Today's Stories

July 26 / 27, 2008

Joseph Nevins
Death as a Way of Life on the Borderlands

July 25, 2008

Harvey Wasserman
NRC: New Nukes Not Ready for Prime Time

Paul Craig Roberts
Are You Ready for the Facts About Israel?

Alan Farago
Where's the Outrage?

Paul D'Amato
The Arrest of Radovan Karadzic and the Selective Prosecution of War Crimes

Gary Leupp
War With Iran? State Dept. Realists vs. Cheney's Ultras

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Eyes Wide Shut in India

Mike Whitney
Obama Dazzles Old Europe, While McCain Cries, "No Mas!"

Paul Krassner
Inside Camp Mogul

Mike Roselle
All Hail Nero!

Website of the Day
Pressing Starbucks

July 24, 2008

Greg Moses
Who Killed Azem Hajdari?

Andy Worthington
Folly and Injustice: Salim Hamdan's Guantanamo Trial

James Bovard
Daniel Ellsberg's Lessons for Our Time

Joe Bageant
Life in the Post-Political Age

George Wuerthner
Boondoggle in the Fields

DC Larson
Shutting Out Ralph Nader

William Willers
The Forest Products Industry in Public Education

David Macaray
On the Prospects for a SAG Strike

Website of the Day
Pacifica Radio Archive of 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago

July 23, 2008

Winslow T. Wheeler
An Air Force in Free Fall

Paul Craig Roberts
The Mother of All Messes

Ralph Nader
Pavlov's America

Mike Whitney
Visualizing Dow 6,000

Susie Day
Senator Sicko: Jesse Helms and the Theatre of the Depraved

Website of the Day
"A Kinder and Gentler Machine-Gun Hand..."

July 22, 2008

Nikolas Kozloff
Ten Years On, Bolivarian Revolution at Crossroads

Patrick Cockburn
Boost for Obama Over Iraq Withdrawal

Soldz, Olson, Reisner Arrigo and Welch
Torture After Dark

Moshe Adler
Everyone Must Share, Not Just Charlie Rangel

Martha Rosenberg
Protecting Bones from Drugs that Protect Bones

Dan Bacher
Bechtel and the Big Dig

Harvey Wasserman
Is Gore Inching Toward Solartopia?

Anthony Papa
A Slugger's Drug Redemption

Binoy Kampmark
Mad Over Benedict

Website of the Day
Hiroshima: A-Bombed Objects

July 21, 2008

Ishmael Reed
Remnick's Latest Blunder

Mike Whitney
The Democrats are the Real Problem

Andy Worthington
Dictatorial Powers Upheld: the Meaning of the Al-Marri Decision

Scott Pellegrino
Should "Meet the Press" Desegregate?

John Ross
McCain Crosses the Border, Gets No Satisfaction

Robert Weitzel
Blowback Through the Looking Glass

Mike Stark
I was Spied on by the Maryland Police

Website of the Day
Pinky Solves the Illegal Immigration Crisis

July 19 / 20, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
It's a Dull Race

Jeffrey St. Clair
How to Beat a Mining Company: Why a Gold Goliath Threw in the Towel

Dave Lindorff
I Was a Victim of the TSA

Saul Landau
Obits for Opposites: Carlin and Helms

Ron Jacobs
Why Afghanistan is Not the Good War

Uri Avnery
Different Planet:the Israel / Hezbollah Prisoner Swap

Neve Gordon
The Untold Story of Ni'lin

Roane Carey
Dr. Benny and Mr. Morris

Robert Fantina
Ashcroft, Torture and the U. S.

Christopher Brauchli
The General Lied

Fred Gardner
Cannabinoid Researchers Won’t Take the High Road

David Macaray
Labor Unions and the Courts

Richard L. Hutto
The Ecology of Severely Burned Forests

Bill Moyers /
Michael Winship
Mother's Milk of Politics Turns Sour

Ronnie Cummins
Netroots Nation or Nation of Sheep?

David Yearsley
Opera and Globalization

Alison McKenna
A Close Call for Medicare

Wajahat Ali
The Dark Knight Ascends

Poets' Basement
Ko Un

Website of the Day
What If Edward Said Had Told This Joke?

July 18, 2008

Corey D. B. Walker
A Kinder, Gentler Imperialism?

Mike Whitney
Swan Song for Fanny Mae

Robert Bryce
Iran Rising

Mike Roselle
Ed's Chicken: Fighting King Coal in Appalachia

Bouthaina Shaaban
U. S. to Mandela: Happy 90th and You're No Longer a Terrorist

Eve Spangler
The Deaths of Children

Website of the Day
Lowbagger Needs Your Help

July 17, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
Airport Gestapo

James G. Abourezk
Big Oil's Raid on the Great Plains

Ralph Nader
D. C. Socialists Save Crashing Capitalists

Allan J. Lichtman
Conservative Denial

Andy Worthington"Screwed Up" and"Abused": Omar Khadr's Interrogations at Gitmo

Ronnie Cummins
Move Over MoveOn

July 16, 2008

Jeffrey St. Clair
Star Whores: How John McCain Doomed Mt. Graham

Paul Craig Roberts
War Crimes Paradox

Conn Hallinan
To the Edge in the Middle East

Dave Lindorff
Torture for Torturers?

William S. Lind
Running the Narrows in Iraq

Christopher Brauchli
Sweepstakes Politics

Website of the Day
History of Iraqi Art

July 15, 2008

Michael Hudson
Why the Bail Out of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae is Bad Economic Policy

Brian Cloughley
Iran's Missile Tests

Patrick Cockburn
Sadr's Militia May Live to Fight Another Day

John Ross
Crunchtime for Mexico's Oil

Howard Lisnoff
When Torture Was Practiced on U. S. Soil

Website of the Day
Rachel Corrie Soccer Tournament

July 14, 2008

Uri Avnery
Will Israel and / or the US Attack Iran?

Paul Craig Roberts
Enabling Tyranny

Trish Schuh
Talking to Iran's Only Jewish Member of Parliament: an Interview with Morris Motamed

Patrick Cockburn
Immunity in Iraq

Mike Whitney
Betancourt Unbound

Alan Farago
Will Miami's Cubans Vote Blue?

Seth Sandronsky
Taxing U. S. Stocks and Bonds

Phyllis Pollack
Stones Paint It Black

Website of the Day
Our Pal in Butte, Jackie Corr, RIP

July 12 / 13, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Lock and Load--It's the Law!

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Origins of the Western Greens

James Abourezk
Talking World War III Blues: From Dylan to Iran

Nicole Colson
The Ethanol Scam

Stan Cox
Fixing a Broken Agriculture

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
Is There an Oil Shortage?

Wajahat Ali /
Omid Safi
The Future of Iran: an Interview with Iranian Nobel Laureate Shirin Ebadi

John Stauber
There May be a Left, But is it Moving? An Interview with David Sirota

Alan Farago
The Crash of the King of Liquidity

Missy Beattie
Dark Neighborhoods

Robert Fantina
Bush's Last Yes Man: Canada, Guantanamo and Yankee Poodles

Rannie Amiri
Mubarak Hires the Mosque

Gregory Kafoury
After the Obama Betrayal

Fran Shor
The Audacity of Hype

Martha Rosenberg
Why Heifer International is Rolling in Dung

David Macaray
Will There be an Actors Strike?

Andrew Wimmer
No Lies! No War!

Ron Jacobs
They Call Me the Seeker

Farzana Versey
The Kashmir Chiaroscuro

Kim Nicolini
Angelina Jolie's Wanted: Taking the M-Fers Down with Guns and Exploding Rats

Poets' Basement
Wright, Fleming, Solomon and Birnbaum

Website of the Weekend
Parsing Jesse Ventura

July 11, 2008

Kevin Alexander Gray
Why Does Barack Obama Hate My Family?

Sasan Fayazmanesh
Historical Amnesia and the Shoot Down of Iran Air Flight 655

Peter Morici
Breaking Down the Trade Deficit

Mike Whitney
Worse Than McCain?

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Oiling the War Machine

Robert Weissman
Crime, Punishment and ExxonMobil

Ramzy Baroud
The Not-So-Historic Barak-Talabani Handshake

Kelly Overton
If There is a Chimp Heaven

Adrian Burgos
In Praise of Jules Tygiel

Website of the Day
Wendell Berry on Mountaintop Removal

July 10, 2008

Brian McKenna
McCain's Melanoma Cover-Up

Paul Craig Roberts
Watching Greed Murder the Economy

Saul Landau
Mississippi River Blues

Ron Jacobs
Who Will Leave Iraq First?

Joshua Frank
Cutting Deals with Big Timber's Darth Vader

Peter Morici
What's Driving the Wall Street Rout

Alan Maass
Jesse Helms Finally Does the Right Thing

Robert Weissman
Humanitarian Failure at the G8

William Blum
Dr. Strangelove

Alan Farago
Coral Reef Meltdown

Website of the Day
Lieberman Must Go!

July 9, 2008

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
Are They Really Oil Wars?

Luis Rodriguez
The Deadly Fallout from Gang Injunctions

Sheldon Richman
What's Wrong with Selling Your Vote?

Fatemeh Keshavarz
Lessons from Sa'di of Shiraz on"Enhanced Interrogation Techniques"

Chad Hanson
Blowing Smoke: Logging Industry Lies on Forest Fires and Climate Change

Sen. Russ Feingold
The Problems with the FISA Bill

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Defining Deviancy Down with FISA

Dave Lindorff
Paul Krugman's Blind Spot

Stanley Heller
A Damned Good Assembly

Philip Rizk
Sick at the Gaza Crossing

Website of the Day
Mumia on Nader

July 8, 2008

Nikolas Kozloff
Riding the Colombia Gravy Train

Laura Carlsen
North America Doesn't Exist: the New Geography of Trade

Mike Whitney
Bush's Rampage in Somalia

Andy Worthington
Scandal at Diego Garcia

Patrick Irelan
The Empire Goes to the Movies

Chellis Glendinning
The Un-tied States of America

David Macaray
A Union Story

Dave Lindorff
Mumia's Long-Shot Appeal

John Chuckman
The Myths of Independence Day

Phillip Doe
FISA and the Decline of America

Website of the Day
Daniel Ellsberg on Warrantless Wiretap Bill

July 7, 2008

Patrick Bond
Can Reparations for Apartheid Profits be Won in US Courts?

Kathy Kelly
Cold Shoulders

Andy Worthington
Repatriation as Russian Roulette

Clifton Ross
A Rescue Staged for the Screen

Elizabeth Schulte
Obama's War Room

Ralph Nader
The Patriotism of Deeds

Dave Lindorff
Keeping Count

Binoy Kampmark
The World According to Jesse Helms

Stephen Fleischman
Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Change

Website of the Day
Time for a Change

July 5 / 6, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Could Anyone be"Worse" Than Bush?

Jeffrey St. Clair /
Joshua Frank
Preliminary Notes from No Man's Land

Patrick Cockburn
Blowback from a Strike on Iran

Mike Whitney
Hunkering Down in Afghanistan with Field Marshall Obama

Robert Fantina
Obama, Iraq and Change

Binoy Kampmark
The Anwar Case: Snitching and Sodomizing

Rannie Amiri
Can Nasrallah Unite Lebanon?

Eric Ruder
Hidden Casualties

Brian Cloughley
Israel Flexes Its Muscles

William Blum
Some Thoughts on Patriotism

Frank Barat
The One-Word Solution

Christopher Brauchli
Bush's Phony Pollution Accounting

David Yearsley
Rubbert Shines, as US Envoy Puts Foot in His Mouth

Ron Jacobs
U. S. Blues

Karim Makdisi
On Soccer and Politics in Lebanon

Wendy Thompson /
Chris Kutalik
What Can We Learn from the American Axle Strike?

N. D. Jayaprakash
The NPT as a Roadblock to Disarmament

Ramzy Baroud
Journalistic Imperatives

Kelly Overton
Animal Rights and Obama

Richard Neville
Bitch Fights and Tomorrow's Top Model

Poets' Basement
Anderson, Gibbons, Matson and Buknatski

Website of the Weekend
Ginsberg and Cassady on"Extremists"

July 4, 2008

Kathy Kelly
Istiklal

Dave Lindorff
My War Story

Paul Krassner
Confessions of a Barista

Jackie Corr
In the Footsteps of Evel Knievel: Obama Heads Back to Butte

Laray Polk
Military-Industrial Convergence

Dan Bacher
Dead Runs: Salmon Fishing Banned in Central Valley Rivers

Walter Brasch
The Rocket's Red Glare--May be Chinese

Charles Modiano
Hall of Fame Hypocrisy

Website of the Day
Springsteen: Independence Day

July 3, 2008

Sharon Smith
Exxon's Legal Guardians

Andy Worthington
Another Torture Victim Gets Charged

Laura Carlsen
NAFTA and the Elephant in the Room

Peter Morici
Crisis Grips the Jobs Market

Ramzi Kysia
Breaking Into a Prison

Martha Rosenberg
Mandatory School Milk and the Early Death of Football Players

Anne Landman
Who Really Benefits From Voluntary Codes of Corporate Conduct?

Dave Zirin
Grand Theft Hoops

Kristin Bricker
US Contractor Leads Torture Training in Mexico

Website of the Day
Bush Tours America to Survey Damage from His Presidency

July 2, 2008

Patrick Irelan
Holy Obama

Vijay Prashad
Lunch with Karzai

Brian Cloughley
Sense of Honor, French and US Style

Ralph Nader
Economic Domino Theory

Robert Fantina
General Stupidity: McCain, Obama and Clark

Dave Lindorff
What's So Special About Veterans?

Parvez Ahmed
Obama and Those Pesky Muslim Rumors

Robert Bryce
The Democrats and Off-Shore Drilling

Website of the Day
King Corn: Q&A

July 1, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Two Months Later, Seymour Hersh Strains to Catch Up With CounterPunch

Mike Whitney
Getting to the Heart of America's Economic Crisis: an Interview with Michael Hudson

Douglas Macgregor
Obama's General?

Steven Higgs
Fighting the NAFTA Super-Highway

Andy Worthington
Guantánamo as Alice in Wonderland

Binoy Kampmark
The Global Seed Police

Dave Lindorff
Blood Money Democrats

Roger Burbach
Fighting Food Fascism

Richard W. Behan
The Story Behind George Bush's Lies

Gary Leupp
The McCain Edge Among Voters on Iraq

Website of the Day
Mountaintop Removal and the Fight for Coalfield Justice

Weekend Edition
July 26 / 27, 2008

The Roots of Change in Fly-Over Country

Big Sky Rebels

By JOSHUA FRANK

This is an excerpt from Red State Rebels: Tales of Grassroots Resistance from the Heartland.

You can go home again, but it might break your heart or turn your stomach. Even if your home is Montana. Perhaps especially here, where there is so much to lose.

No, Montana is not what it used to be. Corporate behemoths have taken over small family-owned farms, and public forests have been squandered and sold to the highest bidder. Poverty and racism run rampant. Native Americans are being corralled onto even tighter plots of land. But while things seem disheartening, voices of hope continue rumbling across the Big Sky Country.

With Montana, like so many other "lost cause" states, not fitting neatly into the Blue State/Red State dichotomy, even Thomas Frank would be baffled. Don’t get me wrong: this is still Republican country. Oversized SUV bumpers flaunt "W" stickers, and almost every Ford truck touts a yellow "Support Our Troops" magnet. There is no question that these flag-waving Montanans overwhelmingly voted for Bush in 2004.

Having grown up on the eastern side of the continental divide in Billings Montana’s largest city with a population exceeding 90,000—I know this area well. Dubbed America’s drug stricken "Crank Capitol" by Time in the late 1990s, Billings is nestled beneath the shadows of 500-foot sandstone cliffs. The snowcapped Rockies are due west. The mighty Yellowstone River cuts through the town’s south end. It’s searing hot in the summer and bitter cold in winter. A forty-minute drive to the southeast will bring you to the impoverished and desolate Crow Agency Indian reservation, which houses the memorial for the Battle of the Little Big Horn where General George A. Custer met his much-deserved fate. This land has a bloody ubiquitous history, the aura of which can be troubling for those familiar with its past.

Much has changed since I left Billings some years ago. An insipid Mormon temple has been erected on the outskirts of town near a glitzy country club. Wal-Mart, Home Depot, Barnes and Noble, Starbucks, dozens of tasteless eateries, and countless cookie-cutter homes have relentlessly extended the city’s boundaries. Once unique, Billings now resembles most any place you would find in these sprawling Xeroxed States of America.
Teenagers fill their weekends with beer, sex and cheap booze, remnants of which pepper the roads off the beaten path. Things are not much different for the slightly older crowd. You are just more likely to find these Generation Xers frequenting the local bars and passing joints back and forth in their pick-up trucks. Who can blame them? This is the rhythm of the new American dream, the anthem for surviving cultural homogeneity: do what you must to escape the mundane. Take two and pass.

A cursory glance probably wouldn’t reveal so much as a chirp of dissent in these parts. That is, of course, if you aren’t referring to the right-wing militiamen that have made Montana famous in the 1990s. But I am not talking about the tax averting Freemen, who stockpiled weapons and took on the Feds, or the chemically inclined Ted Kaczynski’s fetish for sending loaded love letters. I’m talking about a populist backlash that is fast gaining speed on these remote country roads.

Welcome to Montana.

Some things, like the volatile weather that can turn from rain to snow in minutes, rarely change out here. But there are aspects of life in Montana that the public can help determine. The Red State marker that the politicos and pundits have given to places like this is not etched in stone.

Just a few decades ago things on the Montana prairie changed, but sadly it was for the worse. Before the rightwing takeover of the state legislature in the late 1970s, this place was actually thriving with progressive politics. Take Democratic Senator Lee Metcalf, who was a staunch wilderness supporter during his tenure in D.C. and would likely be considered an eco-terrorist by today’s standards.  On the heels of the great conservationist Bob Marshall, Metcalf became a relentless advocate for the wild, where he attempted to make Marshall’s public forest vision a reality. He stood up against timber barons, big oil, and land developers, rarely backing down. He cherished Montana for its ecological beauty, wildlife and serenity.

The truth is Montana has a long history of going against the traditional grain. Along with electing Metcalf, voters also sent liberal Democrat Mike Mansfield to Congress and the Senate nine consecutive times. Sen. Mansfield’s most enduring accomplishment came when he engineered the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 during his tenure as Senate Majority Leader. Using Senator Hubert Humphrey as his floor manager, Mansfield quietly rounded up the necessary votes and broke the Southern filibuster, which cleared the way for the passage of the monumental legislation. Although both Mansfield and Metcalf had plenty of glaring flaws, there is no question that they, compared to today’s corporate Democrats, were remarkable.

Of course, we can’t talk about progressive politics in Montana without mentioning Janette Rankin, whom in 1916 became the first woman ever elected to Congress. A social worker by trade, Rankin was a tireless defender of the underclass. She was also one of the first representatives to speak out against child labor practices in the early 20th century. But it was her opposition to war that led her to her most exceptional accomplishment: just four days after taking office, Rankin voted against U.S. entry into World War I. Violating Congressional procedure, she spoke out during roll call prior to casting her vote and declared, "I want to stand by my country, but I cannot vote for war!"

During the rest of her term, Rankin fought for many political reforms, including civil liberties, women’s suffrage, birth control, child welfare, and equal pay among sexes. She was ahead of her time on nearly every issue. Sadly, however, Rankin’s vote against World War I sealed her political fate. Later, after much harassment back home for her war resistance, she was gerrymandered out of her Montana district. When she ran for a Senate seat, she was overwhelmingly defeated.
Like so many states, an electoral map does not do justice to what has actually taken place on the ground politically or historically. In fact, in 1992 Montana’s electoral points went to Bill Clinton as Ross Perot captured a quarter of the votes. And the contradictions are not much different in the so-called Blue States, where right-wingers run rampant and dominate state and local governments. One need look no further than Schwarzenegger’s reign in California or Bloomberg’s grip in New York City, not to mention the conservative Democrats who rule the roost in the Interior West.

We’d all do well to abandon such divisive and inaccurate Red/Blue labels, and unite behind common causes.

Indeed some Montanans are.

***

Today, a fair portion of the population is pissed. And rightfully so. Montanans have suffered far too long under the boot of the conservative majority. Many years have passed since Metcalf and Rankin were in office. Most recently it was the cavalier Governor Marc Racicot, now a rising star within the Republican establishment, who used Montana as a stepping-stone for his own political trajectory. After Racicot left office in 2000, the state was faced with the putrid stench of Judy Martz, a frightful Republican corpse of a governor who bragged that she was the "lap dog of industry." Martz was then personification of John Sayles’ Dicky Pilager character in Silver City, an unsightly puppet for corporate interests and damn proud of it.

Ol’ Judy earned herself quite a rap sheet after her election in 2000. She shielded timber companies from litigation and supported deregulation as Montanans saw their electricity bills skyrocket. Much to the dismay of her voting base, she undermined public schools. Gouged taxpayers. Destabilized local business owners. Angered small farmers. Martz was a political train wreck, and Montana reacted accordingly. By the summer of 2004 her approval rating had sunk to a meager 30 percent, an all-time low. Without a wince of shame Martz opted not to run for reelection. A sensible decision—surely the wisest of her brief political tenure.

Sick and tired of Republican rule, many Montanans voted to replace Martz with Democrat Brian Schweitzer—a wealthy cattleman who has operated ranches across the state. A naturally gifted speaker, Schweitzer had almost defeated entrenched US Senator Conrad Burns, a popular Republican stooge who had ties to lobbyist Jack Abramoff back in 2000. And Montanans love Schweitzer because, like an honest cowboy, he shoots it straight.

"If I stay in Washington for more than 72 hours I have to bathe myself in
the same stuff I use when my dog gets into a fight with a skunk," he said after a visit out to D.C. a few years ago.

Running on a split ticket in 2004, Schweitzer picked moderate Republican State Senator John Bohlinger to be his running mate. Bohlinger was a pragmatic choice, as it is well known that John is just a donkey in elephant attire, bow tie and all. He simply swapped parties when he chose to run for state congress in a conservative Billings district in 1992. Bohlinger knew his constituents would vote Republican out of habit and a penchant for hating Democrats.

John Bohlinger was right and the Schweitzer camp capitalized on their collective ignorance under the banner of "bipartisanship." But Montana’s neopopulism isn’t about party loyalty. Instead it seethes with a true disgust for big government. A fair majority of Montanans don’t trust their elected officials—state or federal—and the higher up on the ladder you go, the more pessimistic things they’ll have to say about our broken system and the fools that run the show.

In 1999, when Schweitzer drove a batch of old-timers across the border into Canada to see how much cheaper pharmaceuticals were there, he made his mark with senior citizens. As Schweitzer explained in a radio address shortly after he was elected, "The purpose of those trips was to demonstrate the hypocrisy of Congress’ trade policies. They passed NAFTA, told us that it would be great for the consumers of the United States. We’d be able to have products and consumer products cross the border from Canada and Mexico, and the United States freely, and that we would find greater choice. And we have NAFTA and we’re supposed to have free choice for everything but medicine."

Not bad for a post-Clinton Democrat.

Since his January 2005 inauguration, Schweitzer has been vocal in his opposition to the Bush agenda. He even called for the return of Montana’s guard troops from Iraq so they could help battle wildfires, which raged in the summer of 2005. Schweitzer is not buying Bush’s call to privatize social security either. "Today we’re talking about Social Security, something that might happen 20, 30, 40 years from now," he said after a recent meeting in D.C. when U.S. governors spent an afternoon with the President, "But guess what’s really happening? ... We’re cutting Medicaid. We’re cutting programs in the heartland."

But don’t get too excited; Schweitzer is no radical. He is cautious and pragmatic. He opposes gay marriage (though I’m told this is the case only because Bohlinger would have declined to be his running mate had he come out in favor of gay marriage) and wants to expand Montana’s private prison system, one of the state’s only growth industries. As the New York Times asserts," Schweitzer veers right on many economic and social issues: he ... favors the death penalty and preaches about lowering taxes and balancing budgets."

Schweitzer’s win wasn’t the only interesting development in the state since the turn of the century. Montanans also voted in favor of medial marijuana. Despite what liberals claim, these Red Staters may have some common sense after all. And compared to a "liberal" Blue state like Oregon, where citizens nixed a medical marijuana initiative in 2004, Montana sure as hell seems like they are on the cusp of change.

***

Brian Schweitzer was just the beginning of the political change happening here. Montana’s newest U.S. Senator is not exactly the type of Democrat you’d be likely to see backslapping New York City fat cats on their way into an elaborate fundraiser for Hillary Clinton. In fact, Jon Tester, who was elected to the Senate in 2006, isn’t your typical Democrat. He’s almost not a Democrat at all. In fact Tester ran his campaign against Senator Conrad Burns on just that platform. He was tired of the scandals and dishonesty that engulf our national politics and professed that the polluted Beltway could use a little Montana house cleanin’.
Voters agreed, and Burns was defeated in one of the tightest races in state history.

An organic farmer by trade, Tester, a former state legislator, ran his family’s homestead just outside Big Sandy in northern Montana, where the winter chills can chatter your teeth as early as mid-September. Sporting a Marine drill sergeant buzz cut, Tester is essentially an NRA approved populist with libertarian tendencies who vowed he’d redeploy troops from Iraq as well as repeal the PATRIOT Act. And although nobody would consider Tester an anti-globalization activist, his position on international trade is more in line with the protesters who shut down Seattle in 1999 than with the Democratic Leadership Council.

On a "Meet the Press" broadcast shortly before he took office, Tester even addressed the most evaded issue in national politics: poverty.
"There’s no more middle class," he asserted to Tim Russert, "the working poor aren’t even being addressed. Those are the people who brought us here [to Congress] and they need to be empowered. It’s time to show them attention ... We have to use policy to help that situation."
In a debate in September 2006, Conrad Burns attempted to paint Tester as wimpish on terror. "We cannot afford another 9/11," Burns chided. "I can tell you that right now, he [Tester] wants to weaken the PATRIOT Act." To which Tester bravely countered, "Let me be clear. I don’t want to weaken the PATRIOT Act. I want to get rid of it."

Tester built his campaign from the ground up, shunning support from nationally known Democrats like John Kerry and Hillary Clinton, as he knew they’d rub Montanans the wrong way. Instead, the nearly 300 pound farmer who lost three fingers in a meat grinding accident as a child, drove around the state so he could chat face-to-face with his potential constituents.

Fortunately for Tester, he’s used to bucking the system. His first foray with the Washington Consensus came in 1998 when he ran for the Montana legislature because he was outraged over the huge energy hikes that had resulted from the state’s deregulation of the power industry. And he’s been speaking out against policies that pit working folks against the corporate class ever since. Tester even occasionally touts renewable energies and a livable minimum wage.

Still, like Montana’s current governor, Tester isn’t an ideal politician, if there is such a thing. While he may remain strong on some issues, he is weak on a many social justice issues, such as the death penalty and gay rights. Nevertheless, Tester’s campaign and personal appeal may serve as a winning blueprint for left-leaning populists out here in the Interior West. Indeed Brian Schweitzer used the exact formula to become Governor two years earlier.

Yet, Jon Tester’s win wasn’t even close to the biggest triumph for the state. The largest political victory for Montana came when voters overwhelmingly shot down a mining initiative in 2000 that would have returned the dreadful and polluting open-pit cyanide heap-leach mining to Montana’s hills. Big mining companies put up millions to raise support for the bill, but Montanans didn’t bite. Environmentalists and the public won outright.

Open-pit cyanide heap-leach gold mines have forever polluted water and left environmental destruction in their wake. Montana is used to it. Throughout the state these vast toxic pits have poisoned streams and drinking water, killed off wild trout, desecrated the landscape and created environmental catastrophes that have cost taxpayers millions to clean

Still, the greatest change in Montana isn’t happening in the electoral arena. It is taking place on the ground where a plethora of movements, from environmental causes to anti-corporate organic farming, are coming to a head. Election Day hoopla is only a shadow of the real activism going on. These agitators know that ultimate victory requires enduring many, many losses and years of protest before cultural changes are reflected in policy and ultimately, their daily lives.

There is a dreadful attitude still lingering out in Blue America where folks put the majority of their energy into electoral politics, anticipating that change can only happen within the confines of the voting booth. And it’s a downer.

No doubt "blue" is an apt color to describe the dejected mood that still paints our coastal states even with the Democrats in power. Fortunately, progressives, libertarians, anarchists, and others out here in Montana, although a tiny minority, have rolled up their sleeves and continued their work. Elections are never deterrents. They have stayed the course, never abandoning their issues, and are slowly winning as a result.

Maybe liberal Blue Staters will realize this isn’t "fly-over country" after all, and borrow a page from these Red State dummies.

Joshua Frank is the author of Left Out! How Liberals Helped Reelect George W. Bush (Common Courage Press, 2005), and along with Jeffrey St. Clair, the editor of the brand new book Red State Rebels: Tales of Grassroots Resistance in the Heartland, published by AK Press in July 2008.

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