Tagged: CNN

Posted: March 9, 2013 at 11:30 am

GOP Wants No Regulation of Controversial Boarding Schools

by Cowgirl

A religious boarding school in northern Montana named Pinehaven Ranch has no license, no accreditation and employs teachers who are not certified, and is now dealing with allegations that the 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 tonight on the Anderson Cooper 360 show, with interviews with Montana legislators Jenny Eck and Krayton Kerns. Eck is a progressive democrat and Kerns, chairman of the Montana house judiciary, is one of the loudest and proudest Tea Partiers in America. Eck made an emotional appeal to the committee on which she sits, and which Kerns chairs, during a hearing on HB 236, a bill which would make homes for troubled kids like Pineheaven Ranch subject to the same regulation as other youth homes. As in, the state government would be allowed to get involved when school children at private religious schools are allegedly being abused. Religious schools, under current state law, are exempt from regulation.

Kerns, meanwhile, did not disappoint. He said, in an interview with CNN’s Gary Tuchman who paid a visit to the Montana legislature, that not only should schools like Pinehaven not be subject to any state education laws, but that all laws and regulations for all schools, public or otherwise, should be abolished.

The injustice was clearly on Eck’s mind in the committee when she pointed out to the committee that Kerns that allowed the headmaster of the school 20 minutes for his testimony against the bill, but gave opponents of the bill only a few seconds a piece.

And so, the general narrative that has been circulating in the media is that all is well at the Capitol and that “this Session is so much better than last session,” is not true at all. When it comes to the House Judiciary committee, the Montana legislature is still making national news for its awfulness. Perhaps now our own Montana press will get the true picture. HB 236 is sponsored by Rep. Ellie Hill (D-Missoula). Here’s the video:

Posted: March 2, 2012 at 7:01 am

A Birther is Back

One of America’s top TEA Party imbeciles has called for President Obama to prove that he is eligible to be on the Montana ballot, or else have his name removed from it.

Bob Wagner, the Montana state representative who once told CNN’s Anderson Cooper that a person is ineligible to run for president unless both parents were born in America, is back at it again. Reviving Birtherism, Wagner has sent a letter to the Montana Secretary of State (she oversees elections), commanding her to

“prove that Obama is eligible to hold the office he usurped in 2008, or take him off the ballot.”

Wagner believes that Obama’s birth certificate is a fraud; and that even if the certificate were authentic, Obama would still not be a true American citizen because his father impregnated his mother while visiting America.

Alas, Wagner’s letter is the last thing Montana Republicans need right now. They swept the legislature in 2010 in a whirlwind of Tea Party hysteria, only to be utterly humiliated by Wagner and his crowd of Tea Party loons as they coopted the legislature and began passing crazy legislation, calling for an end to the United Nations and a reversion to the gold standard. It eventually proved such disaster for the GOP that the moderate Republicans fled the scene, and voted with Governor Schweitzer and the Democrats.

Schweitzer, meanwhile, had a field day kicking Wagner and his right-wing pals in the ribs. He even staged an event on the lawn of the Capitol building, where he pulled out a red hot cattle iron that said “VETO” and used it to “brand” a few crazy bills, Wagner’s among them. Rachel Maddow did a funny segment on it, highly recommended.

And there’s an even larger problem for the Montana GOP, a dark cloud on the horizon. If Jon Tester wins his race for the US Senate, there is a good chance that for the first time in history, Montana will not have a single state-wide Republican officeholder. Right now, the state’s at-large congressman, Dennis Rehberg, is the last GOP statewide politician, and he’s chosen to give up his house seat to challenge Tester for the Senate. All of the other nine state-wide politicians in Montana are Democrats, even though just over half of the state remains solidly and strongly conservative (Gore and Kerry got 33 and 36 percent in Montana respectively; Obama got 46, but its unlikely he’ll get much over 43 this time around.)

And with the continued antics of nutcases like Bob Wagner, Democrats have a bright future in Big Sky Country.

Posted: January 2, 2012 at 7:23 am

Sine Die

The legislature adjourned Sine Die last night, which in Latin means “without day” (and in Helena-speak means “we’re outta here”).

Dramatic reversal of fortune for Democrats, who came to the session as heavy underdogs facing the real possibility of becoming road kill. The GOP, upon sweeping the elections and achieving record majorities in both houses, came to town ready to make Montana Right Wing History.

Instead, Dems ran circles around the GOP for the better part of the session.

Jon Sesso and Carol Williams, the House and Senate Leaders for the Ds, thoroughly outclassed Jim Peterson and Mike Milburn, who spent most of the session looking dazed and confused, as the radicals in the GOP caucus dictated the terms and humiliated the Republican Party, an effect felt so far and wide that even Denny Rehberg’s numbers sank as a result. Often the leaders could not even get commitments on votes from their own caucus, even when the GOP leaders had made commitments to Dem leaders that they would deliver votes. From day one, Dems were disciplined and had a plan. The GOP never recovered from their early advocacy of crazy and kooky bills that made their way onto national network news shows, Comedy Central, CNN, MSNBC and FOXNews. Strangely, the GOP seems not to ever have felt at all remorseful about the bad publicity this gave Montana.

Schweitzer supplied some theatrics to put the nail in the coffin, with his wildly successful cattle branding veto party, one of the funniest stunts in Montana political history, one that left the GOP looking stupid, weak and deflated, and “bat-crap”crazy unable to respond in any meaningful way.

The 800 pound gorilla in the room the whole session was a several-hundred-million-dollar surplus created by Schweitzer and the Dems during previous sessions and over the last interim, which was bad news for the GOP because they showed up with a hammer but found no nails. In the end, the GOP will do doubt try to brag about a minimal cut of government spending, hoping that nobody reads the fine print: the Schweitzer administration had already reduced spending–submitting a budget with a myriad of thoughtful cuts before the session even began. So it was a semantic reduction for the GOP’s talking points that was ultimately agreed upon.

On big ticket items, the GOP talked tough, like Tea Party types; but fortunately they got stared down, and blinked, in the end. Like their effort, wildly popular among the Tea Party, to refuse all federal funds. The funds were restored in the final agreement.

Also problematic for the GOP, and good for the state, is an overhaul of the work comp system. Working hard in the backrooms throughout the session was Rick Hill and his wife Betti. Evidently Hill believed that having his paws and prints all over a legislative fix of Montana’s very expensive worker compensation program (premiums were the highest in the nation as of the start of the session) would be beneficial to his upcoming campaign. That dream came crashing down when Schweitzer got Milburn and Peterson, in front of all the cameras at a press event, to admit that whoever the architects of the current work comp system were, they sure as hell screwed things up. Who was the architect of the current system? Rick Hill. At the signing ceremony, I’m told that Schweitzer commended the legislators who produced the work comp fix, commended them for “their courage in being willing to admit that Rick Hill and Marc Racicot created one of the worst and most expensive work comp systems in the country.”

On the lighter side, good news that none of the famous “nut-job” bills–like the spear-hunting, the birther bill, the legalize discrimination bill, the militia bill and the nullification bill, etc.–became law. They were all either vetoed with a branding iron or died in the legislature at the hand of a coalition of D’s and a few moderate Rs. Whether these Rs can survive the Tea Party wrath in the next GOP primary is an interesting question. I am sure Roger Koopman will weigh in on it. Unfortunately, so much time was spent on nut-job bills–and an 18th century social agenda–that there wasn’t time to put together anything meaningful on jobs.

Plenty is left to be ironed out, and the Governor will do doubt be busy vetoing or signing bills for a while, including the medical marijuana revision that is very controversial. It also looks like some crap referenda will be on the ballot next fall. But overall, in the 2011 legislature, it is safe to say that the donkey handed the elephant its ass, in a very unlikely upset.

Posted: April 1, 2011 at 7:11 am

Another Montana GOP Legislator Makes It Big as a National Laughingstock

Montana Republican Representative (and bar manager) Alan Hale raised eyebrows across Montana yesterday when he defended drunk driving in a passionate speech to the House.

Video of his speech appeared on MSNBC’s Morning Joe watch the MSNBC VIDEO here, on the Howard Stern show UPDATED, and national political blogs like Wonkette - read the comments for an irreverent, if accurate look at what the rest of the world thinks of our GOP legislators.

Hale is but the latest to make it big as a national laughingstock. Rep. Bob Wagner has appeared on CNN, and Rep. Joe Read was featured on the Colbert Report, and Rep. Greg Hinkle appeared on Fox News. Legislation proposed by Montana Republicans has been mocked by people across America.

Here’s the latest from CNN.

Posted: March 17, 2011 at 6:27 am

Montana GOP Lawmaker Gives Tell All Speech in the House of Representatives

Those of us wondering about the thinking and strategy behind how Montana TEA Party Republican Bob Wagner makes his unique decisions need do so no longer, as he explained his tactics to his colleagues last Friday during an official debate in the Montana Legislature.

To sum it up on in one word “science.”

Rep. Bob Wagner: you’re familiar with him from his birther interview on CNN (as is much of America). Whatever else you might say about the man, it’s hard to deny that he’s smart and literate and can express his thoughts well in the best English ~~(only)~~.

The actions Wagner describes certainly must be true as Wagner would never lie on the floor of the House of Representatives–especially when making his case to cut core essential services that waste valuable taxpayer dollars on food for the poor, housing, education programs, public safety, and other things those taxpayers are in constant need of.

Wagner disclosed his actions during a debate on family planning funding (most of which comes from the federal government, not Montana) to allow the availability of preventative health care on a sliding scale based on ability to pay so that responsible citizens can prevent unintended pregnancy, reduce teen pregnancy, lessen the need for abortion, get tested early for cancer, and other responsible behavior. Watch and learn.

Posted: March 1, 2011 at 7:52 am

Top Editor at the Flathead Daily Inter Lake is a Birther

And that’s no joke. Frank Miele, the top editor at the Flathead Daily Inter Lake and a frequent contributor of arch-conservative editorials which he pens under his own name, has just written an impassioned, roughly 2,000 word piece defending the birther-nut Bob Wagner and his birther bill, and firing back at Anderson Cooper on whose show Wagner appeared a few weeks ago.

Miele sees Wagner’s birther bill as eminently reasonable and necessary, and he is outraged at what he sees as Cooper’s shameful and biased treatment of Wagner. In Miele’s view, the CNN interview was an “ambush…by a left-wing extremist”, with Cooper doing nothing other than trying to insinuate that Wagner “has a vendetta against President Obama — when in fact the law would be applied equally to all candidates, and would neither target nor favor Obama.”

Rather than print multiple excerpts, I will suggest that you read the full idiotic column to fully appreciate it, but I warn you that you will shudder to think that on a daily basis, this man is the arbiter and shaper of the majority of print-news that is consumed by voters in the Flathead Valley. And there is one juicy plum, toward the end of Miele’s editorial rant, which I will definitely print here. This must have made even a good percentage of Republican readers cringe:

“If you want to take the time to research this, you will see that there is considerable reason to believe that in 1961 it would have been possible to register the birth of a baby even if he was not born in Hawaii.”

And so, even though I don’t like to say I-told-you-so, it is important that I do so here. When you all read here, back during the 2010 campaign, that the reporting in the Flathead Valley was all very pro-Republican and candidates like Derek Skees were getting free rides because the media up there were suppressing evidence of their extremism, now you know what I was talking about. The Daily Interlake’s political coverage must be presumed to be Fake Flathead News, all the way.

And while Miele wrote his editorial because he wanted us all to believe that it is Anderson Cooper, not Bob Wagner, who is the nut-job, in fact it is Miele and the ownership of the Daily Interlake who allows him to run the paper, who are the nuts-jobs.

From time to time I hear rumors of progressives with deep pockets who are sniffing around the state, trying to gage the market for a new daily newspaper, statewide, that would combat the right wing rags. The Flathead Valley should be their number one target.

Posted: February 16, 2011 at 5:23 am

Montana Birther Nut Lawmaker Becomes National Joke on CNN