The Democrats’ Da Vinci Code - American Prospect

As the Democratic Party goes through its quadrennial self-flagellation process, the same tired old consultants and insiders are once again complaining that Democratic elected officials have no national agenda and no message.

Yet encrypted within the 2004 election map is a clear national economic platform to build a lasting majority. You don’t need Fibonacci’s sequence, a decoder ring, or 3-D glasses to see it. You just need to start asking the right questions.

Where, for instance, does a Democrat get off using a progressive message to become governor of Montana? How does an economic populist Democrat keep winning a congressional seat in what is arguably America’s most Republican district? Why do culturally conservative rural Wisconsin voters keep sending a Vietnam-era anti-war Democrat back to Congress? What does a self-described socialist do to win support from conservative working-class voters in northern New England?


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Simpson, Otter to back tougher rules on bankruptcies

Headwaters: Idaho Falls Post Register: "BOISE -- Tougher rules for declaring bankruptcy and a permanent repeal of federal estate taxes will be backed by Idaho's two U.S. House members in key votes in Congress this week.
Idaho had the 10th-highest number of bankruptcy petitions per household last year, according to the nonpartisan American Bankruptcy Institute. In the last federal fiscal year, 9,790 cases of bankruptcy were filed by Idaho residents, according to the Administrative Office of U.S. Courts. That's up more than 7 percent from the 9,051 bankruptcies filed in fiscal 2003."

It's a Horse Race...

Ridenbaugh Press on Idaho's 1st CD

Salon on Schweitzer

"'You know who the most successful Democrats have been through history?' he asks. 'Democrats who've led with their hearts, not their heads. Harry Truman, he led with his heart. Jack Kennedy led with his heart. Bill Clinton, well, he led with his heart, but it dropped about 2 feet lower in his anatomy later on.

'We are the folks who represent the families. Talk like you care. Act like you care. When you're talking about issues that touch families, it's OK to make it look like you care. It's OK to have policies that demonstrate that you'll make their lives better -- and talk about it in a way that they understand. Too many Democrats -- the policy's just fine, but they can't talk about it in a way that anybody else understands.' When you're out visiting with folks in a way that touches their heart, you tell them, "We're going to find the money to do the right thing."

You need to have good solid policy -- that's important. But you've got to touch people. They've got to know you; they've got to know that you believe in what you're saying. And that's probably more important when people vote than your policies. Because how the hell are they going to raise their families, maybe work two jobs, go hunting on the weekend, bowl and drink beer with the boys on Tuesday night, and still have enough time to figure out who's telling the truth about the budget, about healthcare, about education?

They look up there and say, "That guy's a straight shooter. If I wasn't so busy bowling and working and fishing, and if I had time to spend on these issues, I bet I'd come to the same conclusions that that guy would. But it's a good thing that he's doing all that studying and stuff, because I'm busy fishing and bowling."

In my Senate campaign [Schweitzer ran unsuccessfully in 2000], I had a great campaign ad. I stood in front of one of my barns, and I said: "Montana is not New York City. We don't need a bunch of new gun laws. We need to enforce the ones we already have." And then we moved to a shot where I was with one of my sons and my daughter, and I was holding a .270, which is a fairly good-size rifle. As I'm talking, I lifted the bolt, shoved in a bullet, put the safety on and handed it to my son as my daughter watched, and he touched one off. And as I was doing that, I was saying, "In Montana, we understand that passing responsibility from one generation to another with gun safety is part of who we are."

So this time around, when we started shooting ads, they had some polling data, and they knew what pushed the buttons of the people in Montana. And I said, "No. This is the way this campaign is going to work: The more times that we run ads with me on a horse or carrying a gun -- it's better if I'm doing both -- the more likely it is that we'll call me a governor at the end of the day. Because what those ads said is, "I'm a real Montanan."

understand that the Democrats in the big cities, on the East and the West coasts, have a grave concern about gun control. Frankly, as it turns out, so do Republicans. [California Gov.] Schwarzenegger supports gun control, I think. [New York Gov.] Pataki certainly does, [former New York Mayor] Giuliani does, most of these East Coast Republicans do. So I can appreciate that they've got a problem in their inner cities. But that's not what we have out here in the flyover zone. We have guns because we like them. We have guns because in some ways it just kind of defines who we are. We like having guns around. It's not necessarily that you're out shooting -- it's knowing that you could if you wanted to.
When you crowd a bunch of people together, when you've got people living on top of each other, they're likely to have run-ins. So you need a whole bunch more laws. When you've got more cattle than people and you've got blue sky that goes on almost forever, people have got room to roam without bothering each other. Live and let live.

I think that guns are probably preeminent in a place like Montana. When it comes to religion, people respect your own opinion. If the question is, Is it important in the flyover areas, the Midwest and the West, to understand something about God, I think it is. I think people are likely to be more God-fearing. Are they in church on Sunday necessarily? No. They might be fishing. People have different ways of getting close to their maker. In Montana, lots of time that means getting out.

Hell, yes. When every mother and father knows that there will be support if they have a kid that deserves the opportunity to make it to the top ... Education is the equalizer. It doesn't matter if you were on third base or were in the dugout when the game started -- you have an opportunity to make it to home plate with education.

And healthcare. You know, in Montana, 20 percent of the people don't have health insurance. They're not indigent, living under bridges someplace or in a culvert with a sleeping bag. Maybe Mom and Dad both work. They say prayers with their kids when they tuck 'em into bed, and then they close the door and they walk down the hall, and they get on their knees and they pray one more time that nobody gets sick because they don't have health insurance. They just can't imagine having a sick child and not being in a position to be able to get the help that they need.
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RollingStone.com: The Long Emergency : Politics

Quite far out there in the quasi-science fact/fiction realm, but Kunstler always make interesting, thought provoking reading. His work on suburbia and how it came to be Home from Nowhere is spot on and helped shape the vision of Hidden Springs. Article

Lawmakers: Feds should pay more for untaxed land

Unless the federal government boosts local reimbursement for lost tax revenue on public lands, some western lawmakers want to give Uncle Sam's property to the affected counties.

"If the government can't be a good neighbor, it has no business being in the neighborhood," U.S. Rep. C.L. "Butch" Otter, R-Idaho, said after introducing his bill this week to increase spending on the federal "Payment-in-Lieu-of-Taxes" program.

Under a 1976 law, cash payments are made by the U.S. Department of Interior to compensate local governments for tax-exempt federal land. The money, intended to offset losses to the private property tax base, is generally used by counties to pay for firefighting, law enforcement, schools and other services.

Western lawmakers have long chafed that rural communities with large tracts of federal land have not received the amount of money they're due under the law. During a news conference on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, a bipartisan group of western members of Congress claimed that during the past decade, rural communities have been shortchanged $1.1 billion.

Otter's legislation, co-sponsored by fellow Idaho Republican Rep. Mike Simpson, would give counties parcels of federal land equal in value to the difference between the PILT payments appropriated by Congress and the full amount authorized by law. National parks, wilderness areas and federal wildlife refuges would be exempt from the conveyances.
Headwaters: Idaho Falls Post Register

Tony Montana

HELENA, Mont.--Tribal flags billowed next to the Stars and Stripes, the smell of burning sweetgrass hung in the air, and the drumbeat from a half-dozen tom-toms was a tad insistent. Scores of Native American tribal members dressed in full war bonnets and chest-length braids intoned powwow tunes while modern-day cowboys and cowgirls, decked out in rented tuxedos and full-length gowns, bounced like pogo sticks in a traditional Native American victory dance. More

Idaho sees solid job growth

Economy - The Idaho Statesman - Always Idaho: "

Idaho job growth was sixth highest in the nation during the fourth quarter of 2004, according to the latest state profile compiled by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp."