Gallatin Gateway is a genuine community, not a contrived artifact of the New West. It has been my home for nearly 40 years and I cherish it deeply. Just like other rural gems of the West, however, Gateway’s attractive ecological, cultural, and geographic features put it at risk for exploitation. The question is can the […]
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Why is Iran risking so much in its quest for nuclear power? Iran’s government claims nuclear power is necessary given the domestic energy situation. The Bush administration declares this petroleum-rich state cannot possibly need nuclear power to meet domestic energy demands, and, thus, Iran’s push for nuclear power must have more nefarious ends. Is Iran […]
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It’s easy to be modest when our neighbor is Ted Turner, owner of the historic Flying D Ranch. The ranch spreads from the Gallatin to the Madison Rivers covering some 113,000 acres, and carries a variety of wildlife, including about 3,500 buffalo. For several years I told Ramona we too needed buffalo. After all, they […]
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Pilgrim Congregational Church has an exceptional music program, especially during Christmas. I write this as the brass, organ, drums and the choir practice. While Ramona rehearses, I study Pilgrim’s bulletin board and see over a dozen appeals for support. Intermountain Children’s Home, Heifer International, Habitat for Humanity, and Central Asian Institute suggest the range of […]
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People make New Year’s resolutions to change their behavior. That’s why so many fail. Stopping unhealthy habits such as smoking or overeating are commitments that require the self-deprivation of pleasure. Vowing to exercise and substitute reading for TV is a positive step to self-improvement, but hard to maintain. The lower the costs or the higher […]
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While joyful in anticipation, coming home for Christmas is often a mixed blessing. Folks arrive with their baggage of memories packed over some years and selectively sorted by time and experience elsewhere. Pleasing recollections color our expectations. Unless gone for a very long while, we expect our home territory to be much as when we […]
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I find it interesting that green activists and their political allies uniformly favor dramatic and draconian action to avert climate change. Serious policy analysts are different; they generally favor less dramatic action applied over the long term. What explains this difference? Perhaps it’s because the analysts understand long-term adjustments are much cheaper and easier than […]
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Bozeman should thank Rick Stroup, a longtime resident and retiring head of the Ag-Econ & Econ Department at MSU. Rick has contributed much to our community. With his forthcoming move to North Carolina State University, an era ends. In the 1970s a small group of scholars at MSU developed the principles and policies that became […]
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Here’s a fundamental rule of political economy: Wealth buys safety, not merely comfort and convenience. This is a true, empirical, universal, testable, statistical generalization, a helpful one when formulating public policy. While we can find exceptions — rich folks do climb Everest and fly their own planes — such exceptions probe the rule. Generally, the […]
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I have just returned from a meeting of the Mont Pèlerin Society (MPS) in Guatemala. Prof. Friedrich Hayek, winner of the 1974 Nobel Prize in economics, established MPS in 1947, in the alpine setting of Mont Pèlerin, Switzerland. Milton Friedman was a cofounder. The totalitarianism surrounding World War II motivated the creation of MPS. It […]
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