I Cogitate

The Last Best Choice

Montana's Public Power Movement

By JACKIE CORR
BUTTE, MONTANA
February 7, 2006

Now I am sure somewhere in America there is a decent corporation .Yet the chances of running across people in Montana.who believe such a thing are slim to none.

Some among us even point to the possibility of a long-ago curse on this land, leaving a wicked spirit or spirits to attract the most larcenous, dishonest, unscrupulous, ruthless, and predatory of American corporations and their representatives. As you must surely know, one or the other will end up in the Big Sky. And you can take it for granted that there mission will be doing their best to make things out here worse then they already are.

An example of that occurred last November when the Republican congress told us it was time for real reform of the 1872 mining law and they knew how to do it. Trust us they said.

So, in the middle of the night, certainly one good reason not to trust them, Richard Pombo, a California congressman snuck into a budget appropriations bill a public lands attachment that would have allowed mining companies, or just about anyone or anybody that called themselves a mining company, to grab almost any parcel of public land remaining in the West. If made law, America's privatization racketeers could acquire public land for around $1,000 per acre, fence it off or put it up for sale for whatever they could get.

When the intent of the legislating leaked to the public, a nationwide uproar followed. And in Montana we found congressman and real estate developer Denny Rehberg standing with Pombo. Not only that, within hours, Republican Rehberg, who enjoys a 100 percent Christian Coalition approval rating year after year, was running around waving a letter from Pombo swearing the midnight hour legislation would not deny access to Montana's public waters and lands.

But nobody believed the congressman and his sorry little stunt didn't go over too well in the Big Sky. Another uproar followed and even our finger in the wind, fence sitting Senator, Max Baucus, started talking about a Rehberg backed assault on public lands in Montana.

Rehberg counterattacked, describing the opposition as hysterical. That said, he then asked a very bizarre question. "Are you really going to fish in the Berkeley Pit, that's what we're talking about?" As you can see, somehow Denny had gotten confused, mistaking Butte's privately owned gaping hole for a public land.

Finally Montana governor Brian Schweitzer jumped in for the kill, likening the revised Rehberg-Pombo plan to a skunk. Said Schweitzer:"If a skunk comes into your house, you can throw it into the shower, and he's still going to smell like skunk. You're not going to get out the smell of this one with just a shower and a little soap."

For now the Rehberg-Pombo "skunk scheme" has been shelved. But you can bet the pair are waiting for another dark night.

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