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Editor’s note: Guest contributor David Kershner is a land conservation consultant who did research for Sightline’s book Tax Shift. In case you haven’t noticed, environmental tax shifting is receiving national attention, thanks in part to Al Gore. Last month Gore gave a speech at New York University in which he proposed replacing the payroll tax with a carbon tax . Last week Time Magazine columnist Joe Klein wrote that he...

** Late yesterday, the Montana supreme court unanimously upheld the lower court’s decision to invalidate Initiative 154 because of pervasive fraud. ** Speaking of fraud, one of Howard Rich’s key shell organizations, Chicago-based Americans for Limited Government, has been operating without a license to do business for almost 9 months. ALG has pumped well over a million in cash into the property ballot measures. It’s not clear yet what the legal ramifications...

Hot off the presses folks: “Property Wrongs,” a new report from Sightline, documents a growing backlash against Measure 37. It chronicles six Oregon communities deeply affected by Measure 37—ranging from a suburban community in Marion County outside Salem to owners of a small resort at Newberry Crater National Volcanic Monument. The report also examines the implications for other states considering similar initiatives this fall. Washington’s I-933, Idaho’s Proposition 2, Montana’s...

New poll data from Montana: I-154, the property-rights measure, had the support of 51 percent of those polled, while only 24 percent were against it. 25 percent said they are undecided. A district court invalidated the initiative because of fraudulent signature-gathering, but the state supreme court has yet to rule on the case and could overturn the lower court’s decision. In any event, valid or not, I-154 will appear on Montanan’s...

[Note: This is part of a series.] What do the words “fraud” and “unconstitutional” have in common? (Hint: It relates to my latest obsession.) Give up? Okay, the answer is that those words were used by courts in Nevada and Montana to describe the “takings” initiatives in those states. What’s perhaps even more interesting is that those words—and the legal reasoning that engendered them—could easily be applied to the mirror-image...

At 21, in a sweating, dirt-floor shack on an island in a Nicaraguan lake, I ate a lunch of coarse tortillas and salted beans. My crooked-toothed host, who invited me for the meal when he saw me standing disappointed outside of the sole restaurant in the hamlet (it was closed), peppered me with questions about life in the United States. Soon, he broached the subject that most intrigued him, “Tu...

Note: This is part of a series. I’ve been writing a lot about Washington’s I-933 lately; here’s what’s happening in the rest of Cascadia. California: Napa County voters handily defeated Measure A, another cookie-cutter “pay-or-waive” initiative. Idaho: Proponents just announced that they have enough signatures to put “This House Is My Home” on the ballot in November. A silly ballot title, yes, but the initiative is much better written than,...

Some unexpected news: The Olympianis reporting that biodiesel is now cheaper than regular diesel. Until now, biodiesel consumers have had to pay a premium at the pump; making highway fuel from vegetable oil was more costly than pumping it out of the ground. But thanks to rapidly rising crude prices, that’s no longer true. Of couse, biodiesel still gets a $1 per gallon federal tax credit. Without that credit, biodiesel...

In today’s edition of TIDEPOOL: Today’s top story highlights some good news from Montana: Logging companies and environmental organizations announce a compromise land-use plan for 3.3 million acres of national forest. And an article that will interest British Columbians: Native Vancouver Islander Patrick Moore has risen to new heights. Moore, a founder of Greenpeace and, more recently, the scourge of many forest activists, is now partnering with ex-EPA head Christine...

Sources of information about how community design and traffic affect health.