Archive for the ‘Rick Jore’ Category
by jhwygirl
I am beyond disgusted with this kind of stuff. If I’ve never written to the fact that the Constitution is the ultimate law of the land, I’ve written nothing.
Today I find that the MT GOP, at its most recent convention, re-affirmed its 2008 platform calling for making homosexual acts criminal.
And lest you think I’m making this up – mainly because the page link I provided has been removed today by the MT GOP – here is a cached version, courtesy of the google.
Now – these Einsteins of the MT GOP apparently have no respect for the Montana Constitution, nor the United State’s Constitution. See, both the Montana Supreme Court and the Supreme Court of the United States of America have struck down “anti-sodomy” laws.
The Montana Supreme Court did so in Gryczan v. State, 942 P.2d 112 (1997). Not only that, Gryczan and the right of privacy it has conferred has been reaffirmed over and over again by both the Montana courts and other state and federal courts repeatedly since its rendering.
The United States Supreme Court struck down anti-sodomy laws in Lawrence et. al. V. Texas (02-102) 539 U.S. 558 (2003), finding a constitutional protection to sexuality. Only Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas dissented.
In other words – it’s no government’s business what anyone does in their bedroom.
Where does it stop, MT GOP? What is it you want? Are there not enough problems out there facing Montanan’s? Have you no respect for the ultimate law of our land? Of our nation?
By Goddess, something is really failing us here, Montana – I am gosh darn sick and tired of politicians on both sides of the aisle proposing voting for passing and signing bills into law that violate the constitution (be it the Montana Constitution or the Constitution of the United States).
It’s beyond disrespectful that politicians think they can push the boundaries of these precious documents as if saying to The People “Go ahead and sue me – you can’t afford the fight.”
It’s pretty friggin’ simple – policies must obey rules; rules must obey laws; laws must obey the Constitution. It’s not a “sometimes” thing. It’s not something that should only followed when it’s convenient or when the “other party” is in charge
It’s all the time.
by jhwygirl
Just a few days ago, Supermontanareporter John S. Adams, of the Great Falls Tribune, gave us the story that an anti-abortion group, headed up with former Ronan Constitution party Rep. Rick Jore, was seeking to put a personhood amendment in the state constitution via three different ballot initiatives.
One presumes Jore is all registered an all with the Secretary of State, since he’s out there waving around a nice banner on the steps of the capitol.
The goal is to define a person as “all human beings, irrespective of age, health, function, physical and/or mental dependency or method of reproduction, from the beginning of the biological development of that human being.”
Adams’ blog, The Lowdown, gave a good preview of the Great Falls Tribune’s July 2nd story – and included a nice analysis of competing interests that are essentially working towards the same goal. That Adams – he’s a smart one…because late yesterday he put up another preview blog post (for a story coming in Sunday’s Tribune) which denotes that at least 3 anti-abortion groups are opposed to Jore’s initiatives.
Jore can’t win for losing, it seems.
Jore must also be pretty dense….he’s tried this before. Tenacious little man, isn’t he?
~~~~~
I notice Rep. Wendy Warburton (R – Havre) is hanging with Rick Jore – her name is mentioned in the July 2nd Tribune article, lamenting the failure of any anti-abortion initiative to make it out of the 2009 legislative session.
Hmmm…let’s see – while Warburton doesn’t have too terrible a record on important health care related votes this past session – and a whole bunch didn’t make it out of Senate Public Health, Welfare & Safety – Warburton voted against the Community Health Center support act – community health centers being the only source of prenatal care for many rural and insurance-less Montanans. So she’s pro-life (I am too) but only to the point where health care is needed. Need health care to live? You’re out of luck if Rep. Wendy Warburton has anything to say about it.
One thing I’m unable to understand is how anti-abortion supporters (certainly not all, but there is definitely a pattern there) can be anti-abortion while also lacking support for health care access for all. If anyone has an explanation on the logic behind those seemingly opposing views, I’m listening.
by Rebecca Schmitz
It looks like there’s not enough wingnuts in Montana after all. According to NARAL Pro-Choice Montana, Rick Jore couldn’t find enough people with an overwhelming interest in controlling the genitalia of others; the “Montana Personhood Amendment”, aka CI-100, won’t appear on the ballot this November. I can’t say that I’m surprised, but still. It feels good to know Montanans rejected Jore’s far-right extremism.
by jhwygirl
Roy Brown, Republican candidate for Governor (along with is buddy Steve Daines) offered up this decisive position on Rick Jore’s constitutional initiative which seeks to give rights to human embryos:
Brown says he is undecided about a proposed constitutional initiative that would define a person as “a human being at all stages of human development or life, including the state of fertilization.” Brown says he is against abortion but wants to make sure that initiative would really help.
Boy, that’s taking a position.
Jore announced his initiative back in mid-November 2007.
Brown must really reading up on Montana issues.
Brown also took a strong stance on healthcare for Montana’s children:
Brown also says he is undecided on a proposed ballot measure to extend health coverage to uninsured children. He says he would prefer to let the free market solve the insurance problem.
Wow. Undecided. And, yep, that free market sure shows signs of helping solve the issue.
I know – maybe Roy Brown doesn’t know how to read.
Don Pogreba, Democratic candidate for the same office, took a position on the issues and how a Governor should behave:
Governors lead, Senator Brown. They don’t pander or hesitate.For the record, I absolutely oppose the former, and enthusiastically support the latter.
See how easy that is?
How’s that for decision?
~~~~~
On second thought – maybe Roy Brown does know how to read, and he’s just waiting on his campaign’s opinion polls to be delivered.
by Rebecca Schmitz
Hey, I know. Look at what I typed up there. That’s an incendiary title for a post. But I’m not going to pretend otherwise; I’m not calm, cool and rational about my access, or that of any other woman, to safe abortion and birth control. You and I know, reader, that both strike at the very heart of what it means to be a woman in the 21st Century. Thanks to the pill and legalized abortion, we’ve been liberated from the idea of biology as destiny for nearly fifty years. I don’t care what your politics are–nearly every single one of us uses birth control, knows someone who’s had an abortion, or has faced an unplanned pregnancy thankfully knowing there are medically safe options out there for us. No, instead I’d like to win you over, Republican, Independent, Libertarian or Democrat, female or male, to what I’m about to say.
I think Rick Jore’s initiative should be allowed to make it to the ballot next year. Yes, that’s right. I’m rabidly pro-choice and yet I think he should be allowed to gather signatures and try to make it to Montana’s 2008 ballot without our lawsuits or other rigmarole. I’ll admit, normally the very idea that my body, my genitalia, my civil rights should be up for a vote incenses me in a way I imagine Booker T. Washington or W.E.B. DuBois felt when they saw the outcome of Plessy vs. Ferguson and the encroachment of Jim Crow on American culture and politics over 100 years ago. They were not defined by the color of their skin and I am not the sum total of my uterus, vagina and fallopian tubes. The idea that people out there still want to control all three disgusts me to my very bones. But you and I are able to fight back in this case, thanks to the very person who’s bringing this initiative forward. That’s why we should let Representative Jore gather signatures and that’s why we should be there every time someone thinks about signing one of his petitions.
by Jay Stevens
Oops.
The House Republicans have sure made a mess.
I touched on this a little in earlier post, commenting on the GOP’s plans to trim $3 billion in funding for the elderly, children, and the mentally ill. But things got worse since.
They’ve trimmed the state Health and Human Services budget to $300. That’s no typo – that’s all the zeroes there are in the budget. The Gazette:
This amendment would wipe out programs serving more than 300,000 Montanans. These include the Children’s Health Insurance Plan; Medicaid, the federal-state health program for poor people; mental health programs and hundreds of others.
The three hundred dollars is, of course, just a symbolic flip of the bird.
But the bottom line here is that it is very important for the Republican Party to emphasize their core principles.
Like hating poor people.
I don’t even know how to satirize this any more. It’s like if a Democrat introduced a bill to tax looking at the moon. It’s beyond parody.
Montana Republicans disgust me. Absolutely and thoroughly disgust me. If the people that voted these idiots into office don’t or won’t speak up, I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to speak to a Republican again with out thinking of a swear word. The basic lack of common respect dished out today by the Republican House was appalling.
Ed Kemmick, who had earlier praised House Republicans for their “gamesmanship”:
But when I mentioned games, I was thinking of chess, or football or baseball, games of skill and maneuver, games in which experience counts for a lot. I don’t know what to say now, when the Republicans appear to be playing Go Fish or T-ball….
But now it’s the Republicans whining because the Democrats refuse to play by the re-written rules. The Democrats were perfectly within their rights—in fact, the Republicans hardly left them any choice—when they simply decided to sit out and let the Republicans try to pull off this farce by themselves.
Political games are defensible only if they are played in pursuit of some worthier goal. If the Republicans even have a goal anymore, except to make themselves look stupid, I don’t know what it is.
Yesterday, the Missoulian chided the House GOP for splitting up the budget:
No one’s talking about budget specifics in Helena. It’s all about the process – one bill or six or eight. The political theatrics likewise divert public attention. Whatever budget emerges, it promises to be the least scrutinized tax-and-spending package in modern history.
The paper calls on Republicans to return to HB 2 and use their “powers of persuasion” in negotiations with the Governor to get reductions in spending.
The Great Falls Tribune on the H&HS cut:
We hope Montanans are comfortable with the idea that one man whose politics are somewhere to the right of the entire Republican Party appears to be dictating much of what passes the state House of Representatives.
We refer to Rick Jore, the affable lawmaker from Ronan who is the Legislature’s sole member of the Constitution Party, a group that probably could hold its annual convention in the back of a van.
The Billings Gazette’s editorial board – who are a day behind the news – were pretty harsh on the House Republicans and their “leader” Scott Sales today because of their creation of two additional budget bills – upping the tally to eight — without any chance for public input or scrutiny.
Tuesday morning, The Gazette editorial board chatted with House Speaker Scott Sales in a telephone conference call that he had requested last week. It was a cordial exchange with Sales describing how the six GOP budget bills would be brought to the house floor in the next two days and that the “six-pack” eventually would be sent to the governor at the same time so he would have a full 10 days to make a decision on signing them.
Imagine the editorial board’s surprise to find that at the time Sales spoke with the board, other GOP House leaders were scrapping one of their six major state spending bills and breaking it into three parts.
“I almost told you, but it wasn’t quite ready for public consumption,” Sales told the editorial writer later Tuesday.
That, or Sales didn’t know about the changes, either.
How can the public participate in this quick-change legislation? Seventy-two-hour notice was posted Tuesday for the Friday hearings, Sales said. That would mean the notice would have to have taken effect at 8 a.m. Tuesday, before the bills were introduced. They weren’t all accessible at the legislative Web site as of late Tuesday afternoon.
The editorial chides Sales for not letting folks have their say – people who are “important to the process,” even if they happen to be experts on the issues – and in the end skewers the GOP’s budget:
The governor’s budget certainly can be improved. But it isn’t the reckless spending spree that his critics have said. There’s no “rainy-day fund” in the House GOP plan, although Schweitzer and senators of both parties have proposed saving some of this biennium’s extraordinary surplus for leaner times. The GOP bills set no money aside to pay for future public school building repairs as the governor proposed. Schweitzer’s budget contains millions in one-time-only spending, including financing capital projects with current revenues instead of bonding. Schweitzer’s government funding and tax-cut proposals appear to be sustainable.
Can the GOP House leadership say the same about its larger, permanent tax cuts and smaller government funding? Asked about that on Tuesday, Sales didn’t answer the question.
Me, on March 6:
There’s been some touting of the Republican party’s shift to the right in recent state politics, as if that meant a new and dedicated sense of unity and mission. There’s been some crowing that the Republicans’ response to Schweitzer’s budget was completely unexpected, and surprised overconfident Democrats.
I admit it was hard to predict that House Republicans would choose such a contentious, time-consuming, and ultimately hopeless means to tout their ideology in the legislature. In the end, of course, it will be that ideological stubbornness that sinks the GOP in this budget battle.
To add to Ed’s collection, it looks like the chickens are coming home to hatch before they were counted.
by Jay Stevens
The Battle of the Budget has hit a new low. In today’s Gazette it was noted that House Majority Leader Michael Lange is threatening to cut $2 billion in federal aid for Montana in order to cajole radical Constitution Party member Rick Jore into voting for the six – no, eight House Republican budget bills.
That’s right. Two billion dollars.
Where, oh where was would the two billion be cut from?
The $2 billion represents two-thirds of the entire budget for the Department of Public Health and Human Services over the next two years. The federal funds make up large portions of the funding of programs that serve tens of thousands of Montanans. The programs include food stamps, energy assistance, Medicaid, mental health and the Children’s Health Insurance Program or CHIP.
The poor, the elderly, the children.
Let us contemplate.
First, if Representative Lange had aspirations for Max Baucus’ Senate seat, he may kiss his ambitions good-bye. Frankly, he’ll be lucky if he gets back to the state legislature after this stunt. Remember, the only reason anyone supported Conrad Burns in the 2006 Senate race was that he brought pork to the state. Pork that Representative Lange is threatening to lop off at one stroke.
Second, if passed – and there’s no way in h*ll the cuts would make it through the Senate or past the Governor – the cumulative suffering of seniors, children, and mental health patients would shatter radical conservative rhetoric on limiting government “entitlement” programs for a generation. Montanans are good people, and good people don’t like to see seniors and children suffer.
Third, this is the dumbest stunt I’ve ever seen. As I’ve said before this cut has zero chance to succeed. Frankly, it has zero chance to succeed in the House, unless Republican legislators all vote for it knowing it has no chance in the Senate. And if it passes the House, it will put a permanent black mark on the Montana Republican party. (Think how well energy deregulation went.) It’s obviously a bluff – a bad one, like pretending you have four aces at five-card stud game.
Oh, and the spending bills are proliferating, so now there are eight bills instead of one. How many will there be next week?
The recent budget controversy is challenging the credibility of that fellowship. The esteemed House is set to allow one person to dictate arguably the most important piece of legislation the House must steward, the State budget bill.
Comments this week from GOP leadership included, (paraphrasing) ‘it will be fixed in the Senate, as it always is’ ‘we just need to move it through the process’. Respectfully, that is not the case. It is not honorable to abrogate your duty. Waiving one’s legislative responsibility is not honorable.
Amen.
While the Democrats are being stubborn on the issue of the bill, the behavior of House Republicans has been disjointed, childish, divisive. They’ve now wasted – how many weeks of the legislative session? When all is said and done, they’ll have to go back to HB 2. The Democratic party has the Senate and the Governorship and the right to frame the debate. The House Republicans, in a political game resembling nothing so much as playing Russian roulette with an automatic, are trying to force their policy on the majority and on the process. The result: a train wreck.
I say, let the Republicans pass their Frankenstein bills tailored to the most radical element of the state’s electorate. They deserve what they will get.
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 the Legislature’s 150 House and Senate members before being sent to the voters.
If somehow four representatives change votes and send the bill to the state Senate, all 50 Senators would have to support the bill in order for it to be added to the constitution. In other words, there’s not a chance in hell this thing will pass.
(Politically, it’s a gift to the pro-life legislators. They can vote for a pro-life bill they know won’t pass. That is, they can support the criminalization of abortion without actually having to live with the consequences.)
To be frank, the bill sounds like a stunt, plain and simple. It’s so ill considered and full of blustery rhetorical hyperbole – and its implementation so obviously would be a disaster for our courts, legal systems, and families – that it seems written specifically to fail.
In short, this bill would hand pregnancy over to the state. Miscarriages become potential murders; a fetus become potential wards of state; every possible sign of abortion would require forced examinations of women’s vaginas. (In fact, I went at length the likely results of the type of criminalization Jore is proposing.)
I don’t think anyone wants that.
Oh, and criminalizing abortion doesn’t reduce the number of abortions:
The abortion rates are highest in Chile and Peru (where one woman in 20 has an induced abortion). In Brazil, Colombia and the Dominican Republic, it’s about one woman in 30, and in Mexico approximately one in 40. (In the United States, the rate is 21.3 per 1,000 women.)
The abortion rate in Chile and Peru is 50 per 1,000 women; 33 per 1,000 in Brazil, Colombia, and the Dominican Republic; and 25 per 1,000 women in Mexico. All of these countries have outlawed abortion and – in some cases – substantially higher abortion rates than the US.
Oh, and thousands of women die from illegal abortions each year, and hundreds of thousands end up hospitalized. Most of those that are arrested, injured, or killed as a result of illegal abortions are the poor. In other words, an abortion ban targets the weakest women among us.
It’s pretty clear that most of us want to reduce abortions. It’s not a pleasant experience, physically or emotionally. It’s also pretty clear that the criminalization of abortion isn’t going to reduce abortions – and it’s going to cause a lot of extremely unpleasant, unrelated, and unintended side effects.
If you want to reduce abortion, you’ve got to create fewer unwanted pregnancies and a society that encourages more women to carry to term. That means better health care, more information and availability of contraceptives, better and cheaper day care providers, and liberal maternity laws. Those things work. Criminalization doesn’t.
If you believe a fetus is a living human and abortion is murder, you should jump off the abortion ban bandwagon and work for humane health care conditions for all.
Or you can keep fighting to ban abortions, and help keep the abortion rate where it is.
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again, banning abortion and contraceptives isn’t a solution, it’s a judgment.
by Jay Stevens
Can you believe this?
The man who’s ultimately responsible for all of our Election-Day problems – secretary of state Brad Johnson – has come out against same-day registration:
The secretary of state’s office is supporting a measure to do away with same-day voter registration in Montana, arguing it could help prevent a repeat of problems that occurred during the state’s 2006 election.
Republican Secretary of State Brad Johnson is in favor of a bill that would require voters to register before Election Day, his chief of staff, Mark Simonich, said Thursday.
Simonich said Election Day 2006, the first year in which same-day registration was allowed in the state, was “somewhat chaotic” because county election officials were required to simultaneously register voters and run elections.
Interesting. Especially because much of the chaos can be lain directly at Johnson’s feet. It was his office, after all, that failed to provide clear voting guides for Montanans. It was his office, after all, that failed to provide easy access to registration rules. It was his office that failed to help voting precincts prepare for the possible crush on election day, on a day when a nationally prominent and historically important Senate race was to be decided.
Instead, Brad Johnson was plastering Montana roadways with this:
That’s right, Johnson was erecting billboards across the state featuring his face and an American flag — ostensibly there to provide voters with election information. Of course, only an idiot would deny that they were campaign posters. For what, Brad? Governorship in 2008?
Perhaps Brad’s office would be best served by eliminating elections altogether. That would make his job easier, wouldn’t it?
In any case, it’s definitely odd that Johnson uses as evidence the chaos he’s in no small part responsible for to do away with a popular voting law. If you were the suspicious type, you might think he tried to sabotage same-day registration…
(In a side note, the most repulsive comment in the article comes courtesy of Rick Jore:
Jore said those who wait to register until the last minute also may not be well-informed on the issues.
Of course, after that comment – if we follow Jore’s logic – we should probably disenfranchise the voters of HD 12.
Or, to paraphrase David Crisp, who could have been talking to Rick Jore:
But if standards for competence and productivity were imposed, wouldn’t you miss voting?
Zing!)
by Jay Stevens
So what’s Rick Jore up to in the legislature these days? It’s a good question, because we crazed bloggers have predicted gloom and doom for the state of Montana in Jore’s appointment as chair of the House Education Committee.
So I check out the bills he’s sponsoring…and, man! Is this guy a fruitcake, or what? He certainly doesn’t mess around.
There’s a bill on hold rejecting the No Child Left Behind Act, which I could actually get behind. Of course, that’s one way to eliminate federal funding for state schools, isn’t it?
There’s another (also on hold) that would replace primary elections with a party caucus in selecting political party nominations for office. On the surface, not revolutionary, but certainly would take candidate selection out of the hands of those pesky voters. Probably would allow for real extremists to win party nominations. Still, there’s no text to this bill, so I’m making assumptions.
Then there’s his attempt to revise Montana’s same-day voter registration laws, pushing registration back to 14 days prior to elections. This is, of course, nuts. Same-day registration was wildly successful in the 2006 elections. A lot of Montanans charged the courthouse on election day, exercising their right to vote. This bill would deny some people the right to vote. Period.
And then there’s LC1171, which prohibits transferring jurisdiction to tribes of state-run lands on reservations. I’m not exactly sure what the intent of this bill is…but I suspect it’s influenced by the recent Bison Range dispute and seems to ensure that no such transfer agreement could ever happen to state lands.
The kicker bill is, of course, LC1173, which would “Constitutionally recognize life begins at conception.” Ugh. Great. Let’s hope this bill never makes it out of committee, because it’s a bald attempt to stir up a political hornet’s next.
All in all, just about what you’d expect from Jore. Let’s hope most of this stuff doesn’t even get out of committee, especially the voting changes and the whacky “life at conception” bill.
In light of the Bison Range fiasco, talking about jurisdiction changes on tribal lands isn’t a bad idea, although I’d probably be against it.
Other than that, may all of Jore’s bills die quiet deaths…
by Jay Stevens
John Adams has a sweet profile of nutcase Rick Jore in today’s Independent, centered around a visit by Constitution Party members to Hellgate High School in Missoula.
In the story, Jore calls public funding of schools “welfare for education,” and promises to make life difficult for a legislature that will soon toil under a Montana Supreme Court order that the body must “develop an adequate funding mechanism” for public education:
“The Legislature is not constitutionally bound, in my opinion, under the separation of doctrine, to acquiesce to the court’s opinion,” he says. “I’m not at all convinced that continuing on the same path of just giving more money, and not addressing accountability and parental rights and authority, is the course we want to go.”
The Federal government has no Constitutional authority to fund or interfere with education and I will oppose all federal funds appropriated for education.
From Rick Jore’s Constitution Party’s platform:
All teaching is related to basic assumptions about God and man. Education as a whole, therefore, cannot be separated from religious faith. The law of our Creator assigns the authority and responsibility of educating children to their parents. Education should be free from all federal government subsidies, including vouchers, tax incentives, and loans, except with respect to veterans.
Because the federal government has absolutely no jurisdiction concerning the education of our children, the United States Department of Education should be abolished; all federal legislation related to education should be repealed. No federal laws subsidizing or regulating the education of children should be enacted. Under no circumstances should the federal government be involved in national teacher certification, educational curricula, textbook selection, learning standards, comprehensive sex education, psychological and psychiatric research testing programs, and personnel.
This is the guy Sideshow Scott Sales thought appropriate to sit in the state House’s most powerful seat for state education.
Jeff Mangan – hardly a liberal – is calling Sideshow Scott’s committee appointments indicative of the leadership’s “extremist attitude towards education,” and claims “the credibility of the Republican Party is at stake.”
Matt Singer is calling for Jore’s ouster from the chair of the House Education committee. I agree wholeheartedly. We shouldn’t be playing politics with our children’s education. To help prod moderate Republicans into action, go sign Forward Montana’s online petition and forward it to other interested Montanans.
by Jay Stevens
Shane, V, and Jeff Mangan already mentioned Rick Jore’s appointment as chair of Montana’s Education committee, but I’d like to pile on.
Here’s the catch. Jore doesn’t believe in using federal money for education. He’s against compulsory education and believes the public school system should be replaced by private schools and homeschooling. Not what you would call a representative view of most Montanans. And now he’s the leading lawmaker dealing with education in our state house.
According to the Tribune story, Jore never asked for the position:
Jore said he never specifically asked for the chairmanship.“Quite frankly, I was surprised,” said Jore, a Ronan resident who served as a Republican legislator in the 1990s before switching parties.
So why did the GOP put Jore in a position where he can wreak havoc on our state’s school system?
Republican leaders dismissed the criticism, saying the education community opposed Sales and other Republicans in elections.
“I don’t recall the education community supporting the speaker, or myself either,” said House Republican leader Mike Lange of Billings. “They didn’t win. That’s the bottom line. If they want to control the committee, my recommendation to them is to be better at campaigning than they were.
“We owe them no explanation whatsoever.”
Got that? It’s a clear message. If you don’t support the GOP, then you’re out, even if you are crucial to the economic and educational well-being of your state. Can you think of an institution more important to voters than education? Me neither, but under the bus education goes because educators didn’t prostrate themselves before the Montana Republican Party.
Make no mistake, this is a deliberate move made by GOP House Speaker, Scott Sales, as part of his “war” on Democrats. I almost feel sorry for Jore, who will no doubt become the punching-bag of state voters, bloggers, and news media next year. (Of course, Jore will deserve every rhetorical blow he receives.)
V:
House Republicans better hope that the people of Montana don’t wake up and smell the coffee. If they do, these insane proposals will ruin any chance they have at making headway with non-Radicals–including a majority of Montana independents–that don’t support total war on public education.
Shane:
Is this how the Republicans in the state legislature intend to do things? Perhaps we can get Abramoff to come here and head the ethics committee? Is this OK?…
[snip]
So, not only does it appear that [Jore] doesn’t support federal funding, but he doesn’t support funding public schools at all. This is how the state Republicans want to run the state?
The appointment of Jore – a self-proclaimed enemy of public education – is the type of move that represents everything that’s repulsive and alienating about politics. Once again we’re seeing lawmakers put political party above the good of the community. If you had any doubts about Montana Republicans before, this little stunt should clear things up for good.
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