by Ken Toole | Feb 16, 2025 | Guest Articles, Uncategorized
Senators Daines and Sheehy certainly can’t stand on principle when they can’t stand at all.
by Ken Toole | Feb 5, 2025 | Guest Articles
By Susan DeCamp
In 2008, I took an oath to the Constitution as a new Foreign Service Officer while standing under the flagpole in front of the Tactical Operations Center on a Provincial Reconstruction Team base in Farah, Afghanistan. I would go on to spend a total of 10 years in Afghanistan, working for USAID. It was my thing.
Fighting Poverty Under Fire In Afghanistan
As a USAID Development Officer, I lived on remote bases in containers, barracks, and on the Embassy compound. I have been under small arms fire, mortar fire, rocket fire, bombs, and the occasional earthquake. My military colleagues were the most intelligent, strategic and impressive people I have ever met in my life. We worked closely together to actualize counter insurgency initiatives based on the book written by General Petraeus. The military sought to protect the population from the Islamic terrorists as represented by the Taliban, ISIS and what have you. USAID sought to stabilize the country through poverty mitigation.This included: access to education for boys AND girls, access to healthcare, agriculture, infrastructure like roads and schools, government systems, and business support.
The Afghanistan president at the time, Hamid Karzai, insisted we call it reconstruction. In fact, it was building an entire economic system from scratch. (For a history of the Afghanistan conflict, read Ghost Wars by Steve Coll). We may have bitten off more than we could chew, but here is the most important point – these are the basic building blocks of a thriving, growing economy, any economy, anywhere.
Mission and Purpose of USAID
USAID is a “soft power” agency used by the government to head off potential military conflict and terrorist safe havens through the alleviation of poverty and ignorance. We were the “hearts and minds” approach that would hopefully promote democracy around the world, embrace diplomacy, and prevent our young people from being sent off to die in wars in foreign countries.
The US Agency for International Development (USAID) was created in 1961 via executive order of President Kennedy. Its creation was based on the success of the Marshall Plan after World War II. It became its own agency in 1998 by an act of Congress. USAID serves as part of the executive branch of government, but it is Congress that provides the budget. USAID funding amounts to less than 1 percent of the total national budget. USAID personnel were posted alongside the military to keep them apprised of who was doing what, where, and when throughout the country. We were part of the counter insurgency (COIN) strategy adopted by the coalition of the willing – known as the International Security and Assistance Force (ISAF).
Women’s Empowerment In Afghanistan
I managed a program in Afghanistan called “Promote.” Promote received a special appropriation of funds from Congress and was strictly for Afghan women’s empowerment projects. We were required to touch the lives of 75,000 Afghan women. Security was poor. Pakistan had been steadily sending Taliban, ISIS, and other terrorists into the country. (If you are interested, read the book The Wrong Enemy by Carlotta Gall).
I busted my chops making sure that all was above board with Promote. Having served for so long in the country, I knew most of the players, and I worked hard to make sure internal controls were in place and the projects were documented and effective.
A Special Inspector General With An Axe To Grind
In 2012 John Sopko was appointed Special Inspector General for Afghanistan. We had just about reached the end of the first year of Promote. This was the phase we called rollout, which entailed opening offices around the country and hiring over 90 percent Afghan staff to reach Afghan women. Sopko announced he would be auditing the program. It was the first year of a 5 year program, violating normal audit standards. He tortured us with endless meetings, demands for data, and began to issue his own press releases attacking USAID, and attacking Promote.
The lies came easily to Sopko. I spent time on the phone with Congressional staffers, debunking the lies. I was told by USAID leadership that I could not issue my own press release or correct the record. In the meantime, Promote clipped along doing some amazing work for Afghan women. Politico published an expose of Shopko’s behavior in 2016 titled, “The Donald Trump of inspector generals” https://www.politico.com/story/2016/05/john-sopko-afghanistan-reconstruction-goats-222418
Trump Handed Afghanistan To The Taliban
I was there when Trump sent McMaster to Kabul to seek an end to the continuing conflict. Ignoring McMaster’s advice, Trump sent his team to negotiate with the Taliban terrorists, ignoring the Afghan government we had spent blood and treasure to strengthen.
Trump was responsible for the deal that handed the country to the Taliban. He deliberately spat on the lives of American soldiers who had died and were disabled in the fight against the international threat of Taliban terrorism – just to make people think that we had failed. Lest we forget, Osama Bin Laden was operating out of Afghanistan to attack Americans. My heart was broken, as we knew what giving billions of dollars in US investment to the Taliban meant for Afghan women. Under the terrorist regime, the schools for girls were closed immediately. (See Politico, Sept. 17, 2020 “McMaster Rebukes Trump Over Taliban Talks”)
One More Page In The Republican Play Book
This is how it’s done, folks. These tactics also work on the Department of Education, Environmental Protection Agency, Food and Drug Administration, US Postal System, Social Security Administration, Medicare, etc. Republicans have been quietly gutting these important public support agencies, and lying about it, for years with their malicious political appointees who are only there to destroy. All because billionaires want even more power and do not want to pay taxes or contribute to the well being of our country. What takes centuries to build can be destroyed in days by evil, power seeking men and women.
by Ken Toole | Jan 18, 2025 | Guest Articles
by Ken Toole | Dec 27, 2024 | Guest Articles
In response to GOP state representative Greg Overstreet’s guest column, “Our legislators are just like you,” I must say that none of the Republicans mentioned in his column are in any way like me. A job doesn’t make a person. Instead, it’s a person’s integrity and ability to make decisions based on reality that matter.
It’s safe to say that every Republican Overstreet listed voted for Donald Trump, a man found civilly liable for sexual abuse, a convicted felon, an adulterer, a serial liar, and, in general, a disreputable, vindictive human being. But, apparently, as long as Trump hates the same people they hate, he gets their vote. So much for integrity!
Part of integrity is having consistent values. Why are so many Republicans bent out of shape that transgender people be allowed to make decisions about their own bodies, when the vast majority of Republicans think nothing about instructing a doctor to take a knife to the penis of any newborn sons they have? Obviously, it’s not the genital surgery that matters. It’s the bigotry.
Many of those same Republicans proudly use Christianity as a club while ignoring the reality of what is actually in the Bible. Denying a woman’s right to abortion is the most prevalent example of this. The Bible clearly gives instructions for forcing a woman to miscarry in Numbers 5:11-31, and elsewhere it states that life begins at first breath. It’s one reason few Christian sects spoke out about Roe v. Wade until it became a political issue they could profit from.
Also, part of ignoring reality is the Republican Christian Nationalist claim that the United States was founded as a “Christian nation.” Again, there is written evidence to the contrary. The English version of The Treaty of Tripoli was read aloud in the U.S. Senate and unanimously approved before President John Adams signed it on June 10, 1797. Article 11 of that treaty states, “As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion . . .”
And then there is the science of climate change. That Donald Trump called climate change a hoax doesn’t make it so. Facts don’t care what Trump says, but, obviously, Republicans are willing to ignore the science—endangering their own children and grandchildren—both in the name of greed and in submission to their authoritarian leader.
On the subject of greed, how are an overwhelming percentage of Republicans able to reconcile their claims of Christianity while being led by a billionaire president, who campaigned with the richest man in the world, and will soon give the rich massive tax cuts while cutting programs for seniors, the sick, and the poor? Isn’t that the opposite of what Jesus preached in the Bible?
So, no, I am not at all like Mr. Overstreet and his Republican associates. And neither are the roughly 40 percent of Montanans who voted against most things they stand for. We may be a minority—for now—but fifty years from now, when students study this era in history classes, it will be the Republicans, not the rest of us, who they’ll look at as they shake their heads in sadness and disbelief.
• Bio: Marty Essen is a college speaker and multi-award-winning author of three nonfiction and five fiction books. His latest, “The Silver Squad: Rebels With Wrinkles,” will be published on January 10, 2025.
by Guest Writer | Aug 13, 2024 | Guest Articles
By Jim Edwards
We’re past the time to “debate” climate change, it’s real – and it’s a problem. We need Congress focused on bi-partisan solutions for addressing it.
We need to be solving it so we can live in a stable climate and not enduring the climate-driven extreme weather events – wildfires, droughts, heatwaves, and the resulting low flows and warming water temps in our rivers and reservoirs. 2023 was the hottest year since records have been kept and 2024 is likely to beat it. Besides rising global temperatures, we’re seeing all sorts of other negative impacts, like more frequent and extreme droughts, floods, and severe, dangerous storms.
However, since the “debate” seems to keep cropping up, I’d like to remind my fellow Montanans that there is overwhelming consensus within the scientific community on these fundamental points regarding human-induced climate change:
- Earth’s global average temperature is increasing;
- Due to our burning of fossil fuels, human emissions of greenhouse gasses, especially carbon dioxide (CO2), are the main cause of the warming;
- International, independently derived research results ALL pointing towards the same finding provide a high degree of confidence that climate scientists are on the right track. The scientific community continues to add new findings and knows that many details about climate interactions aren’t fully understood and require significant, additional, continued research.
Climate defines the range in temperature and precipitation patterns making up our weather. Since the 1800s, the climate has warmed. Since World War II, the dominant contributor has been the burning of fossil fuels—coal, oil and natural gas. All contain carbon. When burned, they emit potent gases, mostly CO2, into the atmosphere. These emissions act like a down blanket wrapped around the Earth, trapping the sun’s heat and thus raising temperatures, and creating droughts. As more water evaporates into the atmosphere, it provides fuel for storms and more intense rainfall.
Nearly 100 percent of climate scientists are now convinced, based on the evidence, that human-caused global warming is happening. Still, the general public perceives there is significant “debate” among scientists – why?
A campaign of obfuscation regarding climate change science has been underway since the late 1980s, funded in large part by the fossil fuels industry (quite similar to what the tobacco industry did 30 years earlier regarding the correlation of tobacco use and cancer prevalence).
In the early 1990s, the Western Fuels Association (with funding from Exxon and others), conducted a massive PR campaign to “reposition global warming as a theory (not fact)”, using dissenting scientists (industry funded), to create the impression of ongoing scientific debate.
My brother spent 40 years as an engineer working in the coal side of ExxonMobil (Exxon is now 100% divested of its coal portfolio). He’s helped educate me to the fact that for the first 30 years of his career, Exxon was invested in climate change denial; within the past 15 years, Exxon has pivoted and is now fully on board with the Paris Climate Agreement.
Scientists do not disagree about whether climate change is human-caused. There are only a very few, and even fewer with scientific backgrounds relevant to climate science, who promote “debate”. Many individuals who pose as “experts” in media sources are not scientists at all, or else have no real background in actual climate science.
People from all walks of life and all political stripes care about climate change and want to see the problem fixed as soon as possible.
To leave a healthy, stable world for future generations, we need to act now, get creative, and work energetically together. For solutions, please see https://citizensclimatelobby.org/
Jim Edwards
Member of the Citizens Climate Lobby (CCL)
Jim founded Mountain West Benefits (MWB) consultancy in 2003. MWB provided health insurance advisory services and was Montana’s largest benefit consultancy firm, advising large employer, association and union sponsored plans covering over 35,000 individuals.
In 2012 Jim and his partner, Richard Miltenberger, founded the Montana Health Co-op (now Mountain Health Co-op). Jim sold MWB to the Leavitt Group in 2015 and retired in 2017. Jim and his wife Sheila have four ordinary adult children and three brilliant grandchildren.
by Ken Toole | Jul 30, 2024 | Guest Articles
This editorial was published in the Missoula Current.
The American Prairie recently announced two property acquisitions in Phillips County, one of the seven counties in which we own property. Chuck Denowh, policy director for United Property Owners of Montana, used this announcement to question our presence in Central Montana.
Mr. Denowh lists a “parade of horribles” regarding American Prairie, accusing us of hastening the decline of central Montana’s agricultural economy and communities and threatening Montana’s general fund revenues by our non-profit status. He even holds us responsible for increases in food prices.
Mark Twain quipped, “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” Here’s what we know:
Around 62 percent of Montana’s land is dedicated to agriculture with more than 58 million acres of farms and ranches. A recent article about American Prairie in Gun Dog Magazine noted, “If American Prairie is afflicting the local economy, it hasn’t shown up in the data. In fact, unemployment in the region has gradually fallen since American Prairie was established, and population is up slightly. The agricultural sector is currently at a ten year high.”
In 2023, 89% of our total land base was leased to local cattle ranchers supporting more than seven thousand head of cattle. On lands where our herd of 900 bison graze, American Prairie pays a per capita tax 2.7 times higher than those fees charged for cattle.
American Prairie pays property taxes for land, vehicles, and equipment, just like every other rancher. Staff and lessees living on American Prairie land or in nearby communities pay into their local tax bases. American Prairie contributes to increased revenue from lodging taxes as we continue to promote visitation in the region. In the last four years, American Prairie has paid more than $573,000 in taxes (real, personal, use, etc.) to the counties where we own property.
America’s farmers, the world’s most productive, annually produce food surpluses that last year supported exports worth $175 billion. The recent increases in the cost of food are an inflationary phenomenon driven by a massive injection of federal money into the nation’s economy.
Land prices are increasing across the United States, including ranch and farmland in Montana. The 2022 USDA Land Values Summary found the value of pasture land in the state rose by 10.7 percent per acre between 2021 and 2022, a little less than the nationwide average increase of 11.5 percent. Data like this indicates that American Prairie is not driving the cost of land.
The growth of American Prairie has little influence on the long-term demographic and economic trends in Central Montana. Extended drought, market fluctuations, international trade policies, personal family decisions, and global integrated agricultural markets have much larger impacts.
We buy land from willing sellers and are but one player in the marketplace. We pay market rates and are limited by IRS regulations from paying more than 10 percent above appraised value. Having an additional buyer in the market place is surely a benefit, and we are helping families secure their futures.
American Prairie is organized in section 501 (c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. As such we are exempt from business income tax and our donors receive a tax benefit. It is interesting to note that Montana’s property tax system annually exempts over $50 million of property taxes for tax-exempt organizations and certain tax-exempt types of property.
Montana’s non-profits play important and often vital roles in our communities. They provide support for cultural and religious institutions, fill gaps in health care, and offer enhanced educational opportunities. Instilled during our nation’s founding, our deeply ingrained culture of philanthropy is the envy of the world. If Mr. Denowh wishes to campaign to change this situation, I wish him well.
A final note: Mr. Denowh represents an organization allegedly supporting property rights and limited government. Yet he is the ringleader of efforts to use the power of the State to attack the legitimate business practices of American Prairie. Isn’t it ironic that a property rights group seeks to use the cohesive force of government to intervene in the peaceful and voluntary transactions of consenting parties?
Pete Geddes is American Prairie’s Vice President and Chief External Relations Officer. He has been with the organization since 2011.
