See that cute little message at the bottom left? It reads “Public Document . Official Business, This document was prepared, published and mailed at taxpayer expense“. That means you paid the cost and it’s officially called “franking”, a privilege that allows Congress to communicate about what they have been doing for constituents. It’s not meant to convey what they are trying to do “to” constituents. Even though he has to sign a certification that ” to the best of my knowledge, the attached material submitted for review does not contain any logo, masthead design, slogans, photographs or facsimiles thereof contained in the campaign literature of a Member, or any specific campaign promises or pledges of a Member or political party“, Denny has a hard time figuring out just what campaign literature really is.

In 2006 Denny sent out 147,000 glossy mailers costing about $60,000 that opponents called “blatant campaign literature”. Of course that’s only for the mailing cost and  doesn’t include stuff like producing all the fancy graphics and pretty pictures of the Congressman as well as publishing costs that go into the propaganda that goes on your tab. In 2008 and 2010 Denny once again sent out pretty picture-filled brochures about how he is fighting to end costly earmarks;

2006

2008

Getting the picture? These pretty, and expensive, brochures that you paid for always seem to show up in your mailbox only during election years.

During Rehberg’s all-out fight against congressional earmarks, he was named the #1 earmarker in Congress. Yes, this is the same Dennis Rehberg that is reported to vote with his party 91% of the time so, you don’t really need to know what his positions are.

According to OpenCongress, Mr. Rehberg has sponsored 15 bills in the House, 0 of which made it into law. He has co-sponsored 138 bills, of which 5 became law. You are not only paying for all this pretty mail that you immediately toss or recycle. You are paying this ineffective guy an actual salary to do this to you.

This is what Keystone bribes will buy - Tar Sands Mine, north of Fort McMurray in Alberta, Canada.

Your entire congressional delegation is pushing for expedited construction of the Keystone XL pipeline based on faulty information. It’s not surprising given that Senator Baucus and Representative Rehberg have accepted more than a million dollars in dirty energy campaign money. They need to hear from you now.

The proposed 36-inch pipe will have a capacity of 900,000 barrels per day of some of the most filthy oil on the planet. This pipe carries tar sands crude which creates three times the amount of greenhouse gases as normal crude oil extraction. The pipe will cross hundreds of streams and small drainages in Montana. Any spill of this stuff into Montana waters would be many times more damaging than the Yellowstone River spill earlier this year.

TransCanada makes extravagant claims for the jobs created by this pipeline, but a recent State Department report puts the number of jobs during construction at only 5,000 to 6,000, almost all of which would disappear after construction. Republicans are calling this a shovel-ready jobs creator, but the majority of the shovels would be wielded by workers cleaning up the spilled crude. The existing Keystone pipeline had 12 major spills last year. The 2,794 pipeline spills last year included 275,000 gallons in Michigan and 126,000 gallons in North Dakota and killed 161 people. For comparison, the spill into the Yellowstone River was about 40,000 gallons and reported cost Exxon $135 million to clean up. If you think those costs aren’t coming out of your taxes or transportation costs, think again.

Almost all of the oil from the tar sands will be transported to Texas for export abroad. Not only will the tar sands oil not help with the U.S. oil imports, it may actually increase gasoline costs to U.S. consumers by relieving a current glut of Canadian crude oil in the Midwest which would be picked up by the XL pipeline.

President Obama recently delayed approval of the XL pipeline, but the big oil money is pushing Congress for speedy approval with millions of dollars in bribes to legislators. Congressman Rehberg has sold out to big oil once again by authoring legislation to give the administration 60 days to make this important decision. Montana’s Senators and Representative need to hear from Montanans that this pipeline is just a disaster waiting to happen. Let them know that we don’t need to become a conduit and dumping ground for more foreign oil at the cost of our pristine Montana environment.

Email Denny Rehberg

Email Max Baucus

Email Jon Tester

Deep Trouble in Western Waters

Fast growing, long-lived populations of Salvelinus namaycush are decimating native fish populations in more than 200 lakes and watersheds around the west. Native trout have faced every challenge thrown at them for more than 10,000 years, but are no match for these voracious non-native predators.

The article highlights attempts to do something about the lake trout invasions in Yellowstone Lake, Lake Pend Oreille and in the Flathead Basin. In just a few years the native cutthroat spawning run in Clear Creek, tributary to Yellowstone Lake, has dropped from 50,000 fish to only about 500 today due to lake trout predation. In Flathead Lake, less than 3,000 native bull trout remain in our largest western freshwater lake. The lake trout population has more than doubled in the last 20 years under a feeble attempt to reduce lake trout numbers using only recreational angling. As crowded lake trout radiate out from Flathead Lake, we have lost native fish populations in 12 of our stronghold lakes including Swan Lake, which became a catch-and-release fishery for native bull trout for the first time this year due to lake trout predation.

There are some success stories. Lake Pend Oreille in Idaho is seeing a rebound in their native bull trout populations as well as a hopeful return of their popular kokanee fishery nearly decimated by lake trout. They have applied an aggressive lake trout netting program and a bounty system. It’s not a matter of wiping out lake trout in our western waters. Once they have established a foothold, lake trout are here to stay, but if we ignore the problem much longer and don’t make the attempt to reduce lake trout numbers and re-balance some of these important native fish waters, we face the very real danger of losing one of the West’s greatest genetic treasures, not to mention many dandy fishing opportunities.

(cross-posted from Flathead Valley Trout Unlimited)

Also check out the new article by the Southern Poverty Law Center, A Gathering of Eagles: Extremists Look to Montana. Both articles have plenty of good information on our favorite perpetual candidate and DVD peddler, Chuck Baldwin who moved to Kalispell a couple of years ago because he knows these anti-government neo-Nazis will shower money on almost anybody who knows the right rhetoric. And, boy does he know the rhetoric. Along with “Crazy Bob” Fanning, he has thrown his helmet into the race for Lieutenant Governor.

Bob and I are committed to fighting for constitutional government, opposing Agenda 21, protecting the right to life of the unborn, preserving State sovereignty, opposing federal government land grabs, and protecting the right of states to govern themselves, which includes defending Montana’s duly established medical marijuana laws.

Well, they aren’t committed yet (although they should have been years ago), first they need you to send them as much of your retirement savings as they can squeeze out of you;

To launch the Fanning-Baldwin campaign, we need 200 people to give $500. Or 400 people to give $250. Or 1,000 people to give $100. You get the idea.

Yeah, I get the idea. Chuck found out years ago that you can separate crazy people from their money more easily than rational folks. I bet old Chuck can even tie a new DVD and maybe a couple of books into the campaign to squeeze a few more schekels out of the true believers. Although he is running for Lieutenant Governor because he seems to want to run the government of the Treasure State, his latest book, “Romans 13: The True Meaning of Submission, shows with overwhelming evidence that submission to government is limited and that the obey-government-no-matter-what argument is false!” (Chuck likes exclamation points) So, I guess he wants to be the government, he just doesn’t want you to pay attention to the government. Anyway, enough about the Chuck & Bob Show. We’ll get lots of that later in the campaign. For now, you need to read these articles and pay attention to what is happening on the lunatic side of town.

This apparent militarization, or at least such rhetoric from many of the movement’s most visible figures, has grown increasingly worrisome. Several judges and law enforcement officers say the concerns are real, just as they were two decades ago. People are coming to court armed with a vitriolic distrust of government — and, on occasion, sidearms.

These are the folks who plan to be our bastion of defense when the George Soros-sponsored black UN helicopters swoop down on Montana to take away our guns, farms and freedom. But, in the mean time, please send all your spare change in check, cash or money order, to Chuck Baldwin, Kalispell, Montana. I don’t know what it is about Montana that draws crazy people, but I suspect that if we could fix it, a lot of us wouldn’t be here. Just because they’re bonkers don’t mean they ain’t dangerous.

The proposal would let the Border Patrol circumvent dozens of environmental laws from the Clean Water Act to the Endangered Species Act in areas those laws were created for: the nation’s most-protected wilderness areas that fall within the 100-mile border zone with both Mexico and Canada.

Oh, yeah. Well surely they would never use the new powers to actually build roads, ditches and guard towers in our National Parks and wilderness areas…

[Border Patrol spokesman James] Frackleton said that designated wilderness areas that prevent motorized access are a frustration for border agents, and pointed out his agency views access differently than the Forest Service or Park Service.

I can certainly understand their frustration with having to walk or ride horses through some of the most spectacular wild country in the U.S. Why don’t we just let them use ATVs in Glacier Park? They would be careful on their snowmobiles in the North Cascades. How much harm could they do on Mt. Ranier with a bulldozer anyway?

Luckily, Denny has come up with an amendment that will solve the entire problem of runaway federal agents. Now the bill will give the county sheriff dominion over the Border Patrol. Now instead of the Border Patrol having to go through all that red tape from state and federal land managers, they can just stop by the sheriff’s office and get a hall pass. Everybody knows that the county sheriff is the most upright and righteous citizen in the county anyway. There ain’t never been a crooked county sheriff. Nobody could buffalo the sheriff for Chrisakes.

But, I’d like to go one step further. Instead of federal agents having to mess with the sheriff or all those closed-minded, environmental whacko, feds. Why don’t we just let the county sheriff patrol the border? Think about it. Look how well the sheriff protected us from evil terrorists in the past. After all, did you ever see Butch Cassidy or Jesse James in this county? Of course not and that’s because they knew we had a county sheriff who wouldn’t stand for that kind of crap. The bonus would be that there would be no road building, black helicopters or noisy, smelly ATVs in our wilderness. Everybody knows that the sheriff and his posse ride horses and they all carry Winchesters. Just think of all the money we would save. The sheriff just heads out to Main Street and tells everybody to mount up for Terror Patrol. No sweeping federal land grab. No need for all those taxpayer funded Border Patrol agents with their fancy automatic weapons and Predator drones. It’s an all volunteer effort. I bet the sheriff would even invite Denny, if he ain’t too pie-eyed to sit a horse.

Shitfire boys, saddle up, lock ‘n load! We’re burning daylight. YeeHah!

We have, under NEPA, looked at many alternatives. But at the time that we were doing that, we had not had discussions with the Nebraskans or heard these significant public comments. So we have decided really to focus on looking at alternative routes that would minimize or avoid the Sand Hills, and we had not done that in the Environmental Impact Statement.

In other words, why talk to the states about decisions that don’t concern them. The White House didn’t count on those pesky Nebraskans. Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska:

If the federal government makes TransCanada change the route, “that works,” Nelson said. “If it doesn’t, then the state will have taken care of it.”

Seems to me that just a couple of months ago, this was the biggest job-creator the world has ever seen. But, that was before there was ring of angry citizens around the White House and the only numbers were coming from Keystone and the American Petroleum Institute. Their claim of 13,000+ direct jobs created just never really stood up to close examination. According to the Washington Post, those numbers indicated  “that the 13,000 figure was “one person, one year,” meaning that if the construction jobs lasted two years, the number of people employed in each of the two years would be 6,500.”

According to the only report not coming from the oil industry, “The project will create no more than 2,500-4,650 temporary direct construction jobs for two years, according to TransCanada’s own data supplied to the State Department.” And, they left out small details that may actually kill U.S. jobs like,

• There is strong evidence to suggest that a large portion of the primary material input for KXL—steel pipe—will not even be produced in the United States. A substantial amount of pipe has already been manufactured in advance of pipeline permit issuance.
• In 2010 US pipeline spills and explosions killed 22 people, released over 170,000 barrels of petroleum into the environment, and caused $1 billion dollars worth of damage in the United States.
• Rising carbon emissions and other pollutants from the heavy crude transported by Keystone XL will also incur increased health care costs. Emissions also increase both the risk and costs of further climate instability.
• KXL will divert Tar Sands oil now supplying Midwest refineries, so it can be sold at higher prices to the Gulf Coast and export markets. As a result, consumers in the Midwest could be paying 10 to 20 cents more per gallon for gasoline and diesel fuel. These additional costs (estimated to total $2–4 billion) will suppress other spending and will therefore cost jobs.
  

  XL Pipeline proposed route (click for big)

A new route ain’t gonna help much with all the other impacts of the big pipe. And, finally how do you get to Texas from Alberta without crossing Nebraska and their precious Sand Hills? Take a close look at the map. Probably the best route would be to go straight south along the entire length of the Rocky Mountain Front through the energy colonies of Montana, Wyoming, Colorado and maybe New Mexico. No need to discuss it with them, they don’t have enough population to object and their comments could not be “significant” anyway.

TransCanada spokesman Shawn Howard said Wednesday that the economic fallout would go beyond the company.
“If they increase the project’s cost, if they file frivolous lawsuits, does that cost us money? Yes,” Howard said. “But it’s consumers they end up hurting because of this. If the price of gasoline goes up, it’s not the company that pays those costs. It’s you and I.”

Nope, I guess that money is going to come out of my pocket. It looks like U.S. taxpayers will be footing the bill for even a second’s delay in letting this multinational corporation run rampant across our plains without any review. Just why will any delays cost me money?

[TransCanada vice president Robert] Jones said the $1 million-per-day loss estimate was based on TransCanada’s existing promises to buy construction materials that require a great deal of advance notice, its commitments to power utilities, and the costs of maintaining staff and equipment, among other expenses.

So, let me get this straight… TransCanada, a giant multi-national oil conglomerate has decided to build a pipeline across the center of Canada and through the U.S. down to ports in Texas so they can transport and process some of the dirtiest fuel ever dug. The pipeline has not yet been approved. Even Canadians and Native American tribes are pissed off and vow to fight the pipeline. Now the Obama Administration, who must ultimately approve a 36″ pipe that will cross hundreds of streams and rivers in the U.S., threaten some of our most important groundwater aquifers, provide fuel to increase global warming worldwide for decades, oh, and provide a few jobs for a few years, have decided that maybe they need to think about this and do the right thing. The President said a decision could take a few more months and needs to consider what is good for the folks who elected him.

“[The State Department] will be giving me a report over the next several months and, you know, my general attitude is, what is best for the American people? What’s best for our economy both short-term and long-term?  But also, what’s best for the health of the American people?” Obama said in a Nebraska TV interview.”

So, what is TransCanada up to? They are buying equipment and hiring people to build a pipeline that they don’t have permission yet to build.

Jones said the $1 million-per-day loss estimate was based on TransCanada’s existing promises to buy construction materials that require a great deal of advance notice, its commitments to power utilities, and the costs of maintaining staff and equipment, among other expenses.

So, it looks like I have to pay TransCanada a $1 million dollars/day because they don’t know how to run a business? What’s wrong with this picture? I wonder if I could get Canadian citizens to pay me $1M/day for delaying my decision to denude their rivers of game fish?

I am the progeny of those who grew up during the Great Depression. My parents and their parents lived in an age when people knew that the world could fall apart. Their values were ingrained with frugality, modesty and moderation. My generation and several that have followed have moved steadily away from those values. We saw an economy that always grew. Housing and land were always a good investment. Money accrued easily through the magic of compound interest and that money was meant to be spent.

Corporations became instruments of the public good. Wages always climbed and benefits were good. We encouraged corporate growth because of the material things it could provide to us. Then something happened.

I have not yet come to grips with what that “something” was, but it led to people seeing themselves less as members of a productive and stable society and more to seeing ourselves as individual consumers. Corporate interests, of course, were there to take advantage of that change and in large part drove the process, but they were not the sole driver. We became consumers because we wanted to.

We no longer compare our lives to those of our friends and neighbors. Our examples have become those of us who are the best consumers. We no longer want security and stability. We want the shoes that Snooki wears. We want the pickup driven by Brett Favre and we have to have the $1,000 fly rod used by Robert Redford, or the latest tablet computer. As we align ourselves more with the examples of great consumerism, we feel less empathy for neighbors and those with whom we once shared our values. Spending on improving community and culture (taxes) becomes a burden on our ability to accrue more and is therefore shunned. We pay less in taxes as a percentage of our economy than any industrialized nation and yet we protest that burden.

The driving force behind corporations is profit maximization. There is nothing new about that. The motivation behind business has always been greed, but our unrelenting need for more drives corporate interests to supply that need and sets the example for them to follow. Corporations found that they could increase profits by paying workers less and real wages have fallen for decades. Retirement benefits and health care cost corporations money and thus they were reduced or eliminated. That strategy boomeranged on business as workers found themselves with less money and unable to buy many of the products those same workers produced. So, we created consumer credit. Now we can buy more while still having less wealth.

We have created a global culture of individual want and need. Where we were once concerned with social issues, we have become a society of individuals who are more interested in fulfilling individual desires. We attempt to substitute purchasing power for happiness. What and how we consume defines who we are, not whether or not we have a functioning society. We occupy our streets or we join corporate tea cliques in protest, but our protests are unfocused and driven by the latest technology on the latest i-phone with must-have apps that come to us through billions of dollars of corporate advertising that we pay for through our solitary purchasing power.

We cannot reform society by ending corporate greed. We must end corporate greed by reforming our society. We must protest abuses of power whenever they occur, but we must recognize that we are the ultimate source of that power and our protests will only succeed when we are united in our dissent and consistent in our message.

DHS, CBP Area of Responsibility. Look familiar?

And I’m not the only one; “Some northern Idaho residents are concerned about proposals by U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials to make the border area more secure”. The document outlines alternatives for your protection on roughly 200,000 square miles of public and private lands along the northern border. This is the area for which cunning old Dennis Rehberg plans to give federal cops unfettered access regardless of land ownership, state or federal laws, or environmental consequences with H.R. 1505, the National Security and Federal Lands Protection Act. According to Rehberg, “It’s time to put an end to the dangerous turf war where federal land managers hide behind environmental laws in order to prevent border patrol agents from doing their jobs on federal land.”

Just what is their job on over 200,000 square miles? It’s kinda hard to pick out responsibilities in the typical bureaucratese of the document. Just the Executive Summary contains eleven pages of abbreviations, but it seems that DHS and CBP would like to conduct CMMI along the entire border without being hindered by the CFR, ESA, EPA, MBTA, MT, MTFWP, MEPA or NEPA.

H.R. 1505 gives DHS the ability to implement their preferred alternatives regardless of state or federal laws or environmental protections. What are some of the alternatives that DHS would like to implement? How about fences, moats, roads, guard towers, and electronic security within a hundred miles of the Canadian border. Some of these alternatives just sound awfully familiar for some reason…

Not Roosville, at least not yet.

Of course we are assured by Representative Rehberg, that DHS would act responsibly if given unrestricted access to do whatever the Hell they want on your land. “We built in protections for grazing rights and more narrowly focused the intent of the law on efforts to secure the border.” Grazing rights? Just what the heck do they want to do up there that would affect what cows eat?

Direct adverse impacts to wetland habitats and plant communities could result from soil erosion, sedimentation and hydrologic alteration due to road, culvert or road construction projects. Roads near riparian corridors pose a risk to riparian habitat quality and population structure. Roads can route sediment into water bodies, fragment aquatic habitat creating barriers to migration, and provide vectors for aquatic nuisance species and hazardous materials. Additionally, roads can allow access to riparian areas for livestock leading to widespread degradation of stream banks, in-channel aquatic habitat, and riparian vegetation.

Ah, I get it! Cows will be able to use the new regulation-free roads through national parks to access “improved” grazing areas. Sometimes Rehberg just makes it way too easy to prove that he dwells in a reality-enhanced world apart from the rest of us. Why should the Border Patrol not have to deal with all those pesky regulations that we normal peons are forced to deal with every day? After all, it’s us that they are trying to protect from the hoards of unwashed hippies backpacking B.C. Bud across the border. He just wants to protect us. That’s why he voted to cut $350 million from border security earlier this year and voted to cut by $31m, the office which detects attempts to import, possess, store, develop, or transport nuclear or radiological material for use against the Nation.

If you have a couple of months to spare, I recommend that you glance through some of the stuff that the government wants to do to enhance our national border with our best and most secure trading partner to the north. “The Tactical Security Infrastructure Deployment Alternative would focus on constructing additional barriers, access roads and related facilities.” In a world where they can track your cell phone to within five yards, in a world where we can deploy predator drones thousands of miles away to kill and maim American-born terrorists abroad, and they can read your license plate from outer space, is it really necessary to put up more fences and dig ditches to make it harder for me to get to the ski hill in Fernie just to stem the growing tide of illegal immigrants from Alberta? Do we really need to put billions into pissing off the only good neighbor we have left? “Probably half the people I know don’t go to Canada anymore,” said Johnna Exner, a Washington state resident. “It’s too much of a hassle.”

The big news this week is further revelations of Herman Cain’s ties to Tea Party financier Koch brothers. AP reports that his 9-9-9, tax-the-poor plan was conceived by Rich Lowrie of Americans For Prosperity. The 9% corporate tax rate has the Kochs drooling in their tea. Cain’s Koch links are really nothing new. He was a heavy hitter for the Koch-financed AFP for a long time. He even headlined their New York rally for the Koch-sponsored Greenhouse Gas, Global-Warming Denial Initiative, which as far as I can tell, promotes more and better greenhouse gases to improve the Koch financial environment.

While not really new news, the Koch ties should solidify Tea Party bona fides for Herman Cain, cement his minority candidate status and pretty much guarantee that the flavor of the week will flip a lot of support to former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson (Who?) in the GOP primary race next week.