Montana, Big Sky, Rural Towns Smaller

"Free Trade Agreements" Were Supposed to Help Family Farmers

Big Sandy, Montana's native-son Jeff Ament, the bass player for Pearl Jam was one of the many Big Sandy High School students who left after graduation to make his way in America and found fame and fortune as a result. What kind of town do his classmates who stayed have?

Two of the three banks have closed, the movie theater's marque is unlit, most of the restaurants have closed and Big Sandy High School has lost a third of it's student population, fewer farms, fewer kids in school.

The previous Presidents Bush and Clinton had pushed for the passage of The North American Free Trade Agreement which was supposed to benefit America's "Family Farmers" by increasing exports of American farm products as well as manufactured goods from our nation's then expanding factories and textile mills.

What happened in the intervening decade and three years?

Big "agribusiness" has grown even bigger as the mega-corporations buy-up what were once family farms landholdings at favorable prices at bankruptcy auctions. With commodity crop prices down the remaining small farmers don't have the money to purchase their former neighbors acreage.

The 2006 Congressional election gave Montana voters an opportunity to express their displeasure with the current adminstration in Washington, D.C. and send somebody to the United States Senate that will represent them rather than the Mega-Conglomerated Agricultural, Energy and Mining Corporations that have benefited from NAFTA.

Jon Tester, a Democrat , who has never lived anyplace than the farmhouse on his family's farm goes to Washington. Jon Tester has considerable local political experience, he was president of the Montana Senate and has served the people of his state in that legislative body for eight years. Of course, there is really no "farm system" (like Major League Baseball has) to prepare a legislator for the Senate Rules that govern the operations of that American institution, or the behind the scene (the Senate's "cloakroom") actions of it's members that defines the word "politics."