Chris Boese's Weblog

R.I.P. Geraldine Ferraro, a feminist pioneer

1984. I was in college. The '70s feminist movement was more than a memory. It was present tense, active, on campus and off.

For a time, I was a president of the Student Feminist Alliance. I was an appointed student representative on the University Commission on the Status of Women.

I attended and shot (as a photojournalist) sporting events that would not have been allowed to exist, would not have been funded, if it weren't for Title IX. (Even so, the women's basketball team wasn't allowed to play in the best fieldhouse on campus, except for big tournament games. Not in the early '80s, yet. By the late '80s, I would find myself shooting NCAA Women's Basketball in the University of Arkansas's primary arena).

We got a woman chancellor hired on campus, the first. We pushed for women to be legitimately considered for every major administrative position national search on campus. We didn't push nominally. Nobody just paid us lip service and hired some crony of a crony instead. Not unless they wanted to feel our wrath.

And somewhere in there, it all got woven in with Geraldine Ferraro. Back then we didn't falter. Didn't accept second-best or also-ran (not the way I see it repeatedly accepted now). Sure, good old boys made harumphing jokes about our lack of humor. How dare we refuse to laugh over being belittled or made the butt of unquestioned jokes?

I really don't think too much of all the compromises and "settling" that happens with the so-called "third wave" feminists. Give me some uppity, strident women any day. We've got NOTHING to apologise for.

And if we had any doubt about that, Geraldine Ferraro's nomination as the first woman as the Democratic Party's vice presidential candidate blew that doubt away.

We'll miss her. But then, we have already been missing her and her (our) generation of feminists for a long time.

That said, we might also note that the first woman who was Speaker of the House, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) is a 71-year-old grandmother, and besides making history as one of the most effective Speakers ever, now as House Minority Leader, she is still taking NO prisoners.

I just wish we could get Hillary to run again. I'm not ready to let that greatest generation (after the Suffragettes, of course) pass into retirement.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/27/us/politics/27geraldine-ferraro.html

New York Times Obituary:

Geraldine A. Ferraro, First Woman on Major Party Ticket, Dies at 75

Geraldine A. Ferraro, the former Queens congresswoman who strode onto a podium in 1984 to accept the Democratic nomination for vice president and to take her place in American history as the first woman nominated for national office by a major party, died Saturday in Boston.

[...]

“If we can do this, we can do anything,” Ms. Ferraro declared on a July evening to a cheering Democratic National Convention in San Francisco. And for a moment, for the Democratic Party and for an untold number of American women, anything seemed possible: a woman occupying the second-highest office in the land, a derailing of the Republican juggernaut led by President Ronald Reagan, a President Walter F. Mondale.

[...]

But Ms. Ferraro’s supporters proclaimed a victory of sorts nonetheless: 64 years after women won the right to vote, a woman had removed the “men only” sign from the White House door.

It would be another 24 years before another woman from a major party was nominated for vice president — Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, the Republican running mate of Senator John McCain, in 2008. And though Hillary Rodham Clinton came close to being nominated that year as the Democratic presidential candidate, a woman has yet to occupy the Oval Office. But Ms. Ferraro’s ascendance gave many women heart.

Ann Richards, who was the Texas state treasurer at the time and went on to become governor, recalled that after the Ferraro nomination, “the first thing I thought of was not winning in the political sense, but of my two daughters.”

“To think,” Ms. Richards added, “of the numbers of young women who can now aspire to anything.”

In a statement, President Obama said Saturday, “Geraldine will forever be remembered as a trailblazer who broke down barriers for women, and Americans of all backgrounds and walks of life.”

[...]

Sarah Palin's inaugural speech sets an interesting tone

You get a sense of honoring historical context here, while also sending a not-so-subtle message to Juneau.

The gubernatorial inauguration was held for the first time ever in Fairbanks, to honor the 50th anniversary of the ratification of the state constitution, where it was ratified, in Squarebanks. Sure, it wasn't Willow (site chosen a a more centrally-located state capital, by popular state initiative). And it wasn't Anchorage (largest city). I suppose they could have picked Seward, which was I think the first capital of the state, one of the earliest thriving cities, but devastated by the tsunami from the Good Friday earthquake of 1964.

So she honored the past, and my mom tells me, spoke movingly about the state and its future. It's like she's giving folks hope, which all politicians would like to do (except Frank Murkowski, who appears to have lost his marbles totally in his last days in office, see below). So is it political lip service? Look at the first article below, at what she's doing with the big three oil companies, who in many ways own the state in the same way Kerr McGee once owned Oklahoma.

Go Sarah! I'm still rooting for you. And I found this old basketball picture from the Anchorage Daily News. Ooh, did we really wear those awful shorts back then?!

Ah, but that's better than that topless beauty pageant shot from the late 1980s, what I found on the Wonkette site. It appears the Washington naughty political talk site has deemed Sarah the "hottest" governor in the U.S., a "hottie," or a "GILF," what the site somewhere calls the "Governix I'd Like to Fornicate." (I'm quoting the Wonkette site. I don't mean myself.)

I just gotta say, this scene with Libby Riddles as Emcee for the inauguration is just classic.

Link: adn.com | alaska : Palin era begins at inauguration.

Palin era begins at inauguration

By KYLE HOPKINS
Anchorage Daily News

Published: December  5, 2006
Last Modified: December  5, 2006 at 02:06 AM

FAIRBANKS -- The applause built for a full minute after Sarah Palin took the oath making her Alaska's new governor Monday. Then, from somewhere high in the seats of the Carlson Center sports arena, the chanting started: "Sarah! Sarah! Sarah!"

"OK, the governor said cease and desist," said the event's emcee, Libby Riddles, quieting the crowd of thousands.

Riddles was the first woman to win the 1,100-mile Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, and it's no coincidence she was asked to host the swearing-in ceremony of the state's first female governor.

"She was an underdog. She was a risk-taker, kind of an outsider," Palin said in describing Riddles, but also defining her own rise from a small-town mayor and Republican Party maverick to the state's top political job.

[...]

Link: The Seattle Times: Politics: Palin takes Alaska reins.

Palin takes Alaska reins

By MARY PEMBERTON

The Associated Press

Sarah Palin is first governor to be sworn in in Fairbanks.

FAIRBANKS, Alaska — Unabashedly promising to defend the interests of all Alaskans as the state increases its energy-production role, Sarah Palin was sworn in Monday as the ninth person to lead the state since Alaska was granted statehood in 1959.

"I will unambiguously, steadfastly and doggedly guard the interests of this great state as a mother naturally guards her own," she told an overflowing crowd at the Carlson Center in Fairbanks.

[...]

"We must have reserves and explore for more to energize our homes, our businesses, for new industry to come alive, to heat our economy and allow self sufficiency while gifting our nation with safe domestic supplies," she said.

"Couple this with ANWR [Arctic National Wildlife Refuge] oil and inexhaustible alternative-energy sources, and Alaska can lead the nation in a much-needed U.S. energy plan," Palin said.

She asked why Alaska couldn't fuel the nation and lead the world.

"America is looking for answers. She's looking for a new direction, the world is looking for a light. It's Governor [Walter] Hickel that reminds me, that light can come from America's great north star; it can come from Alaska," she said.

[...]

She plans to meet today and Wednesday with 12 companies or groups interested in building the pipeline before she moves to the Governor's Mansion in Juneau later this week.

[...]

The meetings will include the three big oil companies that negotiated with Gov. Frank Murkowski on a natural-gas-pipeline contract — ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil and BP PLC, the companies that also own the leases to the gas. The Legislature never ratified that contract.

Palin promised that her pipeline-contract negotiations would be open and transparent, and has told the companies any information or documents offered would be public. Murkowski was criticized for negotiating secretly with the oil companies for several years.

Palin is the state's first female governor and, at age 42, also is the youngest person to hold the office. She also is the first not to be sworn in in Juneau, the state capital.

She chose Fairbanks for the ceremony to mark the 50th anniversary of the ratification of the Alaska constitution, which was drafted in Fairbanks three years before statehood in 1959.

And then there's this:

Link: adn.com | front : Palin to examine last-hour job blitz.

Palin to examine last-hour job blitz

MURKOWSKI: His ex-staff chief was appointed to a gas pipeline authority he bucked.

By ANNE SUTTON
The Associated Press

Published: December  6, 2006
Last Modified: December  6, 2006 at 07:44 AM

JUNEAU -- Gov. Sarah Palin will revisit 35 appointments made by her predecessor in the hour before he left office this week, especially one she called "bizarre."

The appointment is that of Murkowski's former chief of staff, Jim Clark, to the volunteer seven-member board of the Alaska Natural Gas Development Authority.

At least one board member said Clark -- Murkowski's right-hand man in the failed negotiations with oil companies on a $25 billion natural gas pipeline -- has bucked the board's decisions since its inception.

Board member Scott Heyworth questioned Murkowski's motives as well as Clark's support for the authority.

"To do this at the 11th hour and then appoint his chief of staff who's been at odds with ANGDA since Day One, it's amazing," said Heyworth.

Palin's spokesman, Curtis Smith, said he told Palin of the appointment minutes before she took the stage for her swearing-in at the Carlson Center in Fairbanks.

"It's an issue she will revisit when the events of the day settle," Smith said Tuesday as Palin was involved with reopened pipeline negotiations.

Palin has the final word on appointments to any of the state's boards and commissions.

[...]

Murkowski also ended his term as he began it, with the appointment of a family member. He named his son-in-law, Leon Van Whye, to the board of the Alaska Railroad.

Van Whye is married to Murkowski's daughter Eileen.

Frank Murkowski opened his administration in 2002 by naming another daughter, Lisa, to the U.S. Senate seat he vacated after winning the governor's office.

Like I said, Murkowski appears to have gone off the deep end over having to leave office.

Sarah Palin in the Washington Post

I just had to make note of this, for the sake of posterity. It's just sort of a "local kid makes good" thing. Plus, it mentions basketball. Heh.

Link: Sarah Palin (R) - washingtonpost.com.

Alaska

Sarah Palin (R)

Thursday, November 9, 2006;  Page A42

Having clobbered unpopular incumbent Gov. Frank Murkowski in a summer primary, Sarah Palin (R) won the Alaska governor's race by defeating the best-known Democratic politician in the state, former governor Tony Knowles.

Palin, 42, former mayor of the booming town of Wasilla, presented herself as an outsider Republican, challenging what she called a cozy relationship between the "old guard" of both political parties and Alaska's powerful energy industry.

A former point guard for Wasilla's championship high school basketball team, Palin was nicknamed "Sarah Barracuda" for aggressive and relentless play. In a state where Republicans dominate, the mother of four used those skills to carve out a distinctive niche as a face both fresh and fierce.

Sarah Palin is going to be Governor of Alaska

I was staying away from election blog posting, but I can't leave this one out, because it's personal. A 42-year-old woman has just been given the job of running one of the most energy-rich states in the nation.

And I knew her in high school. I posted about this earlier here, when she beat incumbent governor (and the former senator) Frank Murkowski in the Republican primary. That was a tough race, but she had to fight this one too, I bet. Democrat Tony Knowles is a very well-known state politician, former mayor of Anchorage, and a former governor too.

Sarah got 49 percent of the vote last time I checked, and Knowles got 41 percent. More votes may have been counted since then, tho. I'm linking to the Anchorage Daily News story about her win, and last week or so, I found a really neat long piece on Sarah, on Pajamas Media. Gotta go find that again. Nope. What a badly designed site. The article isn't in there, doesn't have a permalink. E-VILE!

I liked that article because it talked about how her competitiveness as a high school basketball player brought her on this path. As somebody who often had the job of guarding Sarah Heath, point guard to point guard, I can vouch for that.

Truth is, Sarah was a better basketball player than I was. I think I even played against her in junior high too, and I think you're allowed to be just a so-so player in junior high, so we were probably more on par then, esp. since she was a year younger. The year after I graduated, she went with Wasilla High to the state basketball tournament, went up against the favored big Anchorage teams, and little old Wasilla won state, 1982. (I still feel whiney because the Wasilla team would all go as a group to summer basketball camp in Hawaii, and our school, Palmer High, never had the money or the leadership to do anything that cool). 

I like how she's run as an outsider and a reformer on the GOP ticket. I got an Alaska buddy I may get blogging soon, and he might take a different tack, but he went to school with her too, at Wasilla High.

Does she know enough about politics, what they went after her on during the campaign? I don't know. Career-groomed politicians scare me. Citizen politicians, like citizen journalists, public intellectuals, that's far more interesting to me. And her dad was a high school teacher. I used to see him around school too, back in the day.

Link: adn.com | Governor Race : It's Governor Palin.

It's Governor Palin

Candidate of change resonated with voters

By KYLE HOPKINS, TOM KIZZIA and BRANDON LOOMIS
Anchorage Daily News

Published: November  7, 2006
Last Modified: November  8, 2006 at 05:38 PM

Voters chose change over experience Tuesday night, making Republican Sarah Palin Alaska’s next governor and the first woman to hold the job.

On a night of political upheaval across the country, Democrat Tony Knowles couldn’t stop the wave of anti-­establishment momentum that carried Palin from her small town roots in Wasilla, past incumbent Gov. Frank Murkowski in the primary and into Alaska government’s top job.

With 98 percent of the precincts counted this morning, Palin had clinched the race with 48.7 percent of the vote to Knowles' 40.5 percent. Independent Andrew Halcro had 9.6 percent.

Palin, 42, claimed victory late Tuesday.

[...]

Palin won with lukewarm support from her own party establishment. But by promising new energy and a fresh face, she whupped a well-known, longtime Alaska politician for the second time in a row.

Earlier, Palin told supporters at the Captain Cook hotel that the campaign had drawn on all political persuasions, regions and walks of life. “I think this is unlike anything Alaska has seen before.” She added in an interview: “If it holds, it truly is a mandate for change. No more politics as usual. We started this campaign talking about trust and transparency. And that’s where we’re ending it.”

[...]

One of the Palin faithful, Kevin Peterson, who wore a pro-Palin sandwich board while running Mount Marathon last summer, offered this on the growing political power of the Mat-Su valleys: “People always thought of Wasilla as a small bedroom community, hicks. We’re not hicks. There are a lot of smart people out there, and Sarah’s one. Real, true Alaskan.”

[...]

[I like seeing the Mat-Su Valley empowered, but I'm not saying I find all of Sarah's positions palatable. Alaska tends to elect Republicans with a Libertarian streak. Tony Knowles I remember as a lukewarm governor. I don't know if Sarah will do better, because Juneau has been corrupt for so long, and that's gotta be tough to go against. If Sarah had come through as a young Democrat instead of a Republican, would she be electable in Alaska?  I don't think she'd even land a spot on the ballot.

It looks like the Democrat (Knowles) outspent the Republican (Palin), in this race. That says a lot, both in how the big money folks wanted Knowles in, and also how lukewarm the support was for Sarah in her own party. But she won.

Strategically, she took the best route, but here's the bit I don't like:]

Unlike Palin, Knowles and Halcro both support abortion rights, stem cell research, benefits for same-sex couples and a rural preference for subsistence hunting and fishing rights, for example.

[...]

Here's a bit from a different Anchorage Daily News article on how people react to her:

Link: adn.com | Palin's win finds favor even with former unbelievers.

[...]

Palin's opponents may have scoffed at her as a political lightweight who spoke in vague generalities. But voters didn't buy those barbs. They elected Alaska's youngest governor -- and the first female in the state to hold the office.

Torrie Ruhle of Anchorage was among the early converts, although she would have been OK with Knowles, too, had he won, she said. But she's glad her official vote paid off. She likes the fact that Palin is a mother, like herself. And she's looking forward to having a leader with "more feminine touches."

Most of all, she believes Palin is willing to work with everyone, regardless of their political leanings.

[...]

Palin's win called up some mixed feelings in Dave Klein, a biology professor emeritus with the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Klein, who voted for Knowles, said he worries that Palin doesn't have enough governmental experience. Also nagging at him are her fundamentalist beliefs and anti-abortion views.

But Palin stood up to Republican heavies, including Gov. Frank Murkowski, whipping him in the GOP primary. She repeated the same feat with seasoned pros like Knowles and independent Andrew Halcro, a former Republican state legislator.

"She was obviously able to pull off an amazing win for a woman who had relatively little governmental experience," Klein said. "She's a very intelligent woman, and she certainly demonstrated she was someone who would not go along with Gov. Murkowski, and that demonstrates something."

Susan Steele lives in Wasilla, Palin country. Even though she admires Palin and everything "she stands for," Steele voted for Knowles. She thought Palin might be too naive to deal with Alaska's big players. She wasn't sure she could hold her own in negotiations with oil companies over a proposed natural gas pipeline from the North Slope.

"But again, she beat Murkowski, she beat Knowles, so maybe this is a wonderful thing," Steele said.

[...]

A girl I know from high school beat incumbent Gov. Frank Murkowski in the Alaska primary

She was Sarah Heath when I knew her. I played basketball against her from a rival Valley school for five years. She was a tough competitor and a sweet person then, and it looks like she's still both of those things now. And she clearly has widespread support with GOP voters (in a red state), because a good bit of the Mat-Su Valley (her home region) was dealing with terrible flooding and damage on election day.

Here's this morning's results from the Anchorage Daily News:

Link: adn.com | elections : Knowles, Palin in November.

Knowles, Palin in November

By KYLE HOPKINS, TOM KIZZIA and KATIE PESZNECKER
Anchorage Daily News

Published: August 22, 2006
Last Modified: August 23, 2006 at 04:24 AM

Former Wasilla mayor Sarah Palin knocked embattled incumbent Gov. Frank Murkowski out of office in the Republican primary race for governor Tuesday, setting the stage for a general election showdown with former two-term Democratic Gov. Tony Knowles and for a potential shake-up in her own party.

Palin’s advantage looked insurmountable while Knowles walloped lesser-known challenger Eric Croft, an Anchorage state representative, after a wild election day marked by flooding in the soggy Mat-Su Valley, downpours in Anchorage and a Murkowski campaign volunteer falling victim to stray gunfire.

[...]

Knowles and Palin offered a similar message Tuesday night. With her supporters sensing victory at her campaign party in the Hotel Captain Cook, Palin talked about the problem with “politics as usual.” Someone in the crowd shouted “Let’s take Alaska back!” to roaring applause. Former Alaska Gov. Wally Hickel, a Palin supporter, smiled and raised his fist.

Maybe half an hour later, Knowles and his running mate, Anchorage Rep. Ethan Berkowitz, addressed the Democratic faithful. “This is our state and we’re taking it back,” Berkowitz said, drawing cheers. Knowles said it was time to reclaim the state from cronyism and favoritism.

The Republican contest emerged as election day’s main event, because it could — and did — guarantee a new governor at a time when Alaska politicans are trying to spark the next economic boom with a natural gas pipeline. John Binkley, a former state senator and Fairbanks businessman, was in second place — well ahead of Murkowski but with no chance of catching Palin.

[Sarah got 51% of the vote to Binkley's 29%. Murkowski got 18%]

In his campaign, Binkley often talked about trust and presented himself as a thoughtful alternative to Murkowski’s sometimes gruff style. Palin painted Binkley as part of the same Republican party machinery that she defied as a member of a state oil and gas commission when she told the state that party chairman and fellow commissioner Randy Ruedrich was mixing his political and state jobs.

Will the party rally in support of Palin now that she’s the nominee? “That’s a good question,” she said. “I never had help from the party from the beginning, it’s been an independent run.”

Later, Palin suggested Ruedrich should resign.

Ruedrich said he doesn’t intend to step down as head of the party. “I was elected for four years through a normal process and I look forward to working with her (Palin).”

[...]

U.S Women Snowboarders ROCK!

FINALS:  American Hanna Teter (left) won the gold medal in halfpipe Monday, with fellow teammate Gretchen Bleiler earning the silver.  FABRICE COFFRINI/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

I just had to blow that bit out in here, cuz I know from one of my students in Montana that the Flying Tomato guy (Shaun White) is totally amazing, but 'scuse me cuz I'm really just enjoying what these women can do. Totally fun to watch.

And I just can't figure out how Kelly Clark could just catch that much air. Sorry she didn't win, but what an amazing run.

Woo woo!

Link: Salt Lake Tribune - Torino 2006.

U.S. finishes 1-2 in women's halfpipe

By Kurt Kragthorpe
The Salt Lake Tribune

BARDONECCHIA, Italy - This will be the last time the U.S. Olympic team is mildly disappointed with a 1-2 finish in the 2006 Games - if there's even another one like it at all. Women's snowboarders Hannah Teter and Gretchen Bleiler earned gold and silver medals Monday in the halfpipe competition of aerial tricks and turns - matching Sunday's achievement of American men Shaun White and Danny Kass. [...]

BARDONECCHIA, ITALY - FEBRUARY 13: (FRANCE OUT) Gretchen Bleiler of United States competes in the Womens Snowboard Half Pipe Final on Day 3 of the 2006 Turin Winter Olympic Games on February 13, 2006 in Bardonecchia, Italy. (Photo by Agence Zoom/Getty Images)

BARDONECCHIA, ITALY - FEBRUARY 13: (FRANCE OUT) Hannah Teter of the United States celebrates winning the gold medal in the Womens Snowboard Half Pipe Final on Day 3 of the 2006 Turin Winter Olympic Games on February 13, 2006 in Bardonecchia, Italy. (Photo by Agence Zoom/Getty Images)

Link: US snowboarders lay claim to halfpipe | csmonitor.com.

US snowboarders lay claim to halfpipe

Both the men's and women's teams finish 1-2, as the sport becomes one of America's most certain medal hauls.

By Mark Sappenfield | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

BARDONECCHIA, ITALY– At the top of her final run down the halfpipe, her gold medal waiting in the most august competition in all of sport - the Olympics - Hannah Teter danced.

Maybe it was to the music in her headphones. Perhaps it was to the song that thumped over the loudspeakers below and spilled though this dramatic cleft in the Italian Alps like an auditory avalanche. More than likely, though, it was to that same outrageous inner soundtrack that, an hour later, told her it was completely normal to lean back and clunk her boots onto the table during the most important press conference of her life.

[...]

Doncha just love fiesty women at the top of their games? Now somebody puh-leaze tell me why they want to drop SOFTBALL from the Summer Olympics?!

Maybe they need to clunk their boots on the table too.

Monday introduced the world to snowboarding's Odd Couple. There was Gretchen Bleiler, who would win the vote for snowboarding prom queen in a landslide. At the podium, the microphone cupped regally in her right hand, she said winning an Olympic medal has always been a dream. Did the US want a medal sweep? Of course, she answered, but "everybody at the Olympics works so hard."

It is not rehearsed or forced, but familiar. These are the answers Olympians are supposed to give, and she happens to be wired that way.

Then there is Teter, who says that winning the gold medal will change her life. Now she can get a boat - to wakeboard.

She won the gold, she says, by the fortuitous combination of Vermont maple syrup, brotherly love, and yoga. "I lit the candles at night and zoned in," she told a press corps apparently not quite sure if the real Olympic champion was bound and gagged in a closet somewhere.

In truth, the two women champions might not be so different. At the top of her final run - the one that brought her silver - Bleiler paused for a moment to dial in the right song on her iPod. It was no concerto. It was Green Day's buzzsaw "Holiday."

And 30 minutes before their chance at international superstardom, Bleiler and Teter took the chairlift to the top of the hill, hopped under some out-of-bounds ropes, and sought out that greatest of snowboarding treasures: untracked powder.

But this is the Olympics. Weren't they afraid of getting injured? Bleiler corrected: "This is snowboarding."

[...]

[grin]

I did some skiing a few months ago, which did my soul good after so many years in the South. One of the funnest lift conversations I had was with this short, fiesty little point guard from just over the Idaho state line who was out snowboarding every weekend even tho her high school coach had forbidden anyone on the team from skiing/snowboarding lest they risk an injury.

Brought back some memories. I couldn't snowboard or do any of those things if my life depended on it, but I did my share of sneaking off to Mt Alyeska in Alaska even tho our coaches said "no skiing." Not to mention the trouble we used to get into, sneaking off on our own on basketball trips to pull all manner of stunts in the ice and snow.

I'm learning all kinds of interesting things about Montana

Jonathan Weber, a colleague here in Missoula, has a New York Times Op-Ed on some of these interesting land use issues. Great column!

Link: A Class War Runs Through It - New York Times.

September 6, 2005

A Class War Runs Through It

By JONATHAN WEBER
Missoula, Montana

JAMES COX KENNEDY, the head of Cox Enterprises, the Atlanta media company, was just doing what lots of modern media moguls do when he bought nearly 4,000 acres in Montana's Ruby Valley: transforming remote Western ranchland into a private hunting and fishing retreat, and doing some commendable habitat conservation and restoration work in the process.

Perhaps unwittingly, however, Mr. Kennedy has walked into the middle of two separate but closely related controversies, one having to do with Montana's stream-access laws - that one will be the subject of a mediation session next week - and the other relating to conservation easements.

[...]

Montana's 20-year-old stream-access law, which declares that the state's rivers and streams are public property up to the high-water mark, provides a clear window into land-use battles. The law, among the strongest in the nation, has survived numerous legal challenges and become a source of pride for many Montanans (including Gov. Brian Schweitzer), though it's still fiercely opposed by property-rights advocates.

The law does not require property owners to provide entry to waterways through their own land, but it does permit access from any public property. As a result, among the most common access points are county bridges. That's where Mr. Kennedy has run into trouble: his ranch includes all or parts of two bridges that cross the Ruby River, and he has blocked access by reinforcing old fencing along those bridges. Stream-access advocates have sued the county for allowing the fences, setting the stage for a showdown on a controversy that has raged for almost a decade.

Mr. Kennedy claims that the bridges are neither safe nor legal river-access sites. More to the point, though, he says allowing public access would damage the riparian habitat and destroy a fragile fishery that he has spent a lot of time and money nursing back to health. That's a similar argument to one being made by the brokerage mogul Charles Schwab, the rock musician Huey Lewis and others who are fighting to keep the public off a waterway south of Missoula where they own property.

And that brings us to the second controversy. Much of Mr. Kennedy's Ruby Valley property is in a conservation easement, an arrangement under which property owners receive tax breaks for forgoing development on ecologically sensitive lands. Easements have been under fire in Congress in the wake of revelations that some developers were claiming conservation easements for golf courses (hey, it's open space, right?) and otherwise gaming the system.

[...]

Easements have proved to be a very effective means of encouraging land conservation and habitat preservation. But there's something wrong when a billionaire buys a ranch, gets a tax break for an easement and then chases the locals off the river in the name of conservation.

Class, of course, is an issue here. Consider the people who are fighting for access to the river: retired miners and schoolteachers and other working folk, some of whom grew up fishing the local waters and some of whom couldn't give a hoot about fishing but hate seeing the landscape walled off. But there's also wider a social issue involved: if land and water conservation and wildlife protection come to be seen as things that only benefit the rich, it will reinforce the perception that conservation is a luxury of the elite rather than a universal concern.

[...]

Jonathan Weber is the founder and editor in chief of NewWest.Net, an online publication about the Rocky Mountain West.

Go read the whole thing.

Newsday.com column: Title IX protection under attack again

This gets me riled up beyond belief. Title IX has directly affected my life in ways I can't begin to describe, as well as the lives of so many of my friends who have participated in organized sports. I remember so well the fights we had back then, just to get new uniforms, to get to use the gym at some time other than 5 am or 8 pm. I remember the reasoning used AGAINST these "privileges," saying stuff like "nobody pays attention to girl's sports" and "girls aren't interested in anything that strenuous."

And last week, I was visiting with my aunt and uncle, who were avidly following the NCAA women's tournament and the University of Minnesota women's team. They told me the women pack the auditorium, outselling the men. This happens all over, but evidently some would like to undo the laws that created the environment where this can happen. It just boggles my mind.

Link: Newsday.com column: Title IX protection under attack again.

Title IX protection under attack again

By Johnette Howard
SPORTS COLUMNIS

March 25, 2005

There are dozens of ways to illustrate why the new guidelines issued by the Bush administration a few days ago to determine schools' compliance with Title IX are an outrage and a deceit that should be attacked until they're stricken from use. But the simplest way to make the argument is to ask a simple question:

What's not to like about the 1972 federal law that outlaws discrimination on the basis of gender, opened the playing fields of this country to girls, not just boys, and survived every single court challenge it has faced the past three decades?

Bush administration officials have been under heavy criticism since the U.S. Department of Education quietly released a surprise legal clarification on its Web site Friday advising colleges that, for the first time, they can remain in compliance with Title IX based on an e-mail survey of their undergraduate students designed to gauge "interest and ability" in sports. If the responses do not show enough interest - and what exactly constitutes enough has yet to be determined - then an institution can go ahead and presume it is in compliance.

Imagine that. There'll be no more pesky need to compare an athletic department's spending outlays or scholarships offered for men versus women. The burden will be on the students to enforce the law, not the universities.

Schools also have been told they can count an unreturned survey as a lack of interest. Which means one of the most effective federal laws on the books, a measure that resulted in an eight-fold boom in girls' participation in sports, can be undercut if one too many 19-year-old co-eds merely forgets in a blur of classes and keg parties and homework assignments to open, download, answer and return an e-mail survey that, right now, numbers eight Web pages.

Is this any way to set public policy?

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Three members of Bush's Title IX committee were reached by phone yesterday. Ted Leland, the co-chair of the committee, said he had no idea the new guidelines were coming, and he had serious "concerns" about the closed process used to reach the decision, and the rationale that a standardized on-line, e-mail survey "can measure a complicated issue" like interest and ability."

Committee members Cary Groth, the athletic director at the University of Nevada-Reno, and Donna de Varona, the former Olympic gold medalist in swimming who was involved in the initial fight to get Title IX passed in the early 1970s, voiced the same concerns.

As de Varona said yesterday, "It shows no respect for the law or the process. It's disappointing because no matter what wonderful role models we produce, or what honor we bring to this country as women athletes, we still always have to reprove why we have a right to the opportunity to be the best we can be. Why is it that for 32 years women have to justify themselves over and over again as athletes?"

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Read the entire column here.