested topics. Most of them were along the lines of "Best Public Restrooms in Breckenridge, Colorado" (1000 words for $50), and "Five Best Photo Ops in Boise, Idaho (again, 1000 words for $50).

Instead, I chose "My Favorite Party" (500 words for $40) and churned out this wretched doggerel in about a half hour. I knew I was competing with other writers to win over the little black heart of some unseen editor, who probably just graduated from journalism school with one of those worthless degrees journalism schools award. I posted the essay, and waited for a response. Seed promised to yea or nay it in three days.

That was 56 64 days ago.

Dear Diary: Booyah! Seed finally responded to my party essay! Although sadly my work won't be appearing at any AOL website, meaning I won't be getting my $40, they said they loved what they saw! (Heart, slow down!) This is almost as exciting as when I got published in The Best American Magazine Writing!

Here's what SEED said:

Thank you for your recent SEED content submission, My Fave Fete.

We're writing to tell you that we liked your content submission, but that it was not an exact fit for publication on one of our AOL network's sites. But we strongly encourage you to try again-we loved what we saw, and hope that we find an opportunity to work together in the future. Please visit SEED (www.seed.com) to find some new assignments that may be a fit for you.

Thanks,
Your SEED Editorial Team

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Dog days at Dark Acres with Lyndon Baines Johnson and Clara

If a tree falls in the forest . . .  The mammoth black cottonwood that finally died of old age three years ago at Dark Acres had invaded our dreams. More than 100 feet tall, it stood in a confusion of wild rose and dogwood bordered by a slough on one side and a fenceline on the other. To get from our front pasture to the Clark Fork River people, dogs, horses and wildlife had no choice but to pass under the towering crown of this behemoth.

Cottonwoods are beautiful and aromatic when alive. But dead ones are nightmares, hurling down huge branches and eventually keeling over, exploding when they hit the ground and driving parts on themselves deep into the earth. It's too dangerous to fell a big one like this with a chainsaw because the wood is always rotten, making the direction of the tree's descent unpredictable.

We always looked up reflexively and put our arms over our heads whenever we passed under it. After storms we ran to the spot where it flanked the path hoping it had finally fallen. But time and again it survived the windiest winds. The fact that when the end came it would smash a couple sections of our two-rail fence was a minor price to pay for being rid of the monster.

This morning I took the dogs for a swim. When we rounded a bend in the path there it was. Finally brought to earth. No one heard it fall. And no one saw it fall. I looked up at the empty space in the sky where it had lived, and then died. I couldn't help myself, and covered my head with my arms.

Dog Show. For no defensible reason we'd like to know what the most common dog names are by region. Well, yeah, we know that the most common American names for boy dogs are Max, Jake, Buddy, Baily, Sam and Rocky; and the most common girl dog names are Maggie, Mollie, Lady, Sadie, Lucy and Daisy. But is Gumbo a common dog name in Louisiana? And in state such as Georgia, with its strong military culture, do dog owners choose names like Fubar and Hooah? How would you go about finding out? Well, most veterinarians keep records of their patients. Is there some way to collate this information into a state-by-state database? Don't we have anything better to do? During these dog days of summer, um, no, not really.

Highest Bid. Uh-oh. The hapless Missoula, Montana daily, the Missoulian, has lost its bidding war with the Missoula Independent, a giveaway weekly, for the City of Missoula's legal advertising. According to the city clerk, Marty Rehbein, the Independent has won a one-year contract to publish this source of steady revenue. In 2009 the contract was worth $10,200. The high bid comes after a law passed in the 2009 Montana Legislature that overturned a requirement that legal advertising can only be published in a periodical with paid advertising (gee, why?) Now the Missoulian will be forced to pay its excellent reporters with revenue one could only suppose is derived exclusively from its apparent remaining source of income, rummage sales ads.

Twister. The tornado that destroyed the Metra Events Center in Billings, Montana on Father's Day is captured eloquently by a young couple who happened to be driving by, and happened to have a videocamera. The footage exudes a sort of hand-held Blair Witch Project terror that only gets more riveting as you watch it again. There's something ripping apart the roof of the massive building, and then the camera is turned sideways, and we see the ominous gray funnel snaking into the evening sky as rain falls, lightning strikes and the roar of the beast and its debris fills the air.

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Even More Notes from the Squalor Zone  By Bill Vaughn

Another Turd Farm? On Feb. 3, 2010 the Missoula County Commissioners rubber-stamped a 75-acre subdivision called "Blue Heron Estates" in Grass Valley near the Clark Fork River ten miles downstream from ground zero in Missoula. The actual rookery of Great Blue Herons nesting in a pair of enormous cottonwoods a stone's throw from this subdivision will not be amused. While the Commissioners were gushing about the "no-build zones" provided by the owner, "protections" for the "riparian area," and the lovely "path" that was promised, they ignored evidence that showed extensive flooding on this property in 1997. In fact, a flood relief channel of the Clark Fork River divides the property, which would be more aptly named "A River Runs Through It."

Images captured by Montana Aerial Photography reveal how much surface water is flowing through the property. And this was the result of a minor cyclical event, which the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers categorized as a ten-year flood.

But even this minimal amount of overflow easily breached the county lane the developers intend to use as access (the county promises to "build up" this lane, which will have the same effect as constructing a dam).

Little wonder the Commissioners decided to forbid homeowners from digging basements at Blue Heron Estates. They remembered another pair of subdivisions they approved along Grant Creek, where basements filled up in 1997 with raw sewage, leading wags to describe these neighborhoods as "The Turd Farm."

CCC Redux. In the same breath that Teabaggers and other elements of the lunatic right whine about encroaching government, and accuse the White House of being "socialist," these dimwits attack the feds for doing nothing to deal with the Gulf oil disaster. In fact, besides the military, the government doesn't have any organization that can be mobilized immediately to deal with emergencies affecting the natural world. Well, yeah, there's FEMA. We know a guy who travels all over the country working as a FEMA administrator, and even he admits that the Agency is a joke.

What we'd like to see is the resurrection of the Civilian Conservation Corps, FDR's enormously successful and popular program that put men ages 18-24 to work on public projects ranging from roads, bridges, and fire lookout towers to planting trees and stocking fish. The new CCC would require mandatory and universal service from every 18-year-old male and female in the U.S. for two years, except those who join the military. During emergencies like that in the Gulf this vast army of civilian soldiers could be dispatched immediately to do what needs to be done, whether it's building barrier reefs or rescuing wildlife, or saving people stranded by flooding.

Evergreen. The more things change the more they stay the same. For example, here's a recent news squib from Florence, Montana: "A resident on oxygen who was smoking caused his trailer home to catch on fire and completely burn down."

Off With Their Masks. The era of the anonymous post (that is, flame) is coming to an end on several major websites, including that of the New York Times, Politics Daily, The Washington Post, and the Huffington Post.

The flesh-eating bacteria that infest our local sites here in Montana, such as that of 4&20blackbirds, leftinthewest, and newwest, should take heed and compel people who want to spout off to use their real names and give up a street address the editors can trace. That also means that commentators at these sites should stop hiding behind noms des plumes.

Here at darkacres we've avoided getting soiled by nameless mud-slingers because we refuse to publish any comments at all. Do we still get hate mail? Once in a while. But because we know how to track down IP addresses, and it's a federal crime to intimidate someone with anonymous email, these cowardly, right-wing jerk-offs have been frightened away.

Bay Watch. May 27 marked the launch of The Bay Citizen, a nonprofit online journal that will cover news and culture from San Francisco and environs. This new venture is edited by Jonathan Weber, the founder and publisher of New West, a regional online magazine based in Missoula. With a relatively modest budget of $5 million and a small staff of 15 journalists, The Citizen is largely funded by private equity gazillionaire Warren Hellman.

The Citizen has sent a shot across the bow of the San Francisco Chronicle, which, like newspapers everywhere, has ceased doing the sort of expensive and time-consuming local reporting that used to make newspapers indispensable. (For example, the lame and hapless Missoula daily, the Missoulian, rarely sends a reporter to County Commissioners meetings any more, thus allowing these autocrats complete opacity when it comes to land use outside the city).

The Citizen joins a growing trend in U.S. journalism—the elimination of the printed edition, which is an enormous waste of paper, physical plant, and distribution resources.

To see other examples of the new generation of online reportage check out voiceofsandiego, Texas Tribune and MinnPost in Minnesota. In April a similar non-profit called ProPublica, which covers national news, won a Pulitzer Prize.

We wish Weber luck in his new venture, and fondly remember him for paying us to publish at New West a very long article about a computer game called Sim City.

Tubers. Because Thursday night earns NBC its best ratings of the week you'd figure that local advertisers in Missoula, Montana would be swarming all over each other to flaunt their wares on KECI during shows such as Parks and Recreation and 30 Rock. But Thursday after Thursday, and several times every Thursday, this local NBC affiliate runs the same tired house ad featuring the station's news anchors. Here's Steve Fetveit, world-weary and exhausted, droning on about the news "profession" as the camera pans in on the copious liver spots adorning his hands. And here's Heidi Meili, once the most beautiful Heidi in the valley, droning on about the news "profession," looking like she just emerged from a three-day fraternity party at which she was the main attraction.

The beat goes on. Assistant  University of Nevada football coach Ty Gregorak has been sacked. The  Las Vegas Journal Review reported May 12 that the reason has nothing to do with his on-field performance. The former University of Montana assistant football coach was arrested in Boulder, Colorado last week after being turned away from a strip club. According to a bouncer, Gregorak was just way too drunk. Friends, we've heard of being too drunk to fish, but too drunk to enter a titty bar?

It gets worse. According to the Journal-Review, later that night Gregorak went back to a parking garage near the club, broke into the bouncer's car, and stole his wallet and a loaded .45 caliber handgun, which he later returned to the bouncer's home. Gregorak will face formal charges expected to be announced May 13.

Gregorak followed former UM head coach Bobby Hauck to UNLV last fall. And his alleged malfeasance puts him squarely in the gangster culture that Coach Hauck seems to inspire. During Coach Hauck's tenure in Missoula a dozen varsity football players were involved in crimes and misdemeaners ranging from kidnapping, thievery and assault with a weapon to drunk driving .

Equine Infectious Anemia Reported. The Montana Dept of Livestock announced May 2 that a horse south of Gallatin Gateway has been diagnosed with Montana's first case of Equine infectious anemia (EIA) since 2007.

Also known as swamp fever, EIA is potentially fatal viral horse disease spread by blood-sucking  insects such as horse and deer flies. No vaccine or treatment exists for the disease, which is characterized by intermittent fever, depression, progressive weakness, weight loss, edema (fluid under the skin or in body cavities) and anemia.

The disease was discovered when the owner of the horse, who was planning to transport the animal out of Montana, had a Coggins test administered. The results came up positive, and were confirmed by the USDA-APHIS National Veterinary Service Laboratories in Ames, Iowa.

Owners infected horses have few options. These include euthanasia or a lifetime quarantine with a minimum of 200 yards distance between the quarantined animal and other equines. Infected animals can also be used for research—some scientists believe such research would contribute to a better understanding of retroviruses such as EIA, AIDs (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome) and Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).

The owner of the sick horse is considering the options.

Evergreen #2. There is an obscure subspecies of writing that takes as its subject the "vast, sweeping landscape of Montana." For decades the hacks who write this copy, which is commissioned from time to time to promote the interests of the tourism industry, have gone to the same box of alphabet blocks and returned with the same clichés (that fine French printer's term for bound strings of words you set in type again and again). For example, here are some sentences from a four-page ad supplement in the April 19 New Yorker, for which the Office of Tourism shelled out $65,000:

"They found the sense of wonder that can only exist in a land so close to its untamed past."

"Maybe you crest a rise and suddenly see five different mountain ranges, blue and unknowable, marching toward different wild horizons."

"Rivers are born of towering peaks raking snow from the sky and powered by steep ravines tilting into broad valleys."

Of course, no commercial gush about Montana would be complete without someone saying "last best place." This trite and incomprehensible phrase is uttered by Walter Kirn, the literary carpetbagger who wrote Up in the Air, a novel in which Montana only appears as Flyover Country.

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Gravel Goons By Bill Vaughn
Industry fat cats use scare tactics to try and squash zoning designed to protect rural landowners in Gallatin County.

ACCORDING TO A PIECE in the April 16, 2010 issue of the Belgrade (Montana) News, "a concerted effort is underway to kill four recently proposed zoning districts in the Gallatin Valley, as a group of concerned citizens and the gravel industry this week mailed anti-zoning information to most every large land owner in the valley, urging them to file written protests."

What these industry goons and their meat puppets are trying to prevent are minimal safeguards for ranchers and rural landowners against the ravages of gravel pits, asphalt plants, cement factories and the heavy truck traffic that services these massive industrial schemes. The imposition of zoning would require gravel miners to undergo a reasonable permitting process before they start digging.

The gravel industry is taking no chances that Gallatin County will end up like Missoula County, where gravel pits in two rural neighborhoods were nixed by the Board of Commissioners, who used the righteous power of zoning to protect homeowners from a dangerous and dirty industry that ruins the property values of everyone else.

One of these neighborhoods is Grass Valley, home of Dark Acres, on the right bank of the Clark Fork River ten miles below the city. In 2006 the owner of a hobby ranch here decided he could make more money from gravel, asphalt and cement than he could from cows. So he appealed to the County for permission to ruin this beautiful expanse of grassland and forest. The Board of Commissioners, an extremely political body of three elected officials swayed in almost every matter by the squeaking wheel, listened to the protests of neighbors, environmental groups, and the Indian tribes who regard Council Grove State Park in Grass Valley as a special place. (Meanwhile, the ranch owner claimed he was only trying to create ponds for the children of a summer camp to play in.)  

Still, because the Commissioners rarely reject subdivisions, despite expensive lawsuits brought because of badly planned ones that got flooded, the neighborhood expected the worse. But the Commissioners surprised us and told the gravel industry, no way, Jose. The gravel industry was not amused, especially when the County later snuffed a similar gravel scheme outside Lolo by imposing interim zoning on the neighborhood. That case ended up in the Montana Supreme Court, which ruled in favor of the Commissioners.

In Gallatin County the gravel goons are playing rough, even lying to people about how zoning is the first step on the road to government confiscation of their guns (that came as news to my redneck neighbors, whose land is heavily zoned and are the proud owners of numerous weapons, which they enjoy firing at all times of the day and night).

The lies and distortions compelled the Belgrade News to issue an editorial. "Using tactics reminiscent of the days of the Anaconda Company, representatives of the gravel industry and others opposed to zoning have launched an aggressive campaign to stop a county effort to create four gravel-zoning districts in the Gallatin Valley. . . . We urge land owners in the four districts to learn the truth before deciding whether to protest; and to take with a grain of salt the many myths, legends and lies about how the county's 'top-down' zoning efforts affects (or don't affect) the citizens' 'bottom-up' neighborhood planning efforts."

Update: On April 27 landowners killed zoning in one of four areas of the county imposed by the Gallatin County Commission to regulate gravel pits. Protests are still being counted in three other districts. State law dictates that if protests are filed by either 40 percent of the landowners in a district, or owners of 50 percent of the agricultural or forest land, zoning regulations can be overturned. In the case of the Southern Valley district, home of the town of Gallatin Gateway, the owners of 63 percent of the agricultural land—13,992 acres of a total 22,354 acres—successfully protested. Of the 1,467 total property owners in the Southern Valley district, according to officials, 123 filed to overturn the district, about eight percent of the property owners.

Although anti-zoning sentiment springs from the pea-brains of Teabaggers, tax protesters, right-wing Christian zealots and other marginalized loons who think they're serving the U.S. Constitution but in fact are serving big business, a state law allowing big landowners to impose their will on a family that owns a home and a couple of acres is hardly a democratic measure, and ought to be struck down. And it's time to put zoning in Gallatin County on the ballot and let the majority have its way. Meanwhile, people who live near a potential gravel pit in Gallatin Gateway now have no protection against the contracting industry, which could give a shit about the property rights of individuals in rural residential neighborhoods.

Update Redux. District Judge John Brown issued a temporary restraining April 30 order stopping the Gallatin County Commissioners from taking any further action on proposed gravel pit zoning. According to the Bozeman Chronicle the order was requested by the Gateway Opencut Mining Action Group, an environmental organization based in Gallatin Gateway, and four local residents who have filed a lawsuit against the county. Their lawsuit claims Montana law denies those who don't own property the right to participate in the process, a violation of the Equal Protection clause of the 14th Amendment. Brown scheduled a hearing on the restraining order for July 12.

Then, on May 3, Judge Brown ordered that interim zoning be extended until at least the July 12 court date, thus preventing the gravel goons from doing their dirty business in these districts.

On May 7 one of these gravel goons filed an intervention suit whose aim is to derail the efforts of the Gallatin County Commissioners to protect small landowners from this rapacious industry. TMC, which already operates two gravel pits, claims the county's effort to enact permanent regulations would hamper the company's ability to mine gravel in the future. Boo hoo.

Woncha Be My Neighbor? Meanwhile, the industry wants the public to believe it's going to regulate itself in the matter of disrupting and ruining rural residential neighborhoods. On its  sand and gravel website the Montana Contractors Association says it's encouraging its members to enact a "good neighbor policy," whatever that means. "We do not believe that firms seeking redress through the courts are attempting to skirt regulations or to make political end runs," the MCA says. "The companies have been unfairly stalled and delayed by state agencies, and the courts are now agreeing with them. This in no way changes commitments of our members to be responsible, good neighbors."

The MCA, of course, sponsored a bill in the 2006 Legislature that would have stripped county commissioners of the power to use zoning to regulate gravel mining. Thanks to Democrats in the Senate this odious measure was squashed.
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More Notes from the Squalor Zone  By Bill Vaughn

Swapping Names. If you visited Google on April Fools Day you saw that the monster search engine and money machine had renamed itself Topeka. No, not as an homage to the local Indians, whom city fathers would soon do their best to exterminate. It's said that the word "topeka" in the Kansa language means "to dig good potatoes." (Hmm. Had the tater made it's way to the Plains from South America by the time Topeka was founded in the 1850s?)

At any rate, Topeka is one of 600 communities vying to become the laboratory for an advanced fiber optics experiment Google is planning to build next year in an effort to dramatically increase the speed of the Web. The winner will be announced at the end of 2010. To get Google's atention Topeka renamed itself Google for the month of March. Although Missoula, Montana is one of the other hopefuls it missed the chance to suck up. But there's still time. How about changing its name from the Salish Indian word for "this water is really fucking cold" to Sergey? Or Brin? Or maybe even Larry?

Speculations. Because some analysts are saying the prices for new homes have bottomed out and have even begun to rise again, speculators are looking around for opportunities to buy low and sell high. According to Money magazine, two of the top 25 cities in the country for making money in real estate are in Montana. The magazine says home prices in Billings will rise 2.7 percent in 2010, and in Great Falls 2 percent. (The best place in the U.S. to buy an investment home is in Santa Clara, California, where the average price of a new home is predicted to rise by a whopping 6 percent by the end of the year.)

The only problem with the magazine's list is that although the Magic City and the Electric City have fun nicknames, no one wants to live there. Billings offers all the grandeur of Fargo, and a visit to Great Falls is like falling down a time tube into 1954. If you think we're exagerrating go have a cup of coffe with the cops who hang out at Tracy's near the Civic Center.

Vanilla Gorilla. It doesn't come as a shock to anyone who's been following the career of Monster Garage star Jesse James that he'd eventually cheat on Sandra Bullock. The only surprise is that it took him five years to do it (that is to say, so far his only public indiscretion has been his alleged year-long affair with a self-described "evil cunt," a tattoo model called Michelle  'Bombshell' McGee.) After all, James is tough, successful and charismatic in that smoldering James Dean sort of way that compels certain women to throw themselves at him.

When I flew to Austin a couple years ago to interview James for the cover of the Men's Journal his publicist warned me that the one thing I couldn't ask him about was "Sandy." In fact, when I arrived at the noisy, frenetic garage where James was rebuilding a car, the former high school football standout and juvenile delinquent from L.A. didn't want to talk to me at all. Not having much else to do I just kept hanging around, sweating in the July heat, and eventually he opened up.

I thought he was honest and unpretentious. Plus, he had the sort of physical and mechanical skills that most men only dream about. As I walked back across Austin to my hotel after the interview it struck me that James didn't like to talk to reporters about Bullock because her presence, unseen or not, would always take over the conversation. And now, alas, the conversation will probably never be about the career of Jesse James again.

Purse Snatcher Update. On March 12 a suspect was arrested in connection with numerous cases of purse snatchings this winter in Missoula and Ravalli Counties. The thefts were reported by equestriennes whose vehicles were entered while they were working their horses at one of the numerous indoor arenas in the area. The thief then used the victims' credit cards to buy gasoline, in one case only ten minutes after the theft was discovered. Evidence against the suspect includes surveillance camera footage of a stout, blonde female using one of these purloined cards at a fuel pump, filling a vehicle that looked like the green Chevy Tracker pictured here.

Missoula Sheriff's Detective Rick Newlon said the suspect was arrested after the owner of an arena noticed a suspicious vehicle that resembled the one shown on flyers circulated among Missoula's horsey set, wrote down the license plate number and called the cops. The alleged perp is expected to be booked into the Missoula Detention Facility March 12.

Ghost World. Websites and blogs that publish anonymous posts and comments have no right to complain about harsh reactions to their content, no matter how racist, sexist, uneducated, xenophobic or hate-mongering. The operators of these sites, in fact, must take responsibility for any comment they allow to be posted under a pseudonym for the reason that there's no one else to hold responsible. And who's to say that the operators themselves are not, in fact, writing these snarling snarks and drooling diatribes in order to whack the hive and drive traffic their way for reasons rooted in narcissism, if nothing else?

If you want your website to become a place for civil discourse demand real names from your commentators, and real email addresses. Or dispense with the whole annoying cacaphony altogether, and refuse, like Dark Acres, to publish any comment (unless, of course, someone wants to pay for it).

Patsies. All March we were holding our breath and crossing our fingers, hoping that three of Missoula's most hapless Gopers filed to run again for Montana legislative contests they lost by massive landslides in the 2008 general election.

First, there was Kevin Blackler, who got out-voted by his Democratic opponent, Diane Sands, by a margin of 3144 to 1710 in the race for House District 95. Then there's Steve Eschenbacher, who got walloped by Teresa Henry 2720 to 1777 in HD96. Finally, our fave punching bag, Carol Minjares, was savaged by Michele Reinhart in HD97 by 3693 votes to a pathetic 1559.

Although these perennial punching bags decided not to get in the ring again a pair of fresh Gopers entered the fray at the last minute, filing just before the deadline on March 15. Matt Stevenson filed for HD96 against a new Dem, Carolyn Squires, and Matt Stevenson will go against Reinhart.

Why do we care this year whether Republicans gets thumped in traditional Democratic strongholds? For the same reason we want Sarah Palin to run for president in 2012. The more that Gopers expose their failure of imagination during this, our fleeting era of the Tea Party Cult, the less Americans will want anything to do with them. For example, opposition to "big government" is a reaction, not an idea, another way of saying: I'm not interested in any society that uses taxes to elevate the conditions of people I don't like, which turns out to be most everyone. And what about the right-wing notion that the way to solve the health care crisi is to remove all regulations on the health insurance industry? This is an idea?

Happy as a heron in a heron tree. The first week of March always marks the return of the great blue heron colony from its winter digs in Latin America, to its condominium of nests in a massive cottonwood at Dark Acres, on the Clark Fork River below Missoula.

We always know exactly when the herons are back because they announce their arrival with a chorus of grating Jurassic screeches that stampedes the dogs through the dog door into the house.

Actually, a heron has at least seven words in its vocabulary, including one made by clacking its bills together. Their most common expression is the one that sounds like the unword "Fraunk!"

When you see these big birds out on patrol, with their crooked necks, six-foot wingspans, long legs stretched out behind, fraunking like a pack of maniacs, you always feel a twinge of the terror that sent our miserable little mammal ancestors fleeing for cover as the Pterodactyls passed over, staring down with the scrutiny of old people scanning an Early Bird menu.

Talisman. Like our Irish ancestors, at Dark Acres we believe hawthorns can influence events in the world of the unseen. No, really. Why not? Lots of people hedge their bets with lucky charms. You know, rosaries, worry dolls, Pawnee spirit bracelets, a funny-colored pebble they found in a Vegas parking lot before hitting a fine payout on a slot.

Lucky for us the largest black hawthorn in Montana grows on our land, between the house and the river. We named her Maeva, after the fabled Irish queen who liked to fight in battle. Over the last couple of years we've placed significant items in the thorny branches of Maeva, hoping she'll hear our pitiful supplications. Here's a dollar bill, a Powerball ticket bearing a one-dollar payout, jewelry from Kitty's dead grandmother, a letter written by my dead mother when she served as an army nurse in the Philippines during WWII, and ribbons of different colors we hope will bring continued decent health and freedom from irrational anxiety.

Hot ticket. Some men's college basketball conferences are more equal than others. For example, the Big East will place as many as nine teams in the NCAA National Championship Tournament later this month (including our fave, Villanova), while the lowly Big Sky Conference will field only one. That's not the only disparity. While a good seat at the Big Sky conference playoffs in Ogden March 9-10 will set a fan back $25, the average price of a ticket to the Big East tournament at Madison Square Garden is $140 $196.

Furless. The grassroots organization circulating petitions for an initiative that would ban trapping on public lands in Montana is claiming its first victory. According to spokesperson (and our pal) Connie Poten, Footloose Montana has gathered the 299 signatures needed to qualify House District 92.

Footloose must now gather the signatures of 5 percent of the registered voters in 33 more House Districts by June 18 in order to put the measure, I-160, on the November 2 ballot. Although HD92 includes much of Missoula's

Upper Rattlesnake, the "Valley of the Liberals," the Secretary of State's office reported that Footloose has already collected more than 4,000 4800 signatures of the 24,337 it needs across Montana.

Opponents of the measure include the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, whose president and CEO, David Allen, said in a recent press release that "I-160 appears to be a backdoor anti-hunting measure backed by out-of-state financiers trying to change Montana values and lifestyles."   

"We're not heavily funded by anybody," Poten countered. "We're operating on a shoestring. The bulk of our money comes from small donations from people around the state."

Dr. Tim Provow, a Footloose Montana board member, hunter, and member of the National Rifle Association, told the Great Falls Tribune that most trapping on public lands is at odds with hunting ethics.  "The first rule of hunting is to 'Be Sure of Your Target!,'" Provow said.  "Trapping violates this rule by its indiscriminate killing of many species, including endangered, threatened and sensitive species, such as Canada lynx and American bald eagle."

And backers of I-160 point to the scores of cats, dogs and other pets that have been maimed and killed by traps set on public lands.

The Black, and The White By Bill Vaughn
Did Teedle have a stroke, or was he trying to tell us something?

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN and the E Street Band were rocking the house with "Glory Days" during halftime at the 2009 Super Bowl when, out of the blue, our ancient TV went berserk. The Boss turned chartreuse. Patty Scialfa morphed into a large Cheeto. Stevie Van Zandt was glowering with the skin tones of someone choking on a wad of calzone. My response, as it is to all appliance insubordinations, was to give the set a good whack. This accomplished nothing. My wife, Kitty, calmly lifted the remote and tried adjusting the buttons that control color and tint. Again, nothing.

We decided the producers were making a statement about the inauguration of Barack Obama, the message being that our skin, be it black, white, purple or green, is only incidental to who we are. Or something. But when we called a

neighbor he told us we must be hallucinating. On his massive flat panel screen there was nothing unusually weird about the band.

As the Steelers went on to edge the Cardinals, garish auras appeared around the players the colors of gee-gaws produced by a plastics factory. We surfed around to other channels, but the virus had infected them all. The next morning, when we switched on the news, the MSNBC announcers were as obnoxious as always in their eagerness to interrupt the people they were interviewing. But we couldn't concentrate on the day's events because everyone was cast in day-glo. The most aggressive of these newsies, Contessa Brewer, was painted in layers, like a radioactive slab of Neopolitan ice cream. [read more]



More Notes from the Squalor Zone  By Bill Vaughn


Mental Health News. Although Montanans ranked themselves the third happiest people in the union, according to a recent Gallup poll, the National Centers for Disease Control have consistently placed the land of oro y plata in the top five states as defined by rate of suicide. In 2005, for example, Montana was ranked first in the nation for the number of people per capita who pursued the question "to be or not to be" to one of is ultimate conclusions.

Why the disparity? Why do a people who say they're "happy" kill themselves at a rate much higher than the national average? Well, everyone lies to each other, themselves, and pollsters all the time. If you believe America actually has a "culture," one of the precepts of that culture encourages us to believe that the revolutionary inclusion in the Constitution of the right to pursue happiness means that we must be happy, whatever that is, whether it's freedom from fear and want, an excellent cell phone contract, or some sense of well-being based on emotional intangibles.

So why do Montanans kill themselves at a rate twice as high as that in most other states? Is it our long, Irish love affair with alcohol? Is it our long Irish love affair with firearms? Is it related somehow to world-class literary critic and University of Montana English professor Leslie Fiedler's analysis of what he called "The Montana Face?"

"What I found seemed, at first glance, reticent, weary—full of self-sufficient stupidity; a little later it appeared simply inarticulate, with all the dumb pathos of what cannot declare itself; a face developed not for sociability or feeling, but for facing into the weather."




Couch Trip
The old Mercantile has finished her life at the age of 144,
but at least we have something to remember her by. By Bill Vaughn

THIRTY YEARS AGO we made our membership in the middle class official. First, we stopped shacking up together and got married. Then we bought our first piece of furniture. It was a simple and understated couch the color of a palomino. Although it was on sale, at $999 it was still unbelievably expensive, by our impoverished standards. But the store where we found it was willing to let us take it home right away and pay for it in installments of $30 a month. There wasn't any other major furniture in our little rent house on La Vasseur Street in what we called the French Quarter, but at least we had a nice place to sit.

The store was the old Missoula Mercantile in the heart of what is now Montana's largest city. We've always liked to wander around this warren of odd-shaped rooms and mezzanines, because there's a surprise around every corner (for example, between the first and second floors is an ancient photo booth). Plus, the atmosphere is from another century; it's quieter and slower-paced than the Big Box Stores out on Reserve, with natural light that streams in from plate glass windows facing Higgins Avenue and East Front Street.

The Merc was established in 1866, long before Montana was even a state. In 1882 it moved into its current eccentric quarters, which would continue to expand with additions for the next nine years. Like most of the old buildings in town it was constructed of red brick fired from a local clay so inadequate for construction purposes it had to be veneered with a sturdier clay shipped in from out of town.

We moved from the French Quarter to Bonner Park and from there to what everyone called The Pony Ranch, in the Rattlesnake Valley. The couch went with us, of course. When we started spending more time in our downtown office on West Broadway than we were spending at home we moved the couch again. We put it in front of the television in what we called The Big Room, which housed our massive typesetting machines. Since we usually worked from 9 a.m. to midnight and our office was in the center of downtown friends wandered at all hours to sit on the couch, watch television and gossip.

We were sorry to hear that the old Merc, which was absorbed into the Macy's chain a few years ago, would be closing its doors this winter. Nothing good lasts, we told ourselves, feeling lame because the only words we could come up with to describe our nostalgia and melancholy was a cliché.

But at least we still have the couch, parked in our living room at Dark Acres. It's still in excellent shape, although it suffered a cosmetic ding. When it was downtown one of our employees, working out at lunch break on our exercise bike, got preoccupied with the soap opera she was watching, and failed to notice that she had moved the bike too close to the back of the couch. When smoke suddenly filled the air she realized her mistake and shrieked, prompting people to run into The Big Room from all over.

We don't sit on the couch much anymore. That mostly because it's been appropriated by our dogs. Clara, our Border collie, has a special love for the couch. Besides spending her nights and some of her days on it, she enjoys having raucous sex with the cushions. Don't ask us why.