Five bankruptcies, a dodged bullet, and lessons for voters

During six years of my service in the Montana Senate and all eight years of my service on the Montana Public Service Commission, I had a ring-side seat with four major bankruptcies that had huge impacts on Montana residents, and I helped Montana avoid being taken down by a fifth. The first four, in order, were Enron, Montana Power/Touch America, NorthWestern Corporation, and Southern Montana Electric. The fifth, and dodged bullet, was Babcock & Brown Infrastructure — BBI — an Australian investment conglomerate that proposed to merge NorthWestern into its operations before BBI itself went bankr...