OP-ED
By Patricia Grabow
Opinion Editorials state the views solely of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Community Journal.
Two weeks ago I vented about multinational corporations’ aims to maximize profit (okay) by controlling politicians any way they can (not okay). Ever since they legally became “persons” years ago, they proved unworthy of it since they have no restraint about exploiting or abusing the communities in which they move. This perversion to benefit stockholders exclusively leads them to extract and dominate whatever poor town has the bad luck to land in their crosshairs. Greed being greed no matter the year, I suggested we’re living in a bad new Yellowstone series to be titled “2025.”
I’ve mentioned before the book Billionaire Wilderness, essentially an ethnographic study of how large corporations took over Jackson Hole, WY. It has also found a kindred spirit in another insightful book, Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World by Anand Giridharadas. Recommended to me, ironically, by one of our Livingston commissioners. At the beginning it quotes from Tolstoy's Writings on Civil Disobedience and Nonviolence, “I sit on a man’s back choking him and making him carry me, and yet assuring myself and others that I am sorry for him and wish to lighten his load by all means possible… except by getting off his back.”
Honestly, for our new Yellowstone 2025 series, reality does the real work, and we would not have to make up much. This week or two has illustrated once again how the large financial interests have taken Livingston over, the will of the public be damned. Even three reasonably smart commissioners seemed not prepared enough to and ask the right questions and challenge assumptions before making an important decision with the start of this year.
It’s safe to say that no matter your political affiliation or background, we live in a beautiful place. The sun over the Absarokas, the Yellowstone River winding through this pristine, historic original rail entrance to the world's first national park. My own grandfather came to Livingston in 1883 like many others by sooty train instead of a covered wagon. So my family has seen its share of things. And that love of the land resonates: people naturally tend to support those who share it at election times.
And then the rubber meets the road. It makes the latest vote for annexation near Albertson’s for the proposed USDA structure a—well, let’s be blunt and call it the cave-in to money interests that it was.
I mentioned previously about the 1600 of us who participated in crafting the city Growth Policy; to plan intelligently while keeping character and environment a front and center value. It seems more people show up at galas tied to environmental protection than nearly anything else—and if it’s Backcountry Film Festival at the Depot just to benefit Loaves and Fishes, it can be pretty packed.
So when I talked last time about Printing for Less (PFL) and investor partner Goldman Sachs being unsuccessful at their first attempt to subvert the Growth Policy to make bigger bucks at the expense of the rest of us, its owner swore about those “blank environmentalists.” He cared little of what the people of Livingston worked and voted for. How dare these peasants not know their place!
So they schemed up a plan. Two of the elected city commissioners had worked for a nonprofit that actually has the word of all things “environment” in its name. Never mind that the issue crosses political lines in the shared public interest, this could be exploited. So with more money than you could count in a lifetime (this is how law sadly works these days), they threatened the city with two lawsuits. Does it matter that we have an attorney? Apparently not much, because if the threatener has bigger pockets than you, the risk is they could cost the city more money than it has in its annual budget.
To borrow the trendy expression these days, that’s seriously messed up.
So what did the commission do? They retreated and created a “conflict of interest ordinance.” Never mind that was never an issue in their prior dealings with HRDC. Somehow they apparently believed this might partly insulate us—or them—even at the expense of the issue that earned many of them bipartisan votes in the first place. So, Wall Street steamrolls over Main Street again, and the city reversed over its own Growth Policy, timidly claiming it was subject to “interpretation.”
Bad move. The Growth Policy has saved us many times before, and it is an understatement to call it an amazing work. Anyone can praise it, but when push comes to shove, it needs defenders.
You can’t say the predators and bullies aren’t skilled in their amorality.
I called that vote a mistake in the past, but there’s more to it. The commission has a minority member whose votes have sided with big money pretty consistently over time. At the beginning of the year, when the commission voted to elect a chair, they did not prioritize who would represent them philosophically, but instead made lame junior-high statements like that the only difference in the chair is that the person runs the meetings. Speaking as one who has attended most of the commission meetings for twenty-five years, including sitting on the thing, let me say it has now been shown how absolutely not true that is.
And this bad choice, I argue, has weighed against the clear wishes of the voters and should be very carefully remembered in the next election. It’s what you see on a larger scale in Winners Take All and what Tolstoy said about putting aside the ego and just getting off of people’s backs.
The consequences are real. You might not read about it in the other newspaper in town, but behind the scenes the rest of us just try to go on with our lives. PFL, in its new capacity as a 500-pound gorilla, is already looking at plans to sprawl out two more truck stops at the 330 exit on US I-90, making existence difficult and even harder for our existing community businesses, and critically not giving a rip for the choke it puts around the neck of the rest of Livingston as a whole, including the 350 core downtown businesses.
As a friend of mine used to say, when people tell you who they are, believe them.
The author of Winners Take All at the outset dedicates the book to his “Orion and Zora and the 300,000 children born today,” with the hope that you will see through our [fiscal bully] illusions.
A quarter century only makes it more obvious. Big money has only to waltz in, drop strategic donations or make threats, and it’s very easy to make people cave. I fear it could have been true with the latest annexation also—and I have little doubt developers somewhere are already drooling at the thought of the next one.
It’s true commissions have not been swayed enough in the past by overwhelming public opinion against annexations, but we have to keep trying. At the very least, we need to challenge the conflict of interest dodge, keep showing up at meetings, and make defending our Growth Policy a serious issue in the next election.
But I wonder if GoFundMe could help with a titanium spinal reinforcement surgery or two.