Trego's Mountain Ear

I saw this meme the other day – it brought back a memory of when I had stopped at a traffic light in Sioux Falls – two lanes of traffic included my Talon, a Charger, a ‘vette, and a fine looking 68 Mustang. And, in each rearview mirror, a highway patrolman watched our slow acceleration when the light changed. But for those who don’t have a muscle car, chargers are more available than ever.

There’s a conversation happening across Canada that too often gets buried under slogans instead of being faced honestly.

Equalization payments were created with a clear purpose: to ensure Canadians, no matter their province, have access to comparable public services. On paper, that’s a principle most people can support. Fairness matters. Stability matters. National cohesion matters.

But let’s stop pretending the system exists in a vacuum.

Provinces like Alberta and Saskatchewan don’t just participate in this system, they carry a disproportionate share of it. Their industries, their workers, and their tax base help fund a federal pool that redistributes billions across the country.

And yet, those same provinces are routinely criticized, talked down to, and politically dismissed, often by voices in provinces that depend on those very transfers to sustain their own budgets.

Provinces like Quebec and Nova Scotia continue to receive equalization while maintaining expansive social programs that their own revenue alone would struggle to support.

That’s not the issue.

The issue is the contradiction.

You cannot rely on a system funded in large part by resource-heavy, economically productive regions while simultaneously condemning the industries, values, and people that make that funding possible.

You don’t get to cash the check and then attack the source.

And if that dynamic feels familiar, it should, because we’re watching a version of it unfold here in the United States.

Across large parts of the country, resource-based and rural economies helped build real, tangible wealth; energy, timber, agriculture, land stewardship. 

That wealth didn’t just appear. It was built over generations by people who valued independence, self-reliance, and community stability.

Then the rules started to change.

Industries get restricted or shut down. Land use tightens. Costs rise. Meanwhile, outside money and influence move in, not to sustain those communities, but to reshape them.

We’re seeing longtime residents priced out of their own towns. 

Working land turned into investment assets. Communities that once supported families now becoming destinations for second homes, luxury development, and, increasingly, large-scale infrastructure like data centers.

And with that shift comes a cultural one.

The same independence that built those regions gets reframed as backward. The values that sustained them get dismissed. 

The people who lived there first are told, directly or indirectly, that there’s no longer a place for them in the version of the community being built.

It’s not just economic displacement. It’s cultural displacement.

Produce the value. Build the place. Then step aside.

That’s the pattern people are starting to recognize, whether they’re looking at equalization debates in Canada or the transformation of rural and resource-based communities here at home.

This isn’t about resisting change. Change is inevitable.

It’s about asking who benefits from that change and who gets pushed out in the process.

Because a system that extracts value from people and places, while eroding their ability to remain there, isn’t balance. It’s replacement.

And whether it’s provinces, states, or small towns, the same principle applies:

You cannot build on the backs of working communities while simultaneously dismantling the very foundation that made them possible.

At some point, people stop asking for fairness.

They start fighting back.

What’s happening in Libby isn’t random—it’s a pattern.

First, local industry gets shut down. Mining and logging projects face lawsuits, delays, and endless regulatory barriers. The recent Cabinet Mountains exploration project is just the latest example, challenged over water, wildlife, and federal review concerns.

Then the economic backbone disappears.

Jobs leave. Wages drop. The community shifts from a self-sustaining resource economy to tourism and service work. Property values change. Locals get priced out. Outside money moves in.
Next, “acceptable development” gets redefined.

Resource industries are blocked—but other types of development, often backed by outside investors, move forward. Land use tightens. Growth is controlled. Planning language like “sustainability” and “smart growth” becomes the justification.

So here’s the real question:
If you shut down industry, restrict land use, and reshape the economy—who benefits?

Because what follows is predictable:
Less local control
More outside ownership
More dependence
The town doesn’t die. It just becomes something else.

Environmental groups argue they’re protecting water, wildlife, and federal standards—and those concerns are real.

But what replaces the lost opportunity for the people who live there?

This isn’t about one mine.

It’s about a cycle:
Shut it down. Reshape it. Sell it off.
And call it progress.

It’s a simple question that we should ask ourselves – possibly ask ourselves frequently. It is, essentially, the basis of our legal system. I am less offended by an apple core thrown from a car window than a bottle or a can. I am much less offended by the mojado who works on a southwestern ranch than the refugee who gets behind the wheel of a truck and injures or kills someone. Like it or not, our willingness to accept or impose government controls is a matter of degree.

I remember searching for a little boy named Ryan. I remember when the search changed to recovery – we hadn’t found Ryan, but a murderous pedophile had been turned in. I read that Robert Hornback, Ryan’s pedophile murderer, may be trying for parole in another couple-three years, and was shocked to hear he had been housed in South Dakota’s prison under the name Sebastian Canon. By the time this next parole hearing comes around Ryan will have been dead since 1987. Forty years is plenty of time for a person to change. But I strongly oppose any parole for Hornback. I think it is right to impose my views on a murdering pedophile.

I think of myself as politically libertarian – but I am downright Authoritarian (call it statist, if you will) when it comes to murderous pedophiles. I suspect none of us are 100% libertarian or 100% Statist. It’s the big reason I don’t like dividing ideologies on a scale of right versus left. From my perspective, the Nazis (National Socialists) weren’t all that different from Stalin’s Communists (International Socialists). Both were extreme Statists – and my nation allied with one group of Statists to put paid to the group that was a little more horrible. Stalin was considered on the left, Hitler the right. There was little difference between them.

I’ve looked at the protests against ICE – and on one hand, when I see the ICE people explaining that they’re catching the worst of the worst, I recall the sinking feeling of knowing we were looking for the body of a little boy. On the other hand, as we talk about illegals, I recall men who worked on southwest ranches to make a better living for their families in Mexico. Men who would have felt the same as I had they been there on that summer day in Libby.

I don’t have even that level of certainty on our drug laws. I do recall that Harry Anslinger (headed the Federal Bureau of Narcotics) made sure that Senator Joseph McCarthy had no problems getting his prescription for morphine filled in DC. And I wonder if there aren’t cheaper, more effective, more humane options available. As I age, I’m a bit more understanding of having a definite speed limit than I was back when Nixon pushed through the double nickel and took away our ‘reasonable and prudent.”

Thinking on the topic, it’s wrong to impose my views on religion to others – or others views on religion on me. I’m kind of strong on the Bill of Rights – a long time ago, I took an oath to protect the constitution of the United States. I accept that oath included the entire document and did not have an expiration date. When I look at the laws passed since then, I think we maybe have too many.

As I read the City Journal – https://www.city-journal.org/article/crime-disorder-safety-affordability-cost-cities?skip=1 – I found this paragraph: “They then provided estimates for 13 offense categories. For example, the direct  or  tangible costs of a single murder exceeded $1.2 million. The total cost of a murder to society—once intangible and crime career harms are included—came in just under $9 million. Murder, for obvious reasons, is an outlier. But other crimes are far from cheap and happen more often: the social cost of a rape exceeds $240,000; an aggravated assault, just over $107,000; and a robbery, just over $42,000.”

I’ve had Crim courses dropped on me when nobody who was more enthusiastic about the topic wanted the class. I’m uncomfortable with criminology as a science because the definitions of crime and criminal change with time and location. It’s really hard to teach a science class where the definitions aren’t consistent over time. Still, if you can teach an introductory crim class, you do know a little about the topic.

As I’m writing this, I’ve just read that the bastard who knifed Irina Zarutska on a train in Charleston SC was found not competent to stand trial. I recall the M’Naghton Rule – but rather than make a mistake, here’s the definition from Cornell Law School: “Under this M’Naghten test, all defendants are presumed to be sane unless they can prove that–at the time of committing the criminal act–the defendant’s state of mind caused them to (1) not know what they were doing when they committed said act, or (2) that they knew what they were doing, but did not know that it was wrong. A common example for the second prong is if a person is acting on orders from “God.”

In a way, I have to agree. Anyone who doesn’t realize it’s wrong to take a knife to a pretty little blonde is bugnuts. (I will continue to use these specific psychological terms – after all, I am a demographer and a sociologist, not a head shrinker.)

But it isn’t just wasting pretty blondes – now I can reference an economist calculating that the murder costs society 9 million. I don’t care if the bastard can’t tell right from wrong. We can’t afford people like him walking around any neighborhood.

An aggravated assault costs society $107,000. Generally, aggravated assault is assault with a deadly weapon, or assault in connection with a more serious crime. Each robbery costs society $42,000 – and the average take to the robber, in 2019, was $1,797.

Of course, I read the blotter in the TVNews- our local police are more like social workers with pistols than Wyatt Earp at the OK Corral (and I like a society where they can afford to be polite and helpful). On the other hand, I’ve been looking at some data from El Salvador:

In El Salvador, they built one brand-new, minimum amenities prison, then made a strong effort to fill it up. I don’t know if the M’Naghton rule is applicable in El Salvador.