My father’s generation pretty well put paid to Fascism.  Sure, Juan Peron and Francisco Franko were still running things in Spain and Argentina as I moved from teen to adult – but the big name Fascists departed our time-space continuum before I was born. 

While members of the Greatest Generation did hang Benito Mussoline by his heels, they couldn’t abolish the memory of the Palazzo Vidoni Pact.   In 1925 that pact established the employers’ association and the trade unions as the only representatives of employers and employees.  This was the legislation that melded government power with corporate power – what we know as Fascism regardless of our political persuasion.

Over the past several years, I have encountered the miniature fascists in several locations.  Usually, the mini-fascist tells me what I have to do, and when I ask the big question, “What authorizes you to demand I do this?” the response is either “Our (corporate) policy requires it.” or “Such and such a law requires it.” 

These mini-fascists can be nice, polite people, or they can be obnoxious folks that have decided to make me jump through a few hoops – I really don’t know why they make that decision.  If they don’t have a badge and a gun, I can respond with an impolite comment and walk out.  (If they do have a badge and a gun, I can ask “Am I free to leave?” and escalate into a civil liberties case if I am not. 

My most recent encounter with mini-fascism was as a signatory on a fraternal organization’s checking account.  The organization has its own tax ID number, and the bank was insisting on me providing my Date of Birth, Email address, Mother’s Maiden name, home and cell number, Employer/Occupation and Social Security Number.  “The Patriot Act demands compliance.”

Neither account was a new account – both have been around for over 40 years.  Changes in signature are normal – but it is easier to ask for more information than is legally required.  That’s where the mini-fascists come into their own – not because they are consciously evil people, but because it is easier to demand compliance with law and corporate regulations than to enforce the law as written . . . to infringe upon the individual as little as possible.

This time, it took several weeks, but it turned out that the bank didn’t require my Social Security Number.  Since it’s over a century since my maternal grandfather got the place where I live in Trego, I don’t figure “Mother’s Maiden Name” is a particularly hard piece of information to get, and as a retiree I have neither employer nor occupation.  I don’t keep a cell phone number.  Finally, the decision was that a photocopy of my drivers license was all they needed.

The problem with mini-fascists is that it is quicker and easier to go along with them – and that cooperation keeps the mini-fascism going. 

In case you missed it- or just want a refresher… Consolidated Polling increases the costs of voting in person, More about Uncontested Elections and Elections by Acclamation, That interesting error resulting in the hand count of the primary ballots, and the Omission of Section 7.

I’ve noticed a meme – pick the subject (your liberties are, the earth is) not dying, they’re being killed by people with names and addresses.    My ability to vote against a candidate in this next election has been taken from me – by well meaning, well-regarded people.

Taking my vote away (and yours) has not been accomplished in a single act – but over time, my vote has been made meaningless . . . and if my vote is meaningless, I’ve been left with the activity of voting, but my vote has no influence. 

Maybe it’s wrong to say I don’t have a choice – I have three potential congresscritters to choose between.  Inside Lincoln County, I can vote for the Cuffe of my choice – I can even write in  Joan Cuffe, Mike’s wife . . . but Paula the Buff won’t count that write-in vote.  I can vote against Matt – but I don’t particularly want to vote against him.  There was no opposition to any candidate on the ballot – and the bottom line is that the election handbook allows our election administrator, Buff Paula, to choose not to count write-in votes.

Paula has a name and an address.  Christi Jacobsen has a name and an address.  I don’t believe either set things in motion to take electoral choice away from the entire county – but it has been done.

Next week, I’ll share the reply to Christi – her response only included “Our office will carefully review your information and observations.”  I think I want a timeline, and I want to be informed of what they do – Christi has already lost a couple of court decisions on elections, and if her office can’t or won’t explain where I’m wrong on subsection 7, it may be time for another.

As October ended, the Lincoln Electric Cooperative controversy continued to grow.  On October 31, Hitting the High Points read: 

“Now there’s a new rumor running around.  Lincoln Electric is supposed to be the target of a buy out and a takeover by private utility companies.  I can’t figure out exactly where this rumor got it’s start, but I’ve been told it was started just north of Eureka, in the new Lincoln Electric Building.  To steal a phrase from Monk, ‘ignorant and uninformed people’ must be spreading this load of malarkey.  As the old saying goes, if you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle ‘em with bull.

The problem with the rumor is simple – it’s not a buyout, it’s been a sell out.  Most of the trustees, elected to protect the members, have sold out.  As a result of their gradual sell out, there has been a takeover – by the manager.

The rumor’s a real simple one – the ignorant, uninformed members of CREAM are being manipulated by evil dastardly special interests, with big eyes, who will move in on Lincoln Electric, like wolves on a lame sheep, take it over, and then sell it to: Montana Power, Pacific Power & Light, Washington Water Power, the Little Sisters of the Poor, pick one.

It’s too bad that they figure that they can’t keep control by telling the truth.

There will be a special members meeting, and a chance to vote out the board that sold us out.  CREAM will be offering a reform slate of candidates to replace them.

I don’t like watching a rumor campaign.  This campaign to regain membership control of Lincoln Electric is getting enough hard feelings without stooping to smear campaigns. 

And I’m making a simple promise to help stop the rumor mongering.  The Mountain Ear will support no candidate or group that is not committed to running Lincoln Electric as a cooperative, for the members.

And thanks for telling us about the rumor campaign.”

On Page 4, the headline was “CREAM churns”:

“The Concerned REA Members (CREAM) met Monday evening, October 24.  As CREAM got a bit more formal, Craig Eaton was chosen chairman, Mike McCurry vice-chairman, and Cheryl Evjene as secretary/treasurer.

Cheryl reported that petition signatures now far exceed the 10% needed to call a special meeting, and that they are being checked against the Lincoln Electric membership list to be certain they’re valid.  The consensus of the attending members was to turn the petitions demanding a special members meeting in as soon as all the signatures can be checked and verified.

CREAM decided it will not be necessary to get a court order for Lincoln Electric to deliver the membership list since one of the LEC office staff has already delivered the list to them.”

On November 7, 1988 the frontpage ad headline was “CREAM Announces”:

“Tonight, (November 7th) Lincoln Electric Cooperative has scheduled a special meeting to receive CREAM’s petitions calling for removal of the trustees.

608 Lincoln Electric members have signed that petition.

These ads will be your only notification and invitation to attend the special board meeting.  Attend if you can.

CREAM

Phone 296-2152”

On page 3, a letter from Evelyn Schroeder:

“Mike:  Here is a copy of a letter I’ve written to Mr. Miller.  It is self explanatory.  You may publish it in the Mountain Ear if you wish.

Mr. Melvin Miller

Manager

Lincoln Electric

Dear Sir;

You requested in the last correspondence to the members of the Coop that if we had any questions to please let you know.

I have one point that has been bothering me for a long time, long before this recent controversy.  As far as I know, the Coops were established for the benefit of rural citizens in outlying areas so they could have the use of electricity and telephone service at nominal cost!  I know out here in the Trego area, there are several families who are without power  and telephone service because it would cost them “an arm and a leg” to have a hook up!  Some have children, and without telephone service in case of an emergency, what are they to do?  One man, living alone, who should have a phone, but here again it is too costly!

With the money that is being spent on many other projects, salaries, etc., isn’t the original purpose of the coops being defeated?

Yours Truly

Evelyn Schroeder”

Page 4, November 7, included “The Lineman’s Saga”

“More news from Lincoln Electric concerns the contracts for the linemen.  Apparently, in bargaining with the union, the management of LEC has suggested their preferred form of contract:  Linemen would not have any seniority of value, instead they would be kept or canned strictly based on the results of management evaluations.  According to the reports we’ve heard at the Mountain Ear, this would allow an overhiring of linemen to occur, poor reports to be written on our existing linemen, then all of them could be sacked whenever the manager chose to do so.

A little background on the union controversy may help at this point.  According to our sources, the linemen were driven to unionize when the manager’s capricious policies became unbearable.  The situation had deteriorated to a point where linemen were spending 4 out of 5 weekends either on standby or on call and were forbidden to travel more than 50 miles from their headquarters.  Although another lineman was allegedly to be hired to alleviate this situation, following the firing of Monk Miller’s son-in-law (due to nepotism), this position was left open.

Obviously, there are two sides to the story.  Monk’s, printed in his ‘Notes from the Manager’s Desk’ in the 9-29 issue of the Tobacco Valley News was “Generally people join unions in hope of improving wages and benefits while at the same time seeking reduced workload conditions.

According to the reports we’ve received, the Lincoln Electric management is negotiating contracts for the linemen through the offices of an attorney who is charging LEC between $95 and $100 per hour for his time.”

Real Clear Politics has published a study evaluating national and state pollsters.  It’s the sort of thing that was never part of my job, but I am certainly pleased to see their work.  The study is at realclearpolitics.  While I’ve copied the table, I encourage everyone to click the link and read the whole thing.  I knew Fox and Quinnipiac lacked something in sampling or models – but this study seems competently done and is nice to have.  Another article, written by RCP staffwriter Carl A Cannon can be downloaded here.

Both articles are worth reading – this excerpt shows why:

Rank	Pollster	Avg
1	Selzer & Co.	2.0
2	InsiderAdvantage	2.6
3	UMass Lowell	3.0
4	Susquehanna	3.3
5	Trafalgar Group	3.4
6	Emerson	3.9
7	CBS News/YouGov	4.0
8	CNBC/Change Research	4.1
9	Suffolk	4.3
10	SurveyUSA	4.4
10	Rasmussen Reports	4.4
12	HarrisX	4.8
12	NY Times/Siena	4.8
14	Marist College	4.9
15	CNN	5.0
16	PPP	5.2
17	Remington Research	5.3
18	ABC News/Washington Post	5.4
18	Monmouth	5.4
18	FOX News	5.4
18	Reuters/Ipsos	5.4
22	Mason-Dixon	5.5
23	Quinnipiac	5.7

Now go back and click the link – there are a bunch of charts looking at these pollsters, and it makes the news a lot easier to understand.

I awakened after a dream where I engineered a clone of the Gardner Gun with flat aluminum plates for a frame, a drill press, and a tap and die set.  It would probably work well in 22 – but I really don’t have any use for one.  William Gardner designed it in the 1870’s as a simplified alternative to the Gatling  – and I may be able to plan how to build a copy, but I surely can’t see a need for one.  I’d probably use a commercial Ruger 10-22 magazine, but as you can see from the photo of the original, it has a crank, not a trigger.  Remember, I spent a lot of my youth with single-shot rifles.  I’m kind of frugal with ammunition.

Still, as the President continues to war against home-made guns, the idea of turning out a Gardner in the garage has a perverse appeal.  And a glance at the photo shows the appeal of turning one out with flat metal and a tap and die set.

Still, it isn’t the only temptation in the bolt together frame option.  The guy behind this article seems to have had a similar idea:

His article shows how, from a quarter inch steel plate, a little bit of round stock, a chunk of stainless steel tubing, you can wind up with a break-in-the-middle shotgun.  This photos suggests someone, somewhere, is mass producing them.

Maybe it’s easier to write gun control legislation if you don’t have much mechanical aptitude?

Snow on the ice shows most of the pond surfaces have shifted from liquid to solid.  The last single migratory duck has landed, swims on the open water, and will be headed south again.  The flocks of turkeys have made the shift from grasshoppers to seedheads.  Bambi and his mother graze in the front yard. 

We’re in the open burning window – snow and rain have made a safe fall for burning branches and downed trees.  Cleaning up forested land is a task that has to be self-satisfying . . . nobody notices the mess that disappears so much as the guy who squares it away.  It’s a constant task, and the easy solution – bringing in a logging operation – just leaves things looking so, well, I suppose that there is no better descriptor than logged.  Cleaned up, I want a forest that has around 20 or 25 percent canopy.  The 100 percent canopy I work into makes sure little sunlight reaches the ground, and too many small trees bend this way and that as they compete for the light that makes photosynthesis work.  But the snow is here now.

It’s time to clean and organize the garage – the work that has been postponed until the weather worsened.  It’s also time to find my ragged, 40 year-old, original thinsulite coat that I wear for work that is dirty and cold.  The question is, where did I stash it when last winter warmed into Spring.  Ah, well, there are plenty of old coats, and some fit better now.

The garage smell is different – a dehydrator works on the last of the garden’s tomatoes.  Sunflower heads are close to the woodstove, continuing to dry.  The slower pace of winter is welcome after a long, warm growing season.

I learned statistics before I learned polling.  While most mathematics came from academics, statistics came from gamblers.  When the folks who are doing the polls aren’t coming up with data that provides answers, it can be advantageous to go back to our statistical roots – and with the internet, that’s fairly easy.

I’ve watched Nate Silver, and his models have been good – the problem is that when you’re number one, there is only one way to go, and soon or late, fivethirtyeight is going to miss.  So, let’s look at what the gamblers are betting on.

The betting is about 2:1 for the Republicans to control the Senate, and 7 out of 8 that they’ll take charge of the House. 

Fivethirtyeight ranks the Senate as a 48% chance for Republican control, and 52% chance for the Dems.  On the House, they show 81% chance of Republican control, and 19% chance for the Dems. 

Here in Western Montana, Fivethirtyeight lays it out as 94% Zinke over just 6% chance for Tranel to win.

It’s going to be interesting to see whether the bettors are a better predictor than the pollsters.

Further comment unnecessary.