Politics

A Definition

Politics is a poorly-understood human condition whereby, if you put two people in the same room you may or may not have it, but if you put the same two people in a bathroom, you will.

Paying dearly for lapse in vigilance

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.

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

Thank You, Howard Zahniser

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lL5lfsZi6Oo

Here's another music video attempt of mine. 

The pictures and documents displayed are from my friend Stewart Brandborg's personal files and records. Brandy took over The Wilderness Society after Howard Zahniser's untimely death in 1964, a few months before Zahnie's eight-year Foggy Bottom slog to get a Wilderness Bill through our ever-unholy Congress was finally realized. It was Brandy's task to implement it against bureaucratic reluctance and intransigence within all the agencies that managed our public lands. The long story is a book that hasn't been written yet (I'm working on it!). For now, though, the short story is this: Brandy's dad (Guy M. Brandborg, pictured on his horse with Zahniser and AnnaVee Brandborg in the video) was a progressive forester from the Gifford Pinchot mold and his grandfather (on his father's side), was what you'd call a socialist back in the early part of the twentieth century when farmer's unions were strong. Socialism, as American as rhubarb pie, just as John-Birch-Society-style "libertarianism" is. Guess which one you can thank for the wilderness law, and for Democracy, too? 

The Brandborgs were well-read, well-steeped in social altruism, and natural believers in Democracy (with a capital "D", not the FoxNews "fair and balanced" kind). With such a rich heritage, Brandy naturally gravitated toward Howard Zahniser and his epic campaign to get Congress to pass the singular law that forced Congress admit that humility was a good quality for them to confess they had a little of. After the Law was passed, Brandy pretty much wrote the book on grassroots organizing in the latter part of the twentieth century in order to get it implemented. Other laws, and other grassroots campaigns, followed the trails cut out by the original Wilderness Society organizers. Political hyperventilation from the extractors and their mouthpieces hasn't let up since, of course. It's been mean and incessant for decades, to the point where we can only bear witness to the inscrutable, nasty yet ultimately ephemeral Tea Party and MAGA phenomena here in the Rockies. 

The Land always prevails. Be on the right side of it. Here's to the start of it all for those of us alive today. Here's to Howard Zahniser, Stewart Brandborg and here's to good ol' Democracy.

Dallas Erickson vs Life As We Know It

A mere few years ago, when Dallas Erickson mounted his “Not In My Bathroom” campaign to fight a Missoula ordinance to ban discrimination based on sexual orientation, I agreed with him. There are certain kinds of people I would not want to be alone in a public bathroom with my kid. Dallas, who has worn his sexual insecurities on his sleeve for as many years as I’ve associated the city “Dallas” with the name, “Erickson”, was top on that list and that hasn’t changed. Not that the Flat World Right has a corner on the “insecurities” market. But in my experience, most Lefties, if they suffer, don’t do so in such a public manner. That’s what our superficial labellings boil down to when you get to the burnt scrum at the bottom of the political pot, which is where we are now. The Left, for all its many, many faults, is not an ideological haven for open perverts and misanthropes. The Right, on the other hand, is.

If I were doing the boiling, I’d say the gist of the matter as to whether we want our grandkids to remember us as “Righties” or “Lefties”, is enclosed within the following two recent news items:

On May 29^th, in a letter to the Ravalli Republic, Mr. Erickson wrote that “Ravalli County is made of a great number of people who call themselves Christian Conservatives. As such we feel that abortion is even more evil than the holocaust because we consider it the taking of a human life. Scientists are in virtual consensus that life begins at conception and unlike their vocal stand on “man caused global warming” they are silent as thousands of babies are killed.”[i]

Never mind, for the moment, that “Science” is in no such virtual consensus that life begins at conception, while it is in virtual consensus on the question of “man caused global warming”. Just let Dallas’ jabbering be for the moment, because he make his own point, which is also mine.

To point, Item Two: Five days before Dallas' local dogmato-screed, on May 24, 227 Republicans (and four Democrats) in the U.S. House of Representatives voted for an amendment that would prevent the Department of Defense from addressing climate change. In justifying this example of jaw-dropping hubris, the author of the bill, Rep. David McKinley (R-WV) posited the rhetorical question that should be on everyone’s lips these days.“Why should Congress” he opined, “divert funds from the mission of our military…to support a political ideology.”[ii] To rephrase this in geo-political terms, 231 of the most powerful people currently on the face of our dear Earth found this statement to be without screaming inconsistencies, and voted to divert funds for Rep. McKinley's (and Dallas") more perfect political ideology.

I don’t think I could say it any better than Mr. Erickson or Rep. McKinley. What can be more disturbing than a “Christian Conservative” or any other confused person sharing one-on-one bathroom time with any of my kids? How about enough self-righteous, dogmatically blinded voters agreeing with the likes of such an open homophile like Erickson in this time of our own extremity, to the point of allowing these flatworlders who have no intention of dealing in any meaningful way with Humankind’s survival to occupy positions of vast power where they debate that very subject? Change begins at home, remember, and if we Bitterrooters put up with Dallas' screeds without consistently condemning them then we are complicit. If you don't believe this, just remember three words. Family Planning Clinic. Extinct in our community today because too many of us are simply not paying enough attention to the fascists in our midsts. And I do mean fascists. Remember: Dallas made $100,000 (gross--and I do mean "gross") as Walmart's frontman in shoving their corporate agenda up ours just before the international corporate bank heist that tanked our economy and temporarily made their super-sized mega-store a moot point and also sent the likes of Swiss-owned insurance vice presidents, Rep. Nancy Ballance (R-Victor), up from Southern California to be one of our moral den mothers. (Let us pray...).

Many Righties, such as Erickson and Harris Himes (remember him?) actually want our world to go to hell. They believe in this outcome, and they and theirs say so every day. Let that reality stare you in the face for a bit and then know that our grandkids, whether we self-identify on either the Right or the Left, will rightfully damn us, each and every one, for allowing this collective insult of reason to have gone on for so long. 

How about we get busy and start effectively counteracting this utter nonsense? 

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[i] http://ravallirepublic.com/news/opinion/viewpoint/article_bea70ab8-e6dd-11e3-8b63-0019bb2963f4.html

[ii] http://www.policymic.com/articles/89887/house-republicans-just-passed-a-bill-denying-something-99-of-scientists-agree-on

Sure, I'm a Marxist!

“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].

 Bullock vetoed both these bad boys, and, ironically, these are the two core issues that have any fight in them here in the Bitterroot. These two lapses in our commissioners’ famously limited judgment [iv], I hope and pray[v], may finally be our watershed moment.

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].

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[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

[xiii] “Why should I care about posterity? What’s posterity ever done for me?”                           G. Marx