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We’ve had a longer summer – and that longer growing season translates to dryer conditions. Despite that, we’ve made it through fire season without serious, project level fires in the neighborhood. It’s been good – possibly just due to luck, but we take the good when it arrives.
La nina is kicking in this month – and that Peruvian pattern affects our local winters – in this case, cooler winter temperatures and more precipitation. NOAA’s projection maps for next winter are figuring it in:
Looks like it’s time to put the snowplow back on the old pickup, and cut a little more firewood.
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As I’ve been following posts about what’s happening, I keep encountering comments about a looming civil war. I think there are some crazy bastards out there that really want to see it happen. There may be as much disagreement politically as there was in 1860 – but it may be time to look at what occurred in the war between the states.
It didn’t start in Charleston – the political violence started in Kansas. Sure, Robet E. Lee took John Brown out in Virginia – but the man began his career in Kansas. The fictional opening scenes from Eastwood’s “Josey Wales” provide a more realistic example than the courteous actual history at Charleston. The war between the states started in Kansas, and, as Eastwood showed, quickly spread to Missouri, then to most of the nation.
By and large, the craziness didn’t make it to Montana. In 1863, our predecessors had better things to do – Union or Confederate, they had moved to Montana and left that war behind them. Definitely not cowards, the founding Montanans left a war they found unnecessary behind them and created a new state.
Colorado almost did as well until a Methodist minister named Chivington took a group of volunteers to New Mexico, showed up at the wrong place, and for lack of anything worthwhile to do tackled a Confederate supply column, and became a hero for it. He got a star for his blunder, and his next action is known as the Sand Creek Massacre. A murderer in blue uniform that time. As the nation built up to the war between the states (and during that war) there was a similar emphasis on soft targets. We still remember William Quantrill and Bloody Bill Anderson as murderous Confederates. Our historians are a bit more inclined to remember John Brown for his anti-slavery stance than for the Pottawatomie Massacre – but crazies on both sides of the issue selected soft targets. We forget that George Hoyt, the lawyer who defended John Brown after the Harpers Ferry raid was also a captain in the Red Legs. On both sides, generally awful people who chose to kill those who disagreed with them, and sought out soft targets.
As I write this, I’m thinking of the shooting at an LDS church and the North Carolina shooting, and the various school shootings – we’re seeing crazies attacking soft targets. And I read folks predicting a civil war – right against left, liberal against conservative. And somehow, it looks to me as if our nation’s whackos will claim the moral high ground as they endorse politics as their grounds for murder. I’ve seen news of one young man using his grandfather’s re-barreled Mauser to kill another – then the next whacko left cartridges that appeared to be 303 Brit (developed in 1888) when he shot at ICE and killed some poor mojado who ha been brought in for deportation.
Montana’s early settlers chose to ignore the path of the crazies, leave the war between the states to those who either wanted it or couldn’t get out of it, and proceed to an area where, Unionist or Confederate, they could work together to build better lives, first in the mines, then in ranches. It’s still a good technique.
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Truth in Accounting has issued its 2025 Financial State of the States report. Half the states didn’t have enough money to pay all of their bills. Montana, on the other hand, was 8th from the top – Fact #2 was “The outcome was a $3.5 billion dollar surplus, which breaks down to $8,600 per taxpayer.” One way of looking at this is that our legislators have been very responsible in fiscal matters. The other perspective is that they have overtaxed everyone in the state. I kind of suspect they’d prefer the first perspective – but taxing Montanans for 3.5 billion more than the government needs makes a credible case that they have overtaxed us. Definitely no austerity budgets in Helena.
The 2025 Financial State of the States report is available at the link. North Dakota was #1 – with a surplus of $63,300 per taxpayer. South Dakota was #9, with a surplus of $8,200. On the other hand, New Jersey scored #50, in the hole for $44,500 per taxpayer – just for covering the 2025 expenses. California beat New Jersey, ranked 46th, in the hole for $21,800 for each taxpayer. Illinois ranked 48th, in the hole for $38,800 for each taxpayer. Maine ranked 25th – with a surplus of $100 per taxpayer.
Click the link, and get the whole report. These excerpts are just to motivate you to dig deeper, and see how the states differ.
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It’s easy to spread misinformation. Unfortunately, we all have a tendency to believe data that supports our beliefs. On the morning of September 10, I wouldn’t have recognized Charlie Kirk if he had walked up and bit me on the leg. By the afternoon of that day, I heard the the President’s words confirming his death. The folding table, and the sign “Prove Me Wrong” were vaguely familiar – it turns out that I retired from the college campus scene about the time he was starting – so I looked at YouTube to see what he did.
I watched him debate, or attempt to debate, a young man whose stance was that anyone who identified as a woman was a woman. Charlie Kirk’s stance was that it took two X chromosomes. He was using rationality against repetition – and, to me, it looked like he was on top of the debate. The guy who was arguing against him looked frustrated, angry and foolish.
I tried rational discourse on Facebook years back. A classmate had posted that (based on her experience as an election official) there was no election fraud in Montana. It was too easy – all I needed was to show one 8conviction, and I had a dozen or more to choose from. Piece of cake – but my rational assessment wasn’t enough to overcome her beliefs. Confirmation bias has a lot of power.
I read left-of-center publications as well as the right. If I limit my information sources to those I want to hear, confirmation bias will beat me. Years back, on Facebook, I cited data from Texas that showed illegal immigrants have higher rates of criminal activities than US residents in general. Texas was the only state collecting and publishing such data. I got a reply telling me my data source was bad because some right-wing pundit had used the same information. I would have preferred more sources – but as a social scientist, you use the best you can get. Unlike Charlie Kirk, I responded to the insult with an insult of my own. A long time ago, Chet Apeland told me, “Mike, you don’t want to get in an argument with an idiot – after the third exchange, nobody will know which is which.” Chet’s rule has been good advice. Whenever I have ignored it I’ve looked like a jerk.
Some of the best information on a specific topic available deals with abortion. Every state collects, maintains, and publishes data on who gets abortions. It’s there. So when a lady from DC – a lawyer – told me that American Indians get abortions at the same rate as white women, I could check. They don’t. At least in South Dakota, American Indian women are less likely. What really shocked me was how much more likely South Dakota’s few black women were to get abortions (than whites). South Dakota is a state that is mostly white, then a lot of American Indians. Still, I was more shocked by the Attorney giving misinformation to the State Demographer. I’m still not sure if she was ignorant, or just believe that she was credible and I would accept her statement without checking.
The data doesn’t affect the argument – one side argues for reproductive rights, the other argues against killing babies. It’s hard to debate when each side has it’s own topic. Makes confirmation bias even more powerful.
Getting back to the murder of Charlie Kirk – when the photo of the assassin’s rifle showed up, I saw a comment: “That’s not a military rifle.” The rifle was a scoped 1898 Mauser with a black synthetic stock. The best guess I’ve seen is that over 100 million of these rifles were made between 1898 and the end of World War II. The 1898 Mauser might be the statistician’s primary example of a military rifle. I suspect I read an opinion from someone who first thinks of an AK-47 (also 100 million produced) or the AR-15 platform (over 30 million individually owned in 8the US). Confirmation bias leads to misinformation.
I have a tendency to distrust all politicians – regardless of party. They live in a world of partisan bias – and, like the lawyer lady, want me to accept that view without checking. It’s easy to get misinformation – and there will always be unpleasant facts. I thought that “Trust but verify.” came from Ronald Reagan – it turns out that it’s a Russian proverb. It was a good idea in a country where the line went “there is no truth (pravda) in the news (isvestia) there is no news (investia) in truth (pravda). It’s probably just as good an idea here and now.
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When I moved to Trinidad, Colorado to begin teaching, I was surprised that the annual precipitation was about the same as it was in Trego. Trinidad was 6,000 feet elevation – downtown Trego is a little over 3,000. Trego is definitely timber – predominately Doug Fir, and in Trinidad you still have to go up the mountain to get to the timber.
We moved to Trinidad along with the final episode of MASH – it took years for me to see that epic program – and we moved into a very arid climate. The record frosts (from Climate and Man) recorded for Fortine were May 29 and September 8. Annual precipitation was 17.43 inches. At Trinidad, the record frosts were May 2 and October 16. Annual precipitation was 16.2 inches. Trinidad showed 167 days of growing season, while Fortine showed only102 days of growing season.
Back in the late seventies, one of the foresters I listened to spoke of ‘climax species’ – essentially the trees that will remain in a location until fire wipes them out, and a succession begins. So I knew that in Trego, with 17 inches of rain and 100 days between f8rosts, Doug Fur would remain. Now, fifty-odd years later, and with the experience of Trinidad’s arid, near desert environment, I’m looking at a longer growing season. I kind of prefer the term global warming to climate change. Can’t say for sure – when Climate and Man was published, they had less than 40 years record for Fortine and Trinidad. But one thing is sure – if you spread the same amount of precipitation over more growing days, it’s a good idea to look for plants that are more drought tolerant.
I need to do more thinning – Dad like the forest unmanaged, and that was OK for his lifetime – but a longer growing season demands more space between trees, and probably a change in species – so when I can, I’m leaving Western Larch and Ponderosa Pine. They seem to be a bit more drought tolerant and fire resistant.
The hayfield, despite being partially sub-irrigated, becomes drier with a longer growing season. On the other hand, when I was a kid, raising sweet corn was a challenge. No longer.
The longer growing season may indicate a change in climate, or it may just be an anomaly. I don’t know – but I’m placing my bet on plants that are a bit more drought tolerant.
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I ‘ve been a free subscriber to Mary Pat Campbell’s substack for a while now. She’s an actuary – which is a bit more specialized than a demographer. A demographer has to know 3 things – births, migration and death. An actuary has just one topic – death. Still, actuaries are very good at their topic. This week, she got my attention with this graph:
It’s quite a chart for a 75 year-old man to read – and note the columns she has emphasized – last year, for men, the mean age of death was 70.7, the median was 74, and the mode 77. As a brief explanation – the mean is the arithmetic average, the median is the middle value, and the mode is the most frequently occurring. Look at those numbers and think for a minute – for a guy who is 75, it isn’t surprising that it makes me feel infernally mortal. She’s still in her fifties, and female, so the chart isn’t nearly so personal for her. (She’s definitely worth reading and is at https://marypatcampbell.substack.com/p/rip-robert-redford-1936-2025-and?img=https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F8c1e30b0-74f2-4108-a7a7-ed238182bd8a_3127x2268.png&open=false
She does a nice job in showing how to use cohort life expectancy for planning pensions, annuities, etc. If you have any interest at all in actuarial tables and planning, log onto her site and subscribe.
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I read a substack called “The Liberal Patriot.” It’s basically the writings of middle-of-the road Democrats – I can’t say that I fully agree with what is written there – but I’m within reach of some of the messages. This morning, in an article titled “The Independent Era Is Coming,” they included some polling results:
I figure that translates to 2/3 of people agree with me – disappointed with government, and 5/8 are frustrated by government. The thing is, largely I’m disappointed by my elected officials and generally frustrated by the professional bureaucracy. That isn’t a winning percentage for either side. The article shows this pie chart:
75% want major reforms or a complete overhaul of the system – and the one-time head of the FBI has been indicted by a Virginia Grand Jury. Comey is an example of the problem and the dissatisfaction with our political bureaucracy – with a Virginia jury of his peers he is likely to walk free with a hung jury, but that will only emphasize the feeling of a need to change the system.
The article ends with : “Be yourself and not a partisan. If you’re economically populist and socially conservative and don’t see this represented in the two-party system, be yourself and support independent candidates who back a pro-worker, pro-family, pro-America agenda. Alternatively, if you really care about a specific economic or social issue and don’t feel that either Democrats or Republicans equally care about the issue, then be yourself and support those who do back the issue regardless of their party label. Some of these candidates may be Republican, some Democratic, and others may be independent. Make them work for your vote! Don’t be a partisan and blindly accept every position and argument on one side and reject those on the other. Don’t write off outsiders without a party label. The beauty of political independence is that you no longer must toe anyone’s line or feel any pressure to conform to a specific party platform or candidate. Embrace the liberation from partisan insanity!”
It would please me if my readers went to the Liberal Patriot and read the articles. I don’t agree with all of them, but their substack does a nice job of showing that middle-of-the-road liberals exist – and they can still communicate with the rest of us. Give the Liberal Patriot a read.
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A Montana ranchette needs about 30 horsepower of tractor. Now I have a soft spot for Massey Ferguson – and have a 59 hp model 40b – but Mrs. Ferguson doesn’t get through the trees well. Her job is to provide the weight and mobility for a small backhoe – and the loader does have enough strength to move some fairly large logs. Still, it’s time to pull her down and get a couple cylinders repacked. I can afford to sideline her because Jennie May is back on line.
As I shopped used tractors – specifically in the 30 horsepower range – I kept looking at (in order of cost) John Deere, Kubota, and Chinese tractors. Jennie May is Chinese – technically a Jinma 284. Built in 2005, she showed 29 hours on the clock when I bought her – and a little ignorance is a dangerous thing. I didn’t know that on 50 hours, you’re supposed to retorque the head gasket. On 229 hours, I blew the head gasket. Fortunately I found a dealership with parts, and our friend Larry not only understands diesel engines, but has been teaching me how to repair them. Monday afternoon, Larry said it was time, I hit the starter, and Jennie Mae is back in business. We’ll be moving some more gravel to the east and west ends of the new storage building.
So how should I describe the Jennie May? She looked like this one when she was new, but 20 years of being parked outside has the paint a bit faded.
She has a 1.5 liter 3 cylinder diesel – and is about the same size as one of the old grey ford 9N tractors – but with four wheel drive, twelve speeds forward, and a live PTO. Fortunately, I can get parts from Keno tractors in Oregon, and there’s an owners group online with recommendations on how to keep a Jinma running.
There are better tractors – but I have a small place and Jennie May does what we need.
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Aging eyes create challenges for a guy who carries a short gun. The old match pistols still have usable sights, but are heavy and long. The old 1911 sights became hard to see because of cataracts – and after cataract surgery still2 are hard to use because I am now far sighted. I can focus with the old sights if I wear reading glasses – but that kind of defeats the purpose.
So I’ve gone over to three dot sights. They look something like these illustrations (taken from the NRA. The difference from my perspective is that the front sight is pretty well focused and the dots on the rear sight are a bit blurry.
It’s not a problem. Forty years ago, I watched a man with a white cane, using a 1911, score well above me. Hoping I could learn something, I started a conversation, explaining that his score was higher than mine, and his white cane suggested I had better vision. His answer was simple: “Son, all I can see distinctly is the front sight. The rear sight is a blur. The target is a blur. You just have too many distractions. As you get older, you’ll get better at focusing on your front sight.” Well, I’m older. I can focus better on the front sight. And I did manage to put 8 rounds inside the 8 ring -despite being shaky. And yes, that’s at Bullseye’s 25 yards (though I was doing slow fire, where the match distance should be 50). It’s hard to take shooters seriously that shoot at 3, 7 and 15 yards.
Sights have improved over time – Hickock’s 1851 Navy Colts had a little notch in the hammer with a brass front sight – and it worked well for him.
Sixty years later, John Moses Browning put slightly better sights on his model 1911. I could change to these more modern variants:
Glocks have really nice sights – but I’m old fashioned. I want a hammer, not a striker. I prefer the Browning designs. So it’s either a new one, or a $45 expense to bring the 1911 technologically up to the 1990 sights.
I’ll write on the newer optics when my vision further declines – I can still view the front sight clearly.
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Karl Marx spent about six weeks writing the Communist Manifesto, and his entire life writing Das Kapital, but we know him as the originator of Communism rather than a long-term student of capitalism. The possible relevance of Joseph Tainter – Niskanen Center interfaces some Marx-like observations of modern Capitalism (things that were not readily observable during Marx’ lifetime) with Tainter’s theory of Complexity:
“capitalism is currently suffering from chronic, degenerative conditions – namely, faltering dynamism and inclusion combined with increasingly dysfunctional politics.”
“After all, contemporary postindustrial capitalism features a mass elite of entrepreneurs, managers, and professionals. Comprising some 20 to 30 percent of the population, this is the largest elite, both in absolute numbers and in size relative to society as a whole, that any social order in human history has yet produced, and – making due allowance for all the problems that bedevil life at the top today – its members are flourishing at a level that would stagger the imagination of aristocracies past. Thus, capitalism as a system for producing mass flourishing is overextended: It works for the top quarter or so of society, but not so well for everybody else.”
Karl Marx died in 1883 – before capitalism managed to pull most people up from abject poverty. He chronicled the problems associated with capitalism – yet years before his death wrote “If anything is certain, it is that I myself am not a Marxist. Still now, 140 years after his death, the problem of Capitalism is that “capitalism as a system for producing mass flourishing is overextended. It works for the top quarter . . . but not so well for everybody else.”
That phrase strikes me as today’s most legitimate criticism of capitalism. It doesn’t lift everyone equally.
I’ve worked and researched the most successful communist group in North America – the Hutterites. Simply enough, their society functions for two reasons – first, the communal ownership they espouse has a strong religious component. The belief is that it is much easier to ascend to heaven from the communal society – which can be one heck of a motivator. The second reason is that the folks who are born Hutterite but do not share the beliefs can easily move from the communal colony into the larger, mostly capitalistic society. I suspect that Karl Marx would have recanted his manifesto had he observed late twentieth century communism in all its forms.
So here’s the next quote from The possible relevance of Joseph Tainter – Niskanen Center
“One fundamental reason for capitalism’s difficulties in promoting more widespread flourishing is the steadily diminishing nexus between economic growth and well-being. It’s not true that more money above a certain threshold has no effect on happiness: The most recent examination of this issue found that reported happiness, both in terms of positive affect and overall life satisfaction, continues to rise indefinitely. Importantly, though, happiness doesn’t increase in linear fashion as income rises; rather, it increases in linear fashion with every doubling of income.”
And that brings us back to the chart that the Niskanen Center shows – demonstrating the decreasing returns to increasing complexity:
Read the whole article. I’ve seen the problems of communism on the small scale of the Hutterite Communes, the Soviet Union, and I owned a Yugo. I don’t know how any economic system can make the lowest sixth flourish as well as any member of the top quarter. Read the whole article, The author does a lot better job at showing how Tainter’s theory applies to our own society than I can. The possible relevance of Joseph Tainter – Niskanen Center
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