Archive for February, 2007
by Jay Stevens It looks like the legislative break is coming just in time: tempers flared in the Montana House Tuesday, as Ed Butcher dismissed Democratic remarks as “nonsense,” and House Democrats asked the body to censure Butcher. Butcher’s no sweetheart, that’s for sure. This wasn’t his first unthinking comment he’s made: Earlier this session, [...]
by Jay Stevens Recently Democratic state Senator Jim Elliot introduced a resolution urging rejection of the Presiden’t fast-track trade authority, which is coming up for review this Congressional session. (Basically the fast-track trade authority denies Congress the right to tinker with the President’s trade agreements, authority that is unabashedly pro-corporate and unfair to American workers.) [...]
Julie Fanselow pays tribute to former state Representative, Janet Miller, a quality person who happened to be a politician, who has terminal cancer. The Montana Senate urged Max Baucus to reject “fast track” trade authority for the President. Western governors get together to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Good on them! (Where’s Montana?) Public funding for [...]
by Jay Stevens There have been a number of posts written about Montana’s House Republicans splitting up the state budget into six…or possibly seven…more, or less…different bills: With the legislative session approaching the halfway point, House Republicans released details of the six spending bills to replace the single budget bill they jettisoned last week. The [...]
House passes a bill that exempts wait staff from the state’s minimum wage standard. A friend of Colby’s penned a nice letter to the Bozeman Chronicle about Koopman’s – now dead – “intellectual diversity” bill. Since I gave “Camp Baucus” a hit, it’s only fair I point out that Dennis Rehberg is also cavorting with [...]
by Jay Stevens Look who’s proposing legislation to overhaul the initiative process: old friends Ed and Trevis Butcher! Trevis, of course, was the Montana money handler for Howie Rich’s terrible trio of initiatives: 154, 97, and 98. Trevis is also a good pal of the Republican Liberty Caucus sweethearts. The initiatives were, of course, struck [...]
by Jay Stevens Today the Montana Senate voted to abolish the state’s death penalty on a 27-22 vote, which actually surprised me. I didn’t think this bill would get past committee – which it did – or a general Senate vote – which it did. While the vote was largely carried by Senate Democrats, there [...]
by Jay Stevens Sarpy Sam nailed the story about a Billings high school basketball coach who was fired for refusing to reinstate a player who had been drinking. The coach, Larry Lee Falls Down, had a rule for his Plenty Coups High basketball team: no drinking. The punishment was a full year suspension. Then one of [...]
The House Republicans’ hijacking of the state budget may create a crisis, claims the Good Gov. Old friend Conrad Burns is now the poster boy for all that’s wrong with the loopholes in the “cooling off” period, whereby Congressmen are required to wait to become lobbyists. President Bush touts his health-care tax breaks, which basically [...]
by Jay Stevens Recently, state Senator Corey Stapleton slammed the blogs in a puff-piece profile: Stapleton himself was later attacked on state and national blogs after the Great Falls Tribune reported a joke he made that “no one in the Negro caucus” objected to the Legislature working on Martin Luther King Day. Matt Singer of [...]
by Jay Stevens Jonathan Windy Boy (D-Box Elder) has introduced HB 586, which would reduce mercury emissions by 90 percent from the state’s power plants: House Bill 586 would require existing fossil-fuel or biomass power plants to reduce mercury emissions by at least 90 percent by Jan. 1, 2010. Plants that had not received a [...]
by Jay Stevens Some time ago, a report was released by Syracuse University on terror prosecutions by the U.S. government, which found that prosecutions had dropped to pre-9/11 rates. I wrote up a lengthy post analyzing the report, and concluded: So, after 9/11 there were more prosecutions, but which resulted in a lower percent of [...]
The Tribune’s profile of Jon Tester is a worthy read. Zoinks! He’s doing what he promised! (Matt chimes in, emphasizing how accessible he is to Montanans…) Montanans and other small-town Americans shoulder a disproportionate burden of the war. Kemmick to plunge into the bowels of state government. Hopefully he’ll sniff out some good stories before [...]
by Jay Stevens Another of Roger Koopman’s “brilliant” ideas is HB 525, a bill that would “encourage intellectual diversity in the university system.” In other words, Koopman wants to legislate political instruction into the classroom. And one presumes the instruction Koopman wants to promulgate is his own. First things off, this bill is not at [...]
by Jay Stevens As mentioned in yesterday’s post summing up the hearings for Trudi Schmidt’s teen program licensure bill, there’s a alternative bill in the draft stage and sponsored by Trout Creek Democrat, Jim Elliot. So, what’s the difference between the two? Plenty. The biggest difference between the bill can be found in the text [...]
by Jay Stevens John Adams has a good summation of the hearing around Trudi Schmidt’s teen program licensure bill. (If you haven’t seen my posts on this topic before, check them out.) The interest in licensing teen programs was sparked by abuses that took place at Spring Creek Lodge Academy. In 2005 the Legislature passed [...]
Jon Tester supports tax cuts – for the middle class. There’s a roadblock, though. It requires rollback on cuts for the wealthiest. We’ll soon see who the GOP represents. Kos uses Tester as an example of how Democrats should tout their values to win elections. Max Baucus says he’ll amend SCHIP funding to Iraqi War [...]
by Jay Stevens Today’s creep is Carl Farnsworth, an anti-tax zealot living in Alberton. He recently wrote a letter to the Missoulian accusing Missoulians of stealing from him: Let’s fine-tune all taxes. Looking at the Missoula crime blotter, one sees a lot of crime in the urban interface. No crimes around my house, so why [...]
House GOP shelves the Good Guv’s budget with nary a glance. Classy. Tick, tock, GOP. Time to actually do some work for the state. Max Baucus! calls for universal health care! Of course he’s not talking about single-payer insurance. Instead it’s something closer to the Massachusetts model, which compels all to be covered. The New [...]
by Jay Stevens Normally I would simply plug Nicole R’s latest gem into a “Links…” post, but today’s Valentine’s Day benediction to the Montana legislature’s “Triple Crown of asshats” merits its own post, mainly because Nicole manages to sum up the apparent attitude of the radical wing of the state’s Republican party towards education quite [...]
by Jay Stevens It looks like Rick Jore’s proposed constitutional amendment giving embryos “certain inalienable rights” at conception looks like it will fail in the legislature: …a preliminary House vote on Monday showed that only 46 of the 100 House members support House Bill 40. Changes to the constitution ultimately need support from 100 of [...]
Montana to be the first state to have an official lullaby? The Good Guv wants to buy more parks and waterfront access for state residents. Republicans attack Steve Gallus’ anti-escalation resolution before the Montana legislature. Corey Stapleton regurgitates talk-radio nonsense: “You can’t support the troops and not the mission.” Uh, yes you can. If Senator [...]
by Jay Stevens One of the main issues behind the sweeping Democratic victories this past election was voter antipathy for Congressional excess when it came to milling with, and raising money from, lobbyists. Jack Abramoff, anyone? There were a lot of promises made about ethics and lobbyists and reform. Only it looks like those promises [...]
by Jay Stevens I suppose I should let Notorious Mark T comment on this article by Matthew Yglesias on the new anti-semitism, but it just gibes with how distorted discussion about Israel has become in the past two or three years. A form of political – or conservative – correctness has crept into the discussion, [...]
Jeff Mangan thinks the Montana Republicans are making a big mistake moving to the far right in the legislature, when voters are obviously looking to moderates for their politicians. Jeff M also looks at the tax-collection bill, and thinks there’s room for compromise. Again…where’s the Republican leadership? Meanwhile, the state senate shoots down the Electoral [...]
by Jay Stevens It’s official: the Pentagon manipulated intelligence in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq: Acting Inspector General Thomas F. Gimble told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the office headed by former Pentagon policy chief Douglas J. Feith took “inappropriate” actions in advancing conclusions on al-Qaida connections not backed up by the [...]
Tester chides fellow Senators for not honestly debating the “merits” of the Iraq war. Notorious Mark T tackles Baucus’ stance on the Alternative Minimum Tax. Why Republican Representative Michael Lange’s HB 405 is the worst bill of the 2007 legislative session. Ochenski mulls whether government agencies should be allowed to lobby the legislature. Conservatives, rejoice! [...]
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