Tagged: oathkeepers

Posted: April 15, 2013 at 9:38 pm

Meet the ATP Board of Directors

by Cowgirl

A court has demanded that the dark money group American Tradition Partnership must reveal its board members, the Associated Press reported today. Let’s meet them.

Doug Lair

Doug Lair (pictured right), resides in Sweet Grass County.

For some reason, ATP is operating in the county under a different name: Sweetgrass Citizens for Constitutional Integrity. The group hosts an innocuously named website sweetgrassroots.org–and it’s really something to see. On it, Mr. Lair warns his ATP followers that “Progressive programs and indoctrination have found their way into our local government and schools at an alarming rate.”

There is one insidious new influence in Big Timber that Mr. Lair is especially worried about. He fears that a local economic development project of the Northwest Area Foundation may really be a secret “progressive indoctrination boot camp.” Actually, the program gives grants to local communities for projects like sprucing up their business and industrial parks to help get the local economy moving.

When the FRONTLINE documentary exposing ATP’s activities was aired on PBS, Lair posted a tirade against PBS on the Sweetgrass Council/ATP website. He accused the station of everything from “belittling Jesus” to spreading anti-American views, to being part of a government conspiracy to vaccinate kids against diseases.

The site indicates that Sweetgrass County Commissioner Bob Faw is heavily invoved in the group. It also helpfully lists the emails of all the legislators they say have done right by ATP in the legislature, so that you may thank them.

Geoff Goble

Mr. Goble is a commercial property developer who also lives in the Big Timber area. He’s also your garden variety secessionist. He’s been linked with the website SovereignStateProject.com According to this campaign finance complaint filed by former state legislator John Esp, some ATP documents uncovered in a meth house appear to show that Goble helped finance the pro-secession website.

The website proclaims such views as:

“The Project was inspired by Rep. Joel Boniek’s recent legislation in Montana and the clamor for states’ rights that is sweeping the U.S. We are part of a grassroots movement of ordinary citizens who are FED UP with the Federal Government.”

and

“States should seize back the power over their own borders and BOOT the Feds. Let them control ONLY the international borders, and stay out of our Sovereign States.”

The complaint also describes how Oathkeeper-affiliated Joel Boniek, Geoff Goble, and ATP worked together to defeat Esp and support Boniek’s campaign for state legislature. Boniek was the former state legislator who made headlines after a bizarre incident which led to his arrest. Goble has also signed his name to statements declaring that Earth Day is “straightforward paganism,” and a “tool used by those who seek to control individuals and engineer society.”

Peter MacKenzie

Peter Mackenzie is a large land owner and Livingston real estate developer and a major bank-roller of ATP. Here’s how he’s described in ATP’s donor prospecting notes, which were uncovered among the infamous meth house documents:

A Peter G. Mackenzie of Mackenzie Associates LTD from the Livingston zip code has given money to Burns, Daines, Fox, and Brown. His profile appears to match this Peter MacKenzie (pictured) who is described thusly:

“Over the past 25 years, Peter MacKenzie has developed and operated 200 plus nationally-known franchises. In addition to spending a number of years on Wall Street, he continued to raise and manage monies for clients. Peter has developed properties in Big Sky as well as currently owns and operates several retail businesses there.”

Posted: December 10, 2012 at 8:50 pm

Courtroom Fracas “Part of God’s Plan”

The Oathkeepers this week published a defense of former Republican state legislator Joel Boniek on their website, saying the “state-worshipping collectivists and socialists of the press” have gotten Boniek’s story all wrong.

Boniek is a “card-carrying charter member” of the Oathkeepers. The group is composed of active and retired military and law enforcement personnel who swear an oath disobey orders that conflict with their world view–which is packed with conspiracy theories involving domestic prison camps and whatnot.

You will recall that a few months back, Boniek was detained by a cop at a traffic stop, appeared to then fondle a pistol in his clothing to try to scare the officer, and then ran the roadblock and got arrested. Boniek is a former legislator and ran for Lt. Governor this year.

As any good Tea Partier knows, when you have a date before a judge, the best way to win your case is to bring an angry mob with you to court, to heckle the judge and prosecutor. This is what Boniek did.

As the collectivist statists at the Livingston Enterprise reported, Boniek showed up and refused to recognize the authority of the prosecutor or judge–the crowd of foaming crackpots hooting and hollering encouragement. When the mob of hecklers took over, the judge and prosector got up and left the courtroom. At that point, Boniek stood up and declared that he was “now in charge of the court.”

“The judge abandoned the courtroom and I announced the case dismissed as the last man standing,” Boniek later explained. A bailiff who remained in the courtroom saw a lump under Boniek’s clothing and asked him whether it was a firearm, and Boniek refused to answer.

But there is a “truer side to the story” which the press has omitted. The Oath Keepers want you to see the former legislator in the same light as Thoreau and the apostles of Jesus.

Sure, Boniek spent the night in jail, but so did “Henry David Thoreau, Saints Paul and Peter, and many other men who did what is right regardless of the official prohibitions.”

Boniek said he did not lead the fracas. Rather, it was God overruling the court as “a part of the Divine plan.”

I was to be treated just like all the other petty alleged offenders who do not know the law, but get a public defender Judas to run them through the corrupt injustice system, and deprive them of their money and liberty. NOT FOR ME! MY GOD TELLS ME TO STAND UP FOR JUSTICE, AND WHEN I STAND FOR MINE, I STAND FOR EVERYONE’S! They wanted to run me through their injustice mill, but I do not intend to be a soft nut to grind.

Montana, explains Boniek, has got problems. For example:

it should be noted that collectivist statists have been moving into Montana like a red tide for more than a decade, swelling University towns such as Missoula, Bozeman, Helena, etc. Like detached flotsam bringing with them all the backwash and infusoria which caused them to move from their original communities in less-free States, ( such as California and east coast urban centers), the migration of neo- and quasi-socialists has finally become visible to Montana’s native population.

Perhaps this problem will be addressed in the upcoming legislature. You can read the rest of Boniek’s defense, including the Oathkeepers’ blow-by-blow account of things the mob yelled, on the Oathkeeper’s blog. Be warned, it’s out there.

The Oath Keepers has been called the military wing of the TEA Party. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the president of a local Oath Keepers chapter in Ohio was jailed after a live napalm bomb was allegedly found at his home. In Tennessee, an armed man driving a pickup painted with the Oath Keepers logo was arrested in a bizarre scheme to “arrest” two dozen town officials. And in Oklahoma, another self-described Oath Keeper was arrested for the alleged rape and forcible sodomy of a 7-year-old. The same guy was also charged with possessing a grenade launcher stolen from a California military base.

Posted: November 15, 2011 at 12:03 pm

Keeping Up with the GOP Gov Kandidates

There’s a whole lot of crazy tumbling out of the GOP Kandidate Klown Kar this week. The latest? TEA Party blogger Ed Berry writes on the Oathkeeper’s website that the Reverend Dr. Chuck Baldwin, the 2008 Constitution Party’s presidential candidate, has jumped onto the ticket of far-right candidate Robert Fanning to be the Republican Party nominees for the Governor’s office.

Now, governor candidate Robert Fanning, an expert in economics, finance, wildlife and resources, has been joined by 2008 presidential candidate Chuck Baldwin as his lt. governor running mate. Fanning made this historic announcement last night at a Gubernatorial Forum in Billings.

Speculation that Baldwin would run for Montana statewide office began earlier this year, when in a speech to a packed room at the Outlaw Inn in Kalispell last January Baldwin warned the audience that “There’s a fight coming.” In his speech, which some thought seemed to call for a civil war, Baldwin described “waking in the middle of the night and imagining himself as governor of Montana.”

he all but declared his candidacy, describing the prospect as, “so thrilling I just get goose bumps.”

To win a Republican nomination, a candidate has to move right, recant absolutely any past position that violates the current conservative dogma and never, ever dare to speak the truth that the Democratic Schweitzer administration has managed the state budget better than any time in state history.

Fanning and Baldwin are already so far right they won’t have to do much moving. Consider the anti-Semitic sermon written by Baldwin, in which he lashes out at the Jewish Banking Conspiracy and refers to Jews as the modern day “moneychangers” which Jesus banished from the temple. He also says these same moneychangers control the media and thus will never report on their own banking conspiracy, and so of course it is he, Chuck Baldwin, who must bring us the truth about them.

“They are destroying America,” Baldwin says, “but Christians don’t see it,” and so he implores Christians to wake up to the reality of what Jewish leaders are up to.

Baldwin was heavily involved in the modern-day incarnation of the White Citizens’ Council that supported segregation and opposed the Civil Rights Movement.

Baldwin said he was drawn to the Flathead and the Rocky Mountain West by what he described as a “freedom-minded spirit in that area that is superior to most places in the country.” He spoke in May at the “Liberty Convention” in Missoula, and at a conservative gathering in Hamilton last year.

The Liberty Convention was the event that included headliners several white-supremacist speakers including Red Beckman, Baldwin and a small handful of others. Red Beckman is guy whose name you have probably heard before. In addition to refusing to pay his taxes, Beckman believes that Jewish people are the literal children of Satan, and people of color are sub-human “mud people.”

In a recent Flathead Beacon article, it was reported that Baldwin has written a column in which he expressed this view:

“The South was right in the War Between the States, and I am not a racist,” he wrote. “Neither do I believe that the leaders of the Old Confederacy were racists.”

Fanning and Baldwin must know at some level that not all of their ideas are fit for prime time. Or maybe it’s just that there are some conspiracies that are too sensitive to discuss publicly. That’s because on their website, their position on Agenda 21, the insidious UN Black Helicopter agenda in favor of food for hungry people and bike paths, is for certain eyes only, and is password protected. Here’s a screenshot:

They should keep all of their ideas far from public eyes, because the more Montanans learn about this pair, the less there is to like.

Posted: April 22, 2011 at 12:20 pm

Fringe Political Element’s Election Plot Uncovered

The Missoulian is reporting that a cabal of far right wingers that are part of a “fringe political element” has launched a campaign to take over the board of trustees at Flathead Valley Community College.

I can understand why local community leaders are afraid. School board races are often the starting points of future political careers, and the slate of far-right extremists will only end up dragging area schools into senseless and divisive “culture war” battles on issues that have nothing to do with public education, solely to promote their far-right views.

What’s worse, the move comes on the heels of Chuck Baldwin’s tirade in favor of making Montana into a right-wing mecca and that his machinations are in preparation for “a coming battle.” (Baldwin is the father of sect member Tim Baldwin.)

As the Missoulian reports, in addition to Ed Berry, the founder of Montana’s most extreme online forums Edberry.com and PolyMontana.com, the challengers running for three of four open college trustee positions are:

“Tim Baldwin, an attorney and the son of Chuck Baldwin, the 2008 presidential nominee for the national Constitution Party;”

“Roland Horst of Bigfork, where he is a board member of the Prolife Coalition” - the group whose leader was raided for Medicaid fraud; and,

“Glenn Wehe of Columbia Falls, a board member on the Evergreen School District and an active supporter of Senate Bill 114, which would have given county sheriffs authority trumping that of the federal government” – one of the nuttiest bills of the Legislative Session.

The candidates are so far to the right that even local conservatives are coming out in opposition to the extremists.

No doubt the extremists will pull the old “they’re lying about me!” response, but I don’t see where the wiggle room is. You lead these movements, you live with the consequences. You start a forum for the most far-right commentary in the state, you own it (like Obama owning Jeremiah Wright. Remember that, Ed?). You join a board of directors led by a woman suspected of defrauding the taxpayers of Montana, you own that too.