Trego's Mountain Ear

"Serving North Lincoln County"

Tag: Politics

  • The Decline of Representation

    The past three Presidents – Obama, Trump and Biden – have each wound up governing by executive order. True, Obama managed to squeak a healthcare bill through Congress – but even with that, Trump was complaining that executive orders were no way to run a country, that we needed real leadership. Now Trump is also choosing the Executive order route – and the branch of government contesting his executive orders is the judiciary.

    I’ve watched the challenges of representative government from a school board – and much of what got accomplished was because three out of five board members were in agreement on that particular issue. It took a long time, and a lot of effort, to get a pay matrix for teacher contracts approved. It took even longer to get a classified pay scale voted into existence. The addition of the pre-school that started this Fall was first brought up in 2020. I’ve been taught how hard it is to get a representative democracy working with only five elected trustees and no political affiliations. How much worse it must be with 435 representatives narrowly split between two parties.

    I think I’m seeing Trump make the same decision that Obama made – “if I can’t get Congressional authorization, I’ll do it based on my own authority.” Montana’s laws do not give a schoolboard chair that power – by law the board chair chairs the meeting, and the board has only a collective power, utterly lacking individual power for the chair. Still, the board chair does have the (unlegislated) power of asking advice from the board association’s attorneys and setting the meeting agenda.

    So nationally, we’re seeing folks who disagree with Trump taking his decisions to judges who disagree with Trump – when the reality is that our House of Representatives are locked in a pattern of behavior where they can’t do their job. The problem isn’t the President or the Judges – a representative democracy fails to work when most of the representatives come from the extremes. As I was looking for a way to finish, I noticed this meme:

    It’s not quite what I wish it was – but I’ve been called both a Trumpkin and a Libtard. I have the feeling that it’s more a question of where the caller sits on the spectrum than where I am. It would be nice to have more folks from the middle in Congress.

  • Fascism Defined

    If you look at the back of a Mercury dime, you will see the fasces, a bundle of sticks around an axe (well, you will see it if the coin isn’t too worn, Mercury dimes haven’t been made since 1945).

    Please note that the dime illustrated has a 1916 date. The word fascism apparently came into use in Italy, and the year was 1921. Obviously, the fasces on the dime weren’t connected with fascism.

    The word ‘fascist’ is thrown around loosely – largely because the Stalinist Communists used it against both the real fascists (Hitler and Mussolini) and any capitalist they wanted to tar with the same brush. The only people who weren’t fascists to the Soviets were fellow communists.

    Benito Mussolini described fascism as “the marriage of corporation and the state.” I can’t say that Benny invented fascism, but he did start the first fascist government. Anyone remember that, in his second month as President, Barack Obama fired Rick Wagoner, CEO of General Motors? Fascism focuses on putting the nation first. Anybody remember red caps that say “Make America Great Again”? Fascism calls for total control by authoritarian leaders. Can anybody recall some of the extreme controls that came with Covid? Like Newsom activating California’s Guard to work with covid tests?

    Fascism promotes a strong, centralized government, ran by an authoritarian leader. Barack Obama, despite having fired the CEO of General Motors, doesn’t qualify as Fascist. Biden, despite leaning toward authoritarian, doesn’t qualify. Donald Trump – despite the red caps that say “Make America Great Again” doesn’t hit all the bases. It’s easy to find one aspect of each president where he touched on one of the aspects – but none of them meet all of Mussolini’s criteria, and Stalin’s criteria were never correct.

    Mussolini, with coauthor Giovanni Gentile, wrote The Doctrine of Fascism. It’s only 33 pages, and Benny the Moose was a decent writer – it isn’t a hard read. If you think about calling someone a fascist, it’s available at https://dn721808.ca.archive.org/0/items/mussolini-archive/The%20Doctrine%20of%20Fascism%20Benito%20Mussolini.pdf

  • Thinking About Venezuela

    I’m no expert on international politics or Venezuela – but I have been there once (Hugo Chavez was in charge then, and I was a college professor working with the departments of State and Defense – I was just as happy to be confined to the airplane as the Venezuelans were to order all people with US passports not to be allowed off the plane). At the same time, I had a student who was dual citizenship (Venezuelan father and mother re-married) whose father was trying to convince her that moving to Venezuela would be better than staying in the US. How things have changed since 2008.

    My father was in Venezuela before the second World War – the US Navy had contracted with Standard Oil to provide survey work, and Dad was paid at ‘Venezuelan Exchange’. If I recall correctly, he was making $93 per month instead of the regular sailor’s pay of $21 per month. I guess I was raised knowing that there was a lot of money in Venezuelan oil, and the girl’s father confirmed it when we visited at her graduation.

    As near as I can tell, we have 3 destroyers, a cruiser, and 3 amphibious assault ships cruising off Venezuela (Navy Times) and the other day they sunk an open boat – apparently loaded with drugs and 11 Tren de Aragua gang members. The deal is, the boat was in international water – so the legality of the strike may well be questionable. Ah, well, John Paul Jones was called a pirate when the Ranger raided Whitehaven.

    Apparently, our President put a 50 million dollar bounty on Venezuela’s President Madero – while that’s twice what the bounty was on Osama bin Laden, the inflation calculator shows that it takes $1.83 today to buy what a single dollar bought in 2001. 82 percent inflation in those 24 years. Venezuela’s navy has 42 ships – and may not be particularly capable on blue water.

    If we are getting close to qualifying as piracy it is probably a good idea to change from a department of defense to a department of war

  • We Have Documents of Different Quality

    I see that the phrase ‘undocumented’ is going out of fashion – and illegal alien is going back in. I suppose it’s like Shakespeare wrote about what’s in a word – if we accept the changed word, we accept a different reality.

    One of the words I understand is ‘mojado’. It’s a Spanish word that translates simply to ‘wet’. Always seemed a bit more polite than ‘wetback’ – it shows something when you insult someone in his own language. But I should get back to the topic – I have a US passport. I think that’s close to the highest quality of documentation one can have – though mine needs a new replacement before next year. My drivers license is of lesser quality – it specifically says “not for federal identification.” Still, it tells folks that the state of Montana trusts me to drive a car on public roads, and no traffic cop will put that same faith in my passport. A bill from Lincoln Electric, showing my street address, can be a supplement to either the drivers license or the passport. A voter ID card is another supplement.

    Citizens or not, we all have documentation. It’s just that some documentation is better than others. Time was when my drivers license could have a post office box number – but that wasn’t good enough to buy a pistol. It had to have a street address. I think that’s because we have a bunch of people who can’t figure out the rectangular coordinate system that has been federal law since 1785 – yes, that system was before the constitution. Still, that day I didn’t have good enough quality identification to buy a pistol. The folks at Cabelas insisted that my ID had to include a street address.

    I met a hitchhiker who was undocumented and homeless – he explained that his wallet was stolen in Oregon and, since he had no address, he was traveling to Vermont, to get a copy of his birth certificate and begin the process of recovering his papers.

    Still, generally speaking, there are very few who are undocumented. There are many who lack the quality of documentation they need.

  • The Enumeration Clause

    Article 1, Section 2, Clause 3 covers two things – the Census and apportionment of representatives in Congress. Here it is:

    Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons. The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct. The Number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand, but each State shall have at Least one Representative; and until such enumeration shall be made, the State of New Hampshire shall be entitled to chuse three, Massachusetts eight, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations one, Connecticut five, New-York six, New Jersey four, Pennsylvania eight, Delaware one, Maryland six, Virginia ten, North Carolina five, South Carolina five, and Georgia three.

    The last sentence doesn’t count anymore. The critical terms are that the “respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons,” “and within ten years.” It doesn’t say citizens. On the other hand, we quit excluding “Indians not taxed” back in 1924. We quit counting slaves as 6/10ths back in the 1870 Census. https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/distribution-by-citizenship-status/?currentTimeframe=0&sortModel=%7B%22colId%22:%22Location%22,%22sort%22:%22asc%22%7D will take you to the individual states populations listed by citizenship.

    Six or seven percent of US residents are not US citizens – but the number varies by state. Over 99 % of Montana residents are citizens. Almost 95% of Californians are citizens. The average congressional district has about 761,000 people (2020 Census) – Montana’s population in 2020 was 1,137,233 and we have 2 congress critters. Basically, we don’t have any complaints about being underrepresented this time around. Before the 2020 Census, we only had one congresscritter – and were extremely underrepresented.

    So there are a couple questions about Trump ordering another census. The Enumeration clause says “within 10 years.” I suspect that five out of nine Supreme Court Justices will agree that 6 years is within 10 years. (I won’t guarantee that they will agree with me, but they should) Then there’s the question of whether illegal aliens should be counted. That’s going to be one for the courts – but if a guy can’t be there legally, I can’t see why he should be counted as a resident.

    By choice, I’d see congressional seats apportioned by number of citizens – but that isn’t how our founding fathers wrote the Constitution.

  • Our School District is 80% Unified

     This article is excerpted from a report I made to Trego’s school board several years ago.  I don’t have an answer to what went on when Eureka Elementary and Lincoln County High Schools were unified by election in 1988 – the relevant board minutes were missing, and Joel and I were unable to find them. 

    I began looking for data when I read of Eureka’s Elementary district’s inability to pass a levy for a new school building – the suggested alternatives included getting the high school to build a new school, and passing the existing high school on to the elementary district.  While it was offered as an “out of the box” solution, it has been done before – the Lincoln County High School I attended is now the Eureka middle school.

    As a Trego taxpayer, I have the privilege of supporting LCHS and Trego Elementary – but when LCHS buildings go to Eureka Elementary, we Trego residents have effectively been taxed to support Eureka Elementary as well as Trego Elementary.  (Joel tells me that Eureka Elementary paid LCHS a fair price for the old high school – but as I rewrite these notes, I still don’t know what the fair price was.  Trego and Fortine districts provide about 20% of the High School tax base.  Turning the old high school into the middle school is a great deal for Eureka – but may have been unjust taxation for Fortine and Trego landowners. I have assurances that that is not the case – but I do not have figures that allow me to do my own calculations.

    Understanding the significance requires data.  And that data is available at https://svc.mt.gov/dor/property/cov#/256 where the state shows market and taxable values for each district.  To minimize the data dazzle, I will attempt to explain using only the market values of District 13 elementary and District 13 high school, then converting them to percentages for ease of understanding.  (this data is from my original report to the Trego board, and is not current)

    High School District                                1,375,196,172

    Elementary District                                 1,108,162,025

    Subtracting the elementary market value from the high school market value shows that 2,670,341, or 19.4% of the property tax values going to LCHS are from Fortine and Trego districts.   The decisions on running the high school are made by five board members elected from the Eureka elementary district – the appearance of representation for Fortine and Trego is a member from each small district, outvoted at the best, and, at the worst a pair with Quisling quality loyalty to the communities they represent.

    I believe that the codes mandate that the Fortine district trustee be voted in by Fortine, and Trego’s trustee be voted in only by Trego voters – but I have found no evidence that elections have occurred in that manner.

    I have been gathering data to better understand the governance of Lincoln County High School over the past three years.  It is a bit perplexing . . . LCHS has, throughout my lifetime, been closely related to Eureka Elementary.  When I attended LCHS, the cafeteria was over in the Roosevelt building.  Roger Ranta was superintendent over both LCHS and Eureka Elementary.  The lines of demarcation were never well defined.  In many ways, LCHS and Eureka Elementary have behaved as a unified district over at least the past sixty years – but with lip service toward recognizing the outlying districts (now only Fortine and Trego) as part of Lincoln County High School’s district and independent of Elementary 13.

    MCA 20-6-101-3(4) states “As used in this title, unless the context clearly indicates otherwise, a county high school is a high school district that has not unified with an elementary district under 20-6-312.  The context of the name “Lincoln County High School” does not clearly (or even murkily) indicate unification with Eureka Elementary.  I suspect that this section of the law was why discussion of the need to change the high school’s name was reported in the Mountain Ear when the unification was discussed in 1988.  (Joel tells me that the two districts are not unified, but that they operate together under a memorandum of agreement)

    I began searching for documentation of unification when I read that comment in the Mountain Ear archives.  I now have a copy of the April 20, 1988 letter to the trustees of Eureka Elementary, District 13 from Cindy Middig, then Lincoln County Superintendent of Schools.   That letter begins: “Congratulations on the success of your unification election” then gives instructions on actions that need to be completed before July 1st, 1988. 

    Since Eureka/LCHS does not term itself a “Unified District” while Libby does, I am assuming that a more detailed review of the LCHS minutes, or the Lincoln County Superintendent’s correspondence will unearth more relevant information.  Middig’s letter ends with “The additional high school trustee nominating areas (the 3 outlying districts) will remain the same.  The trustees presently representing them, Mrs. Lora Johnson (Trego), Mrs. BeeGee Cole (Fortine) and Penny Williams (Rexford) are hereby appointed to hold office until a successor is elected and qualified at the next regular school election in April of 1989.”

    The fortunate thing is that BeeGee Cole and Ted Roo (LCHS board chair at the time) live.  When I called BeeGee she recalled being appointed to the High School board to represent Fortine, but had no firm recollection of anything being done to unify the districts.  She explained to me that she was a Fortine board member and sent by the board to represent the Fortine District at the LCHS board meetings.  This differs substantially from the role Marcy Butts  filled on the LCHS board, and it appears that change is a result of Cindy Middig’s letter.  It appears that Middig did not consider that her change to the board structure would essentially create a taxation without representation situation when the Eureka Elementary Board could vote to take high school properties that were 20% funded by Fortine and Trego.

    I spoke with Ted Roo, whose recollection was that Cindy Middig’s letter removed all the high school board members and gave all the authority over the school to the elementary board.  From Ted’s recollections, we can point to April 20, 1988 as the time when the event occurred.  (Ted only served on the high school board, and ceased being a board member with Middig’s letter.)  If Ted’s recollections are correct, we need to see if “The Lincoln County High School Trustees” performed all the requirements for the first transaction listed in Middag’s letter.

    Since the May 16, 1988 minutes show LCHS board members Ted Roo, Lora Johnson, Penny Williams, L. Jack Higle, Andy Ivers and BeeGee present, we need only review the minutes from that date through July, 1988 to determine if the LCHS board completed that required transaction before July 1, 1988.  My reading of the Middig Unification letter is that, if that transaction was not performed by the LCHS board before July 1, the unification did not legally occur.  The old Mountain Ear article pointed out that there was a discussion that the name of the high school would be changed – yet it remains Lincoln County High School.  The unchanged name suggests that there is a significant possibility that the requirements listed by Middig were not performed.

    If those three specific actions Middig’s letter says were required before unification could occur were never done, as I read the letter, the unification was never completed.  Yes, that would create a challenge to getting LCHS a high school board after the Elementary board has controlled both operations for 35 years – but I know of no statute of limitations that forces us to accept governmental misconduct or blunders.  MCA 20-6-312 lists the requirements for County high school unification.  20-6-313 seems to support Middig’s instructions: “(1) Whenever a county high school is unified with the elementary district where the county high school building is located, the following transactions must be completed on or before the July 1 when the unification becomes effective:”

    Since the High School continues to operate as Lincoln County High School, which name does not clearly indicate the unification with Eureka Elementary, and after talking with then LCHS board chair Ted Roo, I have questions on whether those required transactions occurred – the LCHS name continuation suggests that there is, at the least, some probability that the Middig letter unified the districts, but the other activities that were required to occur before July 1, 1988 did not.

    I (along with Superintendent Joel Graves reviewed the records from May 16, 1988 through August, 1988, and we were unable to find the minutes that described the board activities to complete the following transactions required in Supt. Middig’s letter:

    1.         The Lincoln County High School trustees shall surrender all minutes, documents, and other records to the trustees of the “new” high school district.

    2.         The county treasurer, after allowing for any outstanding or registered warrants, shall transfer all end-of-year fund cash balances of the county high school to similar refunds established for the high school district.  All previous years’ taxes levied and collected for the county high school shall be credited to the appropriate fund for the high school district.

    3.         The board of county commissioners shall execute, in the name of the county, all necessary and appropriate deeds, bills of sale and other instruments for the conveyance of title to all real and personal property of the county high school, including all appurtenances and hereditaments, to the high school district.

    Another necessary search through Eureka’s records is to determine the circumstances of the transfer of the old high school building from LCHS to the Eureka elementary district.  If the LCHS board was eliminated – and I trust Ted Roo and his memory – the Eureka Elementary board held five of the votes that transferred the county high school to the Eureka Elementary District.

    I asked Suzy Rios, Lincoln County Superintendent of Schools, to search her department’s records from May 16, 1988 to August 1, 1988 to see if documentation exists that provides further information on the unification election – but I suspect that the county superintendent’s record went the same way as Extensions – and I disposed of Extensions records when they had been spoiled by years of a sewage leak in the annex basement.  

     Middig did not complete her term of office, and was replaced by Mary Hudspeth as County superintendent of schools.  The dates when Cindy Middag left the office and Mary Hudspeth came in may explain some of my confusion.  (At Trego, we are missing our 1988 and 89 board minutes)

    If neither Superintendent can find evidence that the LCHS board took the action Superintendent Middag required, our next step is to ask Sedaris Carlson (County Treasurer) to see if those actions required of the county treasurer occurred.  If they did, it is evidence that the unification occurred.  If not, it supports the null hypothesis.  Again, 1988 was early in computer evolution – any records will be on paper, and have long been stashed away somewhere.

    We can also check the county commission’s records for the same time period to see if their required actions were performed.  Their minutes for the middle of 1988 will show, or not show, if they did what they were required to do.

    As I understand it, if Superintendent Middig’s letter stood without negation,  we have a high school that is unified with part, but not all, of its constituent elementary districts.  Since Fortine and Trego both exist as independent districts, Eureka elementary has essentially been granted power to tax both Fortine and Trego for the high school district, then turn the high school property over to the elementary district.  If I recall correctly, taxation without representation was the impetus behind the American revolution.  This situation also suggests that if the unification did occur, Cindy Middig did not correctly consider representation and taxation of Fortine and Trego – which is probably a constitutional issue.

    My conversations with BeeGee and Ted leads me to these tentative (and testable) assumptions:

    1. Prior to the unification vote the outlying districts assigned board members to the LCHS board.  This makes sense in terms of communication both ways.
    2. The unification vote that was announced as a success by Supt. Middig was partially enacted – the high school board was replaced by Eureka Elementary’s board, plus a mandated representative from Fortine and from Trego.  Rexford later entered Eureka as a consolidation – ownership of Rexford school and its history may show something:  If the necessary transactions were completed, the building would have been property of the consolidated district when Eureka took over Rexford district.  Additional research needs to be done on the old high school.  Joel explained that Eureka Elementary bought the old high school building from LCHS – that can provide a great deal of light to the questions.  If it was purchased from LCHS, that indicates that there is no unified district.  If it was sold at less than fair market value, that indicates the high school and elementary districts were acting as a unified district to the economic disadvantage of Fortine and Trego taxpayers.  If the building was still owned by LCHS, it strongly suggests that the transactions Superintendent Middig demanded were not completed.
    1. Whether LCHS and Eureka Elementary are unified or not, the LCHS board is set up to exploit Trego and Fortine.  I cannot even vote against the Eureka board member who votes to finance a new high school and sell the existing building to Eureka Elementary for $100 the minute the high school bonds are paid off . . . and a single Trego rep, not even connected with Trego’s board can’t change that.  A governing board with five votes out of seven can institute a policy that elementary students can be transported by high school buses from Trego, through Fortine, to Eureka Elementary.  This amount of power over the two small districts that Cindy Middig granted to Eureka Elementary seems not only unconscionable, but unconstitutional. 

    My thanks to Joel Graves and Suzy Rios for their help in reviewing the records – and demonstrated the old research adage: “Absence of Evidence is not evidence of absence.”

    Our high school board is not (and has not been for over 35 years) matching this description:

    Montana Code Annotated 2023

    TITLE 20. EDUCATION

    CHAPTER 3. ELECTED OFFICIALS

    Part 3. School District Trustees

    Membership Of Elected Trustees Of County High School District And Nomination Of Candidates

    20-3-356. Membership of elected trustees of county high school district and nomination of candidates. (1) The trustees of a county high school district must include the following:

    (a) four trustee positions filled by members residing in the elementary district where the county high school building is located; and

    (b) three trustee positions filled by members one of whom resides in each of the three trustee nominating districts in the territory of the high school district outside of the elementary district where the county high school building is located. The county superintendent shall establish the nominating districts, and, unless it is impossible, the districts must have coterminous boundaries with elementary district boundaries.

    (2) The provisions of 20-3-305 govern the nomination of candidates for the trustee election prescribed in this section.