Tagged: Jerry O’Neil

Posted: March 28, 2013 at 10:12 pm

Wrong Side of History

by Cowgirl

Montana lawmakers who have spent the entirety of their paltry careers voting against equality now find themselves on the wrong side of history. In the wake of the upcoming supreme court decision on equal marriage, no one who reads a newspaper can come to any other conclusion. Even Rush Limbaugh says marriage equality is inevitable.

The nutjob wing of Montana’s Republican Party aren’t just wrong, they’re way out in right field, and soon to be there alone. Montana is one of only four states that has a law on the books that makes being gay an imprisonable offense. This fact alone is despicable, but when you consider what else the Montana Legislature has done you start to wonder if the Montana legislature isn’t among the most bigoted in America.

Consider this: During the past 21 legislative sessions least 32 bills have been introduced to make all Montanans equal under the law. Some, like Sen. Facey’s SB 107 attempted to repeal the “deviate sexual conduct” law, others would have prevent discrimination in housing, or stopped the bullying of young people in schools. Many have been introduced by Sen. Christine Kaufmann, of Helena.

Not a single one of these bills has ever passed in the history of this state.

But it’s worse than that. The Montana legislature isn’t content with blocking equality bills. They’ve tried year after year to make things worse.
Look what they did in 1995, when Republican Senator Rick Holden added an amendment to a bill to require gay men and lesbians to register as felony sex offenders. Democrats tried to remove the amendment, but 32 of 50 Senators voted to keep it in.

It was only after twenty-four hours of scathing national press coverage from CNN that the Republicans were finally forced to take the sex offender amendment out. But not before Billings GOP Sen. Al Bishop decided to share his beliefs with the world. He said consensual activity between people of the same sex was “a worse offense than rape.” (The bill was HB 214 and predates the online legislative search.)

Anyway, the Chick-Fil-A munching bunch was not happy to be denied a “felony sex offender registry” of gay citizens. A couple of days later anti-gay slurs and graffiti were “scrawled across the doors of the capitol, and a famous statue was defaced. With no sense of irony, and no mention of the anti-gay nature of the spray-painted slogans, Senators introduced a bill to make defacing the capitol a felony.”

And who could forget what happened ten years later in 2005, when the all-day kindergarten was opposed by religious right Repubs, who claimed bill was part of the “gay agenda.” “The purported evidence given by these groups was that gay activists were NOT at the hearing, proving it was part of the activists’ secret agenda.”

Public sentiment is now so firmly behind equality that the reaction to democratic politicians who announce their support at this late date ranges from “who isn’t” to “where were you earlier.” The Montana Senate even voted, finally, to erase our “anti-sodomy law” which makes it an imprisonable crime to be gay. Although invalidated by our state supreme court in 1997, the law has remained on our books because Republicans have always refused to go along with efforts to scrap it.

Now, SB 107, a measure to strike the offensive language from our statutes finally passed the senate. That said, the vote was far from unanimous. Ten Republicans voted no.

Any day now the bill will be voted on in committee, and then on the Floor of the House. No assumptions can be made about body which includes Verdell Jackson, Krayton Kerns, David Howard and Jerry O’Neil, so start contacting the lawmakers in the House of Representatives, which you can do via this online form. FYI, you can always use the back button after submitting your message, which allows you to skip retyping all your info when you contact multiple legislators. Or you can cut and paste this list of House GOP legislators.

Conservatives were on the wrong side of history with women’s suffrage, they were on the wrong side of segregation. Let’s see whose side they’re on now.

Posted: February 21, 2013 at 12:07 pm

The End of the Gold Paved Road

By Lash

Survivalist, doomsday prepper and gold standard advocate Jerry O’Neil has made the society pages. He very graciously gave up his reserved legislative parking space to an employee of a Democrat, as was reported in today’s IR.

Let’s all enjoy the moment of shared humanity that this brings us. These are the small slivers of political life where it all goes out the window and people interact with one another on real, human levels. It’s a beautiful thing and it deserves to be lauded and app-lauded.

But what of the other thousands of pregnant women in Montana toward whom he apparently feels no obligation?

In 2011, Rep. O’Neill voted for HB 167, HB 283, HB456, and SB 176, all of which had one thing in common – they made it more difficult for women to access, utilize, or understand the myriad of healthcare and reproductive services available to them. These bills attempted to limit abortion services by criminalizing the death of a fetus, allowed insurance companies to consider discriminate against women when setting insurance premiums, and kept comprehensive sex education out of the hands of young women and men who need it most.

In the current year he is again making such policy decisions. He has voted for HB 239 (which seeks to limit access to sex ed) and HB 104 (which opens pregnant women to prosecution for harm to a fetus).

You would be hard-pressed to find proponents of any of these pieces legislation who have any interest in protecting of the rights of Montana’s women. These proposed policies don’t support, help, or further women’s rights or health. They seek to control, constrain, and change the face of women’s rights into something that the Right believes they should have been all along: virtually non-existent.

So Mr. O’Neil’s penny of chivalry does not outweigh his pound of offense to Montana’s greater female population. When, Representative, are you going to start showing the same respect and compassion for the rest of Montana’s women?

Posted: February 17, 2013 at 10:34 pm

Reforming Gun Laws, Montana Republican Style

by Cowgirl

It might surprise you to hear this, but right-wing Republicans actually agree with President Obama that America needs a radical change in our gun laws. It’s just that they have a different idea of what those changes should be.

In the Montana Legislature this month, in the wake of the Newtown tragedy and a scourge of national gun violence, Montana Republicans have moved quickly to introduce a series of bills to deal with what they believe is society’s most pressing gun problem: it’s not easy enough to shoot someone.

There are dozens of proposals, each one stupider and sillier and more childish than the next. Here are few of my favorites:

First is a bill to change our concealed weapons laws. In Montana, concealed weapons may not be carried in churches, schools, banks, bars, colleges, hospitals and a few other specified areas. Republicans have proposed a bill to eliminate these restrictions completely.

The author of the bill, House Bill 304, is none other than the state chair of the House Judiciary Committee. A police officer showed up to a hearing to testify against it, saying he’d “never seen a bar fight that ended well with a concealed weapon.” The Republicans were unfazed by this testimony and are moving forward with the legislation. There’s also a companion bill, House Bill 384, that specifically addresses the injustice suffered by high school students who are denied the right to bring rifles and shotguns onto school grounds. The bill would forbid school officials from punishing such students.

Keep in mind that these are the same lawmakers who proposed Senate Bill 279 which was a bill to allow legislators to carry guns–both concealed and open–in the state capitol building last session. Apparently they think that this will make the capitol a safer place. I’m sure the many government employees who work in the Capitol will feel secure in knowing that a few crusty old Republican men–who start drinking at 10 am and spend the rest of the day snoozing at hearings or ogling high school pages–will serve as a security force in the event the building is attacked.

And if you think Republicans do not believe in guaranteed access to healthcare, think again. A few GOP legislators have just introduced House Bill 459, a bill to guarantee the provision of medical care–to anyone who is armed. The bill makes it a felony to deny someone health care if the denial is based in any way on the fact that the person is in possession of a weapon, and refuses to answer the doctor’s question about said possession. Said another way, this bill ensures that you can bring a weapon to your doctors office, and the doctor may not ask you to leave the premises if you refuse to answer the doctor when you are asked “is that bulge under you clothing a concealed weapon?” It also forbids pediatricians from asking other questions about guns that they routinely ask, about whether the parent owns weapons and, if so, whether the parent is safely storing them in the house, out of reach of the child.

These legislators should themselves seek out a pediatrician, because they are overgrown children who somehow became legislators.

There are many more such bills, including:

HB 302 by Rep. Krayton Kerns would prohibit state enforcement of any federal ban on semi-auto firearms/magazines

HB 215 by Rep. Edward Greef declares the Winchester rifle “The gun that won the west.”

HJ 5 by Rep. Jerry O’Neil amends the U.S. Constitution to prevent President from entering into any arms treaties that infringe on gun rights.

LC1639 by Rep. Scott Reichner would prevent local governments from restricting firearms.

HB 27 by Rep. Ted Washburn would allow the use of silencers when hunting “large predators,” while

HB 205 by Krayton Kerns would eliminate the prohibition on firearm sound reduction devices in the field altogether.

HB 240 by Rep. Cary Smith seeks to allow guns on college campuses.

HB 468 by Rep. Alan Doane would encourage manufacture of ammunition in Montana to ensure availability.

HJ 3 by Rep. Jerry O’Neil calls for an amendment to the US Constitution which “gives the states the right to make whatever guns they want so long as [firearms] stay inside the[sic] own borders.”

SB 304 by Rep. Roger Webb would establish a “firearm protection act.”

HB 292 by Rep. Randy Brodehl would revise laws related to pawn shop stolen gun procedures

Posted: December 31, 2012 at 7:36 pm

Divorced from Reality

When the Daily Inter Lake asked Rep. Jerry O’Neil yesterday about the Newtown school shooting tragedy, the Columbia Falls Republican responded with his concerns about divorce.

O’Neil noted that Connecticut gunman Adam Lanza, 20, was from a divorced home. Lanza apparently got the weapons he used from his mother, who enjoyed shooting sports. He shot her to death in her bed and then went to the school.

O’Neil claimed his divorce law would keep more families together, but it never passed.

Rep O’Neil believes that it is too easy for women to get a divorce in Montana. He was a big supporter of House Bill 438 which has been repeatedly voted down by his own colleagues. Under the proposed law, women would be required to remain married to drug addicts, those who gamble away the family’s life savings, drug dealers, criminals, and just plain bad people–until they had undergone eight weeks mandatory counseling.

To be sure, Rep. O’Neil believes divorce isn’t the only cause of school shootings in America. He believes they are caused by too few, rather than too many, guns in schools. He supports legislation to turn teachers into armed soldiers.

But O’Neil doesn’t stop there. The Montana Republican told the birther website World Net Daily today that he is pushing for two new amendments to the U.S. Constitution. The amendments would make it more difficult for the federal government to regulate firearms and to sign international arms treaties.

O’Neil is concerned about “the growing power of international treaties” and wants to amend the U.S. Constitution to prevent international treaties from being “used to override the U.S. Constitution”–and its second amendment. O’Neil says his other proposal “gives the states the right to make whatever guns they want so long as [firearms] stay inside the[sic] own borders.”

Posted: December 7, 2012 at 7:42 am

Meeting of the Minds

In a little over a month, legislators from across Montana will descend on Helena to make the laws you must live by. Let’s meet them.

1-Rep. David Howard (R-TEA Park City), Chair of the House Human Services Committee. Rep. Howard is on the record saying he believes a Civil War is imminent

2-A FRONTLINE documentary reported that documents found in a meth house indicate potentially illegal collusion between a secretive right-wing group and Republican candidates. Files on Dan Kennedy, Wendy Warburton, Mike Miller, Ed Butcher, Bob Wagner, Joel Boniek, Jerry O’Neil and Derek Skees were found so far.

3-Rep. Roger Webb (R-Billings). This recently elected GOP-er was convicted of shooting his neighbors dogs to death. It was reported in MT’s largest newspaper.

4-We now have a legislator with ties to the militia movement. Yes, Sen. Jennifer Fielder (R-TEA Sanders County) was elected and will serve on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

5-Then there is the GOP legislator who when called by the press about a former UM student who accused him of sexual assault, handed the phone to his mom. Rep. Nicolas Schwaderer (R-~~Missoula~~ Mineral) denies the allegations. He has also threatened a defamation suit against anybody making “slanderous statements” against him. It is not known at this time whether mom will be coming to Helena with Rep. Schwaderer.

6-Rep. Jerry O’Neil (R-TEA Columbia Falls) demanded to be paid for his legislative acts in gold and silver. O’Neil has been ridiculed for his request in the national press. But recall that last session, half of the House of Representatives voted for Wagner’s bill to require the state of Montana to conduct all business in gold and silver. This includes current GOP Speaker of the House Mark Blasdel and Republican House Majority Leader Gordon Vance and many, many others who are back this session.

7-And let’s not forget Rep. Wendy Warburton and Rep. Kris Hansen (both of Havre) who co-hosted an event with former Gov. Judy Martz to tell Montanans that the War on Women is made up. Warburton has an explanation for the lack of GOP women candidates. She said a couple of years back, that “the biggest reason that more women who are Republicans don’t get into politics is because we are the pro-family party.” Yes ladies, GOP women are home raising kids like the women of the pro-family party should be.

8-After I first blogged it here, the Chair of the MT House Judiciary Committee TEA Party Republican Krayton Kerns (R-TEA Laurel) was featured in a popular Huffington Post story for his blog post claiming that moving some bison will “topple the Republic” and lead to $25/gallon gas prices. This month, Kerns’ concern is the “imminent collapse of society.”

9-The newest member of the MT House Education committee will be an interesting addition. Republican Rep. Sarah Laszloffy, age 19, is an alum of the Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry, where students of all ages come to learn how to live ”a supernatural lifestyle.” (And you thought Republicans opposed alternative lifestyles. Not true!)

According to the school’s website, Rep. Laszloffy and her fellow students learned how to “live the Bible,” —including useful skills such as “how to cast out demons” and other practical solutions to life’s most pressing problems. Bethel’s members also purport to have the ability to heal people through prayer and bring the dead back to life.

Perhaps the ability to bring people back from the dead will be useful. Former legislator turned Public Service Commissioner Roger Koopman threatened that if his fellow GOP legislators didn’t stop criticizing him, “Republican blood will flow in the streets.”

10-The outgoing GOP House Majority Leader, Tom McGillvray (R-TEA Billings). McGillvary tweeted (from his official Twitter account) that President Obama must release his college records so as to prove that he was not a “foreign exchange student” while he studied at Columbia and Harvard. McGillvray is termed out and his term will end this month.

Posted: December 5, 2012 at 6:59 am

Nuggets of Wisdom

Birther Bob Wagner is back.

Montana Representative "Birther" Bob Wagner — Former Rep. “Birther” Bob Wagner (R-Harrison)

The former GOP state legislator from Harrison penned a guest editorial in the Flathead Beacon defending the Republican legislator who demanded to be paid for his time in gold and silver.

Is your state Legislature and state employees hostile to the concept of equal protection under the law? Our public servants take an oath to protect this concept under the Constitution. Columbia Falls Rep. Jerry O’Neil poses a question more valuable than “gold.” Is the protection of the value of labor exclusive to government employees only?

O’Neil has been ridiculed for his request in the national press. But recall that last session, half of the House of Representatives voted for Wagner’s bill to require the state of Montana to conduct all business in gold and silver. This includes current GOP Speaker of the House Mark Blasdel and Republican House Majority Leader Gordon Vance and many, many others who are back this session.

Birther Bob’s editorial also explains his belief that a sound penion system for public employees (as required by the Montana Constitution) is “nothing more than theft and discrimination.” Read the whole thing at the Flathead Beacon.

Posted: November 13, 2012 at 6:29 am

Montana TEA Party Calls for Secession

The Montana TEA Party is circulating a petition asking President Obama to allow Montana to secede from the union.

In an email sent to TEA Partiers yesterday, the Montana Shrugged Billings TEA Partiers wrote that it was time to “put the White House on Notice” and ask the president to ”Peacefully grant the State of Montana to withdraw from the United States of America and create its own NEW government.”

Perhaps the impending secession is the reason TEA Party Republican Jerry O’Neil is demanding his legislative salary be paid in gold.

As of this posting, only 24 people had signed the petition, so the thousands of members the Montana Shrugged TEA Party had claimed to have must have dwindled somewhat.

The entire secession email can be read below the fold.

Continue reading →

Posted: November 2, 2012 at 5:47 pm

Some Folks Might be Heading to the Pokey in Montana

In a brilliant piece of investigative journalism, the PBS show Frontline has revealed the seedy underbelly of secret money in elections, with a full-hour expose of Montana politics and a secretive right-wing group known as American Tradition Partnership, or ATP.

Numerous Republican candidates might have worked too closely with ATP, and could be in trouble legally if not electorally. They might be going to the pokey (meaning the clink, the one in Deer Lodge.)

The short story is that the 2010 election, in which the Tea Party swept into control of the Montana legislature, may have featured massive illegalities. Under state law, third party groups, the ones like American Tradition Partnership which spend masses of unregulated, unreported money, are legally barred from coordinating with candidates. But several legislative candidates and the ATP have been caught red handed, working together, in violation of the law. The Frontline documentary reveals that a secret stash of incriminating documents has been found, showing extensive communications between Republican legislative candidates and the ATP, and showing that the ATP was even preparing campaign material for them.

The Havre Daily News, for example, reported today that GOP legislator Wendy Warburton appears to have been in direct communication with the group, even going so far as to send them a “signature stamp,” presumably so they could send out mailings on her behalf, using her signature. That’s likely to be found illegal under Montana law.

Files on Mike Miller, Ed Butcher, Bob Wagner, Joel Boniek, Jerry O’Neil and Derek Skees were also featured on Frontline. Again, groups and candidates cannot coordinate on campaign communications.

Candidates might be subjecting themselves to a range of penalties, including removal from office, fines, or worse. The question is whether there is a prosecutor out there who is willing to begin looking into this stuff. Generally, county attorneys stay away from political stuff, leaving it to the Commissioner of Political Practices.

Worse, the ATP’s headquarters is revealed by the documentary to be nothing more than a P.O. Box at a UPS store in Washington DC, even though the group is spending tens of millions of dollars on elections around the country and is the most influential source of money in Montana politics. They were estimated to have spent well over a million bucks on just a handful of state legislative races in 2010. They’d send mail to voters, which looked very much like electioneering material, something that is illegal if you are hiding who your donors are.

Not all ATP’s donors have been able to hide. Investigative journalist Paul Abowd this week uncovered a document that revealed one of ATP’s largest bankrollers-a Colorado anti-union group called Coloradans for Economic Growth.

And I would say that this documentary, above all, is an outright humiliation for the Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, who this summer rejected a request by Montana to reconsider the Citizens United ruling in light of the ATP’s shady, unreported, anonymously funded activities in Montana. In rejecting Montana’s plea, Kennedy offered a single paragraph describing why he (the swing vote on the court) was refusing to consider the matter. He wrote that there was nothing that led him to believe that the ATP’s activities could lead to “corruption or the appearance of corruption.”

Kennedy, if he watched Frontline this week, probably wishes he could have that one back. Because he is now revealed to be not a brilliant jurist but a stupid old man, who got duped by a bunch of bad actors. Soon, groups like ATP will completely own our state and federal governments, using corporate money, installing candidates into office, from a P.O. Box, never revealing who the donors are. And the Supreme Court believes that this is all perfectly okay.