Category: Legislative Races

Posted: June 18, 2013 at 5:47 am

Political Quick Hits

Immigration

Montana Organizing Project is hosting a series of open forums and screenings of The Dream is Now, a documentary by Academy-Award winning director Davis Guggenheim, across the state to educate and discuss this complex issue.

The documentary will be free and open to the public Wednesday, June 19 at 6:30 PM at St. Paul’s United Methodist Church. Speakers will include Democratic National Delegate Jorge Quintana, Immigration Attorney Shahid Haque-Hausrath and Pastor Tyler Amundson.

Its worth noting that more than half of all immigrants to this county are women.

The group is urging Montanans to call their Senators in support of the bill, S. 744. It’s also worth telling them to remove the provisions which allow for outsourcing of tens of thousands of U.S. jobs, 1000 of which could come from Bozeman.

It’s also worth telling our Senators to remove a provision by Orrin Hatch, who is famous for screwing middle class Americans for the benefit of large Fortune 500 corporations. Hatch led the charge to amend the bill to more than double the number of outsourcing Visa’s (H-1Bs) allowed under the law– and Oracle’s lobbying team was right there with him, prodding him. Amending the H-1B law makes it easier to import workers, to help multinational companies import many more of them, and to lower the burden of proof (regarding shortages in the domestic workforce) that companies must meet to be granted the right to import a foreign worker. Dick Durbin, D-Illinois and champion of workers, railed against the entire H-1B scheme as nothing more than a scheme which allows the largest companies in America to circumvent the normal immigration rules–and the U.S. market wages.

Hypocrisy Watch

Texas Governor Rick Perry, who railed against expanding Medicaid to working poor Texans because he claimed he opposed federal spending, is now begging for federal funds.

Texas has the highest share of uninsured people in the U.S. — about 24 percent of its adult population — and confronts billions of dollars worth of uncompensated hospital care every year. Montana also comes in high – more than 20 percent of our population is uninsured. Montana sees hundreds of millions in uncompensated care costs.

Posted: June 15, 2013 at 9:54 am

Terrible

How disgusting is it that the U.S. is the only industrialized nation in the entire world that doesn’t guarantee some type of paid time off for employees, despite all the evidence that paid leave policies benefit workers, businesses, and the economy.

This is yet one more example of hypocrisy from the politicians squawking about how they’re the pro-family bunch.

Posted: June 9, 2013 at 12:28 pm

Deschamps Re-elected, Fielder Comes Aboard

Will Deschamps won re-election as chairman today at the GOP convention, and Jennifer Fielder, a candidate with ties to the militia movement and some of its shadier members, became vice-chair.

Derek Skees, who had run on a platform of requiring republicans to swear a loyalty oath to uphold Tea Party principles, lost. And Christy Clark, who was the incumbent vice chair, also lost, displaced by Fielder. Clark came from what she herself termed the “responsible wing” of the GOP–which is an automatic ticket home. Words like “responsible” or “reasonable” or “moderate” are not terms that a GOP politician can now embrace. They are radioactive. Continue reading →

Posted: June 6, 2013 at 8:18 pm

Meet ALEC’s Backwoods Step-Sister

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is the best known boilerplate bill factory. It proliferates hundreds of right-wing bills for non-thinking legislators who take their orders from out-of-state think tanks instead of listening to their own constituents.

However, it turns out that ALEC is not the only source of one-size-fits-nobody bad ideas. Continue reading →

Posted: June 5, 2013 at 7:16 am

For TEA Party, Lies are Better than the Truth

It was a fun week all around for those watching Tea Party loons destroy any remaining chances the hardliners in the Montana Republican Party may have had at regaining credibility lost during the 2013 legislative session.

Exemplifying this phenomena was Tea Party leader Art Wittich, who was on the stump in Kalispell. He hoped to draw out some ire for what he called “adjective Republicans” who care more about jobs and economic development then brown shirt TEA Party ideology–which opposes health care for the working poor.

Wittich did not tell Kalispell Republicans about the new industry report which came out this week showing that states that denied the Medicaid expansion would lose billions in federal funding, and medical employers $1 billion for programs that partially compensate them for care for people who can’t pay. This report doesn’t mesh well with the TEA Party message, which as far as I can tell is “Obama BAD, Hulk SMASH.”

Nor did Wittich mention that Obamacare (which is now the law of the land, whether he likes it or not), will require large businesses to pay a $2,000 tax for each person the business employs but does not give health benefits to–amounting to a $15 million tax increase in Montana alone. If Montana had expanded Medicaid, these businesses would have been spared the tax hike.

Instead, Wittich used obfuscation and lies to deceive his own party members. He told them that IF that states were required to come up with three times more the share of the cost than federal law actually requires for the Medicaid expansion, then taxes would go up. Not a very compelling argument–especially since federal law would have to change first. Also, the Medicaid expansion bills in Montana contained automatic opt-out provisions even if the feds changed the law in a way that what a state had to pay went up.

Wittich’s problem is that if he shares the facts, people aren’t going to be pleased with his and Jason Priest’s actions to block health care for 70,000 working poor–and billions in federal money to pay for it.

Posted: May 23, 2013 at 5:40 am

Militia of Montana: A Closer Look

Now that the president of the Montana Senate, Jeff Essmann, has come out publicly in support of a militia-connected candidate for vice chair of the Montana Republican Party, its time to take a closer look at this woman and the group she leads, and what it stands for, so we can get a better sense of Essmann’s vision for the MTGOP. As a recent report by the Montana Human Rights Network reveals, its not pretty.

As I wrote in my previous post, Essmann is supporting Jennifer Fielder for Montana Republican vice-chair. Fielder is a colleague of John Trochmann. They are co-leaders of the Sanders County Resource Council.

Trochmann is the infamous leader of the Militia of Montana, and in the 1990s was a big figure in the national militia movement. And the Sanders County Resource Council was formed by Trochmann specifically to serve as a front group for militia activity. We know this because Trochmann admitted it, in a radio interview, in which he explains that for legal reasons, he now conducts much of his militia-oriented activity under the guise of several new groups, SNRC among them.

As the Human Rights Network reports, the Militia of Montana was started by a bunch of low-lifes with ties to white supremacists.

John Trochmann and members of his family started the Militia of Montana (MOM) in 1994. Prior to founding MOM, Trochmann spoke at and attended meetings at Idaho’s Aryan Nations. In the mid-1990s as MOM attempted to portray itself as mainstream, Trochmann tried desperately to distance himself and MOM from racist beliefs and Aryan Nations. Richard Butler, leader of Aryan Nations, responded with a letter asking why Trochmann lied about the number of times he had visited the hate group. The letter also stated Trochmann attended several of the group’s Bible studies and helped draft a code of conduct for the Aryan Nations compound. Over the years, MOM distributed material by well-known white supremacists, racist websites, and activists who deny the Holocaust. Its newsletter also published articles claiming Jewish people are the “synagogue of Satan” and control the government.

MOM grew out of another group Trochmann helped organize, United Citizens for Justice (UCJ), the MHRN reports. Some well-known white supremacists were leaders of the UCJ. They included a self-proclaimed neo-Nazi, an editor of a “Christian Identity” magazine (that’s the religion of the Aryan Nations), and a former leader of the Texas Ku Klux Klan. This group eventually folded due to infighting, and reformed as the Militia of Montana.

And Trochmann isn’t the only Sanders County Resource Council activist with a history of involvement with white supremacist militia types. Again from the MHRN report: “Ed Dosh is a [Sanders County Resource Council] activist. A longtime MOM member, Dosh worked the gun-show and preparedness expo circuit with the group during the 1990s. He’s been a close associate of John Trochmann ever since. Dosh was also a founding member of the Church of True Israel, a white supremacist group that splintered off from Aryan Nations in the mid-1990s.”

The MHRN report also says that Trochmann also has a history of trouble with the law:

In 1995, Trochmann and others were arrested in Roundup, MT, following an armed confrontation with law officers after Trochmann’s group tried filing documents supporting the Montana Freemen. When they were arrested, the “patriots” were equipped with plastic restraining devices, $80,000 in cash and coins, and numerous weapons. Charges against Trochmann were later dropped. In 2005, Trochmann faced charges of kidnapping and assault in Spokane after roughing up his niece, because he believed she had stolen a firearm from him. The charges were eventually dropped, but not before MOM shelled out $10,000 for an attorney.

If all of this weren’t enough, check out what happened when Trochmann’s brother tried to kick him out of the Militia for cheating on his wife. Trochmann went and formed a new group that he called the “Coalition for Men’s Rights.” This group was made up of men who had restraining orders against them for spousal abuse. So this is quite a crew and it will be interesting to see if the rest of the Montana Republican Party believes that these are the kind of people they want to follow.

Posted: May 22, 2013 at 6:40 am

Essmann Backs Candidate for Republican Leader with Militia Ties

The leader of the Montana Senate is backing a candidate for Vice-Chair of the state Republican Party with ties to the militia movement. Senate President Jeff Essmann put his support in writing–sending a letter to GOP convention delegates on official state letterhead backing Jennifer Fielder, who is a prominent member of a group linked to the Militia of Montana and a state legislator from Sanders County, where the Militia of Montana is headquartered. (This also appears to be a misuse of the state seal and official letterhead–which is supposed to be used for official state business only, not for partisan politics.)

Fielder is a leader of the innocuous sounding Sanders Natural Resource Council–the organization is the latest incarnation of the Militia of Montana. Fielder is on the group’s board of directors, according to her website. Here’s the screenshot in case this gets taken down.

Fellow Militia of Montana leader John Trochmann explains in this radio interview why the Militia of Montana is currently operating under the name Sanders National Resource Council–to evade detection by federal agents. Organizing an armed anti-government para-military group is against the law.

“For you federal agents that are listening, this movement is growing. There are sweet little units everywhere. Government, you figure it out…

Here in MT it is impossible to start an armed militia and take ‘em out and train them because of state laws…so if you want to train you have to do one thing at a time. You go out and target practice or you go out and do your skills as camping out or cold weather survival, especially like communications. We do that very well here, undetected hopefully…the name may be changed but we are still the same. “

Right now, that name is Sanders Natural Resource Council, Trochmann explains. If you wonder why the Militia of Montana would want to pose as an anti-environmental group, consider this. The militia leaders say that the biggest threat the militia sees right now is from attacks by “globalist organizations” of “environmental wackos.”

The Sanders Natural Resource Council (pronounced “SNaRC” by locals) believes that conservationists who support wildlife management of local bear populations are part of a conspiracy to conduct surveillance on the militia movement. Here’s how the bear surveillance conspiracy works:

“If you try to do anything with these bears–they have collars on them. If you try to plug a bear and the heart stops there will be a satellite over the top you instantly to take your picture of you and call out the game wardens instantly.”

“What if you plug one of the game wardens?” the host asks. To be sure, the host goes on to clarify his remark :”I was being somewhat facetious–but only somewhat, with that.”

And so, to fight the ominous threat of bear-activated satellite surveillance systems, the SNaRC Militia set about spreading fear with a spree of “town hall” meetings. GOP candidate Jennifer Fielder led the meetings, saying the Forest Service was planning a conspiracy to close down the entire forest.

At the meetings, the militia members raved that private property rights are at risk over grizzly management lines that they only just learned of. Problem is, the bear management lines have actually been on the map for thirty years.

The Militia of Montana organized from the remnants of an earlier organization, United Citizens for Justice. That was the group of angry white supremacists that formed in the 1990′s after the wife and son of white supremacist Randy Weaver were killed in a standoff with federal agents in Ruby Ridge, Idaho. The Alliance Defense League reports that “nearly all of its leaders and chief supporters were white supremacists, including Louis Beam, former ambassador at large for Aryan Nations.”

A screenshot of Essmann’s letter can be seen below:

Posted: May 16, 2013 at 6:07 am

National Watchdog Group Profiles Jason Priest’s Dark Money Group

Michael Beckel has just published a new profile on the dark money group a GOP state senator used to influence the Montana state Supreme Court race and block the Medicaid expansion.

The profile shows how Priest used dark money to demonize Supreme Court candidates Ed Sheehy and Elizabeth Best in support of a TEA Party candidate. Priest also used the dark money group to send out attack mailers to kill the Medicaid expansion. Because of Priest’s actions, 70,000 of Montanan’s most disadvantaged working poor won’t be able to get health care.

Beckel, who writes for the Center for Public Integrity, published the report on the heels of a new analysis by the National Institute on Money in State Politics that found Montana is one of 35 states where rules regarding the disclosure of political spending by independent groups are less stringent than federal election law.

There’s much more on this, so check out the links in Beckel’s story above.