Seen in the foothills (Part II): You, too, can strike it rich

Last month I saw several of these signs around El Dorado County advertising a "Gold Prospecting Summit."  The event appears to be directed at those in the area who might wish to make their fortunes--or perhaps just supplement their incomes--with  El Dorado County is, of course, part of the California region known as the "motherlode" based on its association with the era of the forty-niners--the 1849'ers, that is.  But most gold mining ended here many years ago, and once active mines like this so-called Wabash mine near Amador City California became tourist attractions.  Here's a photo I took of my son and his friend when we toured that mine in March 2011.  The boys were delighted with the opportunity to "pan" for gold in a flume, though the nuggets planted in the bags of sand I bought for this exercise were pyrite and brass painted rocks.  During that spring 2011 visit, our guide told us that the mine would soon be closing as a tourist attraction and reopening as a working mine because the price of gold--which has been on the rise for several years, especially since the Great Recession--had reached a point where it exceeded the cost of extraction.  Sure enough, by fall of 2011, the mine was once again dedicated to the industrial extraction of gold.  You can see a photo of that at bottom, along with a photo of the signage for the tourist attraction, a silhouette of old-fashioned mining equipment, which remains even after the closure to tourists.    

I wonder what impact the closure of a tourist attraction like this one will have on the region as a destination, compared to the presumably positive economic effect of the actual extraction of gold.  This will probably depend in part on how hefty an extraction tax Amador County levies on the precious mineral.

Postscript in New York Times from April, 2023:  Eureka!  After California's Heavy Rains, Gold Seekers are Giddy.

Chinese officials concerned about rural unrest

That's the key point of Mark McDonald's piece in the International Herald Tribune summarizing comments from Chen Guangcheng, the activist who escaped house arrest last month and subsequently was permitted to leave China for the United States, where he is studying law at New York University.  The headline for McDonald's piece summarizes it nicely, "Activist Says Chinese Officials 'Terribly Afraid' of Rural Unrest."  Here's a quote from Guangcheng's interview with Ian Johnson of the NYT Beijing bureau:

People abroad look at China's human rights situation and they mainly see the situation of better-known people.  But they don't know about all the violations of ordinary people.  But they'd on't now about all the violations of ordinary people. ... People abroad look at China's human rights situation and they mainly see the situation of better-known people.  But they don't know about all the violations of ordinary people.

Guangcheng goes on to  elaborate on the "huge number of the disabled in China, or the women who are bullied and abused, or the orphans in China," saying that "officials are so afraid--because they know the true extend of the problem.  They are terribly afraid of people organizing."

Based on Guangcheng's other comments, it appears that "ordinary people" refers mostly to rural Chinese.

[The situation is] very delicate in the countryside right now.  This is why they constantly resort to detentions and so on.  They don't even try to find an excuse, they just do it--they are that scared. 

*** 

There is nothing the leaders can do.  There is a saying in China that if you are not correct, how can you correct others?  Their sons and daughters have moved overseas and they are working in China all by themselves. ... But they are very clear that if it continues like this they are going to be devastated.   

*** 

People [abroad] often just focus on elite in China's cities.  If they do, they will completely misunderstand modern-day China.  The most important cases over the past year come from the countryside.  Westerners like to train local officials, to improve their understanding of the law.  But when there's been an improvement, it's not because of improving the quality of officials; it's because the ordinary people grasp the law and push. ... [T]he decisive pressure for change is at the grassroots level.  

Read related posts here, here, here, and here.  

Is Montana different? In context of campaign finance law, Supreme Court says "no"

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday issued its decision in American Tradition Partnership, Inc. v. Bullock, the case under which the Court determined the constitutionality of Montana's campaign finance law. That law, which dates to 1912, bans corporate money from campaigns. (A law passed a few years later limits individual donations to $160/person.) The U.S. Supreme Court held on Monday that the law banning corporate money is unconstitutional because it conflicts with the 2010 decision in Citizens United.  Four justices joined in a dissent written by Steven Breyer:

Moreover, even if I were to accept Citizens United, this Court's legal conclusion should not bar the Montana Supreme Court's finding, made on the record before it, that independent expenditures by corporations did in fact lead to corruption in Montana.  Given the history and political landscape to Montana, that court concluded that the State had a  compelling interest in limiting independent expenditures by corporations.  2011 MT 328, para. 36-37, 363 Mont. 220, 235-36, 271 P.3d 1, 36-37.  Thus, Montana's experience, like considerable experience elsewhere since the Court's decision in Citizens United, casts grave doubt on the Court's supposition that independent expenditures do not corrupt or appear to do so.    

Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer published this op-ed, "Mining for Influence," about the case in the New York Times earlier this month.  In it, Schweitzer describes how Montana came to adopt the law banning corporate money.  In short, a miner William A. Clark became wealthy overnight after finding a massive copper vein.

He bought up half the state of Montana, and if he needed favors from politicians, he bought those as well.  

In 1899 he decided he wanted to become a United States senator.  The State Legislature appointed United States senators in those days, so Clark simply gave each corruptible state legislator $10,000 in cash, the equivalent of $250,000 today.  

Clark "won" the "election," but when the Senate learned about the bribes, it kicked him out.  

Schweitzer also explains the laws' consequences for Montana:

These laws have nurtured a rare, pure form of democracy.  There's very little money in Montana politics.  Legislators are basically volunteers:  they are ranchers, teachers, carpenters and all else, who put their professions on hold to serve a 90-day session, every odd year, for $80 a day. 

And since money can't be used to gain access, public contact with politicians is expected and rarely denied.

U.S. Senator Jon Tester of Montana had this to say in the the wake of Monday's Supreme Court decision:

The court's supposed to be full of smart, well-thought-out people, but they rolled back Montana 100 years, back to the time literally when millionaires and billionaires bought elections, and they did it under the guise of free speech, which is crazy.   This is really a sad day in American democracy.

It is worth noting that Tester's opponent in the upcoming election, Denny Rehberg, is well supported by groups like Crossroads GPS, whose donors are largely unidentified.

All of this left me wondering about the extent to which Montana's claim of exceptionalism relates to its rurality.  So I had a look at its brief in opposition to the petition for certiorari.  While that brief does not use the word "rural" or "nonmetropolitan," it does say this:

Issues of corporate influence, sparse population, dependence upon agriculture and extractive resource development, location as a transportation corridor, and low campaign costs make Montana especially vulnerable to continued efforts of corporate control to the detriment of democracy and the republican form of government.  Clearly Montana has unique and compelling interests to protect through preservation of this statute.  

And that, to me, those descriptors suggest rurality.  And, indeed, as of the 2000 Census, 50.2% of the state's residents lived in places with populations less than 2,500, the Census Bureau definition for a rural place.  That makes Montana one of the most rural states in the nation, at least as measured by the percentage of population who are rural dwellers.

Movement to online newspaper publication leaves out rural and poor

Roy Hoffman of the Mobile Press-Register published this op-ed in the New York Times this morning about the recent decision by The New Orleans Times-Picayune and other papers in its publishing family (including the Mobile paper), to publish a print edition only three days a week.  Here's an excerpt that highlights the consequences of that decision for the poor--and the rural--especially in light of Alabama's digital divide.

Countless folks I've profiled in my home state have been old, poor or seen as marginal; they live down rural lanes or speak English as a sec on language.  Yet they clutch the paper when it's in their hands.  they are hungry, too, for news of their community, town, state and nation seven days a week.

Hoffman goes on to offer an anecdote based on his recent reporting in Prichard, Alabama, a small city of 23,000 that made national news last year when it was unable to pay its pension obligations.  The poverty rate in Pritchard is a whopping 36%, and the police chief there estimated that just 25% of the population have Internet access.  Hoffman believes many there rely on the print edition of the newspaper:

How many Prichard residents read the newspaper itself?  Far more than subscribe, I'd harvard to guess. I've written many stories about people and places in that community, and I know how papers get passed around at the barbershop, the church social, the front porch.  

Hoffman goes on to make a plea for government intervention to make news accessible to all in this digital age of newspaper belt-tightening:

Whether it's through a commitment to public Wi-Fi service in every town, or giving tax deductions for family computers and online services, or offering free classes on how to operate what for many are still newfangled gadgets, attention must be paid.

Mississippi about to (effectively) lose sole abortion clinic

Campbell Robertson reported in the New York Times a few days ago on a Mississippi law that will effectively close the state's only abortion clinic, in Jackson, when the law becomes effective on July 1.  The story features Dr. Willie Parker, who flies from Washington to Jackson each week to be one of several abortion providers at the clinic.  Here's an excerpt:

[O]nce inside, Dr. Parker will begin seeing the young women who have made their way from all corners of the state to the Jackson Women's Health Organization, Mississippi's only abortion clinic.   

All of these journeys may end soon after July 1, when a new Mississippi law goes into effect.  The law, which was passed this spring by large margins in the State Legislature, requires all physicians associated with an abortion clinic to have admitting privileges at local hospitals.  

Most physicians who work at the clinic do not have such privileges, and three of four of them do not even live in Mississippi.  Several of them are currently scrambling to acquire such privileges.

I note in particular Robertson's reference to "all corners of the state" because most of those corners are rural.  As of 2000, more than half (53.5%) of Mississippi's residents were living in rural places, defined as population clusters of less than 2,500 or in open territory.  I wrote about abortion access for rural women--and the Supreme Court's misunderstanding of the burden of rural spatiality in this context--here.

Does ignorance of fracking reflect ignorance of rurality?

A recent University of Texas at Austin Energy Poll showed that 35% of Americans have never heard of fracking and that 28% are not familiar with it.  Because so much fracking occurs in rural and quasi- rural places, I can't help wonder if this is just another reflection of the invisibility of rural.

Other recent headlines about fracking are:

Environmental Groups Say They Will Fight Cuomo's Gas Drilling Plan
and
In Western Pennsylvania, An Energy Boom Not Visibly Stifled

Locals battle feds for water in historic Tombstone, Arizona

The dateline is Tombstone, Arizona, and the story is one of western grit, along with federal-local tension over repairing a water system as old as the city itself.  The city claims the rights to 25 springs to supply its water, and it set out to repair three of them following damage last year by rocks and trees dragged downhill in the wake of summer monsoons.  As journalist Fernanda Santos writes, "The underlying point of contention is an Old West conundrum:  who has authority over water that flows from federal land?"

Here's the lede for Santos's story in the New York Times, which highlights the federal-local tension:

The rules were clear:  no vehicles and no heavy machinery on the mountainside spot ravaged by fire and rain.  Fixing the PVC pipe that carries water from a spring in the Coronado National Forest to this old frontier boomtown, the United States Forest Service decreed, would have to be done by hand.  

* * * 

[T]his tourism outpost of dusty streets and restored saloons is waging a modern-day fight against an enemy its people say is just as threatening as the bad guys of the past:  the federal government.  

So rebel types from around the West came together to fix the Tombstone water system--by hand, insisting that the federal government had underestimated the town.  Santos described the motley crew as "men with long beards and handlebar mustaches, men in cowboy boots and roughed-up hiking shoes ... a city commissioner from Elko, Nev.; a state legislator from Utah; a rancher from Truth or Consequences, N.M.; and a Republican Congressional candidate from Arizona who is running to represent a district that is not Tombstone's."

The president of a local motorcycle group commented, "Big government has underestimated this city.  They thought we might abandon the whole thing when they made it so difficult, but this is not the way Tombstone operates."

A case about the city's claim to the springs that feed its water system is pending before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Tombstone, with a population of 1,562, is in Cochise County, Arizona, population 71,518.

Arkansas Supreme Court strikes down death penalty law

The Arkansas Supreme Court yesterday struck down the state's death penalty law, "faulting a provision that permitted the Corrections Department to select the fatal drugs used in an execution."  In the 5 to 2 ruling, the justices sided with ten death row inmates who had challenged the constitutionality of the law.  The majority held that the legislature--not the department of corrections--must set the quantity and type of drugs used in lethal injections.  Read the New York Times coverage of the decision here.

This ruling comes in the context of a shortage of the anesthetic sodium thiopental, one of three drugs used in lethal injections.  When the active ingredient in the drug became too difficult to obtain, the company that had previously manufactured sodium thiopental stopped making it in 2010. Arkansas has no doses of the drug left. The Arkansas law does not specify whether a substitute for this drug is acceptable.  Arkansas has not held an execution since 2005, while it has dealt with legal challenges.

Law and Order in the Ozarks (Part CIII): Six-year sentence for drug conviction

The June 13, 2012 issue of the Newton County Times reports that a 41-year-old man was sentenced to six years following his May conviction for delivery of a controlled substance (methamphetamine), a Class Y felony.  The man, William Bolin, delivered 1.9 grams of methamphetamine in transactions in July 2011.  Those transactions were "controlled by law enforcement."   Bolin's sentence was linked to his plea deal, which dismissed one felony count and amended the remaining count to a charge of possession with purpose to deliver, a class C felony.  Bolin was also fined $1000 and ordered to pay court costs and other fees.

In other matters:

• A 40-year-old man was charged with two counts of aggravated assault, a Class D felony.  He allegedly rammed with back of a 2000 Chrysler automobile into a 2001 KIA Sportage, occupied by a driver and passenger.  In a plea agreement, the man was sentenced to 36 months of probation and fined $1000 along with court costs and fees.  He must also commit 30 days of community service and have no further contact with the victim. 
• A 25-year-old woman was charged with a Class Y felony of introduction of a controlled substance into the body of another person.  "According to court information the defendant was breastfeeding her child at the time when she admitted to smoking methamphetamine.  The child was 'drug tested,' and the results revealed that the infant child tested positive for methamphetamine and amphetamine."  In another case file, the woman, Elizabeth Weiland, was charged with two counts of endangering the welfare of a minor, a Class A Misdemeanor.  The Class Y felony charge was subsequently dismissed in a nolle prosequi order.  
• A 26-year old man was charged with criminal attempt to manufacture methamphetamine, a Class A felony; possession of a controlled substance, alprazolam, a Class A misdemeanor; possession fox  controlled substance, hydrocodone, a class D felony and possession of a controlled substance, marijuana, a Class A misdemeanor.  About a year earlier, the man, Christopher Walker "had admitted buying pseudoephedrine for several meth cooks and that he had made some himself.  He had in his possession a pouch continuing several syringes, a small quantity of marijuana, alprazolam and hydrocodone.  The items were seized following a traffic stop by Jasper Police. Officials with the 14th Judicial Drug Task Force intervened in the case."  Pursuant to a plea agreement, the defendant was sentenced to five years probation on each charge, to run concurrently.        
• A 19-year-old woman was charged with conspiracy to manufacture methamphetamine after she acquired 4 grams of pseudo ephedrine, lithium batteries, and cold packs containing ammonium nitrate.  The prosecuting attorney subsequently dropped the charges because he learned that she  was under duress from her co-defendant.  
• A 44-year-old man was charged with two counts of terroristic threatening after he recorded telephone conversations in which he threatened bodily harm to two individuals.  In a plea deal, the state amended the felony charges to one count of terroristic threatening, and the man was sentenced to a year of probation.  He was also fined $750 along with costs and fees and was ordered to have no further contact with the victim in that case. 
• A 35-year-old woman was charged with possession of firearms, knowing that she had previously been convicted of a felony.The arrest was made in February 2011 during a home visit by her probation and parole officer.  She pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of possessing an instrument of a crime, a class A misdemeanor, and was sentenced to a year  of probation. 

Feds sue municipalities in Utah, Arizona for religious discrimination, police harassment

The U.S. Justice Department has filed a lawsuit against Hildale, Utah and Colorado City, Arizona, for discriminating against residents who are not members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  Most residents of the neighboring border towns are members of the sect, and its shared police department, the Colorado City Police, is dominated by church members.  The suit accuses the Colorado City police of flouting the law by allowing sect members to "destroy crops and vandalize property of nonmembers."  Justice Department officials also accuse the officers of keeping "underage brides from running away," and the complaint alleges that the cities refuse "to provide electricity and water to nonmembers." Federal officials filed the lawsuit only after both the Utah and Arizona legislatures failed to pass bills that would have abolished the Colorado City Police Department. 

Read more here.  An earlier post briefly discussing Hildale/Colorado City is here. Colorado City's population is 4,821, and that of Hildale is 2,726.

Warren Jeffs, the spiritual leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, is serving a life sentence in Texas for having sex with under-age females.  Read more here and here.

Feds re-open investigations of Oglala Sioux deaths

The U.S. Attorney for South Dakota, Brendan Johnson, has announced the "re-examin[ation of] the circumstances surrounding dozens of deaths that occurred on or near the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, many dating back to the 1970s when the reservation was embroiled in political violence."  The original investigations into many of these deaths ruled them accidents or suicides, but the Oglala Sioux had in May sent Johnson a letter seeking the re-opening of 28 cases.

Mr. Johnson announced that a panel, including his top deputy, would re-consider 50 cases spanning 40 years.  Once that process is complete, he will decide whether any given case presents enough unanswered questions to merit asking the FBI or another agency to assist.  The New York Times quotes Johnson:

If we get the information, the evidence we need for get a prosecution, I don't care how old the cases are.  I don't think it is going to be a short process.  Wit this many cases it might take as long as a year, maybe two years, but I want to get this right.

Many of the deaths occurred between 1973 and 1976, a period known as the "reign of terror" at Pine Ridge.  The American Indian Movement (AIM) was in a power struggle at that time with tribal president Richard A. Wilson and his Guardians of the Oglala Nation, a paramilitary organization known as GOONs.  The period was "marked by deadly ambushes at highway checkpoints and gunfights that on occasion lasted for days."  Many Oglala Sioux believe that federal authorities failed to properly investigate deaths from this period because federal agents were implicated in some of those Indian deaths.

But the cause of some more recent deaths will also be considered, including the 1999 deaths of two relatives of the tribe's current vice president, Tom Poor Bear.  Poor Bear's brother and cousin were found beaten to death in Whiteclay, Nebraska, which borders the reservation.  Their deaths remain unsolved.

Read Timothy Williams coverage of these events in the New York Times here and here.