Posted: February 21, 2011 at 7:28 am

Public Outcry Over GOP Hypocrisy, Lack of Focus on Jobs, Increases

This weekend, letters to the editor appeared in Sunday dailies across Montana decrying the focus of Montana TEA Party Republicans in the legislature on frivolous, anti-worker, unnecessary and hypocritical bills instead of jobs.

In Billings, Republicans raise hypocrisy to art form:

The governor proposes a balanced budget; Republicans counter with $497 million in cuts, but then increase their own per diem expenses. They vehemently oppose health care reform, but then enhance their own personal health insurance benefits. They propose business tax reductions, but underfund education, thereby increasing college tuition and forcing us to raise taxes through local school mill levies.

In Helena, Actions, rhetoric don’t match

In its rhetoric, the Republican Party claims to be the party of small government. The reality — at least as reflected in bills proposed in the Montana Legislature this session — suggests something else. Among the Republican proposals are several bills that intrude on privacy rights and individual liberties, including ones to require unnecessary medical tests (ultrasounds before abortions) and mandatory counseling (for couples seeking divorce). Other Republican-sponsored bills seek to take local control away from municipalities (overturning Missoula’s nondiscrimination ordinance) and from school districts.

In Butte, Sales opinion Tea Party spin

Americans for Prosperity and its hyped populist Tea Party, was started by the oil industry billionaire Koch Brothers of Koch industries, along with Rupert Murdoch who owns FOX News, and other lesser multimillionaires according to www.SourceWatch.org. Using such secretive front groups as AFP, these extreme right wing elites are engaged in a well-planned strategy to destroy unions, the presidency and the environment.

Even the Great Falls Tribune editorial page got in on the action:

We’ll close today with a 10-point code that we think ought to be the dominant topic in the Capitol right now:

Jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs.

Posted: February 15, 2011 at 1:02 pm

Nutwatch

How hypocritical is it that now that the election is over, the majority faction of the MT GOP – which finds most of its supporters pronated at the feet of TEA Partier Wendy Warburton (R-Havre)– doesn’t seem to have a problem with the government interference it railed against during the election?

Warburton wants the government to mandate, in the constitution: you get pregnant, you keep your baby – even if it kills you. Even if you were raped. Even if you were a victim of incest. Even if you were too young to sign a binding legal document – a contract – when you got pregnant, you’re old enough to agree to keep the baby.

In the Montana legislature, the situation is even more absurd. According to legislation that is speeding past the Governor’s veto pen because it a constitutional referenda referred by the legislature directly to voters, you could soon risk going to jail for having a miscarriage.

Warburton’s proposal is so poorly worded (hopefully not intentional) that it would force the state to investigate women who miscarry a pregnancy (which happens 20% of the time). Yes, the government can now decide that you fell down those stairs intentionally – in order to trigger a miscarriage.

Similar proposals have failed to pass year after year, session after session, under both Republican or Democratic control. The idea is so unpopular that its bedraggled supporters failed four years in a row to even get the signatures necessary to qualify this amendment to the constitution on the ballot as an initiative.

If their strategy is based on the fact that the current legislature is profoundly more ~~stupid~~ hypocritical then the voters at large, I’d have to concede that point.