The retirement of Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens sets up another rancorous and bruising battle in the Senate, still trying to recover from the wild rhetoric associated with the passage of the health insurance reform bill. To get that health reform bill passed, Democrats had to use an obscure Senate rule called “reconciliation” so that a simple majority vote could be used to get around the certainty of a Republican filibuster that would have required a 60 percent majority to pass anything.

Filibusters used to be used infrequently by the minority party on issues of particular importance. But now, with Republicans voting as a disciplined and unified block, it has become business as usual, blocking almost any legislative action at all.

The combination of the way we elect the Senate and the adoption of the filibuster as a work-a-day tool, gives American democracy a peculiar character. Each state, no matter how small or how large their population is, has two Senators. At the extremes, Wyoming has a Senator for each quarter of a million people. California, on the other hand, has a Senator for each 18.5 million people. A voter in Wyoming has 68 times the voting power of a voter in California when it comes to the U.S. Senate.

Since 40 Senators can block almost any action on a bill or nomination, in theory, the 40 Senators from the 20 smallest states could control the American legislative process. Those 20 smallest states have only 10 percent of the US population. So, in theory, a 10 percent minority could block the will of a 90 percent majority. This is not exactly the civics text-book version of “democracy.”

Of course, this is not due to accident. It was intentional on the part of our Founding Fathers. The Senate was intended to make sure that the more populous states and the majority they contained did not run roughshod over the interests of the less populous states. At our core then, as now, we did not trust the federal government and wanted to make sure that the individual states could frustrate any overreaching on the part of the federal government.

Although our political history makes this strange arrangement for minority rule comprehensible, it has increasingly had perverse consequences that tend to weaken us as a nation. It is unlikely that anyone would deny that we face an incredible array of very serious problems.

There are the problems of the run-away costs of our health care and higher education systems, both of which, despite all the money expended, are providing poorer and poorer access to crucial services for Americans.

Then there is the corner our energy system has painted us into: We rely on foreign sources controlled by people hostile to our interests, forcing us into protracted military conflicts with huge costs in terms of human lives and the trillions of dollars of our wealth lost. Meanwhile the environmental cost of our energy production and use continues to climb to threatening levels.

Our economy is in collapse and our middle class threatened by a tiny minority of filthy-rich Wall Street speculators over whom no one seems to be able to exercise any control except by bribing them with still more of our public funds.

We are paralyzed when it comes to solving the real problems we face while we squander our wealth on wasteful and destructive projects and activities that actually undermine our well being. Not surprisingly, we find ourselves individually and collectively poor and in debt as the real problems grow worse and we seem not to be able to do anything about them. That leaves us confused and angry, and we, understandably, given our political traditions, strike out at government at all levels.

We have to stop, take several collective deep breaths, and face the sobering reality that launching yet another simple-minded populist attack on government is a dead end. We need to demand, as Jimmy Carter put it during his presidential campaign 35 years ago, “a government as good as its people.” That is, we have to go back to looking at the government as the agent of our collective will that is focused on those important tasks that we individually and through private businesses cannot otherwise accomplish.

We know our government can function well in providing solutions to important problems. In the past that is where our system of public colleges and universities came from. That is where the highway system that connected us in the 20th century came from. It was government-sponsored research that brought us the Internet and our digital communications network. That is where our National Parks as well as our city parks came from. That is why we are blessed with extensive public lands. It is why we continue to win so many Nobel prizes in the sciences and why we continue to lead in the exploration of the solar system as well as our own genetics. We have also made major strides in cleaning up our air and water.

We have proved in the past that during hard times as well as good, there are important public tasks that we can charge our governments with undertaking and expect positive and productive outcomes.

We need to look back over what we have collectively been able to accomplish when a modest public sector partnered with our households and businesses to solve problems and create opportunity. That history is not primarily one of government failure and corruption. It is our job to see that going forward that is not the outcome either. As emotionally cathartic as it may be to simply bad mouth government at all levels, that posture simply renders us hapless and helpless. We have things that we collectively must do, things our children and grandchildren are counting on us to do. We have got to stop whining, begin working with each other, and get on with the nation’s business.

Letters to the Editor

Hamilton planner should be removed

Dear Editor,

In March of this year, the city planner of Hamilton threatened me. He told me, don’t you dare put my name in the paper again! There have been complaints by other people related to the city planner; he should be removed.

A Master Plan for River and Legion Parks will be proposed soon. We need as many people at these meetings (city) as possible if you wish to continue to us these parks for recreational use in the future. The date of these plannings will be in the paper (cost $20,000+).

The main concern is River Park. There are 33 acres or more in this park; 30 acres will be left natural.

The three acres of the park should be for recreational uses. There is a playground in this park for children to use. Some on the Hamilton City Council want this removed; it is not natural or suitable for this park, they say. We have picnic tables, gazebo, open fields for uses such as Folf, Frisbee, running, walking, etc. We have an ADA path for the disabled that need to be repaired, as well as the cave in of the north path. We need to bring in rocks, etc., to stop the cave-in. There are educational signs in the park called “Bruce the Moose.”

The problem is that some councilors want to change the three-acre area over to a natural area, heavy on vegetation management. One councilor stated we need to protect our habitat. The problem with this is there are millions of acres of protected habitat on 75 percent of Ravalli County federal lands already. We don’t need anymore.

Some of the city councilors want the grass to grow tall in this park leaving dandelions and noxious weeds to grow in our parks. If you don’t cut the dandelions this allows bees in the parks. There are many people, including one city councilor, that are allergic to bees! There are three people in the city that have no consideration of people using the parks. All they want is nobody using the parks. I personally heard some people state after we put in the ADA path (a liberal socialist) that more people are going to use the park! We need to keep the grass cut short, please, or spray the weeds, which some councilors refuse to do.

The three-acre park has a ditch that runs through it. The city should let the fire department burn it so that it does not flood this area.

There are no wetlands in the three-acre area. Please, if you wish to use the park, attend the meetings.

Dennis Palmer
Hamilton

Way too many wolves

Dear Editor,

Defenders of Wildlife? What wildlife, other than wolves?

We live in the Bitterroot Valley. Our daughter lives in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. We are at a loss as to why your organization is dedicated to 'saving' the wolf, rather than the myriads of other wildlife that the wolves are decimating. Do you no longer care about any wildlife but the wolf? I sign up everyday online to help feed shelter animals, and there is your ad, begging us to sign the petition to send to our Governor Brian Schweitzer to reduce the number of wolf licenses for the upcoming hunting season.

The planned reintroduction of wolves in this area was 325. There are now over 1500 wolves in the Bitterroot area, and they are growing in numbers, and becoming more bold, as the elk population has dropped from 2000 to 765, due to wolf depredations. You no longer see moose, or bighorn sheep, as you used to. The small animal population has dropped, and the wolves are ripping elk calves from their mother's stomachs, and leaving them to bleed to death, after removing only tasty parts from the unborn calves. Domestic animals are looking better to the wolves all the time, and dogs are being taken from yards, killed, and leaving behind only the head to greet their horrified owners.

I worked for an insurance company, and the photographs brought in of the sheep brought down to have only their anuses ripped out and left to die was enough to encourage me to ask you to send some of these wolf lovers to this area to take a tour.

Sure, the wolves have a beautiful look about them, have a warm family life, and the sound of wolves howling could be considered romantic, if you didn't know that the pack was about to devour a portion of your hard won cattle herd. People here are in a dire economic situation - they depend on an elk for their freezer to carry their families through the winter. Our hunting areas are being closed because the wolves have gotten there first.

Doubling the number of wolves allowed to be killed will not affect the numbers of pups being born in the slightest, and the killing of the rest of the wildlife that you should be protecting goes on.

These wolves are large Canadian wolves, not the wolves that were here originally, no matter what the naysayers claim. If you do not live in a rural area of Montana, and you are not actually aware of what is going on, I would ask that you send someone, without stars in their eyes, to actually come here and witness for themselves.

I used to be an admirer of wolves, but after seeing a friend's small dachshund's wounds after being rescued from wolves who took him from his backyard, the herd of pet llamas mauled and mutilated, the lack of wildlife that used to abound in our small valley, I am no longer a fan.

Send someone here, and if they are still fans after a tour, let them take some wolves home with them.

Carla McDonald
Stevensville

Three Mile should be paved

Dear Editor,

Jim Rokosch, since you are the Ravalli County Commissioner for my District (#1), I guess that you are the one I need to contact about the continuing problem all residents living along Three Mile Creek Road have been experiencing for at least the twenty years that my wife and I have resided here.

When we moved in to this home, at the end of 1990, we were assured by all that Three Mile Creek Road was to be paved very soon. Obviously, that is not the case, as it is still a dirt road, which is only graded by the Ravalli County Road Department in the spring and again some time in the fall. The rest of the time, it becomes a rough, washboard surface that jolts your teeth at all but a crawl speed, and tests your car's suspension better than a factory torture track.

The worst of this problem has occurred over the past five or more years, as the traffic along Three Mile has at least doubled, if not quadrupled. Nowadays there is a lot of new construction going on somewhere past us, farther along Three Mile.

The long and the short of this is that there is a steady stream of vehicles, from early morning to after supper, every workday. This includes everything from full sized semi-trucks with long gravel or material trailers, that make at least six or more trips a day. Added to that are the more usual contractor type trucks, passing by several times a day, as well as the normal, but ever increasing, traffic from residents, school busses, farm and ranch people and their hired hands on everything including 4-wheeled ATVs that dash about at reckless speeds during every summertime.

Starting about four or five years ago, it appears that the Ravalli County Road Department has identified a dust hazard to the Lone Rock School staff and students, as well the residents living along Three Mile. Apparently, the Road Department decided that they would try to shift the expense of mitigating the dust hazard problem by getting us, the people living along Three Mile, to pay for the oiling of the road footage in front of our property. Every spring now, a private oiling contractor sends me a flyer, attempting to have me pay them for applying oil to the road immediately in front of my home. The first year I did fall for that con, and paid them to do so.

After that, I realized that it should be the responsibility of Ravalli County to pay for whatever was necessary to maintain Three Mile, and to mitigate any dust hazard caused because the road was not paved. Since then, several other property owners have contacted me about "paying for my share" of the oiling and I have told them that I would gladly chip in the cost of such "oiling" towards a fund to force Ravalli County to accept, and properly carry out, their duty to fix the road and the dust hazard themselves, instead of "hornswoggling" the rest of us into taking over that duty and responsibility. To date, none of my fellow Three Mile property owners have taken me up on this suggested course of action, however, it appears that none of them are going to take Ravalli County's surrogate oiling contractor up on their offer this year either.

In the meanwhile, I have noticed that Ravalli Road Department has managed to completely re-pave Ambrose Creek Road, as well as Ridge Road, both of which have far less traffic than Three Mile, and neither had any hazards that I am aware of which would have required such re-surfacing.

During this same twenty-year period, Three Mile with all its traffic and annual dust hazard has only had the paved portion "chip sealed" and the worst potholes crudely patched. It has reached the point where we routinely choose to come home via Ambrose Creek and Store Lane, rather than transit Three Mile at all.

This may, or may not, have been brought to your attention previously, but I feel that I must now ask, why should my wife and I, or any Three Mile Creek Road property owner, or resident of voting age, vote for any incumbent Ravalli County Commissioner, until our concerns regarding the road maintenance and hazard control issues of Three Mile Creek Road have been properly and adequately resolved?

Paul F. Edwards
Stevensville

Give credit where it’s due

Dear Editor,

The May 26 addition of the Bitterroot Star was misleading as to how the removal of the power poles and lines at the Metcalf Refuge was initiated. At the Friends board meeting of Jan. 6, 2010, former refuge manager Erin Holmes proposed that the Friends contact the power company about the possibility of removal of the overhead power lines. Her proposal was to bury the lines from the west side of the RR tracks to the refuge office. The proposal included contacts and phone numbers and her estimate of $10,000 to accomplish this.

Board member Dewey Baker volunteered to follow through on this project. Following up on this, Mr. Baker was informed that the cost to bury the lines would be $48,700. This amount was beyond our budget and the refuge did not have funding for it either.

The project then evolved to remove the power lines and poles from the refuge office to the old white barn. Ms. Holmes had very little interaction with Mr. Dewey and only through his perseverance was this project accomplished.

On behalf of the Friends board I extend a grateful thank you to Mr. Dewey and to Northwestern Energy for a job well done.

Paul Hayes, President
Friends of the Lee Metcalf NWR

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