police prepare for change

As Bakken oil booms, police prepare for change

Booming oil production across a wide expanse of the Northern Plains is forcing law enforcement from the U.S. and Canada to gird for a spike in crimes ranging from drug trafficking and gun offenses to prostitution.

By MATTHEW BROWN

Associated Press

 

GLASGOW, Mont. —

Booming oil production across a wide expanse of the Northern Plains is forcing law enforcement from the U.S. and Canada to gird for a spike in crimes ranging from drug trafficking and gun offenses to prostitution.

Officials say up to 30,000 workers could descend on the Bakken oil fields of Montana, North Dakota and Saskatchewan in the next few years. The rural region is emerging as one of the top oil producing areas of North America, and the recent kidnapping and brutal murder of Montana teacher Sherry Arnold has drawn more attention to the changes brought on by the rapid pace of drilling.

In the wake of the killing in Sidney, federal prosecutors are holding a two-day retreat beginning Monday for dozens of police, border agents and other law enforcement to craft a common strategy to deal with rising crime. Two men are in custody in Arnold's case, which left residents shaken and led to a rise in applications to carry concealed weapons.

The town in Montana is in the heart of the booming oil fields, its once-quiet streets now jammed with oil company trucks and hotels booked full with workers.

U.S. Attorney Michael Cotter said Monday that the retreat was already in the works before Arnold's death. But he said it pointed to the importance of better coordination among law enforcement.

"It underscores the necessity and need for this meeting," Cotter said. "The population flux will naturally bring increased criminal activity to the area. It is imperative that our law enforcement establish open lines of communication between each other to ensure they are as responsive as possible."

In communities like Sidney and Williston, N.D., assaults, traffic offenses and other crimes are on the rise as drilling accelerates to meet the nation's strong appetite for domestic fuels.

The situation is exacerbated by a housing shortage that is spurring the construction of sprawling "man-camps" that can accommodate hundreds of out-of-state oil workers.

Government officials say the boom could last another decade or more as companies tap into a reserve estimated by the U.S. Geological Survey to hold more than 4 billion barrels of crude.

The suspects in Arnold's killing - 48-year-old Lester Van Water and 22-year-old Michael Spell - allegedly traveled to the Bakken from Colorado in search of jobs in the oil patch. Court records suggest Spell and Waters had been smoking crack cocaine and were living out of Waters' vehicle when they snatched Arnold off a Sidney street in the pre-dawn hours of Jan. 7.

Industry representatives say companies go to lengths to ensure the workers they hire won't cause trouble - either on the job or in the community.

Drug tests and background checks are standard for many companies, said Kari Cutting with North Dakota Petroleum Council. She added that the lack of housing can quickly deter would-be workers who show up without a position already secured.

"The fact is that neither of the gentleman involved in that unfortunate crime were involved in the oil industry," Cutting said. "We do know there are challenges. Any opportunity has challenges that need to be overcome, and we want to be part of the solution in all this."

101 year old marathoner

 This makes me very embarrassed with my 4 milers

101-year-old marathon runner says London race will be his last

19th Apr 2012 12:24pm | By Editor

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The world's oldest marathon runner, Londoner Fauja Singh, says this Sunday's London marathon will be his last.

Fauja, who was born in India but moved to the UK in the Sixties, took up marathon running at the age of 89 and has completed eight races since.
"Turning him into a marathon runner was one of the easiest jobs I've ever had," his coach Harmandar Singh told the BBC.
"If I said we're doing 10k he'd say 'why not 20?'
"I think the secret to his training regime and his attitude to life is that he's totally positive," he added.
Singh, who is a world record holder in the over 90s and over 100 category, said: "There's a song which says forget about age, your heart should be young.
"When people say you're over 100 I feel strange I don't consider myself to be old. If I start calling myself old I'll feel weaker."
"If I don't run, I don't keep moving that's hard for me. I always walk for two to three hours in the morning, even if I'm ill, I like to walk. It's my medicine," he added.
Singh turned up for his first training session in 1999 in a three piece suit and a pair of trainers and has since gone on to break multiple records and even appeared in an Adidas advert. He says the first 20 miles of marathon are easy, but "the last six I run talking to god".

Out of the woods

Mountain man' in biathlete's notorious abduction seeks parole

By Matt Gouras

Click photo to enlarge

This 1984 image shows "mountain man" Don Nichols, right, being taken into custody near Bozeman,...

HELENA, Montana -- A notorious "mountain man," who abducted a world-class athlete in 1984 to keep as a wife for his son, once wrote that blame for the "incident" lies with her and a would-be rescuer whom he shot and killed. Don Nichols undoubtedly will need to be more contrite later this month in front of the historically stern Montana Parole Board.

Nichols gained international notoriety for the bizarre crime and prolonged manhunt in the wilderness northwest of Yellowstone National Park that ended when a sheriff stormed his camp. He is now a frail, 81-year-old convict whose 150 pounds stretch over a six-foot frame.
Nichols and his son, Dan Nichols, were known to spend long stretches in the mountains living off the land. Prior to the abduction, they had lived for a year poaching game and growing hidden gardens at various camps they set up -- earning them both a "mountain man" moniker they embraced.
The elder Nichols comes up for parole April 27. He has a good track record in prison, where he has worked on the yard crew, and over the years has reportedly become a bit more apologetic for taking Kari Swenson.
But for years after the crime, he wasn't.
"We more or less only intimidated Kari into coming with us. We were only going to keep her with us for a few days if it didn't work out," Nichols wrote in a collection of letters, journals and lengthy manuscript dating from the late 1980s and early 1990s now housed at the University

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of Montana library. "Also, we treated her very humanely all the time, in fact cordially, except for the unusual circumstances. I did not hit Kari. The chain involved was a real lightweight chain. One end was fastened comfortably around her waist and other end around a tree."
Nichols sent the manuscript, which had previously been released in hopes of publishing a book, along with his personal collection of letters and notes to the library, intending for them to be preserved.

great post

Stole this from the Commical because the writer really states the issue facing our dumbing down of the society


Marjorie Smith: Anti-intellectualism a threat to social fabric

Posted: Tuesday, March 20, 2012 11:14 am

Marjorie Smith: Anti-intellectualism a threat to social fabricBy Marjorie SmithThe Bozeman Daily Chronicle | 21 comments

If someone asked you to name Montana’s most important problem, what would you say? My first response when I was asked the other day was education. And then I puzzled over that answer.
Judging by test scores and graduation rates, Montana does a better job on education than many states in this nation. Yet there are nagging concerns. While Bozeman provides its children one of the best educations in the state, and Bozeman voters regularly demonstrate the priority they place on schools with support of bond issues, Montana as a state has not been so supportive recently. Facing a legislative session next year, to be conducted by many legislators yet to be elected this fall, it’s hard to feel entirely confident although perhaps Bozeman’s pro-education stance can be spread statewide as our school superintendent leaves us to work for education on a statewide basis.

Montana’s support for higher education has been notably lukewarm in recent years. Tuition increases are making higher education unaffordable for many of our citizens, unless they take out large student loans. Students graduate these days with debt loads so great many say they can’t foresee buying homes or starting families, activities that have, in the past, been one of the engines of economic growth in this nation.

Just this week in Washington, D.C., college students delivered more than 130,000 letters to congressional leaders asking them to stop the interest rates on federally subsidized Stafford student loans from increasing from 3.4 to 6.8 percent, due to happen this summer if Congress doesn’t do something about it. Budget hawks warn that keeping interest rates low could cost the federal treasury as much as $6 billion. Supporters of education argue the problem arises from treating higher education as a personal commodity rather than a public good.
At least one Republican presidential candidate certainly takes that view. Rick Santorum’s accusation that President Obama is a snob for wanting everyone to aspire to higher education completely ignores the fact that having an educated populace benefits our society as a whole.
Thinking back to horrors like China’s Cultural Revolution, which forced the most highly educated to labor in the fields, resonates for some of us as Santorum’s anti-intellectualism rears its head in the public square. Perhaps that’s what led to my response to the “most important problem” question. I heard the same thing privately a few months ago when someone I know grumbled to his friend that while his wife’s relatives were really smart, they needed to realize that it wasn’t the educated people who built this country.
From what I know of this man’s life, I think he used the word “built” literally, as in built the railroads and cut the timber to make the railroad ties. He’s probably right that not many of those builders had college degrees, and I don’t think he’d be impressed if I said, “What about the engineers who laid out the railroads?” I suspect he thinks he, with his GED, could have done it himself by scuffing his heel in the dirt and telling his crew, “Let’s build it here.” The way he sees it, he’s done just fine, he owns his home, pays his bills, and he didn’t need some high falutin’ college degree. So why would anyone else?
But what’s Rick Santorum’s excuse? He has one more college degree than Barack Obama, but apparently considers aspirations to make higher education more widely available in this country to be elitist.
Of course, the point is that without a well-educated populace, we can’t hope to compete and succeed in this rapidly changing world, either as a state or as a nation. And while Montana does pretty well educating it kids, that guy over there – the one complaining about his wife’s over-educated family – is a product of Montana’s education systems, a half century ago. Let’s hope he’s not a harbinger of our future.
Marjorie Smith is a Bozeman writer, editor and former member of U.S. Foreign Service. She can be reached at yokoi@mcn.net.
© 2012 The Bozeman Daily Chronicle. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

weird Montana laws

Weird Montana Laws

• Prostitution is considered a "crime against the family".
• One may not pretend to abuse an animal in the presence of a minor.
• It is illegal to have a sheep in the cab of your truck without a chaperone.
• It is a felony for a wife to open her husband's mail.
• It is a misdemeanor to show movies that depict acts of felonious crime.
• It is illegal for a man and a woman to have sex in any other position other than missionary style.
• Seven or more indians are considered a raiding or war party and it is legal to shoot them.

Read more: Weird Montana http://www.weirdfacts.com/weird-state-laws/45-weird-montana.html#ixzz1rr5kZ2vF

The City rams a bond issue down our throat

  Bozeangeles is going to use a selective mailing to ram a school bond issue down our throats. The teachers, construction companies and lad developers will get the ballots early the rest of us will get  them at the last moment.

  Its not that we don't need another school or that the infrastructure needs modernization . Its the fact that they  want to keep bleeding the homeowners dry , while the economy is still in trouble. They need to broaden the tax base . How about a sin tax

A great way to go

When I die, I want to die like my grandfather--who died peacefully in his sleep. Not screaming like all the passengers in his car.'
--Author Unknown

Great Bill Board

Good Friday Weather Report

Of course yesterday little Goat was running around in her bathing suit tiday we have a winter storm warning . The Tomato plants are in the garage covered with plastic

$ 200.00 bounty on a fish

Maryland puts gift card bounty on 'fish from hell'

By Greg Wilson

Published April 05, 2012

| FoxNews.com

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  This fish is even meaner than it looks

Wildlife officials in Maryland have put a bounty on the snakehead, the so-called "fish from hell" that can migrate on land and devastates the eco-systems of lakes, ponds and streams.

The state will give out $200 gift cards for Bass Pro Shops as well as other prizes for catching and killing the fish, which is native to Africa and Asia but is believed to have made its way to America through Asian seafood merchants. 

“We do not want snakeheads in our waters," said Maryland Department of Natural Resources Inland Fisheries Director Don Cosden. "This initiative is a way to remind anglers that it is important to catch and remove this invasive species of fish.” 

The first time a snakehead was seen in Maryland was when an angler caught an 18-inch specimen in 2002 in Crofton Pond, 20 miles north of Washington, D.C. Since then, the population has grown and they've been caught in dozens of bodies of water, including the Potomac River and tributaries.

The fish are hardy enough to survive up to four days on land, and can migrate up to a quarter mile between bodies of water by wriggling on their fins. National Geographic has dubbed the snakehead "fishzilla," and it is also frequently referred to as the "fish from hell." They can grow to more than 2 feet long and have been found in at least seven states.

“We don’t expect that anglers will eradicate the snakehead population,” said Joe Love, the state's Department of Natural Resources Tidal Bass program manager. “We do believe this promotion and inspiration of anglers can help control the snakehead population. The information we gain from the Angler’s Log reports are also helpful in assessing the abundance, spread and impact of these feisty fish.”

The ravenous appetites that can destroy native populations actually works against the fish when humans go after them. One fisherman told Outdoor Life blogger Gayne C. Young they bite at any type of bait.

“These fish clobber any type of moving bait you throw, Rodney Hose said. "When they smash into your lure, be prepared for a fight -- especially if they are around some sort of cover.”

To enter the contest, anglers must catch, kill and then post a picture of themselves with a dead snakehead fish caught in Maryland on the DNR’s Angler’s Log webpage. Winners will be drawn on November 30, 2012. Last year, 69 anglers entered the contest, killing 82 of the creatures.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/04/05/maryland-puts-gift-card-bounty-on-fish-from-hell/?test=latestnews#ixzz1rCHRggFB

santa Muerte

NACOZARI, Mexico—It was a family people took pity on, one the government and church helped with free food, used clothes, and farm animals. The men were known as trash pickers. Some of the women were suspected of prostitution.

Mexican prosecutors are investigating the poor family living in shacks outside a small town near the U.S. border as alleged members of a cult that sacrificed two 10-year-old boys and a 55-year-old woman to Santa Muerte, or Saint Death, a figure adored mostly by outlaws but whose popularity is growing across Mexico and among Hispanics in the United States.

The killings have shocked the copper mining village of Nacozari, on the edge of the Sierra Madre, and may be the first ritual sacrifices linked to the popular saint condemned by the Roman Catholic Church. Known as "flaquita," or "the skinny one," the figure known as Saint Death is portrayed as a skeleton wearing a hooded robe and holding a scythe, much like the Grim Reaper.

Authorities say the throats and the wrists of the victims were cut with knives and axes, and their blood was spread on a Santa Muerte altar. Their bodies were then buried near the shacks where the alleged cult members lived.