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| Jul 29, 2010 - 06:42 PM |
Queen City News - Helena's FREE Weekly Newspaper |
Helena, Montana |
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“War is hell.” – Gen. Wm. Tecumseh Sherman, 1880
“Let’s roll!” – George W. Bush, 2001
As this column continues to point out, the utility deregulation bill passed in haste by the 1997 Montana Legislature will continue to wreak economic havoc on this state. The damage is mounting, including these events to date:
In late 1999, Montana Power Company sold off its electrical generation facilities and dumped the proceeds into its telecom subsidiary, Touch America. The hydropower dams, now owned by Pennsylvania-based PPL, are now exempt from state authority, with no long-term obligation to sell cheap power to Montana customers.
In 2000, several Montana heavy industries cut back, and some shut down for good because they were exposed to the inflated wholesale power market created by deregulation.
In 2002, MPC sold off its electricity and natural gas distribution systems to NorthWestern Corp. of South Dakota, and Montana Power’s residential customers were hit with a 40-percent increase in generation costs plus an extra monthly charge to pay off MPC’s “stranded costs” allowed under the deregulation act.
By the fall of 2002, MPC was now Touch America, a losing telecom company that had spent or was looted of almost all of the money from sale of the utility’s assets. The stock price fell to less than $1 per share, but the top executives received millions in bonuses. The collapse of earnings and stock price caused many former MPC employees and retirees and other Montana residents to lose significant personal investment assets and their hopes for a secure retirement.
By now, there were several schemes to build new coal- and gas-fired power plants in Montana, a state that historically exported 55 percent of its generated power, and to stick the Montana ratepayers with the costs of building and operating these new plants, while PPL could sell most of its cheaply made power on the open market, out of state.
All of this carnage could have been stopped by one person: Marc Racicot. Instead of vetoing this ill-conceived piece of legislation, Racicot supported it and signed it into law. Then, after the 2000 election of his hand-picked nominee, Judy Martz, to his old office, Racicot left the state and went to work lobbying for Enron Corp. and the electric utility industry, using his connections to George W. Bush to lobby Western states and Congress for more utility deregulation. According to U.S. Senate lobbying reports, he also registered to lobby for relaxation of power plant emissions and suspension of the 1935 Public Utilities Holding Company Act, co-sponsored by Montana Sen. Burton K. Wheeler in response to the 1920s Enron-like abuses by big utilities.
In early December 2001, Bush appointed Racicot to head the Republican National Committee, and Racicot kept lobbying and making high fees, though he said he had stopped lobbying for Enron.
Racicot recently attacked the patriotism of Senate Democrats–including a number of wounded and crippled war veterans–for not blindly rubber-stamping Bush’s plans to invade Iraq with ground troops. Racicot gave Montana deregulation; now, he wants to give America war. And, like utility economics, war is something Marc Racicot has no expertise or experience in. Unfortunately, people could die because of his influence.
Marc Racicot, like George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Rep. Tom Delay, R-Texas, and many in the Bush administration, is a chickenhawk. These are fellows who themselves escaped or evaded the draft of the Vietnam Era but who are now beating the drums of war.
According to a press release on the Republican National Committee website, “Marc Racicot graduated from Carroll College in 1970, where he was an Army ROTC Graduate and Class President.” This is curious, since Carroll College only started its ROTC (Reserve Officer Training Corps) program in 2001.
From the available evidence, what really happened is this: The first draft lottery was held in December 1969. The intent was to equalize the disproportionate slaughter of poor, working-class and minority men and give the educated classes a chance to be soldiers. There were to be no more student deferments, except for those in Divinity School; that meant no cover for law school or any other post-graduate students. Bush, finished with Yale, avoided the draft by using family connections to jump over the waiting list and get into the Texas Air National Guard, where he avoided several months of duty.
Meanwhile, Marc Racicot was a senior at Carroll when his draft lottery number was drawn. With a birthday of July 24, 1948, he was 23 out of 366. With that low of a number, he was to be ripe for the draft once he finished college in the spring of 1970. But somehow, Racicot went onto law school at Missoula, where he reportedly joined Army ROTC. By the time he finished law school in 1973, the draft was over, Vietnam was winding down, and Racicot went into the Army–as an officer and lawyer and was stationed in West Germany for 32 months, safe, secure, well-paid and privileged, prosecuting soldiers under the Army’s restrictive system of martial law.
Could he have been drafted? Could he have been subjected to war like the 268 Montana men who were killed in action during Vietnam? Could he have maybe survived combat only to come home and experience a premature, post-war death or some of the mental and medical maladies that still afflict many of his fellow Montanans who answered the call?
A news report from Washington the day after the 1969 lottery was drawn stated: “The estimated 850,000 who will be 19 through 25 and classified 1-A or draft eligible as of Jan. 1 are directly affected by last night's drawing. After the first year, only men 19 at the beginning of the year and older men with deferments which have expired will be affected by the annual lotteries.
“For men now in the 19-25 pool with college or other deferments, the position their birthdays were drawn will determine their liability in the year their deferments expire. For example, President Nixon's son-in-law, David Eisenhower, apparently will be ripe for drafting when his deferment expires in mid-1970 upon his expected graduation from Amherst College. His birthday, March 31, was drawn 30th. Since men in the 30th position in his draft board probably will already have been drafted by June, David would go to the top of his draft board's list of eligibles.”
By May 1970, when I was released from the Army, men with lottery numbers 121 through 150 were being called up. Ultimately, men with numbers as high as 195 were drafted. But not Marc Racicot.
Four years ago, I wondered how somebody with a draft lottery number of 23 could have escaped the 1970 call-up and go on to law school for three years. So I contacted the U.S. Selective Service National Headquarters in Arlington, Va., and asked them for Marc Racicot’s draft board proceedings, which are a matter of public record. Fine, they answered, but where was he registered? I assumed it had to be either in Lincoln County (Libby), where he grew up and went to high school, or else Lewis and Clark County (Helena), where he attended Carroll College and his father coached basketball.
Weeks later, on Nov. 24, 1998, they called back: a search turned up no record of Racicot having registered for the draft in either of those counties, according to the Selective Service.
I found my own records from Lewis and Clark County, and those entries end when I was conscripted into the U.S. Army in May 1968. The records show others of my age group who were also drafted, deferred for medical reasons, or had enlisted. But no Marc Racicot.
There were 10 men from Racicot’s home county listed as killed in action in Vietnam. There were 12 men from Lewis & Clark County, some of whom were my good friends and high-school classmates. As any of my fellow veterans can attest, it is not pleasant looking over these lists. Nor is it pleasant to contemplate thoughts of chickenhawk politicians sending young troops to do what they were unwilling or somehow unavailable to do when the rest of us answered the call.
Did Marc Racicot even register for the draft? I don’t know. Maybe he registered at some unknown local board that let him slide. According to the evidence so far, maybe he did not register at all. He got out alive, which is good for him. But did he do it fairly?
When he attacked the Senate Democrats for not leaping onto Bush’s war bandwagon, Racicot said, "It's a legitimate issue because it reflects upon the character and capacity to lead." Well said. Now let’s apply that same criteria to the Bush, Cheney and Racicot military records.
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The Queen City News is published every Wednesday in Helena, MT, by Mossback Media, LLC.
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