Why do people think it's "Jobs vs. The Environment"?

A child's view of economic development....

Being in my second childhood, I often look at things from a child's perspective, extending through college and my various youthful explorations thereafter.  And I can tell you, it's all starting to fit together.  As children, we tend to take everything for granted.  Whatever it is, it must be so.  Everything is new to us, so if it exists, it must work - at least for the grown-ups, who are responsible for everything.  

Adolescence is a time when we re-learn the nature of reality.  Suddenly, everything is about sex and money; who you know, who your family is, what school you go to, what church you belong to, what neighborhood you live in, etc.  Everything becomes problematical.  Even if you know who and where you are or want to be, how do you get there, or even maintain your present status?  And what if you don't like the exalted status of your family?  Can you trade it off for something else?  How do we do this?   What rules are we supposed to follow?  There are so many that we can't even know, let alone follow, them.

And after a lifetime of success (or failure, dispossession, broken relationships, illness, madness, or whatever), what should we think, now that we are "senior citizens" who have always been outspoken in our views and behavior?  Should we suddenly "retire" and go fishing, or play golf, bridge, gossip, baby-sit, volunteer, travel, or what?  What if we have no means (or desire) to do these things?  Then, we might simply go ahead with our work, since we were never paid for it, anyway, and now we at least get enough from Social Security to pay rent, buy food, and take advantage of health care programs. 

The latest project I'm contesting involves the placement of an industrial park in my home town of Great Falls - named, of course, for the Great Falls of the Missouri, which we have managed to almost totally obliterate and destroy by placing 5 hydro-electric dams and their silt-filled reservoirs directly behind them.  And the silt turns out to contain a lot of heavy metals, some of them quite valuable, from the Anaconda Copper smelter  (electrolytic refining center, using the cheap hydropower right next to it).  

An industrial park, within sight and smell of the two closest Falls, Giant Springs, and the world-renowned Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center, was approved this week by the City Commission.  Only a few diehard environmentalists from the Missouri River Citizens bothered to protest.    Some  Fish, Wildlife and Parks (or maybe USFS, which runs the Lewis and Clark center - Giant Springs is a State Park) testified against it, and they probably got in trouble for doing so.  In any case, their testimony was totally disregarded. 
Jane Weber, now a Cascade County Commissioner (just re-elected), was the long-time Director of the Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center.  I wonder how much of this is directed at her?  She might very well assume that it would be a conflict of interest for her to either oppose or favor this proposal.  As for Democrats vs Republicans, and other "civic leaders" nearly all favor any sort of "economic development" over environmental, cultural, or historical preservation values.  Most people I know have simply given up, refusing to subject themselves to the hatred and contempt they get from politicians and union bosses, as well as their friends, clients, employers, or others for "opposing economic development."   

The Anaconda Smelter closed in 1981 (basically as a public service by Atlantic Richfield, which bought Anaconda, promising to double investment in the Montana facilities, and then closing them down).  So, nearly all signs of that vast facility which once employed 5000 highly-paid union workers are gone.  Reindustrialization is on the way, but local people are at odds about how we should go about this, and where it should be located.   

For the past 30 years, we've been trying to rehabilitate what was essentially a Superfund Site, with thousands of acres of real estate, including the town of Black Eagle, yards, farmland, parks, a golf course, along with the smelter property, itself, contaminated with various toxins and poisons to a depth of several feet, and now only covered by a thin layer of sod and fill-dirt.  The whole thing may have to be dug up and hauled away.

Meanwhile, the lack of a "shovel-ready industrial park" has been used as an excuse for the repeated failures of several generations of local "economic development" agencies to attract any large projects to Great Falls.  But nearly every project envisioned and promoted (like the now-defunct coal-fired "Highwood Generating Station") was totally unsuited to our past, our future, and the economy as a whole.  Another example is the proposed ethanol plant, which has been "ready to happen" since the late 1970's.  In fact, converting corn or small grains to alcohol does little or nothing to reduce our carbon footprint, global warming, and actually wastes a lot of farmland which should be used to produce food, or even restored to native grasses for ecologically sustainable meat production. 

I don't believe there is anyone in Great Falls who opposes sustainable economic development which is consistent (not in conflict) with existing businesses, cultural treasures, our unique landscape of the river, the Falls, and Giant Springs.  What we question, and simply cannot understand, is why the GFDA has repeatedly chosen sites and strategies are probably the least favorable to all these other values we treasure.  Especially when there are other sites readily available, and projects which require no such compromises with our quality of life and local economy.   Instead, they mix it all together as a "package deal."  We must take it or leave it, and if we leave it, it will be the fault of "the other party" if not environmentalists, peace activists, unions, etc. 

The biggest disappointment to me is the union leadership, which is almost invariably anti-environment and even anti-historical preservation, tourism, and the like.  The unionized working class totally ruled Great Falls for nearly a century.  Small shop owners and other family businesses were a real "middle class" which thrived, prospered, and generally led the good life like few other places in the world, largely because their customers and neighbors were highly-paid union workers.  As late as the 1960's, Montana was one of the top 5 states in personal income (now we are near the bottom, and have been for many years).  Every job in Great Falls down to clerks, food-servers, and bartenders was unionized.  The City ran many essential services, with the rest being closely regulated so they were considered to be the best jobs available, with great consumer service and among the lowest costs in the nation.  The workers were well-paid, everyone felt safe and secure, and you could trust businesses to treat you fairly and like a friend, instead of an adversary or victim.  What happened?  Could the transition to "a nuclear garrison town" have anything to do with this?  Many of us think so. 

We had a pride of place, not least of all because of the Smelter, the Falls, and Giant Springs, which we claimed was "the largest freshwater springs in the world" and was mentioned in the Lewis and Clark Journals.  It turns out, we're only the 5th biggest spring in North America, Florida actually having a much larger one, which I can't figure out because Florida doesn't have any mountains, and ours comes through the Madison Aquifer from the Little Belt mountains.

In my long monitoring of civic and economic affairs (often confused with "military affairs" in Great Falls, since it was a military operation - the Corps of Discovery- which established us as a US colony and future strategic missile base), I have come  to recognize some recurrent patterns and processes (or "dynamics" - changes over time) which seem to define our local political economy.  Let me describe a few of them which come to mind....

(1) The political discourse is deplorable.  It's like there are two sets of books - one used by the Chamber of Commerce, the GF Development Authority, City and County Commissions, etc, and a different one used to explain and justify their actions to the taxpayers and voters.  And the discrepancies between the two are devastating to any sort of long-term public policy or planning, as we are being told one thing while being led or forced to do the opposite. 

(2) Law and "regulation" has come to mean nothing more nor less than a transfer of power to lawyers and the state at the expense of the rest of us.  So, of course everyone is against it.  And worst of all, it would seem is "environmental regulation", which is taken to be a calculated attack on jobs and the local economy. 

(3) The statement "We need jobs, so we can't afford to  protect the environment" is endemic in our political discourse.  In similar fashion, local military contractors and profiteers keep telling us that war and more military spending is the way to prosperity.  For them, perhaps, but at the expense of everyone else, and ultimately it will ruin the country - if only by turning us into a garrison state at war with all the rest of the world. 

(4) Since we're thinking in military terms, perhaps we should acknowledge that we are a heartbeat away from having a literal "Military Governor" in Montana - the former head of the Montana National Guard is our new Lieutenant Governor - a demotion, to be sure, since he was already a General, right?  But so was Eisenhower, Grant, Washington, and a few others.  Surely they considered their roles as President to be more important, or was it merely a "retirement job"?  In any case, there are plenty of problems to solve, and people available to solve them.  It just takes doing and the much-vaunted "leadership" which seems to be in short supply these days. 

(5) Some people calling themselves "libertarians" are opposed to any sort of economic or environmental regulation - or at least they oppose the bureaucratic top-down command and control systems driven by political expediency (which would be my position, as well).  We consider such regulatory systems as "weapons",  just as the law, itself, is a weapon which, in Montana at least, is used indiscriminately on the just and unjust, alike. 

(6) Trying to get a lawyer to take a principled and rational stand on any issue is next to impossible.  They simply don't speak that language.  It's all about winning and "settlements" which avoid any public testimony, subpoena's, or juries who might not understand (or too well understand) the racket that is going on, here.  So, instead of working together to achieve a cleaner, healthier, and more functional society and economy, we waste a huge amount of talent and treasure fighting and trying to ruin each other - "the other party" or whatever scapegoats are at hand ("illegal aliens", welfare queens, gays portrayed as "pedophiles", radical environmentalists, peace activists, labor unions, teacher's unions, liberals, socialists, etc.). 

(7) Meanwhile, the real criminals are carefully protected by the state and its institutions, with their own expansion or "growth rates" the real object of public policy - not growth in incomes or quality of life for everyone.  It's  all a zero-sum game - the rich can only get richer, they believe, by making the poor, poorer, and by lowering taxes and other expenses which - they forget - fuels the predatory state which they control.  Apparently, they've forgotten what they do, or how they got there.  (Actually, groups like ALEC are quite sophisticated about this - they support police and prison-guard unions, for example, because they are necessary for the police-prison state which ALEC was created to establish). 

And so it goes.  ALEC leaders  have again taken control of the Montana Legislature.  While Steve Bullock is still Attorney General, perhaps he could launch an investigation against ALEC which would identify who in Montana has been associated with it, and what their agendas and resulting legislation and policy decisions have accomplished?  After a decade of following this organization and its many critics, I'm convinced that nearly every harmful, destructive policy enacted over the past 30 years is attributable to it, and to its kindred Heritage Foundation and several other "think tanks".  Although most people think ALEC is "libertarian," it is not.  In fact, it takes the opposite of the libertarian position on nearly every issue.  Even the Cato Institute, which is also financed by the Koch brothers, rarely agrees with ALEC's "model legislation", and of course Cato is diverse and represents a number of different libertarian thinkers.  As far as I can tell, the Koch's only recently began to fund and cooperate with ALEC, which was originally envisioned as a defense and "law and order" group extending prison sentences, and protecting its alcohol, guns, and tobacco clients from the ruinous competition from cannabis and cocaine.  Other major causes include the "health insurance" racket, pharmaceutical cartels, agribusiness, etc., etc.  As well as opposition to organized labor, environmental protection, and any mechanisms to combat global warming or climate change, which ALEC denies is human-caused, entirely.  Unlike Cato, ALEC is rigidly doctrinaire.  They have set positions on every issue, and they rigorously condition legislators, judges, etc. to follow it. 

So, that's what we're really up against.  Whether an industrial park is built next to Giant Springs and the Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center means nothing - especially if they can "prove", as they apparently have, that no pollution will escape, and the Madison Aquifer will not be affected.  That is how they've framed the debate, and since we no  longer have a free press or any open discussion of the alternatives, that's what we're stuck with.  

The Dream of Pembina: A Montana Saga

Montana's Exceptionalism, Or,
Ultra-Montanism in Theory and Practice


From Stephen Vincent Benet's "Western Star"

"That sun-dance has been blotted from the map.
Call as you will, those dancers will not come
To tear their breasts upon the bloody strap,
Mute-visaged, to the passion of a drum,
For some strange empire, nor the painted ghosts
Speak from the smoke and summon up the hosts."

One thing I learned from Joe Howard's "Strange Empire" is that Louis Riel was an "Ultra-montanist" (literally, "beyond the mountains" or present human experience - viz., utopian).  When I looked that up in Wikipedia, I found that it was understood to be an extreme form of Papal Infallibility, and the supremacy of the Papacy over all of the Church (not to mention the planet).  Obviously, Riel was a driven man, thoroughly influenced by his seminary teachers and his own fervant faith.  So, call that a good thing.

And of course he is counted among our greatest intellectual and spiritual forefathers in Montana - teacher,  revolutionary, and prophet.  This was his "wilderness period" between his two revolutionary insurgencies against the tyranny of the British Empire.  This was where he married and had children.  Montana, we find, was his real spiritual home. 

================

Half a century ago, when I first began reflecting on Montana's place in the U.S. and the world, I noticed that only Montana resembled the whole United States in its geographical profile. 

Although we were definitely a "Northern State", many have written about Montana's strong Southern - even Secessionist - tendencies.  One of the first big gold strikes was at Confederate Gulch in what is now Meagher County.  Helena was heavily settled by ex-Confederate soldiers and sympathizers, as was the Bitterroot and several other parts of Montana. 

Great Falls became virtually a segregated town after about 1920, and right up to the 1960's, we're told.  There has always been a substantial Black population here, and both Belt and Cascade count Black women among their founders.  Fort Shaw was home to the "Buffalo Soldiers", and named for the Union Colonel Shaw, played by Matthew Broderick in the film, "Glory."  Yet, a perusal of my GFHS Roundups from the early 1960's show a total of two black students, and about the same number of Native Americans, out of the dozens or hundreds who lived here.  Many more went to Central Catholic High School (now the public alternative - VoTech high school and adult education center) with less than 1/4  the student population of Great Falls High.   Many Catholics also attended the public schools as circumstances or interests changed.  (There was no CM Russell High School, yet). 

When I arrived at a large urban, cosmopolitan university, I found that my own prejudices were quite extreme, although I didn't have any racist ideology to go with them, and soon found myself identifying with the "underclass" of whatever race or background.  Children don't really "get" racism (or any other bigotry or xenophobia), unless it's beaten into their heads by adult parents, teachers, or other role models.  Custer was the "bad guy" in our family, and we always had an interest in leftist or "radical" thinking of whatever kind.  But it was always open and critical, never dogmatic or "conspiratorial."

One of the first serious pieces I wrote for a daily newspaper (the Missoulian) was about the possibility of Montana withdrawing from the United States, and either joining Canada, or forming a new nation out of adjoining Northern Rockies states and Provinces.  Little did I know in those days that this was precisely Louis Riel's vision for Pembina - a Metis, Catholic Republic which would maintain the culture and sovereignty of the various French-Canadian tribes and their less-"developed" and "integrated" counterparts to the West.  That piece was never published, but the Missoulian editors assured me they discussed it, and found it very interesting. 

It would be another 30 years before I finally read Joseph Kinsey Howard's "Strange Empire," which is a real history of the Metis and the Dream of Pembina, and its tragic final outcome with Louis Riel being hanged for treason.  But that dream is very much alive, and there are hundreds of local people, not all of them visibly Metis or Native American, who still believe in and serve this "Empire."  I've often wondered at the title, and suspected that it was added posthumously to Howard's work.  Riel's vision was neither Strange nor an Empire, but merely one of hundreds of Jesuit-inspired Republics formed to protect the land and cultures of indigenous peoples.  But further research (like reading the cover page) identified the source as Stephen Vincent Benet's "Western Star"

"That sun-dance has been blotted from the map.
Call as you will, those dancers will not come
To tear their breasts upon the bloody strap,
Mute-visaged, to the passion of a drum,
For some strange empire, nor the painted ghosts
Speak from the smoke and summon up the hosts."

After their initial defeat, Riel and many of his followers fled to Montana, where there was a large Metis community in Big Springs (Lewistown) and  Fort Benton.  Riel settled in as a teacher at St. Peter's Mission near Cascade, where he taught for a couple of years.  It was Gabriel Dumont who organized the continued resistance, and came to St. Peter's to ask Riel to rejoin them.  The history of these campaigns and the tremendous suffering inflicted on the "rebellious" French and Cree-speaking Metis is the  substance of "Strange Empire."  Following the second defeat and Riel's surrender and martyrdom, Dumont and his followers took refuge in the Teton Canyon, where their descendents still live in the Choteau area (Howard had a cabin and wrote "Strange Empire" there) as well as Lewistown ("Big Springs"), Rocky Boy's Reservation, and throughout Eastern Montana.

Joseph Kinsey Howard was employed by the Great Falls Tribune (then entirely local and independent, owned by the Warden family) in the 1930's and '40's, and probably the greatest journalist-historian-activist Montana ever produced.  I always marvel at how people like him, without even a high school diploma, and working more than full-time as Managing Editor of the Leader, the afternoon paper published by the Tribune, could still write such great books and contribute to many of the leading intellectual magazines on the East Coast, as well as organizing conferences and educational programs throughout the state.  Would that I had done the same, rather than chasing the false promise of a degree from a "leading university" like UCLA.

Like the younger Wallace Stegner, Howard was born in Canada, and moved to Great Falls as a boy.  In fact, their careers are strikingly similar, except that Stegner ended up running the Creative Writing program at Stanford, thus gaining a much wider following among writers and academic historians and other purveyors of the culture of the West. 

***********

Montana is a mythic land.  Like California, we were a creation of Romantic visionaries long before we actually became an English-speaking "state."  Indeed, one might well ask if Montana, like Oz, has ever "been civilized."  Huck Finn, as Leslie Fiedler liked to point out, was supposed to have fled to Montana after the events in Twain's book were over, and he "grew up."  He might have taken the steamboat to Fort Benton, like my great-grandfather Jim Stephens, and worked for I.G. Baker & Company, which owned the ranches on Highwood Creek which are now Katzenberger's and Harris's.  In between, the Katzenberger as well as the Halmes ranch (later John Hoyt's "Jolly Roger") were owned by an Anaconda Smelter superintendant named O'Grady. 

The original Howell Harris of the 1880's raised cattle both at Highwood and in Canada, to feed the Mounties at the newly-built Fort MacLeod, and the "Whoop-up Trail" (notorious for its illegal "trade whiskey") was also used to ship supplies to Calgary and Fort MacLeod before the railroads reached Western Canada in the same year they came to Helena - 1883.  That marked the end of the steam boat traffic, since rail was cheaper, faster, and a whole lot safer for passengers as well as freight.  

Links
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Kinsey_Howard

http://books.google.com/books/about/Strange_Empire.html?id=6pae2d_28GYC

ALEC is the cause of our "national malaise"

How ALEC subverts democracy and representative government
 
The following essay was first published on 3/3/2011 3:08 PM MST, after the last Legislative Session was over.   Maybe it will be of some use to our present Legislature.  Please forward and share widely - especially with those in Helena. 


ALEC and the Rise of the Corporate Police State

by Paul Stephens

For the past 40 years, the "law and order", "tough on crime" Drug Warriors and their corporate sponsors have hi-jacked our government.  The "War on Terror" has replaced the Cold War as an excuse to support a vast military-industrial complex which is not only killing and impoverishing millions of Americans, and hundreds of millions elsewhere, but is killing the earth, itself. 

People often wonder:  How could this have happened?  Who is behind it all?  And what do these people believe - or believe in, if anything?  Is it all just corporate group-think?  Are they being bribed or coerced to support this mass destruction of our public institutions, the environment, and our very minds and souls?  Do they understand the consequences of what they are advocating and proposing?

More to the point (since it is lawyers and legislators who are actually carrying out this agenda), do they understand that they are discrediting the Rule of Law (independent judiciary) as well as democracy and representative government, itself?   It seems unlikely.  They think they are promoting business and economic development through "Jeffersonian Federalism."  And most of them have been spoon-fed a lot of plausible lies by an organization called ALEC - the American Legislative Exchange Council.  


If you don't know what ALEC is, you should spend some time finding out. Here's a good place to start.  "Creating a Right-Wing Nation, State by State" by Joshua Holland

http://www.alternet.org/story/28259/creating_a_right-wing_nation,_state_by_state

Unlike, say, the Heritage Foundation or the Cato Institute, which have similar origins and corporate sponsorships, ALEC doesn't care about ideas or whether or not its policies and programs are valid, moral, realistic, or even legal.  They write their own laws.  That is the main function of ALEC - to rewrite state and federal law on behalf of the prison and police-state lobbies, the "resource industries", the drug cartels, the "insurance" rackets, and most of all, the military-industrial complex of Disaster Capitalism. 

How do they do this?  They organize and "train" state legislators to submit and defend "model legislation" prepared by ALEC.  These are designed to benefit corporate interests and other entrenched power-blocs - especially military contractors, telecommunications (thanks to Conrad Burns, whose Senate committee gave away $80 billion worth of the people's airwaves in the Telecommunications Act of 1996), insurance companies, large banks and brokerage houses (which are now the same thing since repeal of Glass-Stegal - a major ALEC victory), the "pharmaceutical industry", and the destroyers of the global ecosystem.  Even such unlikely "partners" as Wal-Mart and Monsanto are now major ALEC sponsors. 

At the same time, ALEC and its member-legislators are working tirelessly to discredit organized labor, environmentalists, peace and justice policies, and almost all forms of social welfare services, Social Security, Medicare, etc.  Of course, they can't come out and openly advocate this.  They do it by claiming these programs are insolvent, wasteful, corrupt, etc.  Therefore, they ought to be "privatized" so that ALEC's corporate sponsors can take a rake-off from the tax-payer's dollars. 

Did you know that JP Morgan "manages" some 36 states' Food Stamp programs?  I believe Montana is one of them.  A year or so ago, there was a story, soon buried, that Northrop Corporation (!) was suing the state because they had submitted a lower bid, but the contract was given to Morgan (or whoever it was), instead.  [Apparently, they won the suit.  Grumman-Northrop, an aerospace company, is the present holder of this contract.] The bid?  More than $30 million out of $120 million actually spent on this program.   (These are figures from 3 years or more ago - now probably much higher). 

I get food stamps (SNAP card), and it was a regular MT state employee who interviewed me and determined my eligibility.  So, what exactly does Grumman-Northrop do for its $30 million rakeoff?  Nothing but the software and perhaps contracting out the debit cards which have replaced the old paper food stamps, which cost virtually nothing to print and distribute. 

Someone pointed out that the more the states spends on SNAP, the more JP Morgan and its competitors make!  They have the incentive, now, to keep expanding the program, and apparently this is accepted as a simple "cost of doing business" with the state officials.  The more that these corporate "contractors" get out of the welfare budgets, the less is left for those who need and receive the benefits.  What a good deal for us!

Apparently, nearly all Republicans (and maybe 1/3 of the Democrats) are completely cool with this kind of "privatization" program.  In fact, the Democrats support it even more, as they have done with contracting out Medicaid and other welfare services. After all, isn't the government a kind of mafia which steals from the poor to make the rich ever richer?  The evidence is clear that it is.  And what can I, as a poor citizen legislator trying to "create jobs," do about it?  We must respect our betters, and do whatever they tell us to do, right? 

Although I haven't checked it out, I'd willing to bet that the 36 states utilizing similar "outside contractors" under similar terms have all been participating in ALEC's "model legislation" program.  Gov. Walker of Wisconsin is obviously doing something similar, too.  Notice that he didn't want to get rid of the Police and Fireman's unions (which, along with Prison Guards unions - the MEA/MFT in Montana - support ALEC), but all the other public employee's unions are to be eliminated.  That would be difficult in Montana, since public employees unions are very powerful, here.  (I have another article in the pipeline which explains why these "Marxist" unions support massive environmental assaults and degradation). 

ALEC now claims fully one-third of all state legislators as dues-paying members.  ALEC used to be free - indeed, they paid legislators with all sorts of freebies, trips, seminars, and junkets just to sign up.  But that looked suspicious.  Apparently, ALEC re-organized sometime after 2002, to conform with other "legitimate" lobbying and "political action" groups. 

Despite its claims of "bi-partisanship" and "Jeffersonian Federalism," ALEC is a creation of the Neocons.  "De-regulation," "free trade," "supply-side economics," "globalization"  (Bush Sr.'s "New World Order"), ever-more military spending, "the War on Terror," "counter-insurgency", "the War on Drugs", and above all, ever-greater concentrations of economic and political power in fewer and fewer hands. 

ALEC opposes any and all "good government" initiatives.  It does not want government programs to succeed.  It is constantly on a mission to prove the Reagan Dictum that "government is the problem, not the solution."  As our public institutions and the Rule of Law collapse under this onslaught, there is a constantly-increasing demand for "security forces", corporate health care and rehab services, prisons and secure hospitals and treatment facilities, prescription drugs, and of course ever-more production of fossil fuels and nuclear power.  We are experiencing the classic run-up to a permanent war-disaster economy, culminating in a military dictatorship.