Combat! blog hews to resolutions, isn’t useful

By Dan Brooks in Uncategorized 3 Comments
A scrivener

A scrivener

Remember that thing I wrote the other day about how the first two-hour slot of my workday is currently devoted to fiction? Some days, two hours is all you get. There is no Combat! blog today, owing to a surfeit of other obligations. While I type them words for readers who pay better than you, how about you read this long-ish Politco story about the revitalization of Des Moines, headlined How America’s Dullest City Got Cool. Caveat: it’s still not that cool. I know because I grew up there, and I return often to visit my family. But it’s much cooler now than it was in when I was a surly teen. Basically, the story has two parts: Des Moines was America’s dullest city (when I lived there,) then it got cool (after I left.) Colin Woodard puts it better than I do, and you should read his version. I’ll see you back here Monday, with an actual damn blog in addition to my secret novella.

What is the Carlyle Group doing with our water company?

By Dan Brooks in Uncategorized 0 Comment
The Mountain Water Company (artist's conception)

The Mountain Water Company (artist’s conception)

If you do not live in Missoula, you may be but dimly aware of the city’s struggle to buy the Mountain Water company. In June, Judge Karen Townsend ordered The Carlyle Group to sell the town’s water infrastructure to the City of Missoula as eminent domain. It was valued at $88.6 million, a number the city briefly appealed before withdrawing on January 6. On January 11, Liberty Utilities announced that it had finalized purchase of Mountain Water, along with two other water works in California, by purchasing its parent company, Park Water.

Ordered to sell Mountain Water to the city of Missoula six months ago, Carlyle just sold it to somebody else. The move took everyone by surprise, including the city and the Montana Public Services commission. The PSC has to approve every utility sale in the state, and they didn’t approve this one. But Liberty utilities has reserved the right to “raise jurisdictional issues” if the PSC tries to overturn the deal. Because Liberty acquired it in an “upstream transaction,” Mountain Water still has the same owner: Park Water. It’s just that Park Water is now owned by Liberty Utilities instead of the Carlyle Group.

So now the City of Missoula still buys Mountain Water from Park Water for $88.6 million, right? Liberty just deposits the check instead of Carlyle. Maybe—unless the Montana Supreme Court finds for Carlyle in its appeal of the eminent-domain condemnation, and as long as the PSC doesn’t make Mountain Water the object of an interstate lawsuit among two regulatory agencies and a hedge fund, and as long as Liberty doesn’t add any new lawsuits of its own.

The city will have to hire lawyers to represent its interests in all these cases. So far, our bill for this process comes to $4 million. That’s 5% of the purchase price. At want point does the cost of doing business exceed our willingness to buy? If the answer is never, Carlyle can easily take us into deep water.

The Carlyle Group took in $962 million of revenue in 2014. It’s possible Mountain Water has generated more income during than it cost to keep it tied up in court. There are a lot of reasons to interpret the multinational equity fund’s bizarre move last week as part of a war of attrition. You can read all about ’em in this week’s column for the Missoula Independent.

This quagmire is becoming a boondoggle. If you’re just catching up to this story, now is a good time to jump in. The Indy’s own Kate Whittle wrote this handy explainer describing the chronology and salient issues in the case. We’ll be back tomorrow with Friday links!

Daines, Zinke decry president’s “unconstitutional gun grab”

By Dan Brooks in Uncategorized 2 Comments
Rep. Ryan Zinke (R–MT) grabs a gun constitutionally.

Rep. Ryan Zinke (R–MT) grabs a gun constitutionally.

You don’t need to print the American flag on an AR-15. If you’re holding one—indoors, with your finger on the trigger, as former Navy SEAL and current representative from Montana Ryan Zinke is well trained to do above—people will know you’re American. Guns are an essential part of the American experiment. They’re what separated us from Britain in the 18th century, and they’re what separates a new generation of Americans from their faces in the 21st. The Second Amendment guarantees that we all get as many as we want. And despite juridical and popular disagreement over what the authors of the Constitution meant by “well-regulated militia,” I think we can agree it’s unconstitutional to regulate guns at all.

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Updated State of the Union Address guest list

By Dan Brooks in Uncategorized 3 Comments
President Obama delivers his State of the Union address in 2015.

President Obama delivers his State of the Union address in 2015.

On Sunday, President Obama announced that he would be leaving a seat open at his State of the Union Address for the victims of gun violence. This morning, Rep. Steve King (R-IA) announced that he, too, would leave one of his guest seats empty, to protest abortion. “I have reserved it to commemorate the lives of more than 55 million aborted babies, the chorus of voices that have never been heard in this world but are heard beautifully and clearly in the next world,” he said, adding that he would not attend the address himself. In light of these changes, the updated guest list is as follows:

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Still real sick

By Dan Brooks in Uncategorized 7 Comments
Stringer MD advises me to take two naps and feed him in the morning.

Stringer, MD advises me to take two naps and feed him in the morning. Or right now.

Despite the revolutionary treatment administered to me by Stringer, Medical Dog, I am still sick. I would say this is the sickest I’ve been all year, but remember when I dislocated my shoulder, developed painful complications from my vasectomy, and contracted a virus of the inner ear that gave me the spins for two months? I do. This common cold or possibly flu is as nothing to me. I am modern man, and if I am not as robust as my ancestors, I have at least practiced putting up with mild annoyances. There is no blog today, because my lungs are full of cotton and I’m barely hanging on. But when I’m feeling rotten, I compose a little song, which soothes me when I’m moody and I feel like passing on. I just whistle and remember that this year will soon be gone.

I’ll see you in 2016. I promise.