A PR shit-storm will now descend on UM President Royce Engstrom. I’m sure some are already thinking Wow, this asshole was just making demands that the Forrester’s ball change OR ELSE, and now it looks like he tipped off an alleged rapist so the kid could flee the country.

Read the whole article. It’s dumbfounding. Obviously pay raises for top positions, like president of a University, doesn’t guarantee a quality product.

Engstrom should go. Would that be the Board of Regents job?

What’s going to make this shit-storm particularly brutal for those involved is the fact I’m sure they had no other choice. The punk-ass who allegedly committed two sexual assaults is even more untouchable than a football player; he’s a Saudi Arabian probably already soaking in the sun.

Which makes us, the Missoula community, safer, says Engstrom:

The campus is safer because of the man’s departure, Engstrom said at a news conference that he called to clarify the sequence of events involved in the incidents. He called the university’s actions “timely” and “appropriate.” Any impression “that we sat around for a week before we did anything” is untrue, he said.

Engstrom’s right, of course. They weren’t just sitting around. No, Gwen’s article makes it kind of sound like there was some aiding and abetting going on, but I ain’t a law guy, so what the hell do I know?

I know I was at a house party once, in the South Hills, and at this party I met a few Saudi exchange students. I got into an argument with one of ‘em on the back deck, a real arrogant prick. I found myself in the somewhat unique position of defending America, because this Saudi’s sense of entitlement to brazenly sample the freedoms he then turned around and arrogantly sneered at demanded a response, so I asked him if he would be able to blow coke (they were) and drunkenly grope American chicks (they did) back in his lovely country, or if Daddy just sent him to the states to get it out of his system before he got his cloaked servant. It came close to blows.

That was four, maybe five years ago. And now that UM’s rape-tolerant culture is exploding into the headlines—AGAIN—ugly little secrets are surfacing, like an administration exposed as being MORE considerate and responsive to an alleged rapist from (ahem) Saudi Arabia than they were to the two possibly victimized women. I hope everyone responsible for reporting these alleged crimes enjoyed that LOOOONNNGG weekend. Can’t get around to reporting possible sexual assaults until the following business week, right?

Unbelievable.

by Pete Talbot

Can sustainability reduce crime?

The Bakken oil boom is drawing some less-than-desirable elements to Eastern Montana and Western North Dakota.  Of course, crime in boom towns is nothing new: think Henry Plummer, the vigilantes and Alder Gulch.

And apparently we haven’t evolved much from gold camps of the 1800s — environmentally or culturally.  One can still see the mountains of tailings from the dredges that plied Alder Creek over a hundred years ago.  Or visit the Virginia City Museum where Clubfoot George’s clubfoot, looking a bit like a standing rib roast, is on display (apparently he was dug up after being hanged by the vigilantes and his foot was removed for posterity).

And what have we learned, environmentally, since those days? Witness the Berkeley Pit, Colstrip, ASARCO, Basin, the Barker-Hughesville mining district … (and who really knows what all those chemicals pumped deep into the ground in the name of fracking will do to the water tables in the Bakken Play).

But it’s the cultural degradation that’s in the news these days: crime, infrastructure issues, housing shortages, Walmart parking lots filled to capacity with RVs, overcrowded schools and man camps.  And, according to Dennis Portra, the mayor of the metropolis of Bainville, Mont., on the North Dakota border, “Korean prostitutes parking their RV in Bainville for a summer.”

Now I’m pretty sure there’s no way you can sustainably drill for oil or gas but there has to be a more sensible approach.  A permit system that slows development comes to mind, more regulation of where, when and how.  A greater pay-to-play system so that the impacts on schools and neighborhoods and highways and, well, everything is at least somewhat mitigated.  Make sure that there is land, sacred land, that just isn’t touched.  And slow the development way down so that locals get first crack at the jobs to reduce the influx of alleged murderers like these two or this guy.

I realize that we aren’t going to go cold turkey on our oil addiction but really, this cyclical boom and bust is absurd.  How’s this helping to stabilize oil prices or getting us to look at alternatives to an ever dwindling supply of oil? What’s the Williston Basin going to look like when the boom plays out in 20 years?  This is one bad economic model.

And now they’re sinking test wells further west: Choteau, Lewistown, on the lands of the Blackfeet Nation:

“This entire region of the Rockies holds untapped potential that can contribute much needed supplies to help meet U.S. demand,” says Marathon spokesman Paul Weeditz.  The Rockies, apparently, were put here for oil, gas and mineral extraction to meet our never-ending needs.

We really need to get a handle on this, for the sake of a sustainable energy future, for our environment and for our way of life.  It could even put a dent in our homicide rate.

Since seeing this article in the Missoulian I’ve been a little perplexed.

President Engstrom is threatening – quite clearly now – to put an end to some annual forester’s ball that’s been around since I-don’t-know-how-long because it (apparently) gets too rowdy.

Drunken students. The shock.

The thing is so rowdy that I’ve never even known when the darn thing’s been held – and apparently the annual soiree just occurred a few weeks ago.

But answer me this: The Griz games are one big drunken booze carnival before hand, only recently cut back to 5 hours of tailgating on campus property, right? I mean, we’re not talking clandestine alcoholic beverages sipped out of paper cups – we’re talking barrels of beer and all that you’d expect of Montana and football and a bunch of crazed Montana football fans from across the state.

But Engstrom’s got his britches in a skritches over a few dozens forestry students having an annual party to raise some money for scholarships?

When we’ve got university sanctioned public drinking on public property?

Football OK, forestry scholarship fundraising once a year, bad?

Yeah – UM has priorities.

Clearly.

I’m more disgusted than shocked – it’s no surprise, really, that a court that would side with the sale of our elections to the highest willing buyer determined yesterday that our public waterways can be owned by private corporations, without even payment to use the land.

I won’t pretend to have studiously read the court’s opinon, issued yesterday. I have read through it quickly though, and prior I had read both PPL and the state’s briefs, along with many of the other documents.

My favorite read of the PPL v Montana case was one that I think anyone would enjoy, regardless of their opinion on the case or the court’s recent ruling. Historian Stephanie Ambrose-Tubbs’ amicus brief submitted in support of the state’s position is rich with descriptive language that brings to life the color and visual of early Montana – from Lewis & Clark’s first travels on the Missouri to the steamboat travel days, outfitting and present day fishing and floating.

My favorite television reporter Marnee Banks (Helena’s CBS news) did this reporting on the hearing just before the case was heard by SCOTUS in December.

In the end, the court did not agree with the state that a the PPL dam – one in particular which sits on a series of waterfalls on the Missouri River up near Great Falls (there are other PPL dams involved also) – was on a navigable river.

Montana’s claim to rivers goes back to the law of the Magna Carta – under the principle that the waterways are a primary source of commerce, so important to the state that it is within their interest to control. Here in Montana, rivers have been used to move logs. Here in Missoula people might be interested to know that Ninemile Creek, Lolo Creek and the Rattlesnake were all used to “float” logs. That’s in addition to what most would expect – the Clark’s Fork, the Blackfoot and the Clearwater.

“Lolo?” I said when I was first told that by an old logger smokejumper in problembear’s favorite bar over there in Bonner. Apparently the old guys would cut those logs and stack them through the winter in low lands that would then be flooded by damming the creek to then “float” them down to the mills. Today you can still see the old logs sprouting up like mushrooms on the Blackfoot, now that the dam is gone at Milltown.

Some old old maps of Missoula show a log mill a the bottom of the Rattlesnake, near its confluence with the Clark’s Fork.

In some drainages, you can still see the remains of the log structures used to hold the slats that dammed the creeks.

The courts, though, apparently didn’t find logging a compelling enough of a commerce interest for the state to protect.

Meh. Whatever. Sometime soon when the set the date, I’m heading to DC to occupy the steps of SCOTUS. They still haven’t denied the request to hear American Tradition Partnership v Montana, which challenges Montana’s ban on corporate money in elections – and two court justices are hinting that they want to hear the case – so when they do, I plan to be in DC to at least be there for what I’m sure will be well-directed chaos.

What does SCOTUS’ recent ruling mean for our waterways? Apparently if you can’t float a boat, it’s up for sale to the highest bidder.

That, my friends, is sad – no matter how you slice it.

It should be noted that the big banks have gotten away with systemic fraud.

9 million homes have been lost to foreclosure since 2007, and there will be another 9 million before we’re done. Homeowners have lost $8 trillion in home equity (in the last 4 years) and 11 million people are currently underwater on their mortgages. All of this is unprecedented. All of this is the result of fraud.

Ok, now back to snarky commentary about the GOP (scary) clown show.

When it comes to state politics in Montana, I’m probably the least informed contributor at 4&20. Twelve years living in this weird bubble called Missoula, with only three years actually paying attention to local politics, doesn’t gain me much unique insight.

BUT, as an outsider, without any investment of time or money in any active campaigns, I can speak as a somewhat average consumer of our state democracy, examining a bit more objectively the packages being sold.

Like Pam Bucy. Apparently the bow on her gift-wrapping is her status as Helena Insider. I infer this from the duplicitous Cowgirl(s) site (no link, you know where to find “her”) and the flak-contagion Pogie received for this post at Intelligent Discontent.

Based on that, and reading that Pam’s been keen on killing Medicinal Marijuana, my vote is more than likely going for Jesse Laslovich.

Denny’s seat I’m having a little more trouble with. Dave Strohmaier’s “social host ordinance” was a waste of time, IMO, and it doesn’t seem like he’s got wider traction outside the bubble, so I’m leaning toward Franke Wilmer, but with reservations.

Franke is touted as informed when it comes to foreign policy. Part of her pedigree in the bio on her website regarding her scholarly work reads:

Franke Wilmer came to Bozeman in 1991 to accept a position on the faculty of Montana State University. Her research has focused on war, ethnic conflict, and indigenous peoples’ self determination. Franke has written three books, numerous articles and been an invited guest lecturer in the US and abroad. She conducted field research in former Yugoslavia during the war and over five years following the Dayton Peace Accords.

After reading the bio, I found the ISSUES button and read the two paragraphs dedicated to foreign policy:

In an age where terrorist attacks pose the greatest threat to national security, the most effective tools are intelligence with a global reach and well-trained and well-equipped U.S. military Special Forces, not 80,000 troops on the ground in two countries. The greatest threat we face today comes from unconventional enemies that will not be defeated by conventional military tactics.

I have visited more than 50 countries to do research or as an invited speaker and am a professor of international relations. I have spent significant time in an active war zone. I know the great personal costs of war to civilians and military personnel. When we are asked to send our young men and women as well as our tax dollars overseas for a military intervention, we need someone in Congress who will ask the right questions and show restraint in supporting those requests.

I think there’s some decent messaging here, but the lead in framing of Wilmer’s stance features the kind of red meat I reflexively gag on. Getting beyond the arguable claim that terrorist attacks pose the GREATEST threat to national security, the following endorsement of the still-evolving Obama doctrine ( light footprint NATO-style regime change and JSOC assassinations) is going to make it difficult for Franke Wilmer to be the kind of congressperson she claims to want to be, someone who will ask the right questions.

One of many “right questions” to be asking: how’s Libya doing? Not so good.

“While the Canadian government celebrated Gadhafi’s overthrow, the countries in the region were feeling the effects.

The Libyan strongman not only had provided aid for many African nations, but employment for their citizens. His demise set into motion a mass exodus of workers back to their original countries.

That, in turn, created a domino effect as those nations struggled to deal with hundreds of thousands of traumatized and impoverished people, according to a recently released UN report for the Security Council.

Crime and drug and human smuggling have spiked in the region and the return of more than one million people to their homelands has worsened an “already challenging, humanitarian, development and security situation,” the report noted.

But Gadhafi’s overthrow did breathe new life into one organization — al-Qaida.

As Gadhafi’s forces retreated from NATO’s relentless air attacks, theyabandoned bases and ammunition depots holding thousands of weapons, including surface-to-air missiles. In the chaos that engulfed Libya, the sites were quickly pilfered, either by rebels or black marketeers.

African nations were the first to sound the warning. In late March, just weeks into the conflict, Chad’s president, Idriss Deby Itno, told journalists that al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, or AQIM as it is known, had obtained missiles and small arms from abandoned Libyan stockpiles. “This is very serious,” he said. “AQIM is becoming a genuine army, the best equipped in the region.”

Canada was slow to recognize the problem. In April, Canadian Forces spokesman Brig.-Gen. Richard Blanchette said the military didn’t have any information about missing armaments or missiles.

But a month later, Algerian intelligence also was warning that looted Libyan weapons were in the hands of AQIM.

“The region has turned into a powder keg,” Mohamed Bazoum, Niger’s foreign minister, later would tell delegates to an anti-terrorism conference. “Things have changed and degraded since the Libya crisis and the region is on a war path. With stolen weapons circulating, al-Qaida’s total impact is growing.”

There are serious consequences for how the US&Co bumble-fuck around in the Mid-East and Africa. I hope candidate Franke Wilmer is willing to consider the potential blowback of Obama’s preference to use low-casualty humanitarian/terrorist-killing bombing of a half dozen countries to get at those “unconventional enemies”.

Here’s a quick hit for your Sunday enjoyment. The following performance is from Guante, a two-time national poetry slam champ who blasts, in ten responses, the phrase MAN UP! Clicking his name will take you to his site, where you can see more, including a free music sampler.

But shhhh…no one’s supposed to know. He has a plan.

Out on the far right of the state (can’t get any further west Senate District 7) Greg Hinkle – a favorite around these parts for years – has decided that he’s not going to run for a second term.

Even though Hinkle won by about 1000 votes over Democrat Paul Clark in 2008 (5555 to 4581), incumbents have an advantage and Hinkle knows that. So no one’s supposed to know that Greg doesn’t plan to file.

Why? The Tea Party (of which Hinkle is part of) has two good reasons for this: One is that Mark French is planning a run for that seat, and Hinkle wants to see him run unopposed.

French, if you recall, made a run for the chair of the Montana GOP last year after losing his congressional run (25K to Denny’s 96K) in the GOP primary in 2010. After that miserable loss, he then a run for the GOP chairmanship in 2011.

He failed there, too, to Missoula’s most refined and civilized Will Deschamps.

The second reason no one’s supposed to know that Hinkle isn’t going to file for SD7? Back in 2010, the Sanders County GOP had a bit of a split in their ranks, things having gone haywire after the Tea Party tried to take over. The details are foggy to me right now (why oh why didn’t I write about it then???) but the county group split, then later regrouped with the Tea Party triumphant.

In between, Judy Stang, a Republican and former county commissioner in Mineral County then began a write-in campaign for SD7, but eventually withdrew due to Montana GOP harassment, throwing her support to Democrat Paul Clark.

Yeah – things got a little crazy. There are still a lot of pissed of Republicans up there, and the incidents of 2010 have yet to dissolve from the memory for many.

Republicans, though – older ones, especially – still abide by that ‘speak no evil’ rule – which is where Hinkle’s incumbency shines. He knows no one is going to challenge him and that means something.

And so will his endorsement.

So when Hinkle doesn’t file, but Mark French does just a few days before the filing deadline, Hinkle is planning on endorsing Mark French.

Delightful plan, huh?

Incidentally – Hinkle made nationwide news last year with his spears-for-hunting bill, which died in standing committee.

It might sound crazy to some – and he tried to legitimize it as taking up a cause of the poor persecuted spear hunters of Montana thing – but it is symbolic of the Tea Party: Wanting to take Montana back to the day of the Cro-magnon man.

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Have I dastardly foiled the Hinkle/French/Tea Party plans for Senate District 7? Who knows. But will Republicans and Democrats and Fake Republicans and Fake Democrats be considering a run for that seat now?

If they read this, they just may. Especially the ones that are calling themselves the “real Republicans” after this last eminent domain-enabling, more-government-intrusion legislative session.

Like many Americans, I’ve been absolutely disgusted watching how “conservative” opportunism (read: desperation) has revived the culture war to try and drown out the somewhat encouraging economic trend lines and subsequent bump in Obama’s poll numbers.

But, like Wisconsin union bashing, Republicans have once again overreached, figuratively shooting themselves in the foot by apparently forgetting this important little fact: women vote. Political idiocy? to quote the Queen of political opportunism: youbetchya!

This weekend’s poetry series features a poem from Minnie Bruce Pratt. The poem is from a collection of poetry, titled Crimes Against Nature (Firebrand Books, 1990), and was the Lamont Poetry selection for the previous year (Note: the form of the poem is slightly altered from the original). Enjoy!

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POEM FOR MY SONS

When you were born, all the poets I knew
were men, dads eloquent on their sleeping
babes and the future: Coleridge at midnight,
Yeats’ prayer that his daughter lack opinions,
his son be high and mighty, think and act.
You’ve read the new father’s loud eloquence,
fiery sparks written in a silent house
breathing with the mother’s exhausted sleep.

When you were born, my first, what I thought was
milk: my breast sore, engorged, but not enough
when you woke. With you, my youngest, I did not
think: my head unraised for three days, mind-dead
from waist-down anesthetic labor, saddle
block, no walking either.
                                                     Your father was then
the poet I’d ceased to be when I got married.
It’s taken me years to write this to you.

I had to make a future, willful, voluble,
lascivious, a thinker, a long walker,
unstruck transgressor, furious, shouting,
voluptuous, a lover, a smeller of blood,
milk, a woman mean as she can be some nights,
existence I could pray to, capable of
poetry.
                         Now here we are. You are men,
and I am not the woman who rocked you
in the sweet reek of penicillin, sour milk,
the girl who could not imagine herself
or a future more than a warm walled room,
had no words but the pap of the expected,
and so, those night, could not wish for you.

But now I have spoken, my self, I can ask
for you: that you’ll know evil when you smell it;
that you’ll know good and do it, and see how both
run loose through your lives; that then you’ll remember
you come from dirt and history; that you’ll choose
memory, not anesthesia; that you’ll have work
you love, hindering no one, a path crossing
at boundary markers where you question power;
that your loves will match you thought for thought
in the long heat of blood and fact of bone.

Words not so romantic nor so grandly tossed
as if I’d summoned the universe to be
at your disposal.
                                          I can only pray:

That you’ll never ask for the weather, earth,
angels, women, or other lives to obey you;

that you’ll remember me, who crossed, recrossed
you,
                       as a woman making slowly toward
an unknown place where you could be with me,
like a woman on foot, in a long stepping out.

—Minnie Bruce Pratt

This post is a tribute to one of my favorite visual artists, Jess. I am drawn especially to his collage art, which you can see examples of here. I recommend looking at his bio—Jess went from working on Plutonium for the Manhattan Project to focusing on art and settling down to live a long, happy life with one of my favorite poets, Robert Duncan.

Click for more images from my collage tribute

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What I love about collages is re-contextualizing images. Keep an eye out for Paris Hilton!

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