Category Archives: Big Sky Economy

November 2, 2012 · 10:43 PM

Libertarian vote could decide Senate race in Montana

This article was originally published on PBS NewsHour. Read it there at: http://bitly.com/RreNR2

By Taylor Anderson

If the race for Montana’s U.S. Senate seat goes down to the wire, a fishing tackle manufacturer from Hamilton could play a pivotal role in deciding the winner.

By any measure — money, polls or media coverage — Libertarian Dan Cox trails far behind U.S. Sen. Jon Tester, the Democratic incumbent, and Republican Congressman Denny Rehberg.

During the campaign Cox has polled as high as 8 percent and as low as 1 percent, (some polls don’t even include his name), so it’s hard to peg his support. But any votes he receives on Nov. 6 could sway a too-close-to-call race – and help determine which party controls the U.S. Senate come January.

Whatever happens is fine with him, says Cox, who accuses both major party candidates of undermining the U.S. Constitution.

“The good news is no matter what happens in this election, either one or two of the unconstitutional candidates will be out of the Congress,” Cox says.

Rehberg, Tester and their supporters are projected to spend more than $20 million in a record-breaking Montana campaign. By contrast, the 36-year-old Cox has raised less than $5,000.

His signs appear almost nowhere in the state aside from at least one in the Bitterroot Valley featuring spray-painted letters on a white plywood board leftover from his 2010 run for state legislature.

The Libertarian message

Cox’s message seems simple: When it comes to the federal government, less is more.

“Who out there is thinking to themselves, ‘If the government could just regulate me just a little bit more, I’d be happy’?” he asks. “I don’t think hardly anybody’s thinking like that.”

Cox is the only candidate who wants the U.S. to return to gold standard, and he supports a full audit of the Federal Reserve. He says more Americans could afford health care if there were fewer federal regulations and lower taxes.

He mistrusts both major parties. Democrats helped spend the nation into trillions of dollars of debt, he says, and Republicans aren’t the fiscal hawks they say they are. Republicans may talk repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act, but Cox mistrusts a GOP solution too.

“They’re going to swoop in and replace it with what, RomneyCare?” Cox said. “Well, if you’re against the government being involved in health care, why would you trust Republicans?”

For their part, Republicans have been skeptical of Cox and clearly worry that he could shave votes from Rehberg. A Rehberg mailer last featured photos of Rehberg and Libertarian-leaning Congressman Ron Paul over a message calling for an audit of the Federal Reserve.

Cox says earlier in the race he met with Rehberg campaign officials, who asked whether he was getting support from Tester.

“I did have one meeting with Rehberg’s campaign manager where he accused me of, I guess, getting my donations from the Jon Tester campaign, which was completely false,” Cox says.

Meanwhile, Tester’s campaign is working to play Cox’s presence in the race to their advantage. A week before the election, a Tester-friendly group representing hunters and anglers ran a TV spot urging conservatives to vote for Cox instead of Rehberg.

What are the odds?

Experts suspect most Montana voters have made their choice. The number of undecided voters and diehard Libertarians appears to be so small that University of Montana political scientist Jeff Greene calls them the “cookie crumb voters.”

“If (Cox) gets 3 or 4 percent, he will be doing extraordinarily well,” Greene says. “It could decide the election actually if that happens. If he were to get 3 or 4 percent, it would be most likely in my view to come off of Rehberg’s part.”

Because Libertarians tend to identify more closely with Republicans, votes for Cox would come from potential Rehberg voters, Greene says.

“And I would predict, if the Libertarians vote true to their heart, Tester would win the race,” Greene said. “But I don’t think they will.”

He says some conservatives who agree with Cox are likely to make a practical choice for Rehberg to help Republicans gain control of the U.S. Senate.

Senate races in seven states — Montana, Wisconsin, Massachusetts, Virginia, North Dakota, Nevada and Indiana — are considered tossups this election.

About these ads

Leave a Comment

Filed under Big Sky Economy, Financial Stories, Montana Environment and Resources, Politics

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

· 10:36 PM

Same poles, different stakes

Foresters get ready for Ball months after broke loose at UM

By Taylor W. Anderson

It was a cold and rainy game day morning, and 32 people stood outside the Forestry Building at the University of Montana.

Some in this group of early risers stayed out late the night before. One drank yesterday’s cold coffee from a thermos as someone asked for a gulp. The Carhartt- and Hickory-clad bunch had a job to do, and it wasn’t to win a beauty pageant.

It was the Pole Run, and the loggers had to saw 400 trees from UM’sLubrecht Experimental Forest to build the 96th annual Foresters’ Ball, and a bout of mid-October cold weather wasn’t going to impede the tradition, scheduled for March 22 and 23.

The fame of Foresters’ Ball has made the rankings of Playboy magazine’s list of the wildest college parties. For nearly a century, foresters have worked to put on a raucous ball in celebration of the forestry culture and camaraderie.

Then the headlines hit.

Reports of sexual assault on or near campus came to light in December 2011, and UM entered a period of turmoil.

The school hired former state Supreme Court Justice Diane Barz to conduct an internal investigation on the University’s handling of sexual assault.

Barz submitted her report on Jan. 31, less than a week before last year’s ball. The report detailed, “A risk factor of alcohol has been involved in most reports.”

The high-profile investigation and results created a perfect storm that didn’t miss last year’s Foresters’ Ball.

More than 100 attendees were escorted or turned away because of drunkenness. A woman reported being grabbed on the dance floor. Students drank heavily before the event, as had become a norm among attendees, and the University reacted. Engstrom told the ball committee to change or he’d axe the event.

“If we cannot come to agreement on the plan by the end of spring semester, the ball will not happen next year,” Engstrom wrote in a letter last February.

The group came up with a plan that met Engstrom’s demands to make the ball more educational, family-friendly and promote itself as an alcohol-free event.

“You don’t make it 96 years without being willing to meet change,” said Dylan Brooks, the ball’s current publicity officer.

In early May the group submitted a plan to change the stigma surrounding the event, electing to shorten hours and beef up security. The group will promote an education-oriented, alcohol free event. Engstrom signed off on the event days later. And now the party’s on, with some major adjustments.

Cutting for tradition

The group’s mission on Saturday was fairly simple: cut, carry and pile the wood from Lubrecht forest east of Missoula that is needed to build the logging town within the Auxiliary Gyms in the Adams Center for this year’s ball.

About 97 percent of the trees harvested during Pole Run are dead. There were a few live lodge poles that construction officer Evan Neal said were too sweet to pass up, but a vast majority wear the mark of death echoed throughout the Northwest: a blue ring of fungus within the tree’s core, created and farmed by mountain pine beetles.

The beetles, which killed as much as 40 percent of UM’s forest, burrow inside lodge poles and farm a fungus for other beetles to eat. They then kill the trees by cutting off the supply to nutrients and water.

Saturday’s 32 loggers scattered through the dense groupings of trees on a hill 2,000 feet above the Potomac Valley floor. Larch trees burned a fluorescent gold through the forests so thick in areas that sight was limited to about 20 feet.

Women, who made up about a quarter of the group, wore layers of flannel or other dirty mountain garb, save for a few freshmen. Almost every man capable of growing facial hair kept it unshaven in either a thick or patchy trim.

Half of the students had felled trees before. About 12 Stihl chainsaws were unloaded from pickups that lined the logging road winding around the hill. Cold autumn winds bit ears and fingers while the smell of diesel exhaust, unleaded fuel and two-cycle engine oil swirled in the mid-mountain air.

Sawyers strapped on chaps, and everyone grabbed a helmet and earplugs. Safety first. (Had the thick chaps not been covering their legs, at least two freshmen would have learned the hard way about chainsaw safety.)

Seniors  turned professional woodsmen (and woodswomen) point ed lines for new and learning sawyers to aim falling trees. The sawyers aimed their sights, face cut through a third of the tree and cut the backside above the hold. Lodge poles swayed and cracked, and with the helping hand of a logger, fell to the ground, bouncing with a lumbering thud.

Some of the sawyers cut limbs and counted. Others hauled the 40-foot-plus trees into piles. Three hours into the operation 200 trees were counted.

Five years ago Chris Shubert held an axe and saw with a similar group.

The 38-year-old participated in the 92nd Foresters’ Ball before he quit school and deployed to Iraq.

Shubert, equipped for the Pole Run with a professional-grade 440Stihl with 40-inch saw, enrolled this year in forestry. Last year he watched from his Idaho home as the school became entangled in the sexual assault allegations.

He said that while he thinks the ball was perhaps unfairly roped in with the flood of allegations, the University wasn’t out of line in its reaction after the ball.

“If it’s fair for one it’s gotta be fair for all,” he said.

Shubert is a link in the 96-year-old chain of students and alumni who are deeply attached to the Foresters’ Ball.

“This is a long tradition with the University, and as long as the University of Montana is here, it should be part of it,” he said.

Others say the outlandish behavior at last year’s ball came at a bad time for UM.

“I think a lot of that was, (Engstrom) had a lot on his plate,” construction officer Evan Neal said.

This year’s ball will include increased security from more public safety officers. Fewer than 1,200 tickets will be sold for each night, several hundred fewer than last year. The club will need to pay $13,104 more this year than in previous years due to increased security and gym rental fees.

The ball was historically held in the Schreiber Gym before moving to the larger — and much more expensive — Adams Center last year. The costs will eat into the proceeds, which are split into scholarships given to the students who helped put on the event.

Still, the group remains optimistic.

“We’re pretty good with our money. I think we’ll be fine,” Neal said. “There’ll be money, we’ll be all right. As long as people show up.”

taylor.anderson@umontana.edu

Leave a Comment

Filed under Big Sky Economy, Missoula Public Affairs, Montana Environment and Resources, Outdoors

Tagged as , , , ,

August 31, 2012 · 12:02 AM

Due to burn

The following is a story I wrote for the Big Sky Weekly a year ago today about the abundant fuels the Big Sky area has amassed since its last major wildfire. The Millie Fire south of Bozeman has exploded to 10,000 acres as of today as it sends a mushroom cloud of smoke high above the town of Big Sky.

Big Sky enters its 80th year since last major wildfire

By Taylor Anderson

Published Aug. 30, 2011

Patrick and Jeanne Miller live on a small plot of land at the base of a subdivided hill called Summit View Estates.

It’s a Saturday, and he sits in the shade of his back porch overlooking Lone Mountain as the sun rises overhead.

Miller is the president of the Summit View Owner’s Association, made up of the 38 property owners in the area that upkeep the land.

Part of the management includes collective snow removal for all residents, general upkeep, and, as waves of trees die either naturally or at the hands of bug infestations, actively managing the forests.

The process is called forest stewardship, and is increasingly important as Big Sky enters its 80th year since the last wildfire scorched the area’s forests.

Crystal Hagerman and the Big Sky Natural Resource Council this summer released an extensive, 188- page report funded by Merrill Lynch on how residents can manage their property to keep healthier forests.

Big Sky exists in what is known as a wildland-urban interface – ongoing human development in the middle of wild areas – the report says, and it is the duty of developers to keep existing resources healthy. Big Sky’s 61,897 acres of forests are riddled with beetle- and spruce budworm-killed pine and spruce trees. The report said that four percent of all the trees in Big Sky are dead, and would act as fuel in the event of a fire.

Residents with dead or downed trees on their land are encouraged to deal with them. They can also delimb the first four feet of tree to reduce fuel during potential grass fires.

That Big Sky is due for a high-intensity blaze is “a standard assumption,” Hagerman said. “The fires do come in cycles and the Big Sky area hasn’t” had one in 80 years.

The area saw unusually high precipitation last winter due to weather associated with the La Niña system coming off the Pacific Ocean, which helped during the early fire season.

“But it did help grow grasses and vegetation as well,” Hagerman warned. “Now that those are cured we have a lot of tall grasses and flashy fuels.”

Hagerman, through the Gallatin County Extension and Resource Conservation and Development Area, works with residents like the Millers by allocating up to 50 percent of the cost to manage forestlands, which includes hiring contractors to do the work.

Big Sky’s history is one filled with extensive logging by companies like Plum Creek. Due to the high-elevation climate and low precipitation in the summer months, tree growth is slow, and 61 percent of the trees here are less than an inch in diameter.

“The fact that we have a lot of young trees gives a good chance to actively manage them now,” Hagerman said.

Stewardship like that done by the Millers keeps trees, which need room to grow, a chance at staying healthy from early on in their life cycles.

Patrick sat pointing at the skinny trees on his property and showing the difference between a healthy stand of trees versus a cluttered, unhealthy one.

“You couldn’t see the road a week ago,” he said of his thin strip of trees, perhaps 3 inches in diameter each.

People like the privacy provided by thick areas of trees that act like natural fencing, which is an issue preventing some from managing their property. But, the report says, it is important to create a buffer zone between fire fuels and houses to give firefighters a chance at saving lives and property.

“I’m not making fire assumptions,” Hagerman said, “but the fire months are August into September until we get cooler temperatures and snow.”

The Big Sky Natural Resource Council is holding its annual August meeting on Monday, Aug. 29 at the Big Sky Community Corporation office. You can find more information and read the stewardship plan and forest initiative reports at bigskynrc.org.

Leave a Comment

Filed under Big Sky Economy, Montana Environment and Resources

Tagged as , , , , , , , , ,

July 11, 2012 · 10:29 PM

The Libertarian problem? Everyone outside the party thinks you’re crazy

Originally published on politicalmontana.com, the Missoulian’s politics blog for the 2012 election year.

By Taylor Anderson

Libertarianism is a novel concept. Almost anarchistic in ways that leave more power at the hands of people, they believe Americans are innately good, and should rule themselves.

Besides, that’s what the document the country was founded on said.

Libertarians identify almost centric, but generally feel the less intervention of any kind the better. It’s not to say that God doesn’t want gays to marry, it’s who gives a damn?

Any federal legislation will end badly for America. That’s it. There’s no higher power dictating what should be legalized and what is immoral. There’s no need to federally fund emergency responders, but that’s not to say they shouldn’t exist. Why should the federal government have a say in putting out Montana’s wildfires? That should be up to the Montanans.

Their viewpoints don’t seem farfetched when picked apart with a scalpel and a moderate viewpoint. So you don’t care that Iowa’s corn crop isn’t doing as well as expected? Neither do I. I don’t care if groups of people collectively figure out how to solve that issue, just don’t get me involved.

This isn’t to say I’m a Libertarian. I’m undecided (more on this later). I would like to know, however, why more people haven’t gotten on board with the idea of a three party system when a potential mainstream party is standing at the edge trying to get in.

You can’t even Google an answer why Libertarians aren’t covered in the media (go ahead, try it). It may be that Republicans and Democrats come off smarter with answers to burning questions.

“How would you act to keep student loan interest rates down?”

Republican: “I think that’s a great question. While I agree with the fact that students need to pay a lower interest rate on their student loans, I also want to note that one out of two graduates isn’t finding work. We need to fix the economy.”

Democrat: “My opposition in the House wants to fight to keep the rates down, and I applaud that. But what my opponent didn’t say is that he’d like to take money from women’s health to pay for those loans. We should be adjusting income rates to make sure the wealthiest Americans pay their fair share and we don’t keep decimating the middle class.”

Libertarians hear those answers differently than most Americans. Simply fixing the economy means doing something, which means government intervention. Bad. Acting in any way to keep federal student loan interest rates down will further misconduct of the federal government. Besides, those loans shouldn’t exist in the first place.

Then again, hearing a Democrat claim that Republicans want to take money from women’s health care to pay for student loan rates means that they are both arguing over money that a Libertarian doesn’t think should exist anyways.

Is your head spinning yet? Good. Then you’re just like most other Americans who won’t be voting Libertarian this fall.

Perhaps they’re too candid. When politicians better damn well know how to jockey for votes from a very clearly targeted group of people, they know what to say while in front of the cameras. But something seems to say to me that Libertarians just don’t get it.

The party isn’t big enough to claim any massive victories in major elections, yet they keep publicly calling for what most of us see as radical ideas, like legalizing prostitution and drugs at the federal level.

America has long since become a two-party system. Maybe it will stay that way a while more. But if the next Congress performs as badly as the current, perhaps the three-party mindset will sink in more deeply.

We’ll see if the Libertarian Party gets a bit more articulate by then.

Leave a Comment

Filed under Big Sky Economy, Opinion

Tagged as , , , , , , , , ,

June 17, 2012 · 4:29 AM

First debate between Tester and Rehberg

By Emily Stifler – ExploreBigSky.com

BIG SKY – Corporations as people, health care, the cost of college, the reach of government, Fannie May and Freddie Mac, small business, closure of rural post offices, energy policy and independence, veterans.

These were some of the main topics addressed at the first official debate of the three men running forMontana‘s U.S. Senate seat in 2012, Sen. Jon Tester, Rep. Denny Rehberg and Dan Cox.

Held on Saturday afternoon at Buck’s T-4 in Big Sky, the debate was well attended with standing room only.

Rehberg, the Republican challenger, spoke quickly in defense of his beliefs. Democratic incumbent Sen. Jon Tester had a more metered pace. Independent challenger Dan Cox, a libertarian, brought humor to the room.

A panel of four journalists from Montana newspapers included Big Sky Weekly reporter Taylor Anderson andBozeman Daily Chronicle Managing Editor Nick Ehli. Their questions asked the candidates to related these major national issues to every day people of Montana.

Both Tester and Rehberg painted themselves as having come from lower-class ranching backgrounds. But their similarities stopped there, and they later jabbed each other about these backgrounds–Tester at Rehberg’s real estate history, and Rehberg at Tester’s policies.

Although the candidates requested no applause or boos from the crowd, members of the public shouted occasional comments, questions and even angry slurs.

Near the end of the debate, the candidates fielded questions submitted from the audience. One was particularly indicative of their stances and personalities:

“What do you specifically propose to do to get past gridlock, to reach across the aisle, and–even if it is a dirty word–compromise?”

Tester cited the importance of communicating in an honest and straightforward way, and used his recently passed JOBS bill as an example.

Rehberg brought up small business, saying they usually don’t have a revenue problem, they have a spending problem. “The compromise you’re probably talking about is raising taxes.” He said we need to remove the barriers in ability to keep money in these people’s pockets.

The debate mediator asked the question again, saying he didn’t hear much from either on the topic of compromise.

Leave a Comment

Filed under Big Sky Economy

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , ,