Butte Hill Will Always Be Dynamic

The Butte Hill will always be dynamic because it remains the richest hill on earth. In the year before the Superfund Law became a reality a number of community leaders and members of the scientific community met to think through how best to redevelop Butte, without such realities as the Superfund. I remember one of the internationally reknown scientists sent to our meetings by the Electric Power Research Institute, took me aside as we both looked out over Butte from the Montana School of Mines where we were meeting to formulate the technical questions we would be asking facilitated groups. His name was Walter Juda. He told me to remember two things about Butte: it’s a town with some of the finest earth scientists he ever met, “if the Japanese were in possession of The Butte Hill, it would be a beehive of industrial activity.”

 

Well we’ve had the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in Butte during the more than 35 years since that unforgettable conversation. The EPA has done a great deal of good cleaning up, though I do sort of miss the ore dumps along Buffalo Street we used to clamber up in Corktown, I appreciate the storm water off The Hill being processed before heading down stream and the water from The Berkeley Pit being polished before it heads down stream, and I know more will be done to bring silver bow creek to be a lush place to reflect. However, it’s time for local leadership to begin accepting responsibility for the combinations of big decisions that will come our way as metals prices rise and fall, the credits for clean water and green hydrogen get really valuable and the quiet surface of the wind protected  pit is able to float a fleet of solar panels, concentrating their energy on towers designed to produce high temperature steam, by far the most energy efficient way to make green hydrogen.

 

At page 58 of the attached (Internet Archived) Berkeley Pit, Reindustrialization and Mineral Recovery Project is a concept paper for a locally run authority missioned to offset costs of some needed technologies with the benefits of some of the more lucrative. The idea, with the help of EPA as it moves to its redevelopment phase with Butte, is to end the high-grading of  Butte’s natural resources, while leaving future generations to clean up the mess. Unlike the initials ACM, which left us in the lurch, we need to begin working with the initials EPA to eventually stand on our own feet. It might take a little transfer of authority legislation, but I know we can do it.

The Lights of Billings

   

     A few evenings ago I was excited by the lights of Billings while passing through in my excellent fossil fueled and lubricated all wheels driven touring car. Back in the day when our family of six motored in an old black 1953 Cadillac from Miles City to visit all our relatives in Butte for my father’s annual two week vacations, we hardly noticed Billings. For us the high point was waking in the dark as we passed deadman’s curve on two-lane Harding Way, in time to break over the pass and see all the lights that mom called “a bowl of jewels.” Our ancestors worked under the ground there for generations, helping create a city in the mountains more important to America’s World War II effort than the Manhattan Project. People smoked more then and the no smoking signs were in 16 languages. This year for the first time I felt that familiar excitement among the light studded petroleum refinery towers of Billings. 

Butte’s scores of mine head frames and whistles lessened with the advance of open-pit mining technology and ended with happenings in far away Chile. The lighted towers of Billings are bound to eventually change as people make decisions about how to address climate change. For us it will next be a plug-in hybrid that uses the solar panels we’ve had on our house for 16 years and Montana’s gas stations to range our state. As technology evolves we will get a fuel cell electric vehicle. 

By then some of the talented managers, engineers, safety experts, materials makers and construction people who’ve built this fantastical world in Billings will lend experiences from a mature industry to making carbon-free green hydrogen. Idaho National Engineering laboratories has just demonstrated that green hydrogen electrolyzed at high temperature requires 23 percent less energy.That means a future of small nuclear power plants or those strange-looking solar power collection towers. Who knows where the water will originate? It would be nice if Billings got a piece of that generational response to climate change.

Meanwhile let the child in us enjoy the experience of lights dancing in the glow of the setting sun. Whoever would have imagined Billings having more going for it than Wonderland and pre-school girls who threatened to rub my eyes with snowballs?  I’m as delighted to be married to a Billings woman who grew up thinking airports were always up on rims.

John B Driscoll for US Congress

     

Chuck Johnson was sure happy when he finally got one of these Driscoll 1978 Senate Primary Campaign buttons for his political buttons collection. One of the nicest things anyone could have done for me was Maureen Powell of the Big Sky Mudflaps quietly designing, silkscreening and assembling 100 of these. The 1977 Smokejumping season was ended with no more concern about the Hatch Act. 

     Over the 46 years since then I believe I have demonstrated beyond any doubt that I am my own man.  Now my jump spot, with your help, is the US Congress.

Still Working For Change

I understand the frustration, especially among regular Montanans, with the non-responsiveness of our government. I’ve tried to address the problem by running for the U.S. Senate as “A Working Man for a Change,” first against U.S. Senator Hatfield and U.S. Congressman Baucus in the 1978 Democrat Primary, and many times later, ending in the depths of the covid epidemic when, instead of parachute buttons, I spread Ace of Hearts playing cards around Montana at places memorializing Montanans Compassion and Courage. During that campaign I spoke to two people, one on his front porch in Troy and another next to his barn in Dagmar. I recrossed our state to recover all of the cards, so as not to litter. Though running as a Republican I spent so little of my own funds, I didn’t meet the $5,000 legal threshold for filing a Federal Elections Campaign finance report. My thinking at the time was that regular Republicans, were no different than the decent people from Miles City, to Butte, to Hamilton, to Helena with whom I’d been a student, a worker, a Catholic, a soldier and a state office holder. I ran as an “Abraham Lincoln Republican,” hoping to attract those same decent thoughtful people I’ve known in Montana my whole life. I’ve no regrets though I was again unsuccessful.

In 1984, I was ordered, as the Major responsible for Operational Security of the Montana National Guard, to drive a staff car to Kalispell and meet FBI agents who were working to dismantle the ‘silent brotherhood,” which had held up an armored car in California using at least one sidearm purchased in Missoula, robbed a couple of banks in Seattle using the proceeds to buy a safe house on Big Mountain, assassinated a Jewish talkshow host in Denver using the names of dead babies off tombstones in Missoula, killed one of their own members with a hammer for talking too much in a Spokane brothel, and ambushing FBI agents on an island in Puget Sound. I read their signed Declaration of War against our U.S. Government, which they called the Zionist Occupational Government. I then toured Montana Guard units explaining the difference between the right wing and the left wing, and how both are virtually in-distinguishable as far as threatening the middle road of Democracy. All that work morphed over the years into a close understanding of the armed confrontations at Waco and Ruby Ridge and Jordan, and the horrific bombing in Oklahoma City. After 12 years monitoring this metastasis, at the U.S. Army War College, I wrote “A Chaordic Threat, Right Wing Terrorism in the United States,” published by the Defense Department and still on the internet.

In that 1996 Strategic Research Paper I concluded that the threat here in Montana and the Northwest, was serious, survivable and intent upon overthrowing the U.S. Government. By then the movement had progressed loosely to the “concept paragraph” of a field order. When Trump said, “Stand Back and Stand By,” he added the mission paragraph. You know that to be true. Now, after all these years of being quiet, I’m advising you, “Get back on the right side of the line, or there will be hell to pay."

I feel differently now because Trump controls the Republican Party and I must say there can be no decent excuse for supporting him. Trump’s a Fascist, identical to the people our parents fought to the death in World War II, when Hitler sent his finest SS divisions in a surprise winter attack against an all-American defensive line he thought would break and run because we are mongrels, I’m proud to say our citizen soldiers didn’t break and run in The Battle of The Bulge and Hitler killed himself in a bunker. If these truths upset you, I’m not sorry. Make an informed decision about reality. I am no longer a Republican nor should you be.

Sworn To Protect And Defend

The Purple Heart conveying this letter reminds that freedom is not free. General George Washington awarded it to defenders of our revolution for what he called “virtuous ambition.” Today the enemies of our Constitutional Democracy are rapidly acquiring counter-revolutionary power, by using huge sums of money to spread lies and disinformation with the purpose of stoking fear, hardening our people’s hearts and closing American minds to serve a tyrant’s purposes. The “deep state,” sometimes called the “administrative state,” being vilified by leaders of this ugly fascist movement started as Russia’s name for our constitution.

In another time I would have proudly fought as one of America’s soldiers, called mongrels by Hitler, to defeat his vaunted pure-blooded SS Divisions in the bloody “Battle of the Bulge.” Our generation’s fight is more serious. As a Montanan
sworn to protect and defend our United States Constitution, I am fighting today by filing to represent Montana’s United States House District 2 as a Democrat. I have digitally submitted signed candidate information and the $1740 filing fee.

I’m asking for help from Montanans willing to serve as lamps against forces of darkness on today’s two fronts, climate and tyranny. While remaining an arsenal of Democracy we need to also devise ways to become a shelter for Democracy.

We I’ll refuse all contributions, and spend less than $5,000 in this effort, so there’ll be no need to open a campaign account with the Federal Election Commission. I will be grateful for votes from those who agree with what I am saying and doing.

Power And Money and Quislings

   

 Today when I see people equating political positions like U.S Senate seats, and the money that flows to them and through them, with power, I see a lack of understanding about money and power in politics. I was the same way the second to last time Republican Strategist and Manager Pat Collins and I really communicated was on the escalator of the Gand Hyatt Hotel in Washington DC. We were looking out over a sea of white banquet tables, the result of  his handiwork. He laughingly called his venue, “The scene of the crime.” After being a devoted follower of Ronald Reagan, even serving as the staff person advising Reagan’s Kitchen Cabinet during their review of Presidential appointments, he had adjusted his politics a notch, downward in his view, to organize a major political fund-raising dinner for Republican Presidential candidate George H.W.Bush. 

      That was in the Spring of 1992, when I had just decided to not run for my fourth 4-year term as a Democrat on the Montana Public Service Commission. On the escalator going up to the street level I revealed to my friend of more than 30 years, “I’m getting out of politics.” He didn’t laugh with an, “Oh, Sure,” but took me seriously and asked, “Why?”

     “I’ve never understood the money.”

     Then as a hardened operative of many Republican political campaigns he amazed me by saying, “You know, neither have I.”

     In the back of a DC Cab a few minutes later, we had our last conversation. As he dropped me off at The Harrington Hotel, our exchange was hard and true. 

    “Pat, I think you’ve had a stroke.”

    Holding his right arm he asked, “You really think so?”

    “You’d better see a doctor.” 

     I read his obituary the next Spring.

     During my tours of duty at the Pentagon, I’d look up the name of Sergeant David Vallance, our Hamilton High School fullback, on the Vietnam Memorial Wall. I’d cross the river and visit Pat’s grave, in Arlington National Cemetery not because he served in Vietnam but because he served for a while as Secretary of Energy. I’d sometimes stop at the plain marble headstone for Michael Joseph Mansfield, PFC USMC, Montana. Each in their respective year died on the same day. Even that seemed more important than money.

    Mike Mansfield’s last general election campaign cost $100,000. John Tester’s last general election campaign cost mind-boggling millions of dollars. I think I saw a number on the order of $30 million in Federal Election Commission discussions of Steve Daines’ last campaign. 

     Even naive altar boys like myself can not believe that kind of money, lately designated as someone’s free speech, flows to an individual’s campaign, or a Senatorial Campaign Committee, absent something of the Public’s Trust being eventually exchanged. Maintaining public appearances to the contrary are lies,  and lies are the most fundamental form of betrayal. Another word for betrayer is quisling. Quisling was a Norwegian military politician, military officer and Nazi collaborator who saw himself as head of Norway during his country’s occupation by German troops during World War II. He empowered Hitler, but was without his own power, without his peoples’ trust.

    Now in Montana there will be no primary contest to select a Republican challenger to John Tester because Matt Rosendale says he “lacks resources.” He really means that his hand-picked opponent, Tim Sheehy, has behind him both the bottomless coffers of the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee, led by Trump quisling Steve Daines, and the high plains grifter himself, Donald Trump. Unless Montana voters take back their power, controlled by money, the next election of a U.S. Senator from Montana will be a mirage of a free election, soon vanished.

     Today I feel a little wiser than I did that night on the escalator in the Grand Hyatt. As I see intelligent men and women of the Republicans Party crowd inexplicably together behind an American Fascist, I know the secret sauce that binds them is the money, or rather the fear of not having enough money, or rather the fear of not having the power that generally seems to come with all the money. The one way to break that spell is to choose candidates, Republican or Democrat, who treat campaign money as irrelevant, rather than with reverence. Each voter needs to retain his or her personal power to discern candidates who in turn remain able to serve the common good.

     My wife and I have given our $100 to John Tester’s campaign because we feel he’s done a good job and we want to do our small part to help his effort. This young fellow, Tim Sheehy, seems interesting enough and I’m glad he and his family have settled in Montana. Our generation has taken good care of this place and hope theirs will, as well. Right now, though, I think Mr. Sheehy has a lot to learn as I once did. I remember some people saying about me when I first ran for the U.S. Senate as a 31-year old House Speaker. They were right.

Custer’s Pistol

Mr. Marbut,

     During my life I’ve been responsible for hundreds, if not thousands of weapons, and the safety of persons handling them in live fire conditions. I have the greatest possible respect for them and what they are capable of doing. I have no respect for persons who do not maintain them or handle them properly.

     I maintain my own proficiency with a .357 magnum revolver safely stored by a brother. The revolver I use was kept loaded constantly since I was 5 years old, but safely stored in a place no one touched in a home used eventually to house 7 children.

     As you would expect I am most concerned with the safety of gun owners and their families, and have no use for firearms kept purely as luxury items. I choose to keep the people I love in a clean and healthful environment, and therefore have no weapons around my house.

    I no longer hunt, but when I did I practiced fair chase. I’m not interested in answering your Montana Shooting Sports Association questionnaire, but have no doubt you’ll find many who will. However I can offer you the story of Custer’s Pistol, which you’ll find included in my last book, Gonzo Road Show Diary.

Respectfully,
John B Driscoll