Technology Breaktrhough!
Virtual Brain Imaging Reveals Stunning Photos of What Ravalli County Commissioners Are Thinking When They Say "Land-Use Planning"
Note: I never posted this on-line, but it seems appropriate a week before the elections so here it is. I sent this to the Bitterroot Star before the last primaries, when Bitterrooters where lamenting that "if we could only get rid of Suzy...". My point then, as it is now, is that such destructive, extremist politicians like Ravalli County Commissioner Suzie Foss are not the disease by a long shot. They are only the sad symptoms of public discussion atrophied into gangrenous dysfunction to the point where a confounding person like her could ever be in the position she was in. Wealthy elites generally don't like democracy, and gangrenous dysfunction is O.K. with them for now. Getting rid of Suzie was like taking aspirin for hemorrhagic fever. The Northern Rockies, both its environment and its people, have suffered mightily for decades from far-right extremism packaged as "conservative values" by the deep-pocket developers who cash in on dysfunction, and they haven't gone anywhere. If you liked Suzie Foss, wait until you see Theresa Manzella.Virtual Brain Imaging Reveals Stunning Photos of What Ravalli County Commissioners Are Thinking When They Say "Land-Use Planning"
Remember: you heard it here first.
Posted
on March 6, 2014 in the Bitterroot Star: Letters
Remember
Celebrating Conservatism? That good old Johnny Reb revivalist show that camped
at our publicly-funded fairground for a couple years after the 2008 elections?
You must remember them, especially if you want to understand how this county
got itself into this current pickle we are all paying dearly for.
A
reminder then. Celebrating Conservatism was the outfit that marched a hit
parade of extreme-right rock stars through our county to “educate” us about
various conspiracy theories that, according to them, warranted advocating for
civil war or at least for threats of violence against those they disagreed
with:
•
Red Beckman, the Montana Freeman associate who threatened to shoot federal
employees and who taught us that the Holocaust was God’s punishment on the Jews
for killing Jesus.
•
Richard Mack, the Sovereign-Citizen darling who taught us that the county
sheriff was the supreme law of the land and has the right to conscript you, the
citizen, at will to construct fortifications around Hamilton against the time
coming when black helicopters land here with Belgian troops to enforce Agenda
21.
•
Shaffer Cox, who was arrested immediately after being a featured speaker at
Celebrating Conservatism’s “Liberty Convention” for plotting to kill Alaska
state troopers and a judge and who is now serving decades of hard time for it
(talk about not doing a background check!).
•
Gary Marbut of Montana Shooting Sports Association, who shared the stage with
Shaeffer Cox in Hamilton on at least one occasion.
•
And many more.
Remember
the secessionist manifestos Celebrating Conservatism circulated and that
hundreds of Ravalli County citizens – including several who now sit on our
governing boards – signed?
•
The “Ravalli County Questionnaire”, the cut-and-paste, common-scheme paper
terrorism threat to county employees that they would be tried by a “citizen
grand jury” if they didn’t buckle to the signers’ paranoid demands?
•
The “Second Amendment Declaration”, which threatened civil war if one more law
they didn’t approve of was passed?
All
three commissioners – Foss, Stoltz and Kanenwisher – as well as County
Attorney, Bill Fulbright, who won their seats in the 2010 election, were either
directly tied to Celebrating Conservatism, signed their secessionist threats or
pandered to the groundswell of paranoia this group represented for their votes
and support. Also directly tied or associated with this extremist group are:
•
Terry Nelson, chair of the Ravalli County Republican Central Committee, who was
appointed by ALL FIVE Republican commissioners to fill a well-paid government
position (with health care benefits!) he was not qualified for.
•
Jeff Burrows, who was appointed by ALL the remaining Republican commissioners
after Kanenwisher pulled a Palin and split the country.
•
Valerie Stamey.
•
Her husband, Rick Stamey, who now sits on our Planning Board.
•
Almost every other surviving member of the Planning Board.
•
Members of every other county board that has had vacancies filled since the
2010 extremist coup.
•
The “Ravalli County Tea Party Patriots”.
How
did we allow ourselves to get into this mess? It didn’t happen overnight, and
it isn’t the fault of one single treasurer or three single commissioners. They,
as well as the local Republican hierarchy in general – Chilcott, Iman, Hawk,
Thomas, etc. – are doing exactly what they told you, the voter, they intended
to do. They are remaking our governing bodies into their own developer-beholden
images.
Stamey,
Foss, Ballance, Boulanger and, now, Theresa Manzella, are really only the point
people for this reactionary movement that has been going on within the
developer circles of the local and state Republican Party since the militia
flare-up here in the Bitterroot in the mid-90s. Remember that one? When
Bitterroot Rep. Matt Brainard introduced a “state militia” bill in the
legislature days before Oklahoma City was bombed? When the Ravalli County
Courthouse received a bomb threat on THE SAME DAY as Oklahoma City? When Conrad
Burns brought Militia of Montana founder John Trochmann to a congressional
hearing immediately after the Oklahoma bombing to “school” senators on county
supremacy and state’s rights? Twenty years later, Trochmann’s Sanders County
protégé, Jennifer Fielder, is the vice-president of the Montana Republican
Party. The proof’s in the pudding. So-called “moderates” within the state and
local Republican Party organizations have not only never distanced themselves
or their party from those who suffer from the extremist paranoid views of
Celebrating Conservatism and Militia of Montana, they have PANDERED to them for
their votes so they can continue the percolation of wealth and limited resources
to their developer-benefactors.
It
is critical that enough Ravalli County voters, whatever their party affiliation
or non-affiliation is, understand the Montana Republican Party’s history over
the last two decades and the dire consequences – now playing out at your local
county administration buildings – of the unlearned lesson of allowing one’s
bigotry to get the best of one’s common sense. Ravalli County voters: pay heed
to what these people who seem so laughable to you now expound upon in public
before you cast your votes again in any election of any significance, because
these point people not only mean what they say, they have the developer-bucks
and the “moderate” Republicans to back them up.
A
note to doubters: all of the above is fact-checkable for the very simple reason
that neither you nor I could possibly make it up.
No
kiddin’.
Bill
LaCroix, Victor,
Montana
