Ray Ring

Senior Editor

Students of political machinations, you’ve got to tip the hat to the modern Republican Party. Ever since the ascendance of their President Ronald Reagan in 1980, the Repubs have gotten better and better at rallying their base of anti-tax, anti-government, assertively rightwing Christian folks.

They’ve honed their tactics and built huge computer databases, to do “micro-targeting” of small blocs of voters that can swing tight elections — including “stock-car racing fans and snowmobilers,” the Los Angeles Times reported back in 2004.

Now, in a fascinating update, the Times really digs into the Repubs’ micro-targeting of voters.

(Read on …)

Ray Ring

Senior Editor

Global warming’s impact on Western wildlife …

Mercury pollution spreading into birds and other wildlife …

In clear and powerful language, The National Wildlife Federation covers those important topics in two new scientific reports. They’re definitely worth a read.

The mercury pollution report compiles the results of 65-plus studies that find elevated levels of the toxic substance in fish, mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians. It says:

Mercury pollution is making its way into nearly every habitat in the U.S., exposing countless species of wildlife … from songbirds to alligators, turtles to bats, eagles to otters … many more species are at risk than we previously thought.”

The global warming report sums up how manmade climate change in the West is shrinking essential habitat and pushing species around the map, some possibly bound for extinction. Some of the predicted declines: Sagebrush habitat could go down nearly 60 percent, trout habitat could go down 42-54 percent, and prairie-pothole duck habitat could go down 69 percent.

For more info on global warming versus wildlife, and what can be done to address the problem, check the list of sources on the website for The National Wildlife Federation’s conference on the issues, held this weekend in Helena, Montana.

And for some details of the mercury showing up in Utah birds, check a Salt Lake Tribune story. That state now advises hunters and their families to eat no more than tiny amounts of three species of ducks, due to the mercury contamination.

Thanks, to The National Wildlife Federation for this good work. It highlights our need to limit fossil-fuel emissions, including from conventional coal-fired power plants, a primary source of both mercury and global-warming gases.

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management wrongly fired an employee who blew the whistle on cleanup problems at Nevada’s Yerington mine – so says a U.S. Department of Labor judge.

Former BLM project manager, Earl Dixon, was in charge of cleanup at the abandoned Anaconda Copper Company mine in western Nevada. But he was fired in October 2004 after only one year on the job, he says, for informing local residents that the mine was releasing radioactive contamination into the community. During his tenure at the agency, he also repeatedly complained that the BLM, state of Nevada and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency were protecting neither the environment nor public health.

Dixon was known for his straightforward — some might even say blunt or tactless — way of communication, telling this HCN reporter two years ago that his title was ‘environmental protection specialist’ — not ‘environmental suck-up.’ “

At the end of August, Judge Richard K. Malamphy ordered the BLM to pay Dixon back wages, as well as $10,000 in damages – and to give him a favorable, or at least neutral, job reference.

Ray Ring

Senior Editor

Libertarians’ efforts to pass “regulatory-takings” ballot measures in six Western states have run into difficulty in courtrooms in two states. Over the past week, judges in Nevada and Montana tossed out takings ballot measures.

These ballot measures, largely funded by libertarian activists in New York City and Chicago, want to make it impossible for state and local governments to adopt new land-use regulations.

(Read on …)

Ray Ring

Senior Editor

The West’s most obvious struggle between journalists and a NewsBiz owner continues at California’s Santa Barbara News-Press.

I posted about the origins of the blow-up in July. Basically, top editors and veteran staffers put their jobs on the line, taking a stand against the newspaper’s owner, heiress Wendy McCaw. They accuse her of interfering with the news coverage. About one-third of the news staff has left the paper as a result of their stand, and many readers and community leaders are outraged at McCaw.

The latest barrages: McCaw tried to prevent the Society of Professional Journalists from giving an award for journalistic ethics to nine of the rebels, including former top editor, Jerry Roberts. She’s also filed a legal action demanding that Roberts pay $500,000 in damages for impugning the paper’s reputation. And the paper suspended a bunch more staffers for their role in the rebellion. The LA Times has a good summation update.

Among the Times’ reporting:

Dissident journalists and a group of prominent citizens held a news conference this week urging readers to cancel their subscriptions. They said only a hit to McCaw’s pocketbook would force her to stop tilting news coverage in favor of her allies.

… 20 local religious leaders published a letter chastising the newspaper’s management for ethical failures that the clerics said led to “an erosion in our ability to trust the reported news.”

Looking more widely around the NewsBiz, seeing corporate and other owners who subvert news in the interest of profits and friendships, I think we need more rebellions, and more communities demanding better service.

Ray Ring

Senior Editor

The case has ramifications around the West, wherever federal firefighters try to protect houses in the woods:

The government doesn’t have to pay more than a hundred people whose houses got damaged or destroyed by the Bitterroot National Forest wildfires six years ago. That’s the ruling by U.S. District Judge Don Molloy in Missoula, Montana.

The Bitterroot homeowners sued the Forest Service in 2003, demanding $54 million in damages. They charged that firefighters mistakenly ignited a backburn that consumed their homes. In effect, they wanted you and I and all other taxpayers to reimburse them for their losses.

An AP story sums up the ruling:

… (Judge) Molloy said the agency and its employees are immune from such lawsuits because they were acting under a “discretionary function” exception of federal law when they set the burn.

“Whether the government employees’ actions were wise, foolish or negligent is irrelevant in considering whether the exception applies,” Molloy wrote in his ruling, which is dated Aug. 31.

High Country News has full background on the case, and the issue of liability for wildfires, including a photo of one plaintiff, under the headline, “Who should pay when houses burn?”

Ray Ring

Senior Editor

Got an interesting proposal from Mark Osterloh, the Arizona doctor/lawyer who seeks to heal everyone’s politics. He runs revolutionary ballot measures, like this year’s effort to up Arizona’s voter turnout by offering a $1 million prize. I posted about Osterloh earlier, here.

Now Osterloh comes with the full package. Let him explain (with a bit of editing) … and then, GOAT readers, let us know, what do you think?

Dear Ray,

I have an idea, laid out below, for how we could dramatically reform government in this country. Can you post this on your blog to get a discussion started?

(Read on …)

Ray Ring

Senior Editor

Less than 30,000 chinook salmon, swimming up the Columbia River system from the ocean, reached Idaho in this year’s spring and summer runs. That’s only one-sixth of the number of salmon in the 2001 runs, and it’s a shame, says a strongly written editorial in the Idaho Statesman.

The Statesman has been pushing for years for a bold action to save Idaho’s salmon. The editors barely control their anger:

Chinook aren’t alone in their struggle. This has been another dismal year for Central Idaho’s spawning sockeye salmon, the red fish of Redfish Lake lore. The Idaho Department of Fish and Game has collected only three sockeye at its Sawtooth hatchery near Stanley. …

Idahoans can either lament these numbers or act on them.

Three red sockeyes reaching famous Redfish Lake. Are we going to have to rename the lake?

The Statesman’s voice joins the chorus of many others who demand that four big dams must be removed, where the Columbia confluences with Idaho’s Snake River system. The Statesman tells the people of Idaho to:

… Demand leadership from the people they elect, rather than tired defenses of a salmon status quo that simply isn’t working.

(Read on …)

Ray Ring

Senior Editor

A couple of weeks ago, I posted about an ex-pro football player, Rulon Jones, who’s buying Western ranches so he can sell canned hunts — where people with no hunting ethics pay thousands of dollars to shoot animals within fenced enclosures.

Now we have the shocking but predictable news from AP:

More than 100 domesticated elk have escaped from a private game reserve on the border of Yellowstone National Park in eastern Idaho, raising fears the animals will blemish the genetic purity of wild herds, spread disease and flummox hunters.

The elk apparently broke through a fence weeks ago on the Chief Joseph hunter’s reserve near Rexburg, on the fringe of the Targhee National Forest, 10 miles from the southwestern border of Yellowstone.

“This is the train wreck we’ve seen coming for a long time,” Steve Huffaker, director of the Idaho Department of Fish and Game, said Wednesday in announcing the escape.

This leaky canned-hunt operation is near Jones’ latest play. The guy who runs it, Rex Rammell, has a history of defying the most basic safety measures required by the Idaho wildlife agency.

Wyoming’s statewide newspaper, the Casper Star-Tribune, adds a good summation and details:

The elk likely charged the fence until they created a large hole. … “(The news) hits me very cold. It sends shivers up my back,” said Terry Cleveland, director of the Wyoming Game and Fish Department. … Cleveland said officials from his office called Idaho and understood the escaped elk are red deer elk, a subspecies of elk not found in North America, “which would clearly impact the gene pool of native Rocky Mountain elk in the (greater Yellowstone area) and in Wyoming.”

Franz Camenzind, executive director of the Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance, said … disease, such as chronic wasting disease or tuberculosis, is “potentially catastrophic” for wild elk in the region.

Let’s hear it for Wyoming, which has banned game farms, and Montana, which is phasing out the bad idea by banning new game farms.

Ray Ring

Senior Editor

Most worries have been about carbon dioxide emissions heating the climate to dangerous degrees. The latest study says we should also worry about huge increases in emissions of methane — a gas that’s 23 times as dangerous as carbon dioxide. The AP’s veteran science writer, Seth Borenstein, has the story.

All I can add is, we better do our best to marginalize the Flat Earthers — those radicals who insist that nothing should be done about global warming. They include the Cato Institute and a few 100% industry-bought politicians. They add nothing to the discussion at this point, but they slow down efforts to address the biggest problem humanity and nature face. They’ve become dangerous too.

For previous Goat posts on global warming, beginning with the link to this summer’s wildfires, and the High Country News award-winning booklet on effects in the West, go here and here, here and here.