This was the leading paragraph of a story the Ravalli Republic wrote in December 1995, about the trial of the Indiana militia activist who sent a death threat to Ravalli County officials in support of our own anti-government bullies who had been issuing plenty of threats themselves. Written fully 8 months after the Oklahoma City bombing, this "balanced" story was sadly only one of a bottomless pit of examples of the extremely poor coverage that was offered here by our local press in those dark days.

The spectacle of off-road users verbally abusing people they disagreed with in Darby two weeks ago was a failure of public process, a failure of the vocal perpetrators of the abuse and a failure of the off-road organizations, individuals and of the Forest Service who, by their silence, enabled the poor behavior. But it was, as the example above illustrates, more than that, and more lasting.

The spectacle itself, and the dismissals, denials and "balanced" understanding afterward, was and continues to be a failure of the involved individuals and institutions to remember that our words outlast us, and can be resurrected anytime someone wants to use the advantage of perspective to ask those still around "What the h--- were you people thinking?"

If someone wants to go on record characterizing verbal abuse that included a death threat as simply "one side of the debate" that's their business, but it's not going to look good for them once the dust settles. The proof of their inscrutable bias is in the pudding. What, for example, would have been the lead story and talk of the town if an environmental outfit had put as much money and vitriol into turning people out to a public meeting where such poor behavior was the result? Well, fortunately you don't have to use your imagination. You can just root around in the local archives from a couple years ago 'til you find the paltry coverage of an incident at the BNF Supervisor's office, where three peaceful environmentalists were thrown out of a public meeting by armed officers wearing flak jackets. This act was perpetrated under the banner of "public safety" by the same current supervisor, Dave Bull (with Rick Laible in attendance at both incidents, by the way), who didn't lift a finger in defense of environmentalists in real danger at the Darby meeting. In other words, if the person uttering the death threat at a public meeting had been perceived as an environmentalist, anyone with logic and perspective as concerns would have to conclude that the man would have been immediately arrested, and enviros tarred and feathered ad nauseum in the local press, as they have been anyways, with no concern for "balance." Were any "peaceful" motorized users thrown out by armed guards in Darby by Mr. Bull? For all their complaints that they are being shut out, the two incidents are so dissimilar that they are useful only as damning contrasts. As for damning perspectives, consider that one of the ejected three of two years ago was a native Bitterrooter in his 80s, and a portrait of his dad, a BNF supervisor for 20 years during the very days these modern wise-users invoke as times of "traditional values," looked down on his son from the very walls he was being ejected from. This, folks, is perverse. And dangerous.

A year before the Oklahoma City bombings, the founder of the modern Wise Use movement, Ron Arnold, declared before the Montana Mining Association in Butte that environmentalism is part of a plan "to dismantle industrial civilization" and must be destroyed. Eight months later, Cal Greenup, who had threatened to execute numerous local officials, declared that "if I can't raise my animals and live in this country free, I'd rather die." Two months after that, then-Rep. Matt Brainard, R-Florence, tried to get the Legislature to pass a resolution which called for the state to urge people to own firearms suitable for militia activity. Immediately after the Oklahoma City bombing he would claim his resolution wasn't intended to promote an anti-government militia, but merely one that could be called out by the governor in emergencies, and he got a bye. Eight months after the bombing the Ravalli Republic gives the man who initiated the spate of death threats in this county "the benefit of the doubt" and a year after that the People For the West proclaim that "the greenhouse effect is a billion-year-old natural and beneficial phenomenon."

The expectation that Wise-Users will act poorly and should therefore be treated with neighborliness, and the sense of entitlement and immunity these folks surely felt in Darby, belong to another time and place - Mississippi in the late 50s perhaps, where the motto was, "We love our freedom, but we don't love yours."

I believe in fairness, and I've also always given outdoor working stiffs the "benefit of the doubt" because for most of my adult life I've been one myself. But such institutional and publically accepted bias--and the pandering to it--by the media, and by officials and organizations who effectively set the tones of these debates into the future to insure that they either don't happen again, or that they do, is quite another thing. Don't you think?

Letters to the Editor

Losing the 'race for prevention'?

Dear Editor,

Why are there so many races for the “cure”, but no races for prevention? From my perspective, the race appears to be toward extinction of life as we know it, including us. The last 15 years there has been an increasing epidemic of cancer, diabetes, obesity, high cholosterol, high blood pressure, heart disease, lung damage (including asthma and COPD), rheumatoid arthritis and too many other autoimmune disorders to list. Apparently, races for the “cure” have not even slowed down the epidemic.

Lots of studies (just look on the net) have shown that the above health problems, including diabetes, are the result of being exposed in the womb to thyroid hormone disrupting chemicals that predispose the fetus to have those health problems if it survives past birth. The best way to prevent cancer, diabetes and the other listed health problems is to prevent fetuses from suffering from Congenital Fetal Hypothyroidism.

Diabetes, which has increased alarmingly in children and young people, is one of the most often mentioned diseases caused by fetal hypothyroidism in both human and animal studies. According to recent news, the diabetes epidemic has 4000 new cases per day and costs $116 billion a year. Diabetes takes 250,000 lives a year. If another country killed that many United States citizens each year, we would do something.

We are doing this to ourselves, so why don’t we do something? We need to prevent Congenital Fetal Hypothyroidism by decreasing exposure to the factors that cause it, rather than running around hoping for a “cure."

Judy Hoy
Stevensville

Support for free speech

Dear Editor,

I read in the newspaper of 17 January 2008 that Professor Steve Running, a professor at the University of Montana and a noted expert on global warming, had a talk at Choteau High School canceled due to complaints from the community. Some in the community thought that the Professor was going to address global warming, and while he denies that was what he was going to talk about, I have a hard time believing that the subject would not come up. Wherever three people gather the Professor is willing to address an issue that concerns him very much.

While Professor Running and company have little patience with the minority in the scientific community who do not agree with them, I support the professor being able to address a serious concern of all informed people, regardless of their position, on the issue of global warming. Whether you agree or not, the Professor and his supporters have objective data to support their position, not withstanding their ignoring other information that conflicts with their position. Scientists need to act like scientists and educators like educators.

Senator Jim Shockley
District 45, Victor

That familiar sucking sound from Wall Street

Dear Editor,

Ever wonder what happens to all of that money when the stock market drops out of sight, like it's doing right now, to the tune of trillions of dollars, some of it yours and mine?

The money doesn't just evaporate into thin air. For every dollar the market goes down, someone on the other end is taking it for their personal or business gain. It's called "shorting" the market. If you short enough shares of a particular company, you can cause the stock price to plunge, as other investors panic and pull out their money in reaction to your short, leaving you with enormous profits. A single, powerful equities firm can send the entire stock market into a nose dive, which is exactly what has been happening for the last six months.

This legalized theft occurs everyday in the predacious world of stock trading. Just recently, it was revealed that the largest equities firm on Wall Street (Goldman Sachs) has been shorting the same stocks that they have been selling to their own customers, creating losses in the millions. A thirty-page, extremely detailed contract agreement insulates them from justice because they actually tell you in the contract that they may rob you when you agree to do business with them. For every stock recommendation that you hear advertised in the media (like on Jim Cramer's "Mad Money"), there are shorting predators waiting to send the price to the depths of hell, as soon as you and lot's of others purchase the stock. I know this from personal experience.

One of the primary beneficiaries of this current stock market crash is none other than the man who helped to orchestrate it, Alan Greenspan, our former Federal Reserve Chief. Mr. Greenspan, a man of legendary intellect, lowered interest rates to an unprecedented 1.0 percent just before leaving office, therefore making credit available to anyone with a driver's license. This single act created the now infamous "housing bubble" as millions of Americans used this newfound credit to achieve the American dream of home ownership.

It has also created an artificially high level of land development across the nation, which has plagued the Bitterroot Valley over the last several years. We can only hope that some of these wealthy developers have also been caught in the market slide and lost enough money to at least slow them down a little. This entire development crisis has occurred as the result of public policy, where supply-side investment tactics have created an artificial demand for housing. If pure, free-market capitalism were at work, this development boondoggle would not even be occurring.

It should be of interest to you that Mr. Greenspan now works for a major Wall Street equities firm that has been shorting the market to the tune of millions of shares. Big Al (along with hundreds of others on Wall Street) has now made billions of dollars for his employer and himself, helping to put our nation's economy in jeopardy and causing massive bankruptcies to unsuspecting good people everywhere.

Wall Street's explanation for this crisis comes in the form of complex charts and calculations that blame the whole mess on a couple of million, lower, middle class families who are unable to pay there mortgages because their payments have tripled or quadrupled. You may be among these many innocent mortgagees. They call it the "sub-prime mortgage meltdown." What they conveniently fail to tell you is that this is mathematically impossible, since the entirety of these "melting mortgages" amounts to less than 1/2 of 1 percent of our entire Gross National Product, a veritable drop in the bucket. They also fail to tell you that mortgage companies like Countrywide made a killing selling unrealistic mortgages about eight years ago and have already pocketed the money. The current CEO of Countrywide is soon to get an additional $110 million exit bonus because his company has been bought out by Bank of America, at a tremendous loss to stockholders. Some things never change, do they?

Some things never change and it is our fault that they don't. They don't change because we fail to realize that the Emperor really has no clothes, and we keep electing the Emperor to high office. We are an unwitting public that is repeatedly mesmerized by an inflated since of patriotism and a naive belief in the goodness of free market capitalism, which doesn't even comprehend the meaning of goodness, or truth, or integrity, or honesty. Its soul purpose is to make money and to distribute it to those at the top of the American food chain, deceptively allowing miniscule benefits to temporarily trickle down to the rest of us, then taking them from us later.

More than likely, there will be a last minute "fix" that keeps our economy from going over the edge because of one unavoidable fact: the gangsters on Wall Street cannot extract much money from you if you're in a soup line. They learned this painful lesson during the Great Depression of the 1930s. We will hail the "fixers" as great patriots and put them back in office, setting the blueprint for the next economic miracle on Wall Street.

Over the course of our nation's history, the sweat-equity of all of our ancestors before us should have made every American a millionaire today, at a minimum. If trickle-down economics were allowed to work without interference, the middle-class would have benefited greatly, by now. In contrast, we continue to labor more and more, with more and more efficiency, with every succeeding generation losing ground and putting the next generation in dire jeopardy. No amount of Wal-Mart trinkets or high tech cell phones will remedy this problem.

This is tragically ironic because the capacity for free market capitalism to solve humanity's problems is immeasurable and today's corporate blueprint for the production of goods and services is pure genius. All that it takes for this to work for the benefit of all of us is for good people to make it happen.

We should all keep this in mind as we go to the polls next November. Eight years of a Bush, right-wing, Republican government has led us to this historic and dangerous moment. They are the harbingers of criminal activity on an unprecedented scale that we seem to accept willingly. It has also created the greatest income gap between the rich and the rest of us since the plantation days before the Civil War, which was of course maintained with human slavery.

Chris A. Linkenhoker
Corvallis

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