Remember
this, children, if you remember nothing else. Right-wingnuttery is almost
ALWAYS underwritten by those who profit from chaos. It is a symptom of the disease the Montana Legislature is afflicted with, not the cause. Like cancer cells in a prostate,
our body politic always has Cells With Attitude (CWAs) to the right of Attila floating around in its
organs. It’s natural, and their existence doesn’t necessarily lead to terminal
illness. But add the toxin, money, in large enough amounts, and CWAs explode beyond the body’s capacity to deal with them, and
the body dies. Then those creatures who
benefit from feeding on the carcasses of formerly democratic institutions like
our Montana Legislature swoop down for the feast. In our neck of the woods,
this means developers, energy moguls[i],
“charter school” industrialists and insurance executives[ii]
and they are preening themselves for some very juicy pickings--at your
expense--this session. Let me explain.
Last November, Montana voters overwhelmingly approved I-166, charging the
Montana Legislature with working to overturn the 2010 Supreme Court “corporate
personhood” decision known as Citizens United. Rep. Ellie Boldman Hill (D-
Missoula) introduced HJ 6 to the House Judiciary Committee to do just that.
Instead of doing just that, however, this committee, paid for by YOU, with
express direction by YOU to address money corrupting our politics, not only
tabled HJ 6, they actively chose to spend the peoples’ time and money on
discussing AND approving, on party-line votes:
- Rep. Jerry O'Neill's (R- Columbia Falls) Soveriegn-citizen/ Jury-Nullification bill, HB 290, which was NOT tabled in committee, and will receive at least another hearing, if not a vote by the full House[iii].
- O’Neill’s secessionist bill HJ 3 which wants the people of Montana to support an amendment to the U.S. Constitution to amend the Commerce Clause to regulate Commerce between states as though they were separate countries. Really.
- O’Neill’s HJ 5, to amend the US constitution to ban the president’s ability to enter into treaties that “infringe” on citizens’ (read: gun nuts’) rights.
The House Judiciary Committee is chaired by Rep. Krayton Kerns (R-Laurel), a man who signed onto the
“Sheriff’s First” manifesto last week and has had numerous encounters with
reality as it relates to bat-guano ideology over the last couple sessions. Other members of note on the House Judiciary Committee
(that’s right: the House Judiciary Committee)
include:
- Sarah Lazsloffy of the Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry[v].
- Clayton Fiscus, who introduced this session’s Creationism bill.
- Jerry O’Neill, a certified Neolithic John Birch throwback from the McCarthy era (see above).
And where did our mandate to them to address toxic money in Montana politics go? Republicans in both the
House and Senate have introduced several bills that would allow MORE toxic money into Montana politics. Really.
Speaking of the Senate and of the best bat guano money money can buy:
- Sen. Tom Facey (D- Missoula) introduced SB 163 to address what we directed the legislature to address: toxic money poisoning our democracy’s vital organs. Facey’s bill would have simply forced legislators to own up to who they’ve been taking bribes from. Pretty standard stuff in a democracy. In the Montana Legislators’ case, as with most other state legislatures in the country, this would mean admitting whether or not you’re an A.L.E.C. pet, and how much A.L.E.C. paid for your dog food.
- Sen. Sue Malek (D- Missoula) introduced SB 124, which would have clarified the definition of a political committee to include the deep-pocket ones that are currently tanking our democracy by claiming that since they’re just schooling people, there’s no need for the people to know who’s doing the schooling.
Both of these
bills would have gone a long ways towards doing what we thought we tasked our
legislators with doing. But, as in the House, Facey and Malek’s bills both got
tabled in committee, while other bills more important to our legislators’
ideological gyroscopes not only did not get
tabled, but got passed on to the full Senate where further time and money was
spent on them.
SJ 7, just for example, carried by
Sen. Dave Lewis (R-Helena) urges the United States to withdraw from the United
Nations in order “to maintain control over its own…destiny” because “Whereas
the United States is the greatest nation in the world” therefore we don’t need
no stinkin’ "other people" suggesting we do something about global
warming. Really.
Militia of Montana’s Jennifer Fielder and extremist-appointee Scott Boulanger[vi] are
two of the seven Republican senators who are, incredibly, on the Senate
Judiciary Committee (that’s right the Senate Judiciary Committee), which is chaired by “patriot” adherent
Terry Murphy, who also signed the “Sheriff’s First” letter. This committee
freight-trained SJ 7 to the full Senate like a dirty coal train through Missoula, on
a party-line vote. Then this Neolithic Bircher throwback bill PASSED in the full Senate, again along
party lines. Every Republican
in your tax-funded state Senate, including Bitterrooters Thomas and Boulanger,
voted for this whacky, whacky bill with the notable exceptions of Senators
Peterson and Tutvedt (see below).
If the world is flat, then we're a frisbee. And if you're wondering where that frisbee's going, please consider that all of these whacky LAID bills could have been (and may actually HAVE
BEEN) written by Militia of Montana[vii]. Tim
McVeigh or Terry Nichols could have run for office—and conceivably won—on
platforms encoded in these “sovereign citizen” bills.
And if you've read this far, you’re probably wondering where the intersection between such whackiness and corporate vultures ripping apart our body politic is. Well, remember the
last legislative gift to the corporate good at your expense from the Bitterroot’s own Fred
Thomas? Energy deregulation? Keep that in mind, and consider the following:
- HB 280, passed by the House Friday, which would effectively deregulate the insurance industry in Montana by allowing companies who operate outside of Montana to sell insurance here. This would mean that when your blood-bloated insurance company makes its blanket “denial of benefits” claim in order to more excellently benefit their corporate bottom line, you will no longer be able to go to the Montana State Auditor for redress. That’s because our state auditor, who has come to the aid of many a “consumer” in those shark-infested medical-expense waters, will be cut out of the loop, and you may be talking to a phone-bank person on the other side of the world working for an outsourced state auditor’s office from, say, Arkansas, or whatever state has the most bought-off legislature and therefore the most lax insurance regulations. This bill was sponsored, in part, by retired Farmer’s Insurance vice-president, Nancy Ballance, and was outrageously touted by Ballance as a "consumer-protection" bill. It passed on a party-line vote in the House last Friday.
- The SIX school privatization (euphemistically-dubbed “school-choice) bills, which would basically deregulate schools, forking over huge amounts of public funds we earmark for educating our children to snake-oil salesmen and supernatural-living aficionados whose fundamental interests are demonstrably NOT in educating our children in any stretch of a democratic sense. This national corporate agenda to eat our kids (really) is a classic example of those supernatural-living adherents being manipulated by the snake-oil salesmen to benefit (hugely) the multi-national A.L.E.C. beasts who cooked and stirred the idea to begin with.
- HB 41, passed by the Senate Jan. 23rd: “An act prohibiting a governing body from considering the impacts of potential future subdivisions when reviewing subdivision applications.” In a nutshell, SB 41 further deregulates subdivisions, and effectively ties the hands of us citizens who give of our time to attend county commissioners’ meetings in an attempt to stop a horrid subdivision, only to find the commissioners collectively wringing their hands and saying, “There’s nothing we can do! It’s state law! Tell it to your legislators!”
And this is where the rubber hits the road. As mentioned
above, Senators Peterson and Tutvedt, who lost their leadership seats this
session to aggressive rightwingery, played the “moderates” by not voting for
O’Niell’s demonstrably-whacky SJ 7 (U.S. out of the U.N.). And that is exactly
the point:
THEY DIDN’T HAVE TO AND THEY’RE NOT
MODERATES!
They (and other
“moderate” enablers like them) can let others push the debate over the edge of
the world, where it needs to be if such enablers are to bring home the meat to their creepy corporate overlords (who bear a remarkable resemblance, in my mind at least, to cartoon-vultures), which they both did, by voting for SB 41. And Voila! A huge gift to developers, the whole point of the thing. Peterson, Tutvedt and the
rest of the enablers know the side of the bread their butter’s on. What the likes of O’Niell
or Schwaderer know or don't know matters not at all to their morbid benefactors, who really do bear a remarkable resemblance.
In a democratic
world, democracy would not be seen as “the problem”. But in Corporatelandia,
where “War” is “Peace” and “Regulation” is “totalitarianism”, democracy (in our
case our government) must be seen as
the problem if they are to achieve their sociopathic goal of scorched-earth winning. Therefore, it is their
bald-faced strategy to collude with the Birchers and the “patriots” and to then
install either ethically-challenged or just plain whacky elected
officials who's votes can be more excellently bought off with a steak dinner and plane ticket.
Remember:
those who make their fortunes picking the bones of dead democratic bodies want
them dead. Pretty simple. That’s why they fund wingnuts. I hope this helps.
[iii]Fully-Informed
Jury Movement-Red Beckman/Sheriff’s First-Richard Mack
Ravalli Co.-Celebrating Conservatism connections:
Recap of some of current and past extremist players in
Helena:
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