After two months in quiet, peaceful, relaxed, and oh-so-green, southwestern Montana, it was time to come home. To frenetic, hectic, thirsty, brown California, the week of an election in which I had absolutely no interest whatsoever. Amazing.
I made a clean getaway at about 6:30 under clouds threatening thunderstorms that never materialized until I was well into the Utah prairie. Stopping only for breakfast in West Yellowstone and lunch in Pocatello, I made it to Cedar City and the Crystal Inn (where all rooms have a refrigerator and microwave) before dark.
Dining in, on the goodies from my cooler-cheese, hard cooked eggs, bread and sherry cake from On the Rise (my favorite Bozeman bakery)-I read the newspapers from Montana, Idaho and Utah, comparing the analyses of their primaries and how they emphasized, or ignored, national and world events. Red though they may be, these states didn’t seem particularly impressed with Bush’s push for a Constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. Opinion pages reflected disdain for election-year pandering to the social conservative base. Most seemed to think the Senate should be using its time on more pressing matters; like maybe a bill that had a chance of passing.
Ditto the proposed 28th Amendment protecting the American flag from “physical desecration.” Now? With flag burnings rampant in the land? All six of them? Obviously, coming between Flag Day and the Fourth of July, protecting Old Glory should get all those patriotic veterans to the polls.
All this hardly leaves the Senate enough time to approve a $94.5 billion “emergency” spending bill, $66 billion of which goes directly to the Pentagon. And then, of course, they had to dress up in their seersucker suits with the pink and yellow ties, a tradition started by Sen. Trent Lott seven years ago “to show folks that the Senate isn’t just a bunch of dour folks wearing dark suits . . . ” What the photo-op showed was a bunch of dour folks (all Republicans save Nebraska Democrat Ben Nelson) looking supremely silly. Ah, the joys of summer.
The Bozeman Daily Chronicle, much more in tune with what’s important locally, gave more column inches to an AP story about a land-management plan that would allow snowmobiles, but prohibit motorized wheel access, on more than 12,000 acres near Lincoln, most of it owned by the family of Sen. Max Baucus. The rest is owned by the state Department of Natural Resources and Conservation and the Nature Conservancy. The Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks says the ATVs and 4x4s have blazed an extensive system of new trails, spread noxious weeds and made mud bogs in wetlands and creek beds. Those who say the economy of Lincoln depends on motorized recreation oppose the plan.
The op-ed page featured Pepper Trail’s piece about the dangers of “complaint-driven wildlife policy” in Oregon, a topic of contention also among Montana ranchers and wildlife managers. The local section printed an MSU story about a graduate student who caught (netted and released) 34,000 fish in Eastern Montana last year for his master’s degree in fisheries management, researching five prairie streams that flow directly into the Yellowstone River. C’mon, this stuff’s important when the river runs through your back yard.
The Billings Gazette ran a guest column by Clayton Yeutter and Dan Glickman (both former agriculture secretaries in the George H. W. Bush and Clinton administrations respectively) calling for a new farm policy for the 21st century. Current farm policy still looks a lot like it did in 1933, they say, and the time for major change has arrived. The 2007 farm bill should not be a simple extension of current law, as a group of senators suggest (leaving them more time for frivolity}, but should reflect changes in our economy, the impact of the global marketplace and huge changes in the structure of American agriculture. Good point. Cato Institute trade-policy analyst Sallie James came to the same conclusion in another op-ed piece. Though it doesn’t affect my backyard, I thought the farm bill passed last year was an appalling sop to agribusiness.
On a positive note, Montana farmers have given a pass to the use of bovine growth hormone in milk. Darigold Farms of Montana, which processes and distributes milk in Montana and other states, has stopped taking milk from farmers who give the hormone to their cattle. Meadow Gold is following their lead. If not yet blue, these red states at least are turning green.
In Ohio, Wendy’s International Inc. announced it will replace artery-clogging hydrogenated oil with a trans fat-free blend of corn and soy oil for frying chicken and French fries. Maybe when they’re through cooking with it, they’ll find a way to sell it to folks driving biodiesel or flex-fuel vehicles.
Even Iowa is producing more corn for ethanol this year than it plans to sell overseas. And U.S. ethanol production rose from almost nothing in 1980 to 4 billion gallons in 2005. I learned all of this from mountain-state newspapers.
Meanwhile, in California, the Governator was ordering regulators to spur an investigation into the recent “unique spike” in the state’s fuel market. I could tell them a thing or two about that first hand. I had planned to fill my Saturn from the last station in Nevada, about 35 miles south of Las Vegas to take advantage of Nevada’s (and every other state’s) lower prices. But I outsmarted myself. Gas in Las Vegas and northward averaged about $2.80. But at the station in Primm, regular unleaded self-serve was $3.33.
Still muttering obscenities as I pulled back onto the highway, I saw the sign about 400 yards ahead: Welcome to California. Right!