Tagged: Jon Sonju

Posted: December 19, 2012 at 7:32 am

Sports-minded and Fun

Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) was forced to come out yesterday and plead with fellow Republicans to be more “circumspect” when they talk about guns.

“It’s not helpful” for GOP lawmakers to be speaking publicly about some of their ideas right now, he said.  Boehner’s pleading is a little late.  In the wake of the mass shooting at a Connecticut elementary school, several GOP lawmakers are now calling for arming teachers as a way to prevent mass shootings 

Bringing guns into schools is also a pet project of Montana Republicans.  Just last session, Republicans in the Montana legislature pushed a bill to allow guns in schools (House Bill 558).

And who could forget the fundamentalist Christian school in Montana that decided to raffle off a semi-automatic assault rifle as a school fundraiser this fall.

Stillwater Christian School obtained the assault rifle came from the NEMO rifle plant. Family members of former gubernatorial candidate Rick Hill’s running mate Jon Sonju are NEMO executives.

In addition to bidding on the assault rifle, you could also attend the schools “Stillwater Shootout” fundraising event down at the shooting range in Kalispell, MT.

School officials said they didn’t see a problem raising money with a semi-automatic assault rifle raffle. Rather, they called it “sports-minded and fun.”

This Christian private school doesn’t just work to instill these beliefs into the young minds of school children, it also gets involved in elections.  This year, school leaders sent out an email before the primary urging GOP primary voters to oppose non-TEA Party candidates.

With the hard-right wing now calling the shots, hardly surprising that GOP legislators didn’t just stop with their bill to allow guns in schools.  Montana Republicans also tried to pass new laws last session to:

Lift the prohibition on carrying concealed weapons in bars, churches, banks, and government buildings. (House Bill 384)

Create fully-armed militia in every town (House Bill 278)

Allow anybody to carry a concealed weapon around without a permit.  (House Bill 271)

Force employers to allow employees to bring guns to work in their cars. (House Bill 368)

Legalize hunting with silencers (House Bill 174)

And when they ran out of gun bill ideas, they tried to legalize hunting with hand-thrown spears (Senate Bill 112)

This is not a joke. These were real bills put forward by Republicans in the Montana legislature, unencumbered by common sense.   Republicans can’t say the public has no reason to fear their proposals when they seem to fear open debate of what they truly believe.

Posted: November 27, 2012 at 9:57 pm

GOP Legislator Junkets Exposed

Today, new evidence of the extent to which Montana’s legislature has been corrupted by out-of-state corporate interests has come to light.  Citizen advocates have released documents showing that several Montana legislators received all-expense paid junkets where they were wined and dined by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).  The latest ALEC extravaganza kicks off tomorrow in Washington D.C.

As Cowgirl readers know, ALEC is the bane of workaday Montanans’ existence. It’s corporate America’s mainline to corrupting the lawmaking process.  At lavish, closed-door “summits” they write “model bills” and instruct GOP state legislators to force them through back home.

ALEC won’t say which Montana lawmakers are showing up for tomorrow’s posh retreat. However, documents released today reveal some of the state lawmakers who were in on these junkets from 2006-2008.

This influence-buying scheme is illegal in some states, and should be in Montana. Probably some smart democratic legislator is already coming up with a bill to this effect.

The list of the Montana junkateers who are still in office includes:

Elsie Arntzen R-Billings
David Howard R-Park City
Lee Randall R-Broadus
Llew Jones  R-Conrad
Cary Smith R-Billings
Wendy Warburton R-Havre
Scott Sales R-Gallatin County
Jesse O’Hara R-Great Falls
Tom McGillvray R-Billings
Roger Koopman (now on the PSC)
Verdell Jackson  R-Kalispell
Jeff Essmann  R-Billings
Debby Barrett R-Dillon
Rick Ripley R-Wolf Creek
Bob Lake R-Hamilton
Krayton Kerns R-Laurel

Besides those listed above there are many other legislators who are members of ALEC.  Some have already been busted directly introducing ALEC bills, including: Mark Blasdel, Jason Priest, Ted Washburn, Scott Reichner, Pat Connell, Tom Berry, Jeff Welborn, and Jon Sonju.

What kind of laws is ALEC pushing this year?  Lots.  One way to find out if a bill is ALEC boilerplate is to compare it to the lists of the latest model legislation from the various corporations which can be found here.  Examples of new model ALEC bills include:

  • a law to require Attorneys General to do the legislature’s bidding,
  • requirement that all public employees must personally pay the costs of producing public documents unless the printed item does not display the publication’s printing cost,
  • a resolution for a constitutional convention to eliminate consumer protections,
  • repeal of voting access laws,
  • and ironically, a bill to create a new government commission to identify ways to cut to state government–at taxpayer expense,

and dozens more.  Some of the bills are designed to enhance corporate profits by stripping consumer protections from the laws, while others are “message” bills designed to enhance GOP chances in upcoming elections by forcing democrats to vote on controversial, if impractical, bills.

 

Posted: November 14, 2012 at 6:58 am

Hill, Rehberg Have Time for Reflection

Several things are going through Rick Hill’s and Denny Rehberg’s minds today.  First, he is wondering why he ignored the old adage, “pigs get fat and hogs get slaughtered.” Taking the $500,000 donation in circumvention of Montana law–even though the law was in a state of limbo–was a bad move. It wasn’t worth the risk, and Hill’s political instincts were clearly dulled from years on the sidelines. Taking the loot ensured weeks of awful headlines, branding him as a guy in a smoke filled room, flanked by fat cats chomping on cigars, and talking proudly of the fact they own the candidate, and handing him a briefcase packed with big bills.

Second, he must be reconsidering the pick of Sonju.  Hill only won by 1000 votes in Yellowstone County which makes victory virtually impossible for a Republican. Presumably, any Billings name on the ticket would have brought in substantial votes there, but would have left Hill’s performance in the Flathead (where Sonju comes from) largely intact. Sonju got the good end of the bargain. He’s now a rising star with statewide name recognition and will run for statewide office soon, a blueprint stamped out by Steve Daines, who ran with Roy Brown in 2008. His ticket tanked, but Daines carved out his own little thing, and made it work.

The other thing that Hill is kicking himself about is that he way overestimated the likelihood of a competitive primary, and the strength of the idiots who challenged him. All of them embarrassed themselves and were never serious contenders at all. They were political neophytes on the statewide scene, and if Hill had gauged this accurately, he would have done two things: pick a Billings running mate. (Sonju was a pick designed to shore up right wing votes in the Flathead, a conservative battleground), and he could have saved his money, and refrain from spending anything in the primary. Hill believed, in error, that his past sins of marital infidelity would blow up in his face in a primary, especially one inhabited by “moral” conservatives like Essman and Miller and Stapleton. He turned out to have been wrong. None of those yahoos had the skill or finances to mount a serious challenge. But Hill blinked, and Bullock came out of the gate in June with a huge financial edge, ran a mistake-free campaign, turned out key constituencies like Indian voters, and never looked back.

As for Denny, his contemplation today should be about his choice. Why did he choose to run for Senate? The answer cannot be that he wanted to accomplish some affirmative thing for Montana, because he does not believe in that type of stuff. He believes in negative government, occupying an office for the purpose of keeping liberals, or Democrats, out of it, lest they destroy society. So all Rehberg was doing was trying to upgrade the size of his office, get a larger budget for offices and an entourage of staffers, and have people call him Senator.

Denny is also probably wondering why he ever voted for a pay raise; and why he voted to allow the federal Homeland Security office to have domain over public lands. The pay-raises produced brutal copy for negative ads by Tester and Dems, while the land grab enraged Rehberg’s own base, especially when they were reminded about it in a terrific ad funded by an environmental group, who successfully used the issue to get conservatives to flee Rehberg and vote Libertarian. Dan Cox the libertarian got a record 6.5 points.

And Rehberg is also wondering why his twenty million dollar barrage of attack ads, telling voters that Tester supports Obama 95 percent of the time, was so ineffective. After all, Karl Rove came here and told Denny that he’d take care of business and put a knife in Tester by linking him to the president. But Rehberg knows the answer to this, and its eating his guts out: Tester worked hard for constituents for six years, hammering things out for loggers, vets, hunters, the elderly, Indian peoples, women and so on. And he earned the trust of Montana citizens, which allowed them to conceptualize Tester as someone distinct from Obama. Rehberg, on the other hand, sat around for twelve years, doing nothing at all except complaining about Democrats, riding the occasional right-wing wave, and free loading on a generally conservative state electorate. A worker always beats a free loader.

Posted: October 2, 2012 at 12:01 pm

Here’s How Rick Hill Would Spend Your Tax Dollars

Rick Hill is emphasizing his plan to spend your tax dollars to subsidize private schools as part of his campaign for governor.

Here’s a look at the kind of school you would be paying for if Rick Hill were elected.

Stillwater Christian School is the only private K-12 school in the Flathead valley.  The school says it is ”thoroughly committed to the Word of God, upholding Christian principles and ideals.” But a visit to the schools website shows a commitment to academic standards is somewhat lacking.

It’s not surprising that the school is not accredited by the Montana Board of Education.  The school instructs students to use a site called “Conservapedia” for research.  Stillwater recommends a Conservapedia article on Ernest Hemingway that tells us that the most important facts about Hemingway are that he was an alcoholic who was investigated for suspicion of communist activities by J. Edgar Hoover before committing suicide.

The site is full of doozies.  Conservapedia  also explains that Einstein’s theory of relativity is:

“a mathematical system that allows no exceptions. It is heavily promoted by liberals who like its encouragement of relativism and its tendency to mislead people in how they view the world.”

Local Tea Partiers are well-connected to Stillwater Christian.   Billionaire Ray Thompson, a who bankrolls the national TEA Party movement, is on the board of the private school.  As Mother Jones reported:

“Thompson is also active in Montana politics, where he has supported one of the tea party’s most radical candidates, Derek Skees, who’s running for a seat in the Montana house. Skees, who showed up at a Memorial Day parade this summer wearing a jacket emblazoned with a Confederate flag, and has been connected to anti-Semitic and militia activity, is a tea party purist. He has advocated nullifying federal health care laws, refusing federal stimulus money, and shutting down many of the state’s school districts and giving kids vouchers to help cut the budget by letting the private sector fill the gap.”

There are other connections.  A relative of TEA Party GOP legislator Mark Blasdel works at the school.  And when the school decided to auction off a semi-automatic assault rifle as a school fundraiser, they turned to the NEMO rifle plant.  Family members of Rick Hill’s running mate Jon Sonju are NEMO company executives.

Tickets for the assault rifle are $25 each or 5 for $100. If you don’t get a chance to bid on  the assault rifle, you can also attend the schools “Stillwater Shootout”  fundraising event.

For some reason, the “Stillwater Shootout” is not being held on the school’s campus.   We know the TEA Party are big fans of guns in schools. So much so that local TEA Party legislators Jerry O’Neil and Derek Skees sponsored a bill last session to allow guns in public schools.  It was one of the infamous “nutjob bills” of the 2011 session.

This private school also gets involved in elections.  School leaders sent out an email before the primary urging votes against non-TEA Party candidates, so watch for them to send out something on behalf of Hill soon.

If you want your tax dollars to be spent on bringing up the next generation of uninformed TEA Partiers, Rick Hill is your man.

 

Posted: April 3, 2012 at 5:58 am

Baucus Begins 2014 Campaign

Max Baucus has purchased $25,000 of radio ads that will air in the next weeks as Tax Day approaches, highlighting his role in the federal payroll tax cut, the Billings Gazette reported. Pundits are saying that this is the beginning of his re-election bid, and that he must start early to recover from his healthcare hangover.

Baucus has selected an interesting person to vouch for him in the radio ads.   It is Dean Folkvord, owner of the Wheat Montana company.  In the last decade or so, Folkvord has been a major supporter of the Right Wing, having made financial contributions to the Montana Republican Party, Bob Brown (2004), Roy Brown (2008), Todd Reier (2002), Scott Sales (2006), Art Whittich (2008), Pat Davison (2004), Cindy Younkin (2004), Duane Grimes (2004 and 2008), Roy Brown and Steve Daines (2008), Tim Fox (2008), and Rick Hill and Jon Sonju (2012).

Posted: March 5, 2012 at 11:07 pm

Case Dismissed

The Republican Party was rebuffed last week, when the state’s top constitutional lawyer dismissed the GOP’s longstanding ethics complaint against Schweitzer.

The complaint alleged that the Governor had broken the law because he ran a public service announcement during an election year, using state funds which the law forbids.  Schweitzer has always claimed that he was simply doing his job by promoting Montana agriculture, and also that no funds were expended because the radio ad was free.

The GOP expressed outraged at the determination by Jim Goetz, the Bozeman lawyer who was deputized to decide the case by the recently appointed Commissioner Jim Murray, that Schweitzer had done no wrong. “Laughable” is how the decision was described by Bowen Greenwood, head of the Montana Republican Party.  Greenwood also said that the GOP will appeal the decision.

I’d say if a radio station gives free air time to a Governor to do an ad promoting the state’s agriculture sector, then it’s hard to see why Montana citizens would benefit by having such promotional activity be illegal.  And recall that the GOP chose to go after Schweitzer on this issue during 2008, when they needed to hit him hard on something, anything, to try to put a dent his numbers during an election year.

But there is also an undercurrent to this whole affair: agriculture no longer appears to be embraced by the GOP in Montana.  It has been a long time since a GOP gubernatorial candidate (or governor) has hailed from an Ag background, and Rick Hill/Jon Sonju are continuing the trend.  Neither Sonju nor Hill has ever picked up a shovel, planted a seed or poked a cow.  Nor had Roy Brown or Steve Daines (two corporate bozos); nor had Bob Brown or Dave Lewis (two career politicians/bureaucrats); nor had Marc Racicot or Judy Martz (a lawyer and an imbecile), nor has Denny Rehberg (he inherited ranch land from his parents and developed condos on it).

On the other hand, Schweitzer and Tester, both farmers, have dominated the Democratic scene in recent years and have eaten into the Agriculture sector that perhaps the GOP once had a much stronger hold on.  So it sort of makes sense that the GOP would become so irritated about the Governor doing a radio PSA supporting Montana growers.  But rather than just be irritated, they became childish, but have now been slapped down, hard, and probably for good.

Posted: January 23, 2012 at 7:48 am

On Jon Sonju and Federal Earmarks

Craig Moore, a conservative blogger, pointed out a few days ago that Tester and Baucus and Rehberg all support earmarks such as the funds that Jon Sonju’s company receives.

So do I. While I’m not familiar with the Sonju earmark in terms of what it was for, I don’t think federal spending is the bogeyman that Teatards have made it out to be. True, we need to find out what type of stuff Sonju Industries is churning out, and see whether it is wasteful or necessary. But the fact is that Jon Sonju should not be ashamed of employing a sizable workforce paid for by federal earmark spending.

However, Sonju may not, like the imbeciles who populate his party, go around talking about how “government is the problem”. Nor may Sonju trash president Obama, who authorized Sonju’s huge multimillion dollar earmark in 2010.

I have no problem whatsoever with Tester, Baucus and Rehberg delivering earmark spending if it is well spent. (I do object to Baucus bringing a check to Sonju in the fall of 2010, but that was more along the lines of a political objection. I didn’t think Baucus should have been endorsing a Republican state senator over the Democrat Mary Reckin, which is effectively what Baucus did by delivering a giant government check at election time.)

Sonju and Hill have both earned a huge portion of their wealth from Government spending. Some of this spending has provided good stimulus for Montana; others, like the giant payments to Hill’s landlord business, are wasteful and sleazy. These contracts were most likely over-market, sweetheart, inflated rent payments. They were put under Hill’s Christmas tree by his buddies Martz and Racicot, and Hill collected this easy cash for decades while he was a sitting Congressman and also while his wife was in the Governor’s office puling the strings. It’s not pure welfare, but it’s pretty close.

Ironically, before Sonju got the nod, Bruce Tutvedt had long been rumored to be on Hill’s short list for a running mate. But Tutvedt was recently revealed to be one of the largest recipients of farm subsidies in Montana history, and so that probably hurt him.

And let’s remember that Neil Livingstone and Ryan Zinke are also big proponents of such an economic model, Zinke having fought for increased federal defense programs for Montana and Livingstone, likely (this is speculation) having worked on contracts from the US government.

So the irony is complete. Like Livingstone and Zinke, Rick Hill has, in selecting Sonju, stated a clear opinion: that a person should not be ashamed of making a living off of government spending. Certainly he is at odds with the Tea Party on this issue.

Posted: January 21, 2012 at 8:14 am

Sonju Takes #2

So Jon Sonju is Rick Hill’s running mate. Not much is known about Sonju other than that he is tall, not a bad looking fellow, and is the scion of the Sonju industries family in Kalispell. And that he is a state senator. And, that his company is the largest earmark recipient in Montana.

More interesting than Sonju himself is the choice by Hill. It is designed to get votes from a Republican area of the state, the Flathead Valley, which logically means that Rick Hill is worried about the primary, and especially worried about Flathead Valley resident Ryan Zinke, running mate to candidate extraordinaire Neil Livingstone, and the damage that Zinke could do to the Hill ticket on his home turf.

In fact, at the expense of doubling down on his effort to win the primary, Hill has produced a ticket that has no Agriculture representation, and no Yellowstone County representation. That’s not a balanced ticket, given that Hill is himself a politician, insurance executive, and tit sucker (government tit, that is, which Hill did suck until he’d drank half a million bucks or so of taxpayer money, from sweetheart state contracts from his friend Judy Martz).

Perhaps Hill believes that Sonju takes more votes in the Flathead than Zinke. Certainly the Flathead is a big prize in any GOP primary.

An additional question is whether Max Baucus will weigh in on Sonju’s behalf as he did in Sonju’s last race, when Baucus appeared before cameras at an event at Sonju Industries shortly before the election to deliver a giant federal earmark to senator Sonju for his company.