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New West Network: The Voice of the Rocky Mountains
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Carly Fiorina for....What Did You Say?
Former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina has announced she's running for Senate in California, hoping to unseat Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer.
Long one of Boise's biggest employers, HP is part of Idaho culture. It didn't take long for the Fiorina chatter to show up on Idaho blogs, including Tom von Alten's Fort Boise. von Alten, a mechanical engineer who worked at HP for twenty years and still holds stock in the company, wrote, Her campaign slogan will presumably not be 'Let me do to the country what I did to HP,' but I have no doubt she will put a positive spin on every aspect of her career to date.
As a longtime resident of Boise with friends who worked at HP, I've sat at many a dinner party where people told tales of how, instead of bringing people together, she repeatedly did the opposite. Notorious for egotistical, divisive and manipulatory tactics, one of her biographers, Michael Malone, said Fiorina created a pestilential culture and a poisonous stew.
There are numerous reports of employees literally cheering and dancing in the aisles the day her resignation was announced.
Missoula Pedestrian Ordinance May Increase Density of Sidewalk Sprawlers
Two men sit with their legs stretched across the sidewalk, backs against the green doorway near the Oxford Bar and Grill. A younger woman with a dog stands beside them.
So this is where they are sticking us, says a man who identifies himself only as Joe, as chalk lines closed around him.
Joe watches with a look of disgust on his face as a curious visitor uses a tape measure and chalk to identify the spaces that will remain available for sidewalk sprawlers once Missoula's pedestrian interference ordinance takes effect on Thursday.
Property Tax Go-Round: Schweitzer Nixes Request for Special Session
A request by the Northwest Montana Association of Realtors calling for a special session of the state Legislature to address current inadequacies in the property tax reappraisal carried out in the 2009 regular session was immediately swatted down by Gov. Brian Schweitzer last week.
The letter, written by NMAR President Barb Funk, states that 11 counties, including Flathead and Lake, will be disproportionally affected by higher than expected residential property values, and asks Schweitzer to convene a special session to immediately adopt a stop gap measure to solve current reappraisal problems, and establish an interim committee to deal with long-term property tax issues and draw up a bill for the 2011 session.
In an interview with the Beacon, Schweitzer criticized NMAR's letter for using inaccurate figures and questioned why the reappraisal legislation, HB 658, received the broad support of Realtors during the session and afterward, citing a story that appeared Sept. 29 in NewWest.Net where a lobbyist for the Montana Association of Realtors called it, a pretty darn good bill.
The governor also took aim squarely at Republicans, who led the Senate Taxation Committee in crafting the final iteration of the reappraisal bill, saying he would not spend taxpayer dollars at a rate of $80,000 per day, the rough cost of a special session, to bring lawmakers back to Helena when there wasn't a plan in place beforehand to fix any shortcomings in the current bill.
Commissioners Cogitate Over Consumption by Car
The Sandpoint City Council hit a hot button last year when it proposed a temporary restriction on the construction of drive-through fast-food places. Council members wanted some time to consider how this kind of land use fit with the newly minted Comprehensive Plan, and the city had sprouted a drive-through Jack-in-the-Box while the plan was being cogitated over. Shortly thereafter, a corrugated metal farm shed turned up next to Highway 2 that turned out to be a drive-through convenience store.
After the ban was passed, certain members of the community vehemently voiced their disapproval, and one owner of a restaurant that had both drive-through and sit-down options posted a notice on the order counter suggesting that the city planning director go back to where he came from, inspiring some other community members to dine elsewhere.
If U txt & drv U suk
Finally, some good news about drinking and driving.
Car and Driver magazine reported that texting while driving is more dangerous than drunken driving, thanks mostly to self-absorbed teenagers and undisciplined technodorks behind the wheel. Texting and talking on cell phones while driving resulted in almost 6,000 deaths on U.S. roads last year, according to DOT officials gathered for a distracted driving summit last month. Although that's only about half the number of people killed by drunk drivers, it's an alarmingand fast-growingstatistic. And that doesn't even include the hundreds killed while trying to dig out a warm hunk of Dunkin Donuts sausage biscuit from deep in their crotch. (As far as the five-second rule goes, that remains a grey area. So to speak.)
Open Fields Hunting Access Program Needs a Push
Open Fields was a major victory for hunters and wildlife conservation, according to the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership (TRCP) and many other green groups that lobbied for it. It passed back in December 2008, but almost a year later, this innovative hunter access program is still mired in the administrative rule making process.
Now, predictably, conservationists who struggled mightily for the program are asking Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack for a little more priority.
West Among Nation's Highest Uninsured Rates
Richard Angus had been managing just fine without health insurance. A careful skier and cyclist, the Glenwood Springs, Colo., resident figured he could avoid the costs of health insurance, and the risks of going without it. Then last year, he contracted a blood infection that nearly cost him his life.
Instead, it cost him his livelihood. Three weeks in the hospital left him with $90,000 in medical bills he says he'll never be able to pay off. His credit rating trashed, he's seeking bankruptcy protection to stay afloat.
You're very happy that you get home. You're alive! says Angus, 48. Then three months, four months down the road, you have to deal with the bills and the people. You almost wonder why they're keeping me alive when they're just going to make my life hell.
Angus isn't alone. The West has one of the highest rates of uninsured in the country, due largely to the region's dominant industries. Apart from lots of small, independent businesses, much of the West is driven by the service sector, which often doesn't provide health insurance. Neither do many construction contractors, energy industry contractors or agriculture operations.
Hunters: Bear Spray Bill Based on Bogus, Meaningless Statistics
Wyoming lawyer's proposed bear spray bill based on inaccurate information. To insure hunter safety, big game hunters in grizzly country need advice on how to use firearms effectively, not bear spray propoganda.
Keeping It Underground In Oregon's Lava Caves
For the past several days a walnut-sized lump has been throbbing on the top of my skull. This morning when I attempted to shampoo my hair, the scrubbing motion nearly brought me to tears. I can't wear my blue baseball hat without feeling pain.
The cause of the hideous and horribly painful lump on this writer's noggin? It came from a sharp-ass rock in a dark-ass cave.
A lava cave, to be precise.
And despite the injury, I encourage everyone to go check out the lava caves in central and eastern Oregon for themselves. Just try not to be an idiot and get hurt yourself hurt, okay?
As Millions of Acres Come Out of Conservation Reserve Program, What's Next?
More than 3 million acres of farmland in the country is ready to be broken again this season, freed up from contracts from the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), a little-known farm program that has large implications for land-use in the West and Midwest.
Roxana Hegeman of the Associated Press details the changes afoot with the program in a story today. The basics are these: CRP was created in 1985 in the thick of the farm crisis. The program pays landowners to take their land out of production and let it rest in native grasses for a specified period of time. Contracts range from 10-20 years. In September of this year, 33.47 million acres were enrolled in the program. But, the 2008 Farm Bill, passed last fall, capped the total acreage at 32 million, so as contracts expire, more and more land is coming out of CRP.
According to Hegeman's story, more than 3.4 million acres were taken out of the program in Septembermost of them in Texas, Colorado and Kansas, but hundreds of thousands of acres are also going back into production in Montana and the Dakotas. In September of 2008, more than 2 million acres were taken out of CRP nationwide compared to September the previous year.
The USDA has boasted CRP as the largest private-public conservation effort in the country and indeed, studies from the agency show great benefits to water, erosion and habitat since its introduction. But, in the last five years it has come under fire for a number of things, the largest being the criticism that it takes farmers off of the land and thus contributes to the depopulation of rural America. It's also been panned for being a retirement plan for farmers, driving up land prices by making cropland attractive to amenity ranch buyers who are looking for places to hunt and fish while getting income from the land.
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