Big media

The Outpost editor lifts his head above the muck long enough to make another frail attempt to set the world aright. The world shrugs and spins on.

But if you haven't seen "Fiction," you are missing out.

UPDATE: Jim Haigh, a lobbyist for the Mid-Atlantic Community Papers Association, saw the column at Stop Big Media and passed along a link to his FCC testimony on newspaper cross-ownership. It's worth a read.

GOP beating

I'd be interested in hearing contrary viewpoints, but it seems to me that Republicans took a terrific beating in the legislative session. By scrapping the usual budget process, they put pressure on themselves to deliver on their own plan, then they couldn't deliver. Lange's outburst made them look bad, then they looked even worse for the way they dumped him.

Most fundamentally, Republicans seemed to hitch their fortunes to two nonstarters: opposing enforcement of tax laws and permanent tax relief. Whether the Department of Revenue really needs more employees is a technical question I am not competent to answer, but I know how it looked. It looked like the GOP was endorsing fat-cat tax avoidance. Whether it's fair or not, that's a label nobody needs.

On permanent tax relief, I basically agree with Republicans that permanent tax cuts are better policy than one-time rebates. But it's not a deal breaker. We will all get decent tax relief this year; what we get in two years will depend on who is in office, how the economy is cooking, and what the state's needs are. That would be true no matter what this Legislature did.

Finally, Schweitzer is cleaning up on press indicating that after all the shouting he pretty much got what he wanted out of the session. He never seemed to doubt that he would. That hurts Republicans where it really hurts -- right in their vanity.

Contractual obligations

The Outpost's bank since its inception had been First Citizens until it was absorbed by Western Security Bank. I have no complaints about the new bank, especially since it has been buying some ads from us, but the worst part of the deal has been that we had to change our credit card processor.

The deadline for the change to Nxgen Payment Services was Monday, so naturally I put it off until then. Then I read through the application, which was wickedly obscure and had all of the important provisions printed in type that no doubt was Nxgen's entry in the World's Smallest Typeface contest.

But I waded through it and was about ready to sign off until I reached the cancellation provision. If we change processors in the next year, we have to pay Nxgen $295. If we change in the next three years, we have to pay $195.

Online opinions differ about whether processing companies are justified in asking for cancellation payments, but I wasn't eager to make a three-year commitment to a company that I have yet to transact a single item of business with. I liked this provision even less: "Merchant agrees that the early termination fee is not a penalty, but rather is reasonable in light of the financial harm caused by Merchant's early termination."

Say what? How can I legally bind myself to something that I have absolutely no way to know is true? What's "reasonable"? We don't use processing equipment, so Nxgen has no expense there. So far as I know, the only start-up expense it bears is the cost of telling us what phone number we have to dial to enter credit card transactions. From then on, it makes a profit on every transaction. Beyond that, Nxgen's only risk is that I will cheat my customers and they won't honor their credit card transactions. But we have a 10-year spotless history of meeting those obligations, and I am as likely to win the lottery as to start cheating customers now.

The only real financial harm Nxgen faces is that if I don't sign the contract, it won't get a chance to gig me for 200 or 300 bucks if I don't like its service. I agree that this is financial harm that Nxgen will certainly incur.

Good Brewer

I'm a longtime critic of the Billings Chamber of Commerce, but I agreed with most of this. I used to think that a safe way to figure out a position on any given issue was to just find out where the Chamber stood, then take the opposite stance. Brewer has made it much more complicated.

GOP on GOP

As usual, Brad Molnar's take on the Mike Lange blowup is a bit different than anything else you are likely to read. Funnier, too. I especially liked the Bill Strizich anecdote.

If you look closely, you also can see on this page a cartoon by Paul Driscoll, who is back to drawing Montana-based political cartoons after a few years off. It's too small to read online, so you will just have to pick up a copy of this week's Outpost (it's small there, too, but legible).

UPDATE: In the comments, it's Kemmick vs. Molnar. Won't somebody please stop this fight?

Term limits

During the waning days of the spring semester, I was mentally plotting a post blaming term limits for the Montana Legislature's miserable failure to pass a budget this session. Then I read Kirk Dooley's well considered post at City Lights arguing that the U.S. Congress, without term limits, has much the same problems that the Montana Legislature has with term limits.

How to respond? My first thought was that term limits hurt Montana while the lack of term limits hurts Congress. But I was not willing to walk on so high a wire.

Maybe this is closer: Term limits are simply irrelevant to the problems Congress has. Montana gets the worst of both worlds: The divisiveness and partisanship of Congress, plus the lack of institutional wisdom and seasoning caused by term limits. Add term limits to Congress, and it would be even worse than it is.

Take, for example, the congressional debate over funding the Iraq War. Sean Hannity blasts Democrats every day for "politicizing" the war, but politics is, of course, the way questions like this one are resolved in democracies. And the democratic (Democratic?) process, messy as it is, appears to slowly be working in this case. Nobody wants to leave soldiers in the field without bullets or rations, but Congress has gradually been getting across an inescapable point: The president can't simply have a blank check anymore to do whatever he wants in Iraq for as long as he wants. If Congress gives him that blank check, then voters will fire a lot of members of Congress in the next election -- and they will be replaced by representatives even more hostile to the president's aims. This may not be a message that will penetrate the president's skull, but Republicans in Congress are certainly hearing it.

In other words, in Washington the system is working, in its usual awkward and ugly fashion. In Montana, the whole thing broke down -- and I still blame term limits.

SIDEBAR: One of the most annoying aspects of the debate in Helena over budget surpluses is advanced by groups like this one: The surplus should be returned to the people because the money came from the people. Of course the money came from the people. Every cent the state spends comes from the people. There is no other source. The money came from the people, and it is up to the people to decide how best to dispose of it. That's why we elect legislators.

He's back

The jackpot paid this morning. Final grades were due by noon in all three college classes I was teaching. I had to make a speech at 10 a.m. It was deadline day at The Outpost, and I was up all night getting the paper out.

Got 'er done. Even got a couple of hours of sleep this afternoon. So now school's out, and I'm back contemplating what to do with this sadly underused blog. Having the summer free seems like a vast expanse of unoccupied time, but it isn't that easy. Running this business is easily a couple of full-time jobs, and it has suffered for my absence. Getting the blog going is only one of many possible priorities, and I haven't yet sorted out how I will approach them all. It's not clear to me that blogging is all that good a use of my time. On the whole, I would rather study German grammar.

But this afternoon I got a message from my hometown in Texas: "Your fans down here around Victoria hope you'll update your blog pretty soon." That made my day. And it was enough to get at least this much going on the blog.

War plans

The editor of The Outpost takes a futile stab at ending the war in Iraq. For some reason, the column appears twice on the web, prompting some commenters to observe that the editor's plan is no more cohesive than the president's. But that doesn't mean it is worse.

Fading Green

In this week's Montana Green Bulletin, Paul Stephens asks, "Is there a future for the Green Party?" His answer:

Apparently not in Montana. If young people aren't organizing and joining, we are as doomed as the Communist Party and the Industrial Workers of the World. There are, of course, a few hundred dedicated, middle-aged (or older) adults in the United States who still believe in the Green Party, its values, and its future prospects. California, Wisconsin, Maine, New York, Missouri, and a few other states still have active parties fielding candidates, but it's probably safe to say that there's no hope for the Green Party in Montana.

To me it seems that there is real sentiment for a third party in this country, but none of the available flavors -- Green, Libertarian, Constitution -- seem to satisfy. What would it take?

Nur Englisch

Both Idaho houses have passed and sent to the governor a classically stupid piece of legislation: declaring English the state's official language.

Of all the dumb things government sticks its nose into, surely the dumbest by far is trying to dictate the languages people speak. Language has a power of its own, subservient to no government. If English can't hold its own without official government sanction, then no legislation can save it. And if English can hold its own, then no legislation is needed.

If the Legislature would include useful provisions -- say, for example, criminal prosecution of people who use pronouns that don't match antecedents -- then I could get behind this bill. But the bill does not abridge American freedom to butcher our native tongue. It abridges only the freedom to speak another.

Here's hoping

Every presidential election I stake my bet on some darkhorse candidate, hoping that he (sorry, no women have made the cut yet) will emerge as the nation's great hope. Usually the candidate turns out to be a disappointment, or his campaign goes nowhere, but I keep trying because the major party choices always seem so uniformly dismal.

It's pretty much the same strategy I use on our almost annual visits to the horse races at MetraPark. I like to pick a horse somewhere in the 8-to-1 to 12-to-1 odds range, and I always bet $2 to win, never to place or show. It has worked pretty well at the races -- the last two times we have gone, I won enough on my first bet to cover the cost of the day -- but it has never worked out for president. Horse races are more honest, and horses are generally of higher character.

But I keep betting. This year my money is on Bill Richardson, the Democratic governor from New Mexico. I don't know enough about him yet to say that I would even vote for him, but I like what I've seen and heard: He has cut taxes, he sounds reasonable (and willing to fight) on immigration, he presumably understands Western concerns, and he mostly makes sense on the war.

Two things this week increased my hope that he will turn out to be a good bet. One was his support for medical marijuana legislation. Putting human suffering and freedom above the White House's holy war: what a concept. The other was a speech I saw on C-SPAN that Richardson gave to some college students. It wasn't what he said that impressed me -- it was fairly standard political boilerplate -- nor the way he presented himeself -- slightly rumpled, a bit less articulate than I have seen him in TV interviews, and given to a lot of arm waving.

What I liked was what he did when a student asked him a question he couldn't answer. With C-SPAN's mikes, I couldn't make out exactly what the question was, but it had something to do with some action by Texas Gov. Rick Perry. Richardson said he hadn't heard anything about it. He asked an aide if he knew anything about it. He said something like, "You'd think we'd know since that's our neighboring state." He then turned back to the student and asked, "What do you think about it?"

On rare occasions, I've heard candidates admit to not knowing something. On even rarer ones, I've seen candidates promise to have somebody on the staff look into a question. But I have never seen a candidate turn back to the questioner and ask for advice. Richardson didn't treat the questioner like a student to be patronized, a voter to be wooed or, worse yet, a meaningless obstacle blocking the view of the national C-SPAN audience. He treated the student like a citizen who might be able to advise the governor on something he should know.

That's a quality I wouldn't mind seeing in the White House.

Throwing strikes

Jim Phelps stopped by The Outpost on Friday to pick up a couple of back issues on a topic of public interest. If you don't Phelps, you should. He is 91 now and still active in pursuing civic and environmental goals.

He's one of those old-school guys, shaped by the Depression and World War II, who seem to have everything right: tough, brimming with integrity, selfless, full of life. I'm not sure they make people like that anymore, and it will be a sad day when the last of them are gone.

Phelps, looking frail, had no complaints about his age or health. "I feel like a pitcher throwing a no-hitter," he said. "I don't know how long I can keep it up, but I'm just enjoying every pitch."

Hell of a guy.

What's righter

At long last, What's Right in Montana is taking steps to clear up the disaster that its comments section has become. Judging from the comments on this post, it has a ways to go.

O'Reilly saves Montana

Bill O'Reilly just blasted The Billings Gazette for this "ups and downs" item (third one down). O'Reilly called the item "blatantly dishonest" and said he was perfectly aware that the Montana Legislature meets only every two years but that it can meet in special session at any time.

"Until we got on their case, the state of Montana was dragging its feet," O'Reilly said.

Personally, I wish we had dragged a little harder.

Defending Gore

In comments below, "Frank Dugas" concludes that because I defended Al Gore against a specific second-rate piece of journalism, I am obliged to defend him under all circumstances. Why Dugas thinks that I don't know. But I hate to make a guest to the site look silly, so I will play along.

Gore has taken a beating over the last week over reports that his house uses way more electricity than the average house. The charge is not that Gore wastes energy, but that he is a hypocrite for urging others to save.

I'm not too interested in the question of how big a polluter Gore might be. Supposedly, he buys green energy and carbon offsets. Arguably, his use of electricity in the pursuit of persuading others to quit using so much is electricity well spent. But others can take up those arguments.

Let's focus instead on hypocrisy, a trait that appears to be part and parcel of modern life. Jesus told the rich man to go and sell all he had and give it to the poor. But few rich people who claim to believe in Jesus follow that advice. Warbloggers praise war to the heavens, so long as other lives are at risk. Dedicated greens drive cars to get to wilderness. Shop America first believers spend their dollars buying Chinese-made goods at Wal-Mart. I criticize the consolidated beef industry but munch on Big Macs. We all bear our little hypocrisies.

Where along that spectrum does Gore fit? Not much worse than average, I suspect. I wasn't the only viewer of "An Inconvenient Truth" struck by how modest the proposed solutions appeared to be compared to the enormity of the problem. Gore never asked much more of anybody than that they turn off lights when not in use, support green power and ride a bicycle when feasible. Indeed, Robert Samuelson has credibly argued that nothing we are likely to do about global warming is likely to help much.

Compare Gore's hypocrisy to that of global warming skeptics who seem to believe that they can burn as much energy as they want so long as they refuse to acknowledge that there's any problem. Like all of us, Gore has to answer for the difference between what he claims to believe and what he practices. But will those who foster willful ignorance get off any easier?

UPDATE: Wulfgar has much more here and here.

UPDATE 2: Asked about Ann Coulter's "faggot" bomb at CPAC, Sean Hannity responded:

You know, no other person is responsible for what a person says except that person. And so, if they have a problem with what Ann Coulter says, blame Ann Coulter. You can't blame somebody else for what she said. So I didn't see it.

Hannity, of course, loves to berate Democrats and liberals by demanding that they defend the remarks of other Democrats and liberals. It's one of his major rhetorical devices. That's hypocrisy in big boots.

On trial

I failed to mention that my other adventure on Monday was sitting on the jury panel for this trial. It was the third time I've been called for jury duty in the last four or five months, causing me to miss four German classes. No big deal and not much excitement, just a long slog through a series of fairly predictable questions.

Surprises? Maybe two. One was that even people who have sat on juries before have trouble distinguishing between civil and criminal cases. The other came after the prosecutor mentioned that the defendant was married to a member of the Nava family. When jurors were asked whether anything would keep them from judging the case fairly, the woman sitting next to me mentioned the notoriety of that name. The defendant, who was just a few feet away with his back to us, turned around and gave her a luck that struck me as one of pure menace. The prosecutor even complained to the judge about the defendant's "interaction" with the jurors.

I wasn't picked, and I still think I could have been an impartial juror, but I couldn't help but feel a bit safer for a moment knowing that this guy was in the custody of the state.

And while we are on the crime beat, I thought Greg Tuttle's series on the Beach case was splendid, but I was bugged by a quote from Assistant Attorney General Michael Wellenstein, who wrote that the parole board must "keep in mind that while it is indeed a travesty for an innocent man to spend his life in prison, it is a greater injustice for a guilty man to be set free when his victim and her family can never be set free from her brutal death."

Doesn't he have that exactly backward? And shouldn't he know better?

Woe is me

Last week, the Outpost printer messed up and left four pages out of the paper. The printer had to redo the whole run, and we didn't start putting them on racks until Thursday night.

This morning, my e-mail crashed and destroyed everything in the in-box. If you sent something to me recently, please resend. Otherwise, it's gone.

Then I had jury duty, 4 1/2 hours of waiting to not get picked. So tonight I'm trying to do the work I should have started last Friday when I was out delivering Thursday's papers. The merry-go-round keeps turning.

Sunni-Shiite

I just got eight out of eight right on this quiz. Does that mean I get to be president?

GOP dinner

I went to the Republican's Party's Lincoln Reagan Day Dinner last night, largely to see Stephen Moore, who writes for the Wall Street Journal and advocates for free enterprise. His message was predictable enough, and you can read Jim Gransbery's account here, or mine on Thursday or, since this is such a great country, you can read both. I asked Moore afterward about the Iraq War, which he hadn't mentioned among his reasons why Republicans lost out in the 2006 election. He acknowledged that the war probably had been the biggest issue in the election and mentioned, a bit surprisingly, that he had opposed the war. Or maybe not surprisingly, since he has been affiliated with the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank that opposed the war, just as it opposes most government enterprises.

There were no discouraging words about the war from Tamara Hall, who was the mistress of ceremonies for the event. She praised Bush and the war, and said she looked on the president as a "Christian brother who's carrying a load that no single person should have to carry." In what struck me as an odd bit of timing, she also screened a tribute to soldiers, complete with battlefield suffering, just as the Republicans were digging into their salads. It nearly put me off my feed. Maybe she was just being consistent with what appears to be the modern American ideal that war is just fine, so long as we don't have to pay for it.

She said a few other off-putting things. One was a story about a college professor who supposedly offered to prove to students that God doesn't exist by daring God to knock him off his lectern. God chose not to get involved, apparently, but a war veteran, so the story goes, obliged by tackling the professor, explaining himself by saying that God was awfully busy, what with the war and all, and had asked the veteran to act on His behalf.

She swore twice that the story was true, which I doubt. But even if it were, it would seem to say less about atheism among academics than about how quickly people can become violent when they fool themselves into thinking they are carrying out God's will.

But that was not the oddest story she told. That story was about some debate or another that she was in where a student asked what she would do to help students get through college. She said, approximately, that she replied, "It's not my job to get you through school." She said she told the student that it was up to him to get through college, taking on outside jobs and even dropping out for a time if necessary to save enough money to pay his own way.

The response had a self-reliant ring to it, and it drew a nice round of applause. But I couldn't help but think that talk like that also had something to do with Republican setbacks in 2006. After all, almost no students truly pay their own way through college. They go to state schools, they get scholarships and grants, they borrow money through government-backed loan programs, they (or their parents) benefit from favorable tax treatment. The government has its foot in the game every step of the way.

So unless one is seriously making the case (as Rick Jore might) that there should be no government support of any kind for higher education, then it misses the point to pretend that one is taking a principled stand against helping students get through school. All one is really doing is quibbling over the price.

It's easy to mistake a dollar sign for a principle. And if that is what Republicans are doing, then 2008 could be another long year.

Hannity vs. Gore

In a moment of temporary insanity, I watched a segment of "Sean Hannity's America" last weekend in which he attacked Al Gore and other "limousine liberals" for using private jets while bloviating about global warming.

Even by Hannity's standards, this was thin gruel. The only examples he had of Gore actually using a private plane dated from the 2000 election campaign, when Gore was the vice president of the United States. I wondered why I never noticed him back then on any commercial airliners, sharing a couple of rows of seats with the Secret Service.

And, of course, Hannity's concern wasn't that Gore might have been endangering the planet. It was that he might have been diluting the purity of American political discourse with the base alloy of hypocrisy.

President Bush is, of course, exempt from the charge. In 2000, he was in blithe denial about global warming, although by 2001, he was ready to admit that there might be something to it after all. That's OK. Bush didn't get global warming during the campaign, so he could fly however he wanted. Gore, who did get it, had to play by different rules.

Hannity doesn't object to all travel in private jets, just travel by people who suspect that private jets add to global climate degradation. Ignorance is bliss. And a much more convenient way to travel.