“I’m not crazy about reality, but
it’s still the only place to get a decent meal.”
Groucho Marx
Well, it didn't work. Despite my dire predictions that frogs will be
in charge of eternally damning them, our tea-soaked county commissioners torpedoed
the rock-bottom health care needs of over 400 low-income women and men (mostly
women) by unequivocally refusing Title X funds that floated our Family Planning
clinic. This latest, particularly sickening, example of their religious intolerance
evoked yet another letter to the local papers (from me, below), but it also
brings up some interesting parallel realities for us Montanans to ponder on.
The most dysfunctional Montana state legislature ended just a few
months ago. Remember? It was so tea-soaked that the bottom fell out of the
cardboard box these cruel AynRandians used to carry their lighter-than-air
ideological fruitcakes around the halls of the Capitol that they would beat us
over our heads and hearts with. One successful fruitcake they whupped us with was
their denial of Medicaid coverage for over 70,000 low-income Montanans, while
at the same time refusing tens of millions of healthcare dollars that would have
come into our state, but now will be spent elsewhere[i].
They were very, very proud of this sanguinary achievement, which was
predictable in a way only to those living in the same Bizarro World these folks
reside in[ii],
since this cruel act was one of the only things they did get accomplished.
That's because Democratic Gov. Steve Bullock vetoed most of their
worst bills, including their passage through both houses of:
· A bill that would have
refused Title X funds statewide.
· A bill that would have
allowed develop(er)mentally-challenged county commissioners to consider only
"adjacent agriculture" rather than agriculture as a whole when they
ache to approve a mega-subdivision or five, which our commissioners dearly and
always do ache to do[iii].
Consider: If Title X funds had been refused statewide, these
commissioners would not have had to insult a whole valley by refusing our local
share of it all by their self-righteous selves, and their meeting room would
not have been filled to the brim FOUR times in a week and a half with
passionate people who maybe for the first time saw them for the American
Taliban that they truly are. Simultaneously, if “adjacent agriculture” had
become the law of Montana when it came to considering subdivisions, these
commissioners would not have been lying through their teeth to an equally
numerous (and different) outraged public when they approved Legacy Supersized
Subdivision by saying to the good folks who showed up at their various packed
meetings to condemn Legacy that they could only comment on “adjacent
agriculture” and then turning around and say—in true upside-down Bizzarro World
Speak—that they really meant “all that agriculture stuff since that’s what we
were legally supposed to mean so shut up and go back to your minimum wage job
so you can pay for your own heathcare you lazy welfare cheats”[vi]
Thus, in one swell foop, as Marx would say, our Inestimable Ones
managed to unequivocally demonstrate to the entire valley now paying keen
attention to their antics that the only reason these fundamentalist warriors running our county are in their positions of power is solely and
exclusively because they are bought and paid for by deep-pocketed, out-of-state
and even out-of-country development interests who have always polluted our
local politics, interests who always have preferred compromised individuals to
thinking rational beings when it comes to getting what they want out of local
taxpayers. The peas, as everyone should see by now, are in the same pod. Discounting
denial—which we should-- if you don’t like political theocrats, then you don’t
like developer puppets. If you, Montana Heartland of Rural America, think you
can have Tea Party politicians push back against that mean ol’ gubmint without
turning the religio-bigoted dogs of hate loose on your dogs[vii]
and your land, think again.
And maybe we finally are, which is the only silver lining around the
black cloud these (fill in blank) s conjured up for us to plow through.
Just for a little icing on the cake for anyone STILL in doubt: here
are a couple of rumors to chew on. Commissioner Suzy, the one who first said
she consulted God about her Title X decision and then changed her story to read
“it’s all about my concern for the U.S. government going broke”[viii]
seems to have been using her tenure as a public official (with publicly-funded
health benefits!) to file Workman’s Comp claims to cover a number of expensive
operations she apparently claims are the result of her achingly hard physical
job of pontificating from a soft swivel chair behind a commissioner’s meeting room
desk[ix].
Commissioner Jeff, another one of our other Defenders of Virginal Purity and
Other Chivalric Fictions who also receives our publicly funded health benefits,
may have been finding the Title X Family Planning Clinic in Missoula much to
his satisfaction for services provided to his wife (yet another Ravalli Co.
Republican Central Committee member). We will be quizzing them on these and
other apparent discrepancies in their famous moral fortitude applied to others
but not to them[x].
Stay tuned.
Anyone who’s reading this would sensibly think I was making all this
up. Well, would that I were. But I’m not, and I have this to say to any of you
who live in Ravalli County or live elsewhere:
Beware your local apocalyptic teabaggers. They’re Marxists[xi].
Sent to the Bitterroot Star and
the Ravalli Republic
Editor,
With the Ravalli County commissioners’ latest
two “in-your-face” decisions still fresh in the horrified public’s mind—Legacy
Ranch and Title X--a few things should be pretty clear by
now:
·
The “Tea Party” movement is
deeply based in theocracy.
·
Theocrats, by definition, tend to
be authoritarians.
·
Authoritarians are generally either
unstable or just plain dishonest, and should never, ever be given the keys to
the car or to county government.
·
“Tea Party” theocrats such as our
commissioners are demonstrably joined at the hip with entrenched moneyed
interests, both locally and nationally. Most of them would never have gained
their seats of power if not for deep-pocketed benefactors who prefer to
purchase local tinpot dictators to carry their water as opposed to actual
public servants.
·
Just because someone
self-describes herself as a “patriot” doesn’t mean she has the best interests
of We The People in mind, or even that she or he remotely believes in any of
the basic democratic tenets one usually associates with our American brand of
patriotism.
·
Just because a “Tea Party patriot”
loves his or her freedom, there’s no reason on God’s green earth to believe that
he or she loves yours.
Title X and Legacy Ranch are by no means the
only time this commission has crossed the red line into the trendy make-believe
world where Tea Party dictators reside. Their reckless style of governing—most-recently
displayed with Title X and Legacy Ranch--has been going on for the whole
three years since local extremists coupled with local and statewide development
interests deposited four tinpot theocrats into our local seats of power (three
commissioners and a county attorney).
If you’re still inclined to doubt, consider
that Cronyism is the hallmark of authoritarian regimes. It has to be by definition.
Who else, after all, can tinpots trust except their cronies?
And voila! Through fiat appointments and
hirings, our Ravalli County government is now almost the mirror image of the
local Republican Central Committee. In fact, the commissioners latest outrage
against representative government was the hiring of RCC precinct captain
Valerie Stamey to the elected position of county treasurer at $50,000-plus a
year WITH PUBLICLY-FUNDED HEALTH BENEFITS at almost the very second they denied
that same amount of money to cover the rock-bottom healthcare needs of over 400
low-income women![xii]
This kind of know-nothing cronyism crudely
clothed in “patriotism” currently threatens our county, our state and our entire
nation. It’s on full display everywhere, and has been our local tinpots’ hallmark
ever since day one. It’s far past time we all pay more attention to what these
people are really saying, and more importantly, what they really mean[xiii].
[i] “A
hospital is a parked taxi with the meter running.” G.
Marx
[ii] “Who
are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?” G.
Marx
[iii] It’s infinitely
easier for a developer-friendly commission to blow off “adjacent agriculture”
concerns than agricultural concerns as a whole. Basically, if the developer
keeps his fences on her side of the property line, Agriculture’s case is
happily dismissed and full bulldozers ahead!
[iv] “I
have nothing but confidence in you, and very little of that.” G.
Marx
[v]“Q.
What do you get when you cross an insomniac, an agnostic and a dyslexic?
A.
Someone who stays up all night wondering if there is a Dog.” G.
Marx
[vi] This
is one of the counts in the Bitterrooters For Planning lawsuit against them,
and I’m paraphrasing, since what they actually said didn’t make any sense.
[vii] See iv
[viii]
“Quote me as saying I was misquoted.” G.
Marx
[ix]“Those
are my principles, and if you don’t like them…well, I have others.” G.
Marx
[x] See
ix
[xi] “The
secret to life is honesty and fair dealings. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made." G. Marx
[xii] “I have a mind to join a club and beat you
over the head with it.” G.
Marx
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