Tagged: Bozeman

Posted: December 3, 2012 at 12:15 pm

What’s the Matter with Bozeman?

The Bozeman Chronicle reported this week that a new national TEA Party astroturf group funded by the Koch brothers is starting up in Bozeman, just in time for the 2013 legislative session.

The group is called “American Majority in Montana.”  It’s a part of the national TEA Party group out of Virginia called “American Majority.”

Jeremy Carpenter is the group’s local contact. He said the goal is to build up the TEA Party base “by teaching people how to be candidates, run campaigns, get out the vote or be activists.”  The group will be working to put TEA partiers not just in the legislature and statewide offices, but in local offices like school boards, County Commissions, and City Councils.

As the Chronicle reports:

According to an Oct. 5, 2009, Dallas News article, American Majority co-founder Drew Ryun said 75 percent of the group’s funding comes from the Sam Adams Alliance, a tea party organization with connections to the Koch brothers, much like Americans for Prosperity.

Bozeman is already home to two TEA Party groups – Americans for Prosperity, run by former GOP legislator Joe Balyeat, and something called the “Political Economy Research Center” which is some kind of right-wing “think tank.”

Posted: March 8, 2012 at 7:06 am

DOH! Meet the Montana TEA Party’s Keystone Kops

Rep. Tom Burnett (R-Bozeman)

The Montana Commissioner of Political Practices rejected a complaint by TEA Party Republicans this week. They claimed that their voting records on public spending and personal largesse were misrepresented by local Democrats.

The TEA Party legislature tried to shut down the state by blocking education and jobs–claiming a fake budget crisis, but the facts shows Tea Party lawmakers grabbing from the government trough.

Rep. Tom Burnett, of Bozeman, and Rep. Cleve Loney, of Great Falls, had filed a complaint against a flyer that exposed the big bump in taxpayer-funded personal compensation they gave themselves–while cutting education, jobs, and food for Montana families.   In an attempt to hide their hypocrisy from their base of low information voters, Burnett and Loney tried to claim that the campaign materials were untrue.

Cyndi Baker (left) and Rep. Cleve Loney R-Great Falls (right)
Rep. Cleve Loney (R-Great Falls) with megaphone.

Here’s where the story goes Keystone Kops.  It’s a classic case of TEA Party dysfunction and imbecility.  The law on which Burnett and Loney had tried to base their complaint–a law against misrepresenting voting records–has already been struck down in a case brought by the Tea Party-aligned Western Tradition Partnership, the OPP ruling shows.

Yeah, that’s the same Western Tradition Partnership that bought the election for idiots like Burnett and Loney. So even if the flyer was wrong (it isn’t), the very group that elected the TEA Partiers got a judge to block the law the OPP would have needed to correct the record.

Posted: February 14, 2012 at 7:37 am

Nutjobs Only Need Apply

The Montana Republican Party Executive Director, Bowen Greenwood, this week is calling out a fellow Republican legislative candidate for not being a nutjob and accusing him of being a dastardly RINO.

Greenwood made the unusual move of taking sides in a legislative primary the Koch brothers’ former State Director Scott Sales, attacking Sales’ primary opponent in the Bozeman area race. Remember that the Koch brothers gave Greenwood’s predecessor, Jake Eaton, a job after he was forced to leave the Montana GOP in disgrace over his involvement in a Republican voter suppression scheme.  Maybe Greenwood is just trying to keep is future options open.

What makes Sales a real Republican, besides his love of Koch, is first his unabashed ability to attribute fake quotes to Abraham Lincoln. This is important, because Lincoln is the one of the only decent Republicans out there.  He didn’t say a lot of nutjob nonsense. So, it must be fabricated so that people think the GOP has always been this way.

Anyway, on the first day of the session before last, Scott Sales (R-Bozeman), as the House  Minority Leader was looking to set a right winger tone to the session.  Sales read a series of quotes that he attributed to former President Abraham Lincoln. A newspaper reporter looked into those quotes and found that Lincoln never said them.  Sales was forced to apologize on the House Floor, saying he’d been “duped” because he got his information from the internets.

Sales also proved his real Republican-ness when he declared the session was going to be a “war”.  He appointed a nutjob, a Constitution Party member, head of the education committee.  And he’s been palling around with the Tea Party, ranting about how the Government should “live within its means, like the vast majority of families do” ever since.  Well, not his own family, apparently.

So at least the Montana Republican Party has finally put it out in the open: Nutjobs only need apply.

Posted: June 10, 2011 at 6:42 am

Flood Victims Derided

A Republican state legislator has been quick to rush to the assistance of flood victims with that favorite Republican commodity, derision for those who need flood assistance, calling them “the root of all of our nation’s spending and debt problems.”

In a blog post from Rep. Tom Burnett (R-Bozeman) written in response to the current floods, Burnett said that his father had once rejected federal disaster assistance and that this presumably was the only honorable way to behave:

How admirable and rare is such pride and independence. How desperately it is needed. Handouts are killing us. They are the root of our nation’s spending and debt problems.

What does Tom Burnett advise flood victims the root of all our nation’s spending and debt problems to do?

Dad had a chainsaw. He had standing timber. He had tools and know-how. He knew how to mix concrete. He had an independent spirit. He and Mom would rather not take handouts. They felt squeamish about burdening others.

Just go get a chainsaw like Tom Burnett’s dad and mow down some trees and rebuild your own bridges.  Think Tom Burnett makes no sense? That’s your problem, not his.

The state of Montana faces record flooding.

Posted: May 22, 2011 at 10:19 am

End of the World Let Down Has Bozeman Connections

A Bozeman Montana woman behind the movement to put up billboards around the world warning of the apocalypse is still holding out hope for the end at some point, while others say the rapture has already happened, it’s just not obvious.

 

Marie Exley, who helped put up apocalypse-themed billboards in Israel, Jordan and Lebanon, said the money allowed the nonprofit to reach as many souls as possible.

She said she and her husband, mother and brother read the Bible and stayed close to the television news on Friday night awaiting word of an earthquake in the southern hemisphere. When that did not happen, she said fellow believers began reaching out to reassure one another of their faith.

“Some people were saying it was going to be an earthquake at that specific time in New Zealand and be a rolling judgment, but God is keeping us in our place and saying you may know the day but you don’t know the hour,” she said Saturday, speaking from Bozeman, Mont. “The day is not over, it’s just the morning, and we have to endure until the end.”

 

Others say we are simply not paying attention to what actually got sucked up to heaven: in a few markets, Kaiser rolls have gone missing, as well as all airline ads except Delta.

 

 

Posted: May 1, 2011 at 10:33 am

Republican Intellectual Dabbler Loose in the Internets

The reasoning of Montana Republican Legislator Tom Burnett, R-Bozeman—which I’d charitably describe as primordial—was on full display this weekend on his blog. Says the man who represents urban outer Bozeman:

Maybe 38% out-of-wedlock childbearing is making test scores impervious to additional school spending. (Average education expenditures per pupil rose from $3,400 in 1965 to $8,745 in 2001, in constant dollars. US.)

…

What affects education most? Perhaps doubling “school funding” would not counteract the results inherent in the numbers above. With numbers like these, it is unlikely that further increases in taxes spent on education would result in great strides in literacy for each child. These numbers may represent Sysyphus’ boulder.

The opening passage, which comes without a source or citation of any kind, and the conclusion Burnett draws from it, are the sort of statements that should make any sober person cringe.  Burnett thinks that “out-of-wedlock childbearing” is causing the cost of education (per pupil, mind you) to go up, and so, therefore, we should never provide for inflationary cost increases for schools.

Now, I certainly do not in any way frown on Mr. Burnett making these sorts of statements in public – I hope the good people of Bozeman are fully aware of Rep. Burnett’s limited mental abilities, the sooner the better.

Burnett has been engaged on his blog and in the Montana legislature in attacking low income Montanans, and if he is going to engage in such dispicable behavior, he must accept us pointing out the logical falicies in his scribblings.

So I’d like to point out that (based on Burnett’s reasoning skills) since instances of piracy have decreased around the world, global temperatures have gone up.  This is shown by a graph correlating increasing surface temperatures of the earth with a decline in the number of pirates.

This famous demonstration of the flaws with this kind of thinking is intended to show  you that, while it is certainly true that piracy has decreased and temperatures have gone up, there is nothing directly connecting the two trends.

You see Tom,  the fact that two statistics occur at the same time doesn’t mean they have anything to do with one another. Correlation does not equal causation.

Posted: October 29, 2010 at 12:17 pm

Hardhitting Mailer: Bigot in Bozeman

A mailer in Bozeman has surfaced, calling Tom Burnett, the Tea Party Candidate, a bigot because he told gay people that they are the equivalent of people who practice beastiality, incest, and pedophilia. (What is pictured here is not the mailer, if someone has a copy, send it to me and I’ll post it. )

Marnee Banks blogged about it recently, though not about the substance of the issue.  Rather, she questions why the mailer uses this site as a source. The reason the mailer cited my blog, I presume, is that shortly after Tom Burnett wrote these despicable anti-gay statements on his own website, he removed them. He removed it because locals in Bozeman were horrified. A few local folks even ran ads in the Chronicle, denouncing him for the comments (ad pictured).

The state press corp missed it or simply didn’t care, but this blog was on the scene and covered it, catching the ugly anti-gay bigot Tom Burnett making bigoted remarks, then trying to cover them up like a dog who kicks dirt backwards with his hind legs after doing his business.

Posted: October 7, 2010 at 5:38 pm

Bozeman At Risk of Electing Militia Candidate

Bozeman might unwittingly be sending a miltia man to the legislature. Here are some bits of information about GOP candidate Tom Burnett, who is running against JP Pomnichowski, and who seems to have dabbled in some of the darker endeavors of the Far Right fringe.

Casey Emerson, a former legislator himself, is one of Bozeman’s most infamous supporters of the militia movement, even hosting meetings in his business King Tool, where they have entertained such speakers as Militia of Montana co-founder John Trochmann and notorious Nazi sympathizer Red Beckman.   He’s also an apologist for the Montana Freeman:

Casey Emerson of Bozeman, a man with ties to the militia movement, advocated serious concessions on the part of the government, including offering them money, dismissing some of the charges, and allowing them to give a presentation on national television. He also suggested that the Freemen be allowed to face a “common law” jury, “so they can get their bitching done.”

So which candidates meets the standard for Casey Emerson’s support this election cycle?  Only one.  TEA Party Republican Tom Burnett. Burnett received a contribution from Mr. Emerson of $40. That’s not a whole lot of money, but the question is, why is this nut-case supporting Burnett, and what does Burnett have to say about it?