Drawing by Nathaniel St. Clair

How strange that due to the disastrous policies of “their president,” Montana’s all-Republican Congressional delegation and governor are now too scared to even face Montanans in town halls.  And yet Bernie Sanders flies into Missoula on his national “Fighting Oligarchy” tour and draws “thunderous applause and standing ovations” from an over-capacity crowd of 9,000 Montanans on an afternoon in the middle of the week.

Why?  Because people know Bernie is telling the truth about what’s going on in this nation, not fabricating excuses and downplaying the very real damages taking place while they hide under their MAGA hats.

He’s also correctly calling out the fact that both Republicans and Democrats are responsible for the on-going tragedy that sees American democracy, once the envy of the world, turning into an oligarchy of billionaires whose greed knows no bounds or even a scintilla of concern for “the little people.”

Nor was Bernie speaking from a bullet-proof cage surrounded by nasty looking thugs with sunglasses and earbuds to ensure no one gets close to him.  Quite the opposite — top Republicans nowadays don’t dare do what Bernie did — walk out into the overflow crowd of thousands to shake hands and talk directly to the people who couldn’t get in.

The few Republican politicians who dare venture into the realm of “we the people” are being met by angry crowdswhose interests and hope for a better future they have so grievously betrayed.  Just ask 91-year old GOP Senator Chuck Grassley, who was bluntly told “his” people in supposedly “red state” Iowa are now really “pissed” because he won’t stand up to “dictator” Trump.   

In an astounding contrast, there’s no denying that Bernie’s huge crowds are showering this 83-year old dynamo with love and hope, many with tears in their eyes because his words go straight to the challenges they are experiencing and they want to believe that somehow we can overcome the insulated and isolated billionaires and return our government to the people, not the 1 percenters who want ever more, no matter the cost to the rest of us.

That’s part of the reason Bernie Sanders is the most popular Senator in the nation. In his own words from his Missoula speech: “We can either have extreme wealth inequality, with the toxic division and corruption that it requires to survive, or we can have a fair economy for working people along with the democracy and freedoms that uphold it. But we cannot have both.”

Speaking truth to power, Bernie laid it out: ““We don’t accept this blue state–red state nonsense. We are the United States of America, not red states, not blue states.  I believe honestly that I speak for conservatives, moderates and progressives, for the overwhelming majority of the American people, who understand that there is something fundamentally wrong in our campaign finance system where billionaires can buy elections.”

Apparently that rankled Montana’s millionaire governor, Greg Gianforte, who posted: “Bernie Sanders and AOC are in Montana pushing their far–left agenda — but Montanans rejected them and their puppet Joe Biden after four years of failed policies. The people have spoken. They aren’t feeling the Bern.”

I got news for the gov — who has never drawn anything close to Bernie’s crowds or approval ratings. Bernie won the Montana Democratic primary election in 2016 because he, not Hillary Clinton, spoke to Montanans’ concerns. They “felt the Bern” then and obviously are “feeling the Bern” again.  Why?  Because they’re feeling burned — by Gianforte, our do-nothing congressional delegation, and by the eternally lying fool in the Oval Office.

The post How Sanders Won Montana Again appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by George Ochenski.

Bison walking through deep snow near Tower Jct. Photo: Jim Peaco, National Park Service.

Springtime in the Rockies is considered by many as the most beautiful time of the year in Montana as “greens up” and wildflowers blanket the valleys against the backdrop of majestic snow-capped peaks.  Yet, as the snow geese fill the skies, the grim ritual of reducing the number of Yellowstone’s bison as they seek lower elevations to calve and graze once again captures national attention.

Longtime Montanans are all too familiar with the scene more than 40 years ago when state hunters and federal agents slaughtered thousands of bison as they left the Yellowstone National Park. The gory photos were published internationally as the last of the bison that once roamed the Great Plains were gunned down for simply walking across the invisible park boundary.

Back then, the reasoning was a simple but scientifically-flawed fear that bison would transmit brucellosis to cattle, which can cause them to abort and threatened Montana’s “brucellosis free” status.  That’s supremely ironic since it was cattle that transmitted the disease to the bison in the first place — and there has never been a documented case of cattle being infected by bison in the wild.

In an attempt to find alternatives, state, federal, conservation and tribal interests came up with the Interagency Bison Management Plan to control the park’s bison population. The plan combined hunting as well as sending bison to be butchered and the meat distributed to tribes.

Dead bison, however, don’t pass on their genes.  So it also contained a provision to hold bison in a quarantine facility to ensure they were brucellosis free, and then send them to tribal nations who highly value the genetic integrity of the park’s wild bison.

So far this year, about 700 bison have been “removed” through hunt, slaughter, and quarantine under the recently updated management plan and the park plans to “remove” about that many more to keep the herd between 3,000 and 6,000 animals.

The controversies surrounding the actions have intensified rather than cooled.  Some seek “roam free” status outside the park. Others support or criticize tribal hunting and question the treaty rights. And some claim the quarantine and transfer to tribes is the privatization of public wildlife that threatens genetic integrity through “domestication” of wild bison.

All those claims are far too complex for one column, but they’re not hard to find in great detail online.  Suffice it to say there are strengths and weaknesses to all those positions.

It’s pretty hard to argue that being in close contact with tourists, cars and snowmobiles fits the definition of “wild” — especially when they “mow” residential yards in West Yellowstone.  Equally hard to believe being released on tribal lands is any more “domestication” than being in close contact with the park’s millions of tourists.

Likewise, “hunting” is a misnomer for these human-tolerant bison.  And the idea that herds of bison can simply “roam free” in the increasingly populated lands around the park ignores the inescapable conflicts and consequences such “freedom” would entail for humans and bison.

But if truly wild bison are the goal, the park should be sending excess bison to their ancestral lands in the 1.1 million acre CM Russell and UL Bend National Wildlife Refuges.  By doing so they preserve the genetic integrity, provide a true hunt, and the bison are much more likely to survive than “roaming free” near the park.

Why this hasn’t happened is a dang good question.  Moving federal wildlife to a federal wildlife refuge so they can truly “roam free” seems like such an obvious solution for the park, the tribes, the state — and most importantly, for the bison.

The post As the Bison Debate Rages On, Leaders Miss an Obvious Solution appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by George Ochenski.

Windsor, Canada from the Underground Railwood Memorial, Detroit, Michigan. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.

Perhaps if you grow up in penthouse on top of a gilded tower in the middle of the predatory capitalist shark tank known as “New York City,” your world view is eternally corrupted by your pitiful life experience. Perhaps you think every human and nation on the planet are wholly focused on trying to rip you off every day on every thing.

But when you bring that sorry and twisted perspective to the White House you make real mistakes in discerning who is or isn’t your enemy, who is or isn’t trying to wheedle every nickel they can get out of you, and who is or isn’t a threat to our nation.

So it seems as Donald Trump tries to convince the American people that somehow our oldest, most loyal, and kindest neighbors and allies — the Canadians — are an enemy bent on destroying the United States through imaginary economic attacks.

Such are the mistakes made when one sees the world through the blurry and myopic lens of greed, driven by endless avarice to always want to take what others have for yourself.

But then there’s the rest of us.  You know, the people who have actually lived in border states, traveled the breadth and length across the vastness of Canada’s incredible landscape from ocean to ocean.  And most importantly, interacted with and received the kind and courteous reception of which Canadians are justly proud and internationally famous.

As those of us who have spent time in the Great North know, Canada is indeed a nation of immigrants, but who are welcomed rather than vilified and demonized, and rounded up in detention camps for deportation — legally or not.

Canada has also treated its Indigenous citizens, whom they name the First People, far more honorably and fairly than the U.S., going so far as to give Nunavut, the nation’s largest and northernmost province, to the Inuit people to self-govern.

And no, Canada has no ambitions to take over Greenland, Panama or threaten the rest of the world by interjecting itself as a destructive influence in the lives and governance of other people and nations.  Nor does Canada threaten the planet with vastly more than enough nuclear weapons to completely end life on earth — that would be the U.S.

The Canadian people do not in any way, shape or form deserve the treatment they are receiving from Donald Trump.  Where, in any form of international diplomacy, is a threat to simply subsume another sovereign nation accepted — particularly when both nations are long-standing democracies and allies?  Nowhere but in the twisted mind of Trump who thinks insulting Canada’s Prime Minister as “governor” is acceptable.

None of this makes any sense for the rest of us and runs completely contrary to our personal experiences with Canadians.  As a friend who recently returned from a week skiing in British Columbia related, there is now a proliferation of bumper stickers that simply say “Pro American, Anti-Trump.”  Indeed, that phrase is finding wider use across the globe as the rest of the world wonders what happened to the United States and how we went from considering long-standing friends as enemies?

And so I say to my lifelong Canadian friends: “I am flying the Canadian flag to say I’m sorry and embarrassed by the baseless tariff war, the insults, and the aggressive threats to take over your nation — and urge others to do so.”  Remember, more than 75 million Americans voted against Donald Trump, who failed to even crack 50% of the total votes cast.  We are still here, and we will continue to be pro-American, pro-Canadian — and anti-Trump.

The post Oh, Canada, You’re Not the Enemy…That’s Coming From Within appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by George Ochenski.

Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

Knock, knock!  “Who’s there?” says Donald Trump.

“Karma.”

“Karma who?”

“Karmala Harris.”

They say “what goes around comes around” and that surely happened at the presidential debate when Donald Trump got a huge helping of “comes around” served up by Vice President Kamala Harris who, surprise, surprise, isn’t Joe Biden.

It couldn’t happen to a more deserving person than the former president who mercilessly pounded President Joe Biden for his age and failing mental acuity.  Trump’s endless insults of Biden ran the gamut of “couldn’t put two sentences together” to “has to be helped off  the stage” with never a moment’s thought that he, too, was suffering from the very same common signs of old age.

But safe to say after pounding his chest about Biden’s disastrous performance at their July debate, he’s now attempting to spin his own similarly disastrous performance against the much younger, far more articulate, better informed, and imminently presentable Kamala Harris at the podium.

No need to go back through it all, but despite his instant and undeniably false claim of his own greatness and victory in the debate, it’s time to add “delusional” to what’s left of Trump’s crumbling mind.  And therein lies the rub.

How are you going to promise to “Make America Great Again” with a leader who can’t tell the difference between truth and right-wing racist tropes about immigrants eating cats and dogs in Ohio because he “saw it on television”?

Or how about his pre-debate insults that Harris was “low intellect” — only to have his butt handed to him by a calm, articulate, and highly intelligent former prosecutor, U.S. senator, and Vice-President over and over again?

One might be tempted to say this is not the kind of judgment 332 million Americans would want to see in the Oval Office again — especially having given him “the hook” offstage only four years ago and handing him the reality and insult of a one-term presidency.

The MAGAs can make memes with his head on the body of comic book super heroes, or Rambo, or any of the inane concoctions they have come up with.  But the fact is if they really put their “Superman” in tights and a cape it would elicit nothing but laughter — and perhaps a tad of pity.  Not only can’t he “fly faster than a speeding bullet,” he has to take a golf cart to get around because he can’t or won’t walk the course.

Likewise, his former insult that foreign leaders were laughing at Biden came back to bite him when Germany’s leader actually did laugh at him, saying “we also don’t eat dogs and cats.” 

But the Republicans are now so hobbled by their embrace of MAGA-ism they can’t even tell or handle the blatant reality, which was witnessed by 67 million Americans.  As the Washington Post noted:“Republicans do not feel free to be that critical of Trump out of the fear that, even if he loses, he will continue to use his influence over base voters to extract revenge in primaries against the wayward lawmakers.”

My, what brave and visionary leaders we should trust with our future.

But not everyone on the GOP side is afraid of being bitten by their own mad dog candidate.  As veteran Republican pollsters Frank Luntz, concluded: “I think that he loses because of this debate performance.”

Karma happens.  And on his way out the door, yet another insult came back when Taylor Swift, with her half billion followers, clawed him to shreds by endorsing Harris-Walz signing her post: “Childless Cat Lady.”

The post What Goes Around, Comes Back Around appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by George Ochenski.

Despite tons of out-of-state money flowing into his campaign Sheehy apparently thinks the increasingly befuddled Donald Trump will come to his rescue in Bozeman next week.

What’s puzzling, of course, is why any of this is necessary. Just look at the facts. Every statewide elected office in Montana is held by Republicans except Tester’s Senate seat.  One might think, given the obvious, that Mr. Sheehy could probably settle for doing his own campaigning and presenting himself to Montana’s voters without the brash accompaniment of Trump’s tidal waves of lies, insults and threats.

But apparently this “American hero” as Trump calls him, isn’t confident that he can pull this one off on his own and needs another out-of-stater to tell Montanans how to vote.

Or maybe it’s to convince us that Sheehy, who has never run for elected office and remains in far too many ways, an unknown quantity, should replace Montana’s senior Senator because his total lack of experience at public policy or governing will serve the state so much better than Tester.

Whether you like Tester or not, one has to acknowledge that he was a State senator for eight years, during which time he rose to be elected President of the Montana Senate by his colleagues. After winning in 2006, Tester has now been negotiating the sharp teeth of the U.S. Senate for 18 years.  If there’s one thing Tester lacks, it’s certainly not extensive experience in making law, appropriating funds, implementing programs, and overseeing the vast spectrum of the federal government.

But here’s the rub — Sheehy’s hoped-for reinforcement has been having a rather rough go of it lately.  Trump’s pick of J.D. Vance as his vice president candidate has not exactly thrilled the GOP’s top dogs.  In fact, just the opposite as Vance keeps stumbling over his own words and positions, including his incredible statement that the country is being run by “childless cat ladies.”

They say when you find yourself in a hole, quit digging.  But Vance has in fact, dug the hole much deeper by doubling down on his belief that unless you have kids, you’re a liability to society because you won’t care as much about the future.  Apparently that would include Dolly Parton, who made a conscious decision not to have children but is certainly one of the most accomplished, caring, generous, and much-loved women in the world.

Yet, while Vance brings unneeded negative coverage to the campaign, Old Donald is having a very rough ride of his own. Just this week he had what can only be described as a disastrous interview with the National Association of Black Journalists in which his racism and sexism were on full display.

There may be places an increasingly confused Donald Trump feels he can get away with claiming Vice President Kamala Harris “happened to turn Black” several years ago — but not at a convention of Black journalists. Since Harris’ mother is Indian and her father is Jamaican, she is rightfully both Indian and Black — and assailing her race is just another low in the very low life of the ex-president.

One thing Sheehy should hope is that Trump actually remembers what seat he’s running for.  Just this week in another bid to prop up a candidate in Pennsylvania, Trump’s old and tired brain mis-fired again, and he twice claimed his support for “the future governor” of Pennsylvania.  But the candidate, David McCormick, is running for the Senate. It would be funny were it not so pitiful — and just another in the growing evidence of Trump’s declining faculties.

The post Shaky Sheehy Calls for Dubious Reinforcements appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by George Ochenski.

Photo by Ben Ostrower

Time to tip one to a rare victory in the never-ending battle to achieve an actual clean up, not a cover up, of Butte’s toxic mining wastes since it was listed as a Superfund site more than 40 years ago.  

Thanks to the ferocious efforts of a very determined band of citizens who want their inalienable right to a “clean and healthy environment” guaranteed by the Montana Constitution, the “good guys” defeated a “waste in place” plan to use soil contaminated with toxics as infill. 

For far too long it’s been the citizens versus ARCO-BP, one of the wealthiest corporations on the planet, and the Environmental Protection Agency, which has all too often has sided with the polluter, not the people.  

To make matters worse, the citizens have had to fight closed meetings where backroom deals were signed between the EPA and ARCO-BP, the state, and local government officials who willingly ignored Montana’s constitutional mandate that citizens have access to all public meetings unless individual privacy takes precedent over the public’s “right to know.”  And rest assured, when it comes to toxic wastes, there are very few instances concerning individual privacy on Superfund sites.

In this particular case, ARCO-BP, with the EPA’s blessing, had determined it could use soil contaminated with cadmium, lead and arsenic as infill material along the Silver Bow Creek corridor.  The Butte watchdogs, led by Evan Barrett, former legislator Fritz Daily, and many others, said “no way” to using what they called “dirty dirt” and fought to remove the toxics from the creek corridor and backfill it with clean material. 

As Barrett put it, “It looks like the ‘dirty dirt train’ has been derailed,” adding: “It’s a validation for public involvement.  But it’s been a real battle. They were playing hardball.”

Indeed, the EPA and ARCO-BP have been playing “hardball” for the same reason industry polluters always do — it costs less to leave the waste in place rather than moving it to a repository actually designed to hold such toxics and monitored to ensure they don’t leak. 

In this case, ARCO-BP tried to justify their plan by claiming leaving the contaminated materials in place would produce less truck traffic from both hauling the waste away and bringing in clean soil for infill.  Given Butte has been stuck with Superfund remediation impacts for more than four decades, the concern about the number of trucks was a laughable excuse, at best.

While this is one small victory for the people of Butte, it gives hope to other Montana communities now facing similar Superfund issues of “waste in place” instead of an actual clean up.  Most prominent is the EPA’s proposal to leave highly toxic wastes from the defunct Columbia Falls aluminum smelter in place rather than excavating and removing them to a facility permitted to receive such high-level toxics.

Mind you, there are a couple hundred acres of buried wastes at the Columbia Falls site and, wouldn’t you just know it, sitting in the flood plain of the Flathead River.  Considering the 1.2 million cubic yards of those wastes contain fluoride, cyanide and toxic metals, there’s every reason the citizens and local government officials of Columbia Falls aren’t going for it.  Peter Metcalf, a Columbia Falls resident and board member of the Coalition for a Clean CFAC echoed the battle cry of Butte’s citizens, accurately noting: “We have one chance to get this right for the community.”  And when it comes to Superfund sites, whatever they get right or wrong the first time around is what the populace gets to live with far into the future.  

So here’s to Butte’s citizens for fighting — and winning — and blazing a trail for Columbia Falls citizens in their battle for a clean up, not a cover up.   

As Barrett put it: “We want it all clean.  You need to do the right thing and we are not going to give up until it’s done.”  

That’s exactly what our constitution guarantees — and Montanans have no reason to settle for anything less.

The post Down With Dirty Dirt and ‘Waste in Place’ in Butte appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by George Ochenski.

Photo by Joseph Kellerer

A great recent article by Chris D’Angelo reports on the connection between Tim Sheehy, the Republican challenging Jon Tester for his senate seat, and PERC, the Bozeman-based Property and Environment Research Center that promotes what it calls “free market environmentalism.”

While Montanans might wonder about Sheehy’s background and policy positions given the shifting sands in his explanations, the fact that he was on the board of PERC is not in question — despite his failure to disclose that fact as required by Senate rules which his campaign says is an “omission” that’s being “amended.”

For those who have long been in the conservation, environmental, and public lands policy arena, PERC is a very well-known entity. As noted on its IRS 990 non-profit reporting form, the center is “dedicated to advancing conservation through markets, incentives, property rights and partnerships” which “applies economic thinking to environmental problems.”

But to put it somewhat more simply, PERC believes that private land ownership results in better conservation of those lands under the theory — and it is a disputable theory — that if you own the land and resources, you take better care of it due to its investment value.  This has long been their across the board approach to land, water, endangered species and resource extraction.

If one wanted to dispute that theory, it certainly wouldn’t be difficult to do, particularly in Montana where checking the list of Superfund sites left behind by private industries and owners bears indisputable evidence of the myth that private ownership means better conservation of those resources.

In fact, the theory falls on its face since, when “using economic thinking” the all-too-often result is to exploit the resources to maximize profit as quickly as possible.  And again, this example is applicable across a wide spectrum of resources.  In Montana, that can mean anything from degrading rangeland by putting more livestock on it than it can sustain to, as in Plum Creek’s sad history, leaving behind stumpfields filled with noxious weeds on their vast private — once public — land holdings.

None of this is particularly a mystery, yet PERC has sucked down enormous amounts of funding from anti-conservation sources for more than four decades as it tries mightily to put lipstick on the pig of the all-too-obvious results of runaway private lands resource extraction.

Running one of the most high-stakes senate campaigns in the nation, however, produces a lot of tap-dancing around the truth in an effort to convince voters that you’re for whatever position will garner the most votes come Election Day.

In that regard, both Sheehy and PERC are scuttling sideways in their positions.  Given the overwhelming support for “keeping public lands in public hands” in Montana, PERC now claims it “firmly believes that public lands should stay in public hands. We do not advocate for nor support privatization or divestiture.”

Funny that, given its previous and very long-held position that private ownership of lands and waters is the key to conservation.  Likewise, Sheehy’s position, “that “public lands must stay in public hands” is completely the opposite from the one he held only a year ago, and parrots PERC not only in its verbiage, but in its realization of which way public sentiment and the electoral winds are blowing.

Since what’s at stake is nothing less than the future of public lands in the Big Sky State, it behooves us to demand specific policy positions in writing from all candidates for public office — including the race for Montana’s Senate seat.

The post The Future of Public Lands Conservation in Montana appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by George Ochenski.

Photo by jack murrey

Something’s very rotten in Montana’s Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks.

A good guess would point to the Gianforte administration’s attitude toward informing the public about what’s wrong – or likely to go wrong – with the environment.  But “don’t ask, don’t tell” is a dead-end strategy for the state’s future — and a damning trademark of a governor who sees Montana as a “product” to be sold as quickly as possible. 

The latest case involves Dr. Eileen Ryce, the Administrator of the Fisheries Division who was mysteriously placed on “administrative leave” as of May 17.  As reported by the Missoula Current’s Laura Lundquist: “Sources inside FWP said Ryce was publicly escorted out of FWP headquarters in Helena on Friday. Sources asked that they not be identified out of fear of retaliation.”  And when reporters asked for the reason, Gianforte’s appointee FWP director Dustin Temple, hid behind the administration’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” tact and has “refused requests for comment.”

Looking at Ryce’s performance running the Fisheries Division, some things stand out that might have something to do with the director’s action. Put bluntly, Ryce has been telling the truth about some fisheries issues that do not paint the Gianforte administration in a good light — especially in an election year.

Just recently Ryce released the agency’s analysis of the levels of toxic substances in the fish in the Clark Fork, Bitterroot and Blackfoot Rivers. The news was not good, to put it mildly. In a nutshell, the fish in the 148-mile stretch of the Clark Fork are so contaminated with the known and potent carcinogens PCB, dioxin and furans, that Ryce’s division has recommended not eating any of the fish since there is no “safe consumption level” for those toxins. 

Montanans owe Ryce a debt of gratitude for telling us the truth — and protecting not only our health, but especially that of our children.  Nonetheless, is seems apparent the Gianforte administration does not want the truth revealed when the state spends millions of dollars every year touting Montana as the trout mecca of the nation.  Nor is it the kind of news that speaks well of our regulatory agencies and the failure to heed the Montana Constitution’s “inalienable right to a clean and healthy environment.”  Just the opposite, in fact. 

Ryce’s truth-telling was highlighted earlier this year, too, when she appeared before a legislative interim committee and raised a red flag about the number of private ponds being permitted by the agency.  As Ryce detailed, the state has 10,000 private ponds already and is currently permitting at least 200 a year…basically one every working day for the agency. 

The concern is that those ponds are usually stocked with fish bought from both in-state and out-of-state private hatcheries. Shipping in fish from private hatcheries presents a significant chance for introducing diseases or non-native invasive species into state waters from the ponds, many of which are in flood plains close to major rivers. 

Montanans owe Ryce a debt of gratitude for that truth-telling, too.  Once invasive species or diseases are released in Montana waters it is very, very expensive and difficult, if not impossible, to get rid of them. 

Sure enough, just this week the department sent out an alert that it had discovered the first Mystery Snails in Montana near Finley Point on Flathead Lake.  Further proving Ryce’s concern for what gets dumped in private ponds, an angler reported catching a Dojo Loach, or “pond loach” native to East Asia, “in a small pond” near Bozeman.

Those who have been keeping track of the Gianforte administration’s approach to our environment, fish, and wildlife are well aware of the efforts to cut the public out of government decision-making with ever-shorter or totally non-existent opportunity for public review and comment.

All Montanans should be concerned when an honest and competent state employee like Ryce gets muzzled and put on administrative leave for telling the public the truth and raising red flags about potential disasters from private ponds and imported fish and diseases.  

Election year or not, nothing stinks worse than rotten fish — and right now, the stink is coming from the governor’s office and his Fish, Wildlife and Parks director.

The post Something’s Rotten in Montana’s Dept. of Fish, Wildlife and Parks appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by George Ochenski.

Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

Unless you’ve been living in a cave, the fact that the state, nation, and world are experiencing record-setting high temperatures is inescapable — as are the extreme and harmful impacts of global baking.  Montana is no exception.

Yet, as we suddenly transition from our non-winter to a scorching hot and very early Spring — our politicians not only deny this reality, they actively fight efforts to limit the pollutants responsible for increasingly disastrous climate change.

As a recent article from the Associated Press put it:  “Across much of America and especially in the normally chilly north, the country went through the winter months without, well, winter.

In parka strongholds Burlington, Vermont, and Portland, Maine, the thermometer never plunged below zero. The state of Minnesota called the last three months “the lost winter,” warmer than its infamous “year without a winter” in 1877-1878. Michigan, where mosquitos were biting in February, offered disaster loans to businesses hit by a lack of snow. The Great Lakes set records for low winter ice, with Erie and Ontario “essentially ice-free.”

As for Montana, the low snowpack is all too obvious.  Our ski resorts that traditionally open by Thanksgiving with full operations for the Christmas season — were unable to come even close to 100% skiable terrain.  Even those with snowmaking systems struggled due to lack of below freezing temperatures.  Some areas without snowmaking simply wrote off opening at all due to a lack of natural snowfall.

What this portends for the coming summer is anything but good news.  What little runoff our minimal snowpack will produce is likely to be gone almost before “floating season” even starts.  If the predictions hold true, Flathead Lake, the largest body of fresh water west of the Mississippi River, will be worse off this year than last.  Politicians and boaters lamented the low levels and, predictably for that part of the state, baselessly blamed the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribal operation of the Séliš Ksanka QÍispé dam.

While the lack of water for recreation will create economic impacts to fishing and floating businesses, the effects upon Montana’s aquatic ecosystems will be worse.  It’s no secret our coldwater fisheries are already in serious trouble as the too hot, too long, too dry summers stack up.  The Big Hole is hanging on by a thread — and that thread is fraying.  The Lower Madison is routinely closed to fishing — a trend that now spreads to more and more streams every summer in the unrelenting heat.

Even the Yellowstone, the longest undammed river in the contiguous 48 states, is in trouble with fish die offs and the increasing upstream presence of warmwater species like bass, perch and northern pike.  And it may well be “game over” for endangered species like bull trout that require cold, clean and connected waters to even survive.

Although the Forest Service and Montana’s Department of Natural Resources and Conservation continue to come up with inventive names for deforestation under the guise of wildfire prevention, the science is clear that no amount of “thinning” and/or logging will prevent wildfires when temperatures soar and hot winds howl.  As one wag put it, “we’re in for a hellacious summer, with the emphasis on hell.”

Yet our politicians continue their horrendous dereliction of duty to deal with our burning planet.  Instead, Montana’s benighted attorney general, governor and his administration do just the opposite — and challenge our Supreme Court’s ruling that ignoring climate impacts violates Montanans’ constitutional right to a “clean and healthful environment.”

Despite the lamentable fact that Joe Biden leased more public land to produce more oil and gas than his predecessor, Donald Trump claims if he wins his first priority will be “drill, baby, drill.”

But in truth, for Montanans and the rest of the world, it will be “Burn, baby, burn.”

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by George Ochenski.

Image Source: NASA – Public Domain

Montanan’s 1972 Constitution is very direct about what it means when it comes to pollution.

The post Montanans Oppose Catbox Cleanups of Superfund Sites appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by George Ochenski.

Photo by Michael Bourgault

Longtime Montanans who are concerned about the direction in which our much-loved state is headed got a blunt reason from our governor last week when he said: “Montana is an easy product to sell.”

If anyone had any doubts, these words “from the horse’s mouth” pretty much say it all — our mega-millionaire governor sees our state as a market commodity to be sold.

For those who watch the policies Gianforte and his administration have embraced this comes as no surprise. If it can be sold to the highest bidder — from homes to state lands — it’s “For Sale” under Gianforte.

One only need look at what’s been going on at the Department of Natural Resources and Conservation where apparently the “conservation” part of the agency’s title has been sidelined for maximizing revenue from “natural resources.”

If you check the Trust Land Division’s Cabin and Homesite Sales site you might think you were reading something straight out of a Yellowstone Club sales pitch — with prices to match! And guess what? Many of the sites and cabins were owned by Montanans for years, but are now driven out by the high taxes and lease rates. But that’s the way it goes when you’re selling Montana to the highest bidders.

Or how about Gianforte’s rush to log every possible tree off state forests? Most Montanans don’t track those sales, either —  until they go to their favorite stream or campground to find a stumpfield where once a forest stood.

Despite the fact that northwest Montana had so little precipitation last year that Flathead Lake didn’t fill, apparently the very real effects of the climate crisis mean nothing when it comes to “getting out the cut.”

In fact, in spite of last year’s landmark court ruling that Montana has to take climate change into account when issuing permits, Gianforte and the Republican-dominated Legislature ignored that when calculating the so-called “annual sustainable yield” from state forests.

Despite the increasingly drier and hotter conditions — as well as new species such as wolverine and lynx added to the Endangered Species List — the current sustained yield level is 60 million board feet. Last year the state offered 62.5 million board feet for sale but only sold 52 million, meaning the state was willing to log more state lands than the timber industry even bid on. Apparently the requirements of the law that the annual sustained yield must be calculated by “taking into account the ability of state forests to generate replacement tree growth” have been largely ignored by Gianforte’s administration.

All this is somewhat puzzling since the act of “governing” in Montana is supposed to be directed by Montana’s Constitution that specifically mandates: “(1) The state and each person shall maintain and improve a clean and healthful environment in Montana for present and future generations.” It also includes the provision that: “The legislature shall provide adequate remedies for the protection of the environmental life support system from degradation and provide adequate remedies to prevent unreasonable depletion and degradation of natural resources.”

Then again, as one Republican friend quipped recently: “adherence to the Constitution is not the ladder to success in the Republican Party.” And indeed, as the court cases stack up against the blatant unconstitutional laws and actions of the Gianforte administration and the Legislature, that truth seems self-evident.

All you have to do is look around to see our rivers are degrading and our forests are disappearing.

Why?

Because our governor, Greg Gianforte, looks at Montana as “an easy product to sell” — and he’s doing just that, selling our future to the highest bidder as a “product.”

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This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by George Ochenski.

Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

Republicans on the campaign trail and in the statehouse profess they believe in smaller, less intrusive government. Likewise, Democrats continually promise “open and transparent” interaction between the government and the public.

So why are both parties now moving aggressively at the state and federal level to cut the public out of government decision-making?

One might think the Montana debacle over the U.S. Forest Service deciding to “categorically exclude” the proposed Holland Lake Lodge sale and development would have sent a powerful message that the public deserves and demands to be given the facts and the time to review and comment on government proposals and actions.

But that appears to not be the case. Public outrage forced the Forest Service to abandon its attempt to operate in secret — and when given the chance to comment, thousands of people opposed the sale and forced the agency to cancel its foregone approval. The district ranger was reassigned, but that’s a tiny slap on the wrist for attempting to exclude the public the agency claims “to serve” — and who also pay for their salaries, benefits and retirement.

Yet, while the Forest Service is operating under Democratic President Joe Biden, the state bureaucracy is controlled by Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte — and it’s up to the same bad act.

As noted in Tom Lutey’s recent article: “Montana environmental regulators took heat this week for initially giving the public just 10 days to weigh in on a proposed landfill near Shepherd — seemingly at the request of the developer. The mistake, Montana’s Department of Environmental Quality clarified Thursday, was ever suggesting that there would be more time. The government now intends to strike all references from its permit forms. To avoid potential future confusion, given that a 30-day public comment period is not required in statute or rule, this specific narrative will be removed from all applications…”

Perhaps the governor can explain how cutting the public out of agency decision-making leads to less intrusive government — especially when a project is very intrusive on their homes, families, lives and environment.

Gianforte’s Department of Fish, Wildlife & Parks has likewise declared bureaucrats will now determine what’s sufficient for the public. As Eric Merchant, the agency’s “MEPA coordinator” in the director’s office wrote: “FWP policy now dictates a 15-day or 30-day public comment period for EA-level MEPA review. The length of the public comment period is dependent on the level of environmental review conducted for a given project and the time deemed necessary for the public to appropriately engage.” Acronyms aside, the salient point is that the agency “dictates” the “time deemed necessary for the public to appropriately engage.”

And again, this is from people who claim to be “public servants.”

While bureaucrats are paid to be at their jobs, the public is quite busy doing other things — like working, raising families, keeping a roof over their heads. Most people cannot simply drop everything to quickly review and comment on agency actions in the short time period a government agency “dictates” or “deems sufficient.”

And if there are questions or additional information requested? Good luck — file a Freedom of Information Act with the feds or a “right to know” request to the state. And then wait while the comment period expires.

Cutting the public out means government runs itself — a very bad idea no matter if you’re a Democrat, a Republican, or neither. The Biden administration has already been sued over its attempts to exclude the public — and it’s a good bet Gianforte’s administration will likewise wind up in court over short-changing public review periods on agency actions.

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This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by George Ochenski.

Photograph Source: Stefan Müller – CC BY 2.0

There’s something about a new year that brings an optimistic sense of “what could be” in the year ahead.

But that optimism hinges on significant societal commitments to take the actions — not just talk about them — necessary to make the changes that are now so evident and necessary. The hands of time only move in one direction — and the clock is ticking.

Given it’s a national election year, the political rhetoric so far has been anything but positive. While most people are looking for good solid reasons to vote for a candidate or support an issue, it increasingly seems like we’re assailed with reasons to vote against candidates and issues.

Certainly, this is nothing new — the Republican versus Democrat divide and conquer politics have been the status quo for some time now. But “us versus them” won’t cut it if we’re to deal with the very real problems facing our state, country and planet.

Of course, there are plenty of politicians who prefer to sow dissension and preach hatred for their policy or political opponents. And why not? It’s far easier to turn people against each other over largely imagined differences of opinion than to actually come up with the solutions to the challenges we now face.

Make no mistake, those solutions are anything but simple, easy or cheap. Sitting here in a snowless January in Montana with open water on our lakes and temperatures that barely sink below freezing, the enormity of the climate crisis is dramatically coming home to roost. And no snow in winter generally means a grim summer ahead — and a difficult but necessary prioritizing of limited resources among a host of competing interests.

As just one example, will our world-famous rivers and wild trout survive yet another brutal summer of chronically-dewatered streams? Given the recent experiences, particularly on the Big Hole River, the trend is downward as water quantity, quality and trout populations continue a steep decline.

Nor is the Big Hole alone in its misery. The equation is simple and applies to virtually every drainage in the state. Low snowpack in the mountains means earlier and far less runoff. And when the tributaries cease to rush to the rivers the available water for the competing interests is likewise severely diminished.

Increasingly, the attempts to deal with the supply and demand equation through social means, such as watershed groups, continue to fail dramatically. Lower river flows mean hotter water, more concentrated pollutants, more stress on the broader riverine ecosystems, and significant, perhaps irreparable, extirpation of the most fragile species.

Moreover, these conditions are leading to the intrusion of warm-water species, such as bass, into rivers like the Bitterroot and Yellowstone which were historically too cold for them. Once established, especially in our rapidly heating world, reversal becomes impossible.

These conditions are now forcing Montana — and most of the West — to face the difficult truth that major policy changes are necessary because the wetter world of the last two centuries, when states readily gave away more water rights than there was water to fulfill them, is gone. One hundred fifty years ago, John Wesley Powell presciently predicted there wasn’t enough water in the arid West for large-scale development, and time has proven him right.

New year, new chances for positive change. But there’s no time to waste. We need the skills of our best minds and most committed individuals to make the increasingly obvious hard choices. Our world has changed and our policies must likewise change.

The clock is ticking — and the future is what’s at stake.

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This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by George Ochenski.

Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

The decades-long attempt to force “globalization” as the primary economic model is crumbling.

We saw it coming when the pandemic hit and suddenly “global supply chains” failed, leaving those relying on them in dire straits. Now, as clusters of war spread across the planet, once again the supply chains are broken like the fragile, artificial constructs they are.

But spare your tears; globalization was the product of supply-side economists for whom the word “conservation” is anathema. Globalization was always intended to make the wealthy more wealthy, to give those in control more control, and to leave the populace as sheep to be sheared wherever there were resources to plunder, cheap labor to be exploited, and money (it’s always about money) to be made.

By and large, “globalization” has led to plundering resources with virtually no attention to the impacts on intact ecosystems or the plants, animals, and humans that rely on them. Indeed, the environmental atrocities that have already been documented will continue to impact the planet long into the future. They can call it “climate change” or “global warming” but the simple truth is we are committing planetary ecocide and the consequences are exponentially multiplying.

Adding to this seemingly unsolvable problem is the enormous expense and subsequent consumption/pollution profile associated with “defending” the land, water and airways used to transport resources from origin to consumption. One need look no further than the boiling and never-ending crises in the Middle East and now spreading to the Orient, for proof of the futile and unsustainable attempts to do so.

The most recent example is the closure of shipping through the bottleneck of the Strait of Hormuz due to attacks on oil tankers and container ships in response to the Israeli-Palestine conflict. This narrow waterway connects the Persian Gulf to the Indian Ocean, the route through which virtually all Middle East oil exports are shipped.

Our military is heavily involved in the area supposedly because a disruption in the flow of Arab “black gold” would have disastrous impacts on Americans. But “globalization” proponents somehow overlook one undeniable fact — the U.S. is now by far the world’s largest producer of oil and gas, and production increased a stunning 27% since 2017! These are resources sucked from our nation as if there were no tomorrow and exported in enormous quantities to provide vast profits for the oil and gas megacorporations.

In the meantime, more than 25% of Californians were unable to pay their utility bills in October. Here in Montana, that number hit a shocking 22%. Most of those “utilities,” such as electricity, come from oil and gas produced here — not shipped from the Middle East, not threatened with attacks, and not being “defended” by our outrageous $888 billion-a-year military budget.

The question is: “Why are Americans getting the shaft while the international oil and gas corporations get the gold?” The one word answer is “globalization,” where commodity prices are determined by “global markets.” Were those commodities tied to the actual cost of production and transport to market, we would be paying significantly lower prices for domestically-produced oil and gas.

It’s obviously far past time for both Republicans and Democrats to drop their phony, decades-long jive that we are sucking our nation’s resources dry for “energy independence.”

What we’re really doing is sacrificing our nonrenewable resources to benefit the few at enormous cost to the many.

Now is the time for domestic “self-sufficiency” to replace the rapacious policies of globalization and “supply side” economics — and we start taking care of our own people first and foremost.

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Bald Eagle pair, Colewort Marsh, along the Netul River, Lewis and Clark National Park, northwestern Oregon. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.

Humans tend to see the world with mankind as the most important species on the planet.

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Lewis and Clark Meeting the Flatheads in Ross Hole by Charles Russell (1912)

It’s that time of year to be grateful for the good things, people and places in our lives.

And given how quickly our state is changing in these days of endless promotion and development, Montanans might want to give thanks for those visionary conservationists who saw what was coming, broke with those who claimed the riches of the land were “ours for the taking,” and dedicated themselves to conserving the natural wonders of this place we call home.

Charlie Russell, Montana’s most famous artist, was fully aware of how quickly the West was “being settled.” His massive 1912 painting, “Lewis and Clark Meeting the Flatheads in Ross Hole,” majestically depicts that first early contact. But he also saw how the great herds of bison — and the Indians — were being exterminated to make way for plows, cows, railroads and mines.

He lamented the vast changes being wrought by “civilization” and once told a group of developers: “A pioneer is a man who turned all the grass upside down, strung bob-wire over the dust that was left, poisoned the water, cut down the trees, killed the Indian who owned the land and called it ‘progress.’  If I had my way, the land here would be like God made it, and none of you sons of bitches would be here at all.”

Decades later, a Montanan from the Bitterroot, Stewart “Brandy” Brandborg, would lead the Wilderness Society’s successful effort in Congress to pass the Wilderness Act of 1964. Until his death in 2018 at 93 years of age, he believed the battle for lands “untrammeled by man” via wilderness preservation was just that — a battle against the relentless extractive industries that callously called wilderness “a land of no use.”

The Wilderness Act opened the way for Montana’s visionary U.S. Sen. Lee Metcalf, who served from 1961 until his death in 1978, to pass an incredible legacy of legislation, including designating nearly a million acres of the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness.

Metcalf’s Wilderness Study Act of 1977 designated “wilderness quality” lands across Montana and mandated that they be managed as wilderness until formally designated by Congress. Those wilderness study areas included 151,000 acres of the West Pioneers; 289,000 acres of the Beaverhead and Gallatin Taylor-Hilgard; 61,000 acres in the Bitterroots’ Blue Joint; 94,000 acres of the Sapphire Mountains; 34,000 acres of the Kootenai’s Ten Lakes; 81,000 acres of the Middle Fork of the Judith; and 91,000 acres of the Big Snowies.

Then there was Bud Lilly, arguably Montana’s most famous fly-fisherman, who grew up during the “catch and eat” years of the Great Depression but went on to champion today’s “catch and release” ethic. He wrote: “We had a fairly simple idea of waste. If we gave the fish to someone, or ate them ourselves, they weren’t wasted. It took a long time for most of us to figure out that there is more than one way to waste a fish.” He also led the effort to stop “put and take” hatchery stocking of our rivers and preserved Montana’s now world-famous “wild trout” fisheries.

These giants of conservation are gone but their legacies live on in the never-ending struggle against those who would “trammel” every last acre for a handful of silver.

You don’t have to go to a museum to see their work — just look around Montana and be thankful for the rivers, mountains and forests — and the vast array of fish and wildlife they conserved future generations.

And take Charlie Russell’s prescient warning for Montana’s future to heart: “Guard, protect and cherish your land, for there is no afterlife for a place that started out as Heaven.”

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Photograph Source: AFGE – CC BY 2.0

It’s pretty tough to figure out who’s leading what’s left of the Montana Democratic Party these days.

The confusion has only been increased by what appears to be conflicting positions on seeking a special legislative session to deal with Montanans’ “shock and awe” when their tax bills arrive based on the new and severely inflated appraisals.

Normally, the highest-ranking elected member of the party would be seen as its leader. That would be Montana’s senior Sen. Jon Tester who, as it turns out, is “the last man standing” Democrat to hold a statewide office after his party lost every single statewide race in the last election.

But it wasn’t Jon Tester who came up with the idea to ask Republican Gov. Gianforte to call a one-day special legislative session to reduce the state’s property tax rate. Nope, that came from former Gov. Brian Schweitzer and several of his administration’s “insiders” in a series of almost identical op-ed columns.

Having had considerably more experience with the vagaries of special legislative sessions than the former governor, this column pointed out that the Democrats, facing a Republican supermajority in both chambers, would have exactly no chance at controlling any of the actions once the session was convened.

While the Schweitzerites continued to press for their very bad idea, apparently those in the Tester camp are considerably more concerned about what might happen. They’re right to be concerned since the GOP has targeted Tester’s seat in 2024 and he’s repeatedly ranked nationally as one of the top four seats that may flip.

Oddly enough, the apparent confusion and conflicting strategies came to light in an op-ed column by Republican Sen. Brad Molnar. Unlike most of his GOP colleagues, Molnar actually tried three times to get enough signatures to poll fellow legislators on whether or not to convene a special session to deal with the property tax fiasco.

As he wrote: “To help marginalized people on July 19, I sent out a call to poll legislators for a special session to: (1) freeze property values at 2021 values, (2) provide domicile security, and (3) reduce Montana’s over-dependence on property taxes. Needed 10 signatures; got none. Aug. 4, I sent out a call to freeze property values at 2021 values while allowing decreased values to be captured. Aug. 15, I offered a special session to freeze property and mil values at July 31, 2023, levels while allowing those that have experienced decreased values to capture those.’ Soup to nuts they all failed.”

Interestingly, according to Molnar: “Despite Democrats having asked the governor to call a special session to address the (massive) coming tax increases none signed for a polling of the Legislature. I was told, ‘Tester’s people said not to sign because they fear an expansion of the call to include a renewed effort to implement a ‘top-two-only general election’ bill.”

So you have the Schweitzer arm of the Democrats still calling for a special session and, if Molnar’s information is correct, Tester’s people are against it. It’s not good for an already beaten down political party to be so leaderless they can’t decide whether or how to take on the most critical tax issue facing Montanans.

It also raises the question of whether the Schweitzerites’ call for a special session was sincere — or whether it was a political charade intended to simply provide a soapbox from which to assail Republicans.

And given that not one Democrat legislator would even support polling for a tax relief session, that it was a less-than-clever political charade seems much more likely.

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Boulder River near McLeod, Montana. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.

It’s not even August and Montana’s world-famous trout streams are being shut down due to low flows and high water temperatures — so high they severely stress or kill fish that rely on enough cold, clean water to survive. Given these are the headwater streams and rivers pouring off the snow-capped mountains of the Continental Divide, Montana is in hot water again — and that’s anything but good.

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As the old saying goes, “you can run but you cannot hide.” And sure enough, Donald Trump figured if he was running for president he could hide from the many investigations, grand juries, special prosecutors, and defamed citizens currently bringing charges against him. But apparently, like so many things associated with the infamous ex-president, once again he’s just flat-out wrong.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by George Ochenski.

Big Hole River, Montana. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.

More than 30 outfitters, guides, lodge owners and anglers recently submitted an “emergency request” to Montana’s Gov. Gianforte to immediately employ “the full engagement and all available resources under your authority as governor to both investigate this crash and help us develop solutions, before it’s too late.” The “crash” refers to the precipitous decline in the wild trout populations, for which the Big Hole River is internationally famous.

As detailed in Matthew Kiewiet’s recent article, The Big Hole River and its continued state of peril; trout numbers again at historic lows: “Conditions appear dire as ever and the worst seems yet to come.”

If that sounds like hyperbole, it is not. As Kiewiet wrote: “Recent data from three sections of the 153-mile freestone river in southwest Montana showed the fewest number of brown and rainbow trout since data was first collected in 1969.” To put that in perspective, those numbers have plummeted from a healthy 2,000 to 3,500 trout per mile to a few hundred. And “the worst seems yet to come” refers to the extreme lack of juvenile trout biologists were able to locate during their fish surveys.

While it is truly tragic that the state of Montana could allow such degradation of this treasured river to occur through both Republican and Democratic administrations, there’s simply no getting around the fact that the choices made by the state to deal with the river’s problems have utterly failed. As one example, the Gianforte administration hasn’t even filled the fisheries manager position for the Big Hole, which has been vacant for more than a year and a half.

The “canaries in the coal mine” on the Big Hole were the vanishing Fluvial (river-dwelling) Arctic Grayling — the last population in the Lower 48 states. Reduced to a tiny fraction of their historic range, the few hundred remaining grayling continue to be decimated by chronic irrigation dewatering.

This didn’t just happen overnight — it’s been going on for decades. Thanks to over-appropriation under the archaic tenets of Western water law, those with senior water rights can legally run the river dry. Since water rights are guaranteed as property rights in Montana’s Constitution, the only way to keep the water in the river is to buy or lease those rights.

But the state has been woefully inept at doing so, despite being mandated by law to “fund and implement the program regarding the long-term enhancement of streams and streambanks, instream flows, water leasing, lease or purchase of stored water.”

When it comes to the lack of juvenile fish, there really isn’t much of a mystery. When the river’s flows drop to a trickle of warm water, it forces both the larger fish and the juveniles into the few deep, cooler holes left. But then “the big fish eat the little fish.”

No little fish, however, means no big fish in the near future. And that brings us to the ongoing tragedy that has prompted the plea to Gianforte for “emergency action” — not only to save the river and its fabled fishery, but to maintain the river-based economy.

Unfortunately, there is no magic wand for the governor or anyone else to wave and restore the Big Hole in this crisis short of buying or leasing enough water rights to keep the river flowing in our ever-increasing periods of drought.

Sorry to say, but to date, the state’s inexcusable dereliction of duty to fulfill its public trust responsibilities to the Big Hole and other chronically-dewatered rivers is simply too little, too late — and for those who love our rivers, way too bad.

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Hard to imagine why anyone would want to watch Donald Trump spew his endless litany of lies, insults, and vitriol after we’ve seen these re-runs for seven long years now. But sure enough, in an apparent attempt to capture some of the Faux News MAGA zombies, CNN stuck Trumpty Dumpty on air for yet one more re-run of his old and increasingly boring show.

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What did she do to deserve this harsh punishment to remove her from ongoing public policy debates? She actively opposed the punitive bills focused on the transgender community — something she knows a lot more about than most legislators.

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Lamar River Valley, Yellowstone. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.

It’s springtime in the Rockies, where one day record high temperatures sweep the state and the next day we have winter storm warnings.

In between the freeze-thaw cycle, the snowpack begins to melt, once again filling the rivers to full and beyond. It’s nature in all its incredible diversity and wonder — and in Montana, Mother Nature still calls the shots but she gets a significant helping hand from citizen environmentalists and conservationists.

Thousands of snow geese just passed through Montana on their northward migration. For conservationists, it’s very rewarding to see the positive result of tirelessly advocating to preserve the habitat on which these massive flocks rely going north, coming south or overwintering far from Montana’s northern flyway.

As the brown hills begin to “green up,” you can almost feel the joy of the elk, deer and antelope finally getting something fresh to eat besides dried brown forage, sagebrush and pine needles. And again, these healthy populations of native wildlife are proof that the efforts to maintain them — including banning game farms by citizen initiative to keep them disease-free — have again proven their worth. Soon enough, new fawns and calves will be frolicking with the herds.

Our incredible rivers and streams are likewise headed for renewal as the mountains release winter’s snowpack. For the freestone streams that support our internationally famous wild trout fisheries, the rush of runoff scours the cobbled riverbed, removing the sediment that would smother trout eggs and the aquatic insects upon which the trout feed.

But runoff scouring the gravel beds isn’t the only thing our rivers require. And in that regard, there’s a bit of good news for the beleaguered Gallatin River. Thanks to the efforts of citizen environmentalists and conservationists, the Montana Department of Environmental Quality has finally submitted a proposal to the Environmental Protection Agency to list a long stretch of the Upper Gallatin as “impaired by algal growth.”

The designation would cover the 40-50 mile stretch from where the Gallatin leaves Yellowstone National Park to the confluence with Spanish Creek below Big Sky. It may not sound like much of a victory to have one of Montana’s famous Blue Ribbon trout streams listed as “impaired.” But that designation actually initiates a process to investigate and reduce the excess nutrients that have turned miles of the river downstream from Big Sky neon green for the last five years.

But runoff scouring the gravel beds isn’t the only thing our rivers require. And in that regard, there’s a bit of good news for the beleaguered Gallatin River. Thanks to the efforts of citizen environmentalists and conservationists, the Montana Department of Environmental Quality has finally submitted a proposal to the Environmental Protection Agency to list a long stretch of the Upper Gallatin as “impaired by algal growth.”

The designation would cover the 40-50 mile stretch from where the Gallatin leaves Yellowstone National Park to the confluence with Spanish Creek below Big Sky. It may not sound like much of a victory to have one of Montana’s famous Blue Ribbon trout streams listed as “impaired.” But that designation actually initiates a process to investigate and reduce the excess nutrients that have turned miles of the river downstream from Big Sky neon green for the last five years.

For those of us who fished these holy waters 50 years ago, it’s no great mystery where the nutrients are coming from. Before the advent of Big Sky, the Yellowstone Club, and the ongoing development frenzy the water was crystal clear — and there was no algae bloom.

Yet, the state estimates it will take five years to study the sources of the nutrients and put together a plan to address them. Unfortunately, given five more years of runaway development there’s little question that the term “impaired” will continue to define the once pristine Gallatin River — especially as spring’s “flushing flows” bring yet more nutrient loading.

Conservationists and environmentalists often come in for harsh criticism as “obstructionists” from the development sector. But as spring proceeds, look around at the incredible natural world that surrounds us in this place called Montana — great flocks of migratory waterfowl, healthy herds of elk, deer, antelope and rivers that still support one of the greatest wild trout fisheries on the planet.

Many of the natural wonders we enjoy — and sometimes take for granted — simply wouldn’t be here without decades of determined efforts by Montana’s environmentalists and conservationists.

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Thanks to a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit filed against Fox News by Dominion Voting Systems, the nation and world are peeling back the covers on the shocking lies perpetrated by Fox’s top commentators. And how ironic is it that these are the very people who baselessly accused other networks of “fake news” for reporting there was no evidence whatsoever that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump.

In a nutshell — and boy did it hold a lot of nuts — Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, the cheerleading outfit for Trump’s circus —  all lied through their teeth about the stolen election. And why did they do it? For the most basic of reasons. They did it for the money because they feared if they told Trump supporters the truth, they’d lose their viewing audience.

As far as journalism goes, you can’t get much more unethical than repeating what you know to be outright lies as truth. In that regard, the record is absolutely clear thanks to the discovery of the texts and emails between Fox’s on-air personalities, the management, and even Rupert Murdoch, who owns the network, and admitted he and his employees knew Trump was wrong, that there was no stolen election, and what they reported were lies.

It’s not a matter of who knew what and when did they know it, it’s straight out lying to millions of people who really wanted Trump to win the presidential election he lost by 8 million votes. While most of the mainstream media knew Fox was reporting “fake news” the network itself was busy accusing the nation’s long-standing media outlets of record of doing exactly that.

Nor, while Trump was busy wrapping himself in the flag, did those oh-so-sincere pundits and their over-the-top support for the losing candidate in public hold the same opinion of the Great Grifter in private.

The Washington Post has perhaps the most extensive coverage of Fox’s perfidy in an article that specifically quotes the texts Fox’s deceptive pundits sent internally. “I hate him passionately” wrote Tucker Carlson. “We are very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights.” How’s that for coming from the same guy who then went on air to facetiously support the stolen election lie?

Or how about this one to Carlson from Fox Senior Executive Producer Justin Wells: “Sidney Powell and Rudy [Giuliani] are fucking liars.” Takes one to know one I guess. Add to that Trump lawyer Jenna Ellis, who was censured last week by a Colorado Court and admitted she lied about the election. As reported: “Ellis signed a stipulation stating that several comments she made about the 2020 election violated professional ethics rules barring reckless, knowing or intentional misrepresentations by attorneys, according to documents posted by Colorado’s Office of Attorney Regulation Counsel.”

It’s astounding that Carlson and his fellow Fox Fake News pundits knew the truth, but failed to tell their viewers. As one of Carlson’s texts revealed when speaking about their fear of Trump: “What he’s good at is destroying things. He’s the undisputed world champion of that. He could easily destroy us if we play it wrong.” He followed with “He’s a demonic force, a destroyer. But he’s not going to destroy us. I’ve been thinking about this every day for four years.”

That Fox News viewers were blatantly lied to is an historic scandal. But the divisions those lies stoked in Americans are the real tragedy. And now Carlson is on to lying about the attempted J6 insurrection. Bottom line: Fox News IS Fake News — and now, beyond a doubt, the entire world knows it.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by George Ochenski.

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For years Montanans have been subjected to the claim that “environmental extremists” have been flooding the court system with “frivolous lawsuits.”

These absolutely false accusations have come from some of our top elected Republican officials including Sen. Daines, Gov. Gianforte, and Reps. Zinke and Rosendale to name a few. Strangely enough not one of these politicians has ever been able to actually cite a Montana judge tossing an environmental lawsuit as frivolous.

Why? Because it’s never happened.

It’s not hard to see why these politicians would try to mislead Montanans on environmental lawsuits. But when an individual or environmental organization files a lawsuit to protect endangered species, their habitat, or reckless public policies that degrade the environment, there’s nothing frivolous about it.

Most people, and certainly most politicians, know it’s neither cheap nor easy to file a lawsuit — especially if the defendant happens to be the federal, state, or local government.

You better have your ducks in a row when you go before a judge because there’s no guaranteed outcome. The arguments of plaintiffs and defendants stand on their merits and legal precedent. When environmentalists or conservationists win their suits — and they do so quite often — it’s because the facts and the law prevail.

Of course it’s handy to label those lawsuits “frivolous” because they often overturn the projects or policies forwarded by agencies and politicians that place commerce and development as the highest and best use for every public resource.

However, as reported by the Washington Post, Donald J. Trump has now provided a perfect opportunity for those same politicians to see what actually happens when a frivolous lawsuit is filed. A Florida federal judge just sanctioned Trump and his lawyer, Alina Habba, for their frivolous lawsuit against Hillary Clinton over the 2016 campaign — and slapped them with a whopping $937,989.39 fine.

Judge Donald M. Middlebrooks didn’t mince his words in his 46-page judgment, calling Trump a “prolific and sophisticated litigant” who “is repeatedly using the courts to seek revenge on political adversaries.”

But he didn’t stop there, writing: “He is the mastermind of strategic abuse of the judicial process, and he cannot be seen as a litigant blindly following the advice of a lawyer. He knew full well the impact of his actions. As such, I find that sanctions should be imposed upon Mr. Trump and his lead counsel, Ms. Habba.”

As Middlebrook added: “Here, we are confronted with a lawsuit that should never have been filed, which was completely frivolous, both factually and legally, and which was brought in bad faith for an improper purpose.”

Sen. Daines, Gov. Gianforte, Reps. Zinke and Rosendale and your anti-environmental cohorts that accuse environmentalists of filing frivolous lawsuits might just want to think about that before flinging more baseless accusations.

Never has any Montana judge thrown out an environmental lawsuit, sanctioned, nor fined an environmental plaintiff or their attorneys for filing a frivolous suit — let alone dressing them down in such an unambiguous ruling.

There’s nothing frivolous about trying to keep forests standing, water in rivers, and wildlife from going extinct due to mankind’s constant and often destructive manipulation.

As Albert Einstein wrote: “One thing I have learned in a long life: that all our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike. We still do not know one thousandth of one percent of what nature has revealed to us.”

It’s time Montana’s politicians dropped their facetious characterization of environmental advocacy as “frivolous” — especially in light of Montana’s constitutional mandate that: “The state and each person shall maintain and improve a clean and healthful environment in Montana for present and future generations.”

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by George Ochenski.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by George Ochenski.

Here we are on the second anniversary of Trump’s lie-fueled violent insurrection to try and halt Congress from certifying a duly elected president of the United States. Despite the death and destruction in its attempted takeover of the Capitol, the MAGA mob failed — and many are now paying the price in prison. But lo and behold, a tiny band of MAGA clowns has managed to halt the function of Congress by refusing to vote for Kevin McCarthy for Speaker of the House — and without a speaker, the House cannot even swear in its members, let alone perform its constitutional duties to the American public.

There are 435 members of the U.S. House of Representatives. The 20 MAGA extremists — including Montana’s own MAGA clown, Rep. Matt Rosendale — comprise a mere 4.5 percent of the members. That such a tiny fraction of the House can grind its wheels to a stop isn’t a victory for these deluded members. It’s a tragedy and a tremendous stain on the reputation of the American governing process.

Yet, while they can and have been playing the spoilers, they have no viable MAGA candidate of their own and their actions mean the rest of the members of the House, as well as the American public, are forced to watch their political theater make the Republicans a laughing stock for being unable to even elect a leader of their own party. How’s that for making America great again!

Were the consequences not so tragic, it would actually be laughable to see these right-wingers torpedo their own slim Republican majority…and to be sure, many are laughing at the situation. But there’s serious business afoot and while the MAGAs are more than welcome to barricade themselves in a room and fume, the other 415 members of the House are prevented from attending any national security briefings, reviewing sensitive intelligence, or even being in the room where those top secret documents are kept.

Some may find it easy to dismiss such concerns, but considering Russia just sent out its most modern warship armed with Zircon hypersonic missiles against which the US has no proven defense, one might think members of Congress should be kept informed of the situation instead of being excluded thanks to a tiny handful of so-called Freedom Caucus members.

Moreover, the demands of these extremists promise to upend the function of the House should they actually be met. They want one person — just one — to be able to stand up and call for the election of a new Speaker at any given time. Think, now, how many days have passed as a stunned populace watches McCarthy fail on a historic number of votes — and then consider that process taking place whenever one disgruntled member decides to bring the House to a standstill. That’s chaos, not governance.

The MAGA clowns are bad enough in Congress, but comes now our newly-formed Montana Freedom Caucus. Not sure about why that’s necessary since it’s extremely rare one hears Montanans complaining about a lack of freedom. And unfortunately, their idea of “freedom” is often antithetical to actual personal freedom — as in banning books they don’t think you should read or subjects they don’t think schools should teach, forced birth, and “safeguarding” the same election process that produced the first Republican legislative super majority in Montana’s history.

Americans are right to condemn the MAGA clown car tactics in Congress — especially when they offer no viable alternative of their own. We can only hope Montana doesn’t suffer a similar fate — and wind up with a dysfunctional legislative MAGA clown car of our own.

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Photograph Source: Andrew Mercer – CC BY-SA 4.0

The House Committee on Oversight and Reform released a trove of documents last week that show while gas and oil mega-corporations have been mouthing their commitment to clean energy “transition,” they’ve actually been peddling what, in the West, would be called “bull pucky.” In the common vernacular of our time, it’s a practice known as “greenwashing,” which amounts to putting lipstick on the pig of their planet-killing pollution.

Right out of the chute, let’s be clear that these enormous mega-corporations are not in business to break even or save the planet. They are wholly dedicated to making as much money as possible as quickly as possible. They don’t do that by “transitioning” to clean energy, they do it by selling gas, oil, and petroleum products.

Anyone who thinks these corporate giants didn’t know that fossil fuels would threaten the very existence of mankind on the planet might want to consider this article in the Washington Post that opens with: “In November 1959 Edward Teller, ‘the father of the hydrogen bomb,’ told a group of oil company executives and scientists gathered at Columbia University that continued burning of fossil fuels would warm the planet, potentially melting the ice caps and submerging New York and other coastal cities — posing a threat to civilization comparable to a global nuclear war.”

Going on 64 years later, Teller’s chilling analogy is coming true. Only instead of instant annihilation from nukes, we’re experiencing a slower, but no less deadly, self-immolation as the Earth overheats. Now we’re wiping out a record number of species at a breakneck pace in the 6th Great Extinction Event, the predicted sea level rise is accelerating, and huge areas of the planet are running out of fresh water and facing desertification.

Much like the tobacco companies whose scientists and doctors knew their products were killing people — but fought tooth and nail to deny it for decades — the oil and gas giants knew what their products were causing and would continue to cause long into a bleak future.

Of course it’s not exactly a revelation that the fossil fuel industry is predatory in every sense of the word. Take, for example, the outrageous price gouging that recently took place under the excuse that blamed the Ukraine war for skyrocketing fuel costs. Then our “friends” the Saudis added to the trauma at the pump by declaring a cutback in output. I mean, why not kick us when we’re down?

But here we are, after record-breaking profits have swelled the corporate coffers, the war in Ukraine is still going on, and the gas prices are coming down. What happened to all the handy excuses for gouging the public? What happened to the blatant attempts to viciously manipulate the market — and make the public pay?

Adding insult to injury, another Washington Post article reports the House documents “reveal oil company executives dismissing the potential for renewable energy to quickly replace fossil fuels, while working to secure government tax credits for carbon capture projects that might relieve them of the need to drastically alter their business models.” Gotta love that — not only hosed at the pump, but ripped off for tax credits for phony “carbon capture” projects they privately dismissed as futile.

We could go on being played for fools. Or the predatory corporations implicated in perpetuating this charade could immediately become ineligible for the “transition” tax credits as well as requiring full restitution for their most recent price gouging. And finally, it’s time to publicly condemn their “greenwashing” — after all, at this point in the climate crisis, we’ve got nothing to lose by exposing these shameful, destructive frauds.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by George Ochenski.

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Every year about this time we take stock of our lives, loves, family, friends and being able to call Montana “home.” One of the great joys of living here are the rights and protections provided by the Montana Constitution — and those should never be taken for granted.

When you think about the condition of most of the United States, it’s obvious why we’re now experiencing such a surge of in-migrants. Montanans have a long history of being considered kind and generous people and the so-called “rat race” hasn’t yet come to define our lives here. We are not stuck on 8-lane freeways crawling along in stop and go traffic while road rage and frustration boils. Nope, in a very short time you’re in and out of any town — and when you’re out, the real and unique “wealth” of Montana comes shining through.

Consider, for instance, the stunning fact that virtually all of the native species that existed when Lewis and Clark’s expedition went through the state over 200 years ago — and that’s anything but a fluke. In fact, Montana’s long-standing dedication to conservation of public lands and waters is guaranteed by our Constitution, which has been internationally lauded for exactly that reason.

As the Preamble boldly states, our citizens are grateful “for the quiet beauty of our state, the grandeur of our mountains, the vastness of our rolling plains” that we desire to “improve the quality of life, equality of opportunity and to secure the blessings of liberty for this and future generations.”

Following that eloquent declaration, it goes on to mandate that: “The state and each person shall maintain and improve a clean and healthful environment in Montana for present and future generations.” Under “inalienable rights” Montanans are guaranteed “the right to a clean and healthful environment.”

And how does that happen? For one thing, the legislature is tasked to “provide adequate remedies for the protection of the environmental life support system from degradation” and “prevent unreasonable depletion and degradation of natural resources.” The Constitution also requires that “all lands disturbed by the taking of natural resources shall be reclaimed” — and established the $100 million Resource Indemnity Trust Fund to provide “inviolate” revenue for that purpose.

These are guarantees that simply do not exist in our national Constitution. Likewise, the Montana Constitution’s guaranteed “right of privacy” has been called “the most elegant and uncompromising privacy protection ever written” by the Florida Law Review. That foundational right was further strengthened in the recent election by including the right to digital privacy which the drafters could not have considered in 1972, but that today’s Montanans realize as essential.

We also have the “Right to know,” which states “no person shall be deprived of the right to examine documents or to observe the deliberations of all public bodies or agencies of state government and its subdivisions.” Again, that’s a right not contained in the national Constitution, but which has helped Montanans ensure open and transparent government for the last half century.

As we go about our daily lives, it’s easy to forget that the Montana we know and love didn’t happen by accident. Our predecessors had the vision and wisdom to enshrine these rights and duties after the vast corruption of the legislature, media, local governments, and courts by the Anaconda Company. And we continue to struggle to remediate the almost unimaginable environmental destruction across the decades since “The Company” disappeared.

So this Thanksgiving, while being grateful for “our many blessings,” take a moment to remember it’s our Constitution that, in so many ways, leads and protects both us and our beautiful state.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by George Ochenski.

For six long years now Americans have been assailed by non-stop lies from Donald J. Trump, the twice-impeached former president who launched an attempted coup against Congress and relentlessly — albeit falsely — accused the election system of being rigged. But the midterms didn’t turn out to be the “red wave” he predicted. In fact, just like the last presidential election, he lost big again. As the backlash from what Liz Cheney calls “normal Republicans” mounts, it may just mark the end of the road for Trump’s self-centered political ambitions.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by George Ochenski.

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This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by George Ochenski.

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The unspeakable tragedy and human suffering of the “one in a thousand years” floods and devastating winds of Hurricane Ian once again puts the relationship between the states and federal government in perspective. And once again, it is the South, home to the so-called “confederates” who continue to disparage the Union, that has its hands out for billions in disaster relief funds.

Maybe, just maybe, those howling for insurrection from Mar-a-Lago might want to consider where they’d be without the federal government they love to hate.

Suddenly, the vicious snarling of Florida’s radical right-wing governor Ron DeSantis has been subsumed by the reality that the little dictatorship he’s trying to build cannot deal with the level of death, displacement and destruction wrought by the latest “superstorm.” Suddenly, all his blather denying the climate crisis is proven false as the warming ocean feeds disastrous storms, ravaging the state he pretends to lead independent of the federal government and our Constitution.

But of course Florida and DeSantis aren’t alone in their delusions of grandeur and active resistance against a government that, at its core, is pledged to provide the “greatest good for the greatest number.”

Take Louisiana and it’s oil and gas cartel. The state’s politicians, being in thrall to the fossil fuel industry, have fought every attempt to transition the nation to clean, renewable, non-carbon energy. Why? The simplest of reasons —they’re making billions hand over fist by drilling, refining, selling and exporting the nation’s fossil fuels. And they are such greedy profiteers President Biden has already had to warn them about trying to use the hurricane as an excuse to once-again “gouge” the public with artificially-inflated prices.

Or how about good old Joe Manchin and his “coal state” stance that’s led to his outrageous hostage-taking of much needed legislation in the Senate? If we want to give our people — all our people — the help they need, as with the last infrastructure bill, he demands we also eliminate the prudent consideration of potential and likely environmental impacts from fossil fuel projects.

Even worse, in his “vote trading” scheme he demanded that if any solar or wind projects are built on federal land an equal amount of acres must be leased for fossil fuel development.

Then there’s Texas — you know, the state you don’t want to “mess with.” The state whose deregulated “Goldilocks” energy infrastructure is so unreliable it can’t function if it’s too hot or too cold.

Again, they have a radical right-wing governor claiming states’ rights and independence from the federal government and the Constitution — well, until the lights go out, the streets flood, and their people are left desperate for help.

Then, old Uncle Sam doesn’t seem so bad as the billions of federal relief dollars roll in — much of it generated by the “coastal elites” so constantly disparaged by the “independent” Texans.

Say what you want about Joe Biden, but his long experience in national policy is serving these Southern ingrates well in their time of great need. Unlike his predecessor, who threatened to withhold federal coronavirus relief funds from “blue states,” Biden doesn’t run the presidency like a mob boss, but fulfills his role as the nation’s leader to serve all the people, regardless of political affiliation.

There’s great wisdom in “united we stand, divided we fall.” As once again illustrated by the ravages of ever-more-powerful superstorms, it’s long past time that these insurrectionists and rebel politicians realize they’d be absolutely toast without the aid of the federal government — and start acting like part of the Union, not the foolish and failed revolutionaries they pretend to be.

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By now it’s becoming undeniable that mankind is not succeeding at mitigating the planetary consequences of our continuous and increasing pollution of Earth’s natural systems. From mountaintop to ocean shore to the upper atmosphere, the deleterious effects are stacking up and interacting in ways we seem incapable of understanding or positively influencing. And no, it doesn’t take a genius to see the changes all around us — just a firm grasp of the obvious.

Of course the dire straits caused by the Colorado River’s desiccation are well-known after a summer in which the largest reservoirs in the nation are approaching dead pool — the condition where there’s no longer enough water to reach the outlets in the dams. For the 40 million people who rely on that water for domestic, agricultural and industrial use, there’s simply no getting around the reality that climate change is leaving them, literally, high and dry.

It would be one thing if we could simply say “well, it’s a dry year in the West” — but that’s a great simplification given lie by the equally dire conditions afflicting major rivers across the globe. The great Yangtze River in China, the third longest river in the world at 3,975 miles, is drying up. The Yangtze provides water to an estimated 400 million Chinese (more than the entire population of the U.S.) but is so low it’s “affecting hydropower, shipping routes, limiting drinking water supplies, and even revealing previously submerged Buddhist statues.” The reason? Higher than normal temperatures and “record-breaking drought.”

Or how about the “beautiful blue Danube” that is now so low WWII Nazi warships are emerging from the receding waters, the famous European river tours are cancelled due to lack of navigable channels as the ancillary effects continue to spread. According to a recent report by the International Commission for the Protection of the Danube River, “more than 60% of land in the European Union and United Kingdom — an area nearly the same size as India (!) — is now affected by drought conditions.”

Speaking of India, the glaciers in the Himalaya’s sky-piercing mountains “are shrinking far more rapidly than glaciers in other parts of the world — a rate of loss the researchers describe as ‘exceptional.’” Like the Yangtze, the rivers fed by those disappearing glaciers provide the “water of life” for hundreds of millions of people. Yet, as reported by the American Museum of Natural History “in dry seasons, the Ganges no longer reaches the sea.”

The list goes on and on. The Nile, second longest river on the planet: “The water situation in Egypt is critical, Minister of Water Resources and Irrigation Muhammad Abdel Ati told Al Monitor. “We have reached a point where the available water quantities set the limits for economic development. We have become one of the driest countries in the world.”

The Amazon, Earth’s longest river that drains a vast tropical rainforest? Check the BBC’s article: “Drought robs Amazon communities of ‘life-giving’ river.” It’s heartbreaking, particularly for the indigenous people who have relied on the river for thousands of years.

Even in Montana, home to the headwater rivers draining both sides of the Continental Divide, despite a cool, wet spring, our rivers are now too hot and too low bringing fishing restrictions and closures to our world-famous trout waters.

Simply put, when the planet’s major rivers run dry, life as we know it ends. There’s no mystery here, yet our clownish politicians continue to deal with our most critical, life-supporting resources like some kind of a blue vs red game. It is not — as a firm grasp of the obvious makes abundantly clear.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by George Ochenski.

Gallatin River, near Big Sky. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.

The latest national “news” that extremely wealthy people are buying up Montana and the West was about as revealing to Montanans as telling us the sky is blue. We know, we live here, and we see it every day. While many laud the benefits of such economic activity, the very real consequences are stacking up – and nowhere is it more obvious than in the destruction of the world-famous Gallatin River that just turned neon green downstream from Big Sky for the fifth year in a row.

It was way back in 1970 that Chet Huntley, a Montana native and famous anchor for the national Huntley-Brinkley Report, went all in on the development of a high-end resort on Lone Mountain, located in the headwaters of the West Fork of the Gallatin River. Huntley was the trusted “voice of America,” but had retired from the stress of the nightly newscast saying he wanted to “get these damn deadlines off my neck.”

Old Chet told us Montanans who were present at the pre-construction public meetings that Big Sky was going to be a “place for regular Montanans to go skiing.” But Chet was lying through his teeth. That was evident to anyone looking at who was putting up the money for the venture. That would be the Chrysler Realty Corp., General Electric Pension Fund, Burlington Northern, and the Montana Power Co. to name a few. And not only did they get everything they wanted, Chet even “cajoled two Montana governors, obtaining permission for the resort to make use of the state’s nickname, Big Sky.”

At that time, there was virtually no development except for a couple of dude ranches between Four Corners and West Yellowstone. From its headwaters in Yellowstone National Park the Gallatin ran so clean and pure you could drink a handful of cold and delicious water right out of the stream while flyfishing without a worry that it might be polluted.

Many Montanans voiced very real concerns at the beginning of the Big Sky venture about just how many roads, homes, hotels, golf courses, shops, and ski areas you could cram into a narrow, rock-lined canyon without doing serious damage to the area’s lands, waters, and wildlife. In those days, as Montanans with good memories will recall, wildlife in the canyon was abundant, with herds of big horn sheep and moose often wandering down to the river.

Turns out Montanans were fully justified in their concerns for the river and lands they loved. We were, of course, told that our regulatory agencies wouldn’t allow damaging development…and like Chet Huntley, they, too, lied through their teeth. There was no zoning, there were no regulations on how many septic systems could be installed and the regulations that did exist were routinely weakened by developers seeking the enormous profits such a high-end development on Lone Mountain — situated in pristine wilderness — would generate.

Fifty years later we get today’s tragic situation of a neon green Gallatin River directly downstream from the Big Sky, Yellowstone Club, Moonlight Basin and Spanish Peaks developments. Thirty years ago the famous flyfishing footage used in “A River Runs Through It” was filmed on the Gallatin — but nowadays it’s more like “a river of sewage runs through it.”

It’s ironic that while Huntley was pushing Big Sky Montanans were adopting a new Constitution stating: “The state and each person shall maintain and improve a clean and healthful environment in Montana for present and future generations” — a mandate Montana has sadly failed to meet in the past and continues to shirk in the present as the Gallatin turns neon green.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by George Ochenski.

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It’s fair to say the Trumpers, with their delusional denial of both the climate crisis and the election outcome, are having a tough time these days. The planet is burning with new temperature records — and the subsequent disasters — mounting every day. In the meantime, the House committee investigating the January 6 insurrection released yet more damning evidence of Trump’s dereliction of duty from more credible witnesses, videos, emails and texts.

It’s easy to recall how Trump claimed global warming was a “Chinese hoax” that, according to his twisted view of the world, was intended to give China an economic advantage over the U.S. Apparently the idea that some of our political leaders — and certainly the majority of our citizens — desperately want to take action to address the climate crisis is antithetical to the “take it all while you can get it” self-acknowledged greed of the former president.

But the “chickens have come home to roost” on that issue — and it’s so hot they’re laying hard-boiled eggs. The airports in Britain (which is an island in the middle of the ocean) had to be shut down because the runways were melting in the hottest temperatures ever recorded there. So were the roads — and the railways were closed because the tracks are warping in the extreme triple digit heat. And they’re wrapping the London Bridge in tin foil because the cast iron is cracking in the heat.

In the meantime, Europe is burning with unprecedented wildfires scorching its remaining forests, grasslands, and even vineyards. Reservoirs are drained, crops are dead, and cheese-makers fear there won’t even be enough forage to produce milk for their famous parmesan.

Here in the U.S. 100 million Americans are under “heat emergency” warnings for extended triple-digit temperatures. It’s so hot and dry in Texas the ground is shifting and breaking water mains — which only exacerbates their dire water shortage – and “drill, baby, drill” isn’t saving them, nor is their deregulated power system.

While the global consequences of Trump’s Big Lie on the climate crisis are dominating headlines around the planet, his other Big Lie of a stolen election – and the dire consequences for American democracy — are hammered home once again.

In its last meeting for the summer, the House committee investigating Trump’s attempted January 6 insurrection concentrated on just what the worst president in U.S. history was doing while his minions ravaged the Capitol and almost succeeded in hanging Vice President Mike Pence.

And what was that, exactly? Well, it appears from all the evidence that he was sitting in the dining room watching Fox News on television for over three hours and did nothing to stop the violent attack on the Capitol. Nothing to preserve Congress. Nothing to cease the injuries and destruction. And nothing whatsoever to acknowledge he lost the election and allow the constitutional process for a peaceful transfer of power to go forward.

Besides refusing the advice of each and every one of the high level staffers to call off the insurrection he incited further violence with tweets. He didn’t listen to Homeland Security, the Pentagon, or the FBI — nor did he call them to assist in stopping the carnage. Instead, he spent his time calling Republican senators hoping they would stop the certification of the electoral vote — the same senators who had just fled the Capitol in fear of his out-of-control mob.

So now Trump’s climate and election deniers undeniably take their tragic place in infamy. One can only wonder how they were suckered into ever believing Trump’s endless, baseless, and violence-inducing lies — or how they continue to do so.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by George Ochenski.

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Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

The Supreme Court’s decision to abandon 50 years of judicial precedent on a woman’s constitutional right to abortion is sending gigantic shock waves across the nation and through the legal system. Add that to the absolutely damning evidence of Donald Trump’s treasonous attempt to overthrow American democracy in a planned and executed coup. Combined, these judicial and political atrocities send but one message to our already terribly divided nation — brace for impact!

No one who watched, listened to, or read about the Jan. 6 committee’s most recent hearing could possibly believe Trump’s big lie of a stolen election for one second. The Attorney General, acting Attorney General, and the entire top echelon of the U.S. Department of Justice did their jobs, investigated the potential for voter fraud across the nation and came to a unanimous agreement on one thing — there was no evidence of any actions by any individuals in any state, county, or municipality that could possibly affect the reality that Donald Trump simply lost his re-election bid.

Despite threats of physical violence — including intrusions into the homes of voting election officials — the witnesses at the hearing bravely told the nation that they stood their ground, followed the law, and did their jobs. Hardcore Republican conservatives — who admitted they wanted Trump to win — testified that they could not and would not break their oaths to uphold the constitution to cast doubt on the integrity of the American election system for Donald Trump. Even when threatened with dismissal and replacement they refused to claim there was a shred of truth in Trump’s Big Lie — despite his demand that they “just say that the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican congressmen.”

Nor can anyone possibly believe that a handful of Republicans in Congress would have asked for a blanket pardon from Trump before he left office unless they knew what they had done was not just wrong, not just antithetical to democracy, but carried the potential for criminal indictment, trial, and imprisonment. They absolutely knew they tried to overthrow the legitimate government of this nation and they feared they would be held accountable for their treasonous crimes.

But that was not the last assault on the nation when, only a day later, the Supreme Court decided women no longer have the right to control their own bodies, futures, or choices. In what can only be described as a shocking attempt to transform American democracy into a sick religious theocracy, the court’s conservative majority decided they have the right to control the most private aspects of every individual’s life. Justice Clarence Thomas — whose wife, Ginni, has been implicated with plotting and encouraging the Jan. 6 coup attempt — went even further to suggest Americans should no longer be allowed to marry whom they love or access and use contraceptives.

Much like Trump’s heinous attempt to overthrow the American electoral system, striking down Roe v. Wade not only casts aside foundational societal rights, it throws the entire basis of judicial precedent into chaos. Without sound assurance that decided law has some permanence we are left staring into a very uncertain future — where any precedent by which our society operates may disappear on the whim of a few political appointees put in place by the most corrupt president in our long history.

At this desperate juncture in American democracy, our nation has now been plunged into societal upheaval the severity of which we haven’t experienced since the brave struggles for abortion, voting, and civil rights half a century ago — and “Brace for Impact!” is no overstatement.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by George Ochenski.

Yellowstone flooding. Photo: National Park Service.

Humans have a tendency to believe everything will be pretty much the same in the future as it has been in the past. No surprise since generally speaking that was pretty true in the past and while things changed, they did not change so radically or with such severe consequences as they are now. Scientists, who have long warned about the unpredictability of a human-impacted global climate now point to the extreme conditions seen in Montana while the southern half of the nation bakes in an unprecedented heat wave as conclusive proof that the “new normal” will actually be the “new abnormal.”

Four months ago Montana was looking at going into its second year of extreme drought. Municipalities were warning their citizens that water supplies were dreadfully low with reservoirs, lakes and rivers all well below long-term average levels. Irrigation districts were imposing significant cuts in how much water could be expected to be delivered given the dwindling snowpack in the mountains and the predicted higher than usual temperatures.

But then came the “atmospheric river” flowing into the Northwest, dropping feet of snow in the mountains, inches of rain at a time, and suddenly Montana and its neighboring states to the west were looking at relief from the drought that had been plaguing the area and predicted to get worse.

If a little moisture was a good thing, more was even better and a greening Montana portended a more “normal” summer — like in the old days — when the skies were not cloudy all day with thick smoke from climate-driven wildfires. Until the precipitation didn’t stop, the days stayed cool and the late but welcome snows continued to fall in the mountains.

And then came the torrential rains on the snowpack. The flooding that followed was devastating as the Yellowstone River raged to record heights and swept the works of man away like motes of dust. Roads, buildings, bridges, and trees were carried away in the deluge as the power of moving water would not be denied.

In last year’s Greater Yellowstone Climate Assessment, the prediction by scientists of temperature and precipitation extremes turned out to be uncannily correct. And the basis of it all was summed up in one sentence. “Humans are contributing substantially to global warming and climate change through greenhouse gas emissions, especially from the burning of fossil fuels.”

Another recent article put it this way: “The latest update in the U.S. Drought Monitor on Thursday showed the major contrast between the wet Northwest and the hot and dry Southwest. This feast-or-famine contrast is a pattern the climate crisis tends to amplify: extremes on both ends of the spectrum, with the pendulum sometimes swinging suddenly from one side to the other.”

Yet, many of our politicians and government agencies continue to operate as if the way things were are the way things will be in the future…basically denying the ever-increasing severity of climate change induced weather events. But denying our impact on the climate, will not make the associated problems just go away. They continue to extensively log our national forests — the best, cheapest, most reliable filters for atmospheric carbon dioxide — under the phony rubric of “restoration.” In extreme cases, they defend and promote the burning of more fossil fuels — the exact opposite of what must be done.

The stark choice lies before us — change or somehow struggle to survive within the parameters of “extremes on both ends of the spectrum.” As the recent calamities show, the “new normal” is actually the “new abnormal” — and that makes for a very uncertain future.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by George Ochenski.

Photograph Source: Tyler Merbler – CC BY 2.0

The nation and its citizens have been assailed by lies, distortions, and outright fictions since the polls closed on election day in 2020. We have been told the election was stolen, that ballot boxes were stuffed, that voting machines were corrupted, and that the candidate who lost by 7 million votes didn’t actually lose.

But now, as it must and always will, the truth comes out and is being revealed in all its grim details by the Jan. 6 committee that has spent the last year investigating the unprecedented storming of the nation’s Capitol in Trump’s failed attempt to bring a third-world coup to American democracy.

The truth is not pretty — not by any stretch of the imagination. It is, in fact, very difficult to watch the frenzied, deluded mob beat police officers, smash windows, and ransack the Capitol’s hallowed halls. Subsequent attempts by desperate Trumpist Republicans to downplay the attempted coup as some kind of tourist stroll are utterly gutted by the undeniable visual evidence. You can believe your eyes, or you can believe their lies.

Nor was this simply a demonstration that “got out of hand.” Far from it. As revealed in the first hearing by Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney, who is also the vice-chair of the committee, Jan. 6 was the culmination of Trump’s “seven part plan” for the attempted coup led by the extremist gang who dub themselves the Proud Boys.

There was nothing to be proud of, however, in their violent attempt to overturn a legitimate election for the sole purpose of keeping a deranged loser in power after being soundly rejected by the nation’s voters.

As explained in grueling detail, the leaders of the coup came dressed for battle — not a stroll through the statuary hall. They carried radios, wore ballistic vests, helmets, and carried weapons including disabling pepper spray which was used against the Capitol police.

And while the havoc was unleashed, the individual most responsible for spreading the lies of a corrupted “stolen” election not only allowed the riot and damage to proceed unabated, he cheered them on. As now revealed, his hate-filled rant included a call to hang Vice-President Mike Pence whom he decided “deserved it” for not taking the totally illegal action to halt the certification of the electoral vote by Congress.

Thursday’s prime time hearing was just the first, not the last, of the revelations into the utter perfidy of Trump’s evil intent to delude his supporters and use them as pawns to wreak what two witnesses to the violence referred to as “carnage” in the nation’s capital.

The hearings will continue next week and we can expect more testimony, much of it being revealed for the first time, to finally surface into the public’s view. And that brings the Republican Party to its own “moment of truth.”

Given the facts — not allegations — Republicans are going to have to admit that they have been played for suckers by the great grifter. They were lied to from the start and in accepting those lies because they feared their misled voters, they became willing accomplices to a shameful attack on our historic tradition of peacefully transferring power following national elections.

Sitting presidents are immune from prosecution. But Trump is no longer president — and given the undeniable proof of his criminal intent he should be sentenced to prison, his assets seized and distributed to the still-suffering victims of his pre-meditated violence. This isn’t about political parties anymore, it’s about the future of American democracy — and the will to do right in the face of great wrong.

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Warning sign along the Firehole River, Yellowstone National Park. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.

Memorial Day weekend is generally considered the start of the “summer season” in most of the U.S. Finally warm enough to get out in nature and do the zillion things people do for outdoor recreation. But it’s worth wondering, as the crowds swell, whether or not the diverse “great outdoors” can take the ever-mounting pressures on what is a diminishing, not growing, resource base.

For decades many conservation organizations have posited that if more people use our public lands and waters it will result in more people appreciating those resources and subsequently supporting their conservation.

It’s a handy theory — and certainly has a couple of advantages. First, as more wealthy out-of-staters buy up huge chunks of Montana to close off for their private hunting and fishing reserves, they make an inviting target to oppose — although out-of-staters are certainly not the only ones trying to close off public land access.

Second, it’s a lot easier to expound a commitment to public access than it is to take on the actual on-going and increasing abuses of public lands and waters. It’s difficult and expensive to file lawsuits to protect national forests or call for irrigators to leave water instream for fish and aquatic ecosystems. Yet, without our true conservation advocates, there wouldn’t be much benefit to having access to clearcut stumpfields, dewatered streams, and destroyed ecosystems that once supported now-endangered species.

While examples of the theory that more use equals more protection are glaringly absent, the opposite is not true. It doesn’t take long to go to your favorite park, forest, or river and note the abuses heaped upon it. Garbage and toilet paper everywhere, chopped down trees to make room for huge RVs, deeply rutted “troads” and trails, dog droppings, and fire rings filled with broken bottles. On the rivers and lakes, it’s fishing line, often with lures, hooks and sinkers still attached, just waiting to snag waterfowl and riparian birds, and of course the ubiquitous cans and bottles on the riverbed. In the case of our heavily-fished rivers, it’s not unusual these days to see trout coated with fungus from being handled so much and so long for the apparently obligatory social media posts.

Considering more than 10 million people visited Montana last year it’s absolutely ludicrous to believe they all were so aware and concerned that they actually increased the conservation of public lands, waters, and the fish and wildlife that rely on them for existence. It would be very naive to think that people who come from places in which the natural environment has been largely extirpated and replaced by human activities would be familiar with acceptable conservation practices on Montana’s public lands and waters.

Yet somehow, this observable reality has taken a back seat to marketing and over-the-top promotion of stuffing more and more people on a limited resource base. And even when the law specifically says “the legislature finds it necessary to require the department of fish, wildlife, and parks to place maintenance as a priority over additional development at all state parks and fishing access sites” the agency — as well as its “partners” — continue to push for ever more development instead of taking care of existing resources.

The choice is ours. We can continue to promote, advertise, and expound the false theory that more “access” a.k.a. “use” is better for our public lands and waters — or we can objectively consider the on-going abuses and realize the opposite is actually true. Right now that equation is seriously out of balance – and the consequences of not restoring that balance means a degraded future for Montana.

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The tremors from the early leak of Supreme Court Justice Alito’s brutal opinion attacking the long-settled right of women to determine if and when to end a pregnancy are shaking the nation like an earthquake. After four long years of Trump’s widespread denigration of women we now bear further denigration by his judicial appointees. And once again, it illustrates the sad condition of America’s misplaced priorities.

Make no mistake about it, Alito’s blunder has ignited a wildfire of fully justified anger, not just in the women who see their most personal decision taken away from them, but in the more than 70% of the nation’s population that supports a woman’s right to reproductive choice.

As citizens are being financially raped by oil and gas megacorporations raking in record profits by falsely blaming the war in Ukraine, our politicians claim they can’t interfere in the so-called “free market.” But they can demand that a woman who has been raped must carry her rapist’s child to term.

These same faux leaders can’t control the destruction of the climate due to highly-polluting fossil fuel use by mandating higher mileage vehicles, claiming it would take away “consumer choice.” But they willingly take away a woman’s choice of what to do with her own body.

They wail at the invasion of the Supreme Court’s privacy by Alito’s leaked draft decision. But they have no problem invading the privacy of a woman’s most private personal decision.

They raise their religion as if it were a flag and demand that all abide by its artificial strictures on who one can or can’t love. But they ignore the very explicit separation of church and state in the Constitution they claim does not support the individual right to privacy of one’s own body.

They can’t manage to keep our air or water clean enough to provide a livable environment for our children and their parents. But they can outlaw a safe and effective medical procedure to end an unwanted pregnancy.

They can’t provide affordable health care, housing, or income equality for increasingly financially-stressed citizens. But they can demand women deliver unwanted children — and then turn their backs on them once born.

They can wave the false flag of “personal freedumb” to stop businesses from providing a medically safe working environment for staff and patrons during a pandemic. But they can rule that personal freedom ends at the womb.

They can’t outlaw the toxic and carcinogenic herbicides, pesticides, and chemicals running rampant in our food chain. But they can tell a woman it’s illegal to order a medically-safe abortion-inducing pharmaceutical through the mail.

They have no trouble dictating which books can or can’t be read or what schools can or cannot teach about history because it might make white children feel guilty about slavery. But they can tell transgender kids which bathroom they can or cannot use despite the severe emotional damage that might inflict.

They can’t tell us what happened to the billions of dollars that disappeared from the Pentagon’s incredibly bloated budget. But they can access your phone records to see if you were searching online for an abortion provider or drug.

The simple truth is that our nation’s priorities have been out of whack for a long time and are getting worse, not better, as our so-called “leaders” continue to kow-tow to wealth and power while ignoring the masses crying for help.

If there’s anything good about Alito’s twisted ruling, it’s that perhaps Americans will finally stand up and say “we won’t take it anymore” — and it’s long past time we did just that.

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Montanans were justifiably shocked when the news broke last week that Governor Gianforte stopped the Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks from enforcing its instream flow water rights on the nationally famous Smith River as well as the Shields River. Thanks to the “right to know” provision in Montana’s Constitution reporters were able to get the records revealing that the governor betrayed both his Bible-sworn Oath of Office to uphold the Montana Constitution as well as the Public Trust Doctrine, in which he serves as trustee to preserve our publicly-owned rivers and their world-renowned wild trout fisheries.

To make a long and complex story much shorter, Montana allocates water rights based on the Doctrine of Prior Appropriation — which means those who divert water from rivers, lakes, and streams for beneficial uses have rights to the water that are prioritized as “first in time, first in right.” Simply put, those who claimed their rights first have “senior” rights to the “junior” rights that were claimed later.

It’s no secret that Montana’s rivers, like most of the West, are over-appropriated — meaning more water rights have been claimed than there is water in the river. During the severe drought that gripped the state last year and has worsened this year, the senior water rights holders can “put a call” on their rights and legally require upstream junior users to cease diversion until the senior rights are fulfilled.

For many years the concept of holding water rights for instream flows — to protect the health of the river, aquatic ecosystems, fish and recreation — were not legally recognized. But in 1969 Montana filed “Murphy Rights” that gave the state allocations on 12 major rivers, including the Smith. While these rights are junior compared to many of the water rights filed in the 1800s, they nonetheless are senior to the water rights filed after that time — of which there are 82 on the Smith and 44 on the Shields rivers.

When the flows on the Smith and Shields dropped due to lack of runoff from low mountain snowpack, Fish, Wildlife and Parks did what the agency should have done — prepared to put a call on its instream flow water rights to preserve the rivers, their fisheries and ecosystems.

But before that happened, Gianforte stepped in and ordered the agency to halt. In effect, the governor unilaterally decided to forego both his and the state’s responsibility to preserve the public’s rivers in a stunning dereliction of duty and betrayal of the state’s Constitutional mandate that: “The state and each person shall maintain and improve a clean and healthful environment in Montana for present and future generations.” (Art. IX, Sec. 1)

Obviously, a river with little or no water in it is neither clean nor healthful. When rivers are dewatered the effects are significant. Low flows and high temperatures force smaller fish into the deeper holes where they are summarily eaten by the larger fish they would normally avoid by remaining in shallow water and side-channels. When flows fall even further and water temperatures exceed the tolerance of cold-water fish like trout, the big fish die, too.

It takes a black heart to knowingly sign a death warrant on a Montana trout stream as Gianforte did. But then again, this is a guy who shoots trapped, treed, and collared Yellowstone National Park research wildlife…so what’s a few fish, ehh?

Last year was brutal on Montana’s prized wild trout rivers and this year promises to be even worse — especially with a governor who so willingly betrays his public trust and constitutional responsibilities.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by George Ochenski.

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Last week Larry Fink, the CEO of BlackRock, sent the firm’s stockholders a letter in which he bluntly stated: “The Russian invasion of Ukraine has put an end to the globalization we have experienced over the last three decades.” BlackRock is the world’s largest asset management firm — and with more than $10 trillion in assets, one might just guess they know a little something about globalization.

There’s no doubt that the war in Ukraine is an unmitigated tragedy — not just the horrific loss of lives and destruction of entire cities, but the return of a land war in Europe where, after thousands of years of wars, there was hope the world had seen the last of senseless invasions and the needless slaughter of innocents.

Fink posits that the Ukraine war will be the final straw that breaks the back of globalization due to the economic sanctions that have resulted in Russia’s isolation from the global marketplace. In turn, he says the resulting breakdown in global supply chains from the war, as well as the global pandemic, will “prompt companies and governments worldwide to reevaluate their dependencies and reanalyze their manufacturing and assembly footprints.”

In the case of Russia, Fink says the sanctions have disrupted international export markets and points to the skyrocketing price of oil as a sign that “energy security has now joined the energy transition as a top global priority.”

For many, the death of globalization “as we know it” will be a welcome outcome to the dark clouds of pandemic and war. After all, globalization is just a sanitized term to describe the ugly truth of the market system in which human and natural resources are exploited by wealthy nations that simply go to places with the fewest human rights and/or environmental regulations to obtain their goods — be it products of brutal sweatshops or oil, gas, and minerals. The resulting human and ecological disasters are then simply written off as the “price of doing business” in the global marketplace.

Child labor or the heartbreaking destruction of the Niger delta ecosystem by rapacious oil companies make the headlines for a short period of time, but in the end the march of globalization simply grinds the harsh reality of modern day colonialism under the wheels of so-called “progress” in which “buy low, sell high” is the mantra.

Nonetheless, the incredibly complex mechanism of globalization — buying, shipping, and selling a vast array of products and essential materials — has always had a fatal flaw those making huge profits were unwilling to address. In fact, they did just the opposite — moving to less-secure “as needed” delivery to replace warehousing parts and supplies.

But Entropy, the Third Law of Thermodynamics, holds that the universe continually moves toward chaos, not order, and that the bigger and more complex the system, the more energy it takes to maintain order and the more likely it is to break down. No need to debate the veracity of that conclusion, as recent world events have brutally proven.

Fink believes the breakdown of global supply chains will lead companies to rely more on domestic “onshore or nearshore” instead of less reliable long-distance supply chains. He says the good news is: “Longer-term, I believe that recent events will actually accelerate the shift toward greener sources of energy in many parts of the world.”

Given that our planet is now choking on human-caused fossil fuel pollution, if Fink is right, the decline of extremely energy intensive globalization would be a welcome turn to a sustainable future — and the long-overdue demise of human and resource colonization.

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by George Ochenski

Right when you think the Republican-dominated Montana legislature and governor can’t get any worse, they do. A number of bills that Gov. Greg Gianforte happily signed into law are already facing court challenges, so to stack the deck in their favor, both the governor and the legislature have launched a new and shameless attack on the judiciary — the “separate but equal” branch of government that is likely to toss their unconstitutional laws in the garbage where they belong.

The initial volley in this highly partisan battle was launched when the legislature passed a bill giving the governor carte blanche authority to appoint judges rather than pick from a list of candidates vetted by the non-partisan Judicial Nominating Committee, which has operated successfully for decades. As one attorney friend quipped: “This means the governor can pick the absolutely worst, most incompetent lawyer, and providing they’re sufficiently conservative and/or made a big campaign contribution, then he can appoint them to sit in judgment over the most serious issues facing Montanans, their lives, businesses, homes and families.”

Indeed, it’s hard to justify how paranoid Montana’s Republicans have become over the very processes — like voting — that have served the state well throughout its history. But taking a page from the Trump-McConnell playbook, they seem intent on launching a pogrom to eliminate judges they feel are too liberal and pack the courts with conservatives.

The legislators pushing the measures have been blunt in their intention to politicize the judiciary — and in their disregard for constitutionality. As reported last week, Senate Majority Leader Cary Smith told the Senate Judiciary Committee: “The intent of the bill is to have another plan if Senate Bill 140 is determined to be unconstitutional. The intent of the bill is to give the governor a wider range of ability to make selections that he would prefer to have appointed to these judicial positions. In the past we’ve had, it’s kind of stacked the other way, and we’ve ended up with quite a few judges that a lot of us would have considered to be too liberal. This gives the governor a chance to have the other side of the equation represented better and we think we have an opportunity to change the status we have with the courts and have more conservative, more people that are appointed that would be more in line with what a lot of us think we need to do to make changes in the court.”

But here’s the rub. Judges cannot make or amend laws, they must rule on the plain language of the statute — and the Montana Supreme Court is the ultimate decider of whether any given state law is constitutional. This separation of powers is essential to our system of government and provides the “checks and balances” to ensure the other branches of government are acting within the boundaries of our constitution and legal system.

Given the sheer volume of constitutionally questionable laws emanating from this legislature, it’s perhaps no wonder they want to “change the courts.” From discriminating against individuals on the basis of their sexual orientation to interfering in private contracts, this year’s legislature is setting new records for law-making incompetence.

Make no mistake, when you put people who are anti-government in charge of government, you can expect them to try to cripple and destroy government in any way possible. We saw it in the disgraced former president and we’re seeing it now, more’s the pity, in the Montana legislature’s and governor’s brazen and unwarranted attack on the independence of the judiciary.

Thankfully, the disastrous and benighted Montana legislative session is limping towards its ignominious conclusion, which cannot come soon enough for many, many Montanans. Meanwhile, in Congress Democrat “centrists” like Sen. Joe Manchin threaten to hold up the major measures President Biden is seeking to address the tidal wave of very serious threats to the nation and our people unless Republicans go along — a futile and rather naive approach as the dregs of Trumpism continue to plague a once-serious political party. And over it all, a new report by the nation’s top intelligence officials tells us the unvarnished truth about the future — and it says the national and global crises are piling up and our chance to survive, let alone prosper, means taking real actions now, not just talking about it. And time, as they say, is of the essence.

For those who think we will somehow deal with the increasingly disastrous effects of climate change, global pandemics, rampant inequality and international tensions by waving a flag for one nation or political party, the National Intelligence Council’s “Global Trends 2040” report will be a harsh awakening to reality. As the subtitle bluntly puts it: “A more contested future” looms large and unavoidable for mankind.

Indeed, after decades of warnings of the impending environmental and economic cataclysm wrought by human-caused atmospheric pollution with the by-products of our industrialized societies, that future has arrived. Just last week the Mauna Loa Observatory on Hawaii’s Big Island recorded carbon dioxide (CO2) levels of more than 420 parts per million, the highest levels ever in human history and twice the pre-industrial levels of this potent greenhouse gas.

But we didn’t need a number to realize the global warming predictions are coming true. The Atlantic Current is the slowest it’s been in 1,600 years. Sweeping warm water up from the Gulf all the way to Greenland, the effects of the current’s changes and resulting impacts are global in scope. Meanwhile, the ice caps are melting — and we surely don’t need a study to tell us Montana’s glaciers are disappearing at an alarming rate. Shorter, warmer winters; longer, hotter summers; drought and wildfires, and increasingly powerful and destructive storms are real manifestations of our troubles — not politically motivated hype, as some would have us believe.

Which brings us to the seminal questions: What are we going to do about it and who is going to do it? For the last four years, our nation not only didn’t move forward in addressing these environmental challenges, it exacerbated them through the “regulatory rollbacks” enacted by our delusional former president. Likewise, his tax giveaways to the already wealthy and fiscal policies have exacerbated the impending crisis of economic inequality. He’s gone, but the future will pay for his folly.

Now, however, comes a new president in Joe Biden and a new realization by the leaders of the Democratic majorities in Congress that we have frittered away far too many opportunities and dodged too many responsibilities while hiding behind the sorry excuse of “bipartisan solutions” to the nation’s and planet’s increasingly unavoidable problems.

If “centrist Democrat” Joe Manchin thinks the out-of-work coal miners in West Virginia are sitting around debating the merits of ending the filibuster or using reconciliation to pass Biden’s much-needed economic aid to feed their families, educate their children, get health care, reclaim their mine-ravaged lands, and receive the retraining they’ll need as industries leave coal behind, the only one he’s fooling is himself. Time, not cheap political theater, is of the essence now — and the simple truth is we are out of time.

From the state house to Congress, the GOP is in a tailspin of horrific disarray, supporting and passing laws to curtail voting rights, discriminate against virtually everyone who doesn’t fit their image of “us” and promoting unfounded hatred and violence against “them.” In the meantime, what’s left of their shattered post-Trump ideology seems incapable of grasping just how deep they are in the whirlpool of rampant hypocrisy.

Not a single Republican member of Congress voted for the massive COVID relief bill – not one. Why they wouldn’t want to help their own constituents in one of the most difficult periods in the history of the nation remains unknown, although they did blather something about liberal giveaways.

Yet here in Montana one of the worst, least-experienced and most error-prone legislatures in memory would have exactly no chance of balancing the budget as required by our state Constitution without the billions of dollars now flowing into the state from the same measures the Republicans in Montana’s congressional delegation refused to support.

But the vast sweep of Republican hypocrisy doesn’t end there. After years of denigrating government, trying to “starve” it with budget cuts and tax breaks for the already wealthy, we now have the sorry attempt to mandate citizens must “pay to play” to submit comments on the management of our publicly-owned resources.

In this case it’s St. Regis Republican Rep. Denley Loge bringing House Bill 695 late in the session to charge citizens a fee to submit comments on the state’s environmental analysis prior to the government commencing actions on projects that may affect the environment.

Montana’s Constitution guarantees its citizens the “inalienable right to a clean and healthful environment” — and it’s unconscionable to make citizens pay to take part in ensuring our government doesn’t violate that right. While that’s bad enough, it also foolishly negates the value of the pool of knowledge that Montanans possess about their own landscapes, rivers, lakes and forests. Why would any “less government” Republican want to allow a government bureaucracy to unilaterally make important decisions while limiting the important step of public review and comment? Indeed, the whirlpool of Republican hypocrisy seems to have no bottom.

Then there’s Gov. Greg Gianforte who, despite being a member of the “law and order party,” seems to have a tough time following the law; although he’s very good at garnering terrible national publicity for Montanans and our state for such despicable acts as illegally shooting a collared Yellowstone wolf in a trap.

Never fear, fellow Montanans, we’ll make it through the next four years just like we made it through the last four years of Donald Trump’s utter inability to govern the nation. But make no mistake, there are very good reasons voters tossed Trump out of the White House. And as the tended and unintended consequences from the hypocrisy and incompetence of Montana’s current passel of Republican leaders becomes unbearable, they may well follow their not-so-great leader down the path of historic infamy.

Last week’s astounding pronouncements from Montana’s Republican congressional members, Rep. Matt Rosendale and Sen. Steve Daines, left Montanans, including their fellow Republicans, wondering what planet these guys are living on. Both protested against the practice of designating specific projects for funding instead of giving a blank check to government agencies to spend as they wish. And both referred to Congress as “the swamp.” Given they are both supposed to be serving the people of Montana and the United States, their nonsensical comments amounted to little more than an odoriferous leaking of partisan swamp gas.

Right out of the chute, it’s almost impossible to read their comments without laughing. As Lee reporter Tom Lutey wrote in his excellent and in-depth article, Daines claims: “Earmarks are a swampy, corrupt D.C. practice that promotes pay-for-play behavior. This toxic culture does nothing but allow Washington elites to fund their pet projects on the Montana taxpayer’s dime, which is why I have introduced legislation to permanently ban this corrupt practice.” Meanwhile, although Rosendale refused to be interviewed, his office unleashed this gaseous bubble: “Rep. Rosendale campaigned on draining the swamp, not becoming a part of it.”

Mind you, this blather comes following four long years of the former occupant of the White House supposedly “draining the swamp.” Of course it’s rather common knowledge that no administration in recent history has contained as many swamp creatures as Trump’s, which was rife with industry lobbyists running agencies they routinely opposed for their corporate clients. But hey, no need to face the truth when it’s so much easier to just keep repeating the lies.

That said, Daines and Rosendale’s comments brought great consternation to their fellow Republicans who are actually trying to govern. For instance, take the comments of Bill Cole, Republican mayor of Billings, Montana’s largest town. “If we do not have anyone in the House to make requests to House Appropriations, the dollars that might have gone to Billings will instead go to Boise, Baton Rouge or Boston, and I doubt they’ll even send us a thank-you card.”

Juxtaposition that reality with the fact Rosendale, one of the 14 House Freedom Caucus members, has vowed to not participate in the process. Then consider that the majority of the 211 Republican House members voted to, in fact, support the earmarks. Who is out of step here do you suppose? Then again, maybe swamp gas has deleterious side effects on logic circuits.

Even Cy Jamison, Republican lobbyist and former head of the Bureau of Land Management with 40 years of experience in Washington, told reporters: “I always consider myself a conservative when it comes to fiscal issues, but you got to be very practical too. That’s where we’ve lost it.” Indeed, Sen. Lindsey Graham was even more blunt, saying: “Democrats do it; if we don’t do it, we’re stupid.” He also noted that Donald Trump supported earmarks.

What’s at stake here are billions of federal dollars for much-needed Montana infrastructure projects, across-the-board help for Montana’s families, businesses, health and educational systems. Yet Daines and Rosendale are inexplicably putting on some kind of theatrical performance that has absolutely no foundation in the reality of how our fellow citizens get the federal financial assistance they so desperately need and deserve.

Unlike our benighted and addled Republican congressional delegation, swamps actually perform beneficial functions. They hold and clean water by removing nutrients and pollutants while providing a vital niche in their ecosystems. And when they leak swamp gas, it’s simply part of doing their jobs. The same can’t be said of Daines and Rosendale.

Big Hole Valley, Montana. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.

Back in 1989 Montana’s newly-elected governor, Stan Stephens, called a mock session of the Legislature to pass a Centennial Resolution celebrating the state’s first 100 years. True to his roots, the resolution Stephens presented to the legislators lauded the usual extractive industries by which Republicans so often measure success in “taming the West.”

Despite being a mock session, the resolution was open to debate on the floor of the House of Representatives — and that’s where it got real interesting. Rep. Bob Gervais, a member of the Blackfeet Nation, lifted his mic and stood to offer an amendment to the resolution. Looking around the room at his colleagues, Gervais began to speak, opening with “Governor, you forgot something in this resolution — my people.”

A hushed and embarrassed silence descended in the chamber under legendary artist Charlie Russell’s enormous painting titled “Lewis and Clark Meeting Indians at Ross’ Hole.” For indeed, Stephens had completely ignored Montana’s tribal nations as if they never existed.

Rep. Gervais laughingly told how he listened every day to colleagues proudly claim to be “4th or 5th generation Montanans” while, as he said, his people “have been here for ten thousand years.” Then he read his amendment which lauded the time when millions of bison thundered across the plains, the rivers ran clear, the forests stood tall and all the native fish, wildlife, and plants existed as they had for millennia. His amendment was adopted in its entirety.

Comes now another story and reason to celebrate as President Joe Biden’s nominee Deb Haaland is confirmed to be the first woman and Native American to head the massive Department of the Interior. Unlike the “settlers,” as a member of the Laguna Pueblo Nation in what is now New Mexico, Haaland can claim 35 generations of direct line of descent from her ancestors.

Considering the Department of Interior oversees 574 Tribal Nations, it’s a new day from the past administration that denigrated Native Americans by opening their sacred lands to resource extraction and viciously reducing the boundaries of National Monuments dedicated to preserving Tribal traditions. Indeed, Haaland’s confirmation brings pride and hope to America’s first nations.

As noted in a recent Missoulian article quoting Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribal Chairwoman Shelly Fyant: “It gives me chills. Grandmothers all over the world are talking about the shift the world has taken — to have a Native American and a woman to serve an agency that hasn’t always done the greatest job in Indian Country.”

Indeed, given the sweep of Interior’s scope, the comments of Chippewa-Cree Tribal member and Salish-Kootenai College professor Nicole Stiffarm’s are particularly salient. As she told reporters: “There’s a beauty to the way tribal people approach natural resources that’s not present in the mainstream. Resource management is not about fiscal gain. It’s looked at for caring, so these natural resources can then go on to care for your children and grandchildren. The lens of looking at resources outside of their financial gain capabilities has never been done before and it’s going to be added into the equation.”

It’s shameful that Montana’s Republican Sen. Steve Daines fought tooth and nail against Haaland’s confirmation, much as Gov. Stephens simply ignored Montana’s proud Indian heritage. It’s unforgivable given the size of Montana’s Tribal population that Daines so callously disregarded.

But in the end, Daines lost, Haaland was confirmed, and we all — Indians and non-Indians alike — won visionary leadership for the Department of Interior that will see our beautiful state as something besides resources to be looted for short-term gain.

“Wrapped around the axle” is an old saying in Montana that refers to what happens when your truck hooks a piece of old, rusty barbed wire and it “wraps around the axle.” As anyone who’s done it knows, it’s no fun crawling under a rig to unwrap the seriously tightened wire.

But euphemistically, it refers to any situation that has reached a point where forward progress comes to an abrupt halt until you deal with serious problems. And right now, it’s a perfect description of the GOP, the party’s relationship with their former president, and the befuddling actions of Republican members of Congress.

It boggles the mind to think that not one Republican in either the U.S. Senate or House voted for the massive $1.9 trillion COVID relief bill signed into law by President Biden last week. How, one might ask, is it possible to justify these cult-like unified votes against measures that significantly help their constituents? What, there’s not a single Republican out of the nation’s 331 million citizens suffering from the year-long trials and tribulations of the coronavirus pandemic?

The measure contains, among many, many other widespread benefits, serious financial assistance for state and local governments, getting kids back in school safely, helping people meet their rent so they don’t get evicted, supplementing and extending unemployment benefits, child care assistance, and providing relief to businesses from airlines to cross-continent trains to bars and restaurants that have been especially hard hit by pandemic restrictions. Plus it puts real money into the pockets of citizens — money that will roll over into the economy to keep local businesses going, keep the family fed, and the lights on.

While the Republicans pull out their oh-so-phony concerns about fiscal responsibility and the national debt now that there’s a Democrat in the White House, it’s worth remembering they had no such problems when their misfit occupied the Oval Office — and doled out a trillion-dollar tax cut with the lion’s share going to the already wealthy.

And speaking of problems, how wrapped around the axle is the GOP when their Grifter Boy the voters sent packing tells Republican donors not to donate to the Republican National Committee — but to him! Then again, given his enormous personal debt burden accompanied by pending civil and criminal indictments, perhaps he’s decided to change his “America First” scam to the “Me First” scam — which isn’t much of a change now, is it?

Closer to home, the Republican-dominated Montana legislature is not exactly garnering widespread applause for its actions — just the opposite, in fact, as Montanans rightfully wonder at the nutty legislation emanating from the Trumpers in the first half of the session. Far from helping fellow Montanans, so far the focus (if you can call it that) seems to be on doling out favors to special interests and bashing those that don’t fit the Republican ideological mold into which they’re trying very hard to stuff the wide diversity of Montanans.

But Republican ideological purity is about to face a major test when the federal assistance dollars from the Democrats’ COVID relief measure arrives. Surely true Republicans will send back the checks, especially since they’re not even signed by the president. And of course no Republican-owned business would think about accepting the rank socialism of the federal government actually helping its citizens. Nope, they’ll be busy pulling themselves up by their bootstraps.

Just joking of course. They’ll take the money, they always do. And somehow they foolishly think Montanans won’t notice the confusion and incredible hypocrisy of the “wrapped around the axle” GOP.

Wildflowers in a granite crack, Beartooth Range, Montana. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.

Springtime in the Rockies is a magical time when the short, dark days of winter lengthen and the sun’s warmth returns to the land once again, turning snowbanks into running water that feeds our rivers and nurtures the new life sprouting from thawed soil.
Likewise, wisdom and compassion have returned to Washington, D.C., with new leadership and new priorities bringing renewed hope for hundreds of millions of Americans after a long year of discontent.
It was a full year ago that America shut down in the grip of a deadly pandemic that, despite foolish promises that it would “disappear like a miracle,” has now taken the lives of 520,000 of our fellow citizens. We cannot turn back the clock and re-do the horrific judgments that turned our nation’s pandemic response into one of the worst globally. We cannot bring back those the pandemic took from us. We cannot magically restore lost businesses, nor can we wave a wand to erase the impacts on our children’s education.
But what we can do, and what President Biden and the Democratic majorities in Congress are doing, is try to heal what can be healed, to render help where help is needed, and to bring hope to a weary populace seeking not wealth and power, but merely a return to a semblance of pre-pandemic social, economic and educational normality.
Thanks to a realistic approach to the pandemic, Biden has vastly accelerated a nationally-led vaccination schedule instead of trying to sweep it under the rug and pass off what should have been the federal government’s responsibility for distributing vaccines — or even worse, waste time trying to find someone to blame. Already those in the most-vulnerable “over 70” population have been largely inoculated and two million more a day in all age classes are receiving their shots.
Moreover, as tens of millions face the grim prospects of unemployment payments ending by mid-March, Biden and Congressional Democrats are moving a massive $1.9 trillion relief bill through the process. The eviction moratorium will be extended, as will unemployment benefits and additional money to feed the hungry, provide more loans for businesses, help minor children and provide health coverage to the nation’s most needy. These are vitally necessary humanitarian and economic actions to end the widespread suffering and get the nation back on its feet.

Most puzzling is the dark cloud of Republican opposition to helping out their fellow Americans. Why would anyone demand that the 628-page relief bill be read in its entirety on the floor of the Senate just to hold up the funding that polls show more than two-thirds of the public support? Yet, that’s just what happened late last week when Ron Johnson, a Republican senator from Wisconsin decided to play cute and jam the process of actually considering the legislation on its merits.

Perhaps these same Republicans, who had no problem whatsoever in delivering a trillion dollar tax break to the already wealthy, actually believe they are serving the nation by suddenly exhuming the corpse of “fiscal responsibility” that only seems to arise when a Democratic measure to help the populace is being considered.

But like Springtime in the Rockies, although more snow and sleet that undoubtedly fall, Biden and his Congressional Democrats are irrepressibly bringing forth both light and warmth, pressing onward doing what needs to be done, and not playing a reality-TV version of political leadership. “The greatest good for the greatest number” remains, as it should, the goal of good governance — and brings a new Spring of Hope to weary Americans.

During a regular Montana legislative session in the pre-pandemic past, the Capitol would have been regularly filled with hundreds of citizens, groups and organizations holding rallies in support of or opposition to the measures being heard and voted upon every day. But due to the necessary precautions to prevent COVID infection, those rallies and in-person communications have been largely absent. This week, however, marks the halfway point in the session and as legislators return home, it gives constituents a good chance to provide input on the legislators’ actions so far — and those to come.

While Republicans, who hold the majorities in both chambers of the Legislature as well as the Governor’s Office, will heartily crow that “elections have consequences,” the simple truth is that legislators in every legislative session, no matter who holds which majorities, benefits from the feedback of the populace they take an oath to serve.

No one, no matter how intelligent, well-versed or experienced, can possibly know everything about the vast number of issues that come before the legislature each session. There’s no doubt that individual legislators may know a great deal about the issues with which they are familiar. But in the broader scope of society’s concerns, those are actually tiny niches and only a foolish and headstrong legislator would discount feedback from those knowledgeable in specific issue areas.

Unfortunately, Montana’s Capitol has largely been a right-wing echo chamber for the last two months due to the medical impossibility of having large numbers of citizens who are familiar with certain issues being able to contact and inform legislators in person — which has always been the most effective way to communicate, particularly on complex issues.

The result has been an avalanche of very bad, very partisan measures that have little to do with “the greatest good for the greatest number” that governance is supposed to achieve. For instance, what does hunting black bears with hounds have to do with regular Montanans who are trying to do their jobs and raise their families during this very tough pandemic? “Nothing” would be the right answer since chasing bears with dogs is both unethical and exceedingly cruel.

And that’s just one of the many, many bad ideas coming out of the legislature to date. As a friend emailed the other day: “Amid the pandemic, collapsing middle class, high unemployment, high eviction rates & homelessness, and undeniable global warming, their priorities are voter suppression, ending all women’s rights, killing unions, allowing concealed guns everywhere without permits, making sure transgender females cannot participate in sports, protecting businesses from liability suits if employees get Covid when forced to work in unsafe conditions, eliminating rooftop solar, protecting Colstrip’s coal generators from ever closing and replacing the coal plants with NUKES!! Some days, I can’t stand to even read the news.”

But that just scratches the surface of what’s emanating from the Legislature and the Governor’s Office right now, including the measure to get rid of the commissioner of political practices — who actually enforces campaign finance laws. Montana’s political watchdog would be replaced by the secretary of state and a panel of four legislators. And of course there’s nothing like allowing politicians to police themselves for campaign finance accountability. What could go wrong?

This week’s mid-session break will be one of the few opportunities before session’s end when legislators are accessible to their constituents in person. Don’t waste the opportunity to give ‘em an earful before they return to the Capitol’s right-wing echo chamber — and crank out even more bad laws and policies.

When Joe Biden was inaugurated as the 46th president of the United States at noon on Wednesday, you could almost feel a great weight lifted off the shoulders of Americans from coast to coast. Somehow we got through four of the most ignominious years of any presidential administration in the history of the nation. And while we and our democracy have been badly battered, sickened and intentionally turned against not just each other but all conventions of ethical governance, we are not broken. We made it through that long, dark, and perilous tunnel, and now we go forward as a new day dawns in America.

It seems almost impossible to recall that only a week before the inauguration our nation’s Capitol had been stormed, people died and a violent, misguided attempt to stop Congress from certifying the electoral votes failed. Adding insult to injury, the most unpopular president in U.S. history — and his equally unpopular spouse — then peevishly ignored the inaugural to fleece the American people out of one last million-dollar ride on Air Force One.

One week later, with a shocking 25,000 National Guard men and women standing armed and ready to repel any further attempts at insurrection, the threats to disrupt the inauguration evaporated, and spectacularly at that. In fact, the very people who had participated in the Capitol’s desecration realized that they, like the American people, had been horribly misled by the serial liar in the Oval Office. As one Proud Boy posted to a right-wing website, “we got played.” And indeed, they surely did. While their “hero” fled, they were left to answer the knock on the door from the FBI and arrested for their part in the failed insurrection.

Due to the pandemic that has killed more than 400,000 Americans and is still raging out of control across the nation, President Biden was not able to enjoy the joyous crowds that would have undoubtedly filled the national mall to overflowing. But looking over a sea of flags to represent those that could not be there, he gave an inspiring inaugural address that has been called “one of the best ever” by any president — and he brought hope to a nation in desperate need of an uplifting message.

While Joe Biden is the oldest person ever to ascend to the presidency, it’s worth remembering that sometimes age and experience bring a perspective largely unattainable in one’s youth. Biden’s decades of experience in both the legislative and executive branches of government bring a certain wisdom of what works and what doesn’t in the delicate checks and balances of our democracy.

And unlike President Obama, with whom he served as vice president, Biden fully understands that the Democrat majorities in both chambers of Congress with which he now gets to work are ephemeral at best and must not be taken for granted or wasted in failed attempts to placate Republicans at every turn.

As the Republicans have so loudly crowed for the last four years, “elections have consequences” — and indeed they do. Biden is moving aggressively through executive orders to undo the “consequences” of the last presidential election, of which there are many. And while “unity” is being lauded, what we desperately need right now are good, sensible policies to take care of our people and planet — and if unity wants to come along for the ride, all the better.

Hang in there, fellow citizens! There’s no question we have daunting challenges to face — but our union is strong, hate has not triumphed, and we shall prevail.

The red flags of a virulent and lethal pandemic went up early and the country shut down by March in an attempt to “flatten the curve” of infections. But actions by a hare-brained president and his delusional followers rejected the advice of top infectious disease experts, politicized sensible precautionary measures as a cheap ploy to garner votes in an election year, and resulted in the ongoing illness and deaths of millions of Americans as this ugliest of years comes to an end. Good-bye and good riddance to 2020 — as well as the worst president in the nation’s history.

History is replete with mad kings, emperors, pharaohs and even popes. And so, despite the myth of American exceptionalism, we now get to have our own mad president in Donald Trump. The ultimate grifter, con man, continuous liar and malignant narcissist, Trump has turned us against each other, beggared the Treasury, and plunged this nation into its greatest human tragedy in recent history. And no, despite the inane prediction that somehow the pandemic would “disappear like a miracle,” the truth is we now have more than 3,000 Americans dying daily as we head toward a projected 567,000 to 731,000 coronavirus deaths by April.

Having been bunkered up in the self-induced pits of denial since his election loss in November, our version of the Mad King has decided to simply ignore the actual duties for which he was elected. Instead of providing any semblance of leadership on the worsening pandemic crisis, the looming eviction of 14 million Americans, the expiration of unemployment for millions more the day after Christmas, he heads off to Mar-a-Lago to play golf. But not before leaving a trail of misery, crippling uncertainty and anger behind as he racks up the taxpayer tab on his golf trips to a stunning $151.5 million for his nearly 300 outings to his own properties.

Never in recent memory has the federal government been so poorly run. When can anyone recall funding the government not just from week-to-week, but now day-to-day? Every president in 56 years has signed the military spending bill into law — but despite being passed by more than 2/3 majorities in both chambers of Congress, Trump vetoed the $740.5 billion measurelast week because he doesn’t like the idea of removing the names of traitorous Confederate generals from military bases.

How nuts is this guy? Well, his Treasury Secretary, Steve Mnuchin, told Congress that $600 survival payments to citizens would be the maximum amount the White House would accept in the new $900 billion “stimulus” bill. But after the bill made its torturous route through Congress without a shred of input from Trump, he threatens a veto, claiming it must have a $2,000 cap — exactly what the Democrats asked for earlier and the White House and Republican Senate rejected.

But if you’re a corrupt Republican congressman, a murderous mercenary, or convicted for heinous crimes like his son-in-law’s father Charles Kushner, Trump’s not too busy to abuse his presidential power once more and give you a presidential pardon.

2020 will be gone this weekend and our mad president shortly thereafter, despite his crazed antics. But Trump is not America. Our nation has undoubtedly been crippled — but we will not be destroyed by this worst president in history. We’ll pick up the pieces in the New Year, move on and gladly say goodbye and good riddance to 2020 and Donald J. Trump.

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Montana’s Attorney General Tim Fox has for years been considered a moderate Republican, but with the announcement that he and Governor-elect Greg Gianforte have joined the lawsuit filed by Texas’ attorney general challenging the election results in four other states, both men have fully gone down Donald Trump’s electoral rabbit hole of lunacy, hypocrisy and incredulity.

Ken Paxton, the Texas AG who is under FBI investigation for bribery and abuse of office, filed a lawsuit in the U.S. Supreme Court last week seeking to overturn Trump’s loss in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia and Wisconsin despite the fact that the results have been certified after numerous recounts.

Simply put, there has been no evidence of widespread election fraud and at least 55 other Trump lawsuits seeking to invalidate the election’s result have been summarily dismissed.

The Electoral College will voted Dec. 14, to finalize the results in which President-elect Joe Biden beat Trump by 307-232 electoral votes and more than 7 million popular votes.

Texas’ lawsuit has been widely rebuked by the states in question with Pennsylvania’s attorney general characterizing it as having “no basis in law or fact,” and rests on “a surreal alternate reality.” Michigan’s attorney general put it bluntly saying “the election in Michigan is over. Texas comes as a stranger to this matter and should not be heard here.” Wisconsin’s AG called it an “extraordinary intrusion into Wisconsin’s and the other defendant States’ elections, a task that the Constitution leaves to each State.”

It’s always prudent to “flip the coin” in public policy decisions and look at issues from a different point of view. In this case, Montanans should consider what it would be like to have another state, say California or New York, decide to file suit in the Supreme Court to overturn Montana’s election results because they didn’t like it that Trump won here. It’s well-known that Montanans value their individuality and even the thought that some other state gets to tell us our votes should be overturned would be met with intense opposition.

Montana’s election officials, like those in other states, take their jobs very seriously, follow the law, check the verification on mail-in and absentee ballots, and report the results accordingly. Likewise, the hundreds of thousands of Montanans who voted last month would be outraged to think some other state’s attorney general has any right whatsoever to interfere in our election — let alone trying to openly invalidate it.

Joining Fox, governor-elect Greg Gianforte signed an amicus brief with over a hundred Republican members of Congress to “prevent those states from casting their electoral votes on Monday.”

One must really wonder if Gianforte actually thinks allowing one state — or members of Congress — to interfere in the elections of other states is valid? Even Texas’ Republican Senator John Cornyn, formerly a member of Texas’ Supreme Court, rejected the challenge and told reporters: “I do not understand the legal theory. I don’t want other states having a chance to change Texas law based on a similar effort. If you can do it for the election, you can do it if somebody wanted to challenge, for example, Texas law on the Second Amendment.”

It behooves both Fox and Gianforte to consider the “unexpected consequences” of their foolish actions. While Fox is on his way out, Montanans are looking at four years of Gianforte as governor. We, and our beloved state, deserve considerably more prudence than either Fox or Gianforte have shown with this intrusive and doomed effort to overturn a national election at Trump’s behest.

The United States is facing what medical professionals call the most serious public health threat in the history of the nation. The coronavirus pandemic is raging fully out of control, which is exacerbated by a near total lack of leadership at the national level and pitifully little on the state or local level.

In the meantime, the individual responsible for dealing with the nation’s many and varied crises is busy whining about the election he lost, still claiming he won, and evincing not a shred of concern for the health and well-being of 330 million Americans. Put bluntly, there’s no more time to waste on whining and absent politicians.

The numbers are so shocking it’s difficult to put them in perspective: 217,664 new cases of COVID infection a day, heading towards a stunning 3,000 daily deaths — the equivalent of one 9/11 attack every day or 10 fully-loaded passenger jets crashing and killing everyone on board 24-7. Hospitals are running out of beds while doctors and nurses are exhausted from the nonstop tragedy and endless number of cruel deaths.

The eviction and mortgage moratoriums are expiring, as are the utility shutoff moratoriums. Businesses that were shut down in March and April are limping along at reduced capacities and, given the predicted “third wave” of the pandemic, are likely to be shut down again. If the new job numbers — at half of what economists expected — are any indication, whatever blip the so-called “recovery” funds paid for is over.

Facing an avalanche of “must pass” legislation in the next week, Congress continues to be distracted by partisan politics — apparently unaware that the election is over and it’s time to do the jobs they were elected, paid and expected to do. And even if they pass a new “relief” bill, it will not and cannot be enough to put America back on her feet. If anything, it’ll be triage that will not likely reach those in the greatest need, just as the previous billions were funneled off to large businesses by the Trump administration instead of the small businesses intended to receive the funds.

Adding insult to injury, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has unilaterally decided to pull back $455 billion in unused but badly needed relief money to the general fund — perhaps so it can be spent on the ridiculous $740 billion “defense” bill that mainly serves the populace by stuffing $2 billion in the pockets of the bloated military-industrial complex every day.

Faced with these mind-boggling challenges, we have a president more concerned with pre-emptively ensuring his corrupt family and friends are “pardoned” for crimes with which they have yet to be charged. Not to put too fine a point on it, but if they haven’t done anything wrong, what’s he so worried about? And of course “Don the Con” is busy squeezing hundreds of millions from his delusional “followers” under the lie that it’s going to fund the election challenges judges across the nation have abruptly thrown out of court as baseless.

Here in Montana, Governor-elect Greg Gianforte hasn’t shown much leadership on anything so far. Lame duck Gov. Steve Bullock must be busy cleaning out his desk and hoping for a job in the Biden administration because one thing he’s not doing is leading.

Time stands still for no man. In our time of greatest need, as the grim exigencies facing the state and nation continue to mount exponentially, only one thing seems certain — history will not be kind to the politicians who have shirked their duty to lead.

For the last four years the Trump administration has been on a tear – literally, that is, tearing up the environmental regulations put in place over half a century after the nation realized we would not survive a future where our rivers caught on fire, subdivisions were built on buried toxic waste sites, and tens of thousands of industrial chemicals were showing up in air, water, land, wildlife, fish and ultimately, our children.

Make no mistake, it was a battle royal to pass and enact, among a host of other foundational environmental laws, the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, and create the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to oversee the implementation of the regulations and use Superfund to address the worst of the nation’s environmental disasters. Industry’s profiteers fought tooth and nail against being held responsible for their actions, but science and a sense that the present owed a livable environment to the future prevailed.

Trump’s naked assault on environmental protection was nothing short of a return to the days of the far past when what was left behind held no concern in the face of “get it while you can” predatory capitalism. And now, the Biden administration will face the daunting task of restoring sanity – and regulation of industrial operations – to stop the Trump-caused destruction.

Like his predecessors, Biden will face the high-pitched whine that restoring regulations will “cripple industry” – only this time they also get to claim that trying to protect our precious environmental legacy will somehow negatively impact the limping economic recovery. Both claims have long been proven to be false.

In Montana, where Republicans have swept the statewide offices and legislative majorities, the false narrative that regulations are incompatible with a healthy economy is likely to receive broad play. It is at our peril that these protestations should ever receive even a shred of credibility or acceptance.

But here’s the rub for those reckless Republicans who would turn the Big Sky State into the Pig Sty State – federal laws and regulations take precedence over state laws and regulations when states fail to meet certain minimum standards. In other words, no matter what a runaway Republican governor and legislature try to do in the way of environmental degradation, if they go too far, the federal government under the Biden administration is certain to step in. And rest assured, there are still plenty of environmental advocates who will go without hesitation to federal courts to stop wanton destruction of our planet’s critical life support systems.

It’s understandable that Republicans think they received a “mandate” from Montana’s voters in the last election. But there were no environmental initiatives on the ballot from which to judge public sentiment and Montanans did not vote for unrestrained rape and scrape. We are still struggling to repair the “unintended consequences” of the past – and the costs only continue to mount. If, for some reason, Montana’s Republicans think they have been given leave to emulate Trump’s anti-environmental record, they’d best remember that, in the end, it cost him the presidency.

The post The Damage Done appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

Photograph Source: Fibonacci Blue – CC BY 2.0

For four long years, the United States of America has suffered the presidency of a narcissistic reality-TV actor incompetently playing his role as president. But finally this embarrassing charade of governance has come to an end.

Yet, incapable of handling the truth of his loss to president-elect Joe Biden, this spoiled man-child has spent the last two weeks since the election not serving the nation and dealing with the many intricacies of a presidential transition, but pouting, raging and refusing to acknowledge the reality that he lost. By doing so, he continues to ignore the very real needs of our nation as the coronavirus pandemic rages out of control, infecting, hospitalizing and killing record numbers of Americans every day.

The time has clearly come to move on and end, once and for all, the incredible division and damage this terribly flawed individual has inflicted on our nation.

Like far too much of Trump’s term in the White House, what’s happening right now seems like some fantasy that turns one of the world’s leading democracies into a Banana Republic. He’s already blown the doors off the Treasury and looted it for his personal enrichment and that of his family and corrupt cronies, just like any Third World dictator. He has threatened public servants for doing their jobs, telling the truth and standing up for the Constitution they vowed to honor.

In the meantime, we are all paying the price for his unforgivable ignorance in denying the overwhelming scientific consensus of mankind’s increasingly deleterious impact upon the planet’s environment and the undeniable evidence of more and larger hurricanes, disastrous floods, raging wildfires and the “third great extinction event.” What we have to show for his much-lauded “global energy dominance” is actually an economy on the rocks, with the oil, gas and coal industries bankrupted by the pandemic he also ignored.

He has insulted top level military officials and ingloriously removed them from their positions by Twitter because he didn’t believe they were being more loyal to him than to the country they’re sworn to protect. Again, that’s due to his total lack of understanding that this is a nation, not a business, and in the difficult task of governing one must treat those of differing opinions with respect — not expect them to jump like a dog at some imperial command. Even now, 130 members of the Secret Service, who pledged their lives to protect his worthless hide, are brought low by COVID due to his ego-driven need to hold close-contact, mask-less rallies to make him feel like the leader he never was and will never be.

Even worse, he continues to rage and “break things” on his way into the history books of infamy by firing top-level officials and embedding his puppets in jobs at federal agencies where they’ll be protected from dismissal by his successor. Nor are these minor agencies, but the FBI, the CIA and the Pentagon, creating what even Republicans are considering a viable threat to national security.

In the meantime, this most reckless of individuals ignores his job and hides from the media at his private golf courses. But reality will not be denied. The election is over; Trump lost, and as one wag put it: “Time for the Trump flags to fly at half-mast.”

We must unite now and move on to address the most serious threat to the nation since World War II — the tragic, needless and increasing nightmare of the deadly pandemic Trump allowed to proliferate while wallowing in his ignorance and arrogance.

Montana’s Gov. Steve Bullock just chalked up another great win with a victory over Donald Trump’s corrupt puppet, Louis DeJoy, who heads the U.S. Postal Service and has crippled that agency with Draconian measures such as dismantling sorting machines, removing postal boxes and generally slowing down delivery of the mail. Thanks to Bullock’s legal initiative, DeJoy had to settle the lawsuit by agreeing to undo all the changes he instigated in this blatant attempt to suppress vote by mail to aid Trump’s re-election chances.

It’s worth noting that this is the second major, national-level lawsuit Governor Bullock has won against Trump’s corrupt appointees in the last three weeks. Prior to the latest victory, Bullock had won his suit against the illegitimate actions of William Perry Pendley as head of the Bureau of Land Management that oversees millions of acres of public lands. As Federal Judge Brian Morris wrote in his ruling, Pendley “served unlawfully as the Acting BLM Director for 424 days” and enjoined him from exercising the authority of the agency’s director.

While it’s nothing short of incredible that it took a Montana governor to fight and win these huge national issues, it’s worth remembering that it’s not just the lawsuits, but the effect of these victories, that deliver long-term and wide-reaching actions.

For rural Montanans, and indeed, all rural Americans, the Postal Service is a daily lifeline providing goods, medicines and vital communications. Despite the wonders of the internet, it’s often the Postal Service that makes “the last mile” deliveries to citizens nationwide — especially in the hinterlands.

Likewise, Pendley’s actions benefitted exactly one sector — the extractive industries — by turning over the nation’s incredible publicly owned natural resources to corporate profiteers. That’s no surprise to those who have followed Pendley’s career since he has long argued that the federal government should not own land — and has tried throughout his life to turn public lands and resources over to private interests.

In Montana, public lands are cherished by our citizens for many, many reasons, no matter their political affiliation. They are where we hunt, fish, hike, camp, recreate, and find solace from an increasingly hectic world. They are also the gatekeepers of our sources of clean water, the last bastions for an increasing number of endangered species, and the legacy we will pass on to future generations.

While it was a stunning accomplishment for Bullock to legally oust Pendley while he was pirating our nation’s resources, the ripples of that victory go out to many shores. Already efforts are underway to overturn every action he took while illegally holding his position and in this respect, Bullock’s win is the gift that keeps on giving.

It’s not tough to compare Bullock’s actions with those of Steve Daines, his challenger for Montana’s U.S. Senate seat. Daines has, throughout his tenure in the Senate, voted to uphold Trump’s corrupt presidency and his criminal coterie of appointees and special interests. Even now, in the depths of the pandemic, Trump is putting “politicals” in the highest offices of the Centers for Disease Control to provide a rosy narrative to off-set the 217,000 American lives lost to the president’s utter incompetence.

As a friend wrote upon reading of Bullock’s win on reversing DeJoy’s Postal Service changes: “Bullock’s ‘wins’ should be applauded because they are our ‘wins.’” Indeed, they truly are because they’re not for one political party or special interest, they’re in the public’s interest. That means when Montanans — and all Americans — cast their ballots, thanks to Steve Bullock, they’re likely to be delivered on time and be counted in this crucial election.

Photograph Source: Ninian Reid – CC BY 2.0

With just over three weeks to Election Day, more than six million votes have already been cast in early voting in 27 states as much of the White House and Trump campaign staff are infected with Covid-19 and/or quarantined. But as a sick and increasingly delusional president goes on a rampage against almost everyone, historic precedent says the double digit lead Joe Biden holds over Trump nationally is likely insurmountable. In other words, it’s time to simply admit that Trump is toast. The question now is: Will he take the GOP down with him?

Of course there will be Trump die-hards wailing and gnashing their teeth over that prediction, but just ask yourself: Do you really need or want another presidential debate? The last one was a disaster. The president was rude, ignored the debate rules, interrupted both Biden and the moderator over a hundred times and should have been muted — which I’m sure much of the audience would have appreciated.

Truth is there probably won’t be a second debate thanks to Trump’s self-inflicted Covid-19 infection. Whining that “they cut you off whenever they want” he’s refusing to abide by the Commission on Presidential Debates medically prudent decision to hold a virtual debate to avoid exposing staff, the moderator, and Biden to potentially lethal Covid-19.

It’s also worth remembering that before the last debate Trump was demanding Biden take a drug test, baselessly claiming his opponent was on some kind of rejuvenating drugs. Can you imagine what a drug test would now reveal about what’s currently running around in Trump’s body and brain? According to the Mayo Clinic, the steroid dexamethasone alone is known to cause aggression, agitation, anxiety, irritability, nervousness, mood changes, trouble thinking, speaking, and walking, and trouble breathing at rest. Let’s see, do any of those sound familiar?

Need some examples? We could start with Trump’s attacks last week on Attorney General William Barr, FBI Director Christopher Wray, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. These are among “the best people” he himself appointed, with Barr and Pompeo consistently the most loyal of his minions. But why stop there? In the midst of a pandemic that has killed over 210,000 Americans, continues to spread, and may kill twice that many if we don’t take precautions according to Dr. Anthony Fauci, Trump bellowed that he was done negotiating a stimulus bill to aid our increasingly suffering populace while telling people the coronavirus is nothing to worry about.

Is it any wonder that concern over the president’s behavior has sparked talk of invoking the 25th Amendment to consider removing the president because he can no longer fulfill his duties? Even Mitch McConnell, the Senate’s Republican Majority Leader, says he hasn’t been to the White House since August because it “wasn’t approaching the protection from this illness in the same way that I thought was appropriate in the Senate.”

In the meantime, since apparently all the president has left in his bankrupt playbook is to offer Americans more division and hatred, it’s worth noting that those he urged to “LIBERATE” Michigan planned to kidnap Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer before the election — but fortunately the plot was broken up last week by the FBI.

Of course no one really knows what this will mean for down-ticket races, but suffice it to say Republicans are very nervous that voters disgusted by Trump’s cruel circus will sweep them out, too. And given what they have enabled, cleaning house would be a very good thing for the nation.

As if the nation hasn’t been traumatized enough by the horrendous effects of the out-of-control coronavirus pandemic, thanks to recorded interviews with legendary Watergate reporter Bob Woodward, we find that President Trump knew the disease was deadly, was easily transmitted through the air and was by far the most serious health threat to the United States in over a century. Yet, instead of doing what any rational human being would have done and taken steps to prepare the citizenry for the great peril, Trump decided to, in his own words, “play it down.”

Now, as we approach 200,000 dead Americans, the time has come to hold accountable those Republicans who have continually enabled, defended and praised this historically heartless excuse for a president. In Montana’s case, that would be Senator Steve Daines and Congressman Greg Gianforte, both of whom are up for election in six short weeks and neither of whom should ever again be allowed to hold the sacred trust of public office.

It is almost impossible to grasp the enormous evil of a president who would allow a lethal disease to spread uncontrolled through the populace, killing and crippling innocent people, destroying businesses and crashing the strong economy he inherited, while callously claiming, “I don’t take responsibility at all” for the resulting disasters.

Even now that the truth has undeniably come to light, Trump hasn’t evinced a shred of compassion or a scintilla of guilt for the millions of people who have lost friends, families and loved ones to COVID-19. Instead, we are to somehow believe that things would be worse had we known the great peril we faced and taken the necessary actions — which other nations took — to limit the disease’s spread and damage. The sorry excuse from the presidential poseur in the Oval Office is that he thought people would “panic” if the true threat of the pandemic was revealed.

Now, Americans are no longer allowed to enter countries around the world — or even visit Canada, our great friend and neighbor to the north. Now, the bankruptcies and evictions mount daily as the pittance of monetary relief Congress offered to a nation on its knees has evaporated — and now that same Congress apparently cannot find the compassion and offer more to offset the widespread suffering of its constituents.

As the nation faces a predicted increase in coronavirus infections and deaths, this same president and his Republican enablers disparage precautionary measures such as social distancing and masks at their political rallies. It strains credulity to understand how Trump’s supporters could believe a man who has made more than 20,000 lies during his term in office and who still tells them the nation is “doing great.”

The global warming exacerbated by Trump’s policies to “dominate” fossil fuel production — while repealing regulation of greenhouse gas emissions — has resulted in raging wildfires, drought and unlivable temperatures across vast swathes of the nation. Yet once again, as with the pandemic, the man Gianforte, Daines and the Republican Party continue to defend shows not a shred of interest in the human suffering for which he is responsible.

The stunning toll of Trump’s presidency and his supporters Daines and Gianforte can no longer be tolerated or endured. The coming weeks and months will only magnify the tremendous damage these individuals have inflicted on our country and fellow citizens. Our only recourse, if we seek a livable future for ourselves and generations yet to come, is to vote them out — and fortunately the opportunity to do just that is coming soon.

Allegory of the Good and Bad Judge, 15th-century fresco in the old Town Hall and Courthouse building in Reguengos de Monsaraz, Portugal.

In the “old” days prior to the institution of legislative term limits in Montana, veteran Butte legislators loved to play a trick on their newly elected colleagues. They’d come up to them and quietly ask: “Did you get your envelope yet?” The clueless rookies would say “what envelope” and they’d be told “the envelope with the money from The Company.” “The Company” was the Anaconda Company, the offspring of the notorious Copper Kings that rode roughshod over the law and routinely bought or threatened legislators, sheriffs and judges as they made untold millions pulling copper from The Richest Hill on Earth.

Of course, by the time the old guys pulled the trick on the newbies there were no more envelopes with money from The Company. That was a leftover from when legislators would leave their transom windows open in Helena’s Placer Hotel on Last Chance Gulch and, indeed, envelopes full of money would mysteriously appear, tossed there by Anaconda’s lobbyists and goons. By the mid-70s the Anaconda Company was bought by Atlantic Richfield Co. (ARCO), Butte’s mines were shut down, the Anaconda smelter was abruptly closed, and what was left in the wake of the Copper Kings’ blatant corruption was the nation’s largest Superfund site — which remains unreclaimed more than 40 years later.

As an ancillary to the legendary corruption that emanated from the Copper Kings, it was often said Butte legislators jokingly urged constituents to “vote early and often.” But now, with the most corrupt president in U.S. history urging Americans in North Carolina and Pennsylvania to “vote twice” in November’s election, it’s no longer a joke — it is, in fact, illegal to violate “one person, one vote” and “inducing others” to do so is a felony in North Carolina. Were the Copper Kings still around, they’d be green with envy at Trump’s blatant abuse of the law in his attempt to suppress the 81 million votes expected to be cast by mail-in ballots two short months from now.

Of course, state election officials are aghast at the complications that would arise should people actually take Donald Trump’s twisted advice and vote by mail, then show up at the polls in person and try to vote again to “test the system.”

But it’s no such thing. Over and over and over again, state election officials, voting experts and numerous studies have shown the incidence of voter fraud in the United States is infinitesimally small — on the order of less than a tiny fraction of 1%.

If sowing chaos at the polls wasn’t bad enough, Trump’s campaign, as well as the state and national Republican Party, have filed suit against Montanaand other states to halt mail-in voting. And that comes on top of the measures taken by Trump’s mega-contributor, now ensconced as postmaster general, to eviscerate the U.S. Postal Service and ensure the failure of mail-in voting.

These are not the tactics used by someone who thinks they will win a fair election. These are the vicious measures employed by an extremely insecure individual in dire fear of losing by a landslide — and likely taking the Republican Party down with him.

Indeed, Trump got exactly none of the traditional “bounce” in the polls normally expected following a national convention while his Democrat rival, Joe Biden, continues to lead by double digits nationally. Despite the hardships he’s willing to load on Americans trying to exercise their right to vote during a pandemic, collusion, corruption, and chaos will not save Trump — and his unethical and desperate measures may only further doom him.

Those who keep a close eye and report on politics at the national level are aghast at Trump’s blatant use of the White House, Rose Garden and National Mall for Republican Convention activities for his re-election campaign. Those are federal properties that belong to all the people in this nation, not a handful of Republicans who daily evince less respect for and increasing abuse of the laws we are all expected to follow.

The Hatch Act prohibits exactly these kinds of activities where federal employees use their official positions and assets for political purposes. Yet, we have surreal spectacle of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, having used government resources and being paid to fly to Jerusalem on government “business” giving a speech for Trump that is nationally-broadcast as part of the Republican National Convention.

Unfortunately, this is nothing new for the corrupt and lawless Trump administration. It doesn’t take a long memory to recall Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner proclaiming that the national stockpile of emergency medical equipment was “ours” — not for use by the states — during the early days of the on-going pandemic. This view of who owns and gets to abuse public resources is endemic in the Trump administration. And as he has done his entire life through more than 3,500 lawsuits, Trump and his corrupt cronies’ response is always the same “sue us.”

Even worse, last week the White House announced it was creating a “very large dossier” on a Washington Post reporter who had the gall to research and report on $900,000 the federal government has now spent on Trump properties. Mind you, this is the White House attacking the press, not the Trump campaign — and the White House belongs to all the citizens of this country, not Donald Trump.

Unfortunately, Trump’s blatant disregard for legal and ethical boundaries has set the example for Montana’s Secretary of State Corey Stapleton to likewise use public resources for partisan political purposes. In his latest blunder in the public positions he has occupied, Stapleton continues to defend a slimy ploy whereby the Republican Party paid signature gatherers to put the Green Party on the ballot to draw voters from Democrats. When the Green Party denied having any role in the signature gathering, and those who had been deceived by the Republicans’ perfidy asked to remove their names, Stapleton refused to do so.

Then the District Court ruled against him. So he took the issue to the Montana Supreme Court, squandering yet more public dollars for a partisan political scam. He lost there, too. And now he has filed an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court — all while being paid by Montanans’ taxpayer dollars regardless of their political affiliation. Stapleton’s squalid performance in office was documented by a stunning Billings Gazette editorial last week that concluded “he is unfit for any office.”

The outcome of the egregious misuse of public government resources leads to one inescapable conclusion: The governed will begin to widely distrust its own government, never knowing if they are receiving the truth or a partisan political ploy. And that, fellow citizens, is very bad medicine for our democracy.

The post Bad Medicine: Weaponizing Government Resources for Partisan Politics appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

It doesn’t matter who you vote for or what political party you do or don’t belong to, when it comes to funding government it’s taxpayers of all stripes who pick up the tab. Now, at both the national and state level, the new, nefarious, and open weaponization of government resources for partisan political purposes has emerged in full force. If we want to end democracy in the U.S. — this will do it.

Those who keep a close eye and report on politics at the national level are aghast at Trump’s blatant use of the White House, Rose Garden and National Mall for Republican Convention activities for his re-election campaign. Those are federal properties that belong to all the people in this nation, not a handful of Republicans who daily evince less respect for and increasing abuse of the laws we are all expected to follow.

The Hatch Act prohibits exactly these kinds of activities where federal employees use their official positions and assets for political purposes. Yet, we have surreal spectacle of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, having used government resources and being paid to fly to Jerusalem on government “business” giving a speech for Trump that is nationally-broadcast as part of the Republican National Convention.

Unfortunately, this is nothing new for the corrupt and lawless Trump administration. It doesn’t take a long memory to recall Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner proclaiming that the national stockpile of emergency medical equipment was “ours” — not for use by the states — during the early days of the on-going pandemic. This view of who owns and gets to abuse public resources is endemic in the Trump administration. And as he has done his entire life through more than 3,500 lawsuits, Trump and his corrupt cronies’ response is always the same “sue us.”

Even worse, last week the White House announced it was creating a “very large dossier” on a Washington Post reporter who had the gall to research and report on $900,000 the federal government has now spent on Trump properties. Mind you, this is the White House attacking the press, not the Trump campaign — and the White House belongs to all the citizens of this country, not Donald Trump.

Unfortunately, Trump’s blatant disregard for legal and ethical boundaries has set the example for Montana’s Secretary of State Corey Stapleton to likewise use public resources for partisan political purposes. In his latest blunder in the public positions he has occupied, Stapleton continues to defend a slimy ploy whereby the Republican Party paid signature gatherers to put the Green Party on the ballot to draw voters from Democrats. When the Green Party denied having any role in the signature gathering, and those who had been deceived by the Republicans’ perfidy asked to remove their names, Stapleton refused to do so.

Then the District Court ruled against him. So he took the issue to the Montana Supreme Court, squandering yet more public dollars for a partisan political scam. He lost there, too. And now he has filed an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court — all while being paid by Montanans’ taxpayer dollars regardless of their political affiliation. Stapleton’s squalid performance in office was documented by a stunning Billings Gazette editorial last week that concluded “he is unfit for any office.”

The outcome of the egregious misuse of public government resources leads to one inescapable conclusion: The governed will begin to widely distrust its own government, never knowing if they are receiving the truth or a partisan political ploy. And that, fellow citizens, is very bad medicine for our democracy.

Donald Trump admitted he’s deliberately dismantling Postal Service because he believes he’ll lose his re-election bid if Americans get to vote by mail – which is why this is the most outrageous and unethical act of his corruption-laced presidency. Which is why the Billings Gazette deserves high praise for telling it like it is in the first sentence of its editorial last week. “The attempted dismantling of our United States Postal Service is beyond political malpractice. It is treasonous.”

Indeed, Trump’s actions are beyond the pale of any president in recent memory. Far from making America great again, our nation is now mostly pitied by the global community as we tumble from “the shining light on the hill” to the depths of a Banana Republic run by a deranged would-be dictator.

If anyone has any doubt about that, his latest threat to our right to vote — the very foundation of our democracy — should dissolve the illusions hiding under their red MAGA hats. As reported by the Washington Post, Trump told his Fox News puppet Sean Hannity: “We’re going to have sheriffs, and we’re going to have law enforcement, and we’re going to have hopefully, U.S. attorneys, and we’re going to have everybody, and attorney generals (sic).”

That the president does not have the legal or constitutional authority to interfere in state-run election processes makes no difference to the Grifter-in-Chief. As he has done throughout his life, Trump’s approach to challenges of his illegality is “sue me.” A number of states’ attorneys general have already decided to do just that, but given the glacial pace of the nation’s legal system, it’s highly unlikely the issue could be decided before the clock ticks down to November’s election.

How bad is it? Montanans can check the excellent articles by Lee reporter Tom Lutey that the removal of postal equipment began a week after Trump contributor Louis DeJoy became Postmaster General and that “at least two key machines in the state’s largest sorting center in Billings” were removed as well as in Great Falls and Missoula. In a fine display of Trumpian “efficiency,” the Postal Union reports that “parts of the dismantled machinery have already been sold as scrap metal” and cannot be returned to service.

In keeping with the enormous and disgusting tidal wave of lies from the administration, DeJoy told a Senate committee nothing more will be done until after the election, when the dismantling of the nation’s Postal Service will continue while stretching credulity to the breaking point by claiming he actually didn’t know about the removal of hundreds of postal boxes nationwide. That an email was sent out telling postal managers not to reconnect sorting machines destroys whatever flimsy façade of propriety DeJoy is trying to slide by Congress. That Treasury Secretary Mnuchin has reportedly halted $10 billion in Congressionally-approved funding for the Postal Service only adds to the voter suppression put in motion by Trump’s band of historically unethical thugs.

Adding insult to injury, the Republican convention to formally nominate Trump for president starts today and Americans will be subjected to a false construct of “alternative facts,” rosy scenarios, and hollow promises of a better future. But with over a million new unemployment claims for 21 out of the last 22 weeks, a thousand Americans dying daily from Covid-19, an economy in shambles, and the intentional voter suppression by dismantling the Postal Service, their blather is as phony as a three-dollar bill.

As the Gazette courageously editorialized Trump’s treason “is an outrage which Montanans cannot and should not put up with.”

Like most of the rest of the U.S. population, Montanans are wondering how we’re going to get out of the very serious and growing problems afflicting our state and nation right now. They are also, on an increasing basis, growing very angry that our Republican president and his snarling pack of enablers are ignoring the old adage that “when you find yourself in a hole, quit digging.” There’s no great mystery how we got in this unbelievably disastrous state of affairs, but getting out is the greatest challenge facing our nation in a century.

Right now, one American a minute — 60 an hour, 1,500 a day — will die from a disease other countries have managed to contain. Yet, in the wealthiest nation on the planet, coronavirus rages wildly out of control. How did it happen? Look no further than the White House, where a malignant narcissist will sacrifice anything and everything to gain a second term in the office he is historically unfit to occupy.

Of course there are many who would say the disasters now encompassing the nation were totally predictable— especially when an incompetent individual surrounds himself with “senior advisers” from his own family who are anything but senior in the experience that’s vitally necessary to successfully govern a nation of 330 million Americans.

Add to that the hundreds of corporate lobbyists who were politically appointed to “manage” federal agencies that are supposed to ensure public resources are used for the public good. But instead, despite the obvious and enormous conflicts of interest, these corrupt individuals remain committed to ensuring the profits of their former employers — and the public good be damned, the devil take the hindmost.

How bad is it? Well, the Gross Domestic Product, which is the measure of all goods and services produced in the United States, has fallen a whopping 32.9% in the last few months. The temporary federal moratorium on evictions expired last week while 30% of U.S. households didn’t pay their July rent on time and 12 million Americans face immediate homelessness. The unemployment supplemental payments that helped carry some 25 million citizens through for the last few months is likewise gone. But the Republican-dominated Senate decided to leave Washington rather than address the terrible crises afflicting the citizens they were elected to serve and protect.

In the meantime, rather than face these daunting challenges, our ludicrous president decides to spew the threat of postponing the November election because, in his own words, “nobody likes me.” Well, at least he told the truth that one time. But of course, as we have all come to realize, it’s another empty Trump threat since he has absolutely no authority whatsoever to postpone a national election.

Here in Montana, where we’re known for taking care of ourselves and our fellow Montanans, we have gone from one of the least infected states to being listed as a “high risk” state by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention “where the seven-day moving average of daily new COVID-19 cases is 10 or more per 100,000 persons.” How did that happen? Look no further than the flood of inconsiderate tourists from high-infection states flooding Montana while flaunting our precautionary pandemic protocols.

Is there any good news? Well, sort of. Every day that passes brings us one day closer to evicting those who truly deserve to go — the corrupt White House dwellers and their Republican enablers nationwide. Only after that deep cleansing can we begin to rebuild our nation and focus, as we should, on taking care of our citizens.

If the definition of insanity is “doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result,” then the president and his Republican Party now qualify as totally and completely insane. This is not fiction, nor an insult, but fact. We are now living with the results of Trump’s and the Republicans’ demands to “reopen the economy” to bolster the president’s historically unlikely chances of re-election before the pandemic was under control — and now they want to do the same thing to our children.

Here are the hard numbers: Over 4 million Americans confirmed as infected by COVID-19 with medical experts saying the number could be 10 times higher. More than 144,000 of our fellow men, women, and children are dead — and again, that’s those that have been confirmed while the real number is likely much higher.

Those states that took the president’s bad advice to reopen quickly are now the states confronting overwhelming infection and death rates. Yet, even as Florida issues mandatory masking, this incredibly foolish president refuses to issue a national mandate and only recently admitted that the medical advice to wear a mask was a “good idea.” But he still believes it’s a personal choice and we’re “protecting personal freedom” by allowing clueless individuals to wander among the populace without taking sensible precautions.

Now, the nation’s top infectious disease experts are saying we are basically back where we started and must look at fully locking down the population again to stop the currently uncontrolled spread of coronavirus.

In the face of these facts, which cannot be swept under Trump’s political rug, the president and the Republicans are demanding that schools reopen and we expose our children — the nation’s future — to needless and senseless infection and death. Add to the incredible threat to our children that their teachers, school staff, parents and grandparents would face the same medically unjustified, politically-motivated risk. As punishment the blathering bloviator masquerading as a leader says he’ll cut off federal aid to schools that don’t fully reopen.

Anyone who has raised a school-aged child with a developing immune system knows what happens without fail. They go to school, mingle with their classmates and have fun with other kids, and bring home whatever latest cough or cold is circulating through the school. There is, simply put, no way around this and no way to deny its existence.

Perhaps Trump was too busy declaring bankruptcy six times to personally experience raising school-aged children. Or perhaps this most self-centered of individuals simply puts his own political ambition ahead of our children’s, their families’ and teachers’ safety. Whatever his reasons, they are woefully deficient.

That the Republican Party continues to support Trump’s lethal demands is equally abhorrent and intolerable. Republicans, it’s time to abandon Trump’s delusional demands, acknowledge the grim fact that the pandemic is about to become a leading national cause of death, and face the outrageous hypocrisy of saving yourselves while sacrificing our children.

The post A Lethal Hypocrisy appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

You can bet plenty of eyebrows shot up in Republican Party headquarters and campaign offices when Bob Brown’s outstanding column announcing his “independence from the Republican Party” hit the Missoulian last week.

A lifelong Republican with an absolutely outstanding record of achievement and public service, Brown’s repudiation of what the Republican Party has become — and its two top-tier candidates in Montana — were rock solid and indicative of President Trump’s rapidly declining approval across the nation. It’s an old and well-worn line, but there’s little doubt when Republicans like Brown renounce their party affiliation that “the times they are a’changing.”

Bob Brown has been a much-valued personal friend for 35 years, but for those who don’t know him, here’s a run-down of his credentials. Born and raised in Whitefish, Montana, Bob is a veteran of the U.S. Navy, holds degrees in history, art and education and taught high school in Kalispell, Big Fork and Whitefish.

At the age of 24 he was elected to the Montana House of Representatives in 1971 where he served until 1974. He was elected to the Senate for the next 23 years, becoming its longest-serving member and became Senate president in 1995. In 2001 he was elected as Montana’s Secretary of State. When Gov. Judy Martz declined to run for re-election in 2004 the Republican Party nominated Bob, hoping to retain the Governor’s Office they had held since 1993. In a rare electoral defeat, he lost that race to Democrat Brian Schweitzer.

Brown’s record of achievement in the Montana Legislature was likewise significant, where he didn’t just show up and vote, but was the chairman of the education, taxation and judicial committees as well as the committee on committees, which appoints Senate members to their respective roles.

Brown was a well-respected legislator and leader whose erudition and always-open door was much appreciated by all who worked with him for decades, doing the hard work of pounding out the laws and budgets of the Big Sky State.

Brown’s Republican credentials are simply beyond reproach. But the Republican Party changed with the election of Donald Trump, leaving many Republicans wondering just what happened to the Grand Old Party they loved and supported for so long.

In the “old days” Republicans ran for election on fiscal conservatism, but Trump brags that he is the “King of Debt.” And indeed, our nation under Trump has racked up unbelievable debts that will plague future generations for decades to come.

During Brown’s legislative tenure most critical debates revolved around fiscal, social, legal and scientific facts. Now, with a president who has lied tens of thousands of times since taking office, facts not only don’t matter, those that don’t serve the purposes of the president and his grifter-filled administration are simply discarded or labeled as “fake news” by the Republican Party’s highest officeholders. One need look no further than the idiocy of Trump’s needless politicization of the common-sense precautionary health measure of wearing face masks in public to understand just how far afield from “the facts” the Republican Party has strayed.

As the old saying goes: “You can fool all of the people some of the time, some of the people all of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.” It’s obvious Brown has had it with the Republican Party’s “fooling” and finally had to write: “But after watching Trump’s consistently ignorant and irresponsible leadership, I’ve concluded that in good conscience, I can’t remain a member of the party he has taken over.” Good on ya, Bobby old pal.

We just celebrated the founding of this nation in which truly great leaders took up arms against the overwhelming power of the British Empire, fought a bloody war of independence, and at a huge cost in lives, homes and businesses, somehow prevailed.

Yet now, in our hour of great peril as a global pandemic wreaks havoc on the nation, the silence from our current batch of politicians is appalling. While their inaction reaps an almost unimaginable toll of disease, suffering and death, our populace is justifiably wondering, “where are our political leaders when we really need them?”

Of course we have come to expect a leadership vacuum from the White House, where a self-absorbed reality TV actor occupies the Oval Office. His record of abject failure hangs like an albatross around his neck as he tries to wish it all away, pretend it’s not happening, and simply move on to the next episode of The Apprentice President.

But of course this is no fictional television show, this is the reality of America right now. And sure enough, under our poor excuse for leadership we are No. 1— leading the world in number of infections and deaths from an epidemic other nations have successfully brought under control. But the skyrocketing infection rate in America — at more than 50,000 a day with predictions that number will likely double — is nothing over which our politicians should pound their chests or pat themselves on the back.

On a national level, instead of telling the populace the truth about the on-going tragedy we find our top-level infectious disease experts muzzled by the White House and prohibited from talking to the American media. In the meantime, a deranged president holds mass rallies with no social distancing — ensuring “super spreader” events to sicken and kill even more Americans.

Closer to home, it was no great thing to see Montana join the list of the top 10 states where coronavirus infections have risen 50% or more. Justifiably lauded for his early steps to declare a state emergency in March, require quarantines for out-of-state visitors and lock down non-essential businesses, Gov. Steve Bullock reversed course prematurely. There are no longer quarantines for out-of-state tourists as Montanans lament the flood of license plates from states like Texas, where at least 10% of the population is known to be infected.

Nor is there any mandate to wear protective masks when out in public, as many other states have done. Instead, as reported late last week, Bullock pretends to lead by telling Montanans and our flood of tourists: “We’ll continue to look at how Montanans are responding. I think the best way actually to make sure that we’re all masked up is making sure that folks in all of our communities are saying that this is something that is just acceptable.”

If Bullock is worried that taking prudent measures to protect Montanans will hurt his campaign for Republican Steve Daines’ Senate seat, he can relax. On the coronavirus issue Trump-puppet Daines is invisible, as are gubernatorial wannabes Greg Gianforte and Mike Cooney. In fact, virtually all of those telling Montana voters they are leaders seem to have their lips mysteriously sewn shut.

Of course people want to return to pre-pandemic “normalcy” of jobs, socializing and lack of fear that breathing in public will be deadly. But a healthy economy must have a healthy populace. Dying for dollars won’t cut it — nor will the near total lack of leadership from the politicians who promised us they were leaders.

The level of dysfunction of this president and his benighted administration now borders on insanity. After an illusory “victory” over the rapid spread of the deadly coronavirus, Trump announced there was nothing left but “embers” — only to have infection rates skyrocket across the nation, hitting hard in southern and western states that ignored initial precautionary measures or decided to “reopen” prematurely.

The last thing any thinking person would do when faced with this crisis is take steps to make it worse. Yet, that’s just what’s happening as Trump seeks to halt federal funds for testing when the medical professionals are advising just the opposite, with more testing, tracking, and isolation of infected individuals. Our “extremely stable genius” in the Oval Office, however, says the more you test the more infections you find, which makes his “numbers look bad.”

When the Centers for Disease Control and Infection say the actual number of infected individuals is likely 10 times greater than estimated, what does this most historically incapable president do? He urges the Supreme Court to nullify Obamacare, denying 23 million citizens health coverage during a pandemic after millions more have already lost their employer-provided insurance. Regardless of one’s opinion on the benefits, drawbacks, or efficacy of the nation’s feeble attempt at universal health care, to destroy it completely during an uncontrollable pandemic is not leadership, it’s sheer malignant lunacy.

They say cornered animals are the most dangerous and, after a disastrous rally in Tulsa that only filled one-third of the available seats despite bragging of having issued a million tickets, now a desperate and dangerous Trump responds by taking his contagion road show to Mount Rushmore after forcing the National Park Service to allow a massive fireworks display.

Fireworks have been banned at Mt. Rushmore for 10 years due to their wildfire danger and pollution of scarce local water supplies by perchlorate — which causes endocrine and reproductive problems and is classified as a “likely human carcinogen” by the EPA. Illustrating the depth of his ignorance, Trump said “What can burn? It’s stone,” totally ignoring the surrounding dry Ponderosa pine forests that readily burn.

In the meantime, Trump’s “flying monkeys” — Kellyanne Conway, Don Jr. and industry lobbyist-turned-Interior Secretary Bernhardt — are coming to Montana to fundraise, shoot, and fish. Someone ought to tell great white hunter Don Jr. that Montanans don’t embrace unethical hunters who illegally shoot endangered species with laser night scopes as he did last year to kill a rare argali ram in Mongolia on a “hunt” that cost U.S. taxpayers $77,000.

Were this a Stephen King novel we could have some hope that, in the end, the good guys might prevail. But the horror we’re living right now is not a novel. Tragically, we have a desperate and delusional president trailing disease and death in this wake saying “I don’t take responsibility at all.” Given his actions, that seems a firm grasp of the obvious — and more’s the pity.

The post Trump’s Contagion Road Show Heads West appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

It seems like a very long time since there was much good news to celebrate. The pandemic brought America to a screeching halt, which is where it’s stayed and, from the newly rising cases, will likely stay for some time to come due to Trump’s incredibly bungled response. Protests are once again sweeping the nation, still struggling to deal with police brutality and racial injustice. But then, like a brilliant sun rising into Montana’s cerulean sky, comes the decision to halt the oil and gas leases in the Badger-Two Medicine area, the sacred center of the Blackfeet tribe, bringing hope in a very dark time.

As the Missoulian’s Rob Chaney reported last week, “the three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit overruled a judge’s 2018 decision that had allowed a Louisiana company to keep its lease within the Badger Two-Medicine area of Lewis and Clark National Forest.”

The Badger-Two Medicine area is bounded by the Bob Marshall Wilderness Area, the Blackfeet Nation and Glacier National Park. But since it sits outside the reservation boundary, it was available for oil and gas leases, 6,247 acres of which were issued in 1982 for a whopping $1 an acre. The Department of Interior, however, failed to perform the environmental and cultural analysis required by the National Environmental Policy Act and the National Historic Preservation Act and the leases were cancelled by Interior in 2016 after numerous court challenges and losses.

The Court’s Order, written by Judge Millett, beautifully describes the enormous historic, cultural, and religious significance of the area to the Blackfeet. “The Tribe’s oral history describes how its people began to suffer and die shortly after the world’s creation. Seeing that suffering, the Creator returned to the Blackfeet and took them into the countryside and mountains of what would become the traditional Blackfeet territory, including the Two Medicine Area. There, the Creator introduced the Blackfeet to healing trees, bushes, and plants, and taught them how to seek the Creator and other spirits. Seeking those spirits, which is ‘a central and inseparable part of [the Tribe’s] religion and lifeway,’ requires the Blackfeet to be in the proper geographical location and to undertake special preparations for religious ceremonies in the area.”

On the environment, the Order notes: “The Two Medicine Area functions as a habitat for a number of species, including bald eagles, peregrine falcons, grizzly bears, elk, wolves, lynx, and wolverines, and it serves as a ‘critical wildlife movement corridor.’ In recognition of its critical environmental status and to preserve the region, the United States Forest Service in 2009 banned motorized vehicles from all trails and prohibited snowmobiling.”

Given that there is now a billion barrel surplus of oil — and no indication that will vanish due to ubiquitous fracking — it makes no sense whatsoever to pursue yet more drilling, roadbuilding and development in this area than it would to drill in the Sistine Chapel, Mecca, or any holiest of holies on the planet. Unfortunately, it is all too evident that Trump’s administration has exactly zero regard for the environment, national monuments, tribal religious rights, or future generations.

Yet, even as the widespread damage from Trump’s presidency continues to mount daily we have something to celebrate. The Court has ruled that the destruction shall not happen to the Badger-Two Medicine. And now, in Trump’s darkness of arrogance and ignorance, a bright light shines forth, bringing hope for a better, saner, and more respectful future not just for the Blackfeet, but for all of us.

There’s no question that it’s decades past time for Congress to get its greedy paws off the revenue stream that was intended to bolster conservation of public lands and waters. But weighed against the environmental damage Daines has continually supported, his latest charade is just that — an election year ploy to trick Montanans and garner a few conservation votes.

The Land and Water Conservation Fund Act was passed into law in 1965. The revenue comes primarily from offshore oil and gas fees and royalties and is capped at $900 million annually. But since its inception, the fund has only received full funding twice in its 55-year history. All the rest of those years over the last half century Congress has diverted most of the fund for other purposes.

The program actually expired in 2018, but was reauthorized and made permanent in 2019. But it faces stern opposition from Republicans such as Utah’s Rep. Rob Bishop, who considers the Land and Water Conservation program a “slush fund,” wants the Endangered Species Act repealed, and led Donald Trump’s move to severely shrink the Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears National Monuments.

The bill authorizing full funding is called the Great American Outdoors Act, and like his House counterpart, Utah’s Sen. Mike Lee is totally opposed to its passage, telling reporters it is “perpetuating and worsening our already highly problematic federal public lands policy.” It’s worth remembering that Lee doesn’t believe in public lands, like many in his state who think federal lands should be transferred to private ownership.

It’s also illustrative of the strictly political motivation for this ploy that President Trump is now showing support for the bill and has singled out Daines and a fellow Republican senator up for reelection. But like so much emanating from Trump, the truth of his hypocrisy is that he previous tried to cut LWCF funding by 97%.

Make no mistake, it will be beneficial to finally and fully fund the Land and Water Conservation program. But the ugly truth is that no amount of money will mitigate the enormous environmental damages being done by the Trump, his administration and its backers in the Senate like Steve Daines. Let’s remember that Trump first used the excuse of the pandemic to tell his environmental regulatory agencies to ignore environmental enforcement. Then, going even further, he declared an “economic emergency” and suspended the National Environmental Policy Act and the Endangered Species Act.

Given that extinction is permanent — and we’re in what’s been dubbed the Sixth Great Extinction Event — no amount of money will bring back the species Trump, with the puppet-like support of Daines, has doomed. What kind of damages can and will happen when major industrial projects and extractive industries operate without environmental regulation? Montanans need look no further than Butte for a harsh lesson in permanent pollution and the enormous costs to even marginally mitigate it.

If all goes as expected, the Senate will pass the Great American Outdoors Act today. But Montanans should not be fooled by Steve Daines. He voted to confirm the corporate lobbyists Trump put in to head our most important environmental regulatory agencies, essentially putting the extractive industry foxes in charge of the nation’s natural resource and environmental henhouse.

Daines’ record on the environment speaks for itself — and undeniably proves Daines’ “conservation conversion” is a charade.

The post Conservation Conversion Charade in Montana appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

Utopia: a place in which human society, natural conditions, etc., are so ideally perfect that there is complete contentment.

Dystopia: a community or society that is undesirable or frightening.

You can’t get much further away from the news than on the north shore of Montana’s largest water body, Fort Peck Lake. While cattle and bison graze the vast prairie above, the lake lies at much lower elevation and topography pretty much provides a natural blackout for modern communication devices. Besides, once you’re there, “civilization,” or what passes for it these days, seems very far away indeed.

Which is why, after eight incredibly peaceful days of camping and fishing, emerging on Election Day to nationwide riots, the National Guard loosed on citizens and cops cracking skulls while gassing protesters was, in every way, a quick voyage from utopia to dystopia.

Of course not everyone would define being in a place with no electricity, no potable water and no cell phone service as being “ideally perfect.” It’s just as likely that most people would prefer to still be sleeping when the meadowlarks start their loud, constant, but beautifully melodious songs as dawn begins to lighten the eastern sky. Nor would sitting in the middle of a 136-mile-long lake with lines in the water before the sun crests the horizon necessarily be their idea of “complete contentment.”

But for two old anglers very, very tired of the constant barrage of lies, distortions, environmental destruction and hate-mongering from Donald Trump and his administration, sitting in near silence surrounded by the enormous Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge with its elk, deer and antelope and not another human in sight was pretty dang close to heaven on earth.

When we left for home it wasn’t until we’d made our way back up the long gumbo dirt road to the plains that “the news” began to intrude on our reality — and truth is, what came in clearest on the truck radio was the Northern Ag Network, which was considerably more concerned with feeder cattle and pork belly futures than race riots.

As we drove the long, mostly empty road, details started to trickle in. My fishing buddy asked who George Floyd was, but neither of us knew, let alone understood that he had been murdered by a Minneapolis cop who kneeled on his neck and strangled his life away.

By the time we got home the enormity of the situation was revealed in horrific and all-too-familiar detail for those who grew up during the ’60s, with its race riots, Vietnam War protests and assassinations. It was like being in a time machine gone wrong that had thrown us back half a century to a very dark and divisive time in America’s history.

Only this time around, it seemed even more brutal as a president without a shred of empathy or understanding of constitutional limitations sought to unleash the military on his own citizenry — in spite of the Posse Commitatus Act that prohibits the use of federal military forces for domestic law enforcement.

As the days passed, the news got worse. The nation’s capital had been turned into a war zone, complete with new “security perimeter” fences surrounding the White House where Trump had been shuffled to a secure bunker fearful for his safety as protesters breached the barriers.

In short, we’re in it again — and deep in it. The question is: How do we get out of it? And for now, that question remains far from being answered in our polarized, violent and distinctly dystopian nation.

Utopia: a place in which human society, natural conditions, etc., are so ideally perfect that there is complete contentment.

Dystopia: a community or society that is undesirable or frightening.

You can’t get much further away from the news than on the north shore of Montana’s largest water body, Fort Peck Lake. While cattle and bison graze the vast prairie above, the lake lies at much lower elevation and topography pretty much provides a natural blackout for modern communication devices. Besides, once you’re there, “civilization,” or what passes for it these days, seems very far away indeed.

Which is why, after eight incredibly peaceful days of camping and fishing, emerging on Election Day to nationwide riots, the National Guard loosed on citizens and cops cracking skulls while gassing protesters was, in every way, a quick voyage from utopia to dystopia.

Of course not everyone would define being in a place with no electricity, no potable water and no cell phone service as being “ideally perfect.” It’s just as likely that most people would prefer to still be sleeping when the meadowlarks start their loud, constant, but beautifully melodious songs as dawn begins to lighten the eastern sky. Nor would sitting in the middle of a 136-mile-long lake with lines in the water before the sun crests the horizon necessarily be their idea of “complete contentment.”

But for two old anglers very, very tired of the constant barrage of lies, distortions, environmental destruction and hate-mongering from Donald Trump and his administration, sitting in near silence surrounded by the enormous Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge with its elk, deer and antelope and not another human in sight was pretty dang close to heaven on earth.

When we left for home it wasn’t until we’d made our way back up the long gumbo dirt road to the plains that “the news” began to intrude on our reality — and truth is, what came in clearest on the truck radio was the Northern Ag Network, which was considerably more concerned with feeder cattle and pork belly futures than race riots.

As we drove the long, mostly empty road, details started to trickle in. My fishing buddy asked who George Floyd was, but neither of us knew, let alone understood that he had been murdered by a Minneapolis cop who kneeled on his neck and strangled his life away.

By the time we got home the enormity of the situation was revealed in horrific and all-too-familiar detail for those who grew up during the ’60s, with its race riots, Vietnam War protests and assassinations. It was like being in a time machine gone wrong that had thrown us back half a century to a very dark and divisive time in America’s history.

Only this time around, it seemed even more brutal as a president without a shred of empathy or understanding of constitutional limitations sought to unleash the military on his own citizenry — in spite of the Posse Commitatus Act that prohibits the use of federal military forces for domestic law enforcement.

As the days passed, the news got worse. The nation’s capital had been turned into a war zone, complete with new “security perimeter” fences surrounding the White House where Trump had been shuffled to a secure bunker fearful for his safety as protesters breached the barriers.

In short, we’re in it again — and deep in it. The question is: How do we get out of it? And for now, that question remains far from being answered in our polarized, violent and distinctly dystopian nation.

Utopia: a place in which human society, natural conditions, etc., are so ideally perfect that there is complete contentment.

Dystopia: a community or society that is undesirable or frightening.

You can’t get much further away from the news than on the north shore of Montana’s largest water body, Fort Peck Lake. While cattle and bison graze the vast prairie above, the lake lies at much lower elevation and topography pretty much provides a natural blackout for modern communication devices. Besides, once you’re there, “civilization,” or what passes for it these days, seems very far away indeed.

Which is why, after eight incredibly peaceful days of camping and fishing, emerging on Election Day to nationwide riots, the National Guard loosed on citizens and cops cracking skulls while gassing protesters was, in every way, a quick voyage from utopia to dystopia.

Of course not everyone would define being in a place with no electricity, no potable water and no cell phone service as being “ideally perfect.” It’s just as likely that most people would prefer to still be sleeping when the meadowlarks start their loud, constant, but beautifully melodious songs as dawn begins to lighten the eastern sky. Nor would sitting in the middle of a 136-mile-long lake with lines in the water before the sun crests the horizon necessarily be their idea of “complete contentment.”

But for two old anglers very, very tired of the constant barrage of lies, distortions, environmental destruction and hate-mongering from Donald Trump and his administration, sitting in near silence surrounded by the enormous Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge with its elk, deer and antelope and not another human in sight was pretty dang close to heaven on earth.

When we left for home it wasn’t until we’d made our way back up the long gumbo dirt road to the plains that “the news” began to intrude on our reality — and truth is, what came in clearest on the truck radio was the Northern Ag Network, which was considerably more concerned with feeder cattle and pork belly futures than race riots.

As we drove the long, mostly empty road, details started to trickle in. My fishing buddy asked who George Floyd was, but neither of us knew, let alone understood that he had been murdered by a Minneapolis cop who kneeled on his neck and strangled his life away.

By the time we got home the enormity of the situation was revealed in horrific and all-too-familiar detail for those who grew up during the ’60s, with its race riots, Vietnam War protests and assassinations. It was like being in a time machine gone wrong that had thrown us back half a century to a very dark and divisive time in America’s history.

Only this time around, it seemed even more brutal as a president without a shred of empathy or understanding of constitutional limitations sought to unleash the military on his own citizenry — in spite of the Posse Commitatus Act that prohibits the use of federal military forces for domestic law enforcement.

As the days passed, the news got worse. The nation’s capital had been turned into a war zone, complete with new “security perimeter” fences surrounding the White House where Trump had been shuffled to a secure bunker fearful for his safety as protesters breached the barriers.

In short, we’re in it again — and deep in it. The question is: How do we get out of it? And for now, that question remains far from being answered in our polarized, violent and distinctly dystopian nation.

Utopia: a place in which human society, natural conditions, etc., are so ideally perfect that there is complete contentment.

Dystopia: a community or society that is undesirable or frightening.

You can’t get much further away from the news than on the north shore of Montana’s largest water body, Fort Peck Lake. While cattle and bison graze the vast prairie above, the lake lies at much lower elevation and topography pretty much provides a natural blackout for modern communication devices. Besides, once you’re there, “civilization,” or what passes for it these days, seems very far away indeed.

Which is why, after eight incredibly peaceful days of camping and fishing, emerging on Election Day to nationwide riots, the National Guard loosed on citizens and cops cracking skulls while gassing protesters was, in every way, a quick voyage from utopia to dystopia.

Of course not everyone would define being in a place with no electricity, no potable water and no cell phone service as being “ideally perfect.” It’s just as likely that most people would prefer to still be sleeping when the meadowlarks start their loud, constant, but beautifully melodious songs as dawn begins to lighten the eastern sky. Nor would sitting in the middle of a 136-mile-long lake with lines in the water before the sun crests the horizon necessarily be their idea of “complete contentment.”

But for two old anglers very, very tired of the constant barrage of lies, distortions, environmental destruction and hate-mongering from Donald Trump and his administration, sitting in near silence surrounded by the enormous Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge with its elk, deer and antelope and not another human in sight was pretty dang close to heaven on earth.

When we left for home it wasn’t until we’d made our way back up the long gumbo dirt road to the plains that “the news” began to intrude on our reality — and truth is, what came in clearest on the truck radio was the Northern Ag Network, which was considerably more concerned with feeder cattle and pork belly futures than race riots.

As we drove the long, mostly empty road, details started to trickle in. My fishing buddy asked who George Floyd was, but neither of us knew, let alone understood that he had been murdered by a Minneapolis cop who kneeled on his neck and strangled his life away.

By the time we got home the enormity of the situation was revealed in horrific and all-too-familiar detail for those who grew up during the ’60s, with its race riots, Vietnam War protests and assassinations. It was like being in a time machine gone wrong that had thrown us back half a century to a very dark and divisive time in America’s history.

Only this time around, it seemed even more brutal as a president without a shred of empathy or understanding of constitutional limitations sought to unleash the military on his own citizenry — in spite of the Posse Commitatus Act that prohibits the use of federal military forces for domestic law enforcement.

As the days passed, the news got worse. The nation’s capital had been turned into a war zone, complete with new “security perimeter” fences surrounding the White House where Trump had been shuffled to a secure bunker fearful for his safety as protesters breached the barriers.

In short, we’re in it again — and deep in it. The question is: How do we get out of it? And for now, that question remains far from being answered in our polarized, violent and distinctly dystopian nation.

Utopia: a place in which human society, natural conditions, etc., are so ideally perfect that there is complete contentment.

Dystopia: a community or society that is undesirable or frightening.

You can’t get much further away from the news than on the north shore of Montana’s largest water body, Fort Peck Lake. While cattle and bison graze the vast prairie above, the lake lies at much lower elevation and topography pretty much provides a natural blackout for modern communication devices. Besides, once you’re there, “civilization,” or what passes for it these days, seems very far away indeed.

Which is why, after eight incredibly peaceful days of camping and fishing, emerging on Election Day to nationwide riots, the National Guard loosed on citizens and cops cracking skulls while gassing protesters was, in every way, a quick voyage from utopia to dystopia.

Of course not everyone would define being in a place with no electricity, no potable water and no cell phone service as being “ideally perfect.” It’s just as likely that most people would prefer to still be sleeping when the meadowlarks start their loud, constant, but beautifully melodious songs as dawn begins to lighten the eastern sky. Nor would sitting in the middle of a 136-mile-long lake with lines in the water before the sun crests the horizon necessarily be their idea of “complete contentment.”

But for two old anglers very, very tired of the constant barrage of lies, distortions, environmental destruction and hate-mongering from Donald Trump and his administration, sitting in near silence surrounded by the enormous Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge with its elk, deer and antelope and not another human in sight was pretty dang close to heaven on earth.

When we left for home it wasn’t until we’d made our way back up the long gumbo dirt road to the plains that “the news” began to intrude on our reality — and truth is, what came in clearest on the truck radio was the Northern Ag Network, which was considerably more concerned with feeder cattle and pork belly futures than race riots.

As we drove the long, mostly empty road, details started to trickle in. My fishing buddy asked who George Floyd was, but neither of us knew, let alone understood that he had been murdered by a Minneapolis cop who kneeled on his neck and strangled his life away.

By the time we got home the enormity of the situation was revealed in horrific and all-too-familiar detail for those who grew up during the ’60s, with its race riots, Vietnam War protests and assassinations. It was like being in a time machine gone wrong that had thrown us back half a century to a very dark and divisive time in America’s history.

Only this time around, it seemed even more brutal as a president without a shred of empathy or understanding of constitutional limitations sought to unleash the military on his own citizenry — in spite of the Posse Commitatus Act that prohibits the use of federal military forces for domestic law enforcement.

As the days passed, the news got worse. The nation’s capital had been turned into a war zone, complete with new “security perimeter” fences surrounding the White House where Trump had been shuffled to a secure bunker fearful for his safety as protesters breached the barriers.

In short, we’re in it again — and deep in it. The question is: How do we get out of it? And for now, that question remains far from being answered in our polarized, violent and distinctly dystopian nation.

Utopia: a place in which human society, natural conditions, etc., are so ideally perfect that there is complete contentment.

Dystopia: a community or society that is undesirable or frightening.

You can’t get much further away from the news than on the north shore of Montana’s largest water body, Fort Peck Lake. While cattle and bison graze the vast prairie above, the lake lies at much lower elevation and topography pretty much provides a natural blackout for modern communication devices. Besides, once you’re there, “civilization,” or what passes for it these days, seems very far away indeed.

Which is why, after eight incredibly peaceful days of camping and fishing, emerging on Election Day to nationwide riots, the National Guard loosed on citizens and cops cracking skulls while gassing protesters was, in every way, a quick voyage from utopia to dystopia.

Of course not everyone would define being in a place with no electricity, no potable water and no cell phone service as being “ideally perfect.” It’s just as likely that most people would prefer to still be sleeping when the meadowlarks start their loud, constant, but beautifully melodious songs as dawn begins to lighten the eastern sky. Nor would sitting in the middle of a 136-mile-long lake with lines in the water before the sun crests the horizon necessarily be their idea of “complete contentment.”

But for two old anglers very, very tired of the constant barrage of lies, distortions, environmental destruction and hate-mongering from Donald Trump and his administration, sitting in near silence surrounded by the enormous Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge with its elk, deer and antelope and not another human in sight was pretty dang close to heaven on earth.

When we left for home it wasn’t until we’d made our way back up the long gumbo dirt road to the plains that “the news” began to intrude on our reality — and truth is, what came in clearest on the truck radio was the Northern Ag Network, which was considerably more concerned with feeder cattle and pork belly futures than race riots.

As we drove the long, mostly empty road, details started to trickle in. My fishing buddy asked who George Floyd was, but neither of us knew, let alone understood that he had been murdered by a Minneapolis cop who kneeled on his neck and strangled his life away.

By the time we got home the enormity of the situation was revealed in horrific and all-too-familiar detail for those who grew up during the ’60s, with its race riots, Vietnam War protests and assassinations. It was like being in a time machine gone wrong that had thrown us back half a century to a very dark and divisive time in America’s history.

Only this time around, it seemed even more brutal as a president without a shred of empathy or understanding of constitutional limitations sought to unleash the military on his own citizenry — in spite of the Posse Commitatus Act that prohibits the use of federal military forces for domestic law enforcement.

As the days passed, the news got worse. The nation’s capital had been turned into a war zone, complete with new “security perimeter” fences surrounding the White House where Trump had been shuffled to a secure bunker fearful for his safety as protesters breached the barriers.

In short, we’re in it again — and deep in it. The question is: How do we get out of it? And for now, that question remains far from being answered in our polarized, violent and distinctly dystopian nation.

Utopia: a place in which human society, natural conditions, etc., are so ideally perfect that there is complete contentment.

Dystopia: a community or society that is undesirable or frightening.

You can’t get much further away from the news than on the north shore of Montana’s largest water body, Fort Peck Lake. While cattle and bison graze the vast prairie above, the lake lies at much lower elevation and topography pretty much provides a natural blackout for modern communication devices. Besides, once you’re there, “civilization,” or what passes for it these days, seems very far away indeed.

Which is why, after eight incredibly peaceful days of camping and fishing, emerging on Election Day to nationwide riots, the National Guard loosed on citizens and cops cracking skulls while gassing protesters was, in every way, a quick voyage from utopia to dystopia.

Of course not everyone would define being in a place with no electricity, no potable water and no cell phone service as being “ideally perfect.” It’s just as likely that most people would prefer to still be sleeping when the meadowlarks start their loud, constant, but beautifully melodious songs as dawn begins to lighten the eastern sky. Nor would sitting in the middle of a 136-mile-long lake with lines in the water before the sun crests the horizon necessarily be their idea of “complete contentment.”

But for two old anglers very, very tired of the constant barrage of lies, distortions, environmental destruction and hate-mongering from Donald Trump and his administration, sitting in near silence surrounded by the enormous Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge with its elk, deer and antelope and not another human in sight was pretty dang close to heaven on earth.

When we left for home it wasn’t until we’d made our way back up the long gumbo dirt road to the plains that “the news” began to intrude on our reality — and truth is, what came in clearest on the truck radio was the Northern Ag Network, which was considerably more concerned with feeder cattle and pork belly futures than race riots.

As we drove the long, mostly empty road, details started to trickle in. My fishing buddy asked who George Floyd was, but neither of us knew, let alone understood that he had been murdered by a Minneapolis cop who kneeled on his neck and strangled his life away.

By the time we got home the enormity of the situation was revealed in horrific and all-too-familiar detail for those who grew up during the ’60s, with its race riots, Vietnam War protests and assassinations. It was like being in a time machine gone wrong that had thrown us back half a century to a very dark and divisive time in America’s history.

Only this time around, it seemed even more brutal as a president without a shred of empathy or understanding of constitutional limitations sought to unleash the military on his own citizenry — in spite of the Posse Commitatus Act that prohibits the use of federal military forces for domestic law enforcement.

As the days passed, the news got worse. The nation’s capital had been turned into a war zone, complete with new “security perimeter” fences surrounding the White House where Trump had been shuffled to a secure bunker fearful for his safety as protesters breached the barriers.

In short, we’re in it again — and deep in it. The question is: How do we get out of it? And for now, that question remains far from being answered in our polarized, violent and distinctly dystopian nation.

Halsey, Oregon. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.

While the eyes of the nation are on the Senate impeachment trial of Donald Trump, the industry lobbyists he put in charge of federal environmental regulatory agencies have been busily carrying out an underhanded war on the environment. Attacking long-standing regulations on pollution of air, land, water, and endangered species that have, in large part, served the nation well has been their mission from day one of the Trump administration. Now, adding to the rogue’s list of rollbacks, the EPA has decided to gut the Clean Water Act, imperiling us, our children, grandchildren, and generations yet to come.

This development, which will have very damaging and long-lasting consequences, may have surprised some because Trump had already repealed the Obama-era Waters of the United States rule. Suffice it to say his impression that the only way to benefit businesses is to let them run hog wild with environmental destruction and consumption of public resources is wildly off-base. Obviously, the Obama rule was not significantly detrimental to the booming economy Trump inherited. And clean water is one of our most precious public resources without which, regardless of political affiliation, we cannot survive.

The mechanism Trump’s administration used to roll back the regulations is via administrative rulemaking. While most people rightfully believe making laws is the job of Congress, the reality is that once Congress passes a bill and it’s signed into law, the agency responsible for implementing the law must promulgate the highly complex “rules” to fit the wide variety of situations virtually any law must cover.

Importantly, once administrative rules are adopted, they carry the force of law – in effect giving bureaucracies significant latitude to basically make their own laws. Legally, the administrative rules are supposed to be bound by the statutory language of the law they implement. Unfortunately, it often takes a lawsuit to overturn administrative rules that go beyond the laws they are intended to implement and they stay in effect until overturned.

So now we are faced with yet another attempt by the Trump administration to gut long-standing beneficial environmental laws via administrative rule-making. And like the gutting of the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act, and the Clean Air Act, these rules will stand until the EPA is taken to court and the rules are overturned.

In this case, the last thing the Environmental Protection Agency is protecting is the environment. The Waters of the United States rule judiciously regulated the dumping of industrial pollutants, fertilizers, and pesticides into waterways. And since water runs downhill, wetlands and intermittent streams were protected for the very good reason that everyone lives downstream and the only way to ensure clean surface and groundwater is to protect the uphill sources from pollutants.

Moreover, wetlands are one of nature’s true miracle workers. A variety of aquatic plants very efficiently pull pollutants out of the water as it slowly seeps through. So allowing developers or farmers to fill in wetlands is one of the absolutely dumbest things anyone could do if protecting water quality is the goal.

If anyone needs a reminder of what unregulated water pollution looks like, they need only turn their eyes to Butte, Anaconda, and the Clark Fork River that comprise the nation’s largest Superfund site. We learned that lesson 50 years ago, when the Clean Water Act was enacted by Congress. But now, with a science-denying president and a corporate-controlled EPA, we are about to repeat the tragic and incredibly expensive mistakes of the past as Trump’s war on the environment increasingly imperils us all.

The National Environmental Policy Act, better known as NEPA, has served the nation well for 50 years. But last Friday the Trump administration decided to gut the law via administrative rules changes that will allow virtually unhindered development, resource extraction and pollution. It’s one thing for the Trump cultists to support certain policies, tariffs, sanctions and war-mongering. It’s quite another to allow Trump’s anti-environmental administration to doom the future by leaving generations to come a smoldering, polluted and unlivable planet — which is just what gutting NEPA will do.

In a nutshell, NEPA requires the government to consider the environmental effects prior to issuing permits for industries or taking major action by federal agencies. Importantly, the law also requires the analysis of environmental impacts to be presented to the public for review and comment.

As it always does, industry has targeted the law since its inception in an effort to weaken or eliminate the required analysis and/or public review and comment process. In “industry speak” NEPA’s prudent measures to ensure impacts are not unduly or irreparably deleterious to our shared environment are dubbed “red tape” and “regulatory hurdles.”

Bending, as usual, to unrelenting industry pressure, Congress has already shamefully exempted any number of projects — such as clearcutting national forests — from the required environmental reviews. These measures are intended, as in the case of national forest “categorical exclusions,” to bolster the timber industry which has largely cut itself out of a future by logging far beyond the sustainable levels of forest replacement. In the parlance of the timber industry, our national forests are not ecosystems in and of their own right, supporting a vast array of wildlife and producing clean water for our citizens, but are “100-year gardens” to be whacked down and “harvested.”

The problem is that industry’s rap, as usual, is a total sham and there’s no way timber companies are willing to wait a century for the forests to grow back. Moreover, given the increasing impacts of climate change, forest regrowth is not guaranteed. Nope, it’s “feed the beast” and under Trump, all the timber, oil and gas, mining and development beasts are very hungry indeed.

Thus, without a shred of concern for the future, the administration is not only planning on wholesale exemption of privately funded projects, but will omit any analysis of climate change impacts or cumulative impacts. Hence, if you suck a river dry through a variety of diversions, the impacts won’t be considered cumulatively. And if a pipeline carrying toxic oil sands gunk will contribute vast amounts of greenhouse gases to an already over-heated atmosphere, well, no problem — climate change, after all, is still considered a “Chinese hoax” by Trump and his trash-the-planet cultists.

But the consequences of gutting NEPA are not a hoax — they are very real, very dangerous, and very difficult if not impossible to repair. Given that Montana is home to the nation’s largest Superfund site, one might expect our congressional delegation might be aware of the problems and costs of dealing with long-lasting environmental destruction.

The public has 60 days to comment on the draconian changes. By all rights our congressional delegation should be howling over the administration’s efforts to gut the law. Lawmaking, after all, is a function of Congress, not the executive branch. But so far, the silence from Montana’s congressional delegation is deafening — and not just from Trump’s blind Republican sycophants. Montana’s Democrat Sen. Jon Tester, too, is inexplicably mute on an issue that will negatively affect our state and his constituents while dooming generations yet to come.