Category: TEA Party

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.

Posted: May 9, 2013 at 10:31 pm

Former TEA Party Lawmaker’s Trial Gets Weirder

Today’s TEA Party news comes to us courtesy of former GOP lawmaker Joel Boniek, who is using his trial to put forth conspiracy theories and frivolous arguments to defend himself against charges that he ran a police roadblock in 2012. Because of his behavior, the court was forced to issue an official ruling to limit what Boniek can address in his upcoming trial to try to keep him on topic.

Cowgirl readers will recall that last year, Boniek was hauled into court to answer charges that he’d sped through a roadblock in defiance of an officer’s order to keep out. Boniek was trying to get to his house, but his house was in an area where a forest fire was burning and had been evacuated and blocked off due to the emergency. As a devoted Tea Partier and general wingnut, Boniek did not recognize the authority of the policeman to keep him away from his private property. Also, during his encounter with the officer before he crashed the barrier, Boniek allegedly reached for a gun that he had with him in the front seat. As the Livingston Enterprise reported, he:

“allegedly argued with the officers and eventually ‘dropped his left hand near what looked like a holster’ before a deputy brought him to the ground….The deputy removed a loaded handgun from the holster, according to court documents.”

For his day in court, Boniek brought with him an angry mob of supporters, who shouted down the Judge and Prosecutor in such a menacing way that they fled the courtroom fearing for their safety. At that point, Boniek stood up and proclaimed himself regent over the courtroom, and decreed himself innocent of all the charges (before the bailiff told him otherwise, while brandishing his own weapon).

Boniek, who is representing himself, has been asked to stop bringing up a number of frivolous and conspiracy-related arguments.

The first is “jury nullification” which is when a jury ignores the evidence and or instructions of the judge and returns a verdict of “Not Guilty” despite its belief that the defendant is guilty of the violation he or she is charged with. This appears to be a primary focus of Boniek’s self-defense, and the case is being closely followed by the jury nullification crew, as you can see from their press release on the case. He and his band of TEA Partiers have also been ordered not to distribute TEA Party pamphlets around the courthouse before the trial tomorrow, May 10.

During a hearing of his court case on Friday, the Livingston Enterprise reports, Boniek himself “lodged multiple complaints and objections, including that the court is fraudulent and that officials are treating him as an “artificial person” because his name appears in all capital letters on legal documents.”

He’s also accused the judge and everyone involved with the trial of being “fraudulent” so therefore his trial should not proceed. Boniek alleges that the judge will see personal financial benefit from his trial and any fines related to it.

Boniek is also angry with the Livingston Enterprise,who he has demanded show him every story they write about him before it is printed. The whole Enterprise article on the case’s latest developments is a must read.

Posted: May 8, 2013 at 11:30 am

TEA Party Launches Bid for GOP Leadership

The TEA Party may have its own ticket among the candidates who seek to run the Montana Republican Party

Embattled TEA Party figure Tim Ravndal, who made headlines for his remarks that implied support for violence against gays, is floating a slate of candidates for GOP Chair and Vice Chair. Gary Carlson has already announced and put out a flyer listing his qualifications. Jennifer Fielder, a TEA Party legislator from Noxon with ties to the militia movement, is the second name.

In the past, the GOP has tried to give token support to the hard right wing of the party without actually letting them take full control. However, the battle we saw in the Montana legislature between the hard right leadership of Wittich, Priest, and Essmann and the more traditional GOP-ers is also likely to play out here.

Posted: May 3, 2013 at 6:53 am

Laszloffy’s Losses Part 2

by Cowgirl

The Montana Family Foundation’s Jeff Laszloffy suffered a slew of losses this session, but perhaps none was felt so bitterly as his failure to get a parental consent legislative referendum on the ballot for 2014. The Family Foundation’s legislative referenda work was the organization’s major cash cow last election cycle. Since Laszloffy failed to get the measure on the ballot for 2014, the Family Foundation’s ability to impact elections has now evaporated.

Cowgirl readers will recall that Governor Steve Bullock allowed Laszloffy’s unconstitutional bill to become law solely so that the bill can be struck down in Montana’s courts. As John Adams at The Lowdown reports, the move allows women to immediately challenge the measure in court long before an identical referenda passed by the legislature gets to the ballot in 2014.

Sure, Laszloffy knew that the measure was unconstitutional–everyone knew it. But Lazloffy’s purpose in pushing it was electoral, not policy-driven.

You see, last election cycle Laszloffy raised some $300,000–purportedly for the parental notification legislative referenda which was sent to the ballot by the 2011 legislature. Montana Family Foundation’s Incidental Ballot Committee Reports in 2012 show they were able to raise and spend $320,000 in 2012.

In a typical year, the Family Foundation raises about $20,000 for electoral work. But because of the LR, LR-120, they were able to raise more than 15 times that amount. You can see the reports below.

$18,000 May 8-May 24

$3,000 May 25-June 18

$2,000 June 19-July 3

$6,000 July 4 -Aug 3

$29,000 Aug 4-Sept 3

$191,000 spent Sept 15-Oct 15

$3,000 spent Oct 16-Oct 25

$68,000 spent Oct 26-Nov 19

For one thing, this is money that could be used to supplant Family Foundation funds that had been going toward Laszloffy’s salary. What’s also interesting is that the campaign finance reports for Laszloffy’s ballot committee shows that some of the money he raised was leveraged to actually help the GOP’s top targeted legislative races–not just the ballot initiative.

Here’s a screenshot from his “incidental ballot committee’s” campaign report. It reports the expenditure Lazsoffy made for a mailer that was about the ballot measure on one side, and a top tier targeted GOP race on the other. This means that all of the polling and research Laszloffy did for these mailings was supporting the GOP’s legislative candidates too.

Thanks to Cowgirl tipsters for pointing out these fundraising anomalies. Reader tips are the essence of this blog. Send tips to mntnacowgirl (at) gmail.com

Posted: May 2, 2013 at 7:13 pm

Family Foundation Says “God Governs the Affairs of Men”…but had trouble passing bills

by Cowgirl

The leader of the religious right group called the Montana Family Foundation proclaimed in a recent podcast that “God still today actively governs in the affairs of men.”

If it was the will of God that Jeff Laszloffy introduced such right-wing bills this session— as opposed to the will of the people the legislature is elected to represent — how does Laszloffy explain the fact that so many of his bills failed? Especially when the session was overwhelmingly dominated by members of the Republican Party.

Here’s a sampling of bills Laszloffy was backing which failed to pass.

Clayton Fiscus’s bill to require the teaching of creationism alongside evolution in all Montana schools failed.

Kris Hansen’s private sectarian school voucher bill HB 357

Mary Caferro’s bill to legalize religious ponzi insurance schemes, which was vetoed by both Schweitzer and Bullock. SB 181

Cary Smith’s anti-science sex-education bill. HB 239

Krayton Kerns bill to take away the right to death with dignity. HB 505

But it wasn’t just that his pro-active bills failed, bills that he had hoped to defeat were passed and became law.

Tom Facey’s bill to remove from the books Montana’s law that made being gay an imprisonable felony. SB 107

And Laszloffy had tried to defeat Llew Jones’s SB 175, which made major investments in public schools.

To be sure, Laszloffy did get his way on one very prominent national issue. He allowed religious boarding schools in Montana like Pinehaven Ranch to remain unregulated. These religious schools, which have no licenses, no accreditation and employ teachers who are not certified, are now dealing with allegations that staff used violence to discipline students. And yet the Montana GOP has voted, on a party line, to allow such schools to continue to go unregulated. CNN ran a big story about it on the Anderson Cooper 360 show. Ellie Hill’s HB 236 would have addressed the problem. Laszloffy lobbied hard against Hill’s bill.

Before you start questioning God and his plan in light of this new information, make quick review of Laszloffy’s failed agenda–and how out-of-touch these bills make their sponsors appear. Sure enough, Laszloffy will prove to be the answer to the prayers of local Democrats next fall.

Posted: May 1, 2013 at 7:15 pm

Tea Party plays defense after rejecting $6 billion in federal funds

Keith Regier is out of touch. — Keith Regier

by Cowgirl

State legislator Keith Regier, who once compared women to pregnant cattle and a fetus to an unfinished barn, has written an editorial in the Flathead Beacon that attempts to defend his party’s destruction of Access Health Montana, Bullock’s Medicaid expansion proposal to bring health care to 70,000 working poor Montanans which never made it out of the legislature.

Regier makes the Tea Party’s stock argument, which can be easily debunked.

He makes the claim that Medicaid will “worsen health outcomes” for the Montana poor. How? He points to supposed studies that show that Medicaid patients are more likely to have surgical complications, and are statistically more likely to die, than the population as a whole. Essentially, he is arguing that Medicaid makes you sick.

This conflates cause with correlation. Medicaid clients are indeed less healthy than the greater population, that is true. But it’s not that Medicaid makes you sick or that the care is somehow worse –its delivered by the same hospitals and doctors by the same standards. It’s because of the profile of the average Medicaid enrollee. They have likely come to the Medicaid program they are so sick that they have spent down their savings on their illness and are now eligible; or because they have been rejected by private insurance companies due to expensive pre-existing health conditions; or because they have lacked healthcare for many years until their condition has become difficult to treat. Also, the current Medicaid population is heavy on seniors, who have more health problems than the population on the whole.

In other words, Medicaid is a repository for many of the most ill and least treated citizens.

So it is true that Medicaid enrollees are among the least healthy. It is not caused by their enrolling in Medicaid. This is not a difficult thing to understand, even if Regier and his Tea Party have trouble understanding it.

There are some legislators who deserve mention for having tried their best. Democrats who worked hard to bring in the new Medicaid reforms, Dave Wanzenried and Christine Kauffman and Chuck Hunter, and even some Repubs like Ed Buttrey and Alan Olson, deserve some credit for trying to get it done. And many executive branch employees in the governor’s office and the health and human services department–and of course the citizens’ groups and their members who did the most work.

They all understood, if nothing else, that you should try to find room for $6 billion dollars for healthcare when the federal government offers it.

Posted: April 29, 2013 at 11:12 pm

TEA Partiers Vote to Keep Seniors in Barn Rather than Use Federal Funds for Senior Center

by Cowgirl

TEA Party GOP County Commissioners have voted against grant money for a home for the local senior center–even after they previously committed to apply for the funds. Their actions will force the seniors to gather in a rented barn with numerous safety hazards–and pay rent for that privilege to key campaign supporters of the Republican commissioners’ campaigns.

The ultra-conservative Flathead Daily Inter Lake‘s editorial page explains the problem–and-excoriates Pam Holmquist and Gary Krueger soundly for their “shameful” actions and for “failing to lead” and “turning [their] backs on grandma and grandpa.”

Here’s what happened.

Ten years ago, Flathead County needed a new senior center–the area is home to a large and growing senior population and their old space was terrible. This is a place where low income seniors who live alone can come for a hot meal and some company. The county moved the senior center to a rented barn. The building had multiple safety hazards, but warehousing the seniors in a barn was supposed to be a temporary thing.

Ten years later, the county has saved up almost enough money to relocate the seniors. The money comes not from local taxes. Rather, it comes from payments the federal government makes to local government entities with lots of federal land nearby (e.g. Glacier) which can’t be used as source of local tax revenue.

To make up the difference in cost between moving to a new location and the federal funds the county had in the bank, locals started looking at community development block grants. On February 21, 2013, commissioners officially voted to proceed with the grant.A local non-profit and the City of Kalispell had both planned to apply. However, when the county voted officially that it would apply, both entities stepped aside to give the county the spot in line for the money.

But at the last meeting county commission meeting, Pam Holmquist and Gary Krueger reneged and voted against the grant. Cal Scott opposed the other two Republicans, voting instead to uphold the commission’s previous promises.

Here’s the kicker. Because the county waited until the last minute to apply for the grant, its now too late for the city or local non-profits to apply. Whether this was part of a TEA Party plot to screw seniors or sheer incompetence is not known. What is known is that the senior center will remain in the barn–and paying rent to the commissioners’ campaign supporters.

This isn’t the first scandal to plague the Flathead County Commission. In the United States of America today, it is illegal to allow only wealthy property owners to vote. So in 2011 the Republican Flathead County Commissioners did the next best thing.

They sent out a survey to the ‘doughnut’ residents (people who live in a ring around the outer edge of the city of Whitefish) asking who they prefer to manage planning and zoning, the county or city of Whitefish. Instead of mailing surveys to the registered voters in the area in question, they sent the surveys only to corporations and property owners. If you resided in the area, but didn’t make enough to own property, well, you weren’t allowed to voice your opinion.

In 2012, Flathead County officials told citizens who wanted to see the public documents related to Dennis Rehberg’s boat crash that in order get an email with the documents they must pay a fee of $82.50 per email for “photocopying.”

Posted: April 29, 2013 at 7:26 am

The Ties that Bind

by Cowgirl

While embattled Montana state senator Jason Priest has tried to separate himself from American Traditions Partnership, his donor sheet tells a different story. Continue reading →