Bill LaCroix: Jan. 23rd Montana Legislature Update as it Relates to Reality-Based Bitterrooters

There's a lot going on over in the Handbasket for us Bitterrooters to pay attention to. I’ll try to confine my notes to the most egregious excuseless excesses. You know, the ones that don’t generally make the news? That sort of thing.

First of all, let’s give a round of applause to all four of our representatives—Ballance, Greef, Ehli and Connell—for voting in favor of Rep. Howard’s anti-immigration bill, HB 50. This bill, as far as anyone to the left of Attila can tell, directs all Montana law enforcement folks to consider racially-profiling anyone with darker skin than Howard’s who, from his official picture, looks like his ancestors came from Norway (lucky him!!). This bill, according to Rep. Howard, is necessary for the purpose of keeping Montana safe from all those heinous illegal criminals who are always and clearly more heinous than the legal ones, you know. That is really about the best I can do with this bill as far as explaining it, and it was apparently the best our legislators could do in understanding it by voting for a bill whose identical twin got vetoed the last session on the Guano Principle, and probably will suffer the same fate this session, also. What a waste of electricity. Way to go, inestimable legislators.

Next on my list is Nancy Ballance’s amazing efforts to invoke county supremacy through local school boards. House Bill 181, which Ballance introduced Jan. 18^th, would christen school boards as the official Inquisitors of School Librarians.

This is significant, given that Ballance openly proclaims to be a member of Citizens for Excellence in Education (CEE), a national uber-Right, Christian Reconstructionist outfit who has attempted—and in some cases succeeded—in banning school library books they don’t feel hold hard enough to the dictates of Leviticus. Really.

Her other bill, HB 182 also introduced Jan. 18th, would mandate that “strategic reasoning” be added to public education goals. She would also like to add “literacy and numeracy” and “an understanding of political, social and economic systems of the United States and the world” which of course already exist in our public education goals. But never mind the facts, the context is that this is strange stuff indeed, coming from this former Hamilton school board trustee who floated a trial balloon last year on turning Hamilton into a Christian military academy. http://billlacroix.blogspot.com/2012/01/is-world-flat-or-round_1016.html

Now, given the context, one has to ask—and I hope you do (*)—why on the Round Earth does a retired insurance industry executive-turned- backwoods-legislator need to take up time and electricity trying to insert “goals” in OUR public education process that already blatantly exist as if she’s a tea party malcontent--which she is--who thinks they don’t. And what in the HELL is “strategic reasoning”??!!

Leviticus, of course, is that biblical cook book on how to put homosexuals to death and how many stones to throw at your teenage son for disobeying you and other fine recipes for social disaster that probably didn’t work any better three thousand years ago than they would today. But that’s what Christian Reconstructionism, and CEE, and apparently Nancy Ballance, are all about. Again, please read: http://billlacroix.blogspot.com/2012/01/is-world-flat-or-round_1016.html . I’ll just reprint a couple of quote from CEE’s founder and leave the inscrutable designs of Ms. Ballance to your own vivid imaginations:

"There are 15,700 local school boards in this country. It is our intent to take them over one by one. All we need is majority...and then we will determine what is taught, we will determine who is hired and who is fired.”
“We will be the stealth candidates, and you must carry out our mission in such a way that the public won't know what we're about until we've won control. I'm a fundamentalist Christian, and as far as I'm concerned, that's the only kind of Christian there is."

“Dr.” Robert Simonds, founder, Nat’l Assoc. of Christian Educators/ Citizens for Excellence in Education (NACE/CEE).

I’m not kidding. Please contact those legislators on the House Education Committee (*) and ask them WHAT THE HELL.

Other legislative revelations I'd like to share:

· Did you know that Republican Sen. Jennifer Fielder from Thompson Falls is a protégé of John Trochmann (**)? Trochmann, as many of you remember and all of you should know, is the former snowmobile mechanic from Minnesota who moved to Noxon and founded Militia of Montana, one of the most conspicuous and active “patriot”/militia outfits from the early nineties whose anti-government rhetoric and organizing gifted We the People the entertaining activities of Cal Greenup here at home and Tim McVeigh on the national scene. That’s right. John Trochmann’s protégé, Jennifer Fielder, is a duly elected Montana senator now, and she’s also on the Sanders County Natural Resource Council, a “coordination” clone of our rogue commissioners’ “natural resource committee”.
· Did you know that Republican Rep. Nicholas Schwaderer from Superior has a law degree? Not just any law degree, like so many of our legislators have. Schwaderer’s law degree is the on-line kind, from England, specializing in “Maritime and Admiralty law”. http://vote-mt.org/intro.aspx?state=mt&id=mtschwaderernicholas . Remember two years ago, when one of the first acts of our newly-elected rogue commissioners was to spend $200 of supposedly-scarce tax money to buy an “unfringed” American flag? Their stated reason was to appease conspiracy extremists who claimed that the county’s “fringed” flag was illegitimate under “Admiralty law” and therefore any business conducted under a “fringed” flag was treasonous (***)? That’s the kind of law degree Rep. Schwaderer has. And by the way, John Trochmann is an expert on “Admiralty Law” also. Vivid imaginations ho!
· Did you know that Greg Chilcott, in his new role as the president of the Montana Association of Counties (MACo) and old role as passionate advocate of the "patriot" county-supremacy scheme du-jour dubbed "coordination", is spending most of his Ravalli County tax-funded time in Helena? For context, some of you may be among the 400 Ravalli Co. taxpayers who received a threat in the mail from a mysterious finance company earlier this month, courtesy of your hard-working, well-paid commissioners. In some cases these threats were mailed the day after your property tax payment missed the Nov. 30^th deadline. The mailing claimed that your “back taxes “ (remember: only ONE DAY after the deadline!) have now been hijacked by more sublime political connections than you possess and that you may just have to pay this company rent on your “back taxes” or risk losing your home to forclosure. Of course it’s more complicated than that, but your commissioners don’t insist on a better explanation because, apparently, they approve of the threat. This, dear reader, is where the money your senior, shrink-the-government commissioner who is currently wining and dining in Helena, comes from. Nice, huh?

All of this is so outrageous it’s…well...outrageous. It's a frog-dance and we're the ones paying for it. Nothing against frogs or their dances, but frogs generally do that sort of thing on their own time. And they don't pay taxes.

Please contact the legislators below about Nancy Ballance’s bizarre bills (HB 181 and HB 182) and share with them your deepest thoughts.

(*) House Education Committee

Member	Assignment
Kris Hansen	Chair
Joanne G Blyton	Vice Chair
Edith (Edie) McClafferty	Vice Chair
Bryce Bennett	Member
Mark Blasdel	Member
Clarena Brockie	Member
Douglas Coffin	Member
Edward Greef	Member
David Halvorson	Member
Greg Hertz	Member
Sarah Laszloffy	Member
Jonathan McNiven	Member
Jean Price	Member
Daniel R Salomon	Member
Casey Schreiner	Member
Nicholas Schwaderer	Member
Ted Washburn	Member
Franke Wilmer	Member